Random Spew

Wanted to wrap up this blog with some loose bits that have been sloshing around but not quite made it out yet. Sufficiently nauseated? Let's begin:

1) The concept of "friend" is becoming more hazy. Friends used to a group of people like us. (That or a crappy ensemble comedy). When digital culture appropriated the term "friend" it made the whole idea muddy. Our social graph differs widely even between social networks. A keynote speaker broke down the new concept of "friend" into six new categories (from least to most intimate. Meow!)

Address Book Friend

Twitter Friend

Facebook Friend

SMS Friend

Phone Call Friend

Calendar Friend

2)  Something goes viral because it is perceived as a means of  identity creation for the individual. We don't share things out of a general sense of agape. Something gets forwarded because the person sending it views it as a building block of their desired identity. 

3) A good title and thumbnail matter hugely for viralbility. 

4) Marketers misfire with branded entertainment because they are used to purchasing cultural relevance in the offline world. That's how a traditional ad functions. An advertiser crafts the message then buys the necessary impressions to persuade. In the online world it works differently. Content providers like "The Onion" are surprisingly eager to work with advertisers. But they are dead-set against becoming a whore-ish bullhorn for the advertiser. A sense of honesty as well as an alignment between brand-story and entertainment-story are the price of successful entry here.

5) Some geographies are better suited for institutional upheaval. New York is a city defined and monetized by institutions. San Francisco is defined and monetized by individual accomplishment (one guy. one idea. one computer.) This would seem to give San Francisco the edge in current economic times. And lay out a challenge to New York to define itself beyond the hallowed, travertine lobby concerns that have typified us for centuries.

6) Some information wants to be free. Some information wants to be very expensive. This is a loose paraphrase of futurist Stewart Brand. It describes the market forces surrounding information technology and is typical of the debate on how and when to charge money for usage. It calls into question the very definition of "free".  With so many open source codes emerging for free, why pay anything? Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems answered that question somewhat famously when he scoffed that open source is "free like a puppy is  free." The acquisition cost may be nothing. You grab the puppy and leave. But the subsequent costs can be enormous. The parallels to advertising seem many. Consider online services like openpitch.com (a site that links marketers with anybody who is willing to ante up ideas for no charge). Or the doomsday scenario offered by ad pundits where marketers simply crowdsource ad creation. The real question isn't the ad agency fee. But rather the cost of handing your brand over to the uneducated and unaccountable. Then again, maybe it's not an either/or scenario. Consider China—the word's largest market for pirated luxury brands and real luxury brands. Maybe, as professional ad creators, we just got bumped up. Maybe we're providers of a vital and rarefied luxury called "knowing what the fuck works". Hopefully.

That's it for this year's tedium. Join me next year for more.

Where?

If Twitter was the social network that answered the seemingly trivial question of “What are you doing” then GPS enabled mobile devices seem poised to script the logical follow-up question: “Where are you doing it?” The first apps out of the gate are Loopt, 4Square and BrightKite. On the surface they allow you to track friends in proximity to you. In dense, urban areas it has an appeal. (How many times in New York have you been a block away from a good friend and just not known it? Plenty.) The benefit that streams from location awareness is called “augmented reality”. Which only means extracting greater value from knowing everything and everyone around you.

The first panel discussion on this subject was on mobile advertising. A recent survey of media analysts pegged advertising on mobile phones to be the #1 most interuptive. (Just so you know, they mean “interuptive” in a good way.) By wedding mobile advertising with a precise knowledge of where the user is, what results is advertising that is location specific. (e.g. you’re in a movie theater and you get an SMS from Kit-kat.) This could mark a shift away from context based advertising of the past (where a google search would yield relevant banners on the right-hand side) to a totally location based model.

It seems invasive and annoying. But there was definitely discussion in all of these forums on “done wrong” vs. “done right”. The difference being a fair exchange of some kind. You might be walking by a Gap. Maybe you like shopping there, so message from this brand would be less invasive. Add to that an SMS from Gap with a 30% off coupon on your iphone screen and suddenly a pestering text becomes a welcome savings. But that’s just the first blush thinking on this. Ultimately creative minds have to engage on how location becomes suprising and entertaining as part of that exchange.

