Monthly Archive for August, 2007

What is the GNP of Myspace - Social Networks as Nations

Published
by
Karl
on August 22, 2007
in Co-Creation
. 2 Comments

russia

How we value social networks is obviously in it’s infancy but as social networks and metaverses like SecondLife start to approach the size and scale of towns, cities and countries surely we need to think about how they are valued. Recent reports focus on primarily size (population), and growth (population growth), which when put in the context of these massive societies seem rather one dimensional.

It seems to me that social networks are very much like countries, with their own cultures, their own values, their own laws, their own goals, and different roles you can play in them. This is one of the reasons I think population and population growth are not great measures for social networks, third world countries can grow quickly, but their populations can be impoverished, their economies broken. This gets be back to my ongoing thought about looking at the “value” a social network produces is a very important measure, and using the analogy of countries or citys it becomes easier to comprehend.

When I was growing up I used to see advertisements for a new city that had been created in England, it was called Milton Keynes, according to wikipedia this was designated a “new town” in 1967, and therefore had to advertise to get people to move there. This seemed like a strange concept to me when I was growing up, a town that needed to advertise, I figured towns just existed. Social Networks like Milton Keynes need to attract new people to their new societies, but then what makes the town valuable after everyone gets there? Why did people continue to move to Milton Keynes after the advertising stopped?

If myspace had a GNP what would it be? Number of friends?
If flickr had a GNP? Number of photographs added? Tags?
If Yelp had a GNP? Reviews created?

Do countries ever consider how many “eyeballs” they have?

5000 Web Applications In 333 Seconds

Published
by
Karl
on August 21, 2007
in Advertising and Viral-Persuasion
. 0 Comments

Great little viral ad created by a company called SimpleSpark, which is an online directory of “web applications”. The video itself is simple, 5000 logos of web applications that they track in their directory, which demonstrates the problem that they are solving immediately. Not only do they track these applications in a directory they also have reviews of the apps and suggestions for other similar apps as well. Not only do they track web applications, but also mobile web apps, iphone web apps, and wii web apps.

Tip of the hat to LaughingSquid

Social Gestures, Objects, and Equity

Published
by
Karl
on August 21, 2007
in Co-Creation, Marketing, Strategy and Viral-Persuasion
. 1 Comment

Hugh over at gapingvoid raises the interesting point that even though the market for companies to create and deliver one way “messages” is dissapearing, demand for PR, marketing, and advertising professionals is growing. The question is now that we don’t control the “message” what are we doing?

To quote Hugh:

1. Problem: Post-Cluetrain Reality- There is no market for “Messages”.

2. Opportunity: There is, however, a VAST market for “Social Gestures”. As Mark Earls says in his brilliant new book, “Herd”, we are, after all, social animals. We are, after all, primates.

3. Execution: Social Objects, Anybody?

I’m going to add number 4:

4. Value: Social Equity, the value you build over time from the creation of and participation with social gestures and social objects.

I’m absolutely convinced that one of the biggest differences between traditional marketing, and new conversational, people driven marketing is you actually build value over time. I think blogs are one of the best examples, every time you post to a blog it’s like making a small deposit in a bank account, each one build on the rest, and ends up returning interest that compounds. The value of a blog over time becomes more than the sum of the individual posts, as it and the author becomes interconnected through other blogs and sites.

Traditional marketing and advertising used to try and build brand equity, in the new conversational marketplace companies that are participating are building social equity (i’m sure that means something else somewhere but it seems appropriate).

What else could you call the value you build over time by participating in the O’Sphere?

Wal-Mart to deliver DRM free Music

Published
by
Karl
on August 21, 2007
in Co-Creation, Customer-Experience and Strategy
. 0 Comments

They must have heard my plea yesterday because today Wal-Mart announced it will be selling Universal and EMI music DRM free. In some ways it seems like this is a move by both Wal-Mart and the labels to try and wrestle away the stranglehold that iTunes has over the DL music marketplace.

$0.94 DRM-free, 256-kbps MP3 downloads from Universal and EMI with albums priced at $9.22

I don’t know how this turned into DRM week, but I think the move away from DRM is significant for customer experience and co-creation. As mentioned yesterday Grooveshark’s whole co-creative business model is reliant on non DRM music shared by it’s users.

