When a feature is adopted by everyone it’s no longer a feature. This is how it will be for social, location and rewards. Technological innovation is not taking a trending topic and applying it to your project. Innovation is when you see the trend before it even exists and create that trend.
Making anything social at this point isn’t innovative; it’s a part of the product. Pretty soon the same will go for location and rewards. Let’s go one step further – if you make your product based solely on the above features then you’re shooting for the middle.
If you’re not adding social features to your new app then you’re behind the times. People expect your new thing to include social features. If you’re creating a location based service (LBS) application then rewards of some sort are a given. In fact, if you can’t greatly improve on the current market leaders then you shouldn’t be making a LBS app.
Innovation doesn’t come from reiteration. It comes from iteration. Case in point: Friendster. Friendster got to the social network game early but didn’t iterate often enough. When they were having bandwidth troubles & couldn’t scale fast enough people jumped ship for Myspace, who took advantage of Friendster’s woes.
Now Friendster’s co-founder has a new project called Place Pop. It’s an LBS with a rewards structure – that’s it. The badge system isn’t even compelling enough to compete with the top contenders. You can earn bronze, silver, gold and platinum badges based on your checkins.
In order to beat the market leader your product needs to be more compelling. You need to have a better product with more features put together in a new and innovative way. If you’re not doing that then you’re creating an ‘also ran as’.
The lesson we can learn here is this:
timing + planning + improvement = success
Pretty soon everything will be social, include location and give you rewards. As more and more companies include these features the public expects every product to have them. It’s up to you as an innovative entrepreneur to look beyond the horizon to what is next.
What do people need? What will they need? These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself when creating. If you’re just going to a competitor then you’re only going to rise to the middle. If you don’t care about making people’s lives better then how are they supposed to care about your product?
For branding and social media insights check out my Posterous.
You may not need an Apple iPad right now or think you’ll need it this year but mark my words, you will need it in one year. People aren’t quite sure what they do with it and to them I say wait and see. Time and early adopters will show you its many uses and how it fits into your life.
The iPad is definitely a pure consumption product, right now. As time goes on we will see more and more apps that are full-featured utilities. These will end up augmenting your day to day routines as you find yourself wanting to spend more time on such a compelling device.
Apple does an amazing thing for the computing industry and consumers in general. It sets the pace and tells you not what you want but what you will want. Apple creates demand and then effectively supplies it. A different way of doing things but Apple’s old motto is Think Differently.
They aren’t without their detractors. I definitely hear what detractors are saying. Yes the iPad doesn’t have a camera, video camera or support flash amongst other things. I also see that Apple is incremental with their firmware and hardware updates. This is to essentially milk as much money out of you as possible and keep you in the renewable consumption game. Essentially there’s no difference between the first iPhone and the latest iPhone if you really think about it.
My friend Carl put it keenly in a comment he made on my last post. Apple isn’t revolutionary; they’re evolutionary. Modernism has been going on since the 50′s. Nothing new here. They just took someone else’s style and applied it to their industry. Great artists steal.
Carl also had another great point that goes back to why you’ll need an iPad in a year. The major news services are essentially providing free advertising for the iPad, further fueling the feeding frenzy and stoking the fires of consumers. All this talk will drive you into an Apple store, you’ll play with the iPad, then you’ll want it. Even if you don’t understand or don’t want it right now you’re still curious and you’ll eventually come into contact with it. Call it the Puppy Effect.
As far as why you’ll really need an iPad a year down the road goes back to my previous point about how Apple sets the pace. Competitors may have had tablet pc’s before the iPad just like they had mp3 players before the iPod. What Apple does is to signal to consumers and competitors that a certain type of product is now a part of your life.
What will end up happening a year down the road is that consumers will have found all the little ways that the iPad makes their lives easier and better. Competitors will start creating competing products in droves to fuel the market even more. Technology and non-technology product creators will start creating accessories. Designers will start molding their creations to fit the iPad. Thus the iPad will become a part of your world one way or another.
