Audience, Publisher and Publience

Audience

The potential efficiency for peoples consumption of new and information content has improved exponentially with the advent of twitter. On my iPhone, I can consume 50 messages, and click through to maybe 10 pictures or articles in about 5 minutes. I can’t do that any other way. I wouldn’t know where to click, what is of interest, or what is good. If I was to try to do that actively, by visiting blogs, news and scanning, I’d be burnt out in 30 minutes. With twitter, it’s a passive experience, and stimulating rather than tiring. On twitter, I have a filter of likeminded individuals who will scout out good or relevant content for me, and say, ‘look at this’ and give me a hashtag to identify its nature. And, of course, I do the same for them.

Having 200 hand-picked sub editors at your beck and call is a great thing. Not only can I consume perhaps 10 times more efficiently than before... what I can consume is 10 times more pertinent, relevant and of interest. That makes 100 times, of something. There’s no need for surfing. This way is so much quicker, and just works much better.

Publisher

Publishers have fragmented the access to their content, and their content. Newspapers with 30 pages have become headlines to articles from a certain category tweeted to the interested. They are more interesting to the consumer because of this filtering. I’m not interested in Irish party politics at the moment, but I get tech news articles tweeted to my iPhone from the Guardian, and a host of other mainstream sources... ones I’d never buy. One ‘publication(s)’ has 100 articles in 20 categories tweeted to a couple of million readers... Now, that’s a business model... if it carries even a tiny logo from a business. Think about it. Eminently trackable. Eminently costable. Eminently consumable. And so turn-on-and-offable.

Publience

I tweet therefore I am. Tweeting and reading and @ing and DMing. SMS, meets Email, meets Blogging, meets feedback and CRM meets advertising, networking and social media. Where do you draw the line between the audience and the publishers when the audience is a publisher in their own micro or macro blogging or social media , or forum posting right. You don’t. Bloggers and tweeters become journalists too, (cf. Persiankitty and many other examples.)

The Mix of Sliding Scales

Through the twitter filter of follower and following sub-editors, the capacity to engage with the world grows, but the exposure to linear, non-filtered content shrinks.

The remit of the public service broadcaster involved creating content to educate and enhance the population. It involved making programs they may not actually have asked for, or want, so that their exposure to ‘educational’ content would be increased, something impossible in a wholly commercial environment. The twitter fan-base of friendly followers and tweeters has no such remit.

But, it’s a sliding scale. The capacity to get content not offered by a mainstream source increases hugely and a lot of this can be educational and enhance a population.

Also, the capacity for states to control a nation’s view of the world, as soviet Russia did for its own population for perhaps 50 years, has shrunk. Propaganda is a much more difficult game than it used to be.

But, it’s a sliding scale. The capacity for the creation of factions, with an intensely ideologically driven micro view of the world... however inaccurate that may be, has increased. Twitter creates cliques, and not all cliques are hobby driven, or benevolent.

The capacity for slanted or misinformed views to fly around the world has increased too with twitter. But, so too has the capacity for the correction of incorrect or misleading information. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. It’s a sliding scale.

What is Twitter and Will It Last

Who cares? It’s popular and it works’ – you say.  Or, alternately, ‘I’m glad you asked that question, I was afraid to ask because everyone seemed to know all about it’.  Well, in the spirit of working out why things are popular and what they do that works so well -  so that at some stage we can all spot, or develop the next big thing... I care.  Here are my thoughts.

Short messaging combined with blogging

Blogs have suffered from long messaging... this one included.  Wannabe writers wittering on about their inane existence ad nauseam.   Some go nuts writing their super work of philosophical politico treatise in public... waiting to be discovered by another genius, like the soap box geniuses shouting at Hyde Park corner.  While others give a sometimes boring, sometimes entertaining kitchen sink real time Shirley Valentine drama.  Some shock, writing about their job as a hooker or psychiatrist, while others muse amusingly on this and that or shout angrily populist sentiment to the gathering mob (they hope).  The one problem with all of these types of blogs is they are self indulgent, self centred and full of both pride and shame in equal measure.  It’s like watching a manic depressive slowly unravel their shattered character in front of you.  A slow motion personality car crash... and there’s nothing you can do to help, or would necessarily wish to.  OK. That came out harsh... and I'm a blogger, so I can say that.  No?

But for Twitter, 150 characters per message is short, but it’s enough to say what you’re doing.   Micro-blogging.  Not much time for self indulgence in each message, though you could with several  message, and some do tweet far too often.  The size per tweet is also a challenge.  It’s very short.  To answer this challenge, a friend of mine has taken to tweeting short stories for Twitter.  ‘It was a simple plan, but then they were simple people and so, it didn’t quite work out as it should have.  Pity that!’  A mini haikuesque saga.  (Thanks Jo.)

Following People

So, twitter messages are like text messages really, but you can get messages from famous people.  Jonathan Ross, Barack Obama, Stephen Fry are leading the way, but the Dalai Llama, Brian Cowan and probably the Pope aren’t far behind.  Ratzinger @ emmetkelly You are going to hell because you don’t believe in hell, or heaven.  emmetkelly @ ratzinger See you there?

This is fun.  It’s efficient.  It’s novel and it’s new... so, it will join the ever increasing gamut of media messages we can choose to expose ourselves to.

Advertising

In amongst the tweets are the ads.  This means Twitter has a business model.  The ads are small, not interruptive or irritating but yet they cannot be ignored.  As long as there aren’t too many, this will work.  Oh, and they click through too to whole webpages.  SMS can’t do that.

