SXSWi: What I’ve Learned [Part 1]

On March 14, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson
lego headphones

SXSW Rocks!

It’s Sunday evening, halfway point through a jam packed SXSW. I wanted to do a quick post between events with a few notes that either, individually don’t make a full post or I’m working on a longer one.

Events/Parties

Unlike most parties where everyone shows up fashionably late, everyone at SXSW shows up early to get as much in as possible.

  • The Hive Awards were much more entertaining than I thought (and I already had high expectations).
  • The Diggnation event was crazy cool. Wow.
  • Bryan person and crew nailed it with the Social Media Breakfast Mega Meetup.
  • John Hagel’s book launch party and the Powered dinner were perfect because they were more intimate.
  • I’m off to the PBS/RWW party now. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The People

While the parties have been amazing, thy’re not the highlight for me. I know it’s why so many people want to come here but for me the parties were just a convenient meeting place (probably because I don’t drink, so half way through when everyone else is getting their party on, I’m getting a little bored).

Best part hands down about SXSW has been meeting people I have known online, in some cases, as long as 2 or 3 years, and have never met in real life or people I haven’t seen for as long or longer. You all are great, I’m so glad I got to finally meet so many of you and I’m really sorry I didn’t get to meet more of you. I’m going to have to radically update my People to Meet Twitter list.

In fact I keep running into so many of you in the halls that I haven’t made it to very many sessions (but from what I’ve heard I haven’t missed too much).

The Sessions

The two best and most applicable sessions were the Social Business Summit (technically not a SXSW session but whatever) and Gaming the System with 4Chan. You may not realize the inherent irony in these two statements. The SBS was filled with speakers who are accomplished authors, entrepreneur CEO’s, Ivy League graduates and the best business strategists in this space. 4Chan (Wikipedia link because I don’t want to send you to the site) is the bridge the trolls of the Internet live under.  I that’s all very cryptic but I’m working on a much longer post.

Coming Posts

Other posts I’m working on (these are just working titles):

  • What Social Businesses can learn from 4Chan
  • Crowdsourcing Heats Up
  • The Victims Caught in the Crossfire of Geolocation Wars
  • The 3 Types of Social Media Strategy

And I’m only half way through the event.

What did I do right?

This was my first year so I wasn’t totally sure what to expect but here’s what I did right.

  • Wing it: I made almost no plans for sessions to attend knowing that my priority was to meet people.
  • Power Packing: I brought my own power strip, an extra battery for my netbook and power cords for my phones
  • Pack light: This is not a fashion show. Leave the suit at home and pack only the necessities.
  • Staying the whole week: It was rough to get Wed-Wed off but so worth it. I would have hated to be rushed and leave early. I still have so many people to meet and some sessions I really want to attend.

What would I do differently next time?

  • Bring more business cards (although I still wouldn’t give many out)
  • Bring my skateboard (for commuting purposes of course)
  • Book my hotel sooner. I’m a little out of town and have to drive in and parking is painful.
  • Plan more: While I’m glad I didn’t do a detailed plan I do wish I had planned a little bit better. The sessions were spread out between 3 building and I didn’t realize that I’d have to try and run from one building to another for sessions (remember running to class in college). This usually left me wondering around the convention center looking for a room that was in a different hotel. Of course that’s probably why I ended up meeting so many people.
  • Take more pictures and videos. I forgot my camera and at parties the camera phone doesn’t cut it. I also wish I’d interviewed all the great people I met.

Look for a Part 2 on Wednesday.

Photo via Balakov

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Yammer Helps Your Company Create More Edges and Flows

On March 12, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson

Last month I gave Yammer (a product I like) a hard time because it doesn’t integrate with microblogging clients like Seesmic and Tweetdeck and I feel that their pricing is prohibitive to large, enterprise companies.

