“we must focus on mobile people, not mobile devices. In other words, we are not merely shrinking in size a Web experience, but creating an entirely new platform for communication and interaction.”
Nadav Savio, now a user experience designer at Google (GOOG), and mobile usage expert Jared Braiterman, founder of Jared Research, wrote in a 2007 paper.
From the Business Week article “Moving to the Mobile Web”.
Word!
They do mention a few design/UX agencies in the Business Week article including Punchcut (who I only heard about last week as a good friend of mine just left Frog design to join them, also follow them on twitter), and of course the good people at Adaptive Path who have always focused on the people and not the technology.
I know most of us with significant web experience have been hearing for years how the mobile web was going to take off, but it really does feel like the current environment has got some very disruptive forces and new entrants that are going to heat up the competitive environment.
Well that is Bill Hicks ripping marketing a new one, heard about this via Johnnie Moore’s weblog where he also mention he’s starting a new collaborative blog. The the new blog is called Marketing 2.0 in which some very respectable marketing bloggers are getting together to post on how marketing is changing.
I rather like Johnnie’s inaugural post where he even questions the validity of marketing 2.0, I mean, doesn’t marketing just go away if it’s built into the DNA of products and experiences?
In the shiny world of Marketing 2.0, we’d see the back of all that advertising and direct mail - the 99% of noisy clutter that interrupts our viewing and travelling pleasure with its crude efforts to flog us stuff we don’t need.
But maybe we’re just kidding ourselves. Us marketing types have always had a real talent for that, haven’t we?
I wonder if we’re just repeating that tired old solution for any other substandard product with a dodgy customer image - the rebrand! Hey folks this isn’t nasty old Marketing, this is New Improved Marketing NOW with Added Authenticity…
Reminds me very much of victor papanek’s sentement from his seminal book from the 70’s called Design for the Real World
There are professions more harmful than industrial desing, but only a very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others who don’t care.
Now, both me and Johnnie do have one other thing in common and that is we are from England, which I think gives us a somewhat different view of marketing, because to be quite honest America is a nation that has been marketing better than any other nation in history. What we often refer to with slight disdain as that American razzmatazz is in fact the American marketing machine revving up into high gear.
That being said advertising is becoming less effective, customers are becoming more aware of the impact of their consumption, are holding companies to higher standards, and are seeking more meaning out of the products and services they buy. As post war marketing theory, segments, demographics, focus groups, monolithic ad networks and the mass market are becoming increasingly irrelevant companies have to look for new ways to engage.
Just heard of this new service called Plurk which is a similar “microblogging” service rather like Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku etc. According to Venture Beat it launched in January this year and seems to be targeting a more teenage demographic.
bub.blicio.us asks the question “is Plurk another Twitter?” and in many ways it is, it’s a lifestreaming/microblogging platform with friends and fans etc. The one major difference that I see in Plurk is it’s “Karma” measure, and that is one of the only reasons why I think it will be interesting to watch what happens. Karma is essentially a measure of your level of participation in the Plurk system, and it’s the kind of explicit feedback that I think can fuel the growth of social systems. One of the reasons that Yelp is so successful is it has multiple feedback mechanisms that reward and recognize the right activity in the social network, and therefore encourages more of that activity. If you reward the right “value creating” activities on your social network you set up very powerful virtuous cycles.
Mind you, as bub.blicio.us also pointed out there is no apparent business model or revenue model, agreed, but what else is new.
My good blogging friend and burrito fiend Noah Brier has created and interesting tool called Brand Tags. Essentially visitors to the site are shown a page with a brand on it and asked to tag it with the first word that comes to mind. Brand Tags then shows “tag clouds” with all the words people have typed, the bigger the word the more people typed that word, simple really and the results are going to be fascinating. Even in this early stage some trends are emerging.
Google
Yahoo
What does that say about Yahoo’s branding?
Amazon
BMW
LOL!
If you want to see other brands added just twitter them to Noah at heyitsnoah
Interesting video/interview with the Threadless founders. Tara (blogger at HorsePigCow) put the video together and has written a book recently called the Whuffie Factor about businesses that are succeeding by leveraging web2.0/social media and of course the community. Threadless is probably one of the best examples of a community driven company.
