Mark Sigal's Blog - The Network Garden

vSocial Launches Twiddeo (Twitter + Video)

Earlier today, vSocial launched Twiddeo, a new service that allows users to upload — via the web or mobile (email) —  videos and aggregate those videos into Twitter, the same way a standard Twitter update happens. 

The user simply has to authenticate with their Twitter username and password to enable web uploads and to generate a unique email address to send videos from their mobile device.

Uploads are presented as ordinary updates with links within not only the Twitter.com site, but also remote widgets and other Twitter enabled applications, including mobile environments, thereby piggybacking on the reach of the Twitter API, which generates 10X the traffic that the Twitter.com site does. 

The "SO WHAT" of this is that Twiddeo allows users to continue using Twitter as the aggregator it has become — no need to be tied into a website or a standalone application — while enabling video as a service within Twitter.  This lets users start sending and viewing video tweets within minutes.

Many of the brands and agencies that vSocial works with have been trying to figure out the right way to reconcile the popularity of Twitter with their social media and conversational marketing strategies.  Twiddeo is both a great test bed to see what works in this vibrant medium and a shining example of the agility of vSocial's Social Media Platform since the Twiddeo service was able to be rolled out in a little over a week thanks to the rapid deployment nature of vSocial's platform.

Instead of telling people what you are doing, show them. With Twiddeo.

On Intellectual Honesty...

Platitudes don’t equal practice.  Saying is not the same as doing – no matter how emphatically or loudly you say it. 

Communication and coordination is hard but necessary when working with others towards larger goals.  This is where formulating an agreed upon “definition of the situation” is integral. 

This entails having a (preferably) short document that is:

• Visible to others
• Specific in its objectives
• Backed by clear dates and milestones that are meaningful and understandable by others

And finally, track-able by metrics that are readily measurable.

No amount of documentation or data can overcome a lack of intellectual curiousness, an unwillingness to challenge one’s assumptions and/or re-assess the definition of the situation when the situation merits.

That said, avoidance or distrust of hard data is akin to flying a plane without navigation controls. It can be done but unquestionably place both the pilot and his/her passengers at great and unnecessary peril.

See The War: Ken Burns Documentary

"I don't think there is such a thing as a good war," says Sam Hynes, a fighter pilot. "There are sometimes necessary wars. And I think one might say 'just' wars. I never questioned the necessity of that war."

Such is an entry point into The War, Ken Burns’ documentary about World War II.  Up close, you see how necessary and just this war was.  You see how horrific it was. Its massiveness. 

You pause at the great honor and courage that drove so many people to come together at an unbelievably pivotal point in history.  The outcome was anything but foregone, which is what makes the story so jarring and real.  It cuts deep.

You know the axiom about those who forget history are destined to repeat it. See The War.  You need understand this part of our history.  I know that I do.  Here is an excerpt from an excellent review of the documentary:

"The War" invigorates history - in an honest fashion. Burns succeeds precisely in the areas that looked most daunting before he started. He tells the story from the ground up, from the people who fought the war and those who waited for them at home. "The War" is less about generals and tactics and the wonky talking heads of history lessons than it is about the experiences of veterans who can say, plainly, this is what I saw, felt, experienced and took with me. This is what happened to me and the people I knew on the battlefield. Here's why I went and how I'm different for going.

One of the brilliant aspects of "The War" is how every time people open their mouths on camera, it's as if Burns coaxed a secret or a memory from them that they wouldn't have offered up anywhere else - maybe not to their own families. This isn't a regurgitation of facts or memories or battle plans, as on the History Channel. It's people whose entire life's essence was the war, though they would never have chosen it to be. And in "The War," they open up about it in ways that will have tears flowing across the country.

One the one hand, there are some parallels to what is going on in our current world.  On the other, the present is something completely different.  We are too far removed from the reality of what it means to be at war.  See The War.

vSocial Debuts Flat Rate Pricing Model

I have harped endlessly about how online video is destined to change the face of the Internet, and I certainly have been transparent about both the type of applications enabled by vSocial’s social media platform and the names of some of the major brands using the solution (usually via our agency partners).

One of the gates that has blocked broader adoption of video as a core part of the online strategy of brands and businesses is the cost of hosting and serving up video content in a reliable, scalable fashion.

In the past, rolling out your own branded service could easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars in monthly development costs, and untold bandwidth and content delivery expenditures, with lengthy time-to-market and significant execution risk.

Well, today vSocial announced the introduction of a flat-rate pricing option that effectively moves the cost and complexity hurdles to the sidelines.

Here is an excerpt from the release:

vSocial's new flat-rate pricing greatly simplifies the equation for any company looking for an easy-to-adopt way to dip its toe into the so-called "You Tube Economy." No more. With the new vSocial bundled offering, custom branded services can be launched in a matter of weeks based on clear user experience, metrics and workflow outcome goals--all for a fixed, transparent budget.

