5 Top Tips re: Mobiles, Apps, Facebook and Blogs

I must blog, I must blog, I must blog. It’s been there on my list for an age and I’ve made a few stabs, but never posted. It’s an ongoing problem. What’s wrong with me? Is it that I’m using the web less? Eh… no! Not a chance. I’ve become a 24/7er netwise. Maybe it’s the iPhone usage? Well… there’s the thing. The iPhone is so snappy for lookups and sign-ins for social nets there’s not ‘surfing’ per se. But I’m on the net. Amen’t I? Technically, but often appways rather than browsered.

I’m on the social net anyway – and my lookups are constant – never letting a link go un-clicked, or a reference go un-referenced, a fact go un-Googled or a vid go un-viewed (‘sept the flash ones of course which is annoying, but they seem rapidly less prevalent which is concerning). I’m also well podded with Digital planet and buzz out loud and my own penchant for Thinking Allowed.
The faithful (old) Toshiba portégé accompanies me for sit-down work. Hours slip by on comfy seats over lattés or hunched at the office delving my way through big documents before zipping them here and there.

But why not blogging – and this is the point of this blog.

If the web is always with you, as it is with me, you now have to make an active choice to do browser and document work via the bigger laptop screen. This is perhaps where the iPad style device fits in nicely. The trend towards increased access for mid-sized super-light mobile devices with longer battery lives means the capricious nature of much previous net use can now be taken away from work and the office (not the same always) and into the home, the street, the back-room or the coffee bar (I’m in Starbucks right now). The personal and connection work can now stay personal and be dealt with right now, rather than peppered throughout the day when one gets behind a screen.

The other related trend is toward app delivered content. Is it a good thing to have all this content tied up in apps? Well, for some software apps that is definitely true but for other apps I don’t really think so. Many companies really should consider browser delivered services before jumping on the app bandwagon. There are many advantages, such as, you don’t have to keep updating the app, and you can always encourage the ‘add to my home screen’ button to be employed. If the service in question is needed they can find it and return to your site simply with this method. And very quickly, between free and paid for apps, there will be simply too many on the phone – something that iPhone 4 folders addresses nicely. I mysteriously seem to be heading toward my 300th app, having deleted many I don’t use and can do without. Obviously I’m an-typical nerd – but the simplicity and benefits of the app store I, as an early adopter, have found I think will be found by others giving a trend towards more and more apps. Some are really cool. Seriously! But tellingly – several of those on my homescreen are shortcuts to webpages and cloud services. So, the companies in question didn’t have an app, and actually don’t need one for my purposes.

Other apps need to be appified and benefit from being apps. It is the only way that a particular service can be delivered – benefitting from the mobile nature of the service or the iPhone gyroscope thingy. Fair enough. So, an open mind is the best way to go I’d say. Not wishing to dis the client but many want an app without really knowing why – like they want clients to put them in their bookmarks list on a funky new phone. It is always good to have a cost benefit analysis running in the background when you go down this thought cul-de-sac. Functionality and links may be more important to your business than having an app.

Mobile Internet and smartphones mean – to all intents and purposes – that the net itself is disappearing from view. This was always going to happen and has happened with all previous communication technology. The net is now the taken for granted bit that no longer distracts from the content it delivers. Half a billion Facebook users? How did that happen? Quickly and without much effort or worry that it was on the Internet – and now the FB app is so good, it’ll be 1 billion before you know it. If you remove the very young, old or very poor from the world’s population – that starts to look very like 1 in every two people communicates via Facebook – and much of that use will be mobile. Why? Because it’s better.

What this means is that social interaction is now the most powerful driver toward net use and should be the preferred location for engagements of all sorts. The Facebook platform is now most important in the world for social software. If it’s sitting on a MC or PC or iPHone OS… well, it doesn’t really matter.

