Digital Influence Mapping Project

Best Insight From Duncan Wardle at Disney

Disney surprised me at the Media Relations Summit 2008. Duncan Wardle, VP of Global PR Disney Parks, talked openly about having some challenges launching social media-based programs inside the company. The legal department was mentioned several times with a knowing tone in his voice.

They have several social media-based programs going: Virtual Magic Kingdom (think Habbo Hotel meets NeoPets) Dream Jobs (would you like to be a Pirate at the park for a day? Who wouldn't?), a Mom's panel and others. He introduced each by commenting on how challenging it was to get these "uncontrollable" programs through legal.

But the insight came during his description of some of these programs and when he answered the question about where social media responsibility should reside in the marcom world within an organization like Disney.

More Complex Integration

Duncan described having all players of the marcom mix at the table - the brand managers, the advertising folks, the Public Relations team, the CRM folks, etc... That is how we are working more and more. Who "owns" social media or it's more mature outcome, word of mouth marketing, is a trick question. He described how they strike more complex deals now with entities like the big portals (e.g. Yahoo) which weave the communication goals and business objectives of all of the discip0lines to get the most out of the portal. So, it's not just an ad buy to drive traffic to an initiative, it's editorial integration, an even a bigger commitment on selling rooms via the travel channel within the portal, and so on.

Campaigns meant to generate customer or employee involvement and word of mouth work better when complemented and integrated with PR and advertising. They need to work together to get the best effect. And social media? Social media is a set of tools, techniques and methods used to reach a marketing or communications goal - usually in the form of word of mouth marketing. I added this last distinction. I think it was implicit in Duncan's talk.

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. 

Portuguese Social Media: Two Stories of Success

Having spent a few days in Lisbon with some of our top communications pros (locked in a hotel meeting room), I was lucky enough to get out and hook up with two people who know more about what is going on with social media in Portugal than all the pundits in the social media chatterfest.

Seriously, sometimes I get sick and tired of the "analysts" and other self-appointed experts. I just want to connect with folks who are using social media and living their lives. Last year, France was the leading blogging community in EU. Now, Spain is where a lot of the action is. Each market in EU is developing different social media behaviors. Portugal loves on Hi5 and  has a solid core of enthusiast bloggers. I had  a chance  to meet up with two guys who are each successes in social media even though they both work in tiny, boot-strapped start-ups.

What does success look like?

Hugo and Andre share more than being bloggers. Both love Portugal. Andre seems like the cat who ate the canary - like he knows the secret to living well and that happens in Portugal. Hugo has a 3 month old daughter and lives in what sounds like a super sweet apartment with view to die for in downtown Lisbon. That's why I call them 'successes' - they love their lives. They have a passion for their business and their lives outside of that dream. They don't strike me as people who are putting off life while they build a business.

Hugo & The State of Social Media in Portugal

Hugo Neves de Silva started blogging in 2005 when he began writing his master' thesis. His thesis remains perpetually in the future but he continues to blog here. he has promised to translate his recent post cataolguing the state of the blogosphere in Portugal. You can read the originial here and I wll absolutely link to the English version when he gets it together (hint, hint, Hugo). He worked in local goverment on the tech side for 8 years and is now launching a start-up consultancy called Wingman. There focus is in optmizing business' use of the Web - actually getting their sites and initiatives to make more money and produce better business results. Both he and Andre were skeptical of the interactive agency scene in Lisbon - too many folks claiming capabilities that may be just too shallow.

Portugal has geek bloggers who are on Twitter and Jaiku. But business has yet to really embrace the social Web. Corporate blogging is at its infancy and I get the feeling that Hugo has some ideas about how corporations in Portugal can start developing blog strategies. The country is widely connected and there is a wide-spread  bilingual population (English is taught in grade school). people do not access the Internet via their mobile phones even though everyone has one.

Andre & A Way Cool Start-up

Andre Ribeirinho worked at Sapo, the Yahoo of Lisbon,  until one day, he did the unthinkable, what no one does - he left. And he left to create Adegga - a social wine discovery site. The site allows users to see what others think about wines and trades on the natural affinity that wine lovers have. Wine producers (paying member/sponsors) can see member wish lists and other brand-specific information. they can also connect with their fans. Very Web2.0. But with a business model. I love that he is boostrapping and resisting investment until he iterates new language-versions and acquires more registered users. I don't drink wine but if ever there was a category that had a built in "community" - it's wine. His simple design (he did it himself even though he's a techie) and the clear UI and value to both the wine lover and the wine producer is admirable.  Mashable covered their launch as did Stowe Boyd. You can read a pretty good interview at Chaminc, a Portuguese marketing blog. 

