For those who don't have the luck of being married to a Biotech Phd (well, almost Phd) here's the wikipedia definition on extremophiles:
An extremophile is an organism that thrives in and may even require physically or geochemically extreme conditions that are detrimental to the majority of life on Earth.
Hopefully the definition helps in the hyperbole I'll make an effort to build here.
For the past 2 years or so we've been hearing about the web 2.0 bubble. I have advocated this belief myself, stating that many companies are either overpriced or directly unprofitable; "doomed" for short. The most recent post from the "mayhem is near, repent" series I have read is one by Dennis Howlett, its title is worth of a Stephen King novel: "Are we headed for a nuclear winter?".
It is true that the economy is cooling (more evidently so in the US) and that will drive costs cut, heads rolling and venture capitals to become as cold as an iceberg. Many companies will fall, particularly when credit starts to get crunched (an unavoidable step if policy makers don't want to get us into a much nastier situation). The web 2.0 bubble will burst sooner or later.
But "Social Media" and many "services" that came to life under the two-point-oh label are here to stay. Sure enough many sites will disappear or evolve due to the harsh economic conditions, but the same way that "portals" didn't just vanish into nothingness in 1999, web 2.0 will not become just a mere memory overnight.
A recession is to Marketing what "physically or geochemically extreme conditions" are to microorganisms: not good. When the belt starts to tighten we all know that Marketing spend is one of the first to suffer.
I won't get as optimistic as Jeremiah and say social media will be "effective", but rather keep a more moderate point of view. I'll say it will "survive" I have to admit that I tend to be more conservative on expectations because I know that not every single CEO and CMO out there shares (or gets) the enthusiasm for Social Media. Jeremiah writes:
(...) Social Media, which tends to have lower costs than other forms of marketing (commodity tools) can be very cost effective for those wanting to get customers to spread and share messages. On the other hand, marketers need to be careful, because doing it wrong will result in more work, and in some situations, brand backlash.
Cost effective is good, particularly under economical uncertainty, but I think the most important features that will keep the social media marketing boat floating are adaptability, accountability and being (somewhat) measurable. (For honesty's sake I must say the latter two are sketched on Forrester's report).
Here are the thoughts on SMM's advantages:
Adaptability.
Social Media Marketing is adaptable due to what I believe is its definition (for once the wikipedia definition of SMM didn't please me, so I'll give my own): "A direct engagement from a company to its -prospective and existing- customers through online community (social) tools".
Note: although I do believe that things such as transparency and authenticity are premises for a successful Social Media Marketing strategy, I left the terms out of the definition because I can certainly picture scenarios where strategists would leave them out of the equation.
Engagement is constant and tools are variables. Processes are variable as well. This makes SMM a very adaptable task; it can downscale our upscale depending on available budget, tools and bandwidth.
Accountability.
One of the most beautiful things about SMM is that it puts real people's faces to otherwise faceless companies. People relate better to other people rather than to logos or press releases. This is a double-bladed weapon, though. As Social Media Marketers our visibility goes up, but so does our accountability. If I say something or do something wrong on a public site it is my head that's out for chopping. And that is refreshing.
I've witness lack of accountability for far too long in the corporate world. We, as corporations, have grown the awful habit of shielding behind teams and collectiveness when things don't work. I have as a personal premise that if I screw up I'll stand for my mistake (and hopefully learn something out of it).
The same happens when a campaign or social media marketing initiative backfires. There is -quite usually- a personal "touch" (for lack of a better term) on this ideas that can be backtracked like breadcrumbs to the intellectual author. So bosses always have someone to shout at, and that is always cathartic for those in decision making positions.
Measuring.
Social Media Marketing's metrics accuracy stand someplace in between Internet and traditional advertising. It is not possible to relate sales with spend as effectively as with, say, Ad Words but it is not as nebulous as TV ads. Yet, there is a lot that can be learnt and turned into numbers, figures, pie-charts, trends and power point presentations with SMM. In the worst case scenario it can serve as a barometer for the general sentiment towards a brand.
Bonus.