I got several comments from people and had some really good discussions around the use of Yammer and the good and bad people face with the product. To my surprise the most engaged commenter was David Sacks, Founder and CEO of both Yammer and Geni, was previously the COO of Paypal and if that wasn’t enough, producer of the movie Thank You For Not Smoking.

I’ve been meaning to, to do a follow up post on what Yammer decided to launch instead of the features I thought they should have implemented but yesterdays Social Business Summit provided the perfect fodder I needed.

Lane Becker, CEO of Get Satisfaction, made the comment that we need to create more edges in our companies. Edges are where the cool things happen, it’s where conversations with partners and customers happen; it’s where innovation occurs.

John Hagel then later made the comment that companies need to move from knowledge stocks (proprietary IP that they milk dry) to knowledge flows (rich interactions and collaborations with stakeholders).

Earlier this month Yammer released Yammer Communities a tool that can do just that.  From the Yammer blog:

This new product feature enables companies and organizations to create a new type of Yammer network that is not restricted to a common email domain.  Yammer Communities provide companies with a secure, private, and separate space to communicate with their external business contacts.

Yammer Communities

This is an excellent move for Yammer. Traditional “partner portals” or “extranets” are secure, intranet like sites where companies can share things like documents and announcements with partners and over the years extranets have grown to include some level of collaboration. Most extranets suck for two reasons:

  • They’re hard to use have horrible UX
  • People don’t want one more place they have to remember to check

I have no doubt Yammer will destroy current extranets on both accounts. However I still think that being able to access Yammer from an aggregated application like Tweetdeck or Seesmic will make the service much easier to use. But David is a successful serial entrepreneur, the one category of business person I have the most respect for, obviously knows what he’s doing and shouldn’t be listening to every blogger with an opinion and an overinflated sense of importance.

I’m looking forward to giving the new communities feature a test to see how well it works.

It’s pretty long (just under 30 minutes) but if you’re interested here’s an interview Robert Scoble recently did with David.

I chat with the CEO of microblogging and corporate social service leader, Yammer, about what they are doing and how the enterprise market is becoming hyper competitive with companies like Salesforce, Jive, Socialtext, SocialContext, Google, and Zoho all angling for the market that Yammer was first in.

Internal social media is about to go through the growth external social media went through for the last few years. It’s going to be exciting to watch.

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Twitter to SXSW: You’re Using Our Product Too Much.

On March 11, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson

I’m at the Dachis Social Business Summit here in Austin right before SXSW kicks off. Like all conferences they’ve established a hashtag #sbs2010. While trying to follow along with the rest of my attendees, to see who’s here and what’s resonating with them and I got this message

Possibly the most disruptive technology in social media was when Twitter acquired Summize which later became Twitter search and they’re limiting it at probably the biggest geek event of the year, SXSW, the very even that launched  Twitter several years ago. And the SXSW Interactive hasn’t even started yet.

Could you imagine if Bing limited search right now as they’re trying to compete with Google? Twitter is the little train that could and is competing/with partnering against/with, Google, Bing and Facebook.

I couldn’t think of a worse move. AT&T knows SXSW is going to be huge and they’re beefing up coverage just for the event.

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82% of Teens Watch TV Online. 48% Watch TV on Cell Phones.

On February 24, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson

Teenagers watch TV online. No big shocker right? According to a Horrowitz Associates recent study, almost all teens watch TV online at least once a month. Half watch TV on their phones monthly. This study purposely excludes online only content.

Their parents and older siblings are much further behind. Almost half watch some news and sports (probably clips) online but very few watch any TV content on their phones.

The press release doesn’t share too much additional research and the report cost $8,500 but this is obviously a growing trend that’s only going to get even much, much bigger.

Social Media and Mobile Growth are Exponentially Symbiotic
More Mobile Social Proof Points
Marketers are getting a little too excited over location based data

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You Can’t Hide From the Web

On February 24, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson

I know my friend Brian Sollom, is nodding his head and Mike “foleymo” Foley has probably already signed up. The Next Web is reporting about a new app that allows you to take a picture of someone and pull up all of their recent social activity. It’s not hard to let your imagination go from there.

