Ms. Adverthinker

Have you checked out turntable.fm yet? While music is in my life everyday, I am not very knowledgeable about or good at finding the stuff I like. Let’s just say I don’t have an exceptionally discerning ear, but I know what I like when I hear it. And I like being around people who know more about than me and are willing to teach me.

Turntable is that online version of being around people who know more and are teaching me when an in-person lesson is not an option. The reason that I am talking about here is the social and gaming aspects of site participation are interesting:

• Anyone can set up a room and DJ to a theme of their choice. Up to five people can DJ in a room and the control rotates between them.
• Anyone can join the room and “vote” on the song playing as “lame” or “awesome.” When you vote “awesome,” your avatar’s head starts bobbing to the music. You can see how the song is fairing on the lame/awesome meter while it plays.
• The more people that favor your song, the more points you build as a DJ. With more points, you can change your avatar (choices open up at different point levels). Every visitor can see your score.
• There is a chat column in each “room” and visitors talk about the music.
• The name/title of the song shows and there are built in features for sharing the song to your social networks and saving the song to your music player of choice.

CNN recently called it the “cool kids’ Pandora” and offered some spinning tips for the new visitors.

I am loving it right now. Check it out.

In case you missed it Sunday night, here is my discussion with Roby Brock of Talk Business on popular mobile applications. More from Talk Business here and more details on these apps from me here.

One of the most interesting facts from this book:

“A recent major survey of high-level executives, including chief executive officers, chief financial officers, and presidents, revealed that 70 percent of them regularly play casual computer games while working. That’s right: the vast majority of senior executives report taking daily computer game breaks that last on average between fifteen minutes and one hour.”

I wouldn’t believe this startling statistic had I not spotted one of my clients playing Solitaire during a meeting, and another playing Words With Friends while walking to a meeting. The bottom line is that everyone is playing games and in surprising numbers. Games have huge power and potential influence over our behavior. Because there has been a lot of talk in the technology and social worlds of this influence of gaming and its growth potential, and because I believe know nothing about gaming–not being a gamer myself–I decided to read the most talked book on the subject. While I am still trying to figure out gaming and how it can be used in our business as an effective tool, this book did shed some light on the appeal of games and how they can influence change:

“The real world just doesn’t offer up as easily the carefully designed pleasures, the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential. Reality wasn’t designed from the bottom up to make us happy.”

Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal explores why people play games, the psychology behind good game mechanics and gives real examples of games that have the potential to change behaviors for world-wide good. I have a new appreciation for both game developers and game players after reading this book. McGonigal walks through specific games, like World of Warcraft, and talks about specific skills the gamers learn and build by playing these types of games.

Ultimately, McGonigal is saying that game play makes people happy, and when they are happy they will play more, and when they play more they will ultimately reach the defined game goal:

“There are many ways to be happy, but we cannot find happiness. No object, no event, no outcome or life circumstance can deliver real happiness to us. We have to make our own happiness–by working hard at activities that provide their own reward.”

…

“On the other hand, when we set out to make our own happiness, we’re focused on activity that generates intrinsic rewards–the positive emotions, personal strengths, and social connections that we build by engaging intensely with the world around us. We’re not looking for praise or payouts. The very act of what we’re doing, the enjoyment of being fully engaged, is enough.”

So McGonigal wonders if we can define a goal within a game that can fix really big world issues, and that is the impetus for the book:

“What if we decided to use everything we know about game design to fix what’s wrong with reality? What if we started to live our real lives like gamers, lead our real businesses and communities like game designers, and think about solving real-world problems like computer and video game theorists?”

…

“Game developers know better than anyone else how to inspire extreme effort and reward hard work. They know how to facilitate cooperation and collaboration at previously unimaginable scales. And they are continuously innovating new ways to motivate players to stick with harder challenges, for longer, and in much bigger groups. These crucial twenty-first-century skills can help all of us find new ways to make a deep and lasting impact on the world around us.”

With this as her premise, McGonigal walks the how games are created, defined, played and improved upon. From the basics like the four defining traits of a game:

• A goal
• Rules
• A feedback system
• Voluntary participation

To the details like scalability and social integrations. With this kind of detail and range, this book is great for a non-gamer looking to understand what impact games have and how to go about thinking about game design. I enjoyed reading and learning from McGonigal’s extensive experiences and would definitely recommend this to anyone curious about game mechanics and design.

