Video search engine blinkx.com has just released its 3D search engine: “Over 32 million hours of  video. Search it all.”

It’ll be interesting to see how they manage to grow the content to embrace more and more 3D virtual worlds, as well as the traditional 2D web portals, especially since blinkx 3D is intertwined with exitreality.com - which allows you to view the entire 2D web in 3D (I know, don’t ask — just head over and check it out!).

You can also pimp your MySpace, Facebook, Bebo profile pages with 3D material, which is kind of neat, requiring you only to add in exitreality’s browser toolbar (compatible with IE and FFox).

I’ll install the browser toolbar and let you know how I get on…

Well, the paparazzi have been notified, Vogue photographers are on their way, helicopters are circling BetterComms Towers as I type…

Yes, the BetterComms killer-attack Labrador ‘Boof’ has had the special spiked collar placed carefully around her neck… All is in preparation for the no-doubt imminent onslaught of femme fatales hurling themselves at my feet.

Or perhaps not.

But half way through this month of Movember I wish to let you see how it goes with growing my Merv Hughes lookalike…

As you can see, all is looking good so far

I want to thank Samantha Grant, Craig Coomans and Clarence Jones for their donations, and encourage the rest of you who haven’t yet donated by a threat:

If you don’t cough up more dosh then I will NOT shave it off!! AND I’ll come to your office or home late at night and knock on your door.

Do you really want to see something like this -> turn up at 11 at night?

I didn’t think so.

Donate now online — all the money goes to the Prostate Cancer Foundation and BeyondBlue, the depression and mental health initiative.

Have a read of my earlier Movember post as to why these two organisations deserve every penny you can give!

I spent a fascinating day yesterday pouring over research and analysis figures with a Sydney PR agency [nameless at the moment, for reasons that will become obvious].

They were looking at where the ‘influencers’ were for one of their clients’ products.

What blew us all away was the uncovering of the rapid growth of Social Networking sites like facebook, bebo and twitter in amongst the more regular and expected areas where influential thought leaders and potential product/brand evangelists were to be found.

Further analysis and data-mining could have been conducted — and will need to be — in order to move to the next stage of developing relationships wit the key influencers (the ’sneezers’ as Seth Godin calls them, because the more influential they are the wider the idea ‘virus’ can be ‘sneezed‘).

It was great to see the influence the Social Networking sites have, particularly for the client’s product, used or desired as it is by a large percentage of the female Australian/New Zealand population, across all adult demographics but particularly across 18-55.

We then went on to consider another of their clients, a company who are incredibly well known in the general marketplace — both here in Asia Pacific and throughout the world — and who’s products are highly respected.

Their potential customers span from 18 to 108 years of age, male and female. There is almost no barriers to purchase and I would be willing to bet that it would be only the lowest socio-economic groups that could not justify purchasing one or more of their products.

Because of this company’s positioning statement and product development ethos, you would expect them to be exploring the social networks to identify potential brand evangelists.

But no — they haven’t yet. Yet the Social Networks could be a natural ‘fit’ from them. Here’s why…

Decades of academic studies into ‘Innovation’ and the spread of new technologies amongst all manner of populations — rural, urban, impoverished, wealthy — confirms one thing: early adopters of new ideas, products and technologies are highly networked across multiple social groups and highly influential members of their core social groups. If they believe a product, service or idea would be of value to their social group they will sneeze. The greater the belief, the larger and more persistent the sneezing becomes.

At the same time, the second-tier early adopters — those, like me, who follow what the leading edge are doing — take up the cry and join in the chorus [to mix metaphors rather clumsily], often adding value by ‘translating it’ into another language (in my case, the language of business communication) so that the true importance and value of the innovation can be appreciated across broader sub-sections of the larger population.

A number of third-tier members of the population will then join in, influenced in part by the idea of the innovation itself, in part by mimicking what the second-tier influencers are doing/saying (”Hey, John’s using that new widget; he’s always finding cool stuff, we should use it too“), and in part by wanting to be ‘ahead of the pack’.

Once the third-tier are on-board, the rest of the population quickly follows. Some because they ‘get it’ and some because they see their friends, neighbours and work colleagues doing/using it and they don’t want to miss out or appear ‘old fashioned’.

This stage is currently and most popularly known as the ‘tipping point’ — where unless something completely outside the control of man happens, or unless someone stuffs up in a massively spectacular way, the product, service or idea will become the new ‘big thing’.

Yesterday’s innovation is tomorrow’s standard.

