bmf sticky

Sticky

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Mon, 23 May 2011 02:42:00 +0000

Hi all,

as you have no doubt realised, posting has pretty much dried up here. That's not because we haven't found any more cool new to share, but rather that we are moving over to a more 'official' blog as part of the BMF website. This will be launching sometime in the next month or so and i'll post a link here when it does.

Thanks for your interest and look forward to sharing more stickiness with you on the new space soon.

Cheers

The question of reputation

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:41:00 +0000

Insightful post from Techcruch outlining some of the players and positions in what may well turn into the next big battle ground in the socialization of the web: your reputation

The Q&A land rush is on. Quora, of course, has been hyped to the moon, and not without reason. Fortune magazine recently profiled five more Q&A sites, and three new ones just launched: Cloudy, where your friends answer your questions via SMS; InboxQ, Q&A on Twitter; and Setlr¹, which is like Twitter for yes/no questions. Is this a bubble full of copycats doomed to wither into Yahoo Answers Redux? Maybe – but I don’t think so. I think there’s something important going on here, and it’s more than just questions and answers. I think these are the first skirmishes in the reputation wars.

The identity wars are already over. Facebook won, Twitter snagged the silver medal, and OpenID lost. Log In With Facebook and their associated Open Graph have succeeded so thoroughly that Facebook increasingly defines users’ online identities across a whole panoply of sites. But who will define and codify our online reputations? That’s a question whose answer will matter – a lot.

Right now we only have ad-hoc measures to determine online reputations: LinkedIn’s recommendations, Twitter users’ following:followers ratio, third-party influence measurements a la Topsy, and raw friend/follower/connection counts. That last is the crudest and least useful, which is why Facebook itself isn’t really built for reputation measurement. Quora, however, is a serious contender, if they get their PeopleRank algorithm right.

But there’s another massively successful Q&A site out there, one whose reputation measurement already has significant effects: StackOverflow, a problem-solving-for-programmers site cofounded by Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software. While Quora gets all the hype, StackOverflow quietly racks up sixteen million unique visitors a month. It’s by far the most professionally useful site on the Internet. Like many if not most developers, I use it every single workday. One of my complaints about Google is that it should, but doesn’t, catapult StackOverflow into its top five search results for almost every software topic. I like Quora a lot, but if I had to choose between the two, it’d be no choice at all. Quora is interesting; StackOverflow is important.

Lately, though, Joel, his partner Jeff Atwood, and the StackOverflow community have spun off dozens of other Q&A sites under the “StackExchange” umbrella, in an attempt to beat Quora and the like at their own game. And are they ever screwing up. Their policy is to spin off new sites built around themes suggested and approved by their existing community. So what do you get as spinoffs from a coder community? A bunch of StackOverflow subsets for super users, sysadmins, etc., and a hodgepodge of sites focused on photography, mathematics, Apple, video games, board games, role-playing games, and science fiction. Interesting? Sure. Important? Hell, no.

StackOverflow’s killer value is that it’s where people go to solve the problems they’re having at work. That’s a feature that almost all of its spinoff sites completely lack. Having a high StackOverflow reputation is a definite plus, in the software world. I’ve seen it featured on resumes, and it influences hiring decisions. Coders are canaries in the coal mine; in the years to come, members of other fields too will increasingly value their online reputations. But who beyond a vanishingly small minority will care about your reputation on “Atheism”, “Board and Card Games,” or “English Language and Usage,” to pick three new StackExchange sites?

Joel and co. should do more than pander to the enthusiasms of their existing community by letting them vet new sites. That leaves them stranded on a social peninsula only tenuously connected to the rest of the world. Before Quora eats their lunch, they should also try to build Q&A communities – and reputations – focused on other professions: law, sales, etc. (And while they’re at it, they ought to clean up their very Web 1.0 UX, and let people log in with Twitter ~~and Facebook~~ (edit: Correction – they support Facebook logins already. Mea culpa), to make StackExchange reputations easily exportable to other platforms.) It won’t be easy to seed them and spin them up to critical mass, but it’ll be more than worth the pain, and miles better than what they’ve got now. StackExchange could be a real contender, but first they need to change their strategy.

¹Full disclosure: Setlr was incubated by my sometime clients HappyFunCorp.

Thinking Cap Sparks Creativity Via Electrical Current

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 07:14:00 +0000

Great stuff from Sydney Prof here... via PSFK

February 10, 2011

Scientist Allan Snyder at Australia’s University of Sydney’s Center for the Mind has developed a ‘thinking cap’ that sparks creativity by passing low levels of electrical current to the right, creative half of the brain, while simultaneously suppressing neural activity in the left. Allan said the goal was to suppress habits and opinions gathered through life experiences to help users see problems and situations as they really appear. The device was inspired by accident victims who experienced a sudden surge in creativity after damaging the left half of their brains.

Simple math tests were administered to test the contraption. Out of a sample 60 participants, three times as many people who wore the cap were able to complete the tests.

University of Sydney’s Center for the Mind

[via The Sun

The Psychology of Facebook: Implications for Social Commerce

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 06:44:00 +0000

Nice post from Paul Mardsen via Social Commerce Today, on the why's of facebook usage

Thinking of using Facebook as a social commerce platform? Then it can help understand the social psychology of the Facebook user. Here are 7 evidence-based insights from recent psychology research into why we do what we do on Facebook (to learn more, check out Jeremy Dean’s wondrous PysBlog – an Aladdin’s Cave of practical insight)

It’s all about ‘Social Capital’, baby: Facebook is used to manage social capital – the power, privilege and possibilities we have by virtue of the social networks we are part of. Ellison et al. (2008) found that Facebook users had higher levels of ‘social capital’ – in other words more ‘friends with benefits’. Social Capital is a BIG concept in understanding social media – more in upcoming posts. How could social commerce help improve the social capital of Facebookers, whilst helping them shop smart with their social intelligence?
The Facebook 7s. Tap into one or more of the 7 core Facebook activities (‘uses and gratifications‘) identified by Joinson (2008). Note: connecting with or buying from brands and businesses is not one of them)
1. Connecting (with People)
2. Participating (Group Behaviour)
3. Sharing (Media)
4. Using (Apps)
5. Updating (Status Updates Sharing/Learning)
6. Surfing (People – Virtual People Watching)
7. Investigating (People – Social Surveillance)
The Disinhibition Effect: Facebook disinhibits people – they say, share and do things they wouldn’t share, say or do in face-to-face situations. Nosko et al. (2010) found that young, single people were particularly likely to disclose sensitive information about themselves. How could you use the ‘disinhibition effect’ to build a revealing social commerce strategy (think blippy)
Beautiful People: Walther et al. (2008) found that attractive friends boosted the perceived attractiveness of participant’s profiles (unlike the contrast effect in real life). Boost the attractiveness of Facebookers by helping them mix with beautiful people.
The magic number of 150: People can manage relationships with 150 people – and Tong et al. (2008) found Facebooker’s social attractiveness peaked at around this number. Help people manage relationships.
Jealousy: Compulsive Facebook usage is a sign that your partner may be a jealous type (see social surveillance above): Muise et al. (2009) found that participants who spent more time on Facebook were more jealous of their partner. Opportunity to build apps that play on partner paranoia?
The Truth is Out There: Strangely, people tend to be honest about themselves on Facebook: Back et al., (2010) found that Facebook profiles generally reflected their owner’s actual rather than idealised selves. Harness honesty in social commerce.

Collective Vigilance

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 22:58:00 +0000

Great new start-up using crowd sourcing to find those nasty hidden surprises in your bills. I imagine it's quite a challenge for the team to get the platform set up and running, especially for international roll-outs across different banking systems, but some potential for real value-add to end users here.

http://www.billguard.com/

Near field communications - the death of the password?

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 22:45:00 +0000

Bit slow off the mark with reposting this, but a nice article from Computer World about how near field communication (NFC) enabled devices, like the new Android Nexus (can't wait for them to be released here in OZ), could not only change things like credit cards and micro-payments, but also how we handle secure access to data and services.

How Apple and Google will kill the password
Prediction: Your phone is about to become a universal biometric ID and debit card

By Mike Elgan

January 29, 2011 07:55 AM ET

Computerworld - Imagine sitting down at a public PC, surfing the Web, visiting Facebook, checking your online bank account and buying something on Amazon.com -- all without entering passwords or credit card information.

