YouTube Myth Debunked: Kids Are Actually Lazy…

Interesting article here on the distribution of content uploaders across age groups.

Surprise, surprise. Kids are lazy and adults make most of the content.

I’ve been trying to prove this forever. Thanks HitWise.

Being 21 years old, having many friends and a little sister in the 18-24 year old range I could say I told you so. Based on my anecdotal evidence the younger demographic lags in terms of adoption of new media technologies as well. Most of the early adopters are older people (late twenties to early thirties) that are exposed to the latest and greatest. The vast majority of my peers have no idea what RSS is, and very few read more than 5 blogs per day.

The new media world suffers from severe projection bias.

I’m just as guilty as the next person that lives in the new media space of believing that everyone cares about this stuff. Our lives are engulfed in this world, and most of the people you know are too. This creates a HUGE gap between what actual people in Kansas are aware of and what Scoble is familiar with. The recent stat of 6% of the online population being on Twitter is ludicrous. I would be impressed to find that 6% of people in Manhattan had heard of it. Now imagine Cleveland. Projection bias means that we use ourselves as the starting point and project outward; thus, people in the new media world project outward and believe that kids growing up with access to all these tools must be incredibly savvy. This is not true.

Now this demographic is, as a whole, far more open minded toward technology and is very comfortable integrating technology into their lives. However, the kicker is to drum up enough initial interest to sell us. The catch 22 of social media is that it is worthless without friends. I have 0 ‘real’ friends on Twitter, which is why I stopped using the platform and I have relatively tech savvy friends. However, I bet someone like David Armano has a host of close friends that are familiar with and use Twitter. It creates utility for him, but not for most people in the 18-24 year old demo.

This is where web 2.0/new media companies for the most part are failing. It is a classic example of bloggers writing for bloggers and engineering building for engineers. The vast majority of web 2.0 tools are targeted to the tech niche. They need to be repositioned to solve problems that are relevant for their markets. In all the talk about the value of Twitter no one has ever framed how it solves a problem for a 14 year old kid.

The Power of Portals: Ad-Hoc Communities

Portal traffic fosters the perfect environment for ad hoc communities.

This morning I was watching CNN’s coverage on the wild fires in California and throughout the segment they kept referencing the I-Reports coming in from people caught in the fires, family members, and people that just want to lend a hand. At first I was impressed by the integrated citizen journalism feature on CNN.com and the content crossover from digital to broadcast. However, the truly innovative aspect was the ad hoc community that emerged in a blink of an eye.

When marketers talk about online communities many times they are referring to robust communities built around various topics that they can nurture over a period of time and build a base of people to target messages toward. There is a long term ROI built into this model as considerable time and money is spent to build these communities. However, when dealing with time sensitive scenarios, such as major catastrophes, people find ways to communicate with each other, share experiences, console each other, and provide aide by building ad hoc online communities.

This is where news portals still hold a great deal of power. Ad hoc communities primarily emerge for the purpose of information dissemination; thus, news portals are the perfect environment to foster such communities. There are two important factors that give portals power:

1. Branding:

In times of crisis people will be drawn to trusted news sources, like CNN, and by integrating a tool for contribution and communication into the articles people are more likely to contribute.

2. Traffic:

The shear volume of traffic means there are more contributors, which increases utility to other readers. In addition, although it may spike for explosive stories, the traffic is more or less consistent, thus little effort needs to be invested in developing the critical mass necessary for a community to be a valuable information source.

So how can marketers harness ad hoc networks?

Ad hoc networks need to be low involvement and facilitate information exchange. As they are short lived and focus on time sensitive events, ad hoc communities could be a great way to extend the reach and increase the value of content. For example imagine if Ad-Tech created an ad hoc community around one of its tracks and people throughout the day could contribute comments, post questions, brief points from a presentations, and aggregate relevant blog posts. This would build greater utility into the content itself and extend the reach and exposure.

Chris Brogan, maybe you want to give it shot for PodCamp?

UPDATE:

Twitter being used to disseminate information about the wild fires. Platforms like twitter, jaiku, pownce, etc. are great tools for enabling ad hoc networks; however, to reach the critical mass in a limited time frame it still needs to be attached to source that is trusted and has exposure. Thanks to Chris Brogan for bring up the Jaiku angle.

