Advisory Board for The Conversation Group

Today The Conversation Group is announcing the formation of our advisory board. We have sought to bring together a diverse set of practitioners, approaching the participatory Internet from a variety of perspectives. Our goal is to work with these individuals on two important missions -- first, we will rely on their advice and direction as we develop The Conversation Group into a global class company. Secondly we will work with this group to develop analysis, critique, and insights into the evolving role of the Internet in business, with a particular focus on conversational and participatory technologies and trends. As many of these people have written in their own work, the Internet is a change agent for the relationship between individuals and organizations -- we hope to work collectively with this group to shed light on the changes underway, and the changes to come.

Founding members of The Conversation Group advisory board:

(alphabetically)
Chris Brogan, Community Developer at pulvermedia, cofounder PodCamp
Shel Holtz, principal of Holtz Communication + Technology
Todd Parsons, founder Buzzlogic
Mitch Ratcliffe, founder Internet/Media Strategies Inc.
David Thorpe, Senior Partner and Global Director of Innovation, Ogilvy Worldwide
Deb Schultz, independent consultant on social media & marketing strategy
Doc Searls, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto
David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto

The Conversation Group

PR Week broke the news this morning, there is a new kid on the block -- The Conversation Group has officially formed, out of work that Peter Hirshberg and I started earlier this year at Technorati.

Here is our official press release: http://www.theconversationgroup.com/pr1.html

Giovanni Rodriguez of HububPR, Chris Heuer of the Social Media Club and Stephanie Agresta, a nationally recognized leader on affiliate marketing join me as founding partners. Peter Hirshberg of Technorati and Mark Adams, co-founder of the global technology PR firm Text100 join our board of directors.

We also have an incredible advisory board and an amazing list of other folks involved in this effort -- more announcements to come. And of course there is our growing list of clients.

More to come in the days ahead -- with thoughts on what this all means for the Internet, for marketers, and for all of us involved in global markets as buyers, sellers, and observers!

Conversational Media Mis-step: Apple?

Apple is often held up as a shining example of a company that really understands the power of conversation -- how to engage with the "faithful" (as Apple fans are sometimes called), how to listen, how to respond positively to criticism... But Apple (and especially CEO Steve Jobs) has a penchant for trying to control that conversation.

In articles like this one today Apple is being accused of purging negative comments about their $200 price cut on the iPhone. The article claims that

this morning, a check of those forums themselves (negative comments on Apple's site) reveals not only are those topics from the screenshot indeed missing, but at least one of their creators' usernames has been purged from the forum's rolls.

Train from NYC to DC

This morning I took Amtrak's Accela Express from New York's Penn Station to Washington D.C. This afternoon I will be taking it back again. Bottom line: it's as if your flight was 3 hours of turbulence, ugh.

I investigated the train option when I discovered that it is cheaper to fly to Lisbon from New York than to D.C. Really. I am not making this up. The front page of the US Airways website is promoting a roundtrip airfare to Lisbon for less than $600. The roundtrip airfare on the "shuttle" to Washington is almost $700.

So I was pleased that the train was around half that round trip. And I figured that I would be able to work on the train for three hours since, of course they must have WiFi by now. And if I compare the time it takes each -- even though the flight is short, getting to the airport early and getting through security and all that means that it would take just as much time to fly (Ok maybe a bit less, but the train time would be 100% productive time).

The first dissapointment -- no WiFi. Gosh, I even have WiFi on the bus in San Francisco. What is wrong with people out here? Is Verizon paying Amtrak to keep WiFi off the train so that they can sell more EV-DO cards?

But the biggest dissapointment -- the ridiculous bumpy ride. Really -- like sitting on a plane with bad turbulence and bouncing for 3 hours. Why do people put up with this? Next time? Maybe I'll drive. Or buy my shuttle ticket far enough in advance to qualify for a reasonably priced ticket. But not the train. I can't even stand the thought of taking it back to NYC this afternoon.

Boarding Virgin America

Boarding Virgin America
Originally uploaded by Ted Shelton

Today I flew on Virgin America from SFO to JFK. Everyone I mentioned this trip to was excited -- Virgin seems to have some great press out there. "I hear the service is fantastic" people said. Well, let me tell you something. Its just an airplane. Sure, when you get on it is purple and blue and the soundtrack is playing a dance club beat... but once it takes off it still is just an airplane. It really doesn't have anything over Jet Blue.

