Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Caterina Fake, who previously cofounded the photo-sharing site Flickr has cofounded a new search engine named Hunch, which launched Monday 6/15/09.

What differentiates Hunch from other search engines is that rather than focusing on delivering an answer to specific questions (Where can I get Chinese takeout, 10018) Hunch seeks to deliver recommendations to less defined questions (What should I make for dinner tonight?).

Hunch starts off by asking you a few multiple choice questions to develop your profile. You can create an account and save your profile, or the Hunch site can keep track of your answers via cookies (of course you'll need to answer the questions again if you use another computer). If you create an account, you have the opportunity to "Teach Hunch About You" by answering even more questions. This information is used to help Hunch make recommendations that are relevant to you and your preferences. Once Hunch makes its recommendations, you can let the engine know if the recommendations were good or not. This data is also saved and used to adjust future recommendations. Hunch uses all this information to group people based on their answers. The next time you ask a question. It will try to give you recommendations based on the group's answers.

Besides the profile questions, when you start your search you have to answer a series of survey question on the topic you are searching. "Do you like spicy food?", "Are you a vegetarian?", etc. These are used to determine your final recommendations. Hunch recommended I make Jambalaya, which I thought was a great recommendation (even though I decided I didn't want to cook at all last night).

While the site offers an interesting approach to search, it will take many users who will have to literally answer hundreds of questions, for the engine's algorithms to be robust enough to actually offer relevant answers - I stopped just after answering my 200th question, and there was no indication of how many more questions there were. Though it might be cool to get recommendations based on what other people - with similar profiles - have answered... is it worth the hours you'll spend creating a profile when you can chat with a friend?

Hunch has also declared it won't share this data, but if the site takes off, it would be interesting to see what other uses this data might be applicable to. Information like this could make targeted ads VERY targeted...

Madi Benjamin

There are a plethora of social media monitoring tools out there now. As they jostle and tousle with each other tantalizing potential clients with colorful charts, demos and trial accounts, I'm still left wondering where this technology will wind up. Will it go the way of the search engines and eventually wind up with just a few mega players? (OK, really one.)

I first started looking at social monitoring tools back in November of 2007. Since then there have been huge advances in the capabilities included in these platforms and some level of convergence in the capabilities in the top players.

Next week I will be representing Organic on an OMMA Social panel called "Choosing a Social Monitoring Tool: How to Find the Right Fit." At Organic we are are continually reviewing tools, and currently using Sysomos. In the review of numerous tools, I've created my dream list for a social monitoring tool:

1. Easy self-service set up of topics and queries.
2. Efficient filtering of topics.
3. Delivery of results in real-time.
4. Sentiment analysis.
5. Trending Data.
6. Comparison to competitive information.
7. Identification of conversation "themes" around a topic.
8. Identification of Influencers or "influential posts."
9. Demographic Information.
10. Respond to and track engagement.

But what exactly does that top 10 dream list mean?

What if you could re-envision the trading floor with a web 2.0 focus? What if a RIA could expose you to a network of insiders? What is you could analyze Morgan Stanley's extensive historical trading data with your own models? What is Morgan Stanley pushed the envelope of transparency to provide you with more data than has ever been available before?

Check out the Matrix by Morgan Stanley microsite and product overview: http://www.morganstanley.com/matrixinfo/

It is an ambitious new rich internet application that is changing the way people think about the trading floor. Capabilities include advanced data visualizations, human curated (by MS of course) and machine filtered information for the torrents of relevant financial information and news, and social graph/IM/messaging features to connect to a network of your peers. The experience was built using Adobe's Flash Platform technologies, and integrates real-time data, with the delivery of audio, video, reports and rich interactive charts using the Flex framework. Truly revolutionary experience design from a Bank.

Dean McRobie

In honor of the Web 3.0 Conference going on in New York, I wanted to write a piece today not to answer the question "What is Web 3.0?" There are plenty of articles that try and accomplish that task, and to me the easiest answer still is: Who cares?

It doesn't matter what Web 3.0, it doesn't matter what exactly we call it. All that matters to 99% of the people surfing the web is how it is going to affect their daily digital lives. I see three ways that is going to happen in the near future.

1. Knowledge Engines (give me data, not webpages)
There has been a lot of attention paid to Wolfram Alpha, which just launched in beta last week. Do I think it's a "Google killer"? Nah. It doesn't have quite the right ingredients to go mainstream yet... a funny name, a focus on deep but niche data, no easy answers for the lazy college student. But, it's not the only "answers engine" coming on the scene. Look for Google Squared to launch shortly. As consumers become more familiar with this new type of service, they will flock to the service that offers the best answers, even if it has a really funny name.

2. Social Discovery (you're no longer browsing alone)
Start ups like Headup and the very promising Glue offer contextually relevant social information as you browse. Soon consumers will see that they have a much better option than finding out what 500 complete strangers said about a restaurant or a book... they can find out what 10 of their closest friends and colleagues said about it, without even having to ask.

