Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

What fun is building a following on Twitter if you can't parlay it into a high-stakes game of chance? Such us the premise of betyourfollowers.com, a mashup app/social experiment by a small SF-based collective. The idea is simple: you pick five of your Twitter followers and gamble them in a head-to-head battle with someone you follow. You win, you pick up five new followers. You lose, your friend picks up five new followers. (There's even talk of a "Bet Them All" option - which could mark the end for more addictive personalities such as mine.)

"Isn't this a violation of Twitter's Terms of Service or API usage guidelines?" you may ask. To head off such debate, BYF launched in mid-August with an open letter to Twitter:

"We realize that Bet Your Followers isn't your typical Twitter app. We created it to examine new behaviors and explore the value of Twitter relationships. The reason we made an app that lets people risk their followers was to pose the question: If a mass of Twitter followers constitutes social currency, can it be gambled and exchanged like real currency?

We've been enthusiastic Twitter users since the early days and we genuinely value Twitter as a social service (not to mention as a lovely API -- thank you!). Our own followers are dearly important to us. But as Twitter grows, we've watched the race to accrue followers become a strange obsession. Whenever a sizeable group believes something to be sacred, it historically falls to artists, scientists, and hackers to question and play with that assumption. It is with this curious spirit that we created Bet Your Followers. It was also a lot of fun to make.

We realize our efforts could be construed as a violation of your API Terms of Service but we hope you see the value in our exploration of these issues. We'd love it if you sent us a d-message before giving us the boot, if you're even thinking of that -- of course, we would never risk unfollowing you :-)"

As Twitter becomes an arms race of "Who's got the most followers?" and spammers pollute the social airwaves, Bet Your Followers hopes to tap a nerve. BYF could be indicative of a trend in social downsizing. Or it could just be good for a laugh...only time will tell.

But it does revel in one universal Twitter truth: everyone's got followers to spare. We just didn't have anything to do with them prior to now. Will you be partaking in this kind of social downsizing?

Sam Cannon

Coca-Cola found itself at the center of a heated (global) debate when the brand's community manager opened a Facebook thread about their Dasani water.  With 3.6MM fans, the #2 brand on Facebook, starts threads on their discussion tab daily. But on August 5, 2009, Coca-Cola began to realize that even on pages where most people are fans, not all people are fans.

The seemingly innocent topic started with a question that would rally 88 skeptics (as of this post):

"Congress is demanding to know the sites and sources of Coke's Dasani brand water. When will Coke tell the public where its water is coming from?"

To start, I applaud Coca-Cola's willingness to enter the conversation to state its position, restraint in stepping away from the conversation after stating that position, and still allowing the community to discuss the hot issue (i.e. where does Dasani get its water). While I don't recommend using humor to diffuse a situation like Coca-Cola attempted, at least they're trying to display humanly characteristics. I like that they displayed firmness with their position and even pointed people to their site for more information. Another nice element is that Coca-Cola responded fairly quickly. Within three hours of the initial post Coca-Cola had formed an opinion; something we can solve by going through scenario planning before we open topics on the discussion tab.
 
There's an important underlying issue that Coca-Cola now faces: ensure that this topic doesn't jump into another social space.

Of the 100 threads started by Coca-Cola, this thread has received the most comments. And even weeks after breaking, the thread continues to receive new posts. The important thing for Coca-Cola at this point is to monitor other social platforms to make sure someone doesn't throw the conversation to Twitter to blow up. On Facebook fan pages, it's growing increasingly important to monitor conversations that garner attention/comments faster than normal. This allows brands to address issues before it reaches critical mass.

The Takeaway
What worked:
• Responded within hours of initial post
• Re-affirmed position in a second post instead of changing stance
• Kept the conversation going instead of closing the thread
• Giving a link to more information about their process
• Tried to change the subject by opening new thread topics
• Using a branded URL shortener to track user interactions

What didn't work:
• Trying to diffuse the situation with humor

What they need to do:
• Monitor other social platforms (e.g. Twitter) to make sure the conversation doesn't jump and then blow-up
• Prevent users from making personal attacks on each other

Coke did some things right. But if implemented from here on out, the lessons they (hopefully) learned will produce better corporate respect and more loyal fans.

Kai D. Wright



Why is it that the social monitoring vendors that support NLP (natural language processing) for sentiment scoring will go on and on about their 80% and up accuracy? And yet, the vendors that don't offer NLP and opt only for human analysis will tell you that sentiment analysis can not and WILL NEVER be accurate...

A recent article in the NYTimes Mining the Web for Feelings, Not Facts called attention to both the powerful insights and innate troubles that come with such tools. And as with all NYTimes articles that explore some aspect of our business, it has meant a lot of excited chatter in the industry blogs about ways sentiment analysis is ramping up, and questions from detractors about whether or not we can ever overcome some of the basic flaws of the system.

Here is what I think: sentiment analysis won't ever be enough, and not because of sarcasm or industry specific slang, but because we are measuring the WRONG thing. It's about the effect, not the content of the message What you really want to measure is not whether a message is positive or negative, but what influence it has on the people who read it. We spend so much time worried about the mindset of the vocal few that we ignore how their message really changes the decisions of the many.

We need to understand:
1. The human language is complex, but so are people
2. A positive plus a negative does not mean neutral
3. Analysis doesn't consider "degree" of sentiment
4. Sentiment makes no room for personal authority
5. Sentiment does not indicate action

BBC Blast is the popular UK broadcast company's network of "creative teenagers". The goal is to mentor young people by providing them with opportunities to showcase their talent through contests, work experiences, free events, and an online community.

