Is Your Twitter Use Unhealthy?

Twitter has almost 500 million registered profiles now and users are churning out around 175 million tweets every day. That’s a lot of activity. If you’re a stat junkie then check out this infographic at MediaBistro for all sorts of interesting information.

The 140 character limit on tweets makes Twitter a weird and wonderful collection of voices. It also seems to be the platform of choice for celebrities to interact with fans. Throw competitions, promotions and random bits of information into the mix and even Twitter users following a modest number of people are going to struggle to keep up with everything that’s going on in their stream.

Like all social media I got a buzz when I first signed up to Twitter and then I lapsed and didn’t use my account for months. Just recently I’ve been getting back into it. It’s the variety that has me hooked at the moment. Yesterday I investigated after a tweet from Simon Pegg asked people to lay off Nathan Fillion about “holding twine”. Turns out some blogger asked him to send her a photo of himself holding twine and he ignored her, she tried the same with Pegg and managed to make it a trending topic which elicited a photo from him. Now you could argue that the ten minutes I spent reading about that during a busy workday was a complete waste of time and you’d be right, but sometimes Twitter is genuinely informative, interesting or it just makes you smile.

My favorite story last week was on the Guardian as Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, said that using Twitter for hours at a time “sounds unhealthy”. He could have a point. Do you find yourself sitting for hours on end tapping those new tweets as they pop up? How much time do you spend reading tweets? What is your primary purpose in using Twitter? Who is your favorite person to follow?

I dip into Twitter a few times a day at the moment and read a few tweets. I guess my primary purpose in using it is to find and share interesting information. My tips to follow, apart from me of course, are William Gibson @GreatDismal for a really bizarre mix of tweets and Dara O Briain @daraobriain for some cutting humor.

Post a comment and let us know your Twitter thoughts. Or talk to me on Twitter @Setimerenptah.

The Power of Effective Web Graphics on Conversions

Images, images, images... A key component of any web presence? The eye candy that grabs your attention and says look at me? Maybe so, but are images always used effectively and for the right reasons?

No, not at all! And that can be just as damaging for your brand or message as it can be engaging.

Recently an article was brought to my attention that really resonated with Rock The Deadline. It talks of advertising guru David Ogilvy and his research into the use of images in advertising.

His findings offer insightful ways to use images effectively, and comes in stark contrast to the ways traditional web design and advertising engagement has been delivered. Images do not always make ads or web pages better. Without careful consideration regarding layout, format and selection they almost certainly distract and lower professional perception. Online articles and web pages very much fit the pattern of print ads, the way they have to try and catch peoples' eye through such a small window of opportunity. It is a critical process.

A really engaging, must read and very accurate in my opinion. I won't recite the research findings here, I'll just ask: How often do we still see these mistakes being made? If in fact we agree that they actually are "mistakes" in the first place?

Agree? Disagree?

Random image alert!!! We always need an image, right?

Imagination at Work: An Awesome Video Infographic From GE

It’s hard to go anywhere on the Internet these days without seeing some reference to infographics. However, more and more people are turning to video infographics as a means to communicate a lot of great information in a very short time frame.

As an added bonus, videos can be easily embedded onto any site -- whether it be a blog, social media stream, or regular web page. On the other hand, the sprawling nature of infographics requires a great deal more work when you are trying to incorporate them into your online presence.

Here is a great example of a video infographic from GE. If you've seen any others that you love, drop us a note in the comments.

Protecting IP Rights Is Everyone’s Responsibility

Have you ever seen something cool posted on your Facebook wall or Google+ stream, and reshared it with your friends and followers?

You could be guilty of violating intellectual property rights and not even realize it.

Ever since reading Kim Lloyd’s thoughts on the intent of SOPA, I’ve been thinking a lot about how often intellectual property rights are violated on social media sites like Facebook and YouTube – and how often the perpetrators don’t even realize they’re sharing something they shouldn’t. I still don’t agree with SOPA because I believe in looking for solutions via innovation and education rather than legislation. And, to be honest, the thought of a government-regulated Internet bothers me for a ton of different reasons. But, that’s a story for another day…

Even though I’m not a supporter of SOPA, PIPA or other similar legislation, I do feel that theft of intellectual property is a very real problem that continues to grow. Also, despite the rhetoric, big brands are not the only victims. In fact, it’s the little guys – startup independent video producers, bloggers, photographers, etc. – who are being hurt the most. I’ll talk more about that in a moment, but first I want to take a quick look at the so-called pirates.

So, Are We All Just a Bunch of Robbers and Thieves?

