Internet

Always On vs Sometimes off… again.
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I met Marko Ahtisaari, former manager for Design Strategy at Nokia but now part of Blyk, in early October 2005 as he was a guest speaker at my fellowship at Stanford. He had written a blog about Blogging over Las Vegas which brings up the future challenges for the next generation of cellphone technology. The blog is still very much well-worth reading. Interesting enough I stumbled upon a blog entry by Justin Oberman. The blog entry points to a Forbes article “Can you hear me now?”.

My personal opinion is torn here. I do believe technology can solve a lot of issues and be an incredible tool when executed well. I however do believe that we sometimes rush into the solutions and do not well enough specify the problem we aim to solve. I daily see a lot of startups here in the valley with solutions that I cannot imagine we need. I see people who get almost obsessed by Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and the very much over-hyped Twitter. In Sweden, there has been reports of teenagers showing signs of depression and stress symptoms because of social communities.

Is this really sane? Not at all. Who is to blame? We all are. We let the technology control our lives. I can just look at myself. I spend way too much time in front of the computer (even though there are obvious reasons for it). I have begun to more frequently call the person up rather than to email or IM him or her. I very early wrote two longer pieces on the subject in October 2005  – Going offline with future cellphones and Romeo and Juliet – the virtual version :).

I think we all should try our best to take the control back from our technology intense society.

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Dealing with Trolls
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One of Sweden’s biggest blogger – Linda Skugge – has decided she is fed up with the trolls and all the negative, offensive and rude comments she has gotten from her “readers”, so she will stop blogging. I do think it is sad that people choose that option. I got me thinking of the issues with the web of today and the social patterns it nurtures and emphasizes. Yet too many people forget that the web only will enhance the social patterns and structures of the web. Trolls on the web are not a product of the web, instead they are a product of our society. However harshly put, the ease in which you can broadcast your message on the web will make bad things worse and good things better. I think it is ironic even though very logical.

The key to remember about the regular internet user is the feeling of anonymity. You are sitting at home reading someone else’s blog, site or profiles. You see more of the person than the person of you (or at least so you think). You can easily broadcast to a much bigger audience than in any other commonly available and “freely” accessible distribution channel and thus you reach a bigger fraction of your wanted audience but also a bigger fraction of your unwanted audience. You just cannot separate them as the broadcast method is very much blind to the audience. Surprisingly many people forget this when discussing trolls and how to deal with them. This is a problem with the structure of our society, but not really the medium or technology.

What happens in for instance the blogosphere is very simple. The trolls submit posts/comments to which the blog owner reacts and write back to them. The trolls respond. The blog owner responds. More people join the discussing and very quickly a feeling of us against them is created and an intense and very often infected discussion is created. This behavior is very much destructive and doesn’t solve much.

What about enabling various authentication methods before submitting comments or moderation? Well, we haven’t really solved the issue as we only create an obstacle for people to submit. The problem still exists. What about shutting down the commenting function? I prefer to call it the real ostrich tactic. If we don’t see the problem, it doesn’t exist. I have news for you. Just like in the real world it doesn’t. Trolls will just find other channels and ways to get the message through. It is evident that technology can help to solve the flow of rude and offensive comments, but not really solve the real problem.

Basically the only way to solve the problem is to… solve it. Yee wiz!

Let us start to behave with respect to one another always, and try to understand each other. Yes I know it is a very, very optimistic idea, but it is the only sustainable solution so we might as well start now. In the meanwhile, don’t let the trolls get the space they want to have. I know it is the hardest possible way and I never said the solution was easy. Naturally we will always have the right to feel down and hurt by mean comments, but are we really solving the problem by being too confrontational with the trolls? I still don’t think so, but again I completely understand those who so choose to. We can only take so much as individuals and sometimes we need to fight back. Yet for me we need to always remember that it is a social problem. The road to the solution is to acknowledge that and we will find the solution – on the web and outside. Unfortunately there is no easy and convenient truth/solution to trolls. What we need to do is to over time controlling the anger, harnessing the frustration and channel it towards the right goal that is to solve the problem not cure the symptoms.

The solution is still and always will be openness, regardless of how hard it is to deal with the openness.

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The media landscape is changing…
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If anyone doubted that the media landscape is drastically changing and that we will see new outlets should definitely take a look at the article in todays Guardian – We all helped to speed the demise of professional photographers. I don’t fully agree with the title of the article as the future media scene will be a symbiosis between what we not call traditional media and specialized user contributed media sites.

Clearly Web 2.0 is not sufficient and we need to create more intelligence in the business logic of the future online media sites to take advantage of the power of the loose publishing model of social media and counteract the problems with it. Also the future media is facing issues both on the business model side as well as the legal side too. I prefer to start to explain by brushing up everyone on the true intention of the web and one of my favorite quotes from Tim Berner-Lee explaining his ideas behind the web:

“Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere were linked… Suppose I could program my computer to create a space in which anything could be linked to anything…”

I do believe that this idea is lost to many times in the current debate on the web and the future of the web. I have written about this issue before – In the Wake of the Birth of the Web and The Social Web also known as Web 2.0.