The book that will catch the crest of Web 2.0 and show how any business can harness its power by increasing their Whuffie, the store of social capital that is the currency of the digital world.
I think the real key word here is Social Capital (I’ve talked about Social Equity here before but I think Social Capital works better even) and the more I think about it the more I think it is the secret sauce, or at least a way to think about secret sauce.
I just got a very worrying phone call from my Dad today about his Gmail account which he’s had for several years. Essentially he tried to log into the account and it said his password was incorrect, so he went through the various processes to try and get it reset, unfortunately he didn’t have a secondary email account, but he went through the process of answering security questions etc. At some point one of the security questions came up with Chinese charicters in it, which of course prompted him to think that this was a phishing attack. Anyway, he emailed google to say that someone might have got access to his account and he gave them a new yahoo email they could reset and send the password, and the email he got back from google was chilling (for anyone who has thousands of emails and contacts)
Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation. Because our
investigation was inconclusive, we’ve disabled this account for your
security. If you used orkut with this account, we’ve deleted the orkut
profile. At Google we take the privacy and security of our users very
seriously. For this reason, we’re unable to reveal any further information
about this account.
To continue using Google Accounts, please visit
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount and create a new account.
We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your cooperation and
understanding.
Regards,
The Google Team
Note: if you use AdWords, AdSense, or Google Checkout with your
account, please contact AdWords, AdSense or Checkout support directly
at these URLs:
Please don’t reply to this email, as we won’t be able to review your
response. If your question wasn’t answered, please search or browse the
Google Accounts Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/accounts/
Is this a legitimate email from google? are they really going to delete years of email and contacts? Anyone know anything?
I’m going to be part of a panel discussion hosted by Softech on April 23rd on how B2B and Business professionals can tap into and leverage social media. Should be a great discussion and for my part here’s what I hope to be able to elaborate on:
Social Media provides a multitude of ways to build your personal brand and taking control of what employers find when they “google you”
Career blogs/Business Blogs are a powerful tool for networking and connecting with like minded people in similar/complimentary industries or disciplines
The resume is becoming increasingly irrelevant for knowledge workers
Discussion Topics:
Join us for an exciting night with a panel of social media experts who are helping leading companies (Sling Media, Nokia, Wells Fargo, Sutter Home,Plantronics<), organizations and individuals capitalize on social media. Most of the panelists have popular blogs (e.g. experiencecurve.com, emergence-media.com , livedigitally.com, /metzmash.typepad.com) with a strong following and use social media tactics and strategies on a daily basis.
You will learn:
What is social media, the tools, the people, the stats
Why has social media exploded
How is social media changing the conversations companies have with prospects, customers and partners
How professionals can use social media for personal branding, and career development
How B2B companies can capitalize on social media
How social media is changing market research, PR, marketing, sales, product development, and customer support
How social media is changing search engine optimization (SEO)
Moderator:
William Gaultier – CEO of e-Storm International www.e-storm.com
Here’s a bit about SofTECH
SofTECH is a non-profit trade organization committed to fostering communication and cooperation for business and technology professionals in Northern California’s Marin and Sonoma counties. Its goal is to identify and showcase technology leaders and support the technology user community.
Rohit Bhargava, blogger at the Influential Marketing Blog and leader of the interactive marketing team at Ogilvy Public Relations has written a new book called “Personality Not Incuded -Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back“. I think the topic of the book is a very interesting one that relates to companies challenges with branding, customer experience, marketing and PR in this emerging age of radical transparency. The point being that a company’s image and brand is not longer built through the tight management of structured communication, but is now forged and co-created through the conversations in the marketplace, the artifacts that are created by customers, and the experiences customers have with the company through formal and informal channels. I think Rohit is correct that companies some how lost their personality in through the monolithic command and control brand management theory that came along with mass production, and are now struggling to get it back.
Faceless companies don’t work anymore. PNI is a guide to finding the real voice of your organization and using your personality to become a brand that people love rather than one they just buy from. The book features more than 100 case studies, a forward by Guy Kawasaki and lots of SF based brands including Personality Hotels, Timbuk2, Virgin America, and SF based non-profit Kiva.org.
Rohit is organizing a book release party in San Francisco on April 18th, which i am planning on going to and i’m sure it will be an interesting evening for anyone interested in social media.
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