iPlot

Less is More. The Tweet(ed) Revolution.

Looking at the many positive responses it received, Pico Iyer’s recent NY Times blog post on "The Joy of Less" appears to have struck a chord:

"But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I’ve come to understanding happiness). Not having a car gives me volumes not to think or worry about, and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping-pong every evening, to write long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track down old baubles for two kids who are now out in the world)."

I take Iyer’s account as further anecdotal proof of my thesis that we are moving towards a new era of post-materialism, in which the quest for meaning, simply put: collective action for the common good, social impact, sustainability, enlightenment, values, etc., trumps purebred material satisfaction derived from the accumulation of things. If ownership, the tyranny of more, means slavery to objects, the less is ephemeral and offers an infinite number of possibilities.

However, I disagree with Iyer on the role of media stimuli. I tend to have a more optimistic view and believe that Twitter, as the modern, accelerated Haiku, can indeed provide you with that “joy of less” that Iyer describes. To counter Iyer with the very Hamlet citation he uses in his text: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” What if Twitter is the impulse purchase of the enlightened digital citizen? What if it has shifted the need for instant gratification from a purely materialistic to a more intellectual realm? On Twitter, the only thing you can truly own is your account; everything else, even your followers, are ever-changing and highly volatile. Needless to say that tweets come and go as much as anything can come and go, and that Twitter doesn’t have a memory, so that all lives on it are limited to the here and now. That’s quite a moment of Zen. And yet, paradoxically, while ‘less is more’ certainly applies to its tweet format, the true attraction of Twitter lies in a ‘more is more’ network effect. The more people join, the more valuable the social conversation becomes.

This weekend, in the aftermath of the Iranian election, Twitter’s ability to build a mass audience by virally connecting myriad micro-audiences through micro-messages has proven again to have real impact. When the Iranian police started cracking down on protesters, CNN chose to air a repeat of Larry King’s interview with the stars of the American Chopper show, which drove the Twittersphere berserk. Other news networks, too, failed to properly cover the dramatic events that unfolded in Iran, but CNN was an easy target because it is so iconic. While the world was tweeting, the ‘most trusted source in news’ misjudged the situation and failed to turn history in the making into a story. In fact, it completely missed the beat and responded somewhat defensively to Twitterers’ accusations:

The anger at CNN may have been collateral damage of Twitterers’ frustration due to having only limited impact over the events in Iran. But the effect was impressive: Within a couple of hours, #cnnfail became one of the top trending topics on Twitter, CNN was faced with a major image backlash, and you could follow the development live on Twitter. Twitter effectively acted as “media watchdog,” as Mashable commented. Citizen journalism outperformed professional journalism - in real-time. When Ahmadinejad shut down all mobile services and social networks, only a few Iranian Twitterers, with just the trusted authority of a genuine voice, were able to stay connected to the rest of the world and report on the frightening events in Iran. Synchronicity, real-time reporting, should have been CNN’s bastion but it didn’t get any of this. Twitter did.

The parallels are striking: The tentative revolution in Iran coincided with a revolution in the American living room. The protests against the Iran regime corresponded with protests against old school gatekeeper media. The social media grassroots campaign against traditional media became a mainstream media story itself. It will be interesting to see if CNN realizes the other startling parallel, the elephant in the room: Both Iran and CNN have cracks in the wall. The days of the old models are numbered. The revolution will happen but it won’t be televised.

The other key take-away from this media weekend is that on Twitter the main story was not the story. The main story is never the story. Twitter is the mainstream for alternative streams. This is why Twitterfall, which displays tweets grouped by trending topics as a top-down waterfall, is the congenial visualization, the most effective user interface for Twitter. Twitterfall expresses the escalation that is an inherent part of Twitter. On Saturday night, #iranelection and #cnnfail tweets broke down in staccato-pace, many tweets per second. It was hard to take your eyes off; it was too easy, too tempting to stand still amidst the constant motion.

Events are synchronous, multi-dimensional, multi-layered, and social, and so must be news. What if the future of news was Google Wave, as Jeff Jarvis suggests, or other "email cum wikis cum Twitter cum groupware"?

“Imagine a team of reporters - together with witnesses on the scene - able to contribute photos and news to the same Wave (formerly known as a story or a page). One can write up what is known; a witness can add facts from the scene and photos; an editor or reader can ask questions. And it is all contained under a single address - a permalink for the story - that is constantly updated from a collaborative team.”

Or is there a news model based on a horizontal comparison of real-time and filtered search (Twitter vs. Google), a la Twoquick? In either case, the aggregators will win (or have already won). The only model that would keep mainstream media in the game would be to combine vertical motion (Twitterfall) with contextual content that is carefully curated: immediacy AND accuracy, intimacy AND authority. Mashable gets it right when it interprets this weekend’s events as an opportunity rather than a swan song for traditional media:

“While social media sites are both a source of unfiltered information and a venue for public discussion, we still look to CNN, the BBC and their ilk to add context and meaning to this flood of data. And when they fail us, we demand more of them.“

Is Advertising Dead? or The Third Way of Building Brand Equity

(Credit): Element 22

There seem to be three (non-mutually exclusive) models for marketers tasked with building brand equity: marketing scarcity, marketing artificial scarcity, or marketing relevance.

