These “incremental” changes or innovations can be so slight as to be nearly subliminal to the customer, but the impact these changes can have is anything but small.

The most recent example of small change having a disproportionately large effect that I’ve noticed is Audi’s headlights.

I’ve never paid much attention to Audi as a car manufacturer. As is so often the case with durable good type products, the feelings you establish (good or bad) in your early experiences with products tend to inform your life-long opinion of them. This is why brands try so hard to capture the loyalty of the 18-24 year-old male; they know if they get them at that stage in their life, they’ll have them forever. I had a bad experience with an Audi back when I was in college, and, thus, embargoed the company as a possible choice for me since then.

Until now.

It wasn’t some car review that made me reconsider the company. Nor was it word of mouth (either from an actual conversation or some social media variant).

Rather, it was this:

The line of LED lights that Audi has introduced (I don’t know how recently) into their headlights just pops out. For me, this “small” detail completely differentiates the Audi from other cars of its ilk (BMW, Mercedes, Lexus) that, truth be told, otherwise really do sort of look all alike.

What keeps this detail from being “small” is that it represents something larger. In literary theory, you refer to this as “synecdoche” (a part representing the whole; e.g. Blake’s opening line of “The Tyger”: “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/”).

The LED lights in these headlights represents something much larger in my mind: adherence to quality, innovation, style, etc. This detail has made me completely rethink Audi.

As another example, Apple is, of course, masterful at this. Think of what happens on your iPhone if you tap the camera icon on the lock screen rather than slide it upwards. The entire screen bounces up a bit — subtly and stylishly showing you precisely what you need to do in order to launch the camera app from the lock screen.

Too often, we feel we must make wholesale change in our products, services, (selves), etc. In reality, a slight change that is illustrative of something deeper going on below the surface tends to have a more profound impact.

“Small” change has the power to absolutely surprise and delight users. A customer may not comment on these details, but — in aggregate — they register and accumulate powerfully in their mind. The overall outcome is tremendous loyalty.

Tom Waits “Small Change”:

Whether you feel the Porsche design (particularly the 911) signifies all that is right with automotive design, or a feeble attempt made by middle-aged men to recapture something lost (or both/in-between), it undeniably stands the test of time, and illustrates Mr. Porsche’s mantra:

“Design must be functional and the functionality must be visually implemented without gags that need to be explained.”

Originally formulated to quantify value with respect to communication devices (fax machines, phones, etc.), it has more recently been applied to other networks; specifically, social networks.

In the same manner that a network of fax machine increases in value when there are more users of fax machines, the value of social networks increase as their user base increases. ^[1]

This law explains why, for instance, social networks with many users grow exponentially faster than those with few users. In fact, networks with few users tend to die a slow painful death of attrition because there is no value for those few users.

It’s a VERY good thing to keep in mind should you ever be tempted to create some type of social network around your own/owned product, service, band, etc. Can it be done? Yes. Should it be done? Only when you have accumulated enough passionate users that creating a network for them provides more value than do the networks which they are already a part of.

The requisite number for this value to users to be present is vastly more than you think. I would say you need to feel confident that you will have somewhere in the area of 100k users before you should even consider this.

This brings up the inevitable question of how to get all these users prior to instituting a proprietary network. It also explains why so many companies are essentially leveraging Facebook to for their “own” networks.

Essentially, the answer is that it’s vastly harder to get your own users.

Difficult as it is, it’s still important to understand how to acquire your own users; to do so you do the following:

1. Have an exceptional product/service
2. Create an architecture of participation — i.e. use the social networks, and shift the burden of promotion from yourself to your users with a simple goal:
3. Drive people to your (own/owned) Site where you capture their emails
4. Once a significant — several hundred thousand email addresses — have been captured, create a social network that represents a compelling value to them with respect to your product or service, and let them know via email

The alternative: piggyback off FB.

For the vast majority of people, the FB alternative, sadly, is really the only “option.”

For those, however, who feel that having their own network is a more valuable proposition, and are willing to put in the effort, there is an element of “secret sauce” that seems to be emerging that can accelerate your process: Speed/Scarcity.

Scarcity is in many ways the thunderclap of the Internet. It’s one of the few things that can snap an Internet user to attention.

Clearly, all of the flash deal sites (from wOOt to Groupon, et al.) realized this, and – for the time being at least – have been able to capitalize from this realization.

Injecting scarcity into your network accelerates Metcalfe’s law. It supercharges network users, and gives them incentive to act.

Knowing that whatever gambit is put forth is of a limited duration, causes those who care about said offer to act. If that action requires sharing of some kind (or a critical mass (i.e. Groupon-esque) offer; i.e. if X number of people sing up/share, etc., the offer “tips”), the network effect can go into hyperdrive.

This is how, for instance, many companies rapidly increase their Twitter/Facebook presence.

My suggestion: build this approach — some type of frequent offers with a component of scarcity — into your overal strategy. At first, this may (and should) involve utilizing third party, existent networks to achieve scale, but then transition over to your own/owned network to make the offers.

___________
1 One mistake people make, however, is not recognizing that the equation changes: it goes from being a logarithmic proportionality when applied to social networks, rather than the squared proportionality applicable to telecommunication networks – the general theory still holds, however.

In this (short) video he, in a very understated manner, puts forth some really important business principles.

