"As information swirls all around us, we have begun to build an attention economy where the value of a piece of content is driven by how much attention it can attract and sustain. It’s all about eyeballs, especially when advertising is involved. Countless social media consultants are swarming around Web2.0, trying to help organizations increase their status and profitability in the attention economy. But the attention economy doesn’t just affect the monetization of web properties; it’s increasingly shaping how people interact with one another."
Haters Gonna Hate: My SXSW 2011 Panel
Visual notes courtesy of Ogilvy Notes.
Speaking at SXSW has been something of a goal of mine for a while now, and I’m proud to report that this year I achieved it.
My solo panel was called “Haters Gonna Hate: Lessons for Advertisers from 4chan” and my intention was to use the things I learned through my love of /b/ as a metaphor for lessons for advertisers. The SXSW planning team completely changed the format of the talk at the last minute, which was a bit tricky, but I think it came out okay.
If you’re playing along at home, feel free to listen to an audio recording of the session:
The Problem of Group Management
Visualization of my LinkedIn network, automatically generated through inMaps.
As I have been contemplating SXSW this year, one thing that struck me was that, unlike previous years, there wasn’t a clear “winner” in terms of a new technology or platform.
The reason for all the attention that the technology and advertising industries lavish on SXSW is due to the fact that, for the past several years, it’s been the site of the popularization of a game-changing technology. Twitter in 2007. Foursquare in 2009 (as a new idea) and 2010 (as a popular, extensible platform).
In 2011, there didn’t seem to be a breakout app or service, despite the best effort of what felt like thousands of startups equipped with flyers, schwag, and scantily clad volunteers.
Aside from their over-aggressive marketing tactics, one thing that several of these start-ups had in common was an attempt at solving a common problem: group management.
The way that human beings socialize in real life doesn’t match how software treats us online; I don’t really have 290 equally important friends in my life the way that Facebook displays them. Instead, I have a core group of friends who I socialize with on the weekends, a group of people who I work with, a whole bunch of other groups whom I’ve worked with in the past, friends from college, friends from high school, and family members - not to mention a few miscellaneous acquaintances I’ve met and lost touch with over the years. Status updates that are intended for my friends are sometimes offensive to my devout Christian cousins, and - like many people - I find my self second-guessing what I post, since I know it will be visible to my coworkers and boss.
This is not a new insight. In fact, Facebook tried to solve this problem with its introduction of Groups in October 2010. The project garnered a ton of attention from tech bloggers, but, 6 months later, it’s rarely mentioned (Facebook hasn’t published usage data, but anecdotally it doesn’t seem that many folks are using it).
Several companies at SXSW gave the group challenge a shot - GroupMe,Hashable, and Hurricane Party all approached the problem in a different ways.
However, as with Facebook Groups, none of these apps seemed to really take off. Real-life social circles are incredibly complex. Right now, it seems to be impossible for software to handle the fluidity and complexity of social groups without requiring users to manually maintain complex lists of membership rules - which no one has time to do. And even if such magical solution could exist, I’m not sure how comfortable consumers would be with an automated solution to something so important to the way that we socialize.
So is there a way to manage groups that’s not manual? I can’t think of a solution at the moment, but history is full of solutions to problems that previously seemed insolvable. This will be an interesting space to watch over the next few years.
"The trouble with the rat-race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat."
—Lily Tomlin, via Ashley Simko.
Shifting deck chairs on the Titanic
There’s a strange undertone at many of the advertising-related SXSW panels this year. The past few years have involved discussions of Twitter, platforms, transmedia, etc. This year there’s still a lot of that, but it feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of the real issues.
Communication has changed, media has changed, and yet advertisers are still living in the agency-client model that has been consistent for the past 50 years. I don’t think that hiring a social media expert, or creating a new department, or using a few new shiny tools is going to get us far enough.
I don’t have a solution. But the situation for advertisers in 2011 is starting to remind me a lot of the music industry in 2001. There’s a sea change coming, and I worry that all the little changes we’re making are blinding us to exactly how huge it is.
Hacking the Microsoft Kinect
One of the most interesting parts of all the technological advances we’ve seen in the past few years is how “hackable” they can be (although this is generally not what the manufacturers hope for). Hackable parts allow creative and tech-minded individuals to create art projects - and utility - that surpasses the intentions of the original inventors.
A great example of this phenomenon is XBMC (Xbox Media Center) - an open source media player originally based on a hacked Xbox platform that is far better than anything Apple or Google has ever created.
Now we’re seeing the same thing happen with Microsoft’s latest product, the Kinect. Only this time, people are integrating the 3D image recognition software into real-world devices, creating some amazing results.
What will be trending at SXSW 2011?
Today the latest batch of panelist, core conversations, and presentations were selected for SXSW interactive 2011. I was honored that my session, Haters Gonna Hate: Lessons for Advertisers from 4chan, was selected to be one of these. But would you like to see what topics are going to be getting the biggest buzz in March? Here’s a word cloud:
Some of the biggest topics match with the trends in digital design and technology: social, games, web, and media. Others are interesting: health, meetup, and brands all make an appearance. But above all, it seems that we’re focused on doing our jobs better; topics of interest include future, innovation, collaboration, and engagement.
This visual was created by feeding the list of selected SXSW interactive panelsinto Wordle, minus the author and agency information.
Fun is the Future: Mastering Gamification
Fantastic overview of gamification design elements and the ways they can impact design, marketing, services, and business.
(via GoogleTechTalks)
Great documentary on influencers, cool hunters, and trend starters that focuses on the spread of contagious ideas.
I’ve been telling my students at Miami Ad School that, to be successful in advertising, you have to be in the cool hunting business, and I think this documentary proves my point.
One thing I would have loved for the documentary to touch on is how digital has increased the spread and reach of contagious ideas and style.
Fascinating video on how technology is reshaping our brains in very real ways, and some thoughts on the implications from a neuroscientist’s perspective.
(Source: litmanlive.co.uk)
