(I fixed my blog, finally, after a malicious piece of nasty code had crept its way into my broken WordPress site. Now it is better(yay!) and I want to talk about some of the things that I have been reading lately and thinking about thanks to my clients and colleagues. This post moves around and is primarily focused on Marketing(because you haven’t read enough about lately), but on a macro level, it is about learning from the principles of the web and what that means for your business. The traits of the web; being open, flexible, self correcting and constantly evolving share the best traits that make up us, as humans, and in that respect, any organism.)

How can competition and fear of failure drive us to do great things? What can Tools of War teach us about marketing?

In reading the Wizards Stay Up Late, I was struck by the ability for brilliant people to rally together, in a time of war, to innovate and get out of trouble, using the magic(Wizardry) of digital on the problems of the analog world. The work by ARPA and how racing the Russians in a PR war to the moon and over nuclear weapons, led to the web and some of the more advanced technologies that our global economy now operates on.

Specifically,  Paul Baran’s ‘Packets’ story of how a protocol was created that led to the World Wide Web. From Wikipedia: Packet switching is a digital network communications method that groups all transmitted data, irrespective of content, type, or structure into suitably-sized blocks, called packets. The network over which packets are transmitted is a shared network which routes each packet independently from all others and allocates transmission resources as needed. The principal goals of packet switching are to optimize utilization of available link capacity, minimise response times and increase the robustness of communication. When traversing network adapters, switches and other network nodes, packets are buffered and queued, resulting in variable delay and throughput, depending on the traffic load in the network..

To summarize, Baran understood, before anyone else, that the most efficient and safest way move data on a network was to break the data into packets, that could find their way to end points faster and then reassemble on the other end. A similar analogy is how you would move a house across the country. You disassemble, ship in bunches or packets and reassemble when you got it to the final destination.

Seamless transmission of digital bits and distributed nodes, led to the creation of the Web and the ability for the web to live on, regardless of a certain node getting knocked out, and it is still the underlying architecture/ideology that we all work off today. The genius of packet switching also led to Baran understand the need for a distributed(not centralized or decentralized) network that the packets could travel on in the most efficient and safe way to build a safe and scalable ecosystem(Image):

What does this mean for marketing? Baran and ARPA were looking to achieve greater national security and trying also finding a better way for groups of like minds to communicate together. Switch out ‘National Security’ for  Building a Better Brand and ‘Like Minds’ for a Brand’s customers, prospects & vendors and most marketing managers are modern day ARPA employees…… So how can you take your online marketing strategy and turn it into packets? How can you diversify your offerings into a distributed network, in the event that if a node goes out or a sleeper cell wakes up, the rest of the network(your Brand, your Platform) can stay up and scale. How can you diversify your investment in a way that allows you to have conversations to scale with your customers while also not over-investing in any single node?

Much of this is being played out in Social Media or what I like to call as a broader term, in Publishing. The ability to connect with others, with packets of information, across a larger network and find the Holy Grail of having Conversations to Scale with your Customers. A protocol where by you can interact with a consumer on any front and you can assemble the pieces to get them the information they need to have a better experience with your brand.

In order for you to take on this distributed network model online, you need to become a Publisher. Constantly iterating and Publishing, and pushing out different packets across the web.

How to get started? The key is to first understand how “Publishing” is changing, and how it is different online. In order to follow this publishing and packets model it is important to think about the very concept of what constitutes “media and publishing” and how it has evolved due to two massive change agents on the web.

(Battelle Quote)The first is search(ie. Google), which made nearly every “piece” of media available and findable. That revolution began in 2001-2, and continues to this day. And we’re now in the midst of the second change, Social Media. We are today with Social Media where we where with search nearly ten years ago. Social Media is media that any consumer can create, share, and communicate around, and quite often, it’s directly related and/or concerned with a particular brand. Creating and cultivating an ecosystem where customers, prospects, vendors, and employees are engaged (and feel listened to) allows your core business to become a learning organism, one that is far more closely linked to its core customers. Consumer insights, product development, customer relations and service – all of these functions become integrated into this brand community.

Once you run your business as a distributed network & publishing platform that provides value to your customers and prospects online, your business itself will become an ongoing collaboration between your company, your customers, and your partners. This shift begins with a publishing platform-driven, distributed approach to marketing.

