Clear Night Sky - Digital Marketing, Rational and Effective

Don't Tweet to Facebook unless...

Steve Nelson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:48:43 -0700

IMHO it's bad form to automatically feed your Facebook status with your Twitter tweets as a one-way toss over the transom. I'm seeing an increasing number of Facebook accounts where my newsfeed shows someone's status update along with replies and ensuing conversations, but where the original poster is oblivious to this because they don't check in on Facebook.

It's OK to connect your services, but be responsible for the conversations you start.

Just saying.

MJ and Internet Insanity

Lina Smelansky — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:24:41 -0700

It is June 26, the day after the death of the King of Pop. It is still surreal for me to type these words and comprehend the truth – Michael Jackson is dead.

Amidst all the feelings of shock and nostalgia, it occurred to me how quickly this news spread across the world. With social networking sites playing such a huge role in our daily routines, it is not surprising that sites like Facebook and Twitter were the first to notify many.

As a rather credible news source, CNN has been covering the impact of MJ’s death – “Jackson dies – almost takes Internet with him.” With the news spreading like wildfire across the Web, from searches to social network status updates, this type of event was the closest thing to the Internet “breaking.”

In addition to Google Trends reporting the “volcanic” search volume, Twitter crashed, Google news was temporarily out of service, and AOL Instant Messenger shut down for 40 whole minutes. In short – Online Armaggedon.

For some of us, June 25 will become a significant date: the day the world said goodbye to an American icon. (And to IMs for 40 minutes).

RIP MJ.

Self-Branding through Facebook

Akbar Pasha — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:50:57 -0700

I want to talk about how Facebook has replaced our personal public branding (especially for the individuals, more for the companies in a later post) and how people are benefiting from it and how some people are losing out.

To explain this, I want to talk about 2 stories.

1. Facebook Usernames : Have you gotten yours yet? If not, you missed the maddest digital namespace gold rush one can ever witness, it happened last Friday. Facebook announced couple of days back they are going to be assigning Usernames to their users. You may wonder how they have been working without one so far? Well, they do have user numbers so far, and an email address is used for authentication. Now, this username would appear in the url(A prominent digital real estate). Something very very important - because not only Google would index that url and store it forever into the future but this would be an one stop shop for everyone else on the net to get any information about you.

500,000 people registered for their name in the first 15 mins of opening the gates. Over the weekend over 6 million got their names. That's just mind boggling numbers. I believe over a period of time Facebook has grown from "I-know-these-people" to "This-is-how-I-Brand-myself" system. Having 1000's of friends is no longer cool. But what you have in common with them and what you do differently from them is cool. Taking those millions (often annoying) tests, quizzes is not just killing time but defining and stating who we are with respect to those results that these Quizzes produce.

Facebook has grown from a bunch of PHP files to a huge Platform, a eco-system where 3rd party developers can add in their creativity and build applications for the user base of FB. This means, a million ways I can differentiate and make myself unique and branded in my own style. All this would be done under your account of Facebook. Pretty soon - FB would be the standard profile you would be giving out to people (The fine grained settings of who sees what - would keep on growing).

I am more convinced about this because I observed a shift with two services I use with respect to FB.

Flickr: Long time ago, I created a Flickr account. I have about 15GB of pictures, most of them should never see the light of the day! But I was under the impression that I should load up all my pics onto my Flickr(pro) account and believed that "they will come". Well, I got tired of uploading them half way through and my picture gallery hallways were lonely and haunting. This was even before FB was around. Then came along FB. People started to add their pictures to it. Now it becomes interesting because you can tag people in it and sometimes if you have really old pictures, you can embarrass them too. Jokes aside, what this did was - I filtered out my pics (not all 15,289 pics need to be on Internet) and I put out pics which are meaningful and somehow enables participation of my friends. Along the way what I am also doing is - I building a public self-image.

Twitter: Twitter, as you all know is the bomb diggity of anything that has ever been invented. Or that's what we are told. I think twitter is a very un-disciplined system. You have many followers, but they are not invested, may be interested but not committed to you. Usually the Twitter stream gets updated pretty fast and it's hard to keep track. So, over a period of time followers develop 'follower forgetfulness' - which basically means I follow about 4000 people and I don't really care what they do. And as for the leaders on Twitter, they wouldn't stop with their thoughtful posts but they would post before, during & after they have been to a restroom. This leads to 'Twitter Clutter'.

