The web 2.0 list

OpenBC�s Bob Strumpel has created an amazing and very long list of web 2.0-ish companies. The list is a from a month and half ago, so there are probably a lot more by now.

It�s fascinating to browse through if you have a spare hour or two. Plenty of wacky and very entertaining company names, of course. Here, in no particular order, are a few that jumped out at me:

Plurn
Bitty
Diigo
Skobee
Tnook
Zipingo
Oolsi
Gibbity
Smugmug
Gliffy
Loomia
Scoopgo
Quimble
Pobb
Suckingfish
Yubnub
Pooxi

Now I know what to name my next 17 pets!

The BBC gets it

BBC Director-General Mark Thompson gave a speech announcing the BBC�s ambitious plans to embrace participatory media (and pissed of Rupert Murdoch in the process). Some notable highlights:

What we're seeing is a distinct second wave in digital.

In many ways, traditional media coped quite well with the first wave: they launched new linear channels and text-based websites and began to experiment with mobile phones and other portable devices.

Particularly after the dotcom bubble burst at the turn of the century, there was a real sense in traditional media that the digital thing had been nailed.

If you came late to the party, there was no need to worry � you could always dip into your pocket and buy a website or two.

Anyone who thinks that that's the size of it � and there's plenty of them across British broadcasting � has got a big shock coming.

. . .

But although technological change is enabling the second wave, it's not the essential driving force. That force is a revolution in audience behaviour.

It's hardly surprising that choice and empowerment work for audiences � the surprise is the breakneck speed at which adoption of all these technologies is taking place.

Nicely said, Mark.

The trouble with silos

This classic post from Kathy Sierra has got me thinking about silos and departmental divisions. The post features a table comparing traditional marketing with what Kathy calls �neo-marketing��a moniker you could just as easily replace with �post-Cluetrain marketing� or �open source marketing� or �pinko marketing�.

Here�s the bit that got me thinking.



In her post, Kathy was focusing in on the blurring boundaries between engineers and marketers�and I completely agree with her. But I think you could extend that blurring of boundaries even further.

At the company I work for, we talk a lot in terms of the customer experience. One central theme is silos only matter on the inside. In other words, customers see companies or brands as single entities. If they have a great experience, or a terrible one, the blame or credit applies to the company as a whole, not a single department.

So what does this mean to a neo-marketer? Let me take the liberty of adding a line to Kathy�s table:



And that�s only the beginning. More lines can be added depending your industry and its conventions around engaging customers.

For instance, in many B-to-B companies there is a real divide between marketing and sales. Or how about the divide between marketing and billing? Marketing and tech docs? Or marketing and legal, which Seth Godin sums up nicely here?

I guess my real point is that those of us trying to re-define the way business works in this age of participation need to frame our discussion in terms that go beyond the traditional, silo-ed view of companies.

If we�re going to convince these other functions to think like good post-Cluetrain marketers, we may need to come up with new terminology that doesn�t come with the legacy of bad connotations that �marketing� carries. I think Will Pate had the right idea when he chose his new job title. At his previous job, he was the VP of Sales and Marketing. His new role at Flock is Community Ambassador.

Terminology aside, what steps can companies take towards jumping the silos? Is it simply a matter of more formal interaction between marketing and other departments? Or should companies be looking at creating a new role�perhaps a Community Ambassador that floats between departments to help the organization as a whole maintain a consistent, responsive relationship with customers?

What do you think?

Tom Peters takes the weedwhacker to business jargon

Perplexed by business jargon? Tired of the gobblydeegook? Just looking for a little clarity? Look no further! Tom Peters has provided a helpful jargon decoder.

Here are a few of my favourite translations:

"One stop shopping"
"We're buying up every piece of crap we can lay our hands on that's even vaguely related to our business"

"Viral marketing"
"Please tell your friends how cool we are"

"Core competence"
"Stuff we're better at than you are"

Ahh, sweet clarity!