As a recent NYT article on Nike noted:

“…Behind the shift is a fundamental change in Nike’s view of the role of advertising. No longer are ads primarily meant to grab a person’s attention while they’re trying to do something else — like reading an article. Nike executives say that much of the company’s future advertising spending will take the form of services for consumers, like workout advice, online communities and local sports competitions.”

The best companies are starting to do this…… Zappos over Foot Locker, Starwood over a traditional travel agency, Kashi over other Kellogg’s Brands, & the U.S. Federal Government over  20th century Governments.

21st Century economics, the Web and competition is forcing us to rewrite the rules of business. The best way to deal with these changing times, is to understand the principles of the Web and how it can help us evolve.

It is a reasonable question. One that comes up more as the platform continues to gain popularity. Below is a general answer, and I thought it would be nice to get other people’s opinions. If you have feedback, I am all for hearing it.

I will state this upfront, “could twitter go away?”, say, like Friendster or Netscape have. Absolutely.

It took years for Search as we know it today, to get figured out, and companies like Lycos and AltaVista were very important to the eventual success of Google.

The question becomes, “Could what Twitter stands for go away?” Answer: No.

Twitter has created a fundamental shift in how we communicate online that is now becoming a standard for some of the fastest growing web platforms.

Macro Trend: The web is shifting from a vast encyclopedia of information to a social environment that reflects our real identities, and the relationships and information we care about.

Core Principles of Twitter
Presence and Network Effects: The explosion of mobilizing technology(ie. phones, smaller PC’s) allows people to stay connected at all times. The “I dont care what you are doing all the time” argument breaks down similar to the “I don’t want a cell phone because that means you can reach me anytime”. Studies show that if you give us tools and others to talk with, we will in fact talk more. When we talk more, the platform works better. Network Effects.

Follow/Broadcast: The great UGC revolution online has gone something like this: ICQ –> Forums –> Blogs–> Social Nets.

Twitter is a simpler ‘Known Broadcast’ mechanism than any of the above with a better follow strategy. That is why Facebook is now doing it and also WordPress, the largest Blogging software company is as well with something called P2(video).

Open Architecture/Loosely Connected CMS: ‘Open’ has allowed for the proliferation of 3rd party applications. This is important for all platforms going forward to offer API’s for 3rd party developers to create applications off their “loosely connected CMS”. Who else is doing this well? Google with AdSense and Open Social, Facebook Connect and App Platform, Apple(iPhone), Amazon Marketplace, Best Buy, etc.

Search/Discover: Real Time search is a breakthrough. But also finding others that are like you is key. We travel in tribes. The output of conversations is Data. Continuous Data is a river and with a net you can Discover what is in that river.

Who are the companies to watch for?
Google crushed the web as an encyclopedia. Who will own the social environment? I’m not sure yet, but it’s pretty awesome we get to live through this time and watch it unfold.

Is Twitter right for Business? What is good for Business is irrelevant; what is good for the Web is relevant for Business. It is important to think about it in that order.

The Web is The Best Platform ever built by Humans to enable Creative Destruction. Twitter’s core principles are helpful to keep in mind as the web continues to shift and disrupt the forces that get in the way.

How do you know what will happen next? I’m not sure, but there is some evidence, in all that data pudding. On that note, it has been hard to write lately, trying to lift weights , but I wanted to get this down.

There is a lot of powerful data in Google Trends and other free data tools. Enough to where I would argue that every company should hire a person to just stare at Google(and increasingly, Twitter and Facebook(lexicon)) trends to decipher what it all means for your business.

Below is from an email exchange and couple of tweets that I put out there, looking at making a case for finding the next hot ticket on the web. Via email, the person I was talking with was using Google and some other free data services, trying to map media/tech trends based on buzz. The basic argument/questions from the email: MySpace was hot for 2 1/2 years, Facebook for about 18 months(based on trending data) When will twitter peak? And then what is next? What was before MySpace?

Short Answer: I have no idea.

Long Answer:
It is hard to look at Twitter or Facebook and compare them to MySpace. They are two platforms that really change the game and while I think MySpace was a game changer for allowing people to live their life online, it lacked the vision that FaceBook and Twitter have.

Is Facebook past the buzz? The above chart doesnt back this up. It is still growing. There is definitely diminishing returns on buzz, when you reach 200M users. (for instance, Add Google to the graph to see what the trend looks like when they hit critical mass)

To answer the question, I think you have to ask the question; What are the core problems that these platforms are trying to solve? This should help show what the next trend will be. Similar to the Web 2.0 world that came out of Google’s Mission: Organizing the World’s Information and Making it Searchable.

