A Lending Crisis
Posted by goodmind on February 1st, 2008
In April we posted about a unique microfinance institution called Kiva.org. Back then, we referred to the site as “a peer-to-peer banking system which helps entrepreneurs in developing countries receive loans from socially conscious, social media savvy capitalists with at least $25.”
Some months later, the New York Times Magazine reports;
“Kiva is a philanthropic organization facing an extremely unusual challenge: maintaining adequate supply (people who need help) to meet demand (people who want to give it). “
Now the largest possible loan is $25, and it is the lend-ees who are having trouble securing them. It must be that .16 default interest rate.
The Reunification of Journalism
Posted by goodmind on January 28th, 2008
Though we have often alluded to the day when the distinction between bloggers and journalists would at last disappear (and the “citizen” could be dropped from the odious phrase “citizen journalist”), we never thought that it might actually happen in our lifetime.
The approaching collapse of this once powerful divide is being facilitated by the slow but steady increase in websites distributing “hyperlocal” content. EveryBlock and outside.in are just two of the more popular local news aggregators and filters, and while their geographic reach is currently limited to just a few major cities, the success of the concept could have much further reaching implications.
Fred Wilson, author of A VC, owns a stake in outside.in, but makes a compelling case for why the site could drastically increase the role of the local community paper in the national media food chain;
“If a mom (or dad) could blog for two hours every morning between dropping off her kids and going shopping…where are her stories going to get picked up? What if they could get picked up by the big city paper that everyone in her town reads. That’s why I am so excited about Outside.in’s effort to get it’s neighborhood pages and buzzmaps onto newspaper websites all over the country. Here are outside.in’s buzzmaps on the Washington Post website.”
What we find fascinating about this whole idea (and post) is that it genuinely believes and automatically assumes bloggers are capable of producing “stories,” and that these stories are worthy of being “picked up” by a traditional medium. While this sentiment is not uncommon within the blogosphere, supporting what was once a pipe dream with a structural mechanism is, well, news to us.
Outside.in basically aggregates locally produced blogs, analogous to an American Idol for up and coming bloggers by linking worthy posts to newspaper websites. (To see how this differs from the usual life cycle of a blog post, click here). Though Outside.in’s primary competition in this space is EveryBlock, South Korea is also taking steps to legitimize Citizen Journalism through actual academic institutions. Intended to promote best practices among graduates, OhMyNews Citizen Journalism School could steal the show as the NCAA for finding and developing amateur blogging talent.
Tag, You’re It
Posted by goodmind on January 18th, 2008
As forward thinking companies try to graft meta data and social tagging practices onto corporate communication procedures, we can’t help but wonder if what they’re really creating is a folksonomy Frankenstein. Given that the essential premise of a TagCloud, or a Technorati type service is to create new frames of reference from the bottom up, imposing these practices from the top down just seems like a new way to re-package old corporate jargon.
While IBM has buzzword bingo, a more pointed (pointless?) satirical “solution” would leverage the TagCloud format.
All kidding aside, Amazon.com is one major enterprise that has managed to seamlessly incorporate social tagging into profitable knowledge sharing practices;
“Look at any Amazon page for a given book, and you will find a taxonomy (represented by formal subject categories), user-contributed tags, links to other books bought by other people who bought this book, booklists compiled by users on related topics, suggestions for other books based on a complex algorithm combining your past behaviours and those of others, and so on. All of these mechanisms for purposefully finding – or serendipitously discovering – books, co-exist, and compete.” (via Green Chameleon)
The main takeaway from the Amazon example is this; taxonomies flourish in a competitive context. Though taxonomies appeal to the corporate mind as a standard communication system, their primary application is for finding, not framing information and insight.
Word of Mouth Markets
Posted by goodmind on January 8th, 2008
It’s been awhile since Google was the subject of a feel good, quirky-employee-culture-puff piece, and frankly, we were getting worried. As it turns out, the search engine has quietly been running an internal gambling enterprise all this time. The New York Times first broke the story in an article excerpted below;
“Prediction markets have been used for years to predict things like elections. At Google, they are used, of course, for business. In the last two and a half years, 1,463 employees have made wagers with play money (Goobles, as in rubles) on questions like: will Google open a Russia office? will Apple release an Intel-based Mac? how many users will Gmail have at the end of the quarter?”