While there are other wine communities, I woudl bet on Andre's business success. His smart insight about what people want is impressive. I love that he has 100 stores signed up from Argentina to Italy and a dozen other countries.

From Hugo and Andre, I got the sense that Portugal is not a hotbed of Web 2.0 entrepeneurial activity. What they may not fully realize is how they may be the ones to inspire the next wave. Andre says that people who knew he left the comfy confines of Sapo were stunned but also openly rooting for his success. If more knew that Hugo left a career in public service to work at a startup of 5 people while he has a 3 month old daughter at home and a wife - they would cheer him on as well.

I wish them even greater success and have no doubt it will find them. Thanks guys for a great afternoon. And let;s all try to meetup at Shift 08 in Lisbon this October (both Andre and Hugo have a hand in organizing this conference)

(photos from Hugo and Stephanie Booth)

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. 

Idea Bar #8: Nonprofit Widgets in the age of OpenSocial

With this week's announcement from Google of OpenSocial - essentially creating a uber-platform to eclipse all platforms (i.e. Facebook) - and the news that MySpace has joined, widgets suddenly became a lot more relevant. The promise behind the Open Social move, whose API became available late last week, is that advertisers can now create widgets that hold some, hopefully, useful or delightful code, that can be embedded in user profiles across a range of social networks including MySpace, Bebo, Linkedin and more. More than that, we may achieve that wonderful goal of a single social network profile, "one ring to bind them."

Non-profits must jump on the widget wagon now!

If you go to widgetbox, one of the clearinghouse directories of widgets for different social networks, you will find approximately 29 nonprofit widgets available for your download and installation pleasure. They are a pretty varied and obscure bunch from the Dancing Dolphin to the Wild Apricot. Where is the Peace Corps? Amnesty International? Oxfam? Oceana?

So far, folks are using the widget to pull RSS headlines into a special box. (You can check out my Auctions for Change widget on my MySpace page)

I want to feature the 1-2 organizations that I support on my blog(s) and social netwrk profiles. I want to promote their mission and solicit other supporters ($$$). I need a widget that offers something more than headlines. It should offer something engaging like a dynamic statistic of the number of people going without meals in different parts of the world right now. Here's my RockYou countdown widget reminding me that I am off to Taos in t-minus "x" days and counting. How hard would it be to make that a "stat-widget" driven by real research numbers that tell me how many folks are starving, how much of the ocean is polluted, or the average human carbon footprint?

Then I need a micropayment button that allows visitors to give $1 to $1000 (or whatever) right there in the widget. How many people will click and give based upon widget exposure alone? No idea. But chances are, if it's on my blog, it's a cause I support and I will blog about it. Let me be your champion.

Non-profits need to engage their brand ambassadors now. We need nonprofitwidget.org to emerge not as just another clearinghouse (like widgetbox) but as a toolbox for promotion and measurement for nonprofits who would use this type of resource.

Here's how nonprofitwidget.org can work:

• All nonprofits can publish their widgets in this directory which features all of the requisite download and embed protocols to relieve the necessity of too much technical knowledge.
• A directory of developers with rating systems would help nonprofits connect with folks to build the widgets.
• A promotion toolbox will give the nonprofit staff a set of procedures and tools to help promote their widgets
• A voluntary "membership" link will allow all of the folks who are using the widget to remain connected.
• Each widget "page" would feature and aggregate set of links to the blogs who feature that widget thus sending some link love back to those who publish the widget. 

Unlike advertisers who will wrestle with how to measure the use of widgets in terms they are used to (online advertising - see this WaPo article from Saturday), nonprofits have everything to gain by activating their greatest asset - their supporters and fans. 

As reported in the NTEN, Network for Good has released a new whitepaper on technology and fundraising. In general, the report includes their experience with widgets and here are some key points:

"When Wired Fundraisers Talk, People Listen: The messenger matters even more than the message.

Not Every Wired Fundraiser Is a Champion: The successful Wired Fundraiser has a relatively rare combination of true passion and a means to lend a sense of urgency to their cause.

Technology Makes a Difference: Widgets and social networks make existing personal fundraisers more effective.

Smart Charities Embrace the Wired Fundraiser: And they find their own, “inner” Wired Fundraiser. "

 

OpenSocial and open-mobile: Good or bad?

A couple of days after Google announced its plans to support a cross-social network, open "platform" with Linked-In and Frendster, the WaPo features an update on their mobile progress to champion WiMax and other open standards on mobile. While I am always cautious about collosal growth and expansion of a company ("absolute power corrupts...'), I am secretly wishing Google could give the cable companies a run for their money. That's the closed system that needs some serious "opening".