Last week, Roby Brock and I talked about the trend for social media companies to enter IPOs, and Zynga came up in our conversation as one on the horizon for entering that realm. Well, it happened a couple of days ago.  Zynga’s user-base and proven profitability have made it desirable:

• 232 million monthly active users
• $597 million in revenue in 2010

Mashable provides a list of 11 other interesting stats about Zynga’s success.

Zynga is the company behind social games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars and is highly dependent of Facebook for its players.  ”The company admits that basically all of its revenue comes from its partnership with Facebook: ‘We generate substantially all of our revenue and players through the Facebook platform and expect to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.’” This fact may make investors a bit wary of buying in immediately, but with the success of LinkedIn and the talk about growth potential of gaming/games in general, Zynga will probably fair well in this market.

I was recently asked about popular apps for business people.  Here are some more details on the apps I discussed, plus some others that I particularly like and use regularly.

Productivity

Evernote

Evernote is an app that you can download on your phone, tablet and computer, set up one account and it automatically syncs across all the devices. It stores text documents, photos, audio files and attachments, organized as individual files or in notebooks. It is really like your mental file cabinet, scrapbook and notebook or binder combined into one digital app.

I have used Evernote for a while now, but several weeks ago I left my actual, physical notebook at home and was lost for the entire morning until I could go home and pick it up at lunch. Since that day, I never travel or go to a meeting without pulling all my work documents needed for reference into an Evernote notebook so they are accessible on my phone and tablet for easy reference. I hope to never be dependent on a piece of paper again.

Wunderlist

That same day that I left my notebook at home was the day I set out to find the perfect to do list app (my to do list was a strip of paper with sticky notes attached and stuffed in the back of my notebook). And in my search, I found Wunderlist. And it is indeed perfect. So much so that many of the staffers at Stone Ward are now also using it.

Like Evernote, Wunderlist can be downloaded across multiple devices and using one account, the user can sync the to do lists. Multiple lists can be created (for example, one for personal, one for work, one for travel, etc.). The list can be sorted, scheduled and annotated. Additionally, you can share the lists and even add items by email. And there is a checkbox to mark when you complete the item, if you need that satisfaction of checking something off your list. No more sticky notes.

Travel

TripIt

I love this one so much, it has its very own review on Ms. Adverthinker.

Instapaper

With the introduction of iOS 5 and it’s new features in Safari, Instapaper may become extinct. But until then, it is great for travel when on planes or in areas without Internet access. Instapaper is an app that you can download for you phone and tablet, as well as bookmark on your desktop browser. When you find articles you want to read, but simply don’t have time, or want to save it for later, click the Instapaper bookmark in your browser.  When you open the Instapaper app on your phone or tablet, the articles sync to that device and make them available without Internet access. Then through Instapaper, you can save the article to your favorite social bookmarking provider or share via social channels once you have had a chance to read it. The social integration feature is brilliant and may keep Instapaper alive once iOS 5 launches. Tip: remember to launch the app and sync before you get on the plane, while you still have Internet access!

Presentation

Keynote

Keynote is the alternative to PowerPoint, and it is so much better. It is easier to use, creates more beautiful presentations and nicer transitions. However, it is only available for use on Mac computers. And it is now available on the iPad and iPhone. Through the app, you can create, edit and present. For those with these devices, but no Mac computer, you can now experience the difference between Keynote and PowerPoint. You will never want to go back to PowerPoint again.

Remote for Keynote

This app syncs with via Bluetooth with your MacBook to control your Keynote presentations. No more remote needed. And every presenter can sync their own iPhones to control their individual parts of the presentation. It is both handy and impressive.

Staying Current/Education

Twitter

Twitter has its own app that allows you to view all links, photos, videos and follower details right within the apps sliding windows. The interface is friendly and gorgeous. There is no reason to use another third-party Twitter app.

Reeder

I am a huge Google Reader fan. I scan my 100+ feeds throughout the day on all of my devices through Reeder. It pulls them seamlessly in through the categories I have set and syncs across the devices so it knows which ones I have read already. Additionally, it has a built in sharing feature, so I can bookmark the ones I want to reference later through my Delicious account, save them to Instapaper, share to Facebook or Twitter, among many other options.

