Brands Need a More Human Face to Avoid Being “Foreigners” in Social Media, Highlights Research

It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy when research bears out your personal beliefs! When I let my humanity come through the most is when I get the most positive response from our ‘fans’ or ‘friends’ or whatever you’d like to call them that day. Another quote/headline (also bolded in the Financial Times source article):

Consumers Value a Human Face and Gravitate to Brands that Act Like a Friend

… these barcodes will take off in the US.

-Why QR Codes Will Be Big Business in the US, Allen Stern on CenterNetworks in August 2008

See? you don't quite know what this is useful for, do you?

That kind of says it all, doesn’t it? We’ve been hypothesizing about QR codes since 2008. And Stern’s article (from 2008) mentions that QR codes remind the author of a technology he saw first in 2000 that he thought would become big business in the US.

I hate to be the party pooper, but I just don’t see QR codes taking off in the US. For whatever reason (my best guess is the serious lag between the introduction/early excitement about QR codes and smart phone adoption in the US), QR codes have never really taken off, here. And despite all of the talk to the contrary (and article just the other week in Mashable explains  how QR codes finally seem to be going mainstream), I doubt seriously that a large enough part of the US population even knows (or cares) what QR codes are.

Now, the biggest hindrance to adoption of QR codes was (at one time) the available technology.

But recent data from Nielsen research predicts that 50% of the US population will be using a smart phone by 2012 – right now that number’s just over 20%.  And Comscore shows that there are over 45 million smart phones in use as of April 2010, with a majority of those being Blackberries.

Even with tremendous growth like that, however, many smart phones still don’t come with pre-installed QR readers . What value would a QR code provide that is so immediate or unique that a user would take our their phone and get a QR reader application? Really? Just so I can see an augmented reality advertisement? Dan Neumann at Three Minds takes this position, as well, and calls for the official offing of QR codes as a marketing idea in the US.

However, just a few months ago, trend firm PSFK interviewed Alan Bendetto of JMango, which is a QR Code ‘solutions provider’ – because apparently QR codes are still coming. Big time. At least, according to their trend analysis. And the barcoding.com blog continues to talk QR codes, too. I’ve really got to wonder where this growth is that they’re seeing.

No one I know uses QR codes. For anything. Ever.

I don’t think they’re a bad idea, I just think that QR codes are an idea whose time has passed. If they didn’t catch on in 2008, they’re certainly not going to catch on now. Can we all just call this one and let QR codes slip away into obscurity and get on with the next big idea for mobile? Please?

Do you hear what I hear?

I caught this very informative (not surprising, but still eye-opening) article from ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez on the New York Times’ Technology section yesterday and it’s had me thinking…

I know it’s been said before, but now may be a time to remind ourselves (‘us’ being the nerdy types who get all excited about a new ‘it’ technology every few weeks) that WE are not the norm. When your read so many content sources related to marketing and ‘new’ media, sometimes it’s hard to remember that the average American really has no clue what we’re talking about most of the time.

In Sarah’s article, she draws on research from Forrester that shows that only 4% of their research set had ever used a location-based service like 4Square, Gowalla, Loopt, BrightKite, etc. That’s 4% for ANY of these services combined.

I know it’s still important for brands that have an image of being ‘on trend’ and among the early adopter set to participate in the next ‘big thing’ pretty early on – for the rest of our brands, however, we can probably take our time. I hope that helps take the pressure off some others of you – it certainly reminded me to breathe a sigh and let go of some of the pressure to convince others to ‘keep up with the times’.

Caught in the destructive gale

How many times have we heard that something is ‘going to go the way of the dodo’?

We heard it about radio when television was introduced. We hear it about newspapers because of the internet. Now, we’re hearing about email going away because ‘teenagers just don’t use it anymore.’ Such esteemed minds as Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg are being quoted saying they just don’t see a future for email. Brian Solis said so in his blog (he’s joined as an advisor to Threadbox, which he essentially describes as an email replacement tool).

So why don’t I believe it?

I don’t believe it because the history of communications technology shows that it’s rare for a widely adopted technology to be completely destroyed. Even in the gale of creative destruction that I’ve mentioned before (being one of our favorite phrases from my Master’s program), technologies just don’t go away. Kevin Kelly said so in his TED talk from 2005, as well – technologies don’t want to die.

I mean, really – vinyl is still hangin’ around tenaciously. Check out the 9 rules of convergence by Planning Innovations – I can’t speak to the credentials of this source, but it certainly seems sensible to me – especially the 9th point:

“A converged product will not replace any of the contributing categories unless the contributing categories were already on their way out.”

