The only thing worth measuring

Bluetooth. Used massively by kids who don't have the mobile phone contracts to go spraying data, mms and email willy nilly from their phones. Dr Ian Wood talked about the way his kids use it at yesterday's MIPS.
My observations of kids - and many adults for that matter - backs that up. They get together in physical proximity and share pictures, music etc via bluetooth.
Which raises questions about how we monetise this. The usual 'stick ads all over it' kind of solutions get chucked around. They lead to the inevitable "But how do you measure it?"

Here's my solution: Don't.

We are getting increasingly hung up on trying to measure how 'engaged' users are, or the pass-on rate of virals (which at least make an effort to understand that the ad is the content and the content is the ad - rather than plastering interruptive ads over 'the content').

The only measure that's real is; does more of what you're selling get sold?
The rest is observing information flows.

Maybe where this leads us is to a place where the creator of the ad message (the viral, the content that carries the message in some form or other) gets paid an agreed sum for the research and the resulting creative that the payee approves and then a % cut of the uplift in sales (if any!) over the next 12 months (that's an arbitrary number of course - meant to indicate over a longer scale than the blitzkrieg of most 'campaigns'. DIY distribution follows a much less explosive, much more organic, pattern).

Imagine if that 'creator of the ad' is a 'user'. There's a disruption. Where everyone is a content creator now, so everyone is also a marketer.

Advertising paid on results? Advertising that anyone can do? Is this a model already being offered or adopted (and I'm thinking a little beyond straightforward affiliate marketing)? Tell us why it's never going to work - or where it has already?

How many 14 year olds use email?

The deathknell for email has been rung loud and long by the likes of JP Rangaswami. But we (and I count myself among those who have long said farewell to their teenage years) continue to use it.
Who could do without it, we ask?

I spoke at Informa's Mobile Internet Portal Strategies in London today. Chairman Dr Ian Wood reminded us that there were very senior analysts who, not so long ago, had questioned whether or not mobile phones would ever take off - because there were big red telephone boxes at the end of most UK streets.

It's very easy to stick to what we know, and make predictions about the future based on it.

Which brings me to those 14 year olds. I met with Conor Mc Kenna from Taptu today. Forgive me if I confuse the detail, Conor, (and by all means correct me) but the gist of his story was as follows.
A relative of his, a teacher, asks her class of 14-year-old Irish girls who uses email.
Among the 20 in the class the answer came back: 1.
Teenagers are far from backward in adopting social technologies.
A fellow user asked (on twitter last night) for guesses on which application his teenage daughters were demanding was installed first as he set up a new pc for them.
Answer: IM.

I had 20 minutes of free wifi time at King's Cross station in London today before catching a train home. Every one of those 20 minutes were spent deleting spam from my work email account.

I dare say spam can reach me in ways other than email (see this morning's post for a user experience version, for a start). But if you're looking for the president of spam right now, email wins by a landslide.

Tomi Ahonen sent me a gmail last night to say he was at Heathrow. Tomi's a connected guy. I responded by gmail. But the thing that got our conversation reconnected was an sms text.

There's too much wrong with email. 14-year-old girls know this. I'm just trying to catch up.



By the way, Paul Golding presented some brilliant advice for the design of user experiences at MIPS, so I feel comfortable recommending his book.

He also said the nicest thing anyone said about me all day during his presentation.
He described be as: "The UK's foremost evangelist for twitter (probably)"

I'll live with that. Follow me there - it's a better bet than email for a start!

See you at Mobile Internet Portal Strategies?

I'm speaking at Informa's Mobile Internet Portal Strategies in London tomorrow.
I'm first up after the intro at 9.10am, so hope I won't be too soporific for those who make it in time!
I've got a couple of meetings lined up during the day, and there are a few sessions I'd like to see myself, of course.
But if you are coming along and want to say hello, might be best to do so via twitter. Find and or follow me here.
In the meantime; here are the slides for my presentation. They give a taste at least.

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