Pictures and Media

TinyURL has never been so busy, because long internet page locations need to be minimized.  Pictures, sound, quotes, videos... all with your tweet.  SMS can’t do that either.  It’s easier than MMS, and takes up no memory because the files are hosted on the wonderful interweb.  Very efficient, novel, new and fun... so it will last.

Connectedness and Belonging

We are social beings.  We need to be connected.  If we aren’t, we get lonely.  Being alone for even 40 days and nights is likely to get you in the bible.  Loneliness drives Internet communication because it solves the problem.  Twitter takes it to another level, especially when it’s on your phone.  People don’t like to be seen to spend too much time at their PC living their virtual life because it’s obviously visibly solving some need, or something lacking in their real offline life (unless its work of course).  But, with twitter, it’s on your phone.  You get little funny text messages from your friend Stephen Fry.  How cool is that.  And you can tweet him back, and he might even reply.  Hilarious.  You belong.  You’ve arrived.  You have friends... Famous ones.  Lots of them.  And, you’re not in front of a monitor, unless you choose to be.

When twitter is combined with the excellent Locle.ie and Facebook... you’ve arrived.  You have friends, you can see everything about them, and they can you, and you can follow them, and with Locle, you can see where they are on a Google map.  ‘Oh, look, Sean’s at home.’ SMS to Sean.  Goggin’s in 20? (why do my posts always involve pubs... hmmmm).  Tweet: Dart is broken down.  But, look at the bird at the station. I may be some time: twitpic.com/*&JJ(*UFRGF.  When you update your Locle status, it tweets automatically.  Again, very efficient and very clever.

Open API

The mini techie bit of this post.  Twitter has an open API which means that anyone can program a widget for the program, and thus ensure its vast potential will only grow.  More add-ons, plug-ins and enhancements and we’ll be tweeting for a very long time to come.

So, soon, we’ll all be Twitterers.  Soon, we’ll see TwitterAds.  Twitter has big advantages over SMS and may be the answer many issues in the mobile marketing quandary... ‘how do I give my recipients the change to see my products and services.  Semi-impossible with SMSs.  Perfect for Tweets.

Happy Valentine’s Day iPhone

Happy Valentine’s Day iPhone.  Never leave my side.  I’d be lost without you.

OK.  As you can see, the honeymoon period isn’t exactly over.  It’s been six months or so since we met, but I’ve grown accustomed to her face and can now gauge how my life is different since I met her, and how I want it to stay this way forever.

A few months back a friend called me and said... ‘Hey Mr. Kelly, want a new iPhone for €99,’ and I said, ‘Hey.  Yeah.  Why not?  I hear she’s something special.’  It was a blind date.  I had no idea...

When we met it was strange.  I held her immediately tightly.  She was so small, and light in my hand, I found myself exploring her surface in disbelief.  She was so beautiful.  I kept finding new things, touching, swiping and pinching, and I instinctively and immediately felt like protecting her in case she got a bump or scratch.  A cover, a guard.  Oh yes... if something happened to her beautiful surface I would have blamed myself and I couldn’t cope with that.  I wasn’t good enough for a smartphone this beautiful.  But I knew nothing of her power.

A mate introduced me her App store... Wow.  I hadn’t even noticed the funny little icon skulking shyly beneath the calculator.  You see, when she was a doddle to integrate with Outlook, iTunes etc, etc, etc. I thought great, that’s it.  What’s all the fuss about.  But I was so wrong.  It was just the beginning.  The early days were halcyon though. Everything worked, if you read the instructions, but they mostly said ‘plug it in and don’t touch anything!’ which is exactly what I did.

The most incredible thing about her I think is that everything does work, which is strange if you’re a techy like me and used to the challenge a new machine offers for setup, tweaking... optimizing.  That used to be both the frustration and part of the fun.  Tempting a new machine into working for you.  The chase.  Not being beaten.  Conquest.  But the iPhone was such a pure doddle I ended up doing things I never thought I’d do.  Just for the hell of it.  Waiting to be let down, to confirm my insecurities, but no.  We had such fun.  For example, I’m not a big music collector, but I had to use the iPod, simply because it said it worked and it did work.  Immediately.  The early Leonard Cohen sounds just didn’t fit though because I was too happy with my new machine, not sad... So, I moved on.  What else worked?  Well... let me tell you.

Social network applications work perfectly without opening your Safari browser: Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and a few others.  When a mate I haven’t seen for 20 years say’s ‘I’m bored’ I know he’s bored immediately.  (OK, that’s a bit sad, but you take the point).  When Stephen Fry is stuck in a lift, I can see him in the lift. It was pretty funny actually.  He’s a big tech head it seems and he tweets fun stuff around.  (E.g., ‘devolve-me’ - see what you look like as an early human -http://tinyurl.com/9tacnt)

Then there are the email accounts, SMS, WiFi, Contacts and Phone, Maps, Around Me, Vicinity and Google Earth.

Then there are the free retro games (Submarine, Pacman etc) and the widgets which use the angle of the machine, (Biiball and Topple).  Then fun marketing ones like Carlsberg and Zippo.

Then there’s the music apps (Piano, Guitar, minisynth (kids love this one)) and Ocarina (a wind instrument believe it or not.  You blow over the mic and put fingers over the virtual holes.)  It all works

Then there’s the Television app, where you can.... em, watch TV for free, another one where you can control your SkyBox at home and then there’s the Radio (200 or so categorised stations (no BBC though).  Reference (Google, Wikiamo, WorldWiki).  YouTube is great too, and works really well, with full screen and good sound.  eBay too if I had something left to sell.

