http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Tue, 6 Sep 2005 13:05:07 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/06/130507.php Russell Buckley I've known Mark Curtis, on and off, since pre-Internet days. Yes, that long and yes, there was such a time. We probably didn't even have mobile phones in "them days."So it was interesting to do this interview, catch up with his latest thoughts and find out about his new book. Since his company does a lot of work for Nokia, he's at the very heart of all things mobile, and I think I'd describe him in a couple of words as a "thoughtful evangelist". While passionate about digital and mobile generally, this is not the blind enthusiasm of a shallow gadgetman, constantly in search of the new, the faster and the smaller. Mark takes time to think, to argue and to wonder just what the implications for all of us are for the future we're rushing into at break neck speed.Here's the interview:Please can you give us a sense of who Mark Curtis is? A brief bio in a few sentences?I've often wondered myself!I started in marketing agencies&#8212below the line specialising in the (at the time) rapidly growing radio industry&#8212and then became fascinated by the potential of what we then called interactive media in 1994, and set up CHBi as an offshoot to a sales promotion company I was then a partner in. After a shaky start (no-one we talked to believed in our vision that media would change totally), the cuckoo outgrew the nest and it became an independent company, which we sold to Razorfish in 1998 and became Razorfish London. Thereafter followed dramatic growth, for a while wonderful work (at our best when 90 strong), head-turning new business wins (100 enquiries a week at one stage), a plague of management consultants who thought digital was cool (and that they could get rich quick and then screwed up client relationships by being so arrogant) and then the internet winter set in. I left in March 2001, set up Fjord a few months later and where we have focused on mobile. Basically the consistent theme in my career has been media innovation.I have a number of passions which include my four daughters, cycling, running, wine, books, mountains, food, wildlife.Tell us a little about what Fjord does.Fjord develops new mobile products and services for clients seeking to differentiate themselves in handheld media. However, a lot of our work is cross-platform.And a campaign that you're most proud of, that encapsulates what you're trying to achieve these days.I feel the need to take issue with the word "campaign". Right now I fear that much of the interest in mobile is marketing focused and that the default setting for marketing thinking is "campaign"&#8212suggesting ads, ephemeral items that come and go, and above all a pointer to products but not the product or service itself. We've been down this road before at the start of the web. Marketing money tends to gravitate towards new media because it can create stand out appeal, new stuff is fun, and often a very appealing audience can be found there. But with the web the real value was created by building the products and services that suited the medium&#8212in my case Yell.com, RAC's traffic news and route planning, many community plays. More famously Amazon, eBay, etc. These are not campaigns.But to answer your question more directly: As so much of our work is innovation, it is hard to talk about it (clients, understandably, don't want us to.) However, we played an important role in the development of Lifeblog from Nokia, and it gave us a big lift to see a product we had worked on for so long a) see the light of day and b) be so well reviewed. We think it is a harbinger of things to come (but we're very biased). Secondly, next month a new service comes to market called Flirtomatic which Fjord has played a key role in developing. I'm spending all my time on this, and it is very, very exciting.That sounds interesting&#8212let us know when you can tell us more. If you had to summarise the key messages in your new book, Distraction: Being Human in a Digital Age, what would they be?In 2000/2001, as the dot-com boom went pop, the doom-sayers emerged gleefully from the forests of doubt where they had been lurking impatiently. They had of course seen this coming all along, and now we could all gratefully forget about this digital nonsense and return to wearing suits. I remember reading an article about the new managing director of the London office of a web services company, where he actually said this. Hurray, the madness was over.The perception that took hold, and to some extent is still at large, was that this "digital" thing was going away, had never had any real meaning, and that its impact was superficial at best.This is a very dangerous fallacy.Digital technology&#8212essentially the bit that deals with communications&#8212is changing our world more than most people remotely imagine. This book is about that change. Some of it could have been written three or even five years ago. However, the outlines of the impact of mobile technology are beginning to slope out from the mist, affecting the story for better or worse. It is time to give it some narrative form and see if it makes sense.Our world is changing shape. This should not be a surprise as it has happened before. I do not of course mean something as dramatic as a shift from being a sphere to a cube. In this book, I am more interested in the way we think about our universe. If you define reality as that which we think we experience, then history is well furnished with examples