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New Year resolutions? How are they going?
It used to be fags and booze that people gave up as a New Year resolution. 2010 was the first year I heard lots of people claiming they wanted to give up social networking. Fragile idiots.
Between Christmas and New Year I saw quite a few tweets from people quietly waving goodbye for a while (the correct social media terminology here is a “Twitter hiatus“).
Stephen Fry announced he was having a rest – in order to get some real work done. And then there was the Web 2.0 suicide machine. Oh – and a rash of articles and blog posts about social media being various shades of addictive, boring and deadly (some of which we’ve talked about here). At times it looked like the long-awaited backlash might finally break… the dwindling skeptical rump of luddites *soooo* want this to happen – but it hasn’t. A similar thing happened last year, and probably the year before that.
On the other hand – I noticed that lots of other people resolved to look after their blog, or tweet, more/better rather than less in 2010.
I guess you know something has really arrived when people start giving it up because they’re enjoying it too much.
I also predict that they’ll be back – just like the smokers and boozers – with their tails between their legs. Losers.
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Apps for Telly
Last week, the BBC Trust gingerly announced provisional approval of the BBC’s Project Canvas.
The aim of Project Canvas is to define a set of standards for set-top boxes that will allow integration of web and TV. Although, it isn’t clear exactly what the standards will consist of and what Project Canvas’ vision of IPTV really is.
Set-top box manufacturers such as Thomson, Humax and Cisco are involved and have committed to share intellectual property relating to Canvas with the rest of their industry. Content providers such as ITV, Channel 4 and 5 are enrolled within the organisational structure of Canvas itself, as are broadband providers such as BT, TalkTalk and Carphone Warehouse. Google has also voiced clear support during public consultation. One organisation we wont see supporting the project is BSkyB who claim the proposal is anti-competitive and not within the remit of the BBC.
Canvas won’t create, aggregate or sell content or act as an ISP. It’s merely acting to convene disparate industries and organisations to create a set of standards for Internet-enabled TV.
But who really wants Internet-enabled TV?
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The DIYist
If you want to understand ‘the social web’ and where it’s going, take a look at what the DIYists are up to.
For years, DIY was the bastion of the weekend jobbing dad. Men would buy tool belts, low-quality hand drills and set about putting up shelves, bleeding radiators or hanging pictures. And their bible was the Reader’s Digest Complete Do-it-yourself Manual. The appeal of DIY is really the time when you’re NOT doing DIY and you look at the thing you did and think “I did that, all by myself”. There’s immense pride in DIY. And the pride can be totally disproportionate to the effort you put in. You can bang a nail into your bathroom wall with a shoe and still feel pretty pleased with yourself when you look up at that C. M. Coolidge every time you perform your ablutions. -
Measuring
I’ve been thinking of how to measure engagement in the digital space for a while now, so I wanted to aggregate my thoughts and put them in one place. This post is intended to be provocative and get people thinking about how the current thinking of measurement of social media should change. It isn’t meant to be a one-size-fits-all solution – more an articulation of things that people should consider more and more when they embark on work in the online social space.
Assessing necessity
Some brands do not need to engage with their customers online, period. Products like bread or socks, for example, are not the kind of things that people want to have a social relationship with anywhere, forget online. It just makes them look silly.
Defining engagement
Defining what engagement means to you as a brand at the outset is important. Is it having a certain number of comments? Getting people to contribute ideas to a wiki? Making sure they spend x amount of time on a site? It is only later that the ‘how’ of engagement should come into play. The answer to ‘how can we measure the impact of our website/community’ can only be given when you answer ‘what exactly am I looking for’ first.
Areas of engagement
If brands do engage online, where they engage is more important than how many places they are active online. I’d rather pick my battles (Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, for example) and fight them well rather than have my social finger in too many pies (all the above plus MySpace, Bebo, YouTube, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut etc.) and not be able to have meaningful conversations with anyone. Of course this depends on where your audience is. They could well be in Second Life and Vimeo, and if they are, then that’s where you should be – not Facebook. (more after the break)
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I’ve had a baby. What have you all been up to?
(or 10 things that have changed on the web since November '08)In the time I’ve been away and had a baby (she’s 10 months old this week…), a lot has happened.
The internet being a many-splendoured and rapidly changing thing, I hesitate to attempt any coherent summary of all that’s gone on.
Instead, I’ll just pick out a few things that have sprung up on my radar as significant changes between November ‘08 and September ‘09. Broadly speaking, I see them as these:
- digital as support act > digital as headliner
- semantic web frenzy > real-time web frenzy
- slow fade of shiny 2.0 aesthetic > upsurge of big type mobile-friendly aesthetic
- Twitter as geekorama > Twitter as mainstream
- Google primacy > Google supremacy
- 43 white, analogue US presidents > 1 black, digital US president
- banner ads and buttons > social, shared content
- state control of ISPs (Iran, China) > online social mobilisation and subversion
- stream of rubbish reality TV on iPlayer and 4OD > demise of Keith Floyd
- Plus, of course the launch of Spotify, Facebook Connect, a proliferation of Twitter clients and more iPhone apps than you can shake an accelerometer-enabled stick at.
You’re more than welcome to plug the gaps on the things I’ve missed whilst I was lost in the apparently endless cycle of feeding, sleeplessness, nappy-changing and washing.
Please, tell me: what other important stuff have I missed?
P.S. As I was writing this, I found a couple of Trend Blend maps via Ross Dawson’s blog which suggest that between 2008 and 2009, life has gone from being an ordered train journey through society, politics, technology et al…
Trend Blend map 2008
…to a more scary-looking hydra, beset by ominous little red demons. Perhaps I should have stayed at home, offline, with the curtains closed.
