According to Quora the answer to “How does SlideShare make money?” is: SlideShare still runs on VC money. So what the heck?
Is Slideshare going to be a wild success because they recently launched a new “branded channels” approach to monetize, next to their existing Ad- and LeadsShare?
IMO, hell no. This addresses marketing and corporate communications, although it could also be a clever foot in the door-step to enter companies and introduce meaningful measurement to expand into the workplace presentation space… Enough blabla.
So why is SlideShare going to change the world?
Why will presentations never be the same? (Goodbye “Death by PowerPoint, we will miss those afternoon meetings dozing off in peace)
Because SlideShare pivots from “broadcasting presentations” to learning and improving presentations (aka “the feedback loop”)
Oh, that sounds sexy, doesn’t it?
Yes, what do you mean by that?
I mean, look what a perfect business case:
1. Eric Schmidt: ”with a strong platform you find ways to make money in the end”
2. Dave McClure: ”the future is in “paid” and transactions”
3. Fred Wilson: ”show me a company which for every $ revenue destroys 6-7 $ of competitors’
And that is exactly what SlideShare is going to do…
Whom are they attacking?
SlideShare is going to attack “bad presentations”
The pain with presentations:
- you spend time not finding any good example for your own presentations
- you have to “wade” through tons of slides to find the one you need
- you spend a long time trying to get this tiny little thing right (tweak, tweak. Oh no, it’s wrong again…)
- you don’t get little to no feedback on how it went (no data apart from subjective feedback handouts…)
- you have almost no possibility of comparing yourself with others
- you get training but there is no follow up
- there are no clear quality standards for presentations
- etc.
Know that feeling?
So how does SlideShare help you until now?
Well, you probably use SlideShare like most people in a range of ways:
- to see what some cool people presented and get input for your own presentations
- to present yourself and broadcast yourself (and others)
- to see what analytics data your presentations on SlideShare yield (who looked at it, how long, any leads?)
But getting measurable QUALITY CONTENT in a convenient and timely manner in an improvement loop is UNDERSERVED BIG TIME
Yes, you might say. But what about Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte and Dan Roam and Bert Decker and … They are awesome.
Yes, so how much did that help you until now? Those are excellent people, but systems solutions tend to work in a more sustainable way…
So how are we going to get quality?
Very simple, by breaking it down to the slide level. Like ITunes, they sell per track = slide. Everything to it already exists everywhere on the web: Tag, categorize and rank (on a slide and slide-deck level)
What does that mean?
1. Massive possibilities for quality search and monetization
Basically you are getting everybody on your platform buying and selling.
Let’s open the ISlide Store…
Next to a specific tagged slide, imagine being able to download for $/order or pitch (per Slide):
· most popular/best liked slides (or also most popular presentations). Target: presentation specialists, people who sell templates etc.
· better photos, drawings etc. Target: integrate Photostock, Flickr etc.
· better charts. Target: excel gurus and the like
· better visualizations. Target: designers
· better text. Target: copywriters
It seems to be way easier to monetize on an individual level than on a presentation level (and you can draw other platforms onto your platform, like PhotoStock or Flickr).
If you provide categories to rate on a presentation level, you could also start to drive quality there. All the categories exist, presentation trainers use them already for a long time (structure, visuals, proof etc.)
2. Massive opportunities to drive single slide uploads (strengthening the platform)
It lowers the barrier to contribute and allows for easy tagging (think Flickr). You can trigger me to tag individual slides like Facebook does with pictures. When you upload a whole presentation it should give you incentives to rank in different categories on a slide level as well.
3. Massive more data and engagement to measure from the feedback loop
It is way easier to comment on individual slides, so you can start to optimize and measure. All the ranking possibilities and others for community functions are there.
I’d rather discuss presentations on Slideshare where it becomes practical than in a Linkedin Group on Presentations. But of course, you can give them their own “skybox” if they want that. But I guess Slideshare made a conscious decision until now not to allow such functions to keep it lean and clean.
Mind you: some of these feedback loops can also be monetized. If you spend money on UserTesting.com, why not on UserTesting for your presentation?Crazyegg, Gazehawk etc., they all could have a new field to play with… Presentations go analytics… The applications right now seem to be most likely in the corporate realm (using Twitter to analyze feedback during and after presentations for example).
So yes, but what about competitors?
SlideRocket/Prezi/other technologies:
if Slideshare gives possibilies for different and new types of presentation technologies (“Dude, in 5 years everybody will present from browser based apps”) on their platform, they have little to fear from SlideRocket, Prezi or others. It is about being the platform with lots of quality content and the community around it. If browsers apps are going to be the future of presentations and communication, SlideShare could be the best positioned player in the market…
Microsoft PPT:
SlideShare can do things, which Microsoft cannot yet do: because Slideshare has the platform to mobilize UGC. But Microsoft has their MVP community, so there is an opportunity to leverage those as well…
Apple:
Apple could be a force even though its Keynote has only a very small market share. Apple has critical other factors in place (great brand, ease of use, devoted fan base of designers and visually more appealing material than most PowerPoint presentations and a functioning sales and developer platform). So hurry up Slideshare…
Corporations:
how fast will Slideshare be to open up the platform and sells white label solutions for companies?? Or do they do that already? What about other corporate solutions? Probably not a first priority, but SlideShar will have to create an “API” for developers to work on and for resellers to sell to corporations if they have the core rating, tagging etc. in place.
By giving rating criteria and rankings + enabling content to be found easily corporations should be able to save massive amounts of time building presentations and to build accountability into their presentations in a sustainable way. That’s a multi billion dollar business case
So, what’s the message again?
Slideshare can become a massive monetization platform which make presentations more productive and measurable. This should revolutionize the presentation training/design industry.
My guess: SlideShare is now working day and night adding to the framework and building the store, from which everything else follows… Go for it, we’d love you to make this broken presentation world kick ….! (And Rashmi: I’d love to work for you guys and girls 😉
Yeah, so how original is this?
Did you think of it? I am not sure how much is new for SlideShare here. I did not spend time researching the library for this post, I sat through presentations, held presentations, trained consultants in trainings and sold trainings. My first general comment on Eric Ries’ SlideShare-Case Study (authored by Sarah Milstein: http://www.startuplessonslearned…) was passed on to both SlideShare-founders
and got a like from SlideShare CEO Rashmi Sinha (I think she was the first to reply to my comment in the thread, but likes are anonymous) and a nice reply after some more specific points in an email to her. I posted a slightly earlier version on Quora and posted this on Twitter
And what was Dave McClure discussing here?
Shameless plug: If you liked this, I have some more ideas for LinkedIn or Xing as well and love customer (driven business) development. I’d be thrilled to work on this further 🙂
Understand and delight people 