A lot of the fine points have yet to be sorted out. But a few things seem likely:

1) Locations will be bid on. Particularly buildings occupied by multiple business (like a mall). Winning bidders will own that location for some daypart. By splitting it up into dayparts, smaller businesses have a shot at some inventory as well.

2) Path History is everything. Not simply “Where are you now?” but rather “Where have you been all day?” It was pretty widely agreed this information would be highly valuable. GPS phones collect that data.

3) Consumers will be bid on. Knowing where you go routinely, creates the idea of a personal CPM (cost per message). Each of us will have an assigned dollar value based on our path history.

4) The mobile phone as credit card. The itunes music store made itunes a purchasing agent. Soon you will be able to aim your phone at an item and buy it at the location.

5) If you offer some kind of added value, consumers are typically ok with it. Garmin offers a trade-off : Free traffic information for life (something they traditionally charge for) in exchange for some unintrusive, location-based banner ads that don’t pop up while you’re trying to navigate. Very popular.

6) Location targeting will soon be aimed at laptops.

7) Cars are not far away from being able to drive themselves. (No shit!)

8) A company called Moximity is creating a GPS (in beta and only in Austin now) app that will share your path history with a select group of friends as a way of passively socializing purchases. Say, you see one of your friends go to to “Supper” in the East Village twice in one week. You can glean this information from their path history. Maybe it prompts a discussion about the restaurant. Or a visit.

From all of this, powerful privacy issues emerge. I have to say there seems to be a strong age polarity between those concerned with privacy and those who could give a shit. You never see a 22-year old hipster whining about Big Brother in any of these panel discussions. It’s typically someone my age (but heavier, more bearded, sporting Allen Ginsberg’s face on a t-shirt) who seems uber concerned about the conspiracy to enslave humanity that so obviously is behind all this. But there are failsafe’s programmed in by Loopt and others that demonstrate a healthy concern with privacy. Among them

- Always allow the consumer to opt in. They turn it on. They shut it off. Being location visible is a choice.

- Remind the user he/she is visible in case they forget.

- Allow the consumer to program “black holes." Areas that are completely private and not subject to tracking.

- Don’t sell location history.

Managing Social Networks

I'd wager none of us are going to start a social network beyond the analog version of getting face-plantingly drunk across the street at The Frying Pan. So a panel discussion on managing social networks might seem sort of useless. 

But a brand of any size is a social network. There will be devotees and critics. Those with high emotional involvement and those with more casual interest. So the cross-application of user behavior in social networks seems (at least to me) to offer a lot of insight into how brands should manage their social interactions. Maybe I'm stretching the analogy. But I don't think so.

This panel included founders of Fark.com, Reddit.com, Ars Technica and Blogher.com (a website for an emerging crop of digital Bella Abzug's.) Here's what I took away:

1) Twitter search is your friend. Why? Because the heavily invested people can give you a somewhat distorted perception of where your social network (or brand) does right and wrong. Twitter let's you casually poll people with moderate involvement (enough to tweet but not enough to be self-anointed apostles.) The net caution is this: "Beware of the tyranny of well organized minorities".  

2) Communities can be self-policing. One of the big questions for social networks (even bigger for brands) is how much policing to do yourself? The opinion here was that deleting comments certainly isn't capital punishment. And that preventing "flame wars" (hostile and insulting interaction between member users) is critical. But apart from that, it's far more efficient and honest to outsource the defense of your brand.  Every brand will have defenders who are emotionally articulate. I think that's something brands tend to forget.

[Note: Drew Curtis from Fark.com likened a social network to a house party. "Anybody's welcome until somebody takes a dump on the carpet." A timeless thought couched in marble-prose. Just thought I'd share...]

3) The best kind of communities feel small. This was a lightning bolt to me. I feel like every time a brand approaches the idea of social networking, it's always to create a galactic, mega-enormous, visible-from-space kind of experience. What do you end up with? Bunches of sub-topic forums with no posts and a community  that feels like a ghost town. It's no wonder we think this way. Our brains are trained to measure success on the large-scale. The #1 spot on the Super Bowl. "Mass" media. "Big" spots. "Huge" production budgets. 

