Stimulate Me Please - June 16, 2008

Filling out your profile and posting a picture for your avatar may not be enough anymore, well, in the mind of the owner of the technology service you’re using.

I was reading an article on Matt Dickman's blog last week about how social technology applications are continually employing unique methods to encourage users to participate more frequently and meaningfully. So what exactly does that look like?

Think about your LinkedIn profile. Let’s take a quick look at mine:

“OMG, I’m only 90% complete, oh not, what have I done wrong. I must solve this immediately!!!” Right? That’s how LinkedIn wants you to think.

Or maybe the new service Plurk (aka Twitter rival) where you get awarded Karma points and new icons for using the service like it’s no one’s business:

Or perhaps it’s getting a special badge of honor next to your username like Yelp’s Elite:

All in all, I think that these technology services are utilizing interesting social stimulants to perplex the users and convince them to continue reviewing, micro-blogging, testing, etc. However, I think the best tidbit of all is actually inviting someone to an event where you can honor them for all their greatness. I know Yelp does this with their elite, but I recently was invited as a “Cake VIP” to go to the HQ of Cake Financial:

Needless to say I didn’t attend particularly because they asked me to dress to impress, but I still thought the gesture was a grand one. Another issue I have with the invite was the fact they sent it via Evite, which I particularly hate. Overall though, I think they did a decent job of encouraging local community participation, I hope to see more from them in the future.

Tweeting Hot Chicks - June 12, 2008

I heard that people used Google Trends to predict the winner of American Idol. Why not use Tweet Volume to determine who America (or just us geeks) thinks is the hottest chick. I did two different searches.

The first graph pertains to the Holloywood hot chicks. From this graph you can see that people have twittered the most about Lindsay Lohan. Does this mean they think she's the hottest...who knows? I hypothesize that because she gets herself into legal trouble quite frequently, people are twittering about that and not her hotness. Additionally, I think they probably tweet about her in the form of a joke, once again not about her hotness. That all being said, I think the hotness award needs to go to Scarlet Johansson. Yay!Now, for the hotness of the geeks? What internet chick wins it all? Well, I plugged in the name of five of the hottest girls of the web (according to my friends and I). iJustine barely edged out Amanda Congdon, so she get's the award, however, some honorable mentions should be given to Natali Del Conte and Sarah Meyers.
I could always use Summize to check the sentiment and tone of the tweets about these celebrities, but I'm too lazy, so I hope you like the choices.

Just Hook Me Up to a Car Battery – June 12, 2008

I maintain my online identity fairly well, and I’m an active contributor to websites like my blog, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and a few others. However, it’s gotten to the point that there is a service or technology to record, share, send, etc for everything I do.

The people of the world are continually looking to share their experiences and knowledge with friends, colleagues, and strangers for the sake of improving the overall quality of content on the web. Facebook has more than 80 million active users, and is the 6th most-trafficked website in the world. Every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube, and 35% of all internet users watch at least 1 video a month. Twitter now has 1.2 million regular users, and it’s traffic has grown 850% in the past year. Last but not least, Instructables has over 13,000 DIY projects listed.

It also worth mentioning that more and more Americans are gravitating to grabbing their news from blogs, just look at the adoption and usage rate from this eMarketer chart:

So, why are people into sharing and creating so much information? I think that we can break this down into six simple reasons:

1. To express oneself (Flickr or Yahoo Live)
2. Persuaded by a behavioral or emotional trigger (Join LinkedIn)
3. Because they were influenced by someone else (“poked”)
4. There was a deep amount of content to wade around in (YouTube)
5. It was easy, only one click away (Leave a Comment)
6. It had a level of novelty or utility (Stumble Upon)

The world is continuing to live life online, and there are a plethora of ways that allow us to express ourselves and spread information across a variety of networks and sites. However, it’s beginning to be too much. A simple search on Wikipedia shows that there are over 98 social networks worth mentioning. And by worth mentioning I mean that they have at least 3 million users. There were over 12 sites that had 30 million members, and many other sites hovered within the 10 – 30 million range. That’s a lot of places to recreate your information!!!

I’d like to show David Armano’s novelty curve, which I think does a fantastic job of summarizing how we all feel when it comes to the latest social technologies. We don’t want to get left behind and be the last person to sign up for a service, but we are getting tired of all the different things to sign-up for.

Long story short, while I encourage innovation and crave things that are going to improve my personaltivity, I want developers and entrepreneurs to think long and hard about why their products are going to be drastically different and vastly better than an existing product.

