Microspam = Macroprofits

I still hold true to my theory that Twitter’s future is as a content repository, not a communication tool. Let’s face it, the majority of Twitter users are pumping out personal content with minimal knowledge if anyone actually reads it. It’s always a surprise when someone retweets or direct replies to my posts. After awhile you forget there are actually Twitter people following you.

But match exponentially-growing content with the idea of live search, and suddenly something interesting is happening in Twitterville: contextually-targeted 1 to 1 real time communication. In 140 characters or less that teeters on the border of Microspam.

Earlier this summer I posted a tweet that mentioned "Tetris" [made it to the 8th level of Luggage Tetris]. Immediately I received notice that I was retweeted by @a_Tetris. Which, under closer inspection, is a Twitter account automatically reposting any tweet with Tetris in it. With 376 followers, not sure the overall benefit of that, but interesting use of technology nonetheless.

Similar thing happened when I used "moon" [gave permission for the kids to moon the Applebee's next to our hotel]. Oh Obi Wan imposter, your retro one liner was delightfully unexpected, even if you have repeated it 35,000 times.

A month later we were on a roadtrip and I tweeted about a roadside church sign [Alabama church sign of the day = Stop, drop & roll won't work in Hell]. Again, immediately retweeted by @Church_Sign, who reposts any church sign tweet to a limited group of devout Americana Christians.

I doubt these people are hitting Twitter Search every 5 minutes with their keywords of choice. Already there is a software business model evolving to support your every Twitter need -- similar to all the new service companies that eBay spawned as it grew in popularity [1, 2, 34567].

These are interesting uses of real-time responses to real-time content, under the guise of real-time communication. But what about all the dotcom entrepreneurs, up late trying to figure out How do I make money off this damn thing?

Oh, hello @JoniSloan, you may be a genius.

So today I posted a little Kindle-related wit [lady on flight carried a Kindle and a paperback, which kinda defeats the purpose]. Immediately I was reposted by @JoniSloan, who noted that she was reading a book on her Kindle and loved it. Included in her post was this short URL = http://bit.ly/NAizZ. I noticed she include six other @people in her reply, who probably also mentioned Kindle around the same time I did. A click of the URL sent me to Amazon’s Kindle purchase page.

A quick view of her recent tweets shows she reposts specifically about purchasable products. All accompanied by links to e-commerce sites, all tagged with affiliate marketing codes. So Joni is earning a few pennies for any purchases made by users who clicked her tweet links. All of the sudden you’ve got a Twitter business model! Microfiliate Marketing!

I’m not quite sure if this ranks as contextually-relevant Spam. Maybe when it reaches the point where every one of my tweets receives a slew of retweets, directly related to the number of nouns that I used in it. But for now it’s one of the smartest manipulations of Twitter since the fake celebrity account.

So here’s your test of the day. Tweet this and see what happens:

Just passed a church sign that said:
"Hell is playing Kindle Tetris on the moon.”

"S-" is the new "E-"

Remember back in the day when Cyber was the suffix du jour? We had Cybercafes, Cyberspace, Cybermalls, Cybersex. Cyber, cyber, cyber. Then one day Cyber became sooooo 1996 and we switched over to the more modest, less likely to mock, e-. eCommerce, eBanking, eBooks, eCRM, eCoupons, eMail, eToys, eBay, e, e, e. It became synonymous with "something you can do in real life, but on the Internet instead!" The fastest way to distinguish that your program or service was cutting edge and different.

Well, e is soooo 2008. Please welcome the new prefix 2.0 ... Sesame Street interlude here ...

s- !

Yes s, as in Social of the networking variety. Social media, with Facebook and Twitter as the poster children, is finally incorporating itself into standard online marketing strategies. Can't figure out how to cram your marketing into social media? Cram social media into your marketing! Just add an s to it.

(Once again Mobile gets dethroned so close to the finish. Bye bye m-, we barely new ya.)

Here's a couple s terms coming your way in the next fiscal marketing year:

sCommerce
Sure some marketers are tapping into social networks to enhance their purchasing experience [Jansport w/Fbook Connect] or promote their sales promotions [Dell, local malls].

But the new trend is cramming eCommerce into the social networks themselves. Bring the shopping cart, cash register, and UPS truck to the consumers, if you can lure them away from tagging old high school photos long enough to actually buy something. 1800 Flowers just launched an e-commerce page on Fbook. Other retailers are sure to quickly follow.

Does this position Fbook as the next Amazon.com? Can they actually charge enough commission to make a decent living? Too early to tell, but at least it provides something new to dangle in front of the investor community.

So what happens when Microblogging meets Micropayments? Who will be the first to figure out an eCommerce transaction via Twitter? [hint: Pizza Hut]

More importantly, will they create a funny name for it (twuys requiring twitcash)? Perhaps Paypal should buy Twitter to protect their eCash from sCash. The South Bay Community Network might just be sitting on a golden URL.

sMail
It's like eMail but less trackable! My Fbook inbox and Twitter direct messages are just as congested as my Outlook. Which means they are now prime candidates for marketing clutter.

Actually, I think limiting emails to 140 characters could be the most productive technology solution since charging for faxes per page. I have no problem implementing private tweets as the new corporate messaging platform. Even better if attachments are limited to 140KB.

sCRM
Finally, my favorite fuzzy acronym. CRM on its own has a hundred definitions and receives the most hesitant not-sure-exactly-what-you-are-talking-about headnods per capita of any marketing term. eCRM is often pitched as the solution if you don't have a CRM program.

Where CRM focuses on the lifetime value of a consumer, eCRM focuses on using the internet to cheaply maintain that relationship. All of which is very one-to-one. Where is the viral word of mouth influence in that?