A New Era at Technorati

I have spent a lot of time in the San Francisco offices of Technorati over the past 8 months. As a result I have had an opportunity to observe this company from a unique perspective -- on the one hand, having sold them my company (The Personal Bee), I had a stake in what was happening and had a chance to be involved in conversations about the future of the company and I had the chance to get to know Dave and his team. I am impressed with the group's ability to make hard decisions about the best way to move forward in revenue, growth opportunities, and how to get the team focused on execution.

For the past couple of months I've been working with Peter Hirshberg and his team at Technorati on the opportunities in conversational marketing and I'm exciteD -- there is a lot of momentum, they remain a great brand and at the end of the day their ability to adapt and make tough decisons is a mature thing to see from a start up. I expect great things from Technorati in the near future; change is never easy, but its often necessary to keeps growth companies vibrant.

AT&T: Sick and wrong

I know other people have written about this but I just need to vent -- 27 PAGES?! WTF!? Why do I need a bill from you, AT&T, that has 27 pages of "data transfer cost $0.00" ?! Who benefits from this? Are you guys on crack? I wouldn't be an AT&T customer except that it was the only way to get an iPhone (thanks Apple). And as soon as it is possible to have an iPhone and STOP being an AT&T customer I will.

By the way, $0.35 per minute for overage minutes and a 1 minute minimum for a call that doesn't even connect us usurious.

I can't wait to DUMP AT&T

Linkedin vs. Facebook

About a month ago Jeff Pulver wrote a blog post on why he was ditching Facebook in favor of Facebook. Then to add insult to injury he wrote "viewpoint" for Businessweek on the topic, Confessions of a LinkedIn Dropout. Having known Reid and LinkedIn for a very long time (I was an early beta tester, before the site was live) my investment in LinkedIn is considerable. I have invested in using the tool as a professional network (over 350 contacts) and as a resume (http://www.linkedin.com/in/tshelton) and used it successfully to recruit employees, do background checks, and stay in touch with old colleagues. On the facebook side, I had a login with no profile - just created as a holding place.

But at the same time that Jeff was writing his post and article, I was watching an interesting thing happen. While it had taken years of deliberate active effort to build my Linkedin network to 350 people, within 2 months my Facebook network grew to 60 people and is still growing - organically with no effort on my part. And as it has grown, I have gained significant benefits from being in closer touch with these 60 people -- I am finding out about events, interesting articles, and gaining insights into my friends lives.

In short, I am being drawn into Facebook and can also see a day when I might abandon LinkedIn. How did this happen? What did LinkedIn do wrong? And will Reid's recently announced attempt to launch his own open platform for applications on LinkedIn help save the company?

I believe that crux of the problem lies in the way each company looks at "first circle" uses (as Reid might call them). In LinkedIn terminology, you have different kinds of things that you would do with people depending upon whether you know them directly (first circle) or whether they are a friend of a friend (n circles). To me, this distinction is the primary strategic difference between these two social networks. Where LinkedIn focuses on things you might do to connect to people n circles away from you, Facebook is focused on first circle uses -- how do you stay connected with the people you already know.

For awhile now I have thought that this would mean that the two tools would have distinct uses and that I would continue to use both. But I am realizing that first circle uses absolutely trump n circle uses in a tool like this, and I think the reason may hold a lesson for all social media applications.

Because Facebook is alerting me now multiple times a day with interesting items from my friends, I am spending more and more time adding content to it myself, resulting in a positive network effect. As each of the people get more engaged, more value is created for all of the participants and each participant is encouraged to get more engaged. LinkedIn, by contrast, is a cold and distant planet that I might visit once in awhile if I have a very specific objective in mind.

So while LinkedIn becomes a more and more core part of my online existence, LinkedIn becomes a more and more peripheral part. I don't have to write a blog post and an article for Businessweek about abandoning LinkedIn in favor of Facebook - it is just happening without my even noticing.

It is definitely not too late for LinkedIn. There is still time to correct the problem. But the place to focus on product development is the daily experience with my first circle, not the application platform. While the open API will eventually be useful, developers will only write applications for a platform that people use. That problem must be solved first.

The Future of Publishing

Long time friend Sean Wolfe has launched Red Herring TV (http://www.redherring.tv) and is, IMHO, showing the way for print publishers to take their brand value and make it relevant and exciting for web consumers. Sean's interviews with leading VCs for example, make great viewing and MUST viewing for anyone planning on pitching their business plans to these leading folks. Take this example, Kef Kasdin of Battelle Ventures -- I love Sean's opening question "...what do you think, broken or not?" with respect to the early stage VC model.