To close the circle of this conversation and bring it back to blogs isn’t easy. I’m in a funny situation because my work is also my interest and hobby. I was just chatting with another business guy who blogs and we agreed that blogging is important for taking care of the various brands that exist in any business. The CEO is as much a brand as the business brand and that’s important, but also the blog is an important mechanic for extracting insights from the day-to-day experience and bringing them into focus. It’s a process and though it takes a little time (not much), the benefits are tremendous. So, I just have to blog more. It’s as simple as that.

So – time for some top tips:
• Take account of the new way digital media is being consumed in a mobile context
• Take note that the consumption of online content is now often via an app. There are big implications here
• Make sure if you are developing an app – that a browser isn’t be a better way to go – even for mobile devices. The quality of mobile (and iPad browsers) is so brilliant now, and it’s easier to update a website than an app for several devices and OSs
• Use Facebook, and build for it
• Blog for your business and yourself

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Countdown to iPhone 4 release date

Countdown To iPhone 4 release

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If you want something done…

OK. Time for a bit of a braindump.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, and I’ve written a few, but always left them without being published because they weren’t good enough, or big enough, or important enough, or something. I’m not sure I’m out of that head space just yet, but I do want to share some thoughts and questions.

The Tannoy has always been about new technologies and communications, and I’ve tried to track shifts in the way were talk to each other in the digital realm. Since we last spoke I’ve set up a few new companies to address and service these changes. All have a view of digital marketing at their core, but one of these – Pavilion Digital – looks to another development discussed at length by The Economist some months back.

Data.

It’s a word that has lost its meaning because it means so many different things to different people. For me, it is the 1s and 0s of raw code that tell a computer what happened when. Back to the binary coal face! There is more data than ever before, and will be much, much more in future, but what do we do with it?

Pavilion Digital extracts meaning from data. Any and all data. Diverse data sets, market research, server data, tracking data, sales, sales force and CRM of every description. Whatever it is, we can import datasets, analyse them individually or together and extract reports, statistical insights and most of all – value – from what already lies within. We’ve done it in the past few months with some very big clients from the transport and FMCG sectors, and the thing that emerged for me, most of all, was how difficult nay impossible this work is if you don’t know how it’s done, and don’t have the right tools. Few people, in my experience, can get their head around data sets, weighting, imports, exports and then extracting sensible stories from it. Important stories. We have the people to do that, and the best tools, so that’s cool!

In the end of the digital just provides another tool for telling a story. Pavilion Digital gives you the glasses to read it and the directions to understand it.

I’ve also developed and sold some iPhone apps – hardcore utility apps for data gathering and dissemination you understand… not the faddish gadgetry as makes up so much of the 150,000 apps, or whatever it is, that are out there. That’s been real fun. It’s very cool to come up with ideas, get them scoped, scripted and launched, and then someone just has to have them. Very rewarding. When I say iPhone apps, they are actually device and software agnostic, so will work on any smart phone. But more of that in a later blog. I’ll let you all know when the customers launch them and you can check them out.

Again, at the core of these and indeed all digital communication functionality is data.

OK. I sound wishy-washy and half-baked, and sorry for that. I’ll get to the point.
I’m looking at the digital communications industry, and I worry about it, because it seems to me that the whole thrust of internet collaboration is anti agency. Any agency! It’s all about putting people together, directly. Peer to peer not consumer to consumer. And to extend the analogy its about: – P2P, P2B, B2B and B2P.

The internet has taken an amazing toll on the market research space, the advertising industry and the travel space, because it puts individuals in touch with companies directly. And, vice versa, it also puts individual companies in touch with their markets’ individuals too. This puts agencies in a difficult situation… What is left for them to do?

At present, digital ad agencies are broken out by common sense boundaries. Social networks, of course, search and Pay Per Click, naturally. Website builders, traffickers and trackers and em… and, apart from the creative department (part of the website department) and content writers, that’s kind of it. (I’m sure someone will correct me here and feel free.) I know there are bigger agencies which co-ordinate the needs of bigger clients, and there is bound to be a need for these for some time. But then again… the bigger they are…

Market research agencies have a range of other issues including the lack of a requirement for a field force, the slashing of margins, shifting client expectations, the shortening of timeframes and indeed the whole cheapening of the space. Only top quality slimmed down research houses need remain.