Etsy.com = online retail 2.0

Etsy.com is a breath of fresh air. Innovative and simple at the same time. Anyone involved in online retail should arrive with an open mind and take a long, very careful look.

Friday's loose ends

• Us-Generated
  David Weinberger suggests a great alternative to �user-generated� . . . and links to a feature in the Economist on participatory media that�s worth a read.
  
  Related: Words that creepy marketers use, User-generated news roundup
  

• We are witnessing the supernova of bigness
  This Jeff Jarvis post from back in March is one of my all time faves. Makes me feel like standing up and cheering.
  

• Google�s most popular words 2006 (via Waxy)
  Greatest gainer = �furl� . . . ?
  

Force feeding

According to news.com, Philips are working on technology that would prevent TV viewers from changing the channel during commercials:

Viewers would be released from the freeze only after paying a fee to the broadcaster. The freeze would be implemented on a program-by-program basis, giving viewers a choice at the start of each one. According to a recently published patent, the apparatus could work inside a set-top box.

Wow . . . going off on a sarcastic rant about this one is just too easy. The sheer cluelessness is simply astounding.

In their defense, Philips are taking a line straight out of the munitions industry�s PR handbook:

"We just provide the technology. It's up to the broadcaster to decide on how they use the technology."

Here�s hoping that broadcasters are smart enough not to use it all.


Via Lost Remote

Related: ABC hell bent on interrupting viewers

Good, evil and the power of sincerity

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.

--John Cusack as Lloyd Dobbler in the film Say Anything,
1989

Oddly enough, I used to do tech writing.

At that point in my life, I had done a bit of marketing-related work and really enjoyed it. But I was still hesitant to embrace marketing as a career -- mostly because I struggled with some basic questions, like: Do I want to spend my life convincing people that they needed things they probably didn�t need?

Even though I was bored stiff writing user manuals (although the people I worked with were great) I quite often made myself feel better by telling myself that what I was doing was morally superior to marketing. I was simply conveying useful information. I wasn�t selling anything. I was squeeky clean. (Needless to say, I was also a bit self-deluded.)

Then I got a job in marketing . . . and I immediately loved it and haven�t looked back since.

So . . .

The inspiration for this little ramble down memory lane is this great post by Pinko marketing guru and fellow Canadian Tara Hunt, who also struggles with the �evil� aspects of marketing. Specifically, she�s worried that some of the fresh and powerful new ideas she�s helping develop could end up being used for evil:

Anyone could take what is totally well-intentioned and (perhaps a little naive and) hopeful and create another level of deception. The Cluetrain taught big brands to 'converse' with us like they are our friends...like they care. Pinko now could help them enlist us to do their evil bidding.

I may be a little naive too, but I don�t think she needs to worry. But I think she should hold on to her unease about the whole thing -- her hightened "evil detection" system. Nurture it even. In fact, I think it's probably one of her greatest strengths.

Here�s why: today�s customers -- the new and empowered version spawned by the Internet -- are smart. They can smell evil. And they can smell sincerity, too. In this new, networked world I believe that sincere people spreading the word about something they believe in have totally got the edge over evil marketers pushing useless crap.

So if you're like Tara, my advice is: don't worry to much . . . but keep worrying a little.

Tom Peters� oblique strategies

I just love the fact that Tom Peters makes all of his slides freely available for download. Huge decks, hundreds of slides, insane colours, and loads and loads of wisdom and insight.

It reminds me of something I used a lot in my previous life as a musician: the Oblique Strategies, a set of recipe-sized cards printed with short quotes and axioms designed to re-ignite a stalled creative process.

The Oblique Strategies were created in 1975 by experimental musician/producer/artist Brian Eno and his painter friend Peter Schmidt. Back then they were published in limited quantities and, as a result, carried a kind of cult-like mystique among obsessive music fans for years until they finally turned up online in the mid-90�s.