It gets better. You get up and leave without even logging out. Some shady criminal type sits down at the same PC and finds his attempts at cracking your password foiled at every turn. Your accounts can't be accessed because your phone is no longer on the desk.

It gets better still. Hop in your car and press the "Start" button -- no key necessary. The car knows it's you after you wave your phone over the dashboard, and it adjusts the driver's seat and steering wheel just for you.

On your way to work, you swing by Starbucks to grab a Trenta Iced Cafe Mocha with whip. To pay, you wave your phone over a terminal on the counter, grab your drink and head for work.

Arriving at the office, you sail past security with doors unlocking automatically as you approach them. When you walk into your office, the lights and PC come on auto-magically.

But what's this? While you were out, IT replaced your old-and-busted PC with the latest and greatest. The PC is a blank slate, and it's unaware of your data or settings. No worries. Just drop your phone on the desk, and the system instantly implements your settings and begins downloading your work documents from the cloud.

While all this is happening, a co-worker walks in talking smack about the game yesterday -- and the ill-advised bet you lost. You owe him $10, so you both pull out your phones. You launch an app, type in the number 10, and tap the phones together to transfer the money.

All this has taken place without a single password or credit card.

The magic happens when you can combine a biometric ID system (which uses some kind of scan from a smartphone to verify that you're actually in possession of the device) with a secure short-distance wireless communication technology that other devices (cash registers, PCs etc.) can read.

What's wrong with passwords?

Why do we need a new ID system? Because most users don't create secure passwords, and they can't always remember the ones they create.

On any public system -- like, say, Facebook -- if a hacker tries the 20 most common passwords on enough accounts, he'll eventually break in. Any two-bit suburban script-kiddie can download free software to crack the majority of passwords on a public system within hours.

Many people use a single password for all accounts. Once a hacker gains access to the password, he can wreak havoc, steal your identity, destroy your credit, ruin your relationships and expose your secrets.

Password protection -- or lack thereof -- is the IT industry's dirty little secret. Passwords are a broken and obsolete model, yet everyone relies on them and pretends they do what they're supposed to do.

The obvious password replacement is biometric identification -- the use of a system capable of recognizing unique physical attributes, such as fingerprints, iris patterns or voices.

Far too many people don't trust biometrics because it feels like Big Brother technology. But I believe that if the biometric system resides on the user's cell phone, and is under the user's control, such technology would be far more acceptable to the public.

How Apple will kill passwords

Apple doesn't discuss future product plans, but it appears likely that the company is aggressively pursuing the development of technologies that replace IDs, passwords and credit cards.

Two years ago, Apple was in the news for patenting a range of biometric ID tools for the iPhone, such as a voice recognition system, a retinal scanner that uses the phone's camera or, most likely, a system that uses the screen to scan fingerprints.

Last year, Apple hired an expert in Near Field Communication, or NFC, to head up the company's Mobile Commerce department. NFC is technology that enables the transfer of data over distances of just a few inches -- a model that's far more secure and reliable than, say, Bluetooth. Other inside sources have been quoted as saying that Apple plans to build NFC into the iPhone 5.

Apple has also recently advertised three job openings related to payment platforms and short-range wireless data transfers.

And Apple has been granted NFC-related patents.

Apple is in a unique position to add biometric ID and the short-range communication technology that would make it effective.

Because Apple makes both handheld devices and PCs, it could easily build support into both. And because Apple already maintains one of the largest e-commerce systems in the world -- the various iTunes stores -- it already has most of the infrastructure for payments in place -- and the credit card numbers of millions of customers.

Most important, however, Apple has proved to be the best company in the industry at taking research concepts that have been going nowhere for years and mainstreaming them overnight. It did that with multitouch user interfaces, cell phone videoconferencing and touch tablets. And it could do it with biometrically secured NFC ID and commerce systems.

In other words, all Apple needs to do in order to turn the iPhone into a universal debit card is to add a tiny, inexpensive chip to the device. And all Apple needs to do in order to make the iPhone a universal secure ID is to add a fingerprint scanner to the phone and put another chip in its various desktop systems.

Of course, it could be a while before you can use an iPhone as a universal debit card. It could take Apple some time to establish the partnerships and programs necessary to get every gas station and grocery store to support iTunes. But the password-killing ID card functionality could exist on Apple systems as early as this year, or most likely next year.

How Google will kill passwords

Google, meanwhile, does discuss (some) future plans. CEO Eric Schmidt announced late last year that Android Gingerbread 2.3 and later versions will support NFC at the software level. It's up to Google's hardware partners to build that functionality into Android devices.

Google is already using cell phones to improve security. The company has a universal password log-in that grants admission to most of its many online services, from Gmail to Google Latitude. Google encourages users to associate that single sign-on password with their cell phone number. If someone hacks your Google password, you can get a new password sent to your phone.

The Android platform has also been at the forefront of workable biometric solutions for cell phones. In fact, you can already download Android apps that do face recognition and iris scanning.

What doesn't exist yet is a Google-approved or Google-designed system that ties it all together -- NFC, payment and biometric ID. But with Apple apparently taking the lead when it comes to using a cell phone as a debit card and a universal ID, you can be sure Google will step up and do whatever is necessary to compete.

I believe that it will soon be possible to live without passwords or credit cards. If Apple builds in these capabilities, you can be sure Google will. And if Apple and Google do it, so will all of their competitors.

It won't be easy -- we can look forward to messy standards and privacy battles. But once they ship cell phones that can replace both passwords and credit cards, I think life will be more convenient -- and more secure.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and tech culture. Contact and learn more about Mike at Elgan.com, or subscribe to his free e-mail newsletter, Mike's List.

Slow start to 2011 - but not for facebook

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 03:59:00 +0000

Hi all and apologies for the hiatus in posting. End of the old year and start of the new have definitely provided more than a few distractions. In any case, back into it now and hoping to be able to provide more frequent Stickyness in 2011.

To get things rolling, here's a couple things that caught my eye this week:

Facebook is making big strides towards having its own economy. With Facebook Credits out of beta and set to become the mandatory currency for all social gaming purchases (Thanks Mashable: http://mashable.com/2011/01/24/facebook-credits-out-of-beta/), and the recent announcement that Facebook is testing a Group Buying scheme using the credits as currency ( http://mashable.com/2011/01/26/facebook-buy-with-friends/), it certainty looks like the site is setting itself up for a transition into a more commercial environment, and one that it pulls all the levers in. Who's taking bets on Facebook Credits being listed as a tradeable currency within 2 years? I've got a case of red on it if there are any takers?

And, the New York times is thinking of creating its own version of Wikileaks (Thanks Cutline: http://yhoo.it/fU3SDA) The ironic nature of the relationship between Wikileaks, Assange and main stream outlets like the NYT aside, this is certainly an interesting development that might not bode well for Wikileaks in the long run, certainty feels like a good move for news. I'm just left wondering about how much we can trust the main stream outlets when it comes handling really explosive info.

Happy weekend

Google launches it's online 'shopping mall'

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Helen James née Cowley - Creative Director Retail) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 01:39:00 +0000

With Youtube getting on the shopping band wagon and Facebook launching 'deals' it was only a matter of time before Google also took part in the conversation.

On Wednesday, Google launched Boutiques.com, it's very own online shopping centre. The website is designed to give users a personalised shopping experience allowing you to browse through designers, follow them and be followed. It includes bloggers recommendation pages, celebrity style pages and popular trend pages. Perfect for those who need inspiration to build their wardrobe.

Googles Product Management Director, Munjal Shah wrote:

"It lets you find and discover fashion goods by creating your own curated boutique or through a collection of boutiques curated by taste-makers -- celebrities, stylists, designers and fashion bloggers. These days, bloggers, stylists and everyday fashionistas are expressing their sense of style online. We invited them to create boutiques so people could shop their diverse styles. But you have a unique and independent style too, so Boutiques also lets you build your own personalized boutique and get recommendations of products that match your taste."

The site is set up to let users filter their searches by size, silhouette, patterns and colors. Google also is offering what it's calling "inspirational photos." If a user searches for brown boots, photos will pop up on the right showing brown boots with matching outfits.

However, Boutiques.com is currently only available in the U.S. and only for women's fashion. Google has said that it intends to expand but has yet to state when.

New Google phone a 'virtual wallet'

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Helen James née Cowley - Creative Director Retail) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:19:00 +0000

A new Google mobile phone which has a chip embedded that makes it a virtual wallet so people can 'tap and pay' is poised to make its debut.