The problem for the agency world in general is that any company can do all of these things themselves. Easily. And, if they can’t, they will be able to in a year or so. They probably do some of the things already. In fact, any individual will be able to do them. What’s worse for agencies is that very big companies, who make up the lion’s share of all advertising spend, are taking these functions in house. Why? Because they can, they have control, they don’t get dependent and bamboozled by gurus, and because, well, they just like it. Worse again, hard pressed governments, who used to make up another chunk of spend, are doing it too – wiping out even the larger players in the digital ad space. (The loss of such a contract was a major contributor to the downfall of digital media buying giant – i-Level in the UK.)

The issue for agencies is that buying advertising, tracking it, and optimizing it is child’s play, if you know how. It’s not only all so trackable – it is all so easily trackable. And, you will know how to do this sort of tracing and optimizing – if you want to. It’s not hard, if you can read instructions and can use a computer and the Internet. (If you can’t do either – this blog aint for your!)

The other issue is shifting impressions. Two years ago people used to surf the web now and then. That’s largely gone. That free time has been taken up with surfing on Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter… not on websites – unless you are doing something like research for shopping, or gathering information for health reasons for example. Or buying a ticket maybe. In short, there’s very little actual surfing done these days, so the impressions burned per user on the web as a whole will be dropping. Per user mind, not in total as the number of users is growing. The audience is just hanging out in a different place.

The long tail is getting a hell of a site longer. It has to be. People are visiting much fewer bigger sites, and occasionally wandering out of their social network in response to a link. I heard that 50% or so of Facebook users (350 million of them) are visiting the site daily for over half an hour. That is just phenomenal if you think about it. Well, all of those impressions that 350 million had to offer the Internet advertiser outside of Facebook are lost, unless the ads are in Facebook itself.

So – back to data. The game of business today, as I see it, is in using your existing information, your data, and squeezing every morsel of insight out of it before you spend any money on market research. There’s cash in that there data attic – if you just go and look.

Then, when you are advertising – try and get your head around as much of it yourself as you can, (or get staff to). You’ll save an absolute fortune! Between Bluestreak and Google Analytics you can track the world and his mother as they view your ads placed on networks for small beans. Use social networks. Embrace them. Learn how to target your market with age, sex and location. It’s so wizarded – my Dad could understand it. It’s intuitive, obvious, easy-to-manage and click – you’ve got a campaign going. Website? Use blogging software.

You will need help with logos, and creative, but it is a really, really very good time to do this. (There are free ways of getting them too, if quality isn’t a huge concern.) Then, when you’ve got all your add data, and reports, why not integrate them with your server data, CRM data, sales data, spend, product categories and sales outlets, and analyse them all together. That’s where we come in – because, with the right setup, tools and training, or if you want someone to do it for you and send you the reports – you talk to Pavilion Digital. Again, it’ll save you a fortune.

Slash market research budgets, manage and optimize ad-spend without margins to third parties. Optimize all activities and hone the ideas and marketing plans. This is the best way to give your business the best chance of making the most margin on all sales.

And don’t worry about going it alone. The net is empowering all and it is a collaborative space, so, if you don’t know how, ask, and someone will help you – for free. Just give it a go. You can’t break anything, and everything is reversible. It is tough times out there, so what have you got to lose. No, a better question – What have you got to gain?

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Unofficial iPad countdown button

No. I haven’t got an iPad yet. No one does till it’s released at the end of March. Here’s a countdown button so you don’t miss it.

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Irish Times Gloriously Missing the Point of Twitter

OK. It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, mostly with the wind-down of Net Behaviour it has been necessary to pass my time setting up new businesses, and this has gone very well indeed. I’ll make some announcements to those who don’t already know when the time is right, and the sites are live etc.

