Click here to check if anything new just came in.
December 30 2011
December 13 2011
Facebook Adds Private Messages for Pages
the implications are actually quite significant: these private message will make it much easier for brands to interact with fans and – critically – complainants, in a more direct and individual manner.
Private interaction, in order to cut on the noise but also be more specific and personal, is welcome. Pages should look more and more like personal profiles. Facebook also made a good UX choice by not allowing Pages to directly message users, only reply.
LeWeb Peaks at .11% of Worldwide Tweets
Pretty amazing impact to reach 1/10th of 1% of every Tweet generated around the world.
Indeed. This conference is an absolute must.
November 11 2011
Google Plus Circles Katango
But Google+ has a feature that’s analogous to Facebook’s Friend Lists: Circles. And while Google has promoted Circles heavily, both in its marketing and on Google+ itself, it doesn’t do much in the way of automatically helping users sort their friends into Circles — there’s still a lot of legwork involved. Which Katango seems perfectly suited to help with.
As I hinted at recently, I don’t think algorithms can yet achieve the true fabric of human relationships.
Now, Facebook Smart Lists make a decent job of breaking it down for me, but only in the most obvious ways: location, occupation, school. The suggestions given to me are usually odd, but I’m also odd, having lived in so many cities, having no particular place I stayed too long in, having no family linked, being my lone wolf-self or something.
Google+ has nothing like that. Katango is thus a natural fit, but I don’t see yet making it a better experience than on Facebook.
Cross-contextual data is where those algorithms should look next.
November 10 2011
Europe Tech Coverage and the English Language
Let’s stop complaining about the very US-centric tech coverage. Let’s make sure that Europe gets its coverage —and gets constantly at the top of TechMeme— by pushing ourselves like that kid.
My own rant about Europe’s fragmentation in languages —a natural given— and the need to adopt the de facto lingua franca, English, as the common denominator.
Inspired by Mike Butcher.
November 08 2011
Different Amounts of Social Relationships
Mark Zuckerberg:
I think that humans have a capacity for different amounts of social relationships. And I think it varies from person to person but it’s also not about what you should do. You should use the product to keep in touch with whatever set of people you want to. And we try to build all kinds of products that make it so you can stay in touch with small groups.
This is the big challenge for all social network. The fabric of human relationships is vastly more complex than any algorithm can currently handle. Relationships vary over time, context, subtext. They are nonlinear, variable, uncertain.
Existing and not existing at the exact same time.
Will Facebook be the first to grasp the quantum superposition of the human ethos?
October 25 2011
Artists Steal the Future
When Steve called Apple TV a hobby, he meant that Apple is borrowing ideas because they don’t yet know how to steal the industry. The future is still up for grabs.
This is probably the best post I’ve read about that on-going debate on who stole what and who did what first. The gist of innovation.
Ideas Begin As Fragile Thoughts
Steve used to say to me a lot, ‘hey Jonny, here’s a dopey idea.’ sometimes they were truly dreadful. But sometimes they took the air from the room and left us both completely silent. Bold, crazy, magnificent ideas or quiet simple ones, which in their subtlety and detail were utterly profound. He understood ideas begin as fragile thoughts, so easily compromised.
— Jonathan Ive
October 24 2011
Don’t Let Salespeople Run Your Company
I have my own theory about why the decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The product starts valuing the great salesmen, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company.
— Steve Jobs.
Enough said.
Cutting Out the Advertising Pros
social media is more complex and less linear and more anarchic than the Web. There is no straight path for a message to get through
The business of interruption is becoming tougher. It has more to do with some in the advertising industry not being agile enough to start understanding technology. I will always remember this Dentsu executive at ad:tech Singapore 2010 who was puzzled at the reasons why I’d follow what startups were doing in that space.
A business that supports itself with advertising, that, effectively, has only one revenue stream—advertising—is almost entirely run by people who, effectively, want to cut out the advertising pros.
Exactly. Get real. The advertising industry should start to pay attention to the message and who sends it, not only delivering an outdated one.
October 18 2011
I’m Coming to Paros
At one point, he said: “Hey, do me a favor, will you? Don’t let what happened to the music business happen to yours — keep coming up with better ways to provide people with your content.”
