Android App Store Has Me Thinking...

I just read about the Android App store, and while I found it very compelling, there is no need for me to be yet another blogger covering this topic. I was inspired though, and felt compelled to think about the ramifications of the proliferation of apps and what it means for our media ecosystem. I then put my David Armano hat on (okay, so I use stock .ppt graphics...so what!) and attempted to convey how the new media landscape has shifted in light of the new service economy.

In today's media lanscape it is not enough to provide good content (after all, we are the content much of the time) and secure good distribution (it is largely free online). In today's media landscape, it is just as important how content is received, and what value added services can bring to the experience of consumption.

Here is what I see the shift looking like:

The Old Media Paradigm

The New Media Paradigm

Armano, if you are picking up what I am putting down and can do better with the imagery- I owe you a beer :)

Information+Services=Ubiquity

There has been a large disconnect in the way the web works.

  • On one hand, we have information-and we have a lot of people creating various types of information in a variety of formats that do not necessarily work together in a seamless fashion.

    • Many of the people creating information are not web savvy and do not care to be-many journalists, video producers and other content creators or more concerned with their trade (content) and have no time to deal with the inner working of the web. To a point, I don't blame them



  • On the other hand we service providers

    • While very compelling and cutting edge, what good are software platforms with no information.

      • Facebook, Gmail and Yahoo are nothing without people



    • We in the tech world talk a lot about web services as the concept is relatively new-but they are not the end all




Mozilla is working to solve all this. Long live Firefox!


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Making Social Marketing Healthy and Balanced

Yesterdays blog post spoke about whether or not social media can drive a campaign for consumer packaged goods. In the comments section I responded to Jeremy Beyda by saying that value needs to be added to mundane products in order to stir up conversation. People are not going to simply talk about Crest without any additional compelling reason--why would they?

Today I saw this headline in Mediapost, "Old Orchard Using Social Media For Low-Sugar Lines". I got excited thinking I would have another social media campaign to discuss. I began to poke around the Healthy Living site as well as the blog and realized that the writer for Mediapost had put a spin on a press release that was not really implicit in the release itself.

I took a number of screenshots of the site and search results pages to see how well the campaign was doing (see presentation below...in order to see comments you will have to click through to Flickr) and I have to say that Old Orchard is missing the boat (we will see if they are at least listening to the conversation and respond to this post).

Here are some things I don't like about the campaign;

  • NO RSS!

    • If a tree falls in the forest and does not make a sound, did it really fall? If a site has no RSS, is it a blog?



  • No Distributed Web Strategy

    • This is along the same lines as RSS. I see no sign of carrying the conversation to social networks or anywhere that would make this conversation more visible. A microsite without a distributed strategy is like a picnic with no wine (sort of...well, let's just say it is bad)



  • No Social Media Release


I hate to bash this campaign because they are doing so many great things for Diabetes (which hits close to home). Still, there is so much more they could have done. If the folks at Old Orchard want to give me a call, I would be happy to talk to you!

Can Consumer Packaged Goods Survive On Social Media?

I am always happy when I see a large CPG brand launch in an unconventional manner. Furthermore, I will always root for a brand that goes out on a limb and dips it toes into social marketing. Still, just because your efforts are deemed social does not guarantee success.

Earlier this month (I am not sure exactly when, I found out about this story in Ad Age a few days ago) P&G's Crest began marketing Crest Weekly Clean to bloggers and mom's. With little support from traditional advertising, Crest is looking to garner buzz in the social media arena.

A did a number of searches for Crest Weekly Clean and so far have come up with with one blog (the post is great) and one twitter mention. I also saw the mention on a number of blogs that had more ads than content.

I am hoping (for Crest's sake) that this is just the beggining. My concern is that if nothing is done to further market this product, it will be discontinued before it has the chance to gain traction.

Any further insight about this initiative would be appreciated!

Save Friendster!

I am sure that all of you out there remember the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but how many of you remember Friendster? There are probably not as many of you that remember Friendster, but those of you that do probably have fond memories of it. In fact, you are probably still a member. How many of you remember seeing MySpace for the first time after having been a member of Friendster for a while and thinking, "sure, this site does cool things, but man is it ugly!".