Back when I was a working songwriter/musician, I made my own set by printing off each of 100+ axioms and manually taping them to recipe cards. Incredibly geeky of me, I know. Here's my personal fave (probably works better in music than in marketing):

Honour your mistake as a hidden intention

These days, I use Tom Peters� slides in much the same way. Every problem I run into, I�m almost guaranteed to find something relevant in one of his behemoth slide decks. So thank, Tom. I appreciate your generosity.

User-generated news roundup

Another reason I don�t mind buzzwords like "user-generated" is that I can slap them into a Google News search and learn a few interesting things, such as . . .

• Google has indexed over 500 news items that contain the phrase �user generated�
• Media executives are holding back on advertising on MySpace, mostly because the user-generated content is just so darn unpredictable
• At least one person thinks user-generated content and the whole Web 2.0 focus on participation is a very, very bad thing (and they don�t like indie music or indie movies either)
• Samsung is really proud of this camera phone they�ve made that let's users �save their user-generated photos or videos�. User-generated as opposed to what?
  

Are taglines worth the effort?

�Reach out and touch someone�
"Let your fingers do the walking"
�Just do it�
"The ultimate driving machine"
�Don�t leave home without it�

Let�s face it, memorable taglines like these don�t come along every day. In fact, most corporate taglines and slogans are eminently forgettable. And some probably do more harm than good� becoming objects of satire or ridicule.

And let�s not forget�these things can be expensive. There are firms out there that do nothing but create them, and I doubt they work cheap.

So the question then becomes: are they worth the effort?

As a writer, I can appreciate the power of great tagline. I can marvel at the way it sums up a big idea in one short, clever, memorable line that�s easy to understand.

But as a marketer who is bone weary of all-style-no-substance marketing, I can�t help but think that taglines�or at least 95% of them�are basically insubstantial marketing fluff that means nothing to customers.

So what do you think? I�d love to hear some comments.

The reasons for our reasons

Damn, Malcolm Gladwell is good.

His latest New Yorker piece�a review of the new book �Why?� by Columbia University scholar Charles Tilly�is nothing less than mind-expanding.

I�ll attempt to sum it up, but I doubt I�ll do it justice . . .

The basic premise of Tilly�s book, which Gladwell illustrates beautiful, is that the reasons we use to explain our decisions fall into four distinct categories. For each reason we give, the category we opt for is not a function of our character, but rather a product of the situation and the role we are playing.

Imagine, he says, the following possible responses to one person�s knocking some books off the desk of another:

1. Sorry, buddy. I�m just plain awkward.
2. I�m sorry. I didn�t see your book.
3. Nuts! I did it again.
4. Why did you put that book there?
5. I told you to stack up your books neatly.

The lesson is not that the kind of person who uses reason No. 1 or No. 2 is polite and the kind of person who uses reason No. 4 or No. 5 is a jerk. The point is that any of us might use any of those five reasons depending on our relation to the person whose books we knocked over. Reason-giving, Tilly says, reflects, establishes, repairs, and negotiates relationships.

There�s a helluva lot to be learned here about how companies interact with their customers.

-----

Update April 12: Gladwell shares an insightful reader comment that uses Tilly�s �taxonomy of reason giving� to poke a big hole in traditional market research practices.

The MySpace halo

Interesting piece at Forbes.com about the growing number of entrepreneurs tapping into the MySpace phenomenon with all sorts of add-ons and enhancements.

Louis Ramos, a freshman at Southern Illinois University, says he has made more than $200,000 since last June by running Pimpmyspace.com and Myspaceeditor.org, two Web sites that offer MySpace users free tools to upgrade and spruce up their profiles with colors and images.

Sounds like MySpace have cracked down on a few of these piggybackers, but hopefully they�ll take a page from Apple�s book and partner with the best of them.

Via Waxy.

ABC hell bent on interrupting viewers

So ABC are making a big deal about offering up programming online �for free�. To hear them talk, being the first major network to do this is something akin to walking on the moon.

Problem is they�re still relying on impossible-to-skip commercial breaks to make it all work.

