UberNoggin

New technologies can be scary but for businesses the risk of being passed by is too high to be scared off. The best example of late is Mattel’s steamrollering by Scrabulous. Mattel didn’t jump on the opportunity to create an application for Facebook when they could have and Scrabulous did it first with amazing adoption rates. Now Matel has finally created an app but no one plays it because they’re already using Scrabulous.

Say what you want about the copyright infringement issues, Mattel still missed the boat. Think about your own business. Are there tech communities in which your product/service could do well but you’re hesitating because you’re unsure or uptight? Could someone else compete with you in those spaces if you wait too long? How much will the damage to your reputation cost if you allow someone else to deliver your product better?

Think about it while you jam to this ditty.

Scrabulous

So you’ve been thinking about taking your business into the virtual world but you need some help. Maybe you need some numbers, some handy facts about demographics, some insightful analysis about what this whole movement to the virtual world really means for business. Well, O’Reilly is here to help.

Now, I’ve read dozens of “white papers” claiming to be guides to Second Life and other virtual spaces and most of them get mocked and tossed into the circular file here at the Intellahome but, as much as I would have liked to claim that “even O’Reilly doesn’t get it!” I can’t. This is a great white paper.   It’s actually useful! *gasp!* I know! You probably think I’ve lost my marbles, but listen up.

If you’re someone who needs to make the argument to your company or organization for a foray into the virtual, this little baby will actually give you some really decent ammunition: non-inflated demographic and population stats, useful information about money exchanges and purchasing habits, and context for Second Life as one of many new virtual spaces that should be on your radar. It even has a fair assessment of adult content in Second Life that neither glosses over risk or over-hypes it like some of the conservative press has tried to.

It’s worth a read.

Disclaimer: I should note that I did get my copy of the report for free though I would still have been happy to trash it if it deserved it. You can’t buy Intellalove

I’m giving a talk this morning from 8am EST to 11am EST about developing strategies for using Social Networking Sites. If you’d like to watch follow this link.

I’ll post the slides and notes a bit later. Hope to see some of you there!

The Intellacast is back! I don’t podcast as often as I’d like but when I do I try to make it worth it. So here’s a doozy. It’s a challenge to three of the best social media evangelists out there: CC Chapman, Joseph Jaffe, and Mitch Joel. All three deliver great insight into the ways social media is changing how businesses and organizations communicate and market. All three create consistently powerful content about how the new media revolution is changing us all. But all three deliver their messages via media forms that only reach the “converted”: podcasts, blogs, Twitter (except Jaffe who writes books as well).

So, in addition to giving my three rules of social media, I’ve also issued a challenge to these guys: How do the social media evangelists stop “preaching to the converted” through social media forms, and start engaging and exciting the huge population of folks who don’t even know what they’re missing? In the podcast I give my answer the question to get the conversation started.

I hope you all enjoy the podcast. And CC, Joseph, Mitch: I hope you’ll respond to the challenge!

Note: The podcast is at the bottom of the post in m4a format. I tried to get it up on iTunes but didn’t have the oompf to wrestle with it and this headcold at the same time. Enjoy! 

NYT Article about MTV’s Virtual Lower East Side (VLES). VLES is an interesting response to the independent music scene on MySpace and other social sites (which seem to be faltering big time!). In VLES, and its accompanying social network site, bands and fans meet up to support their favorite music, vote for up and coming groups, watch those groups in virtual clubs with the hope that enough popularity will get them gigs in the real versions and maybe even (gasp!) a spot on MTV.

So, being the nutsy person that I am, I couldn’t help but run off and download the VLES software and make myself an avatar. It was, needless to say, very interesting. I had the choice of about five haircuts in five natural colors (so disappointing for us pink-haired folks), about a hundred clothing options, skin color, and the choice of five celebrity faces. I chose “The Portman” because “The Ricci” had anime-sized eyes. I could choose my height but there was no slider for body shape. Everyone is eating-disorder-skinny in VLES.

Here’s my avatar in her Herby Hancock tank top and red Joan Jett haircut.

She’s “like sooo New York! OMG!” When I logged in I was surprised to see that VLES was announcing that CSS (that Brazilian band who sings the song about music on the new Ipod commercials) would be playing.

Log-in screen with concert announcement and menu for choosing the club you’d like to pop in to.

It’s grungy; it’s emo; it’s an opportunity to market to a self-selected audience of people who like virtual worlds, socializing, and new music. In my opinion, VLES is a pretty good idea. But will it work?

Phew! The last few weeks have been insane with travel, talks, and lots of writing other than writing here. It’s nice to be back on terra ferma and on the good ol’ blog talking to my favorite people.

I’ve had a bit of a brainstorm lately and I’m still working through the details but I thought it would be fun to air them here and see what all you brainy (or noggin-y) folks have to say about it. I’m considering writing another book about using web 2.0 tools to streamline your life or accomplish goals. Something like “How to become Internet Famous in 30 days or less” or maybe “Web 2.0 and You”. Hoaky, I know but you get the idea. The more I travel around talking to folks about new technologies the more I realize it’s not enough to know where to click or what address to type in. The real power of these technologies is in how they change our lives. A technology is only as powerful as its ability to solve a problem or enrich our lives.

To that end, I’ve started reflecting on the concept of Digital Makeovers. To me, a Digital Makeover is the process of reflecting on one’s personal or business practices and identifying opportunities/problems that a technology can solve. You folks are probably all techno savvy enough to not need such help but I get to talk to tons of people who know that there is something big afoot in the digital world and just wish they had someone next to them at the computer or in the office who could explain it all and help them develop strategies to make the best use of what is available.

