webconomy

Moved My Blog

2010-07-20T21:33:00.000-03:00

I've moved my blog to a Wordpress based solution on our server...it's right HERE

Why Apples Closed System Works

2010-04-12T09:51:00.000-03:00

Apple and Microsoft are closed. Google is open. There is, I think, a case for both. The debate now rages over which is better and what will work. I think they both will. Apple and Google will win this war unless Microsoft can move out of the 1960's.

Google wins for functional tools and "gets" the Cloud concept much better than Apple does. Or at least sees it differently. Chrome as a browser just has more Cloud features and is a workhorse now for the heavy Webcentric user.

Apple has everything locked down. Even iAd will be locked down in how it enables ads to work. I think there is a place for Apple though. Here's why;

- It Works: Consumers want something that works. That they don't have to fiddle with. Apple approach means software designed for the hardware. Including the Web experience. It just works. Much better than Microsoft.

- No Thinking: Let's face it, people want a solution where they can just "do" what they intended to do and not fuss with installing bits and pieces of this and that. When you want to listen to music, you can. Watch a movie? Simple. Apple understands how we're consuming media. Less than 3% of the market wants to fiddle with the innards.

- Code is Dead: 97% of the market does not want to learn code. They don't care about HTML5 or C++ or whatever else. They want to share and create and watch.

- Design, Design, Design: Apple know's design. They understand how to use all this technology and they know how to make it look good so people want to use it. What IT folks put up with, consumers don't. People are willing to pay for good design.

- We Need A Curator: There has always been some form of "gatekeeper" for content. Whether it was the producer in a Hollywood studio, the editor of the newsdesk, the owner of a printing company. Always. Apple understands that, it's just changed the role of the gatekeeper to curator. Television and radio worked well because they both have "quality standards" but often controlled the content. Apple doesn't care about the content, it cares about how it is delivered. So we always get what we want and it works.

The software and IT industry doesn't really have any "standards" so Apple is helping to do that. Not that they'll always be right, but they are on the right track. I like Google stuff. A lot. So I suspect things will be a tad topsy turvy for the next while.

Microsoft is toying with "open" but isn't quite there and is still basing its technology on the 1960's. They're so slow to truly innovate that they'll be well suited to change-resistant enterprises.

What do you think? Is Apple on the right track?

Why the iPad and Kindle Will Not Be The End of Books

2010-03-28T19:28:00.000-03:00

Sure they're nice. Sweet technology, doing cool things. They figured out the eye-strain issue with Kindle and that will be reflected in the iPad. The pundits are decrying the end of book publishing as we know it. They holler "stop and shutter ye olde printing press." They missed something. Something very important.

The book is an "experience good" I'm not talking good as in nice, I'm talking "good" as in a product.

We "experience" books. They can be part of a meme, a collection of experiences such as tastes, smells, places where they are read and enjoyed.

What the iPad and Kindle will never ever be able to do:

- Never run out of battery power
- Be readable anywhere, anytime (provided sufficient moon or sunlight)
- Not crash when you spill a wee bit of hot tea on it curled up on the sofa
- Gain that aged smell that says "fine old book"
- Be instantly "off" and instantly "on" when you want it to
- Hold memories of childhood and times in our lives
- Become shared and dog eared amongst family and friends
- Get destroyed in a hard drive crash
- Be always there for many, many more years than an iPad or Kindle etc.
- Easily taken on a camping trip and never running out of charge
- Be a lame brand name (a book will always be a book)
- You can't toss a Kindle at someone driving you nuts across the room
- The sheer delight of wandering through new and used book stores and discovering
- The wonder of children's eyes as each page is turned and they sit for hours engrossed
- Stumbling into your soul mate in the cooking section of the bookstore

Yes, there's a market and a place for these devices. But I suspect though books may be printed less, it will be many many decades before the press will die and bookstores will cease to hold the charm they do today.

What other things can you do with a book to have an experience, that you can't with a Kindle or iPad or similar?

The Idiocy of Patents In The Web World

2010-03-16T10:01:00.001-03:00

I'm not a fan of patents, let's just lay that out there. Essentially you create an idea, make the patent filing, then it is approved and made public. Someone copies it and makes a few tweaks and you just gave away your secret sauce. Then you end up in a money wasting circus of defence and suing. Like Apple is with the iPhone in suing HTC and perhaps a warning shot over Google's bow over Android.

All of which is the result of lawyers gleefully rubbing their hands, shareholders groaning or holding their collective breath. I've seen patents used as a business weapon as well, successfully. A company I worked for sued it's primary competitors and in one case beat a giant into closing a division and in the other won royalty payments, adding to its revenue lines.

But overall, I think it's a drain on the corporate coffers, stifles innovation in the current format and leaves consumers without innovative products.

Coca Cola does not have a patent on it's recipe. It could. Wisely, it chose to go the route of secrecy and for over a hundred years has done rather well that way. As has Pepsi and even Google. Once Google submits a patent on its search technology that information is made public and then Google is in a race to sue to protect (what would be a hugely costly venture even for them) and make ongoing changes much faster and at much higher cost than it does now.

My company has a secret sauce for it's search components, Artificial Intelligence algorithms and how we blend it all together. We're not going to patent it. If someone decides they want our secret sauce then they can cut us a cheque, bury us in confidentially and non-disclosures and I'll happily go onto the next ventre.

Meanwhile, the current patent system is a nightmare. Approval in the U.S. is better now that Peer-to-Patent is in place, but it doesn't solve the issue of how big business has turned them into anti-competition weapons they'll wield until an anti-trust suit is filed by government.

All of which stifles technical advancement, frustrates good ideas from getting financed and leaves the consumer hanging. Surely with the collective wisdom of the Web, someone can come up with a better system?

Why Google Gets The Browser With Chrome

2010-03-08T22:04:00.000-04:00

Aside from speed. I made the full migration from FireFox over the past week, in those odd moments I wasn't otherwise swamped. Now I see what Google understands about the browser, that Microsoft has missed, FireFox lost and Apple will take it's own, misguided role with Safari on.

Internet Explorer:
Bogs itself down trying to do everything and doing nothing. Weak on "extensions" and add-ons, slower than all of them out there and working far too hard to keep you in the Microsoft ecosystem. But then I am a Mac user after all.

Safari:
Makes for a nice "clean" experience, fast enough as a browser, but not much in the way of "extensions", in fact, practically nothing. It's certainly smooth as a UI and I like it sometimes. But it's not for the power user.

FireFox:
Dear good old FireFox, still a favourite, but it's been bogged down and slow lately. I've had to re-install several times and it keeps dropping my preferences. I just got fed up and decided to try Chrome. I had a lot of tools on FireFox, our software controls, testing gadgets and SEO tools. It was a workhorse.

Chrome:
I spend upwards of 30 hours a week online doing research, using our research webware and a whole bunch of Social Media tools (after all that's my company) and so I'm a power user. I use Google Apps and Google Docs, Wave, Buzz, Gmail Chat, Twitter, Evernote and a host of other apps constantly.

And this is where Google has set a new standard with the browser. The way the apps can be accessed without opening new tabs or windows and interacted with quickly to do the things you need to do and then return back to your sessions in the tabs.

As we're moving more and more of our leisure and work activities into the digital space, the browser plays an increasingly important role. While the "cloud" is still not there for many processor intensive apps (i.e. photoshop and heavy design or spreadsheets) and the Web isn't prevalent enough, it's getting there.

Even better, Chrome has the ability to add all these services but unlike Explorer, it doesn't bog you down with all the unnecessary processor actions. I suspect as people get the hang of doing more and more within the browser, Chrome will advance. As it should. Take note FireFox.

The Choice To Turn It Off

2010-02-02T21:05:00.001-04:00

Two things strike me about the technology revolution underway today; 1) we've never before, in the history of humanity, been able to communicate like we do today and 2) we made the choice to participate in all these media channels we have available.

Email, Facebook, Bebo, Chat, Instant Messenger, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube; exist because we chose to use them. Enough people made that choice that they become commonplace.

As a result, today we feel our attention incredibly divided. I call it the "90 Second Economy" as everything happens in such small bytes of information. We, the people, made a choice to participate and to consume. My company measure this stuff everyday; and there's lots out there.

We also have another choice: Decide when to turn it off and what media channels we want to and don't want to, use.

I decided over a year ago, in part due to the insight of Chris Brogan, to limit my participation to my company blog and this blog and OK, one other, to Facebook just for friends, Twitter and an aggregator via FriendFeed. Photo's on Flickr and videos on YouTube. I have lots of other accounts, but rarely interact with them; it would just not be possible.

So what about you? Do you exercise your choice to turn it off as well?

Some Things Just Can't Go Digital

2010-01-21T17:18:00.000-04:00

Netflix has been out there on the Web renting movies for a while, in Canada it's zip.ca and now YouTube is announcing it's renting films through it's portal. Hey, I watch a lot of vids on YouTube, DailyMotion and Vimeo I admit.

But I like going to my physical, local video store. I have all these alternate, so-called easier options. I have an Apple TV unit, I can rent from Apple and stream to my HD TV, or watch YouTube videos, use zip.ca, download an illegal Bitorrent (I don't do that, don't like that illegal downloading.) I have all these tools, I use them in different ways, I'm not a Luddite (not entirely anyway.)

We're making more and more activities "digital" but selecting my videos at the video store is something I call an "experience purchase" - where I want the experience behind it. I know the staff at my local video store and they know me. They know my likes and sometimes I don't think I want to watch something, but I trust their judgement. Over 10 years I've seen many of them come and go - but they're always good to me. Video Difference, makes a difference. No digital interface can make up for that in any way possible. The mediums are too different.

Some things can't be digitized. What about you? Is there something you wouldn't digitize that could be, but the experience is too important to you?

Big Change & The Internet Generation

2010-01-03T17:40:00.000-04:00

This year, the first kids of the Internet generation start to come of age. Some already have. They're seriously far more connected than those who are 35+. They're also more networked than any generation ever before in the history of mankind. They're learning how to leverage those connections. They also don't just rely on working in fixed-spaces like offices.

They have credit and credit cards. They actively spend online, buying not just physical, but digital goods like images, music, movies and ebooks. Most are using SmartPhones (BlackBerry or iPhone etc.) and they can complete projects without ever physically meeting.

This year, I believe we'll start to see some interesting new mobile and Web apps come to life. Some of these will be quick little start-ups; 3-5 people building an app for a mobile device or something in the cloud that solves a problem or provides amusement. They'll make some good coin and put it in maintenance mode, collecting high revenues to start, then trickled revenues over the long-tail. But it will create some nice ongoing residual income with the occasional tweak here and there or it will just fade like a quick fad.

But this is the year we'll start to see these types of business opportunities pop up. These mini-businesses and larger start-ups will see some significant changes happen in the online world; and somehow they will impact our broader physical world.

Our Growing Hunger for Being Mobile and Attached

2009-11-09T17:06:00.000-04:00

PC processor shipments are up worldwide. This in itself is a good sign of economic recovery, since these chips go into a lot of devices - and perhaps most interestingly, they go into mobile devices. And that's just the sector that saw the most growth - mobile phones and netbooks at 34.8% compared to 11% for laptops and desktops.

Yet another indicator of our growing hunger to be connected yet mobile at the same time. Are we developing nomadic tendencies? Digital nomads? Certainly with the growing power of the iPhone, Palm Pre and Blackberry on top of Netbooks and increasing availability of wireless Internet access it must be so.

How do you think such mobility might shape our business world in the future?

Battery Power Driving the Web: Why It's Important

2009-09-03T12:07:00.007-03:00

Batteries. We all either like or hate that little Energizer battery flopping around the space station, while Duracell tell's us it's the battery of choice for emergency workers. But batteries play a vital role in the Web, one we don't think about, yet are an invisible technology (except when they drain on us) that are a part of being engaged online. I'd invest in battery stocks myself; OK I already have.

There's a big battle going on now over battery life in Netbooks, Laptops and Smart Phones (and here). In fact it's become a key selling feature of some devices, almost as critical as the quality of the brand. Apple has been slammed for years over battery drainage for MacBooks (I can attest to that) and then over iPhone battery life - with Guy Kawasaki quickly posting tips on how to conserve power in them. Now both Apple and Microsoft are saying their new OS will support longer battery life.

We've become more and more mobile over the years and I'm sure we can all recall the many times at a cafe, restaurant and hotel or meeting room where the first thing we've done is look for a plug. Like we horde reward points on air miles, so we horde battery juice.

The ever increasing presence of wireless Web access, even on public transit and mobile carriers coming out with wireless 3G modems to easily connect attests to our increasing engagement with Netbooks, Laptops and Smart Phones. We just keep wanting more juice to power them.

This is leading to some serious innovations in battery technology and manufacturers are finding themselves ever more deeply engaged with chip manufacturers and other hardware component makers - all working to reduce power consumption while making processing better.

For us, the Web becomes ever more ubiquitous, and it's batteries that are playing the role of keeping us connected. Don't forget, all those data centres in the Cloud are also using BBU (Battery Back Ups) a well as generators for emergencies.

Yup, investing in battery stocks is probably a good idea. It's what will keep the wireless Web hopping.

Is Hyperlocalization Still A Mere Dream? What About Enough?

2009-08-11T16:09:00.005-03:00

Big word; hyperlocalization or "hyper-local". For those not familiar with it, essentially it means the Web being highly local, right down to what's happening on your street. It's not there yet. At least, not on a scale that has much relevance to big brands or local, small businesses. Once it has an economic impact, then it will really get relevant.

Google, along with specialized search engines, like Halifax's promising GenieKnows, are trying. And they're doing a fairly good job. Here are the three challenges I see that has been around a while and is changing, but slowly.

1. Local relevance = Enough Factor

2. User input

3. Invisible Technology

1. Local Relevance:

Does a barber, shoe cobbler, muffler repair centre, plumber need to have a website. There is an argument that they do. I wrote an article about a shoe cobbler over a year ago who see's no need for a website; and he's right. He has enough business. He's making enough money and doesn't need more, he's 2nd generation and the stores been there about 30+ years.

Most small business owners in trades such as plumbing and electrics might have a website. But for them it's just a glorified ad. They see no need to add much to their website because the Yellow Pages are working (online and in print) and well, most have enough business. There is very little motivation to extend their online presence.

It's the "enough" factor. They don't want more than the 10 or so employees they have or the headaches of expansion, capitalizing that growth and then all the issues that go with feeding a larger set of operating costs. They have "enough."

2. User/Data Input

This goes directly to user input. A Search Engine, no matter who good the algorithms are is useless unless someone is creating content to be found. I can't count the number of sites I've been on that content (locally) is well over a year old. That kind of content is stale. It takes people to input the content for the engines to search. That is, fresh, relevant content locally.

3. Invisible Technology

Which goes to the third point; it has to be mindnumbingly easy to input the content. It's not yet. It has to be as easy and as accessible as the standard landline telephone - pick it up (dial-tone) and dial. Done. But it's not. You need to have someone with the ability to run a PC or use a Smart Phone app (if you're in the biz you're snickering at me how easy it is. Take yourself out of your skill-set and be a shoe cobbler who uses a very basic POS and rarely goes online if at all...see my point?)

Localization is getting better. There are some services that have launched that are enabling people to easily input data right down to potholes on their street. Getting citizens to regularly update data still requires some knowledge.

Over the next 5-10 years this will change dramatically. In fact, it's the next logical step and I suspect we'll see some interesting models develop. As more and more people from developed nations (the Western World) get online and the technology becomes pervasive (it's still only ubiquitous) localization must get better - as must the way we input data and interact with the Web. But localization remains a dream for now. Whoever figures out a good model is set to make some serious cash.

What do you think? What am I missing? What tools are changing this? Is Twitter?

Will Boomers Be Forced Into the Cloud?

2009-08-06T10:50:00.003-03:00

In a word, yes. A number are already there. But a blog post today I discovered through a "tweet" on Twitter set me to thunking about Boomers adopting Social Media and the Web as a whole. The survey on Social Media use by Boomers found that well over 80% don't read or pay attention to blogs, don't care for Twitter and rarely participate in forums. I'm not surprised. It goes to my research findings in Atlantic Canada.

In fact, as a whole, the time Boomers do spend online tends to be very Web 1.0-ish. Checking on health information and email being tops in another recent survey. But I argue that Boomers will increasingly adopt Social Media services and Cloud -based services. Why? Pure economics.

My primary example is banking. Banks installed ATM's just around 20 years ago. And unceremoniously thrust mundane tasks onto consumers. More insultingly they started charging a "convenience" fee for services you perform or when withdrawing from a competitive bank. Then they added insult to injury by bringing on phone banking. But we adopted the services and now Canadians and Americans make over 45% of their purchases using a debit card. Including boomers.

Increasingly, as the cost of Internet access declines, speeds increase and PC's & smart phones become more ubiquitous this will change access to services. Within a few more years, much of our activities around knowledge-based functions, will be via the Cloud.

Health: Your health records will be online, you'll set appointments with your doctor via an online calendar.

Banking: More and more activities will be done via online banking; mortgages, loans...in some cases we're already there.

Government Interaction: Drivers license renewal, license plates, fine payments (already there), deed transfers, various licenses and more...all done online via the Cloud.

But you might say "no way, the Boomers have to much economic clout." But businesses, many run by Boomers make decisions based on cost reduction and revenue improvement. Cloud-based services reduce labour costs significantly. As always, economic factors such as this will drive Boomers online. And as Social Media continues to add niches, so will they adopt these tools to connect with their families.

From Doomsday to Boomsday In A Press Release

2009-07-27T16:58:00.003-03:00

And suddenly we've gone from "Depression Era 2.0" to being on the verge of an "Economic Resurgence"...perhaps industrial media saw that all the negative hype and prophesying crushing economic defeat was not helping their advertising dollars? Today's positive housing sales announcement follows on the heels of "cautious optimism" (read: major PR spin) from economists saying maybe the worst is over.

Or was it ever the worst? Yes over 40 U.S. banks closed and several in Europe and other countries. Yes, the stock markets lost significant value and yes unemployment hopped up a bit. Back in February I did some reading between the lines on what media wasn't saying, a little "reality check" if you will.

So here's my hype-o-meter reading today: It's Boomsday Spin Time folks. Doom is out. Boom is in. We're on the upswing, the tide is turning...

...OK, maybe not so hyped so fast. I note the words of "caution" getting thrown in by media and economists...kind of like hedging their bets...yeah, and hedging paid off last time didn't it? I'm just sayin'.

The reality is; housing was way out of control, subprime mortgages were ridiculous to begin with, financial laws were too loose, stockmarkets were way overvalued and manufacturing costs are too high in North America. Then the turn to corn/grain for "green fuel" caused food costs to rise far too high and oil was also unreasonably high and at the mercy of speculators.

A few got really rich, a lot lost a lot of value and everything was out of whack. We had a necessary correction.

All of this was very good for Social Media and the Web economy as a whole as people cocooned and spent more time online, found it enjoyable and will likely stay there. Nice.

So now we spin up for boomsday...

The First Signs of Deeper Changes in Society from Social Media? Perhaps.

2009-07-13T19:26:00.006-03:00

Perhaps all that media "hype" about the dangers for kids on the Web over the past 10 years, then the efforts local law enforcement and parents have made to educate our children on the dangers of the Web is paying off. I was quite encouraged to read an article in TechCrunch today about how kids don't use Twitter primarily because they don't feel it's safe. This is good.

As the article points out, research indicates teens and "tweens" feel safer in closed Social Networks (i.e. Facebook, Bebo and MySpace) because they can better manage "who" they are connecting with. This is showing a change in online social behaviour. Perhaps this is one of the first larger signs of how society is learning to adapt Social Media tools.

Our kids are developing a "Web sense" about how they use these tools. What will be interesting is to see how these behaviours become more "normative" and in what ways Social Media tools and services become used. Do you think this is a positive sign? What changes in the "Net Generation" kids do you think we'll see in terms of social behaviour with technologies such as Social Networks.

I'm not a sociologist, but this seems a Leading Indicator of a deeper societal change as we adapt a technology to our culture. Your thoughts?

The Subculture of Twitter & MLM Scams

2009-07-07T20:40:00.006-03:00

When I read this opening comment on a cheesy sales wesbite "TWITTER is the most amazing marketing tool that has ever existed in the history of the internet!" I then realized a "subculture" had been evolving on Twitter for some time. Yes, it's the Amway type those folks who've fallen under the maudlin spell of "get-rich-quick", convinced that this program (out of the 200 others they've tried) is the only one while failing to realize there is always a Madoff cackling madly at the top of the pyramid their blithely paying into.

I suppose it had to happen. I noticed this weekend that 27% of my new followers on Twitter are in the MLM game. Desperate? More desperate than Wile E. Coyote it would seem. I noted 14 of these Twitter types instantly directing me back to some form of website that promoted how to get rich off of Twitter...I wonder if they realize that even the founders of Twitter haven't figured out a business model yet. I guess the irony is lost on the mindless. After all, they paid $19.99 (cause they bought at a "special low rate" and figure perhaps a few hundred others would.

So, we've got Ponzi and Pyramid Schemes, link-baiting and affiliate scams - with most of these sites being run by just a few at the top. The few who actually are getting rich. Kind of like the Rapture Market in the evangelical Christian Economy racking up huge funds espousing impending doom and the Republican News Network (a.k.a. Fox News) gorging on fear and loathing...

Some of my favourite Follow Thanks I've received recently:

"OMG! Thanks to follow! OMG! So true, here's how I got rich from Twitter & you can too"

"Yer so kewl! I love you! Tnx for the follow, get rich here (link)"...(ed. you love me? who the heck are you?)

"Wow, now your following me, here's how you can make $$ on Twitter..."

"Your great! Learn how to get more followers and get rich via Twitter..."

And so on...so apparently I should be filthy rich by now being on Twitter nearly two years!

Twitter has it's subculture and it's called MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) and they're breaking the first rule of "build trust first, then promote" by instantly promoting. A random sampling of 50 MLM Twitter users showed that 90% of the time, they were all following other MLM types...kind of like the dog that chases it's own tail. Hopefully they'll wear themselves out sooner than later and fall asleep.

The Problems of Web 2.0 & Free Software Applications

2009-06-30T21:20:00.004-03:00

Twitter has locked me out. I can't "tweet" or "re-tweet", I just can't do anything. At all. I'm not sure if someone has hijacked my account, if something odd happened. I installed the latest update of TweetDeck, signed in using my regular account and now I've been locked out. Done. Two hours later and I still can't get in.

Herein lies the main problem with Web 2.0 Apps; you do require patience and some knowledge of getting applications to work for you. At some point, you'll run into an issue with software updates a service shutdown or some other related technical issue. As I did with TweetDeck.

Unfortunately, TweetDeck has not found a simple way to enable updates without requiring a total re-sign-in. This issue resulted in me wiping TweetDeck from my hard drive and installing competitive (and better) solution, Seesmic. But I'm comfortable with doing this. Many, in fact, the majority of people, aren't.

So they stop participating. Frustration sets in. And here we find another issue. Economics. TweetDeck is free and the general public expects it to be so. TweetDeck is looking for a way to monetize it's solution I am sure, but it hasn't yet. So this challenges the expectations between consumer and the products they use when they are free - just how much service should we expect and what happens when we don't get any service?

