Mark Sigal's Blog - The Network Garden

The Programmable Fan Site: A New Media/Ad Unit Model

Back when I was a kid, Radio Shack made an electronics kit for pre-teens called ‘150-in-One Electronic Project Kit.’ 

By following simple instructions and connecting color-coded wires to connectors associated with the different electronic components in the kit, you could make 150 different electronic devices.  Simple, engaging, got the job done.

What got me thinking about the 150-in-One was a recent presentation by Mark Kvamme, a partner at Sequoia Capital, and founder of CKS Group (a pioneering interactive ad agency), where he argued that the traditional "interruption model" of advertising is giving way to a focus on "owning the conversation."

Simply put, Kvamme argues, we now live in a world where people can get media where, how, and when they want, and given that reality, brands have to get savvier about how they are going to interact with consumers. 

To Kvamme, this suggests the importance of new ad units emerging that blur the conventional boundaries between content and advertising.

What follows is my thesis about how one type of ad/content hybrid (i.e., an integrated media unit) called a ‘Programmable Fan Site’ might work. 

Sort of the 150-in-One media unit builder for brands and media companies.

The Programmable Fan Site

A fan site is basically a microsite made up of 5-15 online services, and is designed to be configured, customized and administered as easily as a blog.

To set one up is as simple as four steps.  First, you pick from a set of “landing page” styles.  Landing pages define basic layouts and establish default container logic for aggregating content items within the microsite based on administrator-designed thresholds like new, popular, recently added, heavily commented and/or featured.  Typical landing page styles include: Profile, Blog, Hot Page and Contest.

Second, you choose the underlying services that you want to plug in, such as Blogs, Groups, Forums, Polls, Feeds, and/or Media Services, and set filtered view options.  Filtered view options define the form of the output, and include options like "Ranked List" or "Title Only" or "Title plus Summary."

Third, you customize their layout on the landing page in a similar fashion to the way MySpace made creating profile pages fun and engaging.  Depending on the goals of the brand, customization options can include predefined brand-friendly templates, WYSIWYG design tools and/or CSS support for advanced users.

Fourth, you start creating and programming content using the services activated within the fan site.

Fan sites can be designed to operate on a standalone basis or be interconnected to build a network of fan sites.  They can also start with a minimal function like a blog and add a landing page or start a contest later.  Content creation can be limited to administrators, allow user-generated submissions or a combination of both, defined on a service by service basis. 

Brand and Character Come First in New Media

One important lesson that I have learned over the past few years is that with new media, figuring out what brand/character resonates with the audience is more important than figuring out the format/narrative, since if the audience doesn’t care about the character, you are dead in the water.

What is nice about the programmable fan site model is that it makes creation of new brand and character ‘seeds’ relatively quick and inexpensive, enabling an approach known as the ‘seed-select-amplify’ model. 

In this model, you plant a lot of low-cost seeds, identify/select the seedlings that sprout and then focus your resources on ‘amplifying’ these seedlings via a more formalized character, storyline and narrative development process. 

At its most basic level, new brand/character seeds can be launched as people-oriented video blogs and tested out on in terms of audience interest on You Tube and other video networks, where the basic distribution is free.

By coupling this model with the programmable fan site builder discussed above, you can cultivate your audience systematically and proactively based on campaign outcome goals (see Advertising 3.0 for more thoughts on the topic of new media campaigns).

Related Links:

1. Advertising 3.0: on Madison Avenue and social media marketing.
2. Channel Me and the Rules of New Media: old media versus new media rules and how they shape branding.
3. New Media Darwinian Logic: on new media brand creation strategy.
4. Googling Innovation:  on strategies to Seed, Select, and Amplify new ideas.

Digital Media Rules: The "open sourcing" of information

The "open sourcing" of information is upon us.

It is a sea change, requiring thinking about information and media in terms of surplus, reach and spread and NOT in terms of scarcity and friction.

It assumes that, just as a rising tide lifts all boats, when a resource shifts from scarcity to surplus, tremendous wealth creation opportunities will emerge.