While we like the odds of Google basing business decisions on the wisdom of its own crowd, we also know Google is way too savvy to take the obvious approach in obtaining insight from gambling in the workplace.
Google’s internal prediction market was in fact a rather shrewd research project, a noble attempt to accurately capture the flow of information through the organization. Hedging a bet on Google:Russia was actually a data point in identifying the common factors (aside from demographic details such as job type, or level) that influence opinion.
Findings indicated that “microgeography” is the biggest opinion influencer, meaning information is shared most efficiently, and most effectively, via cross cubicle communication. By Western standards, this might be a low tech way to communicate, but it is not necessarily in tension with the prevailing Internet ethos of the company. Though Google employees prefer their tête-à-têtes to be face-to-face, the content of these interactions reflects the ease of access to new information.
As people consume more information online, the concomitant word of mouth output becomes “smarter” in a sense. Information may still circulate on a local level, but the geographical point of origin has never been more expansive.
A Pedestrian Idea
Posted by goodmind on December 21st, 2007
When we came across School Zone, a “high tech” take on the crosswalk, we couldn’t help but compare it to the plank road craze, so eloquently depicted by James Suroweicki in The Wisdom of Crowds. Once new technology with life changing implications, the plank road boom is often compared to the Dot.com bubble, but also illustrates the power of information cascades.
Information cascades result when people rely exclusively on social proof, at the expense of their own opinions. Well, it is our opinion that a national plank road turnpike infrastructure is adorable, as only a 19th century trend could be. School Zone is just the 21st century manifestation of prefabricated pathways.
However, the some of the social proofs about standard crosswalks make the School Zone concept worth another look;
“School Zone comes in a series of elevated slabs to fit any length road. The raised level ensures drivers see children as they cross and also acts as a speed bump forcing them to slow down or risk damaging their vehicles. The elevation also has an added benefit since it meets the exact height of the curb – wheelchairs can cross with ease….The prefabricated nature of the system means it can be manufactured to the highest of standards and installed anywhere. You can take it a step further and create temporary crosswalks for special events like concerts and outdoor festivals.” (via Yanko Design)
We’re pretty confident that the illuminated LED’s will really enhance the concert/festival experience, and that’s based on both opinion and the social proof of performance enhancing lighting design.
[Insert Predictable Song Lyric Here]
Posted by goodmind on December 7th, 2007
There’s no question customer satisfaction is a murky concept to define. This makes the task of providing satisfactory customer service pretty troublesome. Most companies are more notorious for the “lip service“ imparted in marketing materials, than any other sort of service provided. How can the significant gap between customer satisfaction and service be closed?
Well, where there’s Web 2.0 there’s a way. Satisfaction is a new socially minded service using the “people-powered,” or crowdsourced approach to demystifying what the customer considers service. Insight is obtained instantly via on-line forum, where company employees and consumer contributors can converse about important issues, at their convenience.
Many of our own research studies often end with participants expressing their gratitude that a corporate entitity not only acknowledges, but actually seeks their opinion. Engaging the customer through a question and answer dialogue, and providing an outlet in which to vent often comes off as a “customer service” in itself.
Thus it seems that lip service as customer service is OK, as long as the customer is the one doing the talking.
How Your Fish Tank Can Decrease Our Dependence on Foreign Oil
Posted by goodmind on September 20th, 2007
Though the use of farmland to “harvest” ethanol has raised the price of corn in Mexico, and the price of wheat in Italy (resulting in a one day spaghetti boycott), we are still sanguine about the outlook for biofuels, particularly this very green version. Algae, the bane of fish tank owners everywhere, represents a decentralized source of renewable energy. We may never look at pond scum the same way again.