TED

I am addicted to TED videos. The topics are always interesting and thought-provoking, and never longer than 20 minutes. The TED app is just as beautifully designed as the website, allows for easy search and access to all TED talks.

Public Radio

Public Radio is simple: local NPR stations streamed through an app.

iTunes

The iTunes U podcasts are an amazing resource. Free to download and listen at your convenience and from the best schools in the country. My current favorite series is the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcasts. Check them out now and thank me later.

Convenience

Starbucks Mobile

This one is just cool to use. Register your Starbucks gift card through the app and when you are ready to pay at Starbucks, simply pull up the app and scan the barcode that appears on your screen with the scanner at the register. The amount of your purchase is automatically deducted from your card balance. No more fumbling with payment; it is all on your phone. You can reload the card or add the balances from other cards to your account through the Starbucks website. Love it.

Wordbook

It is a dictionary. I am a terrible speller and I am always concerned that I am mispronouncing words, so I use this app frequently. The definitions include an audio pronunciation.

What are your favorite apps?

This week I talked to Roby Brock at Talk Business about technology IPOs, specifically social media IPOs. Although not a social media company, Square is a technology company that is much talked about of late and one to keep an eye on for future growth.

Square, founded and run by Jack Dorsey (also co-founder of Twitter), is a product and software that allows any smart phone user to accept credit card payments through their phones. The company announced late yesterday that it had raised $100 million in venture funding. “The new round of funding means that Square’s value has jumped more than 6x in the last six months.”

It seems that Jack Dorsey has been everywhere lately. He was recently honored in Fast Company as one of the 100 most creative people in business for 2011. And, he has a great talk available through the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast series.

Keep Square and Jack Dorsey on your radar for great things to come.

I travel pretty frequently for my job at Stone Ward. So, I am constantly on the search for the best suitcase, toiletries bag and laptop bag for Eloise. None of these things have been secured as the perfect fits yet, but I can firmly recommend a travel app for iPhone users: Tripit.

I have been using Tripit now for several months and recently upgraded to the “Pro” version for the added features. I don’t know how I traveled without it before.  Here is why Tripit rocks:

• Forward my email itineraries in whatever format they come to me to the Tripit email address and all the travel details are automatically uploaded into the app: flight, car rental, hotel, confirmation numbers, and maps.
• Check into flights directly from the Tripit app.
• Push notifications of delays and gate changes.
• Automatic sharing of travel information with the people that you put in your “inner circle,” like family, friends, co-workers, etc. This is my favorite feature. (Now my dad doesn’t have to write down all my travel on his calendar; he can just access it in his own Tripit app.)

I love that I can pull up Tripit and see all the details for the four upcoming trips I have booked without having to search emails or shuffle through files and papers. If you are a traveler, definitely check it out.

Another trending topic at South by Southwest this year was the incorporation of game dynamics into social media, communications and generally any type of task where people need to be motivated to participate. The big question, however, was how are marketers going to leverage this idea and trend in their communications. We are now starting to see some experiment with game incorporation. Here is a round-up of examples:

Subway

Subway has partnered with Scvngr to promote adding avocado to its menu. Twenty-five Scvngr players can win two free tickets to the premiere of “The Green Lantern.” Other players can receive free tickets to see the movie in their local theater. “Scvngr players can win the tickets by earning points with the following game-like activities: ‘Superhero Fuel’ points will be rewarded to players who create their own sandwich with avocado as a central ingredient. ‘Quote It’ points can be accrued by users expressing their favorite Green Lantern quote. ‘Flex for the Camera’ points will be rewarded to those who take a photo of themselves next to a Subway logo, while flexing their muscles.”

Sears

“The retailer is offering shoe discounts to Scvngr players who check in at stores, complete challenges, and upload content to the app. The challenges include: snapping a photo of sneakers/shoes; picking three sets of colorful footwear and taking a picture; and telling a brief story about where the player would like to walk to if she could go anywhere in the world.”

New York Public Library

I love this one! Not only does the New York Public Library have its own Foursquare badge, but in May they launched a promotion that allowed a limited number of participants to sign up and spend the night in the library to go on a scavenger hunt. The promotion appeals to the younger, tech-savvy target and gets them into a place that rarely need to visit anymore: the library. Smart.

