Here Comes Everybody. Now just £8
Wow. Best £8 you'll spend this year, I reckon. Clay Shirky's book is currently cut from £20 to £8 on Amazon.
Thought you should know. Recommendation or advert? It's up to you.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Michael Wesch on the anthropology of YouTube
I've been gagging to see this ever since this discussion with Dr Michael Wesch.
Mike (who gave us the Machine is Us/ing Us) is back from hols and has now shared his June presentation to the Library of Congress in Washington on Youtube - on Youtube. Big thanks to ServantofChaos for tipping me off.
Fabulous discussion of participatory culture. If you're (really, really?) so short on time you can't watch it all, go to minute 48. Take a glimpse at the new Earth rising...
P2PR : The real online public relations
Had a brief chat with an interesting chap in online PR yesterday. He reckons the industry needs some good PR of its own - and that could be aided by the right language.
How do you distinguish between people doing traditional PR using digital means (ie sucking up to bloggers rather than print or digital journalists) and those who get the disruptive fundamentals of the power of network and understand how messages spread now.
I have a thought: Instead of sitting in the Online PR silo, perhaps the new kids need to distinguish themselves with the descriptor P2PR.
I can't be the first to put those letters and numbers in that order, surely?
Whatever the case...
What does P2PR stand for? What would the group you are reaching out to like it to mean?
Peer-to-Peer Relations(hips),
Person-to-Person Relations(hips),
Publisher-to-Publisher Relations(hips). (We are all publishers now!)
The Online bit is way less important than the P2P bit of PR anyway. It's all about the people and what they do to each other.
Marketing (of whatever form) is not a process of doing things to people. It is what they do to each other.
So, for me, P2PR is the right approach for the networked world.
We are the connections. We are also how the connections are made.
Don't bother trying to register the url. It's already rather tediously taken... but I have squatted on the blogspot address!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
How we are made great - part II
The graph above is from Louis Gray, via Stowe Boyd.
In part I of How We Are Made Great I argue it is other people that make us or an idea great - other people and their mass behaviour.
Louis argues that bloggers' interactions with their communities and their reaching out to other communities reduces as they become more established.
He's on the money, for me, of course. I discussed similar themes in It's Not How Famous You Are, It's How Relevant
And detailed more risks for those with an abundance of attention, here.
Here's Louis' list of interaction types (together with my use of them).
- Allowing blog comments (yep)
- Responding to blog comments (oh yes)
- Commenting on FriendFeed about your blog (er sorry,... more laziness than attitude)
- Tweeting links to your blog posts (yes)
- Digging your blog (again, I'm a little lazy when it comes to self promotion)
- Stumbling your blog (see above)
- Pimping your blog on others' blogs (yes, in as much as I comment on other blogs and invite bloggers to come by mine to join in conversations here).
Those who roll back on this are actually putting their fame and status at risk, in my view. They're certainly putting the brakes on its growth.
And when they do this they reduce both their value to their community and the communities value to themselves (I am made greater by my connections, so are my connections, Stowe Boyd)
There's no idea that doesn't get better from sharing.
So I think there's one key interaction missing from Louis' list:
- Tracking who is writing about what you've blogged and commenting on their take on it, on their blogs.
So, to summarize parts I and II:
We are made great by other people. And in order to be selected for greatness we must interact with other people.Type 4 bloggers would do well to remember how and why they got to be raised upon our shoulders.
As I concluded on /Message in Part I:
"Go careful when you claim responsibility. Remember all those times you tried to turn the flock and nothing happened - or it turned in the opposite direction?
"You were just as responsible then.We make us great."
Monday, July 28, 2008
How we are made great
Just added a new post at /Message. Pop over and add to the conversation re How We Are Made Great?
Tips for building a love machine
One of the authors of the following slidedeck reached out in a comment on this post (Love, Purpose and Fame) and was kind enough to include a link to the deck.
There's some great tips in it for those who understand that the internet is for people coming together and paying each other attention (attention is love, as we refer to in Love, Purpose and Fame) - for those building love machines! Thanks to Ming Yeow for discovering us!
Friday, July 25, 2008
The Rock Stars of Web 2.0 speak!
I decided to add a few videos to our the rock stars of web2.0 list.
And that's turned it into quite a resource - a grand gathering of bright people saying cool things.
Be warned though - dip in and you may stay longer than you intended.
Click on (almost) any rock star to reveal a video treat.
A reminder of how this was compiled. (Image by nsfmc)
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Europe's top 50 marketing blogs
The Adage Power 150 is becoming something of an industry standard for measuring the relevance/quality of marketing blogs globally. Some think its focus is a little American.
Hence Spinning Around's Uk version (consisting of those from the Adage list based in the UK only) at which FasterFuture currently nestles within the top 20.