The successor to the internet firm's Nexus One smartphone runs on fresh 'Gingerbread' software and is fitted with what's called a 'near-field communication chip' for financial transactions, according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

"I have here an unannounced product that I carry around with me," Schmidt said while pulling a touch-screen smartphone from a jacket pocket during an on-stage chat at a web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

"You will be able to take these mobile devices that will be able to do commerce," he said, "essentially, bump for everything and eventually replace credit cards. In the industry it is referred to as tap-and-pay."

The near-field chips store personal data that can be transmitted to readers, such as at a supermarket checkout counter, by tapping a handset on a pad.

Schmidt hid markings that might reveal which company made the mobile phone, and playfully stuck with referring to it only as an unannounced product.

Google worked with Taiwanese electronics titan HTC to make the Nexus One handsets it released in January in a high profile entry into the booming smartphone market.

Nexus One smartphones built on Google's Android platform won rave reviews for their capabilities but weren't a hit with buyers.

Inside Retail

It's all going to be lost

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 05:54:00 +0000

The internet is almost 20 years old

Just under 30% of the entire population of the earth is hooked into it

All those people have pumped unfathomable amounts of effort and creativity into it… information, content, ideas, tools, services, art, science… you name it, it’s online.

It’s changed our world and how we live our lives by providing a whole new reality and environment

But none of it is real and the thing that amazes and enthralls us today, will have vanished without a trace by tomorrow

Sure various types of data persist, but eventually if someone severs the connection… it’s gone.

The creativity of the past is treasured in galleries and museums, our ancestor’s innovations are resurrected from the earth and marveled at, even the mundane records of our daily lives warrant a more permanent presence… but what of all the online brilliance, creativity and ingenuity? That incredible site, that fantastic new tool, that indispensible new service or community… how can we make the day they are superseded, which they all will be, from also being the day they are lost to history?

That’s why I love this idea: http://www.storyworldwide.com/digital-archaeology/

find something by looking for something else

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 23:24:00 +0000

Take a great piece of utility like GPS navigation, add a new twist of accidental discovery and you get the genius that is Serendipitor http://www.serendipitor.net/ (Thanks Pop-Up City)

Serendipitor from mark shepard on Vimeo.

And, in case you’re kept awake with nightmares of data sniffers recording what sort of bread your web enabled toaster of the future is going to be serving you, it’s also well worth taking a look at the sentient city survival kit Serendipitor is part of http://survival.sentientcity.net/

Sentient City Survival Kit - Quick Start Guide from mark shepard on Vimeo.

Ted Baker London encourages styling via Twitter

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Helen James née Cowley - Creative Director Retail) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:33:00 +0000

At 2 p.m. ET on Friday, Ted Baker London will open the first live, Twitter-operated styling studio.

Over a two-hour period, a rotating selection of seven U.S. fashion bloggers will use a live video stream and Twitter (Twitter) to direct hair stylists, makeup artists, runners and models to create a number of different looks from 450 pieces of Ted Baker’s Autumn/Winter 2010 collection. Spectators can follow the styling session, which takes place at Ted Baker’s headquarters in London, live on takeonted.com and on Twitter by following @ted_baker.

Viewers are also encouraged to tweet in their own styling suggestions with the hashtag #takeonted. The best ideas, the company promises, will have a chance of winning a prize.

We think this is a clever promotion to raise awareness of Ted Baker’s clothing line among fashion bloggers and their readers, and is sure to boost the follower count of Ted Baker’s Twitter account, which currently sports a little less than 600 followers, as well. This marks the first big social media promotion we’ve seen from the company.

Lauren Indvik - mashable

A Foursquare For Beer Lovers

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Helen James née Cowley - Creative Director Retail) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 22:54:00 +0000

Untappd is basically Foursquare for beer lovers. Rather than checking in at a location per se, you check in with what type of brew you are enjoying. You can also attach the physical location of your hops-flavored concoction.

Untappd is a mobile web app. It works on iOS, Android, webOS and BlackBerry 6.0 and higher. What we really like about Untappd is that despite being a mobile web app, it could easily pass for a native app.

Graphics, animations, pop-up notifications and navigational structure are all akin to what you see in native apps like Foursquare or Gowalla. The app is also quite responsive and can use your location.

Untappd uses Foursquare’s mapping API for business names, which makes checking into specific locations a snap. You can also push your checkin back out to Foursquare. Like other location-based social sites, you can earn special badges based on when you check in, where you check in and what kind of brew you declare as part of your checkin.

What makes Untappd different from just a “Foursquare with beer badges” concept is that you can comment on what beers your friends are drinking. You can link your Facebook and Twitter accounts to find your Untappd friends, see what they are drinking and then comment or toast that drink. The app also shows you beer recommendations and shows a list of what beers are currently trending.

The website for Untappd lets you comment or toast others’ entries and view your checkins and badges. You can’t check in via the website; instead, Untappd wants you to use the mobile experience.

We really like how Untappd integrates with Foursquare for its checkin process, because it makes it easy for Foursquare fans to adopt. You can also choose to post your beer-flavored checkin to Facebook or Twitter.

We love the user interface. Seriously, this is one of the most well-done mobile web apps we’ve seen. We also appreciate how easy it is to check in, search for beers and even add beers to the database of drinks.

As niche social sites go, Untappd is very well executed and offers a good value-addition to an already popular social network.

There is some real potential for Untappd, especially if bars or breweries want to get involved in any sort of location-based deals promotion. How cool would it be to get a listing of happy hour specials or weekly promotions? We think any brand that paired Untappd with happy hours would have something really special.

Christina Warren - Mashable

Use Your Phone Number to Make Online Purchases with paymo

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Helen James née Cowley - Creative Director Retail) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 22:35:00 +0000

Online shopping once required a credit card. Boku makes it possible to make purchases online using a mobile phone number instead. Rather than keying in your credit card number, address and security code, all you need to make a purchase using Boku’s payment option, Paymo, is your phone number.

Because the cell phone carriers charge merchants fees as high as 35% for this kind of transaction, Boku started out by exclusively targeting virtual goods. The production cost for such goods is minimal, and therefore their retailers can typically afford the high carrier fees. The company has since expanded to providing its payment option for online services like dating sites and for digital goods like music downloads.

Co-founder Ron Hirson says that the company next aims to expand as a payment method for pay-walled content. Eventually, as carrier rates come down, it aims to be an easy checkout option on ecommerce sites and for frequently purchased physical goods like fast food, coffee and transit.

Boku launched in 2008 when Hirson, Mark Britto and Erich Ringewald — all of whom had founded and sold other companies at this point — acquired mobile payment companies Paymo and Mobillcash. Since then, they’ve raised more than $40 million in three rounds of funding and have partnered with carriers in 64 countries, most recently Brazil and Israel.

While Boku faces competition from companies like Zong, onebip and Fortumo they claim to have the largest reach. Their partnerships with more than 200 carriers gives them access to about 2 billion potential customers. How successful Boku will be at making their payment method an option on more of these 2 billion people’s purchases will depend largely on carrier fees. The high fees that carriers currently charge merchants will unlikely outweigh the convenience that Boku provides its customers.

Partnerships with Vodafone in the UK and AT&T in the U.S. have inched Boku closer to becoming a plausible option for a wider variety of goods by creating higher price points, which allow consumers to make larger purchases and lower carrier fees.

With the company already making about one transaction every second, we’re not making an astounding prediction by betting on its success. Boku was smart to target the global market from the start. There are about 5 billion mobile phones worldwide, and — especially outside of the United States — not all of their owners have credit cards. Enabling these people to make online purchases increases merchants’ potential customer pools.

Boku also takes advantage of three things the world is becoming increasingly obsessed with: online shopping, convenience and secure payments (eBay CEO John Donahoe recently pronounced mobile the safest way to pay online). Although Boku declined to comment on rumors that both Apple and Google (Google) want to acquire it, we understand why they’d be interested.

Sarah Kessler - Mashable

Augment your foraging - technology that helps you find a free feed

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 05:22:00 +0000

While this application is not about to lead me to a feast of wild strawberries in downtown Sydney just yet, is is a fantastic example of how technology can be used to bring us closer to our natural world rather than take us further away.

