Are you getting fleeced?

The internet is a tremendously powerful tool for collaboration, but some argue that this rise of collaborative thinking does more harm than good for the collective innovation of the world. No one argues that projects such as wikipedia do not hold value, but those that oppose the wiki-zation of our increasingly-online economy say that the biggest advantages still come when the incentive of profit is there. Companies like Apple and Google drive innovation, the thinking goes, while the Web 2.0 crowd doesn’t really create anything of value.

However, I argue that the new paradigm is actually more value-centric than ever before. These days, monetizing an idea is a secondary priority — if a website has value, the thinking goes, then eventually its users can  be turned into profit. So far, Google has had success with this strategy, and Facebook has the user base but not the income (yet). On the whole, though, this path has been fairly successful for companies, because the attention of consumers is a valuable commodity.

But even when the carrot of profit is not dangled, the increased connectivity of the internet can create value and attract attention. The obvious example is wikipedia, but openoffice.org and even 4chan use their users to create value for many without asking for anything in return. People like contributing, like feeling the status of being content providers and experts — they like it enough to give their time and effort for free. But does this democratization of information dilute our minds and stifle our creativity?

In a word, no.

The internet is the biggest boon for creative, critical thinking since the age of enlightenment. The expanse of free information means that the everyman can be better-informed and less-easily ignorant. The new information age is not going away — instead of fighting it or crying about it, we should attempt to use its strengths  to strengthen the thinking skills of the world. The web-savvy generation is the best-informed generation in history, and we are the also the most able to distinguish the quality information from the BS. We’re trending more in that direction — so we should be trying to capitalize upon the best points of the new information age and teach the next generation to avoid the distractions.

What do you think? Is the internet helpful to creative, critical thinking, or not? And, assuming it’s not going anywhere, how can we best work with this new paradigm in education?

Recognize all these?

Greetings from Tampa! I gave up my weekend (and extended it by a day in either direction) to help staff the 31st annual Florida High School Model United Nations conference (FHSMUN). As a home government worker, my job was to keep the delegates on policy and on track, and to fundraise for the conference by selling shirts, flowers, and UN-themed errata. This experience really reminded me how important branding is — even this academic conference is obsessed with building its brand in order to expand.

It reminded me of my thoughts last wednesday when listening to Abhi Lokesh’s presentation of his business, Fracture. He emphasized again and again the importance of building a story around their brand and making customers feel like they were getting service their competitors had no answer for. Their idea is not revolutionary — but they are succeeding so far because their branding is cool enough to get customers excited about their product. They planned from the beginning to create a hip, recognizable brand, and they are now reaping the benefits.
FHSMUN, on the other hand, did not start out with such a goal in mind. Now the oldest MUN conference in Florida by a large margin, they have had to adapt to the changing business world and build a good reputation into a respected brand. FHSMUN has always had innovations that other conferences copied and an excellent dedication to detail, but they have just recently begun to relentlessly promote themselves. What started out as repetition of their selling points, ideals and mottoes has slowly become a consistent brand identity which has made FHSMUN the capstone of most schools’ MUN slate. This has made them immensely profitable which has enabled further innovations and improvements.
FHSMUN (and probably Fracture) will never be mentioned with Coca-Cola or Nike as a great brand, but the fact that brand identity is so important to this kind of organization is indicative of the business world in which we are now living. Governments, gang signs, and even serial killers all have to establish a brand to become memorable enough to today’s citizens. A company without a strong brand is like a person without a name: not memorable despite whatever they may provide.

How about these?

Strong brands stand out from the crowd, are consistent, and are considered in business decisions throughout all levels of a company. Branding is everywhere; an unavoidable necessity in today’s business world, even for organizations that are not trying to turn a profit. The best brands become more than brands — every time you google something or use a kleenex (i.e., any tissue) to blow your nose, you cannot help but notice how much brands affect our everyday life and language.

