There is a reason we value art and those who create it. I could write 3 or 4 hundred words about how technology and Social Media are making it impossible for despots to control the message… or I could just point you to the justSignal FreeIran site and get out of the way and let Peter Himmelman (who I’m proud to know) use his art to say just about everything that needs to be said.
Tag: communications
My interest in Twitter/FriendFeed and all things social media is so like my interest and involvement with VoIP it sometimes keeps me up at night.
VoIP for me was never about the technology – and it certainly wasn’t about “making a phone call”, we could already do that. It was about the possibly. The possibility of being able to communicate with friends, family and strangers who have a common interest in the context of what we wanted to talk to them about.
It was always the power of context. It was always about moving our communication into the contexts that mattered to us right then.
Twitter/FriendFeed and social media resonate with me for that reason. And more. We now have the ability to merge the private and the public. To, not only bring the communication into the context (like, for example, a UStream Chat Room does), but also to extend the conversation beyond that venue.
The context then becomes the subject, topic or event – like Peter Himmelman’s Furious World – and that event can live outside the venue in which it takes place (Peter’s studio in CA). UStream extends the walls of Peter’s studio and allows him the ability to invite us all in. Peter gets to do what he’d be doing anyway… and we’re invited.
The Wombat Tracker does the same thing for the conversation about Peter and the Furious World. It tears down the walls of the UStream chat room and let’s the conversation live. Because what we are interested in is talking about Peter, his music, and the Furious World – and that isn’t limited to the venue – just like freeing Peter to tear down the walls of his studio via UStream and invite us in… we tear down the walls that separate the conversation from the rest of the world.
Which brings us back to the cocktail party principle. Have you every been at a cocktail party and just hung back? Stood off to the side and observed everything, all at once? There are dozens of conversations going on, some people are talking to each other, some people are talking at each other, while others appear to be in the conversation, but are really just observing.
You are in a room of people, each making their individual noises – and if you try to take it in all at once all you register is noise. But if you get up, and join a conversation, all that noise recedes into the background. Voices emerge, thoughts are exchanged, friends are made. From a room full of noise we are able to discern the signal – and in doing so participate in conversation with those that share our interests and – if you are lucky – connect with people you’ll maintain a relationship with.
That is what JustSignal is for – and what the Wombat Tracker does. It filters out the noise, turns up the signal and allows those of us interested in Peter, his music and the Furious World to become Wombats.
You’re a Wombat, and you can’t watch Furious World live – grab the Wombat Tracker and we’ll keep you updated. And when a Himmelman fan has yet to discover Furious World and their inner Wombat – we can see that and invite them in. Because the Furious World isn’t a place, it isn’t a webcast, and it isn’t separate from the world – it is you, me, and every one of us – in the world, wherever we are, whatever we are doing.
The current trends in Social Media Brand Monitoring focus around your PR/Marketing agency. They provide tools to create nice reports telling you what the public perception of your brand is – and perhaps some alerts when something “bad” happens.
Led by Radian6 – this trend is very powerful and shouldn’t be ignored. But the real questions facing you (COO, CEO, VP of Product) are:
- Is there any real advantage to cleaning up after the perception is already created?
- If so – how the heck to we operationalize that?
The first question goes to the advantage of quickly (in near real time) engaging, participating and correcting the issues that cause a negative brand perception. As I’ve said before – the urgency is preventing the perception (and attendant backlash) from becoming the story. The real danger is having the original negative perception create a story – the story about how the Social Media universe erupted in outrage. That story will repeat and re-enforce the initial negative perception and create another, more subtle and destructive one – that you are not listening, empathetic and responsive.
more after the jump…
Continue reading “Being in the Conversation – Social Media and your Brand”
I’ve spent a large part of my professional life dealing with the realities of having conversations with customers. In every type and size of company imaginable. And there is one single reality that holds true:
Your brand is what your customers say it is… regardless of your best Marketing and PR efforts.
With the rise of Social Media this reality is even more true. Not because you ever really controlled you brand – but because word of mouth just got global, social and the biggest megaphone you could have ever imagined.
It used to be a single pissed off customer might only impact 10 or 20 people over the course of 3 months. Now a single dissatisfied customer with a Twitter account or Blog can reach hundreds of people in a single day. And, as a rule, if you are doing (or not doing something) that makes customers mad, you do it to more than one per day.
So feel free to create all the marketing material and press releases you want lauding your superior product or service and you commitment to great customer service. In the old world that might have worked. But today it simply can not compete with the conversations your customers and prospects are having about you. You are what they say you are.
If you want to really impact your brand – and how it is perceived by your customers and prospects, get in the conversation.
