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>> Trevor Turnbull: I want to talk about two more platforms that are hot. I see that you
guys have a presence on one and not on another so far.
Google+ first of all; I forget what the numbers are exactly, I think that they just hit 50
million maybe? I could be way off on that but I think that they just hit 50 million.
There was talks projecting them hitting 500 million by the end of the year and the fact
that Google might have gotten it right this time with their social network. Being that
they are the most massive Internet company in the world the opportunity for them to increase
their role on the social side of things is incredibly large to start competing against
the Facebooks of the world. You guys have started to dive into the Google+ area. What's
been your thoughts on it so far and where do you see that one going?
>> Sean: OK. That was actually my idea. I said let's get onto Google+, this is going
to be huge, everybody is kind of laughing at me.
>>Trevor: Very similar to the Twitter conversation then two years ago right?
>> Sean: Very similar. This time it's more like "you sign up but nobody uses it" or "yeah
but that's 50 million Google employees are on it," that sort of thing. "You'll never
get anybody to follow you."
I think this time they did get it right. I think that Buzz was all messed up, it was
totally wrong. They hadn't really thought through what they needed to do.
With plus it's a little bit different and I think it's way more valuable for brands
on plus than on Facebook, or ultimately it will be. Facebook is built for that personal
connection; I want to meet my friend, I want to look up a high school sweetheart or I haven't
seen my buddy in 20 years what's he look like now sort of thing. It's very much built for
that personal connection and meeting people and working on it that way. Google has their
search engine that they can leverage behind Google+.
What are the statistics now on Facebook; you have one in five people I think on Facebook.
In one way shape or form it's like four out of five or five out of five of us are on Google.
Whether it's the search engine, whether it's Google Docs, whether it's Google Maps; we're
using their platform in some way, shape or form. Now they've started to include your
world in their searches so that if you're on Google+ and they've tied everything together.
Whether it's Gmail or Google+ they've tied all of those accounts together. Your world,
your recommendations from friends, the things that are important to you, are showing up
first. You can turn it off but it's showing up at the top. They're starting to leverage
their monolithic power as a search engine company to get people to buy into their social.
I think as soon as they start releasing APIs and saying brands can now add more flourishments
to their page than simply the big picture at the top or the big icon and multiple pictures
that's when you're going to start to see brands really take advantage of this. I think ultimately
it's the power of the search engine that is going to drive this thing.
I like it; I certainly see it's in its young stage. For the lack of a better term it's
a startup. You have to play with it and bust it out. It has some cool things; the hangouts
are cool. Being able to have a conversation with nine of your friends; we've actually
thought about a couple of different ways to be able to run some contesting around that.
I'll ask you - as a fan would you like to sit down with one of your favorite players
in a hangout? Just you and a couple of buddies on Google+ and have a conversation with a
player or an owner or a GM or somebody?
>> Trevor: Yeah. No doubt.
>> Sean: I'm sure you would and I'm sure there's a ton of sports fans that would as well. That's
a great little feature that they have.
The fact that you can record it and there are ways that you can go back and edit things,
the way you add pictures, is good. I think its going to be a pretty robust outlet when
everything is said and done and I think that brands are certainly going to benefit from
it more than they think right now.
>> Trevor: Yeah. Just to elaborate on what you're saying too I think the expansive network
that Google has is interesting. You mentioned the search engine; it's a common phrase now
right? It's not a tissue to paper its a Kleenex, it's not a search engine it's Google. I'm
going to go Google this.
I just did a search for hockey right now on Google, for example, and right beside this
link I see a big "+1" button. I dont see a Facebook like button, I don't see a tweet
this button, I see a +1 button. The amount of users that are using Google, whether or
not their signed up for an account with Gmail or Google+ or whatever it happens to be, I'm
with you. I think the possibilities are massive in this area. It's going to be a big time
battle over the next few years watching these behemoths go at it.
Speaking of the multiple platforms that you see Google on, you now see Facebook talking
about creating a phone. A Facebook-dedicated phone where they now have control over the
whole interface and what you see and all of that kind of stuff. So they're getting into
the hardware side of things. It's really, what we've been saying, the wild wild west
for the last five years but it really is. It's going to be amazing to see what actually
becomes of all of this stuff.
>> Sean: Yeah. Somebody better be keeping track of all of this so that 10 years from
now we can look back and say, "oh my God, he was so wrong" or "oh my God, he was so
right."
