Whatever happened to all of those cassettes?

Take a look... and send me one! I'd love to get one of these as a gift!

I received an email from Schmap recently asking for permission to use my photo of Bishop's Palace, in Bishop's Park. So if you visit the Schmap of London and look up Bishop's Park in Fulham. You'll see my photo. It even works on your iPhone.

Pretty cool!

It brings two highly creative industries together as creative partners, not buyer and seller, but collaborators in a process that should ultimately lead to better ways to spread ideas. Very cool concept. What's next? Ad Agencies buying up film production companies?

Going mobile

The Monday business session concluded with a round of ‘showcases,' among which Euro RSCG Riley's Drew Spencer made a convincing case for mobile marketing as ‘the future of recruitment.' Among other things he noted mobiles' high level of market penetration and unique position as personal, ‘always on' devices, plus the rapid growth of smart phones and the influence of mobile technology on social media. He then outlined how mobile technology could best be used for recruitment applications in the context of multiplatform marketing strategies. After this, there was a mad rush to get scrubbed up for the Monday evening drinks reception and gala awards dinner (see separate Ri5 story).

I used a number of sources to pull my presentation together, from blogs to videos to articles found on Digg to del.icio.us and mostly found statistics and case studies that supported ideas that I had anyways. (Not that I'm so incredibly intelligent). I also saw some new thinking, both in terms of strategies that hadn't yet come across my desk, as well as some new terminology.

One post that I really liked a lot was from the ad:tech blog, called "In a Multiplatform World, Brands must be Present, Relevant" (June 2008). This post talked about Multiplatform Marketing, and the importance of giving roles to the different components in your marketing strategy, not just thinking about reach and frequency across channels. They talked about providing channels for response, interaction and dialogue.

This was relevant to the conference I was speaking at, because most recruiting organisations do not think about using channels in different ways. Recruitment marketing tends to focus on one thing: response. Despite several years of articles, blog posts and keynote addresses from industry experts, the majority of organisations focus very heavily on direct response (or indirect response through a recruiter - which is even more ridiculous).

However, even outside of the realm of recruitment marketing, few brands think about and/or use interaction and dialogue effectively in their marketing strategy. Nike are doing some very interesting things with mobile marketing strategies that allow people to interact with electronic billboards and more, and other companies such as JetBlue are engaging customers in dialogue on the internet (and micro blogging platforms like Twitter) but in general few organisations are doing so.

I'm sure that in many cases, this is not due to a lack of knowledge or even of desire, but a lack of resource or an organisational structure that is not set up for interaction and dialogue. But it seems to me that the organisations that do make room for dialogue with their consumers are moving ahead of the pack in the great landgrab for people's attention, respect and permission to be a part of their lives.

And, what's more, that permissions seems to come down to how far into someone's communication stream they will allow you to be. I used to be very concerned about who had my email address. I set up several different email addresses, which would allow me to segment my contact with people and allow me to have a business persona, a creative persona, and a normal persona. But things moved too fast to keep up with the maintenance on all of it, so I found myself setting my many email addresses up to forward to a single email address. This worked when people composed their emails from their address book, because they would keep whatever email address I gave them and use that to send me emails. But who composes an email from their address book anymore? Now you go to your inbox and look for an email from that person and "reply to sender" (which meant that everyone noticed that my email address was actually a Yahoo email address and not the one I'd given them).

And that's just email, which is already outdated technology for some (a seminar I went to last year had surveyed 16 year olds in the UK who said "email? - that's what my Dad uses to send letters").

People will let you email them something because it's not their first port of call for communication. That's either their social network, or their phone... and with the growth of mobile-enabled versions of all of the social networks, you can see where it's all headed.

Why is this significant? Well, Social Networks allowed you to put all of your contacts into one place, and even decide which Brands can reach you and how much you're willing to engage with them. They allow you to segment your contacts, either by groups within a social network, or by which social networks you allow someone into. For example, old colleagues are not always allowed into my Facebook network, but I would allow them into LinkedIn, MySpace is the only place I really actively engage with my music industry contacts and friends, and so on. I hardly use email anymore. In fact, many of my friends back home were getting upset because I never responded to their emails anymore. Why? I can't control (even with all of the new anti-spam technology) who puts messages into my inbox, so I spend all day deleting junk messages just to be able to read messages from my friends. Second, I am never really on my computer at home and don't have time to check personal emails from work, so I'm checking Yahoo through the Web on my BlackBerry... and then having to spend the whole time deleting spam through a slow, small and difficult to use interface. Using email had become inconvenient as a tool for dialogue and even responding via email was becoming a chore.

So, then earlier this year, our IT Director was kind enough to let me test out an iPhone. I was already a fairly heavy mobile internet user on my BlackBerry, but did find the interface annoying. The iPhone's interface (and no I'm not going to make this an iPhone post... but I do think it's one of the coolest gadgets ever invented) makes the mobile internet more accessible, not entirely, but moreso. This is because people are designing applications for the iPhone interface that make it easy for me to decide exactly what information has permission to be in my pocket and at my fingertips 24-hours a day.

