loose wire blog

Power to the Consumer. (Is That All?)

Jan Chipchase, roving Nokia researcher, as ever inspires and provokes with this piece on the psychology of the coffee cup:

This Akasaka coffee shop includes a row of accessible power sockets (running a long the edge of the window) primarily to support laptop use - though over the course of an hour a number of people charged their phones (yes people here sometimes carry petite phone chargers). Recharging mobile devices in coffee shops is nothing new - but to what extent does the explicit nature of the infrastructure lead to new behaviours? Like? Well, maybe plugging in a printer? Or setting up a server. Or, or...

Jan points to the issues raised by offering power to consumers:

In some ways customers that don't use the power socket are subsidising those that do - after all they pay a the same for a cup of coffee. Or do power using power-users spend more money either on more items or on items that will last longer? What if the electricity socket was a stand-alone working micro market? As you plug into the socket your devices authenticates itself to the system, negotiates how much power (or fuel-cell fuel) it needs and charges away. As with the explicit presence of the socket to what extent does the explicit presence of a micro-market for power this extend existing behaviours? And given the relaxed ambiance that this coffee shop is trying to create is it desirable to create a market in this context?

It fascinates me that the average high street these days is as likely to have as many coffee shops as it is other kinds of outlets. And that people work, live, play, cry and get divorced in them. Why do we need the hustle and bustle of others to be productive?

But for me the biggest mystery is why these outlets don't bother to try to sell something more than just coffee, crappy CDs and bad finger food to these customers. Selling power to them might be a cheap shot, but let's face it, you're not really selling them coffee. You're selling them a place to work. A noise, an ambience. You're selling them the chance to feel cool. To show off their Air. To furtively check out members of a sexually appealing gender. To have physical proximity. To engage with engaging staff. A chance to get away from the office/family/silence.

That's what they're buying. But what about what they'd like to buy, that they just haven't considered yet? A chance to meet the people around them? A way to build an informal network with other users? To be able to print from their computers? To arrange pick up by FedEx? An ATM machine?

To me, Starbucks is never really about the coffee. Well, it is for the people who go in there, queue and then take it with them (and then, I think for a lot of them it's about delaying arrival in the office, or having something in their hands as a sort of weapon to take on the day; if it's halfway through the day it's a chance to get out of the office on an errand that is acceptable.) But for the people who stay in Starbucks, they're buying something else. And who knows what else they might buy if you try to sell it to them?

Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect: Behaviours Reflected

Technorati Tags: starbucks, jan chipchase, nokia, japan, power outlets, social space, work, coffee, environment

Sponsoring Theft

Are companies like eBay knowingly peddling stolen goods? Surely not, but I wonder about their advertising strategy.

I get confused about how sponsored results work. You know, those textual ads that appear alongside search results or on a webpage. I mean, I thought I knew how they worked: someone buys a word and when that word appears they get their ad next to it. But when I look for "laptop stolen" on Yahoo! Answers, I get this:

So what keyword are eBay, DealTime and Shopping.com sponsoring here? Or do they really have good stolen laptops for sale? And if so, wasn't I told? Or these poor folks, whose tales of woe appear right next to these add:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interestingly, trying the same search but for "laptop vomit" throws  up no sponsored ads at all. So "stolen" must be a sponsored word? (It does throw up, so to speak, cases of people feeling unwell over their keyboard. I guess that's the Yahoo! Answers type of crowd. )

 

Technorati tags: laptop, theft, advertising, ebay, vomit

Dud of the Week: eBay Anniversary

I shouldn't boast too much about this, I know, since you're all going to get horribly jealous, but I just received a very exciting email, courtesy of the nice folks over at eBay, congratulating me on an impressive year (or is it 10?) of dedicated custom:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now my friend Jim says this is the lamest bit of spam he's seen in a long while, and points out that since I haven't actually sold anything on eBay the sentiments expressed therein are as genuine as the Microsoft Office on his computer, but I think he's just green with envy. Not least because the email contained a picture of the eBay Green-Pants Wearing Party Dude (pictured below for your convenience):

 I think it's a great idea to send congratulatory emails to your customers on the anniversaries of their signing up. Everyone could do it - 'This is Microsoft here, congratulating you on the anniversary of buying Windows 98! Oh, and buy the way we don't support it anymore, so you'll have to buy Vista real soon! Have a good one!' or 'Hi! It's your friendly cellphone company here. Congratulations on the 3rd anniversary of using our service! You'll be pleased to know that with all the hidden fees and ridiculous per-kilobyte charges we tag onto your bill we've been able to send all our kids to finishing school in Switzerland! Keep talking and downloading and not looking too closely at your phone bill!' It might clog our inboxes but it'll be worth it to feel wanted.

And I think I'm going to make the Green Pants Dude my Dud of the Week emblem. After all he's already wearing a dunce's hat.

The Real Conversation

We all keep talking about the idea of conversations -- the "market as a conversation" (as opposed to the companies shouting at us to buy their stuff) and, nowadays, as the blogosphere as the manifestation of this. The problem is: A conversation between whom and whom? And, more important, what happens when the conversation starts getting spun, as all conversations do?

I've grown increasingly skeptical of the genuineness of this conversation: as PR gets wise, as (some) bloggers get greedy and (other) bloggers lose sight of, or fail to understand the need to maintain some ethicaleboundaries, the conversation has gotten skewed. I'm not alone in this, although cutting through to the chase remains hard. The current case of the Wal-Mart/Edelman thang, where the chain's PR firm reportedly sponsored a blog about driving across America and turned it into a vehicle (sorry) to promote Wal-Mart, helps bring clarity to some issues, or at least to highlight the questions.

