Maybe a Information SuperPanicRoom is Acceptable

So last month I discussed the pleasures of an Internet-free vacation.

This month we went on family vacation #2 in southwest Florida. Standard "live at the beach for a week" lazy tourist trip. We left the laptops at home, but I still had some online connections via my iPhone. Which, as an information retrieval device, came in quite handy for making the trip more enjoyable.

We checked low tide times for optimal sea shell hunting. Quickly found remedies for jellyfish stings (4 beers is the best antidote). Used the new Yelp iPhone app to find good places to eat dinner. The Facebook iPhone app to mock my coworkers with news about manatee sightings, gulf waves, and sunset photos.

But it paid for itself at 4 AM when our 6 year old woke up with major eye pain, after taking a face full of ocean waves the day before. It took less than 15 minutes to find a good local ophthalmologists (yes, mom knew the techical name) via consumer reviews, confirm that they were in-network from our insurance company's site, and pull the exact location/directions via Google Maps. The only bad part was waiting 4 hours to make the appointment.

If you find yourself in the Fort Myers area with a child's scratched cornea, West Coast Eye Care is highly recommended.

Which has me conflicted between being Internet disabled (no access) and Internet restricted (no broadband/computer access, maybe mobile WAP/SMS access) while on vacation.

We could have printed out the tide charts, local restaurants, etc. prior to the trip. But mobile Internet access allows us to be more spontaneous and not have to think so far in advance.

We could just as well have waited until morning to begin calling the insurance company, local eye doctors, etc. and I'm sure everything would have turned out OK. But the ability to speed up treatment by a few hours -- and have some peace of mind at 4 AM -- definitely was preferred.

In the end it is all about self control, which it increasingly difficult in an always-on culture. Of course, once WebTV takes off, it will be less of a debate as long as your hotel room has cable...

You Have to be Nice to the IT Department Again

Looks like the IT department has found their opportunity to jump back into online marketing efforts and justify some headcount.

Forrester just published this POV = IT Departments Play Key Role In The Acquisition And Deployment Of Web 2.0 Technologies. They have allowed marketing groups to drive these programs under the guise of "web marketing stuff." But now that Web 2.0 apps are getting more popular and more robust, IT will want to control the efforts.

Which means we are destined for a slowdown in implementation and evolution. Nothing against IT departments (really, please don't shut off my Facebook access). But they exist on disciplined process, technical thoroughness, and the staffing formula where new projects don't justify additional headcount -- just a longer to do list. A mentality that clashes severly with the rough and tumble chaos of online marketing. All those who have been told that a 5 page microsite will take 6 weeks to go live, please raise your hand.

Forrester's recommendation:
Web 2.0 Marketers Must Embrace The IT Department

My recommendation from the agency side of things:
Try to keep your Web 2.0 efforts off the "client site." Disguise it as part of an online media buy or short-term marketing effort. It worked for microsites for years.

Here's the Forrester summary:

Marketing departments, corporate communications, or other lines of business led early enterprise Web 2.0 deployments, with IT departments along for the ride, if they were involved at all. That dynamic is changing rapidly; our recent Web 2.0 survey shows IT departments taking a more active role in the acquisition and deployment of Web 2.0 technologies. Budgetary controls, the need for integration and technical skills, and the growing importance of Web 2.0 tools are all putting IT departments in the driver's seat. Technology product managers and marketers will need to not only deal with these departments but also appeal to them outright. Those that can do so most effectively stand to close more deals, shorten the sales cycle, and grow deployments more easily.

This Way To The Information Supertrail

Just spent some time in the Michigan UP deep woods. Cabins, lakes, fishing, beer. No cellphone access, internet connections, or even a hardlined phone.

After a week of being cut off from instant information, you realize that you could survive without the internet. I missed George Carlin dying and the break of Madonna's divorce rumors. And I didn't know exactly what the weather would be like when I pushed the boat off at 6 AM. But jumping off the Info Superhighway was a nice break.

On the other hand my cousin, who is a freshman in college, found a 3' X 3' area in her cabin where she could get a weak cellphone signal. She spent a lot of time standing in one spot mashing away at her Sidekick keyboard.

