Archive for the 'community' Category

The Digital Walt Whitman Theory

Published on May 30, 2008 in buzz, community, digital, keywords, networks, personal and social media. 3 Comments

In the days of BI (Before Internet), poets would scrawl in their notebooks chosen words that would carefully compose a masterpiece of creativity. It was an age-old tradition, and these notebooks are sacred testaments to the accomplishments of man. Their notebooks would wither, rip and turn into relics of a past time; the knowledge passed down to the next generation to inspire in a creative cycle.

Those days are long gone and a new trend is emerging in its place. What is this trend? I am tentatively calling it the Digital Walt Whitman Theory. Its analysis based on my observations as both a creative person and researcher of sorts.

The main gist of the theory is: the creative arts adopt new technologies at a much faster rate than the general public due to above average overlap between technology and art. For example, artists are problem solvers, which leads to experimenting with new technologies as forms of expression. This insistence on experimenting for solutions to creative problems is common in artist and creative folks from all fields.

Furthermore, as society becomes more connected and digital adoption rates amongst artists’ trends higher than the general publics rate of adoption, will we see more artistic folks take leadership roles as inventors? Consumers are savvier then ever and no touch point is safe yet the fine arts remain a beacon of experimentation into these new technologies. While consumers slowly grasp at the new world, artists are experimenting with Twitter, YouTube and other social networks and learning what works and what fails.

Is Damien Hurst the next Bill Gates?

China - Tibet - Olympics Torch Chart

Published on April 10, 2008 in blogpulse, buzz, community, digital, social media, tools, websites and word-of-mouth. 3 Comments

Blogpulse Chart

With all the news about the trial and tribulations of the Olympics torch this week, I thought to run a chart and see the blogosphere’s reaction to the issues. It is interesting to see that the torch is driving much more buzz than the issues. I cannot help but wonder if the events have actually overshadowed the reasons leaving no one to gain.

Protest is patriotic but just make sure your ideas, do not get lost in your methods.

Social Networking Users

Published on April 7, 2008 in community, consumer insight, digital, personal, social media, social networks and websites. 0 Comments

A recent report, from OfCom of the UK, about social-networking shows their prolific growth and deep saturation in the UK. I first read about it in a MSN UK story located here and I found its classification system to oversimplify these users. Surely, we can come up with a more profound classification than: Alpha Socialisers, Attention Seekers, Followers, Faithful and Functionals. It seems to only scratch the surface of what is a much more complex eco-system driven by many different types of users and scenarios.

Lets first take a look at scenarios that could evolve as a result of shifting user profiles and maturation of the space. As my company reported last month, Facebook’s numbers have slowed in recent months but its not endemic of the death of social-networking in the UK. The fact is the numbers were growing at a rate that could not have been endured much longer.

But, have they reached critical mass?

This is an interesting question, but with 23% penetration in a country that has only 30 million people total online, it would seem social-networking is still red-hot in the UK. Certainly with that kind of reach, users would fall into more than a handful of types and morph from one classification to another. In fact, I believe that user intentions on social networks are so varied and amorphous that any attempt to classify must be primarily organic.

Lets take deeper look at my organic classification system.

Instead of a linear zoological approach to classes, it should appear more as a hexagon with overlapping interest and a sliding scale. Something like this:

Social Networking Users

Using this hexagonal approach, you could then further define user personality traits based on aggregate sentiment analysis. What does this mean? If you could take a predefined number of UK social network users evenly dispersed across the three majors and parse out there profiles into text. Using that text you could then score the sentiment into different buckets (eg. dating, networking, spammer) based on keyword recognition.

Further refining your chart to something like this:

Social Networking Users Profile

Building out these finite profiles, you get a clearer picture of social networking users and how they interact and relate to one another. The more data ascertained the better the profile. Time of day, age and other demographics can also enhance the map to show more in-depth details of how people engage.

In a very general sense OfCom gets it right, they just leave out a big part of the picture. User interactions and how they effect user profiles. My father said it best when he said “you cannot be, all things to all people.”

