Influential Marketing Blog

10 Easy Ways to Piss Off A Blogger (from SXSW)

At SXSW yesterday, I ran a "core conversation" called 10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger.  This year at SXSW, these aptly titled "conversations" were a type of speaking slot where there was a round table and the challenge of engaging people in a discussion about a particular topic.  Mine was one close to my heart ... the best way to piss off a blogger.  I had created a Facebook event page before the session to try and build the buzz and going into yesterday I had almost 50 people signed up.  So I figured we'd get about 20 to 25.  After the session, I spoke to one of the participants who said he counted about 70 - so we had a really tough challenge of having a conversation with 70 people.

Learning from some of the feedback that came from a panel on Social Media Metrics that I had participated in a day earlier, my main aim was to make sure everyone walked out of the session with what I had promised them ... the 10 easy ways.  The format of the session was a bit different too - as there was no presentation or powerpoint, and I didn't walk in with the 10 ways.  Instead our aim was to collaborate, discuss and walk out with the ten.  I think we managed to make it to more than ten.  A few folks kindly offered to take some live notes and have posted about the ten, but without further ado ... here are the 10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger, as defined by a group of super smart and engaged folks who all made it to be part of this conversation:

1. Invite bloggers to participate in something and don't give them a chance to talk about themselves. This was what I opened the session with, followed by letting people around the group introduce their name and their blogs.  A list of people who chose to share their names and blogs is at the end of this post.
2. Pretend to be a "long time reader" when you actually just visited the blog once and read a few posts.
3. Use a blogger's content or identity without giving proper attribution
4. Send irrelevant information that exhibits no understanding of what they care about or fail to personalize it
5. Add them to a PR list and don't let them get off of it
6. Make it hard for them to link to something by hiding your content behind usernames/passwords, giving them uncertain directions or requiring them to take multiple steps
7. Ask for favors as part of your first outreach to them without building a relationship or earning the right to ask them to help you
8. Fail to identify yourself or falsely represent yourself as something or someone you are not.  This includes failing to mention something about your or your employer that is relevant.
9. Set an unreasonable expectation for a blogger and expect things in an unreasonable amount of time ... ie - sending informaiton and expecting them to post within a few hours.  Quick poll of our session showed that for the vast majority of bloggers, it's not their day job.
10. Get the journalism relationship right.  Some bloggers consider themselves journalists and others don't.  It was clear from the participants that this is a tricky subject, as some people also noted after the session. 

I think we actually ended up with more than ten, but these were the main ones.  I'm looking forward to hopefully hearing more thoughts from some of the participants as the SXSW haze settles and they get a chance to get back to their computers.  It's a crazy show ... lookout for a post here tomorrow on what I think has been the most interesting cultural and technological story of the show: the dominant use of Twitter.

Finally, special thanks to Aaron from Longstation and Steve Harbula (Director of Marketing for the Denver Broncoes) who were both kind enough to take live notes and post them almost right away after our session.

============================

Partial List of Participating Bloggers (from a list passed around - we missed many bloggers, so please add your name and thoughts in a comment if you were there and I'll update the post):

• Destin Joy Layne - The Green Fork http://www.eatwellguide.org
• Biray Alsac - Fitness & Technology Blog http://www.befitwithberay.com
• Beth Carls - K-Ized Mindoh! http://mindoh.wordpress.com
• Lindsay Yaw - Body, Mind & Soul http://www.bethree.com
• Sunil Doshi - http://blog.swiftmob.com
• Adam Brohman - http://amediacirc.us
• Brian Buser - http://www.minggl.com
• Daniel Englander - http://www.greentechmedia.com
• Meghan Warby - http://withoutayard.blogspot.com
• Ruth Ward - http://ruthward.wordpress.com | http://www.sxswm.com
• Jonny Goldstein - http://www.jonnygoldstein.com
• Eric Bryn - Real Estate Relativity http://www.realestaterelativity.com
• Heather Barmore - No Pasa Nada http://www.nopasanada.com
• Amy Bills - Bullblog http://www.bulldogsolutions.com/bullblog
• Eloy Zuniga - http://www.eloyz.com
• Aaron Long - http://www.longstation.com
• Greg Swan - Perfect Porridge http://www.perfectporridge.com
• Danielle Kozich - http://danipennsylvania.blogspot.com
• David J. Neff - Futuring and Innovation in Non Profits http://www.fispace.org
• Marjan Jindrich - Consumers Union Blogs http://www.consumersunion.org/blog
• Tara Anderson - http://iquitforlijit.typepad.com/i_quit_for_lijit/
• Eric Berto - http://www.etelos.com/blogs
• Jackie Huba - http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/
• Samantha Warren - http://www.badassideas.com

