Micro Persuasion

Could Wireless Radios Become the Next Tobacco?

It's hard to remember, but there was a time back in the 1950s and 60s when cigarettes were truly glamorous. No one really considered the potential health ramifications. The images below of James Dean and Frank Sinatra are iconic representations of an era that is now long gone. Since then, of course, people stared to die from diseases that smoking contributed to and we learned a lot about its health impact, including that of second-hand smoke.

 

Now flash forward to today. Our latest addiction? Wireless technology. It's everywhere. And, according to all known accounts, it's completely harmless. However if you look at the photos below (Lindsay Lohan and Harrison Ford), given the above context, is it conceivable things could change in a decade or two and that we might view these images differently?

If there's anyone who is an early candidate to get whatever wireless-induced disease may one day be in our future (if at all), it's me. I have had a cell phone since 1994. Today, the iPhone 3G I carry in my pocket, which rarely leaves my side, has any one or more of the following radios on at a given time: 2G wireless, 3G wireless, wifi, bluetooth and GPS. That's a lot of signals.

Last week Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, warned people to limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer. This is causing some parents to consider postponing when their children can have cell phones. This is probably just temporary panic fire. Still, the admonition certainly got me and others thinking.

Branko Miletic in Australia is following a similar thread, asking "Are Mobile Phones The New Cigarettes?" The answer today is a resounding "no." But I wonder what we'll say in 20 or 25 years.

I have no plans to stop using wireless technology. It's way way too integrated in my life. In fact, my iPhone is fast becoming my primary device. The rise of cloud computing will only accelerate the trend. But I do sometimes wonder about the fact that we don't know what we don't know. How about you?

Google News Separates Blogs from News

Google News has started to separate blogs and news links, according to the Google Operating System...

"When you view a cluster in Google News, there's a new option to filter sources: you can restrict news articles to blogs and to local news sites that are relevant to your query. The filters are a good way to find opinionated articles and more up-to-date information from local sites."

I never understood why they have a separate search engine for blogs. Further, this just blurs the line. Take a look at this cluster of blog links on Obama, which includes a lot of traditional media blogs. All of this is becoming a giant cake mix as the Google Web index gets faster. It's not so easy anymore to keep the pigs and cows contained.

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Threats and Opportunities in Data Leaking

Photo Credit: Kaia Gets Caught! by marcus_in_ny

Kaia, the cat in the photo above (no, she's not mine), is symbolic. If she looks like an LOLcat that's my intention. Kaia represents consumer social networks and free collaboration tools like Twitter, Facebook, Google Docs and LinkedIn. The faucet and the pipes you don't see here are your IT infrastructure. The water is the essential stream of data and information that businesses need for knowledge work. All of this combined represents a giant trend to watch - Data Leaking.

In the business world, information technology (IT) pros plays an incredibly valuable role. As geeks we may not love them all the time, but they do keep mission-critical services like email up and running to "five nines." However, corporate IT is at a major crossroads and things are about to get a lot more complicated.

In a few years mid-level knowledge workers will be dominated by Generation Y. As has been well-chronicled, this demographic has a very different view of digital tools. They grew up with the web. Facebook was part of their college and now their professional lives. They live online and use these technologies to nurture and grow both their business and personal networks.

That's where the drama begins. The pace of innovation in the consumer Internet sector will always outpace what the enterprise can do. It's a tortoise and hare scenario that's really not corporate IT's fault. As a result a lot of work - especially anything that involves collaboration - is leaking outside the workplace and CIOs are left to deal with the risks.

Employees, frustrated with the tools they are given, are simply taking matters into their own hands. Data is leaking away form corporations into social networks, which are becoming the new intranets and extranets of tomorrow.

Top-tier reporters I know are using social networks to bring together their sources into working groups or simply to connect. Many others - both PR pros and journalists - are using Help a Reporter. One Fortune 500 marketer I am consulting has set up a site on Ning to bring together some of it's more digitally savvy employees. James McLaine writes that DDB Worldwide, the largest ad agency in the world, is running a private Facebook group to organize and run a mentoring program. Nielsen exec Pete Blackshaw sheepishly admits he has moved non-proprietary work to the cloud. I am sure that many other examples abound.

Corporate IT knows that Data Leaking is going to be one of their top challenges. According to Forrester Research, 79% are concerned about the risks of unsanctioned use of Web 2.0 tools by their employees (see chart below). The data also shows they know they need to lead the way. However, that's the challenge. IT pros will never be able to keep up with Google Docs, Facebook, Twitter and others who are creating tools that consumers fall in love with and integrate into their own lives. It's just not the way companies operate.

The new world of work thrives on online collaboration. The companies that continually build walls around their employees won't be around a decade from now. As the Wikinomics blog indicates, this requires a new breed of CIOs who are willing to let their employees go and tap into their innovative spirit, rather than try to shut it down (a whack a mole scenario). The more liberal an IT department is, the more likely it is they will be able to innovate using a mix of external and internal tools.

The ramifications of this trend are huge. As knowledge work moves to social networks and "the cloud," the rewards increase thanks to enhanced collaboration. However, then again so do the risks. Cloud services like Apple's MobileMe, Google Docs and Amazon S3 all have had high-profile outages in the last month. We haven't seen a massive security hole rupture in any of these systems yet, but that's always a possibility as hackers increasingly turn their attention to these super high-value targets.

PR professionals have a lot to gain from using these tools. Collaborating on multiple drafts of a press release on Google Docs or Microsoft Sharepoint is a snap, as is interacting with reporters and bloggers on Facebook or LinkedIn. However, there are laws like Sarbanes Oxley to contend with and overall risks of downtime and/or potential security issues.