Stalk a Stranger. Point Your Phone At Their Face.

Recognizr works when the user points the camera at another person. Inbuilt face recognition software maps a 3D model of the subject and transmits the information to a remote server where it is matched with an identity already present in the database. This information is then sent back to the handset along with any relevant social networking information associated to that person, conveniently displayed above the persons head using little social icons.

The service is opt in only (right now) but face recognition technology exists from companies like HP and Microsoft. There are even free versions out there. It’s only a matter of time before this capability is available without having to opt in.

This will scare the crap out of a large number of people. I understand but there’s no turning back.You can either try, unsuccessfully, to hide from it or you can take control of it and manage it.

Here are my 3 big takeaways for you:

  1. There are no back channels. Do not say anything on the Web you wouldn’t want everyone and anyone to see.
  2. Understand how to use the tools. Facebook and Google don’t make it easy to control your privacy (it’s in there best interest when more data is public) but understand how to use the privacy settings and use them as you see appropriate.
  3. There is no difference between online, offline and mobile realities.

I’ve long claimed that ther is no difference between online and offline. Augmented reality apps are another example of this.

As marketers we need to quit talking about online vs offline vs mobile. The form factor and user interface may be different but all three coexist and we need to be thinking about and using all three. We also need to act responsibly with customers best interest in mind.

Don’t sacrifice customer privacy and comfort for monetary gain. There is a backlash coming, it won’t be pretty and you don’t want to be on the wrong side of that fire storm.

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How Does Yammer Stay Relevant?

On February 22, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson

YammerMost people I talk to don’t use Yammer much. The “cool” factor seems to be fading. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was free I wonder how many people would use it at all? As we all know free doesn’t support as business for very long.

Yammer is having a “major launch event” on Thursday 2/25. What will they announce? I don’t know. What I hope they announce?

  • Tools integration for better workflow.
  • Better enterprise pricing.

I like Yammer. I really do. I just hardly ever use it. Here’s a few reasons why I don’t use it:

  • I either have to go to the site or download their own AIR app to use it.
  • I “talk” to most of my coworkers by IM, email and Twitter.

Basically it boils down to workflow. I commented on Twitter last month that I was surprised Yammer didn’t integrate with any of the Twitter apps like TweetDeck and Seesmic. To my surprise @mhat, a “Yammer Generalist” according to his bio, responded to me. He asked what I was hoping for and after a few tweets that was all. We’ll see.

The other complaint I have about Yammer as a corporate employee is their pricing. No not the free part, that’s fine. It’s the $5.00 per person that’s insane. A large company like HP could buy or build a replacement to Yammer cheaper than they could license $5.00 a head. In fact some engineers at HP were building their own version of Yammer that wasn’t as slick (at least not when I saw it a year ago) but it was integrated into the rest of the Intranet so posts showed up in search.This is especially easy for companies to do with open source tools like Status.Net that you could literally host your own internal microblogging service.

Even for a medium sized company like my current employer, Waggener Edstrom, licensing would cost over $4,000 a year ($5 X 800). I’m guessing here but I don’t think we pay 4K a year for the licensing of any single product (excluding bulk licensing like Microsoft Enterprise which covers lots of products and includes support).

I’m also sure they’ll announce a lot of cool tools for better collaboration, knowledge management, etc, etc. But until they solve these two problems I don’t see them being able to continue their early growth.

What would get you to use Yammer more? What would you like to see Yammer announce?

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More Mobile Social Proof Points

On February 18, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson
My Cyber Social Map
Image by frankdasilva via Flickr

Following yesterday’s post “Social Media and Mobile Growth are Exponentially Symbiotic” I wanted to post 2 quick links that emphasize the relationship between mobile and social.

Rohit has a good post detailing a milestone of sorts in mobile’s maturity.