Then there’s the academic stuff.  Stanza (1000s of copyright expired classic books), Translaters (Ultralingua, French, Italian).  The language phrase books actually say the words for you so you’re pronounciation is good.  If someone answers you’re stuffed but you’re half way there.  (‘Help.  I need my inhaler!’ ‘Τι είναι μια εισπνευστήρ? ‘Uggggggghhh?’ 'He say's his hovercraft is fully of eels!' 'No, can I change this record, it is scratched.' 'Ahhhh... Second turn on the left, The chemist is on the corner.')

Then there are the utilites.  Stocks n shares, Notes, word and spreadsheets, super clock, calculator, calendar, text, blog writer and pic grabber and poster. 

And, that’s only the start.  One of the joys of my new friend is finding all the rest of the stuff you can download and run for free, or nearly nothing.  It’s also the weakness.  She can eat up time.  It’s a work machine, a toy, an education and finally, did I tell you?  It’s works?  That’s the bit I can’t believe.  5 rewarding minutes spent with her is like a week with another resulting in failure.  You choose.

Loyalty grows and she never leaves my side.  My laptop is in a jealous sulk and my workstation is ready to dump me and isn’t even talking to the network.  ‘But it’s only a phone...’ I hear you say.  ‘There are plenty more phones in the sea.’  Yeah right!  Thought you’d say that.  Well, I can’t listen to that now.  I just have to check to see if Stephen Fry was up for the ISDN linked voice over in London before filming this morning.  He shouldn’t have had that last voddie!  I suppose, after a night shoot, you’d need something to help you sleep.  Twitterific! 

So, Happy Valentine iPhone.  Listen, are you doing anything on Saturday?  You see, I’ve found this lovely restaurant...  What do you think?  Don’t worry.  I’ll plug you in for a re-charge later afterwards... Whatya say?

Very Short Story: Friday Night Mobile Marketing: Dublin 2012

Keith left the front door of his apartment and tweeted.

Keith: ‘OK.  I’ve left.’

Fachna: ‘Stuck in a lift, should be there in 20.’

Sophie: ‘I hate snow.  Who knows.  1 hour?’

Keith @ Sophie: ‘Come when the kids are down.’

Sophie @ Keith: ‘I’m hardly leaving when they’re running around.  Am I...’

Fachna: ‘It’s decided.  Goggins’ at 9.30.  So sick of this lift guys.  Something smells baaad and it’s me.  Not this time anyway! J’

Passing the Cineplex Keith was vouchered.  ‘Mermaids of the Caribbean with Bradly Armpit and Sterile Creep.   30% off with this voucher.  Offer till 9.30pm, Dun Laoghaire Branch.’  ‘Damn’, thought Keith.  ‘I need to leave BrightKite on so the crew can follow.  I’ll be voucher central by the time I arrive.’

He was right.  5 minutes walking - 5 vouchers.  One a minute.  Vouchers for tyres, burgers, holidays, a charity and bizarrely, free dog grooming had found his iPhone and entered it as he moved toward his local.  ‘How did they know I have a dog?’

Text from Sophie: ‘Where are you?  I’m at the back – smoking section.  Guinness?’ Reply: ‘Yep.  There in a bit’.  

iPod time.  Girl from Impanema retro-electro.  Free iTune with a Big Mac.  Quite good really, he thought.

Hitting Goggin’s he went straight to the smoking section.  Empty. Panic set in.  Did they go somewhere else without telling me? Text to Sophie: ‘Thought you said Goggins’ smoking section.  Where are you’ Reply: ‘Patience pet.  I’m on the loo.  Are they there yet?’  Keith breathed a sigh of relief and sat down.

‘Heya!’  It was Shelley. ‘Hey Shells.  Sophie’s in the bog.  Drink?’ said Keith.  ‘Thought she said an hour?’ said Shelley.  ‘Sophie O’Neil, not Sophie Sophie.  Look. Fachna’s stuck in a lift, but he’s on cam.’  ‘Hilarious,’ said Shell, and clicked ferociously on her screen.

Both Sophies arrived at the table at the same time and joined Keith and Shell. Fachna cammed from the lift with the help of Hotel wifi.  Keith sat back and surveyed the crew, taking the odd suck from his pint.

‘So.  Any news?’

There was a short pause while they all looked at each other, then at their phones and then they exploded with laughter.  ‘Not in the last 30 seconds ya eejit,’ said Sophie Sophie. ‘But we’ll keep you posted!’  Then each, in turn, picked up their respective phone from the table and started tapping.  ‘Another monosyllabic Friday in Goggins’,’ thought Keith and gestured the barman for a fresh pint.  ‘I should’ve stayed at home!’ Then he took out his own iPhone and joined them… each in their own respective personalized mobile silo lifeworld interconnected by messaging, tweets and status updates; separated by a few feet of table and a few drinks, or in Fachna’s case, a few miles and the wall of the lift stuck between the 14^th and 15^th.  Videos and pics passed.  Occasional snickers and the odd… ‘Get a look at this!  Have you downloaded this one?’ ‘That is so cool. Send a link.’  And then back to tapping.

