Changing perceptions about the mobile society

This man's writing changed my life. Now he's turned his attention to changing Microsoft's perception of mobile in The Glittering Allure of the Mobile Society.

Give him half an hour and he'll change yours.

Download the white paper now.

Alan Moore is one of the key inspirations behind my book The Power of the Network, and, I'm proud to say, a very good friend.

Image courtesy

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• The glittering allure of the mobile society

My Christmas Wish List

The fabulous Dan tagged me in this little bit of fun.

If you get tagged you have to blog your Chrstmas Wish list too - and link back to the person who tagged you (me, if you're reading this - that's me :-).

But just because you aren't tagged here and now doesn't mean you can't join in; it just means you don't HAVE to!

These mid-winter thoughts also remind me the year is coming to an end. So it will soon be time to drag out my annual predictions from last year (not much time left for some of those now!) and make another wild stab for next. (image courtesy)

Always fun!

But back to my Christmas wish list. Of course at the top is health and happiness for my nearest and dearest - and for you and yours.

But beyond that, what else could Santa deliver. (appropriate on a day on which its entirely possible I may be spotted in a Santa outfit myself... More of which another time.

1. An end to silos.
The more our metadata can leak beyond them the more we can bring value to one another. Maybe I want one big silo everyone can swhirl around in. Less structured database, more primordial soup.
I happen to believe it would go a long way towards us understanding each other and caring about eachother. Which would help with my next little request.

2 Peace.
Peace has a great chance when it's powered by the flattening of inequalities. Inequalities are the result of exploitation. Exploitation is a good deal harder when we are all publishers, advertisers' marketers and ultimately producers. It's tough to exploit people in the world of the eighth mass media.

3. One more node to share my network, doubling the value for all of us.

4. More of you to pledge to undertake some community action in the offline world. You'll be giving us examples of the generosity of spirit emerging from and required of the networked world.

5. To finally meet Jp Rangaswami in person and hand him the signed copy of The Power of The Network he flattered me so much by asking for. :-)

And I'll tag

Alan
Neville
JP
Stowe
Andrew

ThinkTank makes it easier to connect people who care

Delighted to say this post, which includes my user-is-the-destination now slidedeck and a video of me presenting it at widget web expo (London) has been short-listed for post of the month in Neil Perkins ThinkTank.

I hope you'll spare the time to go cast a vote for any of the very worthy candidates.

Neil's ThinkTank is a great way of connecting communities of purpose: People who care enough about something to make change happen.

The first step is discovering and connecting with people who share your purpose: People you didn't know you needed or needed to know.

Blogrolls (which in a disaggregated one-post-only kind of way is what ThinkTank is) perform this introduction extremely effectively.

It works as a distributed network of trust. Trust me and it's likely you'll trust my advice to check out ThinkTank.

Trust what you find there - and who knows how much value you will find in the new connections that leads you to.

You are on a journey to seek others who  have the same issues and challenges to solve.
If I can be part of that journey, great. If we join together on that journey, even better.
We are the eighth mass media.

Bonus link: Alan Moore on why brands need people and people need brands.

Hail to the Chief Node

Way back when I worked for a plc, those of us keen on adapting the business to the networked world faced a problem.

The biggest stakeholders in the business were not the staff or the bosses, they were the city institutions through whose hands ownership passed on a monthly, weekly and occasionally daily basis.

Image: tsevis via flickr /

Theirs was a mindset built on predictions based on on past performance. They understand and back incremental improvement.

"A little higher with your scissor kick please, but don't you dare try that Fosbury flop!"

So how to convince them that they needed to try a Fosbury flop?

Alan Moore and I mused on this and came up with an audacious plan to bring the then wannabe-democratic party nominee Barack Obama to address city leaders at londons mansion house on the subject of how he would become the next president of the united states through the power of the network; his use of social media to co-create an election victory with self-forming groups of purpose, sharing and passing on a message of vital use to them.

We figured that on his election (which we regarded as a given even then, yes I did tell anyone who would listen so) ought to convince any plc's shareholders that it was time to embrace the power of the network, to buy into, join with it and benefit from it.

Would have cost us a few quid

Just wanted to say thanks to Obama for saving us that time, trouble and money.