Tweaking The Music Business Model So People Get Paid

Published
by
Karl
on August 20, 2007
in Co-Creation and Strategy
. 0 Comments

Companies often have great successes by tweaking business models. Tweaking a business model is sometimes about redistributing a bit of the work, that changes your cost structure, and changes how you compete. Ikea tweaked the furniture business model by employing their customers as logistics and delivery people. South West tweaked it’s business model by not serving meals or checking bags so their customers were employed as baggage handlers. Netflix tweaked the video rental business by employing their customers as reviewers that powered their recommendation system, customers got more value, netflix gained loyalty. The important thing about these business model tweaks is that when customers take on more work/responsibility they either receive more value or save money, that’s why they do the work.

What has happened with the music industry and p2p is nothing more than another tweaked business model, customers have taken on the role of promoter and distributer, but instead of compensating them for that valuable service they are getting sued. The obvious problem was that p2p systems didn’t compensate anyone, and the later ones that did compensate people compensated everyone except the people that make p2p work, that is the users, they are the engines behind p2p.

So along comes Grooveshark, a company that is going to allow people to share all their music and make recommendations, sell DRM free music, for 99 cents and compensate the artist, publisher, and the user who makes the sale. Grooveshark might not make it, but this is the model IMHO that will work in the end, it’s just going to require the right dealmaker/rainmaker behind it (Steve Jobs anyone?). Read a full report on Grooveshark and the exclent Read/WriteWeb blog.

See also

DRM Has Got Me Stuck In The Middle

Published
by
Karl
on August 20, 2007
in Marketing
. 2 Comments

When the iTunes store came out I started buying all my music through it, everything seemed to work, and all my devices played my songs. I was happy. Then I found a little tool that enabled me to view, navigate and control all my iTunes music through my xbox 360 from my Mac, playing through my home theater, this was amazing (full screen visualizer on a 42″ plasma). Then I found out that my iTunes purchased music won’t play through the xbox :-( Now i’m stuck in the middle, I don’t buy CD’s and I don’t shop on iTunes any more. All I do is listen to Pandora, i wish Pandora played on my N95 :-)

From a customer experience standpoint DRM is taking away my control, and I want to be in control of things I buy, period.

BTW Why on earth did Pandora decide to go exclusively with Sprint? i would gladly pay a subscription if I could get a Symbian version of Pandora. The crowdsource company CambrianHouse obviously thinks it’s a good idea.

The ExperienceCurve Social Media Top Ten

Published
by
Karl
on August 19, 2007
in Co-Creation and Viral-Persuasion
. 3 Comments

Bryan Person just recently started an interesting meme called the “social media top ten” on his blog, basically the top ten stories around social media this week. In addition to posting the list himself he also proposed other people create their own “social media top ten”, post it on their blogs and tag it with “SMT10″ for technorati. So I thought I would contribute to this and start my own “social media top ten”, I’m also going to using the tag on delicious which i’ll bookmark the stories I think are relevant on there as well.

So here’s my Social Media Top Ten for last week:

Extending The Monster Brand Through Blogger Outreach

Published
by
Karl
on August 19, 2007
in Branding and Marketing
. 2 Comments

About a month ago I went to a blogger event that was laid on by Monster Cable the guys that make those expensive video and audio cables. The event was organized by Jeremy Toeman’s new consultancy Stage Two Consulting, and was particularly interesting in the fact that it was only for bloggers, and it wasn’t just for “A” list bloggers, so mere mortals such as myself were able to come along. In fact one “A” list blogger from Gizmodo was complaining to me that the event was waste of time for him because there “was no story”, or at least no exclusive for him I guess. The event itself demo’d some of the Monster products, and even engaged the talents of Cali Lewis from Geek Brief TV to help them do a little product launch (much to my chagrin an iPhone holder, a little bit “off brand” IMHO).

Cali Lewis
Cali and head Monster Noel Lee (he’s not that tall, he’s standing on a Segway)

For me the event was interesting for a couple of reasons, it was interesting to see a company engaging bloggers in as a key part of their communication strategy, and second of all they sent me an amplifier to try out. The irony of course was the offer to send me an amp came from a conversation I was having with one of their business development chaps where I was explaining I wasn’t really a gadget blogger so therefore the event was more interesting from a marketing perspective. I told him I had a pretty good home theater set up with an Denon receiver and infinity speakers, so he offered to send me an amp to see if “I could tell the difference”.

