Posted by Jesse Poe on January 26 at 11:48 AM
So tomorrow at 10 a.m. PT the world will be a different place.
Apple will drag the elusive unicorn out of the woods and unveil their Tablet (whatever it will be called), and the world will be a different place just like it was after the iPod.
Maybe?
I doubt it, but it will be a wonderful new way to create, engage and connect. A new tool to build around to work with, to enrich our lives. Should be a step up or two from it's former Newton. So game changer or not, it will be exciting.
You can read proposed specs and uses on every site & blog on the web, however the most important thing to think about for this 'game-changing' moment is if this does change the world, are you ready for it?
The iPod smashed the music industry and then rebuilt it. It also turned music back into a staple of culture.
Technology, as it advances, changes business and the way we work, how will this new Apple device change your business? And if it is not a game changer, will you be able to use it regardless in an effective way for your business.
Here is a chart showing what others have allegedly filed apps for according to
Flurry:
The print industry is rubbing it's hands in expectation of this glorious day. How are you going to use it?
Topics: Internet, strategy, tools 0 Comments
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Posted by Jesse Poe on January 20 at 12:30 PM
So the New York Times is going to start charging for their on-line content.
Makes sense, people have always paid for the New York Times at the newstand or to open their door in the morning and find it waiting there, so why not on-line.
I clicked a survey yesterday on this very topic and the results showed that some 70% thought it should be free. Because journalist should work for free? Absolutely not, but because we have come to believe that everything on the internet should be free. How we got to that idea collectively is the subject of other posts, but it is true, free is the current currency of on-line life.
So is the Times doing something smart?
Well smarter than the Wall Street Journal, in that incidental visitors, arriving no more than once in a while through searches and links, would be unaffected by the new system. This is good as that Wired.com has proven it is the long-tail that is of greatest importance of all. Over 70% of the searches performed leading to their site are for articles more than 2 years old.
Blocking information is like cutting off people’s water, it just seems wrong, but if we can’t afford to pay for serious journalism, we would suffer much greater problems in the future. As an example look at the age of
miss-information that Fox “News” has created.
What is very smart in all of this is that the New York Times is thinking ahead. The deluge of e-Readers that are about swamp the market will most likely funnel down into a paid prescription sort of package, as that internet providers will not be able to squeeze a third monthly charge for access. Your home connection, your phone and your tablet. It just won’t fly. But wrap that up together in a package with different content packages and I’ll buy it.
The most important thing is that as technology steps into this new decade you will see an advance in e-readers that will make the hype for the Apple tablet seem without basis. Flexible screens, that you can fold and shove into your bag will be the tipping point for a complete exodus to digital news, as it will no longer make sense, neither environmentally nor economically, to produce a majority of printed news. Having begun to step into the waters of paid subscription again, the New York Times will, even if running a skeleton crew, still be alive for this new time of jubilee that will once again reposit newspapers as pillars of wealth as well as culture.
Whatever the Apple Tablet may turn out to be, based on the speculation of what it is purported to be, they are missing the boat. I don’t need an expensive one-sided laptop. But an affordable flexible reader that has my choice of content, that I can follow hyperlinks for further exploration or word/fact look ups, email articles to my friends, see videos attached to the news, fold up and shove in my bag; that will be a game changer, and worthy of subscription fees. I’m glad to see NY Times getting ready for that kind of game.
I’m also glad that subscribers to the physical paper will get free access to the site, that is fair and makes sense, I love reading the Times in my hands, but for passing articles and information on to friends and clients, the on-line site is essential. And will hold me over till the future arrives.
Topics: Internet, Mobile_Marketing, social_networking, strategy, tools 0 Comments
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Posted by Jesse Poe on January 19 at 9:30 AM
This morning I was very pleased to see the success of the Mobile Campaign of the
American Redcross. It's simple, texting "HAITI" to 90999 makes a $10 donation. $22 million according the to
New York Times.
The gravity of the need, the compassion of people, and the simplicity of HOW you can help, made one of their most successful campaigns of all time.
Do mobile campaigns work? Yes. Compliments to the American Redcross for not only helping people, but for making it so easy for others to help them help people.
Topics: Mobile_Marketing, social_networking, strategy 0 Comments
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Posted by Jesse Poe on January 11 at 10:10 PM
Here at DMDxd we try to lead by example. We see things that are about to go wrong and promote the good before it goes bad. But sometimes it just goes bad. What can you do?