of man's perceptions of the world around him changing fundamentally.These are very important moments though at the time they happen, it is hard to see what the effect will be.You'd have to go back to the sixties for another decade when our world has changed (the pill, pop music, drugs, the moon landing) so much as in the last ten years. The changes we are living through now are perhaps less raucous and demanding of our attention as sexual freedom or the rise of the teenager. That does not mean they are less important. In the long term, they may be more so.This re-shaping of our landscape is happening at the same time as a tremendous shift in the way we structure our social networks, caused and enabled largely by new technology. The world of our friends and acquaintances is mediated increasingly by electronic address books&#8212in sim cards, mail browsers and buddy lists (the address books used by instant messenger services such as MSN Messenger). Are these going to support or disrupt the traditional social networks&#8212or is this an artificial distinction suggesting that there is nothing to worry about?We do know that social capital&#8212the store of goodwill that helps us have easier relationships with people&#8212is in decline. Will digital halt this or change its course?We cannot take for granted that all progress is good, as the Victorians did. In Why Things Bite Back, Edward Tenner developed a compelling theory that every technological advance carries with it what he called a "revenge" effect, a kind of unintended consequence. Frequently this is chronic and long term, by which he meant low level and hard to detect, but often much harder to deal with than the problem that was being addressed in the first place. For example, pesticides eliminate pests, but damage other parts of the food chain too, which in time makes the growing of crops harder because natural predators of other pests are affected for the worse. Indeed, the original target pests themselves often out-evolve the poison, and the new superbugs are much harder to get rid of.The digital revolution, now roughly ten years old, will not be without its revenge effects, most of which will be social. This book begins to examine what some of these might be and suggests how we can ameliorate their influence and build on some of the very positive aspects of new technology.Erik Davis in Techgnosis relates the following story, taken in turn from Plato, and narrated by Socrates. It concerns Thoth, the Egyptian god of magic and invention. One day Thoth approached King Thamus with an offer of a brand new techne (art): writing. By giving the gift of writing to the king, Thoth hoped to pass on its wonders to all of the Egyptian people, and he promised Thamus that the new invention would not only augment memory, but amplify wisdom as well. Thamus carefully considered the matter, weighing the pros and cons of this major communications upgrade. Finally the king rejected the gift, saying that his people would be better off with out the new device. And reading between the lines of the story, it's clear that Socrates and Plato agree. Thamus feared that the gift of writing would take away his people's memory. He reasoned that once you could write ideas and stories down, the facility to remember them would fade. As Davis points out, it is hard to disagree when you consider the loss of oral tradition in societies that have put pen to paper and ink to press. Well, Thoth has been laying on the gifts thickly recently, and we have no all-powerful Thamus to say "no, thank you." As media guru Marshall McLuhan observed (some time ago now), when you gain from technology, you always lose something too. The aim of this book is to contribute to the debate about losses and gains in the field of human communication.Who should read it?Anyone who wants to think about our world and how we live in it in the early 21st century. And argue about it.What's the big picture for mobile technology? One of the things we're written about a lot for instance, is the mobile taking over from the computer as the most important digital device to access the net? Is this a theory you subscribe to?No&#8212not yet at least. I've seen nothing to suggest that the screen size and input limitations of the mobile are about to be overcome. Of course, I've read about digital paper, scrolling displays. etc.&#8212but I tend to rely on personal experience and I've not played with anything to change this view.I prefer to think of the mobile as a remote control device for demanding things in the context of mobility, i.e. when a PC is just not convenient. It's also great at recording stuff&#8212where you are, what you've seen and experienced. That too is an important point of differentiation. Which device is the key access point to the net will, in time, largely be seen as irrelevant.How has the mobile changed society and how will it change it, in the future?It's made us "always on" and always connected. It encourages partial attention, because we run the risk of emotionally preferencing the siren call of distance, with all its potential, over the here and now. Why else do perfectly thoughtful business people answer calls in meetings, and teenagers text not talk during family meal times? Because they know, viscerally, they are linked to others and it's just too seductive. People love incoming.Give us 3 big predictions for mobile in the next 5 years.The development of new products and services from outside the existing industry infrastructure which go on to define what mobile data and voice are all about.Massive industry