ouroboros

Your Collective Brand

Melissa Sconyers, W+K interactive scout, shared with us Noah Brier's (a Naked-ite) newest creation, Brand Tags.

"Brands exist in people's heads" goes his premise - and here everyone's brand-related tags are collated and rendered as a swarm, creating a graphic illustration of the brand as socially-constructed collective perception, with each perception proportionally scaled by it's importance to the group.  [Interestingly, as participation with the site has increased, Brier's noted more "noise" being introduced - profanity, brand bashing, etc.]

How does it work?  Brier's site shows you a logo, and you free-associate a word (that becomes a tag) into the handy blank field.  Then the next logo appears.  It's shockingly simple, and irritatingly addictive.  So people come to you to tell you about your brand.  Contrast this with Summize, the Twitter search tool that searches public twits/tweets for brand mentions and aggregates them, or their "sentiment"

He's cobbled together a single player Google Image Labeler, only now instead of help Google tag every image using your free labor, you can help Brands get a gut check.  And make Naked look brilliant.  Sweeet.

What I really liked was the gaming aspect of the site - Brier lets you try to guess the brand based on the swarm and see the tags posted by referral URL (so you can ferret out any domain-based swarm biases :-)

Melissa conjectures that the site coding may reveal potential Brier-based brand bias in the order in which brands were entered - Nike is #1 (ID=1), Google is #2 (ID=2), etc. - but his numbering scheme skips from #9 (H&M) and doesn't pick up again until #25 (Yahoo!).  Perhaps this has something to do with their client list?   Or maybe he's leaving room to put them in later?

Check these swarms for W+K partners:

ABC
Brand Jordan
Coca-Cola
Converse
ESPN
Nike
Nokia
Target
EA Sports
Honda
Google
Starbucks
Heineken

If Brand Tags sits at one end of the spectrum of collective brands (where people are required to go to a destination to create and experience collective perceptions), Summize sits at the other.

Summize positions itself as a provider of "conversational search", and it searchs public twitter streams for keywords.  Enter a brand, get a slew of brand-relevant tweets.  In aggregate, it's a pretty interesting snapshot of what people are saying, right now, about your brand.  You can even sift for sentiment.

Nifty.

Social Media CF or Ninja Strike?

Yes, worth another post. The hijinks continue on Chris Brogan's blog. What's intense is the interaction that takes place in the comment string that follows this nicely written slag-off...

Ironically, Chris called out the PR guy and his tactics, and the ensuing fervor probably went farther in promoting the company than had Chris perfunctorily blogged it and moved on...or ignored it. So was the PR guy an idiot, or FIENDISHLY CLEVER? You decide.

It's all about Twitter today...but Zappo's is doing something cool -

Check out this novel use of Twitter by Zappo's - it showcases flattering and not-so-flattering mentions of Zappo's in the twit-o-sphere, aggregates Zappo's employee tweets, and dedicates a stand-alone page to a visual gallery of tweeting Zappo's employees (pictured below), force-ranked by the total friends/followers they have.

That last twist means significant competition to be #1 - so Zappo's employees are effectively pressured (in a fun, socially competitive way) to spread the Zappo's marketing message and brand experience. 

Now that's neat.

See PDX's own evilbackwards as well for gaming theory applied to blogging social inter-dynamicals :-)

 

Verbs-o-fun

Thanks to the magical interweb-o-tron, we now have 'Google','Facebook' - (“I e-mail for jobs, I e-mail my mom,” summed up college student Clonts. “I Facebook my friends.”), and 'Twitter' polluting our verb pool. 

I know many who 'give good Facebook'.

Another reason I love the Interweb-i-tron

I can read about what I'm doing WHILE I'm doing it.  Got the chance to chat with Brian Morrissey @ Adweek about Search and Creative...and while we're talking @bmorrissey tweets:

"cool talk w renny gleesen of WK about search + creative."

Damn.  I like that turnaround time.  Of course, "Gleeson" is with an "o", but he was tweeting, for goshsakes.  And he nailed it in the piece.

