Posted by Brent on Jun 2, 2009 in
Google,
Marketing,
Web 2.0 They’ve dominated search, made paper maps obsolete, and captured a huge chunk of the world’s email inboxes. Now Google wants to own internet communications on a brand new platform of its own invention.
Google’s Next Wave in Internet Communications
Google Wave is a highly collaborative mix of email, shared documents, instant messaging and more, with elements of blogging, social media, photo sharing, project management and issue tracking all thrown in.
The technical aspects of this new tool are very impressive. Not only has Google built its own interface for Wave, but they are releasing an extensive open API that allows developers to access Wave as a communication protocol within their own web-based applications.
If you’ve ever shared a document via Google Docs or a WIki, you’ll immediately grasp the workflow. But Wave starts as casually as an email. It then becomes easy to branch off into a multi-threaded conversation all bound together by the glue of the wave. Clicking individual paragraphs allows you to respond to only that point. Adding new users gives them access to the entire conversation.
Taming the Document History
Such a dynamic framework could easily become confusing, as conversations outgrow their original intent. Mike Elgan at Computerworld seems ready to dismiss the entire project for that reason.
After bouncing stuff back and forth, and after people comment on various parts of the thread, adding commentary at the top, bottom and middle of the original message, clarity about what’s old, new, moot or relevant seems unlikely.
Addressing that concern is where Google created one of the product’s most innovative features. By using the “Playback” function, users can see the entire history of the wave, step by step. Playback can show the progress of the entire conversation, or can be filtered to show only actions of a selected type or by selected users. If you’ve ever been added to an email thread after more than two people have chimed in, it’s not hard to imagine how much more quickly you’d be caught up if playback were available. It’s also a big step towards clarity when compared to most wikis’ “version history.”
Extending Wave’s Reach
The open, extensible nature of Wave means photos or text you attach there can be automatically published to your blog, and updates in either place are immediately reflected on the other. That immediacy translates when collaborating with others, too. As you make edits or type new information into a wave, anyone else who is sharing that document at the same time can see you typing even before you hit enter, for a high-speed workflow similar to instant messaging.
The product is still in its infancy, and won’t be released to the public for some time. Still, there’s considerable enthusiasm about the developer preview. TechCrunch gave a positively glowing review of its vision and ambition.
Opening Web 2.0 to Customers, Partners, and Even Machines
Without releasing Wave into the wild, it’s difficult to predict what forms it will take once real users begin to work with it. The demo video gives an excellent picture of the kind of interaction that’s possible between human users. But the potential for a revolutionary transformation of workflow comes in the ability to let non-human applications and processes join the conversation. Dion Hinchcliffe at ZDNet imagines Wave giving IT systems like personnel, customer and resource management a seat at the Web 2.0 table:
Literally while participants are busy typing and collaborating, a wave can be receiving support from back-end systems such as HRM, CRM, ERP, and so on to provide data, context, and other just-in-time support. Many businesses could benefit enormously from seamless business data integration such as customers, orders, and so on, never mind the deeper possibilities of contextual business processes leveraged directly in the collaborative activities of workers.
A Perfect Fit with Google’s Long Term Strategy
From a strategic standpoint, this gives Google the potential to claim an entirely new space in internet information sharing. Compared to search, maps and email, where they took existing systems and improved upon them, Wave represents an entirely new collaborative model.
Jordan Golson at Salon accuses Google of climbing to “new heights of arrogance” in what he sees as purely a vanity project.
Google, as a company, has failed at monetizing everything except search (and, though it’s based on the same tech, partner web sites through AdSense). Advertising on YouTube has been a failure, and is costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars a year in server costs. The culture at the company is to build first and ask questions later, typical for a company run almost top to bottom by engineers.
The breathtaking arrogance of blowing off potential competition and touting tech buzzwords rather than at least giving a cursory examination as to how one might make money from a product is the Google way.
I’m sure Mr. Golson thinks his pragmatic view is a better way to do business. But he ignores Wave’s contribution to Google’s overall goal to own all the information on the internet, and doesn’t see how powerfully Wave could contribute to that effort. Boiling Wave down to its potential for immediate revenue generation is short-sighted at best.
By providing free services like Gmail, Maps, Docs, Analytics and Earth, Google extends their reach into the way people think about Google’s integration into the internet. What’s more, they encourage users to load their servers with information which those users are then dependent upon Google to retrieve.
In each of these projects, Google opens new doorways for users to interact with information on the internet. And in each case, Google holds the keys to the door.
When that is the overarching goal, a few salaried workers’ time spent on a project like Wave is a minor expense. Finding a revenue model to make each project self-supporting is the kind of short-term business model that most other companies would use. That approach would stifle innovation and detract from the long term focus. That’s the reason most other companies are not Google.
Learn More About Google Wave
To learn more about Google Wave, the video of the Google i/o presentation is a great place to start. There’s also an excellent collection of articles at Mashable.
What do you think about Wave? Is this a tool you’re excited about trying? Do you think your answer reflects how entrenched you are in traditional email, or how comfortable you are with multiple points of presence, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others? I’d love to get your comments below.
