Digital Influence Mapping Project

NetVibes for Marketers

Michael Cohen from Netvibes presented the basics of the customizable interface for the Netvibes service. He is talking to a room full of CRM marketers for a major CPG (consumer packaged goods) in Barcelona. They all want to know how they can brand widegts and pages within the service and then count the hell out of everything. CRM folks are data geeks, data junkies, Ninjas of ROI.

So netvibes remains a small enterprise - 39 employees in Paris - with a deceptively prolific developer core - currently there are over 120,000 widgets created by more than 700 developers. They have 60 million pages created but then comes the kicker that they are trying to remedy: most users are not registered and rely on cookies-only to maintain page-state. They recently released 'Ginger' which prompts you to upgrade (and register). But as an avid Netvibes fan and user, I have't upgraded yet, myself. (Ginger offers a bit of a social network that allows people to "push" changes to their subscribed users - think Facebook.)

Brands can work 2 ways: Premium Universes
There are two ways that brands can "use' Netvibes. The first is to create  a "premium universe" - a branded page that collects widgets together in a private-labeled user experience. If you were Marshalls (disclosure: client of Ogilvy), you might assemble a bunch of bargain hunter widgets - store locator map, Web site homepage, trendspotter blog feeds and more. Anything with an RSS feed or HTML can be embedded in a widget. You market that as a custom url to your customers as an added service (and Google food).

Michael showed examples where Figaro and Tagged have embedded NetVibes customized 'start pages" in their services. He, of course, then demonstrated our client's branded start page. The moment of truth happens when the brand realizes that the user can combine their brand with any other widget content from the library (competing branded content, non complimentary content, etc...).

Widgets
The other way to make use of Netvibes is to create widgets and place them in their library (dollars for premium placement).  1000 brands have created widgets. they come in 76 languages from 69 countries. In this mode, you are leveraging (I said the "L" word) Netvibes user base which they don't know enough about to satisfy even the least disciplined marketer (never mind the CRM folks). For the few that are registered, they know age, gender and town. They could do more but they respect their users privacy.

They have a very versatile approach to widget compatibility (not in the OpenSocial sense). Netvibes Widget Platform (Universal Widget API - UWA) makes widget sportable across OS, device and browser platforms.

Brands track number of downloads and can use their own tracking (like a special Feeburner feed). Netvibes is working on reporting "canceling" or dropping the widget. They have their own CPC-like model = "Cost per installation" (CPI).

He showed examples from NYTimes and CBS (CSI Video widget).

Michael had some good one-liners:

• "The user is your best friend to distribute the brand" - speaking to letting users spread your widget
• "The brand as a service provider" - this is the new mantra from marketers who know that product brands have to think differently now to build stronger relationships with theihr customers. they have to think like service providers.
• "Really Sexy Syndication" - they are enthusiastic about RSS

I love Netvibes

Netvibes has put togther a very useful platform for brands. On the widget side of their business, until they convert more users to registered users, they will attract brands looking to reach the great unwashed (young tech males?). The premium universe offering is a great user experience but relys on the brands existing marketing strategies to drive awareness and usage. Also, it is at the end o fthe day a supercool portal concept. Brands have been trying to capture the start page of their customers for years (most rightly gave up). How many people need a widgetized portal from their favorite soap brand? Still for the right product and service, it is a great solution (slam dunk for any major media company).

Social Media Visualizations

I have become a quick fan of MITs Technology Review. Not sure why I am just paying attention now, but I picked it up a few months back in an airport and rediscovered a great pub (nicely designed to thanks to Art Director Lee Caulfield).

Erica Naone has a great article in the April edition about different schemes for social media visualizations. As a Creative Director, information design has been a long-time love. Now, with digital data, we are seeing interesting approaches to creating pictures of the abstract dynamic of social connectedness. Tools like Visible Technologies help us understand the network path of ideas across bloggers by showing graphics - bubbles, lines, connections.

New Visualizations
Two visual schemes that stand out to me include the work of Mathew Hurst at Microsoft's Live Labs ( I am a regular reader of his Datamining blog)  and the Comment Flow visualization from Dietmar Offenhuber and Judith Donath at MIT Media Labs. The Live Labs work demonstrates the clustering we all sense exists amongst blogs. The image below shows even more centralization than I would have guessed. Is it a 'blogosphere' or a 'blogoclump'?

Comment Flow displays that wonderful mosaic of pics and favicons connected in hubs of comments around core posts or conversations.

