Moderne Muse-Et

I have recently come across with “Path” which the startup defines as “the smart journal that helps you share life with the ones you love”.

Path is a “smartğhone only” platform currently.

The interface design across platforms are in line and looks fabulous. Very user friendly and easy to follow. There are currently no “rewards” or “points” for check-ins or posts, I believe this is due to the “journal” base of the application.

The good thing is you can follow:

1. Thoughts

2. Likes

3. Where abouts of people.

Is there room for improvement? Of course.

Movies, TV shows, games, magazines could be added (like GetGlue).

The reason I wanted to write about Path, after almost a year’s silence is that in my local chain, I observe a path subscription almost every day. This small scale but continuous interest resembles the constant craving of Google+ vs Facebook.

So being similar to F2, GG, FB but being different and much more simple/naive in both design & content, Path looks promising but definitely needs more “entry points/headings” for content.

I heard this phrase first time in a Police song (Wrapped around your finger). There are many versions in my native language and other languages. This describes a hard situation with either end of the solutions leading to tough situations.

This is something we face daily in our line of business. In fact, the digital marketing arena is full of such decisions, that normally cause a problem on both instances. The reason?

Well… Simple. There are many tools / platforms / SoMe sites / SaaSs’ that mix our minds. We keep using them as our “marketing” solutions. Which then lead to becoming a bare “tools / platforms / SoMe sites / SaaS” marketers, instead of developing “media neutral integrated ideas”.

There is a thin line between creating an idea and merely marketing a tool / platform / SoMe site / SaaS as it is.

I personally prefer the hard way… Creating an idea that (not solely and only markets a tool / platform / SoMe site / SaaS) uses the tool / platform / SoMe site / SaaS as a total carrying/bridging/managing platform, that has solid ROI, achievable targets and revolutionizes the way yo use existing tool / platform / SoMe site / SaaS.

This is a “value added” benefit you create as an agency. Otherwise when you market a tool / platform / SoMe site / SaaS as your “bright/only” idea, you merely become a “plain old distributor”.

Distribution methods do not grow the ever evolving digital arena, but creative ideas/solutions/approaches do!

Seems like a totally absurd headline but please be patient and read until I dive into the details.

The headline could also be “The Union of the Web”. Because this actually is the core of the things that had been bugging my mind for a long time.

For the last 6 months in all the meetings I attended there was a continuous and growing demand for a “facebook” usage. Conscious? No! Based on solid and brand targeted research? No! Based on the facts acquired by listening to the movements of our target audience on web? Nope!

The answer is simple. “If I am there, my friends are there… Everybody is there… So I presume my target audience is also there!”

Is it true? Well… Could be…

BUT is it right to be stuck in the digital alone? Why do we keep falling into the “digital” pitfall everytime we mention “Social Media”? Do our target audience, or far better, do the people of the earth live “only” a life on social media? Hell NO! They have a “real” life, job, friends, social networks, entertainment, feelings, hobbies.

“Digital” Social Media is a part (a good part) of the “Media Free / Integrated User Experience”.

So why don’t we start with designing the experience “as a whole”?

Each brand used to have its own playground, its own category spending share. Today the picture is different. A car company can easily challenge a notebook SMB market with its down payment amount, conveying the message “why buy a notebook, when you can buy a car with the same amount?”. The examples can be increased… A cinema ticket competing against a low cost RTW product, ice-cream competing with snacks, snacks competing with refreshments, small-scale electronics competing with friday night entertainment/concerts…

The consumer wants the best, with the lowest cost… And with the same or more satisfaction they can get from another product on their list with the same wallet share. So the big question is… Can I make it only through digital social media? To a point yes but the problem is “actual” purchase is currently concentrated at off-line POP (at least for the majority of our country).

Thus the need for a total experience design comes into the picture.

1. Discovering the right consumer touch points in on & off-line (using SoMe as a research platform, i.e. by listening to the people / trends / needs / feelings)

2. Determining the optimum number of touch points – with the optimum ROI within our budget – based on this research.

3. Creating a brand eco-system that will enable a smooth flow of the user experience.

4. Designing well placed escape-pod points for enlarging the population of the eco system inhabitants to grow the “buzz”.