(Because there's so much out there already on this, I should probably point out the facts as we know them: A couple hoping to drive across the country , BusinessWeek reported, discovered that Wal-Mart allows Recreation Vehicle users (RVers) to park in their lots for free, so they decided to do that every place they stopped. They sought the approval of an organisation called Working Families for Wal-Mart, an organization set up by Edelman to fight bad press against the chain. The organisation decided to sponsor the couple's entire trip, paying for the couple to fly to Las Vegas, "where a mint-green RV would be waiting for them, emblazoned with the Working Families for Wal-Mart logo." The group also paid for gas, set up a blog site, and paid the woman a freelance fee for her entries. The final post on the blog discloses all this, including the connection between the couple and Edelman. But until then the only evidence of a link to Wal-Mart was a banner add for the Working Families group.)

This is how I'd put the issues:

• Can a blog written by someone with an interest beyond merely informing the reader be ever considered something other than promotion for that interest, however well-concealed or unconscious? We get all upset about PayPerPost (rightly so) but far more insidious are blogs that earn their wages in less obvious ways.
• What happens to a conversation when it turns out to be between people who aren't who they pretend to be? The conversation, in this case, appears to be between, not two ordinary folk casually mentioning how good Wal-Mart is on their travels, but between the PR company and their employer.
• When is a spokesperson not a spokesperson? How should we regard Edelman's Steve Rubel if the one thing he's not really covering in his blog is the issue about his own company? At the time of writing the story's been out there for three days already, and not a mention, even a "I can't comment on this at the moment, let me get back to you." Given that Steve is well-versed in these nuances, I'd expect him to be quicker off the mark in this case, company sensitivities and procedures notwithstanding. (Update: Steve has now, on the fourth day, posted something.)

Why do I sometimes feel we're caught in a kind of Groundhog Day in the blogosphere, where we are doomed to repeat ourselves until we learn the lessons our forebears learned? Are we so arrogant that we think we're smarter? The lessons are:

• The Chinese Walls aren't just for the Chinese. They're for us: to protect us against conflicts of interest, snake-oil salesman, shysters and shills. These walls were built over centuries, and we shouldn't think we're so smart we don't need them, however imperfect they are.
• You write to promote your company, however tangentially, and you speak for that company. It's not a cherrypicking job. You can't just ignore topics you don't like the look of. If you don't know what the line is, find out and tell your audience asap. If the story is wrong, get your version out asap.
• Define the conversation, and the conversationalists. Too much talk about conversations, already. It's a nice, neutral, inclusive word. But it's not really. Because most of the time we don't know who's talking, and what their real purpose is. When PR firms with clients, or venture capitalists with an interest in seeing their investments rise in value, or whatever, start to get involved they naturally want to steer the conversation a certain way. Nothing wrong with that, except they must accept that they remain on one side of the conversation. They can't claim to be on both sides. Journalists learned this a long time ago. It's time we all remembered it.

Asia's Obsession With Lists

Last week the WSJ asked me to dig around for sites in Asia-Pacific that are building on the new Obsession with List making, as reported by Katherine Rosman. Here is the result (subscription only), and are some of the sites I came up with. I'd love to hear more from readers, as I'm sure I've missed lots.

• China's answer to 43things -- Aimi -- looks a lot like it, right down to the colors and design. Compare 43things
   
  with Aimi:
  
• Japan has been more creative, with some pretty cool looking sites including Ultra Simple Reminder, check*pad and ReminderMailer.
• Australia's reminder service Remember the Milk is Big in Japan -- 15,000 active Japanese users have signed up since its launch in July. Omar Kilani, the guy behind it, tells me "the service is also available in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese and we have a soon-to-be launched Korean version as well." I'll keep you posted on that.
•  Jon Anthony Yongfook Cockle, a 26-year-old Briton based in Tokyo, has developed a very cool, simple reminder page called OrchestrateHQ, where users can enter quick reminders in either English or Japanese. He's also about to launch a suite of simple Web-based applications called Jonkenpon (nothing up there at the time of writing).
• Lastly, from the guys at Alien Camel, a new service called Monkey On Your Back which allows users to make a to-do list for things that they want other people to do:
   

Technorati tags: web2.0, lists, networking

MySpace Cleansing

Highlight of my Monday morning so far:

Hi jeremy,

You have been invited to join the Colon Cleansing Treatment group on MySpace.
 
Click the link below to see the group:
http://groups.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=groups.groupProfile&groupID=103939131

Feel free to join on my behalf.

The Commuter's Shopping Impulse

A good piece that explores the point I was trying to make earlier about the commuter element in cellphone service adoption, from Reuters’ Sachi Izumi (via textually.org).

Someone needs to look closely at the link between flat free pricing for mobile browsing and m-commerce (yeah I don’t like calling it that either, but it’s there to differentiate between buying online and buying on the mobile. I’m sure the distinction will blur eventually). Japan’s burst in mobile commerce ahead of the rest of the world is impressive, and it’s all to do with people being stuck with their phones for company for long periods. Jun Hasebe, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research: “Impulse shopping accounts for most of the purchases done on mobile phones, and that would not usually happen unless users are on flat fee-based services.” Phones, in a word, have become more like our friends than our friends are.

The only thing holding this back? Fear of fraud. Most people don’t like punching in their credit cards to their phones, although this may have as much to do with where they are (public places, public transport) than it is about actual fraud. One reason I think facial recognition as authentication will play a big role.

Dancing Queen and the End of Popular Music

The other night, as I lay sweating in my mum’s flat in boiling England in the early hours, a crowd of 20 somethings spilled out of a nearby club. The usual hubbub of indistinct chatter ensued as they prepared to disperse. Then the females (I assume; I couldn’t actually see anything) started singing something together, and, gradually the song they were singing emerged: “Dancing Queen”, by Abba, released as a single in 1976. The lassies, who can’t have been born when it first came out, all knew the words (no big surprise, perhaps, given it’s been covered by 20 other artists and was rereleased by Abba in the early 1990s) and sang it long after I felt the moment had passed and they should all go home.