Mashing up crowd sourcing and citizen science principles, Boskoi feels like exactly the sort of approach that could help get a screen focused generation back in touch with the world around them. Imagine using AR tech for this and other crowd sourced/citizen science created ways to explore the urban environment, rather than to win a car (no offense MINI Getaway... i love that idea as well)

Here's more details on the application courtesy of The Pop-Up City

Augmented Foraging With Boskoi

By Joop de Boer | Published: Thursday November 4, 2010

Everywhere in the world you can find plenty of remarkable fruits, vegetables, mushrooms and herbs in the wild. Not only in the forests of Africa, but also in metropolitan areas around the world an enormous variety of edible species can be found. Boskoi is a new open source project that aims to unlock the collective knowledge about these edible species and their location. Boskoi is a tool to explore and map the ‘edible landscape’ wherever you are while using your mobile phone.

The app enables users to submit own findings and post these to the map. Additions to Boskoi will be reviewed by an editorial board, considering toxicity, pollution and endangered or rare species. Findings can be reported on the website or through the beta app for Android phones. The team has set up some rules though to respect nature, ownership and health: (1) be friendly (ask permission if ownership is unclear), (2) be generous (how much do you really need? Leave most for others), (3) be alert (beware of toxicity and do not tread on other plants when picking), and (4) be careful (only add locations that are robust and can survive limited foraging).

Boskoi is a project by the Amsterdam-based foragers of Urban Edibles, initiated by research and design collective FoAM and supported by Urbanibalism and Pollinize. The app is based on Ushahidi, an open source platform for mobile phones that people in crisis situations use to report what happens. The app was built for the post-election crisis in Kenya in 2008. Ushahidi was also used to map the catastrophe in Haiti and the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. For Boskoi “report an incident” is changed to “report a find”. The app aims to highlight what is growing and living in our daily environment as it stresses the quality of the eco system close to the city. The makers of the app found out that the diversity of plants in The Netherlands is higher in the urban than in rural areas. The idea of Boskoi is to develop new networks between people and their living environment through ‘augmented foraging’.

In several countries online mapping networks regarding freely available fruits and vegetables are already running, for instance the Urbana-Champaign Fruit Map. To combine the data collected by all of these ‘sidewalk harvesting’ projects, the initiators of Boskoi are planning to create a ‘Forage Markup Language’ in order to make the knowledge available to everyone. Another future innovation could be a culinary plug-in with special recipes.

Facebook retail 'Deals'

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Helen James née Cowley - Creative Director Retail) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 22:26:00 +0000

Facebook has a new offer for users willing to share their locations in status updates: deals from nearby merchants or big-brand marketers such as Starbucks, Gap or McDonald's. Facebook is launching the Deals service with 22 big brand partners -- Starbucks, McDonald's, H&M, and Gap -- and 20,000 small-to-medium-sized businesses can start creating Deals on their Places page inside of Facebook.

The social network announced "Deals," an extension of its Places mobile feature, which allows users to check in at locations such as bars, coffee shops or malls. Users will be able to claim those deals by walking into a merchant and checking in on their phones or other mobile devices, giving marketers the ability to reach consumers and potentially attracting them into a given store.

The new service combines two of the hotter trends in local marketing: location-based check-in services such as Foursquare, and local group deals services such as Groupon or LivingSocial. "There are many changes in mobile, and there's a revolution in the social space," said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, which has 200 million mobile users. "Mobile is as big as that -- when you combine mobile and social, industries can get disrupted."

But like everything Facebook does, it has the potential of taking a niche phenomenon now exploited by a coterie of small startups and turning it into a mass phenomenon. "While businesses have been able to use other geolocation services to incentivize customers to some extent, Facebook Deals allows global brands to do so at massive scale," said Michael Lazerow, CEO of social marketing firm Buddy Media.

Facebook announced the Deals Platform and another feature called "Single Sign On," which allows users to log into any app on their iPhones and Android phones, eliminating the need for remembering passwords and typing on tiny mobile keypads. There are 550,000 games and applications available on Facebook, and developers can now build the single sign-on into any of them or build new apps with the feature.

Facebook is launching the Deals service with 22 big brand partners -- Starbucks, McDonald's, H&M and Gap -- and 20,000 small- to medium-sized businesses can start creating Deals on their Places page inside of Facebook. Merchants create a Facebook page where there is an option for choosing the kind of deal they would like to offer: individual, loyalty, friends or charity. Individual and loyalty offers are digital
versions of the traditional coupon and loyalty cards, where a customer gets a punch hole for every coffee or sandwich purchased. The friends offer is a strictly Facebook style deal, where if a user checks in his or her friends, they get a discount. The charity deal is where the merchant will donate $1 for each check to a charity.

"The Deals concept solves the long term," said Facebook's director of local, Emily White. "For a long time, merchants have been told to get online. This solves that problem for them and turns the fans into real dollars."

Gap decided to immediately participate in Deals, offering 10,000 pairs of jeans for free to all users who check into one of the 900 Gap stores nationwide. "It's important for us to connect with our customers where they are," said Olivia Doyne, a Gap spokeswoman on hand at the event at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto. "This can be used in so many ways. If a store has too much inventory, we can use Deals for that. We can tailor the deals to our customers' locations."

Facebook does not earn money in the Deals promotions, and Ms. White said this project is very much in a beta state. But inadvertently, by having more businesses create pages on Places and having more people checking into those businesses, there will be a natural increase in Facebook traffic.

Marketers have long seen mobile phones as a powerful means of reaching consumers while they're out shopping or physically close to a given store. "This is continuing Facebook's empowering of small businesses," said Dave Marsey, senior VP of Digitas digital media. "We're gonna see the biggest response with small local businesses that can more directly and electronically manage attracting new customers and rewarding loyal customers."

Mr. Zuckerberg said that, as always, Facebook's focus is to make things better for users. "Whether the deals platform turns into something more commercial, or we choose to monetize something else -- though we have no plans of doing that any time soon -- that works for us too."

The Future of Ad Agencies and Social Media

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Helen James née Cowley - Creative Director Retail) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:19:00 +0000

To keep up with ever-changing advertising and marketing options, ad agencies are rapidly adopting new strategies and outlooks on how consumers interact with brands. While many ad agencies have been slow to adopt social media, others have been keeping up with the trends quite well.

But keeping up with change is never good enough in this industry; the most successful, game-changing campaigns are generally a bit ahead of the curve. It’s not enough to hitch your star to an existing facet of viral content; you have to create the content yourself. And you can’t wait for mass markets to catch up to new technologies before you begin thinking about how to incorporate new tech into campaigns and creative; you need to test how that tech will work now. Mobile and social ads are no longer new; what’s more interesting now is figuring out how brands can integrate creatively and effectively with location apps and casual games.

We talked with five people who are familiar with the connected worlds of digital media and ad agencies, and here’s what they had to say about the future of social media and advertising.
Software Is the New Medium

Tom Bedecarré is CEO of AKQA, an agency well-regarded for its digital and interactive work, a field in which AKQA specializes; you can see some recent examples of that work on the agency’s Facebook page.

He told us in an e-mail recently, “One of the newest forms of media is not media at all, but software and platforms. Increasingly, AKQA is developing applications and marketing platforms that provide greater utility, entertainment and information to our clients’ customers without relying on traditional media channels. One example of this is the Fiat eco:Drive application we created that allows Fiat drivers to monitor their driving skills and fuel efficiency and helps drivers to lower CO² emissions.”

More and more, agencies will be called on to be (or at least have the capacity to behave as) short-order web and mobile dev shops. You’ll need to make sure your creatives have access to skilled hackers and experienced web designers; you might even consider including a few highly technical, very creative engineers in your creative team, not just as part-time or freelance collaborators.
Groups and Friends: The Power of the Hive Mind

If you want to get inside your clients’ customers’ heads, just take a look at what their friends and peers are doing, saying and buying.

We asked David Armano, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital, if he thought group or friend buying behavior could be used as a recommendation system for goods and services. His answer was resoundingly affirmative.

“If the numbers behind Groupon’s recent success with The Gap is any indicator, the answer is yes.” For reference, the partnership between the group-buying site and the national retailer completely smashed sales records for both entities with a simple digital coupon.

But group buying is most powerful when combined with sharing across social networks.

“The key,” continued Armano, “is that the group buying activity needs to be be present in your friends’ streams. Combine ‘likes’ with mass purchase behavior, and you’ve got the perfect storm of a signal that says, ‘Your friend got in on the deal, maybe you should too.’”
Transparency Is Still a Long Way Off

Part of the art of selling is the illusion that the company is doing what’s best for the consumer and not for their own bottom line.