Tweet: Sophie @ Keith: ‘This is so ****ing boring.  Let’s get out of here. Have some fun if u want to.’ Keith @ Sophie: ’15 mins.  Your place.’  Sophie got up suddenly and speaking as she left said, ‘I’ll see yous.  Don’t wait up.’ Keith @ Sophie ‘Kiss kiss – Mwah!’  Sophie @ Keith ‘J’

Keith was vouchered again on the way back to Sophie’s and annoyingly one was a ‘Buy 1 get 1 Free’ for Guinness at Goggins’.  ‘Reliability in a World of Change. Offer closes midnight.’  ‘Might have numbed the boredom,’ thought Keith.

Reaching the door he got a text from Fachna ‘Hey mate.  Out of the lift now so off cam.  Where are you guys? Physically I mean.’  Keith replied: ‘Sorry mate, you missed it, home now’.  ‘Bo**ocks,’ texted Fachna.  ‘What a Friday night that was!’ Keith felt guilty.  Poor Fachna.  So not fair on him.

But as he shut the door to Sophie’s apartment he heard a baby’s distraught cry.  ‘He’s up,’ called Sophie.  ‘Damn it!’  Keith looked up the stairs and listened as Sophie picked her infant son up from his cot, and carried him to the bedroom. He looked at the TV screen flashing away in the front room, and he looked again at Fachna’s text. 

Text to Fachna: ‘Feck it mate.  Goggin’s in 10 mins it is.  You need a Guinness. It’s on me.’

10 Digital Attitudes to help your Company Survive the Recession

1)  Big Online Brand Lessons for Offline Brands

The brands that will weather the recession are online brands like Amazon, Google and Pay Pal.  Web only brands, great market share, and they know what they are doing.  They are also flexible, and do not need tonnes of bricks and mortar to do business.  Did you ever see that documentary on Amazon?  Huge warehouses... thousands of miles of conveyor belts, millions of books and almost no people.  All brands have to learn from these and become more efficient, and by efficient, I mean net driven.  A little investment today creates great efficiency and a recession proof path to market.  Not doing digital means not being flexible, efficient, modern or competitive in today’s world of marketing.  No digital front door, no digital communications and a huge limitation on the number of customers.

 

2)  Carrying out your own research

First class of Bus Org in 1984, and Greg O’Conner asked what the most important element of any business was.  He wrote the school books on Bus Org at the time.  No one guessed... The answer? Market research... A lesson I never forgot it... probably because I slept through the rest of the course.

Research online is more efficient than research has ever been.  But, be warned, buying software is no more likely to make you a researcher than booking a hotel room makes your chat with drink softened strangers a research focus group.  Still, I recommend buying the best software you can, not the cheapest, and make sure there’s training and support and you can save thousands on expensive market research options.  Inquisite is good but costs a bit.  Cheap/free software like surveymonkey is just too simple, and will never give you the outputs you need.  Like everything else, you gets what you pays for!  Use other software to research word of mouth online.  Quick, efficient and clean.  Net Behaviour can also help here with our funky new buzz monitor service.

3)  Added Value

More for the same money, especially when services are bundled together.  More impressions, more tracking, more reporting, more data, more customers delivered to the client.  We just have to work harder and we’ll make the same money!

 

4)  Inspiration and the Multi-disciplinary

 

Now is the time for multi-disciplinary people on the pay roll.  The set that can turn their hand to most things, but most importantly have special interests of their own, which constitutes them as experts in one or two sectors.  Someone is good at video games in the office, someone else can blog, another has a keen eye for good viral marketing executions, while someone else can get stuck in the backend of data driven systems and get outputs that are in plain English.  These are the people for today’s marketing team.  Quirky originality and talent is good.  This is the age of the nerd.

 

5)  Packaging and Bundling Reductions

We’re seeking to bundle our services to create efficiencies for our customer base, and think you should do the same.  Advertising, brand tracking, creative and blog monitoring with a single all-in value cost.  Also you should explore such things like content generation, customer relationship management, but above all, make sure that any mix you come up with is innovative and creative and exciting, but simple and buyable too.  Fix a price people can afford above inviting a negotiation which ever increasing costs that will make a customer nervous.  And, stick to the price.

6)  Digital Literacy

 

Without foreknowledge of the scale of the disasters that would hit 2009, I did loosely predict in a previous post that the digital literacy divide would grow, and today staying on the right side of that literacy equation for the modern marketer has become both an imperative for themselves and for their companies.  The most efficient way of doing things is also the best value, and computer driven solutions are 1000s of times more efficient than others... especially for advertisers.  The net is more efficient in terms of time, cost, value, flexibility, effectiveness and consequently gives better ROI.  The super Google PPC bidding system for example has revolutionised ad buying for all media in my opinion and it works because of giant computer silos munching all that valuable search/need data.  What we’ve seen from these guys is only the beginning, but understanding and learning how to get the most from Google inventions is only at the early stages too.  When you hear someone who says ‘I know a guy who knows all that stuff,’ they don’t! No one does.  It is the utterance and wishful thinking on the part of the net illiterate who wants to persuade you they are safely on the digital bandwagon.  

Indeed travelling today’s digital landscape is an ongoing battle to speak new languages and understand new concepts as you progress.  It’s an ongoing exploration of such scale it would have made the likes of Alexander the Great or Marco Polo stay at home and stare at the wall. But then again, these guys were at the forefront of the technology of their time.  Siege engines, war machines, cartography and natural science maybe, but there's a lesson there too surely.

