Category Archives: Online Trends

Google Defines “You” on the Fly

First published November 4, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Google’s ramping up of local results last week made me realize something: our Web presence is rapidly being taken out of our immediate control. Case in point, the Place Page.

Beyond the Walled Garden…

For over a year now, I’ve been pushing a mind shift to our clients, asking them to stop thinking of their online presence in terms of a “website” and more in terms of a portfolio of digital assets; some under their control and others either completely or partially out of their control. For every entity that lives online, there is a ripple effect. At the core is our website. Spreading out, usually with lessening degrees of control, are the “rings” of our presence: portal sites and extranets, mobile apps, information or products on channel partner sites, online ads, videos, interactions in the social space, comments, reviews, references and third-party apps that may access either our data or pieces of our functional infrastructure. The sum of all this is our online presence. As such, it is incumbent on us to be aware of what that looks like, and how visitors might interact with it.

The challenge is daunting for any company that has been online for a while. Even as an individual, according to Google I “live” online and in over 10,000 separate locations. And that’s just what can be easily identified in Google’s index. I suspect the number is even higher. Today’s column will have its own ripple effect, adding to the collective total of what is “Gord Hotchkiss.” My company’s online presence is the sum of over 25,000 individual parts.

Bringing the Web to Your Neighborhood

Now, consider a tiny two- or three-person company in some small town somewhere in America. The odds are pretty good that they may not even have a website, or if they do, it may not have made much of an impact on the vast ecosystem of the Web. At least, that’s been true up to now. But Google’s Place Pages provides a prescient view of how our Web presence might be defined.

Place Pages aggregates at least some of the various pieces of a local business’ online presence. The interesting part is that these Place Pages exist even if there’s little or no input from the business owners themselves. It’s an online presence defined by an algorithm — or rather, multiple algorithms. It’s a small digital snapshot of “you” as defined by Google. Google decides which parts of “you” it exposes.

Place Pages are important in Google’s local search strategies because they solve a problem that restricted the growth of the hyper-local online market. People will only search if there’s something there to find. Google had to create a scalable on-ramp model to give local businesses an online presence. The company did it by leveraging its strength: finding and organizing information. In this case, the presence is created from the information that defines the business on the Web. It’s carrying a search results page one click further, making it specific to one company and structuring the data in a more cohesive way.

“You” on the Fly

This is interesting and important on two different levels. It shows that an online presence can be created through algorithmic aggregation alone, even in the absence of an official website. It shows how extensive our identities are online. Like it or not, we leave footprints on the digital landscape, and no one is in a better position than Google to gather those together to create online destinations on the fly. If this is true for the tiny Mom and Pop shop in Cannon Ball, N.D., it’s even truer for bigger, more established entities, whether they be organizations or individuals. Will our online selves be increasing defined by Google, with or without our input?

The other thing to ponder is that this is scalable and driven by technology. Google has an open door to aggregate and present different types of information, specific to the type of company it is. I suspect a lot of what you see in the current Place Pages is simply a placeholder for new things to come.

The creation of Web destinations on the fly is quite probably a game-changer for Google.  It’s a natural extension of the company’s mission, organizing the world’s information. It provides a new outlet for something that Google has been doing for well over a decade now: gathering together the ripples that define us online.

Ode to an iPad

First published October 21, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I really had no idea how much I’d love my iPad. I have to say that it’s now my preferred connection to the online world. Somehow, whether by design or coincidence, Apple has tapped into something primal and intuitive in myself. Judging from other iPad owners I’ve talked to, I suspect I’m not alone. There is a magical thing happening between me and this sleek little device. And whatever it is, it’s important, even prescient. This, I suspect, is our future sitting in our laps.

What’s the Big Deal?

I’ve spent a good part of my life pondering various technology interfaces. Based on this, I really didn’t think the iPad was that big a deal. The reason I got one was because I needed an ebook reader and I felt that the iPad offered me more functionality than a Kindle. But other than the inevitable coolness (or, at least, perceived coolness) that comes with any Apple device, I didn’t see what all the buzz was about. After all, it was just a big iPhone… without the phone. I still had to deal with an all-too-touchy digital keyboard and a rather anemic processor.

