Customer World

Customer conversations in a world without identities

I recently read a very thought provoking article by Alec - " Hankering for a world without identity or federation". Also, a lovely follow-up article on the same topic by Andriana. Also, there's a nice comment by Christopher Carfi on the same topic.

These articles raised serious questions in my mind about how marketers, in the future, will have to build conversations with customers without identity. The key issue raised in my head was - increasingly as more and more get customers get online or mobile( in developing markets like India, China and the like) they would like to control their identity & conversations with brands. I presume things like DNPC( Do Not Place Cookies), DNL( Do not link ads(without permission)), DNT(Do Not tag along - SMSs )etc. will increasingly gain importance.

At the same time , these mediums are also being used for transactions and  purchases more and more. Many of these articles talk about protecting identity but when you combine identity with transactional information, interests in various social networks,memberships in certain sites etc.- it provides a new dimension in building conversations  with customers.Marketers will need to use data from multiple sources -in real time- to understand customers, get into their inner circle by really being valuable to their lives not just providing or sending a marketing messages. Also, identities need to be confirmed from multiple sources of paths from where customers come. There is a nice diagram from Adriana that I have picked-up which brings this point alive:
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The key challenges and the winners of tomorrow will be the ones who are able to build conversations without identities. 

Lead management - Involve before you start!

A recent study from the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA)  shows that many companies are ignoring their sales lead management.

Their 2nd annual Sales Lead Management Study, conducted with 144 businesses in Southern California, revealed the following results:

• 68.8% don’t qualify leads before sending them to their sales teams
• 52.4% have no formal process for compiling sales forecast reports
• 82.8% don’t track ROI for lead generation investments
• 55% rated low satisfaction with their SFA/CRM system, at 5 or less on a 10-point scale
• 52.1% use no SFA/CRM system to track the lead process

My View:  The gap between sales & marketing departments has only grown over the years.Sales has had a siloed process in enterprises and in my experience getting sales to see & appreciate good quality leads is always big problem. On the other hand, I have always found, lack of understanding what a good lead is the problem of most lead generation programs. Often there is a mix of science, logic and an intuitive feeling in the salesperson's mind which a software or a process cannot replicate. But, my belief is that right at the inception of a lead generation program, you need to have the buy-in of the sales team. The lead generation team must be 'considered' a part of the sales team and may be that's the reason there's a term coined as 'inside sales'! Nevertheless, the lead generation team, the software and the process must be seamlessly integrated to succeed. It has to start before the program is implemented and announced. That's the key to its success.

Emerging Technology trends that will shape business and economic growth - McKinsey's perspective

Carleen Hawn has drawn-up a nice summary of McKinsey's article.

Technology alone is rarely the key to unlocking economic value: companies create real wealth when they combine technology with new ways of doing business. … we have identified eight technology-enabled trends that will help shape businesses and the economy in coming years. These trends fall within three broad areas of business activity: managing relationships, managing capital and assets, and leveraging information in new ways.

A. Managing relationships

1. Distributing cocreation

The Internet and related technologies … allow companies to delegate substantial control to outsiders—cocreation—in essence by outsourcing innovation to business partners that work together in networks. By distributing innovation through the value chain, companies may reduce their costs and usher new products to market faster by eliminating the bottlenecks that come with total control.

The Caution:
Companies pursuing this trend will have less control over innovation and the intellectual property that goes with it, however. They will also have to compete for the attention and time of the best and most capable contributors.

2. Using consumers as innovators

Consumers also cocreate with companies; the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, for instance… Companies that involve customers in design, testing, marketing (such as viral marketing), and the after-sales process get better insights into customer needs and behavior and may be able to cut the cost of acquiring customers, engender greater loyalty, and speed up development cycles.

The Caution:
But a company open to allowing customers to help it innovate must ensure that it isn’t unduly influenced by information gleaned from a vocal minority. It must also be wary of focusing on the immediate rather than longer-range needs of customers and be careful to avoid raising and then failing to meet their expectations.

3. Tapping into a world of talent

… Much as technology permits [companies] to decentralize innovation through networks or customers, it also allows them to parcel out more work to specialists, free agents, and talent networks…new talent-deployment models could emerge [and] changes in the nature of labor relationships could lead to new pricing models that would shift payment schemes from time and materials to compensation for results.

The Caution:
This trend should gather steam in sectors such as software, health care delivery, professional services, and real estate, where companies can easily segment work into discrete tasks for independent contractors and then reaggregate it … Competitive advantage will shift to companies that can master the art of breaking down and recomposing tasks.

4. Extracting more value from interactions

Companies have been automating or offshoring an increasing proportion of their production and manufacturing (transformational) activities and their clerical or simple rule-based (transactional) activities. As a result, a growing proportion of the labor force in developed economies engages primarily in work that involves negotiations and conversations, knowledge, judgment, and ad hoc collaboration—tacit interactions, as we call them. By 2015 we expect employment in jobs primarily involving such interactions to account for about 44 percent of total US employment, up from 40 percent today.

The Caution:
Tere is still substantial room for automating transactional activities, and the payoff can typically be realized much more quickly and measured much more clearly than the payoff from investments to make tacit work more effective. Creating the business case for investing in interactions will be challenging—but critical—for managers.