But add an s to CRM and now we're talking viral. I envision sCRM as maintaining a relationship with consumers who have the highest likelihood to socialize your brand. Thus you could potentially reach a much larger audience through key influencers, without messing around with double opt-ins and database fields. Pyramid scheme relationship marketing. Amway would be impressed.

Of course, you need a plan for actually identifying those influencers and communicating with them. Which is how the new breed of sMarketing agencies are born.

sConclusion
Our industry loves buzzwords. Social continues to rank at the top of the hype list, destined to be ingrained in your marketing strategies for the near term.

So pick you favorite marketing term, add an s, and be amazed when your programs are recognized as the future of marketing.

IFoundItFirst

So you think writing semi-complete sentences in 140 characters or less is too time consuming? Welcome the next Damn I should have thought of that slacker trend:

Nanoblogging

One word status posts courtesy of Adocu.com

No need for pesky clutter like adjectives or punctuation. No room for adding mystery teaser short URLs. Forget out-of-context retweets. Just one word expressions of your current state of mind. Which for most Internet users is really all it takes.

Sure you could just post one word tweets on Twitter. But where's the competition in that? You'd just get a bunch of retweets from followers using up the other 130 characters available.

Parody 2.0 or Next Big Thing? Sometimes the silly ideas are the ones that actually survive.

Future Buzzwords Today = Macromicrobroadcaster

Twitter reached that coming-of-age state where the marketing industry can't quite decide what to do with this unruly techno-teenager. Its popularity continues to rise at the same time the only social network with a revenue model is starting to fall.

While getting kicked out of China is always a good sign you're doing something right, discovering that only 1/5 of the popular crowd wants to hang with you doesn't help your street cred. Especially since you repeatedly run out of beer when they do show up.

Then comes the report that 10% of its users generate 90% of its content. Hmmmm, peer-to-peer communication platform or the next microbroadcast model? And what happens when the microbroadcaster goes macro? If the macromicrobroadcasters threaten to revolt, then you definitely hit a nerve.

This all leads to ongoing conflict for marketers. Should we care about it or not? Consumer revolution or marketing devolution?

iMedia recently published their analysis of Twitter marketing Winners & Losers. Ford vs Nissan! Dunkin' Donuts vs Starbucks! My fave analysis is Dell vs Apple:

Apple, on the other hand, appears to be missing in action. As one of the world's premier brands -- a technology brand, nonetheless -- its absence on Twitter is puzzling to me and many others.

Fortunately Apple's stock price hasn't been affected... A chart displaying the number of followers per brand would end the whole conversation very quickly.

The report eerily reflects the days when Second Life received the same scrutiny over its early marketing adopters. Then the hype broke and these marketers -- recently lauded as being soooo cutting edge -- were chastised for being duped into spending real world dollars on virtual branding.

6 months from now will not having a Twitter presence catapult you to the top of 2009's Smartest Marketers? Will the first Twitter TV show sponsor be rewarded for their savviness, or laughed off the trade show expert panel? Will you be collecting accolades, spinning excuses, or just waiting with 95% of the other marketers to see what happens?

The Local Pub Just Got Robbed & Its Burgers Really Suck

Chicago NPR had an interesting interview with the founder of EveryBlock.com -- a micronews aggregation service that provides newsfeeds for events occurring in your neighborhood. Here is a description via the radio transcript:

"There’s a bunch of crimes that happened here. Wow there’s an armed robbery right on Briar. Someone reviewed the new cupcake place that just opened. What else is interesting – I can filter to foreclosures."

On the screen I can see there were six foreclosures filed on one day in April – a little glimpse into how the housing crisis is hitting this area. Tracking foreclosures may sound tedious, but it’s precisely by sifting and sorting small pieces of data that EveryBlock is creating such excitement. The site locates that data, on a given block, within the limits of a particular city, as fast as it becomes available. To Holovaty, any new information in the public realm - not just news stories but internet reviews, public records like crime stats and building per, or personal photographs - is news.

One-stop access to localized content/news isn't a new trend. Microsoft started up Sidewalk.com 10 years ago. AOL's Digital Cities was even earlier. But those sites were directly reliant on paying people to provide the local content; usually via newspaper content feeds or freelance writers. Those sites were only as good as those creating the content.

Now there is a flood of both professional and user-generated localized content online, the search technology to find and compile it, and the personal devices to deliver it 24 hours a day.

But what happens when the Always On Generation -- raised on a steady stream of Facebook updates and Twitter tweets -- applies the same voracious appetite for real-time content to news about their neighborhood? Will we become digital versions of those guys glued to their police scanners, waiting for a convenience store robbery car chase? Does having your iPhone beep when you pass a neighbor's house in foreclosure really make you a better local citizen?

And what about the declaration that anything is news? Does a cupcake restaurant review demand the same priority as a mugging down the block? Should video of a three alarm fire compete with video from your block party? The melting pot of public vs personal news will be very interesting to watch.

The latest trends in real-time social media have taught us the difficulty in turning off the information firehouse once it starts. Opening up the corner fire hydrants on a hot day may be fun for awhile, at least until your basement starts flooding. The real challenge is not drowning in your own front yard.

Welcome Back, Mr. Portal, Your Chair Is Still Warm

Twitter has about worn me out. Trying to keep up with the 270 people I am following is almost impossible. I check my iPhone app twice a day, each time with over 200 tweets to read. Its relevancy is quickly slipping away...

Twitter is great at aggregating and collecting content, but terrible at delivering it. There are probably a bunch of people who I would be interested in reading. It just takes too much effort to stay involved.

Which brings me to the topic of Portals. For those Dotcom 1.0-ers, Portals are the butt of all Internet jokes. They originally were created as collection points for "stuff" on the Interweb (think early Yahoo and AOL). A good place to ground yourself as web content expanded beyond comprehension. It quickly went downhill from there.

