I am writing this blog post from high above the US as I fly back to NY after a quick overnight trip to Chicago. However, I am not writing it on a computer, rather I am using just a smartphone.
This trip was unusual. For only the second time I left my laptop at home and traveled with just a smartphone (in my case an iPhone), a Verizon Mifi router and an 8gb Lacie Iamakey USB drive. Nevertheless, I was remarkably able to do just about everything I needed.
Despite the challeneges of working with a virtual keyboard I have become rather adept at typing on the iPhone. I use apps like The Thumb to train myself. In fact, I am composing this post using the outstanding QuickOffice suite, which is available on virtually every mobile platform. My experience this week is encouraging me to go "laptopless" on short trips from here on in, unless I feel I will need a computer to work on a PowerPoint document or to project one.
All of the excitement in technology sector these days is in the mobile space - especially this summer with the gaggle of new devices that are launching. TechCrunch even calls this the summer of smartphone love. But beyond all the hype of the devices, there is a fundamentally bigger story here about how these platforms are tranforming society.
What's notable is that pundits in the tech press aren't even calling the new devices "phones" - as much as they used to. Notice how both Ed Baig from USA Today and Walt Mossberg from The Wall Street Journal refer to the new Palm Pre not so much as a phone but rather a "pocket computer." (Palm is an Edelman client.) The same of course can be said for the entire group: Android, Windows Mobile, iPhones and Blackberries .
This language represents a subtle but important shift. The phone isn't a phone any more. It has become the connected computer that is with us all the time. And just as our PCs serve as a virually endless fountain of information and entertainment so too do our "pocket computers." And it's going to become the focal point for marketers in a short order
Even though I am disconected from the ether as I pen this post I am awed by the sheer amount of content that's sitting on my device just waiting to be consumed. It includes a rented movie, three video and audio podcasts, two thousand songs, five Amazon Kindle ebooks, 10 games, 125 unread RSS items in NetNewswire plus dozens of cached articles in Instapaper, the New York Times and WSJ apps. It would literally take me months to go through it all. Plus once I landed my magical pocket computer filled up with even more - emails, tweets, feeds, etc.
What this has me thinking is that it is simply impossible to be bored anymore. Anyone with a mobile phone (and these days that's everyone) has infinite choices to keep them occupied no matter how idle he/she might be. In addition we have a myriad of ways to use the device to create content as well. Just look at the runaway success of the Brushes application for the iPhone.
So boredom is dead. I for one am happy to see it go. However I wonder how this will impact those of us who grew up at times bored as well as subsequent generations who will never experience it. As always, I am eager for your thoughts either here or on Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed.
For more than 100 years brand marketers have largely focused on push - a mix of tried-and-true tactics that include paid and earned media. However, that was before the Attention Crash, which is changing the economics of digital marketing.
The endless supply of content is taking a toll. It has forced consumers to make hard choices about where and how they spend time. Today people are browsing less and going deeper into a small number of sites. The exact mix of destinations change. What they have in common, however, is that they are all useful.
This habitual shift is resetting the way marketers think. To remain relevant today brands realize they increasingly have to create valuable utilities that consumers pull. These need to seamlessly integrate into the hubs where consumers are investing their shrinking attention.
Kraft, for example, circumvented the Attention Crash with the iFood Assistant, a database of 7,000 recipes that can be accessed from the iPhone. Even though it is clearly Kraft branded and costs 99 cents, the app has remained one of the top paid lifestyle programs on the iTunes store for nearly six months. (Kraft is an Edelman client but we didn't develop this app.)
Utility, however, isn't just about the iPhone or mobile applications. Others are successfully building relationships via rich iGoogle widgets and/or games that consumers find downright irresistible. So, the business case is simple enough. However, the economics are disruptive.
As more marketing becomes utilitarian in nature, marketers will need to invest in not only in developing "high concept" applications but also marketing them. It's very similar to Hollywood where studios spend millions on big-budget blockbusters that have no guarantee for success. Consider, for example, the typical iPhone application. iPhone development costs range from $20,000 for the basics, up to $150,000 or more, according to Forrester Research. That doesn't even include the budget to promote the application.
