October 2009 Archives

Last week I gave the opening keynote at IPZ2009 Interactive Marketing Summit in Istanbul. Here are my slides for my keynote on the Future of Interactive Marketing.

It was a fantastic event, the fourth annual IPZ conference organized by Günseli Özen Ocakoğlu and Hakan Senbir of Marketing & Management Institute, which publishes a range of leading magazines including Marketing Türkiye.

In preparing for my keynote and during my visit I discovered many fascinating things I did not know about the Turkish online market. It is in fact one of the hottest and fastest-growing Internet markets in the world.

As it happens I have a very deep interest in language-defined online markets, such as Japanese, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Korean. Each of these markets – some within national borders and others spanning countries – has very different characteristics across all facets including which types of social media are used, which are dominant players, and the most successful business models. I have written about this before in the context of blogging languages and global media strategies, and will be doing further analysis of country markets soon.

Here are five facts that illustrate how exciting the Turkish online market is.

1. Turkey is the third largest country in the world on Facebook


Source: CheckFacebook

Coming from almost nothing two years ago, Turkey now has close to 14 million Facebook users, overtaking France and Canada earlier this year to be the third largest country on Facebook after the US and UK. Facebook does not dominate social networking in other high population countries such as Brazil, Russia and Japan, so Turkey with a population of 72 million and a very rapid uptake of online services ranks close to the top of the list.

Yesterday I was interviewed on the Business Today program on the Australia Network, ABC TV's international network which broadcasts across Asia.

The interview can also be viewed along with other material in Business Today's archives.

Key points covered in the interview include:

Most business owners recognise that there are many social media tools that can help them run their businesses more effectively. The problem is sorting through the plethora of tools that are available today to work out what to use, and how to use it.

Mashable has come out with a useful list of 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for Business, mentioning:

1. Google Apps for Domains
Online email, calendar and office software
2. LinkedIn
Professional social network
3. Basecamp
Online project management tool
4. Facebook
Social network with fan pages, apps and other tools
5. Twitter
Micro-blogging for relationship building
6. Get Satisfaction
Customer self-support forums
7. MailChimp
Web-based mailing list manager
8. UserVoice
Tracking customer feedback
9. YouTube
Hosted videos for marketing, education and advertising
10. Monitter
Monitor Twitter for relevant conversations and comments

ABC TV ran a segment a few days ago on how companies are using Twitter to create value, including an interview with me on how businesses can use Twitter effectively.

This should be a topic of particular interest to small and mid-sized companies. If you are interested in learning more, SME Tech Summit in Sydney on 1 December will include specific in-detail coverage of how your company can use Twitter (as well as other social media tools) to build your success.

Comments made during the program include:

* Experts say Twitter is here to stay
* Twitter has become a legitimate business tool
* When you don't have much money to spend, Twitter can be an excellent way to promote your business
* You need to be conversational and human to engage your customers
* There are ways that companies in any industry to use Twitter
* It is hard to do properly, and you do need to be consistent if you start
* Twitter is here to stay as part of companies' branding strategy

A few quick notes about the four companies presenting on the SaaS/ In the Cloud panel at Tech23 (for background on the event see my post from this morning). A very impressive line-up.

Angusta Systems. Uses combinatorial algorithms to help banks manage their physical cash inventory – a solid niche apparently worth over $100 million in value to each of the big Australian banks.

I’m at Tech23, probably the biggest and best showcase so far of Australian upcoming tech companies. After creating the list of Top Web 2.0 Apps in Australia list last year and in 2007 and organizing the associated Web 2.0 in Australia events, I had originally envisaged that we would organize a broad information technology showcase event this year. However this did not manage to fit into our very packed priority list, and as it happens others are taking on the task of bringing attention to the best of emerging Australian tech. Rachel Slattery of SlatteryIT, who has long been running events for Australia’s tech community, has done a great job in creating Tech23.