Now there's a European Power 110 version. And FasterFuture heaves its way inside the top 50 (48). Hurrah for us.
Well done everybody. Now go check all these other fine links!
Should bands sue record labels over threat to ban fans?
This is such typical centralised, broadcast thinking. Just exactly what do they think they can control?
The record industry has struck a deal with the six major UK ISPs and the Government to 'deal with' people who illegally share music*.
Deluded fools.
So the second mass media (recordings) is trying to exert control over the sixth (the internet) and the eighth (us)? (image by digitalbear)
How do they propose to do this? Well, they'll send us a stern letter (anyone else see the irony in choosing the post as a delivery mechanism rather than an IM or an email?). Er....and then they'll think about what to do next... Right.
There are a few problems here. I don't have enough life to detail them all, but let's describe the biggies.
1. Nobody owns the internet - least of all the six major UK ISPs. They have no control over what is done on it or by whom or how one node or person connects to another. Their only control is to charge admission. They aren't the only ones to supply access. Others will see a competitive advantage in refusing an invite to this Government-hosted record industry party. Beware the backlash big fellas!
3. This is a slippery slope. If the Government is so keen to encourage complicity with national laws in respect of music downloads, why not on porn? What if it gets a taste for this control lark? Would anyone use the Government-approved internet?
4. *Thou shalt not promote/recommend to your friends (leveraging your own social graph as the perfect distribution method) or otherwise solicit the sales of our product... is not something I would expect the promoters of artists (that's you, record companies) to demand of my fans.
If I was in a band I'd seriously consider sueing!
The internet changes everything. You cannot expect to impose old ideas of business as usual.
As Clay explains (via Alan) below. Buy Clay's book. It's great. Mind you, so is Alan's.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
I'm in media! Oh really? So are my children...
I responded to Paul Bradshaw's interesting question about the future of training for journalists here and by way of introduction mentioned that: "I've been in media for 20 years, unless you count the fanzines I wrote as a kid."
Actually, I was in media as soon as I could be. I even made my own comics and newspapers before I had any means of distributing them.
Which makes me think today's kids will be in media rather earlier and rather longer - and they'll understand the power that gives them rather earlier.
As soon as they connect via the likes of habbo hotel, club penguin, or many of the other social networks for kids they are in media. (image by Terry Lloyd Smith)
They have the tools to enable what we've all become:
We're all publishers now, we're all distributors now, we're all advertisers now, as I've said before.
Which means as soon as we start forming into groups via the network we're in media.
Perhaps we are really in media even before we reach out for our first mouse - part of the eighth mass media I've started exploring here and here?
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Subjectivity is the new objectivity
Just added a new post at /message: Subjectivity is the new Objectivity.
Twitter: The newspaper of tomorrow?
My old mum says she hardly reads her daily newspaper these days. She's been getting the Daily Express delivered for as long as I can remember.
Habit is a powerful thing so the executives at the Daily Express may sleep safe; I don't think she's about to give up paying for her daily copy. It's just she's "seen it all on the TV" by the time the paper arrives.
There's no use telling me you're setting your own news agenda, ploughing your own furrow etc etc. Your user thinks you're just reheating old news. Sorry, but there it is. (Image by kamerakrazy)
Her son (that's me folks) has never had a newspaper delivered in his life. Plenty to worry about for national newspaper folk then.
There's nothing new in this. Microsoft predicts the death of newspapers within 20 years.
Some of the debate about the skills journalism students need, which you'll find here, suggests that while there may still be printed mass distributed things in the future, we may only persist in calling them 'news' papers out of habit.
The thing is, my old mum does still read her weekly local paper. She doesn't do that out of some loyalty born of the fact it was where I started my career. No, she does it because it carries content she has not had access to elsewhere.
She doesn't have access to the internet, and the broadcast types behind the likes of teletext have never gone hyperlocal enough to become relevant or convenient enough for her.
So the local paper remains (for her, at least) a source of unique, relevant content which she is prepared to pay for. Even the advertising in it - by virtue of its focus on the local - for the most part, is of some value to her.
There are hints here for all services - print and digital:
Relevant = useful = valued
Imagine if you knew enough local people on twitter, people you have connected with and maintained connections with through the metadata you have exchanged - so that you trust them and can believe what they have to say.
Imagine if you could select 'My location' on twitter - and only receive tweets from people with x miles.
Imagine you could toggle this on and off when it matters to you.
Perhaps this is the shape of the newspaper of the future?
Whatever tools your communities choose to use, what is clear is that 'news' (read information or content) that people find relevant is that which is niched, either by topic or location or both.
Communities of purpose are the groups to make that happen - just another reason why they will play out as the business units of the 21st century.
Twitter; The newspaper of tomorrow? Well yes, in as much as it is a very effective way of discovering, filtering and distributing information with levels of relevance no printed medium yet has been able to compete with.