I don’t see the email is already on its way out. Also, I can’t seem to find the study now (if you know where it’s at, please help a sista’ out!) but I distinctly recall seeing a study that shows that, despite the generation they belong to, internet users choice of tools changes as they age because of the changing demands of their lifestyle. So the people who are teens now and communicate mostly by text messaging, will slowly shift to a greater adoption of email as their life changes and requires them to spend more time tethered in front of a computer for work, and so on.

The things that DO go away are the tools that NEVER got off the ground. Mini-disc players. Google Wave. Second Life. I can imagine all of these being wiped clean from our collective consciousness at some point. But email? Nope – I just think we’ve got a lot of people crying wolf.

Personally, I see the movement toward increasingly mobile-based technologies and our seemingly endless appetite for community-provided content moving toward a zenith in widely adopted wearable computer. The idea was first introduced years ago (I actually used to be friends with a guy who, together with some friends, invented a wearable computer back in the ’99 and got a fair amount of attention for it). I think that the first widely adopted version of that technology will be released by Pranav Mistry, though, as part of his Sixth Sense project with MIT.

My prediction? Our everyday lives will be lived in augmented reality. As far as social platforms or content-based media, we’ll settle in to a form of publishing that resembles the media we’ve seen in the past in terms of financing (multiple streams of income from advertisers, subscribers and one-off products or opportunities). In terms of functionality? We’ll see more demand for experts and research, but with wider opportunity for community commentary than we see, even today.

I think that the format we’re used to seeing (a linear article with annotations or footnotes at the end) will change and that the wearable computer will alter this even further with the opportunity to provide commentary at different PHYSICAL levels of space. So, for example, maybe the article will sit on top, but you’ll ‘drill down’ (almost literally) for additional commentary by experts or the notes left on an article by your network.

There’s a lot more to be said, but that’s all my futuring abilities can handle at the moment. It’s going to be a fun ride, so saddle up!

A week ago today, TechCrunch circulated a memo by Ning’s new COO, Jason Rosenthal, (replacing Gina Bianchi) that officially called ‘game over’ on Ning’s free platform. Additionally, the Ning staff was slashed by 40%.

Then this week at f8, Facebook announces a slew of new (free) tools to extend their reaches further into the web and build on Zuckerberg’s dream of a whole web ‘social graph’.

Several smarties that I know are calling for Facebook and Google to duke it out for dominance – but it makes me wonder… Change is happening so quickly, that I wonder how this will look when the dust settles in another 20 years or so.

I think we’re living in the center of a very large ‘gale of creative destruction’ as one of my esteemed professors liked to say.

In speaking with a few friends, I decided this could be something to share publicly here.  I borrowed much from socialmedia.wikispaces.com and others, though I did change up a good number of the descriptions since the way I think of them varied a bit or they needed more ‘plain English’ descriptions for sharing here.

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Aggregation is the process of gathering and remixing content from blogs and other websites that provide RSS feeds. The results may be displayed in a Feed Reader, in your Outlook (if supported in your version) or directly on your desktop.

Alerts are persistent searches for specified words, phrases or tags via search engines such as Google, with results of those searches returned to you by email. You may also be able to read the searches by RSS feed. This form of search allows you to check whether you, your organization, your blog or blog item has been mentioned elsewhere, and so to respond if you wish.

API (application programming interface) is a generic term for any language and format used by one program to help it communicate with another program. (via davegroth.com)  API’s are very popular among social networks as they allow 3rd party computer programmers to build small applications that use the capability or information provided by the publicly available APIs a larger program.  One example would be add-on programs for Twitter that allows users to do things with the service that the original program creators did not plan for.

Apps (aka: applications, mobile apps) are small computer programs, usually of limited capability.  Discussions of apps have recently been centered around applications created to run on a smart phone, such as an iPhone or BlackBerry.

Augmented reality refers to a display in which simulated imagery, graphics, or symbology is superimposed on a view of the surrounding environment (via emagin.com). Augmented reality is becoming a highly discussed sub-category of application for mobile phones, as the increased capability of mobile phones is a necessary condition for the implementation of many augmented reality programs.

Authenticity is the sense that something or someone is “real”. Social networks and blogs enable people to publish content, and engage in conversations, that show their interests and values, and thus help them develop an authentic voice online.