Apart from keeping me awake, I realised something more important: I was listening to the last hurrah of popular music. And today marks, at least in the UK, the death of this era. That’s because today is the last edition of BBC’s Top Of The Pops, the long-running television show that broadcast (usually mimed) performances of the top selling single artists of the week. Everyone here in the UK is waxing nostalgic about the show, which first went out in 1964, and has been running pretty much every week ever since. But perhaps its greatest significance will be in its demise, as it reflects the end of popular music as a unifying force.

Ironic, really, given that folk like me weren’t allowed to watch ToTP as kids, at least with the sound on. Even as a late teenager my dad would make a point of walking in to the lounge when I was watching it, to mess about with the grate, or the wine cupboard (necessitating a move of the TV) and would make some sarcastic remark about whoever was on — and his entry always seemed to coincide with a particularly outrageous display by Roy Wizzard or Noddy Holder or Gary Glitter (turns out he was right about him, come to think of it). ToTP was a divisive force in our household, but nationally, culturally, it united. In an era when pop music remained fringe — only a couple of radio stations played it, one of them pirate, and there was scant pop music on TV outside ToTP — the program was a Mecca for anyone who wanted to know what was what. We really cared about who was number one; seeing bands and artists play on ToTP was sometimes the only chance we got to put a face to the voice we heard on the radio. And then there were Pan’s People, the dancers who “interpreted” songs to help fill up the show. They, dancing to the Chi-Lites’ “Homely Girl”, were my first glimpse of sensual womanhood and for that alone I’m hugely grateful.

The point about ToTP was that it gave everyone a cultural reference point. Watch ToTP and we knew all we needed to know to bond with friends, chat up those we wanted to chat up and to sing along at parties. We all knew who The Rubettes were, and while we may have hated ‘Sugar Baby Love’ we all knew it was number one, and hearing it on radios as we went on holidays or tried to steal a French kiss or two at a party, provided a cultural anchor that would forever make that the soundtrack of the summer of 1974 (or was it 1975.) The point? ‘Sugar Baby Love’ meant different things to different people, but it meant something. Listen to it now and I am transported back to the smell of hay (yes, those kinds of parties), feel the excitement of flashing lights and the electrifying presence of females through the gloom.

Of course, a lot of people will see the demise of ToTP as a good thing, the victory of the Long Tail of pop music (or whatever we have to call it now, given it’s not really popular any more.) They’ll say that the Big Head of mass commercialisation of popular music, where a few acts get disproportionate air play, promotion and media interest to the detriment of others, was never what people really wanted, and that now, with the Internet fostering better distribution and an increasingly sophisticated medium of recommendation, we can now listen to what we really want to, rather than what big business wants us to.

That’s true. But when are we going to be able to stand in car parks at three o’clock in the morning all drunkenly singing “young and sweet and only 17” because we all know the words? Or commenting on the silly hats that the Rubettes wore, or complaining about the number of appearances of Status Quo? And it’s not just about the Water Cooler culture — where we all stand around discussing last night’s TV, where we all saw the same thing because there was only one thing to watch — but of something else: cultural reference points that provide a shared soundtrack to our lives. Not a reason to keep Top of the Pops, necessarily, but perhaps food for thought about the world we are entering without it.

Podcast: Web 2.0

Me being skeptical about Web 2.0 on the BBC World Service. Listen here,

Podcast: Receipts

How to get rid of receipts, without just binning them. Another piece from the BBC World Service.

Teaching Kids to Get into Interactive Debt

Next mealtime, expect your kids to pester you to take out a loan on a new Scion. They’ll probably have filled in the forms for you.

A month ago the NYT wrote about how a kids’ virtual world website, Whyville, was cutting a deal with Toyota to promote the Scion, allowing the youngsters to buy a virtual car in exchange for clams, the Whyville currency they earn by solving puzzles (read Heather Green’s piece over at BusinessWeek for a good overview of Whyville). If you’re having trouble following this, join the club: Think product placement in a kids’ version of Second Life. The idea here is that the 8–15 year olds who inhabit this virtual world would get all excited about the “small, boxy” Scion, buy it to zip around the virtual island and then start pestering their parents to buy a real one.

The idea worked. The NYT says that visitors to the site mentioned the word Scion more than 78,000 times. A month later, the term “Scion” has been used another 120,000 times and Whyvillians — the kids playing the online game — have purchased more than 1,200 Scions and gone on 140,000 rides in their cars.  As NYT quoted the chief operating officer for Whyville, Jay Goss: “By definition, this is a sponsor of Whyville that can't have as its customers the kids who visit the site. But they know that kids influence parents, and kids grow up.”

Now apart from the general creepiness of how much the folks who run Whyville know about what their citizens are up to, and the extension of the old Pester Factor from kids urging parents to buy them toys to urging them to buy new whole cars, get this: As of today, they can buy a virtual Toyota Scion xB on credit, “learning in the process about interest rates, down payments, credit and leasing and their applications in real life”. This from a press release:

“Whyville Scion Solutions is a perfect example of motivated, engaged learning,” explains Dr. Jen Sun, President of Numedeon, Inc., Whyville's parent company. “The Scions are a huge hit with our kids. They want cars! But most citizens just don't have enough clams.  We've set up the motivation for them to learn what it means to take out a loan.  They'll learn about interest rates, down payment, credit history, and, perhaps most important of all, being responsible.  If you default on your loan, you'll lose your car, and your credit history will be ruined so that you can't take out another loan.  Educators and researchers know that students learn best when they really care about the topic.  That's exactly what we try to do in Whyville.”

