See the future through Second Life

March 8, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

I took in Kami Huyse‘s and Linda Zimmer‘s session on Second Life, second chance: Why you should be marketing in the virtual world.

Kami and Linda are in second life. They use it to meet clients. They use it for business.

Linda: Second Life is seriously engaging. If you go into Second Life, you must be willing to engage fully with it. Some companies have gone into Second Life and not delivered. This leads to backlash.

Why is Second Life so engaging? It’s ours. We’ve created it. We’re creating the world. And much of it is shared.

It’s spatial, interactive and persistent. You can move through the world and interact with others and with objects. When we log out, what we have created continues to exist. We can go back and continue where we left off.

BMW is using Second Life successfully. It’s actual property is only sparsely furnished. However, BMW is successfully using this platform to engage online communities. Social network has been pushed into the fore. Building corporate cathedrals is secondary.

IBM has allocated a multi-million budget to explore what Second Life means for collaboration and how new business models may emerge within the 3D Web.

Other companies are exploring Second Life’s potential for low cost prototyping. Starwood Hotels has had success in prototyping its aloft hotel concept. Cisco prototyped their vision of the “connected home” in Second Life.

MTV has developed a Virtual Laguna Second Life environment as a companion for their Laguna Beach series, offering fans of the television show and opportunity to place themselves in the show’s setting.

Second Life is about the future as much as the now. Kami provided a live demonstration. When she signed in, the login page showed that only about 30,000 people were signed in at that time. That’s a fraction of the number of people who have joined Second Life. Much of what we saw was empty rooms, which seems to be one aspect of the experience that drives skepticism.

Kami and Linda showed a series of slides demonstrating that, while the absolute numbers are still low, hours users were signed on is increasingly dramatically. Moreover, users span a broad age range.

Yes, there are limitations to Second Life. Usage is relatively low. The learning curve is steep. It’s still early days. However, the 3D Web has great potential and Second Life will give us insight into how people will interact as social networks become 3D.

For more info, Kami prepared some dedicated del.icio.us resources at http://del.icio.us/kamichat/SLResources.

David Weinberger's got a clue

March 8, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

David Weinberger, one of the four co-authors of the ClueTrain Manifesto, delivered the opening keynote address at the NewComm Forum this morning in Las Vegas.

His topic: Conversations, blogs, wikipedia and the New Authority. Who gets to be an authority?

Broadcast is becoming relatively less important in the face of P2P (many to many) communications. Blogs, Wikis, Tags, Consumer generated content.

User generated content is important. But it’s important for a different reason than has been grabbed onto by a lot of people.

Reality keeps things apart. If you have two things, they must be in their own place and they can’t be in two places at one time. The digital world escapes this constraint.

The characterstics of the digital are not contained by the constraints of the real.

In traditional media, such as the New York Times, there is limited amount of space. Only one front page. And the same front page for everyone who buys the paper.

Take away the constraints of the physical front page and everyone can talk. Everyone can design their own “front page.”

P2P communications are important because they change the basic functions of Control and Authority.

The ancient premise was that the larger the project, the more control you needed. Managers. Managers to manage the managers.

The Web shows us that this premise is false. The Web is a project of enourmous size. And it has been built with zero managers. It was designed to be built without managers. Because if you needed managers, it would not scale.

The Web, on its own, is a “permission-free zone.”

Our business world is still at odds with the model of the Web. The infrastructure, culture and attitudes of most businesses are built around the notion of control.

But the Internet is now undermining the walls that companies have put up around themselves.

The industrial revolution turned markets – which had been based on intimate person to person contact – into marketing – which delivered messages to the masses to convince them of their need for mass-produced products.

Of course, there is really no market for messages. Customers don’t want to receive this constant stream of unsolicited messages. And marketers have been constantly at war with their customers.

This is changing. Markets consist of individuals. Individuals with opinions and a voice. And we’re talking to one another. On flickr. On YouTube. Through blogs. By tagging. Through craigslist.

There are values associated with conversation. We get to talk in our real voice. Conversations are open-ended. They are voluntary. It’s about what we’re interested in, not what the marketers are interested in. And they’re not about something else. There should be no hidden agenda.

Weblogs are at the centre of these conversations.

Weblogs show what we care about. And our interests are diverse. Look at Wikipedia, for example. It has listings on more than 1,500,000 different topics. And growing.

Wikipedia tries to organize all information on a topic on a single page. Blogs link the information that appears on an untold number of different pages authored by different people.

Blogging is not journalism. A blog is a blank piece of paper. It only becomes journalism if you write journalism on it. Most people don’t write this way. And their blogs should not be judged by journalistic standards.

Journalism and blogs have developed a relationship. They borrow from one another. But even more significantly, bloggers are asserting their own judgments about what is important. Bloggers have moved into the editorial function.

Some of this is expressed through popularity engines like Digg. And as this model has taken hold, mainstream media have begun to mirror it on their own sites.

And business is beginning to understand that information shared, linked to, mashed up has greater value than in its initial form.

