NOTE: The goal of this post is not to troll and get attention by posting negative comments about media giant AT&T. Instead this post is intended to help all of us better understand what is happening in the world as we embrace micro-transactive interaction.
At the risk of sounding a little “Hippy”, today our thoughts, beliefs, and consciousness are traversing the digisphere in real-time at the speed of light. Because of this we know things much faster (true or not) and are on the way to becoming a digitally connected meta organism. Patchouli aside, the “Twitter Effect” has been linked to very rapid attendance drop-offs of bad movies (including Bruno), leaving the movie executives stunned and broke. No longer does it take a week or two to hear you really shouldn’t see a movie, it happens instantly. Similar effects have been noticed in politics, and stock trading as well. So what do we do?
We learn!
“The Feed” has the power to share knowledge in a more relevant and timely manner than any other medium that exists today. Try searching Twitter for the answer to a problem instead of Google. I was surprised to find my answer in one search after over an hour working the Google query strings. Even better, The Feed offers responses. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, make a post, ask for a Re-Tweet (RT), or use hashtags (#) to get to individuals who are interested in a specific topic. Connected people are an amazing resource.
So that brings us to the purpose of this post. In addition to being a powerful resource for answers, The Feed is an outstanding tool for gathering insight into customer opinion. The successful companies of today realize that building close, meaningful relationships with customers is the only truly defensible business strategy. In other words, Intellectual Property is easy to steal, but you aren’t going to steal my friends unless I upset them and drive them to you. That’s how social media works. It’s close relationships founded on seemingly insignificant communication transactions that are very similar to those you might have with a friend walking in the park.
When it’s time to address the potential issue of your customer’s viewpoints it’s a good idea to take a long look in the mirror and evaluate how you appear to the public. With the newly available RSS query subscriptions offered by Twitter and Google Blog search it’s relatively easy to set up a series of searches that will provide you a view (a mirror) into the shared opinion of your company (or yourself) by the meta-organism/feed.
We’ve created an example here. It’s an iGoogle page that hosts RSS feeds that are designed to eek out positive and negative views expressed about AT&T. (You’ll need an iGoogle account to subscribe to the tab) but we think it’s worth the price of admission. The story is passionate, dramatic, emotional, and bleak.
In addition to the views into The Feed via RSS windows, we’ve provided a number of links to resources including Hashtags.org, MicroPlaza, Twendz, and TWIST. We would like to invite you to develop your own opinions and discuss them here or on Twitter or FaceBook. What do you think AT&T should do? Do you think these people are all crackpots? Do you think blog posts like this will increase negative comments for companies like AT&T?
We look forward to the discussion.
Screen shot of the iGoogle page.
You can get the shared iGoogle tab here
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on July 20, 2009
We love iPhone applications. Heck we may even be making one of our own, but here are a few of our absolute favorites. Most are free – some are fee – all are worthy. (we are not).
- GeoPedia – GeoPedia is basically a location-based Wikipedia interface for your iPhone.
- AmazonMobile – The note/snapshot feature is still pretty cool!
- iTransitBuddy – a robust, easy to use public transportation schedule application. Multiple cities including Chicago.
- enCamp – BaseCamp application for the iPhone. Best of breed so far.
- Facebook – We hate and love this app. Mostly love it.
- GuitarToolKit – Guitar players this has chords, an accurate microphone-based tuner, metronome and more. Very cool.
- Kindle for the iPhone – You don’t carry your Kindle everywhere but you carry your phone. The UI is super easy and readable.
- NowPlaying – Movie listings, ratings and more.
- OmniFocus – It’s expensive but nothing does GTD better.
- PhoneFlix – Netflix client for iPhone. Very useful when a movie idea hits you on the train.
- Skype – VOIP for your iPhone. We eagerly await SMS capabilities in the upcoming releases.
- SpeedTest – Cuz we’re paranoid that our bandwidth is less than it should be. This app tests WIFI and EDGE/3G bandwidth speeds.
- Tweetie – Absolutely the category killer for twitter clients. Worth the money.
- Weatherbug – The best weather information we’ve seen to date.
- Wordpress – If you’ve got a blog post that needs to be up now. This is the app for you.