For instance, there’s a scene where he tells a potential customer the following:

“If you don’t like smoke, you’re not going to like my bacon.”

Lots of wisdom here.

Too often, companies/bands/etc. believe that their product/music/art appeals to everyone. It doesn’t. In fact, thinking this, and, worse, acting on this theory will kill you.

It’s far more important to understand your values/purpose, and then attempt to identify others who share these values, and put what you do in front of them, than it is to be chameleon-like, and try to change to please every customer

What this means is that there will be people who simply are never going to appreciate what you do. This doesn’t make you or them wrong.

What’s “wrong” is not recognizing (as quickly as possible) that these people will never be good customers, and, instead of “firing” them — so you can move on to (and clear the way for) good customers — trying to cater to them.

Doing so takes your time and focus away from customers who are valuable.

Additionally, because there is a lack of fundamental value alignment, no matter what you do, you’ll never please these un-value-aligned customers, and this will only make them more dissatisfied, and more vocal about their lack of satisfaction. This, of course, unfairly poisons the impression of potential good customers.

So…the customer is not always right, and the faster you “fire” the wrong customers, the better.

I do take issue with the idea that he became a powerful music executive by “accident.” Don’t recall that part of the ride.

I believe we’re beginning to see an emergance of this. Others, such as Jay Jamison — who articulates the idea of “interest-based networks” beautifully in this article — seem to think so too.

People are seemingly shocked by the rapid acceleration of Pinterest. They shouldn’t be.

Look at Pinterest’s mantra: “Organize and share things you love.” Compare this with Facebook’s: “Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them.”

See the distinction? FB is about organizing around people; Pinterest is about organizing around things.

We’ve naturally conceived of social networks as being “for” helping us connect with other people (that’s what FB, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. do). The problem with this is that for most of us there is a relatively finite number of people with whom we’ll connect (cf. Gladwell’s idea in The Tipping Point that the max number of authentic social connections anyone can have is 150. UPDATE: Thanks to 9gs reader, Elainejoli for correcting an omission of mine. Though Gladwell is perhaps responsible for popularizing the idea of 150 social connections, the theory was originated by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar).

Not so with things.

We’re constantly discovering new things about which we might want to learn more (in an era where everyone is a content creator, this ain’t slowing down).

The unintended consequence of organizing around things, of course, is that it leads to the possibility of breaking through the glass ceiling of acquaintances. In other words, we have a far better chance of making new social acquaintances via organizing around things than we do connecting with people. This is why Pinterest is growing so quickly.

When we organize around a thing, we’re breaking through barriers of geography and demographics and, instead, uniting around a shared psychographic interest. I can, for instance, tweet a link to an article about some great bbq that I’m looking forward to trying in Austin during sxsw, and I know that some percentage of my followers on Twitter and FB will appreciate this article. However, I’m unlikely to expand my social circle via this gesture.

Conversely, if I go organize myself around the interest/object of bbq, and then look to see others who have done the same, there is a chance that my social circle can expand (i.e. meet new people).

To be clear, I’m not for a minute saying that FB is going away/going to fail (the cost of abandonment is just too high for most people; though there have been some studies of late showing a large degree of unused FB accounts).

Rather, I’m saying that there is tremendous opportunity to rethink how we should be concieving of networks moving forward. As I’ve argued forever, look to objects of interest (in some respects, the more specific the better) that people are passionate about, and give them the tools to better organize. Doing so will lead to far more durable, rewarding, and expansive connections than organizing around existing social connections.

Of course, the real winner will be the person/company who combines object-orientated organization with acquaintance-orientated organization (you can bet FB is working on this). The chart below attempts to exemplify the trends, and the potential outcome.

The main thrust of my journal article is that social media has failed to live up to its promise. Essentially, the guttering candle flame that looked as if it might ignite an entire “markets are conversations” moment, has been extinguished, and in its place…

Well, there’s the rub.

It seems most can agree to feeling, at best, frustrated by social media in its varied incarnations. I don’t believe a day goes by for me where I don’t hear someone talk about how they’re tired of Facebook, etc. However, people are loath to abandon it (the cost of quitting – moving/losing all those photos – is too high). Related, no alternative has emerged.

I’m not sure, however, that it’s just fatigue that is making people dissatisfied. Rather, I think it’s an unfulfilled promise. For a moment, FB (etc.) seemed to offer authentic connection, and, thus, hope with respect to our greatest collective fear: loneliness.

As those connections — once co-opted — became increasingly less authentic, the value of these social networks fell. The promise of not-lonely disappeared.

There are moments of authentic connection out there, however. It takes some looking. It takes following the bread crumbs (often originating on FB).

One such example that works for me is the newly-introduced live stream sessions on Daytrotter. And, yes, full-disclosure, I’ve been working with Daytrotter for ~4 years now.

Why these work for me is their authenticity. You hear the artists creating in real time…warts and all.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and this to me is magic. The tech disappears. The intimacy re-appears. For the time that the artists put themselves out there, there is a bond between listener and artist. For this time, we’re not alone, and we’re not lonely.

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.

These are both exciting and stressful times for many people. Share your excitement; comfort those who are stressed.

Blend the following:

handful of blueberries
one small avocado
some coconut milk or coconut water
some ice

The world has been a happier, clearer, more manageable place since I’ve been drinking these.

I just bought some bee pollen, and plan to chuck some of that action in too.