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On Tuesday I was talking at the NMK blogging event, Blogs: A Real Conversation, that took place at University of Westminster, in  01zero-one. The title of my session was Are blogs new voices of authority? Well, the blogger has spoken.

Comprehensive multi-media coverage by Lloyd Davies of Perfect Path who points to others who did agreat job of summarising the whole of BARC .

I have been to most events about blogging in London and think that NMK pulled it off in an intelligent and interesting manner. And that’s not just because I was on the panel. It was like a gathering of friends without the navel gazing. Interesting concepts about internet, online and blogs were explored, people spoke intelligently about them - metaphors all over the place. My kind of stuff…

  Panel 2 
  Originally uploaded by Lloyd Davis.

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Just as with RSS syndication, it is a sign that things have taken hold when the non-technical mainstream media start writing about innovations which were once the preserve of hardcore techno-geeks.  Podcasting is the latest ‘next thing’ to get noticed in such places as the Wall Street Journal.

Podcasts are yet another of those emergent activities that spring out of nowhere with very little warning.  Much like blogging, no one ever sat down in a corporate office and thought up podcasting, the component technologies were there and it just ‘happened’. It is just another way in which the internet is both enabling and disintermediating. It also shows that merely analysing the technologies is a pretty ineffective way of seeing what is coming down the road: a high proportion of mainsteam analysis of the internet is rather like studying how cars work and then expecting to understand where people are going to drive and why.  Podcasting, like blogging, are made possible by technological developments but they are not ‘technologies’ themselves so much as social phenomenon.  This is also probably why IT consultants are usually the last people to understand developments like these because you cannot understand how such innovations come about by just looking at underlying technology.

I have thought for some time that when Adriana does her presentations to various conferences, we should be podcasting her remarks for people who cannot attend.  But even though we do this sort of thing for a living, even we have difficulty actually finding the time implement it all some times!

Podcasts from tBBC, coming soon

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An excellent article by Gordon Cook in strategy+business about Skype’s challenge to both telcoms and traditional companies. Skype is a “softphone” — a software-based telephone that uses a computer, cellphone, PDA, or any other equipment connected to the Web to deliver voice with simultaneous file transfer and instant messages over the Internet.

It is different from the growing number of “voice over Internet protocol” (VOIP) networks offered by phone and cable companies, because it is a peer-to-peer system, creating ad hoc computer-to-computer links over the Internet whenever Skype users want to reach one another. The big issue here is that no central networks mediate
or manage the connection and so the user to user calls are free. Since its debut, Skype has signed up 35 million users and, at any one time, well over 3 million people are logged into its network.

Those of us who use it, know how revolutionary it is and how it changed the voice communication and its cost. But as Gordon Cook points out, the road to Skype’s domination is not smooth as most corporate IT and telecom managers are trying to avoid Skype at all costs. It is for sound security reasons, but I am sure the idea that employees can be using something that is not controlled by the company and/or its IT department plays a role. But because Skype gives more control to the individual I don’t see how its progress can be halted without resorting to drastic measures:

Soon it will become imperative for larger companies to take Skype seriously, if for no other reason than that peer-to-peer architecture is one of the most efficient, most direct, and least wasteful systems of digital interaction.

But perhaps the most lasting influence of Skype will be that it will force management and IT executives to consider how to structure a network that exists both inside and outside the corporate firewall. To improve innovation and their own productivity, employees will gravitate to the most advanced collaboration and communications tools with the most reliable levels of quality, no matter what price is paid in weakened security.

Indeed. The corporate firewall is a technological equivalent of the great business divide between the company and the ‘consumers’ whose porousness Cluetrain has so effectively pointed out. This is not a statement about no need for security but for looking at the landscape in a bit more peer-to-peer way, you might say…

Cross-posted from Media Influencer

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As we have been predicting for some time, RSS syndication is heading out of the techno-geek ghetto and cruising into the mainstream.  Microsoft will be building it into their next operating system (codenamed Longhorn) and version 7 of its browser Internet Explorer (out this summer) will be following rival Firefox by incorporating easy syndication functionality. Perhaps even more importantly, the merits of on-line syndication as a way of ‘creating your own newspaper’ are appearing in the non-technical media.