and consumer confusion about VOIP/mobile/WiFi convergence.Rapidly dropping data prices. Your background is in marketing. Can you point to any recent campaign involving mobile that excites you?No. We are not at that stage yet.Yes, I tend to agree with that, although I also think we're seeing some green shoots of innovation in this area. Mark, thank you very much. If you'd like to buy a copy of Mark's book, head on over to the publisher, Future Text. And no, we don't get a cut, in case you wondered. Edited: PC Books35578@blogcritics.org Tue, 6 Sep 2005 13:05:07 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/06/075021.php Russell Buckley In the old days of British politics, there was a 2.5 party system, consisting of Conservatives (Tories), Labour and the Liberals. However, since Tony Blair and New Labour winning the 1997 election, we've moved to a one party state, ruled effectively by a President.This has been allowed to happen largely through the incompetence of the Tories in opposition, who have failed to capitalize on New Labour failures and weaknesses - the huge increase in stealth taxes, a war no one wants and the continuing decline of the health service, schools, the rise in yob culture etc.But this isn't a political broadcast, you'll be relieved to hear.The primary reason that a party gets elected is because of its leader. Indeed, Tony Robbins (of Giant Steps fame and a leading authority on NLP) simplifies it further. He says a party gets elected who has the leader who can most appeal to the three types of people; auditory, visual and kinetic. In other words, the winner will be the one who looks and sounds best will inevitably win - policies and what they say are largely irrelevant.While this sounds ridiculously simplistic, when you start thinking about the results of most elections, there's a lot of truth in it, though George W might be the exception that proves the rule.The Tories have consistently managed to elect for themselves, leaders who are unelectable by the voters. They're now going through another leadership election and one of the front runners is Ken Clarke. Ironically, he's older than the current leader, Michael Howard, who gave age as one of his reasons for standing down.Ken Clarke is certainly a popular figure, coming across as a bluff, no-nonsense, straight-talking guy you could trust your country too. Good old Ken's aides have just admitted that he refuses to carry a mobile phone. The impression they're trying to spin is that he's a dear old traditionalist, who can't be doing with all this new-fangled nonsense and who calls a spade a spade.But, to my mind, this makes him arrogant, out of touch and completely unelectable. This is a man who's asking to be allowed to lead a 21st Century country where technology is central to the economy and maintaining the UK's world competitiveness. Not having a mobile phone is about as clever as saying "Forsooth" and going everywhere by horse, these days.Personally, I also question the morals and principles of a man who endorses and is paid by the tobacco industry (Deputy Chairman of British American Tobacco) and who can abandon his long held pro-European convictions for the sake of making him more electable to his party chums.I hope the Tories realise just how much a liability Ken Clarke would be as leader, mainly as it's important for UK plc to have a credible opposition party again. My inclination would be to go with David Cameron, despite his inexperience, or David Davis, but then the Tories don't have a great track record of selecting anyone who actually stands a chance.But please let's not have someone who's in denial about new technologies.Story from The Guardian via Textually. Politics35566@blogcritics.org Tue, 6 Sep 2005 07:50:21 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/02/131048.php Russell BuckleyI thought it was time we joined in all the speculation about what Google's grand vision is, especially as I'm increasingly convinced that, unlike Microsoft, they really "get" what's happening vis a vis mobile technology.If you haven't been following recent events, let me start by summarising some of the key ones recently:Google Talk takes them into VoIP. This means that they can offer free (or cheap) phone calls to anyone with a net connection. This includes people connected to public or paid-for wifi connections. It also includes calls via a PC, or with a phone capable of hooking up via wifi. There's already models that can do this (Nokia's brick-like Communicator, as an example) and a lot more expected soon, subject to operators agreeing to distribute them.Om Malik wrote a Business 2.0 story, which is a fine piece of investigative journalism and deduction. Om suggests that some of Google's recent moves indicate that they're planning (get this) to offer free wifi access to everyone in America. I know it might sound far fetched, but Om explains how it's possible and I certainly think it's more than plausible.Google likes to think big and how much bigger can you get than becoming everyone's ISP and phone provider?Google is about to raise another $4 billion by selling 14.159265 million shares. What do they need this kind of money for? Something big, obviously.In case you missed the story or the point, the number of shares is based on the first eight numbers making up Pi. Clever or smug?Google is about to launch Google Wallet, to compete with PayPal, based on numerous rumours. Again, I think this will happen. It's a great market opportunity that PayPal has had to itself for far too long. Enough people hate PayPal to flock to a rival