Frankly, one of the challenges in running tech showcases in Australia is finding a sufficiently deep and broad pool of excellent early-stage companies. Overall I have been very encouraged by the pace at which new companies have emerged over the last two years, though there is still further to go. There were some great companies at Tech23, but I imagine that it would be harder to find another 23 hot emerging companies. By the time this event runs next year, and hopefully other tech showcases emerge, the signs are that the pool will be considerably deeper.

Unfortunately I am not able to spend the whole day at the event, but below are some quick notes from some of the more interesting companies that I managed to catch this morning. [UPDATE:] See also my notes from the SaaS/ In the Cloud panel and presentations.

I have been interested in the field of expertise location for over a decade, from back when knowledge managers were building 'corporate yellow pages' and other tools to find the best expertise in the organization.

Unless a large organization can bring the most relevant expertise within the firm to bear on the problems and issues at hand, it really has no reason to exist. A smaller more nimble organization could do as good a job with lower costs.

I have written about expertise location frequently over the last years, both in looking at how enhancing organizational networks can generate greater revenues and efficiency, and how social technologies can support effective expertise location, including on the role of enterprise social network software and several years ago about the use of blogs to support expertise location.

Today the Wall Street Journal has an interesting article called Who Knows What? describing the issue of expertise location and explaining how blogs, wikis, social networks, and tagging can support finding the most relevant knowledge in the organization.

This is hardly new stuff, but large organizations are now reaching the point where they understand that social media are important organizational tools, and have begun implementing some of these tools. This means there is in many cases the breadth of uptake required for effective expertise location.

In large, geographically distributed, professional organizations, expertise location can be a 'killer app' which provides immense return on the implementation of social computing. We have reached the point at which this could get real traction.

These issues are also addressed in detail in my book Implementing Enterprise 2.0.

[Hattip to @ariegoldshlager]

For those who were at the fantastic IPZ09 Interactive Marketing Summit in Istanbul this week, apologies for the delay in posting my keynote slides - the hotel bandwidth wasn't adequate to upload them and I'm only just back at home.

For those who weren't at IPZ09, note that these slides were designed to accompany my keynote and not to be useful by themselves. However they may still be of interest.

The slides can also be downloaded as a pps file, which includes the movies but not the animations of all the frameworks as I explained their implications for marketers. See here for the Social Media Strategy Framework in English and Turkish.

I'll be writing more soon about what I covered in my keynote and my (very favorable) impressions of the Turkish digital market.

After a number of requests from friends I signed up for Aardvark recently. If you haven't t come across it, it's a social network for search, where your questions are given to whoever in your extended network is most likely to be able to answer them, as illustrated below.

It's an interesting idea which has got a lot of buzz though not a lot of uptake yet. I suspect that this approach to social search is more likely to get traction within an existing social network rather than a dedicated one, though it's possible that it could take off, most likely initially in specific communities.

The nub of how Aardvark works is by using your nominated topics, which can be input either by yourself or others. I entered topics of 'enterprise 2.0' and 'social networks' and others have tagged me with 'business' and 'social media'.

As such I was rather surprised when I received this email from Aardvark:

(Aardvark) Help someone with a question about *adult entertainment business*

Hi Ross,

Briana/20/F/.....,.. just asked a question I think you might be able to answer,

"What's the best way to learn how to be a stripper?"

To answer, just reply to this message, and I'll forward your email along to Briana.

As it happens I don't know the answer. So why did Aardvark think that I might know?

I have had extensive media coverage this week for my forecasts for social technologies for 2016. One of the predictions that has attracted the most attention is that lifestreaming will become commonplace. Many of us will capture videos, images, audio of conversations and far more. This may be to record for our own purposes, to share with friends or family, or to provide access to teh world at large.

The underlying technologies to do it are certainly available, including cheap storage. However the practical tools that make it easy are only just now getting onto the market. It is not easy to rig up automated cameras or head-mounted video recorders and automatically synchronize with online systems.