Confessions of a Creative Mind

Published on March 20, 2008 in community, consumer insight, creative, digital, engagement, passion, personal and reputation. 2 Comments

What does it take to invent a new tool, product or idea? Ideas are born from somewhere deep down inside of us and can be as simple as Bellsouth’s Caller-ID or as complex as Google’s PageRank algorithm. Both of these inventions have something in common that is much less publicized - failure. That is right, it takes persistence and failure, to make something that improves our lives not some great creative mind.

Humility is most often learned the older you get because when you are young ego rules. I remember as a kid trying to come up with the most original and creative drawing in art classes. Its was the true test of whether you were an artist or just some hack with charcoal. We would debate incessantly classmates with great draftsmanship but poor ability to think in an agile and creative way. The reality of our situation was we were not original either. We did have one thing that set us a part drive. Because as we pontificated about the virtues of original thought we continued to test the boundaries of our own minds without fear of failure. We were free from the constraints of rigid academia to develop ideas, drawings, paintings, websites and more.

With retrospect I learned that age makes you more rigid and less willing to fail. Maybe its the reality of bills. One thing I always tried to keep in my core set of operational values is drive. Because with drive anything is possible. Dreaming big and performing agile is the combination that sets the passionate apart from the rest. I have also never lost the ability to turn my creative fire into well developed originality towards executing a better idea. Because eventually better will become original.

Don’t believe me ask Edison, Ford and Page?

Buzz heats up as Election Day gets Closer

Published on February 19, 2008 in blogpulse, buzz, community, engagement and reputation. 0 Comments

Today was a holiday for me (Happy President’s Day), so I decided to run some Blogpulse queries on hot issues and the coming elections. The top three candidates were picked with the operators of three major issues to see how closely associated to them they were in the blogosphere. Now onto the data.

This first chart, is not one of the top issues, but of the current President linked with the Candidates name. Interestingly John McCain is not overly linked with Bush but Obama seems to index higher with Bush. A number of factors may be at work, but McCain may be successfully fighting the “third-Bush term” moniker.

The next chart shows the candidates linked with the term “health care.” Notably, Hillary is indexing highest in this category with Obama having a few peaks. Its probably related to her history as First Lady and the health care push of the Nineties. Reputation and how long consumers can be influenced by a candidates history lingers long after the issue moves to the backburner.

This chart shows “iraq” as the linked operator. I think the interesting finding here is that chatter seems to be on the rise even though violence is on the decline. Does this mean that conversation is the best way to solve a problem? Neville Chamberlain, famed negotiator during World War 2, may disagree but it seems to work in the blogosphere.

I saved the best for last. Finally, we see the linked operator as “recession.” The pattern is that talk in the media of the recession in the last couple months has caused significant spikes of recession chatter in the blogosphere.

All very cool data and a fun tool to experiment with and listen to about your brand.

Disclosure: I just want to state that Blogpulse is a free tool provided by my employer. The opinions here in now way reflect my company’s thoughts but are my very own ideas of why these charts say what they say.

User Reviews tops amongst Online Buyers

Published on February 18, 2008 in CRM, community, consumer insight, digital and websites. 0 Comments

Interesting data from an Emarketer email on Friday, states that 9 out of 10 online buyers read reviews before making an online purchase decision. The data was compiled by Power Reviews and the e-tailing group who surveyed over one thousand buyers. The survey members also said that they read between 4-7 reviews while deciding what to purchase.

What does this mean to web managers, marketers and businesses alike?

That consumer are becoming more powerful every year. They are increasingly looking to the internet for answers and other digital citizens reviews are the currency they value. Opinions are everywhere on the internet; blogs, boards and search results are being seen by average consumers who trust this content. And as this content level rises, reputation will become the driving differentiator to whether consumers buy product a or product b.

By starting a dialogue between you and your customers the lines of transparency are opened up. You will reap the benefits of an empowered consumer. That value is two-sided and you will learn as much from the comments as the people making a purchase decision who stumble upon them. Additionally, the CRM benefits are tremendous as you continuously refine your service or product these comments.

If you are building, redesigning or planning a new e-commerce site user reviews and community will become important aspects to any plan and these numbers only reinforce the growing importance.