It is not alone in asking tough questions. The new digital tools of human connection (of group forming) consistently raise them:
- What is the value of mass/broad?
- What is the value of mediation?
Monday, July 21, 2008
Voting is now open on the Rock Stars of Web2.0
Over the past couple of months we've been compiling a list of the great and the good of the internet - ready for you to select their ordering.
So we've rounded them up and now they await your attention. A couple of clicks and you're done.
Hope you'll join in the fun. VOTE NOW!
Are journalism students being equipped with the wrong skills?
A really interesting question from Paul Bradshaw, who teaches a journalism degree at Birmingham City University. Watch the video below.
Paul has asked me to join his 'expert panel' to (attempt to) answer it... which I will do in due course...
In the meantime; consider the question for yourself (by playing the video below) - and please add your responses as comments - which I'll be happy to feedback to Paul.
A few initial thoughts: The price of content (read information/news) was sustained by scarcity. Now information is abundant.
We can of course still make money in this networked world. We can make money because of content rather than with it.
The traditional training of journalists has been about gathering, editing, filtering and broadcasting. Perhaps it's time to shift a little more towards the value creating skills of the networked world - the creation of useful services people will want to share?
In the context of information that takes us to ideas like apple's itunes - where I believe you are paying for a useful service rather than the content itself. Google does a rather good job of making money because of content rather than with it, too.
It also places a value on synthesis (and therefore reasoned opinion) rather than 'reporting the facts'.
And crucially places value on collaboration rather than working to the exclusion of others.
Services, synthesis and collaboration - skills for a world in which media doesn't get to control who makes content, who distributes it, or even the user journey.
Join Facebook's F8 party live in London
Josh is hosting a Facebook F8 developers bash (live streaming London garage, to be more precise) on Wednesday this week.
If it sounds like something you should be at, sign up here. (you are on facebook, aren't you?)
Santa Claus is following me... he must be real!
Another for the melting pot of complex identities we weave with digital magic... Santa Claus is on twitter. I know because he's following me.
Is Santa the ulitmate example of a brand you ought to trust. One in which he embodies all the values - everything the brand believes in?
Guess my daughter will be tweeting her Christmas list this year...
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Searching together: The biggest challenge yet to SEO?
This video, from Techcrunch, shows an experimental version of google which includes digg-like social search functions.
Quite a challenge for traditional SEO? It seems like a huge one to me.
Would love to hear some thoughts from anyone in SEO - and from anyone else!
It's clearly a huge step forward from google's previous efforts in social search.
Take a fresh look at your 'resources' (read human beings)
Dave Armano has another corking post at Logic + Emotion
He describes the growing impact of quality real-live human interactions as effective marketing in mediums such as twitter.
One line really rang my bells:
"We’ve become so starved for authentic live human contact that when it’s offered up to us we are all too happy to rejoice and tell the world."I commented on Dave's blog, but I wanted to expland a little here.
Real live human one-to-one (or many-to-many in a community setting) interaction has a really positive impact on us. And then we take that and have really positive impacts on each other (we do the marketing). Just look at my experience with Qik for example.
This need for the human voice and human interaction is often kind of understood by senior company types. But the response I most often hear is:
"But how can we afford to have all the people this would take?"That kind of misses the point. It assumes you have to have specialised team who 'do' customer service.
But human interaction is much more than customer service. Human interaction should be what we all do. Hell, it IS what we all do.
So instead of thinking about the cost of additional people in additional new silos, think about unleashing the staff - the humans - you already have.
Mobile operators. Take a seat before you read this
The VRM project had a bit of a bash this week.
The key learnings from it are brilliantly summed up by Chris Carfi at the Social Customer Manifesto in The Principles of VRM
Among the implications of these Doc Searls pointed out is:
"A free customer is more valuable than a captive one".
What's your relationship like with your customer? Do you like to think in terms of capture, lock-in, owning relationships?
Take a look.
Mobile Operators (among others) are advised to sit down first.
Doc speaks:
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Portability is the new pointworthy: Why links won't matter
I often advise teams creating content to focus on doing what is worth pointing at - the pointworthy.What I mean by this is that the web is awash with repeated press releases.
They don't stand out so you're less likely to have your half-heartedly re-written and rushed-out version pointed at by the fickle citizens of the web than something they find genuinely, stand-out, useful (and relevant).
Do loads of what everyone is doing and you're lost in the blur. Do the right stuff and other people will point you out.
But, with the shift towards portability in rss, widgets, gadgets, apps (etc) distribution becomes more complex; less about a central destination from which to broadcast (and to which to be pointed) and more about networks of people looking at and sharing among each other.
In the world of user as destination we have to think about a web in which links don't matter.
It's hard to imagine, isn't it?