B. Managing capital and assets

5. Expanding automation

Companies, governments, and other organizations have put in place systems to automate tasks and processes [like] forecasting and supply chain technologies…. Now these systems are becoming interconnected through common standards for exchanging data and … this information can be combined in new ways to automate an increasing array of broader activities, from inventory management to customer service.

The Caution:
Automation is a good investment if it not only lowers costs but also helps users to get what they want more quickly and easily, though it may not be a good idea if it gives them unpleasant experiences. The trick is to strike the right balance between raising margins and making customers happy.

6. Unbundling production from delivery

Technology helps companies to utilize fixed assets more efficiently… Information and communications technologies handle the tracking and metering critical to the new models and make it possible to have effective allocation and capacity-planning systems. Amazon.com [has] expanded its business model to let other retailers use its logistics and distribution services [and] independent software developers … buy processing power on its IT infrastructure so that they don’t have to buy their own. Mobile virtual-network operators, another example of this trend, provide wireless services without investing in a network infrastructure.

The Caution:
Companies that make their assets available for internal and external use will need to manage conflicts if demand exceeds supply. A competitive advantage through scale may be hard to maintain when many players, large and small, have equal access to resources at low marginal costs.

C. Leveraging information

7. Putting more science into management

Technology is helping managers exploit ever-greater amounts of data to make smarter decisions and develop the insights that create competitive advantages and new business models. From “ideagoras” (eBay-like marketplaces for ideas) to predictive markets to performance-management approaches… Leading players are exploiting this information explosion with a diverse set of management techniques. Google fosters innovation through an internal market: employees submit ideas, and other employees decide if an idea is worth pursuing or if they would be willing to work on it full-time.

The Caution:
Leaders should get out ahead of this trend to ensure that information makes organizations more rather than less effective. Information is often power; broadening access and increasing transparency will inevitably influence organizational politics and power structures. Environments that celebrate making choices on a factual basis must beware of analysis paralysis.

8. Making businesses from information

Accumulated pools of data captured in a number of systems within large organizations or pulled together from many points of origin on the Web are the raw material for new information-based business opportunities… market imperfections include[ing] information asymmetries and the frequent inability of decision makers to get all the relevant data … allow middlemen and players with more and better information to extract higher [prices] by aggregating and creating businesses around it.

The Caution:
But that sword can cut both ways; today’s aggregators, for instance, may themselves be aggregated tomorrow. Companies relying on information-based market imperfections need to assess the impact of the new transparency levels that are continually opening up in today’s information economy.

Getting your blog strategy right

If you are a company having a blog where potential or current customers visit, Greg Verdino has some great advice on how to make it interesting and compelling:

"..we put together this simple graphic that presents the 7 Strands of Blog DNA - the key elements that, when combined in a unique way, make any given blog what it is.  Original, compelling and unlike anything else on the web."

Google Widgetvertising

Google today is launching a new effort to turn widgets into ads. A select group of brand advertisers are working with Google on special Google gadgets (widgets) that iGoogle users can place on their Google homepage.

What are Gadget Ads?

Gadget ads can incorporate real-time data feeds, images, video and much more in a single creative unit and can be developed using Flash, HTML or a combination of both. Designed to act more like content than a typical ad, they run on the Google™ content network, competing alongside text, image and video ads for placement.

See some examples here.

Poor Customer Experience - Is it a marketing or IT issue?

I have always believed bad customer experience with a company is primarily due to lack of alignment/ synergy with various departments involved in delivering value or service to the customer. When the departments' objectives are not aligned and if they don't work together closely, superior customer experience can never become a reality. In this era of all pervasive technology across the enterprise, increasingly marketing and IT must talk and work with each other to make this happen. CIO Magazine has a nice article on this topic:

Indeed, every time you see significant dysfunction in the way a company or brand interacts with its customers, it is not the fault of one corporate function but two—both marketing and technology. The combination of people and technology deployed across multiple service channels fails to provide the basic services you sought, let alone the world class services you expected.

So when will CIOs and CMOs join forces to address these challenges, not from their well-defended functional silos but together? The answer: when both parties take time to fully understand and account for the impact their solutions will have on the consumer.

It’s Not What You Sell, It’s How You Sell It

When corporations grow to mass market proportions, their scale alone creates complexity that requires one or more presentation layers. Indeed, without integrating a corporation’s touch points into an appropriately configured presentation layer, a company’s offerings (its brands, products and services) and its operations (its people, organisation and processes) can behave in ways that make little sense to customers and present a corporate “face” that’s wildly inconsistent from one customer encounter to the next. Such conditions can also create opaque, unresponsive or simply uncaring corporate behaviors, which don’t align with the intent of most corporate brands.

It’s the art of interaction that makes the difference between great brands that transcend the fate of individual product or service offerings (Nike, Starbucks, or Lexus), and those that live and die based on the often short-term viability of what they have to sell (Reebok, Burger King, or General Motors). It’s a new frontier of competition, and winning requires integrated marketing and IT savvy.