The website has always been a highly interactive place where people can upload their work and find out more about events in their area, but the BBC recently took the online experience to the next level by combining the virtual with a real time real world installation.

"The Blast Studio, a real time interactive installation, gave young people the opportunity to experiment in the Topolski Studio at the Southbank Centre, whilst making the kind of mess they¹d never get away with at home.

"But somewhere between the flinging paint and ever-evolving sculptural ooze is a serious attempt to bring a young community together and encourage them to unleash their creativity."

Thanks to Dave Knoph for the link.

Marta Strickland

One month ago yesterday, a 28-year-old Justin Halpern launched a Twitter page wherein he tweets out quotes from his 73-year-old father Sam. See, some time earlier Justin had moved back into his folks' house in San Diego. Initially, he quoted his dad in the status line of his instant messaging account. Later a friend suggested he use Twitter. On August 3rd, Justin launched the feed with this missive from Sam.

"I didn't live to be 73 years old so I could eat kale. Don't fix me your breakfast and pretend you're fixing mine."

Sam is a preternaturally quotable old cuss, whose penchant for colorful language didn't take long to become the signature feature of most of the daily updates. By mid-month Sam had hit his stride.

"My flight lands at 9:30 on Sunday...You want to watch what? What the fuck is mad men? I'm a mad man if you don't pick me the hell up."

With material like this, the number of followers exploded. Approaching 250,000 now, this page now has a follower total more than three times that of two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash and two-thirds of the way to Tina Fey. With hundreds of people adding SMDS every hour, the stream has now attracted the attention of the publishing media. According to the LA Times, Justin has signed with an agent and is considering offers from publishers. Sure, he was already a writer for Maxim. But it's only been 31 days.  Twenty-nine tweets. This has to be the craziest ratio of writerly output to popular and industry response in history. Justin's not even within shouting distance of 1,000 words yet, but a quarter million people appear to be hanging on damn near every one of them.

And therein lies the lesson. As anyone who's ever tried to grab your attention with 14 words on a banner ad can attest, sometimes a highly condensed story can have much of the character, nuance, and narrative arc of its bigger brethren. Creating the right mechanism of delivery is tricky. But Justin and his dad sure cram a lot of story into those 140 characters. And it seems to resonate more than a little bit. With all of those people tuning in to read what Justin's dad has to say, those little stories--that are all part of a bigger story--are starting to develop some muscle. Sometimes the old man even talks about products. Mrs. Dash: thumbs up. Maker's Mark. Aye. Jim Beam, Kate Beckinsale, not so lucky. At this rate Sam will have a Super Bowl spot by January. Well, maybe I'm getting ahead of the story. But, at least a free case of Mrs. Dash should be already on its way.

Daniel Turman

PS. Hat tip to Craig Ritchie for breaking this news for me. On Twitter, of course.

Nice Visual, But What's Your Story?
There are hot debates here at Organic, as our creative minds passionately discuss and share points-of-view on trends, tactics and technology; media, messaging and all-things marketing. The latest debate centered around the Canadian National Film Board's web site for their new film, "Waterlife."

The film hopes to create awareness of the deteriorating quality and bleak future of the Great Lakes, telling "The story of the last great supply of fresh drinking water on Earth."

Know Your Purpose

The purpose of the web site is to a) generate awareness and interest in the film; and b) start to tell the story and plant the seed of change in people's minds. Mark Rozeluk described it as "probably one of the most compelling and nicely executed sites I have seen in a long while, leveraging a lot of really cool technological tricks and story-telling chops... it's hard to believe it's 'just a website' to promote a film."

But there are a lot of big basic misses here, I think.

I admit I'm interested in the film, and I don't make the claim that the web site is a complete failure, but I have to think for a minute, along with, I imagine, many Canadians, about what the NFB is. This site doesn't tell me what the NFB is, nor does it tell me through the main copy "The Story of the last great supply..." that this is site for a film. It hard to tell unless I track down the "About the Film" grey-on-black type at the bottom of the screen.

I agree they're making an attempt at storytelling, but there's no beginning and ending... which is critical for a story. I don't know where it starts or where it ends. Have I seen everything? Are those photos flying around? How do I get to them?

Nick Sternberg dove right in the conversation, stating he'd like to see the end of the "rather tired trend of using a Flash/PV3D technique serving up a nicely designed pile of things for me to 'explore.'"

"I'm thirsty," he continues, "for hierarchy, for story, for an experience that takes a position and sells it. I'm tired of sifting for it. I don't even care if I can share or follow or do anything social with it. Just give me something to chew on. And serve it on a plate."

Make It Shareable
But, as the truly social web starts to define our purchasing decisions, and as trusted recommendations become the primary vehicle by which we discover new media, marketers and movie makers must ask: how do I share this with people? What do I share? I would ask how the public will find out about this. Probably through a blog, or in this case, through email. But, bloggers don't know what to take from here... there's no embeddable elements or video, and for non-bloggers, the Facebook "Share button" (if you can find it) offers me this:

Or worse, for the Twitter button, this:

When I really want to share deeper content than that.

We have to look at what drove Mark to share this link - that defines the social currency value for him. This is an exceptional example, we can agree, of visual and technological production. That is, he's admiring, as we do in this industry, the medium of the message. On the other hand, the average movie-goer or environmentalist-to-be or joe-on-the-information-superhighway is more interested in sharing the message, or the most compelling part of it.

