Category: Social Media

  • Looking ahead

    The last post of the year is a mix of several things that caught my attention.

    Nick Bolton’s article “Disruptions: Wearing your computer on your sleeve” triggered a series of posts, and my favourite was the RWW version, because it brought out a variety of perspectives and potential use cases, ranging from glasses that act as guides for tourists to “consensual imaging among belief circles” and “to overlay a trusted source’s view of a given scene on mine”.

    In an increasingly social world, the above would seem a very obvious choice. However, there’s an interesting statement in the post, attributed to Mike Kuniavsky is “I feel people already ignore the complexity of reality too much and tend to live on parallel planes that exclude ideas that challenge theirs.” I saw a related theme in JWT’s 10 trends for 2012 – “Reengineering Randomness” (#7), which acknowledges that as our world and consumption becomes more customised, there will be a greater emphasis on reintroducing randomness.

    JWT 10 Trends for 2012 Executive Summary

    View more presentations from JWTIntelligence

    As we try to accommodate both randomness and customisation, the factor that will determine many facets of our interactions is privacy – the amount to which we allow services to tap into our social stream. And that would dictate whether I’ll see a brand giving me a customised offer, combining social information, augmented reality, NFC…

    That brings me to my favourite trends deck this year, by Ross Dawson, which captures not just the above, but also more far reaching ones like “Institutions in question” (#4), and the fitting finale “Transformation not apocalypse” (#12) which sets the tone for an exciting 2012.

    2012: 12 Themes – What to expect in the year ahead

    View more presentations from Ross Dawsn

    until next time, happy new yeAR 🙂

  • Reference Groups for Heroes

    Scott Adams had a very interesting post ‘The Comparison Advantage‘, in which he writes about status related stress when “media is changing our reference group. We’re continuously bombarded with stories about people who are fabulously successful.” I’d add that social media is also a big culprit. According to him, the cure is  “to make sure you’re near the top of at least one reference group in your life.”

    With some difference, this is a thought that had crossed my mind long before I read this. But before we get to that, an interesting thing happened. A couple of posts (in Google Reader) after the above, I came across a post by Nilofer Merchant on HBR Blogs titled “Be Your Own Hero“. Completely contradictory? No. But related and yet different perspectives? Yes. This author asks us to junk the ‘Hero Narrative’ and pushes us to be our own hero by following our own passions and not trying to emulate anyone – a “clarity of purpose” for oneself. One of the proposed mantras is also “I shall not obsess over others’ success”, in addition to doing our bit to co-create the future.

    And now we can come back to my thought. I can relate to Nilofer’s views because that was what led me to leave a cubicle and explore the path of being employed by myself. One and a half years gave me an immense amount of learning, one of which was that even with a well thought out ‘personal purpose’ in hand, it was difficult for me to stop comparing. It really didn’t help that the gestation time for it was quite high, and a ‘need it now’ attitude, probably heightened by social media, also played its part.

    After much thought, I jumped back into a cubicle, before which I rewrote the ‘personal purpose’, in which I attempted to factor in the statustics. Putting a full stop to comparison is a long journey, and I’m already on it. An insight (humour me 😉 ) I had while thinking about the ‘compare feature’ was that so far I had been dependent on one of my identities heavily. Mostly it was my work visiting card. So, when comparing, I wasn’t really acknowledging the other things that I was doing, and doing reasonably well. And that is where I mash Nilofer’s ‘personal purpose’ with Scott Adams’ ‘reference group’. I don’t need to top any of my reference groups, but I need them so that my ‘personal purpose’ is balanced between various activities and relationships. That way, I don’t have to kill myself for not blazing a new trail independently. The cubicle job allows me to work on the things I like to work on; the blogs, social platforms and columns allow me to explore other avenues of interest and gives me a sense of worth, and when I need a hug, there’s D and friends and family. I try to make conscious decisions on each of these, keeping the others in mind. Multiple identities, multiple reference groups, all part of the personal purpose. Early days, but the signs are good.

    until next time, try id out 🙂

  • Enterprise, Consumer, Interface

    Facebook’s new Groups at [university] feature, which allows users to create groups that are only visible to those with the relevant and authenticated .edu address, is probably the social network’s hat tip to its roots and a way to show that it can still play at targeted sharing too. However, what it reminded me of was enterprise tools like Yammer which also use authenticated addresses to create closed networks. Add to that Facebook’s other new feature being tested – private messaging between users and Pages, and I wondered if the authenticated domain feature couldn’t be used for creating enterprise networks within Facebook, which could then interface with consumers using Pages. In fact, that would even go quite a way in solving a user’s work/life identities by allowing him/her to have separate (but connected publicly/privately) logins.

    With Google+ launching for brands and thanks to circles, allowing a relatively easy (and measurable) flow of information within and outside the enterprise (I’ve begun experimenting with this @ Myntra), linking employees, consumers, partners etc through not just sharing but also through live video interaction, Facebook does need to go beyond its current offering for brands and organisations.

    Though I’ve not seen it in action, Twitters new proposition for brands, with better profiles, a new twist to promoted tweets, self serving ads etc do sound interesting and should probably lead to more interesting brand activities on the platform.

