Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: Lowest common denominator

Showing posts with label Lowest common denominator. Show all posts

Monday, March 19, 2012

Who wins with your social solution?

Domino's have become quite famous for their 'social'. Nice apps. Happy twitter campaigns, gathering Facebook fans.
Which is why I'm so surprised at the weakness of its latest work in Australia.
In short, they are crowd-sourcing the next pizza to go on the menu with Facebook fans.
Which sounds on the face of it ok... until you dig into the benefits for the end user.

This from the blog of Online PR/Social outfit Simply Zesty (it's not them that's the blame, they are just reporting on it):

Now in Australia, they’re ... creating ‘the social pizza’ which will harness their 488,000 Facebook fans in creating the pizza they want to see. Starting March 19th and spanning the next seven days, fans will be able to vote on a wide range of factors such as the type of base used, the sauces used, the toppings and even its name. the most popular choices will be then added onto the new pizza which will be added onto Domino’s.
It’s almost like being able to custom make your own pizza to your taste… no wait… it’s exactly like that except you have to go along with the lowest common denominator verdict.

Hell – at least I’ll feel like it’s my pizza in a way I wouldn’t have done if I’d made all the decisions myself… no wait…

This mass crowd-sourcing only ever delivers a mass production outcome ticking the lowest common denominator boxes.

Individuals are already innovating better-fit solutions each time they customise their toppings and crust choices. The long tail solution already exists. Do it with a friend? That's a half-and-half then.

This social solution smacks of an old broadcast model being forced into a network. Always an uncomfortable fit.

It seems to me more to me about the PR message this will generate and less about a best-fit outcome.

If you're treating customers as partners, would this be the best solution for them? An Open Business approach would ask exactly that. An Open Business approach would ask those partners if this was actually the solution they seek before foisting it on them.

I'm thinking the principles of Open Business did not apply here.

A reminder of those principles:

1. It's not about the tools - it is about Behaviours:
Often social business conversations focus on implementing software. Open Business urges you to think Behaviours first. What are people doing, what can and will they do? If you are starting with tools you'll likely starting in the wrong place.

2. Think less about messages and more about products. Open Business urges you to consider ways of making things with the people for whom they are intended; for the best possible fit with real need; for efficiency; for results people care about. Messages are an outcome of this process - not its purpose. Talk 'social' and all roads will lead you back to messages.

3. Ditch the customer.
No, really. Stop thinking about customers. Customers are people you intend to do things to. Open Business urges you to think about the long-suffering customer as partners to work with instead. It pushes those people deep into the production process - right to the start, to join with and be supported by the org in delivering the things all parties want - all partners want.

In a nutshell, Open Business is the art of making partners of customers.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Why I love Twitter's 'People Similar To You' feature

I've only just noticed a Twitter feature which I think is a very healthy development: People Similar To You.
Click through to your twitter profile page and you'll find a small collection of people Twitter has run an algorithm against and decided are people 'similar to you'.
On further investigastion I find it's been trialled quietly since the summer - but only with limited numbers of users. Please check and let me know if you are seeing it on your profile?
If I had to stab a wild guess I'd say it was using similar matching technology as found in @MrTweet - which always had a pretty good hit rate for me.
I have to say the first four 'People Similar to You' delivered to me (and it was just four on the evening of November 25, 2010) were all people I'm comfortable with being described as 'similar to'.

Whether or not the others are we shall see. I'll tweet them all to ask for thoughts shortly...

In the meantime - I really like this development. I like it because it suggests Twitter is taking much more seriously our interest in people very similar to us (not just who, for example, use the term social media marketing from time to time - clogging up the twitter arteries with 'internet marketer' spam).

I've never thought much of Twitter trends. They reveal only the lowest common denominator and smack of a broadcast approach being layered on to a seriously adhoc network play.

Which is why I shouted out for Trends Among Friends - revealing what is important among my friends seems more valuable to me.

People Similar To Me seems like exactly the kind of building block that can make Trends Among Friends work.

While I'm really not too fussed about how appalling Gillian McKeith has been on this evening's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here (ITV 1 in the UK) I am concerned about the metadata being expressed by Tamara, Tony, Neil and Mark.

It could prove to be another wonderful way in which twitter enables us to discover people who care about the same things we do, right now.

And if they are wise they will use this not to message us, but to bring us together to help add value to the thing we care about through intelligent and scalable co-creation.

I have my fingers crossed for it. Though I will note, because I expect others so to do, Twitter will be wise to throw in a little serendipity. The role of the publisher is often to introduce us to things we didn't know we needed to know. The risk of a sealed silo of similarity is clear and one I'd expect any org with the clear understanding of group forming network theory that twitter appears to have to be very careful to avoid.

I mean, it doesn't want to be Facebook, now does it?

Monday, September 20, 2010

Scaling relevance: Delivering bespoke utility at low cost

The networked world will overturn many traditional business models which focus on low cost - often driven by the desire to feed on the economies of scale of mass production.

