The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

Decomposing Google News and Making it Social

In my daily online travels, Google News is a regular, recurring destination.  Here’s a thought about how Google could make the news aggregation site even better, and in the process, make it more indelibly social.

Step One: Formally containerize story ‘buckets’ and expose (make visible) handles like tags, categories, view count data, ratings and like minds (people who liked this story, also liked that story). 

Some of this data Google captures today, some it requires Google either adding UI controls within Google News pages or creating IFrames so that Google can persist a meta-layer around the destination new page (for tagging, rating, categorizing).

Step Two: Integrate this functionality with Google Reader, which probably touches Web history and Bookmarks functions, and invariably gets Google down the path of a deeper, more unified user profile model. The key point here is that while Google does a reasonable job of tracking pieces of this data already, it is overly silo’d and simplistic when it could be integrated in a much more high-value fashion beyond just a consolidated view. 

A best practices way of doing this would be to work backwards from what YouTube does with providing filtered views of video data, personalization and social linkage options to consumers, and apply a similar model to third party news sources.

Step Three: Expose APIs to these functions so that third parties, including news publishers, can create applications and web services that leverage the goodness of Google’s depth and breadth. 

Clearly, not all news sources would opt to participate in all elements of this offering but so long as Google offered an opt-in/opt-out path for publishers, this feels like a natural way to turn consumers into information miners and reward them for their efforts (since they get better visibility to related stories and a path to connect with like minds). 

For publishers, it becomes part of a continuing breadcrumb strategy to increase the reach and engagement level that consumers have with their content.  Plus, if Google provides access to the underlying APIs that they are using, for smaller publishers at a minimum, it gives them pluggable, scalable tools to make the news content on their home web site both social and transparent.

Arguably, such a model could then be scaled out to Pictures, Documents and other like Google services.

Related Links:

1. Social Media - it's about Breadcrumbs and Conversations: a construct for thinking about how social media models work.
2. Googling Innovation - Seed, Select & Amplify: on Google's R&D culture.
3. The Chess Masters - Google vs. Apple: why Google and Apple are without peers, and destined for a market collision.

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.

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?

UPDATE 1: Here's the latest on Chumby (in Forbes), which is making serious headway on building an ecosystem focused on this space.  Excerpt: "It's never been our great desire to be a hardware company; our expertise is software and user interface," says Tomlin. He prefers consumers think of Chumby as a content and media business, based on an ecosystem of widgets and third-party developers. His vision of Chumby's future centers on bringing that personal multimedia Web experience to as many connected consumer electronics as possible.

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.

Envisioning the Social Map-lication

eMarketer predicts that the number of people who create "user-generated" content will rise from 77 million in 2007 to 108 million in 2012.

On the one hand, that is a big number.  On the other, this is the information age, and the Internet is a two-way media so it makes sense that this increasingly becomes a medium where we both consume AND generate/create content.

Towards that end, it also seems logical that applications will emerge that help us take a more unified approach to organizing, managing and publishing our profusion of posts, pictures, videos, comments, tracked discussion threads, playlists and profiles.

Some people think of this bucket as a social map, the amalgam of social media, our network of connections and online breadcrumb paths.

Recently, on GigaOM, I wrote a guest column that expands on the concept of social maps, and envisions some application kernels that support it.

Here is an excerpt from the post:

Isn’t this the moral of the story regarding iTunes, iPhoto and the iPod/iPhone? Namely, that whether blogging, YouTube’ing, Flickr’ing, Digg’ing or tweet’ing, the “forever” bucket is the bucket consisting of my content, my contacts, my contexts and my conversations.

This suggests that regardless of where any of these informational breadcrumbs may originate, each of us needs to think of ourselves as the center of our respective social map universes. In other words, the social map — in order for it to be considered a map – needs to systematically connect the dots between me, my content and my network. A map-lication of sorts.

Check out the full post HERE.

Related Links:

1. Social Media: Breadcrumbs and Conversations
2. Why I Blog: It's about Brand not Bread

iPod touch: take two

A couple weeks back, I posted on the potential of the iPod touch as a mainstream Wi-Fi platform.  My post was triggered by two things.  One, is the (hopefully) imminent release of the iPhone SDK (note: with some qualification, the touch is an iPhone without the phone so non-telephony apps should also run on the touch).  Two, is my own nascent experiences with the touch as a fanatical Blackberry 7130 user.

