Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 260

Facebook Is Looking Smarter Than Ever

Facebook is looking smarter than ever. It happens in a flash.

It seems like only yesterday, when everybody was complaining about Facebook's lack of a mobile presence. Their initial strikes at a mobile app were simply lesser versions of their Web-based experience. Then, something happened. It took a mere six months for the company to turn that around by releasing a full native mobile app experience, that gave consumers a new way to look at Facebook. The output of this shift from Web-based to mobile-primed could not have happened at a better time. While Google has forged ahead with Android and many other necessary leaps in technology, their core search product (and the one that generates a massive amount of their nearly $400 billion market cap) is driven by their search engine advertising business. And, whether it's on mobile or on the Web, that experience hasn't evolved all that much. That is no slight. Search is fast, efficient and as good as it has ever been, but as a platform, it is what it is. Yes, they're making many fascinating moves with Google+, but the jury is still out on how much adoption their social, mobile and Web integration is truly having.

Not Facebook.

Facebook is living the one screen world reality, almost better than any other brand. This was pushed even further with the announcement of Paper (which is set to launch on February 3rd, 2013). While I, personally, wish they would have chosen another name (because the current Paper app is really awesome and will create confusion), this is a very smart business strategy for Facebook. One of the biggest challenges that they face is the fact that Facebook is a walled garden. Everything happens within Facebook. There have been small sediments of this changing (they allow external sites to have Like Buttons, the ability to embed Facebook posts on any website and some other plays), but the primary Facebook experience, happens on Facebook. From the current slew of reviews for Paper, it feels like Facebook is creating an entirely new mobile experience to engage with content that is both a part of the regular newsfeed along with content from outside, and that the secondary value proposition is one's ability to use Facebook to share. That's right: a great mobile app for all types of content first, and Facebook being the sharing underbelly of it. Smart. Super smart strategy. All roads don't lead to Facebook and this will allow them to diversify in what is typically a very finicky space.

Building a portfolio company.

Facebook could have bought a Flipboard-like company, but instead opted to build something on their own. Bolt that on to Facebook (as it currently exists) and Instagram (which they bought for close to one billion dollars in 2012), and we could be at the beginning of a very interesting company that is building/buying a suite of applications to help people connect and share (which would be directly in line with Mark Zuckerberg's vision for connecting the world). I'm apprehensive to be bullish on Paper without playing with it and seeing how everyone else adopts it, but based on the promotional video, etc... it does feel like a standalone product, or even something that could live on if Facebook's dominance in online social networking wanes (which is hard to imagine). The company's focus on social networking, mobile, photos and now stories/news/journalism/more social media paints a vivid picture about the future of how we connect and share. It's still a puzzle with many missing pieces, but based on their recently quarterly earnings call, and now the announcement of Paper, Facebook - which will celebrate it's tenth anniversary this year - continues to look fresh, viable and growing. If they continue down the road of this strategy to build out independent and useful applications that aren't beholden to Facebook as a destination, this could be the beginning of a next-generation publishing and media company.

If you have been following Facebook for any semblance of time, it is a fascinating story to watch unfold.

Tags:

android

facebook

facebook like button

flipboard

google

google plus

instagram

journalism

mark zuckerberg

media company

mobile

mobile app

mobile experience

newsfeed

one screen world

online social networking

paper

search engine

social media

stories

technology

Facebook Is Looking Smarter Than Even

Facebook is looking smarter than ever. It happens in a flash.

It seems like only yesterday, when everybody was complaining about Facebook's lack of a mobile presence. Their initial strikes at a mobile app were simply lesser versions of their Web-based experience. Then, something happened. It took a mere six months for the company to turn that around by releasing a full native mobile app experience, that gave consumers a new way to look at Facebook. The output of this shift from Web-based to mobile-primed could not have happened at a better time. While Google has forged ahead with Android and many other necessary leaps in technology, their core search product (and the one that generates a massive amount of their nearly $400 billion market cap) is driven by their search engine advertising business. And, whether it's on mobile or on the Web, that experience hasn't evolved all that much. That is no slight. Search is fast, efficient and as good as it has ever been, but as a platform, it is what it is. Yes, they're making many fascinating moves with Google+, but the jury is still out on how much adoption their social, mobile and Web integration is truly having.

