See The Whole Web From Your Mobile Phone

Sure, we have heard claims that you would be able to experience the web on your mobile phone, just as you experience it on your desktop, but it has never been entirely true. Skyfire is making some lofty claims that they prove in the video below. I am very excited to test the browser, and am excited about the possibility of a mobile browser that supports flash video as well as Javascript.






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Diane Von Furstenberg Says Yes To "Really Real Beauty" and Conversation

Disclaimer:  Diane Von Furstenberg is a client of my employer, Morpheus Media and helped put this event together. The following post is my (Adam Broitman) take on the event and is in no way representative of DVF, or Morpheus Media at large

Despite the recent controversy surrounding Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, some people in the fashion world still believe in the power of real people and real beauty.

These days everyone in the media/marketing world is paying lip service to the notions of conversation and collaboration, but how many are actually taking part in the seismic shift that has been thrust upon us? Furthermore, how many brands are actually bridging digital social media with real life environments?

The bad news is that the answer to these questions is, not too many. Well, I am here to bring you some good news!

Always on the bleeding edge of culture, fashion Icon Diane Von Furstenberg has proven yet again, that her finger remains on the pulse of society and culture. DVF continues to prove that you can remain at the highest heights of fashion, and at the same time possess the ability to listen to your consumer. As a man who will never wear DVF (or at least probably won't J), I have become increasingly intrigued by this symbol of self empowerment, beauty and forward-thinking.

With the help of the brilliant women over at the Coutorture network, DVF invited a number of bloggers into her studio for an evening of wine and fashion.  I had the pleasure of meeting Couturture editor,  Julie Fredrickson. She is nothing short of brilliant.

Julie had this to say about the event:

The streetwear symbol for collaboration involves combining two names with an "x" as a signifier that two brands joined forces for a creative project. Often it is the collaborations that bring out the best from each side, highlighting the strengths of the players while creating something that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is the "x" factor of unique teams coming together to do something great. It is this spirit of collaboration that inspired us to host a photo shoot with iconic women's wear line Diane Von Furstenberg and the Coutorture community.

The collaboration was a mashup between bloggers and fashion industry professionals. The bloggers had access to professional photographers and models (as well as DVF attire), and were able to create their own ideal fashion shoot. While I was not able to be at the event, I heard that by the end the bloggers became the models (and who knows, maybe some of the models started blogging).

All in All DVF and her brand team were able to create the type of new marketing event that most only speak about.

Blogs to Check Out:

Whose Space Is It Anyway?

Do you love throwing sheep? Is poking your friends the best part of your day? Tom Anderson, president of MySpace would answer these questions with a categorical no! In a rare act of public communication, the president of the 600 pound gorilla of social networking laid out some rules for MySpace application developers. The rules includes governance over how people are invited to adopt applications and rules around incentivizing apps.

Tom states the following,

"Balancing the needs of a community is never an easy job. There are many constituents, all with their own needs and desires. The needs of the few cannot outweigh the needs of the many."

My Proposition

Why not put some of the governing power in the hands of the community?

One only needs to look at the success of Wikipedia to know that the wisdom of crowds is a very powerful thing. If MySpace is in fact a "community" why not set up a trusted board of members and developers (perhaps let the community vote on them). Let them be part of the approval process for applications and other pieces of the platform. I am not advocating MySpace let users entirely run the show, but why does MySpace not take on a more transparent, collaborative stance on the community.

I have to be honest, I see MySpace as a sinking ship. I do however think that if MySpace were to make some radical moves they could turn things around.

I am not holding my breathe.

I have become increasingly disillusioned with both Facebook and MySpace, as they do not embody the true essence of community. Sure, I understand they have revenue goals and they are not charities, but I think it is time to stop referring to these networks as communities and start calling them what they really are, services (and businesses).

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Now That You Are The Media, Who Owns You?

I am really getting to like expressing my feelings over Seesmic. If you are not a member, I strongly recommend going over to www.seesmic.com and signing up (if you still need invites, let me know).

Below the video are some links and notes on what I was speaking about.





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Powerset: An Entirely New Way To Search And Discover?