Want some fast VC $$? Call your site a Portal. Got a bunch of separate sites that you need to somehow stitch together without really exerting much effort? Build a Portal site to house them.

As I predicted last month, Porn is always first to recognize a great online idea. The "legit" business always the fast followers. Pornstar Tweet launched awhile ago as a Twitter Portal for following Porn Stars. They aggregate porn tweets so you have one-click access to their daily lives. 

Sports is another huge affinity group online. It didn't take long for someone to apply the same strategy to athlete celebrities. Please welcome Athlete Tweets!



Same strategy, different topic.

It may take awhile for these celebrities to figure out they are providing mass amounts of content for others to make money from. You can't license public communication. Perhaps at some point their agents will wise up, aggregate their own collection of celebrity talent, and bring them en masse to the highest bidder. Who will then charge a monthly fee for accessing the private public lives of the rich and famous.

Sounds like a revenue sharing opportunity in the making.

At Least @WhiteHouse Isn't a Porn Account

So someone finally figured out how to make money on Twitter the old fashioned way: Extort It.

Here is the brief synopsis courtesy of TechCrunch:

1. Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk 956,186 followers) challenges CNN (@CNNbrk 968,489 followers) to a race to 1 million followers on Twitter


2. Larry King gets involved and takes the battle public on YouTube


3. EA gets involved and turns it into a marketing promotion


4. It is revealed that the CNN doesn't even own the Twitter account/name that has all these followers

That's right. Some average guy set up the account, programmed it to publish CNN's RSS news feeds, and quietly amassed almost 1 million followers. Not sure how that compares to CNN.com's RSS subscribers, but on Twitter it is fairly impressive.

Silly? Yes. Juvenile? Yes. Worth CNN spending money to save face and claim ownership of the Twitter name? No. Er, I mean, Yes!

Apparently CNN "bought" the Twitter account (or maybe just rents it, fairly unclear) in order to lay claim to the user base. Which is a bit mindblowing considering the events that provoked it. Even more so since CNN basically bought ownership of their own content, on a site that is still a relative blip in the webosphere.

It also signals the cybersquatting goldrush for branded usernames on Twitter. Better hurry up and register yours, even if you don't plan on using it. Fake celebrity accounts have already demonstrated how confusing things can get for consumers. Soon even @seriouslywearetherealcompanythatsellsfriedchicken will have a price tag.

What's Your RSS CPC ROI?

Twitter users must come to terms with a unique outcome of their 140 character text blasts = they are completely disposable. That's my assessment after spending the last month in the tweetosphere.

I'm "following" 240 people. About 20% of them tweet throughout the day, 50% tweet maybe one or two times daily, the final 30% rarely. I log on to Twitter twice a day, each time greeted with over 200 posts to view. It's akin to self-induced bite-size spam. Yeah, I'm talkin' to you IamDiddy!

Unlike Facebook status posts --which are less frequent and encourage dialogue via attached Comments -- most Twitter users tweet and rarely look back. You might get a response from someone using the "@username" feature, but it is difficult to track them or build any kind of conversation.

The fact that Twitter is now being lauded as the Google Killer says it all. Google is about finding and accessing mass amounts of information. Requiring a search engine to sort through social content betrays Twitter's limited 1:1 communication value.

So how do brands capitalize on microblogging? You can push out custom online discounts like Dell or create brand ambassadors like Sharpie. But at some point your tweets are going to get buried faster than a Monday morning email newsletter.

Kudos to Intuit Turbotax for being the first to identify Twitter as a content generator, not a communication channel. They just announced that they will distribute their tweets via Google Adsense search buys:

The search giant has started offering marketers ad units that stream their five most recent "tweets" across the Google AdSense network. Intuit used several of the measures available for any AdSense campaign to target the ads, which are running on sites such as Bebo, Facebook, Hi5, MySpace and Alltop.

This provides a much broader audience and overcomes the tweet overload blindspots. The only part I don't understand is their campaign objective:

"We could have used this as an acquisition vehicle, but we're looking at it more like a conversational vehicle," Mr. Greenberg said. We're measuring this [in part by] how many followers can we get. Can we get to 100,000 by allowing people to know we're a resource?" When a user clicks on an ad it takes them not to TurboTax.com but to twitter.com/turbotax.

Hmmm. Can you prove the value of those future Twitter followers (or the current 1,270)? Especially if the CPA is a 50 cent search link click? An email opt-in, er I mean Twitter follow, does not necessarily count as a conversation. Although it is the next CMO conversation waiting to happen, right after you explain why those 4,500 Facebook Fans are so important.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

Makes you think those lessons learned from Bud.TV didn't quite sink in...

@stephenstrong Got That CyberDejaVu.com Feeling Again

I find it fascinating when an online technology/trend achieves what I call the Doppler Hype Effect = the average American knows everything about it before they actually experience it. This usually occurs when the mass media mentions, refers, and explains it so often that even my parents can discuss it in conversation (and they are still on a dial-up modem).

This trend dates back to the beginning of the WWW. From 1995-96 you started hearing more and more about these websites that people accessed with a web browser. Being an AOL user wasn't exactly the end game. Apparently there was another Internet out there that AOL's browser couldn't even see. But over time everyone started feeling the itch to get a website of their own, even if their computer didn't have a modem. And you started feeling really awkward when everyone traded AOL email addresses -- except you.

This mass hype is an important part of consumer acceptance. It is easier to accept something when you assume everyone else is already doing it.

Internet history is ripe with examples of emerging technologies that were so hyped by the media that even a 10 year old could explain them before they went mainstream = email, chat rooms, instant messaging, search engines, e-commerce, personal web pages, webcams. Things we now take for granted were the untamed Wild West just 10 years ago.