Pragmatically speaking, it also suggests an opportunity for organizations to get systematic about knowledge cultivation by codifying best practices and deploying model-driven systems around these same practices.

Two areas, in particular, that scream out for this type of model-driven approach are:

1. INTERNAL employee-centered communities that perform the job of knowledge exchange, and provide 'workgroup containership' boundaries.
2. EXTERNAL customer-facing communities that provide the conversational sandbox for marketing, support and ecosystem cultivation endeavors.

The good news is that there is nothing futuristic or overly complex about deploying either of these models.  The requisite digital/social media modules are at the proverbial "3.0" stage, and source-able from multiple vendors and technology acquisition paths. 

No less important, there are very clear use cases and well-formed workflows in terms of how the various 'chicken parts' integrate to form a living, breathing 'chicken' (metaphorically speaking).

Make no mistake.  There is a sense of inevitability to the trend towards the open sourcing of information. 

To think otherwise is to ignore the lessons of the music and print news media industries.

Related Links:

1. Online Community Building: three critical ingredients to a successful community building initiative.
2. Envisioning the Social Map-lication: on connecting the dots between me, my content and my network.
3. Breadcrumbs and Conversations: social media and how it works explained.

Twitter-nomics: Envisioning Structured Tweets

It has been interesting following the chatter in the blogosphere around the question of what is going to be Twitter’s business model?  This is a relevant topic to many because: A) Twitter is on the cusp of becoming mainstream and has already become mission-critical to lots of bloggers (myself included); B) An ecosystem of third-party services is forming around Twitter so they need it to succeed; and C) Twitter is increasingly recognized as being a pretty unreliable service. 

While seeing business model as a solution to a technical infrastructure problem is akin to confusing tail with dog, it is nonetheless a topic worth considering if for no other reason than necessity is the mother of invention.

A Quickie Twitter Primer
For those who don’t know, the SO WHAT of Twitter is that it is a really simple way of publishing short message SHOUT OUTs (of 140 characters or less length) on any topic of interest – what you are doing, worthwhile links, nuggets of wisdom, etc. 

These shout outs, known as tweets, can be accessed and created via any number of front-ends, including web pages, embeddable widgets, mobile devices, and native applications.

Because Twitter wisely opened up its service to third-party developers (via published APIs), there has been lots of innovation in terms of client apps, and plentiful creation of interesting back-end services that piggyback on the aggregate (and growing) reach of the Twitter network (vSocial’s video tweet service, Twiddeo, is one example). 

In fact, it is well-known that the Twitter API generates 10X the overall traffic that the Twitter Web Site does.  Now that’s leverage for you!

A specific cornerstone of Twitter’s goodness is the fact that its messaging model is asynchronous; namely consumers have to specifically opt-in by clicking “follow” on an account holder’s Twitter page to subscribe to and receive their tweets. 

Moreover, "following" is a unidirectional mechanism in that it does not give the follower/subscriber the right to publish a tweet back to the publisher.  The publisher must explicitly opt to follow you back first. 

This approach mitigates against the type of broadcast spam you see in email mailing lists/discussion boards, where one spammer can subscribe to the list and then blast everyone on the list.  Given the amoral nature of spammers, this asymmetry is a pretty potent differentiator for Twitter.

On Micro Formats and Structured Posts
Some time back, I wrote a post called ‘What the hell is Web 2.0?’ which theorized that the blog creation process would evolve to enable consumers to create "structured" posts.

I put forth 16 different types of structured posts, including business listings, product listings, reviews/summaries, job listings, maps and itineraries, stock quotes, etc., and the idea was that next-generation syndication and subscription systems would enable posts to be processed in a context-aware fashion.

Hence, a business listing might have specific methods to ‘add to rolodex’ or ‘view ratings’ or ‘pin listing on my local map.’  A product listing might have methods to ‘add to file cabinet’ or ‘recommend this product’ or ‘buy it.’  Stock quotes would have their own set of methods, and so on. 

The key point is that such a model allows users to turn flat, unformatted data and raw content items into structured information containers by providing clearly-defined contextual wrappers and handles for working with those items. 

