BrandsAmongMany

Digital is changing the world. It’s changing the way we consume everything. Television isn’t television anymore – it’s just content. It no longer matters where we see it or how we take it in…

That’s an excerpt from a POKE project we worked on a while back. And it’s even more relevant today than it was the day we wrote it. As I sit back and look at how I consume media today, particularly “traditional” media like TV that was originally created for a specific mechanism of distribution, I’m struck by just how much things have changed.

There is exactly one show that I watch on television anymore, and that’s only because it isn’t readily available online. And even that show I watch when I want thanks to the joys of DVR. Everything else I want to see is available via some sort of online service: Hulu, ABC.com (though I don’t really follow their shows), CBS.com. And for movies, of course, I have a Netflix subscription. Add to that, their recently launched “watch it now” service for macs and I’m really pretty much set. And, of course, there will undoubtedly be a Roku set-top box in my future to make things that much easier. Or maybe an xbox.

Great! So what’s the problem? Well, the problem is that my home internet connection is rather…limited (to put it nicely). Or in simple terms, it stinks. Now, given what I’ve just said about how much I use it, that’s a major problem. We (yes, I live with roommates) have serious cable coverage in the apartment (DVR, lots of channels, HD, yadda yadda). But that doesn’t exactly help much when most of my consumption happens on another device. Granted, my roomies still watch TV the “old fashioned” way, so it’s tough to convince them that there’s something wrong with the picture.

But, if I had it to do all over again, I honestly think I’d go without the cable option. I’d pay a little more (if necessary) to get a good internet connection (and I’d make sure the system was set up so that I wasn’t streaming over wifi) and toss the rest. That allows me to see 95% of the content I’m really interested in, pretty much when I want to see it (Hulu and the network sites don’t always keep a full backlog of past shows) and the $75-100 per month savings in cable charges is just an added bonus. In fact, I’ve spoken to a couple of friends who are already doing just this, and they don’t seem to be missing too much.

Is it a solution that would work for everyone? No. I was talking through it with a non-technical friend who was scared by all the different sources, etc. that it entailed to view content. She’d rather just pay for cable. And, of course, the world of digital content delivery isn’t necessarily poised for this type of change either. Network sites still require a bit of patience because they don’t always work so well. Which, of course, brings me to my point and back to my original statement:

Television isn’t television anymore – it’s just content. It no longer matters where we see it or how we take it in…

How much longer is it going to take for that idea to really sink in? How much longer until the idea of connecting your television to a computer instead of a cable box is the norm rather than something that “requires patience”? It’s time people! Get rid of the boundaries between devices and start thinking about alternative means of delivery. Your audience will thank you for it. Sure, it will take a little while for it to trickle down the ranks, but your influentials and innovators are already waiting for it (or they’re making it happen by cobbling together their own solutions). This is the future, ladies and gentlemen, or so I’d say. What do you think? Do you have a unique system of consumption? Fill us in!

Flickr credit [funky_puppet]

Well first of all, obviously here at *AmongMany we do care, a little. I was asked to look into this Motrin Mom’s debacle after seeing the ad on youTube. I read the comments, I watched the responses, I look at the twitter backlash, the websites devoted to writing about and/or slandering Motrin, and the Motrin Response Apology:

And what’s my take on this all? Am I personally offended? No. Do I think Motrin deserves to be boycotted for making this ad? No. Do I find it distasteful? Eh, no. And that led me to think… who made this ad? How did it get greenlit. I know I have tried to do much more distasteful things and was met time and time again with –’ but we might offend old people,’ ‘what about all the people who are bowlegged,’ ‘but some people are afraid of pigeons.’

Anyway this train of thought led me to wonder, who made this ad?
Some would argue, there is no way this ad was made by a mother. Maybe the person was young, and thought they were being clever. Or maybe some man, who hated how his wife was always wearing the stupid sling and complaining about her back, sent his wife to go see a chiropracter, who she fell in love with and then subsequently left him, wrote the ad. Who knows. But more importantly:

Can you tell if an ad is made by a man or a woman?

Remember this pregnancy test ad?

I remember the first time I saw it I thought, there is NO WAY that ad was created by a woman. I could envision two dudes, sitting in their office being handed this pregnancy testing brief and freaking out. They would begin by exchanging stories about girls they were with, and then they’d focus back down on the brief. They’d read all these impressive stats on the accuracy of the test and then they’d learn you PEE on it. They’d chuckle and then BAM. Technology you pee on, an ad is born, with a man stamp of approval.