This is all done via more product placement, this time by a virtual Toyota Financial Services advisor “who walks them through the loan process and helps them learn about their "WhyCO" scores.  The WhyCO is designed to emulate the FICO® in real life.  A Whyvillian's WhyCO score depends on a number of factors including his virtual income, ownership of a Whyville house or business, number of log-in days in Whyville, and leadership roles in the community.  Based on these factors, a loan application is approved or rejected. Citizens who do not qualify for a loan by themselves can get loans if they are co-signed by wealthier friends. The Toyota Financial Services advisor will also point applicants to on-line resources to help applicants understand the details of financing, leasing, interest rates and credit.”

On one hand I applaud the idea. Why shouldn’t kids learn about buying on the Never Never, plunging into debt, meeting the Repo Man, getting thrown out of their house and generally living beyond their means? But is the idea of buying things you can’t actually pay for the sort of lesson one should be teaching kids? My grandad would be turning in his grave. But not for Whyville — in only a few days since opening, the Scion Solutions office has already approved several thousand loans — and not for Toyota Financial Services, which whose “interactive marketing manager”, Maria Tirado, says

“We'd like to have educated customers down the road, and this program is a terrific opportunity to help tweens understand the process of financing a vehicle, everything from interest rates to FICO scores to repaying the loan.”

Does this mean kids, now thoroughly familiar with the credit process, will now pester their parents to buy a new car with a loan? Is this the world we’ve been working towards?

The Message Behind Instant Messaging

Be careful what you wish for. For nearly a decade I, and a lot of people like me, have been dreaming of the day when we could send an instant message to someone who wasn't on the network as us. An instant messaging program is one that sits on your computer and allows you to send short text messages to other Internet users in real time -- if they are online they see the message as soon as you've sent it. it's faster than email because they get it straightaway, and it has the added bonus of letting you know whether the other person is at their computer and awake. Hence the name instant messaging. The big players, like Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and Google all have their own programs and networks, with millions of users. The services are free but beam ads at users through the software.

Now here's the rub: Because there are no open standards, most instant messenger users can only trade messages with others using the same program. So if I signed up with ICQ, say, I won't be able to chat with Aunt Marge if she only signed up with Yahoo. It's a bit like only being able to send emails to people who use the same email service as yourself. Or only to make phone calls to other people using the same operator.

I'm not going to get into who's to blame for all this. For the past few years I've been using a program that lets me include all my chat accounts in one small program, so I can talk to anyone on any service without having to run four or five different chat programs. No ads and less clutter on my screen. Yes, I do feel slightly bad using software that leaches off other people's work, but if those other people can't solve my communication problems with Aunt Marge I had to find someone who could.

But as instant messaging has grown, the arguments against fencing users of each system in have grown weaker. Instant messaging is no longer the province of teenagers: it's as popular in business now as it is in the home, and many a market deal from London to Seoul has been done over instant messenger. Not only that: and the rise of voice over internet services like Skype, which include instant text messaging features, and the introduction of video chat, mean the clamor for interoperability has become harder to ignore.

Hence the recent announcement that Yahoo and Microsoft have started a test run of allowing users of their services to swap messages. This is a big step forward, although it's noticeable that AOL, by far the biggest player in all this with their ICQ and AIM services, aren't yet joining the party. Still, it's good news. But there's a sneaking worry about it all this. Why has it taken them so long? And why now? In reality, hard commercial reasons lie behidn the decision. It's not just about helping me send a message to Aunt Marge on another network. In the recent words of Niall Kennedy (thanks, BJ Gillette), program managers at Microsoft, it's about gathering information about us as we chat and surf so that the companies can target better ads at us. Quite reasonable for them to want to do, I suppose, but one more reason for me to be a tad suspicious about what I say or do online. For now I'm sticking with my third party, ad-free, leaching program.

Shrines to Frustration

It’s depressing that two gripes I’ve posted, both at least a year old, continue to get comments which push both posts to the top of the search engines. My grumbles about accessing Xdrive, an online storage service bought by AOL, comes out top if you search for xdrive problems on Google. Search for cancel napster and my post about how hard it was to cancel the service comes as the next result below a couple of official Napster sites. Both posts got more comments in the last few hours.

I’m not particularly proud about this; I’ve already written a column about Napster’s poor cancellation process, and bad press doesn’t seem to bother either company. (Although maybe AOL might start changing its practice after Randall Stross’ piece in the NYT about how customer service reps are instructed to try more or less every trick before complying with customer requests to cancel their account.

Wearing my WSJ.com hat, I’ve talked to both AOL and Napster about these problems and it seems in both cases neither problem has been fixed. If they had, why would people keep posting horror stories? Somehow I doubt these two cases are exceptional. I imagine there must be hundreds of companies out there where single blog posts have become shrines to customer frustration. Fortunately in both cases readers have added useful advice in the comments so it’s not all just blowing off steam. But why aren’t big companies more proactive about these things by monitoring search results and reaching out to websites or blogs that attract this kind of traffic?

Content Killer

Good piece by Publishing 2.0 » (Google Is Killing the Economics of Content) on how Google’s AdSense is killing the internet by driving the creation of sites that exist solely to squeeze money from AdSense. Here’s how it works in brief, based on Robert Weisman’s piece in The Boston Globe :

A company amasses hundreds of thousands of Internet domain names — and not just silly names, but ones like photography.com, bookstore.com, or jobfinder.com — and then puts a few links on it that look like content but aren’t (new term: “content-light”) . Users go there by typing in the name (rather than searching on Google, as many users apparently do; another new term: “direct navigation”) and then click on AdSense links on the site. As Scott Karp puts it:

The sites were talking about here are NOT about content and they are NOT about serving web users in any meaningful way — they exist for one purpose — pay-per-click ad revenue. …

Why bother with the expense of creating content? Google certainly doesn’t care. And the advertisers dumping billions of dollars into AdWords and similar ad networks don’t seem to care where their ads appear. It’s all about the click.