There's so much here, that I would share, but can't. Each new user, as Nick points out, has to explore and really fish.

Encourage Full Immersion
On top of all of this, the wave of single-pixel navigation points at the bottom of the screen couldn't be more difficult and confusing to use.

The one thing we forget is that the web is interactive. Sites need to do more than just react in a fun way when I mouseover something. They need to encourage my deeper engagement and compel me to interact with others.

Make Social An Integrated Priority
This is visually compelling and has a great feel, but the glass is half-full on this one. They've polluted the life-giving waters of the social web by diluting the word-of-mouth tools to a greyed-out, oversimplified, top-level URL widget that doesn't take in to account how web publishers and sharers might benefit from propagating this information and experience throughout their communities.

It's a Great Lake, but the watershed is kinda dry.

Craig Ritchie
@craigritchie

image credit: romanlily

It's hard to be in the marketing biz without hearing about the power of bloggers -- particularly "mommy" bloggers. These are the parents -- usually fascinating people with large groups of friends -- who put thoughts on parenthood, baby products and the other cavalcade of topics that surround the first few years of having a kid.
 
Because of the monumental nature of parenthood, people are hungry for content, companionship and comraderie when it happens to them. And a friendly face in the form of a personal blog is an obvious oasis amid all the sales pitches, self-help books and professional cockamamy of those who want your dollars to help that kid grow.
 
To this end, us folks in the social media group have been chewing on what this means and where it's heading. We've gone to conferences, read numerous opinions and stories, and even helped formed strategies to influence the mommy bloggers for our clients.
 
More and more, you can see a line of discomfort for all parties developing along the issue of advertising. The concern for the mommy blogger is that a personal blog ceases to be personal when it's overly influenced by corporations or outside forces. And the popular ones are being constantly hit with pitches for event attendance, product samples and so on.

Crowd-sourced concepts and products as well as those that simply elicit fan feedback along the course of the creation are a growing trend. But sometimes I question the intentions behind them -- being more of a goodwill, look-what-we're-doing tactic or a way to create buzz rather than for true inspiration.

Not the case with Imogen Heap (if you will consider how this talented artist has built herself into a stand alone brand). By nature, she's fueled by comments from fans. And it was when she started blogging a couple years ago that she really began to embrace fan's influence on her music.

Now, with the help of a number of social networking tools, she's involving her fans every step of the way. In her Twitter bio she says:

I've been tweeting about making my new album, Ellipse (out 24th Aug). Now... I guess I'll be tweeting about how it gets from my studio to your ears...

Yes, while working on her latest album, Ellipse, she would occasionally share 12 seconds of a track with her nearly 1MM twitter followers and ask for feedback. Admittedly she says (in an npr interview heard on-air) it didn't really cause her to go back and change any part of the song. But it did give her positive reinforcement that she was moving in the right direction.

As if presenting a PowerPoint to a whole room of people wasn't stressful enough. Say the presenter is not very familiar with the topic, nor is as prepared as they should be, or has a particularly tough crowd, these factors increase the stress level exponentially. To celebrate the release of a new wireless projection link, the fine people at Imation have embraced just that. They are sponsoring a PowerPoint Karaoke (PPTK) contest. The premise is simple enough. Put someone up in front of an audience to present a previously designed PowerPoint that they know absolutely nothing about, and hilarity ensues.

This might be something to think about for the next Camp Organic. ;)

http://www.powerpointkaraoke2009.com/

Dave Knoph

In one of the most interesting and ballsiest examples of guerilla consumer research I've ever heard of, Dustin Curtis (of Dear American Airlines fame, blogged about in threeminds) and Alaska Miller have set out to visit every JetBlue city using the "unlimited jetting" pass. Here is the letter he wrote to JetBlue:

"Dear JetBlue, We are Dustin Curtis & Alaska Miller, and we need your help. We're going to use the All You Can Jet pass to visit every jetBlue-served US city between September 8th and October 8th. There are 43 of them, and we've booked almost 90 flight segments. Because we're going to be intimately acquainted soon, we'd like to explain why we're doing this. (And then we have a tiny favor to ask.)"

Oh and you can follow along with his flights here (they started on Tuesday) or his twitter stream.

The sheer possibilities for collecting consumer insight into the airlines industry and JetBlue customers in particular will be incredible! But here are some other things I've been thinking about...

How should JetBlue leverage this unique opportunity?
JetBlue should be publicizing this with their people. The customer service failure potential is pretty high, while the chance of a customer service win is probably pretty low. Already Alaska Miller has posted two comments about their service.

They could also begin to use this as a vehicle for their own buzz campaign. Leverage the fact that Dustin and Alaska are NOT doing this on American Airlines, they chose JetBlue because of the promotion and because they don't mind flying with JetBlue.

What other data besides stories could they be collecting?
In fact, it would be great to see JetBlue post a parallel story, maybe the story behind the trip: notes from flight crew, details on what's going on with weather, mechanicals, Obama landing at JFK, etc. Why not post some metrics for the flights: on time gate departure, wait time due to mechanical versus weather versus TSA versus traffic.

One of the things that hit me living in New York was that while Times Square is always a sea of random global humanity gawping at flashing signs, if you walk through Times Square (as I had to do to get to the office) you see an amazing difference. Did you know those signs CHANGE every 2-3 days sometimes? Things are always in motion. I was fascinated by the temporal aspect of Times Square, not the flashing lights themselves. Personally, I'd love to see how often they come across the same flight crew. I think most people (only frequent travelers) don't see the temporal aspect of an airport or an airline (we are there momentarily then gone). Why not describe how JFK changed over the month (signs, staff, weather, busyness)?

