Social Hallucinations

The Extensions of Man

Technology empowers. Photo camera that enables people to create memories that would be lost if not for the camera. Camera that becomes the extention of the man.Well captured by Samsung.

via Scary ideas

 

What is Facebook Places?

Facebook Places has been launched in US and will soon reach probably the rest of the world. Some deaths are being discussed (Foursquare) as we try find out what Facebook places will mean for people and marketers.

Facebook for marketing as other geo-location services has a huge potential but how the potential turns out depends on the inventiveness of companies in adding more meaning to checking in. Checking-in is fun, especially in the first phase. It is like a game. The thrill of becoming a mayor, getting the badge. Then comes competitiveness. Ousting your friends from places and taking over their mayorship. Trying the first specials...and it appears there are no more specials near you. You just check-in less and less often. You ask yourself - why I should check-in. You lack the purpose. I believe the success of Facebook places for business will depend on the sense of purpose it manage to deliver to people.

As it goes for people, Facebook places will make geo-location accessible to broader audience. It will be another tool for sharing with friends where we are and what we are doing. As my colleague Lara wrote in her post on privacy: "Places provides us with another way of keeping tabs on our friends, of letting people know what we’re up to, of sharing what is basically unnecessary information with anyone and everyone we choose. It’s also another foray in to our private world, and will no doubt meet harsh critique from users who suddenly realise that what is actually private about their lives is diminishing at a very rapid rate."

Watch how you can check in with Facebook Places

 

Mobile & Social Media in Scandinavia

A demographic study within the Nordics of people mobile phone habits, and social ’s media network habits...men and women, boys and girls, from 15 – 55, from all over the Nordic regions, and from all walks of life....

Mobile & social media in Scandinavia

View more presentations from Vizeum Denmark. or read more about Vizeum

 

Technology Epitaph is Useless

The latest Chris Anderson's article in Wired on the death of web was rather provoking and caused quite a stir.

What always surprise me is the easiness with which we kill things around and present them as useless. Like we discard old clothes, we try to discard the technology. We've already tried to kill radio, TV and print. All three are still living and doing quite good, but the way they are used has changed.

As history shows, technologies evolve and being shaped by people and their needs they can coexist and merge.

There is some pinch of sensationalism in the way of declaring web dead. Alexis Madrigal from Atlantic responded to Anderson's article: "What's Wrong with X is Dead".

"From the vantage point of the present, it may seem that technologies are deterministic. But this view is incorrect, no matter how plausible it may seem. Cultures select and shape technologies, not the other way around, and some societies have rejected or ignored even the gun or the wheel. For millennia, technology has been an essential part of the framework for imagining and moving into the future, but the specific technologies chosen have varied. As the variety of human cultures attests, there have always been multiple possibilities, and there seems no reason to accept a single vision of the future." (David Nye, Technology Matters)

Killing the web seems like the attempt to simplify and feel more in control over the complex and unpredictable world of people behavior and interactions - choosing a single vision for the future. It is tempting to have a single vision, because it is more manageable and controllable but world keeps on evolving into plenty of parallel and intersecting paths.

There is no need to write an epitaph when nobody died.

Mass Media Theory vs. Mass Media Reality

The beauty of theory is that it operates on the wish level. It expresses what we wish for...and then comes reality that often verifies theory in a harsh way

via Toothpaste for dinner

All that Jazz

"The Tracker" (El Perseguidor) is the tribute to Charlie Parker by amazing Julio Cortázar.

I remember spending hours and neglecting school in favor of his words and magic universes they've created. Every his book was an awesome adventure. 

Now, the great illustrator José Muñoz created the trailer for the book playing with high rough lines, sleepless Paris of the 50-ties and unforgettable Charlie. Result - the piece of cool. Let the pictures, words and music take you away.