Non-profits seem to be a good target to start with because I think they could benefit the most dramatically from utilizing free online tools to maximize their budgets and mobilize volunteers. Plus, it’s just plain awesome to do good work for someone with a good cause. So this is where I’ll start. By reaching out to some local organizations and offering Media Sauce’s help to develop easy to implement strategies that make use of Web 2.0 goodies to improve their organization’s efforts.

Viva la geek!

Gotta love it when your work becomes a marketing bullet!

If you’re interested in microblogging ala Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, you might be interested to know that Google purchased Jaiku today. Besides making all the Jaiku employees dance around in celebration of their upcoming stock options, this could mean something big. Other smart folks are talking about it too:

• BlogShmog
• Guardian
• Reuters
• Mashable
• Read/Write Web
• OReilly

This could mean some serious improvements in the way Google IM works. Jaiku’s functionality, if added to gchat, could mean that you could sort your friends, send chat via SMS or a web interface not attached to Gmail. I’m imagining the implications of integrating Jaiku into Gmail and it’s making my head spin a bit. Though, I don’t think any of us should hold our breath. It could be quite a while before Google does anything with Jaiku. Keep your eye on it!

The McKinsey Quarterly Journal recently released a research paper summarizing a study of 573 users of contributory video sites. In addition to their findings regarding why people contribute videos, the report includes the table below which shows the supposed rates of participation in many web 2.0 applications. This is a prime example of corporate research publishing findings generated by others without questioning the rigor of the findings.

• 6% of residents of Second Life create 100% of the content?: If you take a look at the study from which this number is drawn, you’d see that the study included an N of all registered accounts at the time of the study, not active accounts. They also defined participation as engaging in the economy through purchase not as actually creating content for themselves or for sale to others. This is an absolutely inaccurate measure of participation. Any one who uses Second Life at all would know this.
• 2% of Wikipedia users create 60% of content?: This stat is misleading due to its being based on a comparison of the numbers of visitors against the number of registered users. Wikipedia gets an astronomical amount of traffic. The fact that only 2% of visitors become contributors is out of proportion to the size of the user population and should also be compared to the number of contributors responsible for a printed encyclopedia for reference.
• 2% of Flickr users post 95% of content?: So the million pics posted a day (Flickr adds 15 terabytes of storage per month!) accounts for grandma posting her 10 pics a month but it also accounts for the photography buff down the street who posts several hundred a week. The fact that there are a few folks who post a whole heck of a lot of content doesn’t make grandma’s pics any less important.
• 60% of del.icio.us content is posted by 10% of users?: There are a couple of important lessons in this one. First, is the nature of the tool. Del.icio.us is primarily a selfish service. I book mark sites so I can find them again. It’s nice that other people might find them useful but that’s not my primary reason to use the site. Second, of all the sites listed on the graph, del.icio.us is by far the easiest to use and the one most similar to a popular old tool, bookmarking in your browser. It’s no wonder that del.icio.us comes across as the most participatory website!

Misuse of research never ceases to amaze me. In the rush to publish a whitepaper or study companies (and sometimes academics, but much less so) snag numbers from whatever source they can find, dress them up, and present them as credible facts.

Dig a little deeper, folks. Get a better understanding of what you’re talking about BEFORE you post/publish/press release.

If you blog then you know the feeling of sitting at your keyboard staring at an empty Word doc or WordPress page, thrumming your fingers on your coffee cup, and trying to decide what to write. Some days I have a hot topic in mind and I can’t wait to get to my desk. Other days I’m lost in thinking “What do people want to know about?” and I end up reading RSS feeds until I find inspiration.

I often coach businesses on how to blog for increased corporate transparency, better relationships with customers and business partners, and as a way to develop their vision in a larger conversation. For an individual it’s not that much different. A blog, whether for a CEO or a grad student, is a way to reach out to others to engage in dialogue. The concept of dialogue or conversation through blogging is important to me. It’s not a monologue I’m writing here. It’s not a soap box. It’s the opening volley of a conversation. “I think this. What do you think?” and then I wait eagerly for comments, rebuttals, additions etc. However, if I want those conversations then I have to keep in mind who is reading and write about things they’ll want to comment on, not just read and close. So we end up where we started, writing something that will please others rather than just expressing our own ideas. It’s not a bad place to start but it can stump you if you don’t know who is reading your blog.

Back when I was blogging on my Second Life Education Research blog I had huge traffic. It was a very niche blog with an observant, engaged audience but since I moved to Ubernoggin (a move I made because I’m not teaching this semester) I’ve struggled to reestablish a significant body of readers. I’ve watched the traffic in response to certain entries, kept up with link backs etc. to stay in the conversation, but it’s been a real experiment in practicing what I preach to other bloggers about how to build traffic and establish a steady readership.

So, after all this pontificating, I want to make a list of the ways I try to increase the number of readers who come to participate in the conversations I start here:

• Be sure your blog is registered with search engines like Technorati, google, and Pubsub so people can find you.
• Use categories in WordPress. Be sure the category tags are descriptive, specific, and popular with your desired audience.
• Write often. The more you write, the more your page is updated and the higher your search rank. If you don’t have time to write often, write several entries at once and post date them to post later in the week.
• Use headlines that are descriptive of the content not kitch or puns.
• Let your network know you’ve written. Don’t spam your friends with your blog address but posting it as a Twitter message, a Facebook status update, or even a gmail status will let your friends know you’ve written something they might be interested in.
• Link to other blogs you like and pay attention to your trackbacks. If someone references your blog go read what they have to say and participate in the conversation on their blog.
• Include your blog address in your email signature and on all online profiles.

What would you add to this list? How do you drive traffic to your blog? How do you encourage conversation? (btw, ending with a question will encourage people to comment and engage in your conversation as well!)