Because such an approach systematically connects the dots between me, my content and my network, this substrate becomes increasingly rich and manageable, and provides natural, logical ways for like minds to connect with and exchange knowledge with one another.

Envisioning Twitter 2.0
So how does Twitter play in this realm?  What I envision is Twitter bifurcating its service between its free “flat data” messaging service and launching a premium "structured" messaging service layer on top of it. 

Specifically, I envision the customer for such a service being the commercial businesses and serious online brand builders that want to gain the publishing tools necessary to better target and more richly cultivate a conversation with their audience via this viral, decentralized and spam-free messaging/marketing channel.

Where does the consumer fit in this equation?  As before, users can opt-in/out if they don’t want structure or aren’t interested in a specific type of listings, e.g., commercial business communications. 

Think of it as an additional layer on the exact same onion with all of the benefits of asynchronous-ness albeit with a little more terra firma baked in.

Such an approach is infinitely better than dropping disruptive Google-style ads inline within tweets, and it allows the free service to grow to ubiquity while enabling Twitter to monetize the goodness of context.

Plus, it has the potential to re-define the way advertising works.

Would Procter & Gamble jump on this bandwagon? What about small businesses?  Would consumers embrace it?

Related Links:

1. Envisioning the Social Map-lication: An application that systematically connect the dots between me, my content and my network.
2. vSocial launches Twiddeo:  Twitter meets video, and vice-versa.
3. Advertising 3.0: on Madison Avenue and social media marketing.
4. What the Hell is Web 2.0:  A unified theory of sorts (written for O'Reilly).

Hillary's Assassination-gate Dissected: Watch this Video!

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC does a terrific job of dissecting Hillary Clinton's not so subtle implication that she stays in the presidential race because, hey, you never know, Obama might get assassinated. 

While it's easy to parse words and either affirm or refute whatever conclusion you are pre-disposed to believe on this one, Olbermann also goes on citing the numerous times throughout the campaign where Hillary, Bill or their minions have played the dark hand and then disingenuously stepped away from those comments, usually trying to claim that HILLARY is the victim for being castigated for offensive behavior.

WATCH THIS VIDEO.  Here is an excerpt:

You actually invoked the nightmare of political assassination.

You actually invoked the specter of an inspirational leader, at the seeming moment of triumph, for himself and a battered nation yearning to breathe free, silenced forever.

You actually used the word "assassination" in the middle of a campaign with a loud undertone of racial hatred  -  and  gender  hatred  - and political hatred.

You actually used the word "assassination" in a time when there is a fear, unspoken but vivid and terrible, that our again-troubled land and fractured political landscape might target a black man running for president.

You actually used those words, in this America, Senator, while running against an African-American against whom the death threats started the moment he declared his campaign?

The politics of this nation is steeped enough in blood, Senator Clinton, you cannot and must not invoke that imagery! Anywhere! At any time!

And to not appreciate, immediately - to still not appreciate tonight - just what you have done... is to reveal an incomprehension of the America you seek to lead.

This, Senator, is too much.

Because a senator - a politician - a person -  who can let hang in mid-air the prospect that she might just be sticking around in part, just in case the other guy gets shot - has no business being, and no capacity to be, the President of the United States.

Why I Blog: It’s about Brand, not Bread

The most common question I get asked about in terms of why I blog is whether I make any money off of it.   The short answer is NO. I don’t even try.  I run no ads because for me, blogging is 100% about building my brand, codifying and propagating a perspective and connecting with like minds.

Did I know that these would be my goals when I started blogging?  Sort of.  Did I have any sense that three years after starting my blog, The Network Garden, I would have written 200 article-length posts, and that blogging would be the single smartest thing that I have done for myself over the past half-decade?  No, I had no sense. 

So in the spirit of giving back, the goal of this post is to share a little pattern recognition about what I have I learned, both from blogging and from participating in the distributed conversation pool that is the blogosphere.

Let me start at the start.  I am a believer that if you want to get into a space, you just need to start doing “something” in it. 

So when I decided to focus my energies on the digital media space, the first thing that I did was to create a blog, and made a commitment to growing it.   Eat my own dog food, so to speak.