Actually, to tell you the truth, I wrote this blog last week, and didn’t publish it. That’s how busy my life has become. And since then there has been the Chile earthquake, which further reinforced some of the points made here. Anyway. Apologies for the silence if you like this blog, and I promise to try harder in future. So, here it goes.

I’ve also been spending my bloggers muse writing for the Belfast Telegraph and Digital Times, so, I have actually been getting my bi-monthly copy out. I’ll tweet and Facebook links those pieces for those who are interested.

——-

400 words, or a 140 character tweet weren’t sufficient to clarify my frustrations at a recent piece in the Irish Times disseminated by excellent @williewhite. I rarely get into Facebook comments banter, but I couldn’t believe how gloriously a recent Irish Times piece ‘The Revolution was Not Tweeted’ by Mary Fitzgerald missed the point of twitter, of the web even. She even missed the power of word of mouth. Ironically, the reason she wrote the piece undermined her argument considerably. You can read it here.

The logic of suffered from two common Irish errors. Dichotomy and exaggeration – Twitter will change the world for everyone, versus it has does not change anything and the hype was wrong. It also suffered from taking too few examples and not taking a sufficiently broad and historical view of change in the world of media and communications. There was also, I felt, a further typically Irish crime of begrudgery at success and fame, or in this manifestation, dislike of technology driven hype.

It was clear to me that Fitzgerald has missed the tectonic shift in social and political communication that twitter has become, not because it is clever programming but because it is simple, easy to use and it’s so popular.

I’ll ask a question. What does it really mean for a world where you cannot stop people from talking and being heard? The question doesn’t seem to make sense even, but just 30 years ago, it did. That’s how far we’ve come. Gone are the days of the power of a state to control the knowledge of that state and their understanding of world beyond. To mould millions of minds into doing dreadful things such as joining the Nazi party or committing genocide. I’m reminded of the fact that during the Falkland’s war, it took 21 days for the sinking of HMS Sheffield to reach the mainstream media in the UK and Ireland. 21 days! And that was only 1982. It would take 21 seconds today, if that, and it would be near impossible to stop the news getting out.

It is this sort of hype, or in my case, excited enthusiasm, that the Irish Times writer doesn’t like, but the facts remain true nevertheless.

The reasons cited for undermining this point of view was that… not everyone in Iran was on twitter during the recent protests against Ahmadinejad’s ‘election’ and that most of the information shared was carried by word of mouth on telephones. I read this and thought… ‘Oh dear. Luddite alert!’

As I see it, all it takes is a very tiny group of people to have a credible but sharp view on truth, with a picture for example, and the balloon of propaganda will pop. Remember the picture of the naked girl running from the napalm bomb that is credited with bringing an end to the Vietnam war? Can you see the picture? If so, you must acknowledge how sharp was the tip of that pin. Perhaps you remember the picture of the mysterious girl with the green eyes from the front of National Geographic magazine, or the 95 theses (tweets?), or the tale of the girl who refused to leave a bus designated ‘whites only’. Or the picture of the dole queue with the slogan ‘Labour isn’t working’ beneath it that swept Thatcher to power in 1979.

All of these single pieces of information consummated a tipping point in public opinion because they manifested an unassailable truth about an injustice. A truth that a million copywriters and spin doctors couldn’t fix. Job done! Truth out! Game over!

The difference between these images and slogans and acts and twitter is that the news that carried all of these pieces of content was carried on mainstream mass media. They had a ready-made audience and word of mouth, education and re-publishing took care of the rest.