“’Find the Future: The Game,’ devised by renowned game designer Jane McGonigal, is a series of ‘quests’ delivered via an app on players’ mobile devices that can be completed at the Library’s 42nd Street location. … The challenges are designed to encourage players to explore and reflect upon the objects from the library’s collections. A player might be tasked, for instance, to scan a QR code located at the Declaration of Independence, and then respond to a creative essay prompt. Once enough quests have been completed, they will be “unlocked” for the public, who can begin playing the game online May 21.”

There is even a video to go along with it:

Snoop Dog Fragrance

Through Facebook, the more people that like the Snoop Dog fragrance, the cheaper the price gets for the fans to buy it. Kind of fun.

Buffalo Wild Wings

Earlier this year, Buffalo Wild Wings partnered with Scvngr to allow “customers [to] complete challenges on their smartphones and win prizes, like Buffalo Wild Wings and Coca-Cola, which are redeemable on the spot. Such challenges, like snapping a photo with a fan of an opposing team, earn fans points that go toward winning the grand prize of a trip to see the NBA finals with Scottie Pippen, formerly of the Chicago Bulls.”

There are many other examples brands experimenting with game dynamics floating around out there, and most of them seem to use Scvngr as their partner in the efforts. While results remain to be seen, the approaches seem on track and look to be engaging for customers.

One of the hot topics at South by Southwest this year was transmedia storytelling, the idea of using various channels to tell different aspects of your story. New research from the IPG Media Lab and YuMe lends further credence to the argument for use of transmedia storytelling:

“The study quantified some long-suspected but never quantified aspects of media behavior. Distraction media was ubiquitous, with 94% of TV and 73% of online video viewers using some type of companion/distraction media. While companion media included everything from laptops, video games and crossword puzzles to physical mail and musical instruments, the smartphone proved to be the true “disruptor” in regards to video attention levels. Of all of the companion media used, the smartphone accounted for 60% of TV and 46% of online video distractions.”

The article goes on to give statistics about the level of engagement with commercials and how viewers who fast forward through the DVR version actually pay more attention to the commercials than those that simply put their heads down to engage with their smart phones while the commercials continue playing. Think about the opportunities that exist for marketers using a transmedia strategy to drive the viewers to their smartphones purposely for the story and message continuation.

Back in January, we outlined predictions for the 2011 technology year that included an increase in mobile photo sharing. Half-way through the year, and we are seeing that prediction come true.

Instagram is now up to five million users and is adding about a million users a month.  According to a New York Times article this weekend, “Those who study the way people socialize online say cellphone photos are becoming an integral part of sharing and communicating.”

“Professor Sundar said people once tended to take photos on special occasions, like birthdays and vacations, then post a big batch on services like Picasa and Flickr and share a link with friends. But with the introduction of smartphones with improved cameras, coupled with the rise of services like Facebook and Twitter, people are more accustomed to constantly documenting moments and sharing throughout the day.”

And brands are starting to experiment and use the tools available to engage their customers with photography.

“Brands like Oscar de la Renta, Brisk Iced Tea, Kate Spade, Starbucks and Red Bull are also on the service. Cecilia Liu, digital marketing manager at Kate Spade, said the company added Instagram to its social media lineup this year. She said it was appealing because the company could mix in a little more personality and behind-the-scenes glimpses than it would on Facebook and Twitter.”

Starbucks was one of the first brands to sign on to Instagram.  Now, when you search the Starbucks tag on Instagram, over 10,000 photo hits come up.

“We’ve been using Instagram for a couple of months and think it’s a fun, different way to share photos of what’s going on behind the scenes,” says Product Manager Brad Nelson. “We’ve also found a lot of people already sharing Starbucks photos, so it’s been a joy to look through those.”

As people are using mobile photography and sharing to these sites to document their lives, what are they taking the most photos of? Food, of course.

And, to find all of this great photography online, last week, Twitter introduced a new version of its search that incorporates photos and videos.

Brands that are figuring out how to incorporate photography sharing into their engagement strategies are connecting with their consumers on a more intimate level.

Below is a Prezi I put together for a couple of agency presentations I was scheduled to give post-SXSW. It sums up my key takeaways from SXSW 2011.