Growing it meant a few things.  One it meant the decision to focus on a few specific categories; namely, digital media, active investing and life coaching.

Two, it meant committing to a discipline of regular posting, which in my case, means making a concerted effort to do 1-3 posts a WEEK and 1-3 twitter tweet (shout outs) a DAY.

On top of this, I have developed a well-formed methodology for plugging into the blogosphere to find posts of interest that are both comment-worthy and related to posts that I have already written.

Let me explain.  I use commenting as a kind of breadcrumb strategy, whereby I reference conclusions from a past article of mine related to the post that I am commenting on, and then link back to my article in the comment.  While not all blogs are supportive of this, most are, and this approach generates a lot of activity for me on my blog.

Also, I limit the blogs that I pay primary attention to to the handful of links that visibly fit within my bookmarks bar (~10 sites).  Given the limited ‘shelf space’ on the bookmarks bar, I replace a link if I find either that I am not compelled to comment on any of their posts over a fairly short time period OR if my comments with links back to articles of mine don’t generate visitors to my blog. 

That way, tracked bloggers are always being tested based on how they satisfy two criteria.  One, engaging my personal interests; and two, satisfying my goals to grow my audience.

As a secondary source, I use Google News and Techmeme to find popular story waves that I can get in front of when the activity generated by sites on my browser bar ebbs. 

This combination of focusing on a few primary sites and using two aggregator sites as secondary funnels, ensures that I maintain a real-time picture of popular storylines while limiting my engagement to a manageable flow of information.

In terms of advertising the existence of my blog and specific posts that I have written, beyond the use of commenting, I do a couple of things that have proven effective. 

One is that I use Microsoft Entourage’s random signature function to create a library of signatures that reference and link back to specific posts. 

This has been a surprisingly effective way for me to connect specific recipients with specific posts in a non-intrusive fashion, and most importantly, it works.  I generate a lot of clicks from this approach.

I have also modified the structure of my individual posts so that most posts have references to other 'related posts' that I have written so that a visitor reading one post is more likely to end up reading two or three of them.  To be clear, I do this manually, as TypePad (my blogging solution of choice) has no automated way to suggest related posts.

Also, lest anyone conclude that once you write a post, it is “done” and cast in stone, please note that as I discovered the effectiveness of adding related links to posts, I simply went back in 'edit mode' to past popular posts and added related links to them as well.  In digital online-land, nothing is ever cast in stone. 

The related links approach has literally changed the game for me in terms of the click flow that subscribers to my RSS feed (via Feedburner) now take. 

Whereas in the past, I always had more views on the feed page than actual click-throughs to specific articles, now it is pretty much inverted.  I almost always have more click-throughs than views, suggesting that a person clicks to read one post then gets sucked into a couple additional ones, which obviously satisfies my goals to have a deeper connection with my audience.

These days, I think that there exists a sort of triangulation process that people go through when they encounter you on the web.  Some find a post of yours via a Google search on a topic or key word string, which then leads them to search on your name, which then leads them to your LinkedIn profile page or your comments on another bloggers’s post.  The triangle, thus is your blog on one axis, your profile on another and your comments on the last axis.

Given this, I make sure that my LinkedIn Profile is both current and narrowly focused on my specific expertise and interests versus trying to be all things to all people (see Narrow Net below). 

Links to my LinkedIn profile are, in turn, integrated into my blog, my profile in the DISQUS commenting system and other key services that I belong to.

Similarly, anyone I encounter in face-to-face meetings and online I invite to join my LinkedIn network, which has expanded the reach of my contact network.  A friend of mine at a New York Times subsidiary clued me into the logic of being 'promiscuous' in contact networks but prude in social networks (where maintenance of intimacy is important, especially for vertically focused social nets), and I have found this approach effective.

Finally, to extend my footprint online, I have done a fair bit of guest columns on services like GigaOm and iMedia, as well as maintaining a techie focused blog at O’Reilly, a publisher of books, events and online resources for programmers.

In terms of other best practices, I have heard fairly consistently from people that I respect that you should commit to a daily post if you can find a way to do so, as that trains your audience to check in today, tomorrow and the day after that versus just intermittently. 