Syndication is one of those things that may appear to be just a small feature until you realise that things which enhances network effects usually have an impact far greater than expected.  RSS is almost certainly going to be one of those things.

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Just a note on the LA Times wiki boo boo: Rob Barrett, the LA Times GM, deserves praise for wanting to use blogs, wikis, and other emergent technologies to reinvigorate the output of the entire media entity. I’ve talked to him many times about this kind of stuff and to say he’s on the side of the angels is a massive understatement. And far from thinking he knows it all, he’s genuinely eager to learn how to get the most benefit out of these technologies for the LAT and readers alike. He’s a true enthusiast, an incredibly clever guy, and - as this incident shows - isn’t afraid of taking calculated risks.

Well done, Rob. Short-term stumbling often precedes huge success. Those who understand that and keep plugging away are the ones who produce truly great things. 

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The Economist has an excellent leader article about what important lessons the remarkable tale of eBay’s growth points to for any business trying to operate online. Today that includes, one way or another, most firms.

The commercial opportunities presented by an expanding global web seem almost limitless. But the pace of change is rapid, and so is the ferocity of competition. To succeed, firms need agility, an open mind and the ability to reinvent themselves repeatedly. Most of all, they need to listen carefully to their customers, paying close attention to what they do and don’t want. Such qualities, of course, would be valuable in any kind of business. Yet for online firms they are not a luxury, but necessary for mere survival.

Hence their writing on the wall for the marketing industry about the ’empowered consumer‘. They translate the many-to-many nature of the internet into the need to pay attention to every whim of the customers. Which is good advice, but I would go even further - businesses should understand that the barrier separating them and the ‘consumers’ is breaking down. Their employees are the same people who create the ‘consumer class’ and the big divide between the ‘broadcaster of the message’ and the ‘target audience’ is no longer what it used to be in the industrial era of mass production and pretty much mass everything…

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One more post on spyware and adware, which is one of my major criticisms of advertising and marketing as its obsession with measurement of every flick of consumer’s eyeball provides a fertile ground for the ad/spyware scum. Dan Gillmor explains why one senator’s likening spyware to somebody walking around your house, kind of invisibly was inadequate.

Spyware is more like someone planting hidden cameras and microphones around your house and office, and even in the bathrooms. It’s just about the sleaziest online activity there is. Given the severity of the problem, one might be pleased to hear that Congress seems fairly serious this year about doing something about it. But it’s too soon to get our hopes up. For a variety of reasons, including the sheer indifference of the bad guys to the rule of law, this plague will be enormously difficult to slow, much less halt.

The stakes are high and growing. Nothing less than the future of online commerce and communications may ride on whether we find ways to deal with spyware.

Quite. And he is spot on about the underlying problem:

IT people need to explain to marketing people that it is never acceptable to install unwanted software on customers’ computers. And marketing people need to understand what they risk if they go ahead and do it.

What they risk with me is simple: If I learn that a company has even attempted to pull a fast one, I put it on my personal blacklist, which means never doing business with it again.

The reason I devote and plan to devote much effort to highlighting the unholy alliance of spyware/adware and ‘respectable’ online advertising and marketing industry, is that the connection does not seem to be obvious enough. So watch this space, I am not done yet..

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A truly dizzing predictions of the future of mobile from Tomi Ahonen on Communities Dominate Brands… I was getting quite excited by 2010 what with a 3.5G phone with a 5 Megapixel optical zoom cameraphone with WiFi type speeds and built-in TV tuners, and a gigabyte size hard drive (like today’s i-Pods). The smallest phones are the size of a thick credit card.