To be realistic though the audiences for these types of communication are quite limited and I’m skeptical to the stat that was recently released claiming 6% of the online pop. is on Twitter.

Now if CNN had a TXT feed that you could just input your cell # and be good to go, that would be interesting.

Is the Customer Always Right?

The quick answer: No they are often wrong, but what can you do about it?

We have all heard the adage that apparently originated at Marshall Fields around the turn of the century. However, as anyone who has ever worked in a service or retail job is intimately familiar, the customer can be obnoxious, ridiculous, and sometimes even a little bit insane.

Well according to Debra Brede, an investment adviser and owner of five-person D.K. Brede Investment Management, we should simply fire the customer. Here’s the full BusinessWeek article: Why, When, and How to Fire That Customer

Furthermore, the Chief Happiness Officer blog provides us is a well written list of the top 5 reasons why the customer is wrong:

1: It makes employees unhappy
2: It gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage
3: Some customers are bad for business
4: It results in worse customer service
5: Some customers are just plain wrong

Check out the original article for further elaboration on the points.

Firing customers is not a solution, it is avoidance of the problem.

No offense to those who live in the world of finance, but you cannot capture the value of a customer in an equation. It is not a matter of they are worth X and cost us Y; Y > X = Fire ’em.

Here are three key insights into difficult consumers:

1. They aren’t all bad:

At times I would consider myself a bad customer; however, I am almost always provoked by terrible service. Yesterday I was at Circuit City in Union Square here in New York and I was looking for a specific computer cable, but I got the run around and after 25 minutes I lost my patience and dug into an employee, in retrospect more than I should have, but I was serviced immediately. Looking back, could I have just started off angry and saved 25 min? This type of situation trains a customer that the only way to get decent service to raise your voice a bit. On the other hand since retail service is usually sub par, I always take the time to thank employees when they do a good job.

2. Take some time to listen:

Instead of just writing people off, listen to them. The reason they are angry could very well be justified. Listen to them, and try to fix the problem together. You can learn a lot.

3. Really bad customers, can be really bad for business

I will admit that some customers are just nasty and walk in looking for a fight, but the number of customers that are beyond reproach is very small. Most people come around if you give them a little respect. For the ones that are adamantly *%#@(‘s, well just deal with them. They are few and far between and you don’t want them on a vendetta against your establishment as they can drive away a whole lot more business than what the ‘equation’ can account for.

Why All Media Platforms Must Fragment

Media must fragment to remain meaningful.

Note: For a deeper look at this topic please read the short historical essay on Facebook in the previous post.

Every form of media is destined to fragment. The time it takes varies, and is getting shorter and shorter, but nonetheless it is inevitable.

A long, long time ago media wasn’t scalable. In the Vaudeville days patrons would shell over a few cents to watch a show that was essentially unique every night. With the advent of the motion picture, shows could be filmed and reproduced. Then the first movie theaters were built allows large groups of people access to rudimentary black and white, silent pictures. At this time content was irrelevant as it was the experience itself that was entertaining. This soon changed, more theaters were built and sound and color were added; however, production costs quickly escalated requiring larger and larger audiences to build economies of scale. Thus, films were made to appeal to a large audience much like they are today.

Then the television was introduced. Television started with a very limited set of content providers, The Networks, and the business model changed to revolve around advertiser subsidization. Over time as production costs decreased and distribution opened up with the advent of cable television, TV fragmented. Cable channels catered to consumer niches. It did quite well as people crave content that is meaningful to them, and mass media can never be meaningful to everyone, just a large subset, if that. No one could have predicted that there would be a channel dedicated to home improvement. Around this time some smart fellow realized that since cable channels catered to a niche, they should be able to charge a targeting premium to advertisers. This concept who grow to become the silver bullet of digital advertising.

Note: I am focusing on one subset of media, but radio and print also went through the same transformation.

Now lets fast forward to the information age where content is 100% free to distribute and basically free to produce. When launching a brand new media platform today you have to flip the old model on its head and first appeal to a niche to gain traction, this is the Bowling Pin method outlined in Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore. Then you build out slowly and eventually try to cross to the chasm to hit the mainstream, then wait around to be bought by Google.

