Digital Ingredients

On July 7th Google announced Chrome OS, the new Google Operating System through a little blog post (not certainly a big launch). As you might have noticed, this tiny post created a huge buzz. Frankly, it didn’t surprise me: almost everything Google does is has a big impact on the digital scenario.

Something else got my attention

I was really impressed by how almost everyone focused on Google challenging Microsoft (see this TechCrunch post that call Chrome OS a “nuclear bomb” dropped on the company from Redmond). Of course, Chrome OS is a competitor to Windows. But only on certain devices (it’s focused on netbooks) and Microsoft still has 90% of operating system market share.
This announcement really got me thinking about the modification of the way we approach to our digital life. It’s shocking to think how traditional operating system have always been at the core of everyone’s activity and browsers just a piece of software, almost a plugin, for it.
Today – presenting Chrome OS – Google clearly states what was there for everyone to see: the digital experience revolves around the web.

We don’t need operating systems with a browser. We need browsers. We need experiences.

The operating system is just a technical fact, needed to support the browser. We’re evolving to a world where almost every application can be web based. Also high-level games can be played “in the cloud”, using the browser as a terminal and letting the consoles somewhere in a server farm do all the job.

There’s more

Think about how this can change your everyday experience.
Now think about how the social web is evolving: social networks like Facebook are developing a lot of functionalities, getting closer to being operating systems. A web-based experience (especially in mid-2010, when Chrome will be released) will not have any chance to succeed without being social. I think referring to the “Eras of Social Web” can be a good way to imagine a scenario.

• First, expect the social experience to characterize your everyday desktop experience (Seesmic desktop is a good preview of how it could happen)
• Then, expect your Social Graphs to improve your everyday experience: by knowing your data, connections, friends, behaviours and content, the system will adapt and provide contextual content
• The border between web and local will blur and so will disappear the separation between social experience and personal – local experience (even when in “private mode”, your information are vital to your system to customize the experience for you

I think the announcement is great mostly because of these implications. The Microsoft challenge is just something derived from it. I think Redmond is already moving in this direction, to evolve the operating system experience and put the user at the core.
The digital experience gets thus more and more useful and interesting for the user.

What’s your take? Can you feel this change, too?

Here's a video on the reason why Google built Chrome (browser). They're trying to increase the amount of time on the web.

Image credit: Michperu

Social Network Updates Going Public: What's in It?

This week Facebook announced the introduction of a new feature: the possibility to share content and status updates publicly, just like it happens with Twitter.
At first sight, this choice looks just like a new possibility for user's privacy setting, but it hides a whole world of possibilities for brands to build a universe that is one step closer to what Jeremiah Owyang defines as "The Era of Social Context".
A quick look at what happens today with Facebook's public updates, which is close to what happened with Twitter's public profiles.

Public data

While there is still private data (users need to opt-in to show updates publicly), there is going to be a lot of user data shared publicly. Brands can start analysing this public data to improve their relationship with the user. This is what happens today with Facebook applications that read your profile (see Volkswagen Facebook Application example). These public data situations are shared situations where brand adapt their actions according to publicly shared data.

Public context

By sharing their updates, users also choose to build a public context: situations where, just by entering a profile username, everyone can see a context adapted to that profile. An example of this is any application that relies on Twitter profile name for personalization (see Volkswagen Twitter example).

A relevant outcome

Expect a lot from this: public profiles (result of public data and public context) will allow to grow a social environment that will get nearer to the Era of Social Context. We can expect it to eventually help brands providing better user experience contextualization and better consumer intelligence.

Here's what happens when a brand name becomes a common term. (Coke, Google, Rimmel, Kleenex, Hoover - in UK)
When googling something, try to do it with Bing - Fun video by CollegeHumor

Tired of all the Social Media gurus and experts who put all their skills in allowing you to grow your follower base on Twitter or the number of your blog readers or friends on Facebook? Let’s try something different.

How to get less followers

The number of people you’re connected to is not irrelevant. It’s fundamental. Meaning that you need to keep the number of connections limited. Your time and attention are limited, so you can interact only with a restricted selection of people.
The main task you accomplish when you interact on Social Media is filtering signal from noise. As soon as the noise increases, you must spend more time and resources in excluding what’s unimportant and have less time for content and connections you want to nurture and benefit from.
You can’t please everybody. And, if you try to, you’ll be less effective on the ones that really matter to you. This is a very basic rule of marketing. That’s the reason why marketing works based on “targets” and “clusters”: you can’t just speak to everyone. Select people you want to build a conversation with.

Wipe out the noise

There are a few tricks to do it.
Stop following back anyone who follows you. Forget auto-follow. It’s very unlikely that people might be so interesting to you just because they follow you. They can write to you, attract your attention with clever, fun, emotional, insightful messages and in a thousand ways more. But the action of following doesn’t make them automatically interesting.
Same for Facebook.
Same for your blog. What’s more valuable? A lot of unengaged readers or less – but strongly engaged – community members?

Selfish?