Unfortunately, this is the new reality of the digital age. Still, the economics and benefits of utility marketing are very favorable when compared to TV advertising - and more marketers will therefore shift their dollars. Success, however, is far from guaranteed.
Blackberry Storm icons via the Gadgeteer
This idea didn't occur to me when I started and this blog five years ago and named it Micro Persuasion, but in all honesty it could have. It's been percolating in my subconscious for a long time. In the digital age - where every second there is something new tugging at our attention - we are influenced more than ever by tiny little icons. And there's no sign of the trend abating.
It used to be that in the old days only brands could afford nice logos. However, today almost everyone and everything has an icon. These little logos say a lot about a brand's persona and what they stand for. However, icons are not just for products and services anymore, it's for individuals too.
I don't know about you but I make decisions about the digital tools/services I use and the digital personas I choose to follow on Twitter or Friendfeed not just based on their attributes alone, but their icons. I bet that I am not alone. Icons also influence the mobile applications we choose to put on our handhelds, the sites we bookmark (because of their favicons) and the apps we run on our desktops.
For all of the conversation around personal branding and social media, there's not nearly enough attention paid to the art of iconography. With that here are some of my favorite icons and how they influence me...
Scoble - I have been following Robert Scoble for years. However, ever since he became the Incredible Hulk on Friendfeed (thanks to Thomas Hawk) he cried out to be read even more closely. Unfortunately Scoble just changed his icon back to the old one but I wish he hadn't. In fact, he should take the Hulk icon leverage it everywhere!
Evernote - Evernote is one of those products I want to love. However, I am constantly picking it up and putting it down. However, every time I see the elephant icon in my dock or on my phone or look at the t-shirt that they sent me long ago (pictured below), I realize that Evernote has so much promise because, like an elephant, it never forgets. That keeps me coming back. (In fact, am composing this post with Evernote.)
Seesmic - Every time I look at this icon on my desktop it cries out to be clicked. There's no doubt that the icon is a draw, even though I find the desktop application to be slow. Still the cute icon encourages me to be patient that the service will be just as speedy as the cartoon.
Seesmic Logo by Leah Jones on Flickr
What icons influence you? And how?
Apple's iTunes App Store is one of the hottest things going right now in the mobile space. Apple in fact just hit one billion downloaded iPhone applications. But there's a mystery behind the scenes here - one that's bigger than "Who is Batman?" Namely, just who exactly at Apple controls the iTunes App Store home screen (depicted above) and what goes into the featured choices they make each week?
On the surface, the App Store appears to be truly democratic and open to any developer. Like clockwork, every Tuesday at midnight PST the deck is reshuffled on both the desktop and iPhone stores. It highlights new and notable applications that Apple's team selects. These apps remain in "heavy rotation" on the home screen for seven days or more.
However, the reality is that the selections are truly anything but democratic. Apple has been known to deny or approve applications randomly and at it's own discretion. One such app was initially denied for featuring the UK's Daily Sun, which often runs objectionable photos. And most weeks Apple appears to highlight applications from marquee names - big media companies, major marketers and game developers - complete with giant graphics and call-outs.
This is not as trivial as it may seem. As mobile applications grow in popularity, the App Store home screen is becoming one of the hottest tickets in marketing. The app selections Apple makes probably have a huge impact on initial downloads and purchases.
I don't have the time or the inclination to investigate this further. It would be great if someone can follow up on this to find out just want goes into the mix. Presumably, Apple's team looks at the schedule for when apps are set to hit the store (which developers can set) and then makes choices just like any editor. I do not believe these spots are paid for although Apple does nothing to keep us from wondering.
However, the iTunes App Store kingmakers are not just ordinary editors. With more and more companies developing apps it's in Apple's best interest as a semi-open platform to provide more guidance and transparency around what goes into the mix - for example, why is one tip calculator highlighted on the home screen over another? Some of this may be forthcoming. Perhaps if we elevate the conversation and shed some light on the process it will encourage Apple to do more. Microsoft ( an Edelman client) appears to be far more transparent here.
