MattDickman.com

Free mobile for advertising impressions; it's only a matter of time

Blyk, a free mobile service targeted at 16-24 year olds in Europe, has recently announced their expansion beyond their test markets in the UK, Germany and France. The company provides free minutes and text messages to its users, and in exchange they receive ads from marketers. The ads are targeted based on the profile of the user.

If you remember, this is the model that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google talked about in November 2006 that got the whole world buzzing. Blyk has been so well received that they reached their initial subscriber goals of 100,000 users six months ahead of schedule.

Here is a short overview movie from Blyk that explains the whole process.

It is only a matter of time before this model comes to the US (though the way our mobile infrastructure is set up it will be much harder to gain the same level of traction). This does however, seem to be a fairly easy way for marketers to reach a targeted audience in a permission-based environment on a mobile device.

Heck, I could see the potential for a very small handful of global marketers try this on their own using this the MVNO model. MVNOs lease parts of a network from a major carrier and re-brand it as a new service. Examples of MVNOs include Virgin Mobile, mobileESPN, Firefly and Amp'd.

What are your thoughts on this model? Would you receive ads for mobile minutes? As a marketer, would you be interested in participating in something like this?

Technorati Tags:
advertising, Google, marketing, Matt Dickman, mobile, Techno//Marketer, technology, trends, MVNO

Finding the sentiment of online conversations

One of the most important aspects of online conversations is the sentiment of what the author is saying. Are they positive about you, negative or apathetic? The difference is vitally important, but very hard to determine due to the complexity of language.

Let's look at what I mean by complexity of language. Most services that are out there take a look at a post and try to identify what is being said by looking the total range words. They have lists of positive words like "great", "awesome", "l33t" (for the hacker crowd) as well as negative words like "sucks", "terrible", etc. If neither group of words is found the post is considered neutral.

I'm sure you can see the error in this. A post could be negative overall, but avoid these words. It could also use one negative word, but be positive overall. What is needed is true contextual language processing (which is expensive and requires a lot of development).

Here are a few examples of sentiment analysis.

Collective Intellect is a social media monitoring solution that we work with. Part of their analysis is of language within conversations and the sentiment that is displayed there. The sentiment is then tracked over time and can be a key metric in the success of a campaign. Their formula for extracting the sentiment is not publicly accessible so I am not sure how they calculate it.

Summize is a Twitter search engine. In their labs section is a sentiment analyzer that lets you enter a keyword and get the real time sentiment. If you play with this for a while you will see some issues as I found out when I sent this link out on Twitter.

*Note that Luke works with me here in Cleveland.

Here is a sample of the output for the term "marketing".

Another service that uses Twitter as the basis to create an engaging experience around sentiment is Twistori. Twistori takes a few key terms like "love", "hate", "feel" and "wish" and creates a dynamic timeline based on the use of the terms. It's very cool to watch the service extract the terms and after a few minutes you see how difficult it is to get sentiment right.

So, do you look at the sentiment of online conversations? There is still no better filter than to read back through a blogger's posts to get their real feeling at this point. Technology is evolving quickly, but so is language.

How are you tracking sentiment online? Is there a tool that I missed? Let me know!

Technorati Tags:
conversations, marketing, Matt Dickman, search, social media, Techno//Marketer, Twitter, sentiment

Facebook's DIY ad targeting explained

Ever time that I show somebody what is possible with Facebook's advertising system, they immediately see the future of advertising. Facebook allows marketers to create ads that are extremely targeted to a unique, specific audience. The ads are pay-per-click so you only pay when somebody is interested enough to engage with you through a click.

In the example I go through in the video (which you can see in the image below) I show you the full range of targeting capabilities within Facebook. While it is very robust, there are some missing elements including ethnicity. Though you may not be able to target the exact individual you are looking for, you can use interests and keywords to achieve the same result.

Here is an Inside//Out look at Facebook's advertising system:

[Feed readers please click through if you cannot see the video.]

Here is the screen capture from the video.

So what does this look like when done right? Here is a good example that I saw today when I logged in to Facebook. The ad to the right is promoting a Chris Brogan "Twebinar" that is hosted by Radian 6. The ad is targeted to my interests, the headline caught my eye and I recognized Chris' headshot immediately. I clicked through to the Twebinar in short order.

Key Takeaways:

• Micro-targeting your audience using these services is easier than ever
  
• Determine how you can target people directly with ads as well as using meta data to reach them indirectly (for example reaching people who watch Monday Night Football to target football fans)
  
• Ads that speak to the audience with the right message at the right time are highly effective
  
• The prevalence of broad, un-targeted advertising inside social networks is nearing an end
  
• Invasive ads like Facebook's social ads should be used sparingly if at all (there is too much risk at this point)
  

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To help you stay on top of what is happening and to filter the myriad options, you can now subscribe to the Techno//Marketer podcast on iTunes. Get updates in real time when new videos become available.

