Digital Culture - 2/18 - TheWayoftheWeb

Some things to think about this week…

July 20, 2009 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

When it comes to balancing my time at the moment, it only takes a slight problem to throw things into flux. Which means I can either wait to post until my fully-formed thoughts are completely developed – or I can get back to part of what made blogging great for me in the first place, and throw out more links to people, subjects, posts, videos etc I find interesting and inspire me in some way.

So in that spirit:

If you’re wondering where the scarcity is in the new economy, JP underlines the answer – The customer is the scarcity.

Here’s 40 minutes of Howard Rheingold on 21st Century Literacies:

See the larger version, and read more at Smart Mobs.

And then there is the always watchable and inspiring Michael Wesch with a new talk, and it’s only 33 minutes long:

Go and subscribe to his Youtube channel – mwesch.

And by the time you’ve digested this lot, I should have some substance to add!

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Filed Under: Digital Culture Tagged With: Business, customer, demand, Digital Culture, howard rheingold, jp rangaswami, michael wesch, need, scarcity

A vitally important law for business communications

July 13, 2009 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

I neglected to write about my fellow speakers at the ALPSP event, mainly because I was enjoying a bit of time off for the last week.

There were great presentations from Ros Lawler of Random House, Phil Archer from the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, Steve Paxhia of Beacon Hill Strategic Solutions (With whom I got absolute soaked in the storms that hit en route to the station), and Gail Robinson from TSL Education Ltd.

But the one presentation that really kept me thinking was by Alex Evans from MediaMolecule (The developers of LittleBigPlanet for the PS3). It was interesting as a videogamer, someone interested in game theory, someone interested in encouraging user generated content, and someone interested in developing business and revenues in the changing economy.

But he also highlighted a very important law – one which was applied to programming, but in my mind applies equally to marketing, PR, and to almost every aspect of a business.

It is:

…organizations which design systems … are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations

Conways Law was originally introduced in 1968, by Melvin Conway. And for me it encapsulates a lot of the challenges I’ve encountered, whether it’s been for a large company, a group of volunteers, or in my current role.

As much as a system designed may mirror communication structures – communications will mirror them just as much. That’s why things tended to be more rigid and evolve more slowly in a larger, more traditional company which was constructed around a defined hierachy.

It’s also why a flat structure of volunteers led to challenges that seem to have proved even more insurmoutable since I left – trying to encourage business attributes from non-businesslike creative people.

And it’s why I relish my new challenge – listening and engaging with a team packed full of ideas, and then herding those cats into the most effective order.

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Filed Under: Digital Culture, marketing, public relations Tagged With: business communications, business organization, conways law, Digital Culture, editorial, internal structure, marketing, pr, public relations, publishing

Is the media having less effect of my purchasing?

July 10, 2009 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

You might want to sit down, but I’ve just spent some money on physical entertainment media. Or to put it another way, I bought some books and DVDs for the first time in ages.

I’d actually been looking for a work-related book which doesn’t seem to be available in bookshops, so that will be an online purchase, but in the meantime, I though I’d treat myself.

Interestingly, I’d spent a while choosing the unavailable book, so was at a bit of a loose end, and ended up coming out with three purchases – and as far as I’m consciously aware, I hadn’t seen advertising or media reviews etc of any of them:

Buyology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy is Wrong by Martin Lindstrom was bought mainly on the strength of the topic, and the foreword written by Paco Underhill, whose book on Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping I’ve previously read and enjoyed.

Code: Version 2.0 by Lawrence Lessig was purely chosen on the articles I’ve read by him and interviews I’ve watched with him.

And from the non ‘tech geek’ world, I also picked up:
Lukas Moodysson Presents (4 Disc Box Set) [DVD] - I’ve already seen three of the four films, but wanted to watch the fourth, and revisit the first two (Lilya 4-Ever is a well-made film, but is the most relentlessly bleak film I think I’ve ever seen). I’m also using it to improve my Swedish language abilities, and be able to lend ‘Show Me Love’ (the original title is better but far more offensive!) and Tilsammens to the rest of my family – and they all understand DVDs!

I thought I was all done, but there wasn’t any peer recommendation to prove this whole social media thing.

Until I got home.

The first I heard about the Xbox Live only release of Battlefield 1943 was via two friends of mine as we chatted. I hadn’t been online on the Xbox for a while due to the work/commuting/family combination, and as a result, I hadn’t been looking at gaming sites.

And within 10 minutes, I’d paid 1200 Microsoft points (About £10 or so), and downloaded the game.

It’s having a number of server issues at the moment, but the basic game is pretty good, and the online distribution of a ‘full’ game is interesting.

It’s being followed up today by the release via Xbox Live of 1 vs 100, which is an online gaming show with real prizes, which should be interesting.

Peer recommendations and loyalty aren’t new, of course. But generally they’d be prompted for me by either an event (my plumbing has broke, who can fix it?), or by media awareness (this game is coming out, is anyone else buying it?).

It seems as if the weighting has now changed, and the peer/loyalty aspect is what then might result in someone sharing a helpful media review, or just leading me straight to a purchase.

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Filed Under: Digital Culture, ecommerce Tagged With: Advertising, Digital Culture, ecommerce, loyalty, media, peer review, recommendations, shopping

When concerns over social networks go way too far…

June 25, 2009 By Dan Thornton 3 Comments

Businesses and organisations can either embrace the opportunities and challenges of increasingly easy social interaction, or they can react against it. And two recent examples show how worrying that reaction can be.

Most digitally-aware people realise that anything you put on a public (or even supposedly private) social networking site can be seen by people including your employers.

But how about Bozeman City, in Montana, which requires job applicants to hand over their log-in information and passwords to any internet chat rooms, social networks or forums?

Why should potential employees have any right to privacy at all?

And then a media company, which by rights should know better, gets shown up. The Associated Press has issued social media guidelines, which not only match the restrictions put out by other media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, but actually asks employees to monitor and edit what appears on their social network profiles, even when it’s written by their friends.

From the guidelines (via Mashable)

“Q. Anything specific to Facebook?

It’s a good idea to monitor your profile page to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards; any such material should be deleted. Also, managers should not issue friend requests to subordinates, since that could be awkward for employees. It’s fine if employees want to initiate the friend process with their bosses.

The News Media Guild, which represents 1500+ AP employees is rightly speaking out about the matter, which could, in theory, see AP employees punished for something written by someone else on their profile wall etc. Or, as is equally likely, a spambot.

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