There is one other very powerful reason why SMM will be around even Marketing budget will equal to a take-a-penny tray: People. Fortunately there is a growing number of customers who have grown numb to traditional marketing BS. There is still value on traditional Marketing, but the signal-to-noise ratio on consumer's ears is tilting towards the noise side. There's a whole new niche that won't ever get engaged by a TV ad but will become active participants and even evangelists for a brand if the messaging is good enough. Many companies would of never turn around part of their negative image if they didn't engage into SMM.
I'm quite certain there's a big chunk of the pie of customers that would be lost if SMM was ditched. And that is something no companies are willing to do.
My prediction: SMM is like roaches; it will survive the nuclear winter.
This post was adapted to Spanish and posted @ Denken Über. Thanks to Mariano for the invitation.
Ok, I know I'm going to have to eat up my words. I'm tweeting.
I decided that as an external observer I had no-clue on what the appeal Twitter has, thus I'd decided to give it a try, use it more or less intensively and then make up my mind and, hopefully, draw some conclusions.
What surprises me is that I'm usually an early adopter of geeky stuff and although I have had the account for well over a year I have not used it at all so far. Something kept me on the skeptical side of things.
It is too early to say anything really useful other than "I'm stevie_glas, feel free to follow me". Sidebar widget coming soon to this blog as well.
Oh, and I'll blame David if I get too hooked up, idiotized or end up hating the thing.
With the sort of luck I've had with technology lately I should have been scared as hell... I just updated to WordPress 2.5.1. Given the sort of description of what this new version fixes I thought I'd rather update as soon as possible.
Against all odds I didn't crush my server, burn my router or kill my PC. It all took 5 minutes.
Here's the list of updates for 2.5.1:
- Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
- Better performance for those who have many categories
- Media Uploader fixes
- An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
- Widget Administration fixes
- Various usability improvements
- Layout fixes for IE
That and a huge security bug.
How many times do we find ourselves asking what would a project look like if one would of started it knowing as much as we do when ending it? For me it happens on every single task I commit myself to. Sometimes it appears as a slight frustration, on other occasions it is a haunting feeling that comes too darn close to a sentiment of failure.
Quite recently I've been working on a project that required a steep learning curve. "Vertical" would be more accurate way to call it.
From scratch there was a certain technical issue (ahem... implementation) that I felt had to be solved on a certain way. The "experts" suggested a different approach to what I thought would be the best way out of the conundrum. "They have to know better" I thought to myself. I gave in and a solution was put in place. Now it turns the "solution" is a problem in itself. I was right, and that is what bugs me most.
In retrospective it is easy to say "I wish I had done that", but I think it is natural to trust on those who (allegedly?) know better. If I found myself in a similar position today I would probably do almost the same.
Where's the learning in this fable then? Keep your options open. Trusting experts is a good thing, but if you think the answer is different from what's suggested make sure you have the path open to get things done your way.
Sorry, this is not a post on breaking technology, new applications, interesting developments or stuff like that.
This is an "AAARG!" sort of message.
In the past week I had my Linux's desktop power source blowing up (and taking the stabilizer with it!), a router strangely going "poof" (and required firmware hacking to restore), Google not accessible from just one of my computers, and the big-brother stuff on my Corporative computer doing all sorts of funny things.
On a very sci-fi sort of way technology turns against its creators. I feel like I live inside a terminator sequel.
That crazy idea of living on a cave and becoming a hermit starts to sound so tempting.
As I was telling a colleague over IM: I've been through robberies (gunpoint and knife), quite a few accidents, some other near-accidents and other scary moments. But I have never, ever been as scared as I was yesterday.
I answered my cell, only to hear "please come, your wife was hit by a car". I live on a 7th floor (8th for Americans). I called the elevator but decided I'd get down faster over the stairs; so I flashed my way down without even turning on the lights.
Half a block to the avenue (running, of course) and my heart started beating again. There was Luciana, standing on her feet.
She had been hit by a car while crossing an avenue. The asshole who hit her came in from a side street and into the avenue and "never saw her". Idiot.