Restructuring the CIO-CMO Relationship

The strategic dialogue between CIO and CMO must begin with consensus as to the desired customer experience and brand. Often these conversations are best guided by an outside facilitator with objective hearing and broad industry context. This probing can highlight impediments of the company’s organisational structure and governance, management incentives, and enterprise economics. Together, the CIO and CMO must know the customer perspective on these issues:-

• Have we deployed the right touch points (human and technology) in the right places in the right ways—and do we have we too many or too few?
• Have we optimised each of our touch points according to customers’ preferences and needs, by customer segment and usage occasion?
• Have we understood the processes or pathways our customers select to interact with our company in each and every purchase or re-purchase cycle?
• Have we aligned and integrated those touch points (along with the people, processes and systems that enable them) into consistent and coordinated expressions of brand and offerings to deliver coherent customer experiences?

Attn: CEO - Great marketing + Great Technology is the only way forward

George F.Colony CEO, Forrester, has written a brilliant paper on how technology has broken down the barriers that existed between companies and customers. In an era where the 30-sec TV Spot and newspaper ads are dying, over the last couple of years, I too have come to firmly believe that marketing and technology departments in companies have to come together and work closely, if companies want to build truly tangible value for their customers. 

George goes on to explain how CEOs need to pay attention to this increasingly:

• Marketing and technology in your company must work together to design and implement your Web 2.0 strategy. And you, and only you, can get the dogs and cats to interbreed. It's an unnatural act, but one that must occur before your company can become an opportunist, rather than a victim, in the world of Web 2.0.
• You may try to restrict your digital content through laws, rules, digital rights management, and/or security systems. The cold reality remains that customers, citizens, consumers want what they want, regardless of how you may try to restrict them. They see the power of digital and its inherent flexibility.
• You've got to earn the respect and allegiance of your customers every day — both of which can wither with unparalleled speed (see Dell and the flaming batteries, circa 2006).
• Get your marketers to throw out those 30-question customer surveys and focus on one question: "Would you recommend this product or service to a friend or colleague?"
• After eight years of evaluating more than 1,000 large corporate Web sites, Forrester found only 3% with passing grades. The vast majority are hard to use, confusing, poorly designed, and cast an unfavorable shadow over the brand.
• It's now a two-way conversation. Listen, respond, and talk intelligently. Stop dictating to customers. It's your customers, not you, that have the power.

Lovely stuff and worth putting into action rightaway!

Indirect from Dell

Dell is known for its direct to consumer PC selling model. In a significant shift in strategic intent from the past, Michael S Dell  said " The direct model has been a revolution, but it is not a religion".

NY Times reports:

The direct sales model had been the key to Dell’s success. Taught in business schools and imitated by companies in other industries, the model enabled Dell to be the low-cost producer of computers and dominate an industry known for falling prices and low profit margins. Dell’s direct model came under pressure as the market for PCs shifted to notebooks from desktops last year. It is harder to custom configure notebook computers, so they had to be manufactured in advance, which lost Dell some of its cost advantage. In addition, consumers were showing a preference for touching and feeling a notebook PC before buying it.The Dell memo signals that the company is preparing to shift toward more full-fledged retail operations. Mr. Dell disclosed that the company is putting in place new manufacturing and distribution models in the United States and overseas.

For me, clearly, this shows that no strategy or business model is cast in stone. What was relevant a decade ago can become irrelevant quickly and suprisingly consumers adapt to these changes faster than companies! Companies need to come to terms with this change and executives in companies must have a keen eye to spot these trends.Else, they will keep doing more of the same, ending-up trying to extract value out of businesses that really have very little future value creation and relevance. Also, it signals the importance of "customer experience" in scalable operations. Off late over the past few years, since the advent of alternative channels of customer interaction like internet, call centre, mobile etc., I have heard company executives talk of self-service channel migration and lower cost-to-serve models. I think one needs to keep a fine balance of the same else every customer interaction will be a transactional relationship leading to little differentiation and value.

Is Joost leveraging the power of internet?

NY Times reports Joost, the Internet television service being developed by the founders of Skype, has lined up several blue-chip advertisers, including United Airlines, Microsoft, Sony Electronics and Unilever, as it prepares for its introduction. While some advertising on Joost will resemble traditional 30-second television spots, others will take advantage of the interactive qualities of the Internet.Instead of interrupting the programming, these ads will appear as the shows are running with a small box called a “hand-raiser.” Viewers who click on the hand-raisers will be sent to an “overlay,” or menu of content created for Purina. “It’s a whole new way to market to people,” Mr. Renshaw said. “You’re combining the best of the rigor of direct marketing with the richness of the Internet and the entertainment of television.”