We asked Jeremy Toeman, founding partner of San Francisco-based agency Stage Two if he thought online marketing has (or should have) more or less transparency in this regard than traditional marketing.

“This might sound odd,” he began, “but I actually think online marketing has less transparency than traditional does.

“In traditional marketing, your advertising was effectively blatant, from TV/radio/newspaper ad buys to junk mail to billboards on the side of the road. Online companies use tactics like SEO, spam/spam-blogs, pop-ups, text-link-ads, fake viral videos, etc.”

Steve Hall, creator and editor of industry blog Adrants, wrote in 2008 that most of the “viral” videos then (particularly the “guys backflip into jeans” clip that ended up being part of a Levi’s campaign) were, in fact, advertisements. And earlier this year, another tattoo-related fake viral video was discovered to be a marketing gimmick from Ray Ban. Fake virility isn’t limited to YouTube (YouTube); often, we find commercial entities trying to “push” supposedly non-commercial content on platforms such as Digg (Digg), Facebook (Facebook) and Twitter (Twitter).

Of course, consumers don’t figure it out… until they do. And they’re getting more savvy about fake transparency all the time.

Toeman believes brands and agencies should strive for more genuine methods of bringing an advertising message to consumers. “Personally,” he said, “I’d nix all the ‘hide the fact that this is an ad’ tactics completely and eliminate the methods of gaming systems.”

If you need more convincing that labeling ads as ads might be a good thing, consider Old Spice’s recent campaign. Pure creativity and Internet (Internet)-culture awareness drove a YouTube campaign that was very clearly advertising; still, the company’s sales doubled as a result of the YouTube clips.
Location Campaigns Are the New Targeting Mechanism

In the past couple weeks, Foursquare took over Times Square and Facebook launched Places. Clearly, location-based services and related ad campaigns are going to become huge very shortly.

“We’re right at the beginning of an exciting time for the development of location-based services and marketing that integrates geo-location into advertising and applications,” said Bedecarré. “Recent announcements by Facebook and Google (Google) reflect the importance of location services.”

Hall says location-based marketing “will change everything.” He explained:

“With the ability to target people only when they are within purchasing distance, brands will be able to come that much closer to targeting nirvana. Offers can be made only to those meeting certain location (and even demographic) requirements, reducing waste and actually saving a brand a lot of money by minimizing its old school spray-and-pray mass marketing techniques. In a nutshell, mobile will, once and for all, make it possible for a marketer to target without waste.”

Getting your clients thinking now about how to integrate location and checkins into a campaign is key. While we can’t yet construct fully formed campaigns around Facebook Places, there are a slew of other services you can use as case studies for an at-scale campaign.

Starbucks, which does an excellent job in the social media advertising and marketing category, has seen good results from a recent Foursquare (foursquare) campaign, as have many other brands. And they were right to jump on the bandwagon early. Between the intelligence you can gather about your clients’ customers and your ability to find more highly qualified targets than ever before, location is indeed the holy grail for advertisers.
Display Ads Are Evolving

Jesse Thomas runs one of the most forward-thinking creative agencies around, but he’s not ready to pick out a headstone for display ads just yet. However, he did tell us that “the usual suspects” of banner ads and skyscrapers are definitely undergoing a change.

“Facebook’s ads have singlehandedly made ads social,” he wrote to us in an e-mail. “The idea of ‘liking’ an ad is genius… The idea of advertising a Page in Facebook via the Facebook ad engine and being able to access special advertising powers is nothing short of revolutionary. In a world of [expletive] Google text ads, Facebook’s social ads are a breath of fresh air. But we have a long way to go!”

And not all of Google’s ad-buy offerings are as excremental as Thomas thinks the text ads can be. “Google offered the ability to integrate the Facebook checkout (one-click purchase) option to their ads, and that was awesome at the time. You will see more of this in the future: Making ads better by integrating features from other parts of the platform that are no longer cool anymore.”

In other words, display can still be part of your ad buys and collateral, but you have to think creatively, target carefully, measure thoroughly and react accordingly. Use all the tools at your disposal to do so.

Jolie O'Dell for Mashable.

Unlogo

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 02:40:00 +0000

Thanks Lester for the tip. Interesting AR project that aims at removing specific items from digital reality, rather than adding them. In this case icons from videos

Unlogo Intro from Jeff Crouse on Vimeo.

Debenhams Interactive TV

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Helen James née Cowley - Creative Director Retail) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 00:22:00 +0000

Debenhams has launched an interactive TV channel today (Monday) to attract new customers by offering fashion and beauty advice, alongside the opportunity to buy.

Debenhams TV, which is available on Debenhams.com, Youtube and Debenhams’ iPhone app, includes interviews with top designers such as Ben de Lisi, Henry Holland and Matthew Williamson and expert fashion advice. There is also a ‘how-to’ focus with online fashion workshops and beauty lessons.

The station is expected to generate 1.5 million views in its first week. Customers can purchase products using a click-to-buy feature as they watch.

Menswear shows on the channel will feature exclusive footage from the launch of Debenhams latest brand, FFP, and other behind-the-scenes footage and interviews from photo shoots, fashion shows and launches.

Debenhams said it hopes to “attract the attention” of shoppers who might not already be using Debenhams.com.

Debenhams online trading director Simon Forster said: “Our online TV channel is a brilliant way for our customers to get style and beauty advice, see the latest fashions and just be entertained. You can see it on our website, through our iPhone app, on Youtube and coming soon – in our stores.”

Retail Week

Brand Campaigns Drive Most Social Media Following

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 07:45:00 +0000

Nice insight... Cheers Brian. Via eMarketer

OCTOBER 18, 2010
Three-quarters of Facebook fans have signed up with pages after invitations or ads from brands

Research on social media users who follow brands has shown marketers the importance of offering deals and discounts on Facebook fan pages as well as the nature of brand following as a form of self-expression, through which advocates can show support for a company they love. But what triggers Facebook users to “like” a brand is typically some form of outreach.

Most commonly, that outreach comes from the brand itself. Three-quarters of Facebook users worldwide who had “liked” a brand told DDB Worldwide and Opinionway Research in September 2010 that they had been spurred to do so by an invitation or advertising from the brand they followed. More than half had also followed a brand based on an invitation from a friend. Many of those invitations are likely a secondary form of brand outreach as well, as marketers encourage current followers to become brand advocates on their behalf.

Only about half of all Facebook brand fans ended up following brands after their own research, making action by marketers critical in building up a following on social sites even though most users already know and like the brands they become fans of.

The effort brands must put into amassing fans doesn’t stop there, of course. While the top reason former fans gave for unsubscribing from Facebook pages was waning interest in the brand, complaints about the information offered on fan pages were also a major factor. Posting too often or posting uninteresting information, taken together, turned off nearly half of respondents.

“Unsubscribers, at 36%, are something to watch out for. And though the majority of fans now unsubscribe by deleting a brand from their friends list, brands, when trying to measure the value of their community, are going to need to be more mindful of those who just hide the brand's message in their newsfeed," said Catherine Lautier, director of business intelligence at DDB, in a statement.

Keep your business ahead of the digital curve. Learn more about becoming an eMarketer Total Access client today.

Check out today’s other article, “Online Video Big Draw on Health Sites for Marketers and Consumers.”

Jay-Z: Decoded Campaign

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 01:24:00 +0000

Great project from Droga for Jay-Z. Via creativity

Niche focused, technology restricted (Silverlight required) and expecting a lot of effort from participants… all strategically sound based on a clear understanding of the audience and the subject matter.

Provides a really good example how we can integrate digital technology with the offline environment to influence and motivate real people to do real things in the real world. Which in this case are then tied back to further interactions in the online experience, then back offline, then online, etc ,etc … fantastic. Just wish i liked Jay-Z then i'd be into it!

Jay-Z spreads himself all over the map.

Droga5 New York goes all out in its launch of Jay-Z's upcoming memoir Decoded with a massive multiplatform campaign that takes every page of the book and brings it back to its birthplace, literally. The book, published out of Random House imprint Spiegel and Grau, is set to release on November 16. Until then, the campaign will recreate each book page on a traditional outdoor, or not so conventional space—think billboard, the lining of a suit, or bottom of a pool—all of it relevant to where the contents of each page originally took place.

"We've made canvases out of some pretty extraordinary places," says Droga5 Creative Chairman David Droga. "We've turned everything into outdoor—350 pages are outdoor and another 100 and 150 are things that money can't buy." The latter will involve some familiar other big names, which at press time Droga could not disclose. "A lot of other big global brands and icons have stepped up to turn themselves into canvases," he says.