Sending a complete stranger money based on a digital photo found on eBay sounds risky. But perhaps less so if 60 Minutes was just talking about the new craze of "Internet cyberBazaars."

Mobile phone carriers should thank American Idol every night for bringing SMS texting to the masses.

Every new Internet trend (fad?) launches in mass media with the initial How The Hell Does This Thing Work? articles. Then come the Look How Many People Are Doing This reports. Followed by Can You Believe People Are Making Money Off This? At which point it becomes part of our culture and common vernacular or quickly fades away, overrun by the next big hype.

This trend took a 5 year hiatus after the Dotcom crash in 2001. Web 1.0 faded away and new hypes were quickly dismissed in a flurry of VC-tainted catcalls.

Then came Web 2.0.

Remember all the reports about blogging and user generated content? New crazy sites like Flickr, YouTube, Second Life, Myspace, Facebook? Most of which the average American could discuss at great length, despite never having visited any of them. The hype wheel made one big loop and is spinning faster than ever.


Which brings me to Twitter. The current King of Hype. Get ready, your mom will soon have lots of questions about it.

The Wall Street Journal recently explained how the hell it works. Everyone is talking about how popular it is getting. It hasn't quite reached the third stage of making money, but Twitter is now receiving more shout outs than a high school hip hop concert.

Yesterday the Sunday Chicago Tribune published an article on page 3 promoting comedian Michael Ian Black's Twitter-driven Fuck It list [follow him]. And this morning NPR ran a story on a Los Angeles Korean taco truck's popularity, thanks to its use of Twitter [follow that truck].

Earlier this month the Daily Show served up a hilarious overview of Congress Twitts:




The other talk shows quickly followed. Leno asking Whoopi if she Twitters [nope]. Jimmy Fallon challenging his viewers to follow this guy on Twitter [follow Jimmy]. Ellen explaining how Diddy and Martha Stewart compelled her to start tweeting [follow her and him and her].

Expect this self-feeding hype to continue growing, thus reinforcing that it must be the Next Big Thing.

Twitter is the cool club kid, jockeying to crash the big party that is our nation's consciousness. Skype, Digg, and Yelp are still hanging out in the parking lot waiting for their turn. Mobile Web has been there so long that he set up an RV camper. But Twitter is right at the club entrance, working the bouncers and pleading that they keep searching for his name on the list.

Hmmmm, your name ain't here. But everyone in line seems to know you. So maybe...

Damn, Hulu just bribed the other bouncer with a big Superbowl TV ad. You might need to wait until tomorrow night when you can get their attention again. So it goes. Maybe you can hit up Good Morning America or Time for a backstage pass. Because hanging with celebrities is the fastest way to the top.

@stephenstrong Got Twittered by a Porn Star: That's in our relationship safe-zone, right honey?

The porn industry always takes advantage of new online technologies first. Often identifying and defining new trends before anyone other industry.

Bootleg file sharing? Check. Webcams live chats? Check. Pre-broadband video streaming-on-demand? Check. Affiliate marketing banners? Check. Pop-up ads, digital-rights management, social networking? Check, check, check. Porn was practicing the Long Tail before most marketers even understood the short one.

It isn't important that porn always seems to be a first mover online. It is important that it always seems to be the first industry making money from it. The only reason porn grabs hold of an emerging trend is because it generates revenue. And there are a lot of people trying to get rich off online porn. Think of it as the world's largest startup, constantly testing/prototyping/enhancing/evolving. Only the successful survive. Which makes porn the perfect litmus test for any alleged Web 2.0 business model.

Which is where Twitter comes in -- probably the only website more desperate for a revenue model than Facebook. If porn can't figure out how to make money from it, then kiss it goodbye.

So as an experiment (let me reinforce experiment) I "followed" a variety of porn stars over the weekend on Twitter. Most of them have a couple hundred followers. A few number in the low thousands. Nothing compared to Diddy (173K), Ashton Kuchter (368K), or Shaq (323K), but probably more than you.

The online version of the Red Light District flag down is widely practiced. Some of you might call it lead generation:

E-commerce CTAs appear as well. If you want to drive traffic to your online peep show Friday night, then targeting guys who are bored enough to follow porn tweets is a pretty good start:

It may end up that Twitter cannot monetize any of this, leaving the revenue models to the companies that support its users.

When eBay first started there were a variety of feeder sites that provided added-value services for users -- photo hosting, credit card processing, last-second bid topping. Twitter is no different.

Tinyurl converts web links into condensed URLs, saving precious character counts. Twitpict provides image sharing/instant tweets. Qik mobile video sharing is getting free word-of-mouth thanks to Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore posts. None of them are charging for these offerings yet.

There's even a Porn Tweet Portal that aggregates porn star posts, capitalizing on Twitter's open source content search.

Cursebird.com may actually be more risque. Sure you get the typical posts that would make a truck diver blush. But pornstars are people too. They can be just as boring as everyone else you are following:

Looking for hot photos? You are as likely to download a picture of their cute puppies or new car. Although it can be a bit surreal reading laundry day posts interspersed with on location blow-by-blows. Can being too normal online hurt a pornstar's street cred?

In the end, I decided to go straight to the source. Spamming a variety of them (oh, the irony) to uncover how they plan to leverage Twitter.

Which, based on their replies, shows we may have a long way to go:

Porn is everywhere online. What gives Twitter an advantage? First of all, it has an anonymous intimacy to it. You get an insider's view of the other 98% of a porn star's life, with some smut thrown in. Second, follow enough of them and you catch glimpses of intra-porn communication (if a retweet threesome is your kind of thing).