>> Trevor: No doubt. We'll you've pointed it out a couple of times already. I was out
there in Washington with you talking Twitter talk at the time when nobody else was really
into it or wanted to spend the time on it or saw the value in it. Now I know that your
senior directors, hell even Anthony; my buddy your co-worker there; is on Twitter. That
says something.
So the other platform that I wanted to talk to you about Sean is somewhat related to your
team initiative to try and tap into that female demographic, your female fan for the Washington
Capitals. I know a few years back you guys launched a site called scarletcaps.com I believe;
I think it just redirects to a subpage of the Web site now. It was really an initiative
to try and tap into that female demographic and give them the content that they were looking
for, that may or may not have been different than what the male fan is looking for. I guess
it was kind of an experiment at the time.
Pinterest has now blown up in the newswires about how awesomely dedicated it is to the
female demographic; it's 85-90% women who use the platform. What's your guys' stance
on Pinterest? Where do you see things going with that platform?
>> Sean: It's funny. I looked into Pinterest a little bit ago; our developer, Alex Ball,
said my wife is on it and the demographics are very female, as you said. I jumped on
it just to see what's going on and what it is. Immediately the first thing that came
to my mind is exactly what you said - this is certainly geared toward women, for whatever
reason. This would be a great platform for Scarlet Caps and that whole initiative.
I mentioned it to our vice president of marketing and we've had conversations around it and
I've had conversations with my graphic designer and developer. For now we're holding back.
The reason why is not because we don't want to jump on it. We have so many fingers in
so many pies that jumping onto Pinterest would actually probably end up hurting our brand
rather than helping it because we wouldn't be able to sustain something that we think
would be valuable. So we've been holding back a little on getting onto that.
As I mentioned earlier, there are some things that you want to trust to an intern and other
things that you don't necessarily want to. People's tastes are certainly different. If
we had an intern this semester who was plugging away and posting stuff on Pinterest; the way
that we look at that is you can't do it just once per day. You have to be pinning stuff
almost constantly. You're talking about a full-time job managing Facebook; it would
certainly be a full-time job for somebody just to sit there and get interesting stuff
and develop and cultivate something on Pinterest. The resources just are not there. We do think
it's a viable platform.
It's kind of funny; I think it's one of these things where it follows Malcolm Gladwell's
tipping point scenario where you have these early adopters that think something is great
and then you have a couple more adopters that think "hey they talked about Pinterest. This
is great." Then you had a couple more and a couple more and now I think they've seen
like a 4,000% growth in the last couple of months. Something absolutely ridiculous. Your cash-flow would be all wonky
if you had a business that was growing 4,000% in a few months. You're looking at that and
you're saying this has to plateau at some point. It's got to go up, it's got to come
back down. I think at some point it is going to come back down and then it will go back
up again. It will be one of those wavy kind of things.
You're seeing that with Twitter now; where a year and a half, two years ago it had gotten
to the point where you were seeing Twitter accounts on commercials and you're seeing
hashtags in shows at the bottom of the screen asking you to talk about a show. Same with
Facebook. You're seeing those things ramp up and now it's like a Web site; everybody
has to have a Twitter account, everybody has to have a Facebook account. It's expected
to be a part of your business. I think at some point Pinterest might be that way and
we'll have to look long and hard at it at that point to say we need to get somebody
involved, somebody on board that can handle this.
>> Trevor: Yeah, no doubt. You spoke to the idea of Google+ even too. Google+ went through
a massive growth at the start and maybe it's plateaued a bit since then, who knows what
we'll see going forward.
I actually saw a stat the other day that talked about Facebook and Twitter's numbers in the
United States in particular. They said that they've seen Facebook kind of plateau a bit
in the United States; their growth opportunities are overseas. Twitter their seeing more growth
than Facebook. Obviously not to the extent of Facebook, I dont know if they'll ever get
to those numbers, but it's interesting to see these fluctuations.
You're right if you dedicate a bunch of resources to the next greatest thing and become the
early adopter in everything now everything that you tried to put a bunch of effort into
before gets lost a little bit right? Or suffers I should say.
>> Sean: Right. It's always picking and choosing your battles and making sure that you're not
doing a disservice to your fans. You're not just putting out the same thing over and over
again. You're actually giving it some unique, some exclusive bit of content.