The things I want to do are send/receive messages from my friends, take and send photographs to people, listen to music and find out about news, music, films and random information like the origin of the term Geordie (for people from around Newcastle, UK), I'd also like to record videos and send them, and although I hadn't realized it yet, I really like being able to find places on a map.

I can do so on my phone and find it easier to keep in touch with all of my different networks, and have even found my way into new ones. I can respond, interact and have dialogue with friends, business contacts and even brands all from this one device.

This has lead to several revelations for me:

1. There is really no difference between an SMS and an email anymore.

Typing on a phone isn't easy, so I don't type long messages anymore. So whether I'm emailing or texting the message length is about the same.

2. It's easier to text

Texting is instant, I don't have to delete spam from my inbox and it's just as effective for 90% of the communication

3. I don't need, or want to, belong to all of these different communities

I'm now thinking that the next thing to come will be a single login that lets you into Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Last.fm, Del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr and YouTube. I'm also thinking that Apple, or someone, should come up with customisable sets of configurations for the home screen. So the "Sport Fan's" home screen, vs the "Social Networker's" home screen, where it changes the default icons to a set that is very useful to that individual... similar to iGoogle or MyYahoo... it's a "myiPhone" customiser. In fact, I actually want one application that brings them all together (Jaiku seems to be headed in that direction?)

4. I talk to people on the phone more

Now that I send shorter emails to people, I am more likely to just want to pick up the phone to discuss a more complicated manner than I used to be... when I would have sent a long email first and then called to discuss only if necessary

5. From a Marketing perspective, the whole game is changing... again... and fast

This is the part that excites me. The possibilities are endless here, it truly is time for Brands to have a response channel, interaction channel and dialogue channel (and to think about how they position their offer in each channel, as each should have a very different purpose in their marketing strategy... everything from making friends, to creating ambassadors, to testing ideas with early adopters, to soliciting employee referrals, to sharing ideas, to collaborating with other businesses, to seeding the market with new ideas...

I have found a renewed purpose for my blog and will hopefully be back on here more often. Would love to have dialogue with anyone that found this interesting...

Check me out on Twitter and drop me a line if you saw this and found it interesting...

I found (on Digg) a post about another cool one today called a "Friend Mapper"

On this site you Login to Facebook and it reads where your friends are and then plots them on a map using Google maps.

The article I was reading was saying that the Flickr audience are extremely proud and loyal of their site, which I am. I have always been so shocked that people I know aren't automatically registered with Flickr, or have registered but don't remember their password. But that's only because I've always assumed that Flickr owned the market. It should, but then again I'm biased because Flickr is the first website I've really used as a method of sharing photos.

I used to (and, in fact, still do) have a photo gallery on one of my personal websites, but I host my websites through a friend's company (Shelfspace.com) and he gives me really good rates, so I do my best not to overload his servers with lots of large files. I also had a son and started taking a lot more photographs than I used to. I did some research into the "photo sharing" world and read so many good things about Flickr (mostly about their "tagging system", or folksonomy as it has come to be known) that I joined.

In all honesty, I don't spend enough time tagging my photos and always wish I did... however I am definitely an extremely loyal customer.

One of the reasons is the fact that it keeps changing. I just found a site called Delivr on which you can search (by tag) for just about anything, including your own photos, add a message to it and send it to someone over email.

That is really cool... I'll post again about things I like about Flickr.

After having given the presentation on Web 2.0 at the conference I was going to, I did a lot more investigation after I read the O'Reilly article and found that it is linked to and referred to often.

Sending only one channel at a time frees up bandwidth on the network for other things.

It is those "other things" that I'm interested in. The whole "Web 2.0" thing has brought us some very interesting advances in technology and the Internet. Primarily, it has opened up even more options for individuals to showcase their skills and creativity and has further challenged traditional media owners (the recording industry, the film industry) and media creators (production companies, ad agencies, musicians, news organisations) to be at the top of their game.

At the same time, the Web 2.0 craze seems like it's losing momentum in some respects. There are definitely too many companies coming along trying to be "the next [enter Web 2.0 company name here]." And there are too many investors trying to get in on the game, spending too much money on ideas that are likely to never go anywhere, especially the copycat Web 2.0 sites. The "Social Networking" game is over, sure there are ways to connect people that are different to Facebook or MySpace, and photo sharing sites that work slightly different to Flickr or Photobucket, and a million video sharing sites popping up. But for the most part, these brands (Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube) are already best-in-class and are not going to be overtaken by a slightly different version of the same technology, unless you are making dramatic improvements to the functionality... or, as Facebook has done, an advancement to the idea of "Web 2.0" social networking by opening your API and allowing people to extend the user experience by developing within your framework.