 

7)  Experimental Marketing

 

With new challenges come new approaches.  Innovation is the cornerstone of successful marketing in 2009, and this means mixing old modes of communication, and coming up with killer ideas which explain the essence of a brand in the modern context.  (Easy to say, hard to do,  has to be done.) There is no time for new marketers to say they don’t understand the net, or don’t believe in digital, because it is just too efficient and turn-on-and-offable to ignore.  People who think this way are as inescapably on the verge of extinction as those who defended the steam engine.  Yes, other things work, and will get you there safely, but if you don’t see it, you don’t get it or don’t want to because you haven’t the time to take to understand why digital is better.  Maybe you’re afraid of going too fast? 

 

From a pure advertising point of view, lessons from the Walkers crisps in recent times show that this could be the most creative and exciting cross mode, including digital, marketing time this century.  I want to taste Cajun Squirrel crisps, to see if they do taste better than my flavour, New York Pastrami and Gherkin and I’ll buy a pack as a result as will about 3 million others in a similar predicament.  That's clever marketing, and who'd have though it would be for the humble bag of crisps.

 

8)  The Opportunity presented by Needs Must

 

We all must still do business despite the incessant news of doom and gloom, and we just have to be cleverer about it.  And if budgets have been cut, you still have to do something.  In fact, I’d say that those who can’t afford today’s digital solutions probably can’t afford anything... and have probably already gone bust.  But, for those who haven’t... seek and you shall find and who dares wins and other clichés. With digital comes a myriad of opportunities.  Those who were there when the dot com bubble burst and got the net bug knew there were opportunities then despite the almost total lack of business.  Things are infinitely rosier now thanks to broadband, iPhone, Social Networks and the rest of the tech developments that exponentially expand the reach of this most versatile two directional medium the world has ever seen.

 

9)  Cheap Luxuries Mentality brings the Masses Online in Droves

 

An economic truth: when times get tougher people still need to cheer themselves up with luxuries and the cheaper ones grow in popularity.  Pizzas and takeaways replace the restaurant, cans in replaces pub nights out, lipstick and knickers are sold by the truckload instead of that gúna nua. Video rentals also increase.  Well, the net has cheap or free music, video, TV, films, chat, dating, games, Skype, web text and even porn... and all-in for a single cheap monthly charge.   So, this is where your customers are going are spending more and more of their spare time and they’re likely to have much more of this too.  Net use kills time so more effectively than TV or radio, and young hardly ever buy newspapers these days. 

10)      IP Society

And best of all the Internet is a social activity. When you maybe can’t afford to be physically social, virtually social beats solo every time.  TV used to be social, but now people are watching videos in bedrooms, on DVD players, or other devices, so they’re not sitting getting embarrassed in front of their parents when something rude happens on the box in the corner. 

These days, things are much less family oriented and much more solo and this where the net comes into its own.  It’s a physically solo, virtually social networking balance which seems to satisfy the social needs of humans in this progressively solitary age.  Sitting alone at home with a can chatting or playing a game or watching videos with mates on the Internet feels much less sad and lonely than the same evening spent staring at Desperate Housewives, ER and QI. Your mates are home alone with you after all - texting, chatting and calling you for free.

And, for the business man, since your customers are online, you need to be there, or they won’t even know you exist.

Listening to the Blogosphere

Listening, I was taught as a child, is an art.  Quite strange really, for a house where all seven of us kids had something to say that was just so important we all had to say it at same time while getting steadily louder and louder until either the food was gone or someone lost their voice, or tempers frayed and it ended in chaos.  In fact, dinner in the Kelly house resembled less the orderly meal of the model of the civilized South Dublin society than the scene from a Rwandan refugee camp when the UN are flinging rations to the heaving, starving, roaring masses.

That being said... there was a lesson to be learned.  If you want to say something, find a calm quiet forum to say it, communicate it in a clear, calm, consistent manner and if it doesn’t get heard, write it down.  That’s what blogs are for.  They are for writing something down for others to read in their own time.  If readers don’t agree with what you’ve written, they can comment, again, in their own time, and you can reply in yours.  The problem with the Irish blogosphere however is that it is as crowded as the aforementioned refugee camp, and though everyone is writing it down instead of shouting, few are listening. There’s just too much noise.  The quality of what is written varies hugely too.  Few have the time to sift through the good, the bad and the ugly of the thousands of blogs out there to find the relevant and interesting discussions that they’re looking for.  RSS feeds help, but I find with these I still miss out on new blogs and relevant discussions that I haven’t got tagged for my reader.  To be frank, I think the Irish blogosphere is a lot like the Kelly Kitchen to the power of n. Some things never change.

Well, that’s not quite true...  because one doesn’t listen to the Internet, (yet).  One has to search, find and read, and this is what a lot of people do when they have an issue, like a health issue like a child with Down’s Syndrome or a pregnancy maybe.  Or otherwise if they are making a big purchase, like car insurance or a house a house move.  Or alternately if something has made them angry or emotional they may want to find other people in a similar state.  Times like these are when the blogosphere comes into its own.

But what if you are a company and you need to listen to what’s being said about you, your products or services.  Well, this is where you need help.

There are many ways of searching the net for blogs, and finding them... of course.  Everyone knows that.  But there are just a few ways of listening to what is being said on the millions of blogs that live, are born and die every day in cyberspace. 

Net Behaviour has some funky software that helps us do it for you.  We can listen for any mentions of companies or topics of interest, or people, and give reports on the level of noise, or buzz around specific topics or items of interest.  We can then take all the comments about a topic, and categories and organise them into a report for you.