I see quite a lot of different challenges when it comes to launching an internet television service. It's unlike the traditional TV network model. Let me tell you why:

• Global Vs Local Viewers: Last week, I downloaded Joost TV beta to my desktop. I am from India and I didn't find the content really relevant for an Internet TV viewer out of India. The traditional TV model of the past has always been restricted by geographical footprint and hence content was a lot localized. The internet TV model is a lot more global, hence programming content has to be a lot more inclusive. Imagine internet users from China, Korea, Japan and the like. They might not find Joost TV currently engaging and relevant. But, they have access to Joost TV!
• Build-up vs Scalability: The Network TV model builds-up viewers over a period of time by way of subscriptions, signal availability etc. The internet TV model is scalable right from day 1. The launch of Joost TV in the mind of an avid internet consumer is a worldwide launch and not a geography launch. Millions of internet users will want to use it right away if content is engaging and entertaining. Hence, Joost TV will need programming partners across globe right from its inception not just from one or two countries.
• Interruption vs Irrelvant advertising Most advertising in network TV medium are viewed, more recently, as interruption. Since internet TV is a medium with a vast global reach, the advertising can get irrelevant too, for an internet TV viewer in Europe or India, if the content and ads are US based, for example. Hence, marketing departments of companies need to work closely with their country teams so that viewers are served relevant country specific ads. Else, it is advertising dollars down the drain.
• Single format vs Multi-format : Most advertising in network TV are single-format based – 30 sec TV commercials. But in the case of internet TV there is a lot of interactive and contextual multi-format advertising opportunities. For example, the internet TV viewer may be interested in just seeing, knowing more, buying, chatting, seeking references etc. about brands and they can tracked at different stages of such a behaviour. Hence, the traditional model of just time-based selling will have to move out and new monetization opportunities will have to adopted by internet TV folks. Advertisers have to work on multiple format campaigns that will have to be served to viewers in real time.

Networked Readiness Index

Economist has an interesting article on ranking of countries on Networked Readiness Index. US has lost its top place and has fallen to the seventh place. India is ranked 44th while China has been ranked 59th. About 122 countries have been ranked in the report.India has lost 4 places in the ranking since the last time this report was published. The reports ranks countries on 67 variables which includes parameters like regulatory environment, measures of technology infrastructure and usage.

India seems to have a long way to go if it needs to get to the top of the list. Being a preferred IT destination and projected to be a fast growing economy, it is important this gets the attention of the policy makers here in India.

Download rankings2007.pdf

Rural India & Digital Era - Customization will help

In a digital era, how do rural and poor communities share stories with one another? By a Nokia mobile phone, with adapted software, if academics in London and campaigners here get positive results from their project.

Using mobile phones with simplified icons, which villagers would find easier to deal with, this British-linked project seeks to zero in on what kind of information local users find useful.

Ramnath Bhat, 25, working in communications-based NGO Voices, is part of the Story Bank project, in association with University of Surrey.It is part of a larger project called 'Bridging the Global Digital Divide' and is based in the rural area of Buddikote, in southern Karnataka's Kolar Gold Fields area. 'We've seen in a prior research that in a lot of cases, information and communication technologies, or ICTs, don't encourage communication among the poor.'

ICTs - primarily computers and electronic communications - imply centralisation, complicated methods of participation, language, and design issues.The project is quite exciting, says Bhat. It uses the Nokia N80 mobile phone, together with easier-to-use software for villagers, including Dalits, to create multimedia content.

'We're modifying the phone interface to make easy the process of creating content. It will be all done by using icons. We'll have separate icons for recording ambient sound, for voice and for clicking pictures or taking video,' he added.

A computer icon is a small pictogram, used to supplement the normal alphanumeric tools used to relate to the computer.With these buttons, an unlettered villager should be able to record small video clips with audio tracks. These digital stories will be then sent to a nearby central server, connected to a touch-screen.

The project aims at making it simple to create and access digital content. Voices also runs a project in the area, where radio-type programmes are put out to local houses.

'We've noticed that villagers cannot access our community centre, because timings don't match or because of their work. With a touch-screen device located outside, they could create and send stories here anytime,' argued Bhat.

What information do villagers seek, really?

'For men, their primary needs are info on governance, legal awareness, agricultural, health. For rural women in this area, it tends to be career information for their children, profiles of other self-help groups, and options for financial loans,' he says.

Children, meanwhile, wanted info on general knowledge, sports events, film stars, and themes science (including seemingly remote themes like dinosaurs or space).

The NGO is also linking the Internet with radio, by adopting the Sri Lankan idea of 'radio browsing'. Villagers ask for the information they need, someone in the NGO searches the Net for it and then reads it out over the local radio 'station'.

thro' contentsutra

Soon, your phone will become your wallet

The world's largest credit card network is ready to replace plastic with silicon.

Visa hopes to turn hundreds of millions of cellphones into electronic wallets that are simply swiped in front of a merchant's scanner to complete a transaction. This form of "contactless" payment won't require a signature or a personal identification number, but will be limited to purchases of $25 or less, Mr. Gauthier said.

Visa expects about $140-billion (U.S.) worth of the transactions it processes will be done with cellphones by 2010. As large as that amount is, it would represent just a fraction of Visa's $4-trillion worth of transactions each year.

A second form of mobile phone payment that Visa hopes to test is transactions between individuals. How such deals would be authenticated remains to be worked out by the card issuers, but they could be much bigger transactions than the contactless ones, he said.

thro' globeandmail

Thumb-Print banking debuts in India

Wired reports on a new banking innovation that is taking place in India. Thumb-Print ATMs are being installed to take the power of 'anytime, anywhere' banking to rural India:

Banks and ATM machines are an unfamiliar sight in the rural countryside here, but the government hopes to change that with new technology that could ease the transition from cash to computers.