If you use another podcatcher you can grab my podcast RSS feed here.

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You can watch this and other Techno//Marketer videos on your video channel of choice:

   
   

Technorati Tags:
advertising, Facebook, Inside//Out, marketing, Matt Dickman, social networks, strategy, Techno//Marketer, trends

Reader poll results; what has your attention?

Many of you who read this blog through the feed don't come back to the site on a regular basis to check out new features in the sidebar. One of the features that I am really coming to like is the T//M Reader Poll. I am going to update the question once every two weeks and then report the findings in a post like this one.

The last question that I asked was "What service has your attention in the next six months?". I thought the results were pretty interesting. Twitter had a commanding 76% of the vote showing that the hype is still there and people are watching it very closely. Google Open Social was a distant second at 14%. BrightKite and FriendFeed brought up the rear with 7 and 3% respectively.

Since this is on your mind, I'll keep Twitter front and center for you and keep you posted on new tools and applications that relate to it. The newest poll question is related to the Fleishman-Hillard Digital Influence Index study that I posted about yesterday.

Take a second and weigh in when you have a chance. I'd love to hear what you think.

Technorati Tags:
FriendFeed, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, Twitter, poll results, Open Social

The influence of digital

As a rule, I only talk about my work and my company when I know it will add value to what you do. That's certainly the case today as Fleishman-Hillard (my company) and Harris Interactive release our Digital Influence Index Study. This study was conducted in Europe (using the UK, France and Germany as the initial round of countries), but you can see trends emerge that I think are global in nature.

(You can download the key findings, the whitepaper and the FAQ for the study.)

The study looks to really dig in to the role that the internet plays in the lives of consumers. It answers the following questions:

• Influence: What is the influence of the internet compared to other media?
• Behavior: What online behaviors are consumers adopting?
• Impact on decisions: What is the impact of the internet on specific consumer decisions?
• Attitudes: What are consumer attitudes towards the internet?
• Geography: What are the differences by country?

The actual Digital Influence Index number shown below in the pie charts is compiled like this:

The chart to the right compares the influence of different forms of media on decision making. As you can see the internet is more influential in each country than any other type of media. It's nearly twice as influential as TV and eight times more influential than traditional print media. Interestingly, consumers spend a marginal amount more time on TV than the Internet, but it's not effecting their decisions proportionally.

The study found that consumer behavior falls into one of five categories. They are research, commerce, communication, mobility and publishing. While you can read more detail in the full report, some highlights are:

• 80% of online consumers use the net to comparison shop
  
• 3 out of 4 use the net to manage bank accounts
  
• 30% post a comment to an online newsgroup or website during a typical week
  

Here is how these behaviors relate adoption levels and influence

Though the study found the internet influential, it showed that there are still trust issues that have to be overcome for it to continue to grow. Trust of information from other users, trust of government information and information provided by companies were all relatively low. Trust in commerce was a little better and trust of the security of communications channels was pretty high as well.

Key Findings:

• Across all three countries addressed by the study, the Internet has roughly double the influence of the second strongest medium — television — and roughly eight times the influence of traditional print media. This indicates a need and an opportunity for companies to reprioritise their communications to address the media shift in consumer influence.
  
• Consumers use the Internet in different ways to make different decisions. For example, consumers are more likely to seek opinions of others through social media and product-rating sites when it comes to making decisions that involve choices that have a great deal of personal impact (e.g., healthcare options or major electronics purchases), but use company-controlled sources when making transactional decisions on commoditised items like utilities or airline tickets.
  
• While consumers see the clear benefits of the Internet on their lives, they continue to have concerns about Internet safety and the trustworthiness of some of the information they find online. In the UK, for example, 66 percent of online consumers state that the Internet helps them make better decisions, but just 28 percent trust the information on the Internet provided by companies.
  

I think this quote from Dave Senay (our CEO) addresses the key point from my perspective:

"The research shows that the Internet stands out as the most important medium in the lives of European consumers today, but there's a mismatch between the impact of the digital channel across a wide range of consumer behaviours and decisions and the proportion of resources organisations generally are allocating to it relative to other media.

Insights provided by this study will help communicators be more strategic in their marketing mix. At the same time, we need to be mindful about the concerns expressed about safety and trust, which underscores the need for digital engagement with consumers based on open and honest representation."

So what should companies and marketers do with this knowledge?