But that’s barely scratching the surface. Tomi buffs up the crystal ball and this is what he sees for 2020 and 2025:

By 2020 the personal secretary function evolves into a personality synthesizer - ie there will be software on my phone, that when you call it, you don’t even know that you did not talk to me, you talked to my phone, which then makes necessary adjustments to my calendar, informs me briefly what was talked about etc. And the translator? by 2020 the bugs are fixed, and we have real-time translation, any language to any language.

By 2020 all payments go directly to the mobile phone account (ie it is the same as our bank account and our credit card account). We pay all relevant payments by mobile phone, from taxes to rents to monthly car payments etc. Most daily newspapers have stopped printing paper versions. Music CDs and movie DVDs are no longer made. And the “free” non-Mobile phone based “old-fashioned” internet has all but vanished.

Finally in 2025 we have the 5G phone. It is totally unfair to call this a phone and it certainly won’t be called that. The form factor is more like a sugar cube or less, can easily be built into a ring for example. People will have these communication devices built into the body, into perhaps a tooth etc., With multi-multi terabyte hard drives these “phones” can ship with all the worlds’ movies, or all the world’s TV shows, or all the worlds’ existing videogames, etc already preloaded, depending on what is your preference of entertainment. And of course mainstream phones come with the top 1000 fave movies, TV shows, videogames AND all existing music preloaded.

I am not sure that the phone will become the device of the future although it makes sense on many levels. However, this is Tomi’s territory and I look forward to more of his insights. In order to appreciate the journey and it isn’t just the path of the mobile phone development but many other media and communication read the whole thing.

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... even though it’s just one settlement in New York. Hopefully that sends a signal to the industry. Eventually.

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Microsoft’s Business Solutions describes its mission thusly:

...to help small, mid-market and corporate businesses become more connected with customers, employees, partners and suppliers.

Simon Edwards is the UK MD of Microsoft Business Solutions. In an email forwarded to me by journalist Dennis Howlett, Edwards responds to his question of whether MBS is looking at the commercial applications of blogging within their app portfolio by saying:

I’m afraid I’m one of those blank pages regarding blogging that the guy on your site talks about. So, I am a long way from understanding the commercial potential.

Is there any excuse for someone in Edwards’s position to be so clueless about blogging? I can’t think of one.

Cross-posted from The Hole

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MediaPost has two article about paid search. The first one is good news for search engine marketing/optimisation business as the Merrill Lynch in a report on Internet advertising issued Thursday predicted that the amount spent on sponsored search listings will increase 47 percent this year to around $5.1 billion, from around $3.5 billion in 2004. Much of the growth will stem from the rise in broadband adoption, which as Merrill Lynch predicts, will result in more queries to search engines. Lauren Rich Fine, first vice president at Merrill Lynch says in the report:

[S]earch volume growth really has been the bigger driver of growth in paid search advertising in late 2004 and into early 2005. We believe this trend will continue as broadband subscription prices continue to drop, more users move to broadband connections, and ultimately conduct more queries.

Overall it seems that online advertising is gathering some serious momentum. Last week at the conference, the statistic of online ad spending as compared with offline has been bandied about a lot. Merill Lynch continued to predict that online advertising would reach $12.4 billion this year and $25 billion by 2009.  My views on that are… well, I am not exactly jumping up and down.

The second article is about how major search engines do not clearly disclose which results have been paid for and which are organic, according to a study, Still in Search of Disclosure, by Consumer Reports’ WebWatch.

Interestingly enough, the study author, Jorgen Wouters, indicated that the failure to prominently disclose whether a marketer had paid to be included in the results misleads consumers.

Our previous studies have shown that 60 percent of consumers surveyed did not know that search engine results included paid advertisements along with non-paid results, and when they found out the truth, they were angry. Search engines need to understand that these practices and omissions, when exposed, matter to consumers--their customers.