A small nervous breakdown from my wife and 15 x-rays later we went back home. All she has is some bumps (legs, back, left side of her face) and some paranoia. She's on painkillers and at home, but safe and almost unharmed. I thank the Christian and Pagan gods, angels, luck, good fortune and whoever you might see fit for that.
Every now and then one comes across some item that has a serious design flaw. Depending on where it comes from the unavoidable question pops: was this made faulty by design or is it just a horrible mistake that bypassed all controls and lingers making the user's life miserable?
A recurring experience with my home banking system got me thinking about this. Since my area of expertise is web it seems natural that I criticize a major bank's web interface.
On this particular case the issue is with Credit Cards. The amount I have to pay appears on my homepage for all my credit cards. That much is good. With a single glimpse I can see all my different account's balances and click on a link to pay anything. That's where the problem begins.
Once I make a payment to the credit card the balance isn't updated until the next month's balance is out. So if I owe $30 to my credit card and make a $30 payment, I will still see I owe 30 bucks. I can't count how many times I've paid my credit card twice on the same month.
Banks aren't particularly known for their honesty and transparency, thus I always feel suspicious about this design "flaw". Was this UI built this way to get users like myself to get confused and pay more? I honestly think it was meant to be that way. Of course I can go and look at the previous events of my bank account and check wether I had paid the credit card for that month or not, but such information should be presented clearly and be handy to the client.
I wonder how many UIs (and objects in general) are designed with some flaws in them in order to get some sort of side advantage (no, don't mention you-know-which OS, that is just faulty, not by design, but rather by lack of vision and corporate in-breeding).
The same knowledge that can help building an intuitive and easy-to-use experience can be turned around into deceiving and taking advantage from the user. We got used to that with pop-ups, porn links active-x installs and all sorts of malware that populate the web. But expecting that from a "serious" corporation such as a bank (serious, yeah, right) is merely lame.
Not too long ago I mentioned my ISP and Google had some sort of incompatibility and I was de-google-ized for about a day.
(A sidenote to this note: I'm too darn dependant on Google, I need to have feeds and other things moved over to alternative services...)
That has been solved. Well, sort of. Whenever I log in to Lenovo's VPN from home I'm kicked out of google. Pages just wont load. I disconnect and it works like a charm.
ipconfig /flushdns does not work. I stopped windows XP's caching services. I switched my router's DNS servers to OpenDNS (which, BTW, has boosted my browsing speed significantly) I don't know what else to do.
Thank god I have three ThinkPads.
For the past couple of weeks there has been smoke from plain and forest fires to the north of the city. But yesterday was the worst day so far. This is how the sun looked like at about 6:30PM
And this is how the skyline looked like at around the same time.
After a whole night breathing that stuff I woke up with a mild headache, a sore throat and my nose was feeling funny. Fortunately winds started blowing the stuff away during the day, but smoke seems to be back now. Not as hard as yesterday but annoying enough.
On the bright side I must admit sunsets have been a pleasure to witness.
I suffer of a psychological disorder. I have multiple personalities. Well, not in real life, but online I have various personas. Most notably I happen to use some of the same online tools both personally and for my everyday job. Of course the login info for each is different, something that can quickly turn into something painful.
Thanks to my interest in Identity 2.0 I came upon a very nice Firefox plugin called Sxipper.
Sxipper is an identity handling tool. It also provides OpenID (which I find myself using more intensively every day) as well as disposable email addresses for those sites where you feel reluctant to share a real email.
Although this two features would suffice to make it an interesting plugin, the real nice features in a time saving manner are the form autofill and persona-handling capabilities.
Auto fill works great because it is human trained. Each Sxipper user trains forms and makes that information available for everyone else. You can also re-train forms in case it is needed.
Using the auto fill in conjuction with personas is just perfect. I have two personas, personal and work. If I need to fill a form with my work contact information (email, address, phone, whatever) I choose that persona.
It is not a perfect tool, but it saves tons of time. Also it is in active development, and the guys at Sxip really listen to users, thus it just keeps getting better. If you feel reluctant to put all that information into a plugin of unknown origin, I might remind you that Sxip belongs to Dick Hardt,, that same guy who gave an awesome keynote on Identity 2.0 at OSCON.