However, this is where media’s need to fragment manifests itself again. As the platform embraces the mainstream it loses touch with the initial core user base. These same core users will then flock to another media platform that better understand their needs. However, it is also important to note that the 800 lbs. gorilla doesn’t die it just becomes a Network, and when there is a new mass media platform there is always room for smaller more targeted mini-networks. For example when Myspace came along it was dedicated to music lovers, but quickly out grew the niche. Myspace has the numbers so music lovers will still use it connect to their favorite bands, but there are a slew of niche music social networks and music discovery sites that have smaller communities dedicated to specific bands or genres. Furthermore, these smaller niche sites, much like cable channels, are commanded much higher CPMs. This is supposed to be solved by new targeting systems that will be built into Facebook and Myspace; however, they will never command the prices of a truly dedicated network.

Fragmentation is merely a social screening process.

Fragmentation is the opposite of convergence which still lingers as a popular buzzword, but much like how people don’t want a cell phone/computer/remote/toothbrush/music player, people want their media platforms to remain separated because they serve distinct functions. Personally, I used Facebook to socialize and Linked In for professional networks. I no desire to have those two worlds reside in the same space. New/Social Media overload is a common topic today as well, but it is a problem isolated to a small group of early adopters. The average person isn’t having any issues juggling the 2 or 3 social networks they are members of.

This is a personal opinion based on anecdotal evidence, I’m very interested in hearing responses.

The History of Facebook: A Student’s Perspective

Social Network’s will never be everything to everyone.

As readers of this blog do or don’t know, I am a recent graduate of NYU’s undergrad business school. I had a Facebook account since May 2004, and I resisted as long as I could. At first I was a member of rebels that would make snide remarks toward the sheep that spent hours a day stalking cute boys and gals from class. Much like my battle against everything AOL in my teens, it was futile. Surely but shortly our ranks began to dwindle. Then one night I decided to check out what the fuss was all about, logged on, and never looked back; however, I still employed a rule that I would never actively friend people to make myself appear popular.

The world I entered was clean and effective. I am extremely interested in interface design and the gaudy, distasteful profiles on Xanga and Myspace kept me far away. Facebook was different. It was a place to hang out with people that mattered to me: REAL friends, long lost friends, and that cute girl from Econ. In our walled garden with the college students only sign prominently displayed, we felt free. We all posted real information, pictures from the weekend’s debauchery, our entire class schedules, phone numbers, birth dates, etc. In retrospect it was probably a stupid thing to do, but who really cared since only our peers had access.

The first dilution of the user base occurred in September of 2005 when the doors were opened to high school students. After an initial uproar we gave in, and said what the hell, they are students too and college students could keep in touch with siblings and younger acquaintances. However, rumors start to surface about companies hiring students to conduct background checks on potential employees. The open world began to crumble. A number of people stripped down personal info, and made their profile private: For Friend’s Eyes Only. However, even after the censoring wave subsided, there was still a level of distrust permeating the network as most of one’s friends were acquaintances at best… Would they betray you?

As the months turned into years Facebook became ever more integrated into our lives. Entire relationships could be consummated and destroyed based on a few wallposts. Checking out the parties your friends were attending became a Friday night routine. Then it came. One day we logged on and everything we did was revealed in a tabloid-like fashion on the News Feed. Boyfriends now had to explain late night ‘pokes’ from the opposite sex, and changes in relationship status spread like wildfire. Again, we revolted. However, lacking the constitution of our parents college generation we rolled over again as a few privacy concession were made.

We adapted to this new transparent world, but nothing could have prepared us for the biggest betrayal yet. Facebook opened its doors to everyone as they sought out fresh pastures to increase traffic. Soon afterward I began fielding invitations from professional friends. This was the end of innocence. My profile pic was quickly swapped out for a far more conservative one, EVERYTHING became private, and I had to edit various unsolicited wall posts from inebriated friends. Wait a minute, this profile looked familiar… Oh yeah, it looks just like my profile on Linked In. My two worlds collided. Facebook, once upon a time, meant something. Now much like GM, which stretched itself thin trying to appeal to everyone the brand is diluted beyond recognition.