Not Facebook.

Facebook is living the one screen world reality, almost better than any other brand. This was pushed even further with the announcement of Paper (which is set to launch on February 3rd, 2013). While I, personally, wish they would have chosen another name (because the current Paper app is really awesome and will create confusion), this is a very smart business strategy for Facebook. One of the biggest challenges that they face is the fact that Facebook is a walled garden. Everything happens within Facebook. There have been small sediments of this changing (they allow external sites to have Like Buttons, the ability to embed Facebook posts on any website and some other plays), but the primary Facebook experience, happens on Facebook. From the current slew of reviews for Paper, it feels like Facebook is creating an entirely new mobile experience to engage with content that is both a part of the regular newsfeed along with content from outside, and that the secondary value proposition is one's ability to use Facebook to share. That's right: a great mobile app for all types of content first, and Facebook being the sharing underbelly of it. Smart. Super smart strategy. All roads don't lead to Facebook and this will allow them to diversify in what is typically a very finicky space.

Building a portfolio company.

Facebook could have bought a Flipboard-like company, but instead opted to build something on their own. Bolt that on to Facebook (as it currently exists) and Instagram (which they bought for close to one billion dollars in 2012), and we could be at the beginning of a very interesting company that is building/buying a suite of applications to help people connect and share (which would be directly in line with Mark Zuckerberg's vision for connecting the world). I'm apprehensive to be bullish on Paper without playing with it and seeing how everyone else adopts it, but based on the promotional video, etc... it does feel like a standalone product, or even something that could live on if Facebook's dominance in online social networking wanes (which is hard to imagine). The company's focus on social networking, mobile, photos and now stories/news/journalism/more social media paints a vivid picture about the future of how we connect and share. It's still a puzzle with many missing pieces, but based on their recently quarterly earnings call, and now the announcement of Paper, Facebook - which will celebrate it's tenth anniversary this year - continues to look fresh, viable and growing. If they continue down the road of this strategy to build out independent and useful applications that aren't beholden to Facebook as a destination, this could be the beginning of a next-generation publishing and media company.

If you have been following Facebook for any semblance of time, it is a fascinating story to watch unfold.

Tags:

android

facebook

facebook like button

flipboard

google

google plus

instagram

journalism

mark zuckerberg

media company

mobile

mobile app

mobile experience

newsfeed

one screen world

online social networking

paper

search engine

social media

stories

technology

The Blog Turns 20 This Year

Can you believe it? I had to re-read the headline a couple of times as well.

Yesterday, The Guardian posted an article titled, The blog turns 20: a conversation with three internet pioneers. It made me do a double-take. This blog, has been around for eleven years. With over 3600 posts and over 40,000 comments, it is much more than a publishing platform. It is much more than a place where I share what I am thinking about or tinkering with. It is an ongoing space where people come together to think differently about how brands can better connect with consumers. I can't thank you enough for being here, and I can't tell you how grateful I am that blogging was invented.

Twenty years is a long time.

Brands struggle to understand digital marketing. To say that this is nothing new, is to acknowledge just how slow companies can be to adapt, and how adverse to change many people can be. You can head over to your local bookstore (if you still have one) and look at the most recent business books being published, and there will - without question - be several titles about how to get started with blogs and how important they can be to a businesses success. When I was writing the first draft of my second book, CTRL ALT Delete (which came out in the latter part of last year), I was genuinely anxious to use the word "blog" in the book. I felt like people reading it may misinterpret my use of the word and think that I was dismissing some of the newer channels, or that I had become an old man, clinging on to this thing that had lost its shiny luster and media darling position in the world. When I look at new media platforms like Huffington Post, Business Insider, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or whatever, I just see some kind of variance on the blog. A blog - for my dollar - has simply become the catchall phrase for the ability that human beings now have to create content (in text, images, audio and video) and instantly share that with the world for free. Blogs were better defined as an online journal that enabled writers to instantly publish their content to the world for free (it could also be easily distributed through the power of RSS - a term that is also all-but-forgotten). Now, it's not just words. It's not just on a computer. Still, Instagram just feels like photo blogging to someone like me.