Scarcity seems to be at the core of all marketing: an exclusive, unique value that can be reproduced; an original idea replicated for many. That's how markets work, how marketing works. Branding is effective when it keeps the aura of an original idea intact despite its mechanical reproduction. Apple's original idea, for instance, could be described as "technology must be fun and human," and it has not lost an inch of its integrity. That's the trait of a strong brand: the idea remains scarce while its distribution becomes abundant. The scarcity of all branded, manufactured products is of course artificial. If it wasn't, these products wouldn't need to be branded. That's the whole point (and the difference between water and bottled water.)

Some brands have taken this concept a step further by creating a special type of artificial scarcity: "democratic exclusivity." Sounds paradoxical? Well, it is. But it works. Gmail has pioneered it: An (exclusive) invitation-only service that pretty much everyone can get invited to (democratic). As another example, take Apple's strategy with the iPhone app store. It is a closed system (exclusive) but principally open for third parties (democratic). Look at the Kindle that Amazon purportedly shares as an app for other mobile devices. It shows that it's certainly good to have recognizable hardware (exclusive) but the true value lies in the software that you own and that you can use to extend the reach of your brand (democratic). Or Radiohead's pay-as-you-like release of “In Rainbows”: Buyers could determine the price (democratic) but the offer only stood for a limited period of time (exclusive). The album - online and physical distribution combined - sold more than Radiohead's previous releases, and the radically democratic way of pricing created a significant amount of brand equity for the band. Democratic exclusivity at its best: artificial scarcity in abundance.

The third and perhaps most game-changing model for marketers is selling relevance rather than scarcity. Jeff Jarvis points to Digg's new advertising system that enables users to vote on ads. Techcrunch calls it a "self service advertising product" that is "somewhat similar to Google Adwords, but with a twist." The twist is essentially a reversal of the traditional advertising paradigm: The most popular ads, as voted on by Digg users, will get more prominent placement and a lower cost-per-click. In other words: The more users digg an ad, the less the advertiser pays. "The Digg system rests on a Cluetrainy need to deliver authentic value and relevance – like Google's ads," Jarvis notes, and he argues "that's the way advertising probably needs to go: The better your relationship (which springs from a better product and service), the more your customers will market it for you, the less you'll have to pay to market it." Jarvis is right: "The future of advertising needs to be selling – that is, enabling – relevance instead of selling scarce space, time, or eyeballs. The future needs to be about adding value – relevance – rather than selling scarcity (extracting what the market will bear).”

Equity is the accumulation, the repeated occurrence, of actions, interactions, and transactions that add value. The best way, then, to build brand equity is to repeatedly and consistently add value through all your interactions with customers. Advertising doesn't add value; branded content does (information). Promotions don't add value; branded entertainment does (entertainment). When you brand something, you don't just market scarcity and advertise your products and services, you market your ability to add value that is relevant.

The web, and the social web in particular, reconciles artificial scarcity with relevance, and that's why more and more branding dollars are moving online. It is the ideal forum for creating an abundance of scarce moments, thousands of small great ideas instead of one great big one. These small great ideas come to live in brief moments of attachment with customers that are personalized and truly relevant for them.

"Advertising is failure," says Jeff Jarvis, and he thinks "media only get in the way of customer relationships." And indeed, how will you make more friends at a party? Showing up with a big banner around your neck that says "I am a great friend" or engaging in a handful of conversations with strangers, listening to their stories and detecting affinities whilst accomplishing a sense of privacy that gradually becomes intimate? Right. In the end, that’s what we should be doing as marketers to build real, sustainable brand equity – creating publicity through intimacy, loyalty through decency.

next09: Video of "Chief Meaning Officer" Talk

Here's the video of my talk at next09. Note that I changed the title last minute...

next09: From Google Economy to Twitter Economy

I'm still processing the many great insights from the next09 conference in Hamburg, one of Europe's leading digital/creative/marketing forums and one that stands out from the conference circuit because of its unique German-international focus (bilingual program, 80% international participants, many international speakers). This year's theme was "Share Economy," and the 1,300 attendees consisted of European VCs and angel investors, web 2.0 entrepreneurs, media, creative agencies, and execs from German corporations (from BMW to Deutsche Bank to Deutsche Telekom).

Jeff Jarvis: "The Great Restructuring"

The first day, the keynote day, was a little disappointing, maybe because expectations were so high. Jeff Jarvis warmed up the crowd with his trademark "What Would Google Do?" Powerpoint deck. While a terrific thinker and speaker, for some reason he and the audience did not really click although he presented a lot of thought-provoking content. The rather stiff response may be attributed to the fact that the attendees were either too familiar with what they heard or felt slightly overwhelmed. Or maybe they were indeed excited - but too German to show it…

Umair Haque, who followed Jarvis, faced an even tougher, albeit partly self-inflicted challenge: explaining the new paradigm of "Constructive Capitalism" in 45 minutes. That's like asking Marx to walk you through his Communist Manifesto in a Twitter chat. It didn't help, certainly, that Haque used the much gushed-about Prezi presentation software; all the zooming in and out was dizzying and, if anything, exposed the lack of stringency in his outline.