• Given the influence of the Internet, audit your current marketing spend and see how it aligns with reality and the influence of the medium
  
• Make sure information that is provided is done so in a transparent, honest manner with full representation
  
• SEM/SEO are crucial as search drives the way people find information
  
• Join the conversation online, support the community and engage in a transparent manner
  
• Keep an eye on mobile trends and poll consumers to gauge demand for such an offering
  

So, what do you think about the information? This is based in Europe, but do you see correlations with the US? You can download the entire white paper here, which includes all of the information above with more charts and graphs.

Technorati Tags:
branding, marketing, Matt Dickman, mobile, PR, search, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer, technology, Fleishman-Hillard

Social reputation patterns

I found a very interesting post on the Yahoo User Interface blog today discussing social reputation patterns. Reputation is a way to create engagement inside a community and plays an important part in many social networks and other action-driven sites.

Some quick examples of reputation systems are LinkedIn's profile completeness and eBay seller ratings. Having these levels of reputation in the system give interactions an added value. In eBay, sellers are given the incentive to deliver what they say they will, because they know they'll be rated afterward. LinkedIn's profile completeness level is dependent on helping others in the system and encourages more interaction.

Here are the patterns that Yahoo mentions:

These patterns can also be used in different types of community environments. They range from altruistic, nurturing communities to combative, winner-takes-all environments. Certain brands can use each to deliver value to their community.

Take a minute now and think about the communities that you participate in where users are given an incentive for taking action. Where does it fit in these patterns? Most sites use multiple patterns to engage different groups of users and it's a very powerful technique to engage users online and drive repeat visits and extended loyalty.

Technorati Tags:
conversations, marketing, Matt Dickman, social networks, strategy, Techno//Marketer, Yahoo, reputation

On widgets and micro interactions

Next Monday I will be on a panel discussion at first Widget Web Expo to be held in the US. The panel is full of brilliant thinkers including David Armano (who is moderating), David Malouf (an Interaction Designer for Motorola), InternetGeekGirl herself Steph Agresta, Steve Rubel (SVP at Edelman Digital) and Ian Schafer (CEO of Deep Focus). The panel is centered around a passion of mine, micro interactions.

        

Micro interactions with brands are very powerful tools for marketers to engage with users where they live online. What I mean is that widgets and other micromedia are location agnostic. You can take an experience like a widget (or a service like Twitter) and put it on your phone, blog, website, desktop, etc. You move them as you like and engage with them in the way you want.

Widgets are portable, brand gateways

Widgets can live on websites and blogs and look like containers for third party information like these:

Services like iGoogle and MyYahoo are made entirely of widgets. You select what you want on the page, move them around and remove them when they stop adding value.

If you run OSX or Vista you can have widgets on your desktop that do any number of tasks.

Most importantly, these widgets enable you as a marketer to allow your customer to have a window into your brand. Are you taking advantage of that? Widgets can stream live video, include maps, offer exclusives and really add value.

So what is a widget to you? Do you have a model that is stuck in your mind or do you think broadly about widgets? Considering that you can have an entire website or transact commerce inside a widget there is no real limit to what you can do.

Technorati Tags:
branding, marketing, Matt Dickman, micromedia, PR, social media, Techno//Marketer, technology, Twitter, widgets, Widget Web Expo

Inside//Out: Plurk

If you read the title of this post and thought I was kidding about the name of the service, I assure you I am not. Plurk is a new micromedia service that is just coming on the radar screen for the early adopter crowd. It builds on the ideas that Twitter has made de-facto standards and adds a bit more interactivity.

The key differentiator for Plurk is the timeline of messages that users can surf through, the modifiers (loves, hates, thinks) that are used to filter messages and the overall style. This looks to be geared toward a younger audience overall. There is a mobile site at www.plurk.com/m that allows you to post and read Plurks from your friends.

Here is a video overview:

[Feed readers please click through if you cannot see the video.]

Key Takeaways:

• These sites are all about community and this one is still young
  
• Users must update Plurk separately from Twitter, there is no stream connection at this time
  
• Plurk allows mobile web and IM updates (haven't seen SMS yet)
  
• Plurk is still new so the API isn't open yet
  
• I personally think that people can reasonably manage 2 services like this at one time, the most broadly functional services will win out
  

Are you using Plurk? It's open to try if you'd like. Make sure you add me there. I'll add you back.

Technorati Tags:
Inside//Out, marketing, Matt Dickman, micromedia, social media, Techno//Marketer, technology, Plurk

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To help you stay on top of what is happening and to filter the myriad options, you can now subscribe to the Techno//Marketer podcast on iTunes. Get updates in real time when new videos become available.

