Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Obvious Mission Statement

Been doing some thinking about Mission Statements recently. I just dislike the phrase Mission Statement - they seem so 90s somehow. In the movie Jerry Mcguire, Cruise is adamant that he is not writing "a memo, its a Mission Statement."

Is there a better phrase than Mission Statement do you think?

At the moment I prefer simply the word "Ambition" or maybe "Vision"

The most interesting Mission Statement/Vision/Ambition that I have come across recently belongs to the folks at Obvious:

Hi, we’re Obvious™. Our goal is to create interesting things that matter to the world.

Short and sweet and to the point.

The founder of Obvious is Evan Williams. His is an interesting story: Evan co-founded Pyra Labs and set up Blogger to help the team coordinating their effort in building software. Along the way, Evan figured out that Blogger was actually more useful than the software that they were developing, and then he ditched the original idea and went with Blogger, which was eventually acquired by Google. Evan believes in this "stumbled upon" process so strongly that he founded “Obvious”, with the mission to “create interesting things that matter to the world” by productizing the “stumble upon” process.  BTW, Twitter is a direct result of “Obvious”

I love the attitude of “You Don’t Have To Know What You Are Doing, As Long As You Have The Capability And The Willingness To Try Hard” but I also really liked the neat articulation of their company's philosophy.

Where are the girls?

This has been something that Beeker and I chatted about a while ago in regards to what we ended up calling "Lady Bloggers". I was lamenting the fact that there just did not seem to be very many of them.

Something seems to be going wrong somewhere:

• iMedia Connection 2008: 2 day long conference on future of our industry. c 30 speakers, not a single girl
• WOM Conference 2008: 1 day long conference on Advocacy and Word of Mouth, c 20 speakers - me + 1 other woman
• Clio Awards 2008: 20 judges, I was the only girl.

What is going on?

It seems to be more than simply a lack of Lady Bloggers, it is actually more to do with the profile  of women in our industry in general.

I am genuinely interested in why there aren't more women talking and judging at events like this.

She Says is an interesting organization that was started by Laura Jordan Bambach and Alessandra Lariu from Glue. They are aiming to help create a connected network of females to help address this issue. While they started She Says with a view about addressing the disparity of female digital creatives, I actually think that it is a much bigger problem than simply a creative one and one that needs to be sorted.

I guess my question is that, are women just less good and managing and promoting their own "brand" so to speak so that they are less high profile and known generally than their male counterparts? Is is that men are better at public speaking stuff like this? Do people just get onto the circuit and then stay on it and these are more likely to be men?

Opening this up to the Lady Bloggers (as well as the Boy Bloggers) - amomgst others Katie,  Angus,  Nicola, Lady Geek, Catch Up Lady, Beeker...

Web 1.0 Vs Web 2.0

I often get asked about the difference between Web 1 and Web 2

This is my new favourite answer:

Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers.
Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats.

Hat tip: Ethan Zuckerman

Global Social Network Map

Hat tip to Digital Supposition for this one.

Sometimes you can get a bit trapped in your own country's Social Network bubble, or as Danah posted a while back, in our own social class bubble. Important to remember that not everyone uses the same social networking sites.

Originally in Le Monde.

Predictions for 2008

Given that it is almost the end of the year, I thought that it was probably the right time to jot down some thoughts and share them around.

Incidentially I did think that I had Delicious-ed all the 2007 predictions so that I could go back and see just how far off the mark we all were, but I appear not to have been too organized a year ago (from memory I think that the key word was Widget, when actually Facebook or Social Networking would have to be my word/words of the year, anyhow...)

Anyway, for what they are worth here are my top 3 things to look out for in 2008:

1. Monetization of UGC
Whether the content is words, static images or moving pictures, 2008 is the year that creators get savvy to the fact that they have helped line the pockets of the likes of YouTube and Flickr. We are doing some work with Metro newspaper, helping them in the beta-phase of a new site called MeView. It's an interesting concept. You upload original video content, you then choose whether you want to add pre-roll advertising to the clip. You get to watch a selction of 10' thumbnail clips and you choose the one that you want to add onto the front of your content. Then for every download you share in the CPM/CPT advertising revenue. Suddenly you move from being simply a content creator, to digital media planner and also content promoter as it is in your financial best interest to drive as many people as possible to view the clip. It's also in the best interests of the agencies who produce the pre-roll advertising to make them as good as possible otherwise no-one will choose their adverts!
Expect to see more Monetization examples in 2008.

2. Sideload Culture
This has already started, but 2008 is going to be the year when Sideloading goes mainstream. We want to be able to move content from one device to another easily, we are starting to expect that we can take pictures on a blackberry and sideload them straight to a social networking site like Facebook.
(I hope) This is the year when it all becomes easier.

3. Augmented Reality
I love this from the Economist: " In the early days of the internet, the idea that it represented an entirely different realm, distinct from the real world, was seized upon by both advocates and critics of the new technology..both groups were wrong of course. The internet has not turned out to be a thing apart...some of the most exciting uses of the internet rely on coupling it with the real world."
The internet is an overlay to the everyday phsycial world that we inhabit, not a separate entity. 2008 is the year of the web being connected and complementary.

Agree, disagre - more to add? Let's get the prediction ball rolling and then come January let's remember that as Alan Key said: "The only way to predict the future is to build it."