This guy's online too

The California gold rush was a massive cultural phenomenon. In 1848, gold being found in newly-founded Coloma was a big deal, largely because California was basically unregulated at the time (remember, it had been part of Mexico only 2 years earlier). The U.S. government solved the property-rights laws much as Wal-Mart solves supply shortages — first come, first served. The result, as you might expect, was chaos and explosive population growth.

The rise of the internet was actually quite similar to the California gold rush. As the web began to gain prominence, businesses and consumers rushed to stake a claim to their online identity. There were basically no rules to registering a doman name — again, first-come, first-served. Websites began to pop up at a rapid pace, seeking clicks in much the same way that the gold-rushers sought gold.

Attention is the currency of the new gold rush — whoever can attract eyeballs can attract companies trying to attract customers. But its supply isn’t dwindling away as the gold did after the initial mining craze — the internet is so useful that its userbase (and therefore, total value as a resource) likely will only continue to grow.

In the old west, power was determined by the speed of your draw. Today, the internet is mostly equal except for differences in user’s internet service providers. Fierce lobbying is underway on both sides in Washington, D. C., and other capitals around the world, trying to sway opinions on net neutrality. If the private companies that provide this essential service are allowed even greater control, they may abuse their power to tame the current wild west of the internet. The government has, so far, ruled to maintain net neutrality, maintaining the free atmosphere online. It is inevitable that those in control of this amazing resource will try to capitalize on it, but it is essential to the meteoric growth of the internet to remain mostly open.

Right now, the best solution for both sides is permitting the current equality and anonymity online. This will enable those across the digital divide to slowly close the gap and join the free-for-all, until the world wide web lives up to its name.

You didn't like those 10 people anyway

Would you give up your friendship with your best friend for a hamburger? No? What about your second-best friend? Probably not. But what about your 600th-best friend, or the pretty girl you met at that conference that you never really spoke to again? It sounds kind of harsh, but let’s face it: facebook friends are a dime a dozen, and whoppers aren’t even on the dollar menu.

This was the thinking behind the Whopper Sacrifice, an ill-fated marketing campaign for Burger King’s flagship artery-clogger. Add the app, unfriend ten people through its interface, and you get a coupon for a free burger. Sounds great, right? Many facebook users have dozens of “friends” with whom they never interact. These “friends” probably wouldn’t have even noticed the difference, except that the app notified them that they had been ditched. Facebook took offense to this (usually there is no notification when “friendships” are ended) and demanded that Burger King stop the notifications. Instead, they ended the campaign prematurely after only one week, despite its massive popularity.

In all, 82,000 people ended 230,000 friendships in a week, all in pursuit of a free sandwich. This campaign got tons of attention for Burger King, so on that end it has to be counted a success, regardless of its early termination. The real loser here was facebook. They had an opportunity to prove that real buzz could be created using their system, and instead shut down a popular program. Now, facebook is still working to show that it is an effective advertising tool. The idea was somewhat harsh, but users could immediately re-friend those they sacrificed, and the overall response was positive (3.6/5 stars on the app’s page). Facebook sacrificed evidence of their marketing punch, and they didn’t even get a free whopper.

The application was successful because its users found it both amusing and beneficial, and it spread virally through its notifications and their statuses. Burger King was creative enough to provide the method for its customers to excite each other about the product, and they did the rest. This is a great example of converting consumers into producers, and it shows one of the biggest strengths of user-generated content: it’s free! In this case, Burger King paid its advertising agencies for the idea, but the huge buzz was created by the users of the app.

User-generated content is efficient and effective because it allows passionate users to augment your business’s own content, but its biggest strengths are also its biggest drawbacks. If any voice can be heard, users feel more involved, but credibility suffers. If you encourage feedback, you expose yourself to the risk of negative reviews. It’s free or cheap, but sometimes you get what you pay for.