Lastly, it is a publicly-acceptable porn channel. Besides Twitter.com, you can read tweets and view links on your iPhone, Facebook widget, RSS reader, and eventually any web-connected device (hurry up color Kindle!) Those of you with Internet fridges can hold off bidding for those Jenna Jamson magnets on eBay.

My free advice to the stars? Start with micropayments. As soon as Twitter (or Twitpict) launches their own Paypal billing system, then you should be able to charge followers 10 cents for every naked photo click (charge 50 cents on weekends and after 10 pm). Exclusive coupon codes for discounted video content would help build a new customer base.

Use your public Twitter account for daily posts and new video teasers. Charge followers to access a private account for the real hot talk and behind the scenes details. Sorry, twatter.com is already being squatted and titter.com really is for kids.

Eventually porn will find the Twitter money shot. It always does. How many marketers are too embarrassed to lurk its progress and leverage the learnings when the time is right?

For the record, I avoided taking advantage of tasteless innuendo and bad puns throughout this blog post. I count at least 9 that come close [there's 1! --ed.] But be warned, it's realllly hard to find them! [2! --ed.]

Twitter: The Devolution of the Casual Game Portal

In January I posted about the first interesting marketing effort on Twitter = Flying Dog Brewery's Post & Win Some Free Shit microblogging promotion.

Since then, Dell launched a Twitter program to distribute follower-only deals via tweets. And Coupon Tweet utilizes Twitter's public search engine to aggregate tweets from any merchandiser posting coupon offers.

But perhaps the killer app is just around the corner. A variety of social games have emerged, per this post from Techcrunch:

Follow @TwitBrain and get served calculations on a regular basis (like 3 per hour). If you’re the first person to reply with the correct answer, you’ll earn one point and hopefully make your way to Internet fame (well, not really) by getting on the top 10 list.

Follow @BeatMyTweet and do the exact same thing, but this time with word scrambles. Warning: it’s ridiculously easy so be fast if you want to be one of the first 10 to reply with the correct answer.

Casual games have always been the rage online. Social casual games were the first true widget hits (still pining for Facebook Scrabulous?) The idea that this extends to microblogging is not so far fetched. Granted it is a slimmed down text-only version, but what other technology could have such a broad instantaneous reach? Plus it provides a real world reward for setting up a Twitter account. Just like American Idol text mssg voting catapulted SMS into the average American living room.

This could be the simple approach that makes Twitter relevant to the masses. It extends the social gaming aspect that gave Facebook its viral energy and provides a mass audience as well.

Microtimesuck may become the buzzword of 2009.

iMedia Brand Summit Reflections & Forecasts

So I just attended my first iMedia Summit as a brand marketer (as opposed to the agency side). Overall very impressed with the level of presenters and topics. Usually I attend interactive conferences and don't learn a damn thing. Not because I'm so smart. Mainly they just regurgitate the same case studies and industry insights that have been beaten into us over time. Which makes you feel smart but really just makes you lazy.

So rather than tweet away and recap each session, I thought I'd provide the insights that floated to the top. Performing 90 1-minute interviews with media sales reps (the Speed Pitching session) gives you a fairly good overview of where things are heading.

Ads in "Free" iPhone Apps are the Next Widgets
Encountered at least 5 vendors who are now selling ad space in free iPhone apps. Which just proves the theory that anything a consumer stares at longer than 5 seconds is prime advertising real estate. iPhone app hype continues to rise faster than iPhone penetration. If you buy into this then you better get a free iPhone for your CMO so he can review the creative.

Twitter is the Next Podcast
Remember when podcasting was going to be the next big thing? It was like radio, only with a more limited audience. Podcasting still serves a specific niche, but it really isn't the mass channel that was originally hyped.

I like Twitter. I think status posting (or microblogging if you want it to sound more impressive to your boss) is here to stay. But it doesn't make a mass marketing channel from day 1. The hype we thrust upon these new communication channels prevents them from really maturing and finding their place. Best thing you can do is ignore all those tweets and let them at least reach puberty.

Mobile is the Next Mobile
The longest-running emerging trend on Broadway. Soooo many mobile vendors. All still small and niche. None can explain what they do in less than 60 seconds. Most won't be around in 12 months. Rinse and repeat.

The Return of the Streaming Microwebisodecast (with product placement)
There are a ton of video production houses going rogue and starting to work directly with brand marketers -- bypassing the creative agencies and media shops (and their high budgets).

Special thanks to last year's Hollywood writer's strike for providing a new outlet for quality video creative. Which means brands are in charge of creating their own branded videos. Minus the hilarious agency creative team, big name director, and week-long stays at Shutters On The Beach. I wonder how long this trend will last...

Bigger Banners are Better but Consumers Still Don't Click Them
Research companies are still presenting the insight that bigger banners perform better in brand effectiveness studies. Geezus, no kidding. That was in my first Dynamic Logic report circa 2001. And the second. And the 157th.

Google/Doubleclick reports that the average banner CTR is now 0.10%. The norm previously had been 0.15%. That means that now 1 of every 1,000 people click your ads. As Google encouraged us: "This decrease seems to have stabilized." Yeah, because the water on my driveway froze solid, but luckily it isn't getting any solider. Is it even statistically possible to get below 0.10% of anything?

The World does not Need a 500K Banner (file size, not price)
Seriously, someone tried to convince me that a 500K square banner would be awesome. Now, a $500K banner I might be intrigued by. Maybe for next year's Superbowl.

Your Email Inbox is the Next Social RSS Reader
I now have email inboxes on Facebook and Linkedkin, at work, and at home. I need to be notified of friends' Twitter posts, Facebook wall posts, friend invites, Linkedin profile updates, blog comments, and when I am tagged in bad high school photos.