Twenty years... and it's just getting started.

In a world of disposable technology (both the hardware and the software), I still believe in the power of words. In a world where books are moving from bookshelves to iPhones, I still believe in words. In a world where pictures can be sent via mobile and then destroyed so that no trail ever exists, I still believe in words. This hesitancy of brands to embrace these channels are both a personal frustration to me, but have also afforded me an incredibly rich life of work that continues to keep me inspired. Still, I have a hard time believing that the concept of blogging is two decades old.

If you love to write.  

Often, people will ask why I love to blog so much and so frequently. The answer is simple: I love to write. If you love to write. If you love to share... you should be blogging. To me, the notion of blogging is still as exciting and powerful as it was over a decade ago, when I published my first post. Back then, I could not believe that this piece of software existed. I could not believe that I didn't need anyone's permission (be it an editor or a publication) to reach an audience. I could not believe that if my words resonated, I would be able to find my own audience and build my own community. Twenty years later, I get that same tingle - each and every day - when I lift the lid of my MacBook Air and stare at the blank screen. I don't often know where the journey will take me, or how easily the words will flow, but I am deeply grateful and forever thankful for the pioneers who built this platform.

It's not about me.

As I read the article in The Guardian, I started to realize that while I am thankful that I was able to find a corner of the world to share my words, that I much more grateful that I am able to read, consume and engage with the thinking of others. I have met some of my closest friends because they are bloggers. Because they share. Because they write. Because they care. These people are real. More real than the digital pixels that transform and distribute their words instantly around the world. If you look to the left of this blog post, you will see something that says, "Check Out These Blogs." Those people are just some of the big brains that I think about, read and follow with each and every passing day. In a world without blogs, I would be waiting years or months (at best) to hopefully grab a new book from them or an extended article in a magazine or newspaper. No more. Blogs destroyed the chasm that existed between writers and their audiences, by giving them the ability to share on an ongoing basis. I marvel at that more than anything else. I hope you do as well.

Happy 20th Birthday, blog! I'm looking forward to decades more of your goodness.

Feel free to share below what blogs mean to you...

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #189

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Burnt: A heated hullabaloo over $4 toast - Edible San Francisco . "The always-quotable Alex Howard once told me that tax rates are simply the cost the rich are willing to pay to stop the poor rising up, or something like that. There's a class war brewing in the Bay Area (and even Tom Perkins has agreed Kristallnacht might not have been the best choice of words ). But whatever side of the burbclave fence you're on, something's got to give. And apparently, it's toast--hipster, organic, toast for the one percent. On a recent NPR comedy show, the host remarked that he 'hadn't seen thin, scruffy men in hats this excited about toast since the great depression.' That might make for good copy, but the story's a bit deeper. Here, then, is a piece in defense of toast, suggesting that perhaps it isn't the perfect lightning rod for income-inequality debaters." (Alistair for Hugh).

Former FCC commissioner thinks it's time to go nuclear on ISPs - BGR . "Decades ago, the US federal government gave carriers billions of dollars to build out broadband. The carriers pocketed the money, the US is still miles behind other countries in terms of access to fast bandwidth, and carriers want to treat traffic that makes them money differently from traffic from, say, Google or Facebook . Well, things are about to get worse. Earlier this month, the FCC's regulatory framework for forcing carriers to respect net neutrality was thrown out. The FCC still has a trick up its sleeve, though: reclassify Internet service providers as common carriers, the way they treat phone companies. This would have wide-reaching consequences for the fortunes of every ISP, and who makes money from communications. Watch this space." (Alistair for Mitch).

The Three Leakers and What to Do About Them - The New York Review of Books . "One of the defining debates of our time will surely be: what to do about privacy now that (almost) all our communications, locations, buying habits, reading habits, watching habits, among other things, are trackable? These kinds of questions cut in many directions: what should states be able to know? What should states be able to conceal? What do journalists have a responsibility to expose? Not to mention, what all those private companies should  be allowed to do with our data  the Googles and Facebooks everyone frets about; the Visas and Mastercards no one seems to notice; and the ISPs and telcos on whose wires and towers our communications travel. In this age of data, spying and just-about complete capture (of private citizen information; of government secrets) three people  Snowden, Assange and Manning - have more or less given up their lives in exchange for bringing these questions front-and-center. And the conundrum, especially for the American government, is: what to do about them?"  (Hugh for Alistair).