"We're trying to do something that's consistent with the Jay-Z brand," Droga explains. "He does all these incredibly bold things in the music industry. He wants to do the same thing to the publishing industry. What's bolder than putting every single page of your book out in the real world, so if someone wanted to read it or discover it, they don't have to buy the book? He's so confident that the story's compelling, the reader will get so caught up in looking at this that they'll want to buy the book."

But fans need not be as jet-setting as Jay-Z to see each execution. A partnership with Bing maps gives the audience a chance to search for each page online via a scavenger hunt, which will provide daily clues to each of the various page locations. "I'd seen that Bing maps presentation from TED, which was extraordinary, and thought, Imagine if we could lay that over the top and suddenly you've got something that's global," says Droga. "You could be sitting in Arkansas and you could walk in the streets of Brooklyn." The agency had been in talks over the last year and a half with Bing to do a nontraditional promotion and finally found an opportunity when the book project came up.

The thrill of the search and book pages aren't the game's only rewards, however. The First players to find a page get a hard copy of the book with that page signed by the artist himself, and all will get thrown into a draw for the grand prize, a ticket to see Jay-Z and Coldplay in concert on New Year's in Vegas.

Edge Shave Gel Uses Twitter for Random Acts of Kindness

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 06:55:00 +0000

Great idea... that's actually being followed through. Via Adage

From Football Tickets to Megaphones, 'Anti-Irritation' Platform Grows

By Jack Neff
Published: October 14, 2010

ORLANDO, Fla. (AdAge.com) -- When a New England Patriots fan last month was irritated at his inability to get tickets to a game against the New York Jets, he tweeted his issues to the Edge shaving gel brand.

Edge has created an 'anti-irritation community' at its website EdgeShaveZone.com.

Within days, the fan, Matthew DeCoste, an interactive designer at Euro RSCG, New York, had tickets to the game as part of an "anti-irritation" campaign in which the Energizer Holdings brand is seeking to soothe some of the many gripes lodged in social media.

Mr. DeCoste had heard of the promotion from a friend at a time when Edge was giving out iTunes and Starbucks gift cards, and he thought he'd try upping the ante, he said in an email.

Of course, Edge can't solve every problem. Mr. DeCoste, who said he got tickets 20 rows back in the end zone, tweeted friends jokingly about the goal post blocking his view. "As the game started getting away from the Pats, I was getting text messages from the same Jets fans about the train schedule back to Manhattan in case I wanted to leave the game early," he said. "So, that was kind of irritating. That being said, I'm still appreciative."

Via its @EdgeShaveZone Twitter handle and #soirritating hashtag, Edge is slowly developing a following of gripers like Mr. DeCoste as part of a long-term campaign with big aspirations to own the position of irritation prevention.

Jeffrey Wolf, Edge's senior brand manager, terms it "the anti-irritation platform," which started last month via Edelman. It included releasing a ranking of the 50 most-irritated U.S. cities (Atlanta was first, thanks largely to traffic) and the Twitter campaign, which is backed by promoted tweets and e-cards to brand fans. Edge also has an "anti-irritation community" at its website, EdgeShaveZone.com.

Ultimately, the brand has bigger things in store for the effort, including as-yet undisclosed work coming later this year under development by WPP's JWT, New York, promo shop Ryan Partnership and media shop MEC.

The social-media effort has started slowly, with still fewer than 900 followers since it launched last month. But the following is likely to swell once more of the Twitterverse, a veritable cauldron of gripes, catches on to the chance of getting problems solved by adding the #soirritating hashtag in a sweepstakes for the social-media age.

Edge last month also sent a megaphone to a University of Alabama professor who said her husband wasn't listening to her and a Blu-ray disc player and the movie "Office Space" on DVD to ease the irritation of an employee annoyed by a coworker.

A few irritations are harder to tackle, such as recent ones about a neighbor's barking dog, a UPS package stolen from a porch, a ham-handed blood drawer, high Ticketmaster fees and a "power-mad boss" who's made employees cry for eight straight days.

Mr. Wolf is part of a panel of Energizer and Edelman employees who review the irritations and then decide which to address and how.

He's not sure what tangible effect the effort has had on brand sales just yet, but notes that it's part of a shift from a heavy focus on promotion under former Edge owner SC Johnson to more brand-equity-building activity since Energizer bought it last year. Energizer and Edge have continued to gain share in shave preparations since the sale (up 5.1 points for the four weeks ended Sept. 5, thanks in part to sibling Schick entering the fray earlier this year, but despite a new push by rival Procter & Gamble Co.'s Gillette Fusion ProSeries products).

"What I'm most encouraged about is where we're going to take this brand moving forward with this robust campaign we'll roll out within the next year," Mr. Wolf said.

Edge led the category with the introduction of shave gels 40 years ago, he said. "What I'm hoping to do with this brand is be the innovator or thought starter in marketing communications as well."

Boomers -- Yes, Boomers -- Spend the Most on Tech

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:12:00 +0000

Nice piece from Adage revealing the real age of the technophiles amongst us

Due to Broad Demographic Grouping Problems, Biggest Misconception About Group Is That They're All the Same

by Beth Snyder Bulik
Published: October 11, 2010

YORK, Pa. (AdAge.com) -- Marilynn Mobley has a desktop at work, a laptop at home, a netbook for travel, an Android smartphone and just last week she bought an iPad. She time shifts all her TV viewing using DVRs and enjoys watching Blu-ray movies at home. She's also 63 years old.

Tech Use

"The misconception that boomers do not appreciate tech crosses all generations. I've heard it from fellow baby boomers who say, 'Wow, you're so into technology,' and on down to 20-year-olds who are also surprised," said Ms. Mobley, a strategic counselor for Edelman in its Boomer Insights Generation Group.

However, she's not nearly as unusual as the media portrays. Boomers are almost as likely as Gen X and Gen Y to own computers, access the internet daily, own mobile phones, DVRs, digital cameras and GPS systems. And while boomers do trail in areas such as early adoption of new devices and services, many of those generation gaps are closing.

"It's actually a myth that baby boomers aren't into technology. They represent 25% of the population, but they consume 40% [in total dollars spent] of it," said Patricia McDonough, senior VP-analysis at Nielsen Co.

In fact, spending on technology is one area where boomers are ahead of their younger counterparts. The 46- to 64-year-old group now spends more money on technology than any other demographic, according to Forrester Research's annual benchmark tech study. That includes monthly telecom fees, gadget and device spending, and overall online purchases. They averaged around $650 spent in online shopping vs. Gen X ($581) and Gen Y ($429) over a three-month period.

And adoption rates of the tech areas where they do lag are soaring. In 2000, baby boomers made up 28% of the internet population and accounted for just 24% of the traffic on a typical day, according to Pew Internet & American Life Project data. But by 2010, those percentages had climbed to 34% of the internet population and 32% of all traffic. Ten years ago, only a quarter of boomers went online every day; in 2010 that number jumped to 70%.

Among 50- to 64-year-olds, social-media usage grew by 88% from April 2009 to May 2010, up from 25% to 47% of all users in that age group, according to Pew Internet. And one in five of them now use social media every day, up from one in 10 last year.

Along with the timeless youth platitude that "old people just don't get it," the misconceptions about boomers and technology incompetence may also be a demographic grouping problem.

The age range in many market-research surveys and studies, for instance, often puts the oldest demographic group at 50 and older. However, Robert DiLallo, director of Grandparent Marketing Group, New York, said that designation is too broad.

"People who are 65 and older were at the tail end of their careers when the real tech revolution began and did not get introduced to the internet that way," he said. "I'm 60 years old, but I'm no more like a 70-year-old in my tech use than I am an 18-year-old."

THE FACE OF TECH CONSUMPTION: Edelman strategic counselor Marilynn Mobley

Forrester's research, for instance, found that among seniors ages 66 and older only 67% owned cellphones. However, 84% of young boomers ages 45 to 54 and 80% of older boomers ages 55 to 64 owned cellphones.

Boomers also use their phones for more than calling, vs. seniors. According to Deloitte's annual media research, 66% of boomers send text messages, trailing Gen X-ers at 80% and millennials at 88%, but way ahead of the 28% of matures (64-plus) who text. Another 37% of boomers have accessed the internet by phone, just behind Gen X at 42% and millennials at 55%, but again ahead of matures at 20%.