There has been a lot of buzz surrounding Powerset and to be honest, I have chosen to ignore most of it. When looking at new search technologies that claim natural language search capabilities and other mind blowing semantic feats, I tend to tune out. It is not that I am not interested in new search technologies; it is just that I have grown skeptical of such claims and am sick of searching for the next best thing in search technology. I figure, if the technology is so great, I will get to it eventually.


Today was a bit different. Through the power of good press release headline writing, Powerset was able to grab my attention. The release read, “Powerset Reinvents the Search and Discovery Experience for Wikipedia(TM) Articles”. Somehow they must have known that one of my passion points is discovery (as it relates to navigating the web) as it is my belief that social media lay at the cross roads of search and discovery (at least in the sense that social media aids in people’s ability to find new things based on topics and items discussed amongst their friends. I guess this is not just about social media, it is about being social).


Here are some of the new features in Powerset:





  • Factz -- When users enter a topic query, Powerset assembles a compact summary of interesting, and sometimes surprising Factz, extracted from pages across Wikipedia




  • Dossiers -- Powerset creates a summary of information found in Freebase and Wikipedia to give users a quick overview about a topic




  • Answers -- For many questions, Powerset automatically assembles an answer list from sentences in Wikipedia or data in Freebase




  • Semantic Highlighting -- The most relevant search results are highlighted based on the meaning of a user's question




  • Minibrowser -- A result can be expanded to show the snippet in the context of the full Wikipedia article




And a couple of screenshots that I took while exploring:







And finally a promotional video:





Powerset Demo Video from officialpowerset on Vimeo.



All in all I found using Powerset to be an enjoyable experience. When doing research I may try Powerset a few times. I guess the question is will this technology apply to the masses of searchers?



Thoughts?




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Monetizing “Open”

Due to announcements by MySpace, Facebook and Google (not to mention Yahoo’s continual push for open standards) there have been a lot of



talk about DataPortability and the importance of being “open” in the modern web economy. While I am very excited about what all of this openness means for consumers, I am skeptical about the business models of the companies that are making these moves.



In order for any one of these web properties to monetize user data, there will need to be some type of control over the data. The catch 22 is that the brand that exerts more control over data will be the brand that is least likely to get consumers to spend more time with them.



I have some ideas about ways to monetize in an open environment, but one of the reasons that I write this blog is to learn from all of you. I would love to hear some thoughts on how these major web brands will be able to successfully monetize their properties (and not lose consumers) in an open web.




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American Airlines: A Business Traveler's Nightmare

Once again I have been forsaken by American Airlines. This is the third flight in a row where my agenda has been utterly destroyed. It is also the third time (in two months) that I have seen what happens when unhappy workers have to deal with the inefficiencies of a sub par service business.

The worst part of all of this is that no one who works here really cares, and as such business travelers are continually turned off. It is becoming impossible fly American Airlines; as every time we fly American, we lose money (due to lost meetings, time etc.) and we get a little bit older due to the stress of trying to fly on an airline where the staff is working against you, instead of with you (notice I did not say for you, even though they should work for us as we pay our hard earned money. I would settle for working with me at this point).

I have said this before but, I hate American Airlines. Not just for wasting my time though. American Airlines represents everything I hate about the state of air travel and service businesses at large in America.

Note To American Airlines Execs:

Have you guys given up? I know the industry is rough right now, but that does not mean that you should shut down all customer relations and service and scrape along the bottom giving the bare minimum to your customers. As a marketer (and consumer), I know the power of positive perception, and how much a mere acknowledgment can mean.

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eBrick and Mortar

Velaro eCommerce Solution- SaasWhy is it that many online retailers have not adhered to the same standards that have been set offline? Technology has played a large role in this, but we are getting to the point where this is not longer an excuse.

I saw a press release today from Velaro. It got me thinking about the state of eCommerce and the growing number of companies that are creating SaaS soultions. As a thank you for getting me thinking, I am going to focus on some of the things that Velaro is doing right (and I need to mention one thing they are doing wrong. Guys, your demo video does not appear to be embeddable. If it were, I would have posted it and gotten additional eyeballs on it at no cost. Am I missing the embed code?)