As a consumer, we expect service, but when the product is free, the "social contract" changes. We haven't paid for anything and in a capitalist society, that means the provider really isn't obligated to do anything.

I don't have an answer. What do you think?

The Dangerous Side of Blogging & HIV

2009-06-10T20:59:00.003-03:00

Mainstream media loves a scary story about Social Media. Well, I have one of my own. I was a little nervous thinking about my approach to writing this blog entry. Overall, I am perhaps overly optimistic about the Social Web and the Web as a whole. Last year, I experienced the dark side of the Web.

In 2005 I began a blog called "Slimconomy" about the business and economics of HIV/AIDS. Why? Well, I had the distinct privilege of working for 3 years at the very front line of the battle against HIV/AIDS. I was marketing, globally, a 90-second rapid test for HIV. Arguably the best in the world. After 3 years of trotting around the world to some of the more remote and darker parts (Western and Central Africa and Latin America) on the road 80% of the time, I was exhausted. I decided a change was in order and left a great company, MedMira, which has a great product. I'm HIV negative just to state that. Anyone who calls it a "gay disease" is ignorant and daft beyond consideration.

Without going into the scary details of the business of HIV here, I'll tell the quick story. A year into my blogging, I wrote an article about the people who believe AIDS is a government/mega-corporation conspiracy despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Despite that I held a dying mother in my arms in a remote African village as her two sons of 6 and 7 looked on. Despite the horrors I'd seen in real-life. They are called the AIDS-Denialists. There are many of them.

My first blog entry attracted some heated blasts at me for writing against them. I wrote again. More hatred spewed at me. So I wrote again. From there it started to escalate. Within two weeks I received nastier and nastier emails.

Then it got worse. I got a phone call at home. It was a death threat. I thought, OK, a phone call is one thing. I ignored it and wrote more, delving into the bizarre beliefs of these denialists. Then I got a letter in the mail. Another death threat.

Yes, it was police time. Without going into too much detail, the threat was considered by authorities to be real, and from a known source of violent action - the detail was frightening. With a family I hold so dearly to my heart, it was time to think hard about what I was doing. I was writing a book about the business of HIV, with a contract from a publisher waiting to be signed.

With a very heavy heart, I put the blog into "hibernation", especially after Google contacted me about a Denial of Service Attack against my blog and some shifty moves by a far-right Christian Fundamentalist group.

The blog is hibernating more than a year later. I've had no more threats. Perhaps this blog post will produce some. Hopefully not. But it was a walk on the darkside of Social Media. One I hope never to take again. Perhaps I'll have the courage to bring Slimconomy back, but for now, not so.

Why "Slimconomy"? Well, in Africa, AIDS is called "Slim" because of the wasting part of the disease. Hence the economics of HIV and "Slim" = Slimconomy.

That's my experience of the downside of Social Media.

Social Media: It's Not The Technology It's How We Use It

2009-06-03T21:49:00.002-03:00

In a Twitter discussion tonight (#PR20chat - hat tip to Beth Harte for initiating a good chat), there was some discussion around "technology" and it's importance in Social Media. Yes, it is important, but the technology is simply an "enabler" or "facilitator" and the original intent of the creator of the technology can change - this the "bargain" created by the end user. The bargain?

Sure. As an example, Facebook was intended for students. After a few years, it became available to everyone and now the average age of a Facebook user is in their 40's. Why? Because that's how it was adopted. As MySpace was adopted by youth. The underlying technologies are similar, but the use is very different. So the bargain is recolved when

Twitter was put out as a secondary interest, but then the public got ahold of it and next thing we knew, it was an emotional search engine and became a vital political communications tool for Obama in 2008. The public changed the intent of the technology - and made the bargain on each tool, not the inventor of the technology.

Spammers got a hold of email and turned it into the next Direct Marketing tool. SMS/txt messaging has grown into a tool for bringing people together and helped organize the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine in 2005.

While it is vital to understand "how" the technologies work, it's most important to understand how they are actually used - and how they are used closes the bargain between the initiator and the end public.

More of the conversation on Twitter search here.

Thoughts?

Social Media, Scribes & The Printing Press

2009-06-01T19:43:00.003-03:00

The parallels between the early days of the printing press (late 1400's) and Social Media today are quite astounding. As Western Europe was going through the transition between Scribes and the newfangled and amazing thing called the "printing press" very few entrepreneurs made money. The business model was pretty much an unknown. Many failed, some succeeded. Today, we take "print" very much for granted and we pay for books, magazines and newspapers, although these business models too are changing.

Sound familiar? Twitter is searching for a viable business model. Marketers are trying to figure out how to leverage Social Media and generate returns. Variations on business models are tried all the time. Some work; most fail.

Yet we forge ahead, just like the early printing shops.

Back in those days they had in Europe what were called "cartolai" which were stationers shops; paper, ink, quills, blotters etc. As paper has been widely and instantly adopted in the 13th century, but oddly enough, the printing press struggled. The most celebrated Florentine book merchant, Vespasiano da Bisticci was said to have made no money printing books. Yet he did until he died.

The first commercially successful book printed was the bible. And certainly Christian e-commerce sites have done well by the Internet too. More similarities.

The transition from Scribes to printed matter was long and hard with a trail of financially ruined entrepreneurs. Sound familiar? Newspapers are today like the ancient Scribes.

Just as there are those who resist Social Media and call it useless (sic. Amanda Chapel construct) so was the same at the advent of the printing press. The Abbot of Sponheim Johannes Trithemius wrote a famous treatise on how Scribes should not stop copying despite the printing press, decrying the value and relevance of books. Yes, he published it as a book. And there was no way the car would replace the horse and buggy was there? Someone got a hitch in their get along methinks.

Surprisingly little has been written about the impact the printing press has had on our society. I was fortunate in my wanderings of a great used book store to stumble upon "The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe" by Elizabeth Eisenstein...what an eye opener to the parallels of the Internet and Social Media.

Do you see any parallels?

Google's Wave Means Absolute Zero

2009-05-28T21:27:00.002-03:00

As many know, and many others have blogged about already, Google launched it's "Wave" service, coming soon to a browser near you. The death knoll was sounded for Microsoft. Again. Yawn.

So I'm not going to babble on about the clash of industry titans and who may win. Who can really know? Nor will I go on about features and what it can do technically. While that's all very nice, what really got me with Google Wave was in fact that it is an Absolute Zero service.

What you say, does that mean? Good question.

Social Media tools and services have done so well for a very basic reason: They reduce the transaction cost of communicating to almost zero and ease "group tension."

The more a Social Media tool reduces the transaction cost, the more it is accepted in business and society. Such as Hotmail in 1997 (email in general), blogging in 2005, Facebook in 2007 and Twitter in 2009 and so on.

Google Wave hit's about as close as you can get to a zero transaction cost; in one spot you can collaborate in ways never before possible. Since you would need to engage several apps to achieve an organized function. That meant several programs and multiple windows open. Not anymore.

The one challenge of Social Media tools remains that you must be connected to the Cloud, either with a computer or mobile device. The limitation of mobile devices is screen size when it comes to something like Google Wave. But to me Google Wave brings the cost of transaction between members of a group or a network to almost zero.

That is impressive.

Collaborate or Collapse

2009-05-18T12:13:00.005-03:00

I recently wrote an entry on the fundamental changes coming from Social Media. One of these was how we can collaborate like never before. Those entrepreneurs, senior managers and others who don't realize the inherent meaning behind this ability to collaborate will find their career progress nosediving within 5-10 years. If you're just a couple years away from retirement, you might miss the impending changes.

So that's a bold statement. Why? Because as humans it's our ability to collaborate that has lead us to where we are today. We had to collaborate to build the first villages and put walls around them to protect the entire village from predators and enemies. We had to collaborate to build Stonehenge. Today, the Web is what it is as a whole because of collaboration.

The Web evolved through collaboration to where it is today. One prime example is the Wiki. The concept of a Wiki is an "argumentative" collaboration system. But the wiki is influencing changing workplace habits.

The Wiki is a prime representation of a Social Media tool that is making a difference in the organization. It allows people to collaborate on ideas and knowledge that turn into best practices, products, services and processes. Direct, measurable and understandable. Behaviour changing.

Most importantly to recognize though is it's not the technology of the Wiki. What's more deeply impressive is that we're learning better collaboration skills than ever before. This changes the workplace, management structure and governments. Think on that a moment. Interesting isn't it? In the entire history of the human family, we have never been able to collaborate like we can today. What do you think this will change?

(Image courtesy MindQuarry.com - sadly a failed Web 2.0 service)

Social Media Won't Be Causing a Revolution Anytime Soon

2009-05-10T20:26:00.004-03:00

So many of us Social Media consultants are often writing how Social Media is changing our world, how a revolution is underway. That Social Media is devaluing the newspaper and changing the PR profession. And so it is. But Social Media is still very young and the significance of the changes underway will not be fully understood for perhaps another 10-15 years at least. Why?

I covered this in part recently when speaking to the Communications Faculty at the NSCC about Social Media. The reason why has everything to do with human nature and our adoption and use of communications technology. A prime example is the printed book. Although Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1400's, it took several decades before protestant leader Luther realized he could print his own bible - the result was the Christian Reformation, then the French Revolution and modern democracy. Books are a social medium.

But before a technology can be used in a revolutionary way, it must evolve within a society. Technology does not cause a revolution, yet a revolution cannot start without the technology. As the image here shows, there are four distinct phases of adoption of communications technologies (and most any type of technology) before we might experience anything that is revolutionary. These "phases" are taken from sociology and are not my invention; the concepts are not new.

Phase 1: Normal - When technology is a normal part of our world. We've passed this phase.

Phase 2: Ubiquitous - This is where we are. Social Media is enabled by Web technologies, and the Web is now ubiquitous in Western Society and most of Asia, but less so in developing nations.

Phase 3: Pervasive - We're approaching this point. But there are still accessibility issues and knowledge of software to overcome.

Phase 4: Invisible - This is when a technology or medium is simply an everyday part of our lives, as in books or auto's. This is also when revolutions tend to occur.

Today, Social Media is uniquitous, but is not pervasive and certainly not invisible. Avid users of Social Media tools, mobile devices and computers might argue. But the fact is, over 80% of the population in Western worlds use computing technology and the Web in limited ways.

Where do you think we are?

Reference Articles:

Wally Bock: http://www.bockinfo.com/docs/fourphases.htm

Clay Shirkey: http://www.shirky.com/writings/semantic_syllogism.html

The Fundamental Impacts of Social Media in Society

2009-05-03T14:46:00.005-03:00

Never before in the history of mankind have we been able to communicate with each other the way we do now. These changes, enabled by technology, are changing the very root of how we work, play and grow our society.

Here's what has already fundamentally changed as a result of Social Media tools;

1. We can "network" to more people than ever before in man's history

2. We can connect to people pan-geographically like never before

3. The cost of communicating is the lowest in our history

5. We can communicate/share with text, audio and images unlike ever before

6. Our ability to communicate is faster than ever in mankind's history

7. Our ability to control/manage "how" we communicate with different social networks is more powerful

8. Never before in our history have we been able to "organize" into social groups like we can today

9. Never before in man's history have we been able to collaborate in building knowledge like we can now

10. We can now get an emotional reading on a population/demographic like never before

12. For the first time in history we can have multiple communications with distinct groups (i.e. work, family, friends) simultaneously.

These facts are quite profound. Since "socializing" is a primary human behaviour. Everyone belongs to some form of social group. Everyone. Whether that be our friends and family, our neighbourhood, work relationships or hobby groups.

We're now just learning how to use these tools. And we're only just beginning. We don't know how this will change our society, but it will and already is. Here area few of the areas I see that we'll face changes that I will address in future posts;

1. The way consumers and companies interact

2. Marketing and public relations will be re-invented

3. The way we view "privacy" will fundamentally change

4. Democratic process will change (becomming more democratic)

5. We now have the ability to affect global change (for good or bad)

6. The employee/employer relationship will change

7. Industrial Media will change

8. The social contract between Industrial Media and the general public is changing

9. We will become (already are) more globally and locally aware simultaneously

10. We will go through a stage of Hypersocialization

11. Our language(s) will change unlike ever before

What do you see? What do you think will change?

Keep in Mind: Technology does not cause a revolution. But a revolution cannot occur without the technology.

Twitter Vs. TV: It's Not Comparable

2009-04-28T19:32:00.003-03:00

So you've visited my blog for the first time. Will you come back? Perhaps. How many times? Probably once or twice. I'm not monetizing my blog, so I have no desire to really keep you coming back. I am passionate on what I do for a living and write, so I'll keep at it. If you don't like the content, you'll leave, and I'm fine with that.

This is not the case for a business. The purpose of a business is to generate profit, otherwise it is a non-profit organization and should therefore not pay taxes. In reading Nielson Wire's recent look at Twitter retention rates I'm catching a wiff of jealousy from Industrial Media - since Twitter is so active as a medium, it takes away viewership from broadcast television, which means lost ad revenue and perhaps less revenue for Nielson.

One clear fact I've come to discover with Twitter: Until you break the 100 followers mark, it doesn't make a lot of sense...but that's another blog post. Here, we're talking retention.

But is that relevant entirely? Television is a "passive" activity, there's little to not "activity", generally you don't interact with television. Which is a key point. We watch television because we want to "consume", but in a passive way - we simply want to be entertained for a while. Twitter is an "active" engagement medium, it's 2-way.

You can just read, but to get to get to a useful amount of information, you have to engage in the conversation. If you're not engaging, you miss things. In some cases, you might only engage with 10 people; and that's fine, since that's the only 10 people you care to engage with. Everyone else is moot.

I don't think it's a comparable metric. The two mediums are very different, therefore, retention is not really the metric is it? Rather, I think the metric should be "engagement" and you don't engage on TV, you watch. Twitter is "active" and television is "passive". Two different objectives. In my view, Nielson is approaching the issue in entirely the wrong way and comparing Twitter to Television is like comparing well, oh dear, apples to windows.

What do you thunk?

Industrial Media, The Web and Crying Wolf

2009-04-26T20:33:00.004-03:00

Watching the news this morning on CTV and CNN I was ready to go out buy a gas mask, seal the windows and hide my family indoors for a while...apparently we're all about to die from the swine flu. Listening closely to the anchors I heard such definitive and tremulous words as "large numbers" and "vast amounts of people" or "many, many people" as well as "global threat" and impending pandemic. Streets are being emptied and entire cities shut down.

This made me ponder what may be the true death of "Industrial Media." Their own over-hyping may be their very undoing. A quick Google search will point out the volume of discussion on how traditional media is dying. Unfortunately, Industrial Media has subscribed to this "perception" and in so doing has ramped up the hype process.

Less than a month into the financial hiccup last year Industrial Media was proclaiming economic doomsday, depression economies and mass global financial collapse - despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Now the latest hype is "Swine Flu"...but look and listen closely to the spin. There's a lot of "if's" and words that present a sense of "doom" and "massive quantities." Then listen to the U.S. and Canadian CDC who are trying to inject some common sense into the interviews they give.

So Industrial Media leverages fear and panic to drive viewership, which in turn improves advertising sales. This is not a sustainable business model. At some point, will we just turn it off? If everything is over-hyped and eventually we're all looking for the wolf but it never shows, then won't consumers at some point say no?

As we learn to look for alternate sources, and find sober second thought and better evidence of reality online, then this sows a serious seed of discontent into the mix for Industrial Media does it not?

Could such tactics lead to newer, more stable and reasonable reporting via the Web?

The Catch 22 of Corporate Social Media Engagement

2009-04-21T20:31:00.004-03:00

Social Media is all about people. For businesses looking to engage in Social Media this represents a bit of a conundrum. On the upside it means the people in your organization working your Social Media strategy are more directly connecting with existing and potential customers. Forming more engaging bonds.

As I read a great post from Beth Harte today regarding a local Domino's Pizza franchise owner, this conundrum struck me. The franchise owner understands and leverages Social Media tools very well to build relationships. This is good and his sales growth reflects his efforts.

Two things present an issue here 1) Dunbars Rule and 2) long-term sustainability and continuity of engagement. In Dunbars rule, the basic concept is that you can only effectively maintain about 150 relationships. It's just what our brains can handle. To a degree we can extend this using the right tools. But that only goes so far.

The second issue is more concerning over the longer term. What happens when the employees engaging in your Social Media efforts quit and move on? Or get hit by a bus? We've seen what happens to corporations with maverick CEO's coming and going (i.e. Lee Iacocca and Chrysler, which he left in shambles in sustainability terms) and lack of long-term shareholder value. It doesn't do much for the shareholders.

So a significant challenge over the longer term for businesses, organizations and governments engaging in Social Media will be the right tools to connect with larger audiences, continuity of their people engaging in Social Media and sustainable practices.

I don't have all the answers. I don't think we can yet, it's so early in the game. But perhaps we can start thinking of some? It's a Catch 22 in some ways isn't it?

What Signal is Ad Spending Really Giving Us?

2009-04-20T21:40:00.004-03:00

As the axiom goes "the only thing right about a sales forecast is that it's wrong." Seems those watching and forecasting ad spending trends are facing this dilemma in a world in drastic change mode. As eMarketer reported today, most ad spending won't just decline next year, it will plummet.

However, the silver lining (there's always a silver lining isn't there?) is that online ad spending is increasing, about 8.6% the forecasters are predicting. So, we continue to see ad spending in traditional media channels continuing to slump.

I doubt many are surprised that ad sales are declining so significantly in traditional mediums. I think there's two things at play here however; 1) people aren't responding to advertising anymore the way they used to and 2) people are creating their messages the way they want to and this presents a whole new set of challenges.

Let's also not forget that despite the explosive growth of the Web and the advancement of "digital" channels, there was a huge growth of new magazines and newspapers worldwide over the past ten years. Now we're in a market correction and so many of these specialty publication are dying as a result of natural market movements.

Perhaps the biggest take-away for me in this story is number 2 above; that consumers are fundamentally changing the social contract that has existed for the past 60+ years in the modern age of media. Seth Godin points out how marketers are liars...and as consumers, we're tired of the same old approach. What these stats may really be showing is the shift in this social contract as a result of the uptake of Social Media.

Do you think this is part of the story? Has the social contract ended?

The Jekyl & Hyde Evolution of Search?

2009-04-19T11:59:00.003-03:00

No tier 1 search engine delivers you results about your personal network. For years there have always been those companies who say they're the "Google killer"; we've yet to see anyone come close. Google has always been on the offensive and perhaps has launched only one defensive move in 2007 when Facebook enabled public search capability outside its network.

This past week Stumbleupon broke away from eBay and returned to it's original strategy, sparking further discussion that perhaps Stumbleupon could start to give Google a run for their money. And remember last July the launch of search engine Cuil? Started by former Google engineers they proclaimed the death of Google and launched. They dazzled in their failure, results even missing social media thought leader Chris Brogan.

In his weekly digest Jeremiah Owyang points out that Stumbelupon may be about the change "search" all over again. Then there's been discussion around Twitter changing "search." So, who's going to revolutionize the "search" business?

Right now, I don't think we can know what's going to happen, but I assert that we're entering a new phase of how people are using search tools. I think we've broken search into two classifications;

1) Generic Search: Where we search using standard consumer search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Cuil or Haiku and visual search engines like SearchMe. This covers everything except searching for information that is "personally relevant." None of the mainstream search engines are designed to deliver you content produced by or about your friends.

2) Personal Content Search: This is where the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Ning and social networking tools come into play. This is the content that is more relevant to the individual and their network. In part it is a reflection of an individuals desire to "connect" with more people while facing Dunbar's Rule that we can only connect to so many people meaningfully. But this connectivity can expand past the theoretical 150 threshold and therefore we look for content meaningful to our social interactions. Perhaps in part this is why services like FriendFeed are so valuable?

And this is where the mainstream search engines fail. It's general search versus social search. When Google figures that out, they will have taken a significant step and perhaps they already have, tying in Gmail and Gtalk with Android.

So what do you think? Do we have at the top level of "search" two primary search activities that we conduct?

Indicators of the Coming Change

2009-04-16T19:54:00.004-03:00

Research firm IDC in tracking PC sales showed less of a decline in sales than anticipated (7.1 rather than 8.2% as predicted.) While for the first time in memory television set sales are anticipated to decline, despite the U.S. and soon Canadian, switch to entirely digital networks.

Yet the growth of broadband Internet connections carries steadily upward and PC sales decline very little. While overall sales of handsets have leveled off, sales of "smart phones" like the BlackBerry and iPhone continue to increase; perhaps slightly lower, but they continue.

Prices for PC's are expected to drop in 2009 in line with smart phone costs and overall data packages for these phones. And this is important to note, for I see it signaling ever more relevance of the Web in our social and business lives.

The main driver to ever broader adoption of the Web and Web technologies still rests in four crucial areas;

1) Cost of the device/technology

2) Cost to access the Web

3)Micropyament Mechanisms

4) Ubiquity of Access

These three primary issues are what I have seen as roadblocks to broader adoption of the Web in society as a whole. As the cost of the device falls, so does the cost of access. This is currently happening.

The last two areas, micropayment mechanisms and ubiquity of access will improve, but I suspect somewhat slower than device and access costs. I've been touting the need for micropayment solutions since 1997, and while it's getting better (i.e. PayPal) it's still not there. The primary issue being credit card companies charging too high a rate to merchants for the transaction. Ubiquity of access still comes down to the same issue it has for the past ten years - that last quarter mile. Wireless is, I and many other pundits believe, the answer, but there is a cost of access and who pays. The provider of the service (i.e. the local coffee shop) or the "accessee" of the service (i.e. the patron.) The models are mixed and the arguments good on both sides.

In terms of the Social Web (Social Media) increased PC sales and smart phone sales means that this sector of the Web will grow much faster than what I term the "Commerce Web" or nice electronic brochures.

As the Social Web increases, businesses and organizations as a whole will be further drawn into using these tools. Not just to engage with their audiences, but as productivity and business tools. This is where Google, Salesforce.com, teamworkpm.net and others are set to see significant revenue growth.

So as much as there may be a "recession" (there is no "depression" folks, nowhere near it), the Web will take o an increasingly important place in our economy overall - one as yet largely ignored by the Luddites of traditional industries - to their peril.

"Localization" On The Web: Just Not Here Yet.

2009-04-13T09:20:00.004-03:00

"Hyperlocal" - are we there yet? In a NY Times article of April 12th, some "locally-focused" web services such as EveryBlock and Outside.in are presented. There's a number of "localised" mobile notification services and some varied attempts at localized search, including GenieKnows. Twitter is starting to have create some "localized" impact. But are we there yet? When will we be there? Not anytime soon.

Many of the biggest issues I see for "localism" or "localization" remain pretty much the same as it was 10 years ago - Web access, cost of entry, ubiquity and content loading. While these have become much better, they're still not quite there. Those that are, remain very much "local", such as LocalBlock which serves but 11 cities and then only in the U.S., Outside in claims to serve over 11,000 cities, but remains U.S.-centric and is still not massively popular. There is citizen journalism, but even this remains fragmented, unreliable and often is highly biased.

One of the more popular forms of localism is event information. There are a number of mobile apps and Web-based apps for local event listing, from Waldii to EventBrite to EventBox and...yes, far too many.

