Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

I know. You thought Second Life was dead. Let’s be honest: Who would be interested in avatars anyway? No money to make there… Well, think again. A virtual-life-savvy hotel resort on a sunny beach in Japan is making a fortune. In real money .

The concept is simple: the resort lets you spend a flower-scented romantic weekend with the virtual love of your digital life. Mind you, not the gorgeous long-legged girl that is operating your favorite manga avatar. Nope… a weekend with a virtual cartoon.  Hundreds of manga addicted, 3G sidekick packing men are visiting the resort to date… an avatar.    A Japanese beach town has found a new tourism niche by drawing young men and their virtual girlfriends. The Ohnoya hotel and the nearby town attract over 2,000 real visitors for this!

All over the resort, these men point their smartphones at AR codes -a two-dimensional barcode that looks like tiny black and white squares-. Thanks to “augmented reality” (AR) software, their fetish manga avatar appears on the screen overlay of their phone.

Last year, a Japanese man calling himself SAL9000 married his favorite cartoon beauty Nene Anegasaki in a tuxedo ceremony that was an incredible hit on YouTube.

Now obsessed young men hunt for scarce dressed manga girls all over the peaceful pacific Japanese coast to fulfill… well, I’m not exactly sure what .

Guy Kawasaki pointed me to a brand new profession Chief Listener. Forget the fuzzy sweater, the inviting divan or the steaming pot of tea near the cozy fireplace. A Chief Listener listens online, looking if the brand that pays him/her gets mentioned somewhere.

Lately online titles crack me up. Browsing through twitter biographies I find Chief Social Media Officers, Gurus, Specialists, an  Onlinemetrist, Padawans, SoMeYedi’s , Experts, a Tweetpert (I kid you not), Chief Online Conversation Analyst, Conversation Managers, Mavens, Social Media Cross Over Consultants, and –I hope you are sitting – a non-executive chairman of a digital thinktank. Nomen est omen.

I have the bizarre feeling that the more a person is in the dark on what to do for a living, the more eccentric the online title becomes .  I need to build a reputational savvy global positioning creditproof title for when I grow up. Rainmaker. I think it suits me .

Dabbing my toe left and right in the stormy waters of Social Media, I bumped into a fascinating quote from Google big boss Eric Schmidt (Google him, it’s impressive ). He said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal: “I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time… I mean we really have to think about these things as a society… Young people may one day have to change their names in order to escape their previous online activity.”

This is a concern I have voiced for a long time now. Do people really know what they are sharing? Do people really want to tell every last detail of their most private lives online, for Google to index? Do people realize that that very cute picture in that minuscule teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini is available for their future boss? What about the massive tagging of pictures taken by smartphones in the dark of a hen night? Do people realize Tweets are indexed and kept, long after their authors have deleted and forgotten them?

Schmidt has a point. Digital citizens should be more aware of the digital traces they leave behind. Some social auto-responsibility is required, indeed. Some social clean up even: map your real friends. Find a circle where sharing is mutual and well defined. Un-friend and un-follow the shady ones. Be online street-smart. And we need more e-netiquette. The freedom of waving your digital camera around ends where someone else’s freedom (for privacy) begins. An opt-in/opt-out for tagging?

We all can become social-digital smarter. But we’ve all been young. We’ve all partied. We’ve all made big, social mistakes. Luckily, for my generation, the memories of those mistakes have been blissfully eroded by the softening hand of time. Should we now be merciless on youngsters that made that one drunken mistake online? Should we continue to judge that one girl for loving the wrong guy just a bit too much, and ending up tagged on exgirlfriends.com?

Maybe Eric Schmidt and his all-powerful Google have a responsibility here: can you get a second chance from Google? Imagine, mister Schmidt, if a youngster made that one online mistake, and motivates why he/she would like to see it blown into –permanent- oblivion.  Could you alter your logarithm, and give the kid the rest of his/her life back? Would that not be easier, more respectful, and more educative than just offering future generations the possibility to change their names?

But I do not want to put the entire burden on Eric Schmidt’s shoulders, I agree with online consultant Suw Charman-Anderson who said somewhere:  “As a society, we are just going to have to become a bit more forgiving of the follies of youth.”