I was in Gatwick Airport about three months ago and overheard some teenagers talking about setting up their Social Networking pages. One of them said he was using Facebook (and I believe it was because he felt that there were better looking girls on Facebook) when the girl said "Why don't you just create a MySpace page." His response that MySpace takes too long to setup. To that she said "I was able to set mine up in a two days." And he said, "Exactly, two days too long." Just as I was ready to begin rushing off to tell my clients about Facebook, the third teenager said, "yeah but everyone's already on MySpace..." a comment that ended their debate in agreement. Funny that now Facebook is one of the fastest growing sites in the world and is attracting people that none of the other Social Networks could manage to appeal to (even my dad has a Facebook page, no offense dad), apart from perhaps Friends Reunited.

And that's my point... If you are going to get into "Web 2.0" then do something groundbreaking.

What will be the next remarkable product to come along and forever change how we look at the Internet, and at ourselves?

I like the idea of video editing via the Web, and I like how Google is offering a document editor (similar to Microsoft Word) and spreadsheet editor (similar to Microsoft Excel), but these don't exactly take us to a whole new level.... so what is it?

I can see Interactive TV really taking off, and I'm sure that there will be people that come along with completely new ways to deliver television programming as a result. Miro is headed in that direction, as are countless others I can see.

I can also see gaming going to a whole new level, especially in the more mature audiences... but what else?

Will SecondLife become a completely virtual world that you walk around and talk in (like you do when you play XBox Live)? It seems so as VoIP is about to penetrate SL.

I applaud the people that are pushing the Internet to the next level... and hope to be working with you or taking advantage of your next groundbreaking creation.

Matthew Martone's blog post about changes to Google's AdWords Landing Page Quality Rankings (from this Google Article) blew me away. In it, he says:

"Well optimized career site landing pages have an even greater opportunity to be visible and attract the less-active and passive job seekers using the Search Engines.

Poorly optimized career site landing pages, which is very common, will result in even more missed opportunities to attract job seekers and convert them to applicants."

He even includes some recommendations on optimising your pages...

I highly recommend that people begin looking at SEO in the HR and recruiting world...

---

This morning, Google said it had created a new application that will allow mobile users to quickly retrieve e-mail on their cells. The new app supposedly will make a cell phone more like a BlackBerry by enabling faster e-mail access; Google said it will employ "automatic pre-fetching" technology, which will let users receive messages up to five times faster than in the past.

Cingular this morning also unveiled plans to let consumers buy music tracks for download to their phones. Cingular competitors already have beefed up the content they offer via cell phones, and many expect that Apple will eventually launch its combined phone-iPod.

Additionally, YouTube chief exec and co-founder Chad Hurley said the company wanted to branch out into mobile in the next year. Speaking at an ad conference in New York, Hurley reportedly said: "Within the next year we hope to have something on a mobile device." He continued, "It's going to be a huge market, especially for the video mind-set we're dealing with."

---

YouTube on mobile is very cool to me. I like the thought of being able to make short movie clips of my son and my family and friends in the US being able to watch it on their phone, from wherever they are in the world.

I just saw an article on the New York Times Website in which Netflix is offering a million dollars to the person that comes up with a better ratings/recommendation system. Netflix revolutionized the way people rent movies, taking the market by storm to the extent that Blockbuster video, whose name had become synonymous with "renting a movie", had to reinvent themselves... doing away with late charges and trying to regain market share by opening up a "DVD by mail" channel in their own business. (I forget the statistic, but they were down significantly at one point thanks to this shift in how people rent videos.

This new move by Netflix is brilliant, in the age of "Web 2.0" where the "user is in control" netflix is making a database of 100 million movie ratings available as part of a competition with a goal of improving their recommendation system.

A very bold, and brave move by Netflix... I applaud you.

I have also posted on my blog about the growth of online video as a viable means of getting your message out there. Even if your message is a personal message that simply needs to be seen by family and friends elsewhere in the world, not an advertising message that someone is paying you to deliver, the Web is now set up to provide this service. In fact, the Web is becoming the place where you edit your videos as well as to send them out.

Recently, Nielsen Netratings published a list of the UK's hottest online brands (this link is to a PDF file) and when you look down the list, it validates what the AOL report was saying (as well as my own hunches) about the future of the online world in the UK.

The hottest brands in the UK are:

1. YouTube (Video Sharing Website)
2. Flickr (Photo Management and Sharing)
3. MySpace (Social Networking)
4. American Express (Financial Services)
5. Photobucket (Image/video hosting and sharing)
6. Mozilla (Web Browsing Software)
7. Vodafone (Telecommunications)
8. Bebo (Social Networking)
9. Odeon (Cinemas)
10. B&Q (Home and Garden Retail)

The proliferation of sites on this list that are to do with sharing one's life with one's friends (or mates, since I'm in the UK) shows the impact of more people having Broadband access, and thus spending more time on the Web (not connecting to it)...