Influential Marketing Blog: 5 Terms That Signify The Future Of Mobile Marketing

It’s hard to predict, but I can say that this year does represent a unique moment where all the different aspects of mobile marketing that have long been preached by believers as signifying a cultural shift that matters to marketers are coming together.

The Shortcode
LBS (Location Based Services)
APP(lications)
AR (Augmented Reality)
DMPs (Direct MobilePayments)

ReadWriteWeb reports on a recent study showing that mobile social networking is now more popular than desktop social networking.

Social Networking Now More Popular on Mobile than Desktop

During the 2.7 hours per day that people in the U.S. spending on the mobile web, 45% are posting comments on social networking sites, 43% are connecting with friends on social networking sites, 40% are sharing content with others and 38% are sharing photos. While those last two figures represent activities that can take place outside of a dedicated social networking service, like a Facebook app for example, they still are inherently social activities.

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Social Media is Just a Big Game

On February 4, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson
Standard joystick

Play On

As a proud member of Gen X I have fond memories of my Atari 2600.If you are reading this chances are you had an Atari, Nintendo 64 or Sega Genesis and chances are even greater you have an Xbox, Wii or Sony Play Station in your home right now. In fact to carry this even further, you are also likely to have an iPod or iPhone loaded with several games.

Gaming is a huge industry. But social media can thank much of it’s growth to gaming.

I’m not just talking about all the Farmville, Mafia Wars, sheep throwing, super poking and other plagues that roam Facebook.Social networks are filled with gaming components. The most obvious is Four Square with it’s points, badges and unelected mayors.

LinkedIn was the first time I noticed it with it’s profile status bar. If you remember back to when you first signed up there was a status bar that gave you a percentage of completion and next steps to improve your level of completion.Add a photo, invite friends, fill in job history, etc. The annoying thing was that I knew I was being gamed but I did it anyway.

Games on iPhone

Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

But there are even less obvious forms of gaming. Why do people care about their Twitter follower count? We don’t really care how many people are following us. It’s nice affirmation and all but really it taps into that deep seeded, primal urge that games satisfies for us.

We watch how many followers we have, we watch haw many RT’s we get and how many replies to questions we ask, just like we watch how many coins we collect or aliens we kill.

Business Need to Play More games

One thing that strikes me as a huge opportunity is to more overtly build gaming qualities into business software.

The biggest problem with CRM software is that sales people don’t enter the needed information in. Taking this thread to the extreme and knowing sales people and their uber competitive nature, what if each lead was a kill and all additional information under that kill determined the value of the kill. You would also need a constant leader board that sales people would check daily (I promise many of them will check it multiple times a day). You could also make a kill list out of your target customers and offer bounties for special targets.

While this is an extreme example that could potentially cause some perception problems, I promise that this would be the most successful CRM system out there.

The Future Will Be One Big Game

With the advent of Augmented Reality we will quickly move from AR games on our phones to AR glasses to everything being one big game.

[Prediction] By 2020 games will be the next social networking. Not games like we think if them today but systems that work off the same gaming theories. There will be gaming communities that dwarf Facebook and challenge Google and Microsoft for time spent, functionality, marketing dollars and developers.

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Facebook Takes on Google Reader: Who Said RSS is Dead?

On February 1, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson

I’ve been playing around with Facebook. Both how to promote brands on Facebook as well as how users consume content within the walled garden (hint: there’s a direct correlation between the two).

As blogs and media networks extend their reach using Facebook Pages, I noticed something interesting:

Facebook can be used as an RSS reader.

Most people don’t use the groups feature enough but it’s just like using Twitter lists, except you can’t share them. I’ve set up one just for the blogs I follow on Facebook.

Facebook as RSS Reader

It’s like a more graphical version of Google Reader with the shared and comments view shown in the collapsed mode.From here users can like or comment on any post or click through to the expanded “notes” view.

