P2PR theory into practice

Bauer Media (the company I work for) has a neat social media play called ditto.net (I would say that, wouldn't I? I've had a light-touch advice-and-support role throughout).

It's a human sorting engine, enabling crowd-sourced entertainment ranking through the simplicity of voting on lists. For the full story, listen to Colin Kennedy.

Anyways, a couple of months back Community Marketing Manager Dan Thornton and myself got our heads together to think of ways we might spread the word about ditto.net (image by Thomas Hawk via flickr)

What we came up with was a list to rank 'The RockStars of Web2.0'.
(You can read Dan's take on all this here).

We figured the inhabitants of this list would be people equipped to discover it and either be sufficiently intrigued/excited/embarrassed by it to perhaps point it out to the many people in their own networks of trust.

They, like all of us, will only pass on what they think their network will think is cool. That's a basic principle for me for how brands can adapt to the networked world.

Rather than bung them all a basic press release, we stood out of the way so they could (at least in some cases) make the discovery themselves.

And in a recent meme (emerging after we started this) that discover-it-yourself approach to PR seems to ring the right bells with the likes of Scoble, Arrington and, most explicitly, Steve Rubel (Does the thrill of the chase make PR obsolete).

We hoped they might even investigate beyond the list they appeared on - more discovery of their own. We trusted they were bright enough to make their own decisions about this - they certainly didn't need us to either lead them by the hand or tell them what to do.

Some I did contact directly, using networks of trust I have built up over time. That's the more traditional side of PR in a networked context. But others discovered ditto through P2PR - friend-adapted-pass-on.

Dan and I both blogged and tweeted about the intitial gathering of the list. We hosted posts where our own networks could contribute suggestions before the list for ranking got created on ditto itself. That stirred a little initial buzz.

And when the list went live, he and I posted and tweeted again. We didn't take it, or ourselves too seriously. Neither did those we contacted directly in the good old fashioned way.

And one way or another the list, and ditto.net, got pointed to by and on Stowe Boyd's /Message (that one really was down to my personal network - I also blog at /message!), by Joseph Jaffe, Euan Semple, Jonathan Macdonald, Richard Millington and, today, by the legend that is Doc Searls.

(Dan's list is way more complete than my own).

And that's without tracking the twitter retweeting (of which there has been plenty) or other social sentiment measures.

Even Jason Calacanis has involved himself in a discussion about it - after discovering (there's that magic word again) that he's languishing at the bottom end of the list!

On each occasion, the conversation continued. And continues. This isn't a boom-bang flash-in-the-pan firework display, it's the release of a (spin-free, upfront) message to be spread in the way the adhoc communities of purpose who discover it choose to adopt and adapt it. It's up to them if they find it useful and how they find it useful.

P2PR is working right here, right now. We haven't done the marketing to them, they choose to do it to themselves.

From broadcast PR to P2PR

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: new networks)

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)

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.

Loudmouth lives! A new era for old media?

UPDATED Nov 16, 2007 to include an interview with project lead Colin Kennedy (see below).

Very pleased to receive the following text in an email a few moments ago:

"I got an invite to this brand new service and thought you might want to be one of the first people to check it out.

If you're into movies, music, tv, people or cars (biscuits coming soon), or you just want to meet new people, you should find something that interests you.

Have a look at www.projectloudmouth.com.

P.S. It’s still in trial mode, so feel free to give them feedback. If you like it – pass it on!"

Which all means that emap's first from-scratch social media play is in public beta.

It's a bit of a watershed in some ways. It's not attached to any current emap brands - and it's not about push content. It is about self-forming communities of interest, about user ratings and recommendation, about networks of trust. This is community-assisted navigation. And it's fun.

You answer enticing questions, building your social network as you go. The result is networks of taste, recommendation and trust which make it easy to discover things you didn't know you needed to hear, see, drive... own.

Maybe it's one answer to the question: what happens after advertising?

It's all pretty radical for an 'old' media company. Maybe the old dog can learn the new tricks?

Disclosure; I work for emap and this is an emap project. I'm privileged to have had some great conversations with some of the guys on the development team - led by Colin Kennedy (ex-editor and publisher of film mag Empire) and Dhiraj Mukherjee (co-founder Shazam).

I caught up with Colin last night (Nov 15) and this is how he sees it:

"We are (at last) in public beta and yet still sort-of in semi-secret trial mode. In other words, there's a long way to go. By mid-December we should launch with a new brand name (finding open .coms in late 07 is a bitch) and I may even label that an "alpha" release if only to highlight the potential we see for the service (if all our dreams come true).

"For the minute though, our aims are more modest, get a rounded product out, get some users, get some feedback, be prepared to kill some favourite features if necessary. We’re trying to remain open about what the service will be used for, it could take off as a dating site or as an Amazon add-on or a classic social network – or some mixture of all three. We’re not sure.

"The trick is to communicate the immediate benefits to our early adopters clearly while keeping our options open for long-term development. This is very much a work in progress but the December drop should make the more useful aspects of taste navigation clear. Our belief is that personal taste is an important factor in lots of decisions and if we can therefore capture and correctly index taste on a wide scale then we can start to facilitate user navigation in lots of interesting ways.

"No one else is quite so well positioned to capture the way people feel about a wide variety of stuff – how important this is only time will tell.

"Since you ask, entertainment navigation is an age-old problem and something I am personally very familiar with from my Empire days, the reason we decided to pursue a social solution to an old problem is that after analysing the market it was just obviously more powerful and scalable. It was like we had all been making radio shows for a number of years and someone had just invented television – if you wanted to remain where the action is it was simply impossible to ignore.

"As it goes, we did trial what I would call a more traditional “content” solution to the problem which would have enjoyed a close relationship with Emap brands but the proposed service just didn’t feel very elegant or cost-effective compared to existing social solutions like LastFM or Flixster - even Trip Advisor and LinkedIn were inspirations. The technology was new but the thinking was old.

"So we went back to a drawing board, tried something that is much more simple in terms of client-side technology but represents a pretty radical break for a traditional media company.

"We asked them to believe in the properties of successful communication systems rather than put their faith in content. I am not sure they entirely understood the pitch but, all credit to them, they did at least decide our approach was worth a shot.”

I think it's exciting and innovative - but I would say that wouldn't I?

I'm really interested in what you think - and so are the team. Feedback please in comments here or directly through www.projectloudmouth.com