On the MIT site, Dietmar describes it as such:

"We have designed and implemented a flexible tool for the content driven exploration and visualisation of a social network. Building upon a traditional force-directed network layout consisting of nodes (profiles) and edges (friend-links), our system shows the activity and the information exchange (postings in the comment box) between nodes, taking the sequence and age of the messages into account."

They have a movie (64Mb) and an application file for download (26Mb) here - could be interesting.

It reminds me of the display of the Vizster project that Danah Boyd had a hand in.

   So where is all thi sgoing? These research-based and somewhat academic models must become the tools for us marketers tomorrow. If we want to track, demonstrate and prove the flow of WOM and the influence of person X over person Y in a particular conversation, having visual displays of the network and the spread of an idea will be very compelling.

As marketers, we live in a world of 'dashboards' that try to make complex data around campaign performance easy to get quickly and to provide meaning if not insight that can be acted upon. 

MashMeet DC & Mashable the Brand

We held a Mashmeet at our offices last night in DC. Pete Cashmore flew in from Scotland and hosted a group of 5 or so startups. First, I want to share some observations about the strtups and then a little about my feelings about the Mashable brand (disclosure: Mashable recently became an OgilvyPR client).

The "buzz" from me happened around Kluster and Mixx. Kluster was full of fun bluster as they landed from a whirlwind gig finishing their product enough that they could demo it at TED which is clearly a great venue for a young, VC-backed start-up.

A Message Platform Side-note

Each of the five startups delivered a lightening round preso in front of about 100-150 people jammed into our space. I wish I could work with each on their message platform - help them tell the crowd in a couple of compelling sentences what their service/software was all about. Each suffered from describing features without ever setting the stage as to the relevance or essential power of their idea. Part of me believes that the geekfest setting of Web 2.0 meetups is a lazy setting with a forgiving audience.  (I'm a geek, so don't get upset). Part of me believes that these presentations are a conscious program to help give the entrepeneurs behind them some experience presenting in a non-threatening environment. Anyhow, I would love to see them sharpen their story.

Kluster

Kluster is a co-creation, collaboration marketplace with a twist. Unlike Cambrian House, they encourage participants to collaborate and invite deeper investment in ideas. They do this by allowing contributors to up their stake in their idea by investing "watts". It is a wee bit complicated but it does look promising. There is a video that describes them here.  They have this age's 'black box' - an algorithm - that helps decide winning ideas (ones with "spark"). Usually, services that create a whole new vocabulary and require a glossary just to get it are annoying. Still, I know Kluster wants to carve out some of its own blue ocean strategy so why shouldn't they have their own language. You should be able to see the exercise they did for TED - The Game of Global Awareness - at their core site here >

Mixx

Mixx is a well known bookmarking aggregator feed reader thingee. By using tags, they create a segmented collection of 'what's interesting' and then display in a very clean, easy to read interface. I am sure I am shortchanging the service in terms of all its value but still I like it and plan to add their icon to our own Web site. I think of it as a tag-based Digg. 

Mashable the Brand
I have always liked Mashable and have waxed poetic here. Having interviewed Pete Cashmore, the CEO and founder, and watched him diligently meet and hand out cards at the MashMeet, I remain a fan. I appreciate that they focus on positive stories. I have never appreciated the snarky side of the Web. Part of it is that they are good - prolific coverage, tell a story via pictures (screen grabs, usually) and yet they have some sort of humility (I mean - the colors of the interface - they are charmingly weird).

I probably gravitated to them because Pete and his team have been looking from the outside of Silicon Valley in. That makes them underdogs in a space dominated by those who can hold parties in the bay area to their hearts content. Pete is from Scotland and while he has a full legion of doom in terms of employees, most are not based in SF. That is changing soon though.

The brand for me is about a relentlessly curious, optimistic group of enthusiasts who value hard work over cocktails (mostly). Pete admitted that most of the time he is holed up working. He remains surprised when he comes to the MashMeets and sees all this enthusiasm and attention from real people.

We will be seeing some interesting upgrades in the near future. Between the core blog, the Marketplace, and the bubbling social network, I think Mashable is a great source of content, community with a human soul. 

A window into BlogHaus at CES

Take a look at our buddies, Podtech's, Mogulus implementation for CES. As per previous years, they are running an "off-campus" house for all of the bloggers at CES. Our guys will be out there with Intel. It's fun watching the live feed.

My Private Digital Focus Group

I read a great post by Fred Wilson over at A VC. He reflected on his kids (3) media behaviors as an imperfect yet still insightful barometer of trends. Sure it's not a great sample but his observations are still quite meaningful.