:-)

Social Business Models

Nice little piece in the Economist on the utility of Social Networks and their futility as revenue generators ...aparently, not even Google can monetize the trackless wastes of MySpace :-) In a nutshell, the things social networks need to do to monetize their user bases (and justify their valuations) risk driving away their user bases.  Facebook shined a Beacon on this (sorry, couldn't resist). 

And if they piss off their users, these networks are sitting ducks to be supplanted by something else not driven to make ends meet with advertising...Thunderbird, anyone?

Virtual Realities - San Francisco, New York, Dubai-land, Falcon City, Second Life, Cloverfield, oh for gosh's sake

Some I'm going to apologize in advance for bad logic, poor application of social theory, bad understanding of the neurologic basis of memories and the like.  And I welcome any thoughts anyone has on the following.

I was talking with Penny Brough of W+K London about the Golden Gate Bridge.  I'll admit, I was a little jet-lagged, but from what I recall, she was saying more folks know San Francisco through images of the Golden Gate bridge than will ever see the real bridge...so there are probably more virtual Golden Gate bridges traveling the world in folks heads than real memories experienced by folks who've actually seen it.  And the SF of the mind may be as real to the non-visitor as the real one is to folks who've been there.   And sometimes when you finally do see something, the real one isn't as pretty as the cumulative virtual one you remember though you'd never really seen it, anyway.

Maybe, somehow, getting a gray day downer the first time you cross the Golden Gate is like when you meet a movie star like Tom Cruise, and find out he's REALLY SHORT.  Or not.

The power of cumulative virtual memory, not Tom Cruise, may be part of the reason why NYC seems to keep getting blasted to bits in movie after movie - it's a quick cheap "gimmie" for a filmmaker/storyteller to leverage the virtual NYC in viewer's heads, built from postcards, movies, TV shows and commercials - to create an instant pang of connection. 

Below, does Lady Liberty get her head torn off so Cloverfield can tap the collective unconscious?

Side note - Lady Liberty gets the short end of the stick in quite a few movies - Planet of The Apes, The Day After, Escape From New York, etc. - she's even in the movie posters for them all.)

A good storyteller, one who engages and moves an audience, weaves the most effective tale when they leverage their listeners' cultural conventions, ideals, shared images, symbols, archetypes, creation myths, known characters and historical situations to create entry points - think Aesop's fables, Grimm's tales, Disney, Tolkien, The Apostles.  NYC, through the cumulative weight of visual imagery and narrative, has entered the world's global memory bank.  It is a virtually 'shared' city, though few (proportionally to the globe's population) have actually been there.  A terrorist attack there, then, became an assault on a real thing AND on our global collective virtual memory.

We're familiar with taking a real thing (Golden Gate Bridge) and provide virtual copies (postcards) to create a virtual visual memory (of the card initially, but ultimately of the "Bridge").  Now we can personally create a virtual thing (an avatar) and create real copies (paintings, figurines, etc.) - like a 3-D printed 'Spore' figurine, a World of Warcraft figurine, or a portrait of your second life avatar.  In the former, shared virtual memory is gleaned from a representation of the real.  In the latter, real is distilled from virtual.   Is one of those more real, less real, or more virtual?

Something happens, anything, and if the experience makes it out of your short term memory into long term, you are left with an accessible memory.  Is the similarly accessible memory of a virtual experience  (say finally mastering and manning the turret guns in Gears of War - FTW!) somehow less real than the memory of a real experience? 

 

As worlds become truly immersive, the distinction between real and virtual is going to get awful gray, especially since you'll be able to upload your brain to the data cloud by 2050 and get rid of that pesky meat-space interface we call a "body".

Second Life is a real thing, and a virtual place and a collective memory fed by its citizens activities and preserved by Linden Labs infrastructure. It's a place where people can live out their fantasies (mundane and/or bizarre).  Players create real space (and value) in a virtual place, 'real' because it can be perceived by the senses, remembered accurately by the brain, bought and sold, and it adheres to a rule system that preserves and protects the reality it creates.  And players pay for the privilege of creating more value for others with each interaction.  Sweeeeet.