Facebook is now likened to being at a bar with your friends, with your parents sitting in the booth to your right and your coworkers to the your left.

It just isn’t much fun.

The Creative Environment P.2: Designing For Innovation

 

Creative environments and how to build them has fascinated me for some time. A good primer is a Squidoo Lens built by Russell Davies on Creative Spaces.

 

 

 

 

 

How cool are these workspaces. Good luck getting your manager to pony up for a slide in the office. However, there are three primary components to building a creative environment.

1. Redefining the environment:

Building spaces like those in the pictures ab0ve redefines the environment. An office is a place where we are trained to put our heads down and hammer away at TPS reports. However, these environments challenge that preconception and make workspaces into embodiments of innovative thinking and also prove to the employees that the company is committed to forward thinking and pushing them to reach their creative potential. This is probably the easiest aspect of creative spaces to change. Kill the cubicle. Have open unconstrained spaces, sprinkle some cool rugs, pastel sofas, and quirky lighting around and your good to go.

2. The Bump Factor:

The bump factor is a number calculated by how many opportunities you have of bumping into co-workers in a given work day. It’s about facilitating random encounters with a wide range of people and building spaces where people can congregate. It’s about freeing communication and working collaboratively. Think about the path from your nook to the toilet. Imagine if you simply walk down a dark corridor, do you business, and walk back to your desk. Now imagine an orientation where you were forced to walk through the digital team, the creative director’s desk, and the intern from Dallas. You are creating more opportunities for spontaneous innovation through the sharing of ideas. This is a hot topic today in the architectural world and for further reading check out a series of articles in Metropolis Magazine. In addition, this week’s BusinessWeek has a couple great articles too, on Offices 2.0.

3. Visualizing Ideas:

The last component of a creative space is building areas where people can visualize and share ideas. For example the first picture in the series above is an egg shaped room where the walls are one big white board. Create areas where people can display ideas in a way where they can be collaboratively manipulated. Once your idea is out there let others mess with it and mash it up with other ideas. Building these types of spaces into the bump factor floor plan makes for a powerful combination.

Try to be more conscious of how you operate in different environments and optimize a creative space for yourself.

Finally, building creative spaces always impresses the clients, which is never a bad thing.

 

 

The Creative Environment: How Environments Define Our Actions P.1

This summer there was a fantastic exhibit at the Guggenheim called The Shapes of Space. It was essentially an exploration of integrating space as a component of design.

The picture above is of the first floor installation space where the floor was converted into a tapestry of LED tiles that pulsated to the rhythm of top 40s Hip Hop. If you continue along the spiraling pathway it takes you to a small observation area on the 2nd floor where you can view the installation from above. This is where I spent a good three hours on a sweltering summer afternoon just people watching.

This is what happened 90% of the time:

a. Someone walks into the installation space.

b. They look at the tiles.

c. They start to tap their feet to the music.

d. They look around.

e. Then they start to boogie out a little.

f. Then in one instant they stop, take a double take, and realize that they are in a museum.

Museum = No dancing, Speaking in murmurs, and showing off your artistic knowledge culled from highschool Art History to impress a date.

We are trained to behave in specific ways depending on our environment, which is why this scenario of nested conflicting environments is so difficult to process.

So what?

Well environments can also facilitate innovation and creative thinking. Especially, when you challenge your brain’s perceptions of what a specific space should be. Force yourself to be uncomfortable.

Facebook + Marketing P.2

UPDATE: New post here on the over-valuation of Facebook and the 2.0 farce.

Here are a few links to, and examples of Facebook marketing.

From PSFK’s marketing blog IF! is a great list of the 8 best Facebook marketing executions compiled by Rohit Bhargava:

“1. MyHome2.0 – A group to recruit tech challenged families for a new reality TV show

2. Support Monk’s Protest in Burma – An online petition, of sorts, which more than 400,000 have added their names to

3. Yahoo! Pilot – A new group from Yahoo for those interested in hearing about and testing some new pilot technology in the works from Yahoo

4. Target – An award winning Facebook campaign targeted at college students decorating their dorm rooms with prizes and contests.

