(Credit:
Roland Allen)
Location matters. Black Swan-author Nassim Nicholas Taleb finds "living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters – you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity." That's particularly true for romance. People move to big cities not to advance their careers, party, escape, disappear, be a star, and so on. The chick-flick fan that I am, I remember very well that candid line from Sex and the City (the movie): "I came to New York City to fall in love." Exactly. "Anyone who's predicting the decline of big cities has already met their spouse," writes Clay Shirky.
One of the most effective places for random but potentially life-defining encounters is the public intimacy of the subway. The underground is not only an object of affection but also its catalyst. As reported by The Australian, a recent study commissioned by the Paris Transport Authority ("L'Amour Mobile" – why studies in French sound better than poems in English is another topic) found out that the majority of Internet messages posted by Parisians seeking a stranger whose path they had crossed stemmed from a look, a smile, or a conversation on the Métro. More than 80 percent of the messages were from underground passengers, typically between 18 and 25 years old, and divided almost equally between men and women. They were often reading books or listening to iPods – activities that apparently unite passengers more than they isolate them.
"The Metro is without doubt the foremost producer of urban tales about falling in love," Frank Beau, the author of the study, commented. Mr. Beau further suggested that the physical proximity of passengers fueled romantic tension. The slightest contact – a glance, a word, a jacket brushing against your shoulder – becomes an "extraordinary experience," he said, adding that the seats by the doors were the best spot for romantic exchanges. Encounters in museums, parks, cafes or on the street were far less likely to produce passion.
A second study commissioned by public transportation executives in Paris showed that 12 percent of Parisians had begun a lasting relationship, as friends or lovers, with someone they met for the first time on the underground.
Despite Paris being the "city of love," one can probably find the same pattern on other underground systems: London, Berlin, Moscow, or Shanghai. The "Missed Connections" section on Craigslist is a popular compilation of frustrated amour in US metropolitan areas. In New York, the story of a romantic subway rider going many extra miles to find his subway acquaintance was a hit on local media outlets.
As The Australian suggests, companies should think about developing mobile web services to enable passengers to reconnect with a random encounter. Ultimately, of course, all this would be much easier if everyone just carried an ID tag (on an opt-in basis) – a Clear Card for Metromantics.
Ps. Frank Beau will discuss the findings of the studies at the LIFT conference in Geneva.
This week I had the pleasure to host Jan Chipchase, FuturePerfect, renowned Nokia research guru, at a frog and IxDA sponsored event in NY. I first met Jan at DUX in 2005 where he did a brilliant presentation on a research study around what people carry in their purse. His premise being that this is the ultimate value threshold that we should use to measure the success of a personal device like a mobile phone. What emerged were insights around how the phone could better integrate with the other things we carry (keys, wallet...). His talk was fun and fascinating. His style was very casual. what I didn't realize, and found out on Wednesday, was that this project launched his research practice over at Nokia, establishing the value of his methods as an efficient way to inform product design decisions.
I had a chance to grab dinner with Jan after the talk and we reflected a bit on the trajectory of that practice. It was very clear to me from that early experience that his goal back then was to effect product design decisions at the feature level – to help Nokia understand how to create products that were stickier, better suited to our personal needs and emerging social behaviors. I am sure that is still an essential part of his work but he has come along way (in no small part due to his personal influence). He is now finding that his most meaningful collaborations are with strategy groups within Nokia. He has been invited into much larger conversations about new markets and product strategies. Pretty cool, and no small feat in a company as large as Nokia. Particularly for an outsider like Jan (he is the only research / design employee based in Japan).
It is a perfect illustration of the rapid emergence of Design Research as a powerful business tool. And it was very interesting to chat with someone who seems to enjoy equally shooting pictures with his fish eye lens in a 6 foot square shack in Ghana or debating the value of market-changing strategies in a corporate setting. Why would conversations in a slum over two weeks with a few dozen impoverished people be welcome in a discussion of corporate strategy? We certainly have come a long way. The passion that comes from direct contact, true connection to specific social needs, has become an essential force in managing strategic decisions. With so many business options to evaluate - the power of a compelling story is only increasing. It is the paradox of choice on a global scale. Jan is doing a superb job of being the agent change for all of us.
The conversation also reminded me of stories I have heard from Hartmut Esslinger, our founder, about his early days with Sony, and his tremendous respect for Akio Morita. Morita really understood how products were made. And stayed very close to these processes even as he was running one of the largest CE manufacturers in the world. He maintained a personal sense of pride in the details of construction. He wasn't just looking at spreadsheets all day.
As we switch to the 21st century economy I believe that CEO's need to have that same sense of pride and appreciation of the specific behaviors they are trying to shape and influence - this is their brand and their product rolled into one. You can only see what you make through these direct encounters - not sales spreadsheets. Seems like a necessary point of view to stay relevant and maintain focus. Are there any CEO's that actually do this? Would Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the CEO of Nokia (whose tagline is "Connecting People"), be willing to ride shotgun with Jan once a year through the urban slums of the world?