This is where twitter and the re-tweet come in. It does not take everyone to be on twitter, or social networks for these to have an effect on a population or public opinion. That is ridiculous. All it takes is one person to write a slogan, or tweet, with perhaps a picture taking on a smartphone for inescapable truth it contains to be retweeted, and within hours the message can be carried the world over. This happened when the Boxing Day Tsunami hit. The pictures and films were amateur. The mainstream media were absent, or drowned, and amateur news became the only source of truth about the scale of the disaster for the mainstream media, and what it looked like. The rest of the job of sharing news and truth is done by word of mouth. ‘Isn’t it terrible’ conversations over a coffee, or ‘did you hear about so-and-so’ chatter over a pint. Phone conversations, texts and even jokes make news travel even quicker and make it some colour of fact. The same happened with Riverbend blogger during the first Gulf War.

So, I’d like to make the point that everyone does not have to be on twitter for twitter to be a total game changer. Every comment, every sentence, every tweet is in fact its own individual webpage, indexable, searchable and findable on search engines and endlessly shareable with thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of people. Word of mouth among social chatting, silly and interesting people is the point, not the instrument used for sharing that word of mouth. Word of mouth takes place online and offline of course, but you have to have something to talk about. Twitter can leak that truth, does and did in the days of the Iranian election.

In George Orwell’s 1984 the news came from a centralised location. This made the concept of ‘thought crime’ credible. Now news and information comes from a million points. The objective view of what happened is now contested. It’s no longer about your news source (twitter, irish Times, word of mouth), but how you use the news you get, like I’m doing here. I’ll tweet and Facebook a link to this blog and, with retweets I may reach a small group of perhaps few thousand. If I mention it the Belfast Telegraph, a few more. But how many of those who hear about this blog use twitter? Does it matter? Nope.

If it was 1982, or 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran, we’d know little or nothing about what happened during the days of the protests, and it would be as simple as it was then for Iranian spin doctors to hide the facts, and for the police to jail protesters. What is more, the protesters probably would not have had the courage that twitter gave those same Iranians in the past few months. Their actions were tweeted around the world, the riots were seen and Iranian injustice was unmasked leaving it open to sanctions, actions and influence. To the court of worldwide public opinion!

When people believe their story might not be heard and their words could get them jailed or killed they tend to be quieter. But when there is the tiniest breath (140 characters) of the oxygen of publicity, they gasp at it and let a roar. Iranians spoke and the world heard. So yes, the Revolution was Tweeted as all revolutions, large and small will be tweeted from here on in.

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Twitter is Bad for Blogging and Maybe Business

Not only does it distract, and endlessly digress, it takes the wind out of your passionate sales. It’s not that twitter is a bad thing, per se, but it can cloud focus on the core variables that make a business work. Closing deals, invoicing and getting paid. This, of course, all comes after creating a product or service, packaging it and selling it.

And this is my beef. So much of the online entrepreneurial zeal is getting lost in a cloud of ideas, messages and directionless digressions that it are not delivering one clear thing that is priceable, and buyable. Consultancy, knowledge, experience and enthusiasm are great but they are hard to take off a shelf and bring to the cash register. If you can’t describe what you’re doing and why and how much it costs, how can someone buy it?

I know there are so many twitter positives for certain types of businesses, but, from my cursory look, these are service business, and more than that, they require a certain type of digital networking element to them. They also often photographic or design in nature!

The difficulty arises when people look at twitter and think they can force any business model down its 140 character throat. Very often you can’t, and you shouldn’t try. You can do more harm than good to your fragile brand. And the last thing you want to do is to expend energy doing the wrong thing well. It’ll look like a hit, but only if you don’t put a value on your personal time, as with a lot of ‘free’ open source programs. Don’t put a cost on 10 years of tinkering and teaching yourself how it’s done by you for nothing and you’ll find most things in life will be ‘free’. I could make my own kitchen furniture if I gave it enough time, but the cost of that time? The quality?

So, what I’m recommending is a mentoring service so that companies can find the right fit, social media wise, for the business needs. Not just the next big thing, or the latest buzz word that sounds like great value, but the right thing that gives the most efficient bang for the buck and doesn’t require of the user/client a lifestyle change on their part, or a similar lifestyle change for their market. And also, to identify the best business that requires the least time for the maximum return on time and financial investment. Clean, efficient and targeted at a real, not an imagined, market that exists today and is only likely to grow.