Check it out!

Apple: Best Customer Service Ever

The USB power adapter from my iPhone was acting flakey -- sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't. Seemed to me to be a short. So I went to the Apple store and told them of my problem. They said, "normally we'd like you to go to the Genius bar so that they can confirm your problem, but the line is really long today so lets just swap it out for you." Wow. In 5 minutes I was out of there with a new adapter. THANK YOU APPLE. Imagine that happening at an AT&T store! Hah! Tell me again why you partnered with them? Oh, that's right. Because King George the Decider and his government decided to give AT&T a monopoly. Sigh. Oh well, soon everything will work over WiFi, right Apple? ;-)

With the Many

Great article from about 7 months ago by my friend and colleague Giovanni Rodriguez on social media and its adoption by larger companies -- read more on his blog. Giovanni explains his use of the word "peer" in framing the discussion about why some social media projects are succeeding. Having spent the last few months trying to explain this concept to companies, advertising agencies, and PR firms, Giovanni's clear thinking on the subject is very welcome. I have been boiling down a similar set of thoughts to the following equation:

Public Relations has been about communication WITH the FEW

Advertising has been about communication TO the MANY

Social media demands communication WITH the MANY

Giovanni's "peer" is a deeper look at this challenge and I encourage you to read both his shorter blog post and the longer version on the Journal of New Communications Research, here.

Good iPhone Wishlist

As the post says, I absolutely love my iPhone... But this is a good list of wishes for the next update. Some of them are unlikely -- the ring tone issue is apparently a dispute about whether AT&T is going to make money on selling us the right to have our songs as ring tones... but all of these should be on Apple's list for the next rev:

http://www.willotoons.com/2007/07/wishlist-for-iphone.php

It's Not Fair

"It's Not Fair." That seems to be the universal reaction. At least amongst those that don't have one. "I just got my new phone and I loved it. Until you showed me that iPhone. Go away, I don't want to see you again." That is what the lady with the brand new top of the line Nokia said. "What are all the problems?" asked the man hoping I would tell him something reassuring about hiw purchase of a new Samsung.

But I had to tell them the truth, that Apple really has done it right. The next group of people saying "it's not fair" will be the other phone manufacturers who don't get what is at the heart of this new device -- that it is about Apple being a USER EXPERIENCE company. Not a computer company. Not a consumer electronics company. Not an entertainment company.

While other mobile device manufacturers think about APIs for data integration, Apple is already moving the cheese and creating an incredible integrated experience.

I called my iPhone "Trinity" -- its about a phone, Internet access, and a media experience. And it does all three beautifully.

Naysayers May Now Stop Saying Nay

The iPhone. OK you are tired of the news. So I won't bore you with my first experiences. I'll just observe that it truly is wonderful. Apple has a huge hit. They really have redefined the cell phone experience. Other phone manufacturers should really think this through and not discount the impact that Apple will have in this segment.

My two complaints so far -- AT&T is stupid. But then again, they all are. It was fascinating watching how much Apple has done to make the integration of the AT&T part of the experience work in a smooth Apple way. But Apple can't cover for everything. So when I happened to type in my street address with the full word "Avenue," AT&T's computers responded that the didn't recognize the address but did have a similar one... it was my address but with the abbreviation AVE. This strikes me as the kind of user experience that Steve Jobs would never allow in an Apple product. It just screams "we are stupid!"

Second complaint is that I can't download software. I can't switch from the horrible Safari to the much better Firefox (or Opera or). I can't add in Adobe Flash (why did Apple leave it off the device!? it is part of the web stack!). I can't load my favorite apps...

But there are so many surprises lurking inside this device. There are fundamental changes in the way you think about your phone when it synchronizes seamlessly with your contacts, email, photos, videos, music, calendar... By the way I think it works incredibly well with the Mac but I have no idea how well it works with Windows.

The Internet as Creativity Driver

In the April issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, a group of authors published a paper (link to PDF) with some interesting scientific evidence supporting what a lot of us have known anecdotally -- as a city grows, its creative output also grows at a faster and faster rate. Or as Deborah Byrd writes in her EarthSky blog:

They found that the creative output of cities grows in a way that is superlinear, meaning as the city grew its creative output grew faster and faster.

Deborah also points to a longer popular article on the topic at physorg.com.

