Hi, I'm Ted Leonsis. I'm president of the America Online Services Company and as an important partner
I'd like to welcome you to America Online and to your first new programming endeavor in this new interactive marketplace.
We've put together this video to help you to be more successful and to get a taste of what you can expect
as you journey into this brave new world of cyberspace.
Shifting from repurposing to really creating original programming can really drive this into the mainstream.
Probably the central idea of this medium is it's about people.
You've got to figure out ways to engage them and make them feel, participants, and make them feel that your service on AOL is their service.
We're delighted to have you join us to be part of making history.
As an interactive programmer we thought it would be best if you could learn from both the people at America Online who have been pioneers in this industry
and your peers and other information provider partner companies.
So they'll be giving you tips and the best ways to make effective, productive, and profitable areas.
The first step, and it's understandable from building an area they would think is to design the area, to sort of build a model,
come up with a metaphor that works and start doing layouts and designing icons.
When actually that's the last of many steps. The first step should be identifying exactly who you are targeting
and then defining a product that delivers on these but then also takes the leap that you can only get through online using the unique capabilities of the medium.
Put together fresh information that uses the media, that uses color, that uses pictures, that uses text, and shortly we'll be using sound as well.
The look of the area, the art, is the first and most important clue people have to understand the personality and the attitude of the area.
We've tried to stay with icons that express what's behind them. When somebody pushes a button, they can tell by the image on the button what's behind it.
And then in the new artwork that we're bringing online now, the photographs and things like that,
we're trying to actually follow the procedure of preparation of different dishes and food so that the graphics and the illustrations carry as much content value as the words.
I put a lot of work and effort into working with an artist to create a graphic look for Blackberry Creek.
It says this is fun. It says this is for little kids. The look, that graphic look, is the way you tell people what to expect and what to think about your area.
Areas that don't work currently are facades. I promise a lot, a lot of heavy graphics, empty behind the walls. It's like window shopping.
What is it that you like? Is it that the merchant puts everything they own in that window? And the answer is no.
They're provocative. They evoke images of what's inside the store.
How are you going to program your area and how are you going to create a design online so that it's changing by the minute?
So if I log on to your place online five times in a given day, it's going to be something completely different each of those five times.
And each one of those times there's going to be something there that catches my eye that I say I've got to get in here, I've got to see what they're talking about, I've got to see what's happening there.
Interest, it's a matter of making the screens change. People want to see that there's a reason to come back.
Part of our information is that weather changes constantly and we try and make it look fresh so that we aren't always just updating the same map
so that users get a little bit of excitement rather than just coming in and seeing their daily weather forecast.
I hope that we're not having to convince any new partners that they need to update their content daily.
Your goal as a business should be to bring people back every day, so you should be identifying ways to do that.
If you're not planning on doing that right now, then you're in trouble as a partner.
We try to do things like contests and surveys and event coverage, all of which have become very, very popular.
We have different chat activities every day. We have kids lead those chats.
We had one where we had them help name a new dog of one of our staff and that was hugely successful.
What you do is limited mostly by your imagination.
So if you can find out how to hook interactivity into your area and make it work, you'll have no doubt about it.
When I think of our most successful partner, what that partner tends to do is they really listen to their member.
They could actually talk back to this institution that they have been hearing from for so many years.
It's the people who use your service that will tell you what works and what doesn't work.
If you go out and say, I have this great idea, I know who my members are, and here it is, and for one month you do everything you want to do, you'll probably fail.
Our members are constantly giving us feedback.
They usually tell us what they don't like because they're very quick to tell us that as opposed to what they do like.
And one of our challenges is when we don't hear from our members is we don't know if they're happy and they like it or we don't know if they're not using it.
Because what's important is what they want to do and you build community because you're listening to them.
I always liken it to say like the French salons of the 18th century in which there were classes, high classes of people who were very adept at bringing together very talented, interesting people and fostering discussion.
On various subjects. That's the secret if you want to be really community based.
Probably 90% of the interactions that occur are from 10% of the users.
So a big part of what we try to do is find ways for members to participate.
You have to be very careful to make sure that everybody's opinion counts and not just the private opinion of somebody who might be the head of that forum.
In our articles, begin to use some of the work that our readers have done, highlight it, place it in different parts in the forum that show that we're emphasizing some of the work that they've done as stuff that we consider to be foolish.