So I’d say do what works, go where your market goes, but do it cleanly and efficiently, and don’t twitter about it, unless you’ve got a business for tweets. And, if you want me to bend an ear your way and bounce some ideas around, let me know. That’s a tweet DM I’ll answer.

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iPhone Saves Lives on Subsequent Saturdays

Two weeks ago, to the day, a viral went around a corner of the web about the Heimlich manoeuvre, and I watched it with some interest as these seemed to be a good thing to know how to do. That evening my Mother-in-law came over to our place, as usual, so that myself and El could pop out for a pint and a bite to eat in our favourite locale. We’re spoilt – what can I say.

So, I’m minding our youngest – Felix, with other various children of various ages clambering over me. Total Wipeout USA is on and this can transfix the kids with slapstick hilarity, which is useful if you’re getting ready to jump ship; or hype them up, which isn’t. It had done the latter. ‘Emmet,’ I hear in cross sounding tones. I consider options and causes. Something has split. Kid has fallen over. Close the clasp on my necklace. There may have been another ‘Emmet’ as I tried to heave my progeny from my belly… but then came a crystal clear ‘EMMET!’ I’m off.

Mother-in-law walking lost and directionless around the kitchen, and then leaning against the wall – lips blue, with a green tinge around her mouth and nose. ‘She’s choking,’ say’s El in a mysterious calm. On auto-pilot, I take over. ‘Kids out… Out! Everyone out!’ I shout, and they leave. ‘Can’t do mouth to mouth, or emergency tracheotomy while explaining why I’m stabbing nanny in the neck to traumatised tiny people’ I say to myself. ‘Not ideal at least’. I spin Mother-in-law around… knot my hands, feel under the ribs, front and side aiming for the diaphragm and say into her ear ‘I’m going to do this… OK?’ She agrees. Two or three violent hoicks later, her feet leaving the ground and I hear the strangled whistle of air through a barely open pipe. ‘You’re breathing now. You’ve got a breath. You’ll be alright now I say…’ She recovers in minutes, and, in shock, pretends nothing happened. We all do. But, on the way to the pub I say to El… ‘It worked. Isn’t that amazing! A simple technique has saved us from a very different Saturday. I watched it on the web, and it worked!’

(It also crosses my mind in true Les Dawson fashion… ‘You had your chance, Mother-in-law choking already. No witnesses. Blew it. You had to turn into Superman… Didn’t you! Then again… Think of the babysitting! She owes me big-time!)

A week later, to the day, El has gone to upstairs after lunch… not feeling well. She comes down and announces. ‘I don’t feel well at all. Look at me! I’m all red!’ And she is. Ears bright red, very flushed, eyes even seeming to bulge a little, and lips a shade of cherry Max Factor would patent. ‘I think it’s an allergic reaction. Anaphylactic shock!’ There was a film I saw a while back where the main actor looked similar and had to be rushed to the chemist I remember, but Ellen had never had anything like that before. Out comes the iPhone, and Dr. Google informs me these are indeed the symtoms, and also the symptoms of an allergic reaction to fresh mackerel which hasn’t been cooled down quickly enough. We had mackerel for lunch. I’m off. Just going to the chemist you need some strong anti-hystamin I call as the door shuts behind me. The chemist tells me that indeed, it sounds like anaphylactic shock, but I’m to get back quick in case the breathing starts to go. The car roars away from the chemist but as soon as I get in the door, I’ve been gone maybe 3 minutes, Ellen tells me… ‘I can’t even breath properly.’ Kids are flung bodily into the jeep, some still in PJs with wife propped in the passenger seat. The lights are with me as we belt for St. Michael’s Dun Laoghaire and I drop her at the door. She hobbles in to safety, an injection, and recovery some hours later. Phew. Typically perhaps I say to El… ‘Isn’t that amazing. Dr. Google had the symptoms. That bloody mackerel.’