If you mention Internet or media piracy, a lot of people conjure up images of seedy characters copying and burning CDs and DVDs in a dimly-lit back room of some shop in the bad part of town. Or, you may picture someone in Asia scouring the web, intentionally looking for content to scrape and reuse on a short-term site to generate ad revenue. Basically, many of us assume that the people involved know full well what they’re doing is wrong, but they just don’t care.

In reality, the bulk of IP theft is committed by those who don’t think they’re stealing or, at the very least, don’t think they’re doing any harm.

Often it’s a case of ignorance. After all, usage restrictions and copyright laws can be pretty confusing – especially when it comes to what constitutes fair use. For instance, how often have you seen a video of a television show posted on YouTube that was clearly recorded by someone with no legal rights to do so with a note in the description saying, “I do not own the rights to this video, and I’m posting it for entertainment purposes only.”

Yes, there is a huge segment of the population that seems to believe if they aren’t personally getting a paycheck as a result of the infringement, they’ve done nothing wrong. They may even believe they’re doing a public service – providing the material for free so others don’t have to pay for it! They don’t stop to consider how others may be making or losing money from their “good deeds.”

Social media outlets like Facebook compound the problem. One person posts the video on YouTube, others share it on Facebook, and still others reshare it on Facebook without even noticing the name of the user who originally posted the video. As this sharing continues and grows, those doing the sharing may even assume that the original poster actually had full legal rights to the video.

YouTube, Facebook and Others: Please Stop Fencing Stolen IP

When you allow digital media to be distributed via your web site without worrying where that material came from as long as you’re somehow profiting through the distribution, is that really much different from fencing physical stolen goods? Rather than only deal with it when someone complains, shouldn’t you take measures to try to prevent it from happening in the first place?

The consensus among most of the big-name sites is that it’s the media owner’s responsibility to notify the site if material is being used without permission. These sites claim that other solutions would be too costly and would severely limit users – and would even result in a stifling of creativity.

Hey, you know what really stifles creativity? When you have to spend hours a week scouring the Internet to see who might have ripped off your old stuff instead of, you know, creating new stuff.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s the little guys who are getting hurt the worst. Big media companies like Viacom have enough money to hire people whose entire job consists of tracking down IP theft and copyright violations. I’m not saying they should have to do this, just that they have the ability to do this – making it harder for others to profit from their work. Independents, on the other hand, don’t have the time or the resources to spend and, as a result, have a much tougher time protecting their IP.

What’s the Solution?

I fully admit that I don’t know of a perfect solution to this problem, but I do think there are a lot of steps that sites like Facebook and YouTube can take to help curb IP theft. For instance, what about asking a few questions with each video or photo upload – things like “Do you have the legal right to distribute this content?” and adding fields for users to cite the original source of the material. Sure, this isn’t going to stop people who are determined to share the content no matter what, but it will make a sizeable percentage of the population stop and think before clicking the upload button.

In addition, simply having an FAQ page that outlines what type of content is permissible and gives specific examples of common scenarios would go a long way toward educating the general public about intellectual property and usage rights. The trick here is to get away from the legalese and use plain language that the average person can understand. For instance, the creative-content subscription site PhotoSpin has a typical user agreement with all the legal bells and whistles, but it also has an awesome The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly section that spells out in clear language what you can and can’t do with the images you obtain from the site.

Would it really take too much effort and be too tough on the end user to implement things like this on Facebook, YouTube and other social media outlets? I don’t think so. Moreover, isn’t it better for these companies to formulate a solid self-regulation plan before some other group (like the US Government) tries to step in with its own method of regulation?

Enterprise Computing Trends in 2012

Enterprise computing for 2012 creates a plethora of challenges and opportunities within the B2B market. Business owners, clients and customers alike are having to adapt to increased globalization and the commercialization of technology owners, both at home and in the workplace. In this regard the scalability of E-commerce, cloud computing and big data management enhances an organizations ability to reach new audiences and position themselves within markets – both physical and virtual – that stretch the boundaries of culture and economic systems.

I recently consulted on a B2B Enterprise Computing industry trends analysis in collaboration with a national agency and network of Universities in the UK. It investigated the fusion of technologies, their impact on business and trade relations, and the trends in IT that will define not just strategic focus in 2012 but for years to come. Garnering opinions from industry experts and executives within a host of business verticals such as Health, Education, Finance, Law and IT services the results often sparked debate and conflicts of interests. Each sector certainly has bespoke IT needs and restrictions – public vs private, profit vs people oriented, etc. – but the core IT focus requirements remained the same. While priorities also differed at the outset, it was interesting to note the almost exclusive agreement on the final ‘trending’ points. That virtualization, collaborative systems and information governance play key roles. That the afore-mentioned commercial outlook, embracing cloud philosophies and big data management will drive success.

