Though I wouldn’t call social media a “revolution” per se, there is no question that it’s evolving and quickly. This video is making the rounds through the twittersphere, and I thought I’d post it too:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8
Best Buy & Radio Shack: Who Failed w/Twitter Support?
August 2, 2009 By 6 Comments
Ever since companies like Comcast used Twitter (e.g., @ComcastCares, see BusinessWeek article) for timely response to customer inquiries or issues — before those issues blew up and hurt their brand or as ways to build goodwill with the influencers and early adopters — other organizations looked to this effort and undoubtedly saw the benefits.
Best Buy rolled out something called “Twelpforce” as a way to leverage employee assistance with customer inquiries (see Techcrunch article). Unbeknownst to me, Radio Shack has done the same thing with “The_Shack“, a Twitter account clearly monitored for keywords as you ‘ll see in a moment.
I’ve been skeptical from the get-go on these efforts, since it’s extremely difficult to explain anything but the most basic questions when one has only 140 characters with which to ask it. Like instant messaging, frustration grows quickly when several messages have to go back-n-forth in order to clearly communicate the essence of the request, and this is the #1 reason I expect most Twitter “help” efforts (like Twelpforce and The_Shack) to fail unless steps are taken to move an initial query offline, or be able to add audio or video to the clarification.
CASE IN POINT: IPHONE HELP FAIL
On Friday I did a podcast recording with the Blue Mikey, a microphone that connects to the bottom of my iPhone and works great, but realized that my shotgun microphone at the office (with its 3.5mm plug) would’ve been 5x better with so many people standing in a circle as part of the podcast. While I completely understand separate microphone use in the headphone connector on the iPhone is not supported, several people have taken apart cables and created their own connector to allow the use of these 3rd party microphones.
So I went to Best Buy in Eden Prairie, MN to explain the need and see if they could help. Complete cluelessness and only one blueshirt had any interest in helping out. So I jumped in my car and started to head for home, but pulled over and did the audioBoo recording on my iPhone below. Lo-and-behold, Radio Shack’s The_Shack sent me an @ reply asking if they could help.
So I thought I’d do an experiment: ask the same question to both Twelpforce and The_Shack and see how fast they respond AND to see who “gets” the essence of what I was asking for and exhibits a willingness to help. To say I was disappointed in one of them would be an understatement.
After the jump, you’ll see the chronology of how this went down and see who — Best Buy or Radio Shack — ultimately prevailed by at least giving me an accurate answer, though not a solution (which I’m still working on). It points out how and why Twitter help is fraught with issues and may very well cause more frustration and problems than it alleviates. [Read more...]
Personal & Professional Hubs for Your Digital Life
July 12, 2009 By 2 Comments
The Minneapolis/St. Paul Social Media Breakfast is a surprisingly strong group of creatives, PR, marketing and interactive media enthusiasts, so much so that it’s possible that the Twin Cities could be the social media capital of the world! Thinking back on my days at Apple — and knowing that the base of creative talent in Minnesota made it one of the strongest markets for the company — it probably shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise.
On June 26, 2009 I was privileged to give a talk to, what turned out to be, the largest SMBMSP yet at 300+ participants. Several people emailed me about adding a voiceover to the PDF of the presentation I’d provided and did so. I’ve created it’s own page for the video here so you can view it in HD resolution.
Let me know what you think!
“God hit the reset button!”
June 24, 2009 By Leave a Comment
“God hit the reset button!” a brand manager friend of mine exclaimed loudly as we talked last week about the economy, about how social media was disrupting “damn near” everything he knows how to do and is doing with brand marketing, and he’s struggling mightily with what to do next.
Fortunately for him, a guy that works for the Chief Marketing Officer at a Fortune 1000 company, he has access to big thinkers and thought leaders (and highly paid consultants along with attending key conferences that cost big bucks) but they’re still struggling with how to add value in a day when that is shifting, customer expectations have already shifted, and almost every former way of doing business needs to be freshened up a bit (or a lot!).
I immediately emailed him a link to this article at Strategy+Business, a magazine and website published by the global commercial consulting firm Booz & Company, called “The Trouble With Brands: Most consumer brands are not creating value. The exceptions share a set of “energized†attributes that companies can identify and exploit.“
It starts off with this: “Many companies that produce goods and services for consumers face a serious dilemma — quite apart from the effects of the current global economic downturn. For at least the past five years, the tried-and-true formulas to boost the sales and market shares of brands have been becoming increasingly irrelevant and have been losing traction with consumers. Globally, the aggregate value of brands to consumers has been falling steadily, and this decline began well before the recent slump in stock prices.“
Why is this happening? For the exact reasons that made my friend realize that someone hit the reset button and that we’ve all got to review, refresh and innovate around how we deliver value to those people we call customers. [Read more...]
U.S. Home Broadband Adoption Hits 63%
June 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Readers of this blog are skewed toward those interested in internet and web-centric technology and services. As such, the latest findings of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project will be of high interest.