Grandparent Marketing Group research notes that the boomer generation and millennials are strikingly similar demographic groups. Both number around 80 million and both grew up in some of the U.S.'s most prosperous eras ('50s/'60s and the '90s).

So it should be no surprise that boomers' internet behavior is more similar to millennials, according to Pew research. Both groups overwhelmingly use email (91% of boomers/94% of millennials), search engines (88%/89%), research health information (78%/85%), get news (74%/83%) and check out online ratings (30%/31%).

The key for marketers to reach boomers is not to dismiss technology as irrelevant to them, but rather to figure out what technology they prefer.

"Which platforms resonate with which demographic?" said Ed Moran, Deloitte director of insights and innovation. "Take gaming for example. For male mature users aged 60 to 75, the PC is the preferred platform, while for the under-15 age group, it's consoles or the iPhone."

Ms. Mobley concurred: "I think the biggest difference in the way boomers use technology vs. the younger generations is that we tend to see it as a way to get something done -- whether that's something at work or staying in touch with friends and family. Gen X and especially Gen Y just see it as a part of life."

Game mechanics

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 23:15:00 +0000

Had this sitting in an open tab for so long that i figured i better share it one day. i've found this small, game engagement mechanics come in handy when articulating how i see interaction working. Enjoy

Thanks Tech Crunch and SCVNGR

SCVNGR’s Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck

Erick Schonfeld Aug 25, 2010

Some companies keep a playbook of product tips, tricks and trade secrets. Zynga has an internal playbook, for instance, that is a collection of “concepts, techniques, know-how and best practices for developing successful and distinctive social games”. Zynga’s playbook has entered the realm of legend and was even the subject of a lawsuit.

SCVNGR, which makes a mobile game with real-world challenges, has a playdeck. It is a deck of cards listing nearly 50 different game mechanics that can be mixed and matched to create the foundation for different types of games. I’ve republished the accompanying document below, which should be interesting to anybody trying to inject a gaming dimension into their products.

Rght now, that should be a lot of people. Every six months or so, a set of features sweeps across the Web and every site and app feels the pressure to adopt it. We’ve seen this with social, geo, and now game mechanics. Of course, all games on the Web have some sort of game mechanics—those elements of game play which make them fun and addictive. But game mechanics are spreading to all kinds of apps, most famously Foursquare (which makes you check into places for badges and rewards). At our Social Currency CrunchUp in July, we had a panel which explored how game mechanics are invading everything. (One of the CEOs on the panel was SCVNGR’s Seth Priebatsch). Every site from Mint to the Huffington Post now has some sort of game mechanics.

SCVNGR’s playdeck tries to break down the game mechanics into their constituent parts. Some elements are as basic as “achievements,” “status,” and “virtual items.” But there are also more complex ones such as the “appointment dynamic” (a player must return at a specific time and perform an action to get a reward, like in Farmville), “free lunch” (a player gets something because of the efforts of other people,like in Groupon), “fun once, fun always” (a simple action that maintains a minimum level of enjoyment no matter how many times you do it, like Foursquare’s check-ins), and “cascading information theory (give out information in the smallest dribblets possible to keep players guessing and moving forward). SCVNGR employees are instructed to memorize the flash cards. Now you can too. There will be a quiz.

SCVNGR Game Dynamics Playdeck

Guide To This Document: This list is a collection of game dynamics terms, game dynamics theories that are interesting, useful and potentially applicable to your work here at SCVNGR. Many of them have clear applications within the SCVNGR game layer (progression dynamic, actualization), many of them don’t… yet (status, virtual items). Many of them are just interesting for your general education on game dynamics theory (epic meaning, social fabric of games). Many of these game dynamics concepts are well known and are sourced from all over the internet and from researchers such as Jane McGonigal, Ian Bogost and Jess Schell and articles on gamasutra (which I highly recommend reading). Others are used exclusively internally here and won’t make any sense outside of HQ. Along with a link to this document, you will have received these dynamics in a set of flash cards. Please memorize those. If you’re on the engineering / game-design team you can access our internal game dynamics visualizer (with the most up to date dynamics) through your account. Download the SCVNGR app for iPhone& Android (if you haven’t already) and start playing. Find places where these game dynamics exist or places where you could implement them by building on the game layer using our tools, or others.

1. Achievement

Definition: A virtual or physical representation of having accomplished something. These are often viewed as rewards in and of themselves.

Example: a badge, a level, a reward, points, really anything defined as a reward can be a reward.

2. Appointment Dynamic

Definition: A dynamic in which to succeed, one must return at a predefined time to take some action. Appointment dynamics are often deeply related to interval based reward schedules or avoidance dyanmics.

Example: Cafe World and Farmville where if you return at a set time to do something you get something good, and if you don’t something bad happens.

3. Avoidance

Definition: The act of inducing player behavior not by giving a reward, but by not instituting a punishment. Produces consistent level of activity, timed around the schedule.

Example: Press a lever every 30 seconds to not get shocked.

4. Behavioral Contrast

Definition: The theory defining how behavior can shift greatly based on changed expectations.

Example: A monkey presses a lever and is given lettuce. The monkey is happy and continues to press the lever. Then it gets a grape one time. The monkey is delighted. The next time it presses the lever it gets lettuce again. Rather than being happy, as it was before, it goes ballistic throwing the lettuce at the experimenter. (In some experiments, a second monkey is placed in the cage, but tied to a rope so it can’t access the lettuce or lever. After the grape reward is removed, the first monkey beats up the second monkey even though it obviously had nothing to do with the removal. The anger is truly irrational.)

5. Behavioral Momentum

Definition: The tendency of players to keep doing what they have been doing.

Example: From Jesse Schell’s awesome Dice talk: “I have spent ten hours playing Farmville. I am a smart person and wouldn’t spend 10 hours on something unless it was useful. Therefore this must be useful, so I can keep doing it.”

6. Blissful Productivity

Definition: The idea that playing in a game makes you happier working hard, than you would be relaxing. Essentially, we’re optimized as human beings by working hard, and doing meaningful and rewarding work.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk wherein she discusses how World of Warcraft players play on average 22 hours / week (a part time job), often after a full days work. They’re willing to work hard, perhaps harder than in real life, because of their blissful productivity in the game world.

7. Cascading Information Theory

Definition: The theory that information should be released in the minimum possible snippets to gain the appropriate level of understanding at each point during a game narrative.

Example: showing basic actions first, unlocking more as you progress through levels. Making building on SCVNGR a simple but staged process to avoid information overload.

8. Chain Schedules

Definition: the practice of linking a reward to a series of contingencies. Players tend to treat these as simply the individual contingencies. Unlocking one step in the contingency is often viewed as an individual reward by the player.

Example: Kill 10 orcs to get into the dragons cave, every 30 minutes the dragon appears.

9. Communal Discovery

Definition: The game dynamic wherein an entire community is rallied to work together to solve a riddle, a problem or a challenge. Immensely viral and very fun.

Example: DARPA balloon challenge, the cottage industries that appear around McDonalds monopoly to find “Boardwalk”

10. Companion Gaming

Definition: Games that can be played across multiple platforms

Example: Games that be played on iphone, facebook, xbox with completely seamless cross platform gameplay.

11. Contingency

Definition: The problem that the player must overcome in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: 10 orcs block your path

12. Countdown

Definition: The dynamic in which players are only given a certain amount of time to do something. This will create an activity graph that causes increased initial activity increasing frenetically until time runs out, which is a forced extinction.

Example: Bejeweled Blitz with 30 seconds to get as many points as you can. Bonus rounds. Timed levels

13. Cross Situational Leader-boards

Definition: This occurs when one ranking mechanism is applied across multiple (unequal and isolated) gaming scenarios. Players often perceive that these ranking scenarios are unfair as not all players were presented with an “equal” opportunity to win.

Example: Players are arbitrarily sent into one of three paths. The winner is determined by the top scorer overall (i.e. across the paths). Since the players can only do one path (and can’t pick), they will perceive inequity in the game scenario and get upset.

14. Disincentives

Definition: a game element that uses a penalty (or altered situation) to induce behavioral shift

Example: losing health points, amazon’s checkout line removing all links to tunnel the buyer to purchase, speeding traps

15. Endless Games

Definition: Games that do not have an explicit end. Most applicable to casual games that can refresh their content or games where a static (but positive) state is a reward of its own.