Blogs are written quickly. By ordinary people. And because they are written quickly, the writing may not be up to professional standards. But because we accept the context of immediacy and the fallibility of the blogger, we accept this quality when we read blogs.

Links are an essential element of successful blogging. Every link from one blog to another is a selfless act of generosity. And this spirit drives the blogosphere.

Blogs do not simplify the world. In fact, they make it more complex by bringing forward true diversity. And in doing this, we organize this complexity in patterns that make sense to us.

Organization is authority. So, in taking control of the content, bloggers have taken on authority that previously was held only by organizations.

Take Britannica and Wikipedia. Britannica’s authority was driven by its authoritative writers and editors. Wikipedia’s authority relies on the judgment of its mass readership and contributors. The transparency of its edits to all readers. The trail of edits. And the presence of warnings in the text of Wikipedia articles that specific articles are subject to argument or not sufficiently researched or stubs. All contribute to the confidence that readers can place in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is interested in having us come to informed beliefs.

And, why do we never see these warnings in traditional media? The drive to be infallible. And ultimately, this is a crucial weakness.

Traditional media are “theirs.” P2P media are “ours.” We’ve never had this before.

This notion transcends ownership. Content, participation and attitude trump ownership. Wikipedia is “ours.” Craigslist is “ours.” YouTube is “ours.” Google is “ours.”

The Web is “ours.” We built it for us. And its driving change.

If you do PR for the Government of Canada, there's a meeting tonight for you

March 7, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

If you live in Canada’s National Capital Region and provide public relations services as a contractor to the Government of Canada, then you will want to attend the special meeting of the Ottawa/Gatineau Chapter of the Canadian Public Relations Society tonight.

The notice of the meeting provides details:

The Government of Canada has issued a request for industry comments (RFIC) for a draft standing offer that would be issued by Public Works and Government Services Canada that would serve as the basic Standing Offer document for a potential new system where PWGSC would offer all departments access to this master standing offer.

This request for industry comments will be available at the meeting for review. We will be drafting a response, as a society, for the deadline of March 12th.

…

To help draft the document, we want to invite our members interested in responding to join us for an evening meeting on Wednesday, March 7th, at 5 p.m. We will be hosting the meeting in the boardroom at Thornley Fallis Communications, and we would welcome all those interested in providing feedback to the process to join us at that time. Please RSVP if possible, but we will welcome anyone who can join us for this session.

WHAT: Special meeting of the chapter membership, CPRS Ottawa-Gatineau WHEN: Wednesday, March 7th, from 5 to 7 p.m. (coffee will be served)

WHERE: Boardroom, Thornley Fallis Communications, Suite 730, 55 Metcalfe St., Ottawa

If you care about the way that the Government of Canada buys public relations services, this is a great chance to be influence the position that will be taken by the local chapter of the CPRS .

Yahoo! Canada issues a call to action for the Canadian SEM/SEO industry

February 28, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

Martin Byrne of Yahoo! Canada issued a call to action on behalf of the Canadian Search Engine Marketing/Optimization (SEM/SEO) industry. Byrne was a panelist at a session on SEM in Toronto this morning along with reps of Google and Microsoft

According to Byrne, Canadians love the Web. We spend more time sitting in front of a computer on the Web than do citizens of any other G7 country. This time is being drained from other media. And the online share of the total Canadian advertising spend has increased from less than 1% five years ago to over 6% this year. Byrne predicts that the Canadian SEM business will rise to approximately $400 million in 2007.

Against this background, he feels that Canadian businesses are missing the boat. Less than 36% of Canadian companies who do online advertising incorporate SEM/SEO in their programs. And they spend less than 18% of their online budgets in this area. Contrast this with the 79% of US online advertisers who engaged in SEM in 2006.

Why this low rate of adoption in Canada? One reason, low awareness. Recent research showed that 47% of online marketing decision makers were unaware that they can target Canadian users through Search Engine Marketing.

Essentially, Canada has been a one provider marketplace until recently. Consequently, there has been a lack of education and promotion of the channel in Canada. There is also a desperate shortage of talent and skills in Search Engine Marketing/Search Engine Optimization. In fact, in Ontario, you cannot obtain formal educational certification in this area.

SEM agencies have had a harder time establishing themselves in Canada. They have long sales cycles, small budgets and limited campaign opportunities. By contrast, the SEM agency business in the US has been expanding rapidly. Byrne warns that if we do not stimulate the industry in Canada, the indigenous companies may not be able establish themselves and the larger US-based companies may simply move into Canada.

Byrne suggests an aggressive action agenda to turn this situation around. SEM Agencies need to get together. Canadian rsearch/case studies must be developed and distributed. Client education channels and opportunities must be created and expanded, especially for small and medium businesse. Standards for policing of traffic quality must be developed. ‘Black hat” vendors should be shut down. And the seach engines need to step up and shepherd the industry to success.

What is Yahoo! Canada doing? They came late to the party with their Canadian platform, but they have launched here now. And they will soon be launching a platform in Quebec. They have located a comprehensive management and client service team in Canada. They are working aggressively to assemble a network of Canadian publishers.

