Conversationware

As yet another social network buzz is starting to die down…..

A recap on ‘what’s happened so far’

Various forms of electronic communication have been invented.

The key aspect to all of them. Asynchronous.

We only have one piece of attention to give at any one moment, and so, asynchronous technology gives us massive productivity benefits - conversations can be carried out over a period, whilst doing other things.

This is true of

• Email,
• IM,
• Blogs,
• Wikis,
• Social networks 

Electronic conversations are also much more powerful because they’re written down, - searchable, discoverable, interactive whilst being less sensitive to time, (timefree)

BUT - the crucial piece is that none of this software truly yet delivers a full conversation electronically.

For all of the marketing sector telling us that they are having conversations with their audience with their blogs - the reality feels more like they are making a ‘presentation’.

A blog is like a presentation in that someone makes their point, and the audience can comment or ask questions afterwards and then leave the building.

This isn’t exactly an example of a roundtable asynchronous timefree conversation is it? I make a comment and then have to remember to come back to see the response, or other people’s questions?

It’s just not intuitive - where is the user interface for our conversations? All over the place on other people’s blogs, that’s where.

Conversations shouldn’t be kept by just one of the contributing parties, and marketers would probably like to continue the conversation with people even after they’ve left the building.

Solve that one and then we’ll enable it with unified communications.

Similar themes

There is a useful ‘zeitgeist’ post by hugh macleod over on his blog, gapingvoid. Echo’s are here at Stowe Boyd’s blog, and I have to agree with both Stowe and Hugh, running a blog is a powerful learning and communicative experience, not to be undersold.

However, it is clear from the comments on the gapingvoid that other people are also still looking for other tools to keep the conversation going, and I think I’m agreeing that there is still some stuff missing (as well as being all over the place).

It feels like it wouldn’t take much to link blogs, comments and conversations, and I’m wondering whether this linked article here at gigaom is alluding to something. Although it talks about identity and Wordpress, the phrases “inside out social network”, and “the social graph” do resonate.

It’s too grand a title, and too big a conversation. But things ARE changing on the Interweb.

Blogging, multimedia presentation, Google Adwords, RSS - this is the web marketing future. This company called Pepperjam does several things that most other companies don’t find natural.

They walk the talk.

The founders video on the front page tell you so much more than just the content - its the passion, the attitude and its the dogs doo-dahs.

Yes it’s a little in your face, and Brits might find this a little unsettling but even they’ll (we’ll) get the hang of it sooner or later.

 The web isn’t new, but Pence Per Click Management is.

PepperJam’s growth rate of over 450% last year, and 550% this year shows that.

But I’m betting this growth isn’t just the service they give their clients, but that they live their dream in public.

‘Online Marketing’ as it is quaintly called, is probably the least expensive communication on a ‘one to many basis’ available.

So, does your business really need more of a shopfront, or perhaps a press marketing campaign with a freephone number and a new callcentre, or maybe ’Online Marketing’ is a better place to put your budget. It could be the best return for your money…

Matt Ambrose tells it best, as usual, around a classic tale of a global micro-brand

It seems that if you tell your company story well enough, people could literally buy into it, and help make the story even better, joining the club.

What’s a better conversation over the evening meal?

a. I popped into town to buy a shirt today from Marks and Spencers - or,

b. I bought my shirt from a chap in England. He flys all over the world once a quarter to measure us up and the delivery is within a week or two. It’s great service, and now he keeps my measurements, it saves so much time when I need a new one. Yes of course, you can find him on.. http://englishcut.com/ There’s loads of pictures of the tailoring process and what he’s up to, quite interesting really.

You could never get that word of mouth from a telesales campaign could you, especially as they always seem to interrupt your dinner.

Being in business is fast becoming a celebrity shoot out.

Isn’t buying an iPod very similar to calling a number and voting for our favourite singer, dancer, aspiring business person, whatever? ….It’s a contract, we buy, and Steve Jobs promises to come back next week to entertain and delight us with his designs and deliver us a unique experience.

I’m tempted to compare the iPhone purchase to a tactical vote - because ’the public’ likes the look of the current vote leaders even less. Looking at it like that, then it’s no suprise people will pay more ($550) to keep their favourite in the game. It’s just the equivalent to phoning in twice.

On some mass level, the public longs to buy into and be a part of the corporate celebrity story, if only to give it more legs (cue a kate moss clothing joke), and give us the next chapter in the soap that is corporate stardom.

(more…)

Someone I was speaking to recently said that companies don’t need blogs if they’re using message boards - and it wasn’t the first time I’d heard that.

Instinctively though, I felt there was a difference in terms of how companies could engage (have conversations) with a wide audience - with current blog technology in the early stages at least.

Having a scout around my favourite ‘principles of blogging’ sites, I found Tom Chandler doing his usual excellent job of articulating just why blogs are better, with other links around the subject.

It’s interesting that companies worry about blogging, and yet allow a ‘free for all’ within their message boards. Perhaps its just that anything new = automatically bad until proven otherwise.

Another favourite blogging (copywriting) site The Copywriters Crucible pointed out this youtube video, with poor sound, but very ‘new-media’ funny.

I wanted to experiment with including a You Tube video in a post, so here it is. The one I chose to use as an example, so you may have already seen it, is a backgrounder for Web 2.0 technology. Reviews were mixed :-), but it’s relevant at least.

This is thanks to a plugin for wordpress found here. It was the plugin that I most easily understood - which is as good a reason as any to recommend it.

All I need to do now, is work out how to create and post demo videos to you tube.

In a book called the tipping point, it is argued that sudden explosion of a social or business trend can be viewed in the same light as a disease epidemic might be.

An example in the book is sales of hush puppies going from 80,000 a year to zillions a year through a very small number of influential people making a small noise in the right place.

A couple of months ago I saved myself £300 in repairing a TV. It was out of warranty but googled and spotted 20 other users on a forum with the same problem. We’d all bought a TV in the exactly the same month, and whereas 10,000 other buyers never had a problem, we all did.

Obviously a batch issue - when I sent them the link to the forum Curry’s rolled immediately offered a free fix.

Now although this wouldn’t have happened two years ago. When the engineer turned up, he’d apparently billed lots of other people £300, so not everyone has got the hang of the internet as a consumer tool yet.

Corporate blogging is still very small in nature, probably? nowhere near even 5%, but in general, company behaviour is now seen to be taking account of internet happenings. Nowhere is this better described than in this article

Following the tipping point theory, there are some very violent increases or decreases in market share coming in the not too distant future.

For honest and hard working companies, karma is on it’s way, but help it along a little by being open about how honest and hardworking you are. Blogging is good for your search rankings and by getting there quickly, it will give you credibility before competitors.