These findings illustrate a departure from the stagnation in home high-speed adoption rates that had prevailed from December, 2007 through December, 2008. During that period, Project surveys found that home broadband penetration remained in a narrow range between 54% and 57%.
The greatest growth in broadband adoption in the past year has taken place among population subgroups which have below average usage rates. Among them:
- Senior citizens: Broadband usage among adults ages 65 or older grew from 19% in May, 2008 to 30% in April, 2009.
- Low-income Americans: Two groups of low-income Americans saw strong broadband growth from 2008 to 2009.
- Respondents living in households whose annual household income is $20,000 or less, saw broadband adoption grow from 25% in 2008 to 35% in 2009.
- Respondents living in households whose annual incomes are between $20,000 and $30,000 annually experienced a growth in broadband penetration from 42% to 53%.
Overall, respondents reporting that they live in homes with annual household incomes below $30,000 experienced a 34% growth in home broadband adoption from 2008 to 2009.
- High-school graduates: Among adults whose highest level of educational attainment is a high school degree, broadband adoption grew from 40% in 2008 to 52% in 2009.
- Older baby boomers: Among adults ages 50-64, broadband usage increased from 50% in 2008 to 61% in 2009.
- Rural Americans: Adults living in rural America had home high-speed usage grow from 38% in 2008 to 46% in 2009.
Population subgroups that have above average usage rates saw more modest increases during this time period.
- Upper income Americans: Adults who reported annual household incomes over $75,000 had broadband adoption rate change from 84% in 2008 to 85% in 2009.
- College graduates: Adults with a college degree (or more) saw their home high-speed usage grow from 79% in 2008 to 83% in 2009.
Notably, African Americans experienced their second consecutive year of broadband adoption growth that was below average.
- In 2009, 46% of African Americans had broadband at home.
- This compares with 43% in 2008.
- In 2007, 40% of African Americans had broadband at home.
The Pew Internet Project’s April 2009 survey interviewed 2,253 Americans, with 561 interviewed on their cell phones.
As I read the report, it was clear that there is an acceleration in broadband adoption which, in my view, is being driven by a number of variables: economic downturn causing a seeking of alternatives, efficiency and cost savings; friends, family and colleagues online, many using social media, creating compelling reasons for others to connect; and a continuing growth of online services in news, information, entertainment and more.
Typepad to WordPress: It’s Done!
June 7, 2009 By 5 Comments
After significant and careful consideration, I’ve decided to migrate my Connecting the Dots blog (which I started in December of 2004 using the Typepad hosted service) to a WordPress installation on a server I control.
While Typepad has made many changes that are good for the blogging community, the platform is still too limiting and the energy in the ecosystem surrounding the service is, well, non-existent. Argue with me all you want (and many have already) but WordPress is giving me what I want, how I want it, and the limitations on growing with Typepad are too constrictive.
The sad part is that exporting from Typepad is a God-awful mess of code. From URL’s that were short, then not short, and underscores (“_”) that turned into dashes (“-”), I’ve had to invest dozens of hours into changing the blog over.
The other sad part is that getting MY images from THEIR servers is a nightmare. While importing into WordPress kinda, sorta works (but permalinks are all hosed up), all images are left on the Typepad server. I used a caching plugin to capture them, but it’s a band-aid and not a comfortable, long term solution.
After waiting days and days for a response from Anil Dash, he finally responded with a connection to a guy named Mark Simmons, but by that time I was already down the road with the migration.
While I understand that Six Apart (Typepad parent) has zero incentive to help me get MY data out of THEIR system (data *I* own by the way), they’ve made it work juuuuust barely enough that they can stand on a box of righteousness and argue the finer points of ATOM and migration.
I’m paid up through December but just set the domain to transfer and will clean up loose ends if necessary, especially the RSS feeds so I don’t lose you, my subscribers.
Farting and Social Media
June 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Is it just me, or does that tweet not come across as satirical?
Much to my amusement, I received this email today from a company that makes a competing “fart app” for the iPhone hoping I’d go look at their app and do a review:
Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 12:55 AM
pam@modstylez.com To: steve (at) iconnectdots.com
pam@modstylez.com To: steve (at) iconnectdots.com
Hello,
I’d appreciate if you can give me some feedback on our iphone app iLightFarts
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=317429824&mt=8
I realize that you are iphone app guru 
It’d be swell if you can place an honest review of our app.
Thank you,
Pam
Besides being incredibly flattered to be seen as an “iphone app guru”, I realized that I’d have to buy this app, try it out, and then do a review. Or perhaps do a review without buying the app and do a positive one since ModStylez actually reached out to me and sees me as a farting expert.
No question I’m a big fan of comedy and even of flashlight apps for the iPhone, but how many does the world need? Do we also need competitive social media strategies when it comes to better farting capability with our mobile devices?