A pilot program will put 15 biometric ATMs at village kiosks in five districts across southern India. The machines are expected to serve about 100,000 workers who will use fingerprint scanners, rather than ATM cards and PINs, to obtain their funds.

Biometric ATMs are already in use in Colombia and a few locations in Japan, but haven't caught on in much of the rest of the world. As a result, biometrics companies are watching the experiment closely as a potential watershed for the industry.

Nagaraj Mylandla, managing director of Financial Software and Systems, which helped design security protocol for the new system, said there are 35,000 non-biometric ATMs in India today. In three years the number of machines is expected to triple to more than 100,000, leaving a window of opportunity for suppliers to make the new technology standard issue for all new machines.

The increase will mean that just about every rural village and outpost will have access to the world's financial backbone and, if the pilot program is successful, fingerprint identification could become standard, even for private bank transactions.

"Many banks here are keen on this idea of doing away with ATM cards," said Sunil Udupa, CEO of AGS Infotech, the company supplying the first batch of ATMs to the five districts in India. "Whether it is practically possible is a very different question, but the interest is huge."

The new meaning of Network TV

What's Network TV as we know it?

Network TV may be a channel or a station that produces TV content and distributes the same to millions of households. They could be  doing it either thro' cable or satellite or terrestrial but it is a   ' single producer and distributor' model.

The new Network TV

Steve Rosenbaum has this to say about the evolution of the new Network TV era.

This requires you to think about the word 'network' in a whole new way.

Today, content is often driven by the passion, enthusiasm and deep knowledge of the members of a given interest group-- like surfers or hamster enthusiasts. The economics are topsy turvy as well. So surfers with high-quality DV cameras and access to a broadband connection are turning their passions into video-based content, with DC Smitty organizing and aggregating this collective knowledge into a network for both viewing and distribution. The economics of these new 'curated' networks revolve around sharing, not owning either content or audience. So DC Smitty owns the inventory on his pages, and video sources own the ad inventory in their video feeds. Sites like Revver share revenue with both content creators and site owners, and its expected that other video sites will over revenue shares as well. But the power is shifting from content pipe to contextual.

So the future of TV is no longer about content creation, though there will be plenty of that. It is instead about content discovery-- finding media nuggets that are site-specific and user-friendly. Video discovery is at the heart of TV 2.0

Read more

Open AD - The world's biggest creative department

Styling itself the 'World's Biggest Creative Department', OpenAd is a relatively minor Slovenian-owned internet business with just thirty-nine staff worldwide. Yet some see it as the shape of things to come - maybe, even, the writing on the wall for traditional ad agencies.

However, OpenAd MD Katarina Skoberne stresses the venture isn't competing with agencies. She insists it simply supplements the use by clients of freelance creatives. "We are not an online ad agency, we are merely a resource of creative material," she says.

Although registered in Switzerland, OpenAd's sales and marketing arm operates out of London while the global support centre is based in Slovenia.

Membership of the exchange is free to the 5,000-plus creatives on OpenAd's register. Explains Skoberne: "Anyone who has registered as a creative supplier - and anyone can - is free to answer the brief, or not, as they choose. Clients pay an initial set membership fee to join OpenAd, then a licence fee for the ideas they use."

"This allows them to post briefs on the site and view existing ideas, paying somewhere between $3000 and $100,000 depending upon the number of pitches they want to hold, the number of categories they want to access and the number of [client] staff who have access."

Among those who have used OpenAd is UK-based charity Comic Relief. Enthuses Amanda Horton-Mastin, new media director: "Make Poverty History was a global campaign and the thing about OpenAd is that it opens the window to global ideas, even for very small clients. It was quick, it was cheap, and the idea we chose was excellent."

Another client is Emap's men's magazine FHM which has used OpenAd three times in the past two years. "We started off with one-off tactical promotions and recently asked for a full-blown branding campaign," says marketing manager Ben Cordle.

"The creative response was fantastic. It gave us access to heavyweight creative talent and saved us thousands or even tens of thousands of pounds on agency overheads."

Thro' WARC

New Communication predictions for 2007

2006 is coming to an end and  it is time to see what will 2007 hold for new communication models that are expected emerge in the next 12 months. New communications Review has some interesting predictions:

From Katie Paine:

Blog "impression" numbers will finally be available.

Blog monitoring/analysis/measurement will show up on to-do lists everywhere.

From Giovanni Rodriguez:

I believe virtual currency may be the next big thing. We are seeing more and more examples of this (Second Life = linden, Microsoft = points). But we ain't seen nothing yet. But watch -- someone will brand this "Money 2.0" (oy).

Voice will be better incorporated into communities. It's about time.

From John Cass:

Second Life will grow in importance; its integration with the real world will develop. Unlike blogging and other social media tools, Second Life is not intuitive, or easy to use for most people. We are already seeing a growing number of Second Life blogs and podcasts. These sites intersect with the real world and search engines. Two things will happen: 1. Second Life will become easier for people to use, and 2. there will be more integration into the real world and searchable content on search engines for Second Life. If Second Life does not achieve this, other 3D environments will leapfrog the environment. However, Second Life's leadership position will be tough to assail because the community wants it to succeed.