Links perform a fantastic task in extending networks of trust. They point people who are interested in one piece of content, or one person's view, at another they might find useful.
They did a great job at discovering people through content.
But we're entering a world in which content is discovered through people.
Here being pointed at is less important than being taken with.
Of course you still have to have something useful and relevant for someone to choose to take your service or content with them.
And your service or message should be adaptable by the receiver so they can better shape it to be relevant to the community of purpose they are currently interacting with.
The rules that make something pointworthy remain true. You can't just make your press releases into an rss, for example.
But portability is the new linking.
It's how we share stuff with each other, through our connections with and to each other.Users are off on their own journeys and if you aren't ready or useful enough to be taken with them and shared among them, you'll be left on your own.
By the way, you can take FasterFuture with you (latest posts and tweets) in the widget you'll find at the bottom of the left column.Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Hey Apple - mind if I manage my own music please?
Is it just me, or is the fact that the Iphone requires hacking around in order to use selections from your own itunes library as ring tones (in the UK) just plain bizarre?
Which part of that doesn't suck, apple?
I'd have thought selecting my own music as a ringtone would be core functionality for a device which is, at its heart, for managing your music and making and receiving phone calls.
There are ways around it. Jemima Kiss was kind enough to share this tweet from @samhs:
- "there is a simple method for converting songs in your library to ringtones.
- "Save song as AAC,
- "then rename from .m4a to .m4r"
Another myth of everything apple working beautifully exploded?
Chris, new to an iphone himself, added:
"It's worth the wait, but for me, for the first time ever with a mac, it hasn't worked as I want straight out of the box..."
And now after initially being told new deliveries of iphones would be arriving yesterday, we're seeing +7 days being added on... at least.
And every day that passes, my current operator, 3, makes me a better offer...
Google thinks I'm a virus
I was innocently searching for Paul Isakson's blog on google when I got this response from google: (click the pic, right, to see a larger version).
I guess it beats being denied access to my own blog because its robots thought I might be writing a spam blog.
Apple and the myth of working beautifully
The myth of Apple = everything working beautifully, was soundly debunked on 3G Iphone Friday.
The fabulous 9838 error was just one among manifold user experience issues: queues, crashing systems, restricted supply etc etc.
Ipod's are less than intuitive ('I've forgotten how to switch it on', moaned my wife when she last picked hers up). And is it wise that there's no lock function (to prevent unwanted button-strikes) for something that often sits in your pocket? (that's fixed on the 3G Iphone)
Itunes is clunky and slow. Macs require their own suite of software.
I'm picking on Apple for a reason. They are among the very best at delivering delightful user experiences. So good at it that Jemima Kiss yearns for an Apple eBay (just watch a newby try to work out what to do with eBay and you'll get her drift).
And yet Apple still gives us iphone Friday.
There is headroom for better. Much better.
And it's worth going after. There is a large and cash-rich segment of the world's population who are not geeks, not prepared to fiddle, not prepared to kill two-three hours of their lives upgrading with new software, not prepared to learn their way around...
They want satnavs as easy to use as a book of maps, mobile phones and computers that transfer calendars, address books and applications from their old ones to the new (in a PAC-code, cloud-ready world why shouldn't your next mobile be pre-loaded, charged-up and ready to roll when it arrives?), they want search to find what they're looking for, digital cameras to upload, store and share without the need to get to a computer, peripherals with the software built-in rather than awaiting their attention on a CD etc etc.
Briefly: They want things to work, beautifully, intuitively, first time.
You can tell these people until you are blue in the face that if they master this or that they'll save loads more time (it's one of the stumbling blocks to getting more people to blog, for example).
But they need more than a promise of future time savings (in adspeak, selling the benefits just doesn't do it).
The experience, right from the start matters. Show by your actions. You need to act, not talk.
How easy/delightful is it to find out about the product or service?
How easy/delightful is it to buy?
How easy/delightful is it to use (from the box)?
The first and second hurdles are easily as important as the last.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Paint the whole sky, we'll still ignore you
Have added a new post on /message about the arms race of interruptive advertising.
Blogs dead? Who cares? Ubiquity of Connectivity is what matters
The eighth mass media is not about tools. I care little who says blogging is dead or who claims microblogging is the next big thing.
The eighth mass media is where:
we are the connections and the way the connections are made; beyond silos. It needs tools but it isn't made by them.
It's the direction we're headed in. The sixth and seventh medias (internet and mobile) are helping us on our way.
How we choose to connect, in which silo or with which tools, is less important than that we do connect - and, crucially, as widely and instantly as possible. Blogs are quite good for this. They are considerably less silo'd than your average (what we traditionally think of) social network. Don't write them off just yet.
More importantly Hugh refers us to one of Clay Shirky's more oft-repeated lines (my emphasis):
"Yes, again, it's all about what Clay Shirky said four years ago, in a wonderful interview he did for Gothamist:
"So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this -- the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast."