I don't know.
(Credit:
Pop!Tech)
I will be attending the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine this week. For the twelfth year, Pop!Tech will convene a network of 600 remarkable thinkers, doers, leaders, and global change agents in science, technology, social innovation, business, environmentalism, globalization, media, education, and many other fields for a four-day exploration of ideas shaping the future.
This year, the organizers will pay particular attention to the 21st century dynamics between systems based on scarcity and those based on abundance, in areas ranging from digital social networks to biology to peacemaking. Among the speakers are Chris Anderson (Wired, "The Long Tail"), Malcom Gladwell ("The Tipping Point"), Paul Polak (IDE), Clay Shirky ("Here Comes Everybody"), and Frank Warren ("Post Secret"). I especially look forward to meeting in person linguist George Lakoff (communication graduates like me may recall him as the godfather of "framing") and "songstress" Imogen Heap (I'm a big fan).
My employer, frog design, supports Pop!Tech's Accelerator program, which has the mission to incubate social innovation ventures. Together with a coalition of partners including iTeach, the Praekelt Foundation, Nokia Siemens Networks, Aricent, and the National Geographic Society, we have been working on Project Masiluleke over the past year, a path-breaking effort that harnesses the power of mobile technology to address one of the world's gravest public health crises. This ambitious initiative will leverage the ubiquity of mobile devices in South Africa to help fight the country's crippling HIV/AIDS and TB epidemics. Robert Fabricant, executive creative director at frog, and our partners will present Project Masiluleke to the public at the conference on Friday.
I will be blogging from Pop!Tech so stay tuned for more.
New Scientist magazine has a good interview with roving Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase. He travels around the world observing and photographing how people live their lives, and how mobile phones fit into that. It's kind of amazing that Nokia allows him to blog about it as much as he does, normally a large corporation would keep a much tighter lid on this kind of research. But he's a good ambassador for the brand, and I'm sure there's plenty he doesn't make public (including the all-important conclusions!).
I appreciate Chipchase's modesty: he avoids the term anthropologist as he's not trained as one (a refreshing change from some other people who have adopted that bandwagon label), and he also doesn't get too caught up in only seeing the world from the point of view of a mobile phone. As he says on his blog "life is way more interesting than little lumps of plastic and metal".
His blog is well worth checking out if you haven't seen it already, with lots of fascinating photos of details of life from around the world.
A recent Gartner study estimates that 189 billion mobile messages have been sent by U.S. mobile-phone subscribers in 2007. It forecasts 301 billion mobile messages sent in 2008.
If correct, those figures would still account for only a small fraction of the 2.3 trillion messages to be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008 (a 19.6 percent increase from the 2007 total of 1.9 trillion messages). Asia is the biggest mobile-messaging market worldwide. China is in the lead, with approximately 560 billion SMS messages sent in 2007, followed by the Philippines' 430 billion and Japan's 190 billion.
The vast majority of the 189 billion mobile messages to be sent in the United States are expected to be SMS text messages, with an average use of about two SMS messages per U.S. subscriber per day. That is similar to the level of SMS activity in the United Kingdom in 2005 and still only at the global average of 2.1 SMS messages per day. The average number in the U.K. today is six SMS messages per day. Singapore is at 12, and the Philippines even at 15.
While the U.S. is still lagging behind Asia and Europe, its adoption of SMS is obviously accelerating. Gartner predicts that this will further propel mobile-payment solutions, as SMS will continue to be the dominant channel for mobile payments.
The analyst house believes that the number of consumers making payments using their mobile phones is set to soar from 32.9 million in 2008 to 103.9 million in 2011.
Despite the continued growth of SMS usage, however, Gartner expects growth rates to slow as direct mobile connections are becoming increasingly cannibalized by mobile-IM communities and social-network portals.
As I wrote before, there is huge potential for an elegant, seamless, cross-platform, and cross-media IM solution that enables the ideal of the "never-ending conversation."
It looks like Apple might again be the first mover here. The company is apparently developing a chat application for the iPhone, as revealed recently through a patent application that describes a "portable electronic device with a touch-screen display, comprising (a) means for displaying a set of messages exchanged between a user of the device and another person in a chronological order." That's basically the description of an UI for an iPhone IM application.
CNBC analyst Jim Cramer thinks that an iPhone IM application is going to be to instant messaging what the iPod was to the Walkman. And Ars Technica is not alone when it suspects that most of the iPhone users will probably value "a way to use instant messaging without using up their SMS message quota."