Not only has social media, or perhaps better said dynamic media (as all media should be soical), become a force to be reckoned with it has also become a issue of corporate stance. If you now say to a mega-national, I am going to post how much you suck on my Facebook, they have corporate speak to combate and control that, which in essence makes people feel like once again they have no power.
The lesson to be put in our pipes and smoked is not the, hey if they make the effort and waste their time we might have to due some damage control (see
United Breaks Guitars and it's more than 7 million views, first showed to me after a Thanksgiving dinner with my whole family watching, if only your company had that kind of viewer attention), but hey in the end we really don't know who our clients are.
That's a problem, not knowing who your clients are.
Enter M.I.A. who's 2007 underground-cum-mainstream hit "Pull Up the People", still to this day one of the best party songs of all time, became overwhelmingly famous with the success of Slum Dog Millionaire and their use of her undeniable sound in "Paper Planes".
So her new record, the first since all this amazing world wide success: Myspace views 29, 190, 328 and 133,398 Facebook fans, is to feature a hit about how she spent 3 hours on the phone with Verizon and still didn't get her problem resolved.
This song features actual Verizon workers singing with her about how the service, how shall I say, sucks!
Listen to
Pull up the People, or
Paper Planes from Slum Dog Millionaire and tell me if she has a voice that millions will hear or not?
I hate to point out the negative, but sometimes you have to, so that others don't do the same. This record has already gone to press, there is NO damage control. It has gone beyound social media, kids will be dancing to how bad Verizon treated her. Must I repeat, you have kids dancing to your poor serivce, there is no damage control. It would have just been better to have had more phone staff available to fix problems for a company who serivces so many people, of
all levels.
Now if she'd only write a song about all my dropped calls on AT&T, I might get my service improved before I break contract.
Topics: Internet, leadership, social_networking, strategy 0 Comments
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Posted by Jesse Poe on January 6 at 9:53 AM
Geekdom has been drooling over the coming of the Apple Tablet. Why?
The simple hope that it will be a game changer, like the iPod was a decade ago, or the iPhone was just a few years ago.
The important question is what will your website, blog, magazine look like on a tablet and more importantly are you ready for it?
With the late adoption of the iPhone/mobile platform and still complete failure of major magazines such Playboy to respond in a current and creative manner, you can be sure this might be your chance to get a leg up.
Many have already cued up, have you?
Here is an example of what Sports Illustrated is planning:
What will your brand look like on a tablet?
Thank you to
Business Insider for these images.
Topics: Internet, Mobile_Marketing, strategy, tools, web_design 0 Comments
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Posted by Jesse Poe on December 14 at 12:01 PM
My 7th grade World History teacher used to give us tests every Friday. As he passed out the test, he would boom out the same mantra every week. No talking, no notes, no going to the bathroom, no looking at your neighbors test, read the whole test before you begin and then begin.
I never read the whole test first, I am sure 90% of our class didn't either, because on the year end final there was only two people who didn't have to take the final. The year end final was passed out with the same mantra as always but this time the last question on the test said, "if you have followed the directions and read the whole test before beginning, then do not answer any of these questions. Simply sit there until 10 mins before the class is finished. Bring your clean untouched test to my desk for a 100%.
Of course 40 mins into the test you started to hear groans as kids read the last question, and we all learned our lessons, or did we?
Friday, I posted about my unfortunate experience with GOOD.is, who until recently has been one of my favorite websites.
I was very unhappy with them, but now I am pleased to announce that GOOD is no longer Bad in my book but back to good.
In the process there is something to be learned about users experience on websites, something I should have learned in the 7th grade, but didn't.
What do your users actually read?
I think that we'd all like to think that every blog post, every tweet, every profile update is read, that links are clicked and that jokes are laughed at. However, people come to your site for a specific reason typically, that reason is different form site to site. If you run a tech site like
Engadget your visitors are coming there for a different reason than if you run a site for esoteric science-fiction, fantasy, horror, fringe culture, and hobby gaming like
Atomic Overmind Press. Even if there might be a tremendous amount of overlap in who is coming to these two sites, they are still coming for different reasons with different expectations.
One of those expectations, you can be sure, is not to read about the things going on on your site, a refresh, a problem, etc. It might be important to you, but not to your public, you can imagine that IF they read it, they are going to read it with their Micromachine's voice.
Other than my bank, my 401k, my email, and maybe my Facebook/twitter, I am not going to read about what you might be doing on your site, and you can imagine this to be true across the board. Unfortunately this was the case with GOOD.is.