Fortunately, viewing algae as potential energy requires little more than a fifth grader’s understanding of photosynthesis. Algae consumes water, sunshine, and CO2, and produces oil and carbohydrates as byproducts, which can later be converted into biodiesel and ethanol respectively. Under favorable conditions, algae can double its volume overnight, making it a nearly inexhaustible renewable resource. Most importantly, algae growth is not limited to a specific set of environmental variables, or political climates. It can thrive pretty much anywhere as long as there is water, sunlight, and CO2. OPEC must be mighty worried.
Colorado based Solix Biofuels, the most promising algae-based energy start up, hopes to eventually compete with petroleum, powering your M3 for around the same price as Premium gasoline. Though many labs have viewed algae as a promising biofuel for several years, no one has yet to hit upon the magic method that will make algae a viable option at the pump.
Algae might be easy to cultivate on a small scale, but producing, harvesting, and converting a larger yield is surprisingly difficult. However, if fish tank owners work together on this, someone should be able to find a solution. Algae could become the crowdsourced derivative of ethanol. Try doing that with crude oil in your backyard.
(via Popular Mechanic)
Hackers Take Over Ikea
Posted by goodmind on September 7th, 2007
The concept of “Ikea Hacking” will make amateur artists out of us all. Instead of assembling the Karlanda sofa as per the instructions, an Ikea Hacker would interpret the materials in his or her own way, creating a one of a kind object out of pretty generic parts. The New York Times recently described Ikea Hackers as;
”do-it-yourselfers and technogeeks, tinkerers, artists, crafters and product and furniture designers…united only by their perspective, which looks upon an Ikea Billy bookcase or Lack table and sees not a finished object but raw material: a clean palette yearning to be embellished or repurposed.” (via Etsy)
The average office employee could also be added to this characterization, since even the most earnest attempt to follow Ikea’s pictographic instructions will entail significant interpretation and improvisation. We have a funny feeling that most of our office furniture is an unintentional Ikea Hack.
Your Company Logo Here
Posted by goodmind on August 29th, 2007
Designing a logo is a difficult enterprise. So difficult in fact, that most us will gladly shell out the job to a graphic designer and leave the font selection process to the professionals.
Yet this technique is not without its own agonies and frustrations, since art school graduates have an uncanny knack for churning out at least a dozen eye-catching interpretations of a single brand name. Committing to just one version is tatamount to brand loyalty in a twisted, solipsistic sense. A logo should inspire loyalty among customers, but best of British luck sticking with one design yourself.
Admittedly, there is a lot at stake when designing or selecting a logo. We’ve been through the ordeal for ourselves, and we’ve been through it on behalf of clients. While nothing can truly substitute the direct views and opinions of a logo’s target audience, FaveUp is a nice way to get a little feedback before taking the plunge.
FaveUp serves as both a design inspiration gallery, and a contest for rewarding creativity. Anyone can submit a design, and anyone can rate a design. Seeing as the site allows us to be the judge, FaveUp’s logo is a little on the lame side. However, the concept of rating designs is undoubtedly cool, and on second thought, maybe their choice of logo was actually pretty shrewd. In this particular instance the logo probably shouldn’t be the most memorable content.
The Mullet Makes a Comeback
Posted by goodmind on August 28th, 2007
An interesting solution to the user generated content conundrum has surfaced, referred to as the “mullet strategy.” The infamous hairstyle oft described as “business up front, party in the back” seemingly serves as the perfect metaphor for how many websites, including MySpace, CNN, and YouTube, have started to structure content.
Professional editors keep things, well, professional on the front pages in order to attract advertisers, while users “party” (argue) on the secondary pages. According to BuzzFeed;
“The mullet strategy is here to stay because the best way for web companies to grow traffic is to let the users have control, but the best way to sell advertising is a slick, pretty front page where corporate sponsors can wistfully admire their brands.”
Though we can appreciate a good mullet when we see one, it takes a certain je ne sais quoi to effectively pull one off. As employed by CNN, et al, this strategy is more reminiscent of the”combover tactic,” a self conscious look which rarely fools anyone.