Dubai-Land is a real thing, too.  But it started as a (mind-numbingly expensive) dream, and is being forced, inch-by-terra-formed-inch, onto an incredibly inhospitable landscape.  Watch the video below and be simultaneously blown away and appalled...and not just by the "action-movie-voiceover" narrative with memorable quotes like "think eco-tourism, but BIGGER", or "watch your kids turn into adults INSTANTLY, and live out their DREAM professions", but by how much this promo video reads like the opening sequence for a soon to be released post-apocalyptic film riffing on the follies of man:

 

Falcon City of Wonders, my favorite part of Dubai-Land, is a land mass tastefully formed to resemble a falcon spreading its wings, and features scale reproductions of the Pyramids ("with retail space the Egyptians would never have dreamed possible!"), the Eiffel tower, Big Ben, and the Taj Mahal.  To keep this thing humble, the designers thoughtfully put in a jogging track around the scale Central Park in the form of a section of the Great Wall of China.

Falcon City of Wonders = big.  Tom Cruise = not as big?

Are virtual worlds creating new collective memories?  Yes.  Will Dubai-land create a new collective memory pool (before its overrun by nuclear/plague/ebola/alien infested zombies)?  Yes.  Is Master Chief the new Luke Skywalker?  Yes.  What happens when you can't tell the difference between a virtual world and a real world?  When does the difference not matter anymore?

 

Favorite Tweets

SashaB cracked out a tweet that pretty much summarized my entire college experience in under 45 characters:

"Listening 2 crazy people talk about death & God."

@Maureen is doing complete recipes in under 140 characters at twitter.com/cookbook - here's the Potatos au gratin tweet:

Potato Gratin: boil 2m 4c milk/3lb peel+slice tater/t salt&garlic/c leek/bay&thyme. Layer x3 w wht pep&nutmeg&parmesan/dot w butter. h@375F.

Un f-ing believable.  Go check out her lava cake recipe.

Brian Oberkirch and Tantek Celik @ SG Foocamp

These guys rule.  Here, however, they are taking a brief break from ruling to drink delicious beverages.

Brand Cults

Lee Clow once said of the Apple 'Think Different' campaign:

"Brands aren't just a way of remembering what you want to buy any more.  They've become part of the fabric of our society.  Brands are a part of our system of ordering things - they even create context about who we are and how we live...They articulate who you are and what your values are." ("Twenty-five visions: the future of Brands", by Rita Clifton and Esther Maughn]

In that spirit, a W+K'er put together a timeline of their personal relationship with Apple.  I took out the felonies.

1981
I enter the world. The Heavens Open. My Mom and Dad buy a house. Steve Jobs drops out of Reed College.

1986
I got my first Apple Computer.

1992
Built an Appletalk network in my parent’s house.

1993
Bought a Mac LC III. Spent my entire summer in our basement on various BBSs.

1994
Called out of class multiple times to help fix my elementary school's Macs.  Got in trouble for stealing [redacted] off a BBS.... And then using the [redacted] to [redacted]   

1995
Bought myself a Power Macintosh 5200.  Kicked off AOL for Porn and started subscribing to Apple's e-World service.  Fell asleep on e-World. Hated my 14.4k modem. Hated Life.  Convinced 3 friends to buy Macs.

1996
Bought myself a Power Macintosh 6400

1997
Bought myself a Newton Message Pad 2000 and a Power Mac G3.  Got in a fist fight during a Mac VS PC debate with the biggest dork in my High School.

1998
I become the neighborhood Mac tech support guy.

1999
Bought the first iMac for my sister.  Convinced my High School to create a Mac Lab.

2000
Realized I would give my life for Apple.

2001
Got Grandma an iMac DV for Christmas. (Note to self: Never by Grandma anything electronic again.) I become a member of SpyMac.com.  My college roommate and I convert our dorm bathroom into the “Mac” bathroom.

2002
Convinced my dad he needed an iMac.  Bought myself a PowerMac G4 and join Appleinsider.com

2003
Purchased a PowerMac G5.  Went on a road trip down Hwy 101. Stopped in Cupertino but was not allowed on the Apple Campus.