5. Placing measurement and tweak points to monitor the overall activity and adjust the flow of the system.

This as a whole gives us the big picture and a clear definition of necessary procedures to reach our goals. Once we design the experience and the eco system, then we come to the micro-planning, which is determination of the platforms / exact names of touch points. The rest is another crucial phase where while we design “how we say”, we start to design “what we say”. Here comes the creative concept and brand visual/verbal rules into the picture.

When I first started my career 21 years ago, the “daily cycle” of the consumer was the most important thing and it still is. I believe in 365 days rather then 360 degrees.

There is huge flock of brands trying to be noticed by the consumer. Do we have to draw attention with the things that I say or do I have to say something interesting on a totally relevant series of on & off-line platforms with a propensity to be sustainable?

The Ouroboros or Uroborus is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. Despite the fact that Ouroboros  namely represents self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, I got to learn from a mentor  that it in fact is a never ending cycle, where everything that looks like improving is actually a repetition of itself with small re-inventions.

This also represents the pitfalls, we as communication experts fall into. Re-repeating the things that we do with small differences and “make believe” that it is NEW & IMPROVED!

Where as it is NOT, just a change in the visual representation of the same experience that we keep doing.

I find it extremely useful to “stop” and take some time off and then get back to work and look at what I do from a fresh perspective and try to find the Pitfalls & Ouroboros loops in what I do.

The same way I work when producing electronic music tracks (this is a well known method recommended by almost all of the producers).

It just causes you to refresh / restart your process and broadens your way of looking at things.

Helps you get a “macro” view of the whole “experience design”…

More thoughts on “experience design” to follow… This time I promise…

In a recent research in the US market, it has been found that people start to leave footprints on the internet as early as when they are 2 years old, through the pictures and posts their siblings put on social media sites and blogs.

This is just the starting. The existing generation growing with a digital footprint enter the SoMe world at very early stages where they take over parent guided existence into their hands and start shaping their digital existing themselves until… Well they leave the earthly living.

This provides a huge dataset, which everyone is very well aware of. Provides the marketing and agency staff with sufficient segments for specific and targeted communications.

How about character and emotions?

Well SoMe also supllies us with that information:

Facebook: Relationship status, types of music & video they are interested in, wheteher they like poetry – novels – movies or not, (sson to be in other countries) where they like to visit – are they very “off-line” social or not, do they travel alot, what do they do at home, who are their most valued friends…

Gowalla: Where they visit, what types of food they enjoy, do they like movies, theater, art or history, how frequent they spare time for their hobbies…

Get Glue: What do they like to watch/read, which TV serials – films  - books – games they like. This the crowdsourced digital verson of past time TV paradise days “epoplemeters” which measures (or tries to roughly reflect) what people watch on TV. Only in a broader, accurate and diversified sense…

LinkedIn: What school they are from, were they social at school, what are their business centric interests, whom they had worked with and of course whom they are in network with (this in fact applies to all social media – but linkedin is crucial for business networking)

As the overall name shows, these are all “social media” and all up until now we tried to do was extract “solid/functional” data from these social media. But it is obvious that a “profiling” (in the emotional and background sense) is very strongly possible through the social media.

Thanks to the cookies in the browsers we already can follow the bread crumbs we leave at every page we visit. So why not use these bread crumbs to get a more and deeper knowledge of the people we want to reach.

I am quite aware that I am talking about an almost “closed group”, a very niche approach. But as once the most important mentor in my life told me “mass is the total of niches”.

Is it possible? Sure…

Take a look at Gist, currently in beta but already has its own API for use on different platforms.

Basically Gist is a personal social media tracking tool for friends, groups, etc. Any new movement/entry/comment on FB, Twitter is visible. Thus a collecting pot for footprints. Give it a try. I started using Gist to better interact and follow friends then clients came into picture and finally the potential business opportunities were there…

Still trying to figure out the use of “social”, “character” and “emotional” data from the SoMe and where exactly it can be used.

Will talk more on this…

There was a Roger Donaldson film called “13 Days” in 2001. It talked about the time of Cuba Missile crises and how JFK and his cabinet handled the situation.