Which made me contemplate The Kids today. Personally, I am old enough to remember life before email, WWW, and Windows 3.1. A week without it is a blast to my past. I suffered through AOL on a 28K modem, so tolerating slow webpage downloads on my 2G iPhone isn't complete torture. But The Kids will have no concept of life prior to always on / always fast / always realtime information.

Richard Louv is co-founder of the Children & Nature Network. He wrote a great book titled Last Child in the Woods. It analyzes the connection with children and nature, and the impact of society's alienation between the two. He warns about the decline of "unstructured outdoor play" and Nature Deficiency Disorder. It can be a bit treehugger at times, but overall it raises very valid points regarding how a disconnection from nature can have a broad impact on a child's creativity and social awareness. It can also induce pangs of parental guilt, but even a walk in the local nature reserve is a great first step.

So I think of The Kids and how they will be tracing their nature walks on Google Maps, posting their 24" Northern Pike catches to Twitter, blogging around the campfire. This digital multitasking behavior already runs rampant through most companies. Hotels have started offering conference rooms that don't have Wifi/cellphone/Blackberry coverage to keep offsite meetings ontrack. Why not the same for vacation spots? It was refreshing to tell everyone at work that there was no way to contact me for the next 10 days. Not my fault! Don't even try! You could probably charge more for those cabin rentals or all-inclusive resorts.

Meanwhile I posted my vacation photos to my Facebook page, staked out our next nature vacation on Google Earth, and found a section on Weather.com that tracks prime fishing times throughout the day. Old habits are hard to break.

Don't Forget to Tivo Your Wii Tonight

Nintendo's Wii Fit marketing inertia keeps building with this announcement:

Tribe, Nintendo Partner For Teen Fitness Program
Tribe Pictures has created a new original Web series, "Get Fit With Alyson," starring Alyson Stoner (of the upcoming Disney film "Camp Rock").

Designed to engage, motive and inspire teens to exercise and live a healthy lifestyle, each 3-minute webisode in the continuing series features Alyson leading other teens through a fun exercise routine, an unscripted chat with the cast about the things on their minds, and her personal musings in "The World According to Alyson."

What is most interesting is that additional video content supporting the program will only be available via the Wii's internet channel/browser. The Big 3 have always positioned their newest gaming consoles as entertainment systems. This is one of the first attempts to deliver original video content through them. Sony's recent announcement of their interactive gaming show is next, although they are charging $3 a month for it.

Would you rather watch video content on your inferior computer monitor or your large screen plasma? Gaming consoles are quickly becoming the new consumer device for accessing web content. So now broadcast TV has more alternative entertainment channels to compete with, ones that share the same screen but are always video on demand.

The Future of Mobile Advertising is Soooo 1997

So Mobile finally caught up with the web browser circa 1997:

Go2 Media Unveils Animated Banner Units
Aiming to entice brand advertisers, mobile content provider go2 Media is rolling out animated banner units across its network of mobile content sites on wireless carrier decks.

The banners will appear at the top of mobile WAP pages and feature a series of images that display on a 10- to-15-second loop and are optimized to run across all networks and devices. The idea is to go beyond static graphical spots and text ads to offer marketers a more eye-catching option for mobile campaigns.

Seriously, if this is the future of Mobile then we can stop now. Because creative teams are really pining for the good old days when they had to cram their creative into 12K banners the size of postage stamps. And animation is soooo important to improving brand awareness, message association, and purchase intent (make sure you put the logo in every frame).

We are really in trouble as soon as the iPhone supports Flash. And the first phone screen takeover ad that I find will be publicly bashed.

Here's something to bet on: 2 years from now we will be moaning about the decline in mobile banner CTRs and start looking for ways to bait-n-switch over to engagement metrics like "time spent reading sponsor pages." At least until video pre-loads explode on the scene and save the day.

Another option: forget about mobile as a banner channel. Reward consumers for interacting with you, don't just push more advertising messages. You could start with SMS code call to actions on your print ads and on your packaging. Or sponsor unique content that they can't get anywhere else (at least when they aren't staring at the 1st or 2nd screen).

Mobile can provide a true one-to-one experience. Please don't waste it on the same tactics that are choking the WWW.