Thank you to Roby Brock at Talk Business for the discussion about 2011 tech trends.  Check out the video here:

Because I had some work to catch up on last night, I chose to stay home and watch the Golden Globes alone.  But I didn’t feel alone at all.  With my computer in my lap, the Twitter app running and Facebook in my browser window, it felt like I was at a watch party among friends.  I laughed at some posts, rolled my eyes at others and commented on many.  Is the fact that technology can replace the feeling of camaraderie that comes with personal, face-to-face interactions good for our society or bad?  Probably neither and both.

This topic is explored in a new book, Alone Together.  I haven’t read the book yet, but have put it on my list to read soon.  The book was recently reviewed over at The Daily Beast:

“The advantage to all that gadgetry, of course, is connectedness: email lets us respond on the go, and we are in touch with more people during more hours of the day than at any other time in history. But is it possible we’re more lonely than ever, too? That’s what MIT professor Sherry Turkle observes in her new book, Alone Together, a fascinating portrait of our changing relationship with technology. The result of nearly 15 years of study (and interviews with hundreds of subjects), Turkle details the ways technology has redefined our perceptions of intimacy and solitude—and warns of the perils of embracing such pseudo-techno relationships in place of lasting emotional connections.”

The “alone” versus “together” situation works in reverse as well: when we are face-to-face among a group of people, many of us isolate ourselves by bowing our heads to the mobile devices actively lighting up in our hands.  If you don’t believe me, next time you go out to dinner, do a quick scan around the restaurant and check out what people are doing at each table.

The impact of technology on social mores is not a new topic of conversation, but as technology and social channels continue to improve and become even more integrated into our lives, the conversation will grow.  But will anything change?  Will we pull back on the use of technology and social media now that it is ingrained in our behaviors?

Check out the novel Super Sad True Love Story for a satirical look at the possibility of completely transparent sharing through technology and utter dependency on technology.  It is funny and sad and scary.  Set in a future where people are obsessed with appearances, their smart phones and credit scores, this book tells the story of two mismatched lovers through their journal entries and online communications.

It is that time of year when predictions for 2011 abound across the web. It’s always tough to make predictions about technology due to the speed of innovation, but that hasn’t stopped the blogosphere from throwing opinions against the wall. Outlined below is a summary of some the most talked about and interesting predictions for 2011.

• Online video viewing continues to grow and results ensue.
• Photo sharing gains in popularity.
• Social shopping gaining momentum.
• Location sharing is (still) not going away.
• Consumer influence continues to grow online.

Online Video Viewing Continues To Grow and Results Ensue

Prediction: More Companies/Brands Using Video to Sell. Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. In four years, more than 90% of internet content will be video.

Online video viewing is now more than just cute kittens. The kittens might get the most views, but consumers are actually just as interested in interacting with brands via videos as they are in laughing at pet tricks. Brands that engage consumers through video demonstrations are seeing the results on their bottom lines. Zappos, as one example, added simple videos of people holding shoes and moving them around to its sales pages and increased conversion rate from 6% to 30%. Based on that success, by the end of next year, Zappos will have ten full working video studios, with the goal of producing around 50,000 product videos by 2010, up from the 8,000 videos they have on the site today.

Toyota is another example: its “The Swagger Wagon” music video garnered over seven million views, only three percent of which were driven by advertising.

And, Travelocity was the first brand to jump on the Chatroulette fad early in 2010 when they placed their signature gnome character in front of the webcam holding signs with clever travel messages. Over 40 days and nights, the Roaming Gnome generated 350,000 impressions on the site, engaged in 40 conversations, and generated over 19 million media impressions for the brand.

In the next year, we will see more brands using video to sell their products and services.

Sources: Mashable, Streaming Media

Prediction: More Mobile Video Sharing. Smartphones with video recording abilities are not new to consumers, and even the ability to record HD video is not new. Up until this point, however, we have not seen mobile video capturing and sharing take off. This is most likely a result of the difficulty in uploading and sharing video instantly due to bandwidth limitations. In the next year, we will see wireless providers improve bandwidth, allowing friendlier video uploads and we will devices improve video compression without sacrificing quality that will assist with immediate sharing.