Companies involved: NameMedia, Marchex. According to alarm:clock, which monitors new tech ventures, NameMedia has acquired a leading domain reseller, BuyDomains, GoldKey, and dozens of smaller domain collections over the last year to create a portfolio of more than million domain names. It was formerly called YesDirect, and claims to have more than 25 million visitors a month.

The iTunization of Books

Good piece in yesterday’s NYT about the future of books. Yes, we’ve been there before but this piece by Motoko Rich does a good job of bringing new elements and old elements to play, from MarK Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions to Yochai Benkler, a Yale University law professor and author of the new book "The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom" (Yale University Press), [who] has gone even farther: his entire book is available — free — as a download from his Web site.

So what is the future of books. I think the important distinction to be made first is between books that are read and books that are referred to. The latter is anything with an index. Sure, people read them cover to cover too, but they are retained in libraries and on your shelves when you need to refer back to something, and you usually do that via the index. Indexes are old hat, and ripe for innovation. That innovation is digitization. Once the information, previously locked up in analog format, its accessibility dependent on the agility and diligence of the indexer, is free, the full potential of the book is realised. That’s why I think all reference books should be digitized, and offered in digital format by their publishers. It’s as simple as the way Google liberated the Internet.

So the real issue is about the first category: the books that are read for their own sake. This is more difficult. Such books offer us not just a bit of reading pleasure, but an invitation to enter a universe created by the author. And it doesn’t have to be fiction; travel, history, even economics — any subject where the author has embraced the form that books offer to emerge with a body of work that is designed to be digested as a body of work. If you get my drift.

Now I’m a bit of a conservative. I think this format works because it is the best delivery mechanism for this thing. The book has been proven to work better than all other forms of delivery and writers have, over the centuries, explored the format and made it the success it is. This, I believe, will continue to work.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for other kinds of “book”. There’s no reason that the “iTune-isation” of music — where the music industry has had to adapt to the rise of the single digital music track download and the demise of the “album” (and presumably the “concept album”) — can’t continue to make inroads to reading (although a whole other subject here is the possible collapse of concentration, focus and flow that arises from this).

And then there’s the idea of “book mashing”, where books are no longer the result of one person’s creative genius, but the combination of a writer and her fans’ comments and contributions, or simply an online collaboration a la Wikipedia.

Then there’s the economics of book publishing. This need to be addressed elsewhere, but publishing definitely needs the shakeup other media are experiencing, and Print on Demand and digital books are providing that. Can only be a good thing, so long as it leads to, or continues to offer, compensation for the creator. A creator needs to eat. (Really. We’re not just skinny through lifestyle choice.)

The final word in the NYT piece goes to Mr. Danielewski, second novel, “Only Revolutions,” will include hundreds of margin notes listing moments in history suggested online by fans of his work. He reckons that “the bar that the Internet is driving towards: how to further emphasize what is different and exceptional about books.” In the end this is what we can hope for from the Internet’s rude bumping up against entrenched ways of doing things.

The Barcode Revolution

Pacarc, the guys who brought the Mitsubishi Jet Towel to the U.S. are now bringing over another piece of Japan: The design barcode.

The design barcode, in the words of Pacarc’s James Allard, “seemed so obvious - utilize the last one-inch square of (nearly) blank real estate on product packing for branding or company image purposes. Why didn't we think of it?! We looked into it and discovered that the mad minds behind it were four Japanese guys in a company called design barcode, inc. We contacted them and after a number of great discussions we are now the exclusive distributor for designed barcodes in the United States.”

It’s a pretty cool but simple idea: turn the boring barcode into something interesting to look at and to enhance the brand at the same time. Expect a full launch next week. I think it’s a very cool idea, and it’s funky that a company like Pacarc are picking up these ideas and bringing them over the Pacific. Expect to see a big launch next week.

Revisiting the Kryptonite Affair

(This post is also available as an experimental Loose Wireless podcast )

Remember the Kryptonite Affair? It was back in September 2004 when a company that sold bicycle locks crashed into the power of forums and blogs and came away battered and bleeding when it failed to respond in Internet time to complaints that some of its bicycle locks could be opened with a Bic pen. Here was my take at the time (well, not exactly at the time; I was only a couple of months late). Kryptonite became a poster boy of how not to handle adverse PR when it comes via the Internet. (A Google search for BIC Kryptonite throws up more than 51,000 hits.)

But now a reassessment of Kryptonite's response has begun with a post by Dave Taylor, a writer, speaker, entrepreneur and blogger. Dave interviews Kryptonite PR chief Donna Tocci, and concludes that Kryptonite's response was in fact measured and swift. Instead, he says, a myth has developed around the whole incident that should be laid to rest:

Always remember that ultimately the company has to meet its market, too, not vice versa. Oh, and don’t discount the effect of mythologizing along the way too: Kryptonite handled its situation with savvy and professionalism and has recovered its position, but the "myth" of bic pens and the crushing blow of blogging has grown far beyond the reality of the situation.

An interesting perspective. But what myth, exactly? That BIC pens can't open some Kryptonite bike locks? Yes, they can. Indeed, Donna was quoted by the NYT at the time as making the argument that arguing that locks made by other manufacturers shared the same vulnerabilities.

Then there's the "myth" of Kryptonite's allegedly slow and leaden response to the whole thing. Dave says a myth emerged that "the company wasn't paying attention to the blogosphere and that it took weeks for it to learn that there was a problem". Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid at the time was merciless in his chronology, saying that there was nothing on the Kryptonite website to suggest there was a problem with the bike locks until at least Day Seven. This is not exactly true. Kryptonite did post something within a few days on its website offering free replacements to any owner "concerned about the security of this lock" while not acknowledging there were problems with the locks, or indeed, why customers might, or should, be concerned.

