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Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
What makes you unfollow someone? Six things stand out.
in: Communicate
How many people can we follow? Take a look at this excellent study by Huberman, Romero, and Wu. It shows that there’s an underlying hidden network of friends, and that the remaining follower/followee relationships are really just social courtesy. If humans can normally handle around 150 social relationships then, as JP Rangaswami observes, tools like Twitter help push this limit up to perhaps 600 people.
Social networking for business is a two-edged sword: You have to keep track of many followers, but automating the process thwarts efforts to remain genuine. And yet we don’t spend enough time analyzing unfollow behavior. Here are the results of some informal surveys over the past few weeks.How many people can we really follow?
View CommentsTuesday, August 19th, 2008
Unclear on the concept of web
in: Communicate, Create
Just a quick one today. But what I find most curious is that web analytics provide so much better data on the effectiveness of advertising, it’s almost irresponsible to use print media to reach people. And since magazines usually make their money from print advertising and sponsorship, that’s got to be a losing game.
I was at Web2Expo earlier this year, and Website Magazine (pictured below) was exhibiting. I find this tremendously confusing. I imagine the target market of people who like to read about the web on paper is roughly the same as the market of people whose assistants print their e-mail for them.
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
Self-branding: Your personal favicon
in: Communicate, Standing out
User interfaces are busy things. They’re cluttered with information, and designers have to reduce it down to its minimum to make things work properly. If I’m using chat, or Twitter, I have icons for everyone I interact with. And they’re the closest we get to a personal logo. Consider Twitter: I have only a few pixels to identify people. Many of these are surprisingly memorable: GigaOm, Laughingsquid, and others stand out nicely. The personal icon shows up elsewhere, too. Here’s the icon strip from my chat (names removed to protect the innocent.) And there are “visitor log” tools like Mybloglog. Unfortunately, I’m breaking my own rule: I have different photos for Mybloglog. It’s time for some brand cleanup. Here’s what I’m going to do: Sean called this a Personal Favicon, and I think he’s right. The little 16×16 icon that appears in the address bar is a brand, reduced to its barest of bones. I’m betting that a branded personal icon, particularly in microblogging circles, will become something trademarked and defensible that graphic designers add to their list of design deliverables for a startup. There will be a land grab, too: I’m not going to choose black and green, or blue and white, because those are pretty well known.
Monday, July 28th, 2008
Nailing that presentation: Have one idea
in: Communicate, Standing out
In conjunction with Bitcurrent, Syntenic, IDG, Flow Consulting and others, we’re helping to run a weekend-long conference in Montreal in September. It’s called Bitnorth. It’s an informal take on conferences, where the attendees are expected to provide much of the content. One of the ways they participate is by delivering Short Bits, 10-minute long presentations on a topic they care about. This year’s general theme is The Other 99 Percent, and we’re looking at how technology has changed non-technologists’ lives. Getting an idea across cleanly is always hard, and presenting is a challenge for many people. So for those folks presenting (and anyone else who cares abount communicating) I decided to try and summarize the process of creating and delivering a presentation. I’m constantly humbled by great presenters (and there are some links to noteworthy ones at the bottom of this entry.) It boils down to knowing what your point is, and getting it across memorably. Read more…
Monday, July 21st, 2008
The path less travelled by
in: Communicate, Create, Standing out, Startups
What can a bookstore teach Canadians about positioning their companies? Marketing is increasingly about attention, and less about product. Most competent people can build a competent product or service. But in today’s world of instant attention, it’s often more about how to succeed in the market than how to get the product right. I had lunch a couple of weeks ago with Robin Axon, formerly of VenturesWest (and candidate for the coolest cyborg name of a VC ever.) We were chatting, as often happens among Canadian entrepreneurs, about The Canadian Ailment. Despite tremendous competence in product design, we never seem to make it North of the Border in the same way the US does. Even US bookstores, apparently, know this instinctively. But more on that later; back to Robin. He had a pretty clear theory about what ails us, which I’ll paraphrase (badly) here: Canadians try to succeed with a product, but Americans succeed with a market strategy.
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
Targeting and repetition
in: Communicate, Create, Standing out
The Nova Scotia Liquor Commission is trying to sell more wine. This campaign does three things really well. If you’re trying to put together a marketing effort, you should: When it comes to beer, nothing beats Nova Scotia brewery Alexander Keith’s focus. They even have a bar (the Lower Deck, the “official home” of Keith’s.) Revel in these gems where a mad Scot channels Mike Meyers, some of my favorite ads of all time. Beautiful. “Often, I’d dreamt of a lake of beer. But not like this. Never like this.” BTW, the actor who played this Scotsman was arrested on charges of child pornography, and Keiths has since pulled them. Sick bastard, but the ads are no less funny.