Enter Facebook. What Facebook provided to Twitter is "Context". Under FB's aegis it was relayed to my friends rather than my mindless million followers. This helped me to further my message to my group of friends. To brand myself with certain thinking.

Don't get me wrong about Flickr & Twitter. I love both these services, I just think as more and more FB becomes successful at being our Digital Home - Flickr is predominantly going to be used as a photo backup system and Twitter will predominantly be used as 'News' relayed in real time system. Imagine what happened in the case of Iran elections. Because of Twitter we know a lot about what happened in Iran in real time. And as time progresses it might end up being used a lot by news agencies, marketing agencies, celebrities, tech celebrities etc. I know a lot of people who use Twitter to relay their company's message and FB to relay what they personally think.

So, anyhow how all this is connected to Facebook name madness? Because, like I mentioned it's going to be indexed and linked on major search engines. These usernames will become your visiting cards, persona, branding machine. As for me, I did my share in participating in this madness. At 9:20PM I sneaked out from a bunch of friends visiting us, having a heated debate about Spirituality and registered my name. I am reborn from fb/644977146 to fb/akbarpasha. My new self-branded digital home. People with common names & who delayed were disappointed.

2. Facebook Laggards: I am pretty sure many of us have at least 1 friend who defies Facebook gravity, who refuses to join Facebook and calls it a waste of time. I am very much embarrassed to say that my best friend is one of those guys. Because he is not connected to anyone of our classmates, he is completely out of touch with our group of friends. The only friends he know or keeps in touch are the ones in his iPhone - that's limited by his talk time & available minutes.

Facebook Laggards are missing out on their digital branding. It's not just about keeping in touch anymore. There is more to it. My friend doesn't participate in what's happening in our little FB world. He doesn't know how and what our buddies think now 10 years later after we left our MBA school. Many have moved onto do pretty cool things, but my friend is not aware of any of it. He lives in a digital desert. His imagination limited by his phone book. What more can I say? He moved to Alabama, became a hardcore conservative (Republican!) and is a fan of O'Reilly show. Gasp.

But as time progressed - I kinda became his window to our Facebook world. Everyone sends a message to me about him and I get back to them about him. I sort of turned myself into his branding manager.

So, if you have any friends who are refusing to join Facebook on the basis of not being part of the herd mentality - please tell them that it's more than just address book with pretty pictures. It's the future digital brand, a identity.

From Berkeley to Honolulu via Google Maps, Good Shoes and a Paddle

Steve Nelson — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:46:15 -0700

I asked Google Maps the quickest way of getting from Berkeley to Hawaii, and it suggested an interesting route of driving from Berkeley up to Seattle and then kayaking to Honolulu. Why drive, I thought, so here is the route from the Clear Ink office to Honolulu via foot and paddle. Click the link at the bottom that says "View Larger Map" to see the exact route. I love the disclaimer: "Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths."

View Larger Map
I'm not sure why it doesn't start me out at the Berkeley Marina which is about two blocks away.

From .com to .ru - a Passport to International Social Networking

Lina Smelansky — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:36:48 -0700

As I was bidding my farewells to the friends I made on my latest family vacay in Russia, I pulled one of these, "Keep in touch, add me on Facebook!" .....whoops!

As it turns out, not only did they know what I was talking about, but they have their own version of Facebook!

It's called "V Kontakte," literally meaning "In Contact." The similarities to the Facebook design are uncanny - from the interface, to the features and apps, to the page layouts - these social networking sites are practically identical!

Even on the other side of the world, the impact of social networking is quite staggering. What is remarkable is how quickly these sites have been socialized on a global scale. The last time I visited family and friends in Moscow, the only way we kept in touch was through email. Now with "V Kontakte," I can share photos, messages, and keep up to date with everything going on in the "motherland" (like my guilty pleasure Russian pop songs, shhh!).

In today's economic climate, round trip plane tickets may be a bit of a splurge. But with a virtual passport at your fingertips, you can embark on your own international getaway!