2005
Purchased a PowerBook G4

2006
Installed a Mac Mini in my parents house. Got it to control the entire sound system for the house.  Convinced my dad that CDs were dead and that MP3 was the future of music.  Bought myself a Mac Book Pro.

2007
Waited seven hours in line for the iPhone.  Bought an Apple TV.

When you stand for more than a single product release, and instead represent a cultural or lifestyle choice; when 'purchasing' is a component of participating, but participating is so much more...you got something.  Gotta hand it to Lee and Apple.

Teams of Portland - W+K meets PDX Bike Culture

The W+K PDX gang has some of the hardest core bikers (non motorized, though you wouldn't guess by their average speeds) you'll find in a building.  That gang worked with fellow members of the PDX bike community to create Teams of Portland.

Portland Bike CUlture doesn't screw around.  PDX is home of the zoo bombers

C.H.U.N.K. 666

and a host of other bike culture freaks and geniuses. 

According to W+K Creative Joe Staples,

"This February, the countries best hand built bike builders will come to Portland for the North American Hand Built Bike Show [NAHBBS].  A few of us here, thought it would be a travesty if all of these interesting people came to Portland and only saw their crappy hotels, the crappy convention centre and crappy Red Lobsters.  We wanted to try to help open up more of Portland to them at the same time, celebrating the rich local bike building and racing culture.

So W+K launched Teams of Portland.com.

Joe warns: "There are a few parts of the website that we are still working on, the maps will come soon, but it's pretty much all there."

 

Joe forgets the proofreaders, but he thanks (all spelling and text his):

Greg Deboer [photographer extraordinaire] Fritz Mesenbrink  [photographer/editor] Matt Foster [Web Builder] Jordi Martinez [Web Builder] Marcelino [made the complicated seems simple] Christina Perry[gots shit DONE] Jose Cabaco [The inspiring Cabaco] Luker Jelly and Tom [they let us loose] John Jay [Championed this things from day ONE] and Dan Wieden [He shouldn't need an explanation]

Avatar Talent Competitions

Avatar singing competitions.  From Microsoft.  I'll admit.  I was surprised.

Get a Voki Now!

Fast forward Viral

Slide.com has risen to prominence on the shoulders of their incredibly successful Facebook apps, one of which includes the "Fun Wall" app, where you can share media.  A neat little functionality they've added is called 'Fast forward', where a piece of media embedded in this wall can be shipped off to your entire friendlist in a heartbeat.

Interesting bit of functionality that will no doubt fuel mind-numbingly broad propagation of some real garbage, but interesting in what it points to from a sociological standpoint.

When old 'what's his name' wrote Tipping Point (trust me, he doesn't need my PR - and btw - was everyone as disappointed as I by 'Blink'?  couldn't pawn that sucker off fast enough) he talked about the power of the subset of individuals that act as influencer nodes on larger human networks. 

To a degree, though I have 'close friends' and 'less-close' friends on my Facebook friend list, by virtue of that list, I have as immediate access to my primary friends as to my secondary, tertiary and 'oh hell, alright, I'll friend you" friends.  At the push of a button my extended network of 'ambient intimates' gets the same piece of info.  And then what happens?

While it's become trivial to distribute minutea (and there is probably a reason why I have fewer twitter followers than Facebook friends), it's non-trivial to parse it.  "You're updates concern me less, as they concern me less", if you follow.  Because what makes a connector valued is not the quantity of information they transmit but its quality, and perceived relevance to the recipient.

Slide.com's 'Fast Forward' feature allows ideas to spread quickly, like WOM on digi-crack.  But for everyone who's wall has been choked with 'Muhammed' the f-ing bear or gotten that '6 degree' group sign up request (last count, 2MM members and counting), it may or may not be a good thing. 

For marketers, before you try to get everyone 'Fast Forwarding' your latest legal-approved marketing blurbs, please ask yourself, "would I forward this delightful tidbit if it wasn't from the company that pays me?"

Facebook's 'Beacon': Inevitable (long term) and Stupid (short term)

They had to go there, didn't they?

Facebook's $15B valuation needed some real revenue behind it, and Beacon looked like one sure ticket.