Social media communications and product managers will begin to realize just what they have on their hands, and via partnering, API's plugins and widgets, social media websites will seek to become ever more part of people's Internet experiences.

From Debbie Weil:

We're unhooking from our computers and will be getting much more online info via our cell phones, PDAs, etc. Beware the marketer who doesn't remember this and doesn't format blog posts, etc. to be read on a cell phone or Treo!

From Sally Falkow:

2007 will see an explosion of web content syndication with RSS and the sharing of content on social media sites. Already one in twenty web visits is to one of the top social media sites according to HitWise. And, these sites are driving traffic to search engines and verticals like travel and telecom.

From Paul Gillin:

In terms of predictions for the coming year, I think we will begin to see the rapid deterioration of the daily newspaper business model under the assault from consumer-generated media. I believe this is an alarming trend that will ultimately lead to the death of some prominent newspapers, but the losers will be replaced by a more diverse and flexible form of new media that fully leverages Web 2.0 technologies and the voices of individuals.

David Strom predicts:

The number of blogs will drop for the first time in 2007, as more people realize that there is nothing really new to view.

Building a financial planning social media

The business model of financial planning is being turned on its head by the web. How about consumers themselves acting as financial planners and learning from each other! I think this is a great idea as there is so much more trust, transparency and honesty to this approach.

The web indeed can be a potent tool for building a  rich financial community. Imagine learning from peers on how to save money from people like you. Knowing from the community on how the group spend their money across different categories. Also, recommendations on the stores that help save money basis your spending pattern. I think there is a lot of potential for such a community.

Wesabe is one such example of a business model taking shape. Wesabe makes it easy to better understand how you spend your money and links you to a community of people dedicated to helping each other make better financial decisions.

Take a look at this video and this explains what am talking about in a beautiful and simple manner.

The world needs only five computers!

Greg writes:

And, no, I'm not paraphrasing something that I bet Thomas J. Watson never uttered in 1943 anyway. But he should have because, ultimately, he might turn out to have been right.

Let's see, the Google grid is one. Microsoft's live.com is two. Yahoo!, Amazon.com, eBay, Salesforce.com are three, four, five and six. (Well, that's O(5) ;)) Of course there are many, many more service providers but they will almost all go the way of YouTube; they'll get eaten by one of the majors. And, I'm not placing any wagers that any of these six will be one of the Five Computers (nor that, per the above examples, they are all U.S. West Coast based --- I'll bet at least one, maybe the largest, will be the Great Computer of China).

I'm just saying that there will be, more or less, five hyperscale, pan-global broadband computing services giants. There will be lots of regional players, of course; mostly, they will exist to meet national needs. That is, the network computing services business will look a lot like the energy business: a half-dozen global giants, a few dozen national and/or regional concerns, followed by wildcatters and specialists.

Read more

Would consumers want to share this presentation?

In an era of sharing and collaboration mania, when anything  that is "User Generated" or "Shareable" gets everybody's attention, a presentation on marketing got my attention. The content looked interesting to me and I clicked.

I found this was a corporate presentation by Salesforce.com. It was put-up in slideshare and one could share the presentation with others. But as I read through the presentation, I really started questioning if I would share it with others. Let me tell you why:

• First, it was company speak. So, why would I want to share it all?
• The logic of the presentation(though relevant) was very biased towards the company's mission, goals and products. Would I pass it on? Never
• It lacked a customer point of view or a customer voice. Hence, did not look interesting enough to be shared
• It had a "talking down" feeling in terms of the messaging in the slides. So, it left me a little cold for it to be shared.

To be shareable, I believe the content must

1. Be interesting
2. Have a tone of voice that's peer-to-peer
3. Have a "Build-On" feature. Imagine if one were able to add-on to the content and make it richer - Collaborative content generation is critical.
4. Differentiate Viewership( ability to just read and know) vs Ownership( ability to add and develop)
5. Buy-in vs Selling - Can't afford to jump the process as people first "buy-in" into the belief and benefits first. Selling starts a little later in the chain.

Take a look at the Presentation. Would you share it at all?

Preparing for consumer-led IT

Gartner analysts predict there will be a large-scale shift in technology influence toward consumers and away from central corporate IT departments.

In a keynote speech on Monday, Gartner's director of global research, Peter Sondergaard, warned conference attendees that consumerization will be the most significant trend to have an impact on IT over the next 10 years.  "We stand at the foot of a new high tide," Sondergaard said. "There is a shift in technology ownership."  Sondergaard argued that consumers already have a great deal of power over how services and technologies are configured and used.

"Consumers are rapidly creating personal IT architectures capable of running corporate-style IT architectures," he said. "They have faster processors, more storage and more bandwidth."

He advised corporate IT executives to adapt to the changes and prepare for what he called "digital natives," or people so fully immersed in digital culture that they are unconcerned about the effects of their technology choices on the organizations that employ them.

The encroachment of Web 2.0 into the business world, sometimes referred to as "Enterprise 2.0," was a common theme running.

