Filed under: Digital culture, Innovative stimulus, Social media, Thinking | Tags: Digital culture, Google, lynete webb, online
For those of you who don’t know Lynette Webb, the insights manager at Google – you can read the previous posts here and here. For those of you who do, here’s another doozy:
“The idea for this slide came from a recent article in the NYT about how the internet is impacting literacy:
“Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends. Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”
It’s a nice thought. When you think about how you read, surf, scan, think and communicate online . . it’s anything but linear. In fact, there’s a sense in which much of the activity that happens online is about joining the dots and redrawing them, than it is reaching some tangible end or defined goal. I like Lynette’s pics because they also pick a poignant point and sum it up perfectly with a great quote and an emotive image. She’s a great resource for inspiration stimulus if you want to get people thinking differently, especially about the impact of the net.
Check out the live link here
Filed under: Digital culture, Social media, geek | Tags: bud caddell, mika arauz, undercurrent
Ok I’ve discovered more mind candy, this time in the form of a couple of strategists who work at digital think tank Undercurrent in the US. The first one is Mike Arauz and he blogs about anything and everything digital. This is an RSS cracker so get on to it, take a peek and whack it in your reader. He also posts a lot of diagrams. Diagrams look smart and are nice to read. I love a good diagram. Here’s a snippet of some of his posts :
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I’ve been thinking a lot about fans. Not just the average viewer, reader, or customer; but, the devoted people who on some level see their affection for something someone else has created as part of their own identity. When we think about how the internet has changed the communications landscape, it seems that fans have taken on an increasingly important and central role in the making or breaking of brands and entertainment properties.
Fandom has a long and storied history (and there are plenty of people who are much more qualified than I am to talk about it), and in the past couple years I think we’ve started a new chapter. The most obvious example of this change is Comic-Con, the huge conference for sci-fi disciples and super hero devotees of every persuasion that has turned into the must-attend super-showcase for every aspiring new movie, TV show, or video game. I’ve also seen fan culture creep into the marketing world. In my own work I often use the word fan in place of consumer, when I talk about reaching a core audience of people who care most about a product or service.
I think that the reason why we’re seeing this interest in fans, is that we’re recognizing how powerful a mobilized fan community can be. If they love you, they will make you a hit. If they hate you, they will prevent you from ever having a chance.
But, relationships between fans and the creators of the work that has earned the fans’ devotion are complex, and the diverse roles represent varying degrees of active participation.
There is another reason why I love this blog. On it I have just found a fabulous link to geeky data heaven. Check out this puppy. For those of you who love a good statistic, this will be the time sucker for 2009.
Another fella from Undercurrent who also writes is Bud Caddell and he blogs at what consumes me. Anyway these two are worth taking a peek at if you’re looking for a little geek buzz uptop.
Filed under: Advertising, Digital culture, banking | Tags: citibank, generation forward, MySpace
Citibank recently launched a new credit card in partnership with MySpace targeted at young adults which it terms “Generation Forward”. It’s launched a sexy ad talking bout this generation, offering some reward type arrangements for good behaviour and offers an interest rate reduction for paying on time.
The idea has been slated by many already as an empty promotion that not only offers a complete firfy if you read the fine print, but that the “generation forward” positioning is actually at odds (in philosophy) from how Citibank itself operates.
The idea of a bank rewarding younger people for responsible repayments is a nice one. The idea of putting a line in the financial sand between the generations which caused the financial crisis and the new generations coming up the line is also a nice one. All in all it seems to be another marketing program that didn’t quite hit the mark due to it’s inability to deliver any real change beyond a sexy campaign.
On the banking scene,I wonder if anyone will build on the idea and do it for real? I wonder if a bank could actually take the positioning and deliver on real savings for younger people as a loyalty exercise? If they could find more innovative ways to provide value and earn more coin for themselves, whilst providing a genuinely responsible and transparent credit plan for young people in the process…Now that would be impressive.
If you’re interested, here’s a little more commentary on the topic:
Filed under: Digital culture | Tags: Age of Conversation 2, AOC2, Drew McLellan, Gavin Heaton, Get Shouty, katie chatfield
Ok for those of you who haven’t heard, the Age of Conversation2 is out now at lulu.com.
Another gem edited from Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan, the peeps over at Lulu have described it like this . . it’s a daring challenge to the business community. Gone are the top-down, command and control messages that held sway through the 20th Century. In are a raft of new techniques that start with listening, responding and action that set the scene for a continuing and evolving dialog about brands, experience, business and community.
All those who participated in the latest book are listed below. Well done to everyone involved, fantastic effort.
