Greg Verdino

Your avatar is a pervert and your kid may be too

So apparently Second Life really is all about sex, drugs, violence and all sorts of other deviant behavior, according to an expose that NBC ran last night.  The gist of the report is that parents need to keep their kids away from the virtual world or run the risk of having those kids grow up to be first life miscreants as well.

Never mind that SL requires the same level of age verification as most adult-oriented sites on the plain old interwebs (e.g., not much but at least it is consistent with otherwise accepted standards), operates a separate grid specifically for underrage residents, and that many of the evils NBC uncovers are more than well represented in the real world.  I'm not saying that SL doesn't have a "dark side" (as NBC calls it.)  I'm just not sure that it's as dark as the media contends or that this angle even warrants mainstream coverage at this point. 

Shouldn't more be said about the promise and potential of virtual worlds (not Second Life per se but virtual worlds in general), rather than just the pitfalls?

What do you think?

Here's the video, courtesy of CenterNetworks.

[Feedies and e-mail readers, click through to watch.]

links for 2008-08-26

• Conversation Agent | Business Uses for Twitter                
  Valeria Maltoni riffs on Brogan's 50 Uses post, pulling out her top 3 starting points for businesses looking to pilot Twitter.  Good advice from a client-side marketer.            
  (tags: web2.0 twitter tools socialnetworking socialmedia microblogging marketing business reference)
              
• Web Strategy by Jeremiah | The Evolution of Brands on Twitter                
  Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang on how brands can get started and ramp up their efforts on Twitter.   
  (tags: web2.0 twitter tools socialnetworking socialmedia microblogging marketing business reference)
              
• Chris Brogan | 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business                
  Exactly what it sounds like, covering everything from how to start, what to tweet and how to justify the investment of time and resources.
  (tags: web2.0 twitter tools socialnetworking socialmedia microblogging marketing business reference)

A quantum link (er, leap) forward, circa 1985

Here's a fun and funky bit of video nostalgia about an early consumer online service, Quantum Link (which launched in 1985 and eventually grew up to be AOL.)

Thanks to Phillipe Deltenre of Bad Idea Indeed for sharing this (a year ago on his blog and more recently as a comment to my post about the social nature of Web 1.0) and for pointing out that, as comical as the video may seem to our ultramodern 2008 sensibilities, the voice over could almost describe Web 2.0 or social media. Close your eyes and see.

Enjoy.

[If you're a feed or email reader, you'll need to click through to the blog to enjoy it, though.]

10 Virtual World Expo passes for the real you

If you're in Southern California or just want to teleport there next week, I have 10 free passes for the Virtual World Conference & Expo, taking place in Los Angeles on September 3rd and 4th.

I won't be at this one, but it looks like a great agenda that will cover the present and future of everything from virtual worlds for kids and the ties between the virtual world and the world of entertainment, to enterprise applications and developing technologies.  The passes will grant you access to the full conference, the exhibit floor and the Virtual Worlds Innovation Awards.

Be one of the first 10 people to register at the event site, using the code gverd4, and you and your avatar are in.  Please note that the gverd4 code will work 10 -- and only 10 -- times, so don't grief me if you're registrant number 11.  Cool?  Cool.

If you have the opportunity to attend, I'd love to hear your perspectives after the event.

links for 2008-08-22

• Digital Nomads                
  DELL's community dedicated to helping virtual/remote workers be more productive and connect with other virtual/remote workers.  I haven't blogged about it because I haven't had a chance to dig in yet, but it seems interesting.      
  (tags: web2.0 technology socialmedia productivity mobile marketing internet digital socialnetwork)
              
• Peter Shankman | "Why Don'€™t You Do Some Work?"                
  Fantastic post about living and working "your way." As a remote worker who hears the "why don't you do some work" question all the time, this one really resonates.
  (tags: change ideas business)
              

Mr. Personality. That's me!

I'm free-spirited, creative and pessimistic -- according to Signal Patterns, that is.  But do you know what?  That seems pretty spot-on.