But the biggest issues I see are ubiquitous access, how these services are accessed and how the cost of content gathering/editing/analysis is covered. This is where a serious opportunity resides for newspapers. Some have started to leverage this, but for the most part, newspapers are still fighting the inevitable. The Guardian's April fools joke created a short spout of furor, yet they could be on to something.

A cold fact remains that not everyone is connected to the Web yet. In fact, the lower income demographic is at a serious disadvantage here. They can barely afford to have a phone, let alone pay a monthly fee to access the Web, plus they must find the means to buy a computer. Even an experiment by the Wall Street Journal in an affluent community, well connected to the Web was a disappointment.

While "hyperlocalisation" is a goal to work towards, the current executions remain fragmented and have yet to prove a viable business model - and "cobbling together" a bunch of choices is not the answer for true success. What may become opportunities here is Facebook or NetLog as Social Network tools. Another approach might be to more deeply understand how people share news, what they trust and what actions they might take. The future of hyperlocalism may rest in "news" becoming more active than passive.

Chicken, Potholes and Marketing

2009-04-06T21:19:00.003-03:00

Is KFC's latest marketing campaign smart and truly "responsible" in it's orientation or is it a sign that marketing today is suffering from an ability to find effectiveness in a world turned numb to most of the messaging we receive today? At first I thought it was a sign of desperation...then perhaps not.

Yes, city streets and the citizens of the 5 selected cities do benefit, municipal governments save and can apply the funds elsewhere. Oh and yes, we are talking about. in the Social Web and in professional media...and that exposure ads up. So it's innovative.

It is also an example of a strategy that crosses multiple mediums and perhaps will spark a flurry of other companies to run similarly oriented campaigns.

The upside might be that through responsible marketing tactics, the economy is somewhat spurred and citizens gain. Campbells Soup for example might suddenly sponsor major soup kitchens in depressed urban areas. Adidas might build soccer pitches in needy areas...

...and it's all good. For a while we might talk about these things, spread the word virally. I just hope we don't get "immune" to these tactics too quickly. Too many marketers have made promises that fell through at the purchase point. Too many marketers have lied and we've become tainted, untrusting and suspicious of the marketing message.

I like this campaign for a unique approach and that people win. It would be nice to see more companies giving back this way and creating a new style of social marketing. Perhaps. Jury's out yet. But done right, it might inspire cross-media discussion and action.

What do you thunk? What kind of similar campaign would you suggest?

The Challenge for Mobile Web Success

2009-03-31T21:44:00.003-03:00

The tech and marketing pundits are looking for the silver lining of these bleak times and "everything mobile" seems to be it. Perhaps another "bubble" to burst? Yet the numbers and chatter certainly seem to be pointing that way as indicated on Marketing Charts today. Such research by Tellabs says upwards of 71% of Americans and 41% of Western Europeans will use mobile data services more this year.

Of course the main concern of users is reliability, speed and...cost. Regardless, we've witnessed the gold rush of apps makers to cash in on iPhone apps (despite evidence that the Power Law Curve is very much at work here in that 97% of the apps downloaded don't get used more than 2-3 times before they're forgotten.) BlackBerry apps trail behind and then it trickles down for Google's Android and other devices. And therein lies what I see as the single biggest problem.

Cross-platform development capability. It's just not there. In fact, it reminds me of Windows Vs. Mac not so long ago. You had no way to interchange or share files. Today, this is not the case. The Web has further eliminated this divide with Webware apps.

Today, developing an app for a mobile device pretty much means you have to devote significant resources to one particular device or find a way to deliver the service via a WAP browser to reach other devices. All of which increases costs through larger development teams, increased learning curves and support.

One interesting service that may be an indicator of the ability to cover this "gap" is, well, PhoneGap. Best of all, it's Open Source. While it isn't perfect yet, I suspect it may be the "Linux" of mobile apps.

Until we see such a service broaden, I suspect user satisfaction will remain limited and the true explosion of mobile apps somewhat stunted.

What do you think? Have I missed the mark?

The Meaning of Twitter?

2009-03-21T13:09:00.005-03:00

Twitter is the next killer app of the Web after email. It may also be the world's most powerful barometer of societal emotion and the first truly societal opinion measure. And it's only in its infancy. Twitter is a temperature gauge of society, a mood monitor and the search engine of emotion.

I'm beginning to think Twitter may just be the social tool that signifies the immense societal changes underway that we are yet barely able to understand. Some anecdotal evidence of this can be found in how news and stories break today and the rapid vertical growth of Twitter in every day use.

Twitter tells anyone who wants to know what people are thinking, doing, feeling, planning, hate, love or care about. In this context it is no surprise that some of the earliest add-on tools to Twitter to be created was TwitterGrader (we all like to know our social standing in a community.) Then there's TwitterSearch which was an app bought by Twitter and integrated. TweetDeck soon appeared for "power twitterers" (guilty here of using it!), in fact here's a list of over 60 Twitter apps that have developed.

Our most basic nature as human beings is to socialize, whether that's on a large scale or small (i.e. just a few people for Twushi - Twitter folks gather for sushi), we crave social connections. Forming groups is fundamental to our everyday living - for work or play. Sharing information/knowledge is what makes our society grow, for good or bad.

Twitter is an enabler of fast group dynamics - faster than email. You can connect quickly around an issue; like the #coalition discussion in Canada that showed a fundamental societal difference in Canadian politics demographically. Obama's extensive use of Twitter in campaigning. When a topic gets heated in Twitter, people assign a "hashtag" to the theme (i.e. #coalition), and in fact you can define a hashtag.

All of this points to a simple communication tool that has enabled the connected world to find a powerful voice. As Twitter and it's ecosystem grow (like email did) we will see more and more examples of societal change driven by social tools.

Twitter is an early indicator of this impending change. Twitter, I think, is the first mass-scale societal radar, temperature gauge and barometer. Social protest in the future will be marked not just by marches on government buildings, but CyberMarches that take place using tools like Twitter - and spread virally to other connected networks....reaching more people faster than ever in human history.

Just as Wiki's an "argument-based" social tool, Twitter is an opinion-based tool.

What's your theory?

Social Media: Democracies and Autocracies

2009-03-16T14:11:00.002-03:00

That President Obama made the first truly effective democratic political use of Social Media is in no doubt. Obama engaged, communicated honestly and we've seen the result. Social Media is inherently democratic, since that which the masses deem "valuable" whether that be news, a good story or picture or video, rises to the top.

Today, the government of the U.A.E. (the Emirates) officially blocked Flickr. Last year the U.A.E. government censored much content on YouTube, although not all. The Chinese government also has a team of people constantly shutting down sites it feels are threatening. In Belarus the government often disables the mobile phone network to stop txt messaging use for rallies.

What I believe we are seeing is the impact Social Media tools are having politically around the world. Even Facebook itself has been accused of political interference of an independent filmmaker who did a film about Cube and America and easing the political sanctions; Facebook says that's absurd - but they did delete his account. The Brazilian government places restrictions on electronic media usage for political candidates as well.

Fortunately, in Western Democratic nations such censorships are not in place. Despite Elections Canada stating election results cannot be "broadcast" before polls close in lagging time zones, they admitted there is little they can do. At least in Canada, America and Europe citizen opinion and democratic liberties are debated and discussed more openly.

What do you think? Will we see increased censorship of political dissent in communist and autocratic countries in the coming months/years? Can these censoring governments control the push to democracy? Already Social Media tools are being used by people to result in democratic changes and reforms...how "deep" will this go?

It's certainly a challenging and difficult issue to address.

The Next Wave of Wealth Will Be Astounding

2009-03-14T16:27:00.004-03:00

The development of centralized power generating plants in the late 1800's resulted in today's power utilities. The invention of the motor resulted in motors that have become so ubiquitous we don't even think of how many are in our home today (computers, fridges, DVD players...) and now computer chips are becoming ever smaller micro-chips and fitting into so many devices.

Then there's the Web, a chaos-oriented network. Like the hydro system of 100+ years ago, we're moving our data and processing into the "cloud" - out onto the Web rather than inside our computers - interconnecting banking, health care information, voting for public leaders, financial management...and general creation and discussion.

And now we sit in some so-called financial crisis. Sure it's a crisis - a crisis for the those who tried to maintain central control on a global market that doesn't work centralized. Because money can move anywhere today, it is now the masses that will influence the financial market in the future. The Centralizers messed it up, they got it wrong and they got greedy. Now, because we can share and talk unlike ever before, we learn more globally and therefore we're starting to demand changes.

Because of the Web and the embedding of technologies , because processing power is cheap and increasing in vast amounts and because we can connect and develop ideas unlike ever before, we are about to undergo a huge global societal transition. Have a look at this Time article on 10 ideas changing the world.

I think the current "financial crisis" is going to spawn entirely new ways of addressing what isn't working in our current society. In fact, as we kick out the financial centralizers and develop a newer, more chaos-oriented system, we will in fact become more wealthy than ever before - not just financial wealth, but health and broader human knowledge.

I'm happy the financial centrists screwed it up, because now we can toss them aside and make a better system, and that is what's happening. We're so much more interconnected...the "swarm" concept is growing and other changes we won't even realize for ten more years.

What do you thunk?

Generational Change & The Recession

2009-03-03T20:12:00.005-04:00

Over lunch with a good friend today, we discussed the recession, although by the packed restaurant one couldn't really tell a recession was underway. Perhaps we thought, what is partly evolving now is a global change in the guard. Most of the financial instruments such as sub-prime mortgages, that lead to this current state of affairs were designed by the Old Guard...the 55+ demographic. The bunch that took over senior management in the financial sector during the 1980's.

Those of us born after 1965 through to about 1980 (there is significant debate over naming the "generations") are stuck like mystery meat in the middle of the Boomers and the Echo (sic "Y") Generation and Generation X. We don't have enough numbers to really be economically or politically persuasive. The Mystery Meat Generation rode the back-end of the 80's into the 90's (born '66 through '76 or so) and were dislocated by Nirvanna and the Spice Girls. Yet we garnered the insights of the Boomers and fed on the energy of the Echo's. We're neither bitwixt nor between. Our wealth, such as it may be now, is off the drippings of the Boomers.

President Obama is of this in-between generation, sitting on the tail-end of the Boomers. Yet he has clearly grasped the changing shifts underway and the new guard coming in. It is those who know how to understand and manage the vast amount of information via the Web and the new medium it represents, that are pushing out the old guard.

Personally, I think that's a damn good thing. The old guard were those who controlled information because the concept of the Web, of cross-functional collaboration of moving fast and developing ideas on the fly, of social justice and transparency, did not exist in their time. It only takes a few good ideas to catch on...and wham! We have change. Or we have a crisis like today...and change becomes necessary.

I was caught up then in this video "Do You Know?" found via Twitter (hat tip to Anne1942 on Twitter) who sells Hammocks. And once we realize the volumes of information we're learning to comprehend and manage, one realizes that perhaps yes, there is a generational shift underway.

The tools that make up what we call Social Media enable us to push ideas fast, to gather quickly and attend to the issues that matter to us - the frictions and tensions of social groups are removed. If we don't feel an issue is important, we move on to what is important to us. If an issue gains enough momentum, it will spill over into an actionable act of change in the real world. Whether that's democratic, political change or simply dislike of a certain style of clothing.

I have no answers, only speculations. What do you think? Is part of this recession, these challenging economic times, a change of generations who are leveraging information in the same way printing changed society hundreds of years ago? Is there a generational shift underway?

The Cold Hard Reality of Social Media

2009-02-26T18:08:00.006-04:00

The cold hard reality of Social Media is that it is just another medium. It's a whole bunch of connected computers with some interesting applications that allow people to connect with a little more interactivity than before. It's more two-way, but it's just a medium.

Okay, so that sounds harsh perhaps. But really, we started this whole thing a few thousand years ago painting stuff on cave walls...early blogging if you will. Then along came the telegraph, radio and TV. All just mediums.

The early days of radio meant an investment in technology and not all embraced it. The modern concept of advertising in these mediums took a while to form. Same with television...and suddenly we had "sponsorships" and then manufacturers discovered women had a lot of buying power and...well, we figured out a medium.

So why is there so much discussion around what social media "is" and "isn't"? Is it really revolutionary? Perhaps...I think we can't even come close to answering that. Those of us that work in the world of social media are students ourselves. We're simply sherpas helping guide businesses, governments and others along the way.

It's simply too early to call any shots on this new medium. We don't know how it's going to change us. There's so much novelty, new applications and services constantly cropping up...and dying. It's just another medium to be figured out.

Is it really a societal change upon us? When might we gain a deeper understanding? What are the clues? Or are we just entertaining each other?

The Web Isn't Important At All Really. Is It?

2009-02-24T20:09:00.003-04:00

There is so much discussion around social media and the impact of the Web on consumer spending or discussions of how many people are doing what on the Web...and let's not forget the constant ringing of newspapers death bell.

So I was thinking about how the Web has influenced the broader economy and where this impact has lead to technology improvements as a whole...here's what I've come up with and feel free to add to it;

1. Digital Cameras: In the mid-late 90's digital cameras were expensive, and uploading an image to eBay or a website was not easy. The Web lead to better digital cameras, seamless uploading of images and "tagging". Even video cameras were spurred to the same heights of development.

2. Electronic Health: The Web contributed greatly to the development of eHealth solutions such as remote telehealth using video camera technology.

3. Personal Safety: Companies like Life Alert and others are leveraging the Web to enable better in-home security for customers....which leads to improved webcams.

4. Music Devices: The advent of P2P technologies and then the iPod radically changed the way we share and listen to music (I won't go deeper into the obvious.) Essentially CD players are fading. But a whole new industry with an attendant ecosystem has been born. Earbuds improved as well as speakers to connect to these devices.

5. Gaming: Now all gaming devices (Wii, xbox360, PSP) all connect to the Web for online gaming. An industry had a sudden lift and an ecosystem was born with peripheral devices like the iPod being made.

6. Mobile Phones: The uptake of email use in the business world lead to the Blackberry...and with mobile data rates improving we saw the advent of Smart Phones...and peripherals for those devices, spurning yet another ecosystem.

7. GPS Devices: Expect to see GPS devices integrate WiFi in the next 2-3 years as geocaching continues to grow. But satellites and the concept of the Web enabled this sector to grow.

8. The Netbook: The scaled down laptop. They're starting to sell and will also spin off a whole ecosystem of peripheral products.

9. RFID: The Web provides a backbone for data communications and so RFID tags and technology took off since the Web could be used to track everything from products shipped through to luggage.

10. Monitors: Because of so much time spent in front of a screen, now we have a whole new advancement in monitors with flat screen TV's and computer monitors.

11. Printers: Now we could print so much...that ugh, we cut down more trees than ever and now you can buy photo printers, colour high-resolution printers...even for home they are affordable now.

The Web is about information, anything audio, text, video and images...and as a result we've seen new devices that enhance our viewing or listening enter the market. Whole product ecosystems have evolved, and no doubt they will continue to evolve...some wonder about the Web still as in "does it really matter? Is it really important anyway?" as they hit the shuffle button on their iPod...

So, what else?

The Web Doesn't Always Matter

2009-02-12T08:43:00.005-04:00

For some businesses and industry sectors, the Web just isn't that important. Yet. Why?

Those of us engaged in the Web everyday sometimes wonder how we ever got things done before. We live and breathe email, blogs and blog ourselves and are active on at least Twitter if not another microblog platform. Then there's the marketers that are increasingly driving budget spend towards Web initiatives and trying to understand Social Media. A question by Beth Harte last night on Twitter got me to thinking and inspired this posts...hat tip to Beth, she often asks some good questions!

So what businesses or sectors may not find much relevance with the Web? Beth went on to say "can you think of any business that isn't online or is never searched for online?" It's a good question and feeling somewhat ornery, I had to think on it. Here's my take...what's yours?

I differentiate between "searched for" and having a presence online. I see them as separate, since something is more than likely being searched for, but may not be online.

In Nova Scotia a past main industry was fishing, but it is far less today than it was. A friend of mine was making a documentary last year and needed to find a commercial fisherman. He searched and searched online...nothing. And Nova Scotia is a VERY connected province in online terms. He had to use good ol' human networking. Then there's the local shoe-shop I was in recently and blogged about...he really doesn't need a website. Similarly there's a biotech company I know in Boston who has no website; they know their customers, are profitable and see no need for a presence.

The areas I find less likely to be online are older, very local businesses. Mostly because the Web is only just starting to get very local. This is slightly different in major urban areas, but rural areas still lack good Web access, thus preventing them from being engaged with the benefits of the Web. This however, will change. In addition, the Web generation is getting older and taking on management positions and bringing those businesses more into the Web era.

As Web access in rural areas becomes more available, and localization of the Web increases, businesses will need to become more engaged. Some won't (I recall an export business in Halifax in 2003 that was still using rotary dial phones in banks...yup. They were forced to change by the Telco who could no longer support analog phone service, but they have no Web presence) and they will lose business to competitors over time.

Yet many businesses that are online don't really get engaged even still, they have a brochure website that is rarely if ever updated. Hence companies like GoDaddy who provide basic websites and do very well with small businesses. They are perhaps, a stepping-stone Web service. But for loggers, labour companies and some traditional sector businesses like mining, the Web still provides no significant value proposition, or no one has been able to make a valid case to them. Yet.

Am I missing something? What's your thought?

What Big Media Isn't Saying About the Recession

2009-02-06T11:49:00.003-04:00

OK, so the unemployment rate rose to 7.6% in the US in January and 7.2% in Canada. So in Big Media terms it's all doom and gloom and the end of the world is nigh...or not. This Yahoo! article from AP sent me over the top with the use of over the top adjectives to describe the unemployment rates.

The recession as I see it is because a) the economy was far too overvalued in many sectors, b) the ridiculous sub-prime mortgage fiasco and c) the beginning shift from an industrial-based manufacturing economy to a knowledge-economy.

If you look at where the majority of jobs were lost in both countries it was the manufacturing sectors. But healthcare and education saw gains in employment. Knowledge-based sectors are either in a steady-as-she-goes hiring rate or increasing their hiring. Silicon Valley is still hiring but can't find people.

The shift we're seeing is that more and more goods are being manufactured in countries with lower labour rates. The social contract between unions and companies in developed nations is far too costly to justify the prices consumers are willing to pay. It's an economic basic.

We're seeing a shift as we need more healthcare workers and education will increasingly need people to teach knowledge-based skills such as software development, sciences, healthcare jobs, information management and on and on...

The biggest question U.S. and Canadian governments should be asking is; how do we retrain all these people? The next greatest exports for America and Canada will be knowledge, bringing better processes and practices to developing nations.

The rise of the Social Web and more people connected will show some incredible new opportunities in the coming years.

Newspapers & Journalists Are Not A Dying Breed

2009-02-01T16:53:00.003-04:00

It seems everyday there is a new blog post blaring the doomsday horn of death for traditional media; newspapers, television, radio and of course, the journalists who write/produce the news/content. They aren't about to die anytime soon. They will change, certainly, but they are far from dead. Using our monitoring tool we found over 250,000 blogs (yeah, blogs) and other similar articles blowing this horn cry.

What a newspaper will look like in 5 or 10 years will be very different from today, but I doubt they will die out altogether...in part because they are an "experience good." Meaning, we like the experience we have when reading a newspaper. I believe a newspaper will be smaller, in tabloid format with clipped articles...depth of content will be on the website. The massive NY Times Sunday Edition and the likes will not be around, they are not sustainable in that format, but the NY Times will survive.

Journalists moreover, are I think, about to undergo a renaissance. Yes, in the world of pushbutton publishing anyone can write anything they want, from just about anywhere. The issues that will come to the forefront in the next few years however are; factual information, bias, investigation, reliability of news source...and good writing skills!

Let's face it, probably about 98% of the content on the Web is mediocre at best. So good journalists will become highly valued.

What we will see, is a massive shake-up of the traditional media agencies. News services like CNN are increasingly becoming more "entertainment" than true news. CTV Newsnet in Canada is always 24 hours late on breaking news, but are excellent for re-caps of what you've missed.

What is going to change is the "contract" that has existed between the general public and traditional media. This will mean more stringent rules for professional journalists and more transparency.

So, am I out to lunch here?

Why Atlantic Canada Governments Got It Right With Broadband

2009-01-26T11:17:00.003-04:00

Atlantic Canada. We nestle up to the edge of one of the most turbulent and unforgiving oceans in the world - the atlantic. Compared to central Canada our total population of 2.6 Million is less than the city of Toronto. Yet we are a proud people, facing not just climatic challenges, but business challenges to export, encourage immigration and find skilled workers. In late 2007 and 2008, (New Brunswick started in 2005), the provincial governments realized that rural communities, suffering from outward migration and loss of youth, faced the challenge of competing globally in the information age as even harder than urban areas.

So we saw New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI and Newfoundland Labrador take measures to deliver broadband (high-speed) Internet access to rural areas. Their programs to do so are more aggressive and better planned than our close friends in the Northeastern U.S. It may also become one of the most important infrastructure undertakings these governments have made.

Today, all urban areas of developed nations have ample broadband access for citizens and businesses. The result has been more active engagement of businesses, academia and the general public. Access to information is vital in a knowledge economy.

In the past, Atlantic Canada was a rich and vibrant economy. This was due to shipbuilding in the days of wooden hulls, vast and rich fish stocks and some minerals for mining. Their position close to New York, Boston and Maine with a good stopover on the way to Europe and Britain gave them the added bonus.

Today we no longer use wooden hulls, the forests aren't as good as they once were and the fish are all but gone. The world is more connected and the North American economy is moving from a manufacturing base to a knowledge economy.

By bringing broadband to rural communities, governments are giving them access to the rest of the connected world. With the advent of Web 2.0 and the ability to better converse and build relationships for exporting, these communities now have a fighting chance. Coupled with marketing initiatives like the Pomegranate Phone (despite controversy locally) help showcase that we've grasped what it will take to engage the world.

Given the tenacity and survival traits of Atlantic Canadians and some of the innovations taking place here, I suspect we'll see some interesting tales of success from rural areas in the years to come...and more inward migration to these areas.

Civil Unrest, Social Media and the Recession: A Heady Cocktail?

2009-01-23T09:34:00.005-04:00

I don't doubt we're in a recession at this point. How much of one I don't really think anyone knows in Canada and the USA or Western EU. Economists are entirely contradictory. Scotiabank says we'll start growing by mid-2009 while TD Bank analysts say we'll contract well into next year. The Feds say it'll be short and painful while others say it will be shallow but long.

What we are seeing however, is an impact in marginally and recently developed nations, those on the edges of the EU and Mexico on the border of the USA. Iceland is an oddity in that it has always enjoyed a somewhat upper middle class idyllic existence...but yesterday the population held protests and egged the Prime Ministers car. Relatively new EU members have seen sudden drops in earnings and jobs. Mexico, fortunately, has seen a halt in rising inflation, which may temporarily hold major protests at bay.

A few years ago, the Ukraine Orange Revolution was largely and quickly organized using a Social Media tool - SMS/txt messaging. A year or so later the same started happening in Belarus. This time though, the government reacted swiftly and shut down the mobile networks and nipped it in the bud.

In more democratic nations, such actions by a government would be harder to implement. The broader availability of broadband access and connected homes would still enable civilian organizing of protests.