Your PR and marketing staff will tell you to invest in Social Media Monitoring tools like Radian6 and Techrigy to gather Social Media data to analyze for your next marketing campaign. And I concede – monitoring what is said about you is a positive first step. The challenge with this strategy is that you are still trying to control the conversation.
What you need to do, what you should be doing is participating in the conversation.
Provide Solutions, Inform, Listen and Respond
The most important branding you do (and can do) is in the conversations you have with your customers and prospects.
Think I’m nuts? Great – Let’s look at two examples:
Motrin’s Blunder:
Motrin released an ill conceived ad. And it isn’t that they didn’t realize their mistake – it was that they weren’t engaged in the conversation. Because of that there were 4 days to allow the controversy to reach significant proportions.
Links:
http://mashable.com/2008/11/16/motrin-moms/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/motrin_bows_to_social_media_pr.php
http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2008/11/18/motrin-moms-and-the-perils-of-social-media-marketing/
Ford’s ScottMonty:
ScottMonty from Ford is actively engaged in Social Media. And because of that he is able to react in real (or near real-time) to negative and positive brand messages. This allows Ford the opportunity to actively engage in the conversation and refute false perceptions and reinforce positive messages.
Links:
http://friendfeed.com/e/a8d15997-12ec-eeee-921b-61c96ed66d27/Why-I-love-the-US-auto-industry/
The takeaway:
Analyzing the data and reacting is about how fast you can “clean up the mess”. It pre-supposes you can megaphone your brand message and shout down those who have a different point of view.
By participating in conversations about your brand you have the ability to prevent situations where the perception becomes the story. You have the ability to turn negative experiences into positive brand affinity moments that increase your customer loyalty and enhance your brand in the eyes of those watching. And in this new Social Media world we are all watching.
On Friday, November 21st cosinity released JustSignal – a combined FriendFeed and Twitter application that allows you to turn down the noise and focus in on just those topics or users you find most interesting.
As much as I love Twitter and FriendFeed, they can become a giant distraction. Too much noise, not enough signal. JustSignal is the solution. It allows you to get your entire home feed from FriendFeed and near real-time “Track” from Twitter – all in one user interface. JustSignal’s filtering solution allows you to only receive the information you care most about – in real-time.
While that alone is a powerful solution for the individual user… JustSignal delivers so much more.
JustSignal Brand Monitor tracks your brand across Twitter and FriendFeed – allowing you to monitor what is said about your brand – and react in real time. Our robust solution queues Tweets, FriendFeed Posts, Comments and Likes that refer to your brand. Anyone in your company can log in and respond to those Social Media brand messages as they happen.
JustSignal Brand Monitor also archives everything said about your company – allowing you to analyze the data and determine what the perception is and how it is trending.
This combination of real-time monitoring and response, and historical data analysis is transformative for your company. Stop sending out surveys and start listening to your customers, prospects and influencers.
You can contact me directly for more information.
I’ve been hard at work over the past week. Having your own company which you are attempting to bootstrap in this economy and sponsoring an academic project with ASU Polytechnic and – in my spare time – working on the challenges of real-time information discovery and participation is exhausting. Never-mind the two children under 6.
I’ve listened to what everyone has had to say regarding the “fire-hose” – or as I tend to refer to it – the question of trackable scope. Karoli took the time to write a very persuasive and passionate post – which you can read here. While we still may not agree weather or not the “fire-hose” is required to make track – I think we understand each other’s point of view. We agree on what is important – if not in which order and why. That is enough for me.
Apparently I was mentioned on the Gillmor Gang on 11/11/2008 – I’ve included the podcast below:
PodCast courtesy of The Gillmor Gang
Standard Podcast [60:12m] Download (746)
The discussion turns to track for the last half or so of the hour. After sitting with my latte this morning and listening (to some parts more than once) I believe I have a clearer understanding of Steve Gillmor’s perspective on the issue.
I completely agree with Steve that establishing a base mechanism for data interchange between real-time/near real-time social media services is going to be critical to the ultimate value delivered. As I’ve discussed on identi.ca we need a real-time data “bus” which moves data in real time from publishers to subscribers. Much the same way an electrical bus moves electricity from generators to consumers. At some point that bus – when widely adopted – will become a standard.
I’ll be posting more about the bus early next week.
I believe – and I am quite certain history bears this out – that standards develop because they benefit the services that implement them. In most cases this is because the interchange of data in some structured way is required to unlock the full value of a particular service or solution. We’ve seen this evolution in the past – email is an excellent example. Prior to SMTP every major producer of email systems had a “standard” for routing email between users. SMTP became dominant because it became more valuable to have email that could be exchanged with anyone than to have email without that capability. As a matter of fact it became a deal breaker if you couldn’t send email to anyone.