Let’s tie all this back in with the client and their great product(s)…

They have a reputation for innovation within their industry. They should be seeking out the sneezers and evangelists within the Social Networking space (and let us not forget that social networking sites are incredibly popular web destinations for all age brackets in Aus/NZ - see table below) and engaging in conversation with them. Today’s web travellers spend a lot less time soaking up one-way information from traditional media channels and a lot more time playing and interacting in genuine conversation with online peers.

As compete.com said six months ago:

“But as social elements become the driving force behind many of the web’s most popular sites, an increasing number of consumers young and old are finding casual online conversation crucial in maintaining and expanding business relationships”

To not do so is to miss a phenomenal first-mover opportunity that will go to one of their competitors if they are not careful.

Let’s hope they aren’t so wedded to in-house innovation that they fail to take advantage of the innovations of social media and social networking!

Hitwise Australia - Top 20 Websites - October, 2008

In researching for something else I stumbled upon a fascinating site: TheAtlantic.com.

Fascinating articles such as

• When is evil cool?
• Why does your dog pretend to like you?
• Is Google making us stupid?
• Who will own your next idea?
• Should women settle?
• Are good books bad for you?
• Which religion will win?

Challenging content, great videos, great photos… do your brain a favour.

Oh, and great marketing that leads you to their print publication - I just wish the flash intro (I truly detest them) didn’t take so long to load at the beginning… but the wait was worth it for the design and layout that comes after the landing image.

Yes, you might be lucky once — ONCE! — but don’t believe the patina of ‘cheap’ will go away easily, from either the product or the brand. Only the really clever AND lucky can get away with it, and usually because their market is savvy enough to see the archness of the in-jokes (witness the superb weezer video, Pork n’ Beans)

Dido’s team have put together a really impressive piece of social network marketing. Very clever!

Despite some technical hiccups that have plagued your humble scribe recently, I actually managed to record an entire conversation in one go!

Mind you, from 13 minutes into the 45 minute conversation a very audible and annoying delay/echo starts. It’s taken me about six hours to try and edit out the most offending bits, but there is still a lot of ‘running over each other’. I also apologise that my own voice was so low in the mix - I’ve tried boosting it, but then it also boosts the pre-echo (if there is such a thing). Anyway, suffice to say that the audio quality is not so bad that you can’t listen to it, but the interview will never be rebroadcast on ABC radio

There is a new digital offering over at The Digital Edge and Jenni discussed it in some detail, but only after we spent considerable time dissecting some of the ‘tools of the online trade’:

• twitter and a sentiment rating tool
• facebook and an international study that appeared in a knowledge management journal — Facebook Groups in Business: A Peer-to-Peer Action Research Initiative [pdf]
• ning
• linkedin
• plurk and
• hellotxt.com inter alia.

Jenni was snapped up via LinkedIn to be the Director of Digital Consulting over at The Digital Edge (it’s a great story!) and it’s no wonder — what she doesn’t know about social research (both offline and online) doesn’t bear worrying about.

Experienced in not only digital PR but also Knowledge Management, research and just what it takes to build a community from scratch, Jenni is a font of good wisdom.

One of the key ‘take-aways’ of our discussion was the importance of ‘Talkability’: that intangible but essential essence of all good social media connections. As she recounts, just because a company thinks it has a great product or service, or is just a great place to work, doesn’t necessarily make for a great social media result.

An invaluable asset that The Digital Edge offers (and so few others do) and which makes them unique is their ability to use a variety of tools — focused on offline, online and mobile interaction — that allows for near- (and in some cases completely-) instantaneous interaction. When considering ethnographic research in order to uncover what people are thinking and doing, it is vital to use as many methods as possible in order to triangulate the data and hone in on the true meanings. Jenni’s research background makes her a very knowledgeable and very valuable consultant to know! I guess that’s why they poached her!

This 45 minute interview is a fascinating insight into what goes into planning a successful social media initiative — you would be a fool not to listen! And since I’ll be in Sydney again this week, I promise I’ll do all I can to buy Jenni a coffee, set up the recorder, and produce a much-higher quality discussion on social and market research in this new communication landscape.

You can download and listen to the interview right now
[42mb | 45mins]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Currently playing: Afterlife - Café Del Mar - Vol 03 - Blue Bar

Alistair Rennie is VP of Software Services, Workplace Portal & Collaboration Software at IBM and he’s been in Australia recently doing his ‘thang’.