Given the length of my posts and the fact that this is an adjunct to my real profession – i.e., being an entrepreneur – I have not mustered this type of frequency, as I am fearful of sacrificing quality for quantity.  That said, it is a goal of mine.

The other area that I am assessing is participating in the LinkedIn Answers service as a way of more formally cultivating a knowledge network.  I will update this post when I find the time to play with, and reach some conclusions.

So netting it out, blogging, first and foremost, has made me a better writer, a crisper communicator and a clearer thinker.

It’s the old chicken and pigs analogy.  Once you click "publish," you have real skin in the game.  The good news is that you can iterate after the fact but I do my best to get the first go around right, as that keeps me honest about whether I am hitting the mark with my target audience.

Secondly, from my posts, people – even total strangers – feel that they know me the first time I meet them.  This means that we can start dialog at a higher level, and I have found that it is easier to build a thread around a specific post. 

No less important is that I have instant credibility since virtually everyone does a Google search on you before they connect.  Not bad for first impressions fodder.

Related posts:

1. Breadcrumbs and Conversations: social media and how it works explained.
2. The Narrow Net Strategy: career path strategies to be your target audience's bullseye by being narrow and deep versus wide and shallow.
3. The Social Map is all about Me (guest column on GigaOM): on connecting the dots between ones posts, comments, tweets, discussion threads, diggs, profiles and the like.
4. Channel Me and the Rules of New Media: old media versus new media rules and how they shape branding.

Wall Widgets: Fixed Wireless at Home

Electricity flows.  So does information. 

This is an attempt, to describe a metaphorical 'socket,' light bulb and currency flow by connecting the dots between three potent technology trends:

1. Widget-ization of the web.
2. Ascendance of mobile platforms, like the iPhone.
3. Ascendance of mobility platforms, like the iPod touch.

Imagine a device called a ‘wall widget’ that functions as a piece of art in your living room or on your office wall.

It can receive and play information feeds, photos and/or video streams, albeit in a wall-mountable form factor.

I call it a wall widget because it leverages Wi-Fi connectivity, is service-aware, and is manageable by non-technical users.

By manageable, I mean that by making template-driven decisions, consumers can remotely 'program' information or media flows handled by the wall widget to meet their experiential needs. 

So what job do you 'hire' such a device for?  Wall widgets are designed to accessorize your TV viewing, radio listening and newspaper reading by providing managed information feeds and media flows.

Think: news stories, stock quotes, photo libraries, RSS feeds, twitter tweets, Techmemed storylines, tracked discussion threads, video playlists, sports highlights and scores.

Why would you want to do this?  Two primary schemas come to mind:

1. Tune-able 'background noise' that is information-rich. 
2. Playlist-driven visual galleries that keep your happiest memories and aspirational thoughts front and center.

Having seen the goodness of twitter’s halo effect from enabling an ecosystem of twitter client and twitter services builders to promulgate, I believe that a wall widgets platform would logically have open, well-documented and extend-able APIs so developers could easily create adapters to hook into whatever information services and media flows they fancy.

A final bit of food for thought; Wouldn’t your iPhone or iPod touch make a great visual, tilt/touch based remote control for wall widget type of devices?

Would you use a wall widget?  Would you buy one?

Related links:

1. Envisioning the Social Map-lication: anticipating a unified approach to organizing, managing and publishing our profusion of posts, pictures, videos, comments, tracked discussion threads, playlists and profiles.
2. iPhone SDK: Mobile Reasons for Optimism: why the iPhone Universe is a big deal.
3. iPod touch: the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform? this is where mobile and mobility start to diverge a bit.
4. Holy Shit! Apple's Halo Effect: on the goodness of manufacturing leverage through strategic execution.
5. Check out Chumby: MG Siegler of VentureBeat tipped me off to this device which does a heck of a lot of what I am talking about in this post.

Advertising 3.0: Madison Avenue and Social Media Marketing

Ponder the golden age of the advertising business for a moment, and what comes to mind are images of Madison Avenue creative types brainstorming, pitching and crafting high production value campaigns that leverage broadcast and print distribution media to reach a pliable, somewhat homogeneous audience.