There was a scene, where during the blockade US Navy shot “blank” shells at the Russian ships carrying missile parts to Cuba. When Admiral George Anderson ordered a shot to be made without consent of Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense), McNamara was upset on hearing Admiral George Anderson saying “We are doing our job here Mr.Secretary” upon his question why the shot was made.

The reply of Robert McNamara was quite meaningful… I do not recall the exact lines but he said that they were not at a war, this blockade and all the actions he requested the navy to do was simply JFK “talking” to Krushchev. An indirect line with a lot of messages.

Social media has now taken the place of “empty shells”…

Instead of apologizing from a friend, we invite them to our list in LinkedIn or friend them on Facebook or even start to follow their Tweets.

What I recently read is quite interesting. The state of Israel has just bought its twitter name (at)israel from a man in Miami, guess what, named Israel Mendes. Besides this they have also opened official social media pages for their PM and other cabinet members.

This seems to be not only to seed their messages but also a nice platform to discreetly communicate with whomever they want to, be it an ally or enemy. In the days before internet it was very hard to communicate discreetly, with ambassadors carrying the messages, secret rendezvous, etc.

The social media can really become an important media for a discreet inter-government touch points, not always at the top level but even statesman level.

Looks like a stupid theory but give it a thought, if the terrorists and suppressed citizens use it (like the kidnapped Japanese reporter using Twitter in Afghanistan – he was released the next day!), why not the governments?

More on social media thoughts soon…

Here is some interesting news for companies that work with crowdsourcing, i.e. selling their products not through sales outlets but through social gatherings. (Amway, Avon and alike…)

With the arrival of applications like Intuit Go Mobile and Square, mobile tools working on iOS, WinMo and Android are likely to evolve into a different platform.

When the companies start discovering to use the iPad as a mobile & interactive catalog, those tools will then not only enable the distribution channels to work more efficiently but also create another distribution channel… A B2C distribution channel, where the end user becomes the new “micro level” distributor, his/her iPad becomes the “shop”, the mobile & interactive catalog becomes the “shop display” and mobile credit card applications become the “cashier”.

I can now hear most of you saying that iPad is an expensive platform. True but not the only way to realize the above dream. There is a hidden player and a “gem” we call Android, if you are not that much into “looks”.

Being an open platform, Android is in the process of supplying many “below 500 USD” tablets, that have not only the same specs but also further embedded capabilities like Flash Player, 2nd video camera (answer requests face to face while on the road so you have the chance to sell always), lighter use of system resources and more storage for interactive materials.

These mobile tools are the meeting point of on-line & off-line integration. They also enable us to do a dynamic pricing, since we not only have the sales data with us but also see the actual buyer reactions in groups (even instant customized communication/database management tool and research tool for new products that are planned to be sold soon). Thus we have sales, price check & price make, instant research… All together!

It is really a pity that Microsoft could not succeed in the Windows Tablet and HP could not move forward the very successful iPaq (does it ring a bell?) business that they created way ahead of Apple.

More thoughts to follow…

Why do people establish/build businesses?

What is the drive?

Convenience? Fame? Needs? Invention? Or making/earning a life (money in plain terms) out of the sum of the previous drives?

Nowadays I am hooked on to a show in Bloomberg TV in Turkey : “Dragons’ Den”

There are 5 investors who listen to new ideas, inventions of people from every walk of life. If they like the idea/invention, they make business offers to the owner of the idea/invention.

And this is where it gets beautiful.

If the idea is good and tempting, the idea owner (who normally tries his/her best to sell his idea) suddenly becomes the decision maker if more then one Dragon (investor) makes proposals. That is, the Dragons start competing.

I looked closely at most of the ideas.

They all fit the definition above, i.e. they are the result of Convenience, Fame, Needs, Invention… But not earning money! Because the idea owners mostly have no solid business plans and do not know how to convert their ideas to cash.

The whole thing reminded me of web ideas/inventions and “angel investors”. And of course the lack of a tradeable/cashable/monetizeable infrastructure.

There is a never ending search for the answer of the simple question: “How do I earn money out of this?”