Here are some interesting facts about Friendster that I was not aware of:

  • Friendster currently has 75MM users worldwide

  • Friendster is the number one social network in Asia

  • Friendster is the 9th largest website in the world with 22.1 billion page views a month


Friendster is not dead! In fact, today Friendster made a big annoucement.

Friendster has announced it has deployed the OpenSocial standard application programming interfaces (APIs) as part of the Friendster Developer Program. The fact that Friendster has lasted as long as it has tells me one thing; it is not about the platform, it is about the people.

Many of us who used Friendster connected with old friends and family, that is what made it great. Sure, you can do the same thing on Facebook, and yes they may do a better job. Still, at the end of the day it is the social connections that make the platform meaningful.

Ben Stein, take it away!

Believe It Or Not, Conversations Happen In The Real World Too!

I have been extremely interested in geo-spatial technologies, location aware devices and augmented reality for quite some time. Much of my interest in these topics has been purely theoretical. Everything is changing rather rapidly.

Thanks to the iPhone (and other location aware devices of course) and companies like Loopt, what is commonly known as "the conversation" by social media practitioners is beginning to come to the physical world. Through the marriage of location aware devices and geographic plugins to social software, the idea of social media has taken on new meaning. Implied data (based on location) is now being brought into things like the Facebook news feed.

Today Skyhook Wireless, maker of the Wi-Fi Positioning System and XPS 2.0, the hybrid positioning system announced that they would be integrating neighborhood boundary data from Urban Mapping, Inc., the leading provider of location-rich content for interactive applications.

I found this video on CNET that explains the basis behind Loki. The video is extremely dated, but it is very interesting to look back at what people were concepting in 2006, and how these concepts are coming to life today.



What does this mean for marketers?

These new technologies have implications on many areas of interactive marketing:

  • Search

    • No longer does search marketing solely apply to optimizing data to be found online. Search marketers must begin to consider optimizing data for location seekers

    • New search engines like Krillion are will be providing consumers with more locally based data



  • Consumer Review and Social Networking

    • Marketers should also be paying attention to companies like Whrrl, where consumers have the ability to share reviews in real time




Many times have I said, "the conversation is going on about your brand with or without you". New location based technologies present new challenges for marketers trying to Join The Conversation.

It will be interesting to see how marketers deal with this new phenomenon.

So Long As I Blog I Shall Never Walk Alone



Those of us that blog on a regular basis know that blogging can change your life, it has changed mine.

What are my favorite things about blogging you ask:

  • Collaboration

    • Often times blog posts come as a result of something that I have read on another blog and I feel I need to add to the pool of knowledge

    • Often times I write a new post based on comments on an older post



  • New Industry Contacts

    • Conversation Agent recently made a list of notable agency blogs and I was left off (*sigh*).

    • I did not know David Berkowitz prior to blogging, but through much banter, conferences and jewhavioral targeting we are now friends (thanks for the shout on conversation agent)



  • New Friends



For those of you that are still on the sidelines, what are you waiting for, the water is fine.

Just remember:

  • As Jaffe says (and I quote without attribution :) ); Social Media Is A Commitment

    • I have been writing this blog a few times a week (at least) for the last three years and I am not on any top 25 lists.


    • NONE OF THAT IS THE POINT

    • I am committed to this blog and the longer I stick with it, the more prosperous it becomes (on many levels).

      • Imagine a brand that showed this type of commitment to it's consumers






Anyhow, for those of you that read this blog, thanks for sticking with me. I love and appreciate of all of you!

IBM's Social Media Press Release In The Clouds


Pretend for a moment you are a press agent for IBM and your boss comes in and says, "the company has decided to invest a significant amount of money in cloud computing. Make some noise for us".

Your options are:




  1. Compose a press release aimed at early adopters (geeks) who know and care about cloud computing

    • potential outcome: a minor ripple is made in the technocratic news pond



  2. Compose a grandiose press release aimed at the mainstream media discussing how IBM is investing in the future of computing

    • potential outcome: it could go many ways;

      • the press may pick it up and go digging to learn about cloud computing only to learn that this is something they have covered before

      • being a Friday in the middle of the summer the press may ride IBM's cloud to the beach

      • the press may call bullshit, feeling they have been duped with a grandiose headline that they do not feel is anything new





  3. Compose a well rounded Social Media Press Release packed with the following:

    • Links to definitions of more obscure tech terms

    • A cost effective video uploaded to YouTube (embedded in the release) that explains cloud computing and the reason that it is important for the future of computing

      • potential outcome:

        • Tech journalists/bloggers are interested because moves by IBM are significant no matter what they are.