Why am I telling you this? It’s Saturday, and I’ve suddenly become quite worried about being any distance from my iPhone and the instant, life saving information it provides. In fact, this week, it’s probably my turn! L

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Google Defends it’s Turf from Apps

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Google wants to own the search experience across every mobile media platform, and its latest offering is a universal search box that lets users of Android-based smartphones look for apps, contact information and web content right from the device’s home screens.

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The Cloud, Collaboration and Polaroid Glasses

I was watching Richard Dawkins last night on TV and he made me ask some important questions about the Net.

He asked what is it when individual neurons act together – millions and billions of them collaborating to produce a person, with intelligence and the capacity for self reflection – and something that some may call a soul?

And following on from this I ask, what is it when tools of collaboration – such as a fluid for messages to flow through serves this function, permitting a physical, social, psychological and educational quantum leap for a group of individuals within a body, or for entire echelon within a social group. Each person plays the role of a neuron, and the body is an echelon otherwise known as the digerati or a part of it. The lubricant of collaboration (closing the gap between the synapse) is social media and tools like Google Wave, file-sharing and torrents or open source software.

As the Roman army well knew – the essence of social advantage arises from collaboration, genius and good communication. Over-stretching the supply chain leads to failure.

And I further ask: what is it when elements of human society take on (inherit), this advantageous, favourable gene – each neuron, both selfishly and generously, using it to their advantage, growing more influential, quicker and more efficient through the communication with other similarly favoured neurons (twitter/facebook through smartphones/mini-pc’s). And what becomes of this group of super cells when they exist within a milieu of similarly favoured or not so favoured ones? Do they become a cancer, a brain, or a new speciality organ charged with information, educational and development?

Is it true that access to information and learning together with the capacity to process, understand and reproduce that information – to appropriate it – gives advantage and success?

I suspect so, and this in essence, is what twitter and social media and Google wave are doing and providing for individuals within the digital society, and the power of these individuals is not their own access to information, (anyone who can search Wikipedia or Google has this), but their group access to a larger cloud of individuals who filter an even greater reach of information. In a world which truly is overloaded with data and facts, intelligent filtration is everything.

Seeking facts through a cloud brings clarity out of confusion, like looking at the bottom of a pond through Polaroid glasses. The better and stronger the glasses, the deeper and clearer you can see. So being part of a good generous cloud of bright people is more advantageous for information processing and finding the fish, than being a blind boffin in your own right, swamped by light from every angle, and without any dinner.

Experts and agencies remind individuals of their weakness and ignorance and dependency, and act as a source of disempowerment and alienation. For example, the days of adverts for household cleaners with an ‘expert’ in the white coat saying ‘It’s Vortex’ are long gone. His place is being taken by a cloud of product users who profile and report on product qualities. All are empowered, inclusive and seeking a better truth.

The net has always embraced the cloud and the multitude and its growth has been explosive as a result, since the days of Usenet and AOL, through to the likes of facebook, twitter, Linux and Wikipedia. These have grown more quickly, and been more successful than any individual or company could ever have hoped to be. The growth of the cloud has been simply exponential and collaboration is its fuel.

Clouds are now the source of news and truth and growth and development. Cloud members trust the recommendations of friends and colleagues above any other source. People always did, we just couldn’t see it, or measure it the way we can in a digitally mediated space. Collaboration takes place in social media, twitter, and file-sharing spaces, and through development tools like Google wave, open source software and open APIs. Fluency in the understanding and use of these collaborative tools gives advantage to the individuals within clouds in their access to information through and collaboration with the other larger ones.

In 1976 Richard Dawkin’s wrote his influential book ‘The Selfish Gene’. In 2009 the net and social media have shown that ‘The Collaborative Gene’ gives a model much closer to the truth.