You may not need an iPad a year or two years from now. What will eventually happen is that technology will advance so much that physical keyboards will become a thing of the past and the iPad will seem like a logical choice. If you think Apple doesn’t have plans on your entire life you’re dead wrong. If you think Apple isn’t already a part of your whole life then you’re sadly mistaken.
For branding and social media insights check out my Posterous.
Science fiction helps us to dream beyond today. This can be both good and bad. Good in that it gets ideas flowing that may have some practical applications towards today. Bad in that it allows many to stay in a far off place with too many high minded ideas that can’t be created for a while if not ever.
Science fiction is dangerous, for everyone. It’s dangerous for do nothing laggards and those who would get rich off of monotony. It’s dangerous for society, for the thoughts it brings can be life changing and earth shattering. It’s dangerous for everyone because eventually it will coopt your job your paycheck your life and force you to adapt to new circumstances.
At one point space rockets and underwater submarine ships were a thing of a wild man’s imagination yet Jules Verne had the foresight to envision one of them. While far fetched science fiction plays a huge role in revolutionizing our lives I’m more interested in the science fiction that blends reality with possible actionable results in the near future. I like to call this science faction.
This area can easily be related to, envisioned as a possible future and people can actually put steps in place to create said creations. The more something is closer to reality the more tangible it is for someone to bring it in to reality. Movies like Minority Report and books that Cory Doctorow write all have futuristic machine elements woven into everyday life in a palatable manner. It’s not too hard for a layman to envision a not too distant future with them and the devices in it. When average everyday people can see themselves in the plot of a science faction story then it’s that much easier for your inventors to create and market similar items onto the same public.
So how does this affect us? Dreamers need to keep on dreaming and creators creating. In fact the artists – your writers, directors etc – need to team up with inventors and entrepreneurs to amplify each others messages into an augmented reality. No I’m not talking about AR. That’s unactionable playtime that the average lazy man won’t use until they fully understand it, it’s easy to use and it passes the tipping point in society.
That’s the crux of all of this. Apple works so brilliantly because they release futuristic looking devices that slightly improve on your everyday life. Apple isn’t looking to give you a hoverboard or teleportation device, although someday they may. People buy the familiar improvement. They consume the 1.1.2. They think the 3.0 is cool but push it too early and it flips big time. As much as people want to innovate their lives they still need to make your crazy contraption fit seamlessly into the rest of their boring mundane existence. If your device can’t integrate with their reality you’ve just moved yourself from science faction to science fiction to oblivion.
For branding and social media insights check out my Posterous.
This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Internet Data
Recent reports have shown social media sites to be female concentrated. What about the rest of the internet? Women may be using social networks more but that still doesn’t account for all the other types of websites.
While social networks may be big with females, internet usage in the United States seems to be split about 50/50 with men and women:
News outlets are the primary focus with males.
CNet, Reuters, IGN, Time, Drudgereport are all predominantly male.
Shopping destinations are the primary focus with females.
JCPenney, CBS, Pronto, Pogo, Overstock are all predominantly female.
*All stats from Quantcast except for MTV, BBC.co.uk, Simplyhired, Pronto, Newsweek and Fancast which come from Google Ad Planner.
For branding and social media insights check out my Posterous.
Appeared originally as a comment on MJ Newham’s wonderful blog at http://martin.newham.ws on a post called Future Of Print.
There are two types of readers: situational and experiential.
I happen to be both so I understand why dead archives are needed as well as digital files. My solution: bamboo. Bamboo is stronger than tree paper, only takes 2 years (give or take) to grow to maturity, and still retains the tactile sensibilities that tree paper does.
I feel that Kindle is the wrong direction. What Kindle is trying to do is recreate a book experience in digital format. The digital format is something separate and needs to be treated as so. The whole point of a digital library is to be able to take many “books” with you at once. Kindle doesn’t make this easy. Plus, it’s not aesthetically pleasing. That’s aim number one with a bookjacket.