The latest is a tool specifically designed for lifestreaming. New Scientist says:

Worn on a cord around the neck, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1-gigabyte memory.

The Vicon camera will be marketed to researchers initially at around US$820, and be available to consumers next year.

Interestingly, the device has emerged from the Microsoft Sensecam, which has been shown to help people with Alzheimers and dementia to recall the events of the day. This kind of memory aid could be equally as valuable to the rest of us.

Since 2006 I have owned and written about video glasses, including in my Six Trends that are transforming Online and Future of Media Lifecycle framework.

Despite my predictions, we still don't see many people around wearing video glasses. However I still think it's going to happen, as I predicted earlier this week.

In the many radio interviews I've done this week I was asked a lot about the video glasses. As I explained, there are many applications for video glasses, but augmented reality is the most powerful.

The recent swathe of augmented reality apps on iPhone have shown us the very beginning of the potential of AR. However people don't want to be always holding up their phone in front of their face.

A case in point is ID tagging, in which facial recognition software identifies people in your field of vision and provides additional information about them. This is something far more easily and less obviously done using video glasses.

The classic scenario is that you see someone you've met before and don't remember their name, but your AR glasses displays their name and any other publicly available information or things that you've noted previously next to them.

Imagine when the technologies in this video can be embedded into your glasses. This kind of information could easily get people to start wearing glasses when they go out into social situations.

Given the extreme popularity of our Social Media Strategy Framework, we decided to translate it into other languages. The translations have been serialized on my blog over the last couple of weeks, and here they are compiled into a single post.
[UPDATE:] Korean has been added - now 12 languages!

Social Media Strategy Framework in 12 languages
(scroll down for frameworks and links to the full post)
English - Social Media Strategy Framework
Chinese - 社交媒体战略框架
Dutch - Sociale Media Strategie Kader
French - Plan Stratégique des médias sociaux
German - Social Media strategische Rahmenrichtlinien
Italian - Schema della strategia relativa ai mezzi di comunicazione sociale
Japanese - ソーシャルメディア戦略構造
Korean - 소셜미디어 전략 프레임워크
Portuguese - Modelo Estratégico dos Meios de Comunicação Social
Russian - Структура стратегии в социальных медиа
Spanish - Encuadre de Estrategia de Medios Sociales
Turkish - Sosyal Medya Strateji Çerçevesi

English - Social Media Strategy Framework

This morning Future Exploration Network issued this press release (excuse the hyperbole :-) ) I have already done several radio interviews on the forecasts in the release with quite a few more radio, newspaper and TV interviews lined up for the next days - the ideas seem to have struck a chord.

Futurist proved correct! …and today describes the extraordinary social technologies of 2016

Seven years ago, in his prescient book Living Networks, global leading futurist Ross Dawson accurately described the networked world of today, anticipating social networks, Twitter, corporate blogging, crowd-sourcing, personalised advertising, virtual personal assistants and much else that is now familiar to us.

Today, he offers insights into the extraordinary world of technology we will experience seven years into the future.

Ross’s forecasts for 2016 include:
• Many people will wear video glasses as they commute and walk around, experiencing new forms of television, news updates, and detailed information about the world around them and people they meet.

Continuing our series of translations of Social Media Strategy Framework, today we are launching the French edition.

See the original post for the full overview of the Social Media Strategy Framework in English and compilation of the framework in 11 different languages.

Click on image to download pdf

Please share this with any French speakers who would be interested.

Also be sure to let me know if you can suggest any improvements to the translation.

NOTA: Puisque j'ai vecu 13 ans a Geneve quand j'etais petit je parle Francais courrament, mais comme vous voyez je ne l'ecrit pas bien et j'ai jamais appris a faire les accents sur un clavier, donc je n'ai pas fais la traduction moi-meme :-).