What are the core problems that these platforms are trying to solve?

Facebook: Social Graph and Networked Presence(ie. What are you doing?)

Twitter: Search(immediacy/discovery), Public Presence, Follow(different than friending)

The follow strategy is where it is starting to get interesting, from a trend level. Follow leads to Public data, which creates Search and other tools, that leads to Discovery. We are seeing Facebook starting to go to a follow strategy and Tumblr, from a CMS level, has the best follow strategy among conversational platforms outside of Twitter. WordPress.Com is, surprisingly, behind here. About a year ago, I thought they would dominate in this space.

Where is this going form a media level?
We are seeing a refinement of the CMS to a centralized location. The whole idea of owning your own domain and controlling it seems to be out, in replace of it is a Smart Content Management System that allows you to do short simple tasks on top of it. The analogy to Personal Computing would be how the majority of PC owners at one time moded their PCs. Now, you can’t even take a damn battery out for fear it wont work with the larger connected system.

Publishing Model Evolving. Content Wants to be Free, Value is in… Something Else
I like Huffington Post and Business Insider models. Smart, connected CMS’ that rely on the long tail of content and are built on a model of aggregation, curation and smart networks(link below). Lead with community, a connected platform, and social equity, and the content will naturally fall into place. Two good posts along these lines:
Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable – Clay Shirky
Outside.in Saves Newspapers – Mark Josephson

How are Companies Online Strategies Evolving? A good question for marketers to answer
Key here is: Getting Distribution and winning over customers and independent developer communities to live on your platform. Battelle wrote a great piece interviewing Oren Michel’s of Mashery.
Getting Horizontal – John Battelle

A nugget from that post:
“Companies that create platforms which enable customers to leverage internal data with collective intelligence will win.”

What does this look like?
An example of a major brand that leverages John’s principle and the architecture of participation. (ie. Feeding the Machine)

Barack Obama: The MyBrarackObama platform was created to take a grassroots concept of campaigning and bring it online. Further creating a networked community that could serve the greater good. What this meant, was you could sign up for all kinds of activities that would have a direct correlation to how campaigners could go about on the ground campaigning.

For instance, I signed up for Phone Banking from the web platform. They gave me 25 numbers to call in the swing state of Pennsylvania. When I called, I would fill out if the person picked up the phone, who they were voting for, if they wanted more informaiton, etc. This in real time populated databases for local campaigners and they could either check this house off the list, or go at them with further Obama messaging. We were all feeding the machine.

How to spot trends within the next hot company?
Spotting new trends can sometimes come out of looking at the companies that continue to change the game, but are now “old school”. ie. What was hot before MySpace?

Example: Amazon, on top of the best customer service(collective intelligence) they also have one of the best API environments(leverage internal data) for developers. Additionally, they provide developers with the “generator” for their business with innovative products like EC2 and S3. They keep the light bulbs on and provide the best architecture. They’ve captured the whole ecosystem of innovation and progress for consumers and developers on one platform.

What is the new trend in marketing?
Umair Haque has a fascinating post looking at new world strategies from companies like Threadless to Zara:
A User’s Guide to 21st Century Economics – Umair Haque

What is the role of marketing in a world where consumption must slow?
In the 20th century, marketing was the pusher of a consumption addiction: Madison Ave’s game was to create perceived value by “differentiating” the same razors, blades, and toothpaste. At the Lab, we’ve found that companies who create perceived value are significantly less profitable and more vulnerable than companies who are rethinking marketing to create real value.

My question: As the world continues to change around us, how can we rethink marketing, like Umair asks, to create real value for everyone involved?

(Writing in a car on the way back from Vermont)

Inspired by a few back and forth twitter conversations, I am more convinced than ever that the future of Facebook is an open networked ecosystem to manage your life online. Sharing on Facebook is already becoming more of a broadcast. The broadcast nature of the platform will lead to more connections being made and the need to continue to open up certain channels to create even more connections and allow Facebook more revenue opportunities.

What leads to the this open ecosystem? Developers creating applications that break down the walls of friends and find more ways for people to connect. A good example is the early facebook application market. The rules of engagement have less to do with your friends and more to do with your associations. You broadcast your favorite football teams and share your favorite moments with non-friends on applications like Water-Cooler or Graffiti.