I like that Dustin and Alaska are crowd sourcing the trip visualization (posting ideas, collecting feedback, adapting), but they need even more graphic visualization (think weather radar, sped up animation of the trip). I'd like to see something like this as the FINAL output.

Dean McRobie

Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

Twitter and teens, twitter and teens. It's such a hot topic lately that even The Onion has tackled it not just on their TV show (above) but in a very smartly done edition of America's Voices, which criticized a recent Nielsen survey which found that only 16% of Twitter's audience is under 25 suggestion, "Isn't that the same percentage of teens who would respond to a Nielsen survey?" and also proposed that teens are too busy sexting to use Twitter.

I'm not sure what the obsession is, but the articles keep on coming. It seems we are obsessed as marketers with the behavior of this particular audience. Is it true that the average Twitter user is a teenage girl or do teens not use Twitter at all? Perhaps young people are beginning to flock to Twitter? Are the behaviors of this audience really that different or interesting? In a more comprehensive study also done by Nielsen, they found that teens are "more normal than you think" when it comes to their digital habits.

But let's forget teens for a second, because I think the best headline of the week about social network platforms was one that suggested that Facebook makes you smarter, while Twitter does quite the opposite.

Even if that is true, it makes me wonder what happens to our brains as these platforms become more and more the same... Just this week Twitter opened up their terms of service to allow for more advertising. At the same time, Facebook launched a "lite" version of their site, and in its biggest move to be most Twitter-like yet, Facebook now will be supporting @mentions, allowing users to call out other users in their status updates.

I think soon we will have less questions about what platform teens are using and which one makes us stupid... and more about what the heck the difference is between these sites any more, if there will be any at all.

Marta Strickland

Knitting and social media does it get better, yes, when you use different colored yarn. However, Hilary Grant is working with Distance Lab on Social Knitworking, taking our conversations and turning them into an ugly scarf that nobody would wear.

"The intention is to provide a way to celebrate our online friendships by taking an abstract overview of our everyday conversations and drawing upon conversational and syntactical patterns to create a knitted keepsake." Hilary Grant, Stefan Agamanolis

How it works: A computer program analyzes your social interactions (IMs and Emails). They take those conversations and find the patterns such as frequently used phrases or sentiments, emotional characteristics, and other features. Then the program outputs an abstract knitting pattern that is downloaded into a computer-controlled knitting machine where it can be knitted as a simple piece of clothing or accessory.

It would be nice if you could add your twitter, facebook, etc. and have a pattern that you could knit by hand.

Kari Girarde

For those who like discounts, but hate to clip. Here's a not-so-new trend that is currently seeing huge growth: coupons sent to your mobile. I admit to using digital coupon codes constantly when shopping online and this sounds just as good --- and easy.

"Snipping out coupons from the weekend paper is still the most common way households in the United States get their coupons, but the popularity of coupons delivered via e-mail and text messages is growing... The convenience of digital coupons is appealing to a new crop of shoppers, many of whom would not dream of carrying around a crumpled pile of paper coupons just to get 30 cents off a box of spaghetti." Coupons You Don't Clip, Sent to Your Cellphone

Digital coupons apparently have a higher redemption rate due to the discreteness (still looking cool while saving) and convenience. Would you use them? Are you already a clipper?

I'm already seeing how marketers could use this to reward their subscribers. Would you sign up to receive their emails, subscribe to their twitter feed, or hand over your mobile number if you were promised discounts? That is what many Gen Y targeted retailers like H&M hope, as they have begun focusing their rewards programs and coupon budgets on outlets like SMS and Twitter.

Sarah Jo Sautter

Anyone else see the last episode of Shark Tank? If you don¹t know what it is, it¹s a show where entrepreneurs present ideas to investors for capital and support.

The last episode featured a guy that creates customized health bars. There¹s a really simple health bar configurator that lets you add your own ingredients and shows you nutritional info on-the-fly. The bars work out to about $3 a piece, kinda pricey, but, I couldn¹t resist finding out how my favorite things ­ chocolate, blueberries and walnuts ­ will taste in my preservative-free personalized Marsh Bar.

https://www.elementbars.com/

I like the drag and drop functionality and the dynamic nutrition chart. But the site could use some design panache and I would have liked for the site to recommend substitute ingredients that would make my bar "healthier". It would be nice to have a tool where you could input your health or diet needs and it recommends the right mix of ingredients for you.

But, overall, nice concept (as long as they don't taste like dust).

Sandy Marsh

First it was "Send to a Friend," then "Share This" and countless other social widgets, and now Facebook Connect represents the most powerful way for a web site to influence sharing.

Like switching from a fishing pole to a net, Facebook Connect greatly improves the user experience by leveraging the user's social graph. Content and tools on your site become social currency for your users to share.

As Facebook continues to grow and become homebase for all of us, the Facebook Connect widget is catapulting to the top of the page, literally, on many leading web sites.

Seen above on The Huffington Post, they even pop up a balloon to combat against users ignoring the nav,

... and here on Digg,

... the Facebook Connect call-to-action has obviously risen in priority for these sites, as they hope to gain new fans and followers by becoming integral in our day-to-day Facebook experience.

Until now, brands have only scratched the surface of the possibilities of Connect, pulling in user-generated metadata and photos in an attempt to create a "personalized" push piece in-spite of the paradigm shift of the web to a pull-driven experiences.

