Nice message from Cisco - I don't often repeat ads here, but this one speaks to The Power of the Network - that the internet is about connecting people. We start with our social graph (our friends, family, peers) and through them discover people who interest us, people we come to trust and through them we discover content they trust and people they trust. And the less silo'd the metadata (the more easily and readily we share) the easier it becomes to connect with our communities of purpose - groups of people who care about what we care about right now. That's what I'm thinking when I'm watching this. How about you?
Image via CrunchBaseSince I've given apple such a hard time over my iPhone. I thought I ought to consider why I persist with it.
The contract I'm locked into has much to do with it. And I'd be lieing if the coolness of it doesn't help (though this is seriously undermined in the style stakes by the black rubber condom I sheath my new one in after I dropped the last. (incidentally, perhaps apple could build in this kind of protection next time around? Or at least box new iPhones with a cheap protective case.)
My daughter told the genius at the apple store that I love my phone.
And she's right.
The iPhone and I have a stormy relationship. Moments of sheer frustration spread widely apart by good experiences.
So 10 things I love about my iPhone. There are problems with how some of these function, as I've posted and tweeted in the past, but they are powerful.
1. The community. When I have problems with my iPhone I can always find someone who has faced similar, overcome the challenge and shared the result. Apple's real ace is that their customers do their customer service ( and marketing, of course, but that's another story.)
2. No walled garden: I'm on an O2 contract but I don't experience the Internet-as-controlled-for-you-by-O2, I get the real Internet - our Internet.
3. The interface. Not so great for one-handed operation but an unmatchable experience for the eye and speed of navigation. When you aren't walking anywhere.
5. The integration with email and calendar services. Easier to set up than most.
6. Intuitive. My daughter could take pictures with the iPhone at the age of 3.
7. Solutions. Updates to make the phone ever better are built into your life. Adding content from iTunes? Want a better phone while you are at it. Ok then.
8. The app store. Easiest installation and best integration of any phone (or computer, for that matter) that I have ever experienced. Some social recommendation to your phone would ramp it higher still.
9. Control of the desktop. That the user can rearrange navigation to suit themselves is a given.
10. The wifi. Connects seemlessly whereever possible. And that's harder to achieve than often credited for.
iPhone - shattered screens and shattered illusions
I dropped my iPhone on Friday. Face down from pocket height to pavement. I don't know if the chill air made it more fragile, but the screen shattered.
It was still working. Just didn't look very nice or likely to last too long in that condition.
So I rang O2. Who didn't know who did repairs. Suggested I tried rivals Carphone Warehouse.
Actually O2 does have an exchange plan. £156 and your phone has to be sent back to apple which will, only upon receipt, supply another. But the on-the-phone 02 people didn't know that.
They could do an exchange. And they would make an appointment for me with a Genius (member of staff) at my nearest Apple Store in Cambridge.
They made it for 3:15pm that day. It takes me some time to get into traffic-choked Cambridge. Even using the park and ride.
I had hoped to be working on a consulting brief that Friday afternoon. But staying connected is key for me. Needs must.
So, making the best of it, I trundled off to Cambridge with 4-year-old daughter in tow. She likes a ride on a double-decker.
And we arrive on time. And we sit down for our appointment. And just as the centralised apple care team had told us when making the appointment, there was no replacement screen available. Only an exchange could solve this customer's problem. But.
But.
They didn't have any in stock.
Let me describe a simple logic flow here.
Has iphone got shattered screen? Yes
Is only resolution of this a replacement phone? Yes
Has apple store got that phone available to conduct said exchange? No
Should you waste an afternoon of your customer's limited time sending him into town on a Friday afternoon with zero possibility of a positive outcome? Can you guess the right answer?
Apple couldn't.
So, there's a customer service issue here. And I didn't half take up some Genius time explaining that in store.