There are lots and lots of online personality tests, but last night I played with Signal Patterns, a personality profiling tool that is in private beta right now (you need to request an invite.) The company conducts research and builds online survey tools that aim to unlock the connections between personality, behavior and preferences.  In doing so, they hope to help members learn more about themselves and get to know their friends and connections better.  I look their basic personality tests (you know, the kind that has you pondering whether you agree or disagree with statements like, "I talk a lot and enjoy being the center of attention at parties") and Signal Patterns declared me free-spirited, creative and pessimistic based on what my responses reveal about 45 different personality traits.  The tool also produces some nice data visualizations, like this one that plots my top 10 traits around a personality wheel:

Of course, my own perceptions of myself may be skewed and people have a tendency to represent themselves the way they hope to be perceived rather than the way they actually are.  So here's where Signal Patterns gets interesting.  They are developing surveys, grounded in science, that help members learn more about themselves and their personalities based on preferences like the books they read, the music they listen to and the movies they enjoy.  In other words, Signal Patterns is looking to bridge the potentially wide gap between what people say and what people actually do. That could be pretty cool.

Now, take it all, link it up with your Facebook profile, and maybe you have a more substantial basis for forming and maintaining online connections than 'you have 17 friends on common.'

You can request a beta invite here, but regardless of whether you have the chance to test the tools yourself, you might want to check out the Signal Patterns blog for some interesting content about personality, the company's research and, of course, their applications and plans for roll out.

You're ahead of the curve. Deal with it...

A new graph of the Gartner hype cycle for emerging technologies has been popping up on a variety of blogs.  If you haven't seen it yet, the graph charts the path that many nascent technologies take from launch, through irrational exuberance, through disillusionment and ultimately to that 'a-ha moment' that leads to measured and rational mainstream adoption.  It's classic 'Crossing the Chasm' stuff... 

What's most interesting to me is that Gartner forecasts that many of the technologies that we so-called social media insiders put so much time, energy and brainpower towards -- in other words, the technologies we seem to take for granted -- are 2-5 years away from mainstream adoption, regardless of where they sit relative to the hype cycle. 

Microblogging and cloud computing?  Nearing the "Peak of Inflated Expectations;" 2-5 years from mainstream adoption.  Social computing, video telepresence and virtual worlds?  Heading into (or already in) the "Trough of Disillusionment;" likely to see mainstream adoption in 2-5 years.  Simple social tools like wikis, social network analysis and location-aware applications (which presumably includes mobile social software) are all trending toward enlightenment (that a-ha moment I mentioned) and productivity or usefulness, yet even these are all 2-5 years from mainstream adoption.

So what's the lesson? There are three, actually:

1) The next time you're chatting with your aunt in Peoria -- or that CMO in Cleveland -- you shouldn't be shocked that they haven't heard of (much less used) some new technology or service that has you and your ambient friends all a-Twitter (pun intended.)  This is probably true even if Advertising Age or BusinessWeek or the New York Times has written a puffy trend piece about it.

2) The next time you feel inclined to write off some new, over-hyped thing as a passing fad that has passed away you may want to stop and consider that outside of our little, well-insulated clique of early adopters, it actually hasn't even started to happen yet.  Sure, some technologies will never cross the chasm (remember the way DAT was going to revolutionize the music industry?) but just because we're tired of it we shouldn't assume that it has outlived its usefulness.

3) Let's be sure not to confuse the early poster children of any technology revolution with the longer term potential and more reasonable expectations that we might have for the category those poster children represent.  For example, don't confuse cyber-flare-out Second Life with the larger opportunity inherent in public virtual worlds.

What else do you take away from the Gartner hype cycle for emerging technologies? 

 

 

Social media: lipstick on a pig or total makeover?

It's probably a safe bet that many of you make your living (at least in part) by helping your clients -- or in the case of the client-side marketers among you, your companies -- engage consumers more effectively through social media channels.