Until now, most sites have relegated social mechanisms to the "Share Button" in the bottom right corner of a microsite.

So, let's be clear -- we're embracing social networks and the social web because of the value we find in interacting with others. This isn't about another "share button." This is about planning social integration as a critical and integral piece of the experience. This is an opportunity to change the question "how many people shared the link to our microsite" to "how do our social mechanisms and the community interactions define our the experience?"

These thriving and expanding communities are giving us a glimpse into the present - which brands will be the first to embrace the power and potential of Facebook Connect? I'll be looking for this link widget game-changer at the top of GM Blogs, Dell Ideastorm, Nike+, and your next brand site upgrade... so, tomorrow then?

Last week, Kevin Colleran, one of the first employees of Facebook and current Director of National Sales, stopped by Organic's NY office to answer a few questions. As we notice more and more companies jumping into the social media pool, we asked him to stop by to give a state of the union on Facebook.

Here are some highlights from our chat with Kevin about Facebook:

1. Brand pages...everyone from Starbucks to Obama have a page now. What's a little known fact about them?
Since they're free to setup, then companies sometimes build robust experiences - namely in the tabs. But, robust features don't outweigh quality content. At the end of the day, the vast majority of your fans do not continuously visit the fan page but will see the newly posted content in their News Feeds. And, with increased adoption of Become a Fan buttons, many never have to go to a brand page to express their affinity.

2. Over the past two years, Facebook has made significant changes to the user experience. What's been the result?
Many people visit Facebook every other day online. And with the mobile phone applications and mobile site, they're visiting in more places. You'd be surprised to know that 90% of the time people spend on Facebook is concentrated on the homepage newsfeed.

3. In terms of moderating conversation, what should we know?
First, know that all communications must occur in public. We don't allow brands to private message fans like individuals can private message each other. We block private messaging to avoid spamming. Second, by default, comments on the fan page Wall are turned on. So, when a brand posts something, then members have the right to comment. The only way for comments not to appear is if they're taken down by the page administrator(s). If you don't have a dedicated staff to monitor the page, then find a vendor that can auto-moderate by rejecting inappropriate comments and holding other comments until they've been manually approved. Expect these services to start at $2-3K monthly.

4. Should we remove pages created by people that bear the name and/or logo of our brand?
At first, it may seem that these user-generated pages are good - after all, who doesn't want users to generate positive content for your brand. But, things can go two ways. What if they start saying inappropriate things? What if they start misrepresenting themselves as employees? At the end of the day, these user-generated pages are liabilities. And as much as it may pain you to shut-down one of these pages, is the liability worth it?

We recommend brands migrate the fans of user-generated brand pages to the brand's official brand page. For current members of these pages, it's a seamless experience. How do you think Coca-Cola got to be the #2 brand on Facebook with over 3MM fans... it's mostly because they combined all the user-generated pages.

5. I'm noticing more and more brands integrating Facebook into advertising. For instance, T.G.I. Friday's is running television spots in which they've promised to give free hamburgers when their page reaches 500K fans. What are other ways to bring attention to your fan page?
Here's three things - ranging from free to paid. The cheapest way is to use a "Become a Fan" button on your homepage. If someone is already logged into Facebook, then clicking on the button adds them as a fan without having to leave your site. Second, you can put a link to your Facebook page in your communications - emails, newsletters, etc. Lastly, consider buying a roadblock on Facebook. We've noticed great success in growing the number of fans on pages with this type of media buy.

For more information about marketing in social media, contact socialmedia@organic.com. For examples of marketing on Facebook, visit http://www.facebook.com/marketing.

Kai Wright

In a great example of actually thinking through the experience of reading news, Google has again made a revolutionary new interface (read more at Google Labs or the NY Times). Basically, the site rasterizes the news into low rez and high rez images and allows you to use the now endemic "swipe" gestures and "pinch and stretch" gestures to interact with the images. You can then select to go to the full article in Safari or the high rez image.

What I love about this idea is that they are using the mobile browser to achieve this. Which means this product will likely work across platforms much easier than a single iPhone application. Thereby short cutting the whole cumbersome Apple store approval process.

I think there is something we can learn from this. Thinking beyond "it's just a browser" to "it's an app platform" will be the secret to unlocking mobile web browsing. The evolution of mobile browsers is paralleling the development of desktop web browsers but at close to light speed. Months not years between new capabilities.

Check out http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/ on your mobile phone. Which platforms does it work on? Looks good on an iPhone, does it work for your Pre? How about your MyTouch? Or that Crackberry of yours?

Dean McRobie

There was an interesting podcast that was passed to me a while ago about the psychology of choice. The episode was called "Choice" and it's from WNYC Radiolab. It's a hour-long, but I found the last 15 minutes the most compelling.

There was a study where researchers offered students one of two free posters. They asked 1/2 the students to explain why they chose the poster they did. The other 1/2 got to choose without explaining their reasoning. The majority of those that didn't have to explain themselves chose a poster of a kitty hanging from a tree with the tag "hang in there". The majority of those that had to explain themselves chose an impressionist painting poster.

Several weeks later, they asked all of the students if they were still happy with their choice. Those who didn't have to explain the reason they chose the poster were overwhelmingly still pleased with their choice. Those who were required to explain, later hated their choice.