We're sharing more now as a society. While this is good, it can also have it's risks - such as organizing protests that turn violent. If we do go deeper into a financial tail-spin, though I doubt that, we may see protests in North America we haven't seen for decades.

If we do see protests, I suspect Social Media tools will play a key part in organizing them. They will be a mixture of SMS/txt, mobile apps connecting to microblogs such as Twitter and general blogs. Groups will organize and evolve in a very fluid fashion, and dissolve just as quickly.

Although we're still some way off from such a reality, it will be a fascinating study in the use of Social Media in terms of group dynamics and how change results from such actions. What do you think?

Social Media Predictions for 2009. Oh Dear.

2009-01-15T21:34:00.003-04:00

Ok so there's been tons of Social Media predictions, and many of them very good and most likely right. So as my agency hangs around in this space, I figured I might as well jump into the fray. Here for Peter Kim and here from Max are some good predictions and discussions.

I stepped back and decided to look at "people" from a "social" perspective and did some digging through some of the research we did for clients over the past year in the U.S., EU and Canada.

So I wanted to look at 2009 from a behavioural/societal perspective, rather than a business model, technology platform or marketing communications point of view;

More Hiding: As consumers/people become more aware of marketers and companies paying attention to what is being said, people will start to put less personal information online. More and more comments will become "anonymous" and we'll begin to see the rise of the Avatar. So people will create more and more, their "online persona."

More Activism: As people begin to understand the ability to "organize" into groups they will begin to rally more and more to "causes" sometimes for a day or a few hours and sometimes over the longer term. Online petitions will come into their own.

Governments Will Engage: Local, State/Provincial and national governments will begin to communicate in Social Media channels. There will be some wonderful flops and some amazing feats of engaging with citizens in a whole new way. But they will start to delve a little deeper in 2009.

More Local: As mobile apps take off with Smart Phones and WiFi availability, mobile Social Media apps will result in a more local feel of the Web. SMS and GPS will marry with mobile apps and the primary victims will be restaurants with poor service who will lose business faster than ever before. Word about local businesses will spread fast, creating a whole new set of issues for the small business operator.

Boomers Will Bloom: Baby boomers and current retirees will begin to be more engaged with the Web and Social Media tools and they will have two priorities; 1) Check the daily obits in towns they lived in before and 2) Share photo's and videos with the kids and grandkids. They will become active and Boomers are likely to find their activist 60's era spirits kindled again and may just hold Virtual Protest Rallies...not sure how, but someone will figure that out. Maybe using SMS services with their in-car GPS devices...

So in summary, people will figure out more how they want to use the tools for social and civil benefit, to enact societal change. Marketers and PR pro's will be running to catch up and we'll be trying to figure out, still, at the end of 2009 how to monetize those changes...OK, I jest a little...what's your social predictions?

The Rise of the Writing Class

2009-01-05T17:30:00.004-04:00

A fellow Twitterer (new verb?) recently commented that "anyone can now write content and contribute" so true and something many have discussed. I recall the Web 1.0 era circa 1996 so many Internet Era's ago and the pundits crying "Content is King" and the adage rings ever truer these days.

Every day vast quantities of new content are published to the Web; blog posts, Microblog postings, images, videos, films, documentaries, books...anything that can be translated digitally can be put somewhere on the Web using various types of instruments (thanks to Shannon Paul for her blog on "instruments" not "tools".)

So in the Web economy we can safely say the adage "Content is King" rings true. Which got me to thinking that if "Content is King" then a truly good writer must be Emperor. A good documentary or film can live or die by the writing. A blog can die with bad writing. As can a proposal or a website.

Yes, anyone can write anything and put it on the Web. But the blogs, news sites, microbloggers and such that write well are the ones that truly get the eyeballs and the chance at monetizing their words. Some pundits have argued that the English language (and many other languages) are dying due to abbreviations in email, microblogs and txt messaging etc.

I argue quite the contrary. If you're a wordsmith, you can shape ideas and opinions, spark discussion and debate. If you can't convey ideas well and concisely, you lose the ability to gain an audience, unless of course, your audience is small and just some friends, then that's fine.

Regardless, what you write is who you are. Writing therefore, is an art still and perhaps ever more so. Good blog writers like Chris Brogan, Beth Harte, Connie Reece, Shannon Paul and even topical writers like Benjamin Boudreau who writes about his Dachsunds gain followings because they write well. If they wrote poorly and without purpose and passion, they would have few followers (which in some cases is fine.)

If you want to be regarded as knowledgeable and gain attention in the "Attention Economy" then the best writers who wield words deftly and craftily will be the emperors.

Is this the rise of the writing class? Is being a good writer essential to online success?

The Upside of the Pomegranate Phone

2008-12-19T11:22:00.004-04:00

Last fall, Nova Scotia's economic development team via Nova Scotia Come To Life launched a campaign that featured the Pomegranate Phone, a very well executed piece of video. At the end of the video you can click through to the provinces economic development site.

There was a lot of discussion over whether or not this was a successful project. Some hailed it as an abject failure, some said it was good, others not so sure. But it did generate discussion...and so finally I thought I'd weigh in. There was a lot of discussion on Twitter as well under the #pombomb tag; and this continues. Hello long-tail.

The Downsides:

- The transition from the video into the economic development website was poorly done

- The sudden shift doesn't make a lot of sense

- The resulting website could be better

- Using NS08 makes little sense to anyone and there's no pre-communication for awareness

- Engagement tools aren't really prevalent or easily accessed

But these are more "technical" and "strategic execution" than they are of the campaign overall.

The Upsides:

- It is innovative

- The government took a chance, they explored the medium, they got creative

- It generated discussion; outside the region, where it matters

- The campaign got national attention

- It will re-enforce economic development initiatives into 2009

- Locally we "bashed" it but outside of NS, people loved it

And to my last bullet above, that's what really matters. People outside the region loved it and continue to find it and visit it. The campaign went viral. Nova Scotia isn't perfect, but then nowhere is. Each region has its issues. Ontario is now a "have-not" province and is having to deal with a shift in its' economic underpinnings.

Additionally, the provincial government took a risk. Bristol and Hatch produced a good creative piece. Sure, some the execution of the strategy was flawed, but over all, I give the government big kudos for taking the risk. In the end, it matters not that anyone locally may not like it; it has been successful outside the region and that is what counts to me. Engaging in online media is always a challenge and it is a learning process. For all of us. Anyone who says they have nothing left to learn about the Web and Social Media would frighten me.

We are innovative in Nova Scotia. We are trying hard. We have some impressive talent and companies here (MedMira, HB Studios, IVT, carshareHFX, Origin Biomed among many others.) We complain that mainstream media doesn't support business in their writings...then we complain about each other. This doesn't solve anyones problems.

Rather, we should applaud NS Come To Life and Economic Development for taking the risk and for increasing our exposure. They could have done worse. So while technical execution may not have been perfect, the overall impact is good. Hats off to them.

Once we learn the value of co-opetition, accepting success and promoting each other, then we all start to win and so does Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada.

The Morbid Side of Social Media: Digital Ghost Trail

2008-12-18T16:38:00.003-04:00

There's so much still to learn and figure out with Social Media; from how to engage effectively as a business to etiquette. So what happens to our Social Media activities when we die?

I was meeting with a client today and we somehow got onto the topic of a recent tragedy affecting their organization and I spoke of how I'd arrived at the scene of a young lady hit by a dumptruck recently. I later found her profile on Facebook and joined the remembrance group - but I couldn't bring myself to leave a comment, it was just too close. Suddenly I saw how important and wonderful a person she had been to her community, friends and family. My client commented that she had spoken to her friend and said "...if I die in a tragedy, please delete my Facebook account..."

It struck me then; people are building a tangible, sometimes extensive, presence online in Social Media services. We're engaged, talking, sharing, creating - daily. The average person likely has a Facebook, MySpace or bebo profile, perhaps all of them, plus up to three other services like Flickr and a YouTube channel...what happens when we die suddenly?

These services don't "know" a person has passed on. Who has the ability to delete their accounts? Sure, they go "dormant" after a while, perhaps get deleted for lack of use. But until that happens there is this digital ghost trail that just kind of lingers on...

So, what would you do? Are there going to be special provisions in a Will now - "here are all my Social Media accounts and passwords, please go delete everything aunt Mary..."? Perhaps.

It's a grim thing to think about at this time of year...but...what would you do?

What To Remember During This Uhm, Economic Crisis

2008-12-17T16:30:00.002-04:00

Are you tired of all the media hype over the "recession"? Are you really that worried about your job? Your house and well, everything else? Sometimes we just need a little "perspective" to avoid being sucked down the well-oiled Media Machine Hole of Eyeballs.

Perspectives to Keep In Mind:

1. We are nowhere near a Depression: Only 11 banks in the U.S. and 4 in the UK have filed for help. Compare this to over well over 2,000 banks worldwide in the 1930's.

2. The Banks Aren't That Bad Off: if the banks are in such dire straights, why are they spending millions of the "emergency" money on parties for staff and paying senior management their year-end bonuses? a prime rule of business - use someone elses money. So they are - yours.

3. The Big 3 Is Economic Disaster: No, it's not. It's called "market forces" and if the market won't sustain a bad product with poor management and too high a labour cost, it will rightly collapse. Economics 101. From those ashes a better breed of cars and manufacturers will come along.

4. We're Still Buying: Business, consumption, economies; they don't stop during a recession. We may hit 7.5% unemployment, but that's not 25% or 50% unemployment like the Depression.

5. Money Is Being Made: Despite the media wailing about the "collapse" of the stock market, many, many are making money. The markets will recover and your RRSP's and 401K's will recover too.

6. Know The Hype: It's in the financial interest of big, mainstream media to "hype" the recession and blow things out of proportion. That way they get more eyeballs and can sell more advertising in a gloomy time.

7. The Markets Are Not Collapsing: Watch the "words" being used. If the markets were all "collapsing" then we'd be seeing massive shutdowns across ALL industry sectors. Millions would be out of work and we really would be in a "recession."

8. It's Going To Get A Lot Worse: Thanks Big Media, politicians, I really wanted to hear that. Is it really? I don't know, I'm not an economist by profession...it is a dismal science after all. However, it may not get worse. "They" don't tell anyone "what" is going to get worse.

9. There Are Opportunities: Despite the doom and gloom cast about by Big Media, there are opportunities...if you do your research, consider your market carefully and prepare well, there are still investments to be found.

It's all in the perspective you want to take. Be aware of the words being used by major media outlets...and remember, this is the 90-Second Economy; when they decide they want create hype about a "booming economic growth"...they will, because that too, will help them sell advertising.

The Irrational News Media & The Financial "Crisis"

2008-12-07T15:39:00.004-04:00

Flick on the telly and hit any news channel and no matter the time of day, there's some comment on the "Global Financial Crisis", jobs being lost and comparisons to the Great Depression. Check any news website and the story is the same. According to all these stories it's time to just curl up in the fetal position and hibernate for a few decades.

It's In Their Financial Interest

A favorite saying of mine is "...if at first you can't find a solution to the problem, look for the financial interest" and in looking for some sort of solution, I found the financial interest of the media...advertising revenue.

The more the "professional media" hypes the so-called global financial meltdown, the more eyeballs they get and more eyes equals greater market share and sustained or growing ad revenues.

As I indicated in my prior blog, we are nowhere near a "depression", how can one think this when in the Depression over 1,000 banks collapsed. Totally. Now we're talking 11 banks, none of which "failed" as they all were bought or merged with other banks.

Instead we might want to ask the media why they are overhyping the story? Just like the stock market and real estate was overhyped, now the so-called professional media are over-hyping.

Maybe we should all just take a deep breath and ignore the "professional" media for a few days, get our heads on straight and think this through. Look below the surface of the media's reporting and ask harder questions. Ask the real-estate and oil & gas speculators why they overinflated values? Ask the government why they ignored the re-selling of subprime mortgage paper over and over and over again?

Folks, this is an economic correction. Not a depression looming. Find a paper bag, take 10 deep in-out breaths and ignore the media for a few days. It's time to get a reality check.

Just Fix It! (I'd refer you to the great Keenan skit on SNL, but NBC in all their wisdom likes to restrict content and hasn't a bloody clue about what the Web is really about. Typical old-style broadcaster...and they wonder what's going wrong. They can't even get Hulu right.)

Stop Comparing Today's Crisis to the Great Depression

2008-11-24T09:54:00.005-04:00

We are not on the verge of a Great Depression, we are nowhere near it. Mainstream media however, would love to have us thinking this way - after all, selling a dramatic story like that helps drive advertising sales and get eyeballs so people can start planning their trip to the soup lines...Brother can you spare a quarter accounting for inflation?

Perspective - Snapshots:

We are comparing our current crisis to the Great Depression because the media is looking for a way to "compare" and that's human nature; just as we've compared the Iraq war to Vietnam, yet they are not comparable. This is our human need for perspective.

Watching traditional broadcast media and comparing it to reality, one can clearly see that broadcast, so called "professional" media is over-hyping the situation and arguably contributing to unnecessary panic in the market.

So What's Different:

Many facts today are different from the time that triggered the great depression, so lets look at some of the facts;

1. No Jobs: The Depression saw 25% unemployment in the US, 28% in Canada. At worst the estimates are 7.6% in the USA and 7.2% in Canada. Also, Canada may see a slow-down, but not a recession.

2. Money: There is more wealth today, by far, than there was in the Depression. Private Equity firms' investments have made a RETURN this year, not a loss. Private Equity may in fact be key element to coming out the recession.

3. Protectionism: The worst thing America, Britain, France, Canada and other countries did was to close their borders to trade. Protectionism drastically slowed trade ad Tariffs went through the roof. This made things worse.

4. Massive Drought: Unlike the dustbowl droughts of the 1930's, we are not facing a similar environmental disaster - global warming aside; and even then, all those why say our forests are being cut down? We've cut down less than 0.1% of our global forests. And the air in London today is cleaner than it was in the 1700's.

5. Shock Absorbers: There was no FDIC or CDIC (Canada) in existence then. There was no Social Security or welfare either.

6. The Liquidator: The man running the Treasury back then (Andrew Mellon) was a wealthy nutcase who remains famous for saying "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate", OK well real estate is another matter today.

7. President: As the Slate article says "this time America doesn't have to wait 3 years for an ineffective President to leave, we only have to wait 2 months..."

Concluding: In the Great Depression Russia, Italy, Germany and Japan were very anti-capitalism and did nothing to help, whereas today, 20 countries got together to fight this battle. Unemployment is NOT going through the roof.

What is changing is some of the industries. If the Big 3 car makers want to succeed, they have to build and design better cars, not the junk that falls apart after two years; this is why the Japanese, Germans and South Koreans are doing so well - quality and good design. We are transitioning more and more to a knowledge economy, this means some traditional manufacturing jobs will disappear, propping them up falsely to satisfy bloated union agreements only delays the inevitable.

I might add that we also have this thing called the Social Web or Web 2.0; this is changing things from democracy to business. We don't know the impact yet, but it will be a transformational shift. More on that another time.

And as Guy Kawasaki said "don't listen to the guys in the financial industry about what's going on, they're the guys that put us here in the first place." Too true.

Mobile Phones Are Dead. Vive Le Cloud.

2008-10-13T10:48:00.002-03:00

The physical phone that is. Could this be an opening signal in potential changes in democracy? Smart Phones are rapidly replacing standard mobiles, and even standard phones offer more "community" type functions. Those that don't use a Smart Phone in future could be missing out as society evolves.

Smart Phones enable greater connectivity, faster and more intimately than ever before. Not just en masse, but with our closer "cliques" within our spheres of interest. By participating we create personal "Social Value", such as voting for stories on Digg or Mixx. This idea of "Social Value" lends itself to fairly ominous thinking of a connected future.

But we already can vote on the Web for elected officials. We can manage all our finances via the Web and Smart Phones. In some countries you can pay for coffee with your mobile. When a New York woman had her phone stolen a couple of years ago, the Web was used by her freind to get that phone back. But what was relevant was not the phone, but the data inside it; which resided in the Cloud, so she was able to get a new phone and upload the data. The phone was irrelevant.

Increasingly, we are placing our personal data in the "Cloud" and that means devices will become irrelevant over time, as Smart Phones themselves already are to some degree. So will Social Value become a part of who we are and how we conduct our lives? By participating in Web-based services, from voting on news stories to elections, to supporting groups and initiatives and playing games, will this all add up to show we are taking a part in society? Will this create "Social Rank?" and could we in future, vote on small municipal, State/Provincial and Federal issues more quickly? Can you imagine a constant stream of things you're being asked to vote on? A bit of a frightening thought.

What Will Happen When Social Media Gets Serious?

2008-09-03T19:10:00.004-03:00

Let's face it, most of what's happening on Social Media services like Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Plurk and blogs is really a lot of banter. There are some excellent gems, good business insights across many industries, some networking, finding old friends, sharing ideas and videos...and while some of it is viable for business and personal development, it's all really new.

Let's put "new" into perspective. This ability to share text, audio and video on such a massive global scale is about 3 years old (Web 2.0) and maybe 20 at a streatch going back to the early BBoards and the Internet's earliest days (I'm not counting DARPANET.) Humanity has been around a few million years. We started on cave walls, eventually we created a writing system and moved to stone tablets, then papyrus reeds, the printing press was invented and that lasted a hundred or so years (and is still going strong) and suddenly we have digital communications.

Digital communications have only been around a very short while in comparison to verbal language and the written word. Even photography and video are very recent. So Social Media and the ability to collaborate on a mass scale, well, that's measurable in terms of a single decade. Put that into perspective.

Social Media is growing, despite only about 42% of the U.S. Web population and 44% of the Canadian Web population using Social Networking sites. But over 60% of the Web population is using blogs and video blogging, video and photo sharing sites.

I think it's very early days. Even though it's early days, we're moving very fast in terms of sharing and collaborating using these new mediums. When print became a mass production communication tool, we suddenly had newspapers so we could learn about what was happening. It wasn't very long until people were producing books to share learning and ideas. Government quickly picked up on the advantages of paper as well.

So I see Social Media as being incredibly early, too early in fact to predict how it will really end up being integrated into society. But soon (perhaps over the next 20 years) Social Media will evolve to an even more serious role in our society. Perhaps something like;

- Groups forcing electoral change and integrated online voting
- Lobbying through Social Media
- Trans-border interest groups
- New economic models

I'm sure there are others, what do you think? What serious societal changes could evolve along with Social Media?

A Brief History of Amanda Chapel or Strumpette or Where's Waldo

2008-08-27T12:47:00.009-03:00

The Blog is called Strumpette, the online personality "Amanda Chapel" and s/he/it/they has been active for some time, foiling and roiling some respected journalists and bloggers for a couple of years. Occasionally borderline droll, sarcastic to extreme and often potty-mouthed beyond being respectable. Amanda Chapel via Strumpette is a construct, (here too) that has been admitted too. And anyone who sees how the AC Construct is always online would think she must be totally loopy from sleep deprivation at the very least.

The AC Construct first appeared in 2006 and then "quit" in October of 2007...but not for long. Her creators brought her back. Likely with the increase in Social Media uptake, they couldn't quite kill her off and she was resurrected. This PR pro talks of his experiences with the AC Construct last year.

Exactly "why" will likely remain a mystery and one I won't be exploring much more. Most interestingly is that despite presenting a hatred of all things Social Media, the AC Construct uses Social Media very well to rally against it - fitting it's purpose very well. In this most recent "interview" the AC Construct did make some salient points - such as don't go charging blindly in as a company. Some speculate the AC Construct is a take on the original UK Spin Bunny. Perhaps. They certainly made more enemies than friends.

So some detail on the AC Construct:

The Creators: The creators of Amanda Chapel are from Chicago and most vociferously lead by Brian Connolly who now has a series of companies doing odd things, including Furthermore Inc. (which is a great gallery of a whopping 3 whole pics) and WePublishing Inc. (which is a Social Media platform, oddly enough! although the site is terribly designed.) No one knows who the rest of them are, and if they do, no one cares enough to say.

Strumpette's Picture: The picture of so-called Amanda Chapel is a free photo that was found on StockExpert of some model. It was available on 2 other photo sites as well. The main "voice" for the Construct is apparently a PR pro, but who knows what "she" really looks like and I don't blame "her" for not exposing her/their identity at this point!

Multiple Sexes: I did inquire with a linguistics professor friend of mine and an anthropologist who looked at some of the postings and they reflect both male and female elocution. Confirming more than one person responds/comments as the AC Construct - just in case anyone cared! Perhaps the original "female" has retired but they continue on.

So in the end, what does it really matter if the AC Construct is one or more people? Or even "who" the Construct really is? I don't think so. We know it's more than one person and I suspect that when it comes to their clients, they do get them involved in Social Media, albeit with baby steps, and with less haughty language. Eventually, the AC Construct will become boorish and given about as much attention as those emails from the rich guy in Nigeria who left all kinds of money in the bank who needs your help getting it out...for a small fee....

When the AC Construct presents logical business arguments, this is a good thing. Sober second thought, especially for a large company looking to delve into the confusing, turbulent and unknown waters of Social Media, is critical. But when the AC Construct rants with foul language and ridiculous claims, it comes across as an inexperienced teenager throwing a hormonal tantrum. But at the end of the day, it is the consumer that drives corporate change with their wallets, and if they keep pushing business to engage, then at some point (I think that's happened) business will have to learn how to work with unmediated communications. To the creators of the AC Construct I say "drop the teenage-potty-mouthed-ranting" and be aggressive, but grow up.

We have not heard the last of the AC Construct, the "team" will likely continue to engage willing authors to take on "her" persona. As long as they're intelligent and not childish, I will enjoy the reading and occasional sparring (when I've had enough coffee.)

The Web and the Socioeconomic Divide?

2008-07-25T13:01:00.005-03:00

I've been looking back to 1995 when I first started into the growing new market called the Internet and the World Wide Web. Back then we almost distinguished them. Today, I think of it just as the Web and Extended Web. I was thinking back on how it was such a "free for all" in every way. Everyone was seeing the potential, and more and more people were getting online. There was a big hurrah when Business 2.0 reported that there was 20 million people online. Now there's over a billion. I think we've hit the Tipping Point hey?

I'm working through a theory. Economists (I'm not one, I'm a marketer - not sure which is worse) always like to put activities and groups into phylums and classifications, which can then be broken down and analyzed through Micro or Macro Economics. We marketers like to segment and analyze - we have a lot in common.

So is the Web seeing a shift in economic groups? I'm working this through. Any thoughts? Blogger Shalunov came up with a good breakdown of Facebook users between Serious and Gigglers...it got me thinking.

What I've come up with so far is 3 primary market segments populating the Web, and I'm open to debate here. This is my thunking;

1. Social Web: This is where conversations ebb and flow. Because Web 2.0 is inherently interactive, the economics of doing business in this segment are truly changing from more "push" channels of the past. A business can't "push" to the markets in the Social Web, they have to engage and converse.

2. Commerce Web: Kind of Web 1.0, but better tools and apps now adding the 2.0 element. But here is where we find the traditional Corporate Website, auctions and Craigslists, dating sites, books, music and entertainment stuff. This is where business models are settling down and people are making money.