I look at my own tribe and what they do everyday. They are 10 and 13 so, they haven't advanced to too much independent consumption (buying DVDs, CDs, indpendent movie-going). Still, I look at the average week and find some interesting habits. But before I catalogue their consumption, here's what I make of it:

Digital Trends: The Bell Report

Personal devices - phones and portable game players - will grow in importance. My kids want their tech with them wherever and whenever. They will prefer these smaller devices over the larger user experiences available to them. I am guessing they feel a more intimate ownership of these devices. I may laugh at all the add-on services that Sprint tries to jam into our phones but I think mobile devices will be big. And not just phones.

TV shows are "filler" for them (this is different than what Fred finds with his children - who are older). They like movies equally well on the TV or in the theater. The drama of movies really does it for them. So there is probably a good future in great writing.

Music remains a passion. Whether on CD or downloaded MP3 files - it just doesn't matter. The appetite for music will not go away. How it's sold doesn't really matter to this next generation. 

They consume books like they grew on trees (which they sorta do). Both read a tremendous amount. Boy also like comic books like Judge Dredd (a classic). Girl has not really discovered magazines yet. Newspapers and magazines are on the ropes.

Tweens are not diving into social networks as vigorously as teens. Now, this might just be my kids as I am sure others are hip deep in MySpace. I am guessing that in a couple of years this will change and they will both have a sophisticated online presence.

The data is in the details:

Each are given 1.5 hours of digital or screen time a day. That includes TV, computer and Wii (we have become a Nintendo-loyal house). Boy (13) does about 1/2 Computer, 1/4 Wii, 1/4 TV. He routinely sneaks in some TV later at night with us but rarely pushes for any particular programming. Girl (10) splits it between TV and Computer.

Computer Games

Boy is a big PC Gamer and can spend hours with his friends either in the room or online playing multiplayer games - e.g. Rome Total War and Star Wars Empire At War (not necessarily MMORPG, although he's begging for WOW). Online he browses YouTube and game sites like Next Level.

Girl spends most of her computer time in various online sites like TY Girls (think WebKinz for dolls), Miniclip (games), and an occaisional friend-recommended site.

Email

Surprisingly, neither is deeply committed to email. Boy uses his everyday in a fairly utliitarian way. Girl has all but abandoned hers. I expect this to change.

Mobile

Only boy has a phone. He uses it routinely as his buddies have phones. He relies on the phone for most communications. We get charged for texting so we had to strangle that at the beginning. Otherwise, he would text all the time.

TV, Movies & Video

Girl watches Disney shows - the live action ones and re-runs of Full House. She also likes Project Runway, American Idol and America's Next Top Model. Boy would like to watch Family Guy and the Simpsons. He has a serious thing for MythBusters and Hell's Kitchen. Both still watch movies (DVD and pay-per-view). Both go to movies several times a month. I don't see much difference in their going to see movies at theaters vs. on teh TV at home. They seem equally interested in both.

Game Platforms

We have had a Wii for about a year and it remains Boy's favorite platform...alongside the DS, that is. He actually seems just as interested in the DS. Girl now has DS but steers clear of the Wii (that's HIS).

Books

Boy reads 1-2 books a week. He re-reads The Zombie Survival Guide all the time. Girl reads 2-3 books simultaneously and has a thing for Nancy Drew.

Magazines & Newspapers

Both read the comics but otherwise the newspaper is useless to them. Boy will read Nintendo Power. Girl has not tuned into magazines yet.

Stream 2007: Uncontrolled Chaos

What do you get when you mix 250 marketing/tech/money geeks with two days of wall-to-wall participatory sessions, bright and bent ideas and an odd-little Greek coast getaway? Well, I don't know yet but so far there has been a lot of high energy around digital innovation, robotics, juggling and I have met some great people.

Stream 2007 is the first unconference put on by WPP. Modeled after Yossi's unconference in Israel (he's here, too), it's chaos on wheels. Tonight is Gadgetthon. Two minutes at a time, people bring their favorite obscure gadget or something they invented and get applause. Scores are registered on two LED t-shirts and a loud meter.

There have been solar flowers, radio-controlled helicopters and my personal favorite - the XBox hand controlled version of the vibrating couch (for game response not what you might be thinking). We are up to #11 who is presenting the ring of love. I refuse to explain.