From a marketing perspective I think the event provided a decent venue to tell the Monster brand story ie. started by Noel Lee in a garage in San Francisco, Noel was an audiophile and audio engineer etc. I think the brand story is pretty important for Monster as they are selling (certainly in case of cables) an intangible benefit for most people, that is very hard to convince people through traditional advertising. In fact the most convincing argument i’ve seen for their cables making a difference was on Gizmodo, way more convincing than any point of sale, or product packaging marketing claptrap.

I think in some ways Monster did not capitalize on this event as well as they could have, and that was primarily due to a lack of follow up mechanisms, or lack of “conversation worthy” happenings (iPhone holder anyone?). What would have been nice is a common tag for photo’s and stories so they could more easily track the conversation after the event. With people like Cali, Thomas Hawk, gizmodo, Daniel Riveongand Scott Beale there was plenty of the right people there to continue the conversation, Daniel also points out the lack of mechanisms for follow up on his blog.

So what about the amplifier? Could I tell the difference between my Denon receiver alone, and sending the signal through a $3500 amplifier, uh yeah, I could tell the difference and so could my neighbors.

monster amp

That’s the amp on the left, the reason it’s on the floor is because it weighs 101 pounds and I wasn’t sure my glass and wood stereo shelving would be able to take it. The amp itself is the Monster signature series 5 channel amplifier, which has a very conservative rating of 150 watts per channel. A really nice feature of the design is the actual power readouts on the front of each bank, which give you a readout of how many watts the amp is putting through each speaker. In my apartment I managed to get it up to about 11 watts before the walls started shaking.

top amp

It’s pretty clear that this is an amplifier that most people would buy if they were getting a full on home theater installation, it even comes with all the hardware for rack mounting, and in fact I can’t think of much stereo furniture that could fit or support this monster (pun intended).

So what was the difference? Louder? Sure, but I think the biggest difference for me (an i’m not an audiophile) was the separation of instruments/voices even at a nominal volume. I’ve played various cd’s and dvd’s that i’m very familiar with and the separation and clarity was distinct. Anyway, like I say i’m not an audiophile, so here’s a much more in depth review.

Personal Sponsorship to do Cool Stuff - The Adventure Cub Project

Published
by
Karl
on August 17, 2007
in Co-Creation
. 1 Comment

Paul is a friend of mine and works at Nokia, and I’ve often accused him of some outrageous boondoggles, but this has got to be the best one yet. Basically Paul is going to fly his 1941 J3 Cub from Paris Texas, to Sonoma California, about 2200 miles. Flying 2200 miles sound easy right? Well this plane is made out of fabric and wood, with a top speed of 70 miles an hour and a 5 gallon tank, with floating cork and wire for a fuel gauge. Anyway, Paul is planning on using a Nokia N95 for navigation using the GPS and as a video camera to document the trip, and because of this actually has got Nokia to sponsor the flight and will be issuing a press release. You can keep up with the flight at adventurecub.com where Paul plans on blogging, posting video etc.

piper

There are some other opportunities for sponsorship, and potentially helping get the video out there so get in touch with him from his web site or just drop me an email and i’ll pass it along if you have any ideas. i’m talking to you Kyte.tv, Shozu, Zooomr.

I wonder what other things he could do via social media to document this?

BTW I’m planning to ride a motorcycle across the northwest of Vietnam visiting with 9 of the indigenous tribes up there, anyone want to sponsor me? I kind of sound like Ewan McGregor :-)

UPDATE: Interestingly the company that makes the, Piper Aircraft found out about this flight and have contacted Paul to interview him about the trip. Props to them (pun intended) for keeping an eye on the blogosphere.

More Pownce Invites

Published
by
Karl
on August 17, 2007
in Viral-Persuasion
. 8 Comments

I’ve got 6 more pownce invites so drop me a line if you want one. I currently use Twitter and Pownce so feel free to add me on either. On a side note i’m really looking forward to this twitter wordpress plugin, the feature list looks amazing.