First, the bad news.  The device can be clunky sometimes. Specifically, crashes of the Safari browser are not uncommon. I have also noted that when attempting to multi thread by listening to music and simultaneously accessing the web, music can skip and applications can become unstable.

Also, the device currently lacks copy and paste functions, which complicates its utility as a serious input device (a core reason I love my Blackberry is that it excels as an input device).

On the networking front, Wi-Fi performance can be erratic, and connecting to seemingly open public Wi-Fi connections is a black art.  I still cannot figure out why it works in some locations where a connection is shown and not others.  Needless to say, this limits the reliable-ness of the ‘mobile’ moniker.

All of that said, the potential of the touch as a mobile platform is undeniable. Its iPod functionality is stellar. The combination of the Multi-Touch touch screen functionality and the Accelerometer portrait-to-landscape display functions really enhance the user experience.

And while the virtual keyboard pales in comparison to the real thing, it definitely becomes serviceable with practice – if not an asset, then at least less of a liability than I perceived it to be upon initial use.

Many have suggested that the browser experience with mobile Safari is a game changer for the device, and while it is pretty solid and fun to use (a definite weak spot of my Blackberry), as a showcase for the native capabilities of the iPod touch/iPhone, it is just okay. 

By contrast, the YouTube application over Wi-Fi is really sweet, and I actually found myself searching for, finding and watching/listening to music videos on YouTube and then buying the song via the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store.  Very slick.

I have put some thoughts into ‘killer app’ scenarios in my earlier post so I won’t recount them here other than to say that the email application could get a lot better.

In fact, I would argue that email is a potential killer application for the platform as a global in-box. With better information organization and sharing capabilities, and multimedia messaging support, who wouldn’t want to be able to take their email archive with them?

Framed differently, if Apple doesn't seize this one how much do you want to bet that Google does given: 1) How much they already have invested in their multi-platform Gmail application and 2) How sexy Google Maps on the iPhone/iPod touch has proven to be (and competent Google is becoming in the apps arena)? 

This is a major storyline to watch for the year ahead; namely, in an industry where the once impenetrable walls between media, mobile, PC and Internet are crashing down, seemingly only two companies – Apple and Google – have figured out how to ‘Think Different’ enough to play the disruptor role across all of these segments.

Given their respective mammoth ambitions, are ‘friends’ Apple/Google destined to become ‘frienemies’ ala Apple/Microsoft (circa 1990), and if so, when?   

UPDATE 1: A couple of decent links of the forthcoming SDK are here (PCWeek) and here (Wired).

The Market Maker & The Information Economy

Once upon a time, Microsoft was the market maker.   They grew the PC market steadily from a tiny hobbyists niche to a PC on every desktop. 

The operating systems business fed the applications business, which in turn, fed the server business. Microsoft drove an economy based on a steady upgrade cycle, giving rise to an industry business model defined by a recurring series of high dollar purchases for the end-consumer.

They were fast followers, which is to say that Microsoft’s dominance was less about creating wholly new markets (think: Apple) and more about recognizing newly-forming markets, embracing the market innovation and then wholly integrating it into their strategy.

When they focused on winning a market, they were pretty unbeatable.  Just ask Lotus, Borland, WordPerfect, dBase, Sybase, Novell and Netscape. 

The analogy that best frames their aggressive pursuit of market dominance was that they were like the football team that was winning 99-0 and still running up the score.  Culturally, they played at only one speed, which unquestionably translated to a measure of antipathy towards the company.

Then something interesting happened. As more of the computing experience shifted to the online universe, Microsoft slowly ceased to be the one true market maker. 

That is not to diminish their economy, which remains huge.  But, the fact of the matter is that new market maker is, after all, Google. 

First Google nailed search. Then they successfully launched and faithfully stewarded a self-service ad supported marketplace that has grown them into a hugely profitable $20B market gorilla.

The larger success of this model opened the door to a proliferation of predominantly free online services, like email, news, mapping services and video.  And those are just the segments that Google has a strong foothold in. 