But then I got my hands on one. And something rather strange happened. I suspect that Apple may have found the perfect form factor. When you combine the larger screen with multitouch technology, it completely changes how I interacted with my device. It wasn’t something I could have predicted. But everything I did on the iPad just seemed more natural, more enjoyable, more — dare I say it — sensual. This was one sexy little piece of technology.

Love of the Limbic Kind

What happened? There is no new technology here. We’re even using an obsolete OS, for heaven’s sake. There may be no rational reasoning — but I’ll tell you, my irrational mind has fallen in love. Then again, perhaps it has nothing to do with ration. Maybe Apple is just making interactions with technology more primitive, in a good way.

Keyboards are stupid in pretty much every way imaginable. I’ve dedicated several hours of my life to understanding the QWERTY layout so I’m a reasonably proficient touch typist, but the layout still makes no sense — and yes, I’m aware of the history of it vs. the Dvorak keyboard.. The mouse was a step in the right direction, but there was still some rewiring of our brains required to understand that the cursor was really our proxy for our hand movements.  I find track pads a rather poor compromise.

But, to be able to grab something right in front of our eyes and manipulate it, ah — that is touching something hardwired deep in our limbic brain.  To flick, to stroke, to pinch — that is what it means to be human. Up ’til now, our user experiences have had to be jammed in the arbitrary constraints of outdated and illogical interfaces. But the iPad, perhaps more than any other device before it, is letting us be human again. And the experience is intoxicating.

The Human Part of HCI

I felt something of the same rush when I first picked up the iPhone, but the extra real estate of the iPad delivers a compounding effect on the level of the user experience. Perhaps you think I’m making a big deal out of nothing, but I suspect that the very humanness of the iPad’s interface could be a game-changer. I’m not the first to say so. This was much of the buzz I discounted when the iPad first came out. But now I’ve had the chance to see what might be behind the game-changing aspects of this device. And ironically, it’s nothing to do with new technology. In fact, it’s wrapping existing technology in a package that nailed the “human” part of the human-computer-interaction equation.

The question that comes to mind is, how might this change the nature of our online experiences? If our entire online history has been built on the paradigm of a keyboard/mouse/monitor interaction, how might that change with a multitouch, interactive screen? And that’s not even including geographically savvy devices, cameras or voice commands. That’s a substantially different paradigm, which will inevitably lead to a substantially different experience. Imagine, interacting with a virtual world where you can picture your surroundings, know where you are, touch the things you’re interacting with and express your intent verbally.  Finally, technology will start to catch up with what it means to be a human.

The Jill Hotchkiss Inflection Point

First published July 29, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Technology has reached a critical point in the adoption curve. My wife, who is imminently practical and intolerant of anything that smacks of gadgetry, is becoming intrigued by my iPhone. I can’t overstate the importance of this in terms of watershed moments. Steve Jobs, if you can get my wife to buy into your vision, you have crossed the chasm.

There’s something important to note here in attitudes towards technology that we digerati, gathered together on the leading edge of the bell curve, often forget. Technology only becomes important to most people when it lets them do something they care about. For my wife, my gleeful demonstrations of the wonder that is Shazam gained nothing but a prolonged rolling of the eyes. Twitter clients and Facebook apps? Puh-leeze! Redlaser elicited a brief spark of interest, but this quickly passed when she saw the steps she had to take to do any virtual shopping. Even the wonders of the cosmos, conveniently mapped by pUniverse, did not pass the Jill acid test. As long as my app inventory didn’t improve her life in any appreciable way, she remained resolutely unimpressed.