Tomorrow is a full day of rapid fire participatory sessions. we are running three of them careful as Yossi warned not to "suck the oxygen" out of the session by doing so much. One thing we are all doing is trying to cover the events in blogs, video and pictures. We will be using the del.icio.us tag - "stream2007". Check it out here>

Megatrends and the Glory of the Road

Will the shrinking credit market affect the VC market and exhuberance around Web 2.0? Never!

Anyhow, David Beisel at Venrock had an interesting post outlining Seven Ubertrends ripe for VC capital. Here are the first three and I encourage you to click through to see the rest:

"1. The digitalization of transportation experience. Our cars are transforming from motorized transportation into digital immersion experiences. With in-dash devices ranging from GPS, to satellite radio, to integrated telephone controllers, the place where many Americans spend much of their day is going digital. Also, other transportation experiences, namely public transportation, is being affected by a digitalization trend – everything from digital signage in subways to infomation touchscreens in taxis is modifying what we do when going from here to there.

2. Internet’s facilitation of green lifestyle. With concern over the environment becoming a progressively more relevant issue, the web provides a natural vehicle for connecting people to resources and services which lessen impact of individuals on environment. We are at the beginning of “The Green Web” which will provide individuals within our society a leveraged way to positively affect the planet.

3. Influence and word-of-mouth marketing facilitated by online social software. Marketers are increasingly concerned about truly engaging with consumers as the effectiveness of traditional advertising erodes. Social software (in its broadest sense) coupled with the principles of word-of-mouth marketing will provide for successfully reaching potential customers via the most trusted source – people they already know."

Idea Mini-Bar

The first point I find interesting as we have been poking around Sync - the voice activated mobile and MP3 control that is a joint venture between Microsoft and Ford - for a client. It's only natural that we would spend energy figuring out how to make use of our time traveling and especially commuting. I hope some equal energy is spent on making the road experience more glorious and fun via digital.

• What about a digital version of "I Spy" that would let cars traveling the same road participate as a community? "I spy something red near Exit 12...."

• Or a voice activated Yahoo Answers for a local community. Driving through, I could call a 1.800 humber and pose a question about the best diner in town with fresh pie. It gets converted to text, someone answers and it appears on my Google map mashup that is custom published for my trip.

• Or a traffic alert collective where everyone traveling on I95 through Maryland subscribes to a live channel that broadcasts traffic reports called in from the crowd.

I am all for seeing where travel innovations go to make us more productive during those lull moments we cannot control. But I don't want to lose the sense of adventure I get on road trips to the distractions of headphones and DVD consoles.

(image Heart Like a Wheel (2006)  from http://www.takehitoetani.com/hbbb.html)

My Mobile Santa Influencer

In my last post, I said I didn't have one. That was two hours ago....

Thanks to Russ - our mobile influencer and Santa in July - I am know test driving the iPhone. Much has already been written about what it's impact will be on the marketplace. I can only tell you what my eyes, ears and fingers tell me. It will create a new wave of device-love. I will return this to Russ on Monday. Yet I wonder if his generosity is some tactical "puppy love" technique wherein I fall in love with it and refuse to give it back. Does he secretly work for Apple?

Picture is great. Swivel thing is cool. Interface responds in a way like no other. Hmmm.....

Creating a Mobile Influence Strategy

Yes, it's here. I didn't wait in line. I don't have one. But that's just me. I tend to resist the obvious just to be "different." Sometimes it works out, sometimes I resist to my own detriment.

What I do have is a Mobile Influence Strategy. Sounds diabolical. It's not. The mobile device/network/applications of today and tomorrow will influence us all in new ways. From paid advertising and brand experiences to earned media defined a little differently to applications and services from non-mobile brands intent on making the lives of their customers a little easier or a little more interesting (i.e. providing value). That's what a Mobile Influence Strategy aims to fulfill.

I have posted before about wpp's investments in mobile marketing and their view of 2007 as a 'try-and-learn' year for most marketers in North America and even Europe. That means that terrific things are possible, measurement is still a little sketchy (non-standrad) and 3G/broadband is still low in the US (around 6%). Still I don't know anyone who isn't expecting tremendous things from mobile marketing beyond what a single device (the iPhone) will trigger.