Technorati Tags:
iPhone, Apple, marketplace
Over the last few months as I travel the country I have noticed that lots of people in PR that I meet are giving out their Twitter IDs in lieu of their email addresses. Many feature it front and center in their email signature. There's even a site that will generate a graphical version for you, which I have embedded above.
On a related note, more of my inbound and outbound communication these days is in the form of Twitter direct messages or, sometimes, public replies. The direct messages arrive through email, but I find myself often reviewing or responding to these in one of my preferred Twitter clients - either Tweetie or TwitterGadget.
At first I despised the bacn. Now, however, I embrace it. What's more, I have come to see the benefits of direct messages and its potential for PR. It has me wondering: can direct message pitches become an accepted practice that journalists can live with? There is upside for them.
For starters, just like with RSS, journalists are in complete control of the relationship. A PR pro can't direct message a reporter unless he/she is following. This means we have to earn our way on to a reporter's screen by providing valuable content, which many of us but not all of us do. Robert Scoble alluded to this in his recent note to PR pros.
The key benefit here is that a journalist can always un-follow any PR professional who abuses the relationship. Still, with spam weaving its way into Twitter though replies, it threatens to put the whole kibosh on the plaform's potential for media relations (I am drawing a distinction here from direct to audience engagement via Twitter, which is very different).
Second, for the journalists and bloggers that do encourage PR pros to pitch them via Twitter they can streamline the process by keeping missives down to 140 characters. That's less than the three sentence format some are embracing. It ensures people make their point quickly. This makes it more mobile friendly too.
Now some pitches could be public tweets, others will have to be private direct messages depending on their nature. And of course Twitter will never replace email pitching entirely.
Despite all the growth and hype, Twitter is still small. Pre-Oprah, Harris Interactive found that in the US, even among the ever-wired 18-34-year-olds, only 8% of those surveyed said they use Twitter. Other demographics break out down as follows: 35-44 (7%), 45-54 (4%) and 55+ (1%). Net, email is ubiquitous, Twitter aint.
Nevertheless, more journalists are using Twitter. So this makes it increasingly attractive to PR professionals. It also makes it essential that we behave ourselves. A few bad eggs will kill this fast.
What's your view? PR pros, have you built relationships with reporters and/or enhanced them using Twitter? Journalists, I am sure you're worried about any such trend, particularly since many of you use Twitter for both personal and professional communications purposes. Weigh in with a comment below or reply to me on Twitter @steverubel. If there are interesting responses, I will round them up in a subsequent post.
Dear media companies,
Thank you for making so much content available for free online for 15 years. I am sure you're eager to monetize it all beyond ads.
The good news is your great white hope has arrived. It's the Amazon Kindle. My unsolicited advice is to jump in now. This could be your last chance to monetize content. Please do so now before tangible media evaporates.
Let me share with you one media junkie's experience - mine.
As a huge fan of books, magazines and newspapers, I was enthralled when Amazon launched the Kindle digital reader in late 2007. However, unlike other occasions, I did not jump in as an early adopter. I was put off by the many negative reviews and I did not want another device to carry. When the Kindle 2.0 debuted last month, however, I decided it was time to get one. Even then I was skeptical it would stick with me.
Want to catch up on your Twitter fix but don't care to have your employer listening in on what your reading? Or maybe you're using an open wifi connection at an airport and and don't care to risk people sniffing your session.
Several months ago I had lunch with a major media company executive who told me that, in the future, content will not be subsidized by banner ads splashed liberally on news pages. This is something that the current economic situation is hopefully accelerating as display ad quality plummets to new lows. I remain convinced that the media must innovate their way out of this situation from both editorial and sales, but no one seems to be really doing so on the advertising side.
If you want a glimpse of what's next for media then you need to really look to the editorial side of the house. As we've seen, that's where all the innovation is happening these days - and its changing how we engage with content. Here a look are three promising approaches and their potential implications.
Throwback Interfaces
Most news web sites all pretty much have the same look and feel - the same one they have utilized since 1994. The interface in some ways closely resembles a traditional newspaper. Usually, the most important story is at the top and it carries the largest headline. Other, less important stories, follow. However, that's where the similarities to old media ends.