Amen to that. We all have cheap, rapid, easy ways of sharing our metadata. That's what publishing has become. Publishing for all. Advertising for all.
We can all share content. Content is the conversation starter, conversation is where ideas turn into action, action is where value is created.
Now we can all share in sharing this. We can all share ourselves.
That is what changes everything.
In some ways the eighth mass media is also the first (as J_Mac pointed out in a comment on the original post).
Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen's work on Mobile as the 7th mass media lists them thus:
1. Print
2. Recordings
3. Radio
4. Cinema
5. TV
6. Internet
7. Mobile
The eighth is where we are moving towards: We are the eighth mass media. But we were of course always the first, too.
The difference between the pre-mass information age and the post mass broadcast age is speed of transmission and scale of spread both enabled by the ubiquity of connectivity.
We need the sixth and seventh mass medias to enable the eighth.
Two pictures of customer service
Right: At Terminal 5, Heathrow
Left: Sign in the window of the Grand India Restaurant, London.
It's not what you say... it's what you do.
Make things spread fast: With a smile (or a scream)
A smile is among the most rapidly transmitted things I know. Laugh and the world laughs with you... smile and people smile back (they can't help themselves, as Herdmeister would aver).
We're monkey-see-monkey-do critters. Homo Mimicus. Things spread because we copy the monkey next to us. So spread with a smile?
One example HERD brings us of human-to-human transmission is the roadside floral tributes to road crash victims we now see so many of. I spotted a varient in New York last month: The bicycle the victim died on chained to a post on Broadway (I took a picture, right).
Now I read that the idea is being copied by fellow apes across the UK. They have been dubbed, Ghost Bikes.
This kind of spreading is very easy to spot (it's hard to miss a bike chained to a lamppost, hence the reporting in the mainstream press).
The idea is being easily and relatively rapidly copied. It is easy to understand the idea, and easy to create our own versions of it. (nb: The moment the Government makes a standard white replica bike to distribute to local authorities to attach to lampposts at accident black spots, the idea will be finished).
But perhaps there is already a brake on the pace at which ghost bikes can spread.
There's nothing funny about them. Nothing at all.
The things that get rapidly shared are not only those which can be easily copied and adapted (co-created) to suit the community we each interact with, they are also funny.
Smiling spreads fast. Laughter too. It's why the watching-tv-at-home belly laugh is a rare thing but the laughs-out-loud are two-a-penny when you're in a comedy club audience.
So, I'll stick with the idea that we pass on things that we think those we are passing on to will think is cool. Stuff spreads this way.
Bit if I think it's cool and funny stuff spreads way faster.
Perhaps it is simply because there are now three possible groups you will share with:
1. those you define as likely to think what you pass on is cool,
2. those you define as likely to think what you pass on is funny and finally,
3. those you define as likely to find it both cool and funny.
I'm guessing group three are the most likely to pass it on?
There's a darker flip: Fear and panic spreads rapidly through groups, too...
Ghost Bikes?
Friday, July 11, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
100(ish) heroes of hitting 100
FasterFuture struggled past the 100 Technorati ranking mark over night (it was showing 101 when I checked this morning).
So, as promised, here's a bit of a celebration to share with those who haveplayed a large part in making this happen - those that link here.
They were all interested in the conversations happening at FasterFuture. If you are, too, you'll likely find them interesting, too.
Enjoy (in no particular order). And once again, thank you.
- Communities Dominate Brands
- /Message
- The Obvious
- Only Dead Fish
- Social Customer Manifesto
- JaffeJuice
- Herd
- Media Influencer
- Chris Webb's Publishing Blog
- Jonathan Macdonald
- TheWayOfTheWeb
- Open Gardens
- Chetan Sharma
- Servant of Chaos
- Paul Isakson
- Snipperoo
- MobHappy
- The Buzz Bin
- Wireless Wanders
- Advergirl
- What's The New Media Buzz
- LondonCalling
- Never Get Out of the Boat
- SMLXL
- New Journalism Review
- Mippin Blog
- BeyondPR
- Nico Silva
- Deborah Schultz
- AbleReach
- Crenk
- Andrew Girdwood
- The Looking Glass
- KoolaidAntidote
- Conversation Hub
- Loud
- BlogTalk2008
- IJump
- Media Philosopher
- Damons Lista
- The Mobiliser
- Stut
- Media Sales Jobs
- WidgetWebExpo
- Bob Stumpel
- MobileAnswers
- Magenta
- Brand Organizer
- AdAge Power 150
- Blog Till you Drop
- WidgetBeat
- The Equity Kicker
- McGuiresLaw
- TheEndofControl
- Situational Marketing
- Ubiquitous Thoughts
- Apple Pie & Custard
- Digital Identity Forum
- The Ad-Vocate
- SocialMediaHeadHunter
- Portabilidade
- Ebooks
- Socialutions
- Howard's Spot
- Lisa Devaney
- JobMatchBox
- NSIDE Nashville
- HighTouch
- Agile in Atlanta
- MagBlog
- Rogers Blog
- Pohdiskeleva.liftari.org
- Mara Triangle
- SearchDominion
- Zec Online
- Zecina
- Terra Incognita
- Spinning Around
- Robbie Williams Italian Diary
- Adrian Watkins
- Spinuzzi
- Coniecto
- Traveling Geeks
- Rethinking Media
- bwl zwei null
- All you need to know about advertising
- 140char.com
- Dovetail Software Blogs
- Xellular Identity
- Isabel Walcott
- The Digital Marketing Blog
- Brands, Digital Media and Me
- Squace
- cPanel
- Choice Learning
- Anne's Spot
- Appunti di Pandemia
- Beatnic
- Coincidence
- Dooley Post
- Kless Blog
- SheepTalk
- Cars Around
- EyeMags
And if I've missed anyone, please let me know - add your link to fasterfuture as a post below and I'll add it to the main list asap.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Who owns your comments?