Mashup apps

In a paper prepared by Gene Phifer, David Mitchell Smith and Ray Valdes, Gartner researchers noted that corporate IT departments historically have lagged behind popular technology waves, such as the arrival of graphical user interfaces and the Internet in business.

They argued that the biggest impacts of Web 2.0 within enterprises are collaboration technologies--notably blogs, wikis and social networking sites--and programmable Web sites that allow business users to create mashup applications.

"Mashups are beginning to see corporate deployment, especially in companies that need to relay geographic information to their users (for example, store locations to customers)," according to the report.

Read more

One number for a better life

How many phones do you have today? An office phone, your mobile phone, your home phone  plus a phone or two more for different reasons, I guess and when you multiply this with all the friends and contacts you have in your phone book, life looks really complicated when you want to contact somebody. But, it won't be a problem anymore.

GrandCentral is a brilliant new web app that lets you consolidate all of your phone numbers into one number, meaning someone can call you on your GrandCentral phone number and all of your phones (cell phone, work phone, home phone) will ring. And then it gets interesting.

If you don't want every one of your phones ringing each time someone calls your free GrandCentral number, you can set rules by friends, family, work, and others, defining where the calls should be directed. When a user leaves a message, you can listen to it online or directly on your phone. The remaining set of features on GrandCentral are a little mind-blowing, in that "I'd never thought of that, but how am I now living without it?" sort of way.

Here’s a list of some of the features:

• Incoming phone calls ring on different phones according to which group you’ve placed a caller’s phone number in.
• You can play different voice mail greetings for friends, family and work calls.
• Voice mail is stored indefinitely.
• Voice mail can be listened to and replied to with just a few clicks.
• Voice mail messages can be listened to in real time and you can jump in to initiate a conversation in real time with one click.
• Telemarketers or others can be banished to the spam folder so if you’re called by the same number again your phone will simply not ring.
• You can click to have GrandCentral call both the person who left a message and your phone.
• You can record a section of any call with one button on the keypad of your phone.
• You can seamlessly switch from one of your phones to another.

thro' Techcruch

The 43-Hour Day!

Global families today are harnessing pervasive technology and media to help them manage busy households and achieve more balanced, satisfying lives, according to research released today by global Internet company Yahoo! Inc. and OMD, a worldwide media communications specialist.

The Yahoo!/OMD study shows the power of multi-tasking in extending the typical day's activities beyond 24 hours. In the U.S., respondents listed, on average, a total of more than 43 hours of daily activities, including time spent sleeping, working, commuting, as well as technology/media-based activities such as emailing, using an MP3 player, text messaging, and watching TV.

The research project combined results from polling more than 4,500 online families in 16 countries with in-home interviews and scrapbooks tracking media and technology usage by families in seven countries. Consistent themes include a resurgence in traditional values, and recognition that the "always on" nature of technology highlights the need to also focus on low-tech activities such as playing board games and dining together

• Nearly three quarters (73 percent) of families with children said it is important to eat dinner together each day.
• Eight out of 10 adults said they "enjoy spending time with their family." This number increases to nine out of 10 among those married with children.
• Average global family owns 11 technological devices (12 devices in the U.S.), creating concerns about information overload while enabling better communications
• 70 percent of global survey respondents agreed that technology allows them to stay in touch with family
• 29 percent of parents said that they use mobile phones to keep in touch with children throughout the day
• 25 percent of parents said instant messaging has helped improve relationships with their children.
• Only a third (31%) of U.S. parents believe their children fail to spend enough time outdoors or playing sports -- compared to 41% of parents in Taiwan, South Korea and India, and almost two thirds (63%) of parents in China.

Family 2.0

"Family 2.0 isn't the Cleavers of the 1950s or the futuristic Jetsons. Today's men cook, women work, and kids often are very tech-savvy," said Michele Madansky, vice president of sales research, Yahoo!. "Father doesn't always know best. He may not have a clue about what MP3 player is the best value, but daughter can be the expert because she has spent time online comparison shopping prices and features."

Matrimony brand launches relationship blog

They say marriages are made in heaven. In an information and networked era, the net seems to be place where it happens faster, I guess.

Bharat Matrimony is one of India's largest matrimony sites.  It's  a site where you can search, identify, know more, find your partner and ultimately get married, if you find your match. India being a multi-ethnic and diverse country with several castes & sub-sects, the net seems to be the ideal place where you can find the right match.

Matrimony sites are doing extremely well in India as they are a great destination where young people can  get to know each other and build new relationships. Also, it also has the potential to reach Indians across the world in a jiffy.

Perfect marriages start and end with great relationships. Therefore, it is not surprising to me that they have launched a relationship blog called matrimonyxpress.com. It is a place where there are experts and one can get advice from them. It's also has a forum to discuss  issues like being single, customs & rituals, jewellery  etc.

Sounds like a nice idea to me.

The Hug Shirt - Differentiated Customer experience thro' Mobiles

The Hug Shirt (F+R Hugs) is a shirt that allows people to exchange the physical sensation of a hug over distance. Embedded in the shirt there are sensors that feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender and actuators that recreate the sensation of touch, warmth and emotion of the hug to the shirt of the distant loved one.The system is very simple: a Hug Shirt (Bluetooth with sensors and actuators), a Bluetooth java enabled mobile phone with the Hug Me java software running (that understands what the sensors are communicating), and on the other side another phone and another shirt.