Here�s the thing guys�different mediums have different rules. Even your sofa-bound home viewers are skipping your ads, and yet somehow you think that online viewers accustomed to complete control are going to be happy to sit through them just because the programming is �free�?

Online communities as games

A few weeks back Dethe Elza pointed me to a fascinating presentation that Shufflebrain's Amy Jo Kim delivered at eTech. The basic gist is that the most successful online communities--the ones with lots of active, very engaged members--are a lot like games. Amy Jo looks at five key "game mechanics" and demonstrates how they keep users interested on sites like Flickr and MySpace.

It's brilliant stuff, and lucky for us they've kindly made the whole thing available online.

The anti-Tahoe

It's like Seth Godin says--the main thing is to have a remarkable product. Something that's worth talking about. That way when you ask your users to help you market it, you end up glowingly profiled in a national magazine instead of openly mocked on Nightline.

Witness the item on Mozilla in Business 2.0's cover story Best-kept secrets of the world's best companies:

In the 18 months since Mozilla released its open-source Firefox browser, more than 150 million users have downloaded it. Not bad, considering the nonprofit foundation has no marketing staff to speak of.

So what keeps Firefox hot? SpreadFirefox.com, a Mozilla website where users post ideas for marketing schemes and volunteers put the most popular ideas into action.

Words that creepy marketers use

Stumbled upon this interesting post from Derek Powazek. Derek feels pretty strongly that everyone should stop using the phrase "user generated content". To his mind, these are "words that creepy marketers use". And they're inaccurate, which he goes on to prove by hilariously deconstructing each word:

User: One who uses. Like, you know, a junkie.

Generated: Like a generator, engine. Like, you know, a robot.

Content: Something that fills a box. Like, you know, packing peanuts.

So what's user-generated content? Junkies robotically filling boxes with packing peanuts. Lovely.

Now, as a writer I've never been to fond of the word "content" as description of what I create. And I'll admit that "user" is not my favourite word either. And I'm a definitely a big believer in speaking plainly and accurately and avoiding corporate marketing-speak wherever possible BUT . . . despite all of that I disagree with Derek.

Here's the thing: if you want people to understand a concept you have to put it in terms that they understand. It's a basic rule of writing--understand your audience.

Which means that in certain situations clunky phrases like this serve a real purpose. They take a good, solid worthy idea--in this case that notion that thanks to the Internet people now have the power to easily create and share useful and sometimes beautiful things that have real value--and put it in terms that business people understand.

If this leads to those same business people offering valuable new tools that enable me to do things that I want to do, like express myself creatively, connect with interesting people, share things that I've created etc., then isn't that worth putting up with an obnoxious buzzword or two?

In the end, it's all about context. So go ahead and use the evil phrase in your business plan, in your VC pitch, in your Business Week article. Just don't use it when you're talking to your customers.

Oh oh! Tahoe!

Christopher Carfi at the Social Customer has done a nice job summing up the brou-ha-ha around Chevy's user-generated Tahoe commercials.

If you haven't heard about it, Chevy have created a site where users can create their own Tahoe commercials by combining a selection of video clips and music options with their own text. Surprise, surprise, some people really don't like SUVs and they've created "commercials" that say so.

My two cents . . . either GM are really, really, really clueless or Mike at Techdirt is right and they saw all of this coming and went ahead with it anyhow.

For their sake, I hope that Mike is on the money.

-------

Had to point this out as well: Snakes-mania continues with Snakes on an SUV!

-------

UPDATE: Looks like Mike was on the money.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis nails it.

Think different: write press releases that make sense to your customers

Wow! The beautiful, gorgeous sanity of it all.

In a move that�s makes so much sense that the sense/nonsense balance of the universe is in danger of being permanently upset, Apple have banned the use of the word �platform� from their press releases because it doesn�t mean anything to their customers.

Please oh please let this become a bandwagon that everyone hops on.

Link

(via Lost Remote)