offering, especially if it was run by Google. I've had a few run-ins with PayPal myself, so I'll shed no tears if they get done over.But Wallet also offers their advertisers a way of charging for goods and services, especially for micropayments, where credit card charges are usurious (c 30% for transactions costing $1, for instance).Google have also just announced plans to move into offline media, by buying up adspace at wholesale prices and selling to its advertisers for a better price than they could get on their own.So they're exploring the offline world now.Google has already launched a form of local search, based on sms.OK, so that's some of the key trends and clearly, there's probably a lot else happening at Mountain View that we're not privy to - either by announcement or rumour and gossip.All this suggests to me that they're going to make a play for the Long Tail of offline media, just as they've captured the Long Tail of online media.Let me give a scenario, in maybe 10 years time.You're out shopping, with your mobile phone, obviously. Your mobile has taken over as your primary means of making all voice calls - using Google Net's VoIP, naturally. Why would you use anything else, when it's free and works everywhere? You don't even have to search for a good connection like those old GSM phones.Your phone has also become your primary means of accessing the internet, again via Google Net, obviously. Your phone is a thin client, with most storage and processing done on the web. Most people don't have even a PC anymore. If they want to do work that involves a keyboard and a bigger screen, they just pop their phone into the nearest docking station and away they go. With the added advantage that the phone has ensured that the screen layout, favourite apps, bookmarks and files are all available exactly as you'd want them.Your phone also knows your location at all times - not through anything fancy, like Assisted GPS, but because Google Net knows exactly where you are on the Google Grid.So suddenly, true location based marketing becomes a reality, no longer a question like "when the tech is available" or "providing you're in line of sight" or "if it's accurate enough".Shops log on to Google's ZagMe service (indulge me!) and in the same way as they can tell AdWords who they wish to target and how much they're willing to pay, they can alert shoppers to offers they think they'll like. Unlike AdWords, where the merchant chooses keywords, ZagMe will work by matching merchants and shoppers, based on the shoppers' preferences.Because the ads are served over wifi, there's no cost of transmission (unlike today's sms), so ads can be cheap and gross margins for Google, humungous.ZagMe will also be a self-learning application. So if the shopper doesn't like a merchant or the type of offer, they can tell their phone and they don't get that again.The shopper can also decide when and where they want to get ads. And how they get delivered - with an audible alert, or just a silent pop-up on the screen. They can opt out of any and all messages too, if they want, permanently or for a period of time - say, two hours.So ZagMe tells you about an offer you want and you decide to go into the shop and buy it. You pay for it, with your mobile phone's Google Wallet.Google Wallet is more than just a payment system though. It's a feedback loop providing information to the ZagMe ad server. If you've just paid for a coffee, for instance, you're not going to want another coffee ad for say, an hour.More sophisticated that this, it builds up a pattern of your responses to offers and presents more of the same. It learns what'll make you buy a Hugo Boss suit as opposed to an Armani, and pitches the incentive just right.ZagMe and Wallet become a useful and valued tool for shoppers, as great targeting, relevance and location make everything they send you welcome.One of the things that Google has managed to do online and why they make so much money is that they've found a way to exploit the Long Tail of advertising - tapping into billions of marketing dollars that didn't really exist before. My bet is that they want to do no less than to open up the same Long Tail for real world merchants.This would allow them to become the most dominant media owner on the planet, cornering the ad market on and offline and at the junction where the two meet. If they can have all that for $4 billion, it's a bargain.A word of warning however. Moving from their existing model to a service where customer care will suddenly become important, will not be a stroll in the park. People don't generally call you to complain that their search engine results aren't very good. But they do to complain that their phone doesn't work, their internet connection is down or that their Wallet won't allow them to make payments.So if you want to run the world's biggest customer care programme, maybe your should be applying to Google.This has been rather long already, so what do you think? Am I on the right lines?Om Malik thinks that it's about Pay Per Call and I agree that this could indeed be part of it. Oliver at my alma mater comes to the Pay per Call conclusion too, but speculates that they'll then launch an ad-funded free calls programme, which is the point where I have to say, our opinions diverge.But do leave a comment and join the conversation on this one. Whatever Google ends up doing, it's going to have fundamental repercussions for business everywhere, as well as for all of us as technology users. Culture35348@blogcritics.org Fri, 2 Sep 2005 13:10:48 