In a networked world we have the potential to scale relevance and should focus on that first.

Relevance - or fit with our specific needs - is reduced by the focus on economies of scale that mass production delivers. Relevance = Utility; in that the more relevant it is to me, the more useful it is to me.

We all have a preference for the thing we find most useful - and place most value upon it. Mass production can't deliver relevance - at least it can't beyond meeting lowest common denominator requirements. The bargain we enter into, when accepting mass produced approximations of fit with our specific needs, is low cost.
There is a balance point between utility and cost - which varies for each of us dependant on circumstances.
I believe our ability to connect with those people like us seeking solutions to the same problems we do, which the web enables, swings the balance strongly in favour of relevance, fit, utility.

And as it does so, so we must start considering, and delivering, new business models which seek to serve the network and not the world of broad mass production; models that make delivering relevance (highest utility) their key driver.
An example; we'd all prefer a made-to-measure, bespoke suit. Not only can we specify it to our taste, it will also be optimised for relevance. In other words it'll fit not just our taste, but our specific shape. To service our bespoke requirement in this regard is costly - particularly when compared with the price of an off-the-peg solution.

Granted suits on pegs are not sold quite at the level of one-size-fits-all, but they are certainly sold against a series of broad 'fitness' points. Very rarely, a buyer's specific taste and shape requirements will be matched by an off-the-peg suit. And on that rare occasion no doubt the rare buyer will rave about the quality of the fit of the suit to all his pals (who no doubt will find buying the same off-the-peg-suit far from satisfactory).

Consider how the networked world could make suits. Let's assume that people are able to accurately measure themselves in all the dimensions a quality bespoke tailor would (and yes, that is quite an assumption, but play along for the thought experiment, please).

Imagine a platform which could gather the meta data of these measurements, associated with their owners (a website, if you like, where people enter the relevant data) where those with excellent matches are introduced to one another - on a global scale.

Now these customers are formed into a group via the meta data of their shared dimensions and taste. Assume thousands of them (remember, we are operating on the global scale of billions of internet users) are a match - and they can all buy together. Now they can get the same order of utility (hand stitching aside, if that is indeed an advantage) as the individual bespoke suit buyer - at the same order of cost as anyone buying a mass-produced off the peg suit.

Imagine the relevance-first model applied to your industry.

The network has the ability to scale fit (relevance) in a way traditional mass production can not. In the complex adaptive system of the economy, those best adapted to the actual fitness landscape are best equipped to survive.

It's another example of how the web reveals the true role of the organisation as a platform - and the web as a place where orgs make things with (others) rather than take things from.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Ban Automated Direct Messages!

Image via CrunchBase

Any form of automated messaging has the potential to be spam. Most of it fulfills that potential extremely well.

For example. At the weekend I was followed by someone on twitter. I got my email alert (a lowest common denominator one from twitter, which the guys are working to make more bespoke through displaying follower counts etc... but still a way to go).

Anyway, the person looked like they were interested in the same things I was. Follower/followed count was pretty even - usually a good sign. The recent tweets looked human and interesting enough.

So I followed back.

And then they let themselves down.

With an automated direct message back to me.

It said something like: "Jeez, I'm just so busy with all these new followers at the moment I can only send you this (poxy - my addition) automated tweet. Sorry and that."

Hang on a minute mate. You followed me! If you're too bloody busy to have a conversation with me don't bother following me. Simple.

Maybe they are hoping that at some point in the future they will have time to have a conversation with me. I'm sure they will.

And that's really the point about lowest common denominator messages. The automated, one press-release-style-email-fits-all approach creates not contact, but resentment.

I said this in the previous post on this blog, but I think it's worth reiterating: When your purpose is to communicate with humans, don't massage the humanity out of your communications.

Automated Direct Messages have no place on twitter as far as I can see. If you get one, you have discovered someone who likely also wants to use you as a channel.

Lowest common denominator (one-size-fits-all) messaging = broadcast = spam = inappropriate for twitter - or any form of peer-to-peer activity.

I hereby urge twitter to make a stand on this - and ban automated DM messages.

Perhaps we could start with a #banautodm hashtag. Your suggestions very welcome

Monday, June 08, 2009

Little bits of politics

The euro election results coming in today reveal yet another inconvenient truth for the old world of mass: a record low turn-out.

Roughly 6/10* elligable Europeans care so little about the policies and the messages of ALL political parties that they decided not to vote at all.

I wonder how many may have made the journey to the polling booths if they had known there would be an alternative box to tick? One that read:

The current system sucks. I want a new one - one that's relevant to me.

Those elected today can hardly claim a mandate. We're starting to ask what constitutes legitimate government? How low must a turn-out be before the result is considered void?

And yet everyone has an opinion about how they would like the world about them to be. The turn-out for that all-day every-day election is pretty much 100%. Current models aren't capturing how much we care.