Once again, it comes down to trust and everyone's own risk/reward levers. But something tells me that as Gen Y dominates, they will trust the web. And that means, like or not, data will flow away from internal servers towards open systems. That portends big things.

The iPhone is a Pandora's Box for Radio

Radio is Dead by super-structure

The following is also my column in Advertising Age next week.

All the talk about one medium replacing another, to date, has largely been just that - talk. Over time new formats tend to be additions in our lives, not replacements for something else. In the 80s, video did not kill the radio star, as the old Buggles song says. Rather MTV made it stronger.

Still, an era is dawning where some new media will, in fact, supplant others. Or, more likely, existing information we interact with daily will come from new players that harness the Internet, e.g. bloggers stealing eyeballs from journalists. It's a function of the attention crash. We can't keep adding media to our lives without reaching a saturation point.

While TV and print have been hemorrhaging, radio has remained more resilient in the digital age. It reaches 93% of the population for 18.5 hours per week, according to Arbitron. This is only down from 22 hours per week 10 years ago. The US - despite rising fuel prices - remains a car culture. We live in our automobiles and radio still rules here, despite the iPod invasion.

This, in part, is because radio serves as a powerful discovery engine for new music. However, the medium today is one-way. That's about to be change thanks to sophisticated mobile devices. The broadband-connected cell phone turns this experience into one that harnesses crowds to become far more personalized. All you need to do to see this yourself is to buy an iPhone and download some of the free streaming audio applications like Pandora or Last.fm.

The iPhone 3G and other smartphones like it will change how people access interact with audio. Already, the Pandora music discovery service is the fourth most popular application in the iTunes store. And bloggers like Jeff Jarvis believe that it will disrupt radio. I tend to agree.

The cellphone will change the radio landscape by not only establishing a two-way modality but by ushering in new models for advertising that are mapped to people's musical tastes and perhaps locally relevant as well thanks to GPS. This maybe one of the most promising mobile ad formats and is a space to watch.

Get Productive with Social Media (and Stay Sane)

Lifehacker is one of my favorite blogs. So when editor Gina Trapani invited me to guest blog about how to be productive with social media, I jumped at the opportunity. Here's the intro and summary. The full essay is here.

Social media is the equivalent of digital food. It's nourishing, tasty and, for many of us, necessary. However, consume too much and you can get sidetracked and create larger consequences. The good news is you can participate in social media in a way that adds value to your life. You just need to know how to manage it so so that it does not devour your attention—the most valuable commodity of the digital age. Here are three simple steps I take.

• Step 1 - Set a North Star
• Step 2 - Apply the Pareto Principle
• Step 3 - Schedule Time to Be Social

Are We Living in a Perfect Storm for Print Media?

I have been giving a lot of thought lately to what impact rising inflation might have on digital media. One strong possibility is that print will get crimped.

Consider this a rather simplistic theory for a Saturday morning. However, it's my view that - as if they didn’t have enough to worry about - newspaper and magazine publishers may see a perfect storm accelerate if gas prices continue to escalate. There are three factors at work here - some go beyond the current economic situation.

For starters, as gas prices go up, so will the distribution costs. This could have a significant impact on margins. However, there are larger societal factors at bay here too.

Second, there's a greater awareness among consumers of their environmental impact. At the Forbes Online Brand Summit earlier this year, Jeff Cole from USC Annenberg predicted that as this broadens, consumers will cut back on print in favor of digital media. I think he's right.

Last but not least we have the growing popularity of speedy 3G-enabled smart phones, including the new iPhone 3G. The devices are declining in price while offering a lot more sophisticated experience for reading news.

When you combine these three trends the future for print doesn't feel bright. The big media companies know this and they're looking for new models that can be as lucrative as what they have now. The question of course is whether or not there will be enough revenue to replace what they have coming in now, even as their costs decline.

Independent's Day: Digital Nomads Rising

The following is also my column in Advertising Age next week.

As I write this column, all the talk is about the recession. There were nearly 40,000 stories in Google News in the last week mentioning the R-word. In addition, a gallon of gas, now at four dollars, may hit seven bucks by 2010, according to CIBC World Markets. Meanwhile, layoff announcements are up 21% in 2008, Challenger, Gray and Christmas reports.

Recessions often accelerate social shifts that are already percolating under the surface. One of the key trends I have been watching is the growing number of Digital Nomads.

If you spend as much time on the road as I do, you’re likely to run into Digital Nomads. This sector of the workforce includes both independents and corporate workers. They use web-based tools like Twitter, wikis, Google Docs, social networks and Skype to collaborate and work wherever, whenever and however they want.

Digital Nomads are already extremely influential. Many of them blog and hang out on sites like Web Worker Daily. In addition, they shun traditional communication tools like email.

Luis Suarez is one such corporate nomad who I met recently at a conference in Brussels. Suarez has a successful career in knowledge management with IBM. He lives in the Canary Islands and has virtually eliminated all business email in favor collaborating via social networks. Suarez has chronicled this extensively on his blog.

Others are declaring free agency. Charlene Li, an influential Forrester analyst who tracks digital trends, blogged that she is leaving the research firm to go independent. Some believe that the growing ranks of free-agent analysts may spell trouble for traditional research firms.

The reality is that many of the tools that workers need to do their jobs are becoming free or low cost. This extends into verticals as well. For example the Google Ad Planner, which launched last week, theoretically could allow anyone to become a nomadic media planner.

Digital Nomads are growing in numbers and they will create ripples. This trend will accelerate use of Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace. Over time, this may slow the efficacy of email marketing and accelerate the reliance on social media engagement.

However, it goes deeper than that. If you don't allow your employees to become nomadic, they may do so and even compete against you in the process.