So, what does this mean? Maybe, the lack of threat of needing to explain yourself causes you to make choices more true to who you are - or doesn't guilt you into feeling required to choose something sophisticated. And/or maybe you're more satisfied in the long term when you make gut/instinct/emotional choices rather than choices based on reasoning. And/or maybe as soon as it seems like "work", you no longer feel emotionally connected to the choices you made and later regret them.

However you interpret the results, it seems to point to helping those to whom you are marketing make immediate choices based on instinct and emotion. It also points to choices being more fulfilling when the reasons for choosing them remain personal. Should marketers be helping consumers reflect more internally instead of assuming they'd like to share their reflections with someone else? Should we "expose" our consumers less?

There was another interesting study about hot vs. cold. 1/2 the participants were given a hot cup of coffee, the other half, a cup of iced coffee. When asked how they felt about the man who gave it to them, overwhelmingly, those who were holding the hot coffee had "warm" feelings about the giver. Those who were holding the iced coffee, liked the giver less.

Makes me wonder how we can better use warm colors, warm language or even actual warm temperature in marketing. Has anyone seen any studies or real world uses of actual temperature in marketing?

Sandy Marsh

In our business, it's easy to get overly sentimental about the Internet. I'm not checking my email with this new multiplatform app on my iPhone... I'm now going through an experience! I'm not sending tedious updates about my day to a vacuous pool of navel gazer... …I'm social engaged! So on and so forth.

In life, I tend to be more romantic about the chores of daily life - …so I fit right into an industry hopelessly in love with itself, the possibilities of the future and the search for human meaning in the modern technology era.

But there's a crumb of discomfort with the praise for Web, in my mind. Perhaps it's academic, but I believe it is fundamental and important. It crystallized while watching a PBS documentary about Martin Luther's writings changing the world via the printing press. Before the printing press, Luther could never have gained the political support he needed to challenge the Roman church. He would have been put to death or silenced as dozens of others had been. His cultural impact on society could not have happened without that invention.

It hit me: we have yet to experience something as fundamentally unique with our current use of the Internet. It is less like the astrolabe making global navigation possible and more like enjoying the benefits of a movie on DVD as opposed to VHS.

It sounds strange to say, given the way the Internet's impact on every person I know. But on some flow chart somewhere in my head, this thing is still just replicating other forms of media in a shinier package. Movies, TV, letters, journalism, music, common chit chat - …all things we did before. With the Internet, these things are now consumed or achieved more efficiently, but perhaps not quite as differently as it gets credit for.

An example: In banking, I'd argue that the ATM fundamentally changed the way the economy works by affecting consumption patterns. Not just a matter of convenience, the ATM became the new front line of Western consumer capitalism. Academic understanding of this led to important actions around ATM banking at historic moments that came to pass. Post Sept. 11, 2001, the Fed took emergency measures to shore up the money supply as Americans "hoarded" cash during a time of instability. During the financial sector meltdown of 2008, economists theorized that the modern bank collapse would "hit Main Street" when ATMs ran out of cash…an event that would cause something in the realm of riots and mayhem.

If your banking Web site went down, would society come unraveled? Would anyone argue that?

On and on my mind goes…an artist displaying photos, a musician distributing songs. These things are now handled differently, but the art itself is unchanged. The Internet has only served to make these things more readily available and (ahem) disposable.

Little email forwards were the ditto'd cartoons posted in break rooms of years gone by. The 15 second video of the guy getting hit in the crotch with a flying cat is the discount bloopers VHS tape of 1985. I watch baseball anywhere, anytime…but is the game now different? Even fantasy sports were played years before Web-based applications by nerds via the postal system.

Unlike the cinema, the television, the telegraph, the radio wave, the printing press, the camera, the University, the democracy…the Internet still has yet to achieve anything truly new, despite making things faster and more widespread. Sure, it's a bit precious of a point to make, but for all the credit the Internet gets in changing the world, so far it has not pushed itself beyond the humble postage stamp in terms of creating a new way of life for society. Are we smarter? More happy? Did this thing change who we truly are? Or are we just doing the same things in a different way?

Is the world more different pre/post Internet than it was pre/post internal combustion engine? I have no doubt someday it will be, but for now…, the answer is no. Maybe it will be around social media as we gather our minds and consciousness in new and different ways. But not until we're at least 10 steps beyond our current understanding of it. Maybe it will be around mobile technology, keeping us linked to the cultural mainframe without borders. But not until hardware becomes more fundamental and seamless.

I guess that means we have some work to do. But hey, that's what keeps me coming back for more.

Mike Hudson

Watch out! You may be outted on Facebook.  MIT students claim that they can tell which guys are gay by checking out their friends on Facebook.
 
Students created an algorithm that first analyzed networks of people who publicized their sexual orientation on Facebook.  Then they looked at men who did not state their sexual orientation on Facebook, but looked at their network of  friends.  Guess what? Gay men have more gay friends than straight men.  Someone had to create a program to figure this out?
 
Popsci.com reports:

"Their computer program was able to correctly identify 10 men whom the students personally knew to be gay in the real world but who hadn't shared that fact on Facebook. (The algorithm didn't work as well with women or with bisexual Facebookers.)"

 
What I find the funniest is that the students completed the project for a class on ethics and the Internet.  Didn't anybody ask whether it was ethical to pry into somebody else's private life when they obviously don't want to state their sexual orientation?
 
Kari Girarde 

image credit: Wessex Archaeology

That appears to be Google's tactic. A few days ago they announced a new plugin for IE 6, 7, and 8 called Chrome Frame. It's available now as a developer preview so you have to prepend "cf:" before the "http" in all URLs, but for a first release it's admirably cohesive and powerful.