But is Dave right in saying that the myth wasn’t true, since "Donna and her team were aware of the problem from the very first day"? Well, a couple of things here. Just because Kryptonite was aware of the problem from the first day doesn’t lessen the problem. Even Donna herself acknowledges that she should have posted "a note on our website about us working on the issue a day or two earlier." Indeed, one could argue that if they did know about the problem from day one, they should have put something on their website to reassure customers, or given them some hint that there was a problem, before they started doing anything else.

Indeed, what is surprising about the whole episode was not the discovery that some bike locks could be opened with a plastic biro, but that information along these lines had been available for 12 years in the form of an article in a biking magazine. Obscure, maybe, but if the argument is that the blogosphere is just too big too monitor effectively, what about bicycle magazines? How many are there in the world? Maybe 200? 1,000? Is that too many to monitor, over a 12-year period?

The bigger point is that the issue spread like wildfire when it resurfaced 12 years on because of the Internet. That's what the Internet does, or can do. Kryptonite's failure was letting down its customers who looked to its website for guidance. So when Donna says "we know that the majority of the people who participated in our lock exchange program heard about it from traditional media sources", instead of this being evidence to back up Dave's skepticism that "a lot of blog pundits are fond of pointing to this situation as an example of why companies need to keep track of the so-called blogosphere", I'd say it highlights the opposite.

If you visit a company website a day or two after damaging news has broken about that company’s products, and there’s no sign of any acknowledgement on the website about this, why would you then keep revisiting it until there is something there? It may not be fair, and it may not fit your schedule, but the Internet requires an in-time response, even if it’s just "we are looking into reports that there’s a problem with some of our products. If you’re concerned, drop us an email and we’ll get back to you." It’s not rocket science.

So, Dave is right in that Kryptonite will forever be associated with PR problems in the Internet age, and it’s good to get a bit of balance in there. But perhaps the myth he is pointing to is that Kryptonite as a company and brand were permanently hobbled by the episode. Donna -- who still has her job -- agrees, saying the brand is not "as damaged as the blogosphere would have you believe". She gives no sales figures. But she also acknowledges that the tubular lock -- the source of all the problem -- no longer exists as a Kryptonite lock. Indeed, more than 380,000 of them have been replaced. She’s a good PR person: she portrays this as a positive, a sign of the company’s logistical skill. But how could one argue the demise of one’s main product, and the expensive replacement of hundreds of thousands of units, as a good thing? I’d say that it’s a pretty fitting testament to the power of the Internet. On balance, I’d say, the "myth" stands.

What Can't Be Automated

Here’s why it’s important to have smart humans at some point in the chain.

I just received this email from FlowersDirect, a UK online flower delivery service, which I use quite a bit. Too much, as it turns out:

Many thanks for your recent order. However, there appears to be two very similar orders on our system, the first is order xxxx , a 'thank you Mum' chocolates and flowers being delivered to Mrs. R. Wagstaff on 26th March 2006. The second is order ref xxxxx, a lilacs & limes Bouquet also being delivered to Mrs. R. Wagstaff on 25th March 2006.

Please could you contact us as soon as possible either via return e-mail or on xxxxxx to either confirm that both orders are required, or that one is surplus to requirement?

Mothering Sunday, for those of you not aware we Brits celebrate our mothers at a different time of year to everyone else, is the last weekend in March. (Another great thing about FlowersDirect is that they remind you of this, more than a month in advance. My Mothering Sunday Miss Rate has declined dramatically since I started ordering from them.)

Anyway, they were right. I couldn’t find confirmation of my earlier order so assumed it hadn’t gone through, or I had placed it only in my fevered imagination. In a normal, busy world where everything possible is automated, this excessive ordering on my part would not have been spotted, or might have been spotted but not triggered any employee concern that it was, in their charming phrase, “surplus to requirement”. Most companies would have just gone ahead and delivered two sets of flowers, which might have delighted my mother, and possibly got my brother off the hook, since he could have claimed one of them was his.

But they didn’t. They checked back with me first. After all it would have looked a tad indulgent on my part to have double-bouqueted my mother and would have set a dangerous precedent. (“You gave me two bunches last year! Why not this year? Don’t you love your own mother anymore?”)

So now all I have to decide is which one to keep and which one to cancel. Chocolates and flowers or lilics and limes. Hmmm.

Is That A Sulky Teenager? No It's A SuperConnector

Technology, it seems, is not isolating teens from each other but quite the opposite: multiplying the number of connections and bonds they make to create a generation of “SuperConnectors”.

A research report published by advertising agency Energy BBDO (nothing sighted on their website yet) concludes that, according to marketing news website ClickZ Stats, “56% percent of teens age 13-18 are SuperConnectors”. This group uses multiple means of connectivity of what the report calls “lean-forward mechanisms” — not a term I’d heard before, I must confess — such as cell phones, text messaging, the Internet, e-mail, instant messaging and search engines.

The important thing here is they’re using these tools to connect, not to cut themselves off (although parents might disagree). The report says that, contrary to popular perception that teenagers are hiding in their rooms playing games and hiding from each other, “friendships within a teen's network spreads out over the Web and other enabled devices.” This means, in short, that teens are doing what we used to do, but are just doing it faster, better, and more broadly. “They are still doing many of the same types of activities that they used to do, for example, passing a note in class. Now, they can text several people at the same time,” the ClickZ piece quotes Chip Walker, EVP and director of account planning at Energy BBDO, as saying. “The underlying urges are the same, what technology has done is allow them to be taken to a new level.”