People who come online are encouraged to take recipes from the cookbook and then ask to put something back for everything they take.
It's always been a give and take situation.
We try to position ourselves and put ourselves in the writers club where the people are talking.
So if you set up a chat room and you never go, you'll never know what people are talking about.
We have a large lay staff and mostly a volunteer lay staff.
We have a staff of 11 volunteers who help with chats and talk about food. They have chats about areas in which they're pretty competent and interested.
We have really been guided by the idea of creating a culture, not just a content area or a commerce business.
Within the first month or so of our being online, we started noticing that our readers would sign their notes foolishly, blah, blah.
The kids like the sense that it's their area.
We ask them to join. They send in a little, they fill out a little form.
We send them a membership card and email and then we have them for our mailing list.
I call the members of Blackberry Creek creakees and the kids, I believe, really are buying into it because they've started calling themselves creakees.
The kids create stuff, send it to us and we publish it for everybody to see.
If you looked at the area, about three quarters of the stuff that's there was created by the kids.
Our point of view is really our heart and soul because the one thing that nobody can duplicate is your own point of view.
Once you create a point of view and make it your own and then teach it to your readers so that it does become part of the culture, you have a very strong competitive advantage.
Do chats, do contests, promote the heck out of them and slowly over time or maybe even quickly you'll build a community that sells.
Unlike a magazine or a TV show in which it's really a one-way street, online you can really wrap a lot of great online functionality into content.
In programming these magazines in the future is to launch new content areas that is not repurposed material out of the magazine but that will create that sense of community.
What we've learned and experimented with in the last 18 months is how to take that newspaper and the information that it provides on a daily basis and the information that it's provided for 150 years
and how do we translate that and make it work in this new online medium.
So what we concentrate on for the most part is giving writers, bringing together all the information there is to writers out there because the information is very scattered
and there aren't very many sources that you can go to one source and say, okay, here's what I need to do, how do I do it?
We've added other features from the New York Times and we've added additional material and features that are not part of the paper.
Remember that you're dealing with human beings and they're paying to be there so everything you do online you should make sure that a member goes away with something of value.
You really make that content supercharged if you will. It's not a cul-de-sac, it's not the end of the street, it's the beginning of a lot of your programming, it's the jumping off point if you will.
Well the power of this medium is its ability to get the consumer involved in the product or service that's being marketed and to get a very, very quick response.
One of the things that we were worried about was that that new commercialism would destroy that sense of community we worked hard to build.
But in actuality it's very well received by the consumer and as long as it's not stuck in their face and it's their choice as to go shopping or to look at some information or infomercials or advertisements
and there's something of value to them behind that it seems to be well received.
The advertisers, whether it's 9X Nabisco or anyone else that's involved in this right now, are also trying to figure out how do you take their marketing messages that have worked in print and make them work online.
Avoid the trap of shovelware. Shovelware really means that you take an existing, let's say, brochure and you shovel it online because that does not work in this medium.
We are moving more and more aggressively into the commerce area with transactions, stores, that kind of thing, but also with advertising and sponsorships, especially linking to the web community.
This medium, unlike any medium that precedes it, allows us to target and account for our investments in the medium.
You can't lose the concept that the most important part of the service are the people.
Whatever resources you think you're going to need, double it or triple it.
You have to be really flexible and able to go with the flow because this is a river moving really fast and you have to stay on top of it.
It really does feel working with the news people at AOL like we're both in this trying to figure out this new medium together and there really is no such thing as a bad idea.
You have to be able to deal with technology. That doesn't mean you have to be a programmer, but you have to be able to learn things, understand things, and figure out how to sort of take the technology and twist it around to do what you want.
Whatever elapsed time you think it's going to take, triple it or quadruple it.
If you want to succeed, you can't come into it assuming you're going to put up great information and the users are just going to eat it up.
And with AOL we truly feel that it's a partnership as opposed to a vendor-customer relationship.
So remember you're not alone on this journey into cyberspace. At AmericanLine we're going to be a great partner for you.
We have tools for you, we have a help desk, we have great energetic, enthusiastic producers.
The whole company is here to serve you to be a great partner.
And don't hesitate to call on us or some of your friends in the other partner companies to help you be more successful.
Thanks, bye bye.