Fortunately, Haque had an opportunity to correct this first impression and reiterate some of his thoughts on a panel with Jarvis a day later, which turned out to be a much more suitable format for his ideas on the transformation of capitalism. He also took the occasion to rebut the attacks of Andrew Keen ("The Cult of the Amateur"), who, on the opening day, had chastised Haque (and all the other thinkers he considers to be under the dark influence of Silicon Valley) for propagating rampant free market liberalism and a dangerous new radical individualism in the guise of the social, consumer-empowered share economy that the conference was celebrating. Keen poignantly remarked that Twitter was getting us back into the 18th century: rather than liberating us from institutional hierarchies, it would reinforce an old power structure and an all too human division of roles: between those who follow and those followed.

Andrew Keen: "Digital Vertigo"

Jeff Jarvis & Umair Haque: "When Money Talks"

Keen accused Haque et al of naïveté and insisted that Google and the other web juggernauts were not "leveling the playing field" through link love (by sharing the scarcest resource on the web: attention), as Haque had claimed, but were rather using it to expand their pursuit of world dominance. In Keen's eyes, Google's openness is nothing but a suave mechanism to foment a monopoly in the attention markets. In the same vein, a party pooper in the audience asked Jarvis: "If free sharing is the future of business, why doesn't Google share its page rank algorithm?" Jarvis' response wasn't all too convincing: concerns over malicious abuse of the data. Hmm. So much for radical transparency and trust as overriding principles in the share economy.

To Google's (and Jarvis') defense, one could counter with Haque's sharp line: "When we're all hyper-connected, the cost of evil goes up." True. Moreover, Google does provide real value as it has created a win-win-win business model (advertisers, consumers, Google) that is vastly different from the toxic chunk Haque bemoaned in the non-sustainable and ultimately value-free products that toppled capitalism as we knew it: the Hummer, fast food, derivatives, etc. And yet, if advertising is the admission that you have a mediocre product, and that it is in fact an expression of "failure," as Jarvis put it, then it is hard to reconcile this view with the fact that advertising remains the main revenue stream in the very Google economy from which Jarvis wants us all to learn.

Despite the flaws in Jarvis' and Haque's thinking, however, I am eager to defend them. It's easy to deconstruct constructive visions of the future as ill-informed descriptions of present realities but it is a much bigger task to actually come up with a positive vision. Keen, the rebel with a good cause, does nothing but throwing a bomb, which he readily admits, but he falls short of offering an alternative to the frameworks Jarvis and Haque and others provide in response to the fundamental crisis of capitalism.

Google wouldn't care about any of this intellectual arm-wrestling all that much. It is fully consumed with doing what it does best: firing out beta-products and services, successfully failing by failing rapidly. One mistake that it made, however, may arguably have lasting implications. It didn't buy Twitter. And so the question, it seems, is no longer "What would Google do?" but "What will Twitter do?" Does Twitter mark the beginning of the end of the Google economy?

Jyri Engeström, who sold Twitter-competitor Jaiku to Google and is now a Google employee, might have a clue. On a panel with social media guru Chris Messina he offered some good insights on micro-blogging trends on the web and defended the new Google Profiles ("you have to opt in"). Messina seconded him and brought up another interesting point that established the context for upcoming business models in the Twitter economy: the "glocalization" of Twitter. He described how Twitter is failing to extend the real-time conversation to the whole world, simply because of time zone differences: one part of the world is always sleeping when you're tweeting. The instant social web conversation is therefore asynchronous, after all, and it is an interesting thought experiment to envision services that bridge the time zone gap and deliver tweets when the recipients can actually receive them (keeping them on the top of the feed), almost like an echo across time zones. What if the real value of real-time was the delivery of tweets when it really mattered?

The whole time dimension of Twitter is uncharted but valuable territory, and there are other add-ins, integrators, and localization services that will emerge in this vibrant new ecosystem. The conversation on the social web is as rich as the human communication (if not richer), and it is just beginning to fully emerge.

What everyone agreed on at next09 is that the next big frontier on the web (and in the Twitter economy) is how businesses talk to their customers. We are witnessing an irrevocable convergence of players. Conversational services such as Twitter and Yammer are moving into the social networking space and are acquiring the credentials of social networks and collaboration tools, while traditional social networking sites such as XING, LinkedIn or Facebook are embedding conversational features to catch up with the irresistible pull of real-time communication.

For both groups, and in fact for all other companies, Umair Haque's advice is golden: Take one of the big ideals (democracy, peace, transparency, equality, etc.) and apply it to an ailing industry that is in need of transformation or at least some serious disruption: healthcare, finance, news, energy, government – you name it. Combine that with the principles of the Twitter economy – transparency, instantification, collaboration, and free sharing – and you have a winner.