All of these create alerts that I can have routed to one email address. So rather than checking all these sites (plus my phone SMS, and my iPhone apps, and my Blackberry), I have them forwarded to my home email. Which is forwarded to my iPhone email. So while away from my computer I know everything going on in my social networks. No different than an RSS reader that gets updates from all the websites/blogs that I have tagged.

If I can get that RSS reader to send daily summaries to my email address then I will be completely decentralized centralized.

The Recession has not Hit the Swag Industry
My tally of free stuff:

• Best Swag = free Zoot running shoes
• Lamest = 5 inch stack of branded Post-it Notes
• Most Repetitive = branded USB thumbdrives
• Yummiest = chocolate-covered pretzels (eaten)
• Sort of Yummy = fortune cookies containing sales call to actions (eaten as last resort)
• Most Relaxing = wooden foot massager with peppermint lotion
• Least Relaxing = branded Rubik's Cube
• Vaguest = leather desktop holder for something (pens? business cards? wooden foot massager?) with embedded clock
• Most Retro = large zip-up portfolio with my name on it
• Closest to Downright Bribery = branded $30 Visa Gift Card. Or maybe it was a stimulus card
• Most Useful = empty box with paid postage to mail it all back home

That's it. I'd definitely come back to the Florida Gulf in February next year. Despite my sarcasm, there was a lot of good information and insights. And some sort of drama at 3 AM on the 4th floor. But what goes on at iMedia stays at iMedia. At least until the webcasts are uploaded.

Reflections, Analysis, and Predictions on a Day of Filth: It was the First Annual Facebook “Cuss In Your Status Day” Dumbass!

So last Tuesday driving home from work I had a minor revelation – no one cusses on Facebook. By “no one” of course I mean my social network friend circle. I have no idea what happens on the rest of the site. Facebook’s semi-private publicness is one of the beautiful things about it.

But I have over 300 friends, most of whom I actually know. And the bulk of them swear. Many of them swear a lot. But not on Facebook. Which got me thinking about the effects of social norms on virtual communities. And how words you would have no problem spouting in real life all of the sudden get restricted online with the same audience.

Maybe you have a few Facebook friends who might not appreciate it. Peers such as a coworker or neighbor; authority figures such as your boss or your mom. Or maybe that type of crassness is just soooooo “Myspace.” Facebook has always been the clean cut kid who makes his bed and wears an honor society pin. While Myspace is sneaking smokes behind the fence and hasn’t had to get a real job yet.

Whatever the cause, I thought it would be really fun to challenge my friend network to break habit for at least one day. It would give some of them the excuse to let loose. At the most it would force everyone to reflect on their own social network in a new context: If you can’t cuss in front of your Facebook friends then are they really your friends? I love passive-resistant angst. Burger King recently pushed the same buttons with their Whopper Sacrifice promotion (unfriend 10 people and get a free Whopper, but we’re gonna tell them why you defriended them).

The Birth Of Cuss In Your Status Day

So that evening I created an event for 3 days later: The First Annual Cuss In Your Status Post Day on February 6 and invited all 340 friends on my list. What the hell, worst thing would be that no one is interested. I mean, it’s just one of thousands of Facebook Events created every day.

12 hours later (9 am Wednesday) 825 people had been invited. This was split into 116 accepting the invite, 25 declining, 16 replying “maybe”, and 668 not yet responding (they were invited by someone to “attend” but hadn’t acted on it). So 59% of the people either saw one of my friends join it and followed them, or received a cold call invite from someone on the list. Definitely some viralability going on.

By noon there were 1,275 on the invite list (197 accept + 25 maybe + 54 decline + 999 not replied). 24 hours after creating the event there were 2,272 (422 accept + 83 maybe + 185 decline + 1,582 not replied). I noticed the percent of “not replied” was steadily decreasing. Earlier that day it was 81% of the total invitees. Now it was 70%.

So I sent a group email asking them to spread the word to their Facebook friends by email, event invitation, or posting to their profile page. The only people I couldn’t communicate to were those who “declined.” If you were sent an invite and hadn’t responded (1,582 people at this point) then I could send you a Facebook email, even if I had no connection to you. Which seems like a major violation of Facebook’s core premise. But I had an event to market dammit so spam away. I was surprised that I only received 4 emails back = 2 pissed off and 2 just wondering how I was able to contact them.

Meanwhile the Event page message board revealed a truly pent up desire for the Facebook community to express themselves. Or not. (Facebook users can view it here)

Click thumbnails below for full images:

I couldn’t tell if people misunderstood that they were supposed to save it for their actual status post on Friday, or maybe were just practicing. Either way it appears that I struck a common nerve.

So this dumb idea picked up steam and became an interesting case study of social viral word of mouth and virtual peer pressure. Like any dedicated interactive marketer I did the next logical thing. I bought some text ads promoting it.

For two years I've been staring at Facebook ads for making big bucks hourly, getting money from Obama, curing my acne, and buying things that Oprah recommends. What if you saw an ad for something out of the ordinary?

By Thursday morning the Event invitee list was up to 2,975 (67% not replied). By noon 3,773 (65% not replied). At 9 pm I had over 6,000 invited. My very small budget text ad buy wasn’t really performing well (average 44 cent max bid = 450 clicks, 0.06% CTR, 773,940 ad impressions, 26 cent CPM). So almost all of these invitees were spawned from my initial 340 invitations.



Cuss In Your Status Day’s Eve
Cuss In Your Status Day was almost here! So I decided to send one last email blast to the Event list (accepts, maybes, and not responded). I then learned that Facebook removes email ability once you go over 5,000 invites. So I had to delete 800 “No’s” and a couple hundred “Not Respondeds” in order to get under the limit.