Other examples of how Facebook has evolved over time to be more of a broadcast platform than sharing among a small network.
- Opening up the network to the world that is outside of the people that have a college email.
- River of news updates to your network.
- Facebook Profile search in Google allows for anyone in the world to find your profile.
- Application market and connecting outside of your friend network
- Facebook Connect allows for your social ID to follow you around on the web. It still allows for this interaction to come back to your river of news, but it also tells the outside world that you have an online ID that can tell you more if you are interested in exploring.

Where does this go? A lot of Facebook’s announcements point towards allowing for developers to create applications that allow you more access to your Facebook status and other updates. This access allows for data to be opened up for developers to create different outwardly facing executions. Similar to anything Twitter apps are doing, with the potential of about 50X the scale and a richer content system to point back too.

Why is this important?

There are a few good business opportunities in Facebook opening up.

1) Real time search. With over 200 million users, Facebook has more info on the current status of the world than any other platform. This data could be used in real time to create an incredible “database of presence”.

2) Adsense-like profile/presence advertising across the web. Facebook talked about it as beacon. It didn’t work in it’s early form but the idea is a good one. The further FB can push sites to use their code to connect their networks, the more Facebook can learn about their users and the re-targeting is much more powerful than the standard AdSense network.

3) Pageviews, pageviews, pageviews. This is still the currency in online advertising. Facebook continues to grow their presence across their site and outside of their site.

4) Developers, Developers, Developers. The other currency in building successful platforms. The more open Facebook’s architecture is, the more developers will flock to their platform. Developers will have access to the two most important pleasures of their trade. Social Capital and real opportunity to make money.

References:
Facebook Developer Blog | Opening Up Facebook Status, Notes, Links, and Video

Ars Technica | Facebook’s “next steps in openness” raises questions

Consumerist | Facebook’s New Terms Of Service

ChasNote | How Important Are 3rd Party Apps?

What started out as a fun way for developers to create apps by working on top of the Twitter API is quickly becoming big business. In terms of big business, think applications like StockTwits or TweetDeck. I fully expect to see brands creating utilities on top of Twitter for a few reasons. To have scalable conversations with their customers, create beautiful pieces of media that reach their audience, and along those lines, collect the rich data of the masses to align the voices of an online community with a brand’s latest campaign objectives.

It will start with a tech brand, but the consumer companies that have millions of customers interacting with their brand on a daily basis have the largest opportunity here.

In 2000 I was interested in getting into powerlifting. I had heard a lot about how training your fast twitch fibers could make you a better surfer(originally inspired by Tom Curren and his model on plyometrics), a higher jumper, and they were your largest muscle fibers meaning if you worked them out, they would make you bigger, quicker. All of this led me to powerlifting and to one my friends who was a great powerlifter. I asked him how I could get into it. And he told me one thing, “Go pick up the heaviest weight in the gym, and see what you can do with it.” Now, he really didn’t mean to do exactly that, but I understood what he meant. Everyone wants to get in shape, they start with exercise books, personal trainers, a new wardrobe, etc. What my friend was telling me was, get out there, see if you like it, if your body reacts to it, you will know what do next. That stuck with me, and continues to whenever I get into something new. Get out there and do it, iterate, and optimize to your strengths that make you better…..

If there is one thing that I am most looking forward to around my work life in 2009; it would be in building projects.

I had a good conversation with someone that I respect before the end of the year. One way or another we got to talking about the frustration we feel with our industry and the “thought leaders” that dominate it. It struck me that these people are in many ways the aspirational leaders of our industry and the frustration lies in the fact that many of them don’t actually build anything. They talk, they network, they come up with principles and keynotes, but when you look at actual product output, it seems scarce. I think this is similar with most industries, but with online marketing the leaders presence and stature is only amplified by the natural tools of social media and the web.

So here is my goal in 2009. To be nothing like them. Instead, I will use the 37 Signals “Getting Real” doctrine as something to strive for and the best translation to my friends Pick up the Weight advice. I point to them and their philosophy for two reasons. 1)They are considered thought leaders and are well known in the overall web industry(kind of contradicting myself here) but also, and more importantly 2) They take their principles and build things and they understand and promote the idea that the future of the web lies with the people that are building it.

Whether you are a social media expert or just have a job in online advertising. You are working on the web; you are building instructions to an experience, you are a software architect. In 2009, I’m looking forward to working with and following people that define these principles.

Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics, wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.

Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that’s not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn’t).

Getting Real is staying small and being agile.

Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.