Just don't get too carried away

Regardless of the risks, user-generated content has become a big part of the business world, and it’s only getting bigger. People expect the ability to contribute now, and they use it in ways that usually benefit the companies that provide the means. It’s important to listen and respond to your customers (like Comcast does on twitter) to prevent bad press, and it can be extremely powerful to use them as the resource they are (see wikipedia). As time goes on, expect to see more advertising campaigns try to create buzz on the level of the Whopper Sacrifice, and expect to see more companies monitor and respond to their social networking presence (only 29% do so regularly!). This is the dawning of the age of the user.

The possibilities are endless!

Consider your bookmarks bar (or, if you’re still in the stone age, your favorites folder). What is the breakdown of websites that you use? Are there lots of web tools, like search engines or email? Are there lots of sites you visit for content, like videos or news? Or are there mostly sites that provide community or allow you to express yourself? Chances are, your bookmarks are some mix of the above three categories. Typically, the most-used sites on the web provide more than one – for example, wikipedia is a valuable tool, a constantly-updating content provider, and an active community of editors. Everyone bookmarks for different reasons, but the basic motivation is the same: the website appears to be valuable enough to the user to warrant repeated visits. When trying to promote a website, those repeat visitors are essential tools, because they keep coming back and (most importantly) they tell their friends about their favorite pages.

Recently, I have worked with a group of fellow Digital Frontiers students to help create a multifaceted advertising campaign around the soon-to-open Citizen’s Co-op. In a cooperative business model, it is extremely important to have passionate customers, because your customers are also owners of the business – part of our task as advertisers is to create, maintain, and expand this passionate customer base. We wanted to increase the co-op’s web presence from the start. They already have a branded site, a twitter, and a facebook page, but right now they lack reasons for their customers to bookmark or share their sites. So, as a group, we planned to change that, starting with a new, content-based blog that would give people a reason to come back and get excited about the ideas behind the co-op.

So how do you create a bookmark-worthy website? One way to start is by thinking about what makes a site successful. When getting a new blog off of the ground, there are a three vital things to consider: content, community, and branding.

The most important factor in getting a website started is the content it provides. Without content that people want to read, it is impossible to attract clicks, links, and attention. In order to see his unique visitors tally climb ever upwards, the smart blogger must add content that is interesting, relevant, and regular. For our blog, we want to have articles that will attract people with interest in local, organic food or sustainable living – these are the consumers that the co-op covets. To house this content, I decided on a wordpress shell (just like Digital Frontiers) with content created by the team behind the co-op and (eventually) its better-informed members. The goal is to have at least one new article every day, because we want to encourage people to visit a lot. Like I said, interesting, relevant, and regular are the keywords here.

Branding is important to any business venture, but is especially powerful online, where different websites can be linked together under the umbrella of a larger brand. We want to stay in line with the established branding of the co-op, but also branch out a little bit. The goal is to tie together the current web site with this new blog, and have both of them interact with accounts on facebook, twitter, and ning. This will be accomplished by making the content, appearance, and names of the sites interlock and support each other (for example, the blog could post a recipe with links to coupons printable from twitter or a “tips” discussion on ning). With this goal in mind, one essential step in the blog’s creation is choosing the perfect domain name. The better the domain name, the less work it is to create strong branding behind the product, and having “.wordpress.com” at the end of its URL makes any blog less memorable. SEO bloggers and metabloggers (bloggers blogging to other bloggers about blogging) have written extensively about what makes a domain name good. Basically,

• Be unique and create a brand;
• Get the .com domain; and
• Make the name easy or fun to say, spell, and remember.

Content requires writers, and branding requires money and vision; creating a real community requires users that really care. This is by far the most difficult of the three keys to achieve, but it is also the one that can most easily make or break the success of a website. Creating community is a great way to convert visitors who would otherwise leave after one pageview into contributors to the site. This is the essential conversion that our last two in-class speakers have emphasized: from passer-by into passionate, from disinterested observer to brand evangelist.

The user base for this website is limited to those in or around Gainesville, so maximizing the conversion rate among the relatively small number of potential visitors is extra important to Citizen’s Co-op. We plan to use ning to host community discussions about local food and events at the co-op, and encourage interaction between visitors at all the sites in the co-op’s network. After the blog and ning are created, we can start trying to attract users and get them to attract their co-customers.