3. The Open Social Graph (social goes everywhere)
With the announcement yesterday that Facebook is going to integrate with OpenID, it's a great time to start asking... what is this really open social web going to look like? Much of the magic is going to go on behind the scenes, in the secret (to consumers anyway) world of linked data. Formats that describe relationships, interests, and social activities already exist, and have the potential to infuse some relevance to the increasingly noisy social networks. As more companies latch onto OpenID, consumers are going to see their online worlds bleed together. Retail opportunities inside Facebook, social opportunities on news sites.

Why do brands and marketers need to care?
The opportunity for marketers to leverage what Web 3.0 is going to change about the web is a whole lot more than semantic advertising. While behavioral targeting and contextual ads leave a lot to be desired, semantic enabled ads along cannot fight the impending trend... online ads are losing engagement. Most solutions are failing to realize the potential of the medium. It's like bringing a radio announcer to television, and forgetting about the new addition of vision and motion. Ads often lack interaction, context, and socialization. (Comparison courtesy of Joe Marchese, SocialVibe)

No... brands and marketers need to care because Web 3.0 is going to take all the social chatter online and start piping it into relevant tools, discovery mechanisms, and applications that will actually enable consumers to make smarter decisions and inform purchases. Social recommendation (semantic enabled) will replace online advertising. And unless we do everything we can to make sure our content is part of the stream... that we are forward-thinking, open, and friendly in this growing pool of linked data... we are going to be left out of the conversation.

For more, check out our series on Web 3.0 from last year on how the next generation web will change the way you connect, discover, and share with the social online world. And how this movement is going to make marketing more relevant and measurable.

Marta Strickland

For the past few days, the technology blogosphere has been buzzing about the upcoming Hulu iPhone app. About the same time, there is a widespread rumor proclaiming full HD output and iTunes streaming from next generation iPhone and iPod touch. It is not difficult to put two and two together, and see the enormous market disruption potential in an iPhone centric living room entertainment solution.

If indeed the new iPhone and iPod touch can support full HD and iTunes streaming, many users may be tempted to purchase Apple's video output cable to watch content on their HDTV. Some may also want to watch Hulu, TV.com, Joost, and other video serving apps this way as well. For Apple, iPhone and iPod touch would suddenly transform into a killer media center with a formidable install base. For the consumers, the relatively open platform would ensure that they have access to diverse content from various sources. For content providers, this model affords them a direct channel to media consumers, bypassing carriers, cable operators, and other traditional channels (even iTunes Store).

The last point can be a big boost to organizations, big and small, who don't have direct tie to those media titans. For instance, Big Ten Network could release an app that relays their NCAA games live or on-demand, without involving in protracted negotiations with cable companies. Another example would be performance arts institutions, such as Lincoln Center and Village Vanguard, creating their own apps to broadcast live or recorded performances, rehearsals, and interviews--a new and conceivably substantial revenue stream.

Assuming iPhone/iPod touch is taking over the living room, what would be the raison d'être for AppleTV? The product seems to be a halfhearted effort from Apple, shackled not by technical but copyright and other business considerations. No wonder Gizmodo gleeful declared AppleTV "obsolute" after the iPhone HD rumor surfaced. Let's not write its obituary just yet.

I believe most users would not want to permanently connect their phone to a TV or a dock. If Apple can support video streaming from iPhone/iPod touch to AppleTV, the latter will effectively become a wireless video breakout box for the former. Imagine browsing Hulu videos using iPhone on your comfortable couch, selecting one with a touch of your finger, and then enjoying the video on your big screen TV. Consumers and content providers alike should be thrilled to see a solution like this. Netflix and other video-on-demand services would certainly be interested as well. But would Apple allow it?

Hopefully the Cupertino company will see that by opening up AppleTV platform they may sell more iPhones and many more AppleTVs. This would translate to more iTunes Store users too. Now, if someone can convince them to also release an API for AppleTV...

In Progressive Enhancement (PE), the strategy is deliberately reversed: a basic markup document is created, geared towards the lowest common denominator of browser software functionality, and then the designer adds in functionality or enhancements to the presentation and behavior of the page, using modern technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets or JavaScript (or other advanced technologies, such as Flash or Java applets or SVG, etc.)

One of the biggest influences on my history as an HTML Geek had to be David Siegel's Creating Killer Websites book. If Siegel beat two ideas into my ideas they had to be that images need to be optimized within an inch of their life and that websites should look and act the same regardless of what browser a user employs.

Published in late 1997, the landscape of the web has changed considerably since those nascent days of web design. Careful use of Photoshop definitely helps in the fight against bloated images along with the increasing acceptance of Portable Network Graphics (PNG) as a web standard. As long as smart decisions are made about what files get saved in which format, we should be looking good.

Yet, there fight for browser compatibility still remains one of the biggest hurdles in a web developers life. "Yes, but does it work in IE?" has become the impetus for many a late night of stylesheet and/or javascript tweaking. The question that might need to be asked sooner rather than later is, "Does this need to work the same in IE?" Or, conversely, "Does this need to work in Chrome?" While websites should still be a relatively similar experience from one browser/platform to another, are we cheating ourselves and our users by omitting a bell or whistle simply because it can't be "heard" in another person's experience?

That is to say, does the web experience have to be identical for everyone or are there arrows in our quiver of "web tricks" that we can let fly for those who happen to browse one way or another?