Brilliant new gadgets and a call for help

Call for help from the Blogsophere please:

I am writing an article for the Spectator on brilliant, must-have gadgets this Christmas. In fact the article is actually about technology and gadgets for girls (no, not those kind of gadgets for girls...). but having spoken to smart people like Belinda Parmar author of Lady Geek and the folks at London Girl Geek Dinner, I know that it is not about Swarovski crystal encrusted cellphones and pink Hello Kitty laptop carriers, and more about great design and ease of use.

Couple of thoughts to share and questions to ask: I am not convinced that actually there is such thing as a girl gadget, surely brilliant design and ease of use a la Apple works across the gender divide?

I know that pink DS Lites outsold the other colours, but I wonder whether than is more of a youth trend rather than simply a female one?

I guess that the only real gender difference might  be that men are happy to spend longer tooling around and getting a piece of kit set up, as Dr Genevieve Bell at Intel says: " If you want to design technology that appeals to women, it needs to work flawlessly out of the box. They don't have the time to faff around."

Is there a technology gender divide??

Are there any gadgets that you have heard about that just sound fantastic that you think I should look into? Regardless of whether you are a boy or a girl/man or woman.

Nokia?? Phillips?? Sony??

In advance, thank you!

Best viral I have seen for ages!

I do happen to love Bob Dylan, but even if you don't I think that this is just brilliant creative.

Have a click on this and let me know your thoughts. It is a creative video messaging idea, but I'm going to let you discover it for yourself!

This is the original Dylan video

Enjoy!

O2 Cocoon Blogger Launch

O2 have produced what I think is a fantastic new handset, it's called Cocoon, you can play around with it here. We are working the launch and I'm really excited about it.

I like my Cocoon for some quite girlie reasons, firstly I just think that it looks great and very different from other phones out on the market at the moment. When I take it out in the pub or at a dinner it always draws comments.

I also like the fact that this is what I would term a piece of "insight-led design." By that I mean, strip away the hype about mobiles and the reality is that after talking and texting, the third most used functionality is the alarm feature (in fact in today's Ofcom Report they said just that) Cocoon has a nest which it sits in at night, charging, and it becomes an LED alarm clock.

It also has a cool functionality which allows you to see in-coming texts that scroll via the blue LED lights on the outside of the phone (that has led to many hours with friends texting me rude words just to see the phone light up and effectively swear at us while we giggle like 12 year olds)

That is very...

...and quite funny.

So I believe in in the product which from a Planner's perspective is a good place to start.

We decided to launch the phone in the Blogosphere before any advertising started.  The fact that you're reading this blog probably means that you understand the power of digital advocacy, but if you need any more evidence see the chart below.

We used a proprietary tool called Web Mapping to uncover who we think that key influential UK bloggers. It made me smile that in the category of Thought Leaders, some old London Beersphere mates turned out to rank really highly. So if you see Faris, John, Russell or Henry around ask them to have a look at their Cocoon. I've also found smart bloggers who I was not aware of before, like Techno Kitten, Tom Hume and Di Overton.

You can see some of their thoughts and postings over at the Cocoon Blog. Please drop by and feel free to leave any thoughts that you have there, or on this blog.

We have had some really positive feedback to the way in which O2 is reaching out to the new blogger world in a transparent dialogue  It's quite brave for large clients to do something like this as suddenly control moves out of their hands over to consumers, but the learnings that they are getting for the future are, I think, priceless.

 

“PSFK: The O2 project seems
like a smart one and provides
a potential blueprint for
brands to engage with
bloggers beyond the
sending of press releases.”

Trusted Places

I'm a bit of a Trusted Places newbie but I think that it is brilliant. It's a simple concept, in fact one that I've chatted about setting up with friends in the past (I think that we called the site Tip Top Top Tips) Based out of the insight that we are always looking for top tips for people who we trust, Trusted Places does exactly what it says on the tin.

Why do I like it? Well the suggestions are smart and not always expected, I think that the visual based registration is very cool and it's easy, both to upload and to search.

Then I find out that I am not alone in my admiration,  the Guardian featured Trusted Friends founders Walid and Sokratis in their top 1o UK digital start-ups.

Walid and I connected through my post on the Covent Garden Night Market and he invited me to their beta testing of their new site - you can read all about it on Trusted Places Blog. Odd after being in so many usability labs suddenly having to do it myself, but enjoyable.

Interesting mix of people including Ian Forrester from Backstage at the BBC, who blogs at Cubic Garden, and a girl who sat opposite me who is a food taster for Waitrose and whose life seems to consist of eating her way along Marylebone High Street.

Well worth signing up and having an explore of TrustedPlaces.

The "Marketing Funnel" is broken

I really like this quote a lot.  It's from Forrester Research and talks about the new marketing dynamic that all of us involved in brands, media and communication should be addressing:

 

The marketing funnel is a broken metaphor that overlooks the complexity social media introduces into the buying process. As consumers’ trust in traditional media diminishes, marketers need a new approach…

 

We propose a new metric, engagement, that includes four components: involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence...Once engagement takes hold of marketing, marketing messages will become conversations, and dollars will shift from media buying to customer understanding.

They have a blog on which they talk more about their four phased approach - Involvement, Interaction, Intimacy, Influence. I haven't seen anything like this from a research company before.

The thought of brands starting building reputation through conversation is a fascinating one and one that I have been doing a lot of work recently. It goes back to the good old Cluetrain and the idea that "all markets are conversations."

Hat Tip to Tom who blogs at Usable Interfaces.