3. IntraWeb: In other words Intranets and Wiki's. Collaborative spaces and knowledge sharing and creation in closed networks operated by corporations, governments or organizations but only accessible by selected participants. These are not commercial in the sense of business models, they are work systems.

4. Extended Web: This is how we expand to the EverNet, through mobile devices. I think Smart Phones will grow the Social Web/Social Media and business models (beyond carriers) are still shaping.

So that's my initial thinking...just how the socioeconomic models of the Web are evolving.

The Ludites Convert & The Economics of Newspapers

2008-07-18T15:27:00.003-03:00

Newspapers are dying and we're all on the Web now; laptops, desktops and mobile phones. Not. I hitched a ride up the elevator just now to my office and a nice, elderly gentleman was on as well. He asked what I did and I said it was around the Web...his eyes lit up! "Ah, everyone is on that thing now!" he proclaimed. I instantly surmised he was not. Then it got interesting.

He said how he was reading the paper and what would lead him to the Web was "this thing they have now, you can see all the earth, but now, you can look at the heavens. All on a computer...that, that will make me go on this thing..." He was so delighted, talking about that.

Two things struck me; the value proposition of the newspaper still exists for PR. An article about GoogleHeavens in traditional media is going to drive a fellow to the Web. The second thing that hit me is that those of us embroiled in the Web many hours a day, tend to forget the majority of people still aren't on the Web, and those that are, are on for very diverse reasons.

It's a humbling reminder that many are still left to get connected. That the "conversation" is only just beginning, and that the technology is changing. Meanwhile not all the rules of economics or business have changed.

The Web and the Economics of Incompatability

2008-07-16T20:35:00.003-03:00

I recall the early 90's and Windows 3.0, I'd had to give up my Mac; there were just too many compatibility issues with software apps. That started to ease in the late 90's and I returned to Mac; it was great. far less issues with compatible programs and there was Office for Mac. My department was all Mac in a sea of Windows and Linux.

It was, for a while, like OS's were finding common ground. Market demand was dictating that certain apps be cross-platform. It made economic sense. A shift was underway. The along came Web 2.0 and now the CrackBerry and iPhone. Google introduced Gears and now Android looms. Products like Evernote (a great product) extend from Web to desktop to iPhone. So things should, one would think, be getting rather better in terms of platform compatibility and hey, maybe we just don't need an OS anymore?

Perversely perhaps, it seems to be getting worse. To stop from writing a manifesto here, I'll use calendaring as an example. There's 20+ calendar apps for Linux. Then Lotus Notes evolving to Lotus Symphony, and then Open Office, Google Calendars, MSN Sharepoint and the whole MS Office Suite. Sure Windows is predominant across the Enterprise, and thus more than likely with calendars. Then there's Web 2.0 calendaring services. More appropriately, there's roughly 89 Web 2.0 calendaring services.

So we've got all kinds of Webware calendars for everything from task reminders to Web meetings and party tracking or just basic calendaring. Microsoft options (Windows & Mac), Open Office and Lotus Symphony and maybe I'm missing some? I'm sure I am. So let's just round it up to a cool 99 calendaring opportunities.

What did you have 5 years ago? 10 years ago? Let's not forget pushing calendars out to mobile devices and synching those devices and global business opportunities and family functions and visits...Calendars is just one example. There's email programs, Web mail and such, presentation solutions (again,client-based Mac Keynote, Microsoft PowerPoint, Lotus Symphony) and then there's about 42 Web-based calendaring options.

Let's have a quick look at Office/Productivity Tools on the Web, given we've got say 4 client-based solutions (Mac, Windows, Lotus, OpenOffice) - these are give or take a few;

Calendaring - 89
Presentations - 42
Word Processing - 71
Visualization - 93
Email - 150

The Enterprise is, to some degree, safe for now. But people go home after work. They do stuff on their machines after work. They start and run small businesses from home even. Then there's all those small businesses. It's the beginnings of a market shift. This is where Microsoft and perhaps even IBM in this market segment, are at risk. The law of scarcity collapsing again?

I use iCal (switched back from Entourage) synched to Google Calendar and Highrise CRM and my BlackBerry. That's essentially 3 calendar systems. So far it works. This is good. Please don't schedule a meeting using Lotus with me or OpenOffice or Windows though...but you can send me Gmail...or Twitter...or Plurk...or identica...

Is The Web Changing the Economics of Selling?

2008-07-14T21:14:00.003-03:00

If you call a sales department in a company one single assumption is made by the rep - that you want to buy a product. Now. If a sales rep calls you, they want to sell you their product/service. In selling terms, the conversation is essentially one-way, focused on getting to "yes." Is the Web disrupting this process? What does this mean in economic terms? Is the Trial Close, Objection Handling and Cold Call Tactics of Yesterday truly becoming Yesterday?

Prior to the Social Web, and for most of Web 1.0, selling was based on person to person interaction. For many decades it was about cold calls and knocking on doors. The fax was the first intermediary technology that was essentially the foot in the door that started to change the sales process. Then along cam Web 1.0 and email. For the most part, things stayed the same. Sadly, business latched onto email like the fax machine (anyone still see those fax sales promo's pouring through every morning? didn't think so) and spam is still growing. Yet all of these tactics, as with most marketing is "Inside Out" - the message is being pushed and there is no engagement.

The word "engagement" is used a lot in Web marketing, but it is really about a non-interactive activity - meaning get someone to watch a video or fill out a request for a white paper. That's not really engagement. It's still one-way. It's capturing a lead sent to sales to make a one-way call.

All of these tactics remain "Inside Out" because the sales rep is thinking only inside the box they have been trained in. Engaging in a conversation to discuss the broader issue and add value? That does little to help the rep meet the daily call completion quota or close deals for end of quarter bonus. A great post about Not Listening inspired my thought on this post.

When it comes to Social Media, and leads generated in Social Media, the current methods of "selling" just don't work. A rep doesn't understand that you may be gathering more information, that you want to understand value more and develop a longer-term relationship. Having done sales for many years (even as a marketer and entrepreneur) the best deals one does are the ones that result in a relationship that lasts for years. These are the result of conversations. Sales people are not trained for real conversations.

Sales people are trained by process. The only half-decent system I've seen yet is the Sandler system. I was trained on Learning International, developed by Xerox. Think of that; photocopiers. It's Web 2.0 and 2008. Mobile devices, a very wired and wireless, increasingly connected world having conversations in many channels in many ways.

The Web is changing the economic value of sales. Altering the traditional "Sales Cycle" in ways that are hard to understand. Cold calling is dying. One-way sales tactics pushing you into a Standard Sales Process of Open and Closed Questions, Objection Handling and Trial Closing - it's on it's way out.

Battle of the Smart Phones: Device, UI or Profitability?

2008-07-11T15:39:00.004-03:00

Apple released it's G3 version today. Soon, BlackBerry will issue it's Bold, followed by the Thunder. Nokia apparently has a new one coming out as well. The battle for market share is now in full swing. No doubt the iPhone is exceedingly popular. BlackBerry has really been pushed to step up to the plate.

As I look at this market, I wonder about the econimic value that will define the space overall, and the applications that will drive the economic value. I see three key areas for this battleground; 1) the device itself in terms of capacity, durability and life cycle, 2) the User Interface (UI) and is it a good UI? followed by 3) Profitability, not in terms of the manufacturer, but the user and the companies leveraging Smart Phones.

Device: I still use a BlackBerry and being a tall guy with largish hands, the keyboard of the Curve is much easier to use than the touch keyboard of an iPhone (I've experienced this with my Touch). Additionally comes the issue of durability and of course the look. The iPhone is much sexier, but Nokia and RIM are making some serious advances. The other issue is usability in a global market across borders.

The UI: This I think, is the major issue. Apple just has it right with the UI. The BlackBerry is annoyingly not simple to figure out, except if you're an engineer. I've been trying to change the ring tone for 2 months. Apple has a much more logical UI. No surprise. One hopes the Bold and Thunder will be a significant evolution.

Profitability: This is where long term success comes in. Smart Phones are the Extended Web or the Evernet. They extend applications like email, Microblogging and certain office functions onto a handheld device, which in some cases can be connected to monitors and overheads. The more "productivity" that can be packaged into these devices, the increased value they will bring to companies, which could drive deeper and longer-term Enterprise adoption. This then goes to making the device a part of the profit equation for business and if it allows a person to have better down time, then that is Personal Profit, and that's good in the 90-Second Economy.

For now, I think I'll just wipe the drool and stay with my Curve, as die-hard a Mac user as I am, and as annoying as the BlackBerry UI is. Some major device changes are underway over the next 2-3 years and it will be interesting to see how they extend into the Enterprise.

Where BlackBerry Falls Down

2008-07-03T13:15:00.003-03:00

The ubiquitous BlackBerry found in all places government in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K through the Enterprise and down into small businesses. No doubt it's the leader. And it works. Well. It's become increasingly easier to use, but still is more of a Geeks phone versus a non-techie device. The iPhone by comparison has a sweet User Interface and changing a ring-tone on an iPhone is a snap compared to a BlackBerry. In fact, a BlackBerry doesn't even understand ring tones, and calls them Notifications; very technical.

With the new BlackBerry Bold, perhaps we'll see some changes come about in this regard. From an informal survey of about 30 people, I found that few had any idea how to make any use of the truly powerful features on the BlackBerry. Most simply set up email and stuck with the factory settings for ring-tones and such. Even on my own Curve, it does wierd things and I've been trying to change the ring-tones for a month. It shouldn't be that complicated. The UI is obviously an engineering hang-over and reflective of an Engineering mind-set of Function over Form. Apple and even Nokia recognize that product loyalty and success in these types of products comes from good User Interface. Make access to common apps quick, simple and flexible and you increase uptake and end-user satisfaction.

We've seen RIM push out a new smart phone with the Bold simply because of these pressures from other players like Apple and Nokia. Even Motorola, often touted as the ugliest User Interface out there, has taken drastic steps to fix the UI. In order to stay in a market leading position, I think RIM will need to address the UI issue and make the UI as easy to use and attractive as the phone itself. I've conciously taken a Curve over an iPhone based on one vital UI function - the keyboard. Having tried to type emails on an iPod Touch, the BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard is much better. They got it right with the trackball in the middle as well. Let's hope they make the UI less of a Geeks Great Challenge and more consumer focused.

A change in UI may also inspire greater use of Web apps, bringing more commerce opportunities and driving more revenues for carriers.

The Economics of Demand Change On The Web

2008-06-18T18:56:00.003-03:00

I recall a period during Boom 1.0 when the magazines Fast Company, The Standard and Business 2.0 burst onto the scene. How many of my peers grabbed them, subscribed and talked about articles. Many of us still do; giving a point to print media. But what struck me today is "change" in the online world. The constant, unending change, and our desire for change, our growing demand for change. New apps, new technologies, new solutions, displacement and entangling technologies. They're constantly coming out. And this isn't limited to just consumers. This is across the board; for developers it's Adobe's Air and Flex. For coders it's Ruby On Rails. For consumers it's a new iPhone, Firefox extensions and Social Network apps in Facebook or Bebo.

Those online are, I suspect, going to become the generation and demographic of people who will, and in some ways are, demanding change in the real world as well. Applications, technologies and designs can be changed quite easily in relative terms. Worldly changes take longer. But they are happening. My focus here however, is "change" in terms of the Web.

Now Google has universal search. But the interface really hasn't changed in ten years. Sure I can try some new skins with my iGoogle, same with Yahoo! and some others. But Google hasn't really changed much in terms of design. Personally, I'm OK with that. I like the simplicity of Google's UI, it's clean and I get where I'm going. Even Yahoo! and MSN have learned the art of clean design and simplified UI - do one thing and do it very well.

But I suspect there are some changes coming with Google, and I suspect they will be the first to show us a new way of search beyond just "universal search". This will be driven by new technologies and platforms. With major advances coming in Interactive Digital Media (formerly Rich Media), Google will be faced with changing it's UI. This will be a signal of a broader change in the Web, I would say the looming shift to Web 3.0 which extends the Web even further. The Evernet.

I wonder what the economic ramifications in terms of online business models are as constant change becomes an element of what a product should do? I think the Agile Development Theory for applications so well promulgated by by Jason Fried and 37 Signals is a prime example of incorporating change into the product development cycle, and an economic way of implementing change expectation into a products life cycle. This will be interesting to watch.

The Future of Mobile Devices: Connectors

2008-06-08T19:30:00.004-03:00

Almost everyone in a Knowledge Economy business or government department carries at the very least a mobile phone. Many of us carry a Smart Phone (BlackBerry, iPhone, Treo etc.) Many of us use laptops and we connect in coffee shops, airport waiting lounges, clients offices, hotels...increasingly, we can connect almost anywhere and almost at zero cost. I call devices that are hand-held and connect to the Web, part of the Extended Web. The analysts and the pundits, they keep raging about how these devices are the future. They are right but also wrong.

What I think analysts, journalists and pundits have missed is the "how" for mobile devices that extend the Web. This is vital. Even sci-fi flicks have a hard time with this. Some movies and books go so far as to tell us we will "jack in" to the Web (I'm not much of a Sci-Fi reader anymore, maybe I'm missing something) to access the Web through our brains directly. Gives me a shiver. What about you?

What I think the issue with all these mobile devices is comes down to size and subsequently - usability. I carry a BlackBerry Curve and an iPod Touch with WiFi access. I spent two months carrying my Touch around to use as a note-taking device late last year. I tried. But unless you're about 3 feet tall with exceedingly skinny fingers, or a tall elf with skinny fingers or a whiz at stylus tapping - the keyboard is frustrating as all get out. Even with suggestive words. Then there's the BlackBerry, even the larger World model. It has a QWERTY keyboard and I can type pretty fast (I can use it better than the iPod Touch for note-taking) but it is limited to just how much you can type. It's great for SMSing or Tweets to Twitter and short emails. But editing documents? Massaging a PowerPoint/Keynote show? Nope.

Mobile devices have their limits in terms of direct usability. One of the wonderful things about humans is that we are all different shapes and sizes, including our pinkies. But they're all truly too large for lengthy use on a mobile device. So what role WILL mobile devices play?

I think mobile devices will become "Connectors" as much as today they are "Containers", these "Connectors" will be intermediaries for various media. Let's face it, writing this blog entry has me on my full-size MacBook keyboard (I even use a 20" monitor for 2-screen productivity at my desk.) I couldn't put in links, edit and write off of a CrackBerry.

In future, these Connectors will be mobile Containers. We will use them to access "Terminals" in various places. Walk into a Cyber Cafe in 5 years, you will just connect your BlackBerry or iPod Touch or iPhone to a keyboard and monitor (via Bluetooth) and have immediate access to all your files stored in your Web Workspace Centre - you'll be access storage and apps via the Web through your device. It will be secure and safe and no one will be able to follow what you're doing later. This is what mobile devices will really be. Plain and simple, unless manufacturers come up with a really new usability system, I think this is where we're going. Our human digits are just too big for the electronic digits.

The Evernote and the Evernet

2008-06-02T19:32:00.005-03:00

It's when something just comes together, that intuitively makes sense with a Web application that you sigh, wish you'd thought of it and sign up for it right away, that thrills me with the Web. But what is really interesting is when it can find sustainability. There are a number of Web apps that get introduced, are seen as cool, people email them around, blog or now "tweet" and thousands sign-up. Great. Eyes for ads or VC money. Three months later, they've faded, the VC money is gone and the creator is struggling to monetize the sight.

Many, including myself, dumped on Twitters parade for a long time. Even though we signed up and used it here and there. Then we started to use it more...now I Tweet a few times a day. Although I get enough to deal with via my BlackBerry I've no interest in txting to Twitter. I say that now...

But this isn't about Twitter, this is about a kind of "mash-up-come-stickie-note" application called Evernote. There've been lots of social bookmarking sites and then there are "reminder" applications, and file search applications like Quicksilver (granted it's not a Web app really) and then there have been clipping apps. Evernote brings the whole thing all together. Seamlessly. Integrating the vital elements of the knowledge workers world; laptop/dekstop, mobile device with camera app, browser. They've looked at a macro-level of the applications, devices and uses of the people on the Web, and understand the "extended web."

So the first thing I wonder is "how do they make the money?" Cool and useful apps are great, but if they can't be monetized for a profit then they're just charity applications. Rather useless for development unless you open source the code. Right now, Evernote is in Beta - good move for this product and following an approach that works; get it out in Beta, measure uptake and understand load factors, usability issues and other glitches. Then develop to refine on the back-end while raising money. An excellent strategy that saves on development cost budgets as well and gets good PR.

But just hanging around the Evernote site and watching the ubiquitous "how to" video done in YouTube player, I decided "I would buy this", without knowing a price. I jabbered with a couple of colleagues and yes, they would as well. I think they could easily charge $50 or a small subscription fee for just the Web based version. In fact, there are several models. It is a scalable architecture (so it would seem) and it blends critical user activities into one spot. Brilliant. If Twitter was the app of 2007, then Evernote should be the app of 2008. Hands down. Looking forward to the formal release...but then Google's been in beta for years and it's just fine.

A final thought - this Evernote, it is yet another example of the Evernet.

Ye Olde Web and The New Web: A Comparison

2008-05-26T16:58:00.003-03:00

Men and women gathered almost daily to watch stocks moving, to trade or speculate! It was a seething, frothing, manic madness of money! Start-ups with fantastical business plans, hairbrain ideas, some blatant frauds. One company was raising money for a perpetual motion machine. One company was planning to carry on an "undertaking of great advantage"...1999 right? Bubble 1.0 right?

This was the South Sea equity bubble - in 1720. Only last year we were gripped with the craze for the Orbo; a perpetual motion machine from Steorn in Ireland. That was nearly 300 years later! Some of what was described in my first paragraph could've been a journalists coverage in a 1999 business review article. Bubbles are called bubbles I think, in part, because they make us giddy like Champagne - but they also keep happening. There was the railway bubble in the 1840's, then the stock speculation of the 1920's that lead to the Great Depression, the Nifty Fifty of the 1970's and the Japanese bubble of the 1980's.

Yet we've consistently ignored these bubbles. Most people seem to think "no, this ones going to be amazing and last" and it is amazing. If you're promoting the stock or cashing out bloody quick. With Web 2.0 and the amount of wealth created at the turn of the century (more people made more money than people who lost; we'd do well to remember that) there is again the resurgence of investing. Albeit the mortgage fiasco has dampened things a little. Still, this Bubble 2.0 won't reach the heights of Bubble 1.0, but it will be good.

We may do well to look at financial history, especially financial history related to great expansions of trading nations (ie. Dutch East India Co., Hudsons Bay and the like) who opened new lands, of the Gold Rush and those eras - for that is what the Web is today. Bubble 1.0 was the first Gold Rush of the Cyber World. It's still new, and ever changing territory. Exciting, fraught with danger and riddled with opportunity. Looking carefully at financial history, then looking ahead, you can find the "now" opportunity.

The Web to the Physical World

2008-05-11T12:53:00.003-03:00

In my work with helping companies formulate Web strategies, going beyond marketing and into the realm of collaboration and productivity, I've found that what companies seem to find difficult to comprehend or work with, is where and how the Web intersects with and impacts the physical world.

The Web is a representation of our consciousness, where we think, express, share and collaborate on ideas. And it is not restricted to "business." The fact that it is not restricted to business, is, I think, a major point. In business for example, we can define very easily, business related frames of reference. If I run a shoe manufacturing business, then my business life is related entirely to a set of frames within which I conduct my business - suppliers of the raw materials, manufacturing equipment suppliers, employees who do shoe production, marketing and administration related work, my shareholders and my customers. When I am running my shoe business, I think about shoes; designing, making and selling them. My concern is reducing my production and marketing expenditures to increase profits and market share. The functions and activities surrounding this are my "frames of reference" and they are clearly defined and all are shoe related.

These "physical world frames of reference" however, can change on the Web. Boundaries become blurred. It is much easier to end up in places not just related to shoes. Very quickly. As a business, I may also find my customers, shareholders and media are interested in things other than shoes. The frames of reference change and become harder to define. Some companies are very aware of this fact, and thus they severely restrict the online activities of their employees at work who access the Web. They monitor visited sites, restrict access to many areas of the Web and are alerted almost instantly to employees who try to go where they shouldn't.

But working with the Web today means engaging in some form of 2-way activity, and these are knowledge-based activities. Activities that enable participants to question, research and develop broader ideas and innovations. These ideas and innovations are then brought into the organization. Where once before the manufacturing supervisor simply received the new design inputs from product management and then went to work implementing, that supervisor may find something on the Web and bring it to product management. This may result in a process change or design change. This means a change in the previously understood efficiencies and now that impacts the supply chain, the design process and marketing.

The Web brings on impetus for change, whether this is desired or not. Businesses have developed away from what they need to be focusing energy on - innovation and marketing as a whole. The Web allows for both, in a way that I suspect, truly hits on what Peter Drucker said over 40 years ago about how business must innovate and market themselves. Today, many businesses have come to focus on financial management and production efficiencies for shareholder value rather than economic profit, and innovation. Business seems to have lost site, in a broader sense, of competitive strategies beyond Porter's "Cost Leadership". The Web can help break that issue and easily enable a business to innovate more and market the business, not just the product.

New Rules For Traditional Business: Tipping Point

2008-04-22T17:19:00.003-03:00

I have the good fortune to work with varying types of businesses. Ones that I really enjoy working with are more "traditional" in nature, such as pulp products sheet metal fabricators and a shoe company. These are mature markets having birthed out of the Industrial Revolution and before. Now the Information Revolution is underway and I'm noticing a certain level of "anxiety" within these industries. I'm also noticing similar states of Deer Eyes In The Headlights looks from industry associations. Things have reached the Tipping Point in terms of information. The fundamental business rules are not changing, they're being added to, and this adapting.

This is what traditional businesses and associations are struggling with. The message could be controlled in the past. Marketing was fairly straight forward. Peter Drucker said "the whole business needs to be marketing itself" or it isn't a business (it has to be making a profit too.) That foresight over 40 years ago is now coming home to roost in a way that any business is trying to grasp, leverage and profit from.

Our employees are smarter today. So are industry memberships. Employees, organizational members, citizens, we can all find stuff fast, we can gather opinions and insights almost instantly. We're all becoming more sophisticated. Even a printing press has a PC attached and can browse the Web. The operator can search the manufacturers wiki for information on colour adjustments, paper feed issues and inking.

We're suddenly realizing we can learn more and make changes. The old system of being able to carefully siphon what came into the organization and channel it through specific processes is fundamentally changing. This means customer feedback is quicker, so product deficiencies and needs are identified quicker. The way the information comes in is changing. Used to be controlled by snail mail, then the phone came along and a company could quickly re-direct a call and voice mail jail was invented.

Eventually the Web changed to the point that now people can say stuff instantly on Twitter or blogs, newsgroups, forums and various website feedback tools...anyone in the company can read it that has Web access, even from a mobile device and next thing you know, all hell breaks loose in product development and HR can't find new hires fast enough.

This shift in how we access, create and share information is now impacting all areas of the business in ways that traditional businesses aren't sure how to manage. Even a business with good profitability in a niche market can find these issues impacting them.

It again comes down to multiple audiences empowered and giving their attention. How will business and organizations learn to adapt?