About to head off to the airport to board yet another plane, I managed to get almost an hour of his time via a conference call to ask him about Lotus Connections, innovation, SMEs (Small to Medium sized Enterprises), and where he sees the future of ‘documents’ going…

Some of the interview was caught via Skype and Skylook, but alas my current trend of technological nightmares continued and my own voice was missing from the mix and the whole recording process stopped about 14 minutes into the interview when my pc locked up. Grrrr…

However, I CAN offer you two sound bites and the gist of Alistair’s responses to my questions.

Here goes:

I started by asking Alistair where Lotus Connections came from and if he shared my view that Social Media was probably one of the first times that the ‘outside of the company’ environment fundamentally changed the ‘inside environment’ (as distinct from legislative changes, inter alia).

Listen to the interview

It turns out that ‘Connections’ is the fastest-selling software IBM have ever had.

I then mentioned being at a discussion last night where Dr. Terry Cutler discussed the submission on ‘Innovation’ he presented to the Federal Government (paper available here; overview of the recommendations is here). I commented that whilst ‘innovation’ as Dr Cutler sees it for the purposes of the growth of the Australian economy is primarily something that should be encouraged at the SME level, and that IBM was a ‘big company’ player not focused at the SME, ‘innovation’ is something that affects all companies, both large and small. ‘Innovation’, I said, was something that everyone must be a part of if any business is to survive; what is interesting is how social media tools and practices can now inform businesses in a way that traditional communication tools could not.

Alas, half way through Alistair’s reply the recording stopped (and only after it had started ‘doubling up’ his voice*). But you’ll get the gist of his viewpoint from listening to this snippet.

Listen to the interview

We also discussed how the collaboration outside of the firewall courtesy of social software was leading to true innovation, at which point Alistair briefly touched upon IBM’s Centre for Social Software, a fantastic research unit put together by Irene Greif in Cambridge, Mass., that worked with SME and corporate innovators and internal (to their own companies, not IBM) entrepreneurs to find new ways of fitting social software into organisations for sound business reasons, not just because ’someone had a good idea’, or ‘everyone else is doing this, we should be too’.

The Centre has its own twitter feed [@ctr4socialsoft], for those (like me) who are interested.

We then went on to discuss a particular component of ‘Connections’: ‘Dogear‘. I put forward the view that Dogear was nothing more than a ‘behind the firewall’ version of Delicious, but with the exceptionally powerful additional feature of being able to tag ‘people’, allowing you and others to find people according to their expertise, interests, professional role, and so on. This, to me, was a ‘killer’ application.

Alistair agreed, adding that the two points I had mentioned (bookmarking and people-tagging) was supplemented by an even bigger component: the ability to meta search through the population’s collection of tags to see what others are bookmarking, which allows you to incredibly rapidly skip past keyword/keyphrase searching (which Google is the undisputed king of) and into ‘wisdom’, the ’semantic’ web that Google so far has not been able to tap into. By tapping into the collective wisdom of others, by reading their insights into the keywords/keyphrase subjects you are interested in, you can ratchet up your personal ‘wisdom quotient’ factorially fast.

I know this to be true myself: not only do I keep an RSS feed of keyword tags that I am interested in, but I also follow the thought leaders of my industry to see what they are bookmarking, on the very sound logic that if it is of interest to them it will probably be of very high interest to me.

As a side issue, we both had a chuckle at how Google (these days no longer a ’search’ company but an advertising company) is, with its cloud computing initiatives like Google docs, calendar and email, giving Microsoft a real headache. So much so that Microsoft and Telstra recently announced a retaliatory action: cloud computing of their own. Apparently I’m not the only one who enjoys sitting back and watch the two of them hammer it out, or watching Microsoft trying to figure out whether it is a search company, an office productivity software company (tons of free software available these days, including the brilliant and free OpenOffice), a software platform company (open-source Linux, anyone?) or a web-software company (Internet Explorer is not the only browser out there).

We also talked about Bluehouse, a software offering of which I wasn’t previously aware. According to an IBM press release, Bluehouse is

the first Web-delivered social networking and collaboration cloud service designed to connect people from different businesses. "Bluehouse" combines social networking and online collaboration tools to help businesses of all sizes to securely work together through firewalls and beyond organizational boundaries. This suite of hosted online technologies allows individuals to share documents, contacts, engage in joint project activities, host online meetings and build social networking communities via the cloud through a Web browser.