Tags: Google, Marketing Strategy, Web 2.0
Posted by Brent on May 8, 2009 in
Social Media,
Twitter,
Web 2.0 There is no shortage of articles on how to make the most of social media when building your brand, your online presence, and your relationship with your customers.
A lot of it is really good. It’s exhilarating how immersive and potent these tools are for reaching out to one another. That excitement has inspired some very smart and talented people to give away tomes of valuable wisdom.
But where the best advice can work wonders for your company’s PR, Marketing or Customer Service, there are no real rules for individuals. Unfortunately, this leaves the door wide open for half-baked and even mean-spirited “experts” who try to bully others into following their own invented code of conduct.
One of the most famous cases is the “Cisco fatty.” If you’re not familiar with the story, Connor Riley (@theconnor) interviewed for an internship at Cisco, and upon receiving an offer tweeted:
Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.
She quickly got a nasty response from @timmylevad at Cisco. And her tweet was widely publicized as an example of abject stupidity and naiveté concerning social media.
Except she hadn’t even applied for the job, and it turned out to be outside her professional field. Her tweet was meant as an inside joke to her very small audience of followers who already knew she’d be turning it down. It’s easy to see how a Cisco employee would not be amused, but @timmylevad unleashed a public castigation in an effort to enforce his own rules on how Twitter should be used.
Ms. Riley herself makes a particularly cogent observation about how someone with 45 followers, all of whom she knows in real life, may treat Twitter differently than someone with over 500.
I think people with many followers can’t afford to be real people on Twitter. Tim Levad would probably never use Twitter to make a flippantly negative remark about his career, because he understands that @timmylevad is more of a mass-media channel than a human being.
If that’s the way TIm Levad wants to maintain his Twitter feed, that’s great for him. Depending on his goals for the platform, it may be exactly right. What I’d like to see quashed is the idea that anyone has the authority to tell anyone else what their approach should be, particularly if the rules they are trying to impose are an effort to move people towards more sanitized and less human communication.
Jeffrey Zeldman is a legendary designer, blogger and independent publisher. His work has long been a guidepost for standards-compliant design, and his website A List Apart is a voluminously rich resource for anyone who makes websites. Due to his well-deserved internet fame, nearly 21,000 people follow @zeldman on Twitter.
Recently, Zeldman was scolded by a Twitter follower who expected more “value” from his Twitter stream. In this critic’s farewell email, he accuses Zeldman of letting his “ego take over,” because he dares to tell jokes and give his reaction to movies he’s seen.
In response, Zeldman rightly refers to A List Apart, his blog, and his free downloadable books where the disappointed unfollower can get the “value” he seeks. But he vehemently rejects the “mass-media channel” approach to Twitter. Jeffrey Zeldman is a real person, who has every right to use Twitter to connect with people and build relationships as a human being, and not just as a name-brand for web standards.
All the best advice for companies in the social media sphere seem to point toward more human communication and away from monolithic press release broadcasts. To push individuals in the opposite direction runs counter to the best of what social media has to offer.
Tags: Cisco Fatty, Low-Fiber Tweet, Social Media, Twitter, Web 2.0
Posted by Brent on Apr 6, 2009 in
Career Development,
Productivity,
Web 2.0 Thanks to a post from Krista Neher, I recently stumbled upon this picture from the excellent Cincinnati photographer Jim Talkington.
That brought back fond memories from bygone days. I could almost smell the D-76 soaking Tri-X in a mysterious bath, while I enjoyed the darkness and the isolation, giving birth to my creative vision.
The truth is, I never had much interest in photography before college. My dad was a professional photographer, but it wasn’t until I saw the job posting for the Publicity Office at Adrian College that I ever asked him to show me how it was done.
We went through two rolls, from shooting to processing to printing in his basement darkroom. I sent in a few prints and got the job. So I headed off to freshman year armed with minimal experience and my dad’s aging Mamiya.
Soon I graduated from PR’s tiny closet in the history building to the full size darkroom of the college newspaper, where I’d push 400 speed film to 1600, bringing out that week’s basketball games and swim meets in glorious grainy detail. The halftone machine was probably bigger than my dorm room, with a loud vacuum pump to hold the wax-resist paper where my shots would be reproduced in thousands of tiny dots.
Several years later, I aim a point and shoot camera at my kids without a thought about aperture or shutter speed. Not only is there no film to process, but my pictures automatically appear on my hard drive through the magic of an Eye-Fi card. It’s a very different world.
This nostalgic reverie actually has a point to it.
That was the beginning for me of some guiding principles I’ve carried with me through my whole career. Something like this:
- Identify opportunities where not a lot of people have the requisite skill.
- Learn new skills quickly, and don’t worry about perfecting them before you get started.
- Keep moving forward, learn from your failures but don’t be afraid of them.
- When better methods and techniques come along, don’t cling to your old skill set just because you put time into developing it. Embrace the new.
