Influx Insights Tag Feed: internet

kevin kelly- the next phase of the web

Influx Insights — 2008-11-07T10:51:26Z

Kevin Kelly's take on the next phase of web development that involves data sharing from the Web 2.0 Conference.

He takes us through what might happen in the next 6,500 days of the web.

Some highlights.

1. Not be anything like the web

2. Be a single machine- everything is connect to the same thing.We have one large machine with the web as its OS

3. The web will own every bit that's produced- if it's not part of the web, it will not count

4. Everything in our lives will be on this "machine"

5. The machine has and will have a global sense- see latest financial crisis

6. Move to the cloud

7. Be all about sharing- what can we do? what will the limits be?

8. Always be on- never off

9. Extreme dependence on this "machine" because it makes us smarter. Being off will feel like an amputation!

10. Lead us to continue to question- "Who are we?"

11. We will need to believe in the impossible

Click To Play

Posted by Ed Cotton

obama almost breaks the internet

Influx Insights — 2008-11-05T15:23:11Z

Data from Akamai shows that Obama become the new number 1 new story in internet traffic volume since records began (2005).

Obama beat out a mix of celebrity deaths and sporting events to claim the number one spot.

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx interview- paul kim- vp marketing, mozilla corporation

Influx Insights — 2008-10-16T19:11:20Z

Mozilla, the folks behind Firefox are at the forefront of 2.0 marketing. They rely on their community to build and market their products and have done some amazing things by taping into their base. Here's a short interview with Paul Kim, VP Marketing, Mozilla Corporation, who explains more.

1. Briefly describe your position?

I'm the VP of marketing for Mozilla Corp.

We work as part of a global open source project to make Firefox.

Mostly, I try to stay out of the way of an inspired team of marketers working in partnership with a worldwide community to spread the word about Firefox.

2. What, in your opinion, has changed for brands in the 2.0 world?

The poles that immediately jumped to mind for me are "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" and "Line Rider".

Classic branding reached a kind of apex in 1971 with the Coca-Cola "Hilltop" ad -

"Hilltop" rolls up multiple strands of an era that is receding for brands: concentration of audience and attention, advertising as entertainment, and implicit upleveling of professionalism over word of mouth.

I can't think of a better counter and illustration of the structural changes 2.0 has introduced than "Line Rider". A Flash-based physics experiment spreads through the global network to spawn a subnet of participant generated content, a commercial enterprise, and a 2.0 brand sui generis.

- 25K Line Rider videos

The core of 2.0 is continuous, realtime and actionable feedback loops.

As the pre-2.0 lag between idea and response shrinks, we'll see the rise of unpredictable, resonant brands that validate themselves not through multi-million dollar traditional campaigns, but through the trackable, grassroots support of individual humans, enstatiated on the web.

3. What have been Mozilla’s most interesting marketing efforts and why do you think they worked?

There is a line from the launch of Firefox to today that rests on co-opting traditional marketing models and opening them up to participation by our community.

The three campaigns that come to mind:

New York Times Ad. 10,000 Mozilla community members donate over $250,000 in a week to fund New York Times ad to launch Firefox 1.0

Firefox Flicks. A contest to deliver community generated 30-second ads for Firefox (inspired in part by MoveOn's Bush in 30 Seconds contest and Butler Shine's Converse UGC campaign). Over 250 submissions; tens of millions of views on video nets.

Download Day. Rallied the Mozilla community to drive awareness for the launch of Firefox 3 with a campaign to set a new Guinness World Record for most software downloads in a single day. Exceeded our goal of 5M downloads with a final tally of 8M. Campaign lived on the web, was global, and provided a satisfying mechanism for individual participation in a collective effort.

4. How can old school brands become more 2.0?

Listen, share, adapt, be open and give back.

At the edges, reimagine your business down to its DNA (for much, much
more on this topic, read Umair Haque at http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/haque/

5. How do expect the economy to impact people’s relationship to brands?

My hope is that the current economic environment, as fleeting as it may be, reinforces the need for sustainable living.

How this filter influences brand relationships isn't clear to me yet.

I'm optimistic about a rebalancing in the relationship and interaction between human and brand(s) in the years still to come.

Posted by Ed Cotton

more blink- visual perception- faster than a speeding bullet

Influx Insights — 2008-05-23T18:13:37Z

Our minds process visual information at a rapid rate, which makes it tough for designers who need to create both instant impact and depth.