The iPhone trumps the Kindle in many ways with the Stanza app. This app isn’t trying to recreate a book reading experience in digital. It makes your reading experience as easy as possible for the medium that you are using. It’s size makes it easy for me to read on the go, which speaks to the whole issue of portability. If you’re concerned with text size, don’t be- there is a feature where you can increase the text size to whatever suits you. I personally would rather read less on a “page” to gain more space in the physical world. I am a man and do not always carry a bag. I don’t want to be seen carrying some unfortunately huge thing when I’m going out, yet I always want to read AND listen to music on my way to some place.
Dead plant books will still be around, just like cds & dvds will still be around. They will all exist in a special limited edition collectors format for those who really need to have a physical copy of something to cherish. Remember, we like having physical copies of stuff. It adds to our definition of who we are. Not everything that we consume should make the cut though.
Digitization is the implementation of zen Buddhism in our physical lives.
*addendum: vook.tv along with the mythical Apple iTablet will most likely bring us a more truer digital ‘book’.
For branding and social media insights check out my Posterous.
Sometimes not everything goes according to plan. When Tagged.com recently changed their registration process traffic to their site spiked. In this case study I take a look at the spike in relation to the circumstances surrounding it. I answer whether or not the spike was a reaction to events or the spike itself affected Tagged.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced today that the state of Texas had reached an agreement with Tagged, Inc., a social networking site that was accused of tricking users into providing access to their address books. As part of the agreement, Tagged has to pay $250,000, which includes the cost of the state’s investigation.
After Tagged had access to a user’s address book, the social networking site sent messages that appeared to come directly from the user, offering to share photos with the recipient. When a recipient tried to view the pictures, which often didn’t even exist, they were prompted to sign up, giving Tagged access to their address book and continuing the deceptive practice.
For branding and social media insights check out my Posterous.
While most of you were obsessing over the Kanye West meme taking the internet by storm, Twitter quietly rolled out an update to their brand image. They killed off the Spam Owl and replaced him with their happy-go-lucky mascot Twitter bird. This comes right on the heels of an update to their TOS many of you have already received by now.
This most recent change is just an extension of their homepage image revamp that focuses more on search and trending topics now.
One thing we know for sure with Twitter is that most of what they implement is done without fanfare in stages. Just as the TOS has been implemented over the course of the last week, the default avatar isn’t changing all at once. In fact, it’s changing over time into many different flavors: purple, dark blue, baby blue, lime green, dark green, orange, dark red so far.
Even with the staggered rollout, established users with their own custom avatars are already having issues:
We’ve already seen the Fail Whale go the way of the dodo in place of a generic 503-error page. Only time will tell what images will replace the other now iconic characters of Technically Wrong Robot, and Maintenance Caterpillar & Chill Ice Cream Cone. What other image changes and default avatar colors have you spotted?
For branding and social media insights check out my Posterous.
On June 8th 2009 Microsoft took an unprecedented move in advertising their new search engine Bing. They subsidized all commercials on Hulu for a limited time period. In exchange for that they produced something akin to a telethon meets an infomercial- the Bing-a-thon. The Bing-a-thon is something that has never been done before online.
Microsoft is getting it right with the marketing of Bing. They understand that search should be easy. They understand that in order to learn about something it should be fun. People don’t want to be lectured. We want to be entertained. Disguise learning in entertainment and you have just created an educated consumer. Here’s what some of you took away from the Hulu Microsoft Bing-a-thon:
Some of you were:
Compelled
destroytodayThe Bing a-thon is like a gruesome car accident. I keep wanting to look away, but can’t seem to close the window: http://bit.ly/zHpPT
RobLaughtonis bing-a-thon really made by the one of the most powerful company in the world? It’s sooooo bad, yet strangely compelling……
latitude46Bing-a-thon is simply terrible, but I just can’t look away. God help us all.
JaysonElliotWatching the live “bing-a-thon” on Hulu right now. I can’t tell if they’re attempting irony or not. It’s all too self-referential.
Informed
mariogvasquezwatched the bing-a-thon on hulu.com. Sudeikis is funny Olivia was hot. Fred Wilard was awkward. Did learn some cool stuff about bing.com
aznsclboiBing-a-thon over… I’m not sure I’m smarter for watching this… but eh, at least I know how to Bing now.