According to Byrne, Yahoo! Canada sees their own success as depending on: supporting SEM education for Canadian businesses, building a stronger SEM industry and growing the SEM business.

All in all, Byrne’s presentation showed that Yahoo! Canada understands the value of being part of and giving to the community. With this approach, watch for them to break out in awareness and profile in the Canadian market this year.

Jason Dailey of Microsoft Canada focused on the adCenter product that Microsoft has just launched in Canada. Dailey suggested that conversion rates for clients using adCenter are increasing substantially. For one client, conversion rates have increased from 1/2 to 1% to 5 to 5 1/2%.

Some search issues: The average time from query to answer is 11 minutes. Nearly 50% of complex queries go unaswered. Only 50% of the web is searchable. And currently search is a destination, not fully integrated into our routine processes. Microsoft is attempting to leverage their platform and technology to expand the number of touchpoints for search capabilities.

Eric Morris from Google Canada pointed to the free tools and services provided by Google. YouTube and Google Video are a great way to generate great traffic for your company. Google Sitemaps provide you with visibility about which of your pages are in the Google Index and how the crawler is finding you. Google Maps provides businesses with a means of being searched geographically by uploading company information through Google Base.

According to Morris, the two most important factors in search engine marketing are targeting and reach. Google provides advertisers with the ability to reach over 85% of Canadians in any month – either through Google sites directly or partner sites.

Google’s contextual advertising appears in Gmail. Google believes that contextually relevant ads in email are useful to users and effective for advertisers. However, Morris did acknowledge in response to a question that, in the aggregate, contextual ads yield a much lower click through rate than on search pages.

Google has added a display advertising program to keyword and contextual ads to provide a full range of advertising opportunities.

Finally Google Analytics provides users with the data they need to understand and fine tune the performance of their sites to achieve their marketing objectives.

Julie Batten of non-linear creations rounded out the morning by focusing on organic search. She presented four tactics in this area.

Social media marketing (SMM) should be used to encourage interaction and information sharing. An example of this done right is the Google Pain Relief letter –
Google sending a letter and headache tablet to a blogger who had complained about the large number of recent changes in Google. An example of social media marketing gone wrong: The Coke Score Flog. Bloggers punished Coke with negative posts about this fake blog.

Link Baiting. An example of a success: How Much is Your Blog Worth? This simple widget generated more than 42,000 links and raised the host blog to # 25 on Technorati.

Personalized search. Search engines now encourage users to create personal profiles so that their home search page can be personalized to reflect their preferences and behaviour. This can be a challenge for marketers. They can respond by incorporating elements that will support users to incorporate the information of most interest into their personal profiles. Include product information, buttons to tag and local information.

RSS marketing. As RSS feeds are attached to more and more current content, the Web usage patterns are changing. Companies should harness this trend by adding RSS feeds to their content.

All in all, this morning’s session provided an interesting contrast between the style and approach of the three major search engines in the Canadian market.

Now, I’m looking forward to Dave’s next session in March, Digital Advertising – What’s Next?

I'm going to Profectio's session on Search Engine Marketing

February 27, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

OK. So, I shelled out $75 to attend the session on Search Engine Marketing that Dave Forde has organized.

Actually a pretty interesting panel, including Eric Morris from Google Canada, Martin Byrne from Yahoo! Canada, from Microsoft Canada. I wonder how many compliments they’ll exchange.

I’ll post about the session when I get back within Wi-Fi range.

I'm not at podCampToronto

February 24, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

I’d printed my boarding pass before going to bed last night, showed up at the airport this morning an hour before flight departure, passed through security and made my way to the Air Canada lounge. That’s when the passenger agent told me that Air Canada had in fact cancelled my flight!

(I suspect the plane I was supposed to be on was transferred to the Ottawa-Vancouver flight. As I passed that gate, I heard the passenger agent announcing that, due to mechanical problems with the aircraft assigned to that flight, Air Canada had been forced to “down-gauge” the plane – and they would offer 10 passengers $200 each to give up their seats. “Down-gauge.” Now that’s a good term. Makes a passenger feel like sausage stuffing. Yechh!)

So, there I am in the passenger lounge at 8:05 in the morning heading to Toronto for the 10AM opening of podcampToronto. Air Canada had cancelled my flight. But they could put me on a flight at 1PM. Oops…

So I missed the sessions I was hoping to attend: Mitch Joel‘s presentation on Building Your Personal Brand Through Podcasting, Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche‘s session on Building a community, Julien Smith on Giving your podcast a Google presence, Peter O’Connell‘s tips on audio tools, resources and production techniques, Mark Blevis’ Editing techniques, Tari Akpodiete‘s session on Getting started with videoblogging, Leesa Barnes on Planning a killer podcast and Mitch Joel and John Wall on What’s hot in Marketing Your Podcast. And I won’t get my long-overdue chance to meet Bryan Person.

I’ve tried to connect to the Quicktime video streams on the podcamp Wiki. But, so far no luck.

I’m hoping that those people who did make it to podcampToronto will blog about the sessions they attend. It’s not quite as good as being there. But this conference is just too good to miss completely.