8 Key Take-Aways from the 140 Characters Conference
Posted by goodmind on April 22nd, 2010
I’ve spent the last day attempting to digest all that I heard and saw at the #140conf on 4/20/10. Below is just a snapshot of my tweets attempting to keep up:
8 key take-aways I’d like to highlight:
1. When thinking about whether or not to use social media for your business, think of the ROI as the “returning on ignoring” -@JeffreyHayslett CMO, Kodak
2. School is real life, not the preparation for real life – we need to rethink education or “school 2.0″ -@chrislehmann Principal, Science
Leadership Academy
3. Think about how your actions online affect the “Hive Mind” (collective consciousness) -@carr2n Writer, NY Times
4. We’re moving from “shouting & selling” to “sharing & helping” – “collabetition” -@hankwasaik Ad Guy, The Concept Farm
5. Everybody’s opinions don’t matter – it’s about building communities you care about -@jessicagottlieb Mom, Blogger
6. Location is that last piece of information people are scared to give away – how do we get past this? What do people get for “checking in”? -@cc_chapman, @dens, @jw
7. Twitter teaches you a new behavior of efficiency -@mchammer
8. Sharing is NOT creepy it’s natural – and everyone has a public life, private life & secret life and that’s OK. We’re not lying online – it’s a network of identities -@stoweboyd
Looking forward to next year! Each of the individual sessions from #140conf NYC are available here.
Please share your take-aways in the comments.
the importance of ‘malleable social graphs’
Posted by goodmind on March 29th, 2010
Here at Goodmind, we try to keep as current as possible with the latest in upcoming trends in social media, new technology, tools, and software. We read about it, blog about it, and participate in it via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and here on our blog.
But the term ‘malleable social graph’, as blogged about by Robert Scoble last Thursday, really got us thinking.
First and foremost, what is a malleable social graph? Let’s quote Scoble:
Well, right now, if you are looking to go to a Napa Winery, or three, and you go to Twitter or Facebook everyone looks the same to you. But, now, check in in Napa with Foursquare and all of a sudden you only see people near you. I have more than 7,000 friends and when I tried this last week (I was visiting a startup near there) I only saw four other people. So, now I was talking with four other people who were on my social graph and who actually were located near me. Now, I bet I could text each of those four and ask them where to go and I’d get very good answers.
That is a malleable social graph. IE, it changes based on conditions you set in motion.
Make sense? Yeah, we gave ourselves the weekend to marinate on this… Although the idea is new, with a bit of imagination, the potential for people and companies (aka ‘malleable business graph’) is limitless.
Scoble goes on to discuss mini mobs (and referenced the video above) but we’ll save that dissection for another post.
The Face of Economic Despair
Posted by goodmind on January 5th, 2009
Images of the Dust Bowl are synonymous with the Great Depression. They are as dry and dull as an American History textbook, which is appropriate since most of these pictures can be found in one. We predict that this go round, the symbolic image of economic recession will be found and cataloged online.
The Digital Ramble has an interesting collection of such images including;
Tumblr web sites like The Brokers with Hands on Their Faces Blog or Sad Guys on Trading Floors make hay of trading-floor disheartenment.
You can check out the entire post here. Your grandkids will probably be exposed to similar stuff in their virtual American History e-books.
Google Cooking
Posted by goodmind on December 17th, 2008
David LaGesse at US News posted a brief piece on “Googling your fridge,” or the practice of finding tonight’s recipe using refrigerator contents as search terms.
This behavior is so widespread at this point that it’s already a business model. Recipe search engines abound, and we’ve personally used the site Cookthink to narrow down our culinary options from time to time.
As helpful as it’s been, it still can’t compensate for those unfortunate nights when all you have on hand are take-out leftovers. Combining chinese food with hawaiian pizza produces less than desirable outcomes.
2009: The Year of the End User
Posted by goodmind on December 9th, 2008
Who needs a top ten list revisiting stuff that was big last year? Fast Company has 8 expert predictions on the evolution of Web 2.0 for 2009. Most of them are variations on the same theme -open platforms, increased portability and mobility of user data, etc, etc. Pretty safe bets, though a few experts go out on a limb and see advertisers finally getting social media marketing right.
In our opinion, founder of Hush Labs (and former CEO of Rackspace Hosting) Rick Yoo’s prediction is particularly prescient;
“I’m not sure that things will evolve the way people have seen in the past. I predict that it’ll mostly be about trying to figure out what users really want and what they find most important then fine-tuning things based on that feedback. The pace of evolution may really slow down by comparison, but the user experience will be far better.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
Is Research Overrated?