I started thinking about the dynamics underlying the increased creative output from people living in cities and how they might apply to understanding the Internet. In cities communications time is reduced, practitioners in like fields can more easily find each other and collaborate, and there is a regular introduction of diverse thinking into city dwellers activities. The Internet is even more effective at shortening communications and helping connect like minds. But does it provide the serendipitous introduction and exposure to new ideas and different ways of thinking? Or maybe another way to ask this is, how can our use of the Internet replicate the best aspects of living in cities so that it can be a super-enhancer of this "city-effect" on creativity?

Wharton West Bandwidth

wharton bandwidth
Originally uploaded by Ted Shelton

Here I am at Supernova2007, along with hundreds of other highly connected colleagues, all beating on the Wharton West network as hard as we can... And it is crumbling under the load. Maybe it isn't this bad when students are here trying to learn, but Internet Frog (http://www.internetfrog.com/mypc/speedtest/) tells me that network reliability is down to 19% and bandwidth... sucks. Hopefully Wharton West will get this problem fixed before Supernova2008!

A Second Life For All

I was privileged to be interviewed yesterday by Annette Moser-Wellman for a project she is doing for Northwestern University’s Media Management Center on innovation. She was very kind to put up with my rambling thoughts for an hour - I bet the audio is edited down to about 10 minutes! How much more efficient would I be if I could self edit down to the interesting 10 minutes ;-) But here I am rambling again and what I really wanted to write about this morning is Second Life.

One of the things that Annette asked me about was how to lead an organization to be innovative. In answering this question I observed that there are people that are more likely to be innovative and people that are less likely to be innovative -- so you can't just lead any given group of people to be innovative. As an example of this I went on a tangent (yes, too many tangents is why my 10 minutes took 60+ minutes...). The tangent was about how people deal with innovation. I mangled a quote from Douglas Adams which with the help of Google I can now bring you from the Douglas Adams website:

1) everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Then I went on a further tangent to reminisce about how I would argue with people when the fax machine first appeared in general business circles (only 30 years ago) about whether or not every business would ultimately have a fax machine. And then in the early 1990s I tried to convince people that eventually everyone would have an email address on their business cards ("just like we now have fax numbers"). And websites, and etc. At each step of the way, there were a set of people that said "no way, don't need 'em" -- my argument was that a sense of curiosity and imagination about the future is a key component to innovative people and some people have that and some people don't. You might be more likely to find this characteristic in younger people (Douglas Adams' point) although some young people are close minded and some older people are open minded.

This tangent of course led me to another tangent -- what is the example of something now that most of the business community rejects but, like fax machines and email addresses and websites, will be an accepted part of our business environment in 5-10 years? The example I came up with was virtual worlds, like Second Life.

Yep, a whole bunch of you out there are saying, huh? Second Life? That "game" thing? Yes, Second Life or something that looks like it is going to be an important part of your business life in the future. Don't believe me? I just saw my first business card two weeks ago with a second life ID on it. That made me start thinking about why this is going to become an important business tool. That made me go start spending time "in world" as the locals say, trying to understand what it is today and what it is going to become in the future.

Here is a really simple formula -- there are mediums to which people willingly give their attention. TV, Radio, the Internet, now Second Life. Anywhere people are willing to give their attention is a place that marketers will want to be with their marketing messages. Where marketers go, a whole service chain will follow. And when all of these parts of the service chain get involved, new market opportunities are created that go well beyond the initial impulse to participate in the medium.

Second Life creates a virtual space that facilitates interactions between physically distributed teams and introduces a set of tools that encourage innovation, creativity, and engaged collaboration. Already there are classes, press conferences, parties, financial transactions and a lot of entertainment (from G to XXX rated) going on all over the virtual space of Second Life. Just like in your first life, there are different times and places for different kinds of activities.

Go ahead, pooh-pooh the idea that you will be doing business in a virtual world. After all, its against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilization.

Engagement: Does it Matter?

engagement
Originally uploaded by Ted Shelton

I have been thinking about the question of if and when companies and brands should engage in this thing we call "social media" and it occurred to me to apply that old favorite, Pascal's Wager, to this question.
You might remember that guy Pascal from a college philosophy course. He thought to apply logic to the question of whether or not to live as if God existed... to quote the Wikipedia article:



We are faced with the following possibilities:

1. You live as though God exists.


• If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.


• If God does not exist, your loss is nothing.



2. You do not live as though God exists.


• If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.


• If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

So I wondered whether one could use this same logical system to address the question of whether or not a brand should engage (authentically!) with their audiences using social media. Here is the revised synopsis:

In his Wager, Pascal provides an analytical process for a person to evaluate options in regarding belief in God. This is often misinterpreted as simply believing in God or not. As Pascal sets it out, the options are two: live as if God exists, or do not live as if God exists. There is no third possibility.