When desktop publishing replaced light tables and X-Acto kinves, I was ready to go along for the ride. When the web started gaining popularity in 1995, I got a Macintosh Performa and a “Teach Yourself HTML in a Week” book.
It took me until Dreamweaver 3.0 to make the leap into WYSIWYG editors, but then i didn’t look back and jumped with both feet into Flash development.
Now, I’ll still hand-code some html once in a while. I’ll put together a swf when it’s the best way to accomplish something. But I’m not married to those techniques. If there’s a faster, easier way to do something, I’m ready to learn.
This is why I feel at home in internet marketing, online development, and social media. The landscape is always shifting. This is an industry that rewards flexibility, adaptability, and a passion for learning. The most successful people in this sphere are those who move quickly, learn quickly, and waste no tears on the skills and techniques they leave behind.
Tags: Career Development, Internet Marketing, Photography, Social Media
Posted by Brent on Mar 26, 2009 in
Cincinnati Networking,
Doing Good Over on LinkedIn, Thom Monahan poses an interesting question about how one person can stimulate the economy with $1,000.
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I would like to have a personal impact on the economy. We’ll call it Thom’s Economic Stimulus Impulse. I’m setting aside $1,000 to be used on something or things that I had not planned. Any ideas? |
This got me thinking about what kind of impact you can get from four figures. Of course, the first challenge as I saw it was to leverage social media to get a multiplier effect from the money so the benefits extend beyond the people who actually touch the check.
So here’s the idea I submitted to Thom:
Use your blog and Twitter stream to take nominations for an online retailer grant. Have people from around Cincinnati give the names and locations of their favorite local (non-chain) retailers. Booksellers, secondhand shops, record stores, etc. Narrow the list to the 3 or 5 most popular candidates.
With $1000 to the winner, you should be able to get a significant number of retweets and cross-links.
Then solicit proposals from independent contractors on how to create or enhance one of those retailers’ online selling. Turn to your community again for votes on which proposal would have the most impact, and hire the winning contractor to implement the plan for the winning retailer.
So for one contractor, your $1000 has provided enough work to pay a few bills. Through the opportunity to demonstrate their strategic chops in the proposal, they gain exposure which may lead to more work.
For one retailer, you create a new channel for sales which may help an otherwise troubled business stay in operation and retain employees.
For everyone else in the running, you spread the word about their business and enhance their local exposure to potential clients and customers.
If your pilot program is a success, maybe you’ll inspire other donors to repeat the project for an even more stimulative effect.
Great thanks to Thom for trying to make an impact on our community.
If you have ideas for Thom, submit them through the LinkedCincinnati Group on LinkedIn.
Tags: Charity, Cincinnati, Doing Good, Donation, Recession, Stimulus
Posted by Brent on Mar 4, 2009 in
Critique,
Marketing This week, Amazon released a free iPhone app for reading eBooks made for its Kindle reader. It has so far received mostly favorable reviews for its execution and for the idea itself.
It would be easy to say that offering eBooks to be read on the iPhone would cannibalize Kindle sales. You could also object that the iPhone’s screen is far too small for reading an entire book. Yet in my view, this is a brilliant move by Amazon.
Amazon’s core mission is to sell content. While the Kindle is a real physical product for which they make a very real profit, the ongoing revenue model for Amazon is to sell eBooks. Kindle’s primary role is as a vehicle for those sales. The iPhone app allows Amazon to open another channel for eBook sales which costs them virtually nothing and removes a $300 barrier to entry for new customers.
Releasing any high-profile application for the iPhone is a publicity triumph. Kindle has received its fair share of media coverage, but no device in recent memory can match the iPhone when it comes to media affection. Any significant move made by a large company which credibly includes the iPhone as a major character in the drama is sure to generate plenty of press.
One of the iPhone app’s most telling features is the ability to synchronize bookmarks across devices. This presents a clear statement that the iPhone app can live harmoniously with the user’s Kindle, meaning enjoyment of your eBook is not an either-or proposition.
That’s where it becomes clear what a victory this is for Amazon. For any iPhone user who has already bought a Kindle, this rewards their purchase with a free option to continue enjoying their eBook in situations where they don’t have their Kindle handy. Even more importantly, it makes an excellent pitch to iPhone users who haven’t bought a Kindle.
There couldn’t be a better target market for the Kindle than a class of consumers who have demonstrated their willingness to buy an electronic device for three figures. By letting iPhone users try Amazon’s eBooks for only the cost of the book itself, Amazon lets the user sell himself on the idea of reading electronic books. As he becomes addicted to the convenience of reading nearly any title anywhere and concurrently grows frustrated with the iPhone’s tiny screen, the Kindle looks more and more attractive.
Any iPhone user who downloads the app and doesn’t buy a Kindle probably wouldn’t have bought one anyway. This gives those users the opportunity to become eBook buyers that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. For those iPhone users who have considered the Kindle, but for one reason or another have not bought one, this app gives a significant nudge.
I applaud Amazon’s iPhone release, and wish them great success. Well done.
Tags: Amazon, Cannibalization, iPhone, Kindle, Marketing Strategy