Social Media and Crises like Japan – Is the web a private or a public matter?

March 12, 2011 at 3:11 pm · Filed under Barriers, Business Model, Media, Skype, Social Media

I was at a Media conference last week. A Journalism Prof dissed Twitter all night long. How could anyone cover a story in 140 characters? In the last 2 months in Canada we have had a regulatory fight – in essence the web is being seen as another entertainment channel where the most important part of the equation is how much we should all pay for watching movies.

I think that this idea – that the social web is trivial and just about fun is wrong and dangerous. I think that its true importance has to be put on the table politically.

Japan nails this issue for me.

Once again, as a huge story breaks, many of us have found that Social Media has given us a better sense of the event than the traditional news POV.

Big news just cannot get at the scope of such an event or touch its immediacy.

Some like the BBC and Al Jazeera are finding a good way of covering such a story – which is to act as an aggregator. They make it easy – you got their their site – I use Livestation as a portal.

Some like NPR are finding out that their one man news platform – Andy Carvin – who is personally aggregating offers a good view as well. Andy and his readers tend to use Tweetdeck

So what are the lessons for the rest of us?

1. If you are in media – curating and aggregating is the way that breaking news will be covered. So what does that imply? It implies a new model for news. At the centre aggregation and then context setting. For you no longer have to do a 90 second view of an event. You can cover the event 24/7 as see what pattern emerges – while you do this – as the pattern becomes visible – you add context. We can start to get out of the sound bite perspective. This will also cost you a lot less to do and improve your coverage. This works on all scales. If you were my local paper or my local CBC station on tiny PEI – population 140,000 – you could offer a massive range of stories – from ALL the sport every game on the Island – to a breaking weather event this way. Maybe for less money than the current system that can only cover 20 stories a day. The same is true for world news as we are finding out now. News will get better and better the more we go down this road. We will all be more informed and we will indeed all become part of the story. I was riveted by a Skype interview from the BBC in London with a woman stuck in her apartment in Tokyo – what was going on was represented in the most human and direct way. I was there. Old news is trivial when compared with this!
2. If you are in the crisis business – In spite of all the mess in Japan now – imagine how much harder the rescue efforts would be without social media? With good aggregation and intelligent filters it will be possible to get a handle on what is going on in a much better way. Again this works at all scales. Back to my little place PEI. We have been having very bad weather and road conditions recently. The mainstream media are starting to do a good job at aggregating the reports of the citizens. The result is that we all know so much more and in real time. We will all get through bad times better. I bet that in the years to come much of the story will be about how social media saved many lives.
3. If you are in a crisis - Imagine being in a badly hit place in Japan and not having a working cell phone versus having one – Could be life and death for you. Imagine if you are at your office in Tokyo and your family are on the coast. How are you going to find out if they are OK? I recall in the early days of Social Media looking for my lost daughter among the pictures of the dead in Thailand – she was OK thank God! so look ahead and think about how your access to the web is governed now. Will many people be excluded because they cannot afford to pay? Will the system be too vulnerable to survive a big problem? Is the system only about the needs of the IP’s or is there a larger context here?
4. If you have a service or a product to sell - How can you not use this avenue for listening and responding. Gone are the days where you could wait for formal research. Gone are the days when you asked the questions. Now you listen and you see the patterns. Tools like Darwin help a lot here. Will you be held hostage too by the IPs? Will the IP’s be able to levy any kind of tax they want on your business? Can they exclude you?

The biggest lesson then for me is that the web and social media are not just toys where I watch movies, hear songs or play games. The web and social media is now the most important part of any society’s social infrastructure.

This implies that it cannot be regulated as merely another entertainment channel. It has profound public value that has to be put first.

Societies that have a healthy and widely used and easily accessed web and social media system – will be better informed and more resilient in the shocks that are inevitable in our future.

The private interests of all have to be subsumed to the public good.