Twitter Chats and Sponsored Hashtags - How To Do It Right

(hat tip to Kristina Loring; re-posting from CNET)

With the Twittersphere reaching critical mass, lots of companies are establishing accounts to speak directly with customers, monitor their brand, and respond to questions and rumors. Most of them are using the micro-blogging service to become more transparent and as a trustworthy resource for their followers, while also exposing a more personable aspect of their brand.

Here are some examples, researched by Brilliant Ink, a communications agency specializing in strategic messaging and content development:

- Ford used Twitter to host conversations and answer criticisms during the recent federal loan hearings in DC: http://twitter.com/scottmonty. Scott Monty is Ford's social media manager and often uses Twitter to enable people to ask questions of Ford execs. Ford also held a chat featuring its CEO Alan Mulally at #FordCEO.

- Microsoft is partnering with Exectweets, a Twitter chat room of sorts for executives.

In addition, there are several companies that do a good job fostering customer service and engagement via Twitter and occasionally focus on a particular discussion topic:

- Dell: http://twitter.com/delloutlet

- HR Block: http://twitter.com/hrblock

- Comcast: http://twitter.com/comcastcares

- Zappos: http://twitter.com/zappos

- Marriott Hotels: http://twitter.com/MarriotIntl (the hotel chain used Twitter to communicate with customers in during the recent bombings in Mumbai)

How exactly one is supposed to use Twitter is still up for interpretation, but these companies seem to be doing it the right way, especially in contrast to those that have chosen to use their Twitter accounts as nothing more than a means of self-promotion (essentially using Twitter as an extension of their RSS feed). These companies most often find themselves broadcasting to an absent/vacant audience. A stark reminder was the recent controversy over Land Rover's use of social media in an ad campaign, and the fact that some Twitterers were paid to contribute, sparking discussions about the risks of "sponsored hashtags."

Organized Twitter chats are a particularly effective vehicle to provide entry points for consumers to engage with companies around specific topics, events, or issues that are meaningful to them. More and more companies are beginning to use these kinds of "hashtag conversations" (using the hash symbol (#) in front of a keyword is a familiar convention for Twitter users; it allows people to search for and follow specific conversations).

Brilliant Ink studied to what extent these conversations offer an opportunity for consumers to truly inform the company's priorities and perspectives around specific topics. One of the brands it examined was PepsiCo. At the end of April, the softdrink company began #PepTrends, an organized conversation around global trends. The moderator introduced a number of trend themes to the conversation, and the most popular topic turned out to be "social media and marketing." There were more than 1,400 individual tweets from the participants, and 171 people registered to take part in the chat. This was PepsiCo's first moderated hashtag conversation, following a very successful South by Southwest engagement where the company had used Twitter and blogs to interact with customers.

Another brand that has been able to amplify its voice through Twitter is Growing Bolder, an organization comprised of former journalists and other professionals interested in issues concerning those over the age of 50. The company hosts a chat tagged #ageop and describes the event as a "weekly informal think tank." It is facilitated by a guest host who asks questions to get the conversation going, but the discussion is fluid with participants introducing newsworthy issues of the week. Topics have ranged from President Obama's first 100 days in office to health care to prom memories. Participants also recently called on State Farm to join in a conversation about insurance -- which brings up an interesting dynamic. Will larger companies such as State Farm respond (or not) to activist- and issue-based groups like Growing Bolder? Indeed, can organized Twitter conversations online translate into offline social organization and action?

At frog design, we recently hosted a #froghealth Twitter chat on the subject of mobile health. Participants included our own health care experts, members of the press, and external health care professionals. Originally planned as an internal experiment to explore the use of Twitter, the chat turned into a discussion about a redefinition of health care and a restructuring of the health care system. External participants noted the event on their own accounts and joined in. One participant of the conversation called it "curated crowdsourcing." In the end, the Twitter chat provided a new way to have a frank discussion with our customers and with experts in the field about on-the-ground concerns.

If you want to host a moderated Twitter chat yourself, here are Brilliant Ink's General Guidelines:

- Determine the format (there are three options): 1. Create a free-flowing discussion where anyone can say anything germane to the topic; 2. Establish a structured agenda where the organizer asks questions and gives participants a set time to answer before moving on; 3. Feature a guest speaker, where s/he answers participants' questions and gives advice.

- Use the first 10 minutes for introductions.

- Don't allow pitching of participants' businesses until the final 10 minutes.

- Take banter or irrelevant chat offline ( remove the #) so as not to hijack the conversation.

- Use a specific account to represent the brand for the chat (@frogdesign) vs. a personal account.

- Never disparage or dismiss ideas or comments.

- Participants expect a 1:1 relationship, so the exchanges need to be conversational.

next09: The Seven Rules of the Chief Meaning Officer

(c) next09

I just came back from the next09 conference in Hamburg, one of Europe's leading digital/creative/marketing forums that stands out in the conference circuit because of its unique German-international focus (bilingual program, 80% international attendees, many international speakers). This year's theme was "Share Economy," and the 1,300 attendees comprised of European VCs and angel investors, web 2.0 entrepreneurs, media, creative agencies, and execs from leading German companies (from BMW to Deutsche Bank to Deutsche Telekom).