But that era, lovingly thought of as Advertising 1.0, is slowly, irrevocably facing death by a thousand cuts, as advertisers no longer can justify economics predicated on the logic that “I know half my advertising dollars are wasted - I just don't know which half” and consumers increasingly are processing ads as the mental in-box equivalent of spam, and filtering them out.

By the same token, Advertising 2.0, the so-called Google-ification of the ad business, is a paper tiger that goes too far in the other direction. 

While Advertising 2.0 ads have the benefit of being performance-based (meaning that you get what you pay for in terms of only paying when a consumer actually clicks), what they lack are satisfying definitions of what constitutes “performance” coupled with the limited context and undifferentiated actions they offered up.  Clicks do not equal conversions without context.

What is needed is a 3.0 advertising model that looks more like direct mail in the sense that it provides a clear call to action, some basis for urgency, specific engagement parameters, relevant metrics of success around those same parameters and a transparent ROI model.

One 3.0 approach, known as a Social Media Marketing Promotion, starts with the concept of initiating an earnest online “event” with your constituency base; namely, some participatory reason for company and customer to have a structured conversation by providing a customized microsite "sand box" for consumers to plug in and engage.

The goodness of this approach is that you can rapidly build campaigns targeted at both Brand Advertising and Direct Response campaign outcome goals.

If brand advertising is the goal, then engagement parameters such as uploads, plays, shares, ratings, embedding, etc. are the metrics that matter and campaign goals should be defined accordingly.

If on the other hand, the goal is direct response, then metrics should be focused on actual leads -- how many people click on the call to action, how many register, request info and the like.

So who’s embracing this approach?  Major brands (and their interactive agencies) such as Chevy, Vespa, Fosters Lager, US Army, TheKnot, Hallmark, UPS and Boston Acoustics, to name a few.

(disclaimer: my company, vSocial, is an industry leader in the social media marketing promotions space).

Related Links:

1. Social Media: Breadcrumbs and Conversations: provides a well-formed construct for thinking about how social media works.
2. Vespa GoGreen Campaign and Interactive Agencies: specific examples of different campaigns in action.
3. Is Advertising Science or Art?: An exploration of the concepts in Claude Hopkins seminal read, "Scientific Advertising."  Argues simple that advertising is measured by its effectiveness in generating sales.  Period.
4. Don't subordinate your Brand: on strategies to avoid losing control of your brand while embracing the managed chaos of social media.

Eating Dog Food: On Safety Nets

The other day I was walking down the street and I heard one guy quip to his friend that he still had a couple of months of runway before he would be eating dog food.

I instantly thought of this homeless old lady in my neighborhood who is forced to drag her four suitcases wherever she goes. 

In terms of outward appearance, she seems pretty normal, all things considered. This is just what life has come to.

How did she get to this place?  Maybe it was…

• Something bad, like an addiction
• A life calamity like an accident or bad health
• A sudden and permanent change in cash flow from the loss of a working spouse
• Outliving her cash

Eating dog food is a metaphor for a place that none of us would ever like to get to.

If family is your safety net, then breathe easy. This outcome does not apply to you.  (Keep a picture of this in your pocket, though, and it will make you more humble and compassionate.)

If, however, you cannot rely on an outside financial safety net, then commit to making a thoughtful assessment of the following: 

1. How much cash do you have? 
2. What’s your monthly income and expenses? 
3. If you needed to more tightly preserve cash, could you?
4. How many more years do you see yourself continuing to work?
5. What’s your cash position look like under BAD, AVERAGE and GOOD scenarios at a couple of different age points in the future.

Stating the obvious, future realities sometimes deviate from present expectations, so we all have to plan accordingly.

PEACE.

Upward Mobility, Land Grabs and the iPhone Universe

If for no other reason than to plan around their patent filings, it is impossible for me not to stop and look at the implications of the location-based services model Apple is envisioning for the iPhone Universe.

Brilliant vision.  Very clear value proposition.  And earnestly thought through (in my opinion). 