- FSS Hockey: Because when you’re waiting for half an hour to be seated at a restaurant, it’s time for a few games of air hockey.
- ICanHasCheezBurger: Lolcats and LOL generation optimized for the iPhone.
- Labyrinth – the most beautifully designed game application. This person knows physics.
- Remote – if you have wifi, this app works with keynote.
- CTABusTracker – really a web page, but use it alot and is very accurate.
- Shazam – this music analyzer works surprisingly.
- New York Times – they have made it more sophisticated, but it is also more unreliable.
- Pandora – use it every day and very easy to use.
- WunderRadio – great streaming radio application.
- Units – the best designed measurement application
- Bejewelled 2 - It’s addictive like crack.
- Ocarina. $.99 turns your iPhone into a flutelike musical instrument.
Honorable mention (not quite applications)
- TrafficGauge – Very easy to digest traffic info for your favorite major metropolitan areas. I use this web app EVERY day.
- Meebo – use it every day
Do you have favorite apps that you can’t live without? Do share!
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on April 29, 2009
Rosenfeld Media (Lou Rosenfeld) is known for their amazing field-manual style UX guides. (Rumor has it that Lou user tests his books!!) Randy Horton, Client Partner at Geneca and joint fan of all things Rosenfeld has drafted a pitch for Lou and his crew. What do you think, will it sell?
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I was recently speaking with Mark FelcanSmith, who is a UX manager at Sears.com, about Rosenfeld Media. Our conversation inspired me to realize that there is actually a book that I actually qualified to write for RM. Here is my pitch:
One of the key activities for anyone who moves into a UX leadership role is to assume responsibility for ordering dinner for the team on late nights at the office. To date, every UX leader has had to re-invent the wheel on learning this highly-intricate and crucial task. That is, until now. For the first time ever, UX leaders will have a definitive reference guide to go to get practical guidance on best practices and approaches to this challenging task.
Rosenfeld Media is proud to announce the acquisition of its newest title: Ordering Dinner for the Team: Challenges and Approaches.
This book will address a range of relevant topics including:
- Buffet-style vs. individual orders – Weighing the relative benefits
- Do you call a special meeting to take orders or interrupt each person while they are hard at work at their desk – Minimizing productivity loss
- Handling special dietary needs (vegetarian, vegan, kosher/halal, gluten-free, food allergies)
- Making sure you have enough napkins, and not the thin little restaurant ones that don’t do any good
- What to do about the really lame plastic forks that break apart in your food when you use them
- Where to dispose of all of the containers if the cleaning staff has already come by for the evening?
- Do you offer any food to the security guard at the front desk who eyes the great looking food as it is delivered?
- And many, many more topics.
I see some really good marketing tie-ins with restaurant delivery websites.
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on April 11, 2009
Here’s the replay of the today’s (tw)Insider Tips:
- SXSW If you see @briangorbett I hear he’s giving away free stuff to those who inquire. Tell him the Cloud sent you.
- SXSW – Please post Leslie reports. Pictures are welcome.
- SXSW (tw)Insider – If you’re looking for hookers or the cool hipster bar “LongBranch”, East 11th Street is the place. Be CAREFUL!.
- SXSW (tw)Insider – Hip Hop night (MONDAY) at “Nasty’s” with D.J. Mel is unforgettable. Margarita’s suck, however.
- <blink>OBEY</blink>
- SXSW (tw)Insider – Which would you prefer, thunderstorms and 43F (Austin) or sunny and 22F (Chicago)?
- Good morning Austin! Today’s weather: Hi 43 degrees F. 90% chance of rain and thunderstorms. Weeeee!
- SXSW (tw)Insider: The bum with the G-string is named Leslie. He has a PhD in physics and has run for Mayor. Say Hi for us.
See you tomorrow Austin!
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on March 13, 2009
You’ve packed your bags, reviewed the conference itinerary, conquered the layover gauntlet, and are checking into your hotel. Are you ready for SXSW? We don’t think so!
Throughout the duration of the conference we will be tweetcasting must know insider scoops on everything from the locations of the best local food to the name and personal habits of the “local color.” Places to avoid, things you MUST do: you won’t know how you’ve survived past SXSW conferences. You can follow us on twitter here or review the daily summaries on spill. Make sure to tweet us back with questions. We’re here to help!!!
p.s. Sorry about the TwInsider thing.