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/06/19/103422.php Russell BuckleyOne of the huge successes in the last few years on the net, has been the blossoming of Wikipedia. I regularly consult it nowadays for information and with increasing frequency.If you don't know about Wikipedia, here's a very brief catch up. It's a multi-authored, free, multi-lingual knowledge repository. Anyone can update or correct it in real time (which is a bit spooky), so it's really the people's encyclopedia.Clearly, this also means that facts can be wrong, as you're relying on the voluntary contributions of ordinary people, not necessarily experts in their field. Facts could be wrong accidentally or deliberately - although encyclopedia terrorism is a bit of a sad way to spend your time. However, the contributors are self-policing, with errors corrected and information being added all the time.There are over a million articles available now, in contrast to the traditional Encyclopedia Britannica's 65,000. Personally, I've never found a mistake, but I've never found one in EB either, though there are apparently quite a few.One of the most exciting things that's going to happen in the next 10 years, in my view, is that the Wikipedia will move into the physical world. It may not be a Wikipedia initiative (ie it might be a new and different organisation that makes it happen), but the principles will transfer and apply.Let's look at how this might work.You're in London and are standing in a pleasant, sunny street in Camden Town. City life is going on around you and you fancy the idea of knowing a little more about where you are right now.Using your phone, as if it was a PC mouse, you uncover snippets of information from the world around you. You click on an old house in the road and a wealth of digital information comes onto your phone screen. Some contain video and audio links.You learn that the house is on the site of one lived in by Charles Dickens' wife after their separation. You're interested in Dickens so you poll the area and find that there's actually a tour of Dicken's Camden Town that afternoon.Out of curiosity, you look up how much this kind of house would be worth, what local rates and taxes are. And you read a review of a local citizen's view of schools in the area.Moving on you see a tree, which looks unusual and casually click on it to reveal its genus. Then you click on car you like the look of, to find out how much it would cost second hand (2003 model), where you might be able to find one and what the gas consumption is like.You get the picture, I'm sure. But how does this all work?The information would be from a variety of new and existing online sources. Some compiled especially for the Mobile Wikipedia by citizen contributors, some merely linked to sites that are already there. Citizen journalists would create the physical world links and then edit how the information was presented online - probably when they were back at a terminal more suited to the purpose. This might be a PC, or when they were able to dock their phone into a larger screen and keyboard combo.Like the original Wikipedia, it would have potentially unlimited links and content and would be self-editing.Technically, there are two choices. The low tech version would be a physical link, which was visible to the user. An example, might be a Yellow Arrow with a code to input into your mobile. More sophisticated, something like a Shot Code which allows you to take a photo of it with your phone and thus link you to the information.Realistically, these methods are not too good long term. We can't have Yellow Arrows stuck all over the place, after all.Much better and altogether slicker would be something along the lines of the Siemens Digital Graffiti. This would allow you to discover links manually. But in the short term, while the world was being populated with links, your phone would alert you when a link was in the area and provided you'd activated that facility and that the alert corresponded to a stated interest.This would allow three people to walk down the same street together. Anne gets nothing sent to her phone. Bill gets Wikipedia style information on everything available - he's that kind of guy. Charlie gets a marketing coupon for a secret sale a local man's clothes shop is giving - he's such a fashion victim.So, to be clear. No marketing messages if you don't want them. And these would be targeted to your profile and preferences.So will Jimmy Wales, the man with the vision, money and drive to make Wikipedia happen rise to this next challenge? Or will someone else pick up the gauntlet and create this huge legacy that few people ever have the opportunity to even contemplate? Culture31269@blogcritics.org Sun, 19 Jun 2005 10:34:22 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/27/042415.php Russell BuckleyThe Kansas City.com (free subscription required or sign in via my pals at the cheeky Bug Me Not) reports about a new service from Sprint, which got me thinking.The Sprint Business Mobility Framework is a service that tracks employees' movements. It sends out alerts to management when they stray outside the designated Geofence and reports a "breadcrumb" trail of where they have been. Finally, it can tell managers which employee is nearest to a given point in the event of a service need - think the nearest taxi or plumber.I've written about these kind of employee tracking devices before and especially about the insensitivity of the companies promoting such schemes. Their CEOs frequently make really funny quips about electric shock therapy and just manage to stop chortling