          • The story is picked up



        • Non Tech journalists/bloggers are interested for the same reason

          • The story is picked up



        • The notion of cloud computing is introduced to a new constituent who may equate cloud computing with IBM

          • The story is potentially picked up, but more important, an important impression is made



        • Conclusions are drawn that IBM had not thought of, and the multimedia assets are spread across the web and the river of news flows into an ocean of buzz










Can Anyone Be A Social Media Marketer?

What is the required skill set to become a "social media marketer" (a title that I am not sold on, but will use for lack of a better one)?

This is not a new question. In fact, this questions has been asked more times over the past few years than I care to recount, but the fact of the matter is that the space is reaching an age of maturity whereby we need some standards.

Are these the standards;

  1. A Facebook account and a copy of The Cluetrain Manifesto
    The Cluetrain Manifesto

  2. Some SEO chops and access to PRWebPR Web

  3. Web design skills and the knowledge of what an API is      Not An API

  4. Over 5000 Twitter followers     

  5. A blog with a Technorati ranking above 200

  6. Spending a lot of time on Plurk talking about Twitter

  7. Have had dinner with Robert Scoble


While the answer to this question is still unclear, one thing I can say with 100% certainty is, the above criteria are not the standards.

I tend to be a purist. I think that if you are a modern marketer you should be, by default a "social media marketer". If you are not, you are simply a poor marketer!

If you were never a marketer to begin with and decided there was a tremendous opportunity (due to lack of knowledge) in the "social media marketing" arena and fulfilled the above criteria, can you then be considered a "social media marketer"?
At the end of the day it does not really matter how you got to become a "social media marketer". The only thing that matters is the quality of work you output.

Those who are passionate and diligent (and of course intelligent) should rise to the top of the stack, but in the interim the onslaught of those claiming to be "social media marketers" is potentially diluting the market and making it difficult for those individuals that are just good old savvy marketers who understand new media.

I would love to hear your thoughts on what makes a "social media marketer" (I know many of you out there have them)

Montenegro Truly Understands The Future Of Social Networking



The Montenegrin independence referendum was a refe­rendum on the independence of the Republic of Montenegro from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro that was held on 21 May 2006.

By June 3rd of that same year Montenegro was declared an independent state. Following their declaration of independence, .me became the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to Montenegro.

Did Montenegro know of the symbolism behind the .me domain?

It has been a long time since I have heard someone refer to a web page as their Personal Home Page.

I remember the days of GeoCities when this notion was popular amongst early adopters of the Internet, but the personal hompage has since been displaced by social networks (at least for the masses).

Is it possible that we will return to the Personal Homepage for the masses as a reaction to the overwhelming sea of social networks?

Perhaps people will grow tired of having too many choices when it comes to social networking, or they will grow weary of oppresive terms of service imposed by instituationalized social networks.

Perhaps people will get sick of not owning their data, and want the ability to take their data with them.

Perhaps people will begin to use tools like Google Friend Connect and build their own Dot Me page.

What do you think? Is this in the cards for the near future?

From Media Planner To Experience Planner

A few days ago I posted about the notion that media planners need to begin to think of their jobs in a more creative light. Media planners also need to start thinking about their jobs as creating experiences.

I recently spoke about this topic at the iBreakfast in NYC. The great folks over at ContextWeb taped the event. I would love to get some feedback!

What Do You Think Of The Facebook Redesign?


I have been doing a lot of thinking about the new Facebook design. It looks a lot to me like FriendFeed (which I use and am a fan of) but I am not sure that this will be popular with the masses. As someone in the industry, I think I may have a different outlook and I wanted to see what the rest of the world is thinking. In an effort to do that, I created this poll.

I was asked some questions by Michael Estrin of iMedia the other day about the recent f8 announcements. Have a look at his article.