Spotify is one of the hottest online music properties of the moment, currently pushing into the US from its home territory of Europe, where it has over 2 million users in the UK and over 4 million users in the continent. Its founder Daniel Ek recently said that it is doubling revenues every month.

The basic model is providing music streaming from a library of more than 5 million songs, through European deals with all the major music labels plus many independents. Ad-supported free subscriptions are available, or full packages for EUR/GBP9.99 or equivalent per month which include ad-free access and the ability to download over 3,000 tracks to your music player to listen to wherever you are.

Early this decade the all-you-can-eat music subscription model was getting some attention. In my 2002 book Living Networks I wrote:

These twin powerful trends of greater access to content, and increased awareness of quality content, can result in greater revenue for these industries, but new business models are required. For example, US music consumers currently spend on average $60 a year on CDs—equivalent to perhaps four albums. If each of those consumers were given the option to pay $10 per month, and in return get all the music they wanted, it is safe to predict that most would take it up, feel they are getting great value, and the industry would double in size.

Now here is a new spin on augmented reality apps: just out on the iPhone is Sun Seeker, from Graham Dawson, the creator of the best-selling Oz Weather and Climate Eye.

See Graham's blog for a detailed description of the augmented reality Sun Seeker app.

In brief, when you look through the camera you see the current location and the path of the sun superimposed, allowing you to see where the sun will be at any point in time during the day (or night). It also shows the sun's path for the longest and shortest day, or in fact any day you choose. Check out the video.

Uses of the app include looking at property, so you can check out where the sun will fall in different rooms through the year, planning your garden, and photography, for example seeing for the day of an event what time of day will have optimal sunlight.

The app has already been covered in a number of media outlets, with apparently more to come - the ITWire review is very useful in covering potential applications for the app:

ITWire: See the bright side of life with new augmented reality iPhone app
Computerworld: Sun Seeker iPhone app released
Apptism: Sun Seeker profile

[DISCLOSURE: Graham is my brother :-) ]

Continuing our series of translations of Social Media Strategy Framework, today is Japanese.

See the original post for the full overview of the Social Media Strategy Framework in English and list of translations.

Click on image to download pdf

Please share this with any Japanese speakers.

Also be sure to let me know if you can suggest any improvements to the translation.

The US Federal Trade Commission has released its long-awaited update to its "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising" to now cover blogging and social media.

The headline news is that:

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

Those contravening the FTC Act can be fined up to $16,000 per post (it has been increased in the last year from the $11,000 that has been widely reported).

In other words, the world of paid influence that we explored at Future of Influence Summit will be regulated and laid open.

This whole thing is a minefield, and I wish had more time to run through all of the issues, but here are a few top-of-mind points that need to be made about this:

Continuing our series of translations of Social Media Strategy Framework, today we are launching the Portuguese edition.

See the original post for the full overview of the Social Media Strategy Framework in English.

Click on image to download pdf

Please share this with any Portuguese speakers who would be interested.

Also be sure to let me know if you can suggest any improvements to the translation.

A couple of years ago Deloitte tempted John Hagel away from independent consulting to co-chair a new think-tank, now called the Deloitte Center for the Edge. I have been a long-time fan of John’s work, and find many parallels with my own path and research.

The Center recently released its first major study, the Shift Index, which was accompanied by an article in the July-August issue of Harvard Business Review, titled The Big Shift: Measuring the Forces of Change.

When the Shift Index was first announced, I was immediately drawn to look more closely because of its first key finding:

The performance gap between winners and losers has increased over time, with the “winners” barely maintaining previous performance levels, while the losers experience rapid deterioration in performance.

This matches exactly one of the main messages I have been preaching since the beginning of the recession, for example in my keynotes at the MegaTrends conference in Abu Dhabi and my TEDx presentation in San Francisco on Future of the Enterprise: this is a time of increasing divergence in organizational performance, and adopting new strategies and activities is essential to avoid rapid erosion in competitiveness.