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Analytophilia, Analytophobia and Social Media Weather Forecasting

I was introduced to a new word today. Analytophilia. I love it. Analytophilia is the addiction to (or love of) checking how connected you are in social media: – how many tweets, DMs, facebook contacts, Linkedin connections and comments on your status, or others. This is a world where agoraphobics feel safe, but can also feel really social, without leaving their desk or iPhone (and entering the physical agora or marketplace).

I’d add another term. Analytophobia. This is the fear that your analytics would reveal, with cruel accuracy, that you’re a ‘nobody’, – not even a ‘somebody’ in the digital sphere. This would lead the sufferer to fear the login, like pressing the answerphone button and hearing ‘You have NO new messages’ too often. It’s not good for the old ego Sir. Time to join an online role-play game (MMORPG), like World of Warcraft. They’ll fix the fragile ego in a jiffy because anyone will play with anyone, and they do so in their millions.

Analytophilia and Analytophobia are, in fact, two sides of the same digitally mediated psychological coin, like pride and shame. Welcome to the Sociology of Social Media Emotion.

There are important implications for businesses which need to figure online, and have figures to prove it, in the growing cloud of online social buzz. There are loads of ways of doing it… if you know how and have the time to do the reporting and tracking, and sifting and monitoring. Trying to do it without the right tools to hand and operatives to use them, is like buying a pile of hammers and saws and nails and trying to build a house. You might actually succeed in building a hut of sorts, which will keep the rain out for a while. But you’ll never build a house or a good one at least. And think of the time, and injuries; and it might fall down in a storm! That’s when you call the likes of my good self (shameless plug). Yes we can! (Bob the builder, not Obama)

Prediction/observation: The net, and all communication is, and will be, driven by data, and those who can handle data and present it in a beautiful, simple, meaningful and actionable fashion… will always be busy.

It’s strange to admit, but I love numbers and the challenge of becoming a social media weather forecaster because weather is interesting, and the language of weather is taking over the language of surfing and sea that haunted the web since its nascent beginnings (from surfing and waves to clouds etc). And did you know that the biggest computers were built, partially, to handle the billions of computations necessary to predict the weather? Eniac for example. That chaos theory arose out of the big shift in weather prediction shown because of a few decimal points being omitted? Physics, maths and the computing that facilitated them were largely driven by the simple need to know what the weather is likely to do next. Well, now is the time for the Social Weather and forecasting, and the computing is being done already, but not by one machine, by the cloud of users and their computers. Businesses and people need to know the temperature outside, before they leave the building.

The driving equation and goal for social media: –

(messages ↑, efficiency↑, news/information/gossip ↑,freedom/mobility ↑, work/life-balance ↑) = (time spent↓)

The online clouds, (word of mouth/public opinion) are moved by the seas (offline people whose opinions (temperature) move much slower, but they hold their opinions for much longer). The net is a much more promiscuous, impatient and ephemeral space than the real world. Always has been. Within the clouds there can be hurricanes (like when MJ died), smaller storms, (#Lisbon2), and little squalls (#Luas). The online activity, in a storm, can strike offline public opinion like a bolt of lightning too, when the fact of the online news being so busy has a huge impact on the news of traditional media, and ALL public opinion (reflexively). The weather is also driven by the medium (the air, or platform (PC/iPhone/Facebook/twitter), and the sun (the Internet connection).

OK. The analogy is getting tired. But, it might still be useful.

In short! What can be done with this? Well, we can:

• Monitor social media: Any topic, issue, group, industry category, sector… whatever. This includes forums, blogs, YouTube, twitter and news sites. We can graph, present, analyse and output for you and yours
• Put scale on the storm: how big, how busy, how powerful, who’s involved
• Forecast: where it’s likely to go next. How big it’s likely to get
• Take part: setting up a social media portal/outlet for your business, and maintaining it
• Alert you: When the unhappy or unruly come knocking at the door of the office.
• Give you an Umbrella: Protecting you with online PR advice and provision

So, don’t be afraid of the Social Media weather. Let us give you the forecast and provide you with an umbrella!

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