Smart marketers like Coke wisely stepped out of the initial effort when they learned the process was opt-out rather than opt-in, and they equally wisely noted that they aren't dropping out of the effort entirely, because the program (properly gated to allow consumer choice in what they share or don't) is pretty darn compelling.

The real lesson from the Beacon' flap Scott Karp nails in his recent piece over at Publishing 2.0:

"Traditionally what happens is a technology company matures and becomes vulnerable to an upstart innovator leap-frogging them in the marketplace...[but] Facebook is too easily to replicate. It only has one real asset — people. What Facebook critics see is not the risk that another social networking company can do a better job with the technology — it’s that one could do a better job with the people.

The next great internet company will not be one that makes a breakthrough with technology — it will be one that makes a breakthrough with people."

read Scott Karp's article here.

 

Hype platforms

A nice post by PDX's own Marshall Kirkpatrick over at Read/Write Web on "hyped new platforms", compares the spate of recent announcements re: Social Networking platforms. It's worth a read. Below is a nice little chart he built:

Radical Transparency - Pt 2 - Myanmar

The outcome of the Myanmar uprising remains to be seen.  But the visual immediacy of the government's brutality has been exponentially magnified by Myanmar's networked citizens.

As we argue about the marketing implications of mobility, and question whether 'consumers' will adopt this or that technology, we find in Myanmar a people fighting for their rights and their lives with the tools at their disposal.  A kingdom historically hidden from the world by distance, ignorance or complacency is dragged to center stage by mobile phones, blogs and email.  But it's not about the devices themselves - it's about that to which they connect:  the web.  The world.  The visibility of Burmese atrocities stems from the advent of networked culture.  The power of near-instantaneous global distribution of images, video, text.  And ideas.

There are three billion mobile devices in the world now, projected to grow to 5 billion by 2010 - and the majority of growth is expected in "emerging markets".  Some of those regions have been saddled with oppressive regimes.  What will the influx of mass connectivity do to them? 

Think on this one for a moment:  Could we have ignored Darfur as long as we have if its people documented attacks by the Janjaweed and government troops with cameraphones?

Picturephoning.com has been covering this well - here are some highlights from the story from Myanmar junta can’t murder in darkness:

"...if democratic forces do prevail over the military junta, the victory will owe something to today’s extraordinary communications networks. If the junta ultimately prevails by force, the same technology will have indelibly exposed its depravity to the civilized world.

...the regime won’t be able to cut Myanmar off from the world. It will never be able to confiscate every cell phone. And while it has shut down the country’s Internet service providers, foreign companies and embassies can stay on the Web via satellite.

Some of history’s greatest crimes against humanity, including the Holocaust and the Turkish genocide of Armenians, were committed in darkness. Whatever the Burmese junta does, it will have to do in the harsh light of international scrutiny. Myanmar’s democracy movement has a precious ally – instant, speed-of-light communications – that past victims of brutal dictatorships couldn’t have dreamed of."

From distributed technology has emerged the phenomenon of connectivity - of network and networked culture. 

In the world of instant global intimacy, it's a gunshot in Asia, not a butterfly flapping its wings, that can cause a hurricane around the world.

Radical Transparency

If you had any questions about the transformative power of interactive media, repressive governments no longer do -  when they want to kill or crush their people, they are learning to start by killing the internet and mobile connections.  On the heels of Ukraine's mobile powered Orange revolution, the SMS powered toppling of the government in Manila, and Uganda's recent reinstatement of SMS after contested elections were sealed up, this from the AP, re Myanmar:

...soldiers in Myanmar...Friday...went after the Internet and mobile phones that have proven so vital and powerful in documenting the dramatic confrontations.

Modern technology has become the generals' worst enemy.

Though the government has cut some phone landlines, it has had less success clamping down on mobile phones, [and] the immediacy has been vital in telling the world so it can act quickly as developments unfold

"The world doesn't know where Burma is. Now they see images about the situation and want to know more." Aung Zaw said.

"Students use cell phones to SMS each other to share information," he said, referring to text messages activists use to organize demonstrations or inform one another of the locations of soldiers. "The junta can't control the technology totally, and it's a huge difference (if you can) deliver the information fast."