Just added a new post on /message inspired by a brief exchange of tweets with Jeff Jarvis.
I owe it all to you - seriously.
As this blog teeters on the brink of a 100 ranking on Technorati (it was 99 last time I looked... hoping the trend is up!) I'm thinking of suitable ways to celebrate this with you. Every link here and every visit has contributed to that ranking - so it's fair and right that you share in this small success.
The best way I can think of is to compile one huge list of links-out to those who have linked here.
Technorati tracks some of this, google some more. But some (eg) I just may miss.
And at the top of the list I want to place the blogs and sites that include fasterfuture on their blogroll or list of recommended links in any way.
I want to make sure I haven't missed you and get the opportunity to return the favour in my own 'recommended blogs' list (see left column).
I work on the theory that if you're interested, you're likely to be interesting.
So if that's you, don't be shy, please add a link in the comments below.
And if you've linked here in any other way, share this, too.
Many thanks.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
How to blog
I was recently asked to jot down a few thoughts on How To Blog and it occurred to me I'd never taken the time and trouble to write down what a lot of us take for granted.
There are lots of people who don't blog (oh yes, I do recognise this) - lots in your own organisations. This then is intended to give a little steer and big shove of encouragement.
And, as always, it is far from complete. It's the story so far, and it's one compiled from doing it and learning from masters - many of whom you'll find listed under 'Recommended Blogs'. And it'll get updated, thanks to your comments.
This isn't intended to explain why you should blog or what you might get out of it. You only have to look around this blog to see the connections blogging has forged for me, the ideas and opportunities that have grown from those, the relationships I could only have established from this little piece of me online. If you have the time.
If you don't, consider two things:
1. Doc Searl's assertion that blogging didn't make him rich, but it did make him valuable
2. The following video, the very excellent blogs in plain english Worth 3mins of your time because it just might change your life...
This then is not about the tools, it is about the attitudes you should try to carry with you as you expose yourself to the blogosphere...
12 Golden Rules of Blogging (...so far)
1. Speak in an authentic human voice: your own.
2. Write about what really interests you. Don’t think of broadcasting to an audience, think of having a conversation with a small group of people. Expect them to join in.
3. Don’t even try to answer all the questions you raise.
4. Worry less about quality and more about relevance.
5. Be brave. Say what you think.
6. Link out. Point at other stuff you think is good. This is how networks of trust are formed. Find other bloggers who are interested in the same things as you. Visit them regularly, add them to your own blogroll. This not only serves you well, it also serves those who visit. They are interested in what you are interested in - that's how they found you.
7. Only share things with your community if you think they will find them useful. They’ll think less of you if you don’t (if you just spam them with product plugs, for example…) This is neither in your or your company’s interest (if you happen to be considering blogging as a tool of marketing communications).
8. You don't have to be a writer. Pictures, slidedecks and videos work fine, too.
9. Post on other people’s blogs – you'll create stronger ties with members of your network of trust and allow their readers to discover you and your blog. Don't worry - If they don't find you relevant, they won't stay. Encourages feedback on your own.
10. Be useful. Don’t just link to your own stuff or sites you plan to promote, do it because it’s relevant or useful.
11. Be honest. People will see through a con, no matter how clever. It only takes one of them to find you out and they’ll tell everyone else. Best bet: Don’t try to fool anyone. If you don’t have the answers, say so. People sharing your purpose will help you find the answer.
12. Respond to comments on your own blog as fast as you can and with humilty – join the conversation, it belongs to us all.
Seriously, what are you waiting for? Start one now.
Papershow: A truly portable magic whiteboard?
I've been playing with a demo version of Papershow. While it at first appeared as flakey as a bad case of dandruff, it turned out a weak battery in the pen was at fault.
Wish the instructions also included: First, check a battery is installed...
Anyway, once I got up and running I found it relatively user-friendly and cool enough to make me smile on my first use. It has that sense of "Magic! It works!" that makes you grin.
You get to use normal paper (you can use theirs which have buttons printed on in the right places, too - I imagine photocopying these would work into the future(?). There's a usb dongle which connects via bluetooth to the pen.
I found it worked from at least eight metres away.
And it is portable with a capital P. The usb dongle carries the software and any ppt's you may wish to play with too (you have to print out the powerpoint via the software in order for it to work on powerpoints too, it seemed to me).
That means you can take the dongle the pen and some paper with you and use anyone's pc.
It solves a problem. Often when I present I would like to draw a quick diagram or illustration to clarify a point or answer a question. This allows exactly that.
It also allows you to replace flip-chart notes with something veryone can share and take-away.
They say: "Developed by John Dickinson, the stationery company behind the Black and Red notebooks, Papershow takes the concept of an interactive whiteboard to another level. Using just a pen, a USB dongle, and a pad of special notepaper, you can edit presentations on the fly as easily as if you were scribbling notes. It is an excellent visual aid, an effective way to increase interactivity, and the best solution for recording meeting notes."
Lean-too marketing: Interesting products + interested people
There are some companies that impress me. Some ways of doing business that any company can do, but most don't.
Occasionally, very occasionally, something comes along which is interesting enough for us to lean towards. We shuffle forward on our seats and peer a little closer.Ooooh! That looks interesting...And then we make the effort to find out more.VodPod was one such for me. Qik is my current squeeze.In both cases my attention (hard enough to grab) turned to intention (I'm going to stop peering at it and start acting) through one simple thing. The company leaned forward, too, towards me. Lean-too marketing.In the case of vodpod it happened like this.Qik is now getting the big up for similar reasons!I mentioned a hold-up in the sign-up process in a tweet on twitter. I didn't complain to the company. In fact, I'd have probably given it up as a bad job... if it wasn't for the fact that Qik is listening.More importantly, the human beings who make up Qik are listening. This is the bit all companies are capable of. Anyone can search summize, for example and see what people are saying about them on twitter (with other conversations to be added soon, according to their site).But listening isn't enough. As this encounter with a Toyota youth marketer amply illustrates. Be sure to read the comments!No, the clever (read blindingly obvious) bit is to actually respond to the act of listening - that is to take part in the conversation. To make like a social critter.Small, very human, interactions make all the difference. Mark Earls at Herd understands this. David Armano at Logic + Emotion is working towards it (see his post describing how one act of kindness by a Disney employee earned that company $100,000).Jackie Danicki gets this, too. It's why, in her role as Director of Marketing at Qik, she's not only monitoring what people are saying about Qik, she's reacting to it and responding to it.She saw I was having problems and took the time and trouble to track down my gmail address (available on this blog and other places, but certainly not in that tweet!)She got an sms sent out to me with the relevant link.Would you or your company do as much? Are your employees empowered to make judgements for themselves on the right thing to do? The kind of small, human, right-things-to-do that earned Disney $100,000?Here's the killer: The Qik download didn't work (I've been pointed at another member of the team to try to work out why - they haven't given up on me yet, so I'm not giving up on them!).So what am I raving about Qik for? It can't be for the quality of the product - because I haven't actually experienced it yet.It's for the quality of the people.I therefore, personally blind to the product itself (though I have heard good things from people I trust), commend to you, Qik.Tell your friends...
Image by Stephen Poff
Monday, July 07, 2008
When search fails: humans to the rescue
Just added a new blog post over on /message which includes an interview with ditto.net's Colin Kennedy.
Love, purpose and fame,
How much of participation is driven by attention-seeking rather than a genuine desire to co-create?
It's a question that framed itself during a conversation with Ivan Pope. I wondered if the desire to participate is a natural human state - and one that gets driven out of us by mass broadcast models (ie sitting back and consuming becomes normalised behaviour in a mass media world)?
I cited the example of my 3-year-old, who could not understand why she could not join in with the nativity play she went to watch last Christmas.
How much of that was driven by her desire to seek attention compared to her desire to join in?
Ivan's point (and this is my interpretation so, Ivan, please do expand in the comments if required...) is that attention = love. The more love we receive the happier we are - a powerful motivator.
So was my daughter seeking more love, or seeking to share in an experience and help form it?
Of course, we don't have to answer either/or.
The learning for those of us who wish to create better ways for humans to connect is to understand that our communities of purpose are not only coming together to get things done, they are coming together to be loved.
In user-generated-content-powered broadcast models, such as Youtube, and our own Ditto.net, less people acquire more of the love. How could we share that out?
Even in Total Communities (where to take part you have to create part, eg facebook, twitter, secondlife) the love concentrates where the attention focuses.
Jemima Kiss, at the Guardian, mused on twitter that she now had 2000 followers and that she would therefore try harder to say something useful or interesting.
When the attention becomes too great, when the conversation becomes little more than augmented broadcast, there is a natural tendancy for us to start making considerations like this. A little part of ourselves is hidden away in favour of the version required for the lower common denominator. (Not a dig at Jemima, I hasten to add, her tweet was just an inspirational, right now, example)
The more famous you are the less you can really be yourself?
Perhaps synchronous attention is a core part of what makes us human - the ability to create real time bonding experiences with fellow humans? The social act of being?
Thursday, July 03, 2008
We are the eighth mass media
Today saw the first Eat'n'Tweet. If you'd like to join us at the next one, add your contact details in a comment - or just your twitter name, or follow me and look out for updates!
It gathered a truly energised group of people to discuss everything from mobile advertising to group forming network theory and all stations in between.
The bit that sticks in my head was a discussion about Mobile As The Seventh Mass Media. I won't go into the detail of why mobile needs to be considered a separate and distinct mass medium (the first is print, second recordings, third radio, fourth cinema, fifth TV, sixth internet) because Alan Moore & Tomi Ahonen have that covered in their excellent white paper and presentations.
The notion prompted the question: So if mobile is the 7th mass media, what is the 8th?
Jonathan MacDonald suggests 'Mobility', I suggest something around treating the 'user' (horrible term, but bear with me) as the destination, driven by real-time response to the expression of shared purpose.
It's a notion at the heart of my white paper Communities of Purpose are the Busness Units of the 21st Century and revisited with a distribution/marketing-focus in We Are All Publishers Now (Media Transformative).
Jon and I are both speaking about the same thing - and no doubt will come up with the right word to describe it in the end...(hey J_mac?)
My best stab right now is "We are the eighth mass media".
I don't just mean that we create it in a UGC vs Professional Content Creators kind of way. I mean WE are the distribution, the content, the 'user journey', how messages are transmitted... WE are the medium and the media carried within it.
We are the connections. We are also how the connections are made.
It is this that marks the crucial shift, how the connections are made, and which will help us recognise when the eighth mass media emerges.
When we can express our metadata globally in real time, beyond any silos, when we can find other people who want to solve the same problem (who share your purpose) right now as we do, people who will join us in solving it right now (because it also holds value for them, right now), then, the eighth mass media arrives.
And then how value is created really does shift. Group forming with no silos. A new world.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Snakes and Widgets
New blogpost just added to /message. All contributions to the conversation welcome!
The UK's top 50 marketing blogs
Spinning Around has compiled its latest version of the UK's Top 50 Marketing Blogs. FasterFuture is in it. Which is nice.I guess it's a reflection of my increasing focus on understanding what it is people want and how they behave. That's what marketing is about. It's also what content, products and services are about. Marketing as THE discipline of the connected age? Who knew?
| UK | Global | Blog |
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Carnival of the Mobilists #130
This week's Carnival of the Mobilists is over at Andrew Grill's blog.
Andrew is one of those you can expect to meet at Eat'n'Tweet on Thursday this week. Great to see he's squeezed a plug in for it in his Carnival round-up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Signature posts
- Communities of purpose are the business units of the 21st century
- What next for advertising and marketing?
- How to go viral: Lose the TV envy and tell the truth
- Established Media will have the last laugh in social networks
- Don't just witness the network: Be part of it
- Reed's Law and how multiple identities make the long tail just a little longer
- Power of the Network = The Power of We - Why media is the new business ecology
- The Church of Brands and the marketplace of the people
- Famous for 15 people
- Long tail will wag the mobile internet dog
Also recommended
Help! I can"t keep up!
The rate of change in publishing is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. The idea of this blog is for us to pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?
Marketing, advertising, customer service, promotions, new product development, M&A etc etc it can all come spilling out of its silos and beyond the company firewall where people can interact with people. And as Dave points out digital stuff helps make this more effective than ever.
Too often we make helping customers some 'ones' responsibility, or some department's, - By sealing that responsibility into a specialised department we sign it off as 'job done'. The impact is to either explictly or implicitly make everyone else ignore and 'get on with their day jobs'.
It's a side effect of the specialisation mass production forced on us - together with an unhealthy dose of scientific management techniques.
But as we rediscover that humans aren't made more efficient by being made more machine-like, the silo walls will dissolve and we'll be allowed to get on with being human. More forward thinking management techniques and companies are already applying them.
And, as Dave points out, being human makes an awful lot of sense when you want to sell to other humans.