From Media Planner To Experience Planner

Those of you that have been following the blog for a while have seen me go through various periods where I have referred to The Experience Web.

  • As the web becomes more highly immersive (due to increasing broadband speeds and new technologies) point to point to point interactions are becoming more prevalent.

    • The web is becoming less of a platform for purely delivering information and more of a platform where ideas can be shared in real time.

      • The result is digitally mediated experiences that were never before possible in electric media





  • From Media Planner To Experience Planner

    • Media professionals need to adapt to the changing nature of the web

      • They need to look beyond the spreadsheet at times



    • By leveraging a variety of media flavors, highly engaging experiences can be created both online and off (the cross section of the two is potentially the most compelling)






Tomorrow morning I will be speaking at the iBreakfast in NYC about the need for media planners to begin to think of their jobs in a more creative manner; one that is capable of creating human experiences.

Hopefully you can join me. If so, please come and say hi afterwards.

Join The Podcamp Boston 3 Twitter Contest!

Go here to enter:

http://twitter.com/pcb3

Here are my entries:Oovoo: Good To The Last Drop
MarketWire: Not Your Fathers Press Wire
mDialog: Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t!
Utterz: The Other White Meat
Blubrry.com: There is no wrong way to eat one
MarketProfs: They’re Grrrrrreat!
CC Chapman: You Better Run For The Border
Blip.TV: They Love To See You Smile
Blue Sky Factory: See What Blue Can Do For You
mZinga: I’m Loving It
Oovoo: You Are Free To Move About The Country
Utterz: Beyond Petroleum
Mashable: We Bring Good Things To Life
MatchMine: Once You Pop The Fun Don’t Stop
Utterz: So easy a caveman can do it
C.C. Chapman: High Performance, Delivered
C.C. Chapman:World-Wide Partnerships. World-Class Solutions.
C.C. Chapman:Who are you?
C.C. Chapman:Your Source of Digital Inspiration.
C.C. Chapman:Your Potential. Our Passion. CC.
C.C. Chapman:Welcome to the Next Level.
C.C. Chapman:Imagination at Work.
C.C. Chapman:Touching is good
C.C. Chapman:Seamless mobility
C.C. Chapman:For a better world for you
C.C. Chapman:Hello Moto

Getting Lively At Podcamp Boston 3



I will be headed to Podcamp Boston 3 next week to speak with some real social media rockstars. I have to admit, I am pretty excited about sharing ideas with Doug Haslam, Philip Robertson and the Co-Founder of the Bald Marketing Rockstars (will this joke ever get old...or funny for that matter :) ) Sir Greg Verdino himself!

crayon, Greg's agency has put together a very cool program with oovoo that will help bring 20 students to Podcamp. Although vague, I do remember what money was like in college, so this program is very cool!

Finally, I am thinking of having a Lively meetup during Podcamp. Everyone is try to make sense of what Google is up to with Lively, and what better way to explore the platform than to have a little meetup within a meetup to play around with the platform and have a discussion about it.

What does everyone think; lunch, laptops and Lively?

Shoot me an email or comment here if you are interested. Even if you cannot be at Podcamp you can still take part, as it is a virtual world.

Open Virtual; A Google 20% Production

Thanks to Brad Berens for bringing this to my attention as I was ready to leave the office and get in an early night. Thanks for keeping me up all night Brad! :)

Anyhow, I was alerted to Lively by Brad via Read Write Web and had no choice but to jump right in. Rather than writing a lengthy analysis (you can go to RWW for that) I decided to document my initial travels through the virtual world as I attempt to set up shop for A Media Circus.

For now I am only going to make a few high level points, but you can be sure you will hear more about this from me in the future!

That is all of the commentary that I am offering right now. I hope that you enjoy my PPT and would love for everyone to stop by A Virtual Media Circus. Look over to you left in the sidebar, just click on it and you are in!





Breaking News: Emerging Platforms Becomes Old Hat

Is Mediapost kidding!

At around noon today I received one of Mediapost's "Breaking News" newsletters, the title of which made me cringe and let out a little yelp of pain/nausea that resounded softly throughout my office. The title of this newsletter is, "Interpublic: Social Is Fastest Growing Emerging Medium; Search Is Slowing".