Also, thanks to Maura Welch, Sanjay Sabrani, Tracy Locke, Liz Link, Shannon McKarney, Gladys Kong, and many other participants who didn't add their names to the list for sharing their perspective as people who interact with bloggers and want to do it better.  We may have focused on ways to piss off bloggers, but clearly there is some great interest and emerging guidelines on how to end up with happier bloggers.  For reference, the guidelines from our 360 Digital Influence team that I mentioned to several of you at the session can be found here: http://blog.ogilvypr.com/?p=244

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Notes From the Twitterbowl: The Top 3 Strategic Super Bowl Ads

Last night during the big game, I joined a large group of marketing and social media types to share some live thoughts about the Super Bowl ads through Twitter (sending them to the @superbowlads user account).  The aptly named "Twitterbowl" consisted of lots of folks live rating ads and sharing some feedback about the ads live during the game.  Voting on ads in real time is nothing new ... however doing it and reading the thoughts of my other contacts during the game was an interesting way to experience the ads.  Though I would have expected a more sophisticated commentary from the group as a whole, being marketing people and all.  Many folks seemed to just be rating ads on entertainment value as opposed to whether or not the message actually made sense for the brand, but it was still a fun experience as part of the game.

Aside from realizing that people can really have completely opposite views of what makes a successful Superbowl ad, it was also clear that all of us love to have our opinions.  Everyone decides what is most entertaining for them, but since this is a marketing blog, I'm going to go with my own top 3 Super Bowl ad list based on strategic value for the brand.  So, here is my list of the top three 3 strategic ads that were creative, engaging, messaged properly and could actually have a real impact in terms of sales (and only one of them made the USAToday Top 10 popular ads list):

1. Tide "My Talking Stain":  This spot was easily relatable (everyone has had that stain they couldn't do anything about), funny, and generated awareness for an under appreciated product  In the Twitterbowl, most folks loved it, and it will easily have the recall when anyone is walking the grocery market aisles and sees it.  The only downside?  The word in the Twitterbowl was that their marketing site (www.mytalkingstain.com) went down under all the traffic.
   
2. Under Armour "Under Army":  Any company that is number 3 in a competitive industry has perhaps the most to gain from a Super Bowl ad because it positions them on equal footing with the other two.  For Under Armour, this meant taking the reigns from Nike and Adidas with their "Under Army" spot, which they did brilliantly.  Not to mention it was one of the rare Super Bowl ads that (gasp!) has something to do with football.  Ironically, it wasn't popular in the Twitterbowl - but for the masses and Under Armour's target audience, I think it was spot on.
3. Audi "Godfather": Audi's spot was a big deal in marketing circles before the Super Bowl even aired because it represented a rare entry from Audi into the Super Bowl mix.  The ad itself was a brilliant parody of the Godfather that positioned the new __________ as the ultimate in new luxury.  Anyone want to bet what percentage of the boomer males watching the game were picturing themselves in that car?

Of course, I am tough on these ads because I am putting the often forgotten lens of strategic value over deciding what was a good creative execution.  If we just looked at entertainment value, which I am sure lots of polls are doing today, the winners were probably a few of the Bud ads and the Pepsi Night at the Roxbury spoof.  Worst ads?  They have to be the Gatorade/Vitamin Water/Sobe combos (seriously, can anyone tell them apart?), the CareerBuilder nasty exploding heart ad (they should have stuck with the monkeys), and the singing Comcast ads (which, thankfully, most of the country probably didn't see).  Big props to Dell and Lionel also, for being the only advertiser (that I could tell) to actually be part of the Twitterbowl. 

Oh, and it was a great game to watch too ... congrats to Giants fans everywhere.  If it can't be the Redskins, it might as well be the Giants doing the NFC East proud.

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Ironweed Films and The Secret of Repackaging That Works

Would you join a book of the month club?  How about taking the packaged tour to see the sights at a new travel destination instead of exploring them on your own?  There was a time when I didn't understand why anyone would choose something like that.  After all, if you can have all the fun of seeing a new place for the first time, why pollute it with a watered down tour designed for tourists (the one word no real traveller wants to associate themself with).  The easy thing to think is that packaged options are for amateurs.  And no one wants to be an amateur.  But then I went to the Outback in Australia.  For whatever reason, I ended up on an adventure tour instead of just getting a car and going.  I had already seen the Outback once by car exploring on my own.  This time, with a friend visiting, I took the tour.  Along the way, we took in a wounded kangaroo to drop off at a shelter and slept under a deeply coloured sky turned extreme by all the smoke from bush fires in the air.  Every experience on the tour was one I would not have had exploring by myself. 