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on March 12, 2009
How many times have you mentioned Facebook, Twitter, or Boxee (shout out to Avner and crew!) and gotten the an eye-roll? There seems to be a stigma developing in the industry because everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) is attempting to build community components into their application offerings. The bad news is it’s not going to stop anytime soon. The good news is that providers are getting better at implementing these systems and consumers are starting to experience real value.
So, why is the online community not a fad and/or evil? At its core, the online community is designed to build closer relationships between the consumers and the product/service provider. It’s important to distinguish that online community does NOT always have to build relationships between consumers and other consumers. Social networking focuses on connecting people in online communities. Online community is a higher level concept that is simply about the building of a body of active and engaged individuals.
Why do providers need to build customer relationships? In the early 1900’s it was common to buy soap directly from a human being that ran a local soap store. Customers would go to this person’s store and buy soap, share feedback, make feature requests, and hopefully deliver praise for the proprietor’s products. The proprietor would in turn make products that the customers desired. Today’s consumer packaged goods (CPG) giant Proctor & Gamble needed to reinvent this system because they could not afford to place an individual in every town they wanted to serve and they could not afford to manufacture an infinite number of variations on their product. Instead they created the first Brand and marketed their products (a small subset) using their brand promises to replace the direct connection that existed prior. As America endured it’s industrialization more and more companies chose to use brand instead the more costly direct representative approach to representing their products and today product sales reps don’t really exist except for big-ticket items like cars (oh and we all love car salesmen!). What companies like P&G failed to see was that the cost saving brand approach was also stripping them of their consumer feedback. They, like most other businesses following their model, became disconnected from their consumers who in turn became less excited about their products. They also found that they had to use manipulative marketing messages to persuade customers to buy their products. They had to lie.
Today the world is changing, or in a small way reverting back, to the direct connection model. People are media-saavy and see right through manipulative marketing/advertising attempts to persuade their purchases. To overcome this, smart providers are using online community to reverse the system. Instead of convincing consumers to buy their products they are letting consumers tell them what products to make. Providers are finding that watching customers using their products gives them incredible insights. Listening to them talk about their products does as well. Building systems that facilitate these observations and discussions is what online community is all about.
Google is a perfect example of well implemented online communities. While no one really thinks of Google as a community platform, their free applications connect us (search, email, document sharing, maps, etc) and in turn inform them about our desires, needs, and behaviors. They use this information to make their products better and sell other products to us. In return we love them.
Stay tuned… BT2 is coming next week. We’ll be talking about the “R” word, relevance.
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on February 3, 2009
Live this morning, Whitehouse.gov has launched a new redesign. Notable additions to the site, (aside from a new look) include a blog and some pretty strong content. During his campaign Barack Obama leveraged the use of social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc) to share thoughts and connect with the people. His team’s use of Twitter tended to be more as a broadcast platform announcing different events and linking to video instead of bi-directional communication but overall it was an effective approach. While everything President Obama is doing to leverage Digital is groundbreaking from a governmental standpoint they have yet to take the real challenge and build an online community. Imagine a place where you could see legislation discussions happening in real-time and interact with decision makers? We applaud President Obama’s administration for taking steps in the right direction but encourage them to push further. Digital could be the tool that connects citizens and leadership to affect real change. P.S. We’re waiting to help!
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on January 20, 2009
The holidays are upon us! Tanagram will be open Today and Tuesday this week.
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on December 22, 2008
We’re going to give it a try. We’ve created a Twitter account for Tanagram (@tanagram) and will share lively news and events with all who care to follow our corporate persona (she’s sassy so watch out!). Using the Wordpress Twitter Tools plugin our posts to spill should go out to our Twitter account and a daily summary of twitter activity will show up automatically on Spill every morning. This *could* be annoying. Consider the experiment initiated.
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on December 13, 2008
Thank you all for a wonderful holiday party. It was food, fun, and entertaining. We rocked this year and next year is going to be ours!
Posted by Joseph Juhnke on December 13, 2008
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