All of the above three methods will lead to an increased web presence, and all will help convert visitors into customers into contributors. The one overarching theme that is important to all three facets is creativity. Whether by creating original content, intertwining brand elements in a new way, or finding a new way to encourage community, innovation breeds success. And bookmarks.

So, dear reader, what has earned a spot on your bookmark bar? How do you think your favorite sites fit in to the categories I described? How else can you draw visitors in and get them to come back? And, what’s the best way to name a website? Add your opinion in the comments.

Even if you’re selling things people absolutely need and your service is better than the competition, advertising is important because there will always be alternatives to your product. If you can follow the strategies of successful companies like Google or Apple and make people want to be involved with your brand, then you can get people to not only use your product, but also convert their friends. Getting customers involved is at the core of the cooperative business model. Cooperatives (as opposed to corporations) are independent organizations owned and controlled by its members, who have joined together to provide goods or services. Perhaps the most recognizable co-ops are local farmers’ markets, where farmers band together to draw consumers to buy their fruits and vegetables. Together they have more success than they ever could alone , but they still have trouble competing with big corporations like Publix or Wal-Mart (Although co-ops Sunkist and Ocean Spray have done alright for themselves). The farmers’ market here in Gainesville is a good example of a cooperative in action, but it doesn’t really make an effort to get its customers involved. There is a void in this college town that the Citizen’s Co-op intends to fill.

Right now, Citizen’s Co-op is an idea and a list of members, but they are refining their business plan and building buzz around their opening. At their excellent website, they have a mission statement and a description of the cooperative identity, both emphasizing the importance of building community around the store. Although local and natural foods are central in the mission of the co-op, equally important are the principles of free and open membership and democratic control. The members of Citizen’s Co-op are not just customers or investors, they are literally part-owners of the enterprise. They help make decisions about the direction of the business and get portions of the profits back — the cooperative simply cannot exist without them. This model allows those customers who are excited about the mission of the store to be involved at the highest level if they choose, making them as passionate about the brand as a CEO might be. With customers this much a part of the operation, rapid growth is possible through word of mouth — but a sophisticated publicity campaign could speed that growth up even more.

The next step for the Citizen’s co-op is to reach out to the community in advance of its opening and create a groundswell of interest. They already have plans to sponsor a bike tour of local food hotspots around town, and (with our DF group) plan to create online content to reach out to prospective customers. Much as Google created a story in its ad, the co-op needs to publicize its mission and create interest around the idea of being an owner of a natural-foods store in order to ignite the imagination of its customers. Right now, it’s a work in progress, but as long as they stick to their cooperative ideals and emulate the strategies of successful companies, they will create a passionate customer base that will inevitably lead to growth.

Generally, advances in this relatively new field are driven by new developments in brain scanning. At first, these tended to be fairly devastating to the patient. Electroencephalography (EEG) measures the brain’s electrical activity, but it wasn’t until 1929, over 50 years after the technique’s invention, that Hans Berger figured out how to get that data without opening the subject’s skull. Pneumoencephalography, a highly hazardous primitive imaging technique which replaces the cerebrospinal fluid in a patient’s brain with air (coincidentally, a good way to take out zombies), was the most powerful brain imaging tool from 1918 until 1970. Neuroscience couldn’t really take off until the invention of the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and CT (Computerized Topography) machines. The CT scan provided multiple angles of the same brain for the first time, but the MRI technique of injecting a radioactive tracer and then using it to measure bloodflow in the brain paved the way for later neuroscience research. The PET (Positron Emission Topography) and fMRI (functional MRI) were built off of this same concept, but allowed researchers enough precision to finally begin studying cognition in real time. As it stands today, neuroscience is ripe for a new development, on par with MRI, that could open up the discipline.