The reason why I started with this story is because this weekend I was thinking again about the power of packaging when it comes to marketing an experience.  I spent the day saturday with a great team of people working on the marketing strategy for my coming book launch and one of the things we talked about was how to package the experience.  It got me thinking about the last packaged experience I joined ... a group called Ironweed Films.  The company has a charge to share great (and underappreciated) independent films with their members each month.  It is, essentially, a film of the month club.  What sets their experience apart, though, is that in addition to a single full length film, they also package it with 2-3 other short films and put a custom cover around the DVD.  The result is that you don't just get a single movie every month, you get an exploration of an idea or theme, played out over several films - and even the chance to take action on their website with a related activity for each film collection.  Past topics have included nature, abortion, elections, iraq, and the future of food.  What makes Ironweed Films stand out offers a lot of lessons on how to do repackaging right.  For those of you who have a service that you are looking to package, read these lessons first:

1. Offer added value.  The biggest thing Ironweed does is that they go through all the films out there to pair up films that explore similar themes.  As a result, each month you don't just get a single point of view on an immerssive topic, you get several.  In most cases, unless you were in the industry and looking for these films all the tme, they include films you might never have seen.
2. Don't forget about having your own brand. When you are repacking things from others, it may be difficult to create your own unique and memorable brand.  Where Ironweed succeeds is in designing their own brand that members can associate with.  Everything from the brown paper envelope with purple writing that the DVDs arrive in, as well as the numbering of monthly DVDs (kind of like episodic comic books) to give you the sense that each DVD is a collectible item add to the branded approach.
3. Make it about passion.  There are essentially two models for repackaging items.  The first is to repackage multiple things for convenience or to make more money.  The classic example of that would be those packages of 4 colors of peppers sold in the supermarkets.  It's all about ease for you, and they charge you for it.  The other model, and the one that Ironweed promotes, is building their repackaging around a mission to bring more independent films to more people (a cause they believe in).  As a result, the passion makes the site and service even more appealing.

Aside from my Outback experience, I am still not sure that I am a fan of taking the packaged experience when travelling.  That can still be a pretty inconsistent gamble.  When it comes to repackaging an experience though, Ironweed has a model worth considering.

Influential Marketing Blog Featured in Wall Street Journal

Many of you may have already caught this yesterday, but this blog was cited in the Recommended Reading  section of the Wall Street Journal yesterday in an article by Keith Huang.  As Jay Berkowitz from Ten Golden Rules shares on his team blog, my blog was one of 60 resources that they recommended to the journalist as part of their reading list and was selected from that list as a recommended resource for companies looking to "optimize their online presence."  Here's the writeup:

Influential Marketing Blog, rohitbhargava.typepad.com
Rohit Bhargava's blog is intellectual and educational. In a recent post, he discusses the art of stamp collection and how, even today, many smaller countries use stamps as a key marketing tool. He writes, 'Next time you pass a post office in any country, pay attention to how they are using their philately to promote the country, cater to tourists, or commemorate moments of significance.'

It is a great media hit and to be selected from a list of what I am guessing were 60 stellar resources is flattering.  I'm in awe at being included among the other bloggers and authors mentioned in the article - including Seth Godin, Steve Rubel, Matt Cutts, John Battelle, Chris Anderson, Joseph Jaffe, and Danny Sullivan. Thanks to Jay for including me in this great list, and to Keith for selecting to include my blog!

Barbie Fights the Tyranny of Toy Packaging

This past weekend, my son had his third birthday - a great moment in fatherhood for me because it's really the first birthday where he gets really cool toys that Daddy can spend an entire Sunday afternoon playing with.  I think I speak for all Dads when I say Baby Einstein doesn't really do it for us.  Give me a projectile shooting Batman doll anyday.  Unfortunately, a large part of Sunday was actually spent combating the diabolical packaging for most toys seemingly designed to keep the toys sealed inside plastic for life.  As most parents already know, if there was a nuclear war, most toy packaging would survive along with the cockroaches.  If you could make a protective bunker out of both, you'd be untouchable.

Mattel is trying to take a friendlier approach as profiled in this month's issue of Fast Company magazine.  Apparently, after extensive testing, Mattel learned that little girls don't enjoy watching their Daddy's crying in frustration after trying unsuccessfully to pry Barbie dolls from their impenetrable packaging.  They also learned that kids don't have the patience to untwist those twisty things and prefer to just pull at a toy to try and get it out (or fling it across the room if they are a three year old boy).  Hopefully they didn't pay too much for those insights.  The result they are coming out with, however, is the sort of packaging parents dream about.  Taking inspiration from food packagers, who have done a good job in many cases to offer easy access opening through single pull tabs, they redesigned Barbie packaging completely.  Now the package is easy to open, can be kept around as a storage container, and is something that girls can open themselves.  Better yet, it stands up to all the rigors of cross pacific travel that most toys make to get from their place of manufacture in Asia to a retail outlet in the US.  Apparently, that is the real reason for the iron clad packaging - so the toys remain in place after their rough international journey.

The whole example is a case study in addressing a pain point for your customers and making the experience better while still addressing the functional needs of the packaging.  I strongly encourage anyone who has any input into product packaging to read the full story in the magazine or online.  It's almost enough to make me go out and buy a Barbie.  Except that a small part of me still wants to keep that Batman packaging around ... you know, just in case that we ever need that nuclear bunker.