Will Work for Stock Options Again

Back in February I talked about the new trend of senior interactive agency talent moving to the Dotcom world. The trend continues:

Matt Freeman Quits Tribal DDB for Top Job at GoFish
Matt Freeman, the executive who was handpicked a decade ago to build the Omnicom Group digital network Tribal DDB, is stepping down as the agency's CEO to head up GoFish, a publicly traded digital ad network.

The pool of senior marketers with strong interactive experience is not very large, and agencies have been hoarding them ever since the dotcom bust. So they will be a primary focus of recruiters.

The advertising industry is also notorious for incestuous feeding/swapping of talent. Will be interesting to see how it fairs as that talent pool shrinks. Without a doubt they will need to start hiring people from smaller webshops/specialty agencies, or second tier markets, who will struggle with being part of a much larger and complex agency structure.

You Got Your Widget in My RSS Feed! No You Got Your RSS Feed...

So celebrity privacy has gone from losing your cell phone address book to having your social widget go all Terminator on you:

MySpace, Yahoo blame bad APIs for celebrity photos breach
Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan's private MySpace photos are all over the Internet now, thanks to a glitch in the bad APIs.

Programmers are people too, and no online technology is perfect. Especially at the rate that widgets, apps, embedded content tools, etc. are being cranked out right now in hopes of being first to be installed, and first to be acquired by the Big Boys.

But it's one thing to have your embedded Taco Bell game crash on you. Another to have your semi-private information spewed across the internet. Which currently consists of personal photos, fave movies lists, and maybe your address/phone number that you forgot to remove from your resume before uploading it to Linked In.

But as users become more comfortable interacting with the internet via social network pages -- as opposed to using external websites -- the privacy impact will grow.

Why visit your bank's website to pay bills, when you can easily install their banking widget on your iPhone, which accidently notifies others via Twitter of your Girls Gone Wild subscription payments. Or store your personal contacts in a format that accidently gets shared on your Ebay merchant page?

Think of all the online shareware that you've downloaded and discovered is crap. Or online tools from established companies that end up being digitally recalled. Or any new Microsoft launch. Now give those same tools indirect access to your personal information and let the paranoia begin.

Just Waiting for That First Social Network Virus

Symantec (makers of Norton Antivirus/Firewall/RAM Decalcifier) has been touching on the social media privacy topic more than once.

Online Social Networks Go Mainstream

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Will be interesting to see how they try to get into this market, which is just begging for some type of automated "check your private information in public spaces" service.

Shameless Work Plug

A lot of people have a point of view about the state of healthcare in our country. Giving them a place online to voice that view is a natural fit. Having that site sponsored by an insurance company is bound to raise a few skeptics.

Our client, BlueCross BlueShield of Florida, bought into an entire integrated campaign on that premise -- The Power of the Human Voice. And the site to back it up:

http://www.powerofthehumanvoice.com/

It allows anyone to leave a voice message with their point of view, which anyone can listen to.

At first, you would exepect the consumer commments to be pro-BCBS or perhaps neutered negative. But BCBS agreed to allow all posts to go up (except those violating standard decency/privacy terms). Even those criticizing their company. The result is a collection of consumer voices that range from enraged to emotional to positive. It is amazing how many end with the person thanking BCBS for the opportunity to express themselves.

Seems like a gimmick, but listen to a couple and you will be surprised. And maybe motivated to leave your own.

Have you Facebooked Old Friends Recently?

So in the last week I found two long-lost friends via social network sites. I had lost contact with both of them 8-10 years ago, primarily the victim of natural social network erosion. People moved, email addresses changed, phone numbers evolved. Gradually lost touch.

Every so often I would stalk them online to no avail. One of my friends, code name "Ex-coworker Creative Director", has a semi-popular name. So search engine hits would turn up a ton of results, which after 5 minutes of browsing revealed zero direct hits. My other friend, code name "Study Abroad in England Floormate", has a really unique first/last name that turns up zero hits. None. For the last 10 years.

Both friends excelled at existing under the grid. You wouldn't find a resume link, portfolio site, personal homepage, press release, or even online phonebook entry. They didn't exist online, which was fine with them. Until they felt compelled to join a social network site.