Do yourself a favor.  Dive deeper and check out the must-read article, ‘Apple filing places iPhone networks at restaurants, zoos, concerts,’ at AppleInsider.

Here is an excerpt:

The concept calls for a short-range wireless network that merchants or attraction organizers could install within their venues. Included in the network would be an "iPhone server" capable of interfacing and serving up customized information and applications to Apple media devices that come within range of the network.

The details of the patent filing lay out some clear application and service patterns. Here is one specific example from the filing (there are several):

"Various location-based content that may be provided in connection with a merchant that sells goods and articles of manufacture. For example, a user may access music (e.g., being freely broadcast by the establishment or for sale on content source), advertisements (e.g., coupon specials, video advertisements, and audio advertisements), event calendar (e.g., to learn of exciting new events that may be occurring at the merchant), virtual card information may be exchanged, podcast, general information on merchant (e.g., return policies), product information (e.g., graphics of products, reviews of products, etc.), or any other suitable information pertinent to the merchant."

Given that Apple has already worked through the logistics chain of pushing apps and media items to devices, including purchasing and transaction processing, there is little doubt that such context-rich services are well within reach of the platform.

At the same time, the breadth/depth of these filings also forces you/me to wonder what the end-goal is in carving out patent real estate in so many of the application spaces relevant to the iPhone Universe.

Is it a land grab and attempt to create (patent) toll roads throughout iPhone Universe or just protection against a would-be competitor outflanking Apple and establishing barriers against them and their developer ecosystem?

Perception has a way of becoming reality so let me state the obvious.  It is incumbent upon Apple to be perceived as magic creators and marketplace enablers, and NOT land barons.

Let me suggest that one path to protecting all sides is to grant a fairly broad usage license to this patent portfolio to developers  (and even competitors) subject to a reasonably crafted, bi-lateral Covenant Not To Sue (CNTS) clause.

Essentially, a CNTS allows Apple to do its thing and expand into segments that it views as strategic without having to worry about the ecosystem that it creates turning and suing it one day. 

At the same time, it also lets developers do their thing without having to worry that Apple might one day turn predatory.

If the larger goal is to become ubiquitous and gain immutable brand ubiquity by winning the hearts and minds of consumers, developers and services providers,  formally granting broad usage rights to its rapidly growing iPhone Universe patent portfolio is the consummate WIN-WIN.

Related posts:

1. The Scorpion, the Frog and the iPhone SDK: on Apple's mixed history with developers and partners.
2. iPhone SDK: Mobile Reasons for Optimism: why the iPhone Universe is a big deal.
3. Holy Shit! Apple's Halo Effect: how Apple has turned gravity into its friend.

Presentation Logic: Don't bring attention to your mistakes

Years ago, I took a public speaking class.  One of the best nuggets that I gleaned from it (beyond the extemporaneous speaking methodology) was the importance of not spotlighting your mistakes when making a presentation.

It is akin to self-sabotage, and readily avoidable by simply being aware and NOT acting on a knee-jerk impulse.

Let me frame the AHA moment for you.  A core part of the class was having weekly presentations in front of your peers.  These presentations were filmed for subsequent review by you, your classmates and the instructor outside the heat/angst of the moment.

During rehearsal for my second presentation, I felt reasonably crisp about what I wanted to say and in what order. 

Unfortunately, when I got up on stage, during one of the transition points I lost my place and stumbled. 

In what seemed like an eternity, there was deafening silence as my peers' eyes conveyed both pain at seeing my struggles and wonderment when I was going to get back on track.

As it was "obvious" that I was crashing and burning, I finally acknowledged to the audience that I had lost my place, and after a moment, did indeed get back on track.  But the damage was clearly done.

Or was it?  Upon review of the tape, another reality became clear.  While my perception of struggle and confusion was palpable, in watching the tape, the ONLY clear indicator that I had lost my place was the moment that I specifically called out that I had lost my place. 

Sure, things could have been a bit tighter, and I certainly could tell what was going on under the surface, but in absence of MY bringing attention to the miscue, had I simply breathed and momentarily paused until I got back on track, no one would have noticed that I had lost my place.