Open Social

Google launched an inititiative to make it easier for developers to create applications that will work across participating social networks. So far the participants include: Friendster, Hi5, LinkedIn, Ning, Plaxo, Viadeo and Oracle. Oh, forgot to mention, Google's own Orkut which stands to benefit considerably. Here's how Michael Arrington described it:

"It is a set of common APIs that application developers can use to create applications that work on any social networks (called “hosts”) that choose to participate.

What they haven’t done is launch yet another social network platform. As more and more of these platforms launch, developers have difficult choices to make. There are costs associated with writing and maintaining applications for these social networks. Most developers will choose one or two platforms and ignore the rest, based on a simple cost/benefit analysis.

Google wants to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks. And if they pull it off, they’ll be in the center, controlling the network....

...OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Hosts agree to accept the API calls and return appropriate data. Google won’t try to provide universal API coverage for special use cases, instead focusing on the most common uses. Specialized functions/data can be accessed from the hosts directly via their own APIs."

Smart, big move. The two 'marquee' names on the partner list need this. Linkedin is on the run from Facebook. It amazes me how quickly Facebook went from being the place for college students to the place for young people to the place for professionals. It makes perfect sense when you think about the similarities of our affinity for our college tribe and workplace tribe. Friendster just needs to break out of the Phillipines.

I spoke with one established, special-audience social network yesterday and they remain on the fence. I doubt we will see the Gathers, eons, and Bebos jumping on board this initiative until they may be forced to by market pressures.

The common platform thing will be a solid for advertisers. Developers will now be able to create applications (e.g. widgets et al) that reliably work across networks. This will make it easier to leverage several to "reach" audiences.

Open - mobile

Google's talks with Sprint and T-Mobile to outfit handsets with Google software is just the beginning. The Google handset continues to circulate around the rumour mill. But the real opportunity is both WiMax and open platforms for handsets. Kim Hart and Zachary Goldfarb's article in today's Washington Post has a great paragraph (several actually):

"Customizing handsets with a Google-powered operating system would rewrite the traditional wireless business model. Today's wireless carriers and handset manufacturers largely determine which applications consumers can access with their cellphones. Google aims to loosen those restraints by introducing a system that would be compatible with third-party features and services. In other words, software companies could design new features to work with Google's software. ...

...The introduction of Google phones would spur the kinds of mobile innovations seen abroad, in particular in Asia, where people regularly watch television on their cellphones, swipe cell phones at vending machines and take a picture of a special bar code to get a download of more information, said Charles S. Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research. New features might include video chat and GPS that takes advantage of Google Maps software, he said."

Is "open" a trojan horse that will lead to global domination and badness for consumers? Or is it consumers' ticket out of the servitude we find our selves with closed systems? Again, I can't help wondering what it would be like to have an open cable system (I have had some "issues" lately with my MSO).

Mapping My World

There is nothing new about creating Google Maps. But there is a neat little application that I learned about from Jessica Clarke over at AU's Center for Social Media called Community Walk.

I built this walk of what's worth buying in my small town.

Imagine using this for Walk-a-thon sponsors - all of those sponsors who sign up get included in the official Walk-a-thon map as recommended stores....

Get my Takoma Park: What's Worth Buying map here>

Stream: When Game Culture Goes Mass

Further chronicles from the first-ever WPP-sponsored un-conference: Stream. The event was held in Athens a week ago and featured a great variety of folks. I had to purposely make sure I didn't go to all of the social media-related sessions. Even though I am eager to meet and hear from fellow social media geeks, I chose a session on gaming.

David Rosenberg works at JWT in the Emerging Media group. He has a Powerpoint but has been careful to tell us how little of it he will use. (Okay - by the end of the session, he used it a little too much but there was some good stuff there)

Gaming and viral. That's his beat. Today he is talking about gaming.

He offered a quick survey of hardware and software with plenty of small anecdotes all along the way. The market is moving (has moved?) 'all wireless online enabled.' Online communities allow us to play anyone. they make the experience social. i am old enough to remember the gang at Downtown Digital (1991?) playing Doom over the network with telephones on speaker or, worse, taped to their heads.

Now?  There are 7 million members of XBOX Live. 45 million games downloaded from the store. 2 million messages sent.

Innovative experiences (beyond great games)

Under a discussion of "innovative gaming experiences," somone in the room applauded the Nintendo DS system for its multiple inputs: shout at it, blow on it, tap on the screen and reacts. Innovative interfaces and user experience really grab me. That's why the Wii is so beautiful. It actually has the ultimate ergonomics - an extension of your arm. The interfaces that allow natural movement like the Wii may be the key to greater adoption of 3D virtual worlds for social experiences. I know some people who believe that Second life-like dimensional experiences are the future of computing. i don't think so. But I do see how Nintendo interface innovation is a step towards improving that overall experience.

