DISQUS

Cheers for the comment, and really interesting points - I'm always amazed in the few conversations I've had about why banks need to change.

The answer for me is the fact I've gone to moneysavingexpert for financial advice on numerous occasions, rather than dealing with a lengthy wait on hold in a phone queue, a queue in branch, and then sitting down with someone who spends their time trying to upsell me to something I don't want before managing to screw up my details for the thing I actually need.

Those organisations that operate as middlemen simply have to figure out what value they can provide, and fast, or they'll be gone and no-one will miss them.

Wow! Thanks for a fantastic response, and you've definitely raised some great points.
I totally agree that the biggest barrier with Ubuntu is in installing new applications as most don't allow you to install without compiling, which is going to stop many people.
However, I do think that perhaps there are two things in Ubuntu's favour.
One is that as a technical professional, you're likely to need to install far more applications than many users. And there's probably quite a large group of people running Windows etc at the moment who will never actually install a new application, as they just want to browse the web, write the occasional CV or letter, and that's about it. And with OpenOffice and Firefox installed, they're effectively sorted.
The other aspect is the increasing amount of applications which run 'in the cloud' or are installed as Firefox plugins, for example, which remove much of the need for desktop installs. If Firefox usage continues to rise, and more people become familiar with the ability to install functionality quickly and easily into their browser, this could be a major plus point for Linux/Ubuntu for those who aren't interested in taking everything apart for every application they might want to install!
Personally, I'm probably not proficient enough with installing applications and playing around with Ubuntu yet, but in my case, it's something I wanted to try and learn....

@Doug,

I totally agree (see the section of the post talking about the elephant in the room) - it's not a case of newspapers splitting readerships between print and online - it's a case of that readership scattering to the digital (Computer and mobile) four winds to find whatever is the most appropriate way for them to keep up with life as individuals...

One of my favourite examples is the somewhat niche use of Greasmonkey as a plugin for Firefox to do all kinds of things to websites that the site owner is unlikely to ever know about (My post on it is called 'evidence of end user control')

Part of my current role is attempting to coordinate all the relevant channels and platforms from a marketing perspective...which is a fun challenge!

Cheers Dave, and totally agree that's another point to include!

Incidentally, without seeing the original memo, we're all operating on hearsay, but if I was trying to make the same point as Mark Zuckerberg, I'd have stated it as "The most disruptive companies choose to ignore users when it makes sense as a business" but it's not quite as snappy.

Hi,
Many thanks for the comments, and it's highlighted that I might need to clarify my thoughts a bit further!

I'm not saying that you should totally ignore vocal users, or consider it wise to make Facebook less usable to generate buzz and controversy. If I thought that was what Mark Zuckerberg was doing, I'd definitely be more vocal in speaking out against it.

What I'm proposing is that it can be a mistake to allow every input from users to define the business strategy and direction of the company - for example, the recent Facebook changes might have made the site initially less usable/more confusing for the average person, but if the eventual aim is to increase brands using Facebook advertising and to allow better data collection, then it might be the right move for Facebook as a business.

Essentially it's a word of caution against jumping on the social media bandwagon and advocating that you take every opinion into account - if you're doing something radically different, a lot of people will speak out as an instinctive reaction before even giving it a try. How many films have been attacked for various reasons by people who haven't even seen or read much about them, for example, or been watered down by focus audiences? I think it was South Park which initially made a focus group of female viewers start crying when they watched it, but by going ahead it became enormously successful.

To get value from listening, monitoring and involving people, it takes a certain amount of awareness and knowledge to set things up in the right way - for instance, the use of ideagoras by the likes of P&G etc is a very specific way of using the wisdom of many individuals outside of the company to be involved in value creation. You need to have a clear idea of what and how you'll respond, and why. For instance, implementing @ replies in Twitter was a hugely important user-driven innovation, and yet the Twitter team haven't responded to the requests to implement groups as yet, and I'd guess that's due to a business reason, rather than hiding away!

Great to have so many interesting comments and debate happening...

I totally agree with Simon, Andrew, Wayne and Louise that elements of what we see businesses doing to marketing themselves, manage reputations, spread awareness etc are all things that can equally apply to individuals - especially in an age where individuals are using online tools to be able to become businesses in their own right in growing numbers.