In a Herculean effort of outreach,
Andrew Price, Senior Web Editor of GOOD.is contacted me through Twitter and then personally by email after my post on Friday, explaining the situation at GOOD.is. Aparently, there isn't a word limit, but for a while characters like dashes and ampersands would just cut off everything that followed them. They are trying to fix it and he directed me to the post:
http://www.good.is/post/We-Made-Some-Changes-to-the-Site
As much as I am a fan, I didn't read this post. Why? Because we go to sites to get what we want, not to find out something on a site that may not effect us (even though it did in this case) and that might very well be addressed by the time I finish reading it.
So how can we get this info to our audience in a way that is effective, how can we communicate with them?
Go to them, tell them the information that they need where it will be effectual.
Had that info been placed above the comment box: Hey we are having issues with our comment box, it's eating ampersands! I would have not only understood, but probably like them even more for the humanity of it.
GOOD.is did nothing wrong in posting a page explaining this, but it is a chance for us all to understand better the way that we move on the internet and how we interact. They did the right thing in addressing the issue and they went above and beyond reaching out to me and Andrew Price was extremely genteel and kind, but it is an excellent example of how we are still always striving to find a better more effective way to keep this every growing machine (the internet) well oiled.
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Posted by Jesse Poe on December 11 at 12:37 PM
So you have built a site, written a blog and even got people to read it. Now what about the comments?
People use the comment sections to dialogue with other commenters and of course you the writter/brand. If you are lucky enough to get some one to engage with you why would you cut them short?
Imagine you finally get a business call and you limit it to 99 words. Come on.
Here is a lesson from GOOD.is who I usually adore, on how not to run your site.
They had a great post, I chimed in with a researched response adding to the post and encouraging conversation. My comment was
535 words of support and added value. GOOD truncates at 99 words, my other 436 words lost.
So I wrote a letter to them explaining how truncated comments don't exactly encourage conversation.
A week later still no response. Strike 2.
Here are the two take aways:
1. GOOD.is lost a passionate follower and turned a Zealot to a detractor over an HTLM code that could say 10,000 instead of 99, and by not caring enough to respond to their email. Why even have a "contact us" if you don't respond? Not a good situation.
2. Cut me off in the comments and I will just post a sidewiki which will immediately get picked up by Google. Lucky for good, the passion behind my 535 words, including the 436 they cut off was positive. Imagine had I been upset about what they wrote..... their word count limit would have made me even angrier.
What would be the draw back, well, that you might get a spambot that hacks in and leaves 30000 links on a comment, who cares, take it out, much better to be troubled once in a while by something everyone must face, than to limit interaction when interaction is what you are after and turn a brand zealot to a detractor.
GOOD work guys you lost a fan.
picture of the sidewiki:
Letter to GOOD.is which they never responded to:
Dear GOOD-
I preach your gospel, book mark you and always link to you in my own blogs, I think your doing a great job & have turned on many friends to your site.
Today I have to say that I am more than displeased with your site.
You posted a great article and I wrote a passionate response of 535 words.
You cut me off at 50 or so.... not a "good" practice, be glad that you have people who follow your site who care enough to write that much.
Adjust your word count to allow for as long as people want, that would be not only good but right.
It's hard to find people who are passionate to help and support, it's easy to loose people over stupid things like this, I just spent an hour of my time helping your site and now what?
Bad practice, GOOD.
I hope you fix this, before people just take the conversation elsewhere.
Would still like to be a fan-
jesse poe
Topics: Internet, social_networking, strategy, web_design 1 Comment
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Posted by Rowland Hobbs on December 10 at 2:00 PM
Did you hear that? That was print media, choking another near-final gasp. Today I came across the
Huffington Post's media review of Playboy's new iPhone app. Perhaps Hugh should stop filming his polyamorous exploits for E! and start reading up on his mobile best practices, because this baby is as attractive as a circus bearded lady in a tartain muumuu.
I'll let HuffPo tell you what's wrong:
"The new $1.99 app will give you the cover of the magazine, the table of contents for the issue, its Playmate's intro text and details, along with portions of text from the magazine's monthly features, like the "Playboy Interview" and "Playboy Advisor." Oh, and there's no nudity either, keeping with the Apple store's no "adult content" policy..."
Oh man, it HURTS Playboy. And not in the good way. Why bother creating an iPhone app? What decimated budget did you further decimate to create this sorry thing? As the news announces firings, issue cancellations, and more at Playboy, why waste perfectly good money on this?