Activating fanbases

Who's thinking about connecting, facilitating, empowering fanbases? Obviously the game publishers and box developers are. What about the agencies? Is product placement or white-label games (e.g. Burger King XBox games) the only way to market via games?  What about activating fans? Who is doing that well out there?

The Word of Mouth Summit this November will drill down into fan communities including a keynote from Microsoft on the Halo 3 launch. WOMMA’s 2007 Summit is November 13-15 in Las Vegas. Get the agenda now>

Stream2007: FOOCamp for Marketers

After a day and a half of wpp's Stream2007 event, I have met some terrific people, participated in some great conversations and activities and generally gotten with the program.

So, what's 'the program?' How can we get a large marketing company, dominated historically by advertising agencies, to become more innovative, collaborative and to work outside their comfort zone. Well, the tech industry in different parts of the world seems to have a good time (fun + social + productive) at these unconferences. Let's see if that might work for these folks.

So, strickly speaking, this type of gathering is a bit inorganic to this crowd but that doesn't mean it cannot work. In fact, I think it is working for many. In the morning, we ran a session to organize the bloggers and vloggers in the crowd. It was well attended and lively but one question I asked was name a conference you have been to that you would consider a good, or even, great experience and why. There were answers but what there was also a disconnect. Someone in the group put their finger on it, "ad agencies don't go to conferences, we go to awards shows."

Interesting. So, this type of conference is new for many of the attendees.

Assembling them here with the Kinnernet format is an attempt to see if a little of the electricity that sparks some of the tech community will work on advertising agencies. Spark ideas by mixing up odd-fellows and odd exepriences. Oh, and let go fo the reins a bit.   

One thing seems clear. Through wpp's digital acquisitions/investments and the people they have invited, the event is not as dominated by the ad agencies as they might have been in previous years. The mix between tech geek and marketing geek seems more even. With a little VC sprinkled on the top.

I ran into someone who felt strongly that this is the type of idea-sparking will be good for the agencies. This will help them/us be the guy/gal who brings the radical ideas to clients. Agencies, especially ad firms, have always been the source of the big campaign idea. That's not enough anymore. Our big ideas need to be about business and a larger sense of creativity. This unconference clearly stated wpp's commitment to this leadership role. 

Amateurs vs. Professionals: Can't We All Just get Along?

Andrew Keen read from his book. Then he talked some more. And a bit more. And he referenced his book quite a few times. So, essentially it was a lecture. Until Jory broke in. Clearly his point is to be confrontational. He mentioned "debating" some of the tech luminaries at other conferences. So, his job is to create conflict. And when the room got to discussion, there was plenty of conflict. Ultimately a good conversation between people who fundamentally disagree.

He bashes the "Messianic faith" of rich entrepeneurs like O'Reilly (FOO Camp).

He is searching for the ideology of Web2.0. "Democratization" is an overused word in the Web2.0 world. Essentially, he thinks the Web2.0/social media craze is a bunch of hot air.

The ideology of Web 2.0 is actually a confluence of ideas

• couterculture of the sixties: idealized view of the community in the sixties leads to the romaticization of that idea. We don't understand how community works
• freemarket eighties: the market will solve all problems (e.g. Chris Anderson/The Long Tail)
• technophiles of the nineties:he objects to the fanatical notions that technology will somehow resolve our alienation. Millions who have not been able to express themselves can now do so, or at least that's the promise: technlogy liberates all of us.

Media becomes demonized as unjust gatekeepers.

His point:
1. Gatekeepers don't keep out talent: mainstream media works well. He defends mainstream media.
2. There's only a few of us who have something original to say
3. The purpose of media is to educate and entertain (not righting social injustices as Web 2.0 often fashions itself)
4. Maintream media is in crisis: fewer people read newspapers, music business in freefall, television ......

Jory finally interrupted him. A couple of cracks about a traditional media presentation and then into some great discussion.

Peter from Technorati defended the role of communication in Facebook and other parts of social media and he points out that the destruction of media is a constant state (i.e. destruction of movies by TV, etc...).

Andy counters over the point that who is benefiting financially from Web2.0? The owners of the "empty vessels" -  My Space, Google, etc... Bloggers aren't making any better a living then the ailing journalists, in fact, they are worse off.

What would he change?
Anonymity - I just don't know that that has a whole lot to do with his core argument. There are plenty of "known" bloggers and social network members who have built up their own credibility based upon....their credible behavior.

Final point from a participant: traditional media and social media can co-exist. The sky is not falling. Still I get the sense that beyond Andrew's bomb-throwing, he is writing about some real changes. Yes, they may be part of an ongoing continuum and not novel today. But he is a smart guy.

Hmmm...maybe I should read the book.....