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If you do not have mass social media as your main connection to your market – you are not only wrong but stupid

November 28, 2010 at 12:20 pm · Filed under Adoption, Andy Carvin, Apple, Barriers, Columbus, Content, NPR, New Realities, Public Media, Relationships, Social Media, iTunes

Most organizations know that the web is important today – even the most dinosauric. But for most, the web is an up and coming “channel” and most still don’t have a clue about social media – they do it because they have to and they do it without much understanding about how it works and how different it is from their old “Normal”.

The final arrival of the Beatles on the web – mainly as we see boosted by social media – shows the new reality. That the web amplified by good use of social media is now the primary way of connecting what you have to the public.

Billboard magazine reports that The Beatles sold more than two million individual songs worldwide and in excess of 450,000 albums in its first week on Apple’s iTunes Music Store. (The Beatles’ catalog was added to iTunes on November 16th.)

According to Experian Hitwise, it was social media — not search — that drove a lot of the online interest and, more importantly, the online traffic surrounding The Beatles addition to iTunes. Consider this stat: On November 16, the first day Beatles songs were available on iTunes, 26% of UK traffic to Apple.com came from social media, about double the amount that came from search.

This nail in the coffin of old marketing is what NPR discovered. When I worked for NPR back in 2005 – attracting a younger audience was thought to be vital. But at the time this meant that somehow the content should be changed. But what they found was that if you changed the medium for connection to Social Media – the young came – they loved the content – they just will not access it in the old way.

In a survey of more than 10,000 respondents, NPR found that its Twitter followers are younger, more connected to the social web, and more likely to access content through digital platforms such as NPR’s website, podcasts, mobile apps and more.

NPR has more than one Twitter account; its survey found that most respondents followed between two and five NPR accounts, including topical account, show-specific accounts and on-air staff accounts.

The data on age is hardly surprising. The median age of an NPR Twitter follower is 35 — around 15 years younger than the average NPR radio listener. This lines up with data we recently found about other traditional news media; the average Facebook user reading and “liking” content on a news website is two decades younger than the average print newspaper subscriber.

Isn’t this what has happened to the Beatles? Good content is good. If you have a product or a service or cintent that is good and is not available on the web via social media – you are punishing your business.

So what does this mean? The jury is no longer out. If you are not using the web and social media well – you are no longer cautious but stupid. You are refusing to see the world as it is. Now I know why you won’t move. Because this is all new and you are not any good at it. It’s like me taking up skiing in my forties. What had held me back was how awkward and stupid I would look and feel. But you know – no one cared about how awkward I was and learning to ski then allowed me to spend 10 winters with my kids having a hell of a time. I am 60. I started blogging back in 2002. I was utterly pathetic at it. But over time, I got ok. You can be too.

The real question is do you want your TV station, store, business to survive? It’s still not too late but it is getting close.

Who can help you? Well there are a lot of shysters out there. “Self proclaimed” Social Media Experts who have been involved for a year or so. So here are a few questions to ask to ensure that you are getting someone who can help for real:

• Tell us about who you have worked for in the past that you have helped make the shift in mindset? They must have been able to help another make this shift in POV
• Tell us who your friends and network are? The shysters know shysters, the real folks know others who know their stuff and their network is as valuable as anything that they know.
• Show us what you have written that moves the cheese! Shysters pound on about Facebook etc, the real deal is part of a larger deeper conversation about what all of this means.
• Show us how knowing what you do has helped you in your own life? Most Shysters still live in the 1.0 world themselves. The real deal don’t – living this life has changed them radically – they have been made different by this and you will know this when you compare the 2 types. PS relentless self promotion is a give away!

Some advice about process:

• There is no formula/cookie cutter – it is not about using Facebook next week – it is about changing your own mindset. So start with lots of conversation about what is going on and where you can start – you cannot know where you will end up right now – don’t try and go there.
• Our mindset is changed not by will but by new habits – try a few smallish experiments and label them as such – look at at others who have done well and see how this may give you a start – Have a look here at how Boingo have used listening or look here about how Kotex have used a deep question. These are powerful places to start to help you be different for in the 1.0 world we don’t listen, we shout. In the 1.0 world we don’t ask tough questions, we live instead in a clean, fun, smooth fantasy world where periods are the best part of the month.
• Hire one or two great young folks. Andy Carvin - just one person has done more for NPR than an army of consultants. Same with Baochi at Boingo who enjoys the confidence of the CEO.
• Persevere!!! This is really really hard to execute – the tools are simple – it is the shift in mindset that is so painful. I have found that as much as I and others know the direction the day to day part of the journey is stressful. Think of Christopher Columbus on his first voyage. He “knew” that there would be land if he sailed long enough west. But his crew did not. They also had to deal with storms etc, When they arrived, it was land but not the Indies – the destination was different. People got upset. When you do this – all of the trials of Columbus will come your way – Doubt, fear mutiny, disappointment – the lot. But there is no going back – you just have to push through.
• Last point – anyone who tells you that this is easy and they can show you a step by step formula is a Shyster

So stand up for our species. Be a Sapiens and not a Sap and good luck to you.

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E2.0: Looking for Goldilocks

November 16, 2010 at 12:36 pm · Filed under Adoption, Barriers, Business 2.0, Business Model, Enterprise 2.0

There are any variety of descriptions and debates about what E2.0 is and isn’t. One of the challenges is that the answer is contextual for each circumstance: there isn’t a ‘right’ answer. But there is a ‘just right’ answer, borrowing a line from Goldilocks.

The potential for E2.0 is to help right the many wrongs that employees face each day, just trying to get their work done. It’s a matter of ‘fit’ — in too many cases, what they’re given to work with doesn’t ‘fit’ the circumstances. It has less to do with usable, than useful, and would preferably be the right fit: just right.

Let’s start with a classic: desktop software. How well does the classic desktop software meet the ‘just right’ needs of employees for the preponderance of daily activities? How much cognitive overload has not been designed out of these tools and related corporate processes?

How do we simplify for ‘just right’? We learn to design business fractals. Fractals are the means by which simple scales, the means by which to avoid too much and yet achieve endless possibilities: orderly chaos = complexity…vs. the complicated littering the halls today, which is simply a collection of stuff with no relevant underlying order (the operative word here is “relevant”).

Here’s where we transition from fairytale to reality. For Goldilocks’ scenario, in each case she was given a choice of three options and from those options she chose the one that ‘fit’ best. The problem is that those choices were pre-staged. There’s a cost to providing pre-staged choices. Because we’re not living in a fairytale, there is no way to pre-design for all the possible scenarios that would determine what would be ‘just right’.

I misspoke earlier. We don’t really want to design business fractals, we want to design ‘for’ business fractals — we want to provide an infrastructure for the fractals to emerge on their own. How do we do that? With structure…’just right’ structure — not too much, not too little.

We provide the means for stuff to happen, but don’t assume that it will happen. It requires active vigilance.

What form does such structure take? Micro-structure, just like the fractals. What does micro-structure look like? Ask any Marine who knows how to apply the Rule of Three. The beauty of the rule is its flexibility.

There is no set size (number of troops) assigned to any specific element. The size of an element of command depends primarily upon the type of unit and mission. For example, an aviation squadron would have a different number of troops assigned than an infantry company because it has a different mission, different equipment, and therefore different requirements.

While the reference used is “rule”, in reality, I prefer to consider it an axiom — something that can be applied in any variety of conditions and isn’t subject to a specific context to remain true.

The word “axiom” comes from the Greek word ἀξίωμα (axioma), a verbal noun from the verb ἀξιόειν (axioein), meaning “to deem worthy”, but also “to require”, which in turn comes from ἄξιος (axios), meaning “being in balance”, and hence “having (the same) value (as)”, “worthy”, “proper”.

Test that concept in any business setting. Most things in a business called “rules” are only relevant in particular contexts. Change the context: the rule breaks, just like baby bear’s chair — even though it was originally ‘just right’. Look for rules that need breaking or often have to be broken to get stuff done. Study it long enough to find the core truth that needs preserving and claim the underlying axiom. Find ways to make it observable, evident. As Eric Berlow suggests in his July 2010 TED talk, “Hone in on the sphere of influence that matters most.”