New Marketing Metric in the Webconomy

2008-04-15T15:52:00.002-03:00

There is a new metric I like to build into my marketing campaigns and specifically into the tactics that I am planning to execute, and this consideration in planning the creative, channel and medium to use has proven to be highly effective. The metric is Time and equating the type of transaction that is desired; knowledge or monetary, for those are the two key transactions of the Web.

By factoring time into the planned tactic, it helps shape the desired outcome. If you want to capture information for lead generation, then that is a Knowledge Transaction (TK) and the knowledge you are transacting is the participant (not the ugly term "user") is providing their contact information (which provides me with key data to turn into insights) in return for my White Paper. I took time to write that paper, and ideally, the participant reading it is taking the time to a) complete a form and b) read the white paper. Ideally, the sales team then receieves the lead and presumably follows up. Research has shown however, that sales teams tend to follow up on less than 30% of the leads generated in this way.

If my marketing tactic is via ad words, then I am driving traffic to a Landing Page or Microsite and generally my desire is that the participant is going to convert to a customer and shell out some coins on their credit card. That is a planned MT (Monetary Transaction) and therefore time must be factored in as to how long I will take to pitch, deliver the value proposition and persuade the participant to go from prospect to customer.

The faster you can make a KT or MT occur, the more likely I have found you are to convert. So KT or MT X Time/relevance = completed transaction.

Time should be valued as a metric. But we don't often think of "how long will this take?" when planning a tactic. We think of the value proposition, the "price point", the medium (place) and the creative to get the prospects attention. Getting peoples attention is hard today, and that's because people are increasingly cognisant of their most precious resource; time.

A New Perspective on Marketing

2008-04-10T15:08:00.002-03:00

What management guru Peter Drucker said over forty years ago is coming true in spades. And business has no idea how to cope or manage this issue. What did Drucker say? "Business has two - and only two - primary functions; marketing and innovation." If a company is not marketing, it is not a business, it is a charitable organization. Yet in top management surveys the primary concerns of a CEO are finance, sales, production, management and people. Marketing doesn't even get mentioned. But "marketing" is everything a company does.

With the evolution of the Web to becoming the newest Utility...the Fourth Utility or the Information Utility, it has spurred the concept of marketing into whole new realms. The fundamental shift of business is not "new rules" that the pundits write about but no one can quite define, it's not about a "paradigm shift" either. It's an age old rule of business and first clearly defined over 40 years ago - it's the arrival of what it means for a business to be truly "marketing" itself.

The Web and the technologies and devices that access the Web, mean anyone, almost anywhere at any time, can interact with a "business". They can conduct a "financial transaction" or a "knowledge transaction" with a business. The way the business responds to and engages with a person is how they are "marketing." When a company has a Website and starts engaging with the Web, it then is enabling itself to market to any audience that may take an interest in it. This includes the little shoe repair store on the corner that can use a microblogging or SMS service to notify a customer when their shoes have been re-soled.

Every single business conducts some form of Knowledge or Financial transaction. Every time a business extends itself and communicates with an audience, a transaction is taking place. The inherent value of a Knowledge Transaction is "time" and the inherent value of a Financial Transaction is "monetary." Both of these have inherent values, both can be measured and both contribute the overall worth of the organization.

By understanding that "Knowledge Transactions" bring value, by user participation or by a productivity (work) then a business can fully be "marketing" itself using the Web and communication technologies. Laptops, DVD's, mobile phones, BlackBerries, iPhones...they are all just "containers" that enable either Knowledge or Financial Transactions and therefore are marketing channels (as already recognized)...but businesses can now be truly marketing in all aspects of the definition of marketing an organization.

Speed For What In The 90-Second Economy?

2008-04-09T19:23:00.004-03:00

We can prepare a meal in about 5 minutes, we carry mobile devices with email and the phone...and ability to microblog via Twitter, interact with our peeps on social networks and send SMS messages. We watch short videos on YouTube in the middle of the day for a quick laugh or moment of stunned awe, but we watch them for 90-seconds. A new executive plane is coming out in 2011 that can cross the Atlantic at Mach 1.5 and we are building cars to go faster all the time.

It's the 90-second economy. We want to move faster, live faster, sleep less (the average Canadian and American sleep under the needed 8 hours) and we work faster...supposedly. Yet studies have shown that productivity drops by 10% in a day through constant checking of emails.

Why are we in a rush? The Web has been the backbone of enabling these speeding up. By such technologies as Twitter, IM and Chat. The Web, I believe has played a vital role in this evolution of speed. Even the material goods, such as cars and high-speed trains and planes, are born of knowledge activities that leverage the Web to bring disparate groups together to collaborate.

Uh oh, some think, are we speeding towards massive global knowledge burn-out? Frying our brains to keep up with it all. Absolutely not. If you buy into the hype of media (and most news is nothing but soundbytes and no true depth) then perhaps we are.

I think we're sorting out where we want to be fast so we can slow down on the things we really want to do. Like chillax on the beach, work less hours, just more intensely. The Web enables this. Time to reflect and deal with other issues. For the more we can outsource and delegate to technology, the more leisure we'll have. Ok, there's a little Asimovian future-think there, a little Huxley and the Brave New World (I feel like the Savage every time I take 3 days to hit the waters for a kayak trip) and perhaps so. But it is the Web that is the enabler. That's a good thing.

Time to go watch a bad sci-fi movie.

Twitter: A New Layer In The Attention Economy

2008-04-03T11:17:00.002-03:00

The first time I signed up for and used Twitter, a micro-blogging application, I thought it rather ridiculous and inane. As I delve into the concept of our 90-Second Economy, or the Attention Economy, I'm realizing Twitter brings value and is a leading indicator in the growing attention economy.

One blogger recently commented how participants in San Fransisco reach for their mobile and begin to Twitter every time they feel a tremor of a potential earthquake. This type of activity has been seen in the Tornado belt and with storms and similar impending natural disasters. It has also been used in emergency situations. And some think it can be used to save children's lives. Perhaps so.

We have more and more "containers" (as I call them) that we are using to access content; televisions, mobile devices, kiosks and desktop computers. The "containers" will continue to proliferate, but they are just that, a container. What matters is what is delivered, accessed, viewed, shared and stored in a container or a network connected container.

Twitter signals, I think, a change in how we are going to process what is sent to our containers. Mobile devices such as an iPhone or BlackBerry, are limited (right now) in screen size and usability. They are also a device we tend to use in situations where our primary attention is focused somewhere else (such as driving or socializing) and the mobile container is a Secondary Attention item, perhaps while we're waiting for coffee at Starbucks or for someone to arrive or as we stand in line. Twitter is a way to communicate quickly with peers (work or social) to convey what an individual is doing or has found, that they think is relevant to their audience.

You have a max of 140 characters to use. This takes less than 90 seconds to view, make a decision and act upon as the reader. The composer may take longer to think of what to say, but it is still quick. The biggest uptake for Twitter has been through mobile containers; better and faster than SMS/texting.

So I think Twitter has relevance, and like all emerging technologies, such as email, we are seeing an application that is just beginning to surface with it's uses. I think it heralds a new way in which we are searching for methods to better manage our attention...ah, time to check email.

The Work Web Vs. The Play Web

2008-03-24T19:46:00.003-03:00

He managed to alienate most of the IT community in his first major book "Does IT Matter?" He was mostly right, and that hurts industry when they have to face a truth. Now he's comparing the "electrification" of the US (and subsequently the world as he seems to neglect this thing called the "WORLD Wide Web", but I digress...he makes some salient points, mainly that the Web is (or pretty much has) become another utility, the Information Utility.

One area I've been thinking about, even prior to this book coming out, is how we divide our time, and what this means for the 90-Second Economy. Time, like information, is becoming increasingly valuable. With more products and an increasing amount of complexity to living, we need to better manage information just to live reasonably sane lives. It doesn't help that corporations and arguably news media, have created a greater sense of "urgency" in their messages. This is another topic.

If ones considers a taxonomy of time-resource allocation and applies a similar taxonomy to the Web, I think we're going to end up with two primary phylum's for the Web; Work and Play. Essentially, this is how we live our lives; what we do for a living and what we do to play (which includes family and special interests or hobbies.)

As we shift the burden of processing and storage over to larger companies that provide the central office/storage equipment and applications, we will increasingly do more work inside the browser. Knowledge workers will operate inside the browser.

So how will that affect how we "play" online? already we can do limited image editing (moving and still) inside the browser, and text of course, is easy. Sound is progressing as well. I think it will be 5-7 years before we can do anything more sophisticated, especially highly processor intensive activities like film-editing at broadcast quality.

But my thought is that eventually, this Web thing will become more utilitarian. The Romance of the Web will fade ( a challenge with mobile connected devices is batteries, which puts dampers on processing capacity) and the excitement and buzz that comes from a new app like Facebook will fade. It's a tough place for serious developers and companies - the innovation expectation, from the public and VC's will be tremendous.

As we become more guarded for our "attention" it will take much more "wow" to get enough of a market to give you a level of attention that equals profits, and I mean Economic Profit, not Shareholder Value. Right now, most Web 2.0 firms can be happy with 200K+ users paying a few bucks a month or driving ad sales, but over the longer term, this model may provide only a modest income. Not the kind of returns a VC wants.

And if we use the Web a lot at work, will we really want to play on the Web during our off-hours? Perhaps the evolution of the TV will change this? I don't quite know how, but the way we play on the Web will change. Devices will change, perhaps we will carry two types of mobile device - one for work and one for play?

Are you at "play" as you read this? Or at work? Or is it play at work?

Chumby for the Attention Economy

2008-03-18T09:38:00.004-03:00

Another device in the Attention Economy fray - the Chumby. Could it be the "pet rock" of the new millenium? It's another Internet appliance in a long line of failed Internet appliances like the MSN Internet Companion, the Netpliance i-Opener (now relegated to the Web Failures Hall) etc. I recall working on an appliance in 2000 with Intel; it never made it to market.

The Chumby is all about the connected world, and goes to support the rising theory of the Web being the newest utility alongside water and electricity. If the Web is truly becoming our "information utility", then the Chumby is simply an appliance to deliver more information.

But where does it sit in terms of practical use? It is built on an open source framework, and it operates more as a Widget appliance, enabling developers to create widgets for it. The widgets push what I call RapidInfo to you such as weather, sports updates, traffic etc., and Long Form Info, such as movies and Podcasts as well. You can connect your iPod.

As a testament to the 90-Second Economy (copyright to me, thanks), you can add Twitter and Facebook or MySpace updates. Great. Funwall posts and Friend requests at 3AM. I can get the same (but choose not to) on my Crackberry or iPod Touch. While I think the Chumby is more a curiosity at this stage, it is another device closer to showing how we are going to be dealing with information in the coming years. It's just packaged in a more "toss around the house" kind of way.

To me it's a rather unessential piece of plastic that no doubt will be of more interest to Tweens and the under 30 generation...or those with a need for constant info feeds or what I term "Validation Desirants" whom constantly need validation they exist by heavy participation in social media and friend circles. The Chumby also tries to take a spot in a persons "resource allocation" space for their attention. Certainly it becomes yet another push channel for marketers to content with. Segmentation of users for this product, should it become popular, will not be viable for at least another 12-24 months.

It may just be cute enough to get a spot on the coffee table or kitchen counter. Jury is out still for me, but something tells me this device might just make it, even if no one is quite sure what the value proposition is. This makes it rather a curiosity for the 90-second economy.

The Failure of 1 to 1 Marketing in the 90-Second Economy

2008-03-14T14:50:00.003-03:00

Finally. The Enterprise was going to implement a massive software and hardware solution, gear up the database and feed the machines massive amounts of data. Then suddenly they would be forging instant deep relationships with customers. That 20% that drives 80% of the revenues would become inextricably bound to their products.

But then there was the Field Sales Team, The Call Centre, The Customer Service Team, Purchasing Department. Then the ERP needed to be included and upgraded. More desktop apps for IT to implement, then training...and then employee turnover. But marketing barreled ahead. The Executive remained poised, the Board ready for the reports.

In broader terms, perhaps the 1 to 1 concept has helped. But I use the word "broader" with intent. For the key failure of 1 to 1 is the concept of the corporation, the business. Can a "corporation" which is made up of many individuals that must work together to produce, sell and deliver a product be considered "one"? And can all of those people ever hope to really come close to "one" person?

The "one" person is buying a product, but what is the nature of the product? Buying a product as an individual means you are taking time to assess, then purchase, use and evaluate the product. In each of these steps a person is determinig the amount of "time" they will allocate. All this varies by product. Shampoo for instance, has a shorter attention span than a laptop. I use my MacBook every single day, sometimes for hours, sometimes for a few minutes. 12 years of using a Mac and I still love working on it. I've gone through a lot of shampoo, I'll go through a lot more, but I allocate little time to that product, and I switch brands constantly. Just because. And I'm a male. I digress.

This is the 90-second economy. In that sense, it's all about the initial impact a company makes on an individual, then the subsequent amount of time I am willing to associate with that product. A company employing 1 to 1 strategies will engage with someone dependent upon the amount of "attention" the buyer/user feels is valuable to associate with the product or service. The concept of 1 to 1 marketing fails to take the concept of "time" and "attention" into account. In addition, "many" can't really have an effective relationship with one.

All 1 to 1 marketing has done is to enable the development of intelligent databases that can move a customer file across multiple departments to ideally allow for better management of a customer account. Some have done that well, others not so much. But this is hardly "1 to 1" it is "many to 1".

How The Web Affects Our Future Relationships

2008-03-11T22:43:00.004-03:00

For those of us above 35 years of age (sadly that includes me by a hair...or less) we can look back at the early days of the Web and Boom 1.0 and recall how it enabled us to connect with so many of our old school friends and find past professional associates and well, start new conversations. It was the basis of a still, if not more so relevant book, the Clue Train Manifesto. It was exciting to reconnect. Perhaps one of the first to truly become a mainstay was Classmates.com by reconnecting schools. I think Classmates is somewhat irrelevant now what with MySpace and facebook, both of which are free, and easier to use.

My point, before I digress, is that with the 35+ generation, we enjoyed "reconnecting" and starting whole new conversations and finding all new connections. Suddenly, a new world of possibilities opened up to us. Still now, 11 years after Boom 1.0 was kicking into high-gear and Web 1.0 was barely 2-way, the majority of people online have secondary educations and are older in a higher income bracket. Yet youth are online more and more.

I think of my 17 yr old daughter and how will they be dealing with the Web when they get into their 30's? It won't be novel anymore. It will be more pervasive, and likely much more integrated to our daily lives. How we will process and use information will have changed.

I believe that for the most part, the Web and the "concept" of what the Web "is" to society, is still a novelty. In 10 more years, it will no longer be a novelty, it will be part of our society in work and home life.

This also means that whatever our kids do today, will be around in years to come. But how will that impact the relationships they form in school? Most of us in the past who are over 35, lost touch with a lot of high-school and university friends. Life happened. We moved around, started a family and traveled. Then suddenly we could reconnect and well, it was just way cool.

So what's going to be so cool for the next generation? How will staying in touch impact the way relationships are formed and evolve? Will people stay friends longer? Will it impact the way jobs are found and held? The relationships we have with our work experiences and the people we connect with at various stages in our life will fundamentally change. But how?

Time to think about that one for a while.

How Will We Be Paid For Our Attention?

2008-03-07T20:33:00.003-04:00

Mobile devices (Blackberry, OQO and iPhone, iPod Touch) and laptops everywhere. Apple TV and home media servers, WiFi Hot Spots, home WiFi, mobile satellite radio and satellite radio at home. Satellite radio and GPS in our cars or on your hip. Even a Blackberry with GPS, music and video capability. I'm trying to figure out where exactly the iPod Touch fits in with the whole thing, but it's there and I have one. Although my 30Gb third gen iPod is now the family music library.

This is the attention economy. These devices are just indicators of how fragmented media has become. And how fragmented it will continue to be. Add in well over 7,000 Web 2.0 applications and counting, DVR's and changes in television viewing habits and that most connected people have at least 2 email accounts. It's a mess.

Seems few corporations can get the eyeballs of the masses, and if you can, you've really got a money maker and a mass market.

Given that demands ever growing on our time, it really shows that our attention may really be becoming more of a currency than cash. Marketers still look too much to obtain the "mass market", but that doesn't work anymore. The Attention Economy means going to segmented markets. Marketing in those channels that reach your segment brings greater economic success I think. I'm wondering how our "attention" as a resource, with more and more content and channels, will become more of a "value item" to marketers in the future.

How will companies pay me for my time resource, to get my attention? How will that turn business models on their head?

Economic of Movie Downloads: A Shift

2008-03-03T17:33:00.003-04:00

Last year when Shrek 3 was released for sale 3 million copies sold in the first three days. That's 11 pertabytes of data. Consumers complain still of download times, broken downloads and final quality of image. Some PC's and Macs have had trouble opening movies downloaded via BitTorrent, which became legit recently. In some cases this is DRM issues and in others poor download quality. Even Apple has had download issues.

I don't think the Web can handle this traffic. In fact, I think we've hit an issue with the Web and how that relates to some of the things we want to do. Physics and the cost of storage and the cost of network upgrades and maintenance start to figure in, though I haven't really done the math. For movies to be regularly downloadable on a viable economic scale, a number of peices of the puzzle have to be maintained.

NetFlix has done reasonably well, but the common complaint seems to be around never being able to actually get to your wish list of movies or that it just takes so long that your secondary list becomes the primary movie list. Now we have Blu-Ray and people investing in fortunes for HD TV's.

Here's an interesting company that I think may succeed: PortoMedia. Why? At first glance it may seem a transitional medium, perhaps a 2-5 year lifespan. I don't think so, at least not until technology can increase the transmission rate and quality of media and ensure consistent quality standards across multiple devices.

PortoMedia uses a proprietary Flash drive (this may be a weak link in the chain, and is the risk factor) that you can slap a movie into in 6-60 seconds. You then connect the drive to your iPod, PC, Mac or even TV. And the movie expires when it's supposed to and you can't copy it.

I believe it has legs in consumer terms since it is reusable, lasts over multiple uses and fits in with standard consumer patterns anyway. Granted, building out a network of kiosks is a challenge, scalability being at issue, and the issue of gaining consumer comfort. May work better when I can plug my MP3 device right into it. But it has legs.

It may be many years yet until we can see even fatter broadband pipes into our homes. There are limits. And if fatter broadband can't be delivered wirelessly, then we again face the "last 100 feet" issue that Cable and DSL have barely solved today. Broadband DSL and Cable have been available for 10 years and are only just now becoming pervasive, and then there's processor issues...anyway, I think ProtoMedia has something special.

Now for competition...or will it be an Oligopoly?

Radar to Friends

2008-03-02T14:58:00.002-04:00

I've posted a number of times regarding how "images" are taking an increased role in how we communicate. The ages old statement that "a picture is worth a thousand words" as tired as it is, just keeps getting reinforced. And with Radar this hits home even harder.

It's simple really. Just take a picture with your mobile device and email it or send it to your Radar account...all the people on your list will instantly receive that image. They can then comment on it. As it's your peer network receiving the image, you know they'll see it and comment. You've got their attention and this is likely a 90-second event in ones day (receive, view, comment.)

Yet another communication tool pushing for our attention and closing the loop on how we communicate. Once video clips or audio or a mix of audio, video, still images comes together, this will become an even more powerful tool.

As collaboration abilities increase and we incorporate the blend of audio, text and image into our messages, then we'll see some even more fundamental changes in how we work and play. That's my next blog.

Evidence of Changes in Our Attention Span

2008-02-29T10:48:00.003-04:00

My belief that we are entering a new phase in how we communicate and interact hit a stunning moment last night. I was attending a function at the Entrepreneurs Forum (a great local organization supporting budding entrepreneurs) last evening.

As the speakers gave their spiel, and as I stood at the back of the room, I looked around to see what people were doing. Many were listening, yet others surreptitiously pulled out their Blackberries and were glancing at their emails. One fellow I saw viewing a video. I would estimate out of a room of maybe 180 people, perhaps 30 that I could see were doing something with a mobile device.

This is the 90-second economy. The Attention Economy. Our lives are pulled in many directions, always have been. But now we are more accessible than ever. Our work lives cross into our social lives with devices like the Blackberry and iPhone and now the OQO. A number of people I speak to in the business world when going to a video link that someone emailed them, first look at how long that video is before they watch it. Average desired viewing time seems to be 90-seconds.

The average scene time in movies and definitively television, is 90-seconds. Average visit times on a website is 90-Seconds. I suspect a little research, which I'm doing, would point to a lot of content viewing time being 90-seconds.

Rarely today, do we spend significant time on long-play items like movies and reading a book. When we do, these are precious oasis of time we allot. Even our daily activities with freinds and family and co-workers are all chopped up. Research has shown that effective working periods are no more than 50 minutes.

It just struck me, running through the hundreds of events I've attended over the years, how in the past few years, Interruptive Devices such as the iPhone and Blackberry, have truly changed the way we communicate and how we manage our time. There's a content delivery business model in here. Whoever sorts that out good make some serious cash. After all, aren't we all trying to figure out a better way to manage our time?

Video: The Driver of the Attention Economy

2008-02-01T12:16:00.000-04:00

Video sharing, User Generated Content, iPod Touch, Blackberry, AppleTV...everything is shifting. The music industry is seeing more and more change and broadcast television is moving this way as well. Widgets are increasingly used by consumers and finding their way into business. Web 2.0 applications like Twitter force the user to reduce their thoughts and expressions to 140 characters. Front place ad spots in online videos are 5-10 seconds, instead of 30 or even 15. Television shows work from the aspect of 90 second segments to keep a viewer moving and interested. A one-hour show is actually no more than 46 minutes run-time with 14 minutes of time slotted for adverts.

This is the Attention Economy. We want our information in snippets. If we want to drill deeper into anything, we'll hop onto a Wiki and do some research. Maybe we'll buy a book. Increasingly, we are learning to manage information and we're beginning to understand the value of our "attention" as are marketers.

I think we'll see textual elements become shorter with increased use of video. Video content is easy to generate and edit at low to mid-grade quality. Large quality productions will became the bane of the high-end producer, with less shows and more expense. We will be tossing away information the way we toss out tetra packs.

The Attention Economy will see new economic models in paying for smaller snippets of information that we find valuable to our overall lives. For small funny video clips, consumers won't pay and will need an advertising model. Larger information packets will scale in price from a few cents to many dollars.

The Attention Economy is working towards a model that truly values "information" as a commodity item. So far we haven't established solid economic principles to "information" but the rise of easily caught, edited and distributed video of multiple devices and networks is the key driver to the next step in the Attention and Information Economies. Music started it via Peer 2 Peer (P2P), video extends it. What will push it?

Web Localization: Not Always

2008-01-08T22:24:00.000-04:00

I had to get some keys cut today. It was a wake-up call that made my day. My work is the Web, I'm on hours a day. I always have 2 browser windows open, one for the Web apps I use all day for working and one for my searches and other activities. I often use eBay to buy gear and such, even runners for my daughters Track needs. It's fast and efficient and I get good deals. If I need local services, I'm online. Sure, I buy groceries near home, but it is a chain store. Big aisles, well organized, clean and maintained. I am in and out of offices and office towers downtown during the week.