Creating a Better Experience
What it does is replace IE's decrepit page display code and javascript code with Chrome's. Everything else about IE stays the same, appearance, bookmarks, history, options, tabs, everything. It's simply that suddenly IE is as fast and modern as Chrome.

And it really is as fast as Chrome. "Notably, IE8's SunSpider scores with Chrome Frame running equaled Google's Chrome browser, a solid indication that the plug-in effectively turns any version of IE into the speed equivalent of Chrome itself."

Users can install the plugin with a single click, without relaunching the browser, and even without administrator privileges. Websites can go so far as to present visitors with the ability to do just this. (More info is available on Google's Dev FAQ.)

Using the Competition's Downfalls To Their Advantage
The beautiful irony here is that this uses an old Microsoft technology they built in the '90s to make IE more flexible than Netscape Navigator. And yet, here it is a decade later being used by one of their biggest competitors to help usher their dilapidated browser into bygone history. Even better, that same feature is what powers most IE toolbars so it's not going to be closed any time soon.

Fixing What's Holding Them Back
Everything Google makes could be made more easily, more quickly,and with better features if they didn't have to support any version of IE, but especially IE 6 which is still the most popular browser globally (by age it would be in second grade now). GMail uses HTML 5's local database features, GMaps and Latitude use the new GeoLocation javascript spec to locate your position. In doing these, they've shown that they can code around IE's nuisances as we all must, but this takes time, costs money, and is really, really unpleasant. Imagine if Reader, Docs, Calendar could work offline such as when you're on a plane and then when you get connected again they would then sync all of their changes to the server. IE8 finally caught up to all other browsers and introduced support for this (yet IE6 and 7 clearly are not going away). Or what if Picasa let you edit your photos via HTML 5's <canvas> feature? This is already supported to degrees in everything except IE.

Google's stance is that which many developers feel: IE is very literally holding us back and it needs to stop.

Late To The Game
It wasn't until last month -- August 7 -- that Microsoft finally issued a public statement with meat on their thoughts about HTML 5. A whopping 5 years after developers and browser makers started the process! This complete silence had an awful lot of us worried about the thorns IE could present in the future and probably was no small part of Google's decision to undermine IE's stranglehold on its stalwarts.

Giving Us A Choice
IE is not going to die by attrition. No one action or event is ever going to make two-thirds of everyone on the internet give up on the browser they use. This will help for sure, that it doesn't require administrator privileges for installation is an unbelievable coup d'état. Three out of four people on Digg who use IE6 use it because they don't have a choice. Well, they've got a choice now.

I know that from now on all of my personal work is going to include the simple code from Google to use Chrome Frame if installed, and offer to install it if it's not. It's too easy and nightmare-reducing not to!

Phil Dokas

image credit: the prodigal untitled13

Do people really think that people are born that hot? I thought the Dove's campaign for Real Beauty was great at revealing the truth about how much work goes into making people attractive.  We all know that Hollywood, magazines and strippers aren't real, right?  I mean they are spackled, airbrushed, fake tanned, nipped, tucked and plumped. And we love it.
 
Interestingly enough, the French government may be taking steps to reveal the ugly truth: she's not that skinny. According to PopSci.com, they have proposed a bill that would require magazines to label any portraits that have been digitally altered. The bill states:

"The publicity photographs of people whose physical appearance was altered by software image processing must be accompanied by the words: 'photograph retouched to change the physical appearance of a person."

The goal of this bill is to combat anorexia, but I'm not sure labeling a photo is the best solution. Do people really want transparency?  Don't we read the fashion mags to escape? Do we really need a warning label saying that this isn't real? 
 
I propose the following labels for the obvious:
1. The action in this film was choreographed, no actor was touched, blown up or burnt in this production.
2. The words spoken in this political speech were not necessarily the truth.
3. The man in this romantic comedy isn't really that caring, witty or romantic.

What warning labels would you like to see?

Kari Girarde 

Let's Do The Numbers
84% of Social Media Programs Don't Measure ROI. What's even scarier is that more than half of marketers don't know where to begin when it comes to social media measurement, or that they should have an objective in mind before they begin.

One in five tweets is about products, which means that Twitter should be considered not just as a marketing platform, but a key component of customer service and product research.

Time Spent on Social Networks Has Tripled and thus Email and IM Decline Thanks to Social Networks. But time spend does not mean easy eyeballs on adds. Users have also come to expect more engagement out of brands who want their attention in this space.

Significant Launches and Let Downs
Google Sidewiki turns any page into a collaboration. Brands should worry less about how people will comment over their pages, and start thinking about inspiring their advocates to go out and contribute all over the web.

MMS comes to the iPhone finally!! Now is the time to create applications and programs that leverage this long awaited update.

Project Retweet is Twitter's plan to more fully integrate retweet functionality into their platform. Advantages are that it will be cleaner and more efficient, but many are discouraged by the lack of comments and customization. A cut and paste retweet does not provide insight our authority.

MySpace Now Syncs Status Updates With Twitter, and a dying platform hopes to latch onto a rising one. Since their platform doesn't support a clean newsfeed model (nor should it), I'm not sure what benefit this adds.

Marta Strickland

There was an interesting piece on npr last week about the impact of social media on the courtroom. What's really amazing is how HR people and lawyers are suddenly all over social media and the implications to their respective worlds. And, these insights are turning into a business in and of themselves. As Organic's Executive Director of HR, my mailbox has seen a surge of invitations lately to training seminars on this topic. Most claim to "teach" people about the latest trends in social media, how to write policies and how to apply draconian, non-enforceable limits on individual freedom of speech and expression. 