With this in mind, businesses might consider encouraging consumer use of videos to share their brand and product experiences.  Providing customers with  back-drop and props, allowing access to a wireless connection to assist in upload speed, and giving them a place to share their videos with other customers are all ways to promote brand-specific videos.

Source: Mashable

Photo Sharing Gains in Popularity

Prediction: More Mobile Photo Sharing. Mobile sharing services will hit critical mass as smartphone users install apps in order to keep up with their friends. The iPhone photography app Instagr.am, which launched less that three months ago, claimed this week to have surpassed 1 million downloads. Services like Instagr.am have become so popular because they emphasize simplicity and make it easy to share your photos on social networks; Instagr.am, in particular, is liked for the filters it offers, the community they find there and the ease of cross-posting Instagrammed photos out to other networks like Flickr, Facebook and Foursquare.

With tools like these, average users can look more like professional photographers and they want to show off their work. And, although people already post photos to Facebook, we will probably see an improvement in their photo sharing features that include integration into their Places app that launched in 2010 so that users can share their work with a broader audience of people who also visit that “place.”

Expect to see photo sharing increase in the next year.  Businesses can capitalize on this trend by launching promotions that reward customer participation by photographs or gives customers a forum for sharing their amateur photography with others.

Sources: ReadWriteWeb, CNN, Mashable

Group Shopping Gaining Momentum

Prediction: More Ability to Share Purchases Through Social Channels Allowing Customers to Become the Advertisers. When you add in a reward component, like with Groupon, there are many more people willing to share their individual purchases (or purchase intent) through their existing social platforms. Groupon was introduced to the central Arkansas area in 2010. It is a daily coupon for a local business that only becomes active if enough people purchase it that day. “This creates the incentive to share the deal with friends and family, until ‘the deal is on.’ It’s great for local businesses because they can set the parameters for the offer and they know a minimum for how many offers they will have sold in advance.” Businesses establish the offer and people who have signed up for Groupon receive the notification. If the user decides to buy the offer, they have the option of telling their friends about it – through Facebook or Twitter, thereby spreading the word to their networks, too. Groupon gets its offers in front of buyers via the word of mouth of its 13 million subscribers.

Groupon’s effectiveness is evident in its claim that it now has 35,000 companies clamoring to be a part of the service offerings and only one in eight applicants is accepted. The companies that register with Groupon must already be getting good reviews at online review sites like Yelp, CitySearch and TripAdvisor, and the deals must offer a substantial discount from normal prices and not be similar to other promotions regularly offered by the vendor.

In the next year, consumers will become increasingly comfortable sharing their purchases and getting their friends on board to make the same purchases.  Businesses should make this easy for their customers to do.  With tools like Facebook Connect and linking to Twitter accounts on their websites, companies can encourage customers to share their purchases through their existing social media tools.

Sources: Social Media Explore, TechCrunch, Forbes

Location Sharing Is (Still) Not Going Way.

Prediction: Location Services Will Continue to Grow in Popularity. People will get more comfortable checking in to a business when they realize they can get deals and coupons for doing so. Additionally, with options like privacy blocking, enhanced security will ease the transition.

“Relevance will distinguish [location] services from each other as the two biggest players, Facebook and Google, have the most powerful social graph data to customize deals for consumers. Don’t count Groupon out, though. It more than makes up for its comparative lack of technology with brand equity and scale, as its massive sales force will remain dominant in 2011 by further monetizing local commerce beyond the recently launched self-service platform.”

If you are a business owner, it is “time to acquaint yourself with sites and applications such as Foursquare, Facebook Places and Gowalla. These sites will help you better target prospects’ likes and interests, pique interest and influence purchase decisions by offering discounts, promotions or giveaways when they ‘check in’ to your business.”

Sources: Mashable, Entrepreneur

Consumer Influence Continues To Grow Online

Prediction: Consumers Get More Selective With The Brands They Allow In Their Social Streams. In the coming year people are going to be much more diligent about curating their own content into a more manageable form. While following a brand on Twitter or Facebook is getting consumers good coupons and deals, it is also turning their streams into undesired and overwhelming advertising channels that drown out the social sharing from their friends. “Therefore, what’s happening in Facebook is that consumers are turning off brands posting to their walls, using friends lists to pay close attention only to their ‘real’ friends, and commenting on or sharing only when something is really juicy. In Twitter, a company called Cadmus aims to change the way we view our streams by determining what content is most relevant to you based on your Twitter usage patterns. Other tools, such as Paper.li and Flipboard (for iPad), also curate Twitter, primarily based on content popularity, and make that content much more reader-friendly.”