  • Co-browsing

    • Offer your online visitors hands-on assistance whenever they need it! Co-browsing allows you to co-navigate with your visitors, leading them through pages and forms. When your agent navigates to a new page, the visitor is brought to that same page. When the visitor navigates to a new page, your agent will also be brought to the same page



  • Click To Call

    • Allow your customers to decide the best way to interact with you! Jupiter Research states that "over 90% of online visitors prefer human interaction" and with Click-to-Call, your visitors are given that human interaction with the opportunity to request an automatic phone call from one of your online agents



  • Live Chat

    • Engage the right visitor at the right time by providing immediate service at the time of need! With over seven years of experience in the Live Chat market, Velaro understands the importance of engaging website visitors in new and exciting ways. Live Chat is a quick and easy way for you to interact with your customers and to let them know you care about all their needs




The beauty of these services is that they work with regular web standards. No java or applets!

There is more, but I am not in the business of selling (and this is not a sponsored post). Head over to the Velaro site and check out Liveinfluence. It is pretty compelling!

Photo Sharing For Dummies/Photo Cloud Computing

I love this guy!


I have seen this type of video for other social media related platforms and I think they are great! For all of us in the fishbowl, this is common sense. In order for us to break out of the fishbowl it is our job to educate. This is when social media will fully realize it's potential!


Have a look:







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Is Google Making Us Better Marketers ?

Is Google Making Us Better Marketers ?


I just got done reading an article in Ad Age entitled “Google Pricing System Plagues Players Like P&G”. One of the main tenets of the article is, due to the fact that Google’s pricing model was not set up for advertisers to achieve economies of scale, large CPG’s cannot achieve the same type of competitive advantage when buying media from Google and other search engines.


This article also speaks of the branding effect of search engines. Impressions on search engines are still not considered valuable to many marketers, but the ones that do consider impressions valuable (I am included in this camp from time to time) sometimes find themselves in a bit of a pickle. If you are buying search merely for impressions, your click through rate will probably be low and your quality score will be negatively affected. It becomes imperative to write compelling copy, bid on relevant terms and bring users to a relevant landing page; all of which result in a higher click through rate and potentially less impressions.


So far I have demonstrated how Google is making us better marketers by:




  • Forcing us to be more strategic

    • We can no longer rely on scale economics alone to get the message across to a large number of people



  • Ensuring we write more effective copy

    • Witty taglines don’t always cut it on Google



  • Making us be relevant to consumers

    • Need I say more?




Google Is Also Forcing All Of Us To Create Media


Pretend for a moment you are a toothbrush manufacturer. You may say to yourself, “I am not a media producer, and why should I be?” Sure, as a toothbrush manufacturer you have created witty commercials, but you paid your fancy Madison Avenue ad agency millions of dollars to do so, and you cannot afford to do it often.


In the slides below you can see how Oral B decided to fulfill the need for content and it seems to be beneficial. Not only is Oral B able to provide more than one reason to go to their site, their content helps to gain visibility on search engines.


Branded content is all the rage these days, but Google and other engines are forcing brands to create both text based and multimedia content if they want to be discovered, and as a result, marketers are adding more value to their consumers than ever before.





The World Wide Social Network

The interactive nature of the web makes it inherently social. It is my contention that one will not realize the true potential of the web if they simply treat is as a magazine on a screen. In fact, I feel one will never realize the true potential of the web if there is not some type of conversation embedded somewhere in the experience they are creating for the web.


The web is a social engine. A really, really big social engine!


A few months ago I wrote a post entitled, "Google: The Web Is Your Facebook". Looking back, this was a silly title for a post, but I cannot change it(you have to love the permanence of the web!).


I started the post by saying:


"when everyone has a blog (or something tantamount to a home base) and can easily push and pull data to applications of their choice (in a well structured web), will we even need Facebook?"


In a short few months my thinking has ballooned significantly! This is not about Facebook, Google, MySpace or any other technology. This shift in the way we view the web is a sociological, psychological, anthropological (and some other -ogical's) shift in the way we view technology.


Okay Adam, What The Hell Is Your Point!


The reason that I am on this tirade today is that Google (once again) has made a significant announcement in the progression of the web-as-social network. Have a look at this video. I realize he gets a little bit technical and this may be a bit tough for the faint of heart but keep in mind that I too have only basic HTML skills. It is the concepts that you really need to grasp, not the code.





The most compelling enhancements to iGoogle are based on the ability to pull in contacts and get updates on their activities (can someone say Facebook Newsfeed).


Essentially what Google seems to be doing is creating a window into the world wide social network!