So, if you’re concerned about what’s being said about your company, or a company you represent online... talk to us about helping keep things kosher blogwise.  It is important because it is so easy for a disgruntled employee, or client to mess things up for you in blogspace... or even a sly competitor for the matter.  It’s always better to keep tabs on these things especially if you are planning a clear marketing message.  The last thing you want is for banter on the blogosphere to pull the rug out from under you before you begin.  Forewarned is forearmed after all.  We can help because we know how these things work, and if we know what you want to achieve, we can ensure that if something is going on behind your blog back you’ll know about it and you’ll be able to get your message across.

Now that you’ve read my blog post and seen what I had to say, can you please pass the ketchup?   Sheesh!

Make that 26

...and Instant messaging!

25 Reason’s Why Faceboook and Linkedin beat Email hands down

1. No Spam
2. No Spam filter
3. No storage issues
4. No mysterious blocked message issues
5. No backups necessary
6. Connect to friends and family ONLY
7. Connect to work colleagues and peers ONLY
8. No visible contact details to those who don’t need to know
9. Syncing with Outlook
10. Twitter style widgets for light hearted and serious updates
11. Log in anywhere
12. They’re free
13. No downloads needed so no compatibility issues
14. They work really well with iPhone and smartphones: work/life balance mail on the go!
15. Confidential messaging when necessary
16. Seamlessly mashes with Location Based Systems on smartphones
17. Linking and networking!
18. Your CV and History in your own words
19. Pictures and Tags (Flicr meets Ma.gno.lia)
20. Send documents, files and links with no spam filters
21. A few perfectly targeted, non-irritating and relevant ads
22. Blog link dissemination
23. File hosting (PowerPoint and Typepad so far)
24. Link to relevant industry groups
25. Smaller computer memory and less processing needed because it’s all online

There will always be email, for work communications, sending documents and keeping track of communications, but it is becoming less and less popular.

There are only so many people you can speak to in a day and more of this speaking is happing through online social networks like Facebook and Linkedin in. The Bebo generation take this for granted and they are right. The truth is that mail is being destroyed by spam as a work and social tool. It doesn’t matter how much storage you have, or whether your Gmail account will ever be deleted or not. If there is too much spam, it gets in the way. Even permissible communications can get routed in error to the Junk or Spam folders because there is a URL in the mail or a bad word or a picture or whatever. It is really irritating and happens all the time. (A wholly innocent holiday snap of son Dick riding in the Donkey Derby is unlikely to reach the recipient by email. How times have changed.)

Also, a big hassle when getting a new machine is transferring the mails over. It shouldn’t be, but it is, and legacy machines often lie around offices because they’ve got all those old mails on them. It can all be fixed with PST on the network, backups, transfers and the like, but for the small business person, or SME, it’s a serious inconvenience and requires some skill. Wizards rarely work first time and if you’re not techie enough to find a workaround, you’re stuffed! Social net communications have no such issues. These aren’t used for ‘serious’ communications at the moment, but I think it’s a no-brainer that they will be soon enough.

As machines get smaller and more mobile, or are ignored altogether in favour of iPhones and Blackberries, social nets will come into their own. The bigger machines (laptops and workstations) will be used for larger document typing, accounts, pictures, music and storage, rather than fulfilling the every minute of every day communications role they have done to date because once the phone syncs well with your machine, and everything is backed up, job done.

Also, as documents get bigger and the net gets slower or gridlocks altogether, (have you noticed the terrible 3pm slump in broadband speed when the US logs on?) social nets may become, of necessity, a realistic alternative for dependable net facilitated communication. It’s more technically efficient if everyone talks in the same location, rather than talks to each other where each has their own peculiar addresses and associated mail routers. We are all tied to a thing called bandwidth, and access to bandwidth, may become so valuable it could be seen as wealth, akin to money.

To get a big techie for a minute, as I see it, if people copy a typical mail with an attachment to several people the size of the mail is increased 100% with each copied person, so it impacts hugely on bandwidth available for everyone with large SMTP facilitated communications (SMTP is the email protocol). Senders are not only copying the same document to each other, they are also copying its format, pictures and loads of other information that isn’t used by each reader of the document. The doc in its most basic form is a text file after all. Very small indeed. However, if they send a doc to a shared webspace using FTP once (file transfer protocol) or better still HTTP (the same thing for webpages like blogs), rather than emailing several people, it is read with HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) in a more spread out way or read and not copied or transferred with all its formatting to each user machine. It won’t clog up the bandwidth nearly as much. I’m pretty sure that’s how it should works. Techies among you feel free to correct me as I’m a day tripper in sys admin land and to be honest I haven’t even considered TCP/IP and Winsoc and all that malarkey since about 1996, so I’m sure to be a bit rusty L.

And finally there is that strange and mysterious ‘email blocked’ problem - the ultimate failure of the email system. And no it’s not my fault. No, the mailbox isn’t full. No, we’re not on a spam list. No, our Internet connection isn’t down because we can communicate through Facebook, Linked in and Gmail no problem. And yes, we get our mails from all our other clients… no problem. Mysterious, problematic, confusing and a total pain in the arse!

So, as Email fails Social Nets will win. Bring on the Nets!

Why the Golden Spider’s is important

The Golden Spider awards?  Important?

OK.  The truth?  A part of me say’s it isn’t.  A bit say’s it’s a beauty parade of sites, large and small, some of which no one has ever heard of.  Part of me says it’s an excuse for late night drinking in a once super-posh south Dublin hotel. Part of me say’s it’s an excuse for competitors to sneer at each other across a crowd, or for employees and bosses to have sort outs, clearing the cigarette laden air.