Should your CEO blog?  What should your brand managers know about MySpace and Facebook?  Do you need feeds, widgets, a podcast or some kind of virtual world presence?  How about mobile social software or presence applications?  And then, of course, how do all of these things fit together and integrate properly with your mass media and traditional PR efforts to actually help you meet your business objectives -- because we all know that tactics without strategy won't get you to where you need to go. 

These questions -- and others like them -- seem to be on the minds of just about every marketer, PR practitioner and client-side social media evangelist.  And while these questions warrant answers, it strikes me that, if these are the first questions we're asking (even the strategy question), we are starting in the wrong place.

If you ask me, starting with social media marketing can often amount to nothing more than putting lipstick on the pig (and yep, the pig in this case is your old school "anti-social" company.)  I can't tell you how often marketers ask me for advice on how to use social media to reach new customers and sell more stuff, yet have never even considered how they can use the very same (or similar) tools to work better, smarter and cheaper themselves.  Worse still are those companies that seem hell-bent on marketing through social media yet can't even access social media sites from within their firewalls.

The most far-reaching impact of social computing is not that it changes the way we market; it is that it changes the way we can and should do business.  Marketing is just the external manifestation of this change, but the change needs to come from within the organization and must impact everything from how we attract talent to how we share information with our co-workers to how we define 'workplace.'

So rather than simply asking how your company (or clients) can market better (or at least different) through social media, why not get straight to the heart of the matter with questions like these instead:

1) How can we use social computing tools and platforms to allow the people who work at my company to share, collaborate, network and work more efficiently?

2) How can mobile social software and presence applications help my company's remote workers (from telecommuters to a widely distributed sales force) be productive no matter where they happen to be, stay connected with each other, and participate in a digitally-enabled corporate culture.

3) How might a private online community enable me to collaborate more seamlessly with my clients, investors and outside business partners?

4) How can I take advantage of social computing technologies to offer my existing customers more convenient, flexible ways to open a direct line of communications with a company representative (or with each other) when they are in need of help or support?

5) How can platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Second Life, pretty much any instant messenger, and even YouTube or Ustream be seen (and used) as corporate productivity tools, rather than as the time wasters many managers and IT professionals still perceive them to be?

6) How do I tap into social networks to find and attract the best new talent?  And how can I empower new workers with a set of tools that will allow them to be productive when, where and how they actually want to work today?

7) How can listening to online conversation about my company, brands, products and competitors provide not just an entry point for my marketing team to 'join the conversation,' but also valuable insights help me improve the way we operate, what we sell and how we produce it?

These are just the seven I thought of while writing this post.  No doubt, there are dozens of others.  What other questions would you add to the list?

And the Inbound Marketing pass goes to...

Last week I mentioned that I would give away one free pass to the upcoming Inbound Marketing Summit, and asked interested readers to comment and let me know why they'd like to attend.

Little did I realize how difficult it would be to pick a recipient.  Next time around I think I'll just pull a name out of a hat.  But at the end of the day (the day being yesterday) I did make a decision.  Before letting y'all know who will be attending Inbound Marketing Summit, I'd like to say a few words about why this was so hard for me.  (If you're impatient to know who the lucky guy or gal is, you can skip ahead.)

In a nutshell, I had a hard time picking a recipient because most of the comments (pleas?) were pretty damn good.  I heard from an Israeli entrepreneur looking to break into the U.S. market, a few start-up workers whose companies quite simply can't afford to send them to conferences and a few out-of-work marketers looking to stay in the game and meet new, interesting people.  Others offered to buy me lunch, threatened extortion or tempted me with visions of hot chicks parading around the event dressed in "I'm With Verdino" apparel.  Let me tell you, although the last was pretty tempting, I was warned that this might not go over so well with a certain other novelty t-shirt wearer.

I also heard -- as I frequently do -- from Chris Grayson.  He's a long-time reader, an insightful blogger, a New Yorker that I can't believe I've never met in person, and a well-connected creative director who has networked with me here and on just about every social network I use.