This brings everyone in the system:

1. The users : They should not be offended by the financial system of the tool they loved and embraced, let aside the fear of data security.

2. The agencies: Looking for a sustainable yet totally agency dependent system.

3. The advertisers: They should not be offended by the UGC but at the same time yield instant and mid-term results.

4. The angel investors: Cashing back the investment they have made ASAP and start earning “real” money.

5. The idea owner: Please all sides, all requests, all deadlines and yet earn money to fight competition/me-too ideas + improve the idea + “live decently”

Tough equation to solve. But a way out has just started to emerge.

“Pricing based on Crowdsourcing”… Find the maximum denominator for all sides, test, if works… Continue!

This approach is also the start of a new era in marketing. The 4P’s has been long gone. Even additional P’s were not sufficient to save the life of 4Ps.

The new model is based on the “Consensus” of all “Customers” for “Continuous” source of “Cash”.

Brand/Marketing departments do not do the “pricing”, all stakeholders are involved in the process. This is the next step of “pay as you go, price as you choose” initial model of web companies.

More thoughts to follow…

I have been using Google Nexus One for over a month. Thus I had more chance to delve into the pros & cons of the phone. A few more comments based on usage experience:

1. 3G and automatic account sync is a battery killer, a serious one. Activate both and you will be left without a battery within 10 hours. Operate in 2G and deactivate auto sync, you will have at least 30 hours to go (with decent wireless usage).

2. The screen is a beauty… Except for under direct sunlight. If you don’t push the brightness to maximum, you end up with a “mirror” like screen.

3. GPS is far better then the GPS of iPhone.

4. I have migrated from iPhone and despite all the “App Store” hails and “Market Place is small” whinings, all I miss is the local traffic software, which is expected to arrive soon on Android platform.

5. Multitasking is definitely great. You don’t have to stop one app and go to another, as the iPhone.

6. At the “Market Place” most apps are free but “free” on Android is different then “free” on App Store. A free app on Android is actually a fully functioning app with ads (well not all but most of the apps are like this).

7. Needs more Google services as native Google apps. Like: Analytics, Tasks, Docs.

8. Gmail, Google Contacts, Google Calendar and Gallery usage is just great.

9. E-mail app other then the Gmail is very user friendly.

10. Your favorite contacts on N1, automatically appear on Google Contacts. And far better then that if your contacts have GTalk accounts, you instantly see their status when you are in Contacts list!

Tethering: The best part of iPhone was the tethering. Due to heavy pressure from Telco’s, Google had previously stopped tethering, but today I have installed PdaNet and voila I am on air instantly. OK you have to pay 20 USD for a full version, but this is acceptable.

Overall I am very very happy with my Nexus One and Android platform.

Google Nexus One

Last week I have migrated from iPhone to Google Nexus one! Phew…

It was a very smooth and easy migration until I have decided to root my new phone. Normally rooting Android is very easy thanks to Google for not limiting the users with restrictions, unlike Apple does.

Nexus One comes with Android and this is the beauty of it, besides the 1 gHz Snapdragon processor, 512 MB RAM, AMOLED screen and upto 32 GB SD card support.

The moment you turn Nexus One on it does a very simple thing to start working… Asks you to enter your Google creds (gmail basically), once you sign in your Google creds voila! You’re ready to go.

All your Google contacts, mails, galleries are synced instantly. Any new contact you add and it is also in your Google account.

Android

The Android Market Place is full of applications, in fact 30,000 of them and the number is still increasing thanks to many many operators and manufacturers backing up the Android platform. In fact, after opening routine iPhone App of the week corners, tech blogs now start to cover Android App of the week.

The apps are majorly full versions, with ads and without cost. If you want the full versions, now that is a problem, since the Android Market Place does not support paid apps in my country.

The only downside of Nexus One is there is no tethering currently available. Not that the OS does not let you do so but rather it is currently not permitted.

The battery is an issue, running out empty at the end of the day.

The screen is great indoors but really problematic under sunlight.

But GPS, digital compass are great. Also apps like Layar, Google Gesture Search, Google Earth (only available for Android 2.1), Shopper are great!

Will update comments after some intense usage…