Anyone who downloads it will think there will be naked photos on there. Which there aren't. Some people may expect articles... but they'll get a teaser and then a message to go buy the real thing? AND they have to pay $1.99 EVERY TIME THEY GET AN ISSUE?
No. No. No.
There are two ways to make this better, and you better do one of them fast:
1. Unlock full articles. At LEAST give your user SOMETHING to do. If they wanted clothed femme fatales, they would subscribe to Maxim. But if you give them full articles, then there is value to the app.
2. Scrap all the half-way commitments, and start creating iPhone exclusive content. NOW the users have a reason to buy! They are getting something they can't get at the newsstand! Maybe it's a few video playmate reviews. Or maybe it's new content created by your writers. Creating new content is astoundingly affordable. And it creates value, which your app sorely lacks.
Unless one of these two approaches is quickly adopted, expect another round of bloodshed at the raunchy rag. I hope to God they aren't celebrating this thing. I hope this is phase 1 of a glorious app that takes Playboy into the next generation (maybe even allowing it to leave print and start turning a profit).
But a part of me fears that this is it. Playboy thinks it's made the jump to mobile, but all we're getting is a lot of useless foreplay.
Topics: Mobile_Marketing 1 Comment
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Posted by Jesse Poe on December 10 at 10:46 AM
So you have heard the buzz about Google now including real time search results.
Some are probably asking:
What does that mean?
And then others are asking:
What does real time search results mean to my small business?
Well quickly real time search results means that key words such as "name of your Biz" are going to be showing up on the front page of Google in a real time search window. These will be brought in from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca for now, who knows what will be invented tomorrow.
So what does that mean for your business? That the time you are spending engaging with your clients/public is now going to be in the spot light. You have been saying good, encouraging, helpful, informative things on your twitter, right? Of course you have! So now when someone types in a keyword such as "bike repair", Mike's Bikerepair twitter account will be streaming in to the front page of Google. I will see all the helpful and courteous dialogue going on at Mike's and want to take my bike to Mike.
John's Bikerepair uses his 2.0 life to discuss how good his cereal is, so we'll know to call him for advice about cereal and Mike to fix our bike.
Remember three things about real time search results:
1. You will be seen, if you are participating in the 2.0 world.
2. Your competitors will be as well.
3. Your happy or unhappy public will also be seen there.
If you do not have a strategy in place to benefit from this, and also to damage control (when that time comes) then I suggest you get cracking! Or hire someone to do it for you.
Google has changed the rules of the game again and you can use them to your favor.
Topics: Google, Internet, leadership, social_networking, strategy 1 Comment
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Posted by Rowland Hobbs on December 8 at 1:13 PM
All my life, I have never struggled for perfection. For one, I believe it's unattainable. For two, I believe it's a moving target. Nothing is ever perfect. If you ever think something is perfect, you're either lazy or misinformed.
On the web this is even moreso the case. The glory of the web is that we can change things on the fly. Files can be put up, and taken down. Images can be uploaded, downloaded, and deleted. We can create multiple versions of the same page just to test which setup works the best.
Today,
WebMonkey (which sounds a lot less serious than it actually is) posted a blog much to this point, except regarding applications.
And it's true! We need to break free of the unending and deadly cycle of reviews and approvals. It is better to get something up and then work on it continually. Once it's in the real world, you can quickly see what works, and what fails.
If all we do is stare at PDF files of designs that have not been put to the real test of hard code programming, we set ourselves up for disaster when the browsers and connection speeds of the world show us what our actual project will look like.
Of course, this is a bitter pill to swallow. How do you tell a client "let's get it out there, and then fix it?" What's funny is you really can't, it's the worst cacophony to their ears. However, also funny, is that this is how it always is. You launch a site and then begin to notice things.
On the web we so strive for organization. For an easy template to pop our projects into. We want things quick, easy, and clean of the blood of the innocent. This doesn't produce good websites, but it does create award winning ulcers and nights of restless slumber.
So we all need to take a deep breath. Grab our clients by the hand, and tell them it's all right. It's okay. We can fix that. It'll take just a few hours.
Why will this work? Because a website is never done any way. Even books print numerous editions. We can do the same on the web, in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost.
Shoot first and ask questions later. Get that site or app up, and then let's troubleshoot. Until your project sees the light of day, you'll never be able to see it for what it actually is.
Topics: Internet, leadership, Mobile_Marketing, social_networking, strategy, tools, web_design 0 Comments
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