Therefore, we are faced with the following possibilities:

1. You join in the conversation authentically.


• If engagement matters, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.


• If engagement does not matter, your loss is nothing.



2. You fail to join in the conversation or do so in-authentically.


• If engagement matters, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.


• If engagement does not matter, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

I kind of liked leaving in the going to heaven or hell as the metaphorical equivalent of what happens when a brand screws this up. But here is the serious question:

Take all of the examples of social media engagement (or lack) and see if they fit into this grid? Can you find an example of a company that engaged authentically but still went to hell?

I can certainly come up with examples of the opposite -- companies that have engaged authentically and reaped the rewards. And companies that have not engaged or have engaged in-authentically going to hell.

On this last point, Chris Heuer (a friend and someone I am working on a project with) and I were just discussing one such in-authentic participant which he just posted about on his Social Media Club blog -- Ragan. Will they "go to hell" for this?

I believe that the most powerful thing about this new "social media" is that the truth eventually comes out and the people that care enough (the ones who matter) learn the truth.

There is an axiom in the news business that the lie is on page one while the correction lands on page 23. That happens because mainstream news has, as a default, a short attention span. But the blogosphere has a very long attention span.

If you know of an example that shows my "pascal's wager" to be wrong -- especially in that upper quadrant, please let me know.

Whistle-Blowing Teen

OK, so perhaps the teen that filmed this video of his high school english teacher (MongZilla) didn't do it with the intention of being a whistle-blower. But the story that the Seattle PI is reporting misses the really interesting point here.

As a parent, I watched this video and thought, if my child was ever in this person's classroom I would be raising hell with the school. This person shouldn't be teaching. How is it that this person has apparently been behaving like this in the classroom for years and hasn't been terminated?

We should give the kids some credit for expressing their frustration that their education is being compromised because the system can't give them qualified teachers.

Singularity Part 2

This is a follow up post to the one I made on Tuesday about Vernor Vinge's 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity." In part one I lead with a quotation from the essay. Here it is again:

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

In part one I offered some thoughts on the first sentence of this quotation -- the time horizon for the development of superhuman intelligence. In this second part I will discuss the second sentence.

Vinge is wrong.

The human era has already ended.

And this points out an interesting fact about Singularities as a phenomenon. When you are in the midst of one, you can only see a little ahead and a little behind. So you don't really notice the gradual change underway. Only in hindsight can you look back and see that something fundamental changed at some point which made everything that came afterwards different.

Why do I say that the human era has already ended? Over the 40 years of my lifetime, humanity has developed a symbiotic relationship with computers -- a relationship which has now become a dependency. Over the 100 years before that we developed a dependency on industrialization and electricity, but this is fundamentally different. Imagine for a moment what would happen to our civilization if we were, for some reason, no longer able to use computers. Would the human race come to an end? No. Would hundreds of millions of people around the world perish? Almost certainly.

But leaving aside the obvious dependencies on computers for agriculture, transportation, safety and the like. And focus on one specific category of human endeavor, what economists like to call the "knowledge worker." The most productive category of our citizenry, the category that makes all of the advances in the rest of our society possible, is the knowledge worker. Scientist, engineer, designer, analyst, adviser... All of these people are dependent upon computers to do their jobs.

The next amazing medical breakthrough, the next computer chip, the next bridge or political campaign -- all of these things will be possible because a human being and a computer are working together. When you think about "superhuman intelligence" don't leave the human out of the equation. The very first superhuman intelligences are already here amongst us -- they are us, every time we use a computer to do something that, as a human, we couldn't have done on our own.

What is the most populous city on the planet? Mumbai, with over 13 million people. Am I so smart that I know this? No. Google told me about Wikipedia which has a page listing the most populous cities in the world.

Trying to understand Colony Collapse Disorder in which huge numbers of bees are dying? Scientists are using computerized DNA sequencing to uncover the reasons.

Designing a complex new product? You are probably using one of the many specialized Computer Aided Design software packages to make it possible.

Reading this post? Even if it is on paper, someone needed a computer to access it and print it out for you.

Our symbiotic relationship with computers has already made it possible for our generation to accomplish things that no previous human being could have done. We are already living in an age of "superhuman intelligence" -- one that will continue to accelerate as these computers continue to become more powerful and as they become more integrated into everything that we do.