While the iPhone currently relies on SMS, Apple could add AIM, Jabber, or Twitter to the interface and thus become the de facto universal conversation enabler. However, building a native IM application (and adding third-party chat applications) could create conflicts with iPhone operators that might be concerned about losing potential SMS revenue, if users sidestep SMS by using IM programs.
We will soon find out. The momentum is building up toward a possible unveiling of the next-generation iPhone at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference on June 9.
Sanyo has these "Infobar 2" phones showing at their booth, in lots of funky colors. They are quite large (about 1.5"/40mm longer than a standard candy bar phone, and relatively thick), but have a nice rounded smooth shape to them and interesting texture finishes. The smooth keys make them a bit of a challenge to use, but the 2.6" OLED screen has a 16:9 ratio that is geared toward watching movies and TV. They come with a built-in digital TV tuner.
They also come with a docking stand that charges the phone and keeps the screen at an angle for viewing.
Doesn't sound like they'll be coming to the US - CDMA only.
Monarchy 2.0: Queen Elizabeth has launched a new channel on YouTube--the Royal Channel--that will broadcast her traditional Christmas address, at 7 a.m. PST Tuesday. According to a YouTube representative (via The New York Times), the channel has been a huge success so far, drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers. The most popular clip is the 1957 broadcast of the Queen's Christmas address, with more than 400,000 viewers.
Trends of the trends: That time of the year again. Media pundits are out-forecasting one other with their predictions for 2008 trends. Here's a compilation: consumer trends, advertising and marketing trends, fashion trends, IT trends, security trends, marketing trends for small and medium-sized businesses, media trends, air travel trends, and there are many more...
Mobile: Speaking of trends, David Armano argues that 2007 was the year of social media and that 2008 will be the year of mobile media. You may be thinking: I've heard that one before. But perhaps he's right. Fueled by the "iPhone effect," this time companies may actually live up to the hype. There are indeed signs of bona fide innovations on the horizon: "Silicon Valley's first phone company," Ribbit, is all the talk right now in Silicon Valley; "viral" WiFi models like that of Fon will continue to thrive; more local businesses and chains will offer free Wi-Fi; and Google's Android platform will drive tons of new business for user interface designers and developers. And then there is the new Skypephone with its iSkoot software. And the Google phone...?
Conversation analytics: New metrics for social media are in high demand. How, for example, do you track and analyze conversations on Twitter? Tweeterboard is an attempt to provide "conversation analytics," and one of the parameters it uses to gauge someone's influence on Twitter is the level of "giving and receiving love..."
Happy Holidays!
(Credit:
Exhibitor Online)
A new study from Nokia predicts that by 2012, a quarter of all entertainment will be created, edited, and shared within peer groups rather than being generated by traditional media.
Jointly conducted with the trend research firm The Future Laboratory, Nokia's study asked trend-setting consumers from 17 countries about their digital behaviors and lifestyles. The company also used information gathered from its 900 million customers as well as views of leading industry analysts.
"From our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call 'circular.' The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up, and pass it on within their peer groups-- a form of collaborative social media," says Mark Selby, vice president of multimedia for Nokia. Nokia pinpoints four emerging trends that propel this kind of "circular entertainment": immersive living; geek culture; G tech; and localism.
Selby continues, "We think it will work something like this: someone shares video footage they shot on their mobile device from a night out with a friend. That friend takes that footage and adds an MP3 file--the sound track of the evening--then passes it to another friend. That friend edits the footage by adding some photographs and passes it on to another friend and so on. The content keeps circulating between friends, who may or may not be geographically close, and becomes part of the group's entertainment."
Tom Savigar, trends director at The Future Laboratory, adds, "Consumers are increasingly demanding that their entertainment be truly immersive, engaging, and collaborative. Whereas once the act of watching, reading, and hearing entertainment was passive, consumers now and in the future will be active and unrestrained by the ubiquitous nature of circular entertainment. Key to this evolution is consumers' basic human desire to compare and contrast, create and communicate. We believe the next episode promises to deliver the democracy politics can only dream of."
Of course, you have to take surveys sponsored by big brands with a grain of salt. Nokia's intent is obviously to ride the wave of a powerful current and promote its mobile devices as the venue where that new kind of "circular," convergent entertainment will take place. Moreover, user-generated content (and user-generated entertainment in particular) is neither a breathtakingly new phenomenon, nor is it beyond any dispute that the traditional networks will just sit and watch their dominance wane.
Nokia's study also ignores the fact that the distinction between traditional and "circular" entertainment is becoming increasingly difficult. In times of professional mash-ups, amateur reality TV, and 24/7 life-casting, where does original content end and recycled content start? What if traditional entertainment becomes a micro-format within user-generated entertainment and vice versa? Naturally, the two intermingle, and it may not even be too bold a statement to forecast that at some stage of a highly fragmented and collaborative distribution chain, all entertainment will be "circular" in 2012.