"Up4" meetup application for Facebook

This gets interesting - a possible app for Starbucks?

"up4 has created a handy little Facebook app that lets you easily create casual events and meet up with friends somewhere offline. With a scheduling calendar, you can pick the day and approximate time for your meet up. Or you can click the “add” button to go directly to the screen for manually entering your information. Say what type of activity you’re “up for” and indicate a time and location. Add any extra information you’d like, type in the names of Facebook friends you’d like to notify, and post it to your up4 application account. All of your events will show on your calendar, though there is the option to see these in a list view as well. See what your friends are up for, and decide if you’d like to join along. You can also leave comments to hold discussions around individual events."

Facebook = Friend Radar?

A co-worker made this observation today:  "Facebook is like my 'friend radar' - if something they are up to pops up in my feed and I think its interesting, I'll hit them - if not, we all know we're there".

All there: an interconnected web of human nodes, generating 'content' ranging from banal to shockingly personal and feeding it up to the community - and the datacloud.

Psychologists say road rage comes from the projection of your id/ego to the boundary of the cars bumpers, and that a perceived slight to your car is therefore a personal insult and dealt with as such...so what happens to your projected interactive presence?

By way of example, this is a by no means exhaustive range of the tools that help makeup my daily interactive 'presence'.  I use these (and many others) daily to connect /communicate/broadcast and participate in my various social networks and communities of interest.

Are you just the sum total of your multiple channels/tools?  Is each a prism refracting a different facet of your personality - shared/obscured/embellished or augmented?  Or do you manage multiple silo-ed personalities?

is one 'realer' than another?  is there a qualitative difference between the 'me' on AIM, 'me' on Facebook, 'me' in Ning?  Are you the same person everywhere?

And from an engagement standpoint, where/when/who are you when you are most receptive to messaging?

Behavioral targeting goes social

The Wall Street Journal popped a nice piece on Facebook today.  Facebook has been trying to figure out how to turn the 30.6 million unique monthly visitors they get into cold hard cash.  Up 'til now, unless you had a labor intensive custom sponsorship, they've had a pretty barebones targeting system for ads - allowing advertisers to hit 'Facebookers' based on age, gender and geographic location ("geotargeting").

The new plan is to convert all the juicy tidbits Facebook users post about themselves on their pages into data they can use to target more 'relevant' ads, and charge (...our clients up the wazoo) higher CPM's for the privilege.  All those little apps you download to your page, the ones that ask you if they can mine all your deepest personal info, and won't work unless you say yes?  Think of them like little digital doubleagents - using your input as flags for advertisers.

"Most users of Facebook treat it as a sort of online scrapbook for their lives -- posting everything from basic information about themselves to photos to calendars of events they plan to attend."

The article quotes a source saying that the ads aren't going to be the standard banners and buttons around the content, but embedded in the 'news feed' function on users home pages.  Not a bad plan.  Because everyone scans the feed - its the place you see what your friends are up to, what posts have been made, new content featured, etc. - sort of a....well..news feed.

From the WSJ:

"Facebook's plan, if it works, could be potentially powerful for advertisers. While Google's keyword-targeted ads aim at "demand fulfillment" -- that is, they are triggered by Internet searches conducted by people who are actively looking for something that they want -- Facebook's new ad plan could help advertisers address an area called "demand generation." This involves using available information -- not just from a user but also the activities and interests of his "friends" on the site -- to figure out what people might want before they've specifically mentioned it."

 

 

Social Networking/OpenSourcing

Social Networking is pretty buzzy right now.  Lot of amazing potential - lot of folks doing it to check boxes.  Lots of money getting pissed away. Before you burn a garbage bag of cash, ask one question:


"What CONSUMER need do we meet by engaging our brand in their space?"   

If you can't answer that, RED FLAG.   If the need you meet is your own, consider doing something else.  Didn't work for me dating in high school, doesn't work now.

Brain Morrisey notes in "Why some brands seem antisocial", "those [brand efforts at social networking] that have succeeded either tap into the existing passionate audience of a niche brand or offer some functionality that cannot be found already on popular social media sites."