A few weeks ago I came across this site called GenderAnalyzer.

It claims to have the ability to analyze your website using the text-classifier uClassify that “has been trained on 2000 blogs written by men and women.”

When I had it scan my personal blog, it predicted I was a man. FAIL.

I had a friend in school who claimed he could always tell the gender. Sweet, sensitive, hand-written, borderline-kinda-maybe funny — it was by a girl. He was a jerk (chicks do love hand-written type).

So back to this Motrin ad. Who made it? Could a female be as insensitive as the blogs make them out to be? Wouldn’t she recognize with all her maternal instinct that holding a baby in a trendy sling was meant to increase the bond between mother & child and look trendy at the same time? I don’t know. When I watch the ad I don’t hear a woman the same way I do when I hear Kashi ads.

What do you think? Can you tell the gender of an ad?

I love the Nissan Shift campaign, probably one of my favorites in the world of car advertising. Yet, their most recent truck commercial seems familiar. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great spot, horrid music aside, but there something wrong here.

Now, compare and contrast.

See what I mean?

Awesome, fantastic YouTube vid on the evolution of digital technology and its impact on people around the world. Researched by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Bronman. Originally tweeted by Tom.

Well, first, what’s “competitive commenting”? It’s the name we’ve coined here at POKE for the trend of “discussion as game/competition” that we’ve seen growing across the web. What started in the comment sections of blogs and other sites like YouTube has grown to include new experiences specifically dedicated to creating competitions out of digital interaction.

We introduced the idea of competitive commenting when we launched Embrace Your Grace, a blog-like fan site for TNT’s Saving Grace that offers up a point-counterpoint discussion about some of the hard-hitting topics presented in the show, and allows readers to vote for either side and submit thoughts of their own.

Tengaged is another prime example. Essentially a digital version of the popular show Big Brother, Tengaged groups ten players into a room where their conversations and interactions within the group become their basis for staying in the game. Those who don’t add value get “voted off”.

Edopter, which we’ve discussed over at ThingsAmongMany, is yet another example. While not a direct competition where someone gets voted out, Edopter has created a “game” in which users are valued based on their predictions of upcoming trends. The more people who agree with a prediction, the more influence the user gains within the system.

Of course, those are both specific sites that require a user to maintain involvment with yet-another social network - a practice that many of us are reaching critical overload with. But what if this notion of competitive commenting could be expanded to include something that we’re already using? What if, say, your tweets - the comments that you’re making already anyway (you ARE on Twitter, right?) - became the mechanism by which the competition were measured? Well, now they can.

Hubspot recently launched Twitter Grader, a new service that pits you against everyone else on Twitter to determine your score (out of 100) compared to the rest of the field. Yup, these guys have successfully created a scoring system to turn Twitter into a game. *AmongMany is currently chugging along with a 63, but hopefully that will increase in the near future as we continue to post content and gain followers.

So how do they measure your worth? According to Hubspot’s VP of Marketing, Mike Volpe, the system takes into consideration:

1. Number of followers
2. Number of followers that your followers have (the power of your network)
3. Quantity and pace of updates
4. Additional proprietary analysis (this is the super secret algorithmic stuff generator part)

Of course, Hubspot isn’t the first to consider grading Twitter users. The now-defunct TweeterBoard offered similar functionality. And this app called TwitterGrade offers a more tongue-in-cheek response to your query, though it does embrace the question of ego theat should be considered by anyone willing to look up their own grade on Twitter. Definitely worth a chuckle.

Tom (aka. meat99) caught my eye with an interesting response this morning on Made With Computers. The question came from Tom Raftery’s Social Media blog. Tom (Raftery…this could get confusing) asked:

What is Social Media’s ‘big thing’ for 2008?

Here’s a quick excerpt from Tom (Raftery’s) post:

Looking back at Social Media, we have had a significant advance (a ‘this year’s big thing’) every year since 2004.

In 2004 - blogs started to really take off
In 2005 - audio podcasts started to take off
In 2006 - video podcasts started to take off
In 2007 - microblogging (Twitter in particular) started to take off
In 2008 - ???

We are in November now of 2008 and I still don’t see any big transformative Social Media technology which has occurred this year.

Has it stalled? What am I missing?