Example: Farmville (static state is its own victory), SCVNGR (challenges constantly are being built by the community to refresh content)

16. Envy

Definition: The desire to have what others have. In order for this to be effective seeing what other people have (voyeurism) must be employed.

Example: my friend has this item and I want it!

17. Epic Meaning

Definition: players will be highly motivated if they believe they are working to achieve something great, something awe-inspiring, something bigger than themselves.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk where she discusses Warcraft’s ongoing story line and “epic meaning” that involves each individual has motivated players to participate outside the game and create the second largest wiki in the world to help them achieve their individual quests and collectively their epic meanings.

18. Extinction

Definition: Extinction is the term used to refer to the action of stopping providing a reward. This tends to create anger in players as they feel betrayed by no longer receiving the reward they have come to expect. It generally induces negative behavioral momentum.

Example: killing 10 orcs no longer gets you a level up

19. Fixed Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Fixed interval schedules provide a reward after a fixed amount of time, say 30 minutes. This tends to create a low engagement after a reward, and then gradually increasing activity until a reward is given, followed by another lull in engagement.

Example: Farmville, wait 30 minutes, crops have appeared

20. Fixed Ratio Reward Schedule

Definition: A fixed ratio schedule provides rewards after a fixed number of actions. This creates cyclical nadirs of engagement (because the first action will not create any reward so incentive is low) and then bursts of activity as the reward gets closer and closer.

Example: kill 20 ships, get a level up, visit five locations, get a badge

21. Free Lunch

Definition: A dynamic in which a player feels that they are getting something for free due to someone else having done work. It’s critical that work is perceived to have been done (just not by the player in question) to avoid breaching trust in the scenario. The player must feel that they’ve “lucked” into something.

Example: Groupon. By virtue of 100 other people having bought the deal, you get it for cheap. There is no sketchiness b/c you recognize work has been done (100 people are spending money) but you yourself didn’t have to do it.

22. Fun Once, Fun Always

Definition: The concept that an action in enjoyable to repeat all the time. Generally this has to do with simple actions. There is often also a limitation to the total level of enjoyment of the action.

Example: the theory behind the check-in everywhere and the check-in and the default challenges on SCVNGR.

23. Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Interval based reward schedules provide a reward after a certain amount of time. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.

Example: wait N minutes, collect rent

24. Lottery

Definition: A game dynamic in which the winner is determined solely by chance. This creates a high level of anticipation. The fairness is often suspect, however winners will generally continue to play indefinitely while losers will quickly abandon the game, despite the random nature of the distinction between the two.

Example: many forms of gambling, scratch tickets.

25. Loyalty

Definition: The concept of feeling a positive sustained connection to an entity leading to a feeling of partial ownership. Often reinforced with a visual representation.

Example: fealty in WOW, achieving status at physical places (mayorship, being on the wall of favorite customers)

26. Meta Game

Definition: a game which exists layered within another game. These generally are discovered rather than explained (lest they cause confusion) and tend to appeal to ~2% of the total gameplaying audience. They are dangerous as they can induce confusion (if made too overt) but are powerful as they’re greatly satisfying to those who find them.

Example: hidden questions / achievements within world of warcraft that require you to do special (and hard to discover) activities as you go through other quests

27. Micro Leader-boards

Definition: The rankings of all individuals in a micro-set. Often great for distributed game dynamics where you want many micro-competitions or desire to induce loyalty.

Example: Be the top scorers at Joe’s bar this week and get a free appetizer

28. Modifiers

Definition: An item that when used affects other actions. Generally modifiers are earned after having completed a series of challenges or core functions.

Example: A X2 modifier that doubles the points on the next action you take.

29. Moral Hazard of Game Play

Definition: The risk that by rewarding people manipulatively in a game you remove the actual moral value of the action and replace it with an ersatz game-based reward. The risk that by providing too many incentives to take an action, the incentive of actually enjoying the action taken is lost. The corollary to this is that if the points or rewards are taken away, then the person loses all motivation to take the (initially fun on its own) action.

Example: Paraphrased from Jesse Schell “If I give you points every time you brush your teeth, you’ll stop brushing your teeth b/c it’s good for you and then only do it for the points. If the points stop flowing, your teeth will decay.”

30. Ownership

Definition: The act of controlling something, having it be *your* property.

Example: Ownership is interesting on a number of levels, from taking over places, to controlling a slot, to simply owning popularity by having a digital representation of many friends.

31. Pride

Definition: the feeling of ownership and joy at an accomplishment

Example: I have ten badges. I own them. They are mine. There are many like them, but these are mine. Hooray.

32. Privacy

Definition: The concept that certain information is private, not for public distribution. This can be a demotivator (I won’t take an action because I don’t want to share this) or a motivator (by sharing this I reinforce my own actions).

Example: Scales the publish your daily weight onto Twitter (these are real and are proven positive motivator for staying on your diet). Or having your location publicly broadcast anytime you do anything (which is invasive and can should be avoided).

33. Progression Dynamic

Definition: a dynamic in which success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemized tasks.

Example: a progress bar, leveling up from paladin level 1 to paladin level 60

34. Ratio Reward Schedules

Definition: Ratio schedules provide a reward after a number of actions. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.

Example: kill 10 orcs, get a power up.

35. Real-time v. Delayed Mechanics

Definition: Realtime information flow is uninhibited by delay. Delayed information is only released after a certain interval.

Example: Realtime scores cause instant reaction (gratification or demotivation). Delayed causes ambiguity which can incent more action due to the lack of certainty of ranking.

36. Reinforcer

Definition: The reward given if the expected action is carried out in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: receiving a level up after killing 10 orcs.

37. Response

Definition: The expected action from the player in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: the player takes the action to kill 10 orcs

38. Reward Schedules

Definition: the timeframe and delivery mechanisms through which rewards (points, prizes, level ups) are delivered. Three main parts exist in a reward schedule; contingency, response and reinforcer.

Example: getting a level up for killing 10 orcs, clearing a row in Tetris, getting fresh crops in Farmville

39. Rolling Physical Goods

Definition: A physical good (one with real value) that can be won by anyone on an ongoing basis as long as they meet some characteristic. However, that characteristic rolls from player to player.

Example: top scorer deals, mayor deals

40. Shell Game

Definition: a game in which the player is presented with the illusion of choice but is actually in a situation that guides them to the desired outcome of the operator.

Example: 3 Card Monty, lotteries, gambling

41. Social Fabric of Games

Definition: the idea that people like one another better after they’ve played games with them, have a higher level of trust and a great willingness to work together.

Example: From Jane McGonicgal’s TED talk where she suggests that it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone because you need them to spend their time with you, play by the same rules, shoot for the same goals.

42. Status

Definition: The rank or level of a player. Players are often motivated by trying to reach a higher level or status.

Example: white paladin level 20 in WOW.

43. Urgent Optimism

Definition: Extreme self motivation. The desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s TED talk. The idea that in proper games an “epic win” or just “win” is possible and therefore always worth acting for.

44. Variable Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Variable interval reward schedules provide a reward after a roughly consistent amount of time. This tends to create a reasonably high level of activity over time, as the player could receive a reward at any time but never the burst as created under a fixed schedule. This system is also more immune to the nadir right after the receiving of a reward, but also lacks the zenith of activity before a reward in unlocked due to high levels of ambiguity.

Example: Wait roughly 30 minutes, a new weapon appears. Check back as often as you want but that won’t speed it up. Generally players are bad at realizing that.

45. Variable Ratio Reward Schedule

Definition: A variable ratio reward schedule provides rewards after a roughly consistent but unknown amount of actions. This creates a relatively high consistent rate of activity (as there could always be a reward after the next action) with a slight increase as the expected reward threshold is reached, but never the huge burst of a fixed ratio schedule. It’s also more immune to nadirs in engagement after a reward is acheived.

Example: kill something like 20 ships, get a level up. Visit a couple locations (roughly five) get a badge

46. Viral Game Mechanics

Definition: A game element that requires multiple people to play (or that can be played better with multiple people)

Example: Farmville making you more successful in the game if you invite your friends, the social check-in

47. Virtual Items

Definition: Digital prizes, rewards, objects found or taken within the course of a game. Often these can be traded or given away.

Example: Gowalla’s items, Facebook gifts, badges

Nokia & Burton = push snowboarding

aaron.michie@bmf.com.au (Aaron Michie) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 23:39:00 +0000

Fantastic open source approach and what a pointer to what Nike+ could have been if Apple didn;t do it ;)

http://blogs.nokia.com/pushburton/