In reality, all businesses have a natural order. The problem is that we’ve been deluded into believing that we need to ‘create’ order. We need to embrace the natural order that is inherent — but to do that we have to find it first. We have to adopt eyes that can ’see’ it (like 3D stereograms).

Let Goldilocks be your guide for providing ‘just right’.

Postscript: A grand thanks to @hypergogue for providing much of the sample fodder that uniquely illustrate concepts that have been ruminating for some time — allowing me to get out yet another ‘blog post stuck in my head’.

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How the revolution in Media will help the revolution in Education

October 18, 2010 at 8:18 am · Filed under Adoption, Barriers, Economics, KETC, NPR, Organizational Design, Public Media, Social Media, education

After many years of thinking and talking, here Sir Ken I think nails the problem and gets the direction for the right new path correct. Helped a lot by the guys at RSA.

So what can we do with this insight?

My experience in public radio and TV – which also is at a crossroads from one culture to another – is that we must not underestimate the power of the entrenched culture. Most people inside pub radio/TV and in education are so invested in the old that they can only fight an alternative.  This is not because they are bad or stupid – it is because they are human and their identity is the system as it is. So to change it means that they have no place. So they cannot go to the new.

If you long for a better education system – you are also worried about how to breakthrough all these barriers. You don’t know how to change the system. I think that we can look at what is happening in media and find a way.

So where is the change happening in media that we might use to help us in education. As I write them I can see how these factors apply to education - can’t you?

• The long term effects of the poor economy is pressing the system
  • The school system is under huge funding pressure too
  • In higher ed – the degree also costs too much now and drives loans that canot be repaid
  • Kids will seek out new ways – they have to
  • In the next 10 years the pressure to find a new way for the money will become unbearable – thus creating the same kind of context for change that we see in media

• There are organizations like Craigslist that are killing the economics of the old and forcing economic pressure – the old way leads to economic starvation and sets a context for change
  • There are new online schools such as the Khan Academy that offer kids a wonderful alternative to school
  • Great Schools like MIT have put a lot of superlative content online
  • Kids are voting with their feet - better content will be available online for next to free as with Craigslist and personals that will ad to the economic pressure

• The web has a bunch of new tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, Apple TV etc that are empowering new sources and new ways of finding, producing and using content
  • Same for Ed - iTunes, YouTube are already there
  • Why take Math with Miss Jones when you can get the world’s best math teachers on your time at your pace?
  • Parents will buy into this too

• There are entirely new organizations – Huffington Post, Daily Beast, Politico – Greenfield that go through no transition but start with the new model – they are forcing competitive pressure
• There are a few old leaders who get it and have enough critical mass inside to go for it now – The Guardian in the UK and NPR – they are forcing change on their system
  • Athabaska and Phoenix come to mind in higher ed – they are moving to the mainstream
  • Soon there will be Grade Schools that have the same features

• There are  few local small organizations that have the leadership to go for it too and are making enough progress to show the rest - KETC is the one I know the best.

So what to do?

Don’t think about changing the whole system!!!!! It’s too big and powerful.

Instead take advantage of these powerful forces.

If you are a learner – Explore the new world of resources – do not feel trapped in school as it is or feel that you have to wait – enough change is here for you to take full advantage now

If you are a parent – see the whole picture for you child – help line them up into that is now available that is more fitted to them and at a cost you can all afford. Vote with your feet.

If you are a school board - Learn how to make the shift from the old to the new – Do a KETC – pick a school with the right leadership and try the new in ONE place – learn from this – use this test bed to expose others to the new from their peers.

If you are a teacher – Learn how to be the new – participate in the new world – be a citizen teacher – offer content or coaching – learn how to be an entrepreneurial teacher who can hang up their shingle on the web or locally. Be the math coach or the history coach in your place or globally!

If you are a social entrepreneur - Build the new a place together so that you are the convener of the a place where kids can be together and yet be part of the a larger universe of resources that fits them!

It’s coming folks – the forces in play are too great to stop it. BUT you have to be a player now if you want to benefit.