But then, aren’t all awards ceremonies like that.  And are they the worse off for it?  No. It makes precious little difference to their importance.  The Golden Spiders is a forum for an industry to meet and greet, share a pint, clap and slide off home... Very therapeutic.  It’s an opportunity for an industry that has taken more knocks than others to take itself seriously for once and not take itself too seriously at the same time

OK.  This is where I sound older than I am, or, about the right age, but I’ve been to all of them so far (I think?)   Not a grand claim, but it gives me an overview of them... and an opportunity to point out some trends.

Before the dot com boom it was a nascent awards ceremony, where a small room could contain all the major players in Ireland each person being one-third techie, one-third entrepreneur, one-third person who couldn’t get a job anywhere else.   Then the Nasdaq struck a tone which shook all, and if you were on the right side of the investor fence, you were an instant multi-millionaire – on paper at least.  The atmosphere of the awards had changed.  An un-earned smugness and swagger crept in, accompanied by breathless ambition, greed, and some misery at missing out.  The bursting of the bubble decimated the attendees and this was a time where those at the awards who were involved in the industry and who’s experience pre-dated the dot com crash could be counted on the fingers of one hand.  There were five of us! The lingo and buzzword vendors had fled to fairer pastures, and the tables were populated by ‘industry’ rather than ‘internet enterprise’.  The sales guys were still there, but worked for telco’s and portals, rather than tech SMEs.  Then in the early 2000s, things limped along until Google fixed the net for us all.  Search engines worked, things could be found, and PPC made sense and was cheap.  Bebo and social sites cemented the advantage won and now we’re in the age of the iPhone, and very high levels of broadband net use for all, if you want it.

That was the difference about this year’s awards.  The mobile content providers.  The winning entrant involved a mobile phone system for keeping tabs on minors.  I’m reliably told it works on very few phones, but I haven’t checked it.  That’s not the point.  The point is that the net has left the office, or home, or SoHo business model.  Facebook can be conceived in the same breath as outlook, or a contacts database, without spam email.  Bebo.. . the same.  The buzzword is the mobile phone App.  This concept was almost unimaginable even a few years ago.  ( I know I’m always banging on about how things have changed, but it never ceases to amaze me, and informs views on the trajectory things might take in future).  But Locle takes things a step further, marrying Facebook with location based services.  The full integration of the latest developments of the social net online, with local society offline.

There was another difference with this awards.  Maturity.  The Internet has slowly but finally arrived in Ireland as an intrinsic and fundamental force in the media landscape.  Not as an add-on for nerds and geeks, but as a centroid around which old media rotate and learn... eating audience share and headspace like a black hole.  Netspace: -engaging, entertaining, informative, efficient, flexible, customizable, cheap, upgradable and full of innovation and creativity.  There were few times for other media that you could make any of these claims, but most importantly, the last two – innovation and creativity.  Radio Luxembourg for Radio?  Hall’s Pictorial Weekly for TV?  Maybe a few others, but these old media have been suffocated by top down civil society, from governments to the church with academic confusions about the role of the public service broadcaster, who owns the media in question and who is more important – the content producer or the audience.  But for the net, innovation and creativity are a commonplace and for this reason the net is where I think the future of our media landscape must lie – with great ideas and the chutzpah to do something about them.  Because what stood out to me about this year’s Spiders was that the creative media thinkers, innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs never seem to tire of the netspace and this is likely to be true for the mobile net too.  There were loads of them there; clever, clever people doing really cool things that stretch the boundaries of communicative technology and its relationship with modern society on very limited resources.  These are things that will create considerable societal change while they make a buck.  Very few new enterprises do things as important as that.  The vast majority make money for a single individual, but very few indeed change the way we all interact with each other.

So, why are the Spiders important?  Well, if it’s only because they are a haven for Ireland’s enterprise and good ideas - that’ll do for me.

Moore Street on the Net. The Trader Segment of Netizen will Grow in Importance

A recent segmentation I ran on Internet behaviour showed several groups.

Dolittles (6%): This group don’t do much and could be termed low intensity Internet users. They report that they all use the Internet for email and chat and they will use all of the other Internet categories, but much less often than the other groups.

Media Consumers (31%): These are the consumers of net content in all its forms, and from all form of traditional media online (RTE, Irish Times, Sky etc), so I’ve called them the media net. Yes, but they’re net surfers with a purpose rather than aimless geeks enjoying the beauty of things digital. This group will go to read news of all sorts. They’ll be financially savvy and are well educated. They also have good jobs and incomes too. These use the net as an information resource and a career enhancing tool to aid decision making and economic communication.

Networkers (8%): Perhaps once considered the ‘sad’, depressive net addicts this group is now recognized as a growing segment of net activity, and they’re using the net tool to help extend their overt social nature... (or over compensated social phobia) and they love it.

These are the group who are into chatting and networking. They like to be linked and bring on the buzz of chit chat and juicy gossip. Yes, more girls in this group, but only just. They like chat, user generated content, bulletin boards and dating. These are the net socialites who get their fix of friendships and talk online.

I think this group are especially important as the trend towards a more digitally mediated social existence and staying in contact with ‘everyone you ever knew’ to feel part of the community is a strong one. It may just be a new stage in reaching maturity, or feed into broader psychological needs, but its there and will only become more prevalent in society and persistent in nature.