Trending IT needs in 2012…

1. Managing costs: This was rewording from "Cutting costs" to "Managing costs" as business leaders in several sectors objected to the terminology and philosophical mindset. It is less an exercise of 'cutting' and more about 'managing' what is currently rolled out and budgeted for. Which is especially pertinent in this economic climate when manageable and variable expenses are crucial. One major factor that makes this possible is the resilience and security of cloud technologies. Cloud computing is so attractive for this very reason - a company can manage costs, leave administration to external parties, reducing overheads and pay per user/usage. Downsized license agreements and internal IT infrastructure variables therefore become much more manageable.
2. Driving revenue through further investment in IT: This depended greatly on the company and sector of business. For example public sector industries – Health, Education – are greatly restricted by budgetary sanctions and governance "red tape", so their opportunity is limited to specific vendors and government run initiatives. Within big business, investment is made in-house or outsourced as an effort in consolidation, standardization or value adding. The bottom line, IT life cycle management that scales is uppermost in executive strategists minds.
3. Improve security governance and demographics: Globalization and commercialization are turning employees and customers into "digital aficionados." People are turned off by unfamiliar hardware, software they have to learn, individual access logins for each and every platform or interface they want to use. This culture creates an expectation for people to be able to use the tools and technologies they are familiar with and use in everyday life. This is a considerable challenge for IT departments, especially where cultural boundaries are blurred, local laws create road blocks to technological rollout and standards must be maintained in-house. Creating a policy and embracing "native experiences" is fast becoming a crucial aspect of strategic focus, to empower, engage and maintain productivity.
4. Big data: Especially key in Health and Finance, the ability to capture, store, search, share and analyse vast amounts of legacy data is at a critical mass. Providing greater storage and bandwidth depends on deployment, network storage capacity and in the 'cloud' on a pay for usage agreement level. The issue to address is migrating from old in-house physical data warehousing, security and recovery, to a methodology that embraces online virtualization. None of which is cheap, and all of which takes a lot of time to sort and filter.
5. Minimizing the energy footprint and impact: In several industry forums there was a distinct impression that this was the ‘white elephant’ in the room. While important as a process of stepping through hoops for regulators and government standards it was referred to as being important only as a “slogan of the day.” However, trends in IT are moving towards going green as matter of course. Economics, optimization, utilization, speed, space and time - all are key drivers for green initiatives. There are also movements afoot where companies will be penalized – for example regarding carbon consumption, energy usage, etc. Enterprise computing is being driven to make ‘green’ initiatives a priority, but it has to be said, this is at the chagrin of some, especially in these economic times with governance and capital restrictions stymieing growth.

For any B2B provider or client, smarter computing is going to drive the ability to scale. Fundamentally, businesses must build an infrastructure so that employees, customers and technology can be harnessed to grow the business while creating ROI. Which, when all is said and done, IS the key to any successful business strategy.

Tech Round Up: Apple and Microsoft vs Google, Sony's Green Credentials

Anyone with an interest in the competition between mobile platforms will already know about the patent wars that have been raging. The latest news this week concerns a German court upholding Apple’s claim that Motorola has infringed their slide-to-unlock patent. This concerns the simple act of sliding your finger from left to right in order to unlock your smartphone. Google has filed for a patent for an unlock screen which is a circle with a dot in the middle and sliding in any direction will unlock it. Do we, as consumers, really care about this? Should you be allowed to patent a gesture anyway? These kinds of arguments are usually settled out of court by licensing agreements but there is major enmity between the players in the mobile market right now.

Google’s Android platform has been targeted by Apple and Microsoft. Your point of view on this will probably depend on which company you prefer or possibly which you have invested in. Either Google gave away Android free of licensing costs to gain a big market share, exploiting technology developed by Apple and Microsoft in the process, or they wanted to create a level playing field and open up the market. So we’ve got Apple suing Android manufacturers like Samsung and Motorola, Samsung and Motorola are counter suing and Microsoft is forcing licensing agreements on every Android manufacturer they can find. Microsoft and Apple (along with a few others) teamed up to grab the Nortel patents. Google bought Motorola Mobility which many analysts are arguing was a move to strengthen their patent portfolio (though Google insists it is about more than that). There have been wins and losses on both sides but there’s unlikely to be a clear winner because both sides have legitimate claims.