Facebook and the social networking universe are offspring of the Google economy. So too, is Yelp, Perez Hilton and TechCrunch.  Economically-speaking, print publishing is being swallowed by online media.  It seems inevitable that the entertainment industry will more formally plug into the Google engine sooner rather than later.

The information-driven economy, of which Google is the market maker, is fundamentally about cultivating and systematically growing user engagement time, and then monetizing that engagement via an ad-supported business model.

It is with this backdrop, one should contemplate a union between Microsoft and Yahoo, and what it does to the competitive balance in the market. 

Umair Haque of Bubblegeneration puts it best, “I hate to be so blunt, but I’m short of time today, so let me offer a guess: Yahoo + Microsoft isn’t just a mistake - it’s a double suicide; a fatal error. Why? Neither company has the DNA to take on Google (let alone the massive number of startups waiting in the wings).”

Amen, Brother.  Truer words were never spoken. 

Why you say?  For one thing, Microsoft generally subsumes, they don't do synergistic co-existence very well. Plus, they are now large, bureaucratic and slow moving. 

By contrast, Yahoo, despite a magnificent footprint of users and services used by users, not to mention content, media  and agency relationships, has never seemed to be able to connect the dots for their users.  This is a cardinal sin, but organizationally, they are too silo'd to cross that chasm, which is their folly.

Thus, Microsoft plus Yahoo feels like a 1 + 1 equals less than two outcome, doesn't it?

iPod touch: the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform?

(note: this article was originally posted on my blog for O'Reilly Digital Media.)

"We believe one of the iPod's future directions is to become the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform." So said, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer at their recent earnings call.

Okay, so let’s play this scenario out. Start with the premise that in most homes these days, reliable wireless connectivity is pretty much a given.

Now, add to this environment a device that fits in your pocket, generates no heat, has Wi-Fi capabilities, a touch screen and killer integrated media capabilities (it’s an iPod, after all).

Finally, give this device - the iPod touch - the ability not to only browse the Web, but to run local ‘client’ applications as well (e.g., the iTunes Wi-Fi music store, maps, widgets).

To be sure, there are some caveats (there always are with new platforms) but the possibilities for such a platform are pretty amazing.

The Wi-Fi Mobile ‘Platform'
Some time in February, Apple is due to release an SDK for building applications that run on iPhone and iPod touch devices.

The addressable market for such applications is potentially quite large. Apple’s own estimates suggest that it will move 10M iPhones this year. If a quarter of the 100M iPods sold to date can be converted to iPod touch owners, that is a combined market that dwarfs the size of Nintendo’s breakout Wii gaming system.

If Apple is smart, they will get religion about making it easy for developers to build local applications and services that are native to the iPhone/iPod platform versus artificially limiting them to ‘pseudo-applications’ that are wholly web-based.

If they got religion on this point they could cultivate a devoted ecosystem of third-party developers, penetrate new verticals and achieve even deeper synchronicity across the universe of Apple/Mac devices, software and services.

To Apple, I would say this. Remember the lessons of Microsoft and the importance of building a thriving ecosystem. It secures the consummate ‘unfair advantage’ to its progenitor by offering greater platform diversity to consumers, making them want to lock themselves in, which has the net effect of giving pricing protection to the platform builder at the center of the ecosystem.

Twenty years ago, Microsoft figured this out and played chess to Apple’s checkers, almost extinguishing Apple in the process. I remember this time well since, at the time, I was selling to Apple’s base of schools, entertainment and graphical creative types. It was painful to watch a great company’s demise.

It remains to be seen if Apple drinks the Kool Aid this go around or not. If they succumb to exercising too much control and force developers into a hobbled web-centric apps model, they risk turning off what would otherwise be a naturally evangelical following. I hope they make the right call.

Mobile Platform Envy
In the scenario that I envision, applications/services would be targeted at two primary use cases. One is living room spaces, where connectivity is assured. The other is intermittent connectivity environments, where having local applications with local data enables users to strike a balance between online dynamism and application availability/persistency. Consider:

- How useful would a Quicken application be that could sync between your iPod touch and the desktop? Application scenarios come to mind for receipts inputting, bill payment, balancing of your checking account and daily cash management. Who doesn’t struggle with this one? A rich application environment with touch screen, input forms and drop-down menus feels like a winner.