I'm sure in due course Obama will address the mansion house. More importantly he now has a platform to address the world: Hail to the Chief Node.

If any company, any organisation, any person remains unconvinced of the need to embrace the poetry and power of the network now, then I am sorry for your losses.

Check Obama's website, his Twitter account, his Youtube channel, the Facebook groups etc etc and stop wondering how he did it.

Instead ask how you can too.

Alan Moore, Tomi Ahonen and me! At Oxford University; Dec 3-4

It's not often you get the opportunity to see both of the authors of the seminal Communities Dominate Brands in the same place at the same time (Alan Moore and Tomi T Ahonen) - and even rarer that you'll find yours truly joining them in what promises to be an exciting exploration of Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media.
Not only is that the title of Tomi's latest book, it's also the title of a course at Oxford University on December 3-4 led by Tomi, Alan and myself.

Hope you'll know someone who ought to be there! Book Your Place

The following is from the University of Oxford's Continuing Education site. 

About the Course

Mobile is emerging as the 7th mass media channel, whilst legacy mass media witnesses a decline. This course presents a journey through some of the most advanced content and media services deployed on mobile phones, in the most advanced mobile telecoms countries such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Finland.

Intending to build on the content of Tomi T. Ahonen’s sixth book ‘Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media’, the course provides a unique opportunity to explore the taxonomy of the seven mass media, with an emphasis on what lessons can be learned when newer media are introduced.

The course will begin by examining the overall industry and the consumers of mobile content, before moving on to explain how to build compelling content to mobile, and exploding the myths of the limitations of supposedly too small keypads and tiny screens. The most promising early media content types: music, gaming, TV, internet, advertising and social networking will also be discussed.
All delegates will receive a free copy of Tomi T. Ahonen's book Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media.

Tomi T. Ahonen speaks to CNN - watch the video here

Who is it for?

Anyone in the current legacy media space who wants to understand new media, thus digital media executives in television, print, radio, cinema, recordings industries and advertising; all in the internet businesses who are interested in the future of the web; and those within mobile who work with media and convergence. No prior knowledge of mobile telecoms or media is necessary.

Course Presenters

• Tomi T. Ahonen MBA, Independent 3G Strategy Consultant and Author
• Alan Moore, Author and CEO of SMLXL
• David Cushman, Director of Social Media, Brando Digital

Course Content

The environment of mobile
• Mobile industry ecosystem
• Digital convergence and mobile, 5 industries
• Customer of Mobile - Gen C

The 7 Media
• Legacy mass media Print, Recordings, Cinema, Radio, TV
• Internet as first interactive media
• Communities of Purpose and Long tail

Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media
• Inherently threatening
• interactive
• Seven Unique benefits of Mobile

Clash of the Media
• Print, Recordings, Cinema vs Mobile
• Radio vs Mobile
• TV vs Mobile
• Internet vs Mobile

Mobile Services and Applications
• Evolution of handset - 8 C's
• The Six M's service creation theory
• Widgets

Community and Mobile
• Group forming theory
• Mobile social networks

Marketing and Advertising
• Social Advertising Intelligence
• and mobile advertising

Making it magical
• beyond the obvious with some case examples
• Shazam, AQA, Blyk, Tohato, Flirtomatic, Cameraphone Dictionary
• Summaries, conclusions, Q and A

Venue

Department for Continuing Education, Rewley House, Oxford
First day registration from 8.30am when course materials will be distributed.
Refreshments from 8.30am on the first day plus two 30 minute breaks during the day and a one-hour lunch break.
The course will begin at 9.00am and end at approximately 5.00pm on each day.

• Book Your Place
  

Measures of engagement - convincing the disconnected

Ever been asked for the ROI on social media by someone who actually uses it?

Just a thought, but I'm making a wild guess that those that use it understand its value in spades - and don't require the numbers. It's those that don't, who fret over each micro response - failing to see the bigger picture.

So your best strategy for getting someone to buy social media is to get them to buy-in to social media with a little DIY. I often recommend that everyone should blog, join a social network and build their own widget, for precisely that reason. Don't just witness the network. Be part of it. (image by burnblue via flickr)

Traditional media people and investors, for example, are happy to spend cash on TV ads, or interruptive online ads, or print ads. Because they get them. They understand that they are to be broadcast and consumed by audiences. And they are part of the audiences that do the consuming.