So, we have built mobile marketing into our strategic plans for all 360° Digital Influence projects. Sometimes it extends a concept. Sometimes it leads the creative thinking. But there are several milestones that are being reached right now that will make this very timely:

• The rise of mobile broadband
• More broadband-friendly phones
• Care about the user experience, like what Iconmobile does
• The use of mobile by the 2008 US Presidential campaigns
• Continued growth of a generation who sees their phone as the mobile device not the thing you plug in at home

Innovations like Microsoft/Ford's Sync that make your car into a giant mobile receiver tied to voice commands

We have experienced a pretty clear model for development of new communications channels and techniques. We start by adding new incremental elements to programs - adding mobile to a larger digital influence engagement with our clients. At the same time, we implement programs that are completely driven by mobile marketing and communications or they are the very center of a campaign. Our Nokia work in Asia is a good example. And we walk the walk. That means we market and communicate about ourselves using mobile. Look for that to launch in the Fall.

One voice in the mobile and community landscape that I appreciate a lot is Communities Dominate Brands from Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen. Tomi wrote a great post recently talking about mobile as the 7th Mass Media and defined the 6 unique benefits (slightly reformatted):

"What we need to do - and regular readers of our blog know this has been a long-term theme for Alan and me - is that for mobile we should not try to copy concepts from legacy media (and yes, today, even the internet is a legacy media, when mobile is the 7th Mass Media). What YOU should do - is build a strategy for mobile - what is the POWER of the phone. Don't see the limitations of a small(ish) screen or small keypad. Think of the POWER of the mobile. As a Mass Media, mobile has six unique benefits, that are not able to be copied anywhere else.

1. Mobile is the first personal mass media (even the internet is only semi-personal)
2. it is the first always carried media.
3. It is the first always on mass media
4. Mobile is the first mass media with a built-in payment channel
5. It is the first media device available at the point of inspiration
6. mobile is the first mass media with near-perfect audience information

Not perfect, but as AMF Ventures reported, on TV you capture 1% of the audience data. On the internet, you capture 10% of audience data. But on mobile you capture 90% of audience data !"

Mobile is in Try-and-learn mode

Yesterday, I had a chance to spend the morning with some really smart mobile companies. These are folks actually implementing programs here or in Europe. They were all interesting for different reasons. (the common thread is that they are all investments of our parent - so full disclosure)

m:metrics

One -  m:metrics -  is a service we use within my team. Evan Neufeld gave us an updated overview of their data on mobile usage in the 6 countries they amass this data on: US, DE, FR, UK, IT, ES.

Their Mobile Lens service is syndicated data on installed base and usage. And they are very detailed. Most of the data he reviewed yesterday was US centric by request, for example:

• 10% of users create or share content (presume this does not include simple text messaging and does include things like photo sharing)
• 30 million people use photosharing
• There is a 6% 3G penetration
• Mobile revenue (usage plus advertising) will be a $4billion-plus business by 2012

Iconmobile

This is a German firm that we have a stake in that is doing some truly awesome stuff. They have a great understanding of what makes mobile experiences successful. In general, the group debated some of the recent efforts by others in the mobile space including ESPN's foray and Vcast and others. Here are some points that came out of our group:

• mobile strategy and implementation must be integrated into other interactive and marketing, not a separate unit doing it's own thing. The insight here is that simply porting video over to the mobile platform may not be as successful as a program that has hooks into other channels and experiences (e.g. contests and activities that create galleries on Web pages, voting that gets tallied and displayed elsewhere, even the ever-popular interactive billboards) This means that try-and-learn programs are complicated. If all we do is port client video over, we shouldn't expect great results.
• No one knows the real appetite for watching video on the mobile device although at least one member of our troop just got back from seeing a device demo in Japan that really made them drool. Most seemed optimistic. I still love watching video on my iPod, so I am a good customer-candidate. The price point of most mobile video providers (e.g. $15.95) is probably holding back adoption.
• According to Evan, users in the installed base (admittedly small compared to potential market), appear to be open to consuming advertising especially if it offsets usage costs.
• CPMs are all over the map for mobile advertising from .20 cents to $20
• There is no standard measurement model right now. Each of our companies is modeling a specific measurement criteria for each engagement vs. there being a standard. This sounds very much like what we are experiencing in social media right now.
• Audience segmentation is often better informed by the demos associated with particular handsets (mobile measurers like m:metrics know the handset, handsets have particular consumers, etc...) than by some super fancy data fusion (there was some debate about this)

Back to iconmobile. Their work is truly wonderful. They are very design-conscious and are spreading the gospel of care in the interface design amidst a world of carriers that often put out a poor user experience. They are also creating some inventive applications from tools and applications to more entertainment-based experiences like the serial soap on Mittendrin.tv.

It's going to be a fun year in mobile.

We are in the try-and-learn phase of mobile. Many clients will recognize the need to use this year to get smart by deploying programs. Others will be cautious and critical waiting for the real audience