4) Your community is your evangelist. Any social network or brand is going to have uber-passionate members. So enlist them. Give them titles. Add a "pro" to their membership. E-mail them directly. Let them pilot offshoots. Reddit hands out mini-Reddit's to involved members with sub-genre interests. It requires little institutional management but spreads the word as only brand apostles can.

Comedy On The Web

It came down to either going to a panel discussion about "Comedy on the Web" or attending a seminar on starting my own adult film website. Those who know me, understand how I anguished over this this decision. Ultimately, "Comedy on the Web" won.  The panel was solid. A writer from "Colbert", founders of Break.com and Collegehumor.com and B.J. Novak from "The Office". Mostly this post is just going to be shit the esteemed panel thought was funny that I wanted to pass along. I won't post links. Google will get you there quicker.

1) "Human Giant" It's an MTV show that has good web presence. 

2) "The Tim & Eric Awesome Show" Two of the three guys from the Absolut vodka shorts.

3) "Jake and Amir" A couple of guys who live and work together. 

4) "Flea Market Montgomery" (I think this got passed around the office.)

5) "An honest R&B song"

6) John Lajoie.com (Seen this before but well done.)

This stuff is all hysterical. My favorite, though, is a pseudo cable access talk show called 

"Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis" on funnyordie.com. I have watched the Michael Cera episode close to 500 times. 

The Future of Everything

Saw a keynote address on "The Future of Social Networks". An interesting title since everything here is (in some way) about that subject. It wasn't so much predicting the next Facebook, Flickr or Twitter as it was suggesting how the vast numbers of social networks that already exist are going to begin working together. There's a "social networking fatigue" that's set in. In response, social networks are starting to behave like air molecules. Increasingly, the networks are exhibiting a willingness to leave the sanctity of their own websites to go where users and consumers need them. A few examples:

Facebook Connect/OpenID/OAuth: What these services do is allow a user to manage all of their login user data in one place. No remember 25 different login names and 7 different passwords. Now you can have one user name and one password for everything. These services also provide easy, push-button architecture so you don't have to have a bazillion windows open at once. The generic, tech-nerd descriptor of this movement is "open stack."

Linked-In/Lotus Notes: They've now combined so your business connections can now flow seamlessly into e-mail world.

Ustream.tv/Integra 5 Media Friends: A way of combining live TV with chat. The days of television being a one-way medium are dwindling. Episodic TV will still be watched asynchronously. But live stuff (Presidential debates, sports, shitty "American Idol" type shows) are likely to be enjoyed with a group of friends watching in real time, chatting within the group and voting and responding to the network or show itself. 

Amazon/Retail: Retail sites are combining user relevant nodes on the social graph for product recommends. Essentially what this means is that you won't be taking product advice from some guy living on cans of Del Monte niblets and saving his own urine in pickle jars. But rather, from friends imported from your networks or people close to your mind map. The implication is a better product recommend. Something that works for you better. Though some of my friends have pretty questionable tastes on some subjects. So I might take my chances with the pickle jar dude on occasion.

Google Voice: (Formerly "Grand Central") this app connects all terrestrial phone numbers (Cell, VOIP, land lines whatever) under one phone number of the user's choice.

It's hard to talk about all of these things without also talking about privacy and a user's motivation. Why put yourself more on the grid? Why share all your login info with an open stack app? Why interact with a brand voluntarily? 

First of all, because information about users is already out there anyway. In a lot of cases, you're opting to give out information about yourself that, while not public, is only being asked for as a formality. Harvard University admissions does a stock Google search on every considered applicant. Though, by my estimation, that's more of a risk to somebody named "Mark Koelfgen" then somebody named "Ted Smith".

The second reason is structured rewards. Socialvibe.com allows users to trade a soft endorsement (badge) for an existing brand toward money that can be donated to user chosen charitable causes. So it's a straight line between endorsement and social consciousness.

Third is the ability to op-in and opt-out at will. The Open Stack technology doesn't really memorize your login info per se. And that info can be removed from an OpenID. So the information sharing is not irrevocable.

Fourth is built trust. Users trust Google. Google doesn't' fuck people over. That means something. 