On the Web marketing blogs and sites such as iMedia, the pundits are ranting about localization. Ridiculous services such as Twitter and foamee (IOU's for beer you owe friends) go on about localization. You need to get to the neighbourhood, bring it down to a micro-scale, bring in SMS and text messaging on mobile devices. Tell friends and family where you are and what you're doing and about to do. Even small businesses should get online they say, the dry cleaner, the corner store. Really?

I had to get the keys cut for the office. I walked 5 doors down to the shoe repair shop that also cut keys. I just needed 2 keys. I walked into a time warp. A two-foot tall fake Christmas tree sat on a shelf in front of me. I thought it's even beyond Old Christmas...and noticed how grimy and dust covered the tree was. It must have been up there for a good 5 years, never taken down. Old signs and newspaper clippings from the late 1980's, yellowed and musty. Old packages from the 70's that were bleached from the passing years.

The cash register is 50 years old. No computer anywhere. A home stereo threw out some country music. The door stood ajar to the busy road on this warm January day. Suddenly my heart lifted. I was taken back in time and I was in a real localized, neighbourhood store. The owner is third generation, just in his late 30's, a very nice and affable man, excellent customer service. A nice older lady at the counter. He has an iPod and is very Web savvy. He does not need a computer. He does not need a Web site. It's economics. Why pay for that to add a small amount of incremental business that will mean hiring 1-2 more people in already cramped space that may not justify the cost of the marketing effort. He has all the business he can handle as a one man shop with part-time assistance. That's his life, people walk to his store, he fixes their shoes and has a chat with them and he likes that. It's a quintessential small local service store.

I hope it stays that way. The Web does not always offer a business solution. It does not always make economic sense...and for a fella that lives and breathes the Web everyday and is almost over-gadgeted, the experience of that store today was like going back to my childhood, the High Streets of England and the old streets of Montreal when we came to Canada. It was a treasure.

Do-Not-Track: Economy Killer

2007-12-16T13:10:00.000-04:00

DRM, DNT, BT, Copyright...all are some form or another of attempts to limit how people use and share digital content. New acronyms seem to pop up on a fairly regular basis. The major record labels, years after the Napster mess, still don't get it. Book publishers are coming along far better. And now, Paramount Pictures is releasing the Jackass 2.5 Movie ( an inane movie to begin with) online via Blockbuster for 2 weeks prior to the release of the DVD. Another 10 years from now and the concept of the movie rental store will have gone the way of the 8-Track anyway.

What strikes me the most odd about such failing concepts as DNT (Do-Not-Track), similar to the DNC (Do-Not-Call) list against telemarketing firms, is how economically ridiculous it is, and entirely untenable from a software development concept. Deploying the DNC law and engaging it with Telco's was relatively easy. The telephone infrastructure is the same across the US as it is in Canada (although the US system is a little less advanced than Canada's.) Everyone's phone has tip and ring and SS7 signaling that carries the Caller ID and other signals that enable the features on our phones from the Central Office.

But computer systems is an entirely different matter. Now you're dealing with; browser type (Firefox, IE5,6,7, Opera, Mozilla, Netscape etc.) then with the OS (Mac, Vista, XP, Windows2001, Linux, Unix etc.) and then the network infrastructure, which again is inconsistent. Then you've got to deal with Social Network sites hosted in various parts of the world and the co-locating of data in various countries.

To enact this DNT concept would cost billions upon billions of dollars and take years to develop and then implement. By which time, the consumer has further evolved what the Web is, and we're likely into Web 3.0 and then how do you deal with the Extended Web...iPod Touch, iPhone, Oqo and Blackberry?

It may also mean the attempt of the U.S. government to go back to the concept of the Internet, shutting down global access and blocking Americans from the World Wide Web. And we haven't even touched on the global trade issues and how much export trade is conducted via the Web today. The DNT concept is ridiculous not only then from the point of implementation, but because the consumer is doing too much with content. Consumers are moving content around and corporations are leveraging it for knowledge transfers and knowledge transactions. DNT is an economic killer and will do little to actually affect any relief on privacy. Most companies now have invested a heavy effort in privacy terms and that is where legislation can have teeth. I am sure that some alternative technical applications can also be developed. For now, the DNT concept seems like stodgy old Senators and Congressmen bumbling around Capitol Hill with little concept of how the Web is impacting their economy.

The Web and Societal Change

2007-11-27T11:22:00.000-04:00

Real change, the kind of change that impacts entire societies and economies, like the kind of democracy we have today, or monetary systems or concepts such as human rights on a broad scale, can take decades to evolve and become entrenched in social consciousness. The Roman Empire did not fall over night, the percieved decline of the American "empire" is not happening overnight overnight either, if it happens at all.

The world is going through phenomenal change now. Democracies are struggling, economic power is falling to large mega cities such as London, Toronto, New York, Frankfurt and Tokyo. As Friedman points out in the Lexus and the Olive Tree, it is the "electronic herd" that is influencing currencies and trading today.

The Web has certainly played a vital part in these changes, and with the concept of Web 2.0, enabling ever greater collaboration and content creation, this will impact change even more. Projects like One Laptop Per Child out of the US, will put greater knowledge skills into the hands of developing nations' children. Who will grow up and create change. Change that could impact the world.

The Web is still in its infancy as I've described before, and as it grows, I think it will still be an entertainment medium, but it will become a way of societal creativity. Activism is already more enabled and popular due to the Web and the ability to reach more people and provoke thought and inspire discussion which can result in real change. For absolutely every single thing humanity has ever created, from fire to cars and the Web was the result of thinking of an idea. Then executing it in the real world.

I wonder if now, with the ability to share and collaborate faster, more economically and across broader geographies and societies than ever before, will the Web speed up the pace of deeper societal change than ever before known? Does it toss out the current belief that such deeper change takes longer? How long until we can look back and definitively argue that point?

The Real Economic Model of the Web

2007-11-10T11:28:00.000-04:00

The rush to monetize Social Networks (SN) is on; Facebook has climbed in value to $10 Billion from a paltry few million a couple of years ago. Microsoft just paid $240 M for a measly 2% stake, beating out rival Google. All for advertising dollars. All for the exact same revenue strategy as Boom 1.0 which failed.

Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results each time? I wonder what the definition of Economic Insanity is? This is modern history with a plethora of actual and anecdotal evidence...and no lessons have been learned.

The economic model put forward yet again by start-ups is that with Web 2.0 enabling the vast sharing of knowledge (what I call KBT - KNowledge Based Transactions) or information as a commodity, the SN companies claim this is the spot to advertise. Lets not forget that Google made $3 Billion from just 5% of searchers clicking on the ad words in the side of the search page results. Not bad for 3 months. And people are clicking on ads; the model is similar to Direct Marketing where 2% of people responding to flyer is good.

The key item we're missing in all this model is the end sale results. OK, so maybe 2% of people are clicking on banner ads, text ads and such, but are they actually making purchases? What is the resultant conversion rates, then drag that down into subsequent cost of acquisition and cost of goods sold...what does that formula look like and is it really delivering an appropriate ROI? Perhaps. Although I somewhat doubt it.

How are we accounting for the infrastructure cost and the massive use of storage. Google is adding 100 storage servers each and every day. That's just Google. What about Microsoft? And all that Cisco gear to support networks?

Some vast amounts of cash were made in Boom 1.0, although the media would paint a sad story and images of bleakness, but there was no recession or even mild economic downturn outside IT. Although I haven't sat down to do the math (at which I'm wretched anyway; I am a theorist after all), I suspect the we're back in the same insanity of Boom 1.0 of making massive assumptions without thinking the model through.

Maybe we're all just having so much damn fun it doesn't really matter anyway. Maybe that's the point. Perhaps the real economic model of the Web is simply moving money around. After all, money markets are judged by country anymore, they are based on SuperCities (Frankfurt, New York, London, Tokyo...) and the Electronic Herd, and perhaps it's a whole new economic stream that is coming to light. Rather than defined profit centres, perhaps its resultant economic and information wealth at a higher level?

Social Networks: Crawling Babies

2007-10-24T20:33:00.000-03:00

MySpace came along, then Facebook. By all accounts, Facebook has slammed into the MySpace market and swept it away. Google innovated and MSN fell away as a distant search engine yet again. Firefox rose from the ashes of Netscape in the browser wars. One could go on and on and on and...

In each case there is an idea born, a man or a woman who creates the concept, perhaps in their basement or parents home, or even sitting in a Starbucks. Quickly they build a prototype, perhaps with a smattering of savings and friends and family cash and off they go. Before too long there are investors, venture capitalists and partnerships bloom. If it's really good, word spreads, people start adopting the new application or using the Web tool. Then the media hype begins, the pundits start punding and analysts start their soothsaying. All say "get on board now or you'll lose out" or the social pressure dictates that people must join...

But all this means is that new Web applications become as fickle as fashion fads. Sure, Facebook is popular. Today, perhaps for a few more months or a year or two. But do we hear much anymore of Geocities? It was a rage at one point. Geocities was one of the earliest ways to easily interact on the Web. It was a place for exchanging ideas, thoughts, passions...knowledge.

Certainly, Web 2.0 has made the critical difference. The ability to share knowledge, to build out on ideas and collaborate, for everything we create as humans, whether on the Web or in factories, starts with an idea. Absolutely every tool we have started in a brain.

True monetization of Web 2.0 applications, like Facebook or Flickr or even mash-ups, is still years away, and I doubt any pundit or analyst can truly claim to know what will work. Facebook, as popular as it is, could easily burn out. Already there are so many apps. I deleted half of them, I can never get enough "chumps" to become a vampire and really, I have far more to do with my time. Like blog.

I think that many of these "trendapps" will evolve into more simpler forms. We will see a division between our online work life and our social world, and apps will be streamlined to reflect that. They will also become increasingly mobile, for soon enough we will carry two devices...but that's another blog.

In the meantime, the evolution is fun to watch and to dip ones toes into, but people are so busy exploring and learning to share and communicate in whole new ways that what exists today is simply the equivalent of a baby discovering that crawling means new things to play with.

Smaller Means Less Productivity

2007-09-24T09:50:00.000-03:00

Sometimes, they say, smaller is better. The iPod Touch is a stroke of brilliance, yet again, from Apple. The company that is transforming computing and how we will deal with information; from entertainment to work. Microsoft brought in Surface (funny, Apple goes small and functional and Microsoft goes for big and bloated.) I'm not sure we can entirely grasp the changes that are about to come in the way we do computing, and the resultant economic impacts from the fall-out. It will be at least a decade before we see a significant impact.

But small has it's limitations. A keyboard being a prime example. The reality of work and academics, is that you still need, and will need for some time, to type a lot of words. Reports, books, blog entries, proposals, policies...any number of tasks. Just how long can you use your thumbs to type? A company called Asus is introducing the EeePC 701 (what a ridiculous product name) which is a highly accessible, small PC with wireless connectivity aimed at the "entertainment" market. They also aim it at students, perhaps they won't mind squinting so much at that age? I'm sure the optometrists are salivating for the clients it will bring them.

Fact is, such small devices are limited. The screens are too small to multi-task. In order to attempt to compete with the capabilities of Firefox and Safari, Explorer had to introduce tabbing. How many tabs can you realistically work with in a 3.5 or 8 inch screen? Then there's the keyboard. We could be using keyboards without sound or that "popping" feeling, but studies have proven that we need to hear anf feel the keyboard in order to know we are doing something.

So while I am sure smaller devices, certainly the iPod Touch, will do extremely well, it will be a long time until we change the way we have to produce wordy documents in the workplace to replace current sized machines. I use a MacBook Pro, but at home and the office I attach it to a flat panel monitor; this enables me the use of two screens and multiple windows. When I'm mobile, a 13" screen is fine for limited times.

Small is better for quick, low typing intensity functions, but not for real work. How many devices then, will the average person carry? A mobile phone, mobile PC and Laptop?

Plague 2.0 and the Web: HIV

2007-09-21T21:56:00.000-03:00

In the 1300's the Bubonic Plague (Plague 1.0) devastated the world. In a matter of a few years, the plague played a major role in the decline of the "modern" world. People fled to the countryside. Cities collapsed and economies died. Then came the laws of the Fifedom. Eventually we came out of the Dark Ages into the Middle Ages and the development of Mercantilism. Democracy was soon born.

In my last entry, I was musing on the 1700's and the business model then and now with Web 2.0 and how the economics of that work. Today I was thinking about HIV/AIDS. How it is Plague 2.0 and people are leaving the countryside and moving into cities, the hegemony of the USA is slowly fading; hopefully not. Change is afoot.

Perhaps the webconomy could play a key role in battling HIV? It is a powerful platform for the transfer and leveraging of knowledge. The battle for HIV is fractured and distorted by religion, politics and corporate growth. Scientists suffer for lack of common political direction with funding for research. Each country is in a rush to find a microbicide, vaccine or cure. Sharing, collaboration and transfer of knowledge is not encouraged.

I think it could be quite amazing if there was a sharing and collaboration platform that covered off the critical elements of fighting HIV/AIDS. Scientists could share, companies would split revenues on products (the cost of production would be so significantly reduced.) Education systems could be developed and people could find information. The One Laptop Per Child program could be leveraged in developing nations.

The Web today could be a huge weapon in fighting Plague 2.0 (HIV), millions of lives would be saved and perhaps we would stave off, in part, another Dark Ages by mitigating the plague of HIV. For mixed with HIV is a declining overall world population, the rise of the city state and increased religious fundamentalism in both dominant religions.

Will we learn to leverage the Web to fight a virus that is winning? It would be nice. So much has changed since the 1300's, so much sadly seems to have stayed the same. With Plague 1.0 it was the wrath of God...and so such nutbars again claim the wrath of God on Plague 2.0, then add the ridiculous elements of sexual taboos.

What has the Web done yet?

The Web: Circa 1750's

2007-08-31T20:43:00.000-03:00

From around the 1300's through to the early 1800's, men would get together, usually as a consortium, and buy a ship. They would find a crew and they would load it with various products for trade. Often, they would have several to many shareholders. Once stocked, they'd salt their meat have a final bath and off they'd set. They'd go to some remote port, such as Cape Town or to Bombay and there they'd sell their load of goods, and take on a pile of local spices and such and off they'd go to either another port, or perhaps back home. They would sell off the goods, let the crew go and sell the ship and make a small fortune. Perhaps they'd continue in this fashiom, building a fleet of ships (i.e. The Dutch India Company, the Microsoft of its day, so to speak.)

Which brings me to the evolving business model of the Web today. I see in MBA classes and in variouses businesses I come across, along with the pundits out there, the struggle to understand the economics of the Web in terms of a business. We mustn't forget that the concept of "management" only evolved after WWII in today's form. Traditionally, we have held that a business starts up with the idea of a product. It builds a factory and produces a widget and sells it. Competitors enter, so the company either finds manufacturing efficiency to reduce costs or it innovates and adds a whistle to the widget. It then either survives or dies, acquires or gets acquired. Shareholders either receive dividends, go broke or make nice on an acquisition. All fairly straightforward.

Then the Web came along. And some said "that's it, the rules of business are being completely re-written" and off they went about advertising models and no one has really said "ok, well this is how the rules of business have been re-written". It all went bust anyway. And lots of money was lost right? I mean, no products, no viable business models, everyone lost.

Wrong. In the period of 1995 to 2001, the world generated and accumulated more mass wealth than at any previous economic leap in the history of trade and commerce, more than the closest prior time of great wealth building - the exploration years, though the accumulation of such wealth took hundreds of years rather than less than a decade.

Today, the model I think has evolved to become not so much product focused, but Evolutionary. A company starts up with an idea and creates not necessarily a product, but the start of a product such as Linux, people add to it and it evolves. The money comes from later on servicing that software and making it work for people who want to pay a fee. Or perhaps, the idea is something that brings people together to share and collaborate, there is no defined "product" it is a space where knowledge transactions occur.

These businesses are much like the ship consortium's of hundreds of years ago. They set sail with a small crew to somewhere barely known, not quite sure what they'll find at the other end, then they dump a load of cargo (original idea) and take on a new one. Then they sell out, or merge or evolve and morph into something newer and bigger.

We've gone beyond the simple build-profit-sell or close model. It still exists, it always will. The fundamental rules of economics haven't changed. They will I think, eventually, but we are morphing. Today we have income trusts and the "company" as we know it does not innovate, it simply delivers due to established share. Coca-Cola and Pepsi will never see double digit corporate growth. It's unreasonable.

We've created so many financial instruments and are moving so much cash around the world, amongst so many centres that we spread risk and find profit by moving money around. Web-based businesses, whether they be based purely on Knowledge Based Transactions or a combination of a manufactured good and knowledge, now leverage financial tools so differently and in new ways. Less common is the huge profit and more common is the long-term and mid-term approach to investments and shorter term gains are through leveraging a business into the longer term players.

Somebody adventurous takes the ship to the unknown port and brings it back hoping to sell it off, and then does it over again. Some become corporate stay-at-home Goliaths. Some will bring you shareholder value, others economic profit.

Everything old is new again. It's just the context.

Monetizing Business Online

2007-08-13T18:37:00.000-03:00

I see that many businesses are struggling to understand a common social lexicon - Show Me The Money! - that I hear often from a colleague who is a Chartered Accountant and whom I respect deeply. He's Scottish so he understands the fundamentals of protecting civilisation. He has also spent 30+ years Pre-Internet Age, thus he brings to a business discussion truly relevant business knowledge, not just "pie-in-the-sky" ideas.

As in my last post on Social Networking, I spoke of the VC's and money types and entrepreneurs still falling back to "advertising" as the main source of revenue. Even as a marketer, I'm starting to feel that "advertising" has become the social welfare network for pure-play Web companies looking for a business model. It's almost as if that's the way entrepreneurs and VC's have come to think of a Web start-up. Getting eyeballs whether your a Web 2.0 social application or a Meganiche certainly is a business model; but there are other ecomic impacts that contribute directly to business growth.

Journalists, even business writers, are still locked into the myth that the Web is "a marketers dream" that it's the "best marketing tool ever." In part, yes. A marketers dream? Nightmare is more like it. Ask a marketer how they keep up with it. How they stay on top of all the online channels and latest trends and strategies. Most don't. They develop marketing strategies and plans, then the measurements to track success/failure, launch, measure, evaluate and adjust. And ad spending is part of a marketers war chest, but rarely can a marketer rely on the Web as a sole marketing vehicle. They must access the various other channels where their target is in order to cut through the clutter to get the message heard and then, really only then, does the Web become useful. Get their interest, drive a prospective buyer to the Website, then answer their questions and perhaps then monetize them. But a marketer needs to leverage multiple channels, not just the Web.

I digress. Where does monetization online really lie? Most business people think its just music, books, eBay and other catalogue shopping experiences. And, oh dear, "ad revenue". Where I believe the money really is, is in the broader picture - productivity gains from new Web-based applications such as calendar sharing, CRM systems and product demonstrations. The money is in Knowledge Based Transactions - KBT.

If you want to look at where the money is, it is where knowledge must be transacted. I break the KBT concept down into three primary categories; 1) Research & Investigation, 2) Evidence and 3) Collaboration. You can't wrap a gift, you can't taste test, you can't test drive a car - these are all tactile and involve elements of a business transaction that simply don't translate to the Web. With the advent of Web 2.0, we can share and transact with knowledge much easier. The majority of Web users are after all, educated and earning in the top 30 percentile of the economy.

If you want to find an economic model, determine the type of KBT that will take place and if you can charge for a particular transaction. A capitalist society is based on transactions, whether a social or business contract, we are always transacting with each other. Some knowledge transactions begin as "free" and progress towards monetization.

In my next entry, I'll dig deeper into the three main elements of Knowledge Based Transactions that are the key to driving Web business models in the future. If anyone might read this and think its somewhat intelligent, don't expect it to make you rich overnight. True wealth is made of hard work and smart work...I'm not truly wealthy yet so I can't weigh in sensibly on that point.

Social Networks: Emerging From The Sea?

2007-08-08T21:28:00.000-03:00

I wonder if it was as virulent and chaotic when life crawled out of the sea as it is with Social Networking sites these days? I'm having slightly dizzy feelings of Boom 1.0 just before Bust 1.0 came on...then it was iVillage and AskJeeves (now just "Ask"), Shout and Geocities, even my own CityScapes all scampering about at the edge of the sea scrounging for ad dollars and VC money. Users couldn't really "interact" though, not like Web 2.0. All you had was chat rooms and newsgroups; slightly clumsy and filled with vague references and innuendo.

Most people know Facebook and MySpace...and now there's even more; Sconex for the Latin American community, Ruckus a campus-based music sharing site, myYearbook (taking on Classmates.com?), Piczo (kind of a Flickr on steroids) and well, even one for the Mucky Mucks with Mega Bucks (Smallworld.)

I dare say many will fail, as is normal in all industries (typical business failure rates in the Western world are 70% within the first 3 years.) I see the marketers, VC's and journalists writing about them. They're all pointing to the ten-year old, generally unsuccessful revenue of model of...advertising. Very few have had any real success with advertising as a revenue model; Google, Yahoo!, MSN. And these mostly because they are pervasive and people have to search somewhere. Yet they've had to extend the "added-value" of additional services and products (i.e. Gmail and GoogleDocs etc.) to capture eyes and present multiple opportunities. As successful as they are, all are threatened by PPC fraud issues, among other uncertainties.

But why still drive for advertising revenues? So many failed that way. Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results isn't the definition of insanity doing the...oh, yeah...so why go for what isn't really working?

So failed revenue models aside, what about time? We have only so many hours in a day. 90% of us are doing something - work, study, volunteering...and then there's sustainability and interest mixed with time. My next ingredient for this "webological" soup would be ADD. We are after all, in a 90-Second Economy (the nanoeconomy as my good friend and associate John says), how long can a Social Network keep our attention?

The battle will not be so much then for ad revenues, as it will for attention span, precious personal time and perceived end value. Millions are using Social Networks, but can anyone really say why? This is what I find interesting, since it opens up some very interesting pathways to future knowledge sharing in our society, and what we may go one to create - hybrid democracies, new economic models, new social behaviours? I wonder.

The Web & Democracy

2007-08-07T22:37:00.000-03:00

Several journalists, economists and international studies gurus have all put forward various theories on how North America may evolve in the coming years. One journalist has speculated that the current siutation in West Africa (Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria etc.) is a model for how we are progressing; more regional conflicts, collapsing democracy and huge financial upsets. There has even been the theory, very hotly contested, of the Nine Nations of North America by Garreau.

I think what all have discounted is the Web, and the impact it has and will have, on society as a whole. Developed nations have over 70% usage by populations and developing nations are catching up. With the advent of, sigh, Web 2.0, to tout and overused but accurate term, even businesses are taking the Web more seriously through cross-enterprise usage. Software as a Service is expected to become a $52 Billion market over the next few years. That's not small change.

The Web, or more accurately the minds that embraced and leveraged it, has lead to greater wealth than we've ever known in mankinds' history. With global networks, currencies have become more flexible than ever, and more fluid. Democracy will change, but fundamentally, democracy and capitalism have made the world healthier, wealthier and smarter. Developing nations are catching on to this fact, and they want a piece of the pie.

The Web will be a mediation and disintermediation tool in the coming years. The fibre is in the ground and across the oceans and in the skies, laptops are cheaper than ever, mobile devices are proliferating. Trade zones and democracy will change.