The Paratext's the Thing - The Chronicle Of Higher Education . "Why the aside, the conversation, the Tweets and blog posts and Facebook comments are becoming more important than the things they are talking about." (Hugh for Mitch).

Everything I need to know about management I learned from playing Dungeons and Dragons - Quartz . "I was at my parent's house earlier this week. It is the house that I grew up in. On my journey to rediscover the electric bass, I was trying to find all of my old books from school on the subject. Of course, it was all just where I had left it. Right next to the stack of books, I discovered my original Dungeons & Dragons starter kit box. It included instruction manuals, adventures, the famous dice and even some characters I had developed. It transported me back in time to my early teens. I didn't think I was a nerd (or I didn't care), but I loved creating characters with friends and taking them on adventures. It was much more than a board game, it was much more than role-playing, and it was much more than something we did to kill time. I learned a lot from building these characters and these worlds. It's quite possible, that I never realized just how much..." (Mitch for Alistair).

What You're Worth To Facebook - The New Yorker . "Facebook had a great week. Just look at their stock . Just look at how they've managed to embrace and run with mobile . Just look at the pending launch of stand-alone apps like, Paper . The question becomes this: is there any chance that Facebook can outdo Google at this point? The real promise of Google's revenue from advertising is that they are able to put a message in front of people who are searching for something, in specific. Is it possible, that Facebook can take this a step further by putting messages in front of people that are hyper-relevant without those people even having to search for it? Facebook thinks so. Let's see if they can pull it off and what this means to companies like Google and Yahoo ." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

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alex howard

alistair croll

bgr

bitcurrent

book a futurists manifesto

burbclave

complete web monitoring

dungeons and dragons

edible san francisco

facebook

facebook paper

fcc

gigaom

google

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

managing bandwidth

mastercard

media hacks

npr

pressbooks

quartz

social media

solve for interesting

the chronicle of higher education

the new york review of books

the new yorker

tom perkins

visa

yahoo

year one labs

Hacking Art Education And The Creative Experience

Is an education worth it? Is an education in art school worth it?

There are many marketers that have (or are even thinking about) art education. It will not be news to anyone, that most students leave college in tremendous debt. With that, there is no real link between a formal education and a guaranteed job that will carry a family through the middle class (or beyond). Life has become ever-complex. The definition of The American Dream is becoming ambiguous. For artists, it has become even more complex. Noah Bradley published a very contentious piece on Medium titled, Don't go to art school, that garnered a ton of attention. Primarily, because he was someone who attended some of the best art schools in the world. Jonathan Fields from Good Life Project had this fascinating conversation with Noah. It's an important piece of content to watch and share for everyone working in the creative space and for those who know young people who are considering a more creative life with an education in art.

Hacking art education and building a strong body work...

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the american dream

Brooks Forester From The Bachelorette Talks Reality TV, Marketing And More

Episode #394 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

I spent some time last year at HubSpot's inbound marketing summit in Boston. It was, without a doubt, one of the most exciting marketing events I had attended in a long time. You could feel the excitement in the air, as more and more national brands began to embrace the power of building relationships and figuring out new ways to market their products and services. It was a stellar line-up of presenters, and I found myself quite taken aback by a spoof of the ABC reality TV show, The Bachelorette, that the company executives were performing live on stage. It turns out that Brooks Forester, who was a contestant on the ninth season of the reality televisions series, made a very newsworthy exit from the show when it was down to the wire. It also turns out that Brooks works in the inbound marketing space and wasn't just there to be the comedic relief for the Hubspot folks, but was actually going to discuss some of the marketing lessons that he learned while being on the show (and the aftermath). In those few days, we connected and decided that - when he was prepared - we could our own, little, "The Bachelor reveals all..." about marketing, being a reality television celebrity and what comes next. He's a super-kind individual and I hope you enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #394.