- About 15 years ago, the Interactive Network was service that allowed you to participate in an interactive fashion with TV game shows and sporting events. Unfortunately, it was pretty limited and required that a special hardware box with a dedicated phone line be connected to your TV. Plus, no one knew what the hell interactivity meant since the Web was still pretty nascent, so it failed. But with an iPod touch, an interactive TV programming guide application becomes possible that allows you to systematically interact with your favorite TV programs (think: sports, game shows, finance, reality TV, etc.) and connect with others who are watching the same program - in real time.

- What if all of the businesses that you frequent could maintain an interactive version of their customer loyalty program with you? You could always have coupons and discounts of interest at your fingertips, and could manage communications with them just as easily (information requests, booking reservations, etc.). Such an application is perfect for intermittent connectivity.

- Imagine a virtual DJ application where iPod touch users could allow third party DJs to ‘program’ what users see and hear on their iPod touch by pushing information feeds, video, audio, photos and the like. Users could choose to IM, SMS or talk live with others in the 'audience' in a one-to-one or one-to-many fashion. It’s like Pointcast for the Web 2.0 generation.

- It seems really clear that role-playing games (RPG) and virtual worlds have a logical place in this landscape. Similarly, there are a bunch of games that could take advantage of the input and movement functionality of the iPod touch device. What about playing backgammon with someone remotely but in real time?

- Finally, I would be willing to bet that A LOT of people would want to use such a device as an e-wallet application. Far from waxing poetic about futuristic services that require integration and customization that does not exist today, there are a bunch of products that can be ordered online and either delivered to you or that are local enough that you could pick them up. What about a service that aggregates all of the menus in your area of restaurants offering delivery service?

Given that it could be the perfect device for local and ultra-targeted advertising, making the ROI seem clear, one wonders if this is the killer device for an ad-supported Wi-Fi service.

Maybe that explains rumors of a reference design integrating Google’s Android (open handset platform) with the iPod touch. Perhaps this also explains Google’s recent announcement that they are upping their commitment to iPhone optimized applications.

Is the iPod touch destined to be the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform? Or jut the Newton revisited? What do you think?  Me? I just bought one so I am voting with my pocketbook.

UPDATE 1: Interesting analysis by Needham & Co. suggesting that Apple is letting iPod touch cannibalize iPhone sales to grow the overall market and convert larger existing iPod base.

UPDATE 2: Been using my touch device for about four or five days now, and two issues.  One, the flow of the touch virtual keyboard does not compare to my Blackberry 7130.  Whereas, with the latter I happily write long blogs (~500-1000 words), with touch, short notes are all that is palatable.  Two is that the wi-fi performance and reliability pales in comparison to my MacBook Pro in the exact same spot of my house.

UPDATE 3: Two pretty cool moments with the touch device over past couple of days.  One, playing with the Google Maps application I can say without qualification that it is sweet.  The combination of touch-screen with the dynamic richness of an application makes it the closest I have seen (and in many ways superior) to the pinned maps application my partner Steve Lee and I pioneered back in 2003 (he now leads Google's efforts in local search and maps on mobile).  Two, watching Lost Season 3 finale the other night, I had never seen the show before but with touch by my side (and an informationally subtitled version of the show on ABC - smart!), I was able to bring up Lost entry on Wikipedia, flip touch sideways and get basically caught up with first three seasons. Not bad. Quite enjoyable, in fact.

UPDATE 4: See my new post, 'iPod touch: take two.'  Basically, my thoughts on the iPod touch from a user perspective and some ruminations on how Google and Apple intersect and/or clash.

Spock, social networks and online privacy

As first exemplified by Friendster, there emerged the concept of a social network where the fundamental goal was to connect with as many (pseudo) 'friends' as possible. 

This, in turn, gave rise to contact networks like Plaxo and professional networks like LinkedIn, where the purpose was more explicit; namely to exchange specific information or facilitate qualified introductions. 