Tom (meat99) responded with:

2008 is the beginning of the “Curation” process. There is a quality revolution taking place in social media - video’s, blogs, photos, microblogs, etc will get more specific and more focused. Content will be much more focused on “how good it is” not on “how many people have seen it”.

As usual, an insightful answer from Tom (meat99) - hence why I love working with, and learning from, him. I don’t disagree with his response in the slightest; the idea of curation, especially through digital media, is something we’ve been looking at a lot this year at POKE. Just look at all the different digital services that have cropped up around culling down and presenting the “best of what’s out there”. Urban Daddy comes to mind quickly. So do Yelp, Going, and a slew of iPhone apps that could fill the rest of this page.

Of course, repeating his answer here doesn’t make for much of a thought - kinda wish I could rewind to before I read his post so it wouldn’t be stuck in my head. But after mulling it over for a few minutes, another important idea came back to me. This is an insight that I picked up on a recent project, and it’s something that has stuck with me. So here’s my response:

Perhaps the big evolution of social media in 2008 is the movement - or the acknowledgment and embracing of the trend - away from “collecting as many friends as possible” and toward the “advancement to the inner circles” of social media communities.

If we think about the history of social media for a minute, it’s pretty clear that some sort of caste system exists in almost every social site out there. Take a look at I’mInLikeWithYou, a dating site that masquerades as a gaming site that still works like a dating site (but functions like a social network)… Users “earn” the opportunity to get in touch with people who catch their interest by bidding and/or betting on a game started by the other person. But why are some games worth thousands of points while others barely jump above the 100 mark…?

Even simple message boards, perhaps the oldest form of “social networks” out there, often display a member number for each user. And the crew that’s been there the longest - those with the lowest numbers - have an unspoken seniority within the community. When they talk, others listen. And, of course, those members are often tapped to become the moderators and administrators of the community.

Recently, especially in the last year or so, we’ve seen more and more communities that make this a central focus. These social networks are no longer centered around how many friends you have, but rather overtly celebrate your status as a user within the community. Edopter, the “social trendcasting” site where users share what they believe will be the next big trend, is a perfect example. Rather than showing your friends on your profile, your rank within the system and your level of influence are placed front-and-center.

Yay Hooray!! is another excellent example - albeit one that I can’t speak to very specifically because I haven’t been invited to join yet. I do know, however, that it’s another community that labels its users according to a ranking system. Unlike some other communities though, on Yay Hooray!! it’s possible to skip over rungs on the ladder if an existing higher-up believes you’re worthy.

Of course, I guess Tom (Raftery) could argue that this doesn’t answer his original question if you take into account his reference to a “transformative technology” for 2008. But then, the difference between, say, audio vs. video podcasts (which Tom used as examples for ‘05 and ‘06, respectively) isn’t necessarily a big technological difference as much as it is a difference in the way that people are using the technology available to them.

So is this movement (shift in awareness? embracing of change?) THE ‘big thing’ for ‘08? I dunno. That feels like a heck of a claim that I’m a little hesitant to make (ie. commit to). But it’s definitely something that’s worth keeping in mind as we continue to move forward. Especially as more specialized, niche communities continue to grow across the web.

I’ve spent the last year telling various clients that its time they open their content to the world. In fact, one of my first projects here at POKE was for a TV Network who wanted to know how their brand could become more “digitally relevant” - our answer: set all of your content free. Let people see it when and where they want, embed it when and where they want, and even better, mash it up however they want.

Of course, that tends to scare clients just a wee bit.

Well, in the race for freedom of content…MTV WINS! Yesterday, the archetypal source for all things music-on-screen launched a library of 16,000 (and growing) music videos at MTVmusic.com. Search for your favorite artist and wade through their collection of video content on the fly. Watch it when you want it. Embed it wherever you want it.

But wait, it gets better. While not readily apparent on the surface, a couple of people smarter than I have pointed out that MTV has also built an API into their system. Everything is accessible. Want to put together a feed of Queen? No problem. Want to build a click to watch video site that leverages MTV’s library? Git codin’! Want more info? Check out their developer documentation.

So what’s it all mean? Well, it means that the bar has been set. High. For all of you content creation companies, this is where your head needs to be. What do I mean? How about Hulu – you guys listening over there?

THIS is how a video sharing site should work. Hats off to you MTV for stepping up and winning the game!