This week's On The Media (NPR Show) has an interesting look at the net's "mid-life crisis" - discussing outmoded routers, anonymity, and viruses, among other things. I found it most fascinating that in all of the discussion of where the net's at currently, where it's been and where it's headed that there was no mention of the single-most used application used when dealing with the internet - the web browser.

Yes, of all the tools that need to be standardized on the web, browsers have had the most attempts at regulation via the W3C but, yet, still prove the most irksome. Likewise, they exemplify the problems that OTM focuses on - they're outmoded (IE6 still proves to be a major player though it's not two versions behind) and they open up users to Trojans and other malware via their poor coding (again, IE6). I wonder if OTM requires some kind of metaphor to make this point clear. For me, I describe the difference in web browsers as if looking out four windows and seeing four completely different versions of the same view. (though others have more colorful methods of describing this troublesome topic)

Listen to OTM's story here:http://onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/03/13/06.

Mike White

image credit: Wired

Playpower.org is a group dedicated to Computer Aided Learning in developing countries, currently targeting $12 TV-computers already in sale throughout China, India, and South America.

Last week I went down to O'Reilly's ETech conference to support Playpower during their presentation by playing some improvised beats off my PSP. It was a lot of fun, and on the surface it makes sense: pairing video-game-console produced music with video-game-console based learning.

But the pairing of Playpower and Starpause runs deeper than video-game aesthetic. I started producing music with a classic gray brick gameboy after I realized some new software from Sweden on homebrew carts from China could it into an electronic music workstation with four monophonic synthesizers for under $100.

In the same way, Playpower has looked at what technology is already available to the "the emerging middle class" in developing countries and connecting the dots to get quality learning games on those machines. It's a bit like the now-expected web2 mashup but instead of tacking feeds to maps with ajax, Playpower is arming retro-enthusiast coders with Computer Aided Learning studies and slipping the results to Chinese manufacturers (who are hungry to clone and publish any content, original or not).

They're is calling it a Market Intervention and you can follow their progress via the Playpower blog or on twitter.

Jordan Gray

Today's marketer has to wrestle with a plethora of new platforms, channels, and delivery medium. She needs to deliver emotionally resonating messaging to online, offline, out of home, set top, personal computer, mobile, laptop, occasionally connected, touch sensitive, and always on devices.

A week or two ago, Randall Rothenberg's post on "heartbeats and mouse clicks" broke open a topic that has been seething below the normal work-a-day lives of interactive marketers for a long time. Randall opens his article with: Quick -- name four fantastic, emotionally resonant, culturally significant and successful interactive advertising campaigns from the past year.

How did you do? Did you find a campaign that really emotionally engaged you? That nameless visceral reaction to an idea, an image, a word, an experience. Like Randall, I couldn't name any. Nothing. The closest I could come was the RG/A Nike+ integration. I didn't have a visceral reaction to it, but the elegance and simplicity and the change in behavior it has wrought with me is certainly something that stands out.

This past Friday I attended The New York Times Developer Network's inaugural API seminar. The event was aimed at promoting their roster of existing APIs and launching a new one, for their Times People social network. Organizers had hoped to use the event as a way to reach out to independent developers who would, in turn, presumably use the APIs in innovative ways. In fact, the sprinkling of "hackers" in the audience were overshadowed by a wide range of media-types. Which, despite initial intent, wasn't all bad for the NYT since the media-types did a bang up job of publicizing the event.

I'm a fan of the New York Times' website. It is a consistently high quality experience and, as such, run by one of the few mainstream news companies that understands the digital world. It's clear that the people running the NYT are aware of how important increasing digital consumption habits are to their current and future success. The writing quality is generally high, but more importantly, in recent years, the NYT have released a steady stream of site features, standalone applications, and APIs that together amount to a digital experience that far exceeds that of its competitors.

The recent financial woes of the NYT, and the newspaper business as a whole, have been widely publicized. And while the NYT's new "open" strategy doesn't appear to be a last ditch attempt at staying solvent, it is worth asking: What's in it for them?

As a marketer, I have encouraged several key clients to develop an API. They were all, like the NYT, large national or international brands. Lots of big brands are sitting on huge amounts of data that can, potentially, be shaped into useful services by either the brands themselves, or by developers enthusiastic about what they can do with a new dataset.

There are two reasons why an API makes sense for the NYT, new revenue and free advertising.

Low volume use by a third-party can encourage innovation and often amounts to free advertising in some very interesting places (the risk is having your brand represented in a way you can't control). If a developer hacks together a mashup using your data and it's interesting enough that people use it a little bit, your brand wins some credibility, exposure, and in the case of the NYT, readership in a community where it otherwise might not have any.

If a third-party developed service becomes successful and moves to the realm of high-volume use, your brand could wind up with a new source of revenue. This is why the terms of service for most APIs restrict free use to somewhere in the neighborhood of five thousand queries per day. Anything beyond that costs. So assuming whoever developed a service that gets enough traffic to exceed that number of queries can monetize (easier said than done) the publisher of the API should stand to make some money it wasn't making before.

Dan Neumann

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23timesopen
http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/