Facebook is a growing source of news for most people. While the geeks among us may still prefer RSS or Twitter your average user will follow a fan page before they subscribe to an RSS feed.  I’ve written about a study showing that Facebook members use the social network as a growing source of tech news.

(BTW, feel free to join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page.)

Over on the Facebook blog, Malorie Lucich, has a post about how she’s seeing the rise of Facebook as a news source Creating Your Personalized News Channel.

When the earthquake hit Haiti, victims in the area, news affiliates and people around the world used Facebook to learn what was happening, connect with loved ones and quickly disseminate information. ABCNews.com and France 24 added Facebook live stream boxes to their sites to enable people to share their feelings on the disaster and relief efforts, and publish it back to their Facebook status. Meanwhile, The New York Times created a special Facebook Page dedicated to Haiti coverage, resources and updates from their reporters on the ground.

Malorie then recommends building a group of just the news sources you follow to clear the clutter. The next step in Facebook’s twitterfication will be to make these lists shareable. Facebook could also further this adoption by mimicking Twitter’s now dead, Suggested User List and have a recommended group that people could follow or even recommended groups by category. Companies would pay millions for that kind of reach.

As this kind of use on Facebook grows your Facebook fan numbers could easily eclipse your RSS subscriber numbers. This also poses an interesting challenge for publishers hiding their content behind pay wall or a unique partnership opportunity, depending on how they approach it.

Update: Marshall Kirkpatrick just posted a very similar post on ReadWriteWeb:

Facebook Could Become World’s Leading News Reader (Sorry Google)

Services like MyYahoo and iGoogle saw some traction and many readers here may have a Google Reader account, but dedicated RSS (really simple syndication) feed reading services have never lived up to their potential to become a mainstream phenomenon. These days many people say they just wait until links get shared on Twitter and they never use a feed reader at all. Late last week Facebook threw its hat in the ring and called on users to use its service as a news feed reader. There are a number of reasons why Facebook could be the strongest online subscription option yet.

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

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The Splinternet Fragmentation of the Inbox

On January 31, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson

Josh Bernoff has been posting lately on the demise of the Golden Age of the Internet and rise of the Splinternet.

The Splinternet means the end of the Web’s golden age

Now with iPhones, Androids, Kindles, Tablets, and TVs connecting to the Web, that’s not true. Your site may not work right on these devices, especially if it includes flash or assumes mouse-based navigation. Apps that work on the iPhone don’t work on the Android. Widgets for FiOS TV don’t work anywhere else.

Meanwhile, more and more of the interesting stuff on the Web is hidden behind a login and password. Take Facebook for example. Not only do its applications not work anywhere else, Google can’t see most of it. And News Corp. and the New York Times are talking about putting more and more content behind a login.

Web marketing has grown since 1995, based on the idea that everything is connected. Click-throughs, ad networks, analytics, search-engine optimization — it all works because the Web is standardized. Google works because the Web is standardized.

Not any more. Each new device has its own ad networks, format, and technology. Each new social site has its login and many hide content from search engines.

Josh also has an updated post declaring proof of the Splinternet. He doesn’t so much offer proof of the Splinternet’s existence but more of a hypothetical index that allows you check your own Web stats for the fragmentation he’s mentioning.

Josh’s index is good if you’re a webmaster or Web marketer with access your analytics. But your average tech geek need to look no further that your iPhone. That very device which has fuled the rise of the Splinternet like no other.

Behold the Splinternet in the wild:

The Splinternet

The Splinternet

News allerts, missed calls, email, And this is just my iPhone 3GS. On my Windows Mobile, HTC Touch Pro2 I have my work email, other voice messages, missed calls and text messages. On my HTC, MyTouch 3G with Google other apps that need updating, the same Twitter, Facebook and Brightkite  messages as well as GTalk IM messages waiting for me.

Each one of those messages sends alerts, notifications to multiple “inboxes” but all of them can only be managed in their proprietary walled garden.

Have you spotted the Splinternet in the wild?

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

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