Meanwhile the anticipation was killing a lot of my Facebook friends. There was a huge amount of potential swear energy being stored up for Friday. And it sounded like they were promoting it with their friends as well. The 6,000 official Event invitees were probably only a portion of the total number of Facebook users aware of it.

Which is where Facebook gets fuzzy as a marketing tool. I was ground zero for Cuss In Your Status Day. I know all my friends were aware and that some of them would take part. But I had only a minor glimpse into how their friends we reacting. And no idea what was going on with the 6,000 other Event Invitees and their friend connections. Were people talking about it? Ready to participate in it?

Cuss Day!
On Friday morning the carnage started.

I can only speak for my friends, but it started slow and built into one big messy collection of swearing. And not-quite-as-offensive swearing:

Some even celebrated with their profile photo:

All day. Non stop. Well, at least for some of us.

Some went all out with a flurry of adjectives worthy of George Carlin. Some apologized at the same time. Some did it once. Some went on all day. The F Bomb was definitely the swear of choice. It took 2 hours for the dreaded C Word to appear.

And by reading the status comments, it seemed like those off my friend network had heard it was coming. And if they hadn’t, at least thought it was a great idea.



And maybe it really was going on all over Facebook. Or at least parts of it not related to me.


Or maybe not.

One of the big questions for me (and others) was how many Facebook friends would be lost during this day of debauchery.


Seems like there was some defriending going on, but maybe not to the extent everyone was worried about.

I lost one “friend.” Haven’t looked into who it was and honestly don’t really care. I picked up 10 new friends, so that more than balances it out.

It was a crazy madhouse of cussing carnage in the morning and through lunch. Slowed in the afternoon and pretty much stopped by the end of the workday (at least in my group). Which I guess follows the same trend as online shopping from work. By evening it was pretty much over except for the real diehards. I had a theory that it would pick up again after people started their Friday night drinking. But maybe my social crowd is showing its age.


The Aftermath
I estimate maybe 20% of my friends participated that day. I didn’t have any expectations so I guess that is good. Many others who I expected to take part didn’t, which is the more interesting result. I assume from self-inflicted peer pressure, which I hope haunts them for at least a few more days. Or maybe they really could care less. I caught a few friends deleting their naughty posts on Saturday, probably after their left temporal lobe sobered up.

So about 285 of my friends lurked and tolerated my posts (and the posts of other friends we share). Or maybe they don’t check Facebook that often. It is a lot like inviting a crapload of people to a kegger party, getting wrapped up in the drunken fun, and then trying to remember the next morning who showed up. Actually, it was a lot like that.

Back on the Event page there was a total of 9,803 invitees by the end of the day. 30 times the original number I had personally invited 3 days earlier. And the portion of invitees who had not responded dropped considerably to 54% of the total. Which means at least 4,500 were actively aware of it. Not to mention the 774,000 media impressions from my text ad buy.

How many people actually participated? No idea. Unlike Twitter -- where user posts are mostly public and available on twitter.com to search (check out Cursebird.com) – Facebook posts are private. Which makes any success criteria purely anecdotal. This is what drives marketers nuts about trying to tap into Facebook. Facebook’s sales team should be pushing for an anonymous “buzz chatter meter” to sell as an extra measurement service. They have a proprietary lock on it that no other research company can fulfill.

An informal poll of my friends ranges from “not many cussers” to “a lot.” I bet an average of 10 – 15% of your total friend list is accurate. Which could mean I just need to publicize it more next year. Or maybe there’s just too much social peer pressure in virtual communities. But I bet if more people hear about it in advance (and assume their friends are aware as well), then they will have less trepidation taking part.

I didn’t see it get picked up in the press, which is easily resolved by friending some magazine editors between now and February 2010.

Seeking Corporate Sponsorship of CIYSD 2010
So I’m planning the Second Annual Cuss In Your Status Day for 2010. Interested? Sign up on our Facebook Group and I’ll notify you when it is scheduled:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=63177759136

Got thoughts, insights, or commentary on how Cuss Day affected your social group? Leave a comment here or email me at my new official address:

fucker@cussinyourstatus.com

And hopefully I’ll cuss you next year dumbfuck!

Best Call To Action of 2008 = Post & Win Some Shit

So I'm a big fan of beer. The kind of geek who stands in front of the store beer selection for 5 minutes -- pondering exactly which 6-pack to buy -- until his wife finally quietly demands that I JUST PICK SOMETHING ALREADY!

Craft brewers ("microbrewery" is sooooo Beer 1.0) have some of the most loyal consumers in marketing. The ones who proudly wear branded t-shirts, hats, and sometimes even tattoos. Choose their restaurants based on the beer list. Drive across state lines to buy a limited releases not available in their area. Pay $8 for a 4-pack.

If you have heard of -- and preferably imbibed -- beers from Bell's, Dogfish Head, Flying Dog, Ommegang, Lagunitas, Rogue, New Glarus (JUST PICK SOMETHING ALREADY! ) then you know what I mean.

These brands are the perfect test case for guerrilla marketing. They can't afford big advertising campaigns, instead thriving off rabid fans and word of mouth. It is only natural that they take advantage of social media and online communities to talk to their consumers and reach new ones.

Denver's Flying Dog Brewery is a great example. They have their blog, Flickr stream, Facebook mascot page and fan page, YouTube channel, and even an open source community project for developing new beer recipes. None of these gather the number of users or views that would strike fear in the hearts of mass brewers. But for craft brewers every consumer counts.

My favorite initiative is a promotion they ran in December via Twitter. Using a new mobile-based beer review site (Beerdo); they awarded prizes if you posted a review for one of their beers. Here's the scoop, promoted via their Facebook page:

For the next two weeks any Flying Dog beer reviewed on Beerdo will be entered in a contest to win some Flying Dog shit. We’ll draw a name at random and the lucky winner will receive some awesome Flying Dog merch. We’ll also be giving out prizes to some of the more creative descriptions of our beer. Think of it as our Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus present to you.