In talking to many German attendees, my impression was that the German creative community shows no signs of a downturn. The German start-up scene in particular, if that is any indicator, is alive and kicking. There are many new promising web 2.0 firms run by smart entrepreneurs (many of them funded by entrepreneurs who made a fortune during the dot com heyday), and there is a lot of money to go around. Notwithstanding this newly found confidence, however, Germans still look to the US, and in particular to Silicon Valley, for technology trends and innovative business models – this is nothing new but next09 was a stark reminder of how powerful the Valley myth still is. Consequently, there was a large contingent of social media folks from the Bay Area.

I met several great people including Lane Becker, the founder of Adaptive Path and co-founder and president of Get Satisfaction (the "people-powered customer service" that seems to be everybody's darling these days), Natasha Friis Saxberg, the founder of Mentory, a web-based mentoring network, Daniel Reckling from Neckermann.de, Germany's largest online retailer, Stephan Loyen from Simyo (a German discount telco), Darius Miranda from Wells Fargo (which appears to have a pretty sophisticated social media B2B strategy), and many others.

In conversations with Jackson Bond and Johannes Haus from Xing, the European equivalent to LinkedIn, it became evident that for social networks and other web players 'conversations' are the next big frontier. The business world is ready to embrace an enterprise Twitter, and many business communities (social networks and intra-company networks alike) are working on proprietary internal micro-blogging services – micro micro-blogging, if you will, that can be better customized and controlled. Yammer for everyone. In one of the main stage sessions at next09, Stowe Boyd ("Unmarketing") presented the Open Enterprise 2009 study, which predicts that in a few years 80% of knowledge-based tasks in corporations will be happening outside of formal organizational boundaries and be open-sourced, crowd-sourced, social, and conversational.

In this vein, I was invited to speak about "The Shrinking Brand – Marketing in a Small World," a talk I had given before at the eMarketing conference in San Francisco. But after listening to Jeff Jarvis' terrific key note on "The Great Restructuring," Umair Haque's pledge for "Constructive Capitalism," and Andrew Keen's passionate rebuttal of both, I felt the need to change the focus of my talk and approach it from a broader view. It was also more fun to present something new. And so I came up with the "Seven Rules of the Chief Meaning Officer" (I know, I know, ten would have been better, but sometimes there are only seven...), based on a concept I've been blogging about over the past few months. This was the first time I ever shared it at a public forum.

My key points, in a nutshell: As brands face an unprecedented level of competition, transparency, and consumer empowerment on the social web, 'meaning' is becoming the new powerful currency that connects brands with their brandholders in the 'share economy.' The new marketing leader, the Chief Meaning Officer, is a strategic activist, social media entrepreneur, constant innovator, and integrator. The Chief Meaning Officer has the potential to transform business through meaningful marketing – marketing that consistently creates added social value, not as an afterthought but a sine qua non. While marketing has always been the art of turning friends into customers and customers into friends, it is now the art of finding, befriending, and activating the like-minded for a common cause, for the common good – and for profit. Brands that have a reason to exist, an argument to win, will be more appealing than ever.

The Seven Rules:
1. Listen and converse (and converge)
2. Atomize your brand
3. Activate your customers
4. Think and act like a media company
5. Give more than you take
6. Be the change
7. Be yourself

Here are the slides:

Tim Leberecht@NEXT09: The Seven Rules of the Chief Meaning Officer

View more presentations from Frog Design.

More about the other next09 talks – and the emerging 'Share Economy' (that you may also call a "Twitter Economy") – in the next couple of days…

Multimedia 2.0: From Paid Media to Earned Media to Owned Media and Back

Marketers face three types of media as channels of interaction with their audiences: paid media, earned media, and owned media. We know that in today's hyper-relational, atomized micro-markets, paid media's effect is somewhat limited. The days of broadcasting one-way messages via mass media are gone. Traditional advertising is struggling to cut through the clutter in an economy in which attention is the scarcest resource. Most ads are ignored or perceived as spam.

Earned media, on the other hand, has the merit of third-party credibility, and it reaches people when they are opted in and value the information. Media coverage in the right publications is still the single most effective tool to raise brand awareness. But what are the right publications? The big media juggernauts are ailing, and their authority is increasingly undercut by social media whose vibrancy and dialogic nature has turned static information into a constantly evolving conversation. Blogs, social networks, file-sharing sites, and micro-blogging services have reached the critical mass needed to dominate the mainstream agenda. The timeliness of Twitter, the quintessential conversational medium, makes it a direct competitor to traditional news outlets (which is why Umar Haique suggests the New York Times should buy it). Just ask yourself: Would you go to the NY Times, CNN, or to Twitter if a disaster hit the US?