It’s almost funny. I met a distinguished communication specialist, -expensive suit, nicely groomed grey hair- rambling at a cocktail party a week ago. He gave his attentive audience some remarkable quotes… one of them being that “digital communication is a nice to have these days”. Nice to have. That is what he is counseling his clients. Nice to have. When I wanted to know if he actually ever used social media, he confessed that he did “not have the time for any of that modern nonsense”.

I can find a plethora of well paid, highly intelligent consultants counseling their clients on digital: without any experience, knowledge, frame of reference or even remote understanding. People with less than a handful followers on Twitter, who never tweet, who are not experimenting, who have no access to any metric tools are helping brands decide on how to communicate. Do not get me wrong. I do not think for a moment that all wisdom and results come through or from social media. I am an honest believer in integrated communications. Keep the best of the past, add the best of today, and you’ll be armed for the future…

But, seriously, how can you give valuable advice on something you do not practice, that you do not know, and that you do not master? How do you take the responsibility? It beats me. These people do not have a clue how social media can be a great add-on to the communication mix. . The reason is mindblowing simple: they do not know, because they do not use it themselves. Management by example. Counseling by example. Only people who actively participate in social media are able to determine if their clients could benefit in any way. Not being involved in social media gives you absolutely no insights on what it is about. So you should be silent about it.

On every corner of the street, there is a self-proclaimed social media guru now, shooting some buzzwords in a presentation, and trying to tap into the marketing honey-pot.

Never take advice from a guru with an online social capital that is lower than your own. Call it street wisdom.

I get my social media streams funneled into my brain through five screens. Content comes in swiftly at a nice steady rate of about a tweet/post/second. Do not worry. If your content is remotely interesting, challenging, funny, edgy, groundbreaking or special… I will notice. I have a decent, well-equipped army of filters, aggregators, spam detectors and fluff busters.  None of the spam shall pass. None.

But I do get the flying green space invaders looking at messages, tweets and posts that get seeded by #’s. I know hash tags are a useful thing. I love hash tags. Heck, I use hash tags. But I would love it if people would just use them wisely, with caution. Not all the time. Not #everywordbelongsbehindahashtag you know. And if you need a hash tag so #yourmessagelooksfunny, maybe you should redefine the metric fun system.

O well. #maybeImjustgettingold.

You do not have to follow me, you do not have to follow anybody .

My colleagues from the London office invited me to speak at their healthcare event “How to communicate with the 21st Century Patient”.  Highlighting the importance of digital media seemed a logical thing .  More and more patients turn to the internet as their first source of information, confronting their medical practitioners and doctors with the information they have found online. Dealing with this “dr Google phenomenon” is something that is changing the medical playfield, and frankly a bit of a challenge.

A freelance healthcare writer, co-presenting at the event, is an excellent    journalist (with a focus on print media). However, I had to disagree with her when she stated that off-line information is per definition better than on-line information, and that online providers of content are mostly inferior to off-line providers.

And that is when the sleeping journalist in me roared. When I was a young press monkey, older journalists were better, and journalists with a blue accreditation cards were better than the ones with a green card. Now the quality debate shifted to it’s online, or offline.  Honestly, that is enough nonsense to propel a pound of half-cooked beef in an orbit around Betelgeuse.

It is NOT about off line or online. It is about quality of content. If the content is good, crosschecked, weighed, referenced, footnoted, transparent, honest and correct…. I could not care less if it is written by a journalist with a diamond incrusted press card, or by a nerdy blogger in a Hindustani basement.

Encyclopedia Britannica, the self-proclaimed God of wisdom, proves to be less correct than the crowd sourced, wiki-drafted, and community controlled Wikipedia.

Trust me, you will also find fine and balanced content online. Written by journalists; bloggers; moms and dreamy eyed students. Not all of those have nihil obstat press card blessing… who cares?

There is always something. An earthquake. Michael Jackson passes away. Brittney Spears could not find her undies. Steve Jobs iPhone presentation crashed (hihi). Paris Hilton hates undies. Perez Hilton accuses Miley Cyrus of doing a Spears/Hilton. The BP oil well catastrophe, Porter Novelli doing a EMEA social media tour….

Every day something pops up that shakes the web and throws my beloved Tweetdek bananas. But I can live with that. It puts a smile on my face, makes me a little wiser, and gives me something to talk about in the elevator.