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Boingo Part 2 – Using the power of the network effect – Superfans

September 27, 2010 at 10:34 am · Filed under 2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Adoption, Barriers, Community, Connected Enterprise, Customer Service, Disney, Energy, Interaction, Interviews, Management Theory, Marketing, Network Effect, Organizational Design, Platforms, Relationships, Robin Dunbar, Social Contact, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Objects, Socialprise, Trust, Trusted Space, Twitter, User Revolution, Web 2.0, Wisdom of Crowds, Work 2.0, Workplace

What would it be like if your business had a sales, marketing and support force that was 1.3 million strong that you did not have to pay for? What if you could source this leverage with a tiny central force? Sounds impossible? Do you have any idea of how this could work?

Now that everyone is using Social Media – what I am seeing mainly are people who using the new tool in the old way – trying to shout above the noise – “Look at ME!” “Aren’t I cool!” “Aren’t we good!”. I am seeing a Dilbert approach – “Let’s have a Facebook site” “Let’s get on Twitter”.

Most do what most do when a new technology arrives – they apply it in the old way and so get nothing in response.

So what then is the power and leverage that you can harness by using social media well?

Boingo are on their way to finding out how to do this. Oh yes and I am one of the people that are part of this and oh yes I am not being paid and nor do I in any way work for them. I am living the theory.

So how might this work and so how might you do this too?

Boingo have a class of people that are deeply committed to the enterprise that Baochi calls her “Super fans”. They and why they are connected to Boingo and each other is the core of the leverage potential. We will meet 4 of them in this post who agreed enthusiastically to be interviewed by me. As you will see, these Super Fans are attracted first of all to Boingo by the obvious:

• The service – easy one stop access to Wifi in Airports and Hotels – is now no longer a nice to have for travellers but an essential
• The support for the service is outstanding – got a problem – you get instant personal help

But a great product is not enough. Nor is good service. What is the differentiator for Boingo is the human nature of the relationship that Boingo has with its customers. Most organizations do not allow their people to be human. Service people are often ciphers working from a script. Boingo have set up an environment where their key point of contact is a real person who is allowed to be herself.

She has a name and a face and we are all in awe and a bit in love with her. We all feel her presence watching over us. It is way more than getting her help when we can’t sign on. She watches out for us. Have a problem – A quick tweet. In minutes she is there. She is like the guy who runs the old corner store who holds your keys when you go away, keeps an eye on your kids in the street, helps you find a new roommate.

As Nuno Montegro, a customer in Portugal says – It is not what she says but how she says things that is the difference.

Nuno is like me, a customer who actively refers others to the service.

Most of Social media is all about Weak Ties – They are very useful but Weak Ties don’t get people to do much – or risk much – or commit much – that is why they are Weak – they are easy.

If you want to do something – Civil Rights in the US – you need Strong Ties. (Nice new piece by Malcolm Gladwell that explores Weak and Strong Ties in depth)

The key to attracting Strong Ties is being human. It is NOT PIMPING your product. It is instead to show that you really do care about ME. It is instead to show that you can indeed be trusted.

How do you show this? Nuno makes the point that every service and product fails at times. The key is to offer the best possible response to the inevitability of a problem. The best possible response is to know from experience that if there is a problem, you can reach a real person quickly and that they will go the distance to help you get it fixed. “I felt as if I was the only customer in the entire world when she was helping me” Nuno told me. I had the same experience.

Attracting Strong Ties is all about “Giving”.

Aaron Strout is the CMO at social media agency, Powered Inc. and is also Super Fan. “Boingo is proactive and they don’t expect a direct return – they are not selling all day – so if they want an inch, I go the mile back. It’s Karmic! I know if I have a problem that they will look after me. If people are good and do good, then good comes back. Not necessarily directly but good gets attracted back. We talk about a wide range of things that affect me not just the product – which is great too – have to have that – they listen.”

What Aaron is talking about here is a very old model for an economy that was the centre of all tribal economies – the Gift Economy. In the Gift Economy, the Big Guy is not the man who has the most stuff but the person who gives the most.

This is the power in networks – this is how Open Source Works too.

