ON: Digital+Marketing

ON: A Hipster Sensibility Matrix

Via Gawker

ON: The Art of Storytelling

The film industry has finally caught on that there is more to promoting their content properties than launching a branded widget or throwing up a MySpace community.  If you want to create a real fan, involve them in storyline and blur the line between the story and their reality. 

This is exactly what Hollywood has begun doing.  Lets start with the site for the film 2012.  A faux group called the Institute for Human Continuity is focused on ensuring the existence of human life after Earth is decimated by a series of events foretold by the Mayans.  The Institute has several possible disaster scenarios outlined and links to survival guidebooks -- including one detailing how to survive a tsunami.

Visitors to the Institute can sign up for the IHC Lottery, which offers people across the globe an equal chance at living through the year 2012.  I love this approach because it is what Hollywood does best.  Ahhh!!!! (sign of relief) The message and the medium sharing an idea and space in a viewer's life.

Visit the site at http://www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org

ON: Every Moment In Context of History

I have to files this one under fool election findings.

EveryMoment Now provides "context and scope to the moments shaping our world."

If stories 'above the fold' are important and those 'below the fold' secondary, then EveryMoment Now is looking 'behind the fold'; ^{(fig 1)} that is laterally, through time. Moments connected with an event both above and below the fold are brought next to each other to gain insight into the now.

People, places and events in the context of media are like stocks — they peak and bottom out over time. They have a media history. There are two insights to be culled from this:

1. Being able to see these spikes (variance) in news coverage over time will illuminate potentially hidden patterns, stories or correlations.
2. Providing a simple, clean and intuitive interface to this data will allow quick access to and assessment of these patterns and stories.

EveryMoment Now aims to illuminate the news through this historical context. EveryMoment Now was built and designed by Craig Mod, a Tokyo based designer and developer.

The current version of EveryMoment Now is focused on the 2008 US General Election.  Check out EveryMoment Now at http://everymomentnow.com

ON: A Good DiggNation Episode

My Favorite DiggNation this year.

Inside the Attack that Crippled Revision3, Radiohead to Prince, Canadian Border to check iPods, Gun T-Shirt a Security Risk, Metal Gear Solid 4, Can you see a Spider?, The Internet Will End in 2012.

ON: The Digital+Marketing Top 10's

This coming week I will focus on looking back and learning, but more importantly looking forward from those learnings.  All of it will manifest itself in Top 10 category lists.  Today I start with a spotlight on Bruce Tempkin of Forrester and the Customer Experience Matters blog.  What I love about this top ten list is that he gift-wrapped the top ten "Customer Experience Resolutions".

1. We shall focus more on our customers and less on ourselves
2. We shall get to know more about what our customers really need
3. We shall formalize a voice-of-the-customer program
4. We shall incorporate personas in our experience design processes
5. We shall clearly define our brand in terms of promises to customers
6. We shall judge every interaction on how well it fulfills our brand promises
7. We shall engage front-line employees in improving customer experiences
8. We shall get the executive team to collectively own the customer experience
9. We shall establish a multi-year journey towards customer-centric DNA
10. We shall give customer experience the attention that it deserve

To create great experiences for people (consumers, yes, they are people) you must first bake it in to your culture. If you are working for a company that doesn't have a culture of customer-centricity baked into it, then it will be difficult to achieve any of these goals.  If your company never had it—you will have to figure out how to build that culture or move to a company that exudes this culture.

ON: Jakob Nielsen's Dated Viewpoint

It is rare that I let a post ruin my day or make my blood boil.  However, I got a chance to read Jakob Nielsen's article on his Alertbox called, Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous and it had me seeing red.  In recent years, I have found most of Nielsen's posts are close-minded and ill informed – yet his write up on Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous was the worst offender and takes the cake.

The main point of his article is to prove that:

“AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most profitable.”

Fellow practitioners agree that his POVs are just that - his personal view, take, opinion, etc.  However, as an active practitioner of  AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content programs I can attest that these are not methods and languages are not hyped, they are a basic need in the conversation economy.  Moreover, they have improved the way we think, build, and create experiences for consumers to engage within.  Not only do I disagree that we divert design resources, but I would state that design resources need to jump into the game and treat their work as if it were always in beta. (Like a great car designer or architect)  old school designers need to get into the game.

He makes many arguments, one of which is there are two few users for community and user-generated content.  After examining three different teen studies conducted by major media companies and one from Forrester that show 75% are active contributors in online community content, it is presumable that users are not limiting their online conversations and dialogs to merely interesting business tasks.

The vast majority of his points are off and have no real world practitioner’s basis for the conclusions except one.

“Instead of adding Facebook-like features that let users bite other users and turn them into zombies, the B2B site would get more sales by offering clear prices, good product photos, detailed specs, convincing whitepapers, an easily navigable information architecture... Before throwing spending money at 2.0 features, make sure that you have all the 1.0 requirements working to perfection.”

