Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond

Monday, January 19, 2009

The Crunch and your personal experiments

An unhealthy dose of risk aversion has swept through the financial world since it got taken somewhat by surprise by the crunch.

It's extending its hope-corroding fingers into the world of social media start-ups.

Less of Google's - 'you can't milk a calf' - more of - 'show me the money'!

Don't let this eat at you, too. Don't be part of a downturn in personal experimentation. (image courtesy)

For example. When you hear Google is closing services, does it make you think twice before uploading content to any new-comer? Does the risk averse monkey on your back whisper: "you'll lose it forever if they go belly-up"?

Are you sticking with the devils you know? The brands you already have a taste for?

Who you trust for cloud services is built around assumptions of long term reliability.

To win in this space cloud competitors will have to offer guarantees to customers - and evidence of a personal content migration or retrieval plan should the worst happen.

Which takes you back to needing to prove a value for these relationships to funders.

And it's all adding up to creating a credit crunch of experimentation.

Experimentation - our essential playfulness - is vital for the health of our web and for increasing innovation, innovation which brings efficiency and wealth for all. The more experiments, the more successfully we find good fits for the evolutionary fitness landscapes that can converge and amplify through the two complex adaptive systems of the web and the economy.

The less we experiment, the less chance of finding all the right fits for all possible niches and needs.

Your willingness to experiment is the equivalent of the banking system's willingness to lend.

There is no government bail-out scheme on offer for this.

Only you can keep the flame of experimentation and innovation alive.

And you must.

Lend yourself - your time, your playfulness, your innovative spirit - so that the evolution of the web may continue.

Try the new guys. Take a risk. Extend them some of your credit.

Show the bankers how it's done!

Show your intent with a comment below! Encourage your friends to do it too, blog and tweet it, email and text it.

You are the driving force of the web.

Go play!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Google holds the key to conversational marketing

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBaseI like where Stowe is going with this
He draws the conclusion from the Google shakedown ( Google Ends Google Video Uploads, Shutters Notebook, Catalog Search, Dodgeball & Jaiku ) that the big G is lining up a bid for Twitter.

Interesting, because if there's anyone with the volume of advertisers required to make a business model work in Twitter, it is Google.

Interesting too, to imagine how a half-way house to the fourth dimension of marketing (co-creation with real-time adhoc communities of purpose) could be delivered with something very similar to google adsense.

Think of conversational marketing, think of people being rewarded for recommending products or services where-ever they (digitally at least) talk about it.

Think how we are all advertisers and all marketers now. How the only way messages are passed on in social networks is peer to peer.

Think how trust in you as a source of recommendation could be enhanced rather than damaged by payment (a la ebay's reputation system) when your recommendations aren't broadcast, but shared in peer to peer networks of trust.

If I spam my friends, if I fool my friends, if I fail my friends - then pretty soon they aren't my friends any more.

And if the value of your recommendations are ranked by the reach of your social graph - that should keep the spam down: Lie to make a quick buck if you like. But trust is your currency in this world - and you've just blown yours.

Mechanically how might this work? Perhaps I register with Google Conversation Sense (tm!) and I pick out a series of brands and products I actually like, use and would recommend to peers.

After this if and when I do recommend these in digital p2p communication, I get a micropayment. The size of payment depends on how many people follow/read/interact with me online (which correlates with trust, of course).

There are details to be overcome, for sure. For example, should your use of a specific term become a link whenever you use it - to a particular vendor, depending on bids of the kind used in adsense/adwords.

A simpler proposition would be that you get rewarded for the mention - those receiving the recommendation will use search (likely google) to find a vendor for themselves anyway!)

And I'm thinking beyond single networks. Google could track the conversation across all open networks - and reward participants where-ever the conversation is happening.

Which explains why Facebook (with its conversations beyond the reach of google) is seen as such a rival for them.

Ultimately that may mean that Facebook is the more glittering prize for Google to go after - since they can get at the conversation in Twitter anyway.

I want to thank Farhan Rehman for the thinking around adsense and conversational marketing.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Feeling unlucky?

"$110,000,000 - approximately: amount of money lost by Google annually due to the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button"

More mad internet facts here.

Welcome to the human network

Nice message from Cisco - I don't often repeat ads here, but this one speaks to The Power of the Network - that the internet is about connecting people.
We start with our social graph (our friends, family, peers) and through them discover people who interest us, people we come to trust and through them we discover content they trust and people they trust. And the less silo'd the metadata (the more easily and readily we share) the easier it becomes to connect with our communities of purpose - groups of people who care about what we care about right now.
That's what I'm thinking when I'm watching this. How about you?

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

10 Things I love about the iPhone - no, really

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBaseSince I've given apple such a hard time over my iPhone. I thought I ought to consider why I persist with it.

The contract I'm locked into has much to do with it.
And I'd be lieing if the coolness of it doesn't help (though this is seriously undermined in the style stakes by the black rubber condom I sheath my new one in after I dropped the last.
(incidentally, perhaps apple could build in this kind of protection next time around? Or at least box new iPhones with a cheap protective case.)

My daughter told the genius at the apple store that I love my phone.

And she's right.

The iPhone and I have a stormy relationship. Moments of sheer frustration spread widely apart by good experiences.

So 10 things I love about my iPhone.
There are problems with how some of these function, as I've posted and tweeted in the past, but they are powerful.

1. The community. When I have problems with my iPhone I can always find someone who has faced similar, overcome the challenge and shared the result. Apple's real ace is that their customers do their customer service ( and marketing, of course, but that's another story.)

2. No walled garden: I'm on an O2 contract but I don't experience the Internet-as-controlled-for-you-by-O2, I get the real Internet - our Internet.

3. The interface. Not so great for one-handed operation but an unmatchable experience for the eye and speed of navigation. When you aren't walking anywhere.

4. The iPod. Their best yet.

5. The integration with email and calendar services. Easier to set up than most.

6. Intuitive. My daughter could take pictures with the iPhone at the age of 3.

7. Solutions. Updates to make the phone ever better are built into your life. Adding content from iTunes? Want a better phone while you are at it. Ok then.

8. The app store. Easiest installation and best integration of any phone (or computer, for that matter) that I have ever experienced. Some social recommendation to your phone would ramp it higher still.

9. Control of the desktop. That the user can rearrange navigation to suit themselves is a given.

10. The wifi. Connects seemlessly whereever possible. And that's harder to achieve than often credited for.

What do you love about your phone?