The other stuff - the clever, engaging (and we'll come back to that word in a bit) stuff is co-created within communities. And those that you want to part with their cash are not part of those communities.

Is it any surprise that Fred Wilson's outfit (Union Square Ventures) invests in socially engaging projects from twitter to disqus, del.icio.us, etsy, feedburner, tumblr and beyond. He lives in the social digital realm. He is therefore at an advantaged position to see the value. And Fred is famous for his hit rate. Maybe others could learn?

If you can't actually convince your would-be meal-ticket that they should blog, widgetise and generally get themselves connected before you pitch them, you face a tough gig. You'll have to play by their rules.

Luckily, we're finding a way to meet them halfway.

I tweeted yesterday: "Consumers value brands. Engaged people are valuable to brands".

ROI can't come down to increased traffic. Traffic is just eyeballs - it's just the page impression number. ROI has to get closer to and be more comfortable with the smaller, but more important numbers, of engagement.

For me, engagement with a community means you contribute something to it. Youtube's audience is valuable in a page impresssion sense. Youtube's contributors (particularly those forming groups, commenting and uploading video) have a much higher per capita value for youtube. (Total communities are ones in which to take part you must create part).

Enagagement should be measured by actions. All the rest is passive consumption.

Both have value of course. But what is the relative value? We feel engagement has higher value. Fred Wilson feels it well enough.

But where are the spreadsheets to convince the disconnected? SociallyMinded.co.uk colleague Matthew Brazil is working on exactly this with Radion6. I'm hoping to help him along the journey as is Dan and the organisers of Measurement Camp are striving for similar.

Matt is carefully testing the impact of using social media on actual business done for his consultancy.

That's exactly the kind of clincher the disconnected needs. And filling this hole may be just the blue touch paper required for more companies to get and use social media.

And as they do, they will become better - more fit for the networked world. More human. And that will be great for all of us - and for them..

So, if you have thoughts, any methodologies... post away!

And to try to get this rolling along and even more brains set workign on it, let's try it as a meme: Measures of Engagement.

John Carson has added his take.

I'll tag a first five to join in please: Alan, Dan, Joseph, Matt and Will

Best Practice in Social Media? Best practice being human

The estimable Neil Perkin just tagged me as part of a 'Best Practice in Social Media' meme.
Trouble is Neil has said much of what I would have.

Actually, that's not a problem - it's a great thing that so many of us are converging around similar conclusions: Seth Godin, David Armano, Mark Earls, Jackie Danicki, Alan Moore, Euan Semple and seminally Doc Searls and the rest of the Cluetrain gang, to name but a few...

So yes I'll agree with Neil, once again, that human interactions are critical. (Image by dotbenjamin via flickr)

They are exemplified in notions such as P2PR, Lean-Too Marketing, The Intention Economy (which Doc was referring to more than two years ago, so I'm a late comer on that!) and summed up as best as I know how in this slidedeck:

Adapting Brands To The Networked World

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: internet network)

If you want a case study; try this. The slidedeck above also refers to some great examples of the use of social media.

Quick guide? Well I wrote this for 'how to blog'. Seems much of it is appropriate to all social media.


Time to tag: I nominate: Neville, Christopher, David, Mark and Jonathan
Dan was already tagged by Neil! This meme was started by Mitch.

Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media: Download and share

I'm off for a little R&R. So I thought I'd leave you something chunky to download, read and digest while I'm gone.
 Tomi Ahonen (of Communities Dominate Brands) is about to publish his sixth book - Mobile As Seventh of the Mass Media.
Regular readers of this blog will know we're fans of the concept (originally worked up by Tomi and his co-author on CDB, Alan Moore).
Jonathan Macdonald and I are now pushing the idea into what the Eighth Mass Media can become.

But right now you can download a free 30-page excerpt of Mobile As Seventh of the Mass Media in advance of publication. And, should it tempt you to buy (it will, particularly if the mobile space and digital convergence fascinate you) you can pre-order here.

Tomi says: "Here is the pdf file of the book, Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media. It includes the Foreword by Pekka Ala-Pietila (CEO of Blyk and past president Nokia), the Introduction Chapter, one of the case studies (Flirtomatic) and the fourth chapter, Mobile as 7th Mass Media, as well as the index of the 18 chapters and 16 case studies.