Here is a link to the full release.

Profiled in TechieCrossing

TechieCrossing, an online career and employment site, did a profile on me that is now online.  Here is an excerpt:

Sigal has learned a few important lessons over the years. He said, “Experience has taught me that people usually fail for one of two reasons. One, they lose hope, or two, they do something stupid and drive off a cliff.” He adds that it is of supreme importance that one have “tangible milestones with dates attached to them” to help one along the way and to know when progress should be occurring. This awareness is what Sigal maintains throughout the inevitable highs and lows that come with startups, helping him “avoid driving off the proverbial cliff, all the while keeping it real.”

Embrace the boomerang

One of my mantras pertains to being lazy dumb wherever the environment supports it.  Finally humbled, I realize that I can’t out-think “the market” on a daily basis. 

The best that I can do is be intellectually honest about my goals in career, family, social doings, health and other practices, and  then work earnestly, faithfully towards those goals. 

Recently, I had a bit of an epiphany that one way I can apply the lazy dumb mindset is by embracing the boomerang.

What is the boomerang?  Basically, it is karma, the belief that what comes around, goes around.  That what you cast out is what you receive over the long haul.

But as opposed to thinking about the karmic boomerang in some comeuppance construct, I see this as more about practicing a daily exercise of faith.  Faith that:

• I can craft and execute plans that don’t require a miracle for the plan to succeed. 
• I and the people in my space will rise to whatever occasion is called upon us. 
• I can grow a culture where working towards specific outcomes in a coordinated fashion is second nature.
• By being generous with encouragement of others (versus stingy with it), goodness will return in spades.
• By fostering an environment where people can feel good about themselves and their accomplishments, they will become inflated, and in doing so, carry us collectively aloft.

Compassion for self and others. And commitment to creating favorable gravity.  It's the human capital equivalent of investing in index funds versus trying to be a stock picker.

Lazy, dumb investor

"No one is too stupid to make money in the stock market. But there are many who are too smart to make money." 

Such is the entry point into a really thought provoking article by Ben Stein about stock investing. His argument in a nutshell is that in modern times the surest way to make money is by buying the broad stock indexes domestically--both in the emerging world and in the developed world. 

This is the essence of lazy dumb investing; namely, that by not over-thinking the investing equation and instead, plugging into one type of instrument -- the index fund -- you can regularly out-perform the market. 

Plus, by investing for the long term versus chasing short-term momentum, you avoid the pain and destruction that occurs when periodic bubble-icious cycles occur, as they are prone to do.

The "smart" investor, by contrast, plugs into a regular diet of trying to be a time teller and outguess the market day by day. For the most part, the market wins -- especially over the long haul.

Why try to be smart, he wonders, when "the inert, lazy, couch potato investor...knows that despite wars, inflation, recession, gasoline shortages, housing crashes in various parts of the nation, riots in the streets, and wage-price controls, the S&P 500, with dividends reinvested, has yielded an average ten-year return of 243%, vs. 86% for the highest-grade bonds. That sounds pretty good to him."

Now, while that sometimes makes me the euphemistically "smart" investor in terms of my investing strategy (see "Information Arbitrage" post), I am happy to say that I practice the index fund discipline, and so far, so good.  This is consistent with a general strategy of trying to embrace Lazy Wisdom wherever practical and productive.

Take heart, Stein argues, even if there is a recession, recessions rarely last more than two quarters, and the economy and the stock market revive mightily after that--and that buying stocks in a recession is a good idea, not a bad idea.

Amen.

Vespa Go Green Campaign and Interactive Agencies

I have talked a lot about UGC/word-of-mouth marketing campaigns powered by vSocial's Campaign Solutions hosted offering. 

Well, another one just went live.  It is called the Go Green Vespa Video Challenge, and the focus of the campaign is on Vespanomics; namely, how Vespa owners do their part for a greener planet Earth.

Great interplay of consumer engagement and branding strategy, which brings me to an interesting article that I read today on the role of interactive agencies in UGC/branding initiatives.

The entry point into the article is a fundamental question of whether the role of agencies gets neutralized as more and more marketing/advertising is consumer participatory and user-generated (versus professionally produced).  The author wonders aloud if brands ultimately build their own bridges to consumers versus working through agencies.

My experience suggests that agencies are one of the critical gates to successful campaigns in this arena.  Why?  Agencies drive the creation of good seeded content so that initial visitors aren’t met with an empty site.

They drive the creative that reconciles what engages consumers to create and submit content with the underlying branding and marketing goals of the campaigns.

Further, agencies craft the holistic approach to ad buys and marketing efforts that build awareness of and drive traffic to the UGC campaign microsite, all the while cultivating viral spread offsite.

UGC campaigns are the quintessential example of managed chaos.  Too much of one without the other is a recipe for failure, and it is specifically this type of orchestration where agencies excel.