Today's WSJ article "Building Buzz for Ellis Island - and Shirts", by Suzanne Vranica and Stephanie Kang warns "the last thing the Internet needs is another social network".  Baba Shetty of Hill Holiday says "the same kind of talents in judgement that we apply to other things in marketing applies to this media as well.  You do not say, 'Yep, check, we've got social networking'.  You have to think: 'How are we going to do it?'"

Walmart got justifiably trashed for "The Hub".  Finish Line will most likely end up writing off their social network.  We'll see if Disney can make Club Penguin work, or if MySpace can right itself enough to prevent its pages from making logo-bedecked NASCAR vehicles look like tastefully refined branding exercises.

Net: "social networking" needs to be part of a strategy, not a standalone tactic.  It requires sustained effort, focus and resources.  Know that the number of friends you HAVE on MySpace matters far less than what you DO with those friendships.

Take Nokia.  They created the Nokia Forums to allow you and me and Nokia engineers and developers to interact.  You can pretty much find anything - info, FAQ's, developer SDK's, etc., etc. - real projects, real info, real interaction.  3.2 MM registered members.  Hundreds of projects.  Lot of energy. 

Walmart's 'Hub', thinly disguised product shill platform aimed at tween (gag me) 'Hubsters"?  Punchline.  Click either link below.  Visit a live community.  Laugh at the smoking ruins of a dead one.

Jukka Silvennoinen, Nokia Forum Champion.

Walmart 'Hubsters'

Mobile Social Networking Potpourri/Cornucopia/Smorgasbord/Dim Sum

M:Metrics has released new data on mobile social networking in the US and Western Europe.  This research excludes Chinese efforts such as Wozone, WangYou and QQ, and the entire Japanese market, including Mixi and S!Town.

Yuko Matsunaga (W+K Tokyo), highlighted that in a recent survey of over 9,500 Japanese mobile subscribers, 43.9% "rarely" use their phone for calls.  FOR CALLS, folks.  What else are they doing?  #1 email, followed by blogging, gaming, THEN calls...no wonder Nokia has banned the term phones in favor of the lighter, more memorable "multimedia computing devices".

Some tidbits from the m:metrics report:

• In the month of June, 12.3 million folks in the US and Western Europe accessed a social networking site via mobile
• Those under 25 are the most active users of mobile social networking sites across all geographies. In France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the age demographic with the largest percentage of use is 13-17-year-olds, whereas college-aged consumers (18-24) are the most avid users in the United States and the United Kingdom.
• MySpace and Facebook are the top two social networking sites accessed via mobile in both the U.S. and UK.
  
  • MySpace attracts 3.7 million U.S. and 440,000 UK mobile users
  • Facebook = ~2 million US, and ~307,000 UK.
  • Rounding out the top three is YouTube in the U.S., with 901,000 mobile visitors and Bebo in the UK, with 288,000.
• As far as mobile distribution/access, MySpace appears on the decks of : Amp’d, AT&T, Helio and Nextel. Facebook was accessible on the Sprint, AT&T, Virgin and Amp’d decks and YouTube on the Verizon deck. In the UK, MySpace has distribution on Vodafone, Bebo is on the 3 deck, but number-two MSN Live Spaces is offered nowhere on-portal.

In other developments,

• Nokia launches Mosh in Beta
• Facebook, the social networking utility of choice for the post-MySpace crowd, even features a completely iPhone customized experience. 

Here some sexy data....

App Networks

Further to the theme of distributed brands ("fishing where the fish are") in the interactive space, PDX's Danny Sheniak dug up a nice piece by AdWeek's Brian Morrisey entitled "Facebook Spawns Ad Networks".

The gist of the piece is that Facebook's opening up their development platform has spawned an industry whose monetization potential, and data mining capabilities, are just not unfolding.  For anyone not on facebook, these applications, or "apps", most often take the form of custom modules that users can add to their page.  Users are effectively ceding their personal page real estate for these applications, and often choose to allow these applications access to their personal info to "customize the experience".  Morrisey got Troy Youngof VideoEgg on the record:

"If you were to break the Web down into phases, the first was a top-down directory approach like Yahoo!, the second was Google's natural language search and the third is organizing the Web around the profile," said Troy Young, chief marketing officer at Videoegg.