However, if people get the chance to click their mouse and move away because their perception tells them there's no point to going deeper, it means impact is everything.

Recent research conducted by the University of Vienna shows just how fast people process visual information. Its study focused on art and asked subjects to compare similarities and differences in various pieces.

Researchers found that subjects could register content in less than 1/100th of a second.

Within 1/20th of a second subjects had already started to interpret style.

All this happening before recognition of the whole object.

It shows that art directors and designers have less time than we originally thought to capture attention and stop people from clicking away with their remote button or mouse.

Posted by Ed Cotton

we are hard-wired to be info junkies

Influx Insights — 2008-04-02T12:54:26Z

There's a good piece in the WSJ about research conducted by Irving Biederman, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California.

His research has found that we crave information, just like we crave food. If there's lots of information to look at and digest, we seem hard-wired to enjoy wallowing in it. This explains why fundamental disloyalty and clicking away from a site to something else is so attractive to us.

It suggests that the experiences we create for brands should be multi-dimensional and give the user more control, rather than something that's tightly edited.

It appears that we are happiest when we roam and don't want to be boxed in.

"In other words, coming across what Dr. Biederman calls new and richly interpretable information triggers a chemical reaction that makes us feel good, which in turn causes us to seek out even more of it. The reverse is true as well: We want to avoid not getting those hits because, for one, we are so averse to boredom.

It is something we seem hard-wired to do, says Dr. Biederman. When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and we are junkies for those. You might call us 'infovores.' "

For most of human history, there was little chance of overdosing on information, because any one day in the Olduvai Gorge was a lot like any other. Today, though, we can find in the course of a few hours online more information than our ancient ancestors could in their whole lives."

Posted by Ed Cotton

"2008 will be a crap year"- bruce sterling

Influx Insights — 2008-02-14T04:07:41Z

Now showing at the bottom of this post is Mr. Sterling's extraordinary presentation from the recent LIFT conference in Geneva, on 2008.

He takes on Microsoft; "Gates left because it was so boring!"

According to Sterling- Carla Bruni is the phenom that is defining our future.

Sterling suggests Carla's relationship with Nicholas Sarkozy is the product of an internet policy decision, the most interesting story there is and something no one could have predicted. Sterling declares Bruni to be a Black Swan; a random, unexpected event that changes everything.

He goes onto create a series of 4 futurist scenarios for Bruni/Sarkozy based on the axes of ambition and publicity.

Funny stuff.

Posted by Ed Cotton

is data portability the cure for network fatigue?

Influx Insights — 2008-01-20T21:44:03Z

Network fatigue is a big problem as web users experiment, use and play with so many differtent sites, each with its own user identites, passwords, friends and content, so perhaps data portability is the answer.

DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

Via Cubicgarden

Posted by Ed Cotton

unlimited = a never ending web experience

Influx Insights — 2007-11-06T10:39:53Z

The constraints of integration too often put limits on the creative application of a single medium.

The idea that interactive should follow the lead of television often doesn't make any sense. It's refreshing to see an idea that seems so perfect for the interactive medium and one where the agency has been allowed to play a little.

Poke's campaign for Orange all about a simple unlimited calling service, but it's been treated as an experience.

How many times have we seen this service executed in a boring and predicatable fashion?

Online, Poke have made it playful, random, experiential and masively engaging, it also translates the idea of unlimited into never ending and applied it directly to the web.

The end result is a welcome change from the predictable pathways most users are set.

Posted by Ed Cotton

google: half the company has been hired in the past 12 months

Influx Insights — 2007-10-25T00:31:46Z

CNET has an interesting story about the rapid fire hiring practices at Google.

The company added over 2,000 workers in the last quarter alone and wasn't without financial impact,it caused a 3 cent miss in earnings. However, one analyst pointed out a more troubling fact that half the company has been hired in the past 12 month. That means someone who has been at Google for more than two years is not only a millionaire, they’re also a veteran.

Google’s internal brand culture is in danger of diluting to the point of meaninglessness, unless the HR people can step up and successfully “Googlewash” the new employee base.

Google is a classic example of a company that starts out as a challenger to the incumbents and the established norms, just like Microsoft did to IBM, but in a very short period of time, finds itself just like the incumbents it was rallying against.