Ex-coworker CD is job searching and joined Linked-In. He actually found me first through the "people you might know" recommendation engine. He still doesn't show up in Google (at least not the first 5 pages of results, which is my breaking point). But a Linked-In search delivers 36 people with his name. He is now easy to find based on his city and job title (#4 on the search results list). We are getting together within the next week to catch up.

Study Abroad in England Floormate is also still Google Free. But I found her in about 5 seconds on Facebook. She's the only person with that name. Her Facebook page is literally blank except for her profile photo, which is obviously her. My "be my friend" invite was positively returned within 6 hours. We are now catching up over email and Flickr.

These are two people who really made no effort to establish an online presence, and they easily stayed off the grid. They aren't luddites, live fairly normal lives, and are probably among a large population of internet users without an online homestead. But one profile on one social network instantly opens them up to public eyes.

The social networks themselves are fairly low risk. You choose how much personal information to make public. Potential "friends" need to be acknowledged by you before they establish formal communication. But as social networks become ground zero for your online existence, the natural extension between your online and offline life begins. One or two words can instantly match your Linked In profile to someone else's photo album on Webshots. Which can link you to those relevant web pages results buried in the search engines. And all of the sudden your name drifts up through the search results flotsam, floating through the thermocline to the top of the results pages.

As more offline information becomes enabled online (cue Google Doomsday soundtrack), these connections become stronger. And your private life slowly inches into public. Which is OK with me. I still have a list of old college roommates who I'd love to catch up with, or at least lurk-view to see what they are up to.

Research Confirms: Social Networking Just Like the Rest of the Internet

A variety of new reports on Social Networking came out this week, all confirming the obvious:

Big generalist sites like MySpace and Facebook still dominate (just like the big content portals of AOL, Yahoo, YouTube, etc.). Niche networking sites are growing (just like their predecessors -- niche blogs, niche content sites, niche video sites).

And mobile is going to be a category killer at some, um, point in the near, maybe far, future. We assume. Look over there! A mobile beta program! With a banner on it!

Facebook is getting all the hype right now, but MySpace continues to dominate:

Hitwise reports that MySpace.com received 73.82% of the market share of U.S. visits in April 2008 among a custom category of 57 of the leading social networking websites. Among the top 10 social networking websites, Facebook ranked second by the market share of visits with 4.8%, followed by MyYearbook, which received 1.33%.

All that debate over Facebook Beacons, and they only get 4.8% of the traffic? Damn hype engines.

Which is too bad, since most marketers know that MySpace is a sink hole for online advertising. Too much clutter, terrible CTRs, limited opportunities for branded content. MySpace TV has more opportunities but even News Corp, MySpace's owner, admitted they have some problems right now attracting advertisers to the largest social network site on the planet.

But despite the dominance of the big social networks sites, here's a recent report about the growing area of niche community sites. Which may be a more accurate place to spend your client's marketing dollars:

Large numbers of US Internet users joined online communities last year, and membership in such groups is now a mainstream activity. Nearly half of US Internet users surveyed for the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future's "2008 Digital Future Project" report said they belonged to a hobby-oriented online community. A full 41% of respondents belonged to an online social community, and one-third belonged to an online professional community.

If you haven't been to Ning yet, then put that on your list of sites to throw out during buzzword presentations. Especially if you can add that the founder also created the web browser. Not a web browser, the web browser.

And Mobile continues to try to become the new access point, like the baby brother who keeps wanting to tag along on your trip to the mall:

eMarketer forecasts that mobile social networking will grow from 82 million users in 2007 to over 800 million worldwide by 2012.

"This population will comprise current online social networkers who are extending their digital lives to mobile as well as a growing number of mobile-only social networkers," said John du Pre Gauntt, eMarketer senior analyst and co-author of the new report, Mobile Social Networks. "Early reports suggest strong user demand for mobile social networks."

Poor Mobile. Still trying to break away from phrases such as "forecasts" and "early reports suggest" and "maybe kind of sort of we think."

Finally, just for fun, what happens when the virtual world blurs into the real world:

No Shit Sherlock headline of the day

I am still trying to figure out how they got the remote control out of Dad's hands. But that is probably a different study.

Survey: Moms Skip Ads on DVRs
Despite redoubling their efforts, TV networks have much to do to entice viewers to stick around and watch commercials, according to new research from MindShare that focused on American moms.