I always find it interesting that the Top 5 countries in the world (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands and Canada) are also Constitutional Monarchies, capitalist/socialist and have the highest education and Internet connectivities per capita. I think the pundits need to check their email.

Free: The Dichotomy of Post-Industrialism

2007-07-29T14:25:00.001-03:00

Open Source software. The bane of Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and other similar software giants. Surprisingly adopted by the ancient monolith of IBM in the carnation of Linux. I'm perhaps the hundred thousandth person to consider OpenSource and write something on it.

What I found intriguing with Open Source is the change in the economic model. The naysayers I have come to find, are those that apply the wrong economic rules to the building of the knowledge economy, they apply Industrial Era methodologies and evaluations. These are the people who promote DRM (Digital Rights Management) and espouse the need for stringent controls on Intellectual Property - at the raw manufacturing end of the goods. This is where a new rule has overwritten an old rule. While many rules of business remain the same, some have fundamentally changed. This is one of them; base manufacturing of the "good".

In the Industrial Era, we discovered the ability to make machines to mass produce raw materials; cotton into clothing, tin into cans, sand to glass to glasses, windows, jars etc. Then we made other stuff, such as cars. It was a whole new era of finding people who could build the machines that made these things. Arguably the Loom and printing press being the first true machines of the Industrial Era. It cost to have them designed and built.

Linus Torvald built his for free - Linux Operating System. Behlendorf created the Apache server, on the Linux Kernel, for free. They invited others to collaborate. Thus was born Red Hat, ColabNet and SpikeSource. Their economic model was to create products off the base system, the foundation if you will of the collaboration network. In the case of Red Hat and SpikeSource, they "added value" to what was there by ensuring it worked. They are profitable companies generating consistently growing revenues. Red Hat even went public. It's shareholders are receiving dividends.

I think what the Old Boys are struggling with is "why would someone build something for free?" That just doesn't compute in traditional business terms. I don't think Torvald or Behlendorf did anything for free really. They just made a necessary investment in basic infrastructure. Without what they did, neither could have gone on to make the millions they have made since then.

Free has been the misconception of the Traditionalists who figure every line of code and smidgeon of data must have a paying customer. What about the old pioneers of America and Canada? No one paid them? They hauled their families across an ocean and had to build even their basic shelter. But their investment paid off for future generations and new countries. Same with Open Source. It is the new Wild West, though I am certainly not the first to suggest that analogy.

I think someone needs to look at the Old Economic Principles and look at a collaborative form of economy, the authors of Wikipedia almost get there, but get too wrapped up in motivational stories than looking at the true principals of economics.

Collaborate or Die

2007-07-21T21:06:00.000-03:00

Ah, the pundits of the Knowledge Economy. Collaboration Calamity! Collaborate or you'll never grow and reap massive rewards. We've got social networking, Wiki's and now Microsoft has launched SharePoint with OfficeGroove (gee, they broke the brand bank on that one) and OfficeCommunicator. Oracle and SAP, along with SUN are rushing to bring the corporate world's version of "collaboration tools" to the stodgy Enterprise. I suspect these major corporations may be biting off a little more than they can chew, or may get bitten hard in the proverbial arse as they implement these software tools.

I find it rather ironic that the true growth of Wiki's and other social networking sites has been due to their chaotic and wholly organic nature. In all of these instances, one might argue, they arose from the Agile Development theory of software creation. They succeeded because the structure and rules was simply a framework, and the individuals brought minds together and this collaborated and the results; YouTube, Facebook, Flckr, Wikipedia, speak for themselves.

Here rolls in Microsoft, SAP, Sun and all the other "enterprise" software companies pushing the world of the "Agile Corporation" or of the Collaborative Enterprise. Obviously, they've never looked inside their own organization - critics of Microsoft say it has become stodgy and bogged down itself in process and regulation. It has become, as all major corporations eventually become, victims of modern management theory. Which is, to say, reduce and mitigate risk as much as possible with the theory that the inevitable economic reward is profit, but profit in terms of shareholder value, not economic profit. I'll grant Sun some small possibility of succeeding in that they've taken the Linux approach to their software and hardware.

I suspect that the truly successful businesses in the near future will be the smaller, truly agile organization that ignites a fire in the belly of the people working in the organization. If global enterprises are looking to software that enables document sharing and better trolling of databases to enable them to be more agile, I suspect this is dead before it will even start. Even as they want to be more "agile", they are struggling with how to assign rules through Identity Management, Data Security and policy management. They become so bogged down in these issues that the concept of collaborating all but suffocates in the womb of the Intrapreneur within the organization who thinks his nice salary is protected and he'll be hailed as the manage that lead the corporation to a 3% overall gain in shareholder value that year...and it only took 4 years to implement. Meanwhile the competitor down the street with a tenth of the employees has generated 5 times the economic profit over the shareholder value measurement and is relaxing on a corporate cruise in San Diego harbour.

Collaboration in the way the major software companies are touting it is nice, but it is anathema to current hierarchical management theory. Enterprises are destined to become the safety net for pension fund investments, while true economic wealth will come from smaller, nimbler companies who collaborate internally and, gasp, with sometime competitors. My vote is for the small enterprise, the business of 1 person to 200 persons, they attract the ideas people, the people with passion, for without passion, there is no progress.

Tossing the OS for the Browser Only Experiment

2007-07-15T20:15:00.000-03:00

I have an old PowerBook G4 from a previous incarnation. It has a 60Gb hardrive and is pre-Intel processor for Mac. I haven't much time for the bloated and over-coded Windows platform itself, but I do find the integration of the Office suite of products useful, especially Excel and Word; superb programs. The OS, well, nevermind.

But with Web 2.0, with GoogleDocs, Backpacker, Campfire and Highrise and with the rise in other various online applications, including Gmail and Web-based back-up of documents and such, I wondered, can I collaborate with the world without Microsoft Office, that I've been using for oh, 12+ years? My MacBook I'll leave with Office, since I need to use Word and Excel with my colleagues and business partner.

The G4, I have erased all aspects of Office (rather strange to buy a license and then toss it out in the Trash) off the old G4 and will rely on Campfire and Backpack, Firefox for the browser (seems 99% of Web apps will work in Firefox, often better than Explorer), GoogleDocs and Spreadsheets (hopefully a good free web-based presentation application will be available soon, there are several pay-fors, the best so far being Carousel, that I can tell, for ease of use and functionality) and hopefully a decent Web-based spreadsheet software, since Excel still beats anything else out there from what I've seen.

All this being said, I am curious to see how close Web applications are to being really usable in business terms. The ideal with LotusNotes (Enterprise only please and thank-you) and Microsoft Office is that they are integrated as applications and it is easy to move data around within them, making them unified in the true sense of the word. The challenge is that as they add patches, fixes and new versions, they become ever more complex.

Microsoft is making a significant play for the Web-based market through SharePoint, but it still remains bloated and requiring significant infrastructure support; it is heavy, even though the interface builds on a majority of the market that has lived and breathed Microsoft products for nearly twenty years.

What will be needed, I suspect, to make economic sense in terms of scale and a viable revenue stream to truly threaten Microsoft, will be a Web Application Suite that uses GUI's and has a smooth, streamlined interface, works quickly inside a browser and has some way of dealing with data collisions. A problem within an Enterprise network will be data collisions, as you'll have so many workstations making calls to the server, and can the current switching and routing gear accomodate that volume of calls when you add in that more video and graphics intense materials will also be vying for network access?

So, I am going to begin this journey of going all In-Browser for my activities on my G4, which are limited mostly to Blogging, music downloads and management and my writing. This will be an interesting experience, for as much as the pundits hail the arrival of Web 2.0 and the falling of Microsoft and the like...it is a long way to go yet I suspect.

Pre-Fireworks Networking

2007-07-02T17:30:00.000-03:00

I recall the days of my childhood waiting for the first whistle and bang followed by the snap and boom, shockwaves rolling across your body and the burst of lights exploding across the sky...we waited in giggling anticipation or I tussled on the ground with my mates. But as we waited we chilled with our parents and friends and it was almost always magical...

Last night as we sat and waited for the fireworks in our folding chairs (and I fiddled with the camera to take a few prime shots - or so I hoped) I looked around me at the crowd on this knoll by the harbour as the sun said goodbye to the day, and there were little bright glows all around. I counted 7 glows - bluish, lighting up childrens' faces with an ethereal and ghostly glow. NintendoDS's, PSP's, there sat the children, in their own chairs or on a parents lap. I noticed 2 groups of kids interacting over their screens, their gaming devices connected wirelessly, talking about their games and messaging.

This latest generation of kids, they will be more connected than we might possibly imagine today and it struck me that in a hundred years, our great grand children will look at us as we look back to our great grandparents with horse and buggy and oil lanterns for the dark. And while some played alone, still others were connected with their devices, using them but socializing with these machines.

It is the age of collaboration that is upon us. We feared as parents that our children would become isolated blobs, pasty and pale behind the monitor. In some ways, perhaps so. But less so I think and perhaps more so will they communicate better than we do today. SMS, IM, iChat, texting, social networking - we are communicating across thousands of miles instantly, and across thousands of millimeters. Instantly.

For a few a hundred dollars or a few bucks a month, we can increase our communication levels. The language must change, but the economic barrier to communicating faster and more has come down. Science shows we use less than .04% of the capacity of our brain. Our children are choosing to collaborate, to question the current industrial management, low-risk taking system of the world.

I felt then, pensively, a little more hopeful of our future. Simply because with all these devices, children are choosing to use more, the devices that let them communicate and collaborate. The more we talk, no matter if its in mashed up words, sans vowels, or with pictures and movies, the more we share our ideas, emotions and feelings and maybe, just maybe, that will mean less chance of war and more chance to grow.

A Visual World Evolving

2007-06-19T11:35:00.001-03:00

I've talked before about how symbology, or semiotics is becoming increasingly popular in both the consumer world and now in business. Evidenced in brand logo's such as Apple and Mercedes Benz or Jaguar, all symbols that connote something to people - they deliver, in one simple symbol, a whole data set represented in visual cues. If you were about to buy a new computer, I doubt you'd look for a web page full of statistics. Same with a car, first you look at the outside, then the inside, and likely the only stats you want to see are mileage and maybe horsepower! Yet behind these symbols lie enter sets of data about the vehicle.

Depending on who we are as individuals and the frames of reference we draw upon (an engineer will have a different set of frames from a graphic designer), we will pull the data we want to make decisions. Yet all walks of life respond to visual cues - we all know the male/female symbols for the loo...at least we'd better! And for handicapped, all symbols carefully crafted by exceptional designers.

I look at how Cnet news has added a visual mapping tool to navigate content better, how GoogleAnalytics presents most data visually, how my clients wants graphs showing marketing metrics and even the popular TV show, Lost, has a visual mapping tool to navigate through the characters! In my writing I almost always use Visual Thesaurus. SEO guru Avinash Kaushik points to the value of using visual cues to better understand data.

In a world increasingly driven by numbers; economists that pull out stats and scientists delivering quantifiable numbers to prove theories, we're still driving towards visual cues. Now Mercedes Benz has retained Apple to design its new navigation system...because Apple knows how to make things look good, yet provide the data to make the decisions to create. Value today, in the parts of the world that are knowledge-driven, is created through ideas and implementing them, and part of what helps us create those ideas is the numbers that tell us how people are responding to our ideas and guide us in improving upon our idea.

I see this as further evidence that we will integrate numbers more and more with visual cues so we can better understand metadata (the data behind the data) and understand the "sofdata", the area between the hard numbers and the visual elements that help us form decisions (i.e. the soil where the roots grow is the metadata, and the flower above is the visual result we find attractive, but right at ground level is the stalk that supports the flower, the "sofdata"). Joined together, visual cues and numbers create a picture that will speak not a thousand words, but one hundred thousand and let our creative talent go to the next level in knowledge production.

The Poor Web

2007-06-08T09:31:00.000-03:00

Everywhere I travel, and in the conversations I have with people I meet on the road or locally or through email, I hear about people making the effort to learn. It seems that many of us are always adding to our education storehouse in our brainpan. And we're not studying to become more general in our knowledge, but more specific. Specialization is increasingly important as we produce ever more content that is ever more available, whether it be in text or video.

But what about those struggling just to be able to afford a PC at home, let alone the added cost of the Internet access to get on the Web? Here in my home province of Nova Scotia, the Premiere made another vague political promise about getting high-speed Internet access to every home outside urban areas. That's nice. You run a wire to a shack off the side of the road, yet the occupants can barely feed the kids every month. Nice job. They have fiber, just the wrong kind.

As we create more and more, and thus push the demand for more knowledge and create increased value through the sharing and collaboration of the Web, are we creating a new mass of poor, even amongst the techies? In the first Boom 1.0 computer programmers made an average of $65,000 a year in the USA. Today, that has decreased to $52,000 just seven years after the Boom 1.0 crash and as Boom 2.0 arises, companies have not increased those wages, stocks are still offered, even more so. Add to the fact there has been no net increase in IT jobs since 2001.

As much as the Web is creating opportunity, and yes, the barriers to entry are much lower for starting a business and making a buck...you still have to find a PC and know what to do with it...we're also creating the Webconomy/Wikiconomy poor. Those that can't afford their own or their childrens education. How will the evolving economic changes impact them? Are we creating a class of worker to keep cleaning up after the mess of those who profess to be intelligentsia? Makes me wonder.

Can You Eat Cake on the Web too?

2007-06-01T19:54:00.000-03:00

I'm still keep coming back to the numbers, trying to understand the magic of the Web, and who's on there, why and what are they doing? I suspect many a marketer/economist is - perhaps this is part of the reason analytics is becoming such a key part of business, perhaps too much? I've ranted before on the numbers of people being online; we know there's roughly 500 Million out of 6.2 Billion worldwide. In geographical/country terms, that's slightly larger than the EU (US=340 Million, EU 400+ Million, Asia 2.4 Billion roughly), yet the largest portion of Web users is Western countries, and coming up fast is Asian countries. Japan and Canada throw an odd curve ball in there with relatively smaller comparative populations. Yet Canada's GDP is almost three times that of non G8 countries.

The Group of Eight (G8) comprises some of the most economically powerful countries in the world, accounting for 13% of the world's population, but 46% of the global economy. Average GDP per capita among the G8 was $29,700 in 2004, compared with $5,400 for non-G8 countries. And about 85% of Web users (I still see the "Internet" as being the US and Canada, not the world) are from Western nations (I exclude Russia in this case as a political anomaly.)

Further, we know that of Web users in the Western nations, 80% are earners above the poverty line, and the majority of Web users have a post-secondary education. Even 34% of households in the with computers have 2 or more in the house.

My conclusion: It's the wealthy who are online. We're educated, and we're higher income users; I'm in the top 10% of Canadians in income earnings. Not that that is saying much with our taxes here! So, the 500 Million online are, for the most part, rather well off. What does that mean? Well, that will change. But as I've said before, that comes down to needing an easy-to-use appliance for the non-technical (techiliterate), easy micropayment and low cost access to high bandwidth.

Maybe the next revolution will be the bourgeoisie for the benefit of the poor? Is that inflammatory? I'm suddenly feeling like a piece of cake...

How HP Wasted Money On Groceries

2007-05-30T12:53:00.000-03:00

Large corporations always have what I term a Newton Project. This is a reference to Apple's Newton, the first mass-market foray into the PDA several years before PalmPilot, which has been displaced by the Crackberry. In the case of HP, it would be HP's new concept, the RSA (Retail Shopping Assistant), wow, what an ingenious product name. I'm feeling a mad desire to go buy some eggs, rotten ones.

This stunning peice of technology will, supposedly, make our grocery shopping life easier and we will instantly get the benefit of coupons and manufacturer discounts. Yep. It access the Web so from home we can work through the retailers site to upload our grocery list, then arrive at store, add any items we thought of as we drove to the store and get a print-out with the latest coupons and a nice little map of the grocery store we go to several times a week because we're creatures of habbit and marketers know, just like moms, that 92% of grocery store shoppers live within 5 miles of their store and are repeat shoppers. So that map? no comment.

Obviously this is a device that accesses the Web and therefore should expand on the Web economy. But it doesn't make any economic sense, or cents. Less than 2% of coupons issued are actually claimed and the coupon business has declined by over 40% in the last 5 years, by 12% in 2006 alone and 13% in 2005. Add to this the fact that couponing, in marketing terms, actually creates price erosion on products and does not increase sales of a product in fact it hurts them since the cost of the coupon promotion is rarely, if ever returned. Despite this fact, many companies still issue coupons, except those that likely measure them, but coupons are just "standard marketing procedure" for companies, except those that do the math.

Business economics aside, the most important aspect of why this product will fail is simple; People. Women still do 90%+ of the grocery shopping. We've been able to make grocery lists online for years, and in many cases send them to stores for pre-printing, even pre-picking. Yet such gimmicks have failed in grocery stores. Research has shown this is due to the need to touch products, especially produce. In addition, how many people know their entire food needs sitting at their office desk? How many have the PC at home or will drag a laptop, start it up and enter data at home onto a website? Not many I suspect.

I think, in the end, it all comes down to how we behave as human beings. It's simply that much easier to pick up a pencil and peice of paper, poke around in the cupboards and fridge and write things down, then hop in the car and head down the aisles. Companies that still want to waste profit opportunities through coupon issuance would be better served sticking the coupons by the product in the aisles we'll wander down anyway. We're busy enough as it is, without adding a bottleneck and inconvenience.

HP, one might suggest that you add a new position to your Labs: Marketing Analyst & Consumer Research Analyst. It would save you some money. This is a Web Economy Peripheral doomed to fail.

Be On Your Web Behaviour

2007-05-18T08:57:00.000-03:00

I've ranted about privacy. A little. I've looked at the Social Networking tools and ranted on them and the barriers to entry for the common folk of the world. As a professional marketer and seasoned business executive (perhaps a little too seasoned?), I've had my mug posted on the Web many times, been quoted in news articles and press releases. I can't lie about what I've done regarding work in the past...it's all permanently there on the largest reputation management system in the world - Google and other seach engines. It's on the Web.

Used to be it was just celebrities we really heard about. Local business people and localized celebs, they got some press, but how often did we go back to newspapers and magazines? Mostly, they were tossed or used as floor protectant when we painted. Today, it takes but a few seconds to plug in a name on Google or Yahoo and if anyone has done almost anything, from track & field meets to media quotations, there they are. Forever. Time and date stamped.

Guy Kawasaki recently pointed out how the Web keeps us honest, and yes, it does, when there is a reputable link to us, it does. Anyone can build a website, and post whatever we want, perhaps creating a better image of ourselves. The validity of it comes from a secondary confirming source, such as a recognized media outlet that validates your experience or activity claimed. In Canada there is a company that is developing a system to confirm peoples credentials, initially with a criminal check, and later on to education and work-related experience for prospective employers and organizations, it is HR Central. I think they have an excellent concept, and it adds a level of much needed verification, since as we know, most people lie on their CV.

Another upside to having your name out there on the Web is that you may later be able to better protect yourself if your identity is stolen, since you will have 3rd party validation of your identity. Possibly. I think a picture is critical to go with that, but with tagging on Facebook and Flickr and the like, and hey Yahoo's photo site has 2 Billion photos on it, I suspect this may be a key advantage to later validation of who you are. Conversely, it may make identity theft easier, but I'm more for the protection side.

So will it keep us honest, the Web? More so I suspect, but everyone lies, whether we want to admit it or not, from slight embellishments to full-on lies. I myself don't provide entirely accurate data in any online communities as I've said before, because I don't quite trust where the data will end up.

And I guess that a fundamental in the end - the advantage of the Web is the ability to communicate and share ideas and information, the issue is trust. We want to communicate, but how much do we trust each other? You can buy software to wipe your drive, can someone wipe you from the search engines?

The Irritable Web: Is The Message the Medium?

2007-05-14T20:04:00.000-03:00

The Gutenberg press radically changed the world. Our language could now be copied and distributed on a scale never before known, and the cost of communicating ideas and concepts reduced. Marshall McLuhan pointed out, arguably, that this was a major controbutor to democracy, capitalism, nationalism and Christianity. Then he gave us the "medium is the message" concept. Then the Web came along and turned it all upside down.

I think the Web proved this, with a twist. What I think the difference is, is that the Web has become a more interactive medium, where the "message" could be more easily manipulated and controlled, this is no longer the case. Blogs radically impacted how Microsoft communicated to its economic stream of developers and consumers, while we've come to "hate" some guy in California who is a wannabe Trump and turns out to be just rather deprived of something. Newsgroups in the mid 90's allowed scientists to slam Intel for a bad chip and L'Oreal lost thousands of customers not accepting the Newsgroups could impact sales over animal testing.

Now we see books on the "transparent corporation" and Sun and IBM tout the "agile" enterprise built on the "starfish" concept, instead of the Newtonian "spider" since a starfish can lose a limb, but grow it back and a spider can't. Corporations are becoming fluid, working together, consumers are trouncing and loving people who are rising to iconic status.

No one, not even corporations with hired PR guns, can manage the message like before. As I work with my clients on marketing communications projects, the challenge is more than crafting the press release and targeting the media one wants to contact, you have to consider the blogging audience and the newsgroups and bulletin boards of investors and how a news snip (B-Roll) might end up on YouTube or Broadcaster.

The audience is the message now. With terms like "irritainment" out there used by professional media and hacks like me, I think we can say that mass controls the mediums now. The rise of the female consumer with spending power in the 1950's changed post-industrialism with demands for more options, colours and sizes. Now we're demanding that and more, this will change the Web and our economy more fundamentally than before.

The Economics of Privacy

2007-05-14T09:24:00.000-03:00

The "stats" show people in North America spent more time online than watching TV in 2005 and we can assume this held into 2006. In Europe people still do that wonderful thing called "socializing" in the real world; coffee shops, long Parisian lunches (I miss those), beer after work. In the US and Canada, we huddle up to our Mac after dinner or during the day we surriptitiously log on to Facebook or Flickr for a few minutes, we SMS a friend, we do research online at work or access business applications, our kids surf for school, and Facebook...

Although most of us don't spend a huge amount of time actually online, we are still doing stuff there. From work-related to social activities. An increasing amount of that "social activity" is consumerism - shopping. From books to music to nick nacks. A friend of mine now makes a very lucrative living trading hierloom jewelry online, enough that she quit her day job. This also means we're putting ourselves "out there", our identity and our lives as I've written on before.

We are becoming a networked society. In Asia, cash is decreasing in use while people use mobile phones and smart cards to pay for small ticket items and credit cards for larger tickets. This will happen in North America as well. Last week a Russian in England was caught, by chance, about to pull off $30 Million in credit card fraud.

The dangers are out there. Banks constantly warning us of hokey emails, the Nigerian scams and lurkers in chat rooms. The bigger question posed therefore, is our identity. How do we manage it? How do we secure our identity, and our credentials? How does someone validate our credentials and how do we make sure we can assign rights to people to view our information?

A number of companies have put forward the concept of Digital Rights Management (DRM), and a couple want to give it a less ominous name, same concept though. In the future, it will be people that will assign rights. As businesses learn to secure their data, not just their networks, so the general public will be able to secure their personal data and assign the rights to use it...there's a killer app. This will be a financial boon to companies who can garner this.