Here’s how to rate a beer via Beero from twitter:

1. Create a new tweet.
2. Start it with @beerdo
3. Next, type the name of the beer you’re rating. For example, Flying Dog Doggie Style Pale Ale
4. To rate your beer, use 1-5 exclamation points (1 is low, 5 is awesome)
5. You can then use the rest of your message to describe the beer you’re drinking.
So your tweet would look something like this:

@beerdo Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter !!!!! This beer is as big as Hunter’s reputation, and I love the massive but balanced brew.

We’ll be monitoring all tweets with “@beerdo” and “flying Dog” in them, so make sure your reviews about our beers contain those terms.

We’re really excited about Beerdo for a bunch of reasons. One of those is that it’s a unique and innovative way to rate beers on the fly. So if you’re at a bar and trying Double Dog for the first time, it’s easiest to review the beer as you’re drinking it.

So tweet away, fans of Flying Dog!

The beauty is that this isn't a closed-system promotion. If I "tweet" about their beer, it is not only seen by Flying Dog but also anyone else following me via Twitter. Whether they know of Flying Dog or not. If I post 5 times about Flying Dog beer, then that is 5 brand impressions reaching a potentially new consumer. And if they are my friend on Twitter, then odds are they are someone who might enjoy a Snake Dog IPA or Horn Dog Barley Wine.

It also would make a great call to action when consumers are enjoying their product = bottle labels, bar table tents, coasters.

I continue to debate the marketing potential of Twitter. Not just their advertising revenue (or lack of), but also how brands can leverage it to support campaigns and drive loyalty. The use of status posts as promotion entry could be one of the first marketing tactics that makes sense.

Full of Meat and Online Marketing Wisdom

I attended a dinner last night of Chicago online marketing gurus as part of the Conspiracy to Change Advertising. It was hosted by Eyeblaster and a nice informal opportunity to discuss the state of interactive. Two interesting concepts came out of it:

Microspamming:
The act of setting up a microblog account such as Twitter, Facebook status, etc. for the sole purpose of pushing out as much random information as possible, with little concern if the recipients are reading them. Specifically for those Twitterers who push out more feeds than they consume/subscribe to.

Behavioral Targeted TV Ads:
When your digital TV and computer start sharing the same IP address, why can't Google serve up dynamically-targeted TV spots based on your online browsing habits (as captured by AdSense and Doubleclick tracking)? Which means 'round the clock Webkinz ads in my house.

We are looking for participants from the "client side" (i.e. marketers who actually pay the bills, versus those of us who collect the money). Let me know if you are interested.

Too Late, NanoTwitter.com is Already Taken

Interesting story about HP's nanotechnology initiatives:

HP's grand vision: measure everything

Imagine walking down the supermarket aisle with a cheap device you could hold up to a tomato. If the sensor detects a pesticide residue, you'd know the "organic" label is a lie. Similar tools could track the chemical content of water in a stream, telling you if there was lead contamination and when it got there, or keep constant watch on a bridge and tell if a structural steel beam was at risk of collapse.

Such products are almost certain to become common in coming decades, according to Stan Williams, who heads Hewlett-Packard's Information and Quantum Systems Laboratory. He aims to develop a panoply of microscopic-scale nanotech devices that will be able to measure essentially anything - and at low cost to boot. Viruses, bacteria, the chemical composition of molecules, vibration, moisture levels, particular sounds - these are just some of the things that the super-cheap devices he envisions will be able to detect.

The Internet is great at collecting massive amounts of information. Search engines are great at tracking and sorting massive amounts of information. The WWW is great at giving visual context to massive amounts of information. Mobile technologies are great at collecting/distributing that information anywhere we want. Imagine worldwide tracking of carbon emissions in realtime, viewable via Google Earth.

So it will be interesting to see how these technologies jump the shark into the public space. Toss some in the fridge to automatically add items to your webgrocer shopping list when the food starts to go bad? Paint some on your lawnmower to let you know when it is time to fertilize the grass?

And if marketers start implanting them in their products, and network them together into a massive consumer database (think really small RFID), what research insights and marketing programs might be spawned? At least the privacy groups will then have something bigger to worry about than behavioral ad serving.

The Pornification of Emerging Media

There's an old saying that you know an online technology is ready for the mainstream when the porn industry adopts it.

Looks like Twitter-style microblogging has finally reached puberty. From TechCrunch:

Twatr.net: Adult Twitter clone
Twatr.net is trying to keep a low profile but according to the founders it’s basically a Twitter for adults. The site is SFW right now and they’re building out HD video and image streaming/sharing along with some impressive audio features for those who might be afraid to bare it all. The Amsterdam-based company just closed a 2 million euro funding round.

Stephen is Twittering about the lack of Twittering

I finally found a couple people who will admit to Twittering. Although they can't decide if it is a fad either. I filed it under my new category: "things I am finally too old to get into" -- along with my Facebook page and video IM.

I don't see it going mainstream until a famous celebrity strikes a deal with Perez Hilton to microblog for them. The bite-size reality show.

At least that was until Orbitz started offering their own version of user-generated travel updates:
http://updates.orbitz.com

Basically Orbitz users send Twitter-style updates while they are traveling -- delayed flights, short security lines, full parking garages, airport bar drink specials, etc. It borders on "scratch my day trip to New York and I'll scratch your traffic jam drive to O'Hare" good Samaritan.

But if they attached a reward system, such as Orbitz Points every time you post, then they might really have a constant source of relevant user content. And a social media CRM strategy (sm-CRM?)