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The Virtual World is Upon Us; But It May Not be What You Thought

The hype cycle for virtual worlds seems to have come and gone for many marketers and members of the media. For those dismissive of virtual worlds I have one thing to say, hold on tight, the future is upon us!


Last October I wrote a post entitled, "6 Thing That Second Life and Facebook Have In Common". I was intentionally being provocative and got a little bit of pushback on these claims. Well, I am back with similar thinking and wish to reiterate the some definition of the word "virtual" that I laid out in the comments section of the aforementioned post:



  • Adj. Computer Science Created, simulated, or carried on by means of a computer or computer network: virtual conversations in a chatroom.

  • Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name


As you can see, the word "virtual" has no inextricable connection to 3D graphics, persistence or Furries :) (look it up if you have to)


Get To The Point Sir!


A partnership has been announced by two bleeding edge companies; SeeSaw and LocaModa. The result it an even more bleeding edge media reality (and a tremendous amount of opportunity for marketers)!


SeeSaw defines itself as:


SeeSaw is the most extensive network of digital out-of-home media having aggregated 36 digital signage networks across 25 different categories of locations into a comprehensive national network with 22,000 venues nationally and growing.


LocaModa defines itself as:


LocaModa connects people and places. The company's social platform enables people to access and control media in their favorite places, bringing location experiences to the web and web experiences to locations. LocaModa connects people in bars, cafes, colleges, public spaces and conferences.


Combined the two companies aim to marry digital out of home with mobile social networking; creating an experiential platform for consumers and marketer's alike.


According to Monte Zweben, co-founder and chairman of the board of SeeSaw Networks;


"The mixture of digital signage, the Web and mobile devices extends an advertiser's investment in impressions to engage a larger community of people through viral marketing opportunities on social networks...with LocaModa's mobile social platform, an impression on a digital sign can turn into a conversation among the people at a location, the people monitoring a location online, and ultimately through the people connected as friends on social networks."


When combining all of these factors, the result is nothing short of a basic definition on virtual world, only this experience does not take place in a purely digital environment. This experience is housed by the physical world. While I am sure I can get into examples of the tremendous opportunities this creates for marketers, I will hold off for now. I would however love to hear your thoughts.


In Other Virtual World News


Sociotown has launched a browser based virtual world. Other virtual worlds such as Second Life suffer from high barriers to entry due to heavy clients and the necessity for a large amount of computing power. Perhaps the browser based virtual world will be able to capture more attention due to it's ease of access.





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It’s Not The Mobile Web, It’s The Web

I just got done reading a post on Read/Write web that has me all a twitter. The post is entitled,

“Is the Mobile Web Dead? Some Mobile Entrepreneurs Say Yes”

The post speaks of how ex-Yahoo! Mobile evangelist turned startup entrepreneur Russell Beattie announced that he is folding his company Mowser, a service that lets you view the Web on your mobile phone. Here is a quote from Beattie as to why this decision was made,
"I don't actually believe in the 'Mobile Web' anymore, and therefore am less inclined to spend time and effort in a market I think is limited at best, and dying at worst. I'm talking specifically about sites that are geared 100% towards mobile phones and have little to no PC web presence. Two years ago I was convinced that the mobile web would continue to evolve in the West to mimic what was happening in countries like Japan and Korea, but it hasn't happened, and now I'm sure it isn't going to.

In other words, I think anyone currently developing sites using XHTML-MP markup, no Javascript, geared towards cellular connections and two inch screens are simply wasting their time, and I'm tired of wasting my time."



A few take-aways:




  • Anyone who is creating a service that is only geared for mobility is missing the boat.

  • The notion of the “mobile web” is a farce.


 


The Experience Is the Message


To deem the web browsing experience on a mobile phone as something entirely separate from the experience on a PC is a grievous error. Sure, any service that is going to be viewed on a mobile device must be appropriated for such an experience, but those who do not take into account the fact that people want their data wherever they are, on whatever device they are on, are grossly mislead.


At the onset of the mobile computing era many believed that the handset needed its own software and standards separate from the ones created for the desktop. While it is true that there needs to be differences in presentation and experience, all data needs to reside in the same cloud. This is especially true for personal data in order to create a truly useful, transmedia experience. This is the type of experience that consumers in the next phase of the web will come to demand.