My favorite recent example of an organization taking the "concerned" approach around social media activity is the not very progressive city of Bozeman, Montana. They are requiring job candidates to offer up their passwords to Facebook and any other social sites they use. What's even more shocking is that this isn't something they've just recently implemented.

This just seems ludicrous to most of us, not to mention an infringement of civil liberty and a right to privacy. But it's really happening. What on earth made them think they should do that? Did they also ask to read diaries? Personal email? Look at checkbooks? Go through dresser drawers?

Sure, there are certain things that legally -- and perhaps ethically -- people shouldn't tweet about or talk about in a public forum. Yet for the most part, trying to limit access to the internet in a courtroom or the workplace is akin to creating a no talking policy! Social media is changing the nature of the workplace, the courtroom and business in general. Instead of trying to limit it (as some of these training seminars might suggest), we should be guiding employees on the how they can use it.

Tracy Cote

It seems as though iPhone junkies and coffee junkies are a match made in heaven. Starbucks recently launched two new applications for the iPhone that make it easy for customers to user their mobile to get their daily coffee fix.

The first application, myStarbucks, makes it possible allows customers to remember their friend's favorite drink, locate nearby Starbucks locations, as well as other fun features. But the bigger development is an application that turns your Starbucks card into a bar code on your phone's screen that allows you to pay for your coffee by scanning your phone.

Digital bar codes and digital couponing is a trend we've been following closely hear at Organic. And so I am curious to see how well this new mobile application works for Starbucks.

"Digital coupons apparently have a higher redemption rate due to the discreteness (still looking cool while saving) and convenience." Sarah Jo Sautter

This isn't the first time Starbucks has made a move to support the mobile superuser crowd. In 2008, Starbucks shifted their wifi support from T-Mobile to AT&T, offering their Starbucks card holders two free hours of wifi access per day and completely free access for any AT&T broadband subscribers.

Thanks to Lisa Yamamura for the link.

Marta Strickland

Marketers often ask why QR code technology for mobile phones (and other 2D barcode tech) hasn't made it to the mainstream in North America. There have been a few notable efforts, some of which are still ongoing, but for the most part the technology remains esoteric and unused.

There's a very good reason for this. In North America we don't need this technology.

Quick Response (QR) codes were used to solve a very specific problem, inputting URLs. In NA, the majority of people who use their mobile phones to do anything more than make calls have a QWERTY keypad. The main reasons this tech took off in Japan and other parts of Southeast Asia are and not in North America are:

1. Carriers there ensured that reader applications were installed on every device.
2. Most phones in those countries didn't (and still don't) have qwerty - or equivalent - keypads, so using 2d barcodes as a way to quickly link to a site made sense.

It's difficult to find data on QR reader penetration outside Japan and Korea, but to be wildly generous let's assume that in the US it's 5%. Even if this were the case, the potential reach is far lower than it would be if a URL were used instead.

So why are marketers still intent on forcing this tech on the American public? Recent campaigns by Ford and Ralph Lauren use 2D barcodes with little regard for the implications imposed on would be users. In the case of the ford campaign, users would need to perform one of the following actions before arriving at actual content:

"Simply open your phone's browser and download the free app at gettag.mobi or text 'Tag' to 4Ford. Then follow the directions to scan or snap this tag to see features come to life."

At the end of this convoluted path is a video, so why not simply print a short URL that links directly to the video or a mobile site where users can watch multiple videos? There's no good reason.

Given that the same functionality can be achieved with greater reach using a plain URL, use of QR codes as a replacement or supposed shortcut to web-based content adds little value to the campaign. In fact, it likely detracts from it. We don't have barcode reader penetration in NA, but we do have QWERTY keypads which means inputting a URL is trivial.

There are other uses for 2D barcodes that make sense. In particular, expect to see 2D barcodes deployed as part of a POS redemption mechanism for mobile coupons. For more on this, check out this post on the new Starbucks iPhone app.

Dan Neumann

Image credit: qisur

Lord Byron said about card games that "one can game ten times longer than one can do anything else." But what could card games do in the planning of online services?

Cards, if not really in a game-like manner, have been used to help plan the information architecture for websites for a long time. The exercise known as card sorting involves potential users sorting cards representing the content on the site into groups that make the most sense to them. The results of the exercise can then be used as the basis of the sitemap, or to test the effectiveness of the navigation structure of an existing site.

But with the rapid emerge of social tools, user experience designers have started to develop card games for planning entire digital products.

A couple weeks ago at the Idea09 conference, a gathering of information architects, social media strategists and user experience designers in Toronto, conference-goers gathered to play Social Mania, a game developed by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone, both long-time UXD experts who have worked together at Yahoo!

In the game, people work in teams to develop a digital product around an object for a specific audience delivered in a specific way. There are cards that represent different demographics, and others that represent social objects and delivery tactics with a "plus" score for all of them, and cards that represent risks or anti-social patterns with a "minus" score.

The game is still in beta testing and, having played it myself at the conference, still needs work to make the rules easier to follow. But it's a fun idea that has potential to become a real, effective tool for planning.

Fun idea are also these Mental Notes cards. They're a set of cards that bring together 50 insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to the design of websites and software applications. Like the Social Mania game, the Mental Notes cards are currently in development and should be out and available to UX designers and everyone else interested in spring 2010.

Karri Ojanen