Avatars are graphical images representing people. They are what you are in virtual worlds. You can build a visual character with the body, clothes, behaviors, gender and name of your choice. This may or may not be an authentic representation of you.

Badge(s) are small symbols posted on blogs or websites, which often function as web-links, to display membership in an organization or support of a cause.

Blog is short for ‘web log’.  Blogs are websites with dated items of content, usually presented in reverse chronological order, self-published by bloggers. Blogs are usually text-heavy and can contain any type of content, can be corporate or private, group or individual, etc.  If posted content are primarily video posts, they’re called Vlogs (video logs), and if posted as audio posts, they’re often called Podcasts.  There are also Photo Blogs, which are photo-heavy only containing small amounts of text.

Blogosphere is the term used to describe the totality of blogs on the Internet, and the conversations taking place within that sphere.

A blogroll is a list of other blogs or websites displayed on a blog (often in a sidebar), showing who the blogger reads regularly.

Bookmarking is saving the address of a website or item of content, either in your browser, or on a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us. If you add tags (descriptive words), others can easily use your research too, and the social bookmarking site becomes an enormous public library.

Bulletin boards were the early vehicles for online collaboration, where users connected with a central computer to post and read email-like messages. They were the electronic equivalent of public notice boards. The term is still sometimes used to describe forums.

Categories are pre-specified ways to organize content – like a set of file folders into which blog posts may be binned.  Categories are usually set early in the life of a blog (or website) and change infrequently.

Chat is interaction on a web site, with a number of people adding text items one after the other into the same space at (almost) the same time. A place for chat – chat room – differs from a forum because conversations happen in “real time”.

Comments are reader notes in response to primary content posted by another. Comments are seen as an integral part of blogging, however not all blogs allow for public comments.

Content is used here to describe text, pictures, video and any other meaningful material that is on the Internet.

Content management systems (CMS) are sometime described as the Swiss Army knives of social media. They are software suites offering the ability to create static web pages, document stores, blog, wikis, and other tools. CMSs have the advantage of offering comprehensive solutions – though, as with all tools, have some drawbacks.

Creative Commons describes two (closely related) things. 1) It is a licensing setup which allows creators to release works on the Internet under specific terms governing their attribution, commercialization, and derivation, intended to encourage people to legally re-use the works of others more freely than traditional copyright protection allows.  2) It is the non-profit organization dedicated to protecting Creative Commons licensing and educating people about the benefits of Creative Commons licensing.  Creative Commons (the non-profit organization) can be found online at: http://creativecommons.org/

Crowdsourcing can be defined as outsourcing work to a large group of semi-organized individuals (a crowd), usually organized via the internet (via sprythink.com). Usually, crowdsourced projects are completed by the crowd on a voluntary basis (no compensation).

Face-to-face (f2f) is used to describe people meeting offline. Online interaction is likely to be richer after f2f meetings.

Feeds are the means by which you can read, view or listen to items from blogs and other RSS-enabled sites without visiting the site, by subscribing and using an aggregator or newsreader. Feeds contain the content of an item and any associated tags without the design or structure of a web page.

A Feed Reader is a tool used to gather and organize RSS Feeds. Popular feed readers are Netvibes, Google Reader and NewsGator Online.

Forums are discussion areas online (sometimes within larger websites), where a group people can post messages or comment on existing messages asynchronously – that is, independently of time or place.

Friends, on social networking sites, are contacts whose profile you link to in your profile. On some sites people have to accept the link, in others, not.

Groups are collections of individuals with some sense of unity through their activities, interests or values. They are bounded: you are in a group, or not. They differ in this way from networks. Email lists and forums sit easily with bounded groups, blogs with networks – although the match with tools is not entirely clear-cut. A group may use a blog, and an email list may serve a network.

Hashtag (#) is a way of organizing topics in Twitter. The hashtag convention appears as though it may be adopted by other services, as well.  Example: For the 125th Society of American Florists convention in 2009, SAF used #saf125th as the hashtag that anyone posting to Twitter about the convention should use.  That way, all comments about SAF’s convention could be easily searched for and located online because they would share a common (but unique) phrase.

Instant messaging (IM) is chat with one other person using an IM tool like AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Live Messenger or Yahoo Messenger.

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social network.  Users typically post the contents of their resume to the site and form a network with people they have worked with in the past.

Lurkers are people who read but don’t contribute or add comments. The one per cent rule-of-thumb suggests about one per cent of people contribute new content to an online community, another nine percent comment, and the rest lurk. However, this may not be a passive role because content read on forums may spark interaction elsewhere.