Image obtained through PET

Image obtained through pneumoencephalography

One area in which this breakthrough is likely to occur is in the blossoming field of brain-computer interfaces. Brain-computer interface is poised to change not only the way we understand the activities of the brain, but also the way we interact with virtually all the machines that make modern life possible. The Graphical User Interface changed the way we interacted with computers and made Bill Gates and Steve Jobs household names, but it is by no means a permanent institution. Already, researchers have used implanted electrodes to restore a semblance of vision to the blind, or give amputees prosthetics almost as good as the real thing. It has been more than 10 years since the first “locked-in” paralysis patient was able to move a mouse cursor with his mind, and 5 since advances allowed patients to have the electrodes on the outside of their skulls (it seems to take a couple years to develop a scanning technique that anyone would volunteer for). The direct-brain interface scientists are moving more quickly than the pure scanning researchers because they are motivated to get the money waiting for the first company to really take advantage of the new technology.

Within our lifetimes, we may be controlling much of our important machinery with our brains. Our knowledge of how cognition works in the brain will only improve as neuroimaging waits on the next technological breakthrough to open up research. Neuroscientists, like zombies, work with their limited resources to reach a greater understanding of the brain (or its flavor). If these resources are dramatically expanded by a technique as influential as the invention the MRI/PET/fMRI scanners, neuroscience could make a quantum leap forward. Direct-brain interfaces and down-to-the-neuron imaging are only one disruptive innovation away — and when that innovation comes, it will change the way the entire species understands itself and interacts with its technology.

We may speculate to any end about this new technological revolution, but it remains to be seen how it will all play out. Is this exciting or terrifying? What are some possible implications of this technology? Will we ever completely understand cognition? And what makes brains so delicious (to study, of course)? Use your brain to move your hands and discuss in the comments, but while you do, imagine doing it all at the speed of thought. It may possible sooner than you’d think.

(on Wednesday, January 20, our Digital Frontiers class was split up into groups, given 5 stacks of post-it notes, and told to “create value”. This is the story of how one group used networking principles to create new connections, and hopefully new friends, among the student body)

One of the largest changes that Facebook has wrought in our generation’s mindset is our new willingness to post personal information online. When I tried to explain to my octogenarian grandmother how social networking has changed since the advent of the internet, her immediate reaction was to question the benefit of having private data displayed for all to see. It’s unprecedented to have so much personal data in the hands of a nongovernmental organization, and a lot of Facebook’s perceived value (estimated by Microsoft to be $15 billion in 2007) comes from its immense stores of personal data. The personal data that all these users provide is used to network with each other and express themselves – but this process is groundbreaking only in its scope. The same principle was working in business cards, bulletin boards, and conferences long before anyone had heard of Mark Zuckerberg. Since the time of the Egyptians and before, the writing on the wall has been important in mankind’s communication.

But in this age, the wall is usually just a digital representation on Facebook – basically the same technology that has existed since BBSs in the early days of the internet. When our team used post-it notes and the new mindset of information-sharing to create a (literal) “friend wall”, we were combining old technology with new ideas; in a sense, the opposite of popular social networking sites. Our goal was to use our limited resources to help college students make friends based on common interests and experiences. Although most college students have hundreds of Facebook “friends”, usually they actually interact with a much smaller number of people, mostly based on common activities or passions. The idea of the friend wall is simple: at some public location, take over a wall with scores of post-it notes; label it as such and promote it enthusiastically; ask passers-by to write their first name, point of intrigue, and contact information on a post-it and stick it up; encourage everyone to take an interesting post-it home and hopefully make a friend. The response to this simple idea was surprising enthusiasm.

Once the little yellow contact cards started going up, passing students became curious and thronged to see what the commotion was about. It seemed to be a refreshing new side of social networking – people used the opportunity to describe themselves briefly to appear as interesting as possible. Between lacrosse players, aerial dancers, musicians and tetris fiends, UF’s diversity was on display and students were able to meet people In a nonthreatening and unique way. All in all, we probably connected 100 people in a limited timespan. The idea of a “friend wall” has real potential.