The stark difference between traditional media and social media is that the former provide original content whereas the latter provide an open forum for content from third parties. This has given rise to the notion that everyone is a media channel, and the rise of owned media. With paid media being largely ineffective and earned media facing the growing irrelevance of traditional media in face of burgeoning social media, brands pursue the avenue of becoming media companies in their own right. Bypassing traditional media channels, they either set up their own TV channels, print publications (corporate publishing), or blog networks (McKinsey's What Matters is a recent example), or they actively participate in the social web conversation, shaping and following the meanderings of the status update economy.

Owned media alone, however, is no longer a differentiator when most consumer and enterprise brands have their proprietary media channels in place. No matter how fragmented the new media landscape will look, there will still be a hierarchy based on authority of voice, and there will be winners and losers. Brands still need to find the right balance between talking and being talked about, and they still have to distinguish themselves from others by having a unique voice and perspective.

Smart marketers realize this and embrace a branded content distribution model that spans all three types of media: By producing compelling proprietary content (owned media), they attract the attention of traditional media and extend it to social media (earned media), and can then amplify the exposure via advertising if needed (paid media). Only this three-pronged media approach works. Multimedia, in this sense, does not only mean a richness of media formats (video, text, audio), it means the combined use of multiple types of media to yield maximum brand exposure through sustained cross-media conversations.

Innovate or Die: Newspapers and Advertisers in the Post-Advertising Age

Has it finally arrived, the post-advertising age? Advertising Age, nomen est omen, recently ran a story on the blurring line between commercial and editorial content, as media companies are facing a fiercely competitive marketplace amidst declining advertising budgets (according to the Newspaper Association of America, advertising revenue in 2008 decreased by 17%, to $38 billion) and the looming crisis of the news industry as a whole (see Clay Shirky’s seminal essay on "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable").

As if to further prove the point, the Los Angeles Times carried a page one advertisement yesterday that craftily confused news and commercial messaging, and consequently sparked a public outcry. Obviously (but not too obviously) labeled as "advertisement" in the top line of the column, the ad for the new NBC cop show Southland simulated a mix of news story and critic's review, including a headline ("Southland's Rookie Hero") and the mentioning of a "reporter" following the story. The last paragraph of the story then disclosed the premiere of the TV series.

It is no coincidence that the controversial ad promoted content from yet another media company (NBC). Like newspapers, the big TV networks are struggling with retaining viewership and ad dollars, and are as forced to explore alternative promotional formats as newspapers are to push the boundaries of their genre.

(Credit: Post-Advertising Blog)

While you can argue whether the content of the NBC ad displayed poor taste, the placement of the ad definitely exceeded previous attempts to "package" commercial messages as editorial content. Driven by economic concerns, the New York Times recently sold the first ad in its history on the traditionally 'pure' front page of its print edition. And the Finnish Helsingin Sanomat even sold its entire front page to Apple for an iPhone ad. But at least these ads – however intrusive to the editorial integrity – were still clearly marked as ads. The L.A. Times coup is unprecedented: No other major news paper to date has ever run an ad in editorial disguise on its front page. Is it "innovative and breakthrough" as Adam Stotsky, president of NBC Entertainment marketing, claimed, or just deceptive and desperate?

In a story about the fake story, the L.A. Times quoted its own publisher Eddy Hartenstein, who decided to run the NBC ad despite newsroom objections: "Because of the times that we're in, we have to look at all sorts of different – and some would say innovative – new solutions for our advertising clients," he said. Like other newspapers, the Times laid off hundreds of employees to cope with shrinking revenue. L.A. Times owner Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December.

The NBC ad in the Times is another example of 'fake authenticity,' and before you condemn the concept as unethical, ask yourself this: Isn't fake authenticity the main ingredient of every compelling story? What if storytelling (branded or not) is the actual domain of news outlets? The L.A. Times' experiment may appear a bit hapless, but it embraces a trend that seems irreversible. The Post-Advertising blog nails the growing sentiment among marketers and media folks: "Just as brands need to be publishers, so publishers need to be marketing agencies that can create opportunities for brands to tell their stories, as well as helping to craft the stories they tell. At a moment in history when ads are giving ground fast to immersive and informative experiences, publishers need to quit selling space and start selling their ability to help tell and host media experiences." And furthermore: "Traditional media need to transform themselves at least partly into content-based marketing services organizations. They need gradually to quit working with media buying and advertising agencies, which keep relegating them to their traditional roles." On the flip side, Allan Moore urges advertisers "to change the currency of advertising - from display, to something that is more like a service, that enables people. That is more relevant, more contextual, more life-enabling. That is where the money is."

While this sounds like a perfect marriage, advocates of traditional journalism will cry foul over any potential crossover. Yet even they will acknowledge that there are only few options left on the table for ailing newspapers as they have no choice but to change their business models:

The first one is the dog-pays-watchdog scenario – the 'socialization' of newspapers through funding from community trusts, citizens (Spot.Us), or government subsidies, in order to remain a strong independent press.

The second one is the aggressive advertising route a la the L.A. Times, further propelling a hybridization of editorial and commercial content ('edvertising' instead of advertising).