MySpace and Facebook further extended these models by allowing people to build personal pages, exchange rich media (and virally spread it), interface with like minds via well-defined services, and create sub-networks where membership is bounded by affinity, affiliation, geography and the like. 

The latest trend is to 'platform-enable' these networks, mostly so that third party applications can plug into and extend these environments, but also to enable content, conversations and contexts that are created within these spaces to be syndicated and/or virally distributed out to other web sites and web services. 

Twitter, which is best described as a short message service built around answering the question, “What am I doing right now?” has generated 10X the traffic it receives on the actual Twitter.com site via third party services that plug into the Twitter API.

Which brings me to an interesting service that I stumbled upon the other day which seems to push the model forward.  It is called Spock, and it has some noteworthy attributes.  One is that by leveraging the power of algorithmic search, the Spock service automatically builds a personal profile of you (based solely on public web data). 

You can “claim your page,” and the service makes it very easy to validate or invalidate information about you.  It also makes it simple to further customize your profile in ways that are meaningful enough that as a user, you might habitually tend to your profile (on a daily or weekly basis) in the same way that some people manicure and water their gardens.

Similarly, friends of yours can discover your unclaimed profile and use this stumble upon moment as the trigger event to initiate contact with you, invite you into their network and/or encourage you to claim your profile page.  Moreover, they can put their vote in about the accuracy or inaccuracy of a specific item of data on your profile, a sort of 'wisdom of crowds' informational amplifier and error-checking mechanism.

There are some implications of this approach that are interesting, to say the least.  One is that privacy advocates will have alarms galore going off.  The premise of a service aggregating your identity to a single page is troubling, inasmuch as it lowers the bar to someone stealing or compromising your identity. 

The idea that a third party can theoretically claim your page by falsely claiming to be you is troubling.  The concept that a third party can chime in and validate or invalidate information about you on your profile implies a loss of control, which is unsettling for some.

At the same time, the premise of a profiling and networking model that leverages both outside-in (algorithmically-generated data sourcing, categorization and linkage; crowd wisdom functions; discover/claim mechanisms) and inside-out functions (user-defined customization of content, context and connections; invitations to trusted sources; privacy controls), while making everything search-able feels like the right approach.

Moreover, the service introduces the concept of a Spock Power score, which is a rudimentary transparency mechanism that spotlights the level of engagement and participation that a given individual has made within the service vis-a-vis activities like customization, invitation, validation and the like. 

Personally, I think that there is a gap in the market for reputation systems that provide an individual’s 'score' in areas like trust, knowledge, accuracy and activity levels, ala the Whuffie score concept in Cory Doctorow's sci-fi novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," and to be clear, the Spock Power score does not deliver that, but it is a start down a promising path.

In addition, the service does provide a Developer API, presaging a day when users can enable the rich data in their profile to be plugged into third-party services for things like:

• Personalized recommendation services that automatically present content, products, services or people likely to be interesting to you (see: Interestingness), spotlight related content or identify non-obvious connections.
• User-defined in boxes and filtration mechanisms for solicitation of marketing offers.
• Market aggregation services that enable like minds to harness the economy of scale goodness of buying cooperatives.
• Assimilation of experts, advocates and interest groups into 'knowledge networks.'
• Local event planning tools that reconcile the faux intimacy of virtual, online spaces with the realness of offline, physical ones, sort of the 2.0 version of Meetup meets Evite.

Needless to say, there are already services in many of these areas, suggesting the potential to extend existing services (versus re-creating the wheel yet again) in a manner that does not require the individual to be locked into any one service.

To be clear, while Spock passed the initial sniff test for me personally, it is too early to tell if it will overcome the '1.0/3.0 Paradox' and solve enough problems in its 1.0 youth to build the needed audience and business required to survive and grow into maturity, robustness and ubiquity in its 3.0 stage of life (as Google did). 

I would suggest that one path for Spock to add value is by providing greater transparency mechanisms in terms of what is new, popular, recently viewed or relevant on the network.  Another is by the service playing the part of the Oracle and perennially asking questions of 'the network,' and then spotlighting popular responses or identifying forks in types of responses. 