A counter example can be found in the world of Instant Messaging. After nearly 10 years there is no dominant standard. Each network implements it’s own standard and perhaps bridges messages to other standards. AIM uses OSCAR, GTalk uses XMPP, MSN uses SIP/SIMPLE. You want them all – you need a clever developer who creates a client that can talk to all 3.
There are many reasons that these standards either emerge or fail to emerge. But I’m fairly certain that it has rarely been the case that the standard was implemented because a small, vocal community of users insisted on it. I am very certain that the majority of standards become dominant is because there is a business imperative which makes using a standard more valuable than not.
Call me cynical – but that is how the world works. The question isn’t should there be a widely implemented standard for real-time micro-messaging, the question is what is the win-win? What is the business imperative that will drive widespread adoption? Specifically – how does it benefit Twitter to publish everything to the real-time messaging bus?
My contention is – as I’ve said before:
When compelling and broadly adopted services exist, which demand real-time un-scoped access to multiple underlying services, the individual services will have no choice but to “open their kimono” or face massive user defection.
The key part of that statement is “broadly adopted services exist“. My opinion is that we have to focus on the value proposition. What are the problems being solved and why are the valuable to users?
There are many – and some can be solved today (and as Karoli knows – some that can’t) – without the fire-hose. If I did not believe that to be true I wouldn’t be attempting to solve them. Will they be imperfect? Yes – but the goal isn’t perfection on day one – it is making a situation incrementally better by solving the important problems facing the user.
FriendFeed offers an interesting case – since they base their business model on being an aggregator. And, at least in theory, aggregation is one way to establish a real-time messaging bus and standard. It, however, requires not a network of peers but a single massive aggregator serving as the gateway/hub for access to information.
What I know – with complete certainty – is that the marketplace has ways of working these types of issues out. There will be a winner (or winners). They may or may not be the best technical solution. The real-time micro-messaging bus will be created to support the solutions that gain traction in the market. The solutions will not constrain themselves to 140 characters or any other standard which impedes the ability to solve important problems.
In short – until we hash out the types of services and how they deliver value AND the business imperative which drives a broadly implemented standard… there will be no standard (beyond paper standards).
So I’m going back to work creating value and solving important problems using the power of real-time (or near real-time) information discovery and participation… you in?
Yesterday I took about and hour and created a FriendFeed to XMPP bridge. The advantage I had was that I was already running a XMPP server and had a working XMPP bot – these existed for my own personal use as well as for cosinity.
Why?
Primarily this is about information discovery. The ability to participate is challenging (see below) as FriendFeed is an aggregator.
As I said in an earlier post – I believe FriendFeed’s Real-Time functionality is missing two important capabilities.
- The ability to filter the feed by keyword(s).
- The ability to get real-time for the public timeline.
While there is nothing I can do about access to the public timeline – I can, via the API, create the ability to filter a feed by keyword(s).
Additionally, XMPP is a clean way to distribute the information – so why not have it published via XMPP?
How?
Since FriendFeed had not released any sample code or a Python/PHP library for real-time yet I had to modify the existing libraries to support real time. This turned out to be trivial – I simply made a new {fetch_RT} function which looks much like the existing {fetch} function. With that complete I could simply use this modified PHP library to grab a user’s real-time stream.
As I mentioned earlier I already had an XMPP server running and had created a bot for other reasons. I simply re-used that bot and the over the network XML API defined by the bot to send the FriendFeed stream out as XMPP messages.
There are several important things to note here about the architecture:
- De-Coupling the FriendFeed real-time processes from the XMPP bot processes is a very efficient model.
- Keeping the XMPP stream bot a “dumb pipe” (i.e., outbound message streaming only) is also very efficient.
- Clicking on the link at the front of the XMPP message opens the FriendFeed “conversation” in a browser.
- Since FriendFeed is an aggregator, participation via XMPP will be very problematic.
- For Example: If the message is a tweet do you want to reply with a tweet – or comment on the tweet in FriendFeed’s conversation?
- The bot would have to track a large number of variables for each message in order to properly distribute your comment/message/etc.
- This overhead would directly affect the ability of the service to scale.
- The scope of the feed (e.g., the apple room or My Home feed or my “the cool people list”) and the keywords for which you’d like an XMPP notification would be configured via a web interface.
- This – again – goes directly to keeping the service as scalable as possible.
- The down side is you can’t change scope or keywords via XMPP messages.
- There is the possibility of creating a separate “ffstreamcontrol” bot which would take these commands. It remains to seen if this is really required or a nice to have.
- Since the stream bot acts as a dumb pipe – it can rapidly scale by running multiple instances with the same UID and a different resource string. You won’t know (or care) which bot you are connected to – they all look the same. If one dies – the FriendFeed real-time processes will be programed to try the next one… and the next one… etc.