Baby, say it one more time

Throughout my career at media agencies I've faced many times the question 'how many times people have to see our message to get it? We have developed tools that based on the research and common sense helped us to establish the levels of so called effective frequency. This graph from Armano's and Rubel's presentation on 6 digital trends seems to be in line what we've been doing and believing (I am curious how they've come to those numbers). Majority of people need to hear things 3-5 times before they sink in. This of course depends on the complexity of the message, the context and the environment we are communicating in. It requires crafting the messages that it are easy to understand and are relevant to people.

 

Though, it doesn't mean we need to push the same message 5 times through the same channel, over and over again in hope people finally get it. When message isn't relevant, they will never get it, rather get annoyed or immune over it. The repetition and effective frequency is more to me about "lightning lots of small fires" like Mark Earls says, meaning we create many contact points with people in spaces where they already are, where they are in the right receptive mode and context. It is not necessarily about sending out the same message but adapting the message to environment it is going to be seen in. Integrate and adapt, be always in beta to get best out of it and make sure people hear what you say by communicating smarter.

The World is a Global Village

Marshall McLuhan explores how electronic media are changing society moving from individuals of print culture to tribes of electronic media culture.

The old media aren't replaced by the new ones, the just change the role they play in people's lives and society along with cultural changes the new media trigger. Evolution.

It is incredible to see that 50 years old interview and experience how future proof are some McLuhan's thesis.

via Wabi-Sabi Lab

Your Life, Your Game: The Art of Collecting Points

Great show by Jesse Schell game developer and great performer on how Facebook and diverse social platforms will influence our reality, not only the way we communicate but the way we learn, shop ... the way we live! To sum up his fascinating thoughts: everything will be part of the game and we will earn points to get rewards...figure it out!

Making is Connecting

The new promise of creativity and innovation by connecting digital tools, activism, happiness and social capital by David Gauntlett

Digital tools aren't really worth much unless they are enable people to do stuff, innovate, initiate the change. Brilliant.

Are People Turning into Distrusted Media?

Definition of media got extended significantly over many years, starting from newspapers to social media that are media disseminated through social interaction or even people. Are people media? Are we the mere instruments conveying information that are currently losing trust of other people. Can our communicative abilities be reduced to objects that transmits information?

I don't agree with Armano's theory of decreasing trust in people as the result of overall decrease of trust in media, the correlation doesn't imply the causation. Following Armano's deduction, we could easily come to the conclusion that we are on the way to slow social disaster of mistrust and alienation along the growth of social media. This is oversimplifying of human relations built on trust. Trust is essential to human relations and is fundamental for social interaction and their development. The question lies in how far circles of trust stretch. 

"Trust surveys"  suffer from the lack of understanding of what people define as friends/peers. Those surveys deliver mere numbers without any understandings. Facts.

As I wrote two days ago, the main culprit here are "friends" and our language. We should maybe look at the decreasing trust in friends / peers as the result of the devaluation of friendship caused by media as Facebook. We have experienced rapid growth of our circle of friends with people who were in fact strangers to us. 

I say it once more: we still trust "people like us" but we are simply not sure whether Johns we follow on Twitter are really like us...

The importance of digital literacy

Howard Rheingold on the importance the literacy in participation and sharing is what will decide whether Internet will be useful tool or garbage. 

The Internet as Playground and Factory - Howard Rheingold from Voices from The Internet as Play on Vimeo.

Virality is not a strategy

"Virality is something that has to be engineered from the beginning…and it’s harder to create virality than it is to create a good product.  That's why we often see good products with poor virality, and poor products with good virality.  The reason that over $150 Billion is spent on US advertising each year is because virality is so hard.  If virality was easy, there would be no advertising industry."

(Josh Kopelman)

Image by aussiegall via Flickr

You can't build your product, communication strategy around viral cause viral isn't something you can plan and decide how it should act. Virality is something that is the result of human interactions which you can't only predict but you can't control either. In stead of focusing on virality, shifting efforts into creating the good products and spreading them / news of them is what matters.

As Noah Brier says "if a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear ..." . Stuff doesn't become viral per se. It becomes viral cause some people heard about it, tried it, liked it and shared it with others who tried it, liked it and shared it, and so on.

via Noah Brier

Popularity isn't easy - this is also very relevant

Danish Mother Seeking - Update

Video was removed was YouTube .... well it just proves all my points. However video can be seen here.