about death squads to round up straying employees.I've also pointed out that studies show that when employees are trusted, productivity increases. The opposite is true; when you patently don't trust people and use this kind of technology, you're encouraging them to try to beat the system. It doesn't take a genius to work out that these systems track devices, not people. So just as we used to clock mates in and clock them out, in the old days of punching bits of card, some employees will find themselves sitting in a warehouse surrounded by colleagues' mobile phones on Friday afternoons.If your company is considering one of these services, you have a real personnel issue at the heart of the company and there's nothing for it - your Board of Directors must resign at once. Anyone who confuses treating a symptom, rather than the disease itself, simply lacks judgment.In the UK, privacy died years ago as we happily allowed "them" to install CCTV cameras everywhere. So much so, that the average citizen living or working in an urban area gets filmed 70 or so times a day. This has led, among other things, to a rise in hoodies and base ball caps as fashion items among kids, as they seek to avoid identification.Sure, wearing a hoodie doesn't make you a criminal. But just as low slung jeans was a homage to the hard homies who had gone to jail (and had their belts taken away) in urban America, hoodies nod at the hard kids who wear them with crime in mind.And now Bliar wants everyone to carry ID cards. A truly unbelievable waste of public money, as what all these things have in common is that the crims always find a way 'round them and ordinary citizens are inconvenienced.Next, we have the camera phone in every pocket - and soon it'll be a video phone. This means that any crime or private moment has a very good chance of being filmed. You snog your girlfriend with a bit of passion, to find a couple of kids are filming you. Or they preempt the action with a little Happy Slapping.Sting recently had to abandon a skiing holiday, as he was fed up with the crowd of amateur paparazzi following him around.Russell Beattie was also violated this week, privacy-wise. While he was trying to activate his Boost mobile phone account, he was asked such intrusions as the age of his father and brother - not information he had ever given them.The other area that springs to mind in this little rant is reputation. One of the next big boom areas (just my opinion) is online reputation management systems. These will collate data on all of us, specifically for prospective employees. Not only will resume/CV accuracy be monitored factually, colleagues' and managers' opinions might be collected, leaving no room to hide.While you might reasonably object to having your name on these databases and possibly even succeed in requesting removal, this may be like being asked to be removed from the employment market altogether. After all, if you ask for removal, you must, de facto, have something to hide.It's bad enough having your credit constantly monitored if the company has made a mistake and downgrades you. Apparently, it can take months to get it corrected. But suppose effectively your "right to work" gets accidentally compromised or deliberately so, by a colleague with a grudge?Finally, while defenders of these systems say that "law abiding citizens have nothing to hide," this is only relatively true in a democracy. If we ever see a return to some of the regimes (of the left or right) that dominated Europe last century, such exhaustive information on every citizen would make Big Brother look optimistic. And if you automatically think that Big Brother is the TV programme, go and read the complete works of Orwell now and sit at the back of the class until you've finished.While we may think a return to those politics are impossible these days, I don't think we can be complacent. These schemes all make the rise of such regimes much, much easier than in the past. "Information is power" and all that.I started this rant about LBS tracking for employees (and let's throw in child tracking as well - evil trade that it is). But please don't think I'm against LBS generally - I think it'll add huge value to our lives and enrich society in many ways. But like all technology, there are good and bad uses for it.Very often it's the obvious uses that are inappropriate, while the good ones take a little more thought and crafting to emerge.Let's pray that the good uses win out in the end.Via W2 Forum (subscription required) Sci/Tech30216@blogcritics.org Fri, 27 May 2005 04:24:15 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/22/143007.php Russell BuckleyFollowing my interview with Tomi Ahonen a few weeks ago, I've been reading the new book Communities Dominate Brands he co-wrote with Alan Moore.If you've only got time for a top-line opinion and you're interested in marketing, here it is; very good, you should read it. Here's a slightly more meaty review.Unlike the scope of Tomi's previous books, which are focused on mobile, this one has a much wider scope, encompassing a look at everything that's happening in media, blogging, mobile, marketing and online communities. If you're a regular reader of this blog, many of the themes and case studies will already be familiar to you - indeed, I joked with Tomi that if I was to write another book at the moment, it would have been this one!That's not to imply in any way that you won't learn anything from the book&#8212far from it. It also does a very fine job of bringing these themes together and making sense of the big picture.It's