The old mass broadcast model of democracy is being challenged just as all forms of mediation are, by the power of the network.

Our electoral system is devised to match a world of mass; of lowest common denominator; focus on the hit end of the long tail.

The Us Now movie raises some of the issues. But it doesn't challenge the basic assumption that we should be governed by massing us into geographic groupings.

Perhaps we choose not to be grouped in that way any more? Perhaps the global communities of purpose that emerge, when we get our hands on the tools of digital self-organisation, change politics and the concept of nation states as much as they challenge traditional media and traditional business models?

Perhaps self forming, adhoc, communities of purpose will become the new way in which groups are gathered to be governed and to govern themselves?

If you had to start from scratch with an electoral system today, knowing what we know now about the power of the network - and the power it gives us all, would we start from where traditional politics has delivered us?

Do you trust the judgement of everyone who gets to vote?

If our lords and masters at the centre don't deign to consider the impact of the network, I have a funny feeling we'll just end up working around them...

*Updated at 10:35am on official turn-out figures.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

The evolution of control: Coding is power

I had lunch with some of the guys from ThirdE yeT yesterday, and apart from business (I'm pleased to say I sit on the advisory board) we talked about something I think could be as revolutionary as the peer-to-peer publishing ability of the internet.

It all stems from a notion raised by Dom Penrice, one of the big brains behind the very interesting publishing model driving www.basedrift.com

Dom suggests the new owners of the means of production/control are not all of us (as you may conclude from the fact that we are all publishers now) they are, in fact, the coders. (image courtesy)

The ownership of the means of production has always been a pretty centralised affair.

Centralizing ownership meant centralizing control.

Way back when, The church owned the books and their production so it owned information. And that gave it control.

With the arrival of the printing press those who owned the means of creating and distributing information multiplied.

The result was new ideas spread more rapidly and were put into action faster, creating value for more and more people.

Or, the Renaissance, as it's otherwise known.

As industrialisation got swinging, and mass production started matching lowest common denominator needs, we developed faster and faster printing presses and distribution processes.

Cinema, radio, tv are all examples. Faster printing presses with ever broader reach.

Ownership of the means of production was still in the hands of the few though.

With the arrival of the Internet we all became publishers. Control of information was suddenly harder to make money from. Ask any traditional media owner.

Where once the ability to publish information (and therefore control it and everything reliant upon that) was scarce (and therefore valuable) now that ability had become abundant.

Publishing is virtually ubiquitous now. And almost ubiquitously virtual.

So a new currency emerged, a new scarce means of production: code.

Programmers now decide our experience and control our opportunities. They are the new press barons.

Except there are lots of them. Not ubiquitous. But lots.

So we've reached a new stage of control where more people (those with programming skills) have control, but still not enough for the true group forming value of the Internet to fulfil its potential.

How so? Well, just as an idea benefits from evolution, so an implementation.

If I share an idea, you will take elements of it that you find useful to share among your peers. Your feedback to me may benefit my version of the idea. Your evolution of it (with your next community of purpose) may make the idea a better fit for you and/or a better fit for the larger fitness landscape (the evolutionary model).

Ideas benefit from complex adaptive systems - such as peer to peer digital networks. The Internet.

They benefit so effectively from this today because our ability to publish our ideas one to another has become ubiquitous. We (pretty much) all know how to do this peer to peer publishing of ideas thing.

But far less of us know how to implement them when it comes to the coding and design.

And when an idea reaches that stage the evolutionary processes slow right down. There are too few people available to lend their skills to adapt code to make it a better fit for their purposes in rapid iterative processes of the kind we have for ideas.

Imagine if we could make it as easy to code as it is to publish.

Look what ubiquitous publishing has done for the production and exchange of content/information/ideas/

human relationships.

More content uploaded to Youtube in the last year than broadcast by TV ever.

Ubiquitous publishing.

Imagine ubiquitous coding.

That's precisely what Dom Penrice has in mind: finding ways to allow anyone to manipulate code, parcel up the value created and pass it on to the next person with shared need. The next person can then add their value to hone or reshape for their community of purpose. And so on ad infinitum with evolutionary processes amplifying or damping as dictated by the fitness landscape.

Dom's vision is that at each iteration those that have contributed get paid, feeding back, pyramid style, to the originator.

It is a supply web, networked world approach to programming and one which could be as revolutionary as the arrival of ubiquitous publishing itself.

ThirdeyeT are starting to put the idea of ubiquitous coding to practical effect in their new publishing cms. It allows them to change the design of their site (and not just reskin it) in two days flat - without the need for any specialist skills.

I know many a editor who would be very grateful of that.

In the days of the constant relaunch giving control directly to the people with the vision has to be a good thing.

We're all publishers now. All advertisers, all marketers.

When we are all coders, then the next revolution will begin.