You might say it’s selfish to exclude some people from your conversation. Well, you’re not excluding anyone, but just focusing on a selected group of people, allowing anyone to directly contact you with direct @ replies.
It’s also very important that you listen a lot to what’s being said outside the conversation you’re part of. Set up some monitoring tools (e.g. a Google Reader that aggregates results from at least search.twitter.com and blogsearch.twitter.com). You’ll be warned when something’s being said that could matter to you and you can choose whether or not to interact. Through listening you’ll find out new people you want to follow and add to the group of people you follow.
Let’s get back to the question: deciding to focus on people that matter to you is not selfish, it’s an act of generosity to the few people who really matter to you and with whom you want to build a conversation.

Use perspective

Of course this applies to people and brands with different weighs, depending on the effort they’re putting in their social presence and on their strategies and objectives.
“Few people”, “A lot of people” can range from 10 to 10000000 followers. The focus is on quality, not on quantity.
Find out what the right amount is and…. Go for it.

What's your take? Are you giving your followers the best of your attention or spreading it to anyone?
Photo credit: LuMaxArt

I really like simple revelations that bring us back on planet earth. I think the real value of research is connecting with "the real world". Since you're reading this blog, I assume most of you are into digital marketing, communication or brand engagement. So, it's crucial that the communication strategies and initiatives you work on are build around... people.
It's important to do a reality check about what we do. Everyday. More times per day. This will help focusing on who we do it for: the consumer.

This short clip is about an interview that Google did in Times Square, NY: less than 8% of the interviewed people knew what a browser is.

Enjoy. Think. Refocus. ;)

Consumer research is one of the part of my job that I like the most (I work as an Experience Planner at Agency.com). Something I also like so much is when projects turns into something concrete. This happens through several phases: the consumer analysis is used to define a strategic framework, accordingly with the brand objectives. The next steps include creative definition, design, production and development. All the phases come true in close contact with the client. Then, the cool part is just about to start: it's fundamental to adjust projects while they're on-line, measuring the results and trying to understand how to improve them, always keeping an eye on the operations KPI.

Let's get back to consumer research. Since all we build revolves around people who will interact with it, it's a crucial part of our job. When you see it turn concrete it's great. When you measure results and refine it's even better. It always amazes me when I get to see results for our initiatives, especially if they're coherent with the evaluations we made at startup.

Recently I've been able to measure behavior before and after the startup of a big project and come out with interesting results.

Consumer research: inductive process

At startup, we've set up a strategy based on the client's main clusters. Then we referred to Forrester Social Technographics and other sources to find out the behavior that our target has on Social Media. We've build a pretty precise idea of what kind of relationship we could expect to establish with each single socio-demographic segment of our cluster.

Consumer research: deductive process

After the startup, a few days ago, what we set up has been successful and attracted a lot of people, we have been able to measure the target all the way around: starting from our user socio-demographic profiles. Since it was an activity that developed consumer engagement through social media, we had several needles to tell us who interacted with our initiative: insight tools (e.g. Facebook, YouTube), Social Media monitoring tools and analytics stats.

Top-down = bottom-up

The real interesting thing is how much the actual target resembled the picture we defined at the beginning. The coincidence was almost complete.
It feel so good to understand the possible target behavior and to build experiences that are relevant, useful and interesting for our clients' consumers. This applies to huge project and to tiny little initiatives as well.
This is one of the main reasons why I love what I do.

Photo credit: richkidsunite

People who are able to find something are infinitely more valuable than people who have that something. In a recent post I wrote in a provocative way that knowledge is nothing. Gatekeepers (people that can help seeking an information) are so much more valuable than anyone who "just" knows something. Knowledge can be achieved fast today, it's harder to achieve the ability to locate knowledge and to share it.

How does this apply to brands?

As I often do, I tried to figure out if and how this could apply to marketing. Then, tonight, a tweet by Jeremiah Owyang gave me started a sparkle in my mind:

"Although many brands are doing social pollination (spreading content to social sites), few are doing the opposite of aggregation."

Probably this is the key. We shift from a digital world in which everything is organized in folders and labeled to a world where:

• Humans are the most valuable feeds
• Brands (not just people) need to be human to set up effective conversations
• Tools try to speak human language to act as gatekeepers (see WolframAlpha)
• Collaboration moves in waves (see Google Wave)

In this scenario it comes clear that people put an awesome value in everyone who can act as a lighthouse, leading their way to information and content that can be worth for them.

What does this mean for brands?

This is a great opportunity for brands: they have an awesome source of information about what consumers look for. Consumers look for content, information, engagement, connection, support, services.

Brands acting like humans can build aggregators that concentrate everything related to their world that their consumer might look for. Aggregators can be built in many ways: through a community management activity, through an editorial staff or even leveraging on the consumers suggestions.

Brands can become gatekeepers, thus building places people can refer to and use those places to nurture a conversation and a relationship. This is valid for both personal and "standard" brands. Aggregate content, information, elements of engagement, connections, give support and provide services in one place. Be the one who is able to find things, not the one who owns things.

The great chance stands right there. And remember: do not limit your plans to your service or product. Extend it to the universe around it. Are you selling boats? Talk about the sea. Are you selling forks? Talk about eating.

Broaden your focus,
build a relationship,
be a gatekeeper.

Photo credit: rachel_thecat