Now it's that easy to stay "V Kontakte"..... I like this! (insert thumbs up)

Ashton Kutcher, media mogul, leapfrogs newspapers in "subscribers"

Steve Nelson — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:24:32 -0700

Ashton Kutcher now has more subscribers on Twitter than any US newspaper except USA Today ~~and Wall Street Journal~~ has for its paper news.
He's closing fast on ~~those two~~ that one. (In the one day since I started writing this blog, he's surpassed the Wall Street Journal).

If you don't think the comparison counts, I wonder how many of his 2 million followers buy or read paper news as regularly as they check Twitter?

How does this flocking behavior work in social media? Kind of like this (RT @aplusk):

Cisco Replaces General Motors on Dow 30 Industrials Index

Steve Nelson — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:30:11 -0700

Cisco has replaced General Motors on the Dow 30 Industrials index, further symbolizing the rise of the well-clichéd "Information Superhighway" relative to industries based on actual superhighways. This isn't a literal substitution - people haven't dramatically moved to drive less because online shopping is easier, though it does seem to be elastic with gas prices.

Recall the Yellow Pages slogan "Let Your Fingers Do the Walking" which implied that at one time, you had to do a lot of walking (not driving) to find goods and services.
AT&T is still in the Dow 30, as fingers still walk over keyboards and cell phones, while B.F. Goodrich, maker of shoes for all that real world walking and tires for all that real world driving, joins GM in the league of also-rans.

The Upside of the Downturn pt1

David Howard — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:45:58 -0700

Listening to the daily recession news reminds me of ordering a coffee at Starbucks.
In the case of Starbucks, you start with the smallest (a tall) and end up with something
akin to a trough of latte. In the case of this recession, it begins with a disaster and
ends up with something akin the end of mankind as we know it.

Under all of this gloom,
there are a number of nuggets that need to be uncovered.
Not the least of which is the fact that we've been here before! This is not the first
worldwide recession - nor is it the last.
One interesting tidbit about recessions, they open up huge opportunities for innovation
and positioning against the competition. Don't forget, your competition is hurting too.
As many companies are pulling back on programs and development, the field is left open
for forward thinking businesses to jump far ahead of the competition.
Today, I ran across an interesting list published by Inc.com. The names on this list
are companies that were started during similar times. Included on that list:

- HP
- IBM
- Microsoft
- Symantec
- Coors
- UPS
- Herman Miller
- Walt Disney
- Toys R Us
- Dominos Pizza

Instead of putting the breaks on and stopping their business plans, these companies
powered forward and took advantage of the situation.

The Psychology of Twitter

David Burk — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:41:48 -0700

Thanks to Kevin Macguire's Innovation Diaries for a wonderful post about how to understand the motivations of Twitter junkies in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I recently posted a joke chart about this--ridiculing the "I'm going to the rest room" crowd--but this is a great piece in terms of understanding what is often perceived as the arrogance of the digirati, the culture of online and where Twitter seems to be on the adoption curve.

I am especially fond of the "non-user berating" that is funny because it is so true. As opposed to Facebook, Twitter has 7 million monthly visits" and no business model. This doesn't mean I am against Twitter--I think it's a siren for things to come--but it is bigger than life for current users. Even the founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, seems to need some safety reassurance based on this tweet: “couple near me at whole foods are discussing Twitter. she thinks it’s boring. bitch.” (@ev)"

What The Googles Are Up To

David Burk — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:15:54 -0700

Thanks to active Twitterpaters @johnbattelle and @thepartycow, you can read about some new options Google is testing at "Google Blogoscoped". The post includes screenshots, and a link to this YouTube video of the options in action.

Here's a summary:

What happens is that on the search results, say for the query comic books, a link in the top blue bar will read “Show options...”. Click it, and a side bar full of options expands to the left. The options include some known experiments, plus things I didn’t see so far. There are restriction options to show only recent results, only videos, only forum entries, or only reviews. You can sort by relevance, or by date, and you can only show results from time ranges like the past 24 hours or the past week. You can opt to receive longer snippet text, and images. There’s also a timeline feature and search suggestions.

Basically, you can limit your results to things like videos, forum posts, etc. But for all the time Google spends on indexing and cross-referencing text, I wonder if they are coming up with a plan to address the "semantic web". Text is a container for meaning, and there are many people working on this conflict, which would obviate some of Google's technology. If you'd like to learn more, here's a primer on the semantic web.