What it shows is that people respond strongly to community, even artificial community, because the relationships we have with others are some of the strongest forces in our lives. Especially for students, the opportunity to connect and share some of yourself is to powerful to pass up. Hopefully, we can apply the lessons we learned on Wednesday to help Citizen’s Co-op create a marketing plan that emphasizes the community of a cooperative grocery. If there’s one thing that will stick in my mind from this creativity exercise, it’s that nothing is more powerful in marketing than the excitement of a crowd.

The 21^st century, among other changes, has seen a significant uptick in the amount of advertising we are exposed to. As multimedia multiplies, it runs up bills that can be most easily paid by advertising. The latest behemoth, Google, got famous because of a search algorithm but got rich because of those tiny text ads that always seem to know what you’re talking about (or at least fail hilariously). My point is, the average tech-friendly consumer is bored by advertising. Getting attention used to be the end-all measurement of successful advertising, but in this age it is more important to get real interest. If a potential customer is intrigued or engaged it is now easier than ever for them to explore your content further or share it with their friends through social networks. The internet has really changed how companies and individuals must approach consumers and sell products.

In class, we discussed Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s presentation of the Macbook Air. Jobs has a strong understanding of how the web has changed the game; he knew that blogs and journalists had endlessly speculated about the product he would reveal and Apple built up the anticipation even further with banners hinting at “something in the air”. Tech blogs created tags for the Air and anticipation continued to ratchet up – modern consumers were rabid for news about a product they actually had to wait for. Jobs’s keynote at Macworld was masterful. Using his informal style (he knew he was also speaking to nerds in their boxer shorts across the world) and a simple presentation that emphasized the visual wow factor of the Air’s design (what tech bloggers and their readers were most likely to drool over), Jobs nailed the big reveal. Having the Air be the last product in the last speech mirrored the secretive feel of the product and lathered up tech writers even more. Apple wanted people to know about their product – but by making it seem like they were trying to keep it secret they made it more enticing. This meant that Apple could afford to let its consumers look up the applicable tech specs and focus on selling the product on its strongest points (i.e., hardware design). Jobs was effective giving the keynote not just because of his presentation skills, but also due to the Apple P.R. department’s unified strategy. The Air really did not live up to its hype, but its hype was groundbreaking in its magnitude. Google trends shows the Macbook Air never again came remotely close to the level of interest they manufactured around that keynote address.

The lesson to take away from this post is that while giving good business presentations is a valuable skill, the little things that you add to your presentation are the ones that make it a big deal. We are bombarded with people selling us products and ideas; to stand out, you need not just a good speech and powerpoint, but a campaign that catches the blogosphere’s imagination. If you can capture real interest in your audience and get them involved, they will do your job for you (and better than you ever could).

So how about it? Were you interested in the Macbook Air despite yourself (I know I was)? Can you think of another product that so successfully used the blog community to sell itself?

More than just increasing my web presence, I hope that this class will increase my already considerable web savvy and thereby increase what I can get out of the web. I had to add Digital Frontiers to my schedule during Add/Drop week because I had nearly imagined the class just weeks before when talking to a friend about how social networks had astronomically expanded and how this changes the world of business. The thinkers behind youtube, wikipedia, Pandora, facebook, etc. have changed the way we access information and, as a global society, we are only trending more towards using networked online applications for everything. Not all new technology is as useful as these, but anyone who’s ever lost a day clicking around wikipedia can testify to web 2.0′s usefulness in spreading knowledge. Perhaps after taking this class I will find value in Twitter or find a blog worth consistently following; honestly, I would be happy with a quality new webcomic to read or band to listen to. In the end, what will shape the internet is increased networking between people, and not just ISPs. It’s already happening and this generation of students is lucky enough to be able to ride a technological wave into a monsoon of money and stock options. So, with the goal of fostering a more complete global network:

What’s your favorite band no one’s heard of?

Do you read any good webcomics?

Which social news sites do you use? Are you part of the community there or are you more of a lurker?

How awesome would it be to have the job of translating everything on facebook into Pirate slang?