The third and opposite option banks on content and a hyper-customization of articles, ideally monetized through micro-payments (see TIME's Mine model or the Swiss 20 Minutes micro-newspaper for commuters).

A fourth model sees newspapers follow the maxim "If you cannot beat them, share with them." In a much discussed move, the Guardian recently announced its Open Platform initiative, allowing anyone to use Guardian content on their site or web service. The publication hopes to make money by requiring partners to carry its advertising as part of its terms and conditions. Instead of trying to charge users for content that can easily be duplicated for free anyway, the Guardian lets anyone duplicate and use its content, and then slaps ads on top of everything. Will it work? It's too soon to tell but at any rate it's a bold move. For TIME's Mine, the Guardian's Open Platform, and also the L.A. Times NBC ad, Albert Einstein's adage rings true: "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." And new it must be for newspapers if they want to survive.

The last and arguably most worrisome scenario for newspapers would be a combination of the previous three options, however no longer run by a media company but a trusted consumer or enterprise brand. Imagine the McKinsey Daily (focusing on business news), the Starbucks Times (community news), the Apple Tech Journal (technology and design), or the Nike Herald Tribune (lifestyle and fitness), produced by leading TV, digital, and film producers, staffed with the nation's best journalists, complemented by citizen journalists, and distributed via a rich social multi-media platform. Wouldn't you trust, follow, read them?

@SXSW: Branded Conversations / Some Quick Thoughts on the Past, Present, and Future of Twitter

Someone blogged that SXSW Interactive is just like the Internet itself – disjointed, decentralized, scattered, fast, aggressive, random, fragmented, and so on. In fact, the main commonality between the two may be that the number of attributes to describe them is infinite. Like the Internet, the annual tech conference in Austin is an echo chamber of an echo chamber, a place where original thought and commentary get mixed up and mashed up in a highly self-referential meta-conversation.

That was already the case before Twitter entered the scene at SXSW two years ago but the micro-blogging service has certainly amplified the effect. It was both comical and frightening to see the uber-individualistic geeksters at SXSW captivated by the invisible rules of an ostentatious behavioral uniformity: Within one mile of the convention center you could observe the strange ritual of groups of people standing or sitting together, chained to their iPhones, twittering instead of talking: “#SXSW. Twittering about SXSW.” The real conversation was often limited to a quick “What’s your name?” or “Where’s the next party?” just to have some input for the next tweet. It is indeed a Read-Write generation that is coming of age in the wake of an all-dominant present, with no particular loyalty to the past and maybe not even an interest in the future (see Peggy Orenstein’s recent piece on “Growing Up on Facebook” in the NY Times Magazine).

Yet the rise of the social digerati is unstoppable. New data by Nielsen Online shows that social networking sites (which encompass social networks and blogs by Nielsen’s definition) are experiencing growth rates of twice as much as any of the main destination sites (search, portals, PC software sites, and email). The time spent on social networks and blogging sites is growing at more than three times the rate of overall Internet growth. Furthermore, social networks are gaining traction among new audiences. On Facebook in particular, “the greatest growth... has come from people aged 35-49 years (+24.1 million). Furthermore, Facebook has added almost twice as many 50-64 year old visitors (+13.6 million) than it has added under 18 year old visitors (+7.3 million).”

Of all the social networks, Twitter may well be the most pervasive broad- and narrowcasting channel, propelled by an ever-growing base of users. Every day more sophisticated Twitter business models are popping up that move the service closer into the hands of a mainstream audience: charity campaigns such as Twestival and Tweetsgiving (Robert Fabricant pointed out that there is a natural synergy between micro-blogging and micro-donating), as well as San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom’s efforts to use Twitter as an official channel for city-wide emergency communications are just two of them. And when even Jon Stewart features Twitter and all major publications run how-to guides, this seems to be a clear sign that Twitter is entering the mainstream.

But is it really? First of all, let’s remember that it took the service, despite all the hype, two years to reach today’s level of attention. And the adoption is primarily happening in the US. Even the Internet population of Germany (40 million), the third largest economy in the world, is still lagging: Twitter has only 27,000 registered German users at this point. Let’s also put Twitter usage in context of the overall digital footprint: Twitter has 11 million registered users and attracted seven million unique visitors in February, which represents a stunning 1,382 percent growth since last year. The total Internet user base, however, consists of 1.4 billion users. The most widely used data application on the planet is SMS text messaging: three billion people actively use it. And compared to Facebook’s 175 million users, Twitter’s numbers are miniscule. In other words: The whole world may be talking about Twitter, but the whole world is not yet talking on it. The next few months will tell us if Twitter is over-hyped or if we’re witnessing a revolution – and if so, if the revolution will eat itself.