But trop is too much. I hate football, yet the whole twitterverse cracks at its seams because a couple of million bonobos all over the world painted in their favorite war-colours (seriously orange?) chatter endlessly on how  where and when a midsized leather ball should roll. Seriously, it’s football. Keep it in your sofa, between your pizza and sixpack.

In about a weeks time sweating men with shaved legs will take over the twitterverse, steaming up and down some way overrated French hills in de Tour de France. And, mind my words, Twitter will crash again.

I have nothing against all that healthy sporting on TV, but when it crashes my online universe I’m getting annoyed. I’ve seen more Twitter fail whales than I can handle. I hate fail whales.

So does Mariana Pugliese, a web savvy cake designer from sunny Buenos Aires. The haunting fail whale chased  her so badly at night, that she decided to create it in real life… and eat it.

Cool. A Fail Whale Cake. Can’t wait till @princess_misia makes me one….

It must be a plague, or a disease. In any case it seems contagious. And freaking annoying. For some reason way too many people tell me they’re not into Social Media. They do not get it, do not need it, were never on it, will surely quit it soon. It makes their lives miserable; it will ruin their family life, and in no way it can get compatible with their work environment. Most probably the life expectation of this planet goes down the drain per tweet that leaves my Tweetdeck.

All of this garbage-nagging gets to me by phone, over a beer, on Facebook, Twitter or when I’m bolting something manly and robust on my Landy. Most often the people who shower me with this nonsense tilt their head a bit to the left, and wait expectantly. For the argument. For the arguments. For that flood of highly intelligent, moist-making logic, highly skilled ratio and passionate savoir-faire.  They wait for me to tackle their opinion, to try to convince them otherwise, to prove them wrong…

They’re waiting for a fight….

But frankly, I cannot be bothered. I just don’t care. If people think they should not be on Twitter, that is fine by me. They can quit Facebook, any day. They can blow their blog out of the water.  I care as much as them trying to buy a pink Hummer.

Honestly, it’s a free world. You have the right to think Social Media is wrong, overrated, annoying and will affect us as a species in a way that most certainly displeases Darwin.

Just do not bore me with it ….

Shuffling through my weekly mountain of undigested news, I stumbled on a nice article in the Wall Street Journal on how Digital Media have created countless gigabytes of text, sound, and images… most of it created by people who understand little of the professional standards and practices for media. One might think that this produces an un-fresh sea of mediocrity, eroding quality and acceptability, and steering humanity as we know it directly into chaos and intellectual collapse.

But do not jump too quickly to the wrong conclusions. Since Gutenberg invented the book press (and people eroded contemporary literature with vulgar versions of the Bible and its interpretation) , every increase in freedom to create or consume alarms people who want to defend the old system and set of metrics….  Every century, the “old ones” accuse the new technology to make the younger generation stupid. And still, humanity seems to get smarter, week by week…

Close to two billion people today are connected to the same network, spending more than a trillion hours a year of free time, creating a cognitive surplus so gigantic that even a tiny fraction of it that can be seen as “valuable” creates breathtaking positive effects.

The Wall Street Journal states that: “Increased freedom to create means increased freedom to create throwaway material, as well as freedom to indulge in the experimentation that eventually makes the good new stuff possible.”

On this rainy Sunday I agree. We’re watching a digital revolution: on communications, media, press, conversations, connections, privacy, work/life balance, and countless other holy grails.  There is never an easy way through a revolution. We’ll have to ride it out, bolting the rails just in front of a fast moving train.   Of one thing I’m convinced, in the end, when we will lick our wounds, and watch how the dust settles… we’ll discover it will have made us stronger, and smarter.

Everyone goes high on social networks these days. Twitter and Facebook –just to name the two obvious ones- propelled themselves to the absolute zenith of popular online services. Barack Obama used the dialogue and “tribe” possibilities of social media to fuel his –winning- campaign.

Most Belgian politicians are following slowly however… they discovered social media just in time for the last elections. Bizarrely (or predictably?) a lot dropped their engagement again just after being elected… with the new elections a two weeks off, they started to target their online friends and followers again. Not very respectful, and frankly lots of orphaned followers do not take this treatment kindly.

Twitter behavior is also bizarre. Some Belgian politicians have gathered a couple of thousand followers, but do not take the courtesy to follow back. That is about as polite  as giving somebody a business card, but coldly refusing the card that is offered back… it is rude, and arrogant.