And then there were the students.  I have a soft spot for students, since they both figuratively and literally represent marketing's next generation.  They have the most to learn yet, not surprisingly,can teach us oldsters a thing or two about how to market more effectively to the next generation of consumers.  Besides, unemployed marketers and start-up mavens be damned, most students have few opportunities to attend professional conferences, network with guys like Godin (who is keynoting the event,) and fewer still have the bucks to buy their own passes.

Which brings me (finally) to the recipient.

His name is Sean Tiner. (Pictured with Perez Hilton.) 

Sean and I are connected on Facebook, and although I would hardly say I know him at all (after all, this isn't about giving a ticket to a friend) here's what I do know.

He's a last semester grad student at USC's Annenberg School, writing his thesis on "Thinking Beyond Web 2.0." His blog presents some interesting, unique perspectives on marketing and pretty much anything else he's passionate about.  One of his passions is art and he's a pretty accomplished artist.  Yep, he's the guy that made the 'Innovator' portrait I blogged about on Friday and, while that was by no means my main selection criterion (because let's face facts, art is cool but cute girl in vanity-stroking t-shirt is cooler), it didn't hurt that he got creative and took his entry one step further.

As I read his entry (see the comments thread), it was clear that he wants in for the right reasons. He wants to learn, be inspired, expand his horizons and learn new perspectives from real world practitioners.  But he also wants to bring his own perspectives to the table, share those with others and inspire his peers and colleagues to think differently. In fact, it is this kind of commitment that led BrandWeek to profile Sean in an article about what a future marketing leader may look like.  From the BrandWeek piece:

"If you want a peek at the sort of person who'll be running the corporate marketing department in a few years time, you might want to spend a few minutes with Sean Tiner. Tiner, 24, is a grad student at USC's Annenberg School for Communication. Annenberg has been minting communications professionals since 1971, but Tiner's approach to his major shows just how different a budding marketer of today is from those of yesteryear.

Tiner's currently writing a thesis he calls "Thinking Beyond Web 2.0: Leveraging the Ego of Generation Y to Build Business." For him, the term marketing is no longer defined solely by advertising platforms and demo-appropriate messaging. The field's far more global than that—a nexus of social, cultural and creative identity. Tiner's blog gives self-marketing advice to wannabe marketers, though "wannabe" clearly isn't how Tiner would describe himself.

"There's so much competition today for getting dream [marketing] jobs," he said. "So you need to market yourself in a way that shows the right and left sides of your brain are working."

Tiner plays up what he sees as his strengths—which include experience in the visual arts and writing business plans. He tells recruiters that he understands how to get a Web community excited about a brand to help it connect with potential customers. "My passion's opening a lot of doors for me," he said."

Well, Sean's passion opened this door.  Congratulations Sean.  I'll see you in Cambridge.

5 social media principles from 3 social media gurus

This week's issue of Larry Chase's Web Digest for Marketers newsletter features part one of a two part conversation about what works in social media marketing, what doesn't and just how big a shift new marketing represents for most corporations (read: really freakin' big.)  Larry and Janet Roberts (aka Second Lifer EvansMom Goodspeed) interviewed Steve Rubel, Amanda Watlington and me about everything from how we define 'social media' and changes underway in the blogosphere to where social media fits into the marketing mix and how you might think about measurement.

With Steve, Amanda and I each offering a unique perspective on conversational marketing, the piece provides a nice primer for marketers just beginning to get their heads around the impact, challenges and opportunities.  Larry sums up the article with the following key takeaway:

"If you want to succeed in social media marketing, you'll have to be ready to change the way you listen to customers, talk with them and measure your interactions with them. The revolution hasn't taken over the world yet, but the crowds are gathering outside your gate."

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably already knew that.  You'll find more meat (not to mention plenty of interesting quotes) in the actual interview excerpts - you can find the complete article on the Web Digest for Marketers site.