Given I managed to only keep note-enabled discussions with two people going at any one time before getting very confused (and caught by our English teacher Mr. Tolkien), this suggests all sorts of new skills. This, indeed, is another side of multitasking we tend to forget about. It’s not just about doing different things at once, but doing the same thing with lots of different people at once. I can well understand that this may not be considered a good thing — given the paranoia teens are prone to, I can only imagine the fear and suspicion that must permeate a classroom seeing all the under-desk texting, vibrating and muted beep-beeps going on at any given time. But in a positive sense, perhaps all this is useful training for the kind of world we older folk are already a part of but woefully underprepared for. Perhaps multitasking should be a course kids actually take to prepare themselves for the kind of jobs we are now struggling to master.

Of course, this report being commissioned by an advertising agency, the main thrust of the piece is about how to reach these teens. SuperConnectors, we’re told, “are resistant to traditional advertising messages.” Instead, the report suggests trying to use approaches that “allow teens to communicate with each other and personalize what they're receiving.” This is interesting stuff. I can see several ideas popping out of this: One might be to assume that with teens everything is ephemeral and temporary, so websites and services that pop up should be designed to be only temporary. So, networking sites should just be designed to last only a few months, and then be replaced by something else that would seem wild and new to the user — even if it’s just the same old thing from the same old company with a fancy new name, a new design and some extra gimmicks or features.

The other element must be standards to allow users to easily transfer their stuff — settings, connections, photos, messages, whatever — between these “pico networks”. Another option could be ensuring these networking sites and services could allow third party add-ons and user mash-ups so teens could adapt and personalize their virtual networks. In any case, the good news seems to be that teens may actually be using technology in a healthier way than we oldies are.

It's Not Always About Online

Software developers used to write programs that looked and worked great on their big-monitored, big-powered, big-hard drived computers, forgetting that most of us have small screens, weak computers and no disk space. Now, with Web 2.0, they're writing programs that assume we're always online. Well, we're not. Cameron Reilly of The Podcast Network, trying to retrieve his flight booking in a hurry, highlights the dangers of relying on something like Gmail when either you, or it, isn't always online:  

Pull up Gmail to check my booking. Gmail down. GMAIL DOWN??!??!?!?! Get a message saying "sorry, gmail is down. we're trying to fix it. please check back in a few minutes."I don't have a few minutes. Need to get my ass to the airport or miss my flight. Jump in car. Check Gmail again from my mobile while I'm driving (don't crash don't crash oh don't crash) - still down.

Yes, he probably should have printed it out at the time. Yes, he should have saved a copy to his hard drive/phone in case. Yes, we shouldn't rely on free email services, however big and snazzy the company. But the truth is that (a) Cameron is as human as the rest of us and (b) we use these services as if they are a service, which they're not. They're a luxury that only exist as long as the company want them to exist, and as long as we're online. 

This second lesson is easier to remember if you live in a part of the world where most of the people are not online for most of the day. This is partly because it's not that kind of culture, and it's partly because the quality of cable Internet here is so low. But this is a good thing, because it means I never rely on online email for important stuff, and because it means that whenever I find something good I save it somewhere I can retrieve it whether or not I'm online.

Bottom line: I love web-based applications like Basecamp. But I'm never going to build critical tasks around them so long as I can't access them, or a recent backup of them, when I'm offline. This is one area where the likes of Groove have an edge. And while the argument may follow that one day everyone will be online, I'm betting that one day, too, everything will come to a shuddering halt when the Internet fries one day and we're all scrambling for our offline backups.

Oh, Cameron made his flight ok, by peering into his offline backup. In this case his brain.  

technorati tags: offline, online, webapps

Getting Dating Advice Online

If you're willing to fork out $20 a month for dating advice, you're in luck. A newly launched website,  econfidant ("smarter advice for dating & relationships") does just that:  

econfidant can answer all of your dating or relationship questions. No question is too basic or too involved. We can help you strategize how to get dates, work on ways to make your relationship work, help you figure out what you are really looking for in a relationship, or provide suggestions on fun things to do on dates. econfidant addresses questions, concerns and issues related to all stages of the dating process- there are no bad questions.

It'll be interesting to see if they still think that after a few hundred questions along the lines of "my date hasn't called me back after I burped the national anthem on the car-ride home. It was a long ride, the conversation had thinned out and I didn't know the words. What should I do next?" 

Anyway, econfidant is the brainchild, if that's the right word, of Rachel Begelman and Sarna Lee, "two longtime friends whose own experiences convinced them no one should experience dating alone". (Both are currently in long-term relationships.) I certainly agree with part of their premise: "We live in an age where we meet more people online than in real life and where a text message can be interpreted a thousand ways," Begelman said. "The one-size-fits-all model of relationship books and advice columns is no longer enough." (It's interesting how SMS gets blamed for all sorts of things, probably correctly. There's a whole thesis in there, if someone is not already doing it.)  

The idea, then, is that people are going to feel happy about coughing up $20 a month to tell their problems to strangers because "you can get the advice you're seeking without having to worry about what a friend might think or repeat, and without having to listen to their problems first, " according to Ms. Lee. In other words, friendships can be a real pain when they're two-way. Whatever happened to friends who never told you their problems, but loved listening to yours?

Anyway, I wish I could say I thought this was a good thing. But I don't. I'm not against online dating. Finding a partner is a bit like finding a job: You rarely find one through close friends, so networking makes sense. But going online for romantic advice? Perhaps it might work in some cases -- some people clearly need a slap or clip around the ear, a need that can be spotted by long time friend or complete stranger alike. But I worry that this is getting mighty close to outsourcing one's friends. How can the quality of a response to question of a few sentences take into account the peculiarities of every situation, of every person? Isn't the backlog of knowledge one builds up about one's friends through long tedious conversations about their problems preparing us for exactly to dispense the kind of advice a friend having dating issues might need?