Cliff Bremmer is a programmer who works for a company called Carley Corporation that bids on government contracts to develop instructional CD base/computer based training for the US military.  ”In my spare time I help companies understand and navigate the social media spectrum in a professional yet interactive way.  The company I’m currently helping is the one my father works for called the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel“.

The Gift?

Not only is he a fan but in interacting with Boingo he has learned a lot about how to use SM media well. “If there is anything I’m proud of lately it’s that I helped the Pegasus Hotel promote their brand with the help and support of @Boingo and other companies to become one of the most popular brands in Jamaica.” Boingo is  not only helping him with his travel and Wifi but is talking with him and helping him help his dad in his business with advice and Tweet Up prizes such as free access and bag tags. The Gift in action!

He can see the flaws of how most use SM – “They are stuck in self promotion versus communication. I can see through it all – it’s all about them.”

In the Gift Economy that drives Trust and so Strong Ties, the starting point is YOU. In the non network economy the starting point is ME. No small difference!

Shelby Rogers is a flight attendant, a serving soldier (in the active reserve) and the wife of a serving soldier. Travel is her life. When she is not working, she travels. Access to Wifi has made her travel better – “I now know more than the Gate Agent does about my flights!” and it has taken away much of the loneliness that travel brings with it. Who has not been alone eating room service and watching TV in our room? “I can stay in touch with my husband on Skype and every city seems to have a friend in it.”

For Shelby, Boingo is a service that truly meets her needs. But it is how Boingo is connected to her that has transformed a pleased customer into a Super fan.

How often has your service provider taken you out to dinner? “We have even had dinner recently. I am now a walking billboard for Boingo with winking bag tags!”

So what does this mean? What are the lesson for both Boingo and for you?

• Baochi is no accident – the Boingo senior leadership have created the role and given it the space to enable someone who is naturally humane to be herself inside it. This new way of using Strong Ties to be the centre of a network is all about culture. In most cases senior leadership is too scared to let go. But if you do let go and create this safe place then the power of the network effect can be yours
• A really powerful network has to have an inner core bound by Strong Ties. This is where the leverage is. One staff person like Baochi can without too much trouble have close ties with 34 people. That gives her an outer network of 1.3 million. If she can handle the Dunbar limit of 144 that creates an opportunity of 400 million! You can see that with the right person, you can have a vast reach – provided you realize that your goal is not to have thousands of relationships but a few Strong Ones
• The secret is the math of social leverage. Many of you know about the “Dunbar Number”. Some of you know about “Magic numbers – the hierarchy of trust in human groups. If you don’t here is a quick primer.

So what now?

I think that the next stage would be this:

• At the moment all the Super Fans have a strong relationship with Baochi – I think that the best next step might be to find a way to connect them to each other
• At the  moment most of the dialogue is still about the obvious and excellent service that Boingo provides – I think that some of the work that the Super Fans could do might be to deepen the conversation – Shelby touched on this in her interview with me – What is it that being easily connected while travelling does? In her case it helped her deal with isolation and loneliness – it helped her do her job better – it kept her in touch with her husband – these are deep issues that I think connect all of us who travel a lot

As I think about networks, I think about the laws of physics. All systems have order and attractors. Some force is needed to keep systems coherent.

Think of the Sun in our own local system. It has mass that provides a gravity that holds all the planets and asteroids and stuff in a pattern. It has energy that creates life in the system. I think that any healthy human social system has to have gravity and light.

At the very centre is the “Right Space” a Trusted Space created by the leadership. In this Space, the Right Person – Right being a person who as part of her natural persona truly cares about others. Connected to her is the fuel and the mass that makes up the Sun – the Super Fans. The closer they are to the centre and the closer they are to each other – the more mass and the more energy. The more mass and energy, the larger and more healthy the network of Weak Ties that form up around the Sun.

What gets in the way is our fear about losing control.

At Disney the surface of the Brand Icon never changes but inside the mask is a person who changes all the time and so is never allowed to speak.

But in the new world we have to take off the costume and let the person inside have conversations with the public – HARD to do.

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