Evil Spec

Wanted to post this link. It's a panel called "Is spec work evil?" There are several new websites that hook up junior designers who need cash with companies who want to circumvent the cost of hiring an agency or design shop (i.e. crowdspring.com). Essentially, designers post turnkey design solutions and slap a $400 price tag on them. This has a lot of agency folks in a lather for obvious reasons. David Carson unloads both shotgun barrels on the crowdspring folks. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQu0292dftA

CAM (Couldn't Agree More...Duh!)

The Kick-Ass Echo Chamber

One of the funniest things I've heard here is an off-the-cuff reference someone made in a panel discussion. It refers to how a room full of bright creative minds can all become wildly enthusiastic about the dumbest idea. It's not untypical to hear overlapping, excitable shouts of "THIS IDEA IS KICKASS!!"It's this energy that can propel an idea past the finish line even though it's mind-numbingly idiotic. She termed it "The Kick-Ass Echo Chamber".  Funny how many things here feel like that. It's hard to sort out which social media inventions really have the explosive potential they promise. And which will be forgotten by next year this time. There is some pretty wide consensus around a few digital entities that merit discussion. 

TWITTER. There was an interesting comment made about how digital culture absorbs new technology. It's generally agreed upon that they 1) First adopt the technology.  2) Then figure out a use for it. This is Twitter all over. I've been a member for a while. But never really did much with it. After all, Facebook coopted the twitter function a while ago. So what's the point? A couple of things happened that made it powerfully relevant again. First, people figured out how to search tweets. So now consumers and brands have a powerful, non-binding, low threshhold way to interact. Example: Nike does a search on "Nike Air Force 1". They read all the tweets. Maybe there's a pattern. The shoelaces won't stay tied. Nike takes a closer look at the shoelaces. And finds out the complaint is absolutely right on. They can replace the faulty laces and a problem gets fixed before it's hardly been realized. Moreover, brands are using tweetbots (programs that search and isolate tweets with key words in them) so they don't need an office full of people monitoring the activity. Jetblue and Dell have resources monitoring and using Twitter as a quick-read, quick-response, quick-message device. Twitter users are beginning to understand that companies are listening. So consumers have adjusted their behavior to include tweeting for purpose of being heard by the respective company. Instead of just tweeting into the ether, they're tweeting into the ether knowing they're being listened to. Dell uses Twitter to push discounted hardware. Jetblue uses it to monitor customer complaints (i.e. sudden gate changes). But they also use it to monitor the competitition (think Southwest Airlines). There is broad consensus about how to use Twitter and how not to use it. In a sentence: Think of it as an infobooth and not a billboard. Companies who fail with it, use it to spam their customers with tweets that don't exchange any value. These brands typically have zero followship. Jetblue has 170K followers. But they are very particular about how they use it. You have to remember that you can't hard sell with Twitter. It's conversation. It's social media. Which begs the obvious question, "can you be social as a brand?" As well as some subsequent questions such as, "who speaks for the brand?" Is it a single person? Do you anthropromorphize the brand somehow? Comcast apparently does an incredible job of managing through Twitter with their Comcastcares Twitter site. 

Another huge aspect of Twitter that's only recently gained vast popularity is hash-tagging. Hash tagging I personally find really fascinating. It's called hash tagging because the code always begins with a #. Think of it as an instantaneous chat room that can be created in about 2 seconds around any subject in the world. In every auditorium I was in, the group would agree on the hash tag. By plugging that code in, we would all be in a twitter room centered around that subject and (in this case) geography. Anyone could tweet questions, jokes, criticisms, whatever. The moderators would grab questions directly off the hash tag forum. #SXSW was the South By Southwest hash tag. By following it I could find out what was happening all over the festival, if there was a room change, where the afterparties were, etc. Twitter has been adapted for mobile devices and with Netbooks in full explosion mode, this thing can only go up.

Check it.

An interesting startup that's doing well. Their service offers  mass text or mass voicemail for the user. Church groups. Fraternities. Pretty much anybody who has to get messaging out to a large-scale but closed group.

Greetings from last year!

The beauty of modern technology, it seems, is that old pictures can be used for new badges. Hence my Tom Arnold era face graces my SXSW badge this year. Either it's my face or a large pie with two tiny raisin eyes thrust in it. I'm unsure which. (As promised, I begin with petty neurosis, then get to the post.) 