Did my day really have to be interrupted by this nonsense?

Of course I felt compelled to comment on this after seeing it, as this is the type of headline that makes phones ring over here in agency land, and the questions are often as ridiculous as this headline.

It is not just the headline I take issue with, it is the content and projections as. Here is what I mean:

Statement

While growing of a much smaller base, Magna's Wieser said emerging media nonetheless appear to be slowing down, especially online search, which he projects will grow only 24.0% next year. While still healthy by traditional media ad growth standards, Wieser said it represents a slowdown from 26.5% growth in 2007 and 29.5% in 2006.

Reaction

How tragic, only 24% growth in search! I know the analyst is only doing his job but anyone who takes 24% growth as alarming (especially in the search space) as something negative probably needs to take a Quaalude!

...and another thing, if emerging platforms are seeing growth, when do they cease to be emerging? Where is the cut off line here?

Statement

The fastest growing of the emerging media platforms tracked by Magna, he said, is social media, which includes both social networks and applications like ad-supported widgets

Reaction

Does this mean that we can expect an onslaught of new, "me too" applications and widgets or does this mean that we will actually start seeing some integrated social strategies that involve true conversation and collaboration? Of course the answer is most likely the former, but are social networks, applications and widgets the beginning and end of social media?

Of course not!

...and one more thing, since when is being social an emergent behavior. I know I am being overly pedantic, but I just hate these stats :)

In the end, this type of thing should really not get me all riled up. After all, I still have my health!

Google Takes Cookies To The Dry Cleaner



As we all know, cookies have been an integral part of interactive marketing since it's inception. Privacy issue's surrounding cookies have been disputed for a long time, and Google has been very careful with it's use of cookies as well as other third party ad serving technologies.

Over the last few months Google has been making some exciting moves in the advertising space. Some of them had me wondering, "has hell frozen over?"

The first move by Google was their announcement that adsense publishers would be allowed to serve ads unsing third party ad servers; and when there are third party ad servers, there are third party cookies!

The other, more recent annoucement was Google's new media planning tool, Ad Planner. The tool leverages data from the Google toolbar (and other sources) in order to help media planners ad sites to their plans based on demographics, geographics and most interesting, co-visitation habits.

In light of all of these changes that are taking place inside the Googleplex, many are beginning to question Google's ability to remain "unevil". As a result Google has been spending some time educating consumers on their privacy policies (which are now on the Google homepage).

In light of all of this education about privacy, I thought it would be fitting to post a video created by Google in January about the use of cookies. I am sure most of you reading this are familiar with all this info, but I thought it would be fun to bring this video to the surface, given that Google is now operating more heavily in third party cookieland.

Why I Don’t Care That Googlebot Can Crawl Flash



While I do not claim to be an SEO guru, and am not a developer, I have been in this space long enough, and have enough web chops to know that the announcement made yesterday by Google and Adobe is not a step forward in the progression of the web. Here is why:

1. The "Because You Can" Syndrome Destroys Lives

a.       Why do brand marketers and advertisers create experiences online?

  1. Well, sometimes it is to do commerce.  Other times it is to create engaging platforms to immerse consumers, but neither of these reasons require a 5 minute flash intro to a brand site that has nothing to do with the core selling proposition for a given brand. All too often I run into people who do flashy things because they can- and not because they should.


b.      Brand Marketers and Advertisers- read your bounce rates as they are the voices of consumers!

  1. I am not saying that pure flash environments inherently provide a poor user experience. What I am saying is that many who use Flash tend to exploit it to the point where usability it sacrificed. This is however something good taste can rectify :)


2. Open Standards Make The Whole World Sing

a.       No one of us is as great as all of us (a good friend taught me that, you know who you are)!

  1. We have already seen what happens when standards are open. I hate anything that even remotely signifies a step away from open standards and the possibility for collaboration.


3. I Want To Keep The Dream Of The Semantic Web Alive

a.       I long for the day when the World Wide Web is the World Wide Social Web. When things such as XFN, FOAF and Microformats are common place. I long for a day when the way our data is enclosed has meaning in it (in addition to the data itself). It seems that pure flash environments bring us further away from that dream