What Most Social Networks Do That People Hate ...

I sign up for a lot of social networks.  Part of my job involves reviewing new sites and knowing what is being launched and as a result I end up signing up for 2-3 new sites a week.  Of course, I don't actively use all those sites - but for those that I have signed up for recently, as well as the dozen or so that I do actually use, they all seem to make the same mistakes.  I had a conversation this past week about some of these choices and it turns out I'm not alone in my frustration.  So if you are launching a social network, or have some input into making one better, here are just a few of the things that people hate.  Avoid them and you're already on your way to standing above more than a few of the social networks being launched out there. 

1. Pretending users don't belong to other networks. If you sold breakfast cereal, would you believe that your customers would just walk into a store, buy your cereal and walk out?  Of course not.  People belong to multiple networks and yours is just one of them.  If you really want to stand out, offer them a way to integrate their experience and take a page from online retail.  When I hit Target.com - I can log in with my Amazon.com username and password.  If they can use the same data, so can you.
2. Creating custom email messages and inboxes. Just about every social network does this.  When I get a message in Facebook, I get a useless link that tells me I have a message.  To read it, I need to click on the link.  We are all used to email.  Just figure out a way to send us an email with the details when something happens.  When someone comments on a blog post, I get an email from Typepad with the full comment.  That's useful.  Having to access ten sites every day to pick up custom messages isn't.
3. Forgetting about basic usability. Many social networks do many things, and they are usually designed for many uses.  Basic usability is the one thing that gets left behind.  MySpace has the most confusing navigation and design since dotcom retail sites in 2000.  Facebook has secret links that are impossible to navigate to (like when you have friend requests and you are logged in and can't find where to accept them).  Ning.com lets you join lots of networks, but I haven't yet found a way to easily navigate back and forth between the many networks I belong to.  These are common tasks and users are having trouble with them.  To improve, social networks should take a page from online retail sites and learn how to rework their interface for the key calls to action.  If that's too hard, just sit and watch 2-3 relatively new users struggle to navigate their way through your site.  You'll get a list of issues to fix out of that, I promise.
4. Forcing unnecessary data collection. When first joining a social network, there is nothing worse than being forced to fill out an endless form with all sorts of data that they don't need and you don't want to give.  Just ask me for a username, password and email (ok, and age if you're afraid teenagers might infiltrate your network).  The rest can come later, if I actually like and start using your network.

Anything else you want to tell your social network?  Let's all collaborate and make them less painful together.

The Complete Gallery Of Simpsons Movie Marketing

In what may go down in history as one of the biggest integrated movie marketing efforts in the history of Hollywood, the pre-promotion for the upcoming Simpsons Movie is in full swing right now.  Unlike many other Hollywood promotions, the marketing for the Simpsons movies is going beyond billboard and print, beyond television, and beyond even interactive or viral.  This campaign has everything from creating your own animated avatar (that's mine on the left!) and having a chance to star in an upcoming episode, to winning the chance to get the premiere of the movie in your hometown provided you live in one of 14 Springfields around the US Vermont (the winning city ).  This post is an attempt to round all these marketing efforts up in a visual way.  Be warned, you might end up wasting an hour or more following all of the links below ... so read at your own risk!

• The Official Simpsons Movie Site
• Official Simpsons Marketing Partner Site
• Xbox Contest
• JetBlue Contest
• JetBlue Downloadable Movie Banners
• Be In An Animated Simpsons Episode 7-11 Promotion
• List of 7-11s Nationwide To Get A Kwik-E-Mart Makeover
• List of Simpsons Inspired Products To Be Sold at 7-11/Kwik-E-Marts
• USAToday Springfield Hometown Movie Premiere Challenge (UPDATE: Vermont Wins!)
• Simpsons MySpace Page
• Kwik-E-Mart in Burbank, CA Flickr Gallery
• Kwik-E-Mart in Dallas, TX Flickr Gallery
• Kwik-E-Mart in Orlando, FL Flickr Gallery
• Kwik-E-Mart in Bladensburg, MD (outside DC) Flickr Gallery
• Kwik-E-Mart in Denver, CO Flickr Gallery
• Kwik-E-Mart in Vancouver, BC (Canada) Flickr Gallery
• LAist Writeup of Burbank, CA Kwik-E-Mart
• DCist Writeup of DC Area Kwik-E-Mart
• Update: Kwik-E-Mart in New York City Flickr Gallery
• Update: Kwik-E-Mart in Las Vegas Flickr Gallery
• Update: Kwik-E-Mart in Mountain View, CA Flickr Gallery
• Update: Simpsons X Vans Custom Skateboard Shoes (via comment from rj at SneakerPlay)
  