World Grenade - June 10, 2008

I love this image!

Brewing Some Booze - June 9, 2008

Ahhhh…nothing’s tastier than reaping what you sow, especially if it gets you a little tipsy.

This past weekend I spent a good part of Saturday afternoon brewing beer with Johnny D of the Jo-Tel and Shannon, adjunct professor to the Jo-Tel. Johnny D and Shannon are avid amateur brewers, so they were the perfect people to tag along with for this experience.

Brewing first kicked off with a trip to San Francisco Brew Craft off of Clement Street in the Richmond district so we could pick up the grains, barley, malt, and yeast. The store was great, and the brew master, Griz, was happy to write recipes on the spot, as well as claim that technologies like cell phones and digital cameras were ruining the intellectual capital of the world.

We then headed back to Shannon’s joint to concoct a brew called “Lawnmower.” The brewing process took about 3 or 4 hours, so we made sure we had plenty of snacks and other home brew to drink. We also threw back a couple of Underbergs to make sure our tummies didn’t get upset.

The brewing process isn’t as complicated as I initially thought. Here are the steps (in pictures and words) that we followed:

Step #1 - Get your supplies

Step #2 - Bring the water to an almost boil and insert the grain bag into the hot water.

Step #3 - Let the grain bag soak in the hot water for 45 minutes

Step #4 - Remove the grains, and bring water to an almost boil, at which point you’ll then add the malt

Step #5 - Bring the brew to a boil with the malt in it, and add the hops intermittently throughout the boiling.

Step #6 - Cool down the beer using a copper coil

Step #7 - Pour beer into plastic container, and add yeast halfway through

Step #8 - Let sit in container for x number of days, then transfer to glass container for final fermenting process which will also take x number of days depending on the brew

I'll post the bottling of the beer once we get to that phase.

A Good Sign? - June 5, 2008

If there ever was a sign that the apocalypse is upon us, this could be it.
Thoughts, suggestions, sage words of wisdom to the NKOTB...just stop, stop while you are ahead. Please end the pain.

Proper Misuse of Yahoo Answers - June 4, 2008

Yahoo Answers is a place people go to pose questions concerning topics they believe the community on Yahoo might know. It's also a place where people can go to peruse the questions, rather than having to be an active participant.

I decided to toy with the system to see just how reactive they would be to a couple of asinine questions, and also to determine if people are actually utilizing Yahoo Answers.

So with that being said, see the screenshots below of the questions I posed, as well as the community feedback. Mind you, these were only so flagrantly abrasive as to solicit response, and they in no way, shape, or form are a determinant of my actual behavior.



p.s. the first post got flagged and removed within about 15-20 minutes

Social Technographics – June 2, 2008

Forrester recently published a book, Groundswell, which I’ve been occasionally reading as time allows. So far, I think it’s a good read for a marketing executive who has absolutely no idea what social media is, and the propensity it has to change the way products go to market.

To aide marketers, Forrester developed six distinct personas to define the ways in which people utilize social technologies. The personas are as follows:

- Creators (publish a blog, upload video/photos, etc)

- Critics (post ratings/reviews, leave comments, edit a wiki)

- Collectors (use RSS feeds, add tags to content, vote)

- Joiners (maintain a social network profile)

- Spectators (read blogs, watch videos, read reviews, etc)

- Inactives (none of the above)

I think that they are all fairly self explanatory. Now, what should a marketer do with this information? Let’s say you’re launching a new product. Let’s say your target market is women, ages 25-34 that live in the United States. If you were to launch an online campaign to raise awareness about your product, and encourage engagement with your product, what would you do with social technologies?

The Forrester social technographic tool will help you decide what type of social technologies your target audience is most comfortable with. See the snapshot of the tool’s profile of women, ages 25-34 living in the U.S.

Bars indicate the percentage of the selected demographic that are in each social technographics group. The white marks indicate the same percentages for the whole population of the country selected. The index indicates how the demographic compares to the population — a score of 100 means the demographic is the same as the population average.

According to this chart my target audience is comfortable with social technologies given the high indexing across the board, but they are most likely to be spectators and joiners. That being said, a decent amount of my target audience is also likely to be a critic or creator.

Essentially, I could then take this information and feel good about executing an online campaign that embodies many of the social technologies that my target audience lives and plays with.

Given these profiles are somewhat generic, I think they are a good step in the right direction for giving marketers the confidence they need to incorporate social media into the mix. It would be great if they could breakdown the profiling even further (e.g. men into sports, ages 18-24 who live California).