Attended a panel discussion about mobilizing online communities. Much of the discussion was actually about monetizing your website idea. So all of you with a big money .com tucked away in your brains take heed. There are some interesting changes in the thinking out there. 

One idea that is rapidly changing is how much to charge users for membership. The old model was really simple: Membership is free. Make all your money with online advertising. This is stone age thinking. If you walk into a venture capitalist with that model in hand, the meeting is pretty much over. Why? Online ad revenue is shrinking. Plus, it's only profitable once you hit critical mass (i.e. get enough users). In addition, what the online community has begun to realize is that people will pay for the littlest things. (Witness iphone apps which often clock in at 99¢.) It's really better to start with a small fanbase who pay a little bit upfront OR make basic membership free but charge something for premium services.

Open thy mental sphincter!

First of all, we're all officially old. I figured that at my first discussion when one of the panelists sniffed that his company had succeeded so quickly largely because "the oldest person working there was 24 years old." I figured I'd begin with my personal neurosis. It's always the best place to start. 

You might not give a fuck who else is here from ad world. But for those interested, I've counted people from Goodby, Wieden, BBH, Saatchi, McCann, Fallon and HP. 

I'm going to try and distill this down to the really potent stuff. I could go on for days. Those of you who have listened to me pontificate on any subject know this all too well. So let me (try) and be brief.

The iphone. This is a monster creation by Apple. And the implications of it stretch far beyond the ipod. There are 17 million iphones out there. With 9 million estimated ipod touches. 70% of all mobile web traffic is by iphone even though (by volume) they have a much smaller percentage of the market. It's a silver bullet for three main reasons. 1) It's always on 2) it's always with you (i.e. people don't forget phones vs. say Nintendo DS, PSP's) and 3) it's location aware. Gaming outperforms other iphone apps exponentially. Particularly puzzle games (cross-gender appeal.) Games that were intented for only "snack size" play (thing 3 or 4 minutes) are actually averaging 15 - 20 minutes and beyond. 

The profitability of developing an iphone app can be huge. Developers who already have mac platform games can spend two hours converting the code for iphone use. Then it's a lottery ticket. If you crack the top 100 games, it's pretty much self sustaining. But there are over 25K titles so that can be tough. The guy I listened to had a game sell 810k copies netting him 1.5 million and that's after Apple takes their obligatory 30% cut. This, for two hours work.

There are mmorpg's being developed in for iphone as well (check out "Aurora Feint"). Something seemingly impossible, given the fact that people with iphones aren't seldom playing in realtime together. This game has developed a way to "summon ghosts" that play for you when you are not online. So you're playing even when you're not playing. Note: I think I need a bong hit to understand this. But it sounds cool.

So what's the secret to becoming an app developer bazilionaire?? One clue is to make the iphone's interface operations essential to game play (i.e. the accelerometer which knows how your holding it and the multi touch screen.) Apart from that it's Youtube video demos, twitter, pushing press releases through every conceivable channel and prayer. 

One interesting thing came up that's pretty relevant is our business is the interaction between designer and programmer. Typically designers have an artful vision. Programmers go to work. The the designer has a coronary when they see how the programmer has butchered their art direction. The suggestion on solving this was for designers to create a moving version (no matter how rough) early on. And for designer and programmer to live in the same space. 

Exhausted from nerding out. Time to go twitter my blog post, poke somebody on facebook i hardly know and put on my Battlestar Galactica pajamas. 

Do they still make Kaypros?

I've always thought of myself as a pretty "cutting edge" guy. And, like a lot of people who use such hackneyed descriptors, I'm not. I'm the one with the rotary-dial cell phone. I'm the one who predicts cassettes will slaughter CDs. I'm the one churning my own butter rather then give one, thin dime to those Land O Lakes bastards. Watching me is a bit like watching Matlock unbox an ipod. So it is with assured ineptitude, that I embark on a journey typically reserved for the the digital elite: The 2009 South By Southwest Interactive festival on behalf of mcgarrybowen.  Another thought occurred to me as a quick way to compound my foolishness. "Why not write a blog about it?" So this is where that eyewitness account will live. Every nerdy detail of each symposium, workshop and seminar. Who will care? I WILL! Because I have a blog dammit! Which should at least elevate me to the status of a precocious 8-year old. So stay tuned. Festival starts March 13th.