That’s exactly the concern of Twine founder Nova Spivack who might speak for many other early Twitter adopters when he warns of the implications of Twitter’s massive growth and the increasing amount of uncontrolled abundance. Let alone potential security vulnerabilities, he flags “Mainstream Adoption” (“Tens of millions of new users are going to flood into the service. It is going to fill up with mainstream consumers. Many of them won't have a clue how to use Twitter”) and “Notifications Galore” (“Every service on the Web is going to rush to pump notifications and invites into Twitter”) as the two main threats. In his opinion, “There is soon going to be vastly more content in Twitter, and too much of it will be noise.” This raises an important question: Will Twitter remain an open-ended, self-organized conversation or will we see the emergence of more filters to make sense (and money) of all this chatter? Or, more philosophically put: Can we handle abundance (the entire Twitterverse) without any scarcity (the filter/curator)?

I’d say we need some scarcity, some reduction of choices. Spivack suggests introducing adding meta-data to save Twitter from its very eloquence, and there is definitely demand for organizing the ‘entropic chaos’ that characterizes the never-ending Twitter conversation. This could be an opportunity not only for Twitter itself but also third-party brands acting as curators. So far, almost all Twitter apps either add value on the input side (Twitterphone, Twitterific), visualize the output (see Pepsi Co.'s Zeitgeist app), or combine both (Tweetdeck). But one dimension is underexploited: accessibility.

“Brand curators” – operating along the coordinates of organization (self-organization vs. curation) and timing (real-time vs. past) of Twitter content could offer just that: making Twitter more accessible. For example, they could provide vertical search feeds (in real-time) plus some additional context. Both could be embedded in a visually rich ‘landscape’ view that features ‘favorites’ (domain experts), most popular (re-tweeted) tweets, and “breaking tweets.” In addition, Twitter curators could compile past tweets within certain categories or topic areas, as editorialized search results. Or they could create some ‘artificial scarcity’ and offer programmed Twitter slots, limited in time and audience (Liz Kelly from Brilliant Ink told me recently about a one-hour panel of journalists on Twitter as just one example). The brand would act as a ‘human’ search filter, as a trusted authority that uncovers and organizes relevant tweets. This could be interesting for media companies or brands that are transforming into media companies.

It’s worth pointing out that this scenario is not identical with just a branded linear Twitter feed. What I’m envisioning is a bias to commentary instead of immediacy. Not just a stream of tweets – a handpicked collage of various adjacent Twitter formats (replies, direct messages, re-tweets, searches). Think of it as Tweetdeck for the more passive mainstream user who wants to read tweets rather than write them. First steps into this direction are Breaking Tweets, Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, and especially MyAlltop, the recently launched customizable version of the news rack. Offering celebrity MyAlltop lists, the service provides a blue print for brands: it creates a dashboard that offers curated content, features star Twitterers and their recommendations, and highlights tweets by categories. MyAlltop demonstrates that the verticalization of the Twitterverse is of most value if it goes along with a presentation that is horizontal.

The biggest opportunity may be something more fundamental, and it may be one for Twitter itself: a public archive of tweets. Have you ever wondered where the huge volume of Twitter-generated content goes? Who owns all your tweets? Are you giving away your data or sharing it? How can you access it (besides going back chronologically through the search function)? Sure, Twitter keeps tweets and doesn't auto-delete them. You can also set up a LoudTwitter account to generate daily blog posts that contain all your tweets from the past 24 hours. Or you can use Tweetdumpr, which creates a .csv file with your last 250 tweets (it used to be the entire record; the fact that Twitter has limited it lately shows that it may have an interest in monetizing past tweets). But all of these services work only for your own tweets and are rather cumbersome. What I’d like to see is a public Twitter archive. There is value in storing and distributing old conversations, the “now” that’s long gone. Clearly, the totality of tweets represents a massive library of human thought that we need to preserve and make accessible. In the future, wouldn’t it be interesting to go back in time to rediscover the SXSW tweets from 2009? Memory is a vital aspect of all communications, a prerequisite of accountability – yes, one could even consider it a human right. With traditional media eventually locked out of the conversation, we need to maintain the ability to revisit past events (even if they were just communicative) – if not to rectify them so at least to reflect on them.

Or is there no need to remember – and we just go with the feed? Can meaning be self-organized – without scarcity, without historians, without interpreters? And are we producing any meaning at all, or is true what the Boston Globe pointed out: Just as technology is giving us the ability to amplify every word we utter we have nothing really meaningful to say? I guess none of these questions can be answered in 140 characters. Let me know what you think – but take your time.

Coup d'Etat on Twitter

Matt Webb just pointed out in his LIFT presentation that humans “take pleasure in watching things unfold.” True – even if the events are a quasi-authentic account of something that has already happened.

Coincidentally, the Spanish site Per Soitu reports about a fascinating example of “fake authenticity” and the emerging trend of using Twitter for storytelling. On February 23, 2009, exactly 28 years after about 200 soldiers and paramilitary members of the Spanish Civil Guard toppled remnants of General Franco's dictatorship, a group of Spanish Twitterers revived minute by minute the historical coup d'etat that occurred on February 23, 1981. During Franco's fascist government all cultural activities were subject to censorship, and many were plainly forbidden on various grounds (political or moral).

We’ll see more of this "instant" rewriting and reliving of history. Twitter is perfectly suited to translate historical narratives into the realm of social real-time presence. The new Hollywood?