- Again – this is a very efficient model.
- Will provide high levels of redundancy
- The bots will all connect to a dedicated XMPP server – the XMPP messages will then be distributed via XMPP federation.
- XMPP federation protocols are very efficient.
The Plan:
My current plan is to build something similar to what you see below. The user will create XMPP streams based on scope (i.e., FriendFeed scope – For Example: the Debates 2008 room) and keyword(s). The user will be allowed multiple XMPP streams. All XMPP stream creation, deletion and modification will be done via a web interface.
The XMPP bot(s) will serve as a dumb pipe for content delivery.
Participation is problematic – and as such will be set aside for now. User’s can still participate by clicking on the link in the XMPP message – this link will open the FriendFeed conversation (here is one for example). This will allow the user to participate, subscribe to the user’s involved in the conversation, etc.
Please feel free to comment – let me know if you think this is headed in the right direction.
NOTE: This was written very quickly based on a prototype made yesterday. Please excuse any less than completely thought through concepts… it is a work in progress.
The thing about innovation – is that it really isn’t innovation if everyone you pitch it to immediately “gets it”.
Which creates a nice piece of circular logic – I’m innovating, so no one will understand. Since no one understands I must be innovating. Which is – as my grandmother used to say – happy horse-shit.
Innovation is built on commonly held premises. If you want to know if your problem is people not “getting it” because it is innovative – and thus beyond the range of their current world view- talk to them about the premises that led you to the innovation.
I spent lunch today talking to two very smart people about the future of communications – and that applications are the future, networks will be commodities. And that conversation was ok… where I think I lost them is when I moved to a user centered application development approach for communications.
All of a sudden we weren’t talking about how to let users use features of the network (as an application) and instead we were talking about leveraging the network as a tool to solve important problems for the customer via applications.
The innovation is an application first (as opposed to network first) communications model. A model that assumes the network is commoditized and ubiquitous. This breaks hundreds of years (in telecommunications) of business model and world view. Generally speaking that world view gap is what allows – or prevents – a person from “getting it” when it comes to your innovation.
The important part is that the premises you based the innovation on still garner nods of agreement. If they do – you are innovating. If they don’t it might just be an idea that legitimately makes no sense.
I’ve been using FriendFeed for several months now. As a matter of fact, with the addition of real-time FriendFeed is now my primary Social Media interface. Why? Because the critical attribute which makes Social Media useful (yep, I’m banging on the adding value drum again) is aggregation, not publishing or networks. Publishing and networks are required – but they quickly become commoditized. An example – Twitter gets popular and up pops Laconica, Yammer, OpenMicroBlogging, identi.ca, …
Social Networks are no different. How many social networks do you have to check every day to keep up? What are the odds that all of your friends (or co-workers) are on the same network?
Social Bookmarking – no different. Friends across multiple networks.
The result is that you – in order to actually use Social Media in a useful way (information discovery) – have to jump through hoop after hoop after hoop to attempt to discover anything.
That is why aggregation is so powerful – and why I was never all that impressed with Twitter’s Track feature (which caused so much angst when turned off). Track was only interesting if you assume all the relevant information was/is on Twitter. In other words – the network drives value, not the information – and that completely misses the point.
FriendFeed gets it. The value is in the information – and providing aggregation of that information and useful tools to locate, consume and re-share that information is the key to providing value. With the introduction of Real-Time FriendFeed completely changes the real-time information discovery game.
FriendFeed allows a user to aggregate all the places they view, track, share, and create information. When you follow a person you follow all of their information – regardless of what network it is generated on. That – to me – is the point of a “follow” – I want to know what you find interesting, because if you find it interesting I might too. I really don’t care how you share the information… and I certainly don’t want to follow you around the inter-webs joining every cool new network to get access to the information you view, track, share, and create. When you join a new service (a.k.a., network) you add it to FriendFeed and viola! I can see what you share there as well…
The introduction of real-time (while admittedly imperfect) is a sea change for real-time information discovery. It transforms it from a network (service) based activity (e.g., I can see what happens on Facebook in real-time in Facebook – I can see what happens in Twitter real-time in Twitter – etc) to person based activity – I see, in real-time – what you share, without the limitations of network/service.
The only thing missing from FriendFeed today is aggregation based on topic. That is, the ability to specify a group (e.g., everyone, my friends, a room, etc) and a topic search (e.g., debate, google, pretty cat pictures, etc) and see only information which satisfies both criteria.
At the end of the day – the aggregation of information a person shares, and the ability of others to “follow” that information stream is Social Media. The social graph is interesting, but it doesn’t add value to people’s lives in any meaningful way (granted it creates a highly valuable advertising platform). Efficient sharing of information and information discovery does. Aggregation is the secret sauce.
Brian Roy 