Note to marketers… it’s all in the mind. It’s about how you treat your clients’ customers. If they are sheep or eyeballs that just need to be teased, entertained or otherwise manipulated into paying attention and buying the products you want them to, it will show. It has always shown, to be honest, but now the ‘empowered consumer’ can and does talk back.

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He [Bob Garfield] was talking, of course, about our industry’s acne that is pop-ups, our bad hair that is sketchy content, and our halitosis that’s spam. He didn’t even really focus on our stigmata of Spyware, which has probably gone farther than any of our industry’s other ills to erode consumer trust.
- Mark Naples, onlineSpin

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As you may have read elsewhere, I accepted an offer this week to join Latitude, the world’s largest and most successful search engine marketing company, as their head of marketing.

It is not the case, though, that I left the Big Blog Company for Latitude. In fact, I told Perry and Adriana about a month ago that I felt the time had come for me to move on from our shared mission of teaching companies how to converse with their customers, potential customers, and industry peers. (Actually, we were doing a lot more than just that, but for brevity’s sake, I won’t detail every single way in which we’ve been trying to change the world.)

I have been itching to do something that would let me affect the big picture of which blogging is only one very integral part. I had no idea what that something would be, but I knew I had to try to find it. But it found me, in the form of the offer from Latitude, within a very short time of my decision to leave full-time work with tBBC. (To those who were horrified when I replied, “I don’t know” when you asked me what I was going to do next, and who thought I was insane not to have a ten year plan or whatever other rigid schemes you think people need in order to live well: The way this is working out is a good example of what we at tBBC refer to as the benefits of the emergent.)

But as I have written previously, I wouldn’t have the expertise to do what I’ll be doing at Latitude if I had not spent the last year soaking in tBBC. Most businesses pay lip service to ‘company values,’ but it’s no exaggeration to say that the values I cultivated thanks to Adriana and Perry (and our good friends like Alan Moore at SMLXL) are ones over which I’ve become obsessive in my wish to honour. Engagement not interruption. Pull not push. Individuals not ‘consumers’. Value for value. The benefit of the emergent. Your behaviour is your brand. Sneer at the Cluetrain purity of it all, but don’t doubt our sincerity. All of us from tBBC, and the people we gravitate to (and who gravitate to us), are individuals who do not like to be pushed around, who reject attempts to control our behaviour, and who resent few things more than a company that thinks it can get money out of us by pushing us around and attempting to control our behaviour.

Those are the values I’m taking to Latitude, and which will be core to my efforts there. The opportunity to bring those values to an established, highly successful company that is surrounded by the stalwarts of traditional, intrusive, push marketing is very exciting to me. Just as tBBC has been instrumental in me landing such a great gig, I hope to be instrumental in making the mentality of marketing in the UK (and beyond - if that’s not too much to hope for) one that is much more receptive to the values I learned with tBBC.

And when I say tBBC, I mean Adriana and Perry, the two people with whom I have been immersed in this stuff for at least three thousand hours over the past year. After logging that kind of time, there’s no way I can completely extract myself from what they are trying to do. Plus, we’re still friends and I still talk to Adriana on pretty much a daily basis. So you’ll probably continue to spot the occasional post from me on this blog.

So thanks, Adriana and Perry, for changing my life. Not only do I now know exactly what I want to accomplish in life, but I also have a finer appreciation for the humble hippo than I did before I met you. I could not pay you a higher compliment if I tried. 

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Alright, not really ‘blues’ just the final impressions from the NMA Online Marketing conference and show, which you can read about here…

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Off to the NMA online marketing conference. I am going there today to have a look around, talk to passers-by about interruption vs engagement marketing, make sure my laptop and the ‘multimedia’ (read video clips and links) in my presentation work for tomorrow, and finally spend some quality time with Jackie Danicki on the Latitude stall. If you are around, do come and say hello.

Will try to do some moblogging on my other blog while I am there, if there is anything worth capturing…