Jim Gianopoulos tells a great story.
A Paper Magazine Is A Broken iPad
It’s hard to say if the video was fabricated or not, but the crux of the matter is: as humans, our senses are defined by what surrounds us.
Just try asking what is a VHS tape or a floppy disk to young kids. Or watch this other video —in French, but you’ll get it.
Touch screens are the new norm. Siri-like communications with devices might also become one. All of us will be old farts.
Useless Fans
Roughly 70 percent of Facebook users say that they do not want to be advertised to by businesses that they are fans of.
A bit of a link-bait tactic in titling the article ‘Why Facebook fans are useless’. Yet, the major reasons why brands should still consider Pages is clearly the Open Graph, as Amielle Lake ends up pointing out:
When a user becomes a fan, Facebook aggregates trending and demographic information to give you an indication of who your fans are and where they come from.
And, yeah:
The trick to deriving value is figuring out how to convert a fan.
October 13 2011
What Next for Apple
Google will face its existential crisis not from another webpage with a centered white box, but from the interface and context of search changing completely.
This piece by Matt Mullenweg is really well thought out. It’s no surprise Google has acquired Motorola. Mobile is the most natural screen, the one you have an intimate affair with and carry everywhere.
People who make hardware should get their software act together before Apple does for them.
Nails it.
Last Time He Saw Steve
The father turned to Steve as he passed close by and asked, “Excuse me, sir, would you mind taking our photo?”
Just go read that story. My favorite.
October 06 2011
Beautiful prose. Dark backdrop.
Late last night, long hours after the news broke that he was gone, my thoughts returned to those grass stains on his shoes back in June. I realize only now why they caught my eye. Those grass stained sneakers were the product of limited time, well spent.
56 is too darn young.
October 03 2011
Real Time is Often Not Real Time
It’s not measurement it’s monitoring : Too often, communications professionals mix these two elements up. And, if they monitor the immediate response to an action, they are very likely to make decisions upon data received in a very short time frame. It’s like deciding that you’re destined to be a Hollywood Star based on a standing ovation you got in sixth grade. Measurement looks at trends over time.
I love the analogy. I wouldn’t go as far as calling real time tracking the “worst consequence of the social media revolution” though. There’s a difference between what the tools offer —a potential— and how we understand and use them.
Think. Talk. Analyze. For each step its measurement. For each step its tool.
September 27 2011
Professional Data-Miners
Marketers have vastly more information about potential consumers than ever before. Every time you use a loyalty card you surrender personal information. Every time you do a Google search or hit the “like” button on Facebook, you surrender yet more. Google and Facebook protect personal privacy, but they also make money by selling generic information to advertisers. Professional data-miners use electronic data to create a detailed picture of what you have bought in the past (“history sniffing”) and how you bought it (“behaviour sniffing”). They can then draw your attention to products they think you might want to buy in the future. Smartphones can tell you that there is a shop nearby that stocks just the thing you have been looking for.
And consumers are learning more and more about marketers.
September 22 2011
The Conscience of Television
I actually believe that television directly reflects the moral, political, social and emotional need states of our nation – that television is how we actually disseminate our entire value system. So all these things are uniquely human, and they all add up to our idea of conscience.
The mapping of the US society psyche through the history of television shows, by Lauren Zalaznick.
the digital folks did not invent disruptive.
Indeed.
September 21 2011
Steve Jobs Lessons
1. The most enduring innovations marry art and science
2. To create the future, you can’t do it through focus groups
3. Never fear failure
4. You can’t connect the dots forward – only backward
5. Listen to that voice in the back of your head that tells you if you’re on the right track or not
6. Expect a lot from yourself and others
7. Don’t care about being right. Care about succeeding
8. Find the most talented people to surround yourself with
9. Stay hungry, stay foolish
10. Anything is possible through hard work, determination, and a sense of vision
I usually really dislike these kinds of ‘motivational’ articles —and top 10 lists as well— but I must admit that this one struck a chord. Maybe I’m getting older and sentimental.
May you change the world.
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
In a nutshell, yes.
permalink