Posted by goodmind on December 4th, 2008
Today’s New York Times poses an interesting question: do we overrate basic research?
It’s a pretty loaded piece that takes on most of today’s favorite faux-controversial topics (Mr. Obama’s BlackBerry, the rise of China and India, America’s declining economy, and techno-nationalism). We almost didn’t make it through the entire article, when it seemed to suggest that as a nation, we ought to cut spending on research.
However, the reasoning behind this blasphemy is basically sound. According to Amar Bhidé, a professor at the Columbia Business School, the possibility for “midlevel innovation” is inevitably lost in the shuffle of a big research budget allocated from on high.
Midlevel innovation is defined as anything
…from a venture capitalist tweaking a business model to trim costs by a few percent to a technician fine-tuning his company’s business software to save a couple of data-entry steps in the accounting department.
It basically boils down to finding new ways of using existing technology, not spending big bucks to invent something totally new from scratch. It makes sense, and its something we’ve been helping clients do for a long time through research.
Most companies today need research in the first place, because they have previously relied on the latest technology to solve all of their business problems. Our task is to figure out how to help them use it efficiently, effectively, and profitably.
Black Friday Browser Wars
Posted by goodmind on November 26th, 2008
War is costly – even the browser variety. It’s never a bad thing when implicit standards (ahem, Internet Explorer) are challenged. However, as Firefox, Chrome, etc continue to gain market share, web designers are hard pressed to keep pace with the idiosyncrasies of various browsers.
According to one alarmist press release, page load times, missing graphics, and entire check-out procedures can be compromised if a website hasn’t been optimized to accommodate all manner of web browsers.
Online retailers in particular will be at risk this holiday season, for reasons entirely unrelated to the current economic landscape. The look and functionality of a single site can vary dramatically from one browser to another. For e-commerce websites, this essentially amounts to the entire shopping experience.
The conspiracy theorist in us wants to believe the entire browser war conflict is actually the collective brainchild of brick-and-mortar shops, looking to shore up their books come Black Friday. In all seriousness however, it does beg the question of how an unstable browser market will effect your business. Does it really matter whether or not customers can find your company’s website if they can’t actually use it?
Show Dogs
Posted by goodmind on November 13th, 2008
We may never crack the code of what makes a video go viral. Still, if Shiba Inu Puppy Cam is any indication, cuteness is a huge factor.
The live video stream pretty closely approximates the experience of standing at a pet shop window, minus the puppy mill related pity. At the end of the day, what is successful video but a sanitized version of reality?
A Debate Worth Watching
Posted by goodmind on October 8th, 2008
We think it’s mighty interesting that Knol, Google’s “Wikipedia Killer,” is finally assuming some relevancy with it’s new debate format. Controversies as conversations certainly help television network ratings, so it’s little wonder that;
The aftermath of the US financial bailout bill is the first topic discussed.
Economists from the conservative Cato Institute and the liberal Economic Policy Institute (EPI) have posted differing opinions as Knols. Now readers can post comments and in theory, recommend changes to the text. (Good luck with that.) This is just the first of several debates Knols will host in the handful of weeks leading up to the US Presidential election. (via ReadWriteWeb)
Realistically, readers won’t be “participating” in debates between experts. In theory, it’s a fresh take on the whole Town Hall Meeting format, as readers will be more like speech writers, recommending changes to endorsed responses. This may be a bit optimistic on our part, but how great would it be if the electorate could shape precise answers, instead of just posing superficial questions?
Capital Gains and Losses
Posted by goodmind on September 30th, 2008
Maybe there’s a silver lining to this whole bailout S.N.A.F.U. Maybe, just maybe, network executives have figured out that vast web exposure is well worth the “loss” in ad revenue.
Take CBS for example. David Letterman’s reaction to McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign (among other things) is available on the CBS website (edited and with ads), while pirated versions have also been posted on YouTube (full monologue, no ads). In total, the clip has about 3.5 million views. That’s 250,000 for CBS and 3.2 million for the pirates.
According to AdAge, CBS execs are well aware of the numbers, and the existence of pirated versions;
Like all TV networks, CBS routinely demands that YouTube take down unauthorized clips of shows. So why haven’t they taken down this one? They won’t say it, but it seems likely that the network has decided that the publicity the “Late Show” is receiving from the clip is far more valuable than the few ad dollars that advertising might generate.
How long do you think it will take for print newspapers to have a similar ad model epiphany? Let’s hope it happens before the industry needs a bailout.