But lately, there have been cracks in the wall of technology defense she has carefully constructed since marrying me. A nifty little app called Mousewait was the first chink. Knowing the wait times in the ride lines on a recent trip to Disneyland was something she cared about. Suddenly, she was asking me to take out the iPhone and check to see how many minutes we’d have to wait at Splash Mountain. Yelp helped us find a reasonable family restaurant in San Diego. And Taxi Magic allowed us to quickly hail a cab in San Francisco.

But the moment I knew the defenses were ready to crumble was when she recently turned to me and said: “So, you can do all that stuff on an iPhone? What other things can you do?”

Aahhh… the door was open, but only a crack. If I’ve learned one thing in 21 years of marriage, I’ve learned to tread slowly when these opportunities present themselves. I had to carefully craft my response. Too much enthusiasm shown at this point could be fatal…

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“On the iPhone… what could you do with it?”

“What could I do with it, or what could you do with it?

“Me… let’s say.”

And here we come to the crux of the matter. I’m extremely tolerant of technology. I’ll struggle my way through an interface and put up with crappy design simply so I can emerge victorious on the top of the early adopter heap, holding my iPhone proudly aloft. At the first inkling of frustration, my wife will turf the thing into the nearest trashcan. If you functionality is what you’re looking for, app designers have to provide the shortest possible path from A to B.

If you really want to scale the opportunity that lies at the Jill Hotchkiss inflection point, what you have to do is start providing seamless functionality for app to app. The new iPhone OS is edging down this path by supporting multitasking, but there is still a long way to go before you’ll make my wife truly happy. And that, believe me, is a goal worthy of pursuit.

White Salmon and Black Swans

First published July 22, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The conversation started innocently enough. We were entertaining out-of-town guests at a winery and restaurant overlooking Lake Okanagan. And, as often happens when people visit B.C., they ordered salmon.

“You know, I heard that not all salmon are pink. There are actually white salmon.”

“Really, I’ve never heard of that.”

“Well, let’s see if there really are white salmon.”

So, we turned to the arbitrator of all such things: Google. If it can be found on the Web, apparently it exists. Which is an interesting behavior in itself, and a point I’ll come back to in a minute. But first, let’s talk about why the existence of white salmon is important.

A Fish by any Other Color

A white salmon is important because it’s a black swan. Or, rather, it’s a Black Swan. The capitalization is critical, because it’s not the animal I’m referring to, but the phenomenon identified by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book of the same name.

For all of human history, until the 17th century, it was commonly accepted that all swans were white. But in 1697, Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered a black swan in western Australia. Why is that important? Well, for the vast majority of us, it’s not. But what if, for some reason, our world revolves around swans? What if our ability to earn a living depends on the predictably of a swan’s natural coloring? Then suddenly, it becomes vitally important.

Black Swans — and white salmon, for that matter — are outliers. And outliers are important because they cause us to change our view of the world. The normal, regular and expected allow our lives to run down predictable paths. As long as this continues, nothing changes. But the unpredicted, the unknown outlier, is an undeniable occurrence that forces us to reframe our view of things and take a new path. It was a Black Swan that changed the world.

According to Taleb, Black Swans have to have three things: they have to lie outside the realm of regular expectations, they have to carry extreme impact, and, when we discover them, they force us to alter our view of things to explain their existence. We have to change our view of the world to accommodate them. Taleb asserts that all of human history has taken a path that pivots on the discovery of Black Swans.

Discovering Black Swans

Now, back to our dinner conversation. Black Swans only become important when they were discovered. The vastness of the physical world meant that it took us a long time to find that first black swan.

But the world today is significantly different than it was in 1697. Today, Black Swans pop up all the time on YouTube or in a blog post. Every single day, somebody somewhere is googling a Black Swan. And, when they find them, Black Swans go viral because the unexpected is naturally fascinating to us. We can’t help but talk about it, and today, when we do, chances are it’s through a digital channel.

The more the world becomes digitally connected and synchronized, the faster word spreads about Black Swans. And when word spreads, we are forced once again to change our view of the world. This means that the pace of change in human history, catalyzed by Black Swan discoveries, is picking up speed. Today, you can’t step outