Measure your change-readiness; find your leaders

The core competency of any business today is its readiness to adapt to the networked world.
How much is your business, not just preparing for change, but change-ready?

Measuring your level of change-readiness is the first step. Acting on what you learn from this excercise is the next. So, quite simply measure, the percentage of your people who are living in the network.

They are already adapting to survive. Follow them, encourage them, incentivize them and JOIN them.

What does that mean in real terms?

How many are active users of social networks (score higher for members of total communities - in which to take part you have to create part. Examples include facebook, myspace, bebo, twitter where the minimum requirement for involvement is that you create a profile).

They are learning the simple and powerful disruption of self-forming adhoc communities of purpose - the business units of the 21st century).

How many are creating blogs; with words, pictures, video or audio?
They are learning all about the disruption that we are all publishers now, all advertisers and all marketers now. They are learning how content connects people and people connect content. They are learning how to pool and share and create new value in value webs they control. They are creating networks of trust superceding anything the mass-focused centre can muster. And they are doing it inspite of, despite of, audience and for and with community.

How many have built and deployed their own widget? They have learned the user is the destination now, that it is more important to be taken with the user on their journey than to lead their horse to your chosen water.

Those who make widgets understand the content isn't theirs it is owned by the person who adopts it, who adapts it, who will pass it on with the same understanding to the next adhoc community of purpose they converse with.

So score your business for your social networkers, your bloggers and your widget makers.
You need to be beating the global averages - around 8% of internet users blog, more than 40% use social networks. The number of widgetisers can be lower - at present. We'll let you off with 5%.

Anything less and you need to take urgent action. Organise workshops, call in the experts but critically - listen to the people who are already doing it within your organisation. They are your keys to indiginous change - the most powerful kind. Listen and learn. This is an an important element of the next step: identifying your leaders.

So now get your venn diagram out.

Where those who blog, those who use social networks, and those who create widgets intersect, there you'll find those refusing to sheepwalk. They will be challenging your status quo and beating a path to success in the networked world.

These are the heretics. These are the people ready and willing to create and to be the eighth mass media. They understand 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.

Support them, encourage them, incentivize them. They get the disruption - and what to do about it.

Be led by them.




As always, this is a work in progress, some thoughts in beta. Your adaptions welcome.

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).

In general I try to focus on the ones that are less directly promotional in the traditional sense (digg, stumbleupon) and more on a meeting of minds - where I believe the real promotion happens anyway - comments, responding, reaching out to individuals.

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.

Which is kind of why this is How We Are Made Great Part II and not just a comment on Louis' blog. Hope he'll discover us and join in?

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."

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.

Why we blog. Bloggers understand. Broadcasters don't

One slide from BlogHer's social media survey stands out for me (pictured left, via Chris Carfi on Twitter) because it reveals the value of blogs and blogging. It's about the relationship, it's about communities of passion and trust and it's about people coming together with shared interests.
The best social networks perform all these functions. The greatest value emerges when people combine with purpose. It's clear from these stats that that's exactly what bloggers are doing and also what they think they are doing.

It's the community/conversational/let's get together and get something done feature I think media companies often miss, reverting instead to using blogs as broadcast on the cheap.
Some people just never really get how things are meant to be used, do they?

Make this mobile. But will we still talk?

I've just added a new widget at the top left of the blog. 'Make It Mobile'. Click it and you'll have the content from this blog on your phone to take with you where-ever you go. And it'll get updated the moment I update.

The irony of sending it to your communication device is that by doing so you risk disrupting the conversation.

The 'make it mobile' badge is one of the new bits from Mippin. I've been following Mippin's progress - a system which turns rss feeds from fixed line content into mobile sites, since it launched (Mippin plays video from your feed/ Mippin: Satisfying the long tail, extending the reach of the stumpy dog). CEO Scott Beaumont joins the conversation here from time to time.

They are among the best of a crowd of challengers in this space (widsets, squace and a new one on me, kimia)

Today they've updated and the changes make it oh-so-easy to monetize your content.
And as we know from the explosion of the long tail which adsense inspired on the internet, offering an incentive to publish is a key driver for the many millions who will populate the mobile internet.

In this post when I suggested the long tail would impact mobile internet first and fast (and Itsmy.com and Pepperonity are showing the way) I asked for the following to enable that long tail:

1. Really easy creation of mobile pages (on fixed line and on mobile)
2. Really easy ability to change the design to our tastes (and I'm thinking icons/desktop style as well as background colours and layout)
3. Ability to add and create rss feeds
4. Ability to add code snippets (ie YouTube video, google adsense)
5. Really easy share/ creator propogation (ie socially networked)
6. Enabled for social trade.
7. It has to be free to the site owner.
8. Option to offer as an application-based widget.

So how does the latest version of Mippin score?
1. If your fixed line site has a half decent rss feed it couldn't be simpler to mobilize. But you can't make a mippin site or upload content to it from your mobile.
2. The icon and desktop stuff is still illusive - but that's a nightmare to make right for every operator and every mobile, so Mippin, you are forgiven.
3. The rss feeds bit is what drives mippin. They rely on you having a fixed line site already which has them.
4. The youtube video example has now been implemented on Mippin. Add a youtube code to your blog post and it will play on the mobilized verson too. Critically they've made it easy as pie to add admob code, more easily even than admob. Type in your admob id number and mippin does the rest. Need an admob account? The links are there to guide you very swiftly.
5. Easy share stuff - well that awaits critical mass but Mippin is certainly enabled for this.
6. Enabled for social trade. Sadly not (in a mynumo kind of way) but what the hey.
7. Free to the site owner. Yes yes.
8. Widgetised. No. You can't create a widget to share on anyone's phone's 'desktop' or homepage. But there is a widget (now added to this blog) for your fixed line page which makes it a one-click operation for a user to get your content optimised for their phone, on their phone.

So, a round of applause chaps. I'm trying the admob ads on the mobile version, though I don't expect too many to be queueing up to place ads on my content, but I do seek to understand how easy it is to achieve.

One thought/question: Itsmy.com doesn't share revenues with the people who create its content. Their users are inspired enough by two things which make this possible:

1. The owner of the UGC (publisher) gets to control whether or not they have ads of any kind on their content. If they do choose to have ads then they can also select what kind (as referred to in my posts about Mobile Internet in Berlin earlier this week) and in this respect the user begins to think of the ads as content - not as an unwelcome interruption.
I'm hoping that they get to select at a quite granular level ie which brands, even which exact ads. I need to revist Itsmy.com to confirm. Perhaps a more regular user can tell me?

The right brands on your content allows you to show the world what kind of person you are.
It's a nice reversal of the usual routine in which brand owners decide who or what to associate their brand with through where they choose to advertise. In this model the user gets to select which brands WE wish to be associated with.

Is this another example of the intention economy? Trust me? trust my brands!
Since most users in the Itsmy environment are likley to trust their peers more than a brand in the first place, this could prove very powerful.

2. Only content created on a mobile is allowed on itsmy. That means a) it's all guaranteed to be the users own (written, shot, or filmed on their phone) and b) it all comes from the point-of-inspiration device that is your mobile. The result is users share the content they create very rapidly - and upload lots of it, creating loads of advertising opportunities as they go. Being able to publish at the point they are inspired becomes a driver in and of itself, as CEO Antonio Vince Staybl discussed in Berlin.

Mippin speaks to a need. The need to extend reach into the mobile space for anyone who is creating their content on fixed line.

Itsmy speaks to the need of those who are inspired to create, publish and share as they live their life, where ever they are and what ever they are doing (data charges allowing!).

In theory of course, if you use something like shozu to add content to your blog... and your blog feeds into your mippsite, then you can share at point of inspiration, too. Bit of a stretch though?

Wonder if you can turn an itsmy site into a Mippin one? Would that make for an unholy mess or a double whammy?

I suspect the former for a relatively simple reason. Mippin is a broadcast model. Itsmy is a networked one.

No matter how much of my rss feed is published, the one thing you can't do via mippin is add a comment to the original blog post, or even on the version of it that appears on mippin.
You can vote on my Mippsite in its entirety, you can send a link to a particular post by email. You can twitter it. You can share it on facebook. And these are all very socially enabling, all about sharing after all.
But in each case in order to join the conversation I must send the user away AND hope they are also a member of the community in which we could actually have the conversation. And in this respect the model misses out on the creation-at-the-point-of-inspiration power of the mobile AND the exponential growth potential of connecting up the nodes.

This has to inhibit its fit with the networked world.

This is not necessarily a criticism. And if it is, it is certainly one which can also be levelled at Mippins RSS-fed rivals. Mippin is, after all, an attempt to mobilize the broadcast, publish-from-the-centre, world. The fact that it turns the humble blogger into a broadcaster too is perhaps just a casualty of this.

So, for the record, if you do read one of my blogposts on mippin, please try to keep your inspiration burning long enough to get to a fixed line or full internet version of the blog and join in the conversation then. Send yourself a text reminder or email alert (hey Scott - add that as a button!)

Why twitter is going to beat facebook - and force me into buying an iPhone

Twitter's mobile app is a bit on the crummy side. I can't find new friends on it, I can't send private messages, I can't pick them up.
But it doesn't stop me using it - way more often than I do the facebook mobile app at the moment (see the Armano illustration...hmm).

Why? I think it's because Twitter's 'What are you doing' updates have so much more value than facebook's status updates. They have something Linkedin, and anyone else who thinks low-effort microblogging has tapped into a rich vein, should seriously consider. They have the option to point to something outside of Twitter - to the rest of the known and being-rapidly-discovered-by-my twitter-friends universe of digital stuff.

In short, urls work as they should in twitter. The only time I see them work as they should in facebook status updates, by comparison, and not without irony, is when they are are an rss feed from another application - such as twitter.

Links are immensely conversation-enabling. By pointing at something you flag it as a conversation starter. And the more conversation enabling, the more in tune with the power of the network.

What is it that stops facebook status updates turning into a conversation? Is it simply the clutter of all the other updates streaming through my news feed?
I don't think so. There's plenty of 'clutter', if you mean stuff I'm not going to give my attention to, on my twitter feed. Is it a disinclination imposed by the design of facebook?

Perhaps.

Perhaps facebook turns us into little broadcasters? I announce: "my status is x. I don't want to talk about it. I just want you to know it. If you'd like to talk about it... message me."

This indicates the facebook newsfeed is less conversation enabling - and therefore ultimately offers less value in a networked world. Conversations aren't shared so others can't contribute so the Reed's Law value growth enabled by self-forming groups is harder to come by (though granted, far from entirely precluded by other aspects of facebook).

The fact that we move to private messaging when we want to talk on facebook, rather than share an open conversation, indicates to me that facebook risks growing its value according to the law of one-to-one communication networks value (Metcalfe's Law) rather than the exponential growth of Reed's Law (Group Forming Network Theory).

A blog is way more conversation enabling.
Is facebook microblogging at all? Or simply microbroadcasting?
The distinction is writ large by the whole facebook premise. It is about privacy over openness.

Blogs and Twitter (despite the ability to block followers - which again, you can't do on the mobile version of Twitter) are about openness. I haven't received a single private message on twitter since I joined (though I did send a few before I worked out for myself this wasn't really the place). When we require privacy we use different modes of communication.

Conversations are there for all to see and join in. And on twitter they can start from anywhere and from anyone (on a blog its more centralised, more where the author leads).

Perhaps we should describe Twitter as decentralised microblogging?

This makes it exceptionally conversation enabling and a great fit with the networked world - which I think is why the net gen love it so.

Why does that make the inevitability of my acquisition of an iPhone greater by the day? Simply that whenever I click a link in a tweet on the mobile version of twitter I have no guarantee of being taken to a mobile-optimised page or a mobile internet page. I get the 'real internet' on an iPhone or indeed on any good tablet style wi-fi enabled device. Without being able to follow the links I'm unable to join the conversation. 3G mobile isn't enough. So I guess mobile had best stick to broadcast, cracking text plays, and that brilliant services thing - but that's a post for another day...

By the way, follow me. I'll follow you.

Doc Searls on the value emerging from all that time you waste blogging...

Doc Searls gives us another example of the Because Effect:

"I make zero money with blogging. (No advertising. Love that.) But I make more than zero because of blogging. Not enough to make me rich, but enough to make me valuable. And far more than I would make with advertising alone.

"And the value I create isn’t just for me. I see what I do here as a positive contribution to the world: open prose that’s like open code: simply useful. Or, in other terms, NEA: something Nobody owns, Everybody can use and Anybody can improve.

"At its best, anyway. Some of what I write, I’m sure, is useless. But most of the time I’m at least trying to do something helpful. I think all the best bloggers, like the best programmers, the best builders, the best Wikipedia contributors, all try to do that. Whether they sell it or not."

Absolutely. And it's how all value will be created before too long.

What happens when you write a blog post

Neat interactive graphic.

Don't just read this, start your own blog

Here's a great quick guide on why. I would have just added it to the vodpod but it's hanging rotten right now:

Pushing the blogging go-button

It's not every day you get the likes of Alan Moore and Euan Semple in the same room. It's even rarer that you get them to share between 20-odd people in your own backyard. But that's what we were treated to at the Never Mind the Bloggers event I hosted at emap's Specialist Media hq in Peterborough yesterday.
We'll be sharing video from the event before too long - thanks again to the efforts of motorcyclenews.com's Angus Farquhar. Alan has already blogged about it.
The event was meant to inspire people to start their own blogs - and give them the tools to do so. One way or another it's off to a good start.
I say one way or another because while not everyone agreed with the message that Alan and Euan brought (and which, to be clear, I support), their words did achieve the objective - to act as a call to action to blog.
So today emap has more bloggers. Check out some of their initial efforts here:

• Phil Bell: http://rollingrust.blogspot.com/
  
• Tim Street: http://virtualb0y.blogspot.com/
• Stefan Bartlett: http://bluesmusiclive.blogspot.com
• Ben Wall: TearAlongTheDottedLine
  
• Ian Richardson: http://roccomedia.blogspot.com/
• Gareth Ashman: http://eco-shed.blogspot.com/
  
• Liam Marsden: http://liamm-theworldofmoose.blogspot.com/
• Charlie Watson: http://watsonianramblings.blogspot.com
• Matthew Proud: http://footymatters.blogspot.com/
• Andy Donovan: http://blackdixon.blogspot.com/
• Martyn Moore: http://martynwriting.blogspot.com
• Simon Penson http://cleverinvestments.blogspot.com/
• Sean Warwick: MediaLifeCrisis.blogspot.com
• Harriet Linton: http://lintonthinking.blogspot.com

more being added as I collect their urls!

And of course, we already had this blog http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com
and Dan Thornton's: http://thewayoftheweb.com
and Guy Procter's: http://trailgear.blogspot.com
Matt Clarke's http://fishfishfish.org
PFK blog

And if you know of more by emap staffers, let me know.

More nodes on the network - more opportunities to connect - more understanding of the power of the network. More edge.
This is good.

Never Mind The Bloggers

Just putting together the final details of an internal emap event I'm hosting at our base in Peterborough, Cambs, tomorrow: Never Mind The Bloggers.
It is intended to inspire and turn that inspiration into immediate action.
I'm thrilled that Alan Moore (Communities Dominate Brands) and Euan Semple (The Obvious) have agreed to speak and join in a forum in our morning session. That's the inspiration - and some of the finest around.
The guys will also be hanging around when the 'action' starts. Everyone who attends the event will get an immediate follow up session in front of a pc to help them turn the desire to blog into the reality of their own blog.
We will be videoing the presentations and hope - with permission - to be sharing words of wisdom on this blog before too long.

Journalist2.0

I posted this as a response to Ajit Jaoker's post on his excellent OpenGardens blog. You won't read my response there because it was written as a reply to Ajit posting the same item on Forum Oxford, which we both belong to.
Anyway, since it was so relevant to the content of this blog - I thought I ought to record it here, too.

As a journalist (at least that was how I once described myself) of almost 20 years experience, it's hard for me to admit - but the role of the pro is being marginalised by the wisdom of crowds.
But as an evangelist for the new ecology - it makes me excited about the future.
There are some areas where the pro still has advantages - notably access to exclusives and trust with traditional advertisers - but as I've argued in this post (niche brands need ugc, broad brands need ultra exclusives) - when the whole world is a blogger there's no way you have enough control to claim an exclusive.
And over time advertisers will learn that the trust is vested in the community not the brand itself. Response rates will teach them,
But there's an argument that the relevance of the professional journalist lives on - for 'journalist' read blogger. For 'professional' read reputation systems. For 'Highly resourced' read community-funded.
Simply: The professional journalist of yesteryear is being replaced by a community-validated blogger, who gets paid through models like ohmynews or, less-aggregated, google adsense etc.
If his community grows large enough to support his efforts full time - he can perform this role full time.
Journalist2.0 lives and dies by his relevance to his community and reputation as judged by all (now everyone is his employer).
And there is no professional or technical barrier to entry.
One conclusion to draw is that the arrival of blogging deprofessionalises journalism. It makes it something anyone can do and anyone can contribute to.
That's why the likes of Alan Moore describe the arrival of the blogging platform as being as significant as Gutenburg and his printing press. It's all about the decentralisation, the relaxation of control, on information.
We should all end up with a closer approximation of the truth.

Everything changes....

It seems that despite the current rush to jump online, U.S publisher Ziff Davis is listing game portals 1up and EGM among the three divisions for which it is actively inviting offers. While the sites are not critically acclaimed for their standards of journalism, they are popular, and it seems to suggest the firm might be moving away from publishing? More comments around the web, including GameSetWatch.

As noted in David's last post, blogging continues to do well on the internerd. It's probably a little early to dismiss predictions of a fall over the next 11 months, but I don't think any fall will be especially sharp or significant as yet. There's still expansion to come from integrating audio and video blogging, plus social profiles etc, all into one accessible place. And I'd like to see a breakdown of blogging's rises and falls among age groups. After all, there are plenty of middle-aged and old-aged computer users still discovering things like blogging and youtube.

Plus there are more and more outlets for 'Pro Bloggers' to actively seek a living from their writing. Certainly as incentive as a pension supplement?

Lastly, and bowing to internet schizophrenia and pro blogging etiquette, I'm trying to limit my split personalities. Therefore StressedBadger is no more, and Badger Gravling has taken his place. No less of a stupid pseudonym, but it's also my name on Xbox Live, countless gaming sites and forums, and dare I say, imbued with a certain Scandinavian air of efficiency which I'm going to need over the next few weeks. Especially if, as promised, broadband returns to my house at midnight tonight.

The future is startlingly similar to the present...

I'm intrigued to see what the wider world make of my most recent post on The Way of the Web.
My views on how editorial sites will be fuelled by user generated content have become more coherent over recent weeks. Certainly when it comes to text submissions, there seems to be a lot that suggests the new editorial model for many publications will in fact be very similar to the current set-up.
Anyway, I'd be very interested in hearing some more points of view, so get yourself over to The Way of the Web