According to the labels, record sales would have burgeoned if not for the existence of file-sharing site Napster. The labels’ optimistic forecast comes in the form of a chart included in a trial brief for their case against LimeWire.
The above chart was born out of a case brought by major labels like Sony Corp.’s Arista Records and Warner Music Group Corp.’s Atlantic Records against LimeWire. The trial is scheduled to begin May 2.
In the brief, the labels say:
“The evidence will demonstrate that there has been a $55 billion decline in record industry revenue over the last decade. Plaintiffs and Defendants disagree as to whether mass filesharing through peer-to-peer services has been the primary cause of this decline (Plaintiffs’ position), or just one of several causes (Defendants’ position). But even if LimeWire caused only a fraction of this decline, Plaintiffs’ damages would still be in the billions of dollars. Plaintiffs will offer evidence at trial demonstrating that far greater than a fraction of this harm was caused by LimeWire.”
What do you think of the labels’ position? Are Napster, LimeWire and Co. to blame for the declining music industry? Should the labels have embraced file-sharing earlier and adapted it to their own purposes? Let us know in the comments.
Liz Elting is co-founder and co-CEO of TransPerfect, the world’s largest privately held provider of language and business services.
Web users in the Middle East, Asia, the Americas and Europe have embraced Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms as vehicles for communication, commerce, and revolution. If North American-based businesses are to reach this rapidly expanding, increasingly sophisticated Internet audience, they must get smarter about international search engine optimization (ISEO).
Just like domestic SEO, international SEO aims to boost the likelihood that a particular website will rise to the top of search results, thereby enabling increased conversion rates. The challenge internationally is selecting the right SEO strategies for an enormous number of locales, cultural norms and languages. Here are some key points to consider when tackling ISEO.
1. Humans Beat Machine Translation
Even with adequate time for review and planning, machines can make small errors in localization that have significant consequences. The pressure to get it right via social media is exponentially greater, since time is short and engagement expectations are high. Brands need human experts who can quickly identify faults in automated translations and repair them before damage occurs in important markets. This is also true for accompanying imagery, which can convey unintended messages if not properly vetted.
2. Learn Vernacular and Optimize Keywords Accordingly
Whether a user seeks out information via a regional search engine or through Facebook pages or Twitter hashtags, the company looking for that prospect must anticipate the phrases he or she will employ. For example, a young person in one part of the world may search for shoes using a slang term, such as, “tennis shoes,” “sneakers” or “kicks.”
No two search engines use the exact same algorithm to produce organic results. The techniques required to optimize for Chinese search engine Baidu, for example, may be vastly different from those needed to optimize for Google. Businesses that want to reach targeted users need expertise not only in language, but also in culture and technology. This is one reason why enterprises must adopt an integrated approach to ISEO that determines the right wording and creates consistent, relevant messages in ads, landing pages, social media posts and search engine marketing.
3. Make Every Character Count
Improving the visibility of a website abroad — which demands knowledge of regional cultures, dominant local search engines and top keywords — starts with translation. Effective localization requires more than plugging words into a bot that spits out literal interpretations. This is certainly true for global websites, but the importance of connotation intensifies as communication gets more compact. Twitter’s strict length parameters, for example, make every character choice a critical one, particularly when you consider that English text can expand in character count when translated into other languages. Translating for this kind of platform requires not only timesaving software solutions, but seasoned human translators, as well.
Multi-language tweets can be a valuable tool in numerous communities around the world, but 140 characters in English do not neatly translate into 140 characters in Arabic, for example. To communicate convincingly with multilingual audiences via social networks, companies need more human involvement. Engagement is key.
4. Register a Local Domain and Apply ISEO
Global search marketing requires local domain and IP registration, as well as meaningful and fresh content that is keyword-specific. It demands descriptive tagging, rich media, social media distribution and internal and external links. These elements must take into account the search habits of target audiences and the algorithms of the search engines they are most likely to use. There is little value in going live with a website that is not optimized with these needs in mind. Only when ISEO and design are done in conjunction can a business be certain that customers will find it online. This principle applies to social media as well.
5. Get to Know Your Audience
Internet World Stats show that 86% of web users live outside North America. Many of them speak languages other than English, and capturing their business depends upon quality website translation, localization, and smarter ISEO. Increasingly, that business opportunity also hinges on extending multilingual campaigns to social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter.
To break into promising regions in the Americas, the Middle East, Europe and Asia, enterprises are applying these principles to all of their electronic communication points with customers, and therefore maximizing their prospects for success.
Know your audience’s lingo, its concerns and its preferred platforms so it can quickly and easily find and do business with you. Use social media to show that your company took the time and effort to communicate with global customers in a meaningful and authentic manner.
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All right, all right … we know that content is the grease that keeps the gears, pipes, levers and shocks of this relentless internet machine rolling down the highway.
The deal is, you make/write immortal stuff related to your business or ideas, and people will eventually find you, trust you and pay you.
The question is: Where the hell do I get the ideas for all this content I’m supposed to be writing?
The answer lies at a little-known crossroads that great songwriters, journalists, novelists, philosophers, scientists and poets have been driving to for millennia.
Listen in, we’re going to give you the map right now …
In this episode Brian and I discuss:
How to generate a constant stream of powerful content ideas
What to do if you feel like an uncreative, unoriginal dolt
Where “original” ideas come from and how to grab them
The two essential elements of all compelling content
Want to discover the smartest ways to mix social media, content marketing, and SEO? We’ve got you covered with Internet Marketing for Smart People. It’s a FREE 20-part course and email newsletter that delivers the techniques and strategies you need to know as an online marketer.
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Quick Pitch: Convofy is a private social network for enterprise, designed for visual thinkers.
Genius Idea: Convofy runs on Adobe AIR and focuses on detailed annotations for images, video, links and documents, making it ideal for firms that collaborate on a lot of documents or multimedia.
Convofy, built by the team behind the Scrybe task manager, differentiates itself through its focus on multimedia, drag-and-drop interface and real-time information stream. These features are made possible because Convofy runs on Adobe AIR and not in the web browser. And because it’s an AIR app, it can be placed in a convenient and always available area of your desktop.
It offers the features you’d expect from a social network built for the enterprise: a newsfeed, groups and file-sharing all fleshed-out features. Its newsfeed is extraordinarily visual, displaying documents, photos, slides and links inside the stream. Adding files to your Convofy network is as simple as dragging and dropping the files onto the app. It also comes with a series of notifications for when your co-workers comment on something you’ve added.
Convofy has a few tricks up its sleeve to differentiate it from the enterprise social networking crowd. One of those tricks is the ability to markup uploaded documents and add conversational notes. It makes collaborating on documents rather simple, although it’s nowhere near as robust as Google Docs. Convofy also includes annotations for videos and photos as well, and these annotations include timestamps so it’s easy to see the history of a conversation around any given piece of multimedia.
The app takes annotations one step further than most of its competitors. A team within Convofy can even annotate the web. Say you read an interesting article and want to point out a key phrase to your co-workers; Convofy lets you comment on that item and gives everyone else in your network the chance to comment and converse on the link.
Convofy is also mobile via a mobile web application built for smartphones that can run HTML5.
If you’re already using Chatter or Yammer, you may not find a lot compelling reasons to switch to Convofy. The enterprise app really shines though if you’re a company or team that shares lots of images, videos and documents. Design, research and consulting firms are the ones who will most likely find it useful, especially if they are willing to learn the ins and outs of the system.
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
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