And my annoyance at my wasted time left me asking a range of other questions I really think apple should have a stab at answering:
How much does a screen really cost? Given they break at the drop of a phone (my wife dropped her Nokia yesterday- zero damage) why aren't Apple making cheap and quick repairs available?
Why do you think mobile phones are the width they are? It's because it is the ideal fit for the average human hand (Nokia's interaction designers have known this for a long time). The iphone's extra few millimetres of width make for a great screen but an inherently more droppable design.
Yes apple, I am holding you partially to blame for all those cracked screens. We haven't all just got clumsy. I've owned mobile phones since the mid 90s - dozens. And I've never broken a single one.
And what about this pricing? £200 for a replacement. Hang on a mo. That's what I paid for my brand new one on contract in the first place. I'm still on that O2 contract.
Yet the replacement phone is made of recycled parts (in a new case). And you get no periferals, no charger, no earphones.
I'm all for secondhand recycling, cutting down on waste - but why do you get to keep all the cash saved apple?
The apple store rang me on Saturday to tell me they did now have a phone for me to go back into Cambridge to pay them £200 for (and they get to keep my cracked one - to recycle and charge someone else £200 for. WTF?).
Over a barrel, I went to get it.
Apple care were meant to have rung me at just after noon to explain how they would resolve and recompense for my wasted time.
By 3pm they hadn't called. I had to call them as I dashed for the apple store to make my 4:15pm Saturday appointment.
BTW: My PC was running the wrong time when I restored the iphone from itunes. Which meant to get the right time on my phone I had to reset the computer's time, restart it, restart itunes and then restore the iphone to factory settings and then finally restore all the content and contacts etc. To adjust the time. Ouch.
Dr Chris Thorpe has seen me present a couple times - once in New York and on another occasion in London.
We've got to know each other somewhat. In fact we've got to trust each other, so much so that he's agreed to join a network of consultants I'm bringing together who share a vision of the networked world.
"His insight into the current landscape... is fantastic and from it he provides a stunning vantage point into the networked world which is building minute by minute, connection by connection, conversation by conversation around us. For people outside of this networked world this vantage point could quite easily be daunting, even vertiginous. However through examples, quotes from other thought leaders and a very good and not overdone smattering of illustrative case studies he makes things simple. This is done without making things over simplified though, and the book can almost be seen as a way of talking someone from old marketing/advertising off the ledge they may currently be finding themselves on."
Chris has also identified some of the poetry that I've strived for in my writing from time to time.
"Themes running throughout the book often have a recurring linguistic motif... This makes the book almost like a piece of music where themes will come in and out of focus but remind you of their presence... it feels very well structured although in essence it is a collection of semi-connected essays."
It's something the thoroughly excellent Ted Shelton, also referred to when we met earlier this week.
And that's very interesting to me - and I hope to you.
But what you may find even more interesting is his discussion of the merits of reading the same words you can discover digitally, on this blog, in the context of a printed book - and how the print experience compares with the audio one (in Seth Godin's Tribe download).
Those who would replace our libraries with e-readers and kindles may do well to note.
Twitter's missing millions: How social media will make money
I have a feeling those of us old enough to use search are getting rather tired of it. Search fatigue is setting in. I've hinted as much before and more recently at /message.
Indeed my own informal research (ask the kids you know) suggests the latest generation of digital natives aren't even bothering to try it long enough to tire of it. They are skipping straight to friend recommendation. (image courtesy)
I've been doing the January thing. Searching for a holiday. What a chore that has become. Dead end after blind alley after irrelevant results. SEO without the social can do that to an Internet.
Thought: wouldn't it be good if SEO was all about an improved experience for the customer, rather than the vendor? We might be more inclined to surf the resulting SEA (search engine accuracy) with more joy in our hearts.
I digress. Search fatigue is driving us to opt for a strategy of 'good enough for me' results, by which we mean 'if it's good enough for the friend I trust, it's good enough for me'
Recent questions I've been asking of the humans Itrust on Twitter include where should I go for a holiday with guaranteed hot weather, all inclusive, safe and fun for my 4yr old with kids clubs and baby sitters. Oh and at the right credit-crunch adjusted price.
