What Comes Next? Part 2: The Suckage!

On August 28, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson
SIERRA MADRE, CA - MAY 29: Seventieth anniver...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

As a follow on to yesterday’s post on the 80% online US adoption rate. I’d like to point out the down side: Suckage.

Yep, pure suckage. Are you tired of spam? Are you tired of Twitter/Facebook spam? Wait until you start getting location based social spam, from your “friends”. Think a lot of people are jumping on the social media bandwaggon now? Man you ain’t seen nothing yet. It’s about to get ridiculously disgusting.

Tired of the echo chamber? At least up until now it’s been filled by people with above average intelligences. You think washed up real estate agents turned social media experts are bad? We’re about to enter the Wal-Mart age of social media.

Remember back in the mid 90’s when EVERYTHING was eXXXtreme!!!!!? Yeah, that bad. It’s coming.

The worst part is that a lot of people are going to tune out. A lot of the smart people are going to leave in disgust. And really I can’t blame them. It’s too bad because finding those really smart people to have great online conversations with is already hard enough.

Trail blazers rarely stick around when the settlers show up. Revolutionaries get shot when the war is over.

The irony is that there are still some social media Utopians out there that believe that everything will be ok as long as you’re transparent. Yes be transparent but that doesn’t make everything better. It just exposes the assholes.

No one said to themselves as a kid I want to grow up and be a marketer so that I can deceive and manipulate people. That’s why they become lawyers (I’m kidding Nipper).

But inevitably every form of marketing has turned into that. Advertising started off as way to support some media that provided a service. And advertising itself used to be a service people appreciated. Same with direct mail and email marketing. Eventually they all get abused and social media is no different. Kind of sucks huh?

But this isn’t a doom and gloom post (I’m saving that for later). Just trying to be pragmatic. The only way to get above the suckage is to not succumb to it. Don’t spam your friends with mass event blasts on Facebook, email or Twitter.

Be thoughtful about who you’re communicating with in any channel.

So what are you going to do about it?

  • I’m going to keep writing this blog and I promise to never suck.
  • I’m going to keep sharing everything I find interesting.
  • I’m going to have a blast doing a job I love.
  • I’m not going to keep following everyone on Twitter (although I’ll follow most).
  • I’m not going to follow anyone on Facebook I don’t know personally.
  • I’m not going to suck.

The day I start sucking is the day I leave social media.

What are you going to do?

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What the Postal Service Can Learn from the Web

On December 3, 2008, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

us postal service

Image by kiss kiss bang bang via Flickr

People often talk about how the Web turned traditional business models on their head. But do we really understand the full significance of that? I’d like to give you an example.

With the holiday season quickly approaching we will all be using the postal service during the worst possible time.

How does the postal service make their money?

They charge postage. 1st class, which is what most of us use, pays the most per ounce. Bulk rate (aka junk mail) pays the least.  The bulk rate customers are the postal services *power users*. They use the service the most and pay the least.

The postal service is suffering as more and more 1st class customers use their service less and less. Paying bills online. Sending eGreeting cards. Sending emails instead of letters. Sending photo’s digitally instead of through the mail.

The bottom line is the customers who pay the most – and send the highest quality content – are being incentivized to use the service the least. The customers who pay the least for their service – and arguably send the lowest quality content – shoulder the least amount of the financial burden.

How do Web based business make their money?

*Most* Web businesses make their money by getting as large amount of users as they can. Advertising is one obvious example, but freemium services work the same way.

The freemium model gets as many users as they can and then only charge their *power user* for the premium services. Flickr is a great example of this. Flickr is free to everyone, but once you reach a certain amount of storage you have two options: delete older unwanted pictures to keep your storage size down, or pay $20 annually. I took the lazy route and paid the $20 – well worth it.

What if the postal service worked the same way?

All the 1st class users would pay the least amount (totally free is a little unrealistic). The *power users* would pay the most.

The first benefit I see is that this would drastically reduce junk mail. It would also increase the likelihood that your 1st class users would use the service more (seriously how much does it cost them to send a letter?).

What do you think? Am I crazy? Is there no way this model could apply to a non-Web business? I think it could. It would just require the postal service to think about their business model differently (not likely going to happen).

UPDATE I also got some Twitter comments on Web based business models that could be applied to the Postal Service.

From @waded:

@tacanderson The CDN one… print letters/junk in the same city. I wonder if that would be cost effective or not?

@tacanderson Netflix does something similar for commonly-watched movies. (They use both physical distribution centers, and digital CDN.)

This could be interesting. People could submit there letters digitally and then have them printed and delivered closer to the location. This would probably work really well for the bulk mail industry.

From @nathancook:

Love your USPS comments; Wondering would people mail their letters for free by allow junk to be attached (think: webmail). @tacanderson

Me: @nathancook ooh, nice one. like google.

@tacanderson More specifically, yahoo or msn that literally attach spam footers. I use youmail and am thankful for their spam model for VM. (voice mail)

I think this idea also has some promise. Kind of like the Google model. Free Web searches but you get advertising with it, or like Nathan points out, it’s how HotMail started out. You’d always still have the option of paying a premiumto have your letter delivered w/out advertising.

Maybe there’s a business in giving away pre-stamped envelopes w/ advertising on them? hmmmm

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New Channels of Engagement

On April 17, 2007, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

I find myself debating with people about the business relevance of New Media tools. For the last two years (and probably for the next two years) I have dealt with sceptics who question the validity of blogs, podcasts, wiki’s, forums and online social networks (LinkedIn) as a viable communication medium.

Lately I have been fielding the same questions about communities like Twitter, Ning and Second Life. In my last post I wrote about the problems with e-mail: The channel is clogged.

The same problem exists with radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, junk mail, spam, and telephone marketers. The channels are clogged. When users no longer find a particular channel useful will they use less channels? No, they will find or make new channels.

This is what Twitter, Second Life, MySpace, blogs, etc, are: new channels of communication. Ironically, this is what TV, radio and the printed press started off as: channels of communication. Then people started asking what the business application was. Now these channels are so clogged with ‘business applications’ (ie marketing) that we have to find new channels of communication in order to talk to each other.

In a previous post I talked about what New Media could learn from the “demise” of old media. My recommendation to Marketers: Tread lightly, don’t yell, don’t interrupt, engage, add value, participate.

The same is happening in our workplace. We don’t have enough channels for the amount of information we have (and we haven’t seen anything yet). All of our old channels were designed in a different world; a world of limited information. This is why I blogged about the death of e-mail. As we have created more information we have crammed it in the same channels: e-mail, TV, radio, etc.

New Media is a channel, how we use it is what makes it powerful or just another annoyance.

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My First Public Appearance

On February 11, 2007, In Comm, By Tac Anderson
The Axtecs had a sence of humor
Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

On Tuesday the 13th I will be presenting at the Boise Chambers Lunch-n-Learn series. The topic will be “The Death of Spam” (Justin came up with the title) use the power of the social web to accelerate the growth of your company (I came up with the sub heading).

I will be addressing the issue of trust and why your company has none anymore, what happens when the web brings you the combination of richness and reach (something that no other medium can do) and key points for the CMO, CIO and CEO.

If you’d like to attend please sign up in advance, or just show up It doesn’t really matter to me. If you’d like a preview or can’t make it but want to know what you’re missing I have attached the cut sheet I will be handing out at the presentation.

the death of spam

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