In Google’s case, this has happened really fast, it clearly knows it needs to do everything it can to protect its unique culture.

There are some interesting thoughts on this notion from the company’s founders in this video. (warning...it's long, but comments about culture and scale are at 29m 25s)

Posted by Ed Cotton

new web rules from the bbc

Influx Insights — 2007-06-22T00:50:27Z

Some interesting new "rules" from the BBC. (Via Tom Loosemore)

1. Build web products that meet audience needs: anticipate needs not yet fully articulated by audiences, then meet them with products that set new standards. (nicked from Google)

2. The very best websites do one thing really, really well: do less, but execute perfectly. (again, nicked from Google, with a tip of the hat to Jason Fried)

3. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves: link to other high-quality sites instead. Your users will thank you. Use other people’s content and tools to enhance your site, and vice versa.

4. Fall forward, fast: make many small bets, iterate wildly, back successes, kill failures, fast.

5. Treat the entire web as a creative canvas: don’t restrict your creativity to your own site.

6. The web is a conversation. Join in: Adopt a relaxed, conversational tone. Admit your mistakes.

7. Any website is only as good as its worst page: Ensure best practice editorial processes are adopted and adhered to.

8. Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever.

9. Remember your granny won’t ever use “Second Life”: She may come online soon, with very different needs from early-adopters.

10. Maximise routes to content: Develop as many aggregations of content about people, places, topics, channels, networks & time as possible. Optimise your site to rank high in Google.

11. Consistent design and navigation needn’t mean one-size-fits-all: Users should always know they’re on one of your websites, even if they all look very different. Most importantly of all, they know they won’t ever get lost.

12. Accessibility is not an optional extra: Sites designed that way from the ground up work better for all users

13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes: Encourage users to take nuggets of content away with them, with links back to your site

14. Link to discussions on the web, don’t host them: Only host web-based discussions where there is a clear rationale

15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent: After all, it’s your users’ data. Best respect it.

Posted by Ed Cotton

brands and online video- 7 new rules

Influx Insights — 2007-03-26T19:24:06Z

Here are 7 new rules for brands wanting to play in the new landscape of online video, it's a follow up to the previous post on big brands experimenting with online video.

1.    Creativity Rules- The bar has been raised to 11

In the past, when brands used to look at creativity, they were comparing themselves to each other, so the bar was pretty low, often anything that got people to laugh, was deemed a success.

Now, engagement has gotten so much harder. The competition is that much tougher and new modes of consumption place new pressures on content to be compelling. The switching cost is very low.

Brands are used to competing in a war that was often based on throwing lots of money going at the best talent and the best and most media. The playing field has changed. With such low barriers to entry- everyone with an imagination is now a potential competitor for your audience's attention.

2.    Brands Must Push Boundaries

Consumers are flocking to entertainment that pushes extremes.

a.    realness and rawness- reality tv
b.    violence and language- premium cable-like HBO
c.    speed and spontaneity- user generated

Brands have to be prepared to go there; otherwise their content will always be second-tier in comparison to the competition.

3.    Give Up Control of Content

Consumers want content distributed in the places they inhabit, they don’t want to be forced to consume it on your website. Content needs to be widely distributed and consumers should be allowed to place it in their own social media environments, like on My Space pages.

4.    Study the Landscape

Brands must have their pulse on this rapidly changing landscape. This isn’t about knowing who the next YouTube is, but learning how consumers consume this new media and understanding what forms of content appear to be working best.

5.    Partner

There’s a lot of merit in what Coke did, they went directly to the source with a proven track record of viral success and worked with them. Imagine if Budweiser, instead of trying to build it’s own network, had given some seed money to dozens of people who had already achieved viral success, the result of BudTV might have been different.

6.    Encourage the User to Engage

Brands are so used to the broadcast model, that they forget the internet offers countless opportunities for the audience to interact with the content. Whether this is just simply allowing them to comment on the content or remixing it, you have to let the user in.

7.    Simpler is Better

It’s easy to get carried away with the belief that your content is so compelling you can create multiple layers around it. Make it too complex and you will end up turning people away. Think video games, the best sports games have an instant play function, where you can just play, they also have layers and added complexity, if strategy is your bag.

Overall, brands face a radically transformed landscape and in order to play, they have to be prepared to experiment and be willing to learn from failure.