The moral of the story is that your audience rarely puts every nuance of your presentation under the microscope, and this allows you to back out of dead ends, correct mistakes and generally massage your presentation into shape -- in real time.

Human nature in these situations, however, is to put yourself under the microscope and call out mistakes as the occur.  You do yourself and your audience a disservice when you spotlight such mistakes, as my experience underscores.

One final comment on this topic.  It amazes me how many people walk into important meetings and presentations without formally documenting or practicing what they want to say and/or codifying what outcome they want out of the meeting. 

As someone once said, luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparedness.  Mixing metaphors a bit, if an once of prevention can be said to be worth a pound of cure, then an ounce of PREPARATION is worth at least a pound of good luck.  Food for thought.

The Five Keys to Business Success

I am a big believer of chronicling best practices and lessons learned in the field of entrepreneurialism. 

Why? Because fundamental truths, when they reveal themselves, can save you from painful dead-end paths, minimize the time you spend re-creating the wheel and generally translate to a higher probably of success – regardless of industry, stage of business or outcome goals.

The paradox, however, is that there are so many nuggets that one encounters over time, across companies and at different milestones of a business that sometimes the real challenge is to just keep things simple enough to be manageable.

By that, I mean that the definition of the situation can be clearly and consistently communicated to all members of your constituency audience (which includes customers, partners, investors and employees).

Put another way, as my Bikram yoga teacher likes to say, “If you come across two philosophy books, one thin and the other thick, choose the thin one, as the author of the thick one still has more work to do.”

With that in mind, the five most important drivers that I have found to entrepreneurial success are:

1. Embrace Specifics: the company culture is to sweat the details (and document them) about the target customer, use cases, product requirements, development schedules, customer support assumptions, business models, market penetration strategy and the competitive landscape.
2. Be Reality Driven: the team is intellectually honest about the definition of the situation and strives to create clear metrics and measure actual performance relative to stated goals to objectively prove out the core assertions of the business.
3. Reconcile Paradoxes: there is an understanding and intellectual accommodation of the fact that the path to business success is replete with short-term versus long-term trade-offs, most notably conflicting agendas between your constituent base.
4. Practice Clock Management: the plan of record is based on a fundamental alignment on how much time is allocated to achieve specific milestones, the available resources, especially cash, to achieve those milestones and fall-back options if goals are not timely met.
5. Mentally Tough Hires: the foundation of the team is built around a core that can cope with the highs, lows and uncertainties that are endemic to the entrepreneurial process.

Are there other essential truths that you see as missing? How do you perform relative to the above keys to success?

Related Posts:

1. Core concepts learned doing seven startups.
2. My blog post, "On Intellectual Honesty."
3. What is Bikram Yoga (10 years of practice and counting)?

Never let them see Oz: Sell the Magic

Have you ever been to a great restaurant where the waiter proudly told you that their signature fish dish was inspired by a comparable dish at the restaurant down the block? 

Can you imagine the fashion designer, Giorgio Armani, telling attendees of his latest fashion show that the $15,000 gown they just saw modeled on the runway is just cotton fabric assembled by low-wage workers in a third-world country? 

Would you appreciate/value that food dish or designer fashion item more or less if they told you this upfront?

These are rhetorical questions, but they speak to the importance of recognizing that while reality may be inspired by looking at this competitor, talking to those customers, or finessing and iterating a so-so idea until its implementation is pure brilliance, never forget that you want the customer feeling that what you do is MAGIC (albeit, with a little SCIENCE perhaps). 

This may be a little unnatural when you first present things this way to customers, partners or even co-workers, but it is suggestive of the importance of selling a vision, speaking to an operational discipline and driving your target audience to a specific experiential place. 

Life is messy.  We often grope our way to success.  Pure luck and serendipity often enter the equation, as does simple asserting, watching and listening.

But remember, while these statements are borne of reality, there is another reality; namely, that customers don’t want to see the man behind the curtain.  They want to be entertained and amazed.

Don’t let them down.

See also:

1. My blog post on 'the assertion-based reasoning model.'