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marketing podcast

podcast

podcasting

social media

the bachelorette

twitter

video podcast

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #188

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Debunking Princeton - Facebook . "A recent Princeton study claimed Facebook would lose eighty percent of its users in the next few years. Sure, we all know the kids love their Snapchat , but that seems dubious to me. Apparently, it also seemed dubious to the whip-smart data science team at Facebook, who took them to task with this brilliant rebuttal. Oh, and based on this analysis, we're running out of air, too." (Alistair for Hugh).

What are the best travel hacks? - Quora . "I spent a lot of time on the road last year. My favorite travel hack is using the ironing board as a work desk you can adjust to your perfect height in a hotel room, so you don't destroy your back in a marathon writing session. This Quora thread is packed with gems." (Alistair for Mitch).

Last Alan Moore Interview? - Slovobooks . " Alan Moore , creator of Watchmen and a few other cult comic classics, gives a delightfully grouchy interview, which he seems to claim will be his last. In it, he pillories contemporary adults for raising kids' entertainment from the last century (superheroes) to the center of our cultural life; attacks claims that his work is prevalent with misogynist scenes of rape and violence against women ('prevalent' compared to what?' he asks, 'Consensual sex? Non-sexual violence?'); and bridles at the idea that white men shouldn't write characters of other races. A thoughtful and detailed piece on our art, politics, culture." (Hugh for Alistair).

Sit Back, Relax, and Read That Long Story--on Your Phone - The Atlantic . "It's no suprise to me (since the thing that sold me on ebooks was reading War And Peace on my iPhone ), but certainly marketers and content producers should have a think about this little stat: one of Buzzfeed 's most popular stories ( Why I Bought A House In Detroit For $500 ) is 6,000 words long. Average time spent on the article by tablet readers: 12 minutes. Phones? 25 minutes. Movies, television, books and long articles. Turns out phones are *built* for these things, no matter what David Lynch has to say about it ." (Hugh for Mitch).

Why Bitcoin Matters - The New York Times . "I get asked about Bitcoin and digital currency all of the time now. Bitcoin is sweeping pop culture like Facebook once did. I believe in the power of digital currency and the massive opportunity that lies ahead for it. Who cares? Who am I? Just some dude with a blog and an opinion. Let's ask the experts what they think. Someone whose opinion I hold in the highest of regards would be Marc Andreessen . So, here's what he thinks about it..." (Mitch for Alistair).

Jerry Seinfeld on how to be funny without sex and swearing - The Guardian . "I don't care what you do for a living, if you're not spending your time truly honing your craft, skills and talent, they are being wasted. Someone who takes this job to a whole other level of dedication and care is Jerry Seinfeld . He's no longer a spring chicken, but this doesn't stop him from always having a spring in his step. This is a fabulous read that should motivate you to keep at it. Whatever your 'it' is." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alan moore

alistair croll

bitcoin

bitcurrent

book a futurists manifesto

buzzfeed

complete web monitoring

david lynch

facebook

gigaom

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

iphone

jerry seinfeld

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

managing bandwidth

marc andreessen

media hacks

pressbooks

princeton

quora

slovobooks

social media

solve for interesting

the atlantic

the guardian

the new york times

travel hacks

war and peace

watchmen

year one labs

Inside Business Insider

Are you a fan of Business Insider?

It's a website that generates million of unique users each and every month. They have an amazing knack for delivering the news with killer headlines that get attention (hot hot click bait!). The CEO and editor, Henry Blodget, appeared this past week on Charlie Rose to tell his very fascinating story. From a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charge that led to a permanent ban from the securities industry (coupled with a major fine) to running one of the hottest online publishing channels in the world.

This is the story of Blodget and Business Insider...

Tags:

business insider

charlie rose

click bait

henry blodget

news website

online publishing

sec

us securities and exchange commission

Great Content Is The Least Of Your Worries

If a brand is looking to do something more than traditional advertising, what would be your recommendation?