Getting Real is about iterations and lowering the cost of change. Getting Real is all about launching, tweaking, and constantly improving which makes it a perfect approach for web-based software.

Getting Real delivers just what customers need and eliminates anything they don’t.

So many exciting, rich applications coming online based on new architectures and platforms. There is a gold rush of potential on platforms like The iPhone, Facebook, Android, OpenSocial, etc. Developers have opportunities that could make them millions, while also offering a meritocracy around their work that keeps them independent and not engineer #1B465D at Oracle or some other software legacy company.

The problem? There are big gatekeepers looking to create an exclusive club, take profits, steal IP, and leverage their scale to crush anything that is competitive. Feels very similar to four years ago when, if you were an independent site looking to create a revenue model, you didn’t have a lot of choices. Ad networks paid $0.10 CPMs and affiliate partners were not interested in valuing your audience for anything else than a CPA transaction.

Who is going to create a model that looks out for the interests of developers?

I think the biggest issue they are going to have to overcome is how safe consumers feel in entrusting all their passwords to one company. Which begs the question, is it safe?

The application for the iPhone and even the browser is the best solution I have found for managing so many of the toughest accounts to log into. ConEd, TimeWarner, AT&T, etc. It also gives you a snapshot into your balances.

Some photos of the iPhone UI from Lifehacker

For travel it is a great way to look up your itinerary for a flight or hotel check-in without having to crack open the laptop or remember reservation numbers.

The Remixed World

Via Oren, a drawing from Hugh MacLeod on the importance of APIs.

Barack Obama

I’ve covered this one a bit, but it continues to be great. Now there is news that he is going to take fireside chats to YouTube. Awesome.

Nikon D90

It’s by far the best camera I have ever owned. I’m a novice with DSLRs and my hands tend to shake a lot but I’m impressed with how easy it is to use and how good the photos are.

Google Analytics & Google Trends

Neither of them are new, but I find myself using them more and more each day. Great companies make great products.

Yammer

We are using it internally at FM. It’s cool, the collective nature of a simple messaging tool allows for a clean way for people to share thought streams and ask questions. In a smaller company you have a lot of people that are talented in many areas that are far beyond the scope of what they are hired for. Tools like Yammer allows for this to come out.

An iPhone Case

I don’t have one of these but I’m going on my third iPhone. Maybe I should buy one? Steve Jobs: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” I argued the case conflicts with the design and therefore interrupts how it should naturally work. Well, it doesn’t work at all when the screen is shattered.

#hashtag/meme movements

I’m excited about services like Twitter and their ability to capture the spirit of the moment in a very lightweight, extensible way. Hopefully more to come here.

cooliris

Formerly, Piclens, cooliris is just cool. If you have a PC hooked up to your TV it’s even better(larger screen). A fun piece of software to weave your way through a more liquid and media-rich web experience.

I’ve been beating the Facebook Connect drum since it was announced. I even had the opportunity to speak my thoughts on it a bit at the Social Ad Summit on the Alternative Social Advertising Models panel and last week at our CM Summit around Social Media Optimization. Facebook or any social network only gets really interesting when it is open, searchable, and extensible.

Giving that intro, it was awesome for me when I saw Nick O’Neil writing about Scott Rafer’s presentation in Berlin around the Facebook Platform.

In the presentation Scott talks about the death of the Facebook Platform and the “intial” opportunity of Facebook Connect as the place where developers should be focusing their time. I say “intial” because I think Scott is concerned about Facebook having and using the same sort of power over Connect, as they have over their developer platform. A fair assesment, but this time the rules are different given the tradeoff for Facebook with Connect. Now, Facebook has the opportunity to “spread” its code base outside of their network and they also have competition, Google’s OpenSocial/FriendConnect. In my opinion, both of these companies are competing for the Social answer in advertising to what was Google AdSense for Publishers. The winner of this battle should reap the rewards of billions of dollars spent against Social Advertising in the coming years.

The general lesson to think about with the recent platform bust on Facebook is for all developers to not forget about the real opportunity, distribution platform, code base, and community. That is the overall openness of the web. Swallowing the Facebook Juice doesn’t prepare you for the larger offering of all the services of the web. Facebook Connect and Google OpenSocial/FriendConnect offer a way to “connect” the ecosystem of their social graphs while also maintaining your presence in your own ecosystem and code base. Both of these brands get the fundamental long term importance of being open and it Scott’s important message to developers to follow the lead of the big boys.