Lastly, I wonder if there is a game or marketplace concept that can be overlayed on top of the service that rewards users for levels of participation, either by giving them actual monetary consideration, formal recognition and/or greater access to governance controls within the network. 

So many potential paths of interest, but obviously a tradeoff between near-term tactical focus and long-term strategic vision.

I would be remiss if I did not close by speaking a bit more about the topic of privacy and the very real and reasonable fears that we all have whenever the words ‘privacy’ and ‘online’ are interleaved in the same sentence.

Privacy is a paradox.  One the one hand, there is no sugar-coating the fact that there are bad people out there that will do bad things if they have access to your personal data, and the easier it is for them to get their hands on that data, the more likely bad stuff will happen. 

The counter to that reality is that the cow has left the barn already, and it ‘aint coming back so the best alternative is to embrace transparency.  This logic is based on the premise that if we all have access to the same set of public data, better tools can be built to manage it, better laws can be crafted that legislate acceptable use and tougher penalties can be put on the books for criminal offenders. 

After all, does anyone feel safer knowing that access to and control of this data is almost exclusively in the hands of credit card companies, governmental authorities, insurers and the like?  I know that I don’t, being a believer that you can only protect and improve what you can track and measure, whereas today we are at the mercy of self-interested parties that are self-policing themselves.

A great primer on the topic privacy is, “The Transparent Society” by David Brin.  In this day and age, it should be a must-read.

Assertion-based reasoning

A friend of mine had a great exercise.  He would say:

“Write up the set of core assertions about your business.  Then imagine a challenge to those assertions by your constituency base. 

Imagine them asking you to articulate the ‘WHY’ side of your value proposition.  Then imagine them responding to your answer with a collective 'SO WHAT,' either formally or informally through inaction. 

Ask yourself, what then, what would your next move be?"

In Buddhism, you have the concept of things being “workable.” Paths can be discovered, situations can be stitched together and routines can be iterated and then forged over time. 

I would assert that if you can commit to answering the ‘WHO’ in this type of model and doing so with clear specificity, then you can develop a well-grounded, workable path to becoming the ‘WHAT’ that you want to be.

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.

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.

Featured in PR Week Product & Tools Newsletter

As part of the Expert Q&A section of PR Week's Product & Tools Newsletter, I was interviewed recently to talk about the role of social media in PR, marketing and media, and how the media landscape is evolving.

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Here is an excerpt:

How can communications professionals most effectively use video in their PR campaigns?

MS: There are three primary areas [where] we work closely with PR professionals, agencies, and major brands. One is to leverage rich, social media as part of a larger conversational marketing strategy to create brand awareness through uploading, rating, reviewing, commenting, sharing and an underlying contest for most popular/interesting/ viral content. For example, this is a link to a blog I wrote about a campaign called "laidback legends" that we did with Fosters Lager and their interactive agency, Chunk, which allows consumers to upload videos of the different characters that you encounter at a bar. Weekly winners get their bar tab covered for the week. The grand prize winner gets a dream trip with their bar buddies.

The second is the use of these technologies to supplant the type of community engagement that previously was dependent on a face-to-face event or was relegated to an email list.

The last is to test new social media services very rapidly without the high cost, high execution risk and long time to market. In this case, we enabled Disney, by working with their interactive agency, avenue a/razorfish, to create a new virtual theater concept that has the potential to reinvent the way companies market new DVD releases. Here is a blog post on that service which went from storyboard to first pilot in a few weeks.

Reason AND Faith

Reason and faith find a welcome home when you pursue your life's passion. 

I have always known just how much luck is involved in success.  Perhaps the path is more straightforward for others, but for me it takes daily work, intense focus and a sometimes lonely leap of faith that my truth is destined to be realized. 

The space that I am within, social media, is a vibrant one.  It is all about faith.  Faith that people systematically connecting with like minds in a rich fashion is a good thing. 

Faith that the combination of favorites, related and recommended content will lead to better media and information flows. 

Faith that companies, their customers and their constituencies will take the plunge and embrace as strategic the cultivation and capturing of conversations; that they will take whole the development of never-ending narratives with and between their core base. 

I really believe in the goodness of all this but new markets don't follow familiar paths.  You just can't know what you don't already know.  There is no substitute for actually doing.