I think Andrew is right about having it as a perspective, rather than a formal process and something that you shout about - for instance, I've always used the same logo/avatar across all social networking sites despite the fact that hiding behind a crash helmet is a pain when meeting people in real life for the first time - but having started to use it, I was conscious that I should use the same image because people would associate it with me wherever they saw it.

In the same manner, I always try to make sure I'm polite and civil, even when I strongly disagree, because that's what I try to be like offline, and because it's the best way to end up with meaningful interaction rather than a flame war - by the same token, I'd like to have a reputation as someone who is capable of intelligent debate and being helpful where ever possible.

But all of this comes from aspiring to be a position where people might hear about good work I've done, or recommend me, without needing to dress it up in terms like Me.Inc or Personal Branding.

There is an area of celebrity where branding/marketing type crossover definitely happens, and that's with the real superstars who have a value in attaching their name to a product (e.g. Michael Jordan, Air Jordans, the Jordan motorcycle racing team etc).

But even then, I'd probably separate brand 'Jordan', from Michael Jordan. Whether others do the same or not, I don't know.

Probably the trickiest example, rather than Scoble or Louis, would be Gary Vaynerchuk and Winelibrary TV etc. But I'd suspect he'd talk about 'Owning IT!', rather than 'personal branding'...

How strange - something weird must be happening, because I've just written about being at #27 on a new post, and yet you've both suddenly appeared on the old one I linked to?

Cheers for the comments - it certainly seems to have been about 20 minutes of Malware meltdown before recovering.

The sad thing is that at the time I started using the avatar, the Stig thing never even occurred to me.

I think it's being used to motorcycle forums where a lot of people use pictures of themselves on bikes, wearing crash helmets...

Hi Scott - thanks for the comment. I definitely don't think age stops us using and loving technology - just that for most people it gets harder to find time to play around with it as much as they'd like because they end up having to do so many other things!

Personally, I just hope I have all my faculties when I retire to be able to spend all my time playing with whatever new technology has arrived!

@Euan lol...depends on what you're looking for in a pair of headphones! You can buy better ones for noise cancellation etc, but for a relatively budget pair I've found the Sony's pretty good, and they survive being stuffed in my backpack every day for work. I've also used them for at least an hour a day, 5 days a week for probably 18 months, and they haven't fallen apart yet!

Personally, my favourite was a comparison of the online strategies of Coke/Pepsi
http://thewayoftheweb.net/2008/11/coke-and-peps...

But the most popular post was actually asking if Microsoft was throwing away
the success of the Xbox 360's marketing with a change in direction:
http://thewayoftheweb.net/2008/11/has-microsoft...

I totally agree that it's not about different technologies - it's totally about the focus and drive.

That's partly why I don't think microblogging will ever replace the function of long form blogging - it's much harder to explain the reasoning, focus and clarity around a thought to more than one person and without 20 messages!

I think for me, I was just amazed at myself for feeling bad about not contributing enough to some key communities - and realising how many I'd signed up for over the past year or two and never attempted to engage with - and how many times I've seen other people doing the same thing.

People can start 100 groups to try and achieve something and none of them will get anywhere without the required enthusiasm and effort...

The 360 was unusual because when it launched, the original Xbox wasn't the leader with the focus on online gaming, yet the 360 persevered and managed to capitalise on the growing trend for multiplayer gaming, combined with the increase of broadband availability around the world

Hi, it's the Freshy 2 theme from here: http://www.jide.fr/francais/

@Ben - Cheers...you know I've followed your blog etc for a while, so I know your work well.. Will definitely be in touch..


@Jonathan Cheers...I had a feeling you'd have some strong wishes...and certainly ones that I think will be shared by a lot of people...I think some of them will take fundamental changes in human nature...and changes to advertising and music will be far slower than anyone would wish for...but I think we'll get there...one day!

I don't think Angus would have been able to take parts of the building with him... Not without someone noticing, anyway!

Magpie? I think they've got it right that the most profitable part of Twitter is around the content stream - but not sure whether it will be accepted by the majority of users...look forward to some more indepth thoughts on www.140char.com soon!

Thanks to Giles for adding some of the context I lost in reposting!