The natural answer is: create content. And, to leverage that content through digital (re: social media) channels, so that consumers will see it, share it, talk about it, etc... Even that is not a simple and easy thing to do. We've seen - on a constant and consistent basis - just how hard brands struggle to get the right type of content into the right channels to see any type of movement happen. It's still few and far between for most, as they grapple with defining what success (or ROI) looks like in comparison with their traditional advertising measurement models. With that, too many brands dismiss the myriad of other reasons why consumers like what they see. In the end, having great content or great advertising is a fraction of the work that defines success for a brand. 

What else are consumers looking for in a brand?

Utility. As you know, utilitarianism marketing, is a huge part of my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete, and still remains a vastly untapped opportunity for brands. Consumers want to have a tool (or utility) that adds value to their already cluttered lives. Newsfeeds are filled with links and how-to articles. This is just more clutter for them to sort through. It's not just about valuable content, but how that content is cased for them to actually derive a true benefit from it. The content that goes into this case is critical, but until a brand knows how much of a utility their apps, websites or wearable technologies are adding to their consumer's lives, it will be hard to break through the clutter.

Functionality. This can best be described as the opposite of "death by a thousand paper cuts." Functionality is all of the small, smart and simple ways that your marketing creates value to the consumer by removing layers of friction and adding in thousands (hundreds?) or little things that make the experience of the utility that much easier and fluid than anything else they had used previously. Think about the "slide to unlock" functionality of smartphones versus the old days of multiple button combinations to get your device into working mode. The easier it is to navigate and use coupled with the valuable content will build more loyal consumers.

Design. In two words: design matters. I've watched consumers - on countless occasions - attempt to navigate a website on a mobile device or try to work through a "mobile-friendly" version of a brand's digital experience only to quit or calmly state, "this sucks." Consumers don't care about your IT roadmap or your marketing department's apprehension to spend budget on a native mobile experience, they simple find it to be a brand weakness. Period. This isn't just about mobile either. So few brands spend any semblance of time designing better experiences, that we wind up having two instances occur: One, a general homogeny, where it's hard to tell the difference between one brand from another. Two, a brand that believes design is at the core and is able to create such a chasm between themselves and their competitors. Content surrounded by poor design is poor content.

Integration. It's a digital world. This pushes content well beyond the realm of simple text. We live in a world of text, images, audio and video. Consumers have an expectation to have that entire experience fully-integrated. They want access to the content as apart of the experience. Push this to think about ways to build a proper integrated player or embedding the right tools, so that the consumer can best benefit from a holistic experience. 

Apps. This may be contentious to some, but apps are the new reality. Consumers are looking for new and interesting things on their smartphones and tablets. There is no reason why brands should not play an important role in this space. Sadly, most of the branded apps don't follow the notions being put forward here and relegate themselves to narcissistic tendencies. They're looking to pimp and shill over utility, functionality, design and integration. Consumers love and want more apps. Apps are the new websites. Brands need to get used to this.

Alerts and notifications. If consumers love what you're doing and creating, they want to know when more of that good stuff is coming. There is a balance here and subtlety that is hard to master, but the brands that consumers know, love and trust are also the ones that they want to be most connected to. Consumers do like alerts and notifications that are valuable. Don't forget about that. And don't be annoying. Remember, this is a very sensitive issue. Brands are trying to add value with alerts and notifications, not bulk up on impressions.

Interaction. Arianna Huffington quite beautifully stated that "self-expression in the new entertainment." Consumers love access. They love commenting, sharing, complaining and more. Do you know what they love more than that? Doing it in public. People love to share and tell stories and add to those stories. Great content is no different. In the early days of blogging, I used to say that the biggest difference between traditional media and blogging is that in the tradition world, the last period at the end of the last sentence is the end of the piece. In digital media, the last period at the end of the last sentence is where the story begins. Having great content without building in the hooks for people to have interaction, social play and commentary renders the content neutered.

Distribution. This is something that I have blogged about on countless occasions. Content without an even stronger content distribution strategy is useless. This is a hard one for brands to understand. They want to control the content on their own platforms. Great content wants to be free. Brands can help with this. It means breaking down the walled gardens and finding new and interesting places where customers (and prospective customers) play and connect, and to get your content into those channels of distributions. Think about your industry trade publications or other, more adventurous, places for your content to live and breathe.