Repelled
johnyjuiceOMG….wth #bing-a-thon that is time spent I WILL NEVER get back! Thank you #Google for not EVER doing that!
jbruin@AlexBurdz I’m really hoping that MS spent most of that 80/100 mil on ads cause bing-a-thon was an epic disaster
Interested
arturotthe Bing-a-thon is awesome, haha so cheesy but actually very fun. I hope they make the entire event available later on.
bajanxWhat an idea by Microsoft having a Bing a Thon on such a recognized website like HULU. How much will this help popularize “THE BING”?
{The interesting thing to note here is that Microsoft made it easy to share the telecast in Facebook and Twitter AND the message that was shared was updated according to what was happening on the Bing-a-thon. Notice the same bit.ly link.}
Promoters
RadumsI just made some dude eat like 40 cupcakes. Go to hulu and check out the Bing-a-thon. http://bit.ly/avTj0
yotobari288I just finished watching the Bing-a-thon with Olivia Munn, Jason Sudeikis, and Fred Willard. It’s running again on hulu http://bit.ly/avTj0
lakkineniOlivia Munn is live on hulu’s Bing-a-thon right now. Come watch it. You’re welcome. http://bit.ly/avTj0
{Of note here is that some found such value in the automated shared message that they reshared it. Some (myself) changed the message & left the automated link only to have others share that message as well.}
katriordRT @db It may not be ‘cool’ to like Microsoft but they get relevant marketing = Live Bing-a-thon http://bit.ly/avTj0
My conclusion? Microsoft made the right decision to market Bing the way they did. People were clearly informed. These are the people that are likely to use Bing over and over again. The people who were compelled (as well as the promoters/sharers) are likely to tell their friends of the funny cool thing they saw and interacted with. Bing has a funny name. It can make you think of Friends’ Chandler Bing or evoke a sound. The bottom line is this: Microsoft wanted to educate its consumers and brand Bing’s personality at the same time. Mission completed.
Only time will tell if people adopt Bing as their default search engine. Right now people have turned the proper noun ‘Google’ into a verb by saying ‘google it’. I can definitely see people adopting Bing in the verb sense. They may say ‘bing it’ if someone wants to know specific information about something or ‘bing’ as a verb may just eclipse ‘google’. Google may provide tons of search results but that’s also its downfall. Microsoft may not say Google in their ad but they might as well, as I’m sure many of you have felt the same frustration:
Microsoft’s differentiator? Their tagline:“It’s not just a search engine. It’s the first ever decision engine, from Microsoft.”
While Google is focusing on Wave, Microsoft is taking this chance to make search more relevant. Yes, many of us are excited for real-time email etc etc BUT frankly I’m more excited with relevant search. The internet has become our default for information. I’m hard-pressed to find anyone who actually uses encyclopedias and dictionaries in dead-tree format. I already have Twitter for real-time info as well as instant messages. E-mail and document editing are fast enough for me now.
Make your customer’s life easier in a timely and relevant way and you’ve won their hearts. I’m sure Google has something up their sleeve for semantic web but until that day you can just Bing me.
For branding and social media insights check out my Posterous.
There’s a scene in The Wizard of Oz I can’t get out of my head. The flying monkeys have attacked; the Scarecrow has been torn apart. What’s left of the Scarecrow laments: “First they took my legs off and they threw them over there! Then they took my chest out and they threw it over there!”And the Tin Woodsman looks down and replies: “Well, that’s you all over!”
The title of the article is meant to invoke a sense of what is to come, not to just talk about advertising but branding and marketing.
In this article I’ll take a look at what I feel is coming down the pipeline for these areas. The future isn’t set in stone and neither are these predictions. Companies are already starting to track your habits. In the future it will just get more intuitive. Read the rest of this entry »
The world is a changing place. Tools may come and go but you'll always have your toolbox.
What you do with it is up to you.
Damien Basile
Who:
Damien is a communications strategy consultant and entrepreneur. He currently is working on a stealth startup so don't ask him what it is. He won't tell you.
While most of you were obsessing over the Kanye West meme taking the internet by storm, Twitter quietly rolled out an update to their brand image. They killed off the 