And it's cool to see the other comments. I think Nicola's point is important, but I'd suspect that in Collective's case, the plan would be to only hire people in the top right quadrant anyway, as with quite a lot of digital agencies. As Greg said, a lot is about attitude and ensuring you have people who care about their work.

There's the oft-quoted example of people seemingly wedded to their laptop 24/7 - and they're doing it because they love their job and what they do (He says, commenting at 9.40pm!). And they'd rather be doing interesting creative things 24/7, than a 9-5.30pm that they want to escape as soon as possible.

I definitely think we're reaching the point where people that claim no interest in the digital opportunities or existing side of their business are in an increasingly risky position.

Cheers for the interesting comments.

@Rob - I definitely agree that resources like Wikipedia etc, and those topics outside my network definitely provide a resource, although do find my first instinct is to ask my network via Twitter etc, and then use Wikipedia.

@laurent - I think many people have encountered the echo chamber since the earliest newsgroups and forums! Social Media Monitoring/Buzz Monitoring tools are slightly different, as they aggregate individual posts, comments and thoughts etc. And generally they provide a more quantitative result, with the facility to more easily see the vocal qualitative results, rather than aggregating the thoughts of people around the blogosphere, for example, into a most popular improvement to your website, for example.

There's definitely a role for crowdsourcing, but it's choosing the most appropriate tool for the task, rather than assuming that plugging in a random crowd will solve everything!

Thanks for the all the comments, long and short, agreeing and disagreeing.

I probably could expand my thoughts a little more to give some more background!

I've been gaming for 26 years now, starting with a ZX Spectrum, and including every console from Sega, Nintendo (Up to the Wii), Sony (Up to PS3), MS, etc. So I hopefully don't have the 'fanboy' loyalty to a system that would make me insult alternatives regardless.

I do see some of the intentions and benefits of the update to the 360 dashboard, and I'm glad that MS are taking the time and effort to continue to develop it, rather than waiting till the next gen of consoles.

But what I'm discussing is really from a marketing point of view - every successful brand has a 'belief' with it, from the company, and from the consumer. In consoles, Sony was a great example with the original Playstation, coming into a new market and becoming the coolest option available, regardless of functional spec.

Meanwhile Sega had a cool image with the Megadrive and Sonic etc, but got confused with the MegaCD, 32X etc, and never really recovered (The Saturn and Dreamcast were fine machines but commercial failures).

To use a comparison with PC gaming, it's akin to building the Alienware brand up for a few years, then producing a low spec, low cost Alienware netbook because Asus had some success. Regardless of the actual functionality, Alienware would look like it's copying someone for the sake of it.

I agree you get out of a console what you put in, in terms of games etc, but products are also about beliefs and the feeling you get from them - hence why you pick one newspaper over another, or a website over another, without examining exactly what stories are in each in detail.

I bought into the belief and branding of the 360 at launch until now - the existence of games like Viva Pinata were accessible to children, but for me it was a machine for adults to enjoy online gaming.

Now it doesn't feel like a place where adults can hang out and play games whilst drinking beer and chatting. Now it feels like a place for children and early teens to compare the clothes of their avatar, whilst they tell the 'grandads' to get out of their network...

It's the equivalent of buying Forza Motorsport, playing it for months, and then finding out that overnight someone swapped it for Juiced!

Don't forget the PPA Award for Interactive Magazine of the Year amongst other awards...:)

I did a bit of writing about this on my own blog, and I agree with some of the comments above.

I think there are two ways it scales:

1. You expand your team.

or

2. People learn to accept that someone attempting to connect with lots of people won't be able to respond to every message, from every person, individually. I think social media is shown by the fact that if I post something of interest, or occasionally, just a random comment, someone like yourself, or Hugh McLeod, or Chris Anderson etc will respond if possible.
I don't expect to get a response from you if I'm bombarding you with messages about the sandwich I ate this morning.

You can share your stuff with the world, but a smaller percentage of people will actively comment and respond - so it's all about finding the best ways to reach as many of those people as possible, with the reasonable expectation of the amount of time and effort anyone can reasonably put in!

Ah, could the refusal be down to articles, and claims of Tysabri causing brain damage and PML?

http://www.druginjuryblog.com/2008/08/05/two-mo...