I was brain surfing at Get Shouty and had to pass on Katie’s latest ditty about AOC2. Very entertaining…
Yo AOC2 let’s kick it
Nice/nice – maybe (x2)All right stop collaborate and listen
Conversation is back. (Not a brand new invention!)Media dollars are acting tightly
But information flows daily and nightly
Will it ever stop yo I don’t know
But if you turned off the TV would you slow?To the extreme you rock a media plan like a vandal
People’s attention’s not a moth to a candle
They don’t go rush to the speaker that booms
Advertising kills your brain like a poisonous mushroom
Filed under: Digital culture, Geek stuff | Tags: Kevin Kelly, Mike Walsh, San Francisco, The digital future, The Fourth Estate, Tim Berners Lee, web 2.0, Web 2.0 Summit, Web trends, Wired Magazine
An interesting post here from Mike Walsh who writes The Digital Future that’s definitely worth a read if like me, you’re wondering where to next…
So what’s next for the Web?
[Mike's post starts here]
Another 'interesting snippet' from Google's Insights Manager Lynette
It was the unspoken question of many who gathered at the Web2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week. For Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, it all came down to a number – 6,527. Or, the exact number of days until now since Tim Berners Lee made the first webpage. All the innovation, the new wealth, disruptions in traditional media and the millions of Wikipedia entries – a seemingly impossible scale of human endeavor – had been created in that relatively short span. So, what are we likely to see in the next 6500 days?
For a start, it’s becoming clear that 2008 will be an inflection point for the industry. In her annual high altitude scan of the new media landscape, Morgan Stanley internet analyst Mary Meeker pointed out that relative amount of time that consumers spent on websites has changed dramatically. When you look at the metric of global minutes, over the last two years YouTube and Facebook have gained over 500 basis points of relative share, at the expense of traditional portal incumbents Yahoo! and MSN. (more…)
Filed under: Digital culture | Tags: blogging, Google, posting, problogger, search, search engine marketing, search traffic, SEO, Social media, traffic, writing posts
A great post from Darren over at Problogger about getting more traffic to your blog that I thought I’d share with you. It’s a great post and good food for thought. When you think about it, it’s how we think about communication in general [or should do]. Who are we talking to? What interests them? How do we get their attention? Where do they hang out?
“What is the best way to get Search Engine Traffic to Your Blog?”
1. Search Traffic has been an important part of my blogging
The amount of traffic that the blogs I’ve worked on get from Search Engines varies considerably from blog to blog but on my two current blogs I get 25-35% of my traffic from Search Engines (largely Google).
Here’s a chart showing how Search Traffic fits into the mix of my photography blog traffic (from a couple of months back):
You can see that Search Engine Traffic is not the biggest source of traffic (social media takes that award) but it is significant considering the site gets over a million visits a month.
2. Search Traffic isn’t Everything
Looking at the above chart you see that if I was to only ever focus upon Search Engine Traffic that I could potentially be loosing up to 67% of my blog’s traffic.
One of the main points I made yesterday is that people shouldn’t become obsessed by Search. While it has amazing potential – I find that sites grow best when they have a variety of sources of traffic (including from Search Engines).
Here is another chart from the presentation which shows the four main areas that I put effort into when thinking about driving traffic – Search, Social Media, Community and Content.
Search Engine Optimization, participating in social media, building community and producing content are four important elements of building a site that gets (and keeps) high levels of traffic. When a blogger becomes obsessed by any one of them (to the detriment of others) the site can suffer (or at least not realize its potential). When the four elements come together a blog can grow quite rapidly.
Filed under: Borrow this, Digital culture, Emergent media, Future of Media, Future of Work, Futures, Google, Innovation, Innovative stimulus, Looking for insights, Macro trends, Social media, Thinking, Trends stuff, creativity, open source | Tags: Advertising, Clay shirky, Google, Here comes everybody, insights manager, Lynette web, Russell Davies, the future of media, THe power of organising without organisations, typepad, UK
Another good piece of innovation stimulus from the lovely Lynette Webb, Insights Manager at Google who created a Flickr site called “Interesting Snippets”. I’ve profiled her before and this is the latest image to her collection. It comes to us with a great quote from Russell Davies’ blog entry about Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody.
For those of you who haven’t heard about it, Clay’s book is about what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures. When the traditional obstacles are broken down and we can all connect, engage and speak freely. What does this mean for the way we interact? For the way media publishers direct content? What happens when our unrestricted right to access, to connect and to speak is not only realised, but assumed?
It’s worth checking out Russell’s post on the book here
And if you haven’t read Clay’s blog you should definitely wet your whistle with a little of this