This is a big legal battle that looks set to run for a long time. If you’re interested in the legal complexities then this Foss Patents blog post makes interesting reading. If you want to know more about the patent wars and licensing then check out this excellent article at The Verge.

The fight against Google on the one side and Apple and Microsoft on the other has been in the news on another front this week. Concerns were raised about Google circumventing Apple privacy settings on the Safari browser. If you’re concerned then check out this article at The Washington Post which explains what they were actually doing and points out that they have now stopped. Microsoft wouldn’t miss an opportunity like this so they charged into the argument with an IE Blog post suggesting that Google bypasses privacy settings in Internet Explorer as well. Google was quick to respond with a statement you can find at The Verge which calls Microsoft’s policy “non-operational”.

The issue of tracking online behavior and privacy rights, whether you are signed into a service or not, is clearly concerning people. The reason behind it is generally to target relevant advertising at you. I wouldn’t be fooled into thinking that it’s any more for Apple and Microsoft than just another front to open up against their sworn enemy.

Getting away from the bitter tech war for a moment it was nice to see a positive story on Tech Radar about beleaguered tech giant Sony. They may have posted big losses and the release of the most powerful handheld gaming console ever in the shape of the PS Vita looks like it could be every bit as disastrous as Nintendo’s 3DS but they are engaged in some extremely smart green practices so let’s show them some love and buy a new Sony TV.

Do you take sides in the tech war? Post a comment and share your thoughts.

Redefining Work... Globalization Meets Content Marketing

Redefining the Deal

We all know that the post-war social contract most developed countries are familiar with is rapidly changing. Education has become much more expensive even as it has become a less reliable path to employment. Employment - until recently a promise of rising wages, rising expectations and social mobility - is now itself a lifetime of continuous uncertainty and anxiety. Personal learning must be continuous to learn new skills as technology replaces even more labor, and the better jobs involve more intellectual skills than ever before. The developed world faces billions of new workers competing for the jobs that are available and employers are increasingly more global in their search for new markets and for low-cost production. If you have kids, you’re nervous for them. You're nervous for yourself too. Globalization lets companies become less nationalistic and less concerned with - or accountable for - social well-being. Even so, here in the US the SCOTUS has ruled that corporations have unlimited ability to fund political discourse. Distanced from employment and distanced from civic representation - citizens, voters, taxpayers, and workers are increasingly on their own. The magazine Fast Company called this the “Age of the Individual” in its now-famous cover article, “The Brand Called You.” That was in 1997.

Redefining the Desk
Developed nation economies (especially the US) are increasingly moving toward a services economy at the expense of traditional manufacturing. Manufacturing now involves sophisticated technologies and systems controls over complex machines. The deployment of capital through technology is currently much more efficient than the use of labor. The jobs in the most productive of today’s factory are more likely to require a PhD than a strong back. But outsourcing is not limited to jobs. Many household brands now routinely use contract manufacturing, and the major trend in Information Technology integrates Software as a Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing as the new norm.

There is also a pronounced shift in who provides the capital infrastructure that even service workers need. The service economy worker, aka knowledge worker, is being downsized from offices to cubicles, relocated from office to home, and re-classified from employee to contractor. This trend toward engaging people as independent contractors also shifts overheads like heating, lighting and connectivity, tools like hardware and software, and human resource issues like healthcare and pension benefits – all onto the individual. Gains in collective advantage are being redistributed as corporations respond to, or take advantage of, the globalization effects of technology dispersion and increased labor competition. It is probable that hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of knowledge workers are now working from home.

Redefining the Dialog

Compounding the increasing fragmentation of traditional civil relationships is the change of control in public and marketing communications. The days of one-way communication from party to voter or vendor to customer are over. In the business world, today’s customers – both consumer and business buyers – are increasingly vocal and participatory in discussing and critiquing the goods and services they buy. They use social networks to seek referrals and use their own social graphs to curate, not only the content they consume, but also the products they research and purchase. In this post-PC world of mobile communications, time spent on social networks has passed that of time spent on traditional web portals. Social Commerce is the hot new investment trend in VC right now as consumers increasingly rely on their own social sphere of influencers to make their buying decisions.

In order to stay part of this never-ending conversation, today’s marketer must adopt communications strategies that involve listening, conversing and messaging to their audience. The sheer amount of content required to satisfy this always-on dialog across multiples of media is enormous. Who will create this? How can we afford them? How will we manage them?

It was once famously said that what this country needed was a good five-cent cigar. I think what this world needs now is a good network of independent experts who create marketing content for businesses on a reliable, affordable, sustainable basis.

How will your organization develop the personal stories and deep-dive content that will keep your audience engaged?