The underlying idea of the web directly implies that philosophically it should be perfectly fine linking to other sites, thereby directly or indirectly giving them the credit for the content. If you are not storing their content, I will have a very hard time understanding why that would mean infringement of copyright. If that is copyright infringement then isn’t just telling it to my friends about the content also be copyright infringement? I know I am totally over exaggerating and the examples are not really compatible as the nature of broadcasting in the two different cases is very different. However online it is sometimes very hard to tell the two cases apart. I do believe we instead should try to adapt to the situation and find new ways to deal with copyrighted material and in particular how to make sure that the creators get credit and money for it. I do believe by letting them be part of the creation they will help us find a solution which will satisfy all parties. I would like to emphasize that I do not in any way – directly or indirectly – encourage copyright infringement and you should always respect copyrighted material.

The previous and ongoing disputes with Google News will also shed some light on the problem with linking to sites and how you can do that. From the case in Belgium, it is clear so far that you are allowed to link to the sites and even store a small snippet, but not store the full article. If someone disputes even that, we might as well start to think about banning search engines as they then also would be illegal – they link to sites and store a short snippet for each link. It opens up for a very interesting discussion which basically means no one can do anything with any content of the web if you do not ask them. To me, the whole thought behind the web is then completely lost and I certainly don’t believe that is the right way to go.

As for the business model, I do believe the outcome of the case between YouTube and Viacom will give guidance to the IT industry on how to treat the copyright issues online in a monetized environment (especially how to judge when a video clip becomes a copyright infringement and when it is not). The future advertising is definitely moving towards online video or IPTV (pick your flavor) so the case is highly relevant and timely. (The outcome will probably also impact the other available distribution channels too though.) The industry is in definite need of some guidance to handle these issues when you have advertising as a business model and it is still very much an unknown territory. What does the law really mean as for which solution is the right one? No, it is not very clear today.

My intention with this blog is to emphasize that the media scene is changing and will continue to change if yet only faster. Unfortunately the business models as well as the legal models have not evolved to match the development. The entrants, who best understand how to take advantage of all the different available distribution channels – offline, online, broadcast – the evolution of the media as well as the flatness of the world, will become huge hits. I have a bet on which site will be that, but that is a later question.

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The Stickiness and the Viral Nature
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I have of various reasons had a lot of discussions lately on viral marketing and stickiness. It is interesting to look around on the web these days and you find numerous examples of sites claiming to be viral and using these techniques to build their communities. Very few seem to have thought it through though.

I think viral marketing is conceptually simple yet it requires some fingertip feeling to do it successfully. It is something we all can relate to, something that is personal and something very intuitive and thus you just want to and can share it instantaneously with your friends. It sticks to your mind like glue to your finger. You just remember it without taking notes. You might forget a few details but the concept is never lost. The best examples are urban legends. We have all heard about the lady who tried the dry the cat in the microwave. I haven’t met a single person who doesn’t instantly start to discuss it. In music it is these annoying phrases and melodies, which just doesn’t go away (even though you sometimes want them to).

Anyhow, I sometime ago spoke to one of the professors at Stanford on another matter. We were talking about water issues on the border between Mexico and USA. He said that one of the main problems they faced when solving the issue was to explain the abstract law. The moment they started to explain the situation in personal stories they reached success. He explains the concept as embodying thoughts, giving the story legs. The impersonal abstract thoughts transformed into something simple, relatable and credible. It was not big, difficult words anymore. I got another example in a speech by another Stanford professor on environmental stability; he used an analogy to explain child mortality in Africa. It all came down to, maybe not that surprising, the availability of water. Sounds simple right? He put it like this to exemplify the complexity of the problem: “How would you prioritize 4 liters of water per day? You need it to cook and you need to drink it. Would you prioritize your personal hygiene? If so, what would you choose?” The effect got bigger as he took four of our water bottles and put them in front of him. Instantaneously, everyone realized the problem and the issues faced.

Viral marketing is about the same. You package your message to something everyone can relate to and the word will spread. A pretty package is not necessary. It is the message which should stick, not the presentation of the message even though it might help. I did my own little viral marketing example last summer during the last conflict in Lebanon. I sent out an email, to be honest not very polished, that I wanted people to start sharing their stories via cell phones to a blog I have set up. It took only 1.5 days before I got the first reports from Haifa and Beirut and the readership grew beyond my wildest expectations. The email was sticky as we all could relate to the message in it. It was simple. “Please tell people in Lebanon and Israel that they can tell their stories to this blog simply by sending one SMS or MMS.” I haven’t met anyone who hasn’t wanted to hear what the people felt and experienced there or anywhere else in the world where conflicts are or closeness in the society rules. There is the need for the emotional element of the messages, but also further exemplifies the need of simplicity.

A Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Chip Heath talks about branding stickiness in his book “Made to Stick” and he concludes the key attributes (my comments after the dash) to be:

  • Simplicity – simple messages are more easily remembered than abstract equations if anyone doubted that.
  • Unexpectedness – who doesn’t remember the first Matrix-trailer? Who didn’t just want to see the movie just to get that answer: What is the Matrix?
  • Credibility – If the message is not credible, why would anyone pass it on? Please do remember that it is the current credibility that matters.
  • Emotions – We are emotional creatures and want to see especially emotional or even controversial material regardless if we agree or disagree. Even if you hate the reality show, you will watch it, just so that you can tell everyone else why it is so bad.
  • Stories – messages gets passed on by people to people everywhere. You just don’t have the time to tell an introduction, method, results, conclusion and discussion over a beer or a coffee. Your friends will most likely go to sleep or start to play with their cellphone and there goes that evening.

This has very high relevance for building online and real communities, viral brand building and social media. Community building is easier online as the sharing of information is much faster. (Of course there are cases where you have communities supported by real communities, or vice versa.) Why is stickiness the central component of any social media site? It really is pretty simple. Communities are about people, and then I am not talking about the creators. My good friend Tom Calthrop once said to me when we started to discussed the permission system inside AroundMe: “Erik, social communities is about what your members want, not what you want”. I do think it is one of the main wisdoms of the online media of today, but very often forgotten. The community will tell where you want to go and especially social media sites such as MySpace, YouTube but let us not forget the very often forgotten amazing social media channel email has been formed by the users. It also opens up for viral marketing.

Communities are about people. People easily relate to other people. Moreover the ones who can convince you the best are your friends and family. Why not use them to market your site or help you build your community? (It is very much like recursion in computer science yet simpler. You only need to worry about the first step, then pass it on!) Now we come to a piece that is very central in viral marketing and why the simple and relatable message is so important.

Let us step back and think of a well-known psychology phenomena.

Many have done the experiment of the 10 people chain where the first person tells a story to the second, the second to the third and so forth. Most of the times, the story the 10th person hears has very little to do with the first person story. Why? We usually don’t put so much care into telling stories to be passed on to multiple people, and thus it seldom is simple and contains too many details. The key is to tell the story where the listener relates to the story regardless of who that is, the persons background or education.

Even if you know how your friends and family will be convinced, you need to make sure that the message sticks well-enough for them to be able to pass it on where the important pieces are there. A good friend of mine told me recently: “Stick to one message, not several. Erik, you can handle many messages, most people cannot.” So true.

So how do you do this?

What I have realized lately is something very simple. You as a viral marketer must know your business or objective that well that your misconceptions and uncertainties are not passed on to the rest of the chain. Misconceptions and uncertainties propagate, just like the errors in numerical solutions of equations. If you have misconceptions or uncertainties make sure that your message doesn’t contain even pieces of them or almost worse will change when you get the answer to them. The later is the main challenge, but the successful sites on the web have all these elements. Look at Google who basically said “Here you can search” and their UI was matching the message. I can still remember when I got the link to Google over ICQ then from a friend. (The same friend convinced me that MSN messenger was better. More viral marketing.) When I got to the site it was impossible not to realize what to do. I do still doubt this was an intentional UI. I think it is more an artifact of the fact that Google was more focused on the backend rather than the front end simply based on the fact that they developed algorithms for the ranking of pages. A textbox and a button with search was the only thing needed to as fast as possible get to the list of search entries. Looking back, it is a brilliant UI yet not planned as far as I believe.

It brings up to another attribute of the message. It needs to be consistent with the rest of your organization, the content of your website, the behavior of your staff, your user interface, your technology solution and so forth. Don’t tell the user something you are not as you will not keep misguided users, and even worse from a business perspective. They are very less likely to come back again. If you tell the users you are something you better be that to. The ultimate example of successful viral marketing YouTube basically said: “Hey guys, here you can upload videos…” again with a matching, simple UI. They never told you which videos to upload, just videos and that is the brilliant move. They could adapt to their users whatever they chose to and the success is then history. They also listened to the users as they enabled sharing via email and related videos, which really created their explosive growth. What I am missing in the attributes for sticky messages by Professor Chip Heath is the consistency of both your brand and message. It can be claimed to be covered by the credibility, but I do think it is a separate attribute.

You can say that all messages you send out from your organization must be packaged exactly as your viral marketing message. We all are aware the key in branding is the consistency in your interaction with your users, or else your users get confused. Viral branding is about letting you users build your brand. If you are uncareful when you specify your “viral message”, they might build a brand you didn’t intend. The main problem with viral marketing is that you cannot really prove success nor check if your message sticks before you try it out.

Viral marketing is the future yet it is completely different from regular marketing. The success rate is much higher than normal marketing if done correctly though.

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