very hard to summarise a closely-worded 250 page book into a blog post. But if I had to pick the most important conclusion it would be that the days of traditional, advertising-led, interruptive marketing, dominated by big media, are over. The ROI from this type of activity is in rapid decline now, with swathes of big business in denial&#8212led by the ad agencies and the big media owners. Pretty soon they'll move on to the anger stage of the grieving process, like we see in the music industry.New marketing is emerging and it's about dialogue, or engagement. Companies need to engage with their customers in an authentic, honest and open manner. One of the many case studies in book is the infamous Kryptonite Bike Locks, which I've covered before. While it was certainly true that their locks could be opened with a Bic pen, what enraged people and caused such a problem was that the company ignored them. As Hugh McLeod so memorably put it:DAY ONE: KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best. THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are the best.DAY TWO: KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best. THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are still the best.DAY THREE: KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best. THE MARKET: Ummm... yeah I'm sure they are, but what's all this about some recent video on the net that's supposed to show how you can crack your locks in 10 seconds using a simple Bic ballpoint pen?DAY FOUR: KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best. THE MARKET: Hey, I just saw that video on a friend's website. And I'm kinda ticked off because I just paid $60 for one of your new locks 3 weeks ago, and I'm wondering if a Bic pen can crack my lock or not... does the pen crack all Kryptonite locks or just one or two models?DAY FIVE: KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best. THE MARKET: Hey, I just visited your website and saw no mention of the Bic pens. What the hell are you doing about it? Are you going to fix the locks? Are you going to give me a refund?DAY SIX: KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best. THE MARKET: No, they're not. You guys are assholes. At a cost of $12 million, so far, I'm sure they won't make that mistake again&#8212if they survive, that is. They abused the trust of the community and they've been made to pay the price. The trouble is, you can't get that trust back so easily.[Speaking of Hugh, it occurs to me that the book could have been improved by the judicious scattering of a few cartoons, or something to lift the fairly intense layout. I don't mean the writing style itself is intense, just the way the book is laid out. This is only a small point, though.]New marketing is not about engaging individuals in dialogue, but about working with them as clusters of individuals&#8212or the communities that have organically formed online and through networks of connected mobile phones. People are going to talk about your company or brand, whether you like it or not. You can't set the agenda or control the conversation. But you can listen and react. And you can use this feedback to improve your company and its products.And you know the scary part? It's cheap. Sure, you need bright people to lead and manage the change. You still need smart people in an organisation to engage with customers. But there's no cost of media anymore. And that's why those who understand this in the ad agencies are desperately seeking a way out, while the rest of the Ruperts blithely continue to wine and dine increasingly dissatisfied clients.This has fundamental implications for PR agencies too. If clients engage in direct customer communication, why do they need to use the press as a conduit, which just distorts what you want to say?The other very important message of the book is the importance of Alpha Users. These people are authorities within their community on a given subject. Seth Godin had a similar concept with Sneezers and Malcolm Gladwell with Mavens. But the basic idea is that these are the people who evangelise about your products in the community. If you focus your engagement on them, they'll tell everyone else.Bloggers are typical Alpha Users. If you engage with a blogger in the right way, they can deliver your company credibility and sales. If you engage in the wrong way, they can do real damage.On to the book itself. I don't think I've ever read a book that has such a contemporary feel to it. Even the case studies feel current and relevant in an environment where even a few months can seem like years. The price of this is that the editorial process seems to have been a little rushed, with quite a few typos and some areas which could be more polished. In some ways, it's bloggings answer to a book - the writing isn't perfect, but it's open, honest, readable and authentic. Personally, I'm happy to trade a few typos for speed-to-market, so it's hardly a major criticism.I do have one other major disappointment with the book, being quite honest. That is that the people who need to read it (big company Marketing Directors, Ad agency CEO's, big media CEO's) probably won't, and will stay cocooned in their own little worlds. This is going to be very bad news for their companies. So if you know one of these people, you'll be doing them a favour by buying them a copy&#8212even if they might not thank you for it right now.By the way, I don't benefit if you do buy a copy, in case you were wondering. I did get a free review copy though. Books29925@blogcritics.org Sun, 22 May 2005 14:30:07 EDT