Some media brands, though, are dabbling in new models that are a throwback to print - and with some success too. Take the Sporting News, for example. The venerable sports daily, which to some degree sits in a commodity market, last summer launched Sporting News Today. The free, opt-in service attracted 75,000 subscribers by the time it launched and probably has a significantly higher circulation today.
Sporting News Today delivers to your inbox either via RSS or email a beautifully designed virtual newspaper - and on weekends too. The content is fully searchable and it is supported by full-page ads similar to what you would see in the print publication. You can also bookmark and share individual pages. The reading experience is terrific.
Watch for more magazines to try a similar approach and to port this to sophisticated mobile devices like the iPhone or Amazon Kindle.
Hyper-Vertical Navigation
In the old days newspapers and magazines were limited by space in the number of sections they could legitimately offer - e.g. news, sports, business, entertainment, etc. However, that's not true anymore as the Long Tail and infinite space of web allows millions of niches to bloom.
Media companies are recognizing that some readers/viewers want to drill down deep into very specific areas of interest. They are slowly adding topical navigation features or creating APIs that allow independent developers to do so.
The New York Times is among the more notable innovators here. Times Topics classifies and categorizes every single article (even older ones) into thousands of topical pages. Some of these get very specific. For example, you can track a single company- like PepsiCo or GE, two of our clients.Every page has an RSS feed too. Here's the feed for the PepsiCo page.
In addition, through their developer network, the Times offers a rich library of APIs that are spawning all kinds of new creations. The latest is the NYT Explorer (above). This tool not only makes it easy to search the Times archives but then to do so by drilling down further using the same topical taxonomy.
Mobile Apps
Finally, while the web browser remains our primary entryway to digital content, some power users are particularly attracted to applications. This is particularly true among smart phone users. Many media companies are filling the void with own smart phone applications. Variety, for example, just launched an iPhone app powered by Newsgator (below). People magazine will roll out one powered by ScrollMotion later this spring.
As a next step I would expect media holding companies to roll up several of their premiere brands into a single app so that you can say get content from Entertainment Weekly and People via one interface. In addition, I bet they will let you subscribe to RSS feeds as well.
These are some of the editorial and user interface innovations that are on my radar. What's on yours? What have you seen that's novel when it comes to news delivery? So far it seems like the editorial side is way ahead of anything on the advertising front these days. At some point they may catch up. However, if they don't it could spell trouble for ad-supported content.
Edelman's Digital Public Affairs team in DC has authored an awesome white paper that takes you inside the Obama campaign. You can download it here (PDF). The white paper imparts several lessons: start early, build to scale, innovate where necessary and more. You can find other Edelman white papers on our site. This includes 9 on 9 - key consumer trends for 2009 (also in PDF format).
Twitterholic added a couple of neat features.
First, they now sort Twitter users by when they joined.
They also now sort Twitter users by location. So, for example, you can now see who has the most followers among San Franciscans or New Yorkers.
In addition, you can also sort Twitter users by the number of updates or by how many they follow.
Finally, you can combine these. So now it's easy to find out who in New York has been on Twitter the longest. In addition, you can also now track the overall top 100 list via RSS. Here's the feed.
Two digital publishing sites have quietly started rolling out electronic books that can be viewed just using a web browser.
Random House is now offering several full length books for free on Scribd. The choices include The Surgeon, a 2002 novel by bestselling author Tess Gerritsen. What's also significant here is that Gerritsen is making the book available as a DRM-free PDF download.
Meanwhile Zinio, a site that offers digital magazines and textbooks, is expanding into mass-market books. Zinio has opened a digital bookstore that features a handful of titles. These include technology tomes like Social Media Marketing in an Hour a Day.
It's great to see the publishing industry experimenting with new formats. I personally think that book publishing is primed to see the same kind of disruption that the music business saw earlier the decade. This is why I am a fan of sites like Safari Books Online.
As mobile devices become more sophisticated, many consumers will aspire to do more in their browsers. This includes, for some, reading books. I think this will lead to a lot of experimentation with different business models. Two that come to mind are a-la-carte pricing for specific chapters and/or books that are free and supported through advertising.