Trend Blend map 2009
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RSA talk: Connected Minds, Loneliness & Social Brains
Some time back, I wrote a very frustrated post on how experts from the field of psychology make sweeping generalizations of what it means to use online services like twitter, facebook and other social networking sites.
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Taking a look at the social media landscape in China
I was at a talk on how internet word of mouth (iWOM) works in China a couple of weeks ago. There were a few noteworthy things that Sam Flemming, CEO and Co-Founder of CIC, said:
1. Social media is very much existent in China, but it’s like it’s on steroids: 298 million internet users, 105 million bloggers, 91 million members on their Bulletin Board Systems or BBS (discussion forums around different topics), and 58 million people on social networks. It’s all about perspective: Facebook has only 200 million users WORLDWIDE.
2. BBS have a huge influence on consumer purchases – over 80% look at reviews there or go there to ask questions before making a purchase. Much as I like Amazon, that’s not where I go to decide what to buy: but could Amazon or something like it channel prospective buyers in such vast numbers successfully?
3. QQ, China’s largest social network, has a revenue model that surprisingly very few other social networks have replicated: they don’t make money off ads but through digital micro-transactions with their own currency: QQ Coins. In fact, QQ Coins have become so successful that China’s central bank is considering cracking down on it because of its increasing use to buy real-world goods.
4. Group purchases, in the model of Dell Swarm, are on the rise. This has interesting implications for brands, who can easily reach their target audience on BBS.
5. Brands get inspiration for new products by tracking discussions on these forums. When Chinese sports apparel brand Anta wanted to create a new line of products for their ambassador, basketball player Luis Scola, they realised that fans were referring to him as ‘Four Carat’ on the web, so created a line inspired by this which went on to become a success.
6. This is a phenomenon which clearly marks the difference between the East and West: more people access the internet on their mobiles than they do on a PC.
Here is CIC’s White Paper on the role of iWOM in making purchase decisions, which Sam presented:
..and here is another interesting one on the development of iWOM and online communities in China.
There is so much talk about Facebook, Twitter and the like that sometimes we forget there are much more wide-reaching platforms – in a different part of the world. Surely there are lessons there that we’re not taking the time to learn?
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Howard Rheingold speaks at MxM Event: Smart Mobs Revisited
Has the future turned out the way it was supposed to?
That’s something we’re very interested in here at Made by Many, so we’ve invited world-renowned author and futurist Howard Rheingold to present an evaluation of the outcomes and predictions he made in the 2002 best-seller “Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution”.
Howard’s talk will be followed by an open discussion – I’m sure it will be a lively one! The event will appeal to anyone interested in new models of mass collaboration, crowd-sourcing and emergent intelligence that are made possible with the advent of ubiquitous social computing. We’ve only got a few free seats left, so if you’re interested, get in touch with me asap at elin@madebymany.co.uk and I will try to get you on the guest list.
The event will take place next Wednesday (July 8th) at 15:30 – 17:00 in BBH’s offices at 60 Kingly Street.
Below is a video clip of a talk Howard gave for Ted on collaboration, and Smart Mobs has also got it’s own blog over at smartmobs.com. And of course, don’t forget to follow @hrheingold on Twitter!
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Whoever did this should be shot
This blog post at Social Media Today just got sent round the office about how *not* to use Twitter. It’s the rubbishiest use of Twitter we’ve ever seen (and let’s face it, the bar ain’t that high!).
The offender is trendy furniture store Habitat, who appear to have been sold some kind of automatic tweet-spam generator. Said tool goes off and fetches hashtags for trending topics and inserts them into lame tweets about product. The result is unbelievably crass, as you can see below, and includes hashtags for those following the Iranian Election, with the result is a tweet that reads, “#MOUSAVI Join the database to win a £1000 gift card Now!”
Someone, somewhere is responsible for this. They should pay the ultimate price. It’s one of the worst ideas EVER.
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Protect The Human new homepage
Following up on Tim’s recent post on the new Protect The Human homepages, I’m going to write about the process I went through to create the final homepage designs.
1. Sketching
I started with sketches. Sketching ideas on the paper helped me visualize quickly what we wanted to achieve through the new homepages and how we wanted to address current site’s issues.
It was an easy way to present the initial ideas to people involved in the project (client, creative director, developer, etc.), and made it easy to apply any changes required. It was also much quicker than creating the initial visuals in photoshop!
2. Creating ‘grey boxes’ in photoshop
After the sketching session I had a clear idea how to present both logged in and logged out homepage objectives. I knew the content that should go on the pages and I could start playing with it in photoshop.
I started with laying out grey content boxes on the page, creating the grid, and showing the hierarchy.
Logged in homepage
Logged out homepage
3. Designing
The next step was to start the design. I did several versions of the homepage before achieving the final one. However, the previous two steps saved a lot of my time and made the actual design process less frustrating.
Here are the final designs:
Logged out homepage
Logged in homepage
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On the logged in homepage, for users who have only just registered and are new to Protect The Human, there is a set of 3 automatic, time-based actions suggested for them to take:
Once user starts taking actions this panel changes to suggest personalized actions:
‘Recent highlights’ panel becomes also personalized (Highlights for you) once user has specified interests. It displays the content based on user’s chosen tags and campaigns.
I’ve also created two templates for the feature area so that Amnesty has the flexibility to choose the type of content they want to show. They highlight crucial events, campaigns, etc., and urge the user to take action.
Video template
Image Gallery template
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Overall, I did truly enjoy the whole design process. Simple things like sketching can make the whole design process so much easier.
More improvements to the site will follow as we’re currently working on them.
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