5. I read Business 2.0 – and I want to keep reading! – A grassroots and ultimately unsuccessful effort from the editorial team and readers of Business2.0 to keep Time Inc. from closing the magazine

6. Bhargava Clan – A group for people with my last name originated to connect Bhargavas together worldwide and perhaps even facilitate some arranged marriages along the way (has more than 125 members)

7. Dancing with the Stars Vote for Mark and Kym – Mark Cuban has been working his Facebook friends for the past few weeks to keep the votes coming and to combat some of the celebs that he is up against. Reading his status updates about being nervous 55 minutes before showtime puts you in the midst of the action and makes you care. I’ve been voting for him even though I don’t watch the show.

8. Event Related Groups – Just about every marketing or tech event now has an associated Facebook group. The nice thing about these groups is that it makes it somewhat easier to connect with folks that you meet at the event as many are listed in the same place. Ad-Tech, SxSW and Intel’s IDF all have facebook pages.”

Also hop on over to Greg Verdino’s blog to read his insightful commentary Rohit’s post.

Playing in the Sandbox P.2: Building a Sandbox

Your sold. You want to try something different. You’ve drank the cool-aid.

Now what?

Go build yourself some sandboxes.

In the computer development world a sandbox is defined as:

“A protected, limited environment where applications (e.g. Java programs downloaded from the Internet) are allowed to “play” without risking damage to the rest of the system. “

What better place to have a little fun and experiment than a sandbox?

Real world sandboxes come in the form of communities. Although communities aren’t as risk proof as development sandboxes they serve the same purpose.

Here’s a five step guide to building a sandbox

1. Identify sub-groups within your larger consumer base:

Go beyond demographic information. Communities are self-organizing and they are already out there. There are communities for tuning Hondas, swapping sneakers, extreme ironing, and collecting vintage high-top Converse shoes.

2. Find out where they ‘live’:

Where do the members of these communities hangout? Forums, social networks, blogs, or maybe even a popular street corner. Before you can talk to them you need to find them.

3. Introduce yourself:

Be authentic. Introduce yourself and don’t try to be something your not. Don’t ever, ever lie about what you are representing.

4. Start a conversation:

Talk to them. Respect their opinions. Let them have a voice and be heard.

5. Build something with them:

You now have a sandbox, so experiment, but never forget that experimentation is a partnership. You are trying to be a better friend. Never stop listening.

Now go and have some fun, but play nice, and remember just like in a real sandbox if you break the rules you will be exiled.

Playing in the Sandbox P.I: Don’t Fear Experimentation

The sandbox is a place for experimentation. Learning from your mistakes.

The sandbox is essentially a microcosm of life. As children, the sandbox teaches us basic social skills, how to share, and the most important lesson of all: For some reason that still evades me, girls don’t seem to like it when you pull their hair.

The sandbox is a free for all, it is an environment populated by anarchists, there is no comprehensible law of the land, and there is an imposed social hierarchy awarding size. However, it is also a world where the citizens are extremely forgiving. One can initiate an epic struggle over an action figure that ends in a messy fit of sand tossing and banshee-like shrieking, and five minutes latter your nemesis can be your best friend.

Consumers unfortunately don’t forget.

It’s a tough world outside the sandbox. You often only have one chance to make a favorable impression, and after 20 years of loyalty, consumers will drop you at the drop of dime over a small misunderstanding. It gets worse. In the pre-internet world you would lose customers, recalculate your customer retention numbers and ARPU rates and move on; however, today these disgruntled consumers have amplification systems for their stories of betrayal. Rating systems, blogs, and other online communities allow consumers to share their stories and influence an ever growing number of others that your brand wronged them. It’s not all bad though, the same infrastructure can be used to spread your gospel.

So what’s the silver bullet? How do you get people to preach from your book?

Well, I apologize for bursting your bubble, but there is no one solution and there never will be. There is no silver bullet and you will never get them to preach from your book. Why? Because you no longer own the book, they do.

But, there is still hope.

You just have to try.

Nobody is perfect, but we should always be trying to better ourselves. People simply want to know that you understand them, hear their voice, and are working toward addressing their issues.

So, experiment. Implement new products and services. Much like the sandbox of our adolescence you will find that people are much more forgiving if your intentions are noble.

Stop being so afraid. Get out there and experiment. You will fail at times and you will succeed at times, but at least your trying.