Historic Interviews With The Founders Of Social Media, By Lon Safko

Neil Creighton, CEO of RatePoint

In this histori interview, Lon speaks with Neil Creighton, the CEO of RatePoint email marketing, how he founded GeoTrust which was later acquired by VeriSign. Neal talks about how he combined e-mail marketing with a complete review survey platform so businesses can get reviews from their customers and republish those out in different places, and a lot of that is social. Neal tells us that e-mail marketing is the base part of their service and a lot of businesses use email marketing. He says the ROI on it is very, very high and that for every dollar you spend you get $43 back. Email Marketing is a very effective way to reach your customers.Neal says "A lot of it has to do with social media but the number-one thing people look out for before they transact with a business, whether it's calling a landscaper or plumber is, I buy from businesses reviews. And they generally start at Google and they generally look up the business name and reviews pop up. 70 percent of people believe reviews or they trust reviews from people they don’t know.

Tony Mamone, Founder & CEO of Zimbio

In this podcast Lon Safko speaks with Tony Mamone, the Founder & CEO of Zimbio, the interactive on-line magazine. Tony tells us how his magazine caters to four basic pop-culture categories of news; Style, Entertainment, Current Events, and Sports. Zimbio covers more than just stories, it highlights the people making the stories.In this 30 minute interview Tony shares his ideas about social media, user generated content, and on-line publishing. Tony explains how Zimbio is “self policed and added to” and about “the democratization of publishing”. Tony also tells us how his small 15 person company built Zimbio to more than 13 million readers every 30 days, with the help of 35,000 volunteer contributors, offering a combination of “citizen journalism & paid traditional media”. Zimbio publishes more than 10,000 articles and 5,000 photographs every day!

George Strompolos, Content Partnerships Manager for YouTube

In this historic interview, Lon Safko speaks with George Strompolos, Content Partnerships Manager For Google’s YouTube about companies from around the world who are using YouTube to market their company’s products. George tells us that “YouTube isn’t just about teenagers watching videos of dogs on skateboards”. It’s about Fortune 500 marketing and companies like Blendtech and their “Will It Blend”, which caused a 300% increase in sales due to these YouTube videos.In this 25 minute interview George describes how YouTube’s members are uploading 13 hours of video per minute and more than 1 billion video downloads per day! George tells us that YouTube has the same number of users under 18 that they have over the age of 55. He also shares how some of their video content providers are actually making a living from their contextual advertising associated with their videos. One such rising star is “Fred”, a 15 year old pretending to be 6 with anger management issues. You just have to see Fred to believe Fred.

Stephanie Ichinose, Director Of Communications for Yelp

In this historic interview, Lon Safko speaks with Stephanie Ichinose, Yelp’s Director of Communications about how Yelp helps! Stephanie explains how “Yelpers” are rating restaurants, auto mechanics, dentists or any company right in your home town.In this 34 minute interview Stephanie describes how Yelp has received more than 3.5 million reviews of services all over the United states, and how Yelp.com has more than 14 million unique visitors every 30 days. Stephanie further describes how the mobile phone has changed the way people access Yelp information. Imagine you’re out to dinner, wanting a good pasta restaurant; turn on your mobile phone, type in pasta, and Yelp returns all of the rated pasta restaurants that’s closest your GPS cell phone and shows their five star ratings!

Patrizio Spagnoletto, Senior Director of Marketing Yahoo! Search Marketing - Advertising Your Business with Yahoo! – SEM

In this historic interview, Lon Safko speaks with Patrizio Spagnoletto, Senior Director of Marketing Yahoo! Search Marketing where he discusses how easy Yahoo! makes it to create multiple keyword advertising campaigns. He explains how they provide a step-by-step on-line process and even have customer support that will help you over the telephone. Patrizio explained how by choosing more specific two & three word keyword phrases that you can actually target a much more specific customer and at a lower cost.In this 17 minute interview Patrizio describes how many of their 100’s of thousands of customers such as Lending Tree & Amazon manage 100’s of keyword campaigns and how 20% of your keywords can generated 80% of your revenues.

Matt Mullenweg, Co-Founder of WordPress

In this podcast Lon Safko speaks with Matt Mullenweg, Co-Founder of WordPress and president of Automatic. Matt discusses how and why he created WordPress just to fulfill a need for an easy to use blogging platform and how he had no idea how popular WordPress would become.

In this 23 minute interview Matt shares his ideas about how social media and blogs are being used and about his hope this “open source” software platform is improved and maintained. Matt discusses how people are using WordPress within the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and Ford Motor Company.

Gary Vaynerchuk, Host & Founder of Wine Library TV

In this historic interview, Lon Safko speaks with Gary Vaynerchuk about his success with building community and Wine Library. Gary tells us how he built his brick and mortar liquor business to more than $50m by building his on-line community.In this 23 minute interview Gary talks about how he built his following using video to more than 80,000 video views everyday of his now 600 videos. We also discuss his “How Do You Monetize A Blog” video, book & TV offers, how to “Network Virtually”, Word Of Mouth On Steroids, and his simple formula to success; PHCC, Patience, Hustle, Content, and Community.

David Treadwell, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Live Platform - Azure

In this historic interview, Lon Safko speaks with David Treadwell, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Live Platform. David discusses Microsoft is all about building connections with people, devices, and data, and how Live can help businesses and individuals “sync to the cloud” (you have to listen to hear what this means), get access to 5gb of on-line virtual storage, and 25gb of photo storage for free.In this 23 minute interview David explains how more than 460 million (nearly a half billion) are currently using Microsoft’s Live Platform and how Microsoft is strive for an open architecture to allow developers access to all of the Microsoft Live tools. David also speaks about the value of Microsoft’s new program called “BizSpark”!

Dharmesh Mehta, Director of Product Management for Windows Live Messenger

In this podcast Lon Safko speaks with Dharmesh Mehta about Windows Live Messenger. Dharmesh explains how Windows Live Messenger is designed for IM, Photo, and video sharing and you can go from your desktop to your laptop then your mobile phone all seamlessly.In this 23 minute interview Dharmesh shares his insights about why 325 million people are currently using WLM and how 85% of its users are outside of the United States using 55 languages. He further explains how WLM works on three levels, SMS, WAP, and Client Apps and offers features applicable to the entrepreneur and the Fortune 500 enterprise alike. Dharmesh discusses how all these service and 25 gigabytes of virtual hard drive space is yours free. He also speaks about the 10 billion messages sent each day using WLM and how more than 10 million messages were sent using WLM just in the time it took to do this interview.

Peter Booth Wiley, Chairman of The Board of John Wiley & Sons Publishing - Wiley – Knowledge for Generations

In this historic interview Lon Safko speaks with Peter Booth Wiley, Chairman of The Board of John Wiley & Sons where Peter describes how Wiley, a 201-year old company, has been in the forefront the technological revolution in publishing. That’s right, John Wiley & Sons celebrated their 200th anniversary in 2007. John Wiley was publishing books when Thomas Jefferson was president. Peter explains how Wiley began experimenting with computers in the 1950s while thinking about how they would impact their authors, their customers and the way they published. He describes how Wiley took this experimentation to the next level in the 1980s with the creation of a sales training program on an interactive videodisk with assessment capabilities.In this 39 minute interview Peter explains how the secret to Wiley’s success is two fold; they create an internal culture that encourages creativity and they listen to their authors. Among those they have listened to were J.D.R. Licklider and Robert Sproull, both of whom played important roles in the development of the DarpaNet, the mother of all internets. When a subject matter expert comes to them with a new concept, Wiley is willing to take a carefully calculated risk and publish their work. And more…