Net, companies used to try to find you.  Now you can choose to invite them in.  Like vampires that can't enter your home without you inviting them in. 

Mini-programs (2,800+ at last count) like "Where have I been", "Ninjas vs. Pirates", and "Zombie" are built to be shared, forwarded and discussed.  Most apps allows you to download them with a single click to your own page after seeing it on a friend's.  Applications users groove to can get enormous distribution quickly. 

The trick for brands considering this channel is not developing an app at this point - it's getting it distributed.

Lance Tokuda, RockYou CEO, notes "there are a lot of billion dollar corporations that only have 1,000 users" of their Facebook applications, he said.

Why?  Two reasons - first and foremost, you need a compelling value proposition (ask yourself: why the hell does someone want your app on their page?  if you can't answer beyond "its a chance to connect with my brand", you're screwed).  Second, the directory on Facebook that lists all the available applications force ranks them based on their popularity - as determined by downloads.  Which means big ones get bigger, and new ones have to come up with clever ways to crack the top 10, or come up with novel ways to monetize their presence.

Enter the networks.  Morrisey cites two, in particular:

• Videoegg's Facebook ad network runs video banner ads on the landing pages "for over half of the top 10 most popular applications".  When users launch the application, they get a page with a VideoEgg-served ad.  The ads are getting $10 CPMs, and Videoegg is taking 40 percent of the revenue generated by the ads
• Widget maker RockYou has started an ad network around SuperWall, which lets users put multimedia messages on friends' profiles.  RockYou's network will "offer consumers downloading its programs selections from others that haven't gained momentum", and RockYou intends to charge the developers of those apps a fee per download, and "might at some point even create applications for brands".

Look for many brands to step into cow flops and dog doodie attempting to get into this space.  But look for smart ones to figure out new ways to make real connections - and potentially leverage existing social networks to build their own social platforms!

Bar Camp

Un-conferences are the thing.  Business Week thinks so, anyway.  And we got one here in lovely P-Town.  What are they?  Open source conferences = wave of the future.  No sitting and watching.  creating.  on the fly.  Bar Camp Portland starts tonight.  And W+K is in the house.

Social Networking - big and getting bigger

Social networking, fueled by digital media, is NEVER GOING AWAY.  It is hyperaccelerating (thanks, Twitter) and evolving.  My kids will probably jack into the metaverse via RFID enabled WiFi aware Coke cans... and where it will end up is anyone's guess.  Let it suffice to see that we are seeing human beings' fundamental social wiring being hacked and recompiled.  There will be bugs and glitches, but eventually, Skynet will smooth all the bumps out.

Came across a nice overview on social networking, specifically monetization and integration of extensions, from the folks at Read/Write/Web.  Below are a couple of highlights.  The original article in its entirety is available here, by Alex Iskold for Read/Write/Web.)

Alex breaks down the social network universe into two broad camps: Generic vs. Specialized. 

He defines them as follows:

"a generic network... exists primarily to keep in touch and a specialized network is one where people are brought together based on the specific common interest. According to this definition Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and even LinkedIn are considered generic social networks. del.icio.us, Flickr, LibraryThing and Flixster, on the other hand, represent specialized networks."

Generic Networks need to monetize.  The same freewheeling User Generated Content (UGC) that makes them popular often limits their viability for advertisers.  Leveraging niche channels (by building or buying/integrating them) is a way to generate revenue.  For Specialized Networks, the challenge is building sufficient scale to attract revenue (typically ad or affilate dollars).

While Specialized networks can offer "better user experience[s]", because a specialized User Interface "can be more focused and rich", that focus may hurt them should they try to expand beyond their core offerings - in a way that generalized networks would not be.  One way to think about it: Walmart (the best example I have of generic) can sell organic produce, beer AND guns (= crazy delicious).  A gun store (a specialized offering) would have trouble convincing their clientele that their juices are freshly squeezed.

This space is interesting and getting more interesting - especially with the growing number of immersive 3-D social networking universes.  Fun.