What really excited me was that this was a software service that was aimed at SMEs, not just IBM’s traditional blue-chip clientele. Built from the ground up and with over 10,000 users already, this beta software allows a SME to create a fine-grain social network — allowing data to be shared between two people, five people, five thousand people. Imagine the ‘family/friend/everyone’ options of, say, Flickr, built into a cloud database working as a fully-secure extranet. Cool.

I then brought up the question of ‘documents’ and where Alistair felt this dinosaur of the business age was heading.

He felt strongly that there are four developments that need to occur with documents:

1. That standards need to be aggressively set and aggressively complied with, making documents both ‘open’ (via ODF, or the OpenDocument Format) and multi-composable (of which more in a moment);
2. That new document types will still need to integrate heterogeneously with all manner of legacy systems;
3. That web-based cross-collaboration on documents needs to be built-in as a basic requirement, not a ‘wish list’ add-on;
4. That documents become very much more ’social’ — that whereas current document generation (even via wikis) is asynchronous (only one person at a time can edit it/contribute to it, for example) the document of the future/now needs to be truly collaborative. For example, where we already have mashups of different media, there is or should be no reason why we cannot apply the same thinking to what we have traditionally emailed around the offices and clogged email servers and inboxes with.

Now, will this happen overnight? Of course not, but great things are afoot. For example, just 48 hours before our interview Sun and IBM announced the joint release of a developer tool kit for ODF, the cryptically-named OpenDocument Format Toolkit Union.

There was just soooo much more that I wanted to ask, and so much more that Alistair was wanting to share, I’m sure. His excitement and passion for the development of new types of documents was palpable even at the other end of a conference call! Even I got excited — hard to believe, isn’t it? I’m normally so laid back… [author rolls on floor laughing]

More questions, Alistair

But Alistair did leave the door open to more questions, so I’ll do so via this post, inviting either himself or members of his team to answer:

1. No doubt as a marketer you have your ears very close to the marketplace; do you see the global economic crisis impacting on future business communication trends, and what are those trends?
2. Can one’s delicious tags be imported into ‘dogear’?
3. Does IBM share/still share (in light of the economic crisis) Gartner and Forrester’s bullish predictions on the take-up of the 3D web? Will such 3D worlds eventually integrate with, for example, Lotus Notes and Lotus Connections?

~~~~~~~~~~~

So there you have it. I could have stayed talking with Alistair for hours. Like my previous interview with David Boloker, I found Alistair passionate and enthusiastic about business communication and the strategic use of technologies to both sustain current business and encourage/support future business growth.

The exclusive interview with Alistair was courtesy of Lukas Picton and those very fine folk at Text100 (and I trust their building move over the weekend was hassle-free!).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* the ‘voice doubling’ glitch is a technical hiccup that plagued me when I interviewed David Jones from Hill & Knowlton in Canada; I still don’t know whether to release that interview or not because the beginning and end are fine but a large chunk of the rest are almost painful to listen to).

A fabulous article by Brian Solis on a range of tools that work in conjunction with the Twitter platform to make our comms jobs easier.

Definitely worth bookmarking!

If you are interested in decorating your office with gorgeous images of this ‘Boston of the Southern Hemisphere’, then you should check out Robby Cummins’ gorgeous work.

I bumped into him on Twitter and he’s helped me deal with the external hard drive crash of a week or so ago; it was only through curiosity that I followed the link from his Twitter profile to his online portfolio.

I don’t know if he takes private commissions, but you can always contact him via Twitter (@Robbyc) and ask…

Word reaches me that research into Word Of Mouth marketing has created a new hurdle for traditional marketers.

Says AdAge:

Before they make a purchase, 93% of Americans consult their co-workers for advice, according to a new study from Big Research on socializing in the workplace.

Going on to comment about the research findings further,

The survey offered some interesting insight into how much people socialize at work. Of the 3,389 U.S. employees surveyed in the study, 68% admitted socializing with co-workers during work breaks, and another 42% said they phoned, texted or e-mailed friends and family from the office during the work day.

[sarcasm alert] Naughty workers — they should be working, not socialising! What are they paid for? Blimey, anyone would think someone clever invented the ‘organisation’ as an adult day care centre! [sarcasm finished]

Citing Stephanie Molnar, the CEO of an agency that specialises in marketing within the workplace, the article suggests that seven out of ten employees in the US work in a networked-in-same-fashion environment; the implication of which is that such informal networks have a reach greater than the combined circulation of daily US newspapers.

Since, as Stephanie asserts, less than ten percent of US companies actively engage in workplace marketing, there is a good deal of growth yet to come in this emerging marketplace.

Read the full article.