    The first generation of social media tools have focused on monitoring, engagement and some measuring. They will obviously have to evolve with the platforms’ own feature set advancements. (not to mention new platforms) Meanwhile, I’ve seen at least two forms of this evolution. Salesforce, which has, with the acquisition of Rypple, entered the talent management sphere, continues its march towards being a one stop shop (Chatter for enterprise collaboration, Radian 6 for social media monitoring, engagement and others). On another front, Percolate is aiming to solve an interesting problem area that I can identify with – sustained communication with consumers across platforms that balances interesting content with business objectives.

    New platforms, new tools, decreasing attention spans, new hardware and technologies and a relentless pace of advancement – 2012 promises to be exciting.

    until next time, horizon tally

  • Branded Spikes

    While waiting for the cognitive teardown of the immensely viral Kolaveri (like this Angry Birds one) in the form of either ‘What we can learn from’ or ‘How to craft videos like’ posts and also wondering how long it would take my Twitter timeline to move back from RIP to make-fun-of when a celebrity dies, I read this very interesting post titled “The New Patterns of Culture: Slow, Fast & Spiky” (via)

    It offers fantastic perspectives on creation and consumption patterns of culture, and digital’s weighty role in the changes being wrought. The limited ‘spotlight’ options of an earlier era (mainstream media) now have to co-exist with platforms and mechanisms that are open to most. ‘Scale is no longer a guarantee of stability.‘ Consequently, attention is the more coveted prize. Another related phenomenon is that ‘Change no longer happens all at once for everyone‘. I remembered ‘IsItOld‘ when I read this. 🙂 I sense quite a few concepts agglomerating here. Small ideas, which I haven’t written about for a while now, and transmedia storytelling, for starters, and a reversal of polarity. (the last via Neil Perkins post, linked to earlier)

    Brands have always been using popular culture. One brand that I can immediately think of is Amul, and yet, I almost missed their Kolaveri ad. (via) Yes, not the greatest, but decent. The point here is that while they got the creation right, the distribution is still iffy. And that’s another challenge. Popular culture is more complex than ever before. With the abundance of content and platforms, keeping a watch on the long tail of culture, prioritising according to the audience-fit and then distributing it is not going to be an easy task.

    I have always liked (and hence, borrowed with credit in presentations) the analogy of bonfires and fireworks to social media and advertising. (respectively) The implications of this are not just in standard brand advertising but also in branded content. Brands now have to think of how the long-term story and the spikes can work together and ideally, complement each other, even while figuring out what role advertising and branded content play in each. Despite the seeming fit of social media to spikes, I wonder whether we will, in the medium term, see a role reversal – ‘mass’ media providing spikes and the internet dealing with the long term story, before settling into shared roles.

    until next time, get a spike mike

  • Social+

    Consumption and curation. At some point I can still remember, I consumed newspapers, magazines and all other mass publishers (across platforms) and expected them to curate for me. Curation for a large mass, when linked to their kind of production process and business model, got tits first whiff of trouble when the internet only models came into the picture. In the early days of content abundance, an algorithm came into our lives and changed the way we found content on the net. A bit later, I was introduced to a different kind of curation courtesy the service then known as del.icio.us.  #youremember I would put Google Reader in the same category too.

    Then came Facebook and Twitter, and RSS died several times if we go by the blog posts. Facebook for me has been and is a social graph. The only way my interest graph has crept in (in terms of content discovery and consumption) is in the form of pop culture. Can that change? I wouldn’t write it off. Twitter started out as an interest graph, but when it scaled, it began flirting with social graphs. For me, it’s now both, and I find that difficult to work with. It’s probably a bit of my laziness too – curating who I follow, making corresponding lists etc erm, not done. Anyway, my discovery and sharing on that network is minimal now. So, in that respect, the curation I expect on these platforms is minimal too.

    Purely by activity, it would seem that I am more active on my interest graph networks now. I wonder if I am alone in not being sure of mixing my interest and social graphs -Delicious, Foursquare, GoodReads., and until recently, (generically) Reader. The curation is by a set of people I trust in that domain, and any ‘social’ that happens remains ‘by the way’.

    Google didn’t even see the social boat IMO, and when they did, it was too far out. Wave, Buzz: crash, silenced. But while writing the WT5 column late last week, I found that Google+ has been creeping in everywhere – search results, news, Reader (I haven’t forgiven you, Google) and building in features like Mutual Circle Chat and search options.  I was thinking about this when I received one of my best sources of curation these days – the weekly Only Dead Fish newsletter (email, how ironic 🙂 ), and that’s where I saw this excellent post titled ‘From destination social to distributed social : why Google+ is the Trojan horse of the social web‘

    That’s exactly what Google seems to be doing. Unlike Facebook, which built THE social network and then tried to link consumption on other sites in an ‘oh, okay, fine’ way, Google is playing a balance act, and to its strengths. By giving me the tools to build a social network on Google+, and simultaneously being present at my points of consumption, Google is making me play curator to both social and interest graphs. If all goes well, I think Google will not only collect data, but also build several social networks based on interest graphs. Google’s cash cow still doesn’t have much to do with all this, but once the networks are built, Google will have better contexts for AdSense, based on a really smart social algorithm.

    I have always believed that Android is the next Google. Still do, but now I think that Google+ is a contender too. Or maybe the social OS will be built by them together.

    until next time, evil graphs 🙂

    Bonus: A Google Ventures backed app on iPhone named Stamped – very relevant in this context.