How Do We Market When The Experience Is The Message?


According to eMarketer, total mobile ad spend worldwide will hit $19 billion by the year 2012. $6.5 billion of that is projected to be spent in the US market. The important question is, how will this money be spent?


In order to get a clearer picture of percent growth year over year, I took eMarketer’s data and created the following chart.


 


 



As you can see the largest percent growth year over year (on average) will be in the search sector, followed by messaging. While this may come as no surprise to some, I feel that these numbers support the argument that mobile is an extension of the web at large, as opposed to being its own entity. Search and messaging have much greater potential to lead back to an experience where a user session is longer, and potentially more transactional. As a marketing vehicle it has always been my contention that the mobile device is best suited for extended direct response programs and CRM functions. Many advertisers today are using the mobile space for branding exercises. This is a reaction to the common (but fleeting) notion of the mobile web as an experience separate from the web at large.


When the experience is the message, marketing must become am exercise in adding value to the end user. The advertising paradigm has shifted to the point where experiences are more influential than impressions, and more easy for marketers to create.

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Hey You, Get Off Of My Cloud!


I was a little late to the blogging game (at least in comparison to the David Armano's of the world), but I have been doing it for quite some time.


 I feel that things are coming full circle today. One of my first posts in 2006 was called, "The Magical Disappearing Desktop" (this was pre A Media Circ.us). I was at Supernova in San Francisco when it became quite apparent that the notion of local computing was becoming obsolete.


At the time I could not have predicted that the notion of cloud computing would become so popular so quickly, and that it would make the headlines of such major publications as Businessweek within two years, but I knew it would be a big deal. (for things I am tagging on this subject, check back at this link periodically http://del.icio.us/platter/%22cloud%2Bcomputing%22).


Last night I had dinner with Jeremy Beyda, Real Estate Mogul (and soon to be interactive marketing superstar) and the product SugarSync came up. We began talking about the future of cloud computing and the convergence of information and the divergence of hardware.


Here are some slides I posted this past summer:









Today I came across a video from CloudTrade demonstrating  their new product. It set me back on the path of interest that began a few years ago. With products like Google Docs becoming more popular, the realization of cloud computing for the masses is imminent.


The question is, how much of this cloud will be governed by Google?


How many of these new start-ups already have their exit strategy in mind (sell to Google)?


It is very exciting for me to watch the progression into a clouded world. I, for one have had to many local issues, and lost too much data as a result of local computing to want our current method of computation to continue as is.


Bring on the cloud!






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Mobile Discovery: What Is It Really Going To Take?

I feel as though I have heard (and admittedly said) the words, "this is the next big thing, it is huge in Asia" a thousand times. This statement is of course in reference to the Quick Response (QR) codes or 2D bar codes.


A few questions to ask are, why have response codes not taken off in the US? What is it going to take take to proliferate this technology? Is it possible that the fact that this is huge in Asia is merely a sociological difference and this type of activity will never be that popular in the US?


I found this case study today that sheds some light on these questions. Let me know what you think.






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Who Says You Can't Make Mistakes!

A few days ago, under the pressures of work and urban living I lashed out against a company with a series of harsh tweets (twitter posts for the uninformed). This company was having technical issues and people were receiving a mass influx of email. It was pretty annoying!

A day or so later I received a very personal email with a sincere apology and an offer. This company creates custom search engines and offered to make me one (I thought that was kind of cool). I turned around and acknowledged their integrity and would like to share their official apology:

Three days ago we experienced a critical technical problem with our hosting company. One of the mail servers kept running a script which resulted with some people receiving a huge amount of emails form Joongel.

We are extremely sorry for all the inconvenience caused. We didn't mean to cause any harm to anybody.

We have found out what was the problem and fixed it. Our hosting company caused
us a lot of damage and we will make sure this will never happen again.

Please accept our sincere apology.

Dror Ceder
Co-founder

In case you have not guessed it, the company is Joongel.

Now, I want to be clear. This is not an invite for people to go out and annoy people and apologize in hopes of getting a loving blog post, but in this case I think Joongel is doing a good job of cleaning up their mess and I appreciate it, therefore I am helping them out.

I will be putting up a badge so you can try out the official A Mediacirc.US search bar. I would love some feedback (I am sure Joongel would love it too)