It is no longer enough for companies to be in these channels generating regular content. The content that brands and companies post is going to have be worthy of consumer curation into their social streams. “If your content is truly compelling and share-worthy, it’ll get noticed and Liked, it will generate Comments and Retweets, and you’ll be okay because it will have legitimately earned its way into people’s streams. If not – you’ll have to have a combination of search optimization savvy [and] fans in high places (influencers).” In the next year, as consumers get more selective in their follow habits, brands will get more creative in their ploys to make into the social streams.

Source: Social Media Explorer

Prediction: Online Influencers Are Celebrities. Consumers want to be heard, and more importantly they want answers. Consumers are already scouring the social web and polling their friends and followers to decide where to eat, shop and stay. Websites dedicated to customer reviews will dominate the social media landscape. Sites such as Groubal.com, consolidating common user-submitted complaints and presenting those petitions to businesses, demanding answers for their wrongdoings.

As consumers are doing all of this, brands are desperately trying to insert themselves into those relevant streams by analyzing Twitter, blog posts and reviews to understand not only who has the largest audience, but how much influence individuals have. These influencers become well-known locally, regionally and nationally as their content is commented on, retweeted and linked to, driving them higher in search results. The past year also saw some brands go full throttle on Foursquare’s game-like geo-location platform, attempting to reward mayors and creating custom badges for the network’s power users. To measure the relevant influence of these online “celebrities,” tools like YouTube’s Partner Program is being joined by new services such as Klout to create an official layer of social credibility.

We will see brands doing more research on their social consumers in the next year as they figure out ways to influence the influencers.

Source: Mashable, Entrepreneur, Harvard Business Review

Is our increasingly technological media world giving us so much information that we are distracted from pursuing independent and in-depth knowledge? It appears that our country’s president believes that. In May, President Barack Obama gave a commencement speech at Hampton University in which he, the very same president that leveraged online information channels to win his current post, said:

“‘You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter,’ he told the students. ‘And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.’”

President Obama seems to be criticizing the media, technology, video games and the internet in one fell swoop, lumping it all into an “information” category. When did having access to more information become a bad thing? Is not good to hear many sides of a story so we can form our own opinions? And if the information comes to us in an entertaining way, doesn’t that just make us engage with it more?

The discussion that sprung on the internet following this speech was surprising: while many were quick to defend the technology, most agreed with President Obama and felt they were constantly attempting to manage information overload, with no time for processing and understanding. This brought to mind the two-year-old The Atlantic article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (which has developed into a book just released this month entitled The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (see the Ms. Adverthinker review of this book here) Some highlights from the article supporting President Obama’s opinion:

“…media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

“A new e-mail message…may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.”

“Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives-or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts-as the Internet does today.”

And, an excerpt that provides an argument for the other side:

“In Google’s view, information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers.”

One commenter had an interesting perspective in favor of the information abundance we are experiencing:

“…it may not be that the internet is making us stupid but making us more demanding. Before the internet we were given a limited number of topics that we could review from a newspaper, television, magazine etc. Since they were limited in scope they needed a greater amount of depth and description. However now that we can delve a wider range of topics there is no need for such depth. In fact if a person was to spend as much time on any given topic today as was 50 years ago or more it would be hard to stay up to date on the numerous happenings that are going on. No longer are people simply expected to know what is going on in their home town on a day to day basis, but all the important events of the modern world….So it is really a question of balance and of need. Is it truly necessary for us to wrap our minds around each topic that we stumble upon on the net, or is it more important to simply grasp the main points of each topic? In today’s world it is no longer necessary to be intimately familiar with each topic, I can say that I have often found it better to skim information so that I am aware of it’s existence, then when I find myself in need of it I can pull it up more quickly.”

The debate is an interesting one that has spawned books, articles and comments galore. The access to information is empowering. The knowledge we gain is the power. The question then becomes, are we turning that information into knowledge? Perhaps we are in the midst of an evolutional shift: those that can learn to navigate the information streams and turn them into applicable knowledge are the ones that survive.