  • Simpsons X Vans (Mr. Cartoon Design)
  • Simpsons X Vans (Gary Painter & Geoff McFetridge Designs)
  • Simpsons x Vans (Tony Munoz & Taka Hayashi Designs)
  • Simpsons x Vans (Futura & Todd “Reas” James Designs)
• Update: Simpsons Create 180ft Homer Chalk Drawing in UK Field (Via reader Mark Tong)
• Update: Ben & Jerry's Release Two New Simpsons 1-Day Only Flavours (Need an image if anyone has one)
• Update: Simpsons Mobile site offers phone downloads and first mobile game
• Update: Burger King Simpsonize Me Site to "Simpsonize" a photo you upload
• Update: Full story and fashion spread in Harper's Bazaar magazine
• Update: 4 Different Collectible Simpsons Covers for Entertainment Weekly (Via DeliFaks)

If anyone has any other links of marketing related efforts from partners, or other images from Kwik-E-Marts, please email me or leave a comment to this post and I'll add them.  Also, below are lots of images and screengrabs from these efforts -- enjoy!

The Simpsons Movie Poster (with every character from the show):

Simpsons - Create Your Own Avatar Tool:

Simpsons USA Today Springfield Challenge:

Simpsons Official Partner Page - www.seeyellow.com:

Simpsons MySpace Page and "Simpsonize Your World" Contest:

7-11 "Get Animated Into A Simpsons Episode" Contest:

7-11 Real Store "Kwik-E-Mart" Makeovers:

Images from Kwik-E-Mart Makeovers (images taken from Flickr Galleries referenced above):

Simpsons XBox Promotion (Winner of "Lamest Promotion" of the lot so far):

JetBlue Blog Takeover by Mr. Burns (Winner of "Most Unique"):

JetBlue City Destination Bubbles (brilliantly boils the essence of each city into a single Simpsonesque stereotype - 14 cities in total):

 

And last, but not least ... a real life Squishee! (from DCist post linked above):

Update: Simpsons X Vans Sneaker Designs (images from www.hypebeast.com & www.honeyee.com)

UPDATE (07/11/07): Vermont Wins USA Today Contest for Hometown Premiere

UPDATE (07/13/07): Influential Marketing Blog reader Christopher Trela shares this image of In-Theater Marketing from NY

Update (07/19/07): SimpsonizeMe Site From Burger King (with funny error messages when site doesn't respond):

Update (07/19/07): Simpsons Mobile Website and Mobile Meltdown Marketing Game:

Update (07/19/07): Fashion Spread In Harper's Bazaar (via FYI-Mag)

Update (07/19/07): Simpsons "Homer Erectus" 180ft Chalk Drawing at Cerne Abbas (via Influential Marketing Blog reader Mark Tong):

Update (07/20/07): 4 Different Collectible Covers for Entertainment Weekly Magazine

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Live Earth Includes DC, Thanks To The Native Americans

Today might be the largest simultaneous social marketing event ever staged - as Live Earth concerts light up stadium stages on 7.5 stages on 7 continents.  In case you're wondering, the "0.5" stage is right here in DC.  The concert taking place now is at the American Indian Museum after they offered their venue for a "Mother Earth" version of the concert.  Why this venue instead of the preferred larger one on the steps of the Capitol in DC?  Mainly because partisan politics from Republicans who believe global warming is a "hoax" (led by James Inhofe) threatened to keep the DC event from happening and blocked it from taking place in Gore's originally preferred venue.  Regardless, the event is here in DC and I will be heading out to see it live and share photos later tonight.

In the meantime, there are live video streams and information available at http://liveearth.msn.com/ as well as a full schedule of artists and shows.  Despite this live satellite feed - I can't help but wish for more integration of social media so I could share in people's experiences of the shows real time throughout the day.  There is a Live Earth blog, but it is authored by a single individual who is going to the concert in NY and watching the rest online and on TV like the rest of us.  Even the Unofficial Live Earth blog is mostly updated by a single person.  Michael Prospero from the Fast Company Blog is promising to live blog the New York event, and I am sure there are other similar individuals at the other concerts doing the same - but there doesn't seem to be a way to collect this aggregated conversation in a single location, which seems like a big missed opportunity. For a global concert event across 8 cities - one person is never going to be able to share the entire experience of the event in a comprehensive way because they cannot be in more than one (or 2) places at once.  If there was ever a moment where I might actually care to read Twitter updates from lots of people I don't know, this would be it. 

Regardless, watching these events unfold live around the world is addictive and I've been spending much of a day where I intended to work on my book watching the films and concert performances in HD on TV.  The campaign has a very simple call to action and plenty of easy ways for each and every person to make a pledge to "answer the call."  Every social marketing campaign should be so relevant and have such a clear way for anyone participate.  If you haven't seen any of the shows, be sure to visit the Live Earth site today - and stay tuned for a report from the DC event and hopefully some live photos from me later this evening.