This sort of random Twitter harvesting (and subsequent emailing) is spam…plain-n-simple. ModStylez (a company who hosts with a Melbourne, Australia ISP so I assume they speak English and further assume they appreciate the satirical) is undoubtedly harvesting any-and-all tweets that mention “fart” apps, but if they’d actually read mine — and had any sense of the ironic — “Pam” would’ve understood that I think these sorts of apps are a complete waste of time.
These and other fart app creators need to do something useful or at least get better at authentically using social media when they reach out to people.
Facts About The Digital Economy
April 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment
This report is put out by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, an organization that is a "…market-oriented think tank that studies the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. Its mission is to educate policymakers, opinion leaders, and the public about issues associated with technological change, based on a philosophy of limited government, free markets, and individual sovereignty."
"PFF's research combines academic analysis with a practical understanding of how public policy is made. Its senior fellows and other scholars are leading experts in their fields, with distinguished careers in government, business, academia and public policy. Its research is substantive, scholarly, and unbiased."
Covered in the report are these key areas:
- The Growth of the Internet
- The Hardware Sector
- The Communications Sector
- Digital Media
- Electronic Commerce
- Threats to the Digital Economy
- The Worldwide Digital Economy
One of the best parts are the active links in each chapter's EndNotes which allow you to drill down into many areas covered within this report.
Here is the download page and a direct link (PDF).
Broadband Providers: “Let’s cut ‘em off at the pass!”
April 2, 2009 By 2 Comments
Even the most naive and casual observer can see that the threat from services like Hulu; both Apple’s TV and movie offerings within iTunes; Joost; and the accelerating number of media center software offerings (providing access to ANY video on the internet), pose a huge threat to the cable companies and other broadband providers.
They are all clearly trying to get out ahead of the user market (and the maturity of video provider business models as well as the open source media center software) and put caps in place before wider adoption occurs.
As a tail-end baby boomer with enough of a geek nature to be involved far too deeply in the ‘net, web and social media in my business, I realize I’m atypical within my demographic on how I, and as a result my family, use our Comcast broadband connection. With Comcast’s 50mbps down/10mbps up DOCSIS 3 setup in my office (Note: we were one of two companies in their Minnesota rollout of this new technology) and 16mbps down/2mbps up at home, I’m dealing daily in video, photos, moving around large Zip files, screensharing, personal publishing, and numerous other online activities. These activities are mission critical to our small business, my wife’s and my client interactions, as well as family activities and connecting with others.
Comcast, one of the largest providers in this space, directly affects all aspects of our digital lives. With my family and my current and increasing use of the internet for an every expanding array of online activities (Skype calling; my son’s video gaming; Flickr and Vimeo for photo/video sharing; online backup of our computers; use of our new Mac mini media center), we are certain to end up violating Comcast’s draconian 250GB bandwidth caps (er, I mean, Network Management Policy).
The kicker? According to Comcast’s executive escalation group, I can’t even pay them more for higher tiers of service with no cap or, as one representative told me in March, “…the cap is the cap, regardless of the tier of service.“
Did you know that, in Comcast’s case, they can simply cut you off for exceeding that 250GB cap with no warning and that their promised metering tools are still missing in action?
Then I read this recently about Time Warner’s laughingly low caps and realized that, if Time Warner gains traction with this approach, Comcast will follow suit and we’ll all have to watch and do whatever these providers allow us to do online.
TV = Brain Off / Computer = Brain On
March 18, 2009 By 3 Comments
In 2004 Steve Jobs famously said about TV vs. computers, "We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on." It was one of those statements that seemed like a throwaway (and one most of us did the old head bobbing up-n-down about), but it's become more and more true since then.
My wife and I often take our laptops upstairs and lie in bed finishing up the days emails, exploring, and increasingly watching "TV". In fact, my brain gets SO turned on that I find it hard to go to sleep…so I've actually stopped doing that in order to relax, quiet down and nod off (and older relatives have cautioned on how "you're going to ruin your marriage" by playing with our laptops at night vs. with each other).
When I first saw the delightful Alec Baldwin Hulu ad on the Super Bowl — with its clear and humorous reference on how TV watching turned your brain into a gelatinous mush they could scoop out and eat (since they're aliens, after all) — the brilliance of the campaign took my breath away.
It did so because of the NBC team's recognition that most of us in the always-on, always-connected participation culture — increasingly turning our attention away from all traditional mediums like TV, radio, newspapers and magazines — view television watching as the mind numbing, brain mushing pursuit it is, but still one we turn to when we choose to be entertained passively.
The team obviously recognized that doing a fun advertisement to get our attention, directly addressing this obvious fact within it and, of course, delivering a service that meets our needs whether we're watching an actual television set or have our brains turned on with our computing devices, they nailed it.
Jobs nailed it too over four years ago with that statement. He didn't say anything about turning your brain on to perform tasks, but rather computers as an extension, a stimulator of our brains.
As we all move away from purely linear, serial tasks and processes toward a world where we drink in information, news, entertainment while connecting with others in a parallel and associative way, I'm eager to live in this time of awakening where more and more of us are living in a perpetual state of having our brains turned on.
Steve’s Social Stuff