At an extreme, it gets silly. Is someone with 14 contacts less happy or socially or economically adept than someone with 100? Or 500? Doubt it, and studies would indicate that 50 is the max number of relationships people can handle at all. (For Lions its 30). Business contacts may be different of course and it will be quality not quantity that is important there too. Get this for a wheeze. There’s a cheat on Bebo so you can pretend you have 100s of friends. (Hope there’s one for LinkedIn L)

Mappers, Restaurants and Cars (42%): Then, there are those who use the net for restaurants, car trading and maps.

They might use email, but the net hasn’t impacted on this group socially or economically at all really. These tend to be older men who perhaps don’t have the time or the need to be chatting to their peers who aren’t that net savvy anyway. The net makes sense to them when they can print off a map or a timetable, but the rest of the stuff? Well, really! It’s more for the kids isn’t it, though he doesn’t understand what exactly it is that they do when they do it. But, he’s (as it typically a he) is proud of his net connectedness nevertheless. This group you won’t see on the web that much really except for newspapers, Google and main stream media.

Traders (13%): This is the group that are the main focus of this post. These use the Internet like an ATM... a ticketing machine for flights, banking and shopping. Functional stuff. 13% of Internet users are in this distinct group. Doing things without having to queue for less money, or when they need to upgrade their phone.

But, within this group are those that use eBay and Classifieds. The tech savvy ‘trotter’s independent traders’ of the great web boot sale in the ether. This is one of the most important sectors to Ireland Internet economy. The invisible spivs, the attic hunter gatherers, the ebayerati.

What exemplifies this group from the others is their need to make money from the net rather than spend time on it or buy things on it, though they will be include those who do. They ‘make’ money either in savings on goods purchased in other markets, or by selling and trading. And, I think in the current economic climate, this group is set to grow...

eBay consider people to be basically honest, and they’ve been proven right. Yes, there are always some people who’ll try to sell fake goods, but we don’t blame the platform, but rather the seller, and that’s the way it should be.

For example, I’ve always known that if I buy a €5 watch when I’m on holiday in Tunisia and it turns out not to be a real Rolex it’s totally my fault for being such a mean muppet – thinking I can take the piss in a third world country and even haggling him down from €20 and thinking I was clever. God, I so deserved it. (‘Wanna buy Rolex, Tag, Swatch? Reel Gold! Verry good price for you my friend. You Ireesh? My Mother she ees Ireesh. I write letter to her in Ireesh.’ And I thought I had the upper hand. what was I thinking?)

No, there’s is no such thing as a free lunch. And, the same applies online. But, on the other hand I also know that there are good carpets to be bought in Turkey, or art, or whatever, so I’ll have few qualms about taking that risk. eBay is a bit like that for me. Great bargains for the discerning purchaser. It’s just like the real world. There are millions of things to buy online, if you look and it doesn’t take long with a little practice. eBay should be a primary port of call before you shell out full whack for new goods with all the VAT attached. Very often, the only difference between an eBay purchase and a retail one is the box and Styrofoam it’s packed in, and even that can be an inconvenience to get rid of. Then there are tickets, brand new goods, antiques and all sorts of stuff you will only be able to buy online - if you look that is.

There’s a new breed of Irish seller to join the street sellers of Moore’s Street and Camden Street, and they’re waiting with their wares to sell to the highest bidder on the net.

This group don’t look like traders though. They are homemakers, women with kids, men who look for car parts online, fixers, menders and make doers. Oh, and a few petty crooks of course. These are the people who keep the family budget ticking over and make sure the car gets the kids to school. These are the head down and work hard bunch and these are the group I think are kind of recession proof, philosophically speaking anyway. It’ll be hard alright but they’ll manage, and if they don’t remember a recession themselves, their parents and grandparents won’t waste any time in reminding them.

And finally, I think we should all take a leaf out of the philosophy of the net trader. For the giant Irish middle class there’s no shame in saving money in Lidl any more is there. It’s a competition for how much you’ve saved, rather than being concerned about how much you have to spend. And to sell and trade things you don’t have to have a stall on the main street and the voice of 10,000 Woodbines - it can be done from your front room. I think it’ll catch on.

And Finally...

And finally, though these groups add up to 100% they are not ‘discrete’ groups. They cross over each other and almost all use email and Google etc to some extent (there are those that don’t believe it or not). So, there will always be exceptions, that is, groups that don't fit into these bands, but these groups represent a statistically valid generality with whatever insight that can provide. If you know a find a different group not described above they may reside within one of mine, or the Dolittles, or they are just new, or strange. Or indeed, they maybe have been so niche the weren't picked up by my sample. Gamers, for example, are omitted, and they are becoming steadily more important. But, they fall between stools in my breakdown... somewhere between social networks and chatters including behaviours of both. Why do they fall between stools? Well, because the stats told me they did. And, what does that mean? Well, if you think about it gaming is a social communicative practice after all, but there is no typical ‘gamer’ behaviour online on sites other than gaming sites that differentiates the gamer, as a type of Internet user, from the others. In other words, gamers are normal, just like the rest of us or there’s a gamer in all of us. Gamers don't use the web any differently to the rest of us... at least not yet with any statistical significance anyway. That will probably change in the coming years.

But tell me what you think? Do you know some groups that need exploration? Is there more to this than meets my eye? Let me know. I always listening, very interested and keen to learn.

And in the meantime why not get an eBay account and check it out. You know you want to and you could maybe save a bundle! J