Here is where pragmatism enters the equation.  There is a saying that you can not improve what you don't measure. This is a medium that can be measured on so many levels. Brand awareness.  Attention.  Well-defined actions. Completion. Signing up for an email list.  Requesting info.  Buying something.  And on it goes. 

But the workflow-friendly means to make sense of the data in a meaningful fashion are still pretty young. 

And what constitutes the metrics of your success and that of your customers in this medium? It really depends on what your ambition is.  How earnestly you approach something that is not yet fully formed.  Early adopters gain huge market "land grab" advantages.  That said, fast followers are all too often the last man standing. 

Ultimately, you've got to pay the bills.  In the lexicon of "Built to Last," it is not the reason for being but it is certainly the oxygen.

What got me thinking about this is that I am reading Al Gore's book, "The Assault on Reason" and one of the central tenets of the book is how disconnected our society has gotten from owning our own critical reasoning facilities. 

Putting the political and cultural aspects of the book aside, I realized that I do reason very well.  It is the oxygen that I breathe naturally.  What I do less well is faith.  It sounds strange to say that, as I am very spiritual and like I said, I have taken many leaps throughout my life and career to date. 

Somewhere along the line, however, I started to carry a dispassionate self.  Wanting to believe that there is a light a the end of the tunnel. But too much of a chicken shit to take the emotional plunge and put it all out there.  Too much of a chicken and not enough of a pig.  No more.  I am all in.

The seeds of faith have been re-planted.  I must chant it daily.  Shouldn't we all own reason and embrace faith (whatever that means for you) and faith-filled pursuits ?

MyRaganTV Launches

I have written previously about MyRagan.com, a business-to-business focused social network and online community powered by Me.com’s SNAPP platform.  In essence, this so-called “MySpace for the PR Industry” has enabled Chicago-based Ragan Communications, a specialized information publisher serving over 80,000 customers, to create an online, global space where “like minds” can network with one another, stay on top of their game by accessing industry-specific content libraries, and build out their brand/online presence by connecting with a dedicated audience of communications and PR professionals.  In just a few months, the community has grown to over 8,000 members.

Continuing its rollout, Ragan has just launched MyRaganTV, an enterprise-class video service that augments and extends MyRagan’s content, community and communications functions to the online video universe.  The solution, which is powered by vSocial’s Enterprise Community platform, is also noteworthy in that it showcases the first integration between the vSocial and Me.com platforms, enabling users to have one login, one rich user profile and unified search across users, conversations and content types.

MyRagan/MyRaganTV are suggestive of the ways that enterprises can embrace social media in a business-to-business and business-to-consumer context.

My Article on Web Platforms and Social Media

The Internet is evolving from a web of static text and links to a vibrant online space marked by interactive conversations, rich media and “orchestrated” narratives. 

If this were broadcast media, the analog for this shift would be the evolution from radio to television. But social media is a different animal entirely, encapsulating and stitching together content, communications and community in ways that reflect the consumer’s personal interests, their affinities, affiliations and the contexts within which they create and participate.

In the article, "Web Platforms and Social Media," I make the assertion that the emergence of this wave is driving the need for new types of social media-aware platforms, with Facebook’s F8 platform offering one example, and my companies, vSocial and Me.com offering another. 

Through specific customer use cases, I attempt to shine a light of how companies big and small are embracing this model and what it means for their business.

Here is a link to the full article, and here is an excerpt:

For example, in the new media realm, CBS is attempting to create an audience-centered network model where the audience defines the boundaries of the network, not some arbitrary URL. Such an approach disrupts what it means to be a broadcaster, while at the same time re-enforces the value of really good, conversational content.

In the business-to-business realm, social media platforms are beginning to profoundly shape the ways companies message, market to, fulfill, empower and support their customers.

Consider the segment known as conversational marketing. Conversations, augment, if not replace, the original advertising model of blasting a message as a way of enforcing brand. In the conversational marketing model, a major part of branding is authenticity, and authenticity requires true engagement - so a recurring and effective approach is a word-of-mouth campaign.

I would love your thoughts on whether the customer examples  from the article resonate with you.  Also, let me know if there are other examples that standout for you.