Who knows. I'd test it myself (you get a first question free) but I'm happily married. There's no website for that, although I'm sure there will be one day.

technorati tags: dating, romance, advice, networking

The Problem With Surveys

I love BBC World, the satellite news channel, and I love offering feedback (rarely welcome, as readers will know). In the hope of satisfying both passions I joined the BBC World Panel where "users are invited to register and record their comments online and to take part in regular surveys and questionnaires specifically on viewing and programming issues."

The surveys are handled by a company called eDigital Research which claims to be

unique in our field as we combine an in-depth research background with a thorough understanding of developing and managing Internet websites. Our propriety research programmes are developed in-house by our experienced team of developers allowing us to develop bespoke client programmes and react to the immediacy of the Internet. We are able to translate complex market research data into concise management reports that highlight key business issues effecting the ROI. 

With all due respect to eDigital, which also trades as eMysteryShopper, eCustomerOpinions, eGlobalPanel and ePollingStation, all this language sounds tired and out of date. "The immediacy of the Internet"? What does that mean, exactly? The Internet is a huge bunch of people. That's what the Internet is. For sure the Internet is "immediate" but it's not just about being fast, it's about connecting to customers, listeners, surveyees, whatever. (And what are "propriety programmes"? Do they mean proprietary, as in "something exclusively owned by someone, often with connotations that it is exclusive and cannot be used by other parties without negotiations" or propriety, a noun meaning "correct or appropriate behavior". Both kind of make sense here, which perhaps illustrates the poor use of language here.)

Anyway, as I was filling out yet another BBC survey this morning I realised how old this kind of approach is. The survey in question was just like the other surveys I've done in this series: They are composed of questions and either multiple choice answers, or ordering selections from drop down menus, all of which are time-consuming for the user without ever really zooming in on the user's real priorities. This is the kind of thing:

(The numbers go up to 10.) There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this, but it also needs to reflect the way the Internet has changed the way consumers interact with companies, and the expectation (however unevenly reflected) that their voices be heard beyond choosing a few options that don’t necessarily capture the flavor of their attitude towards the product. This kind of multiple choice thing is fine in quick surveys for busy shoppers outside supermarkets, but not in a survey of volunteers who have deliberately set aside time to offer feedback.

Then, the equation should be quite different. The surveyor should be asking “How can I vacuum up as much of the rainbow of this user’s attitudes and thoughts about the service/product in question before they go to breakfast?. Sifting through their thoughts may take me longer, but the quality and usefulness of that freeform feedback is going to be much more valuable to the client than simply a few PowerPoint graphs."

This lack of effort to gain access to the user’s real feelings towards the product/service is reflected in the final question, a broad one (without a question mark, oddly) but with only a small box for the user to type in their response:

 

As you can see, I went on at length about my passion for English soccer, and my ideas for how BBC World could expand its coverage without having to fork out big bucks for actual soccer footage. But I also, knowing from previous experience that as far as I know respondents to these BBC World surveys never hear back from the surveyors, however much extra feedback we type into the freeform text boxes. added this final comment:

One last thing: communicate with your respondents. This survey is too Old Thinking. Start a conversation with your viewers that doesn't just involve us clicking multiple choice boxes. Email your respondents with follow-up questions, engage us as human beings. Some of us love BBC World and want to see it do well. But throwing our considered responses to your surveys into a deafening silence is not the best way to engage or keep your viewers. Nowadays the market is a conversation. Use it. And use us.

How should someone do this? I would say the BBC Viewer’s panel should be just that: a panel of selected viewers (chosen, perhaps, for the quality of their freeform feedback), overseen by a panel leader who maintains a blog, throwing out occasional gems from viewers’ responses and updating viewers on the progress of the changes being wrought in response to these surveys. This morning’s survey, for example, was initiated by an email with the intriguing paragraph:

Because of the costs involved, there are many problems showing clips of sports on news channels. Should BBC World show only what it can, or would you like to see a rolling results show on the channel? Whatever you think, and even if you aren't a sports fan, we'd like to know what you think.

Off to a good start. But that’s just the beginning. Use blogs, use discussion forums, use blog comments, use a Wiki, use Skype, use whatever it takes to find out, to really find out, what your viewers want from you. Let them guide the discussion, not a market research company with spelling issues.

Indonesia's Slice of the Long Tail

It’ll be interesting to see how this kind of thing pans out: An Indonesian publishing company run by an expat American has launched a catalogue of Indonesian pop music on iTunes (declaration of interest: the guy, Mark Hanusz, is a friend of mine). Could this kind of thing change the way this kind of music is distributed, and, perhaps more interestingly, define a musician’s fan base and therefore their definition of success?

There are plenty of examples of music already crossing boundaries. But moves like Equinox Publishing, which claims its “catalog forms Southeast Asia's largest selection of music to arrive on the digital music landscape”, represent a significant step forward. Until now it would have been nigh impossible for Indonesians living outside Indonesia, or anyone else for that matter, to get their hands on anything other than a CD of gamelan music. Now they can zip their way through 30–second previews of dozens of Indonesian artists on iTunes. Perhaps more significantly, it levels the playing field a bit: Now anyone browsing iTunes is as likely to stumble on an Indonesian band as they are to find a U.S. or European act.

Already Western bands make their way to a place like Indonesia — from Deep Purple and Procul Harem to more, er, contemporary acts like Foo Fighters, Mariah Carey, Alanis Morissette. With a potential audience of 200 million people, it pays for itself. But maybe the tide could change. Mark likes to see himself as slicing off a thin wedge of the Long Tail, catering to a small but significant market. But what may prove just as intriguing is the possibility that an Indonesian band, via something like iTunes, could become just popular enough in certain places overseas to justify a tour or two. Could we be seeing the likes of Homogenic, Netral and Dewi Lestari playing Boston or Bristol?