People understand what I mean by all that. And if they don't, they ask questions. People who come to know me also know what makes me happy.
We're not being lazy. We just trust our friends (our adhoc communities of purpose) more than we do search returns.
Algorithms eat your heart out.
And so to Twitter's missing millions. Everyone is asking how this phenomenon can turn all this two-way flow of conversation into cash.
And most struggle to see an answer. And I think that's because it's like looking into the fourth dimension from a world of just three.
We want to apply business models we know - ad models, banners, affiliates etc. to a networked world we are glimpsing in the corner of our eyes - a blur of a ghost we think we may have seen.
But before google gave us adsense few would have predicted such a brilliant fit with the third dimension of the digitally disaggregated world. It gave us ads that served as content by virtue of their potential to be so relevant to the content they were served against.
That was something that couldn't be done in the two dimensions of print - and couldn't be conceived of from those thinking in those two dimensions.
Twitter - and the other peer-to-peer networks which make up social media are different from the broadcast style websites which went before them. It requires a different model again to monetise.
There IS money being made in Twitter, via conversational p2p marketing. We're all buying stuff on the recommendation of those who make up our social graphs - of our ad hoccommunities of purpose.
The vast majority is done with zero involvement by the brands getting the benefit. And zero involvement by Twitter.
So how will Twitter stake a claim on those missing millions?
What I do know is there IS a key to unlocking this - trouble is, not only do we not know where we left it, we don't even know what it looks like.
The adsense moment for social media will come. My guess is it'll involve a combination of conversational marketing, co-creation webs and ways of enabling production by communities of purpose.
Social media's monetisation will be less from the traditional broadcast model (cash spent to persuade us to buy the mass produced) and more from the networked world it inhabits - a model enabling a crowd-sourcing response to deliver against global, real-time niche needs.
The fourth dimension in this case is not just time, it is right now, real-time - and the adhoc communities of purpose who act in it.
Someone has to come up with a list of blogs which deal with convergence of marketing/advertising/pr/editorial/production.... er the power of the network and it's impact. Ok, that may be something of a niche...
There's a lot of doom and gloom among the financial soothsayers. Purpose-less business are being put to the sword. My (Huntingdon, Cambs) High St Woolworths went last week. Which as far as I can think means the only place left where you could buy a cd on Huntingdon High St is WHSmiths.
And you have to fear for the likes of Smiths in the current climate. Like woolies, it lacks a purpose. For me its become a Christmas shop. I visit it once a year. If smiths stopped selling CDs there would be no where left on the High St to sell them.
And this illustrates the reality and illusion of fear of 2009: Music is being enjoyed as much, if not more than ever. It isn't music that's at risk in a recession, it is a business model - one which packages up, stacks on racks and locks out co-creation.
The illusion is that all is at risk. The reality is that business models which don't fit the networked world are at risk. (image courtesy)
I spent New Years Eve playing Guitar Hero with friends - a glimpse of how new value gets created in a supply web (the artists get paid for their music, and the coders and game designers and interaction designers etc get paid for their contributions.
£300 of console. £175 of game and equipment. Wild guess: more than you've spent on CDs or downloads in the last year?
And way more fun.
People playing together co-creating an outcome they want. It's what multi-player gaming has always been about.
It's what the business models that need have no fear of 2009 must also be about.
Those that have purpose, those that engage with the power of the network; 2009 - and the future - welcomes them.
Those that persist with the broadcast mindset, with command and control, with centre over edge, those do face a tough 2009 - and no future.
As Christmas 2008 fades into memory, like Scrooge, while there's life, there's still time to change. May the ghosts of Woolworths and Zavvi do the trick.
Best not wait for the ghost of Christmas-Yet-To-Come to show your business to its grave.
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