So, are you still just worried about the content side of things?

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advertising

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arianna huffington

blogging

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ctrl alt delete

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design matters

digital channel

digital experience

digital integration

digital media

entertainment

great content

marketing department

mobile app

mobile device

mobile experience

mobile friendly website

newsfeed

notifications

self expression

smartphone

social interactions

social media

tablet

traditional advertising

utilitarianism marketing

wearable technology

website

The Next Great Marketing Disruption

Last week was a weird week.

I was in New York speaking at the National Retail Federation's Big Show in New York City. My closing keynote was to take place after former President of the United States, George W. Bush, was going to speak and then Costco co-founder, Jim Sinegal, would be awarded a lifetime achievement award during the NRF Retail Industry Awards Luncheon. If that isn't strange enough, in the following days one of the great technology startup icons, Jack Dorsey (Twitter and Square - at the same time) was also going to give a keynote session titled, The Receipt - A Communication Channel. That's weird, right? Here's the full description from the conference guide: "Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square and Chairman of Twitter, will discuss the power of human connection and the ability to see big potential in the smallest of moments. With this philosophy in mind, Jack will focus his keynote on the untapped power of an often-overlooked artifact of commerce: the receipt." 

Is the next big disruption in marketing, retail and technology the sales receipt?

Do you remember the now-infamous Seinfeld episode where George Costanza's wallet was so overstuffed with receipts (and yes, there was even some hard candy in there!) that he was sitting at a tilt with it in his back pocket? Does Dorsey believe that the future is in alleviating the woes of these annoying little pieces of paper that are typically scattered between our wallets, purses, desk drawers and nightstands? Does Dorsey believe that the future of better marketing is in leveraging this societal annoyance into a wanted piece of marketing content? Here's what he said about it: "What if we see the receipt more as a publishing medium -- a product unto itself that people actually want to take home, that they want to engage with, be fully interactive with?... What can we do with this everyday tool... What can we build into this canvas that's actually valuable, that's independent of the product you just sold? What can you give in this communication channel, this publishing medium, that people want to engage with?" The only solutions to the questions that Dorsey provides were for retailers to add their Twitter handles to these receipts or to take a look at the many exciting ways that Square (his mobile POS system) is leveraging the mobile wallet component of the system to give electronic receipts that ask for feedback and/or provides tips or whatever. Re/code described the presentation as, "crazy talk," while Valleywag went on to editorialize that, "Dorsey didn't actually explain how any of this makes any sense at all, or is not a poor caricature of startup fever dreaming, so I'll offer an idea: receipts are dumb and annoying, and we should just have them archived in our email somewhere in case we need them for taxes. No one should be trying to make receipts interesting. They're receipts." In the end of that Seinfeld episode, George's wallet exploded. Dorsey's thoughts may have had the same comical climax.

Or did it?

While Dorsey may have radically changed the way we communicate in 140 characters, or how we can use our mobile devices to pay for our everyday things (without even having to remove it from our pockets), he may not know how many brands have been leveraging their sales receipts over the past few years. Supermarkets often use this channel to offer coupons and discounts, Chipotle asks patrons of their restaurants to enter the code at the bottom of their receipt for access to the customer-only bathrooms, Staples uses the space to encourage customers to take a survey, and there's more. Perhaps the spirit of Dorsey's comments are more profound and important than the examples he provided or the snarky tech pundits' discourse. At a macro level, Dorsey is right about brands needing to get better at taking every opportunity to optimize and maximize a moment of engagement. Perhaps the sales receipt should be perceived of as an archetype for a very commonly used form of communication that is in dire need of an upgrade? What about thinking about those smaller moments (instead of the big campaign), the ability to have a more human connection (instead of pimping more coupons) or the ability to always add value (along with information)? Sales receipts may not be the next great marketing disruption, but thinking about better ways to blend a traditional form of communication that consumers are already accustomed to with technology is a surefire way to make marketing better, more interesting and, when done well, perfectly disruptive.  

What do you think?

The above posting is my new monthly column on marketing innovation for Strategy Magazine. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

Strategy - Receipts: The next great market disruption?

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