We in the digital world should take to heart.  This was a good point but the way it is stated is a bit backwards and stated with the attitude of a dictator (someone who does not seek outside insights to find solutions to a problem) when getting to that conclusion, I have hard time taking the article seriously.

What Nielsen has managed to do with his latest post is prove that Web 1.0 guys who refuse to see the light of new consumer engagement models. Nielson proves the he cannot evolve with the help of insights and has inevitably become the old guy at the bar, trying to pick up women with bad pick-up lines. Simultaneously, AJAX practitioners  are reaping the benefits of listening, changing practices to evolve with their audience (like any good partner should).

One of his arguments takes on profitability, which can be discredited by any number of profitable web companies that have been pushing the envelope of innovation.

Practitioners sound off... Do you think Jakob Nielsen's viewpoint keeps the industry from moving forward?  Alternatively, does it keep us in a method that helped prove the demise of the 1.0 model?

ON: Google Transit

Its official Google Transit is in Beta.  To celebrate the debut Google took its pin took to the streets of Vancouver, which was the first Canadian city to get the Google Transit treatment.  Google Transit allows you to create your own transit trip, complete with itineraries and maps.  This is great for those of us who use public transportation to make our rounds.

ON: GooTube Gone TV

Google will be syndicating YouTube content via its AdSense network.   The service lets any publisher that is part of Google's AdSense network show video from premium YouTube content creators on its site. Google's system will automatically match video content to the participating websites; it will match the ads contextually as well. All three parties -- the video-content creator, the AdSense publishers and Google -- will share in the revenue.

What does that mean to the people creating ad units?  YouTube's ad format involves more graphical overlays that can expand to video when clicked, which is a much better way of serving up video ads online than pre-roll. 

Google will also use the dynamic optimization technology it originally developed for advertising to continually "learn" which syndication pairings work best.

As new content racks up views, Google will track how much users seem to like it and how much of each video people watch.

I think the power of this thing is that you will be able to embed a standard YouTube player on the site, and Google will figure out which videos to show.  When I sit down and dissect how thing could work... it raises many questions for me.

Outstanding questions:

1. How might this program affect the copyrights lawsuit with Viacom?  Google ran its first test with Viacom in summer 2006 (that was before Viacom decided to sue Google, alleging that YouTube violated its copyrights).
2. Which publishers will begin participating?
   
   • The announced publishers are TV Guide Broadband, Mondo Media, lonelygirl15, Extreme Elements, and Ford Models.
3. If the program is open to "everyone", will people choose to see the oodles of bad long tail videos?
4. Will ad sense be the new way we rate best performing videos?  Or will the best performing videos be shown the most frequently?

ON: Toy Story For Us

One of my favorite sites and sources of daily laughs is SomethingAwful.com.  I was cruising and found this great grindhoused Toy Story poster.  It was created by 'Pyrocy' for one of the Photoshop Phriday competitions.

ON: MTV's Digital Incubator

While going through the slew of emails that I get from media conglomerates on their new launches I ran across one that came to the top... (thanks Matty!)

Cisco Systems is teaming up with MTV again to fund college entrepreneurs who might be creating the next big thing in broadband and mobile content. Cisco is working with MTV's 24-hour college network called MTVU to launch the second year of the "Digital Incubator" program, an annual contest that selects undergraduate and graduate student groups to win a cash award aimed at helping them develop content for broadband and wireless users.

Cisco announced Monday that it had selected five winners for a $30,000 grant. This year's winners combine elements of social networking, cell phone-based gaming, online interactivity and viral videos. The programs will become part of MTVU's programming for the coming academic year.

Cisco is best known for providing the infrastructure gear that makes the Internet work. For more than a year, the company has been implementing a strategy to broaden its product portfolio. The company has been aggressively pushing into new markets that are more consumer-focused, such as video, home networking and even consumer electronics.

Late last year, it created the Media Solutions business unit, which develops and markets products to digital media content owners. The head of the group, Dan Scheinman, has said the next step for Cisco is to work more closely with the companies that are creating the movies, TV shows, music and other multimedia content that end up in consumers' homes.

The Digital Incubator program is another way for Cisco to understand and possibly influence the kinds of applications that will be developed.

"There is a massive technological disruption under way fueled by consumer demand," Scheinman said. "And we're trying to get an idea of what that next generation of entertainment will be."  While none of the 10 teams selected last year has hit it big yet, Scheinman said that seven of them are still working on developing their projects. MTV has decided to license the software from at least one of the teams from last year.

This year, Cisco changed the program slightly. Instead of providing $25,000 to 10 teams, it is offering $30,000 grants to five teams. Cisco is also selecting a grand prize winner in the fall to win a supplemental grant of up to $100,000.

Winners can be found here: http://www.digitalincubator.net.