When touching the sensors on your shirt your mobile receives the data (hug pressure, skin temperature, heartbeat rate, time you are hugging for, and the name of the person you want to hug) and delivers it to the other person. If the other person or the sender doesn’t have the shirt she can just send an SMS text message, and it will be transformed into a hug! If you don’t need a hug you can switch it off.

A telescope for your Nokia phone

In an era of disruptive innovation, this one is a stunner!

The handset accessories firm, Brando has developed a "telescope" for some Nokia handsets, which the company says offers a 6x zoom facility for the camera phone. The design does need the back of the handset to be replaced - to provide a securing mechanism for the telescope - so is currently only available for the Nokia 6230, 6230i and the 6680 handsets.

Thro' cellularnews

Pre-Paid PCs from Microsoft

Close to the success of pre-paid mobile in the developing world( India, for example, is adding atleast 2-3 million customers every month) which helped expand the market, Microsoft with its partners is expected to launch pre-paid PCs!

The initiative, dubbed Microsoft FlexGo, aims to lower the barrier to buying a PC by requiring a smaller initial payment. After paying for minutes on the PC over time, consumers ultimately own it outright -- albeit for a higher total cost than if they had paid in full up front.

From a business perspective, the market potential is large. Some companies involved in the FlexGo program estimate that more than 1 billion people worldwide earn enough to buy PCs under the initiative, but not enough to buy one on their own.

Read more

The power of documenting personal experiences

Changing lifestyle & adoption of technology is creating a new kind of  knowledge available about individuals and their activities. This is creating a new inflection point in sharing knowledge and creating extremely customized experiences based on understanding the individual and what he or she does.  This seems to be getting  a lot of attention from corporations.

Greg is talking about a research by Microsoft called mylifebits - A personal database for everything. The MyLifeBits project at Microsoft Research is an attempt to make most aspects of a person's work and life experiences searchable. MyLifeBits captures every e-mail, every web page visited, documents read, every phone call, every bit of music, every photo.

Imagine the impact of this knowledge and the kind of marketing opportunities it can provide.

How do you recruit tech geeks?

Only a challenge will get them excited. Only a project can  keep them motivated. Pose them a problem and they will get into action immediately. Also, the best of the geeks thrive by competing.

So, calling for interviews thro' recruitment ads may not be the best way to recruit. That's an old world model. You will get tons and tons of resumes but the best ones may not apply. The best way is get them to do some coding. Challenge them within a group. Pick the best out of the lot and get them to work for you.

This is exactly the way Google is doing it in India.  It's called The India CodeJam.

Here's the prize money if they participate and win!

Competitor(s)	Prize
First Prize	Rs. 122,000
2nd - 5th Place	Rs. 56,000
6th – 10th	Rs. 44,200
11th – 20th	Rs. 33,200
21st – 25th	Rs. 22,200
26th – 50th	Rs. 18,000
* Winner must be present at the onsite round to receive prize.

There are many of them already participating. See for yourself.

Collaborative customer networks - The next wave on the net

Om Malik writes on the Next Net 25:

Business 2.0’s Next Net 25 list is up. (I have been away and currently posting this from LAX, otherwise would have linked sooner.) The Next Net will encompass all digital devices and the Next Net is deeply collaborative.

Driven by ubiquitous broadband, cheap hardware, and open-source software, the Web is mutating into a radically different beast than it has been. And that is leading to the creation of entirely new kinds of companies, new business models, and oceans of new opportunity.

We have spliced this list into five categories - Social Media, Mash-Up & Filters, The New Phone, The Web Top and Under The Hood. The VoIP Companies we picked for this category include Fonality, SIPphone, iotum, Vivox with Skype (eBay) as the incumbent to watch.

How mobile VoIP will change cellphone usage

At last week's 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, several big names in the communications sector, including Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles), Nokia (Profile, Products, Articles), and Skype Technologies (Profile, Products, Articles), announced mobile phone-based VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) products and services that could radically change how cellular customers use their handsets in the future.

European 3G (third-generation) operator Hutchison 3 Group (Hutchison 3G), a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, announced a partnership to provide what could become the world's first commercial VoIP service for mobile phones.

"We don't view VoIP as something that will cannibalize our voice business; users will have to pay a fee for access," said Christian Salbaing, managing director of European Telecommunications at Hutchison 3G. "We view VoIP as a way to create greater customer choice and expect the service to increase their usage."

thro' infoworld

Microsoft's free internet voice service challenges Vodafone

Tony Glover writes:

MICROSOFT has developed a Skype-style free internet voice service for mobile phones that City analysts believe could wipe billions off the market value of operators such as Vodafone.

The service is included in a mobile version of Microsoft Office Communicator due to be released this year. It will take the form of a voice-over internet protocol (VoIP) application that allows Office users to make free voice calls over wi-fi enabled phones running Windows Mobile software. It uses the internet as a virtual phone network as well as accessing e-mail, PowerPoint and other Office applications.

Read more

thro' tech.memeorandum