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Danish Mother Seeking is busted! Karen26, Danish mother seeking... was hired by Visit Denmark to promote Denmark abroad. This is rather disappointing that such a good idea that would work really good to promote safe sex, was used to promote Denmark. That's also pretty shocking that such an angle was chosen to tell the story of Denmark. 

After finding out who was behind the campaign, I must say I asked myself about the ethics - not about the ethics of use of social media, but about the ethics of the content, about the way the governmental company chooses to present Denmark for the world. Respect is missing.

Let's look at aftermath first: over 1 million views, over 5.000 comments and lot of commotion on blogs and in mainstream media...primarily in Denmark. It is pretty understandable Danes are shocked over the way their compatriots have chosen to promote their country. It is like a bad reality show. The comments from Visit Denmark and agency behind - Grey Copenhagen heats the situation even more up. I heard Peter Helstrup, strategic director at Grey Copenhagen say:

"I think, this is the most effective campaign, that was ever created for a danish company" 

Well, this is impressive viral campaign that used controversy, fake & real approach and delivered over million views in just 3 days. As I wrote yesterday views, buzz has nothing to do with effectiveness, it has nothing to do with social media. This is just a tactical and short-term solution, deeply rooted in traditional media thinking focusing on creating controversy in order to boost up views numbers on YouTube (views are still shiny objects for so many). They could as well just show bare breasts. (Btw I would like to hear more about the goals that were set up for the campaign apart from views and appearance on TV2)

What about relevancy of the campaign? I keep on asking myself, how this campaign is relevant for Denmark? Isn't Visit Denmark's major goal to attract tourists to Denmark? It seems like the major efforts were put into promoting this video in Denmark. Apparently, Denmark is where the most response came from. I googled this morning to find any comment, any blog post about the campaign outside the boarders of scandalized Denmark. I found one at Mashable titled: Danish Woman’s One Night Stand Video Is a Government Hoax. Not to mention the comments that appeared on YouTube.:

"its amazing to see all the foreigners who have lived in denmark for a long time (decade or more) come out and slam Denmark. I lived there for a decade too, and was disgusted by the petty racism and xenophobia. Not to mention shallow women who will fuck you but not even hold a civil conversation."

"Lets get to Denmark, and get laid! that its all folks! Nobody is interesting in little right wings shiit Denmark!"

No one can deny it - the campaign has backfired and it seems there is no plan to handle the crisis situation. I've heard around that Visit Denmark is deleting comments from people that criticize the campaign.Is it true?!

This is where public engagement begins and we can talk about social media marketing and Visit Denmark seems to be unprepared to handle it. This is when the real things happen - not while the views counter is going up and people leave comments hoping she will find the father of the child, but when the discussion gets heated and opinions about content appear all over the Internet.

Visit Denmark got blinded by the shiny promise of millions of views and lot of buzz. They got those views along with disgusted, disappointed, shocked people and apparently no plan how to handle the bad response video generated.

Companies and agencies chase the shiny objects like buzz and views, missing the big picture and opportunities that are available for creating the public engagement and relationships. Using social media tools will not make you social. We keep on mistaking traditional media campaigns using social media with social media marketing. Social media marketing is about ideas that are rooted in understanding of human behavior and emotions and that get people together, make their lives more exciting or easier. Social media marketing is about people (not views)

Is the next episode coming: Danish Tourist Agency Seeking the lost trust...

TicTac Micha Rocks Again

TicTac Micha is back. He didn't stop to entertain the world after the great performance in Copenhagen. The great response from all over the world, the lots of fan emails showed that TicTac Micha is great and there is the need for more.
So he is back with the World tour. The first stop was in Malmö, Sweden where he rocked at the midsummer party!


and here is his first performance from Copenhagen - watch TicTac Micha video here.

Stay tuned for more updated from Micha's tour by visiting his website. :-)