Update Rant - Can someone explain to me why the sound and video crew covering the DC event are the only ones that don't seem to understand how to get a good camera shot (without sun flares or blue overtones) or how to get microphones to work where you can actually hear the singers performing?  There's a big step down in quality of the TV broadcast between the DC event and all the other events I have seen so far ...

Is Keeping Your "Classic" Version a Necessity?

Launching a site quickly around an idea to claim a first mover advantage is rapidly becoming a mantra for new Web 2.0 startup sites.  As new social networks and other types social media tools on websites pop up - many are simply exploring an idea quickly to see if it sticks, and aiming to put in more work to redesign or add features at a later stage.  Added to this is the large number of sites that have grown their audiences before the rise of Web2.0 competitors (and the increasingly formulaic design of Web 2.0 sites).  The result?  Redesigns are inevitable.  Technorati and Yahoo are just two of the many sites that have gone through recent redesigns to update an interface.  The only problem is, no matter how bad an interface is - once someone starts using it in that form, they are used to it.  The classic example is the keyboard, which was originally designed to slow down typists by placing common keys as far apart as possible.  Of course, people adapted, and every attempt now to replace the QWERTY keyboard has failed, despite the fact that new designs may be superior in every way.  Sometimes what people are used to wins despite every logical reason to switch.

If you put the rising number of sites going through redesigns together with the fact that older users will always have adapted to your old interface - you have the New Coke vs. Coke Classic conundrum.  For most of these sites, the new version sticks around (unlike Coke), however the necessity of keeping your "classic" version will be increasingly common as sites allow their longstanding users to continue using an older version of an interface that they are more comfortable with.  Yahoo has done this very well with their upgrades to Yahoo Mail - I am still running the "classic" version for my personal account.  Technorati has tried to take some steps towards this with http://s.technorati.com, but hasn't quite succeeded as some features users used to use often seem missing now (even if they are not).  In either case, the real question seems to be how long is reasonable to keep a "classic" version of an interface around.  I'm not talking about the screenshots you can get on the Wayback Machine - but a fully functioning old version of a site.  You certainly don't want to move ahead into the future updating two versions, and at some point the older version will be out of date.  Is it better, therefore, to just force all users to upgrade and use the new version?  Or should sites follow the old adage of giving their users what they want and avoid the possible fate of New Coke and their new interface being rejected?  As a user or a site creator, what do you think?

6 Dream Features Of The Ideal Social Network For Your Family

Almost everyone I know is sharing photos online with family, and some more web savvy families have full groups set up online to correspond with other family members across the world.  Over the last few weeks, I have come across several social networks aimed at helping families to communicate with one another.  The solutions range from slick interfaces to creating your family tree (Geni.com) to sites focused on bringing out the life stories of family members and sharing them with others (OurStory.com).  There are fairly good services for creating your family website (MyFamily.com*, TheFamilyPost.com or PongYang.com) as well as newer social media sites like Vox.com designed to help you create a family or personal blog.  Along with these are long running genealogy sites like Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com or OneGreatFamily.com - all of which let you add your family members and find out more about your ancestry. 

All of these sites have their own niche of great features, but the problem is there is no single destination that puts all of this together.  It's not easy to do, when you consider that a family social network (unlike any other kind of social network) is not held together by people with the same interest, or people of the same generation.  Familes are complex groups of people that in some cases share nothing more than a last name.  It therefore needs to translate well across generations, genders, interests, and even countries.  I have been seeking the ideal site to create my own network for my family - and have come up short so far.  This weekend I started thinking about what my ideal family social network would look like, and came up with some core features:

1. Visual Family Tree - This is the most readily available already, but it's an important and fun tool to see how everyone is related.  Features would be very easy to use with drag and drop simplicity, perfect for letting a member of my family from any generation participate.  Integrated into this would be the smarts of family history and ancestry look ups, as well as the types of identity look ups used by ZoomInfo to map profiles of individuals to existing content online under the same name.
2. Tiered Relationships - I don't know all of my family equally.  There is my immediate family of my wife, parents and brother.  Then there is a outward circle of family, such as cousins, that I am very close to.  And then there is the wider circle of family that I either have only met once, or am related to by name but don't know.  The ideal family social network would let me tier my relationships with family into one of three categories depending on the closeness of my relationship.  Every feature across the site would then be available for me to share with my 1st, 2nd, or 3rd tier relationships, as well as with everyone in my network.  VisiblePath has a good model for this tiered system and Linkedin has the original "degrees of separation" model.
3. Family Email Database - Probably one of the most frequently used and needed applications of a family social network would be a way to email all family or subsets of family.  It would have all the grouping and webmail features you would expect, but also integrate to popular online email programs and allow you to segment family into the tiers to determine who gets particular emails.  Finally, the ability to import email lists and synch between programs would be vital.  Yahoo Groups has one of the most popular interfaces today for people to manage these activities. 
4. Group Calendaring - This is probably the most useful function of an online network, namely to store everyone's birthdays and anniversaries.  Beyond this, however, there are many times when I have been on the road in San Francisco, for example, and wondering if a cousin of mine might also be travelling there.  Of course, we could email each other - but it would be so much more useful to see their whereabouts on a calendar.  Privacy would be in place to control what family level sees what information, and tools would be available to synch to Outlook or other calendar programs.  Examples of cool calendaring applications include 30Boxes or Calgoo.
5. Integrated Other Social Networks - Realizing that family spread across the world probably have profiles on one or more other social networks, a key tool of the ideal family social network would be the ability for all of these profiles to be linked to and included as part of people's profiles.  For the most common social networks, such as Flickr or MySpace or YouTube, the site would allow you to create a "family channel" that aggregates RSS content from all the sites into a single location and lets people subscribe based on their tiered relationships (ie - only subscribe to content from 1st tier family in your "family channel" page.
6. Recommendation Engine - People have always recommended products to one another and family members can be powerful voices to influence purchasing decisions.  Added to that, everyone has an Uncle that is good with cars, or a cousin who is a professional photographer.  Harnessing these expertises, the family social network would have a feature where people could create pages or recommendations about products or areas that they are passionate about.  This could also create the revenue model for the site, as people recommending products in an authentic environment like this is exactly the type of impression advertisers are dying to pay for.  Squidoo.com has a good model for sharing this type of expert content within an online community, and the now seemingly abandoned eFamily.com probably had a similar idea.

Most of these features exist in other sites, but no one has yet put all the pieces together.  The family social network could be the next big thing - after all, everyone has a family.  Now you have a list of the features and even a revenue model.  If you do find or build a site like this, let me know so I can be first in line to be a beta tester ...

* MyFamily has a "2.0" version that has recently launched which is worth checking out and seems to have many (but not all) of the features I mention above.

Flat Whites in DC: Why Thinking Outside Your Region Matters

There is a restaurant in the Washington DC area called Cassatts which is the only location in all of DC where you can get a flat white.  For most people that might not mean much, but for anyone who has lived in Australia or New Zealand, the thought of starting a morning without your flat white (an espresso based coffee drink similar to a latte) is unimaginable.  One of my common complaints about the DC area is that I have yet to find a coffee shop that serves a decent cup of coffee ... but Cassatts stands out for their signature coffee and uniquely Kiwi feel.  Why does Cassatts provide such a compelling experience?  Is it because the coffee just tastes better?  Or is it because they have brought something that is extremely common from another region into a place where they can stand alone?

Imagine the street vendors selling golgappas (also called pani puris) on Chowpatty beach in Mumbai relocated to the streets of San Francisco to offer the same street food to unsuspecting residents.  Or an authentic silver shop from the Taxco region of Mexico located in Philadelphia.  This is about more than importing products from one place to another and reselling them.  Anyone can do that.  Thinking outside the region is more about geographic displacement: bringing a business that is relatively common in one geography into a new location where it offers something unique and different.  Uniqueness is key in creating a story consumers will share with others, particularly when you think about the challenge globally.  Travellers go to far-away places to seek authentic experiences, and often do so because of the reputation of a certain place when it comes to food or products to buy.  If you can capture that experience and bring it to an unexpected place, you can have your own blue ocean.  That's the power of thinking outside the region.

Image Credits:
Rain.Forest Photostream on Flickr
Pani Puri Presentation on SlideShare from Thakkar

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4 Trends That Signal the Future of Online Retail

In the industry I work in, it's easy to get overly passionate about all of the new sites emerging every day that fit into this Web2.0 classification the industry has created.  The majority of these sites are willing to trade short term revenue for the prospect of building up a user base.  New users have become a metric that seems valued among these sites more highly than revenue.  I'm not arguing with the facts - recent events have certainly proved that getting bought out can be a viable business model, and reaching a certain threshold of new users is no small feat in a crowded marketplace.  But just in case you might think that this is the new business model to watch, don't forget about online retail.  Since the mid-nineties, consumers have been increasingly moving a share of their purchases online, and online retailers are the largest beneficiaries.  And they have not stood still.  Here are just a few trends that are shaping the future for online retailers, and demonstrating that while Web 2.0 social networking sites might have more sex appeal, online retail is still going strong:

1. User Experience 3.0 - If you want to really look that future of user interfaces and how streamlined they can get, there are several online retailers that are worth a look.  Netflix certainly has won it's share of rewards (though some might disagree and call that a social network), but one of the top sites that I recently visited was Endless.com, Amazon's new entry into the shoes and handbags category.  The site has a brilliant browsing and sorting navigation structure, easy tools to read about products, and seems to have corrected every criticism the more fashion conscious might have made about Amazon's tendency to overwhelm consumers with it's overcrowded product pages.  The result is a site extremely easy to use, with great prices for designer products, and even a killer promotion with their current promotion selling consumers with the promise of "negative $5 for overnight shipping."
2. Affiliate Marketing Fever - The ease of publishing your own site is driving more and more people to see their online efforts as a moneymaking source.  As this area explodes, it's not just driving huge profits for Google's Adwords, it's also driving a rapidly growing affiliate marketing craze online.  Ad:Tech in San Francisco this year was filled with Affiliate Marketing Networks that seemed oddly disconnected from the rest of the event - but were there recruiting hard and partying hard nonetheless.  There's no doubt the rise of affiliate marketing mirrors the growth of online retail, and will likely get even bigger and crazier as time goes on.
3. Promotion Code Shopping - It's common knowledge for most online consumers that it's ridiculously easy to find promotion codes and discounts to apply to just about any online retailer.  While most may not have as easy of an experience as I recently had by finding instructions to get a discount on filing my taxes through TurboTax from their Beta Community of users answering tax related questions, the ready availability of these codes is tapping into the sale oriented consumer that was profiled in the book Treasure Hunt.  Shutterfly is one company that has figured out how to use this to its benefit.  The site allows users to collect online promotion codes and save them in their account to use at any time before the expiration date.  The result is an ongoing brand experience and a high likelihood that consumers will return often for multiple orders.
4. Reinventing Retail Categories - The most often quoted examples of online retail in this category are sites like Priceline or eBay that turned traditional retail in their categories upside down.  Letting consumers set their own price for a hotel room or airline flight was a huge transition for the travel industry.  Today there are sites like www.bagborroworsteal.com that are finding similar ways to reinvent retail categories.  You might wonder (if you think about these things) that if Hollywood celebrities can just "borrow" brand name accessories for big events or momentous "one time only" occasions, why can't the rest of us?  As more new sites approach traditional businesses with an eye for innovation, online retail will continue to be a hotbed for new ideas.

The open question worth asking, I think, is how these lessons might be applied to the slate of social networking sites that may reasonably merge with online retail experiences.  Purists would claim that creating an online community and selling products or services in a retail sense should be mutually exclusive.  For now, they largely have their wish, but this will likely start to change.  That's a good thing.  As for me - I remain as passionate about finding new social networks and Web 2.0 sites as anyone ... but when it comes to where I would invest or choose to focus my business, online retail is really the force of the future.

2 Recaps of The Millennials Conference

Yesterday I moderated a panel on user generated content at the Millennials Conference put on by my friends at Digital Media Wire, an event that featured many brands, thinkers and even millennials themselves talking about media and marketing to this new generation of young people.  I published two separate summaries of the event, the first of which was about the multicultural thread that I noted throughout the event which you can read on the 360 Digital Influence team blog.  I am part of the 360 Digital Influence team and the group blog features lots of great ideas from folks on our team and is a worthwhile read.  The other recap was written for Anastasia and the readers of YPulse, a popular marketing blog all about targeting Millennials (alternately called Generation Y).  If you haven't seen of visited Ypulse and do any marketing targeting youth today, I highly recommend adding it to your list of blogs you read regularly.  And Anastasia has a new book out called Totally Wired which is also well worth picking up if you want to get inside the wired lives of the milllennial generation.

Links:
A Recap of The Millennials Conference On YPulse
The Multicultural Mindset of Millennials on the 360 Digital Influence Blog

The Indian Film Festival, Permanence and the Internet

Last night I had the chance to attend the opening of the Indian Film Festival here in LA, which opened with a film called Provoked featuring Aishwarya Rai and Naveen Andrews.  The film tackles the difficult topic of domestic violence and is based on a true story.  After watching the story being told and thinking about the film afterwards, I was drawn to the idea of permanence.  The film has been produced and released, and now offers a permanent testament to the story of Kiranjit Ahluwalia - a woman who was strong enough to overcome her situation of domestic abuse and offer inspiration to women around the world.  Film and books certainly have this aura of permanence, but what about the Internet? 

If you asked anyone a few years ago, they would have pointed to the inherently changeable nature of the web as proof that it will never have this permanence.  In a world where what is arguably the best source of information on the Internet is a site with millions of definitions for terms that can be changed everyday by anyone (Wikipedia), how could anyone believe that the Internet has the same permanence as a film or book?  Yet as we have seen with the recent scuffle around Steve Rubel's remarks on Twitter, what some might have considered the least permanent type of site possible, comments made online can indeed stick around for quite some time.  People who have created photos and webpages throughout their youth are contending with this permanence as they go out and start to seek jobs and manage their indiscretions that might be recorded and easily available to a potential employer through a web search.  Politicians are dealing with a new age of transparency on every legislative choice they have ever made being available for any voter to see.  Yes, permanence is alive and well on the Internet despite it's many flaws and inaccuracies.  It may not yet offer the same feeling of permanence as a film or book today, but there is no denying it has a feeling of permanence far beyond what it used to.  Here's an open question: do you think it will ever reach the same level at films and books?

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