(Credit:
Photo illustration by Handvertising USA)
Advertising space is scarce. No wonder advertisers are innovative when it comes to taking advantage of underutilized real estate--such as the human skin.
Handvertising USA is an Orange County-based company that connects advertisers with customers willing to display ads on their hands.
"Almost everyone has been to a county fair, swap meet, bar or club and had had their hand stamped for proof of entry. We have found a better use for this space that could make everyone happy," says CEO Mike Brown. "We find venues also use the stamps to increase business. For example, venues are offering special prices on drinks if the customer has a particular Handvertising stamp. People are requesting particular stamps because they want to fit in and they want the drink special," he says.
This low-tech advertising idea will not work everywhere: Barcelona's exclusive VIP Baja Beach Club offers its VIP guests the option to implant a special microchip in their upper arms. The RFID-recognized chip not only gives them special access to VIP lounges, but also acts as a debit account from which they can pay for drinks. No fraud possible. And identify theft requires body theft.
Both examples indicate the renaissance of the human body in the marketing mix. While sidewalk wavers and door-to-door promoters are part of the old-school marketing arsenal, the new solutions are more sophisticated and go literally under the skin. Not only are the borders between human body and technology slowly disappearing; advertising, network, commerce, and consumer are converging as well.
Humans are still the best hardware. (By the way, they're still the most powerful software, too; it will take at least five more years, experts forecast, to develop a computer processor that is on par with the capabilities of a 6-year old child.) Consequently, NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest wireless operator, is working on a mobile phone that sends electric signals through the human body to transmit data, enabling electronic payments or data transfer at the touch of a finger.
Over at Micropersuasion, Steve Rubel is making a bold prediction: The portals will be big winners in the social-networking wars.
"Social networking is certainly rising and there seems to be no end in sight to the phenomenon. However, what I do know is that people will jump around from one Myfaceborkutspace to another and not all of them will win," Rubel wrote.
He is referring to Long Tail author Chris Anderson, who points out that all good web sites should have elements of social networking and therefore suggests that social networking is a "feature, not a destination." Rubel believes that the portals' key advantage is that they "own the glue that keeps many of usconnected to our structured social networks (e.g. Myfaceborkutspace) and the looser ones--e.g. a personal network of contacts. And that glue is a trusted communication system that works with every person and social net."
That's true. You could also say that our buddy list is our social network, and we appreciate just plugging it into the most convenient and trusted network of our choice. Call it the "floating network." I therefore also agree with Rubel when he says, "No matter which social network(s) you participate in, even if you float, you're going to turn to your trusted communication system to manage it all. This will include any or all of the following: a) Web-based e-mail, b) instant messaging (which is nowadays integrated), c) RSS and d) telephony tools like Grand Central."
There are good reasons why there is a lot at stake for the traditional portals, and there are good reasons (Rubel names them) to predict they will not just sit back and watch the young social-networking sites own the game, especially now that business has begun facing up to social networks. And yet, I am hesitant to follow Rubel's prediction that the portals will have the upper hand in this conflict. In fact, I think he gets the conflict wrong.
I don't think this is as strict an antagonism as Rubel describes it, and I would even question the "war parties" as he identifies them: On the one side, the emerging social networks that are relentlessly trying to enhance the one main feature they're built upon ("making connections") into a platform. On the other side, the big portals, the AOLs, MSNs, Yahoos, that are seeking to operate more like social networks. This is an over-simplified showdown, for Rubel stages a competition where, in fact, we witness a co-evolution. The portals will adapt the best social-networking features, for example by activating the "dormant social networks" they own (see Yahoo Mash), and the social networks will adapt some of the portals' features; just yesterday AllFacebook and Paid Content speculated that Facebook is preparing to launch a music platform, either as a potential iTunes killer (according to AllFacebook) or a MySpace competitor (according to Paid Content).
However--and herein lies the major difference to Rubel's assumption--both social networks and portals are striving to eventually become something entirely different: the new operating system. Facebook is not shy about its intentions, and you could argue that it has already transformed the site into something much bigger than a social network.
It is a not a social-networking war; it is a race to become the de facto operating system for the social networker. And that is, of course, why Google, which is neither a social network nor a portal, is in the game too. The company is said to be feverishly working on "out-facebooking" Facebook by introducing a meta-platform that integrates not only a suite of Google services (like iGoogle, Gmail, Google Talk, Orkut, etc.) but is also 100 percent open to third-party developers--and other social networks. Google's recent acquisition of mobile social-network Zingku indicates that this uber-platform may have a strong mobile component and the long-rumored free, ad-based phone service. In other words, while social networks and portals are fighting the "social networking wars," Google may be winning the actual competition at hand: to become the dominant operating system for all of our communications. You can also call it the World Wide Web.
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