If you use another podcatcher you can grab my podcast RSS feed here.

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You can watch this and other Techno//Marketer videos on your video channel of choice:

   
   

What would it take to topple Twitter?

Twitter has a double unfair advantage over its competitors; a huge user base (estimated at over a million users now) and a very solid head start.

This hasn't stopped a host of new competitors from trying to give it a go. Among the latest competitors are BrightKite, Jaiku (who is owned by Google), Plurk, Utterz and even Facebook and LinkedIn have begun enabling micromedia updates on user profiles.

[Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod]

However, as Twitter's service woes keep mounting and user sentiment keeps edging toward the negative, I have to wonder...what would it take to topple Twitter?

In order to understand this, we need to look at what makes Twitter work. Let's break them down so we can see how it's gained such wide-spread popularity.

1. Simplicity: Twitter does one thing really well. It lets you communicate what you're doing right now. Now other functionality (no matter how easy it would be to implement), 140 characters, one text field and one button. Anybody can look at it and start using it in minutes.

   What competitors need to do: Though I think that there is room beyond 140 characters of text on a service like this (think video and photos), it needs to remain easy to use. Design and usability needs to be where the majority of the development time is spent. The technology should, as I've said before, fade away to the background. If it's not clear on what the user should do within 5 seconds of opening the page it's too complicated.

2. Ease of use: This builds on the previous idea of simplicity. Twitter let's you use it. It gets the heck out of your way and adds value by supporting conversation. The interface guides the user smoothly through the interactions. Posting a message is easy, replying is easy and the content is simple text. That's ease of use.

   What competitors need to do:This is a no-brainer. Any competitor who is going to topple Twitter will have to have an extremely easy to use service. Like I mentioned before, a lot of attention needs to be paid here. Too many services offer more features/better technology, but are a pain to use.

3. Mobility: Twitter has a very strong mobile platform. Not only is the SMS (text messages) updating solid, but the mobile site allows most of the regular site's functionality from nearly any device and network. Either option allows for seamless use when away from the browser.

   What competitors need to do: There is no option for the competition to miss this crucial piece of the equation. The portability of the user experience has to be in place. Users need to be able to update and receive updates from any device in the world. SMS is growing in popularity and allows quick updates from US networks. The mobile site allows more reach and really lets the user step away from their computer with confidence. SMS also serves an important role in getting messages to people and breaking through the clutter.

4. Platform agnostic: We just touched on the mobile platform, but Twitter's open architecture has allowed developers to extend the service to IM (AOL/GTalk/Jabber) as well as desktop applications. For IM, users add Twitter as a friend and send it their updates. Applications like Twhirl work like any desktop application (think Start > Applications > Twhirl) and don't make you keep a browser open at all times.

   What competitors need to do: This is another area that any competitor worth their salt will need to copy. The open architecture allows the development community to do its work and enhance the service faster than the competitor would be able to.

5. Strong RSS: Twitter has a very strong RSS architecture. You can subscribe to individual's feeds, your own feed (messages and replies) and use the RSS feeds to build other services. Other services like Twitterfeed use RSS to update Twitter accounts automatically. You can look at my "Techno//Marketer" twitter feed for an example. That feed is 100% auto-generated by Twitterfeed.

   What competitors need to do: No question here either. RSS is a staple of the new digital frontier.

6. Widgetization: Twitter had this right from the start. One of the most powerful ways that Twitter spread through the social media space was from the blog widget that allowed people to promote their messages as well as the service. It added value to the reader and drove new users. You can see my example in the right-hand panel of this blog.

   What competitors need to do: The more options people have to spread their content the better. Formats should be adjustable (width, height), customizable (color, branding) and should work everywhere possible.

7. The community: This is Twitter's ace in the hole. No matter how good other services are, no matter how easy they are to use, no matter how comprehensive the utility there is no use for a service like this that doesn't have a community. While some competitors have been around longer they have not been able to build the buzz and following that Twitter has. Some of this is due the founder's background (having founder Blogger.com) having an immediate, connected audience.

   What competitors need to do: You have to transplant the community. What I mean is that a competitor that's looking to topple Twitter (not build a new, unique audience) will need to use the openness of Twitter against it. Accounts will need to be moved over while keeping all of that user's connections in tact. to move user's networks in whole. Accounts and logins will need to be moved to make it as easy a transition as possible.

What would you add to this list? Is Twitter indomitable at this point or are they Yahoo in 1999 with Google just around the corner?

Technorati Tags:
conversations, design, Facebook, FriendFeed, Jaiku, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer, technology, micromedia, Twitter