Ok, I know that Apple is a favorite point of discussion amongst blogs like this. Someone is always standing at the ready to either praise or blast them for their newest…whatever. And I usually try to keep out of the fray. You’ll notice that we didn’t post yet another “ZOMFG, Apple released the 3G iPhone, let’s go stand in line for six hours!!!!!” post. But now that a few days have passed, and the initial shock is wearing down a little bit, I’m going to pick up my tradition of stepping back for a moment and trying to take a look at what’s really going on behind the excitement. Last September, it was the Starbucks partnership that prompted my musings…

This time it’s AT&T. Or is it just Apple? The web has been absolutely on fire with discussions of the newly released iPhone 3G. Most of that discussion, however, has been the usual fanboy discussion and the incredible lengths to which people have gone to acquire the device. Apple has reportedly sold more than 1 million devices since launch. According to Fortune, twenty one states are completely sold out. Sounds like heaven, right?

Maybe not so much. Reports from users are coming in every second, and the outlook is a little grim. A thread on Howard Forums has caught some attention and spurred a number of other discussions regarding both AT&T’s preparedness for the massive influx of new 3G capable devices, as well as questioning Apple’s hardware build. That led to further complaints on Macrumors.com, which in turn pointed [me] toward a similar discussion on Apple’s support forums.

General consensus: something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Complaints from 3G users around the world are coming in, reporting a variety of problems all pointing to either a major issue in AT&T’s 3G network - a reasonable deduction for US users - or in the new iPhone’s hardware itself - a more reasonable explanation given the worldwide issues. 3G-ers everywhere are complaining of slow connection speeds (the supposed benefit of the new 3G network), dropped calls, lack of signal, etc. - all in areas supposedly covered by their service provider’s network.

I’ll readily admit that I’ve pretty much caved and plan to do something that I vowed I wouldn’t - purchase an iPhone under AT&T. In fact, I’ve already made the call to Verizon to find out the exact date on which my contract is up (August 11 for anyone interested). But this is definitely enough to make me think twice about that decision. We can only hope that the issues will be fixed quickly, either via a firmware update from Apple (assuming that a software update can fix the issue) or some attention from the various service providers around the world. I realize that 3G is a newer technology that’s still being rolled out in many places, but if the reality of the system is that 3G speeds are slower than EDGE then maybe we’ve jumped the gun in the interest of “getting it out there”?

Do you get the point? You should…

Great point from the Stuff That Happens blog by Eric Burke.

The evolution of digital technology has created expectations in consumers that brands simply don’t live up to.

This has been a defining principle in my thought process as I’ve grown into the digital realm. In fact, we’ve spent hours discussing just this thought around the tables of POKE. What is the difference between marketing of the days of yore and communication in today’s connected world? I’m gonna go out on a limb and start with…expectation.

We’re used to getting what we want, and getting it NOW. We’re used to being connected to the process the entire way through (straight down to the automated, geographic tracking on the package as it makes its way from Des Moines to Timbuktu). We’re used to picking up the phone and sifting through twelve automated menus and three Indian call centers to find out that we dialed the wrong customer service number.

So, what do we expect these days? Well, as this post bounced around my drafts folder, Tom managed to put it into words quite nicely over at Made With Computers:

We want more.

More information, services, ideas, more of each other and more value from you, the brand we grace with our attention. We also want to manage our relationships with your company, and to have_among other things_ instantaneous transactional capabilities. These expectations are increasing, not going away. To matters worse…

We also want less.

Less emails, less hold times, less crap snail mail and really - less interaction with you. That is of course, unless we want more interaction with you. Then, you know, give us that too.

And, as Tom goes on to point out, the line in the sand (read: trench, canyon, black hole…) between the brands that seem to get this and those that do not is almost unfathomable.

Of course, the benefit to this is that it doesn’t take much to impress me as a consumer anymore. All you have to do is overturn a few of those expectation - preferably in a positive way. Have a human answer the phone. Give me a correct answer to a question when I call to ask (are you listening Bank of America??). Make information easily accessible - AND CORRECT - on your website; believe it or not, I’m willing to spend the time looking for it on your website just so I DON’T have to call you (because I don’t trust your humans anymore).

Ladies and gentleman, the world is changing. Those of you who decide to keep up - or (gasp) rush ahead with us - will flourish. The rest of you…we’re getting tired of your ways. The backlash has already begun. Don’t let it hit you in the ass on your way out.