Mashups are Web applications that combine data or functionality from two or more sources into a single integrated application. (via Wikipedia)

Meme is a word used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet.  The term ‘meme’ is borrowed from biology in which meme describes how mimicry or imitation adopted individual by individual can spread widely and influence a species.  Popular internet memes are things such as “ninjas vs. pirates” which started with one person and influenced others to use the idea in their own content online.

MicroBlogging is a type of content creation with many similarities to a traditional blog but is highly restricted in length (see: Twitter).

Mobile web are browser based web-services that are specifically formatted for use on mobile phones, such as WAP or iMode (in Japan). They use a different protocol (set of rules for transmission of information) than traditional internet protocol.

Newsreader (see: Feed Readers).

Open-source software “refers to any computer software whose source code is available under a license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. It is often developed in a public, collaborative manner”. (via Wikipedia)

Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a protocol which allows sharing of files over internet by direct contact between two or more computers (a server is not required). The most frequently cited P2P network is the now defunct music sharing service, Napster.

Permalink is the permanent address (see: URL) of a specific item of content, for example a blog post, rather than the address of a web page with lots of different items. You will often find it at the end of a blog post.

Photosharing is uploading your images to a website like Flickr. You can add tags and offer people the opportunity to comment or even re-use your photos if you add an appropriate copyright license (see: Creative Commons).

A platform is the framework or system within which tools work. That platform may be as broad as mobile telephony, or as narrow as a piece of software that has different modules like blogs, forums, and wikis in a suite of tools. As more and more tools operate “out there” on the web, rather than on your desktop, people refer to “the Internet as the platform”.

A podcast is audio or video content that can be downloaded automatically through a subscription to a website so you can view or listen offline on your computer or a music or video player like an iPod.

A post is an item on a blog or forum.

Profiles are the information that you provide about yourself when signing up for a social networking site. As well as a picture and basic information, this may include your personal and business interests, a “blurb” about yourself, and tags to help people search for like-minded people.

RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication. This allows you to subscribe to content on blogs and other social media and have it delivered to you through a Feed.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is the act of marketing your website via paid or un-paid listed on search engines to increase website traffic.  SEM works together with SEO, but is not the same as SEO.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the act of tweaking your website to make it more attractive to search engines so that your website displays as early as possible in search engine results pages, such as Google.  SEO works together with SEM, but is not the same as SEM.

SMS (Short Message Service) is another term for text messaging.

Social media is a term for the tools and platforms people use to publish, converse and share content online. The tools include blogs, wikis, podcasts, and sites to share photos and bookmarks.

Social media monitoring is the act of tracking mentions of your company, brand or product across social media platforms. Social media monitoring can be achieved through simple web searches, blog searches, etc. or can be much more in-depth with the assistance of 3rd party services such as Radian6, Visible Technologies, and many others.

Social networking sites are online places where users can create a profile for themselves, and then communicate with others using a range of social media tools including blogs, video, images, tagging, lists of friends, forums, messaging, etc.

Subscribing is the process of adding an RSS feed to your aggregator or newsreader.  It’s the online equivalent of signing up for a magazine, but usually free.

Tags are keywords attached to a blog post, bookmark, photo or other item of content so you and others can find them easily through searches and aggregation. Tags can usually be freely chosen, as compared to categories which are often pre-set.

Threads are strands of conversation. On an email list or web forum they will be defined by messages that use the use the same subject. You may also see the term ‘threaded conversation’ used in relation to blogs, e-mail or any other format which allows the users engaged in a conversation to see every prior response, usually in reverse chronological order.

Trackback: some blogs provide a facility for other bloggers to leave a calling card automatically, instead of commenting. For example, if Writer A references the web address of Writer B’s content in a blog post, a comment noting that reference may be automatically added to Writer B’s webpage with a link to the post by Writer A.

Troll is a nickname given to forum users or commenters (usually on blogs) that actively attempt to create discord.  They often insult others or state unpopular (even misleading or false) opinions with the objective of making others angry or upset.

Twitter is a popular social network and microblogging service. Twitter allows users to post text-based updates of up to 140 characters via the internet or SMS.

Tweet is the phrase used to describe a (max.) 140 character update on microblogging service, Twitter.

URL (Unique Resource Locator) is the technical term for a web address like http://www.bbc.co.uk

User generated content (UGC) is text, photos and other material produced by internet users.  UGC can result from a contest or simply as a result of available technology, such as YouTube, which made it possible for anyone to publicly share video content of their own creation.