You may freely quote from this document, and you may freely forward it. I am shortly going to launch a blogsite for the book as well, so there will be a place to collect the feedback, news and developments in the 7th Media space. If you blog about the book, I would appreciate it if you could include a mention of the futuretext.com website where potential buyers can already order the book today, before it appears on Amazon in a couple of weeks.

So that's the deal. Enjoy. (Image by Norma1 via flickr)


Pleased to say I'm co-hosting a two-day course at Oxford University on the subject (Mobile As The 7th Mass Media)  with Tomi this winter. Check here for dates when confirmed.

And I'll be presenting on The Eighth Mass Media at WidgetWeb Expo in London in October (6-7) and at Mobile Content (also in London) in November. Tomi and Jonathan Macdonald are also on the bill of the latter. Unmissable really ;-)

Now, where's that suntan lotion...

Are you socially minded?

Socially Minded is a new group blog from people with a mind for social media, living and/or working in and around Cambridge, UK.
We figure it should make for a great collection of thoughts (fed, as it is from this blog (I live in Huntingdon, Cambs), Communities Dominate Brands (Alan Moore lives in a village near Cambridge), Dan Thornton's (resident in Peterborough), Rebecca Caroe's (another Cambridgeshire village resident) and host Matt Brazil (from Cambourne).
We come from backgrounds in pr, marketing, futurology, advertising, publishing, consulting, communities, editorial and more.
Socially Minded creates an online intersection for us - a place to aggregate and share.

Hope you'll share in the discoveries.

There are, of course, many, many group blogs. What I like about this, what makes it a little different, is that it brings together people both digitally and physically.
Though we're not being entirely exclusive about the Cambridgeshire thing, it does provide a focus - a hub for further possibilities.
An interesting space to explore.

Surprise surprise! Social media is everywhere people are

Two new reports come to my attention today. They strike me as offering just the kind of ammunition you may need if you are battling to make the case for social media while those around you persist in reaching for their telephone directories...

1. How associations are using social technologies.
This is from Principled Innovation (via Chris Carfi)

2. Social Media in the enterprise (in the inc.500, actually)
Looking at its growth in corporations (via Alan Moore)

Bottom line: Social media is getting everywhere. (image by victoriapeckham via flickr)

Oddly enough, that's because people are everywhere.
And everywhere people are they will form groups, disintermediate and disrupt.

Choices? Join in their journeys or be an obstacle they will overcome.

Blogs dead? Who cares? Ubiquity of Connectivity is what matters

The eighth mass media is not about tools. I care little who says blogging is dead or who claims microblogging is the next big thing.

The eighth mass media is where:
we are the connections and the way the connections are made; beyond silos. It needs tools but it isn't made by them.

It's the direction we're headed in. The sixth and seventh medias (internet and mobile) are helping us on our way.

How we choose to connect, in which silo or with which tools, is less important than that we do connect - and, crucially, as widely and instantly as possible. Blogs are quite good for this. They are considerably less silo'd than your average (what we traditionally think of) social network. Don't write them off just yet.

More importantly Hugh refers us to one of Clay Shirky's more oft-repeated lines (my emphasis):

"Yes, again, it's all about what Clay Shirky said four years ago, in a wonderful interview he did for Gothamist:

"So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this -- the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast."

Amen to that. We all have cheap, rapid, easy ways of sharing our metadata. That's what publishing has become. Publishing for all. Advertising for all.

We can all share content. Content is the conversation starter, conversation is where ideas turn into action, action is where value is created.

Now we can all share in sharing this. We can all share ourselves.

That is what changes everything.

In some ways the eighth mass media is also the first (as J_Mac pointed out in a comment on the original post).

Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen's work on Mobile as the 7th mass media lists them thus:
1. Print
2. Recordings
3. Radio
4. Cinema
5. TV
6. Internet
7. Mobile

The eighth is where we are moving towards: We are the eighth mass media. But we were of course always the first, too.

The difference between the pre-mass information age and the post mass broadcast age is speed of transmission and scale of spread both enabled by the ubiquity of connectivity.

We need the sixth and seventh mass medias to enable the eighth.