Scribd, which has seen strong growth this year, and Zinio won't be alone. Google could start monetizing out of print books or even current bestsellers in a manner similar to what it has done with magazines. In addition, I would be highly surprised if by year's end the Amazon Kindle wasn't just a gadget but a platform that operates on many devices, including most mobile phones. They will increasingly face pressure from the iPhone.
It's early going and electronic reading is not for everyone. However, millennials and their younger sibings expect all media to be searchable and available in chunks. So this is why I am bullish about ebooks and think they will have a breakout year in 2009.
There were a lot of web sites I really used actively this year - the entire Google network, Techmeme, Friendfeed, Facebook and, of course, Twitter. There's one though that stood out: Popurls. It's a site that people don't talk about enough and that's a shame because there's so much to tout here. Popurls rocked this year and it's my pick for the the best web site of 2008. (Disclaimer: the Popurls page features a link to my most recent blog post but I am not compensated by them in any way nor does Edelman, my employer, represent or currently work with them.)
Popurls calls itself "the dashboard for the latest web-buzz, a single page that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from the most popular sites on the Internet." The site was created by Thomas Marban. What it basiscally does is aggregate web sites all in one place - digg, delicious, news sites, Techmeme, key blogs, media sites (Flickr, YouTube, etc) and much more. The great thing about it is that you can easily personalize it to your tastes. As you use it, the site gets smarter and shows you recommendations. You can view stats for the web site here.
So why am I nuts about Popurls? There are many reasons...
However, there's an even bigger story here that everyone is missing. Thomas Marban is making money.
Popurls has sponsors. More importantly, the site is represented by Federated Media. Together they have come up with some very clever, deep brand integrations. For example, Populrs and Intel created Popurls Blue for IT managers. It also debuted a partnership with Epson.
It's too bad that Popurls doesn't get the props it deserves from the tech blogging community. It's an important site. They had a banner year and it's easily one of my favorites overall. Congrats to Thomas on a great 2008 and I look forward to seeing more innovation from him in 2009. A next logical step for them would be an API.
As the year rolls to a close, several news organizations have added iPhone applications to the iTunes App Store. These include USA Today, NPR and Accuweather. Now throw in ABC News, which launched this morning.
The ABC News iPhone application features video clips from their national news programs, stories from the web site as well as local clips from affiliates in major cities. In addition, what's unique about the application is that they also have a tab for breaking news and local emergency alerts.
You can download the free application here (iTunes link)
Although home grown alternatives have been around for awhile now, Wikipedia recently launched its own official mobile site at http://mobile.wikipedia.org/. The site is very basic, which is exactly what mobile users will want it to be. It's also available in several languages.
There's also a link on the WIkipedia Mobile home page for a feature called Spoken Wikipedia. The project will presumably play article recordings on mobile devices.
I am a big believer in cloud computing. It's the wave of the future. Work is transitioning from the desktop to web applications, albeit slowly and not without challenges. But make no mistake, it's coming. The success of the netbook market is a great sign of things to come. However, I believe smartphones will give this category a run for their money.
Earlier this week Alex Wolfe at InformationWeek published an interview with me about how I use my iPhone as the fulcrum of my productivity system. I want to share with you one part of the interview here since it summarizes my thoughts on how cloud computing and smartphones are going to change the game...
Wolfe: Do you foresee additional uptake of tasks by smartphones?
Rubel: I believe we're in a great era of transition. Ten years from now, we will laugh at people who still take laptops on business trips. The reason is that smartphones will be the center of everyone's computing experience and they will blend personal/professional lives.
Our data will be stored on the cloud. The devices will connect wirelessly to LCD monitors and keyboards/mice and utilize the full Windows or OS X experience. Once detached, they will adopt a more mobile-centric paradigm like the iPhone or Windows Mobile operating system. The same thing will apply at home. Hotel rooms will even have these peripherals. People will have one device that does it all, but these will leverage the cloud and peripherals for tasks that require it, and adopt different personalities based on context.
While others like my friend James Kendrick disagree, the future is coming a lot quicker than I imagined. In fact, it sort of arrived today. This morning a brand new iPhone app from Quickoffice called MobileFiles hit the App Store. You can get it on iTunes here and it's free. I downloaded it and boy it is sweet.