Viral is a condition when internet users pass along internet content to other internet users. Viral content moves from person to person and is a necessary condition for a Meme.

Virtual worlds are online places like Second Life, where you can create a representation of yourself (see: Avatar) and socialize with other residents in a free-form setting.  In virtual worlds there are very few rules and no stated purpose as there is with many games using similar ‘world’ based settings.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) enables you to use a computer or other Internet device for phone calls, rather than using traditional telephone lines. The best-known VoIP tools are Skype and Vonage.

WAP (wireless access protocol) (see: Mobile Web)

Web 2.0 is a term coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004 to describe blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other Internet-based services that emphasize collaboration and sharing, rather than less interactive publishing (Web 1.0). It is associated with the idea of the Internet as platform.

A wiki is a web page – or set of pages – that can be edited collaboratively. The best known example is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia created by thousands of contributors across the world. Once people have appropriate permissions – set by the wiki owner – they can create pages and/or add to and alter existing pages.

Source Credits: socialmedia.wikispaces.com,  livingstonbuzz.com, converstations.com, wikpedia.org

So what have I learned?

1. Remember to ask! – Don’t just send notes introducing people to your project.  Make sure you ASK for what you want.  I was surprised and excited to receive a note back from the Editor in Chief of a fairly major online arts magazine saying that she’d be happy to help us gain some visibility for our project.  Asking works!
2. Pull out all the stops.  If you’re a student, tell them you’re a student!  If you have no money for advertising, tell them what you CAN provide.
3. Don’t limit yourself to the traditional – I sought out Facebook Groups and sent notes to the administrators.  I’ve heard back from a few, which is a few more people than I’d have reached if I hadn’t done so.
4. Plan for a fraction.  If you don’t plan on hearing from everyone you reach out to, then you’re not as likely to fall short of your goal.
5. Just do it.  The old Nike slogan still has legs – we covered this point time and time again in our program and it seems so obvious, but it’s probably the hardest thing.  Even if you don’t feel ready, you have to start sometime.  I’m not saying don’t make any preparations, but don’t drag it out.  Prepare the minimum, then put your feet to the pavement, otherwise you’ll find reasons to continue to wait!

Also, I have to confess, I’m loving Twitter lists and Listorious right now.  I think Twitter lists are much more user friendly than Twitter directories like Twellow or WeFollow (though those are great, as well) and are perfect to get started with a new Twitter account.

That’s all for now, but I’ll certainly update again when ArtStarters.org is live encouraging you all to go sign-up and check it out!

Particularly, it’s been on my mind whether social media causes us to become ‘oversharers’ in other areas of our lives, too. We become so habituated to sharing the whole story – even if it’s in fits and spurts – that we continue to overshare when we step away from the keyboard.

Oversharing is obviously a rampant problem on sites like Facebook. I’ve done it, you’ve probably done it, and we all hear stories of the person who did it much too big ‘that one time’.

Perhaps a ‘stop the oversharing’ PSA is in order…

1. An inherent necessity to at least pretend to be friendly : This one’s actually been pointed out to me by lots of people since I moved, that I ‘can’t be from California’ because I’m ‘too nice’
2. Over-apologizing (sorry for being sorry when you told me to stop saying ‘sorry’!)
3. A need to act like I don’t have a life outside of work when I’m at work
4. A need to talk too much about work when I’m away from work
5. A tendency to overshare when dealing with any kind of service representative – waiters, valets, customer service people on the phone, etc.

So why do these things matter to my work?  Because they shape the way that I communicate to people who communicate to me!  I do a fair amount of customer service (as you’ll note from some prior posts here) in my communications role, and my responses tend to embody all of the characteristics I mentioned before.  When I learn of a customer service complaint, the super friendly, very apologetic tone.  And you know what?  It works.

People like that tone when they’re talking to a company.  They WANT you to be too friendly and too apologetic.  But on the other hand, I see the values of a West Coast lifestyle helping with social media in different ways – like the ability to take your work with you but still have fun!  All of these social media folks who live-Tweet events and photograph every attendee – that’s a great skill in social media!  Whereas my Midwestern work ethic means I focus on the moment and often forget to capture things that way, unless I’ve been assigned to take pictures or live-Tweet, but then I often miss the bulk of what’s being said and done!  lol

So what’s your take on cultural differences and work in social media?  Do you buy it?