I know it is not about numbers, and I do understand you cannot interact with everybody. Star profiles like Bill Gates, or miss Spears cannot possibly even follow back their countless followers. But a Belgian politician? Should follow at least the people who are interested in him/her. Out of courtesy, for one, but also out of curiosity.

How can a politician who is not listening represent me adequately? Ignorance, or arrogance… I do not care. I will not give my vote to someone who is not even interested in following me back.

And you?

find the Belgian politicians on http://www.netvibes.com/politicibelgie

Here is me talking on Studio Brussel about Belgian politicians and their social media behavior To listen, click on the image below (Dutch only, sorry guys!).

I can feel your pain. Your teenager is a total weirdo, with wrong hair, beginning acne, white earbuds plugged in securely in its pointy ears.

“It” eats no meat, and gazes all day to a computer screen while texting friends. No worries. You’re fine. The fruit of your love is not turning into a lonely socially challenged psychopath (well, most are not, anyway).

You just have a digital native at home. And trust me, that plethora of connecting devices; battery eating little gismos and flat screens that comes with your sweet little teenager are what the riffle is for a Para trooper: gear for survival. In todays connected world, mastering the social connection abc is simply a must.

Many parents fear that all that digital and electric hocus pocus interacts negatively with the way kids develop relationships, emotional bonds, and ultimately their own identities. Many fear that it will negatively impact the ability to communicate, interact and work with others.

Amori Yee Mikami, a University of Virginia psychologist, just conducted a research that proves that your kid is..; well doing fine actually. More than fine: Mikami found that the kids that spend the most of the time on social media sites are often the healthiest psychologically. How’s that?

I’ve been passionate about location based services for ages. In my humble –but very wise - opinion, the various possibilities for location based offerings are endless. True, location will only pay-off and be widely accepted when it will be closely linked to the psychographic and econo-graphic profile of the user. And the user needs to be in full control of the level and focus of the LBS information coming through his shields… But we’re not there yet.

After GPS in car and navigation on mobile devices, the first steps of true location based applications are surfacing fast. Twitter, Facebook and other networks scatter to embed location in their offering.  Gowalla and Foursquare constructed their complete business model around it.  Most users still look a bit hesitant at these services. Checking into places is a nice gimmick, but what does it really bring? And how quick do people tire of collecting mayorships and badges? Pay-offs will have to be found to keep as well consumers as businesses and brands in the game.

The tracks are now being laid in front of the fast moving train. Starbucks, the coffee phenomenon, already rewarded frequent customers with a collectors Barista badge on Foursquare. It now jumps a hell of a step further by offering a stunning 1 dollar discount to people holding a Starbucks mayorship on Foursquare.  

Getting a full $1 off a $4 Frappuccino is a baffling discount. For the first time, loyal customers get a tangible pay-off for their location based social media advocacy of their favorite brand.

Collecting badges, adding new places, posting reviews and sharing tips just jumped from mouth-to-mouth sharing in a game-esk set-up to a possible lucrative business with a direct ROI for participants. The rules of the game have fundamentally changed. Did any-one notice?

Dear Yves,

about a week ago I sent you an open post, tweet and mail: on you and Twitter. You probably did not see it, but lots of people (yours truly included) offered you some insights and do’s and don’ts on social media.

But you and your colleagues had a busy week, we know. A week where the people of this country, and people interested in this country followed every single syllable of the politicians that are negotiating the future of this country.

You twittered about nice flowers and our Belgian tennis babes. Nothing wrong with that. And you went to sleep at 1 in the morning on Wednesday. One of my American followers found that useful information. And in the midst of the negotiations on the future of Belgium, you found time to tweet about cycling.

And half the world was amazed to hear two hours later from sleepy journalists that you did not find the solution to Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde.

@alexanderdecroo warned on Twitter that he would bring your government down, if you had not a solution today. Did he not tell you? See, you could have known if you would have followed him on Twitter?  And @svengatz said already on Wednesday he would split something, anything really. But you do not follow Sven either.

I realize negotiating is hard and perilous work. But looking from a distance, we, communications people, see a clear lack of communication. People who do not reach out, who do not find each other. Who talk, but do not listen. Who communicate egocentrically…

Maybe, going forward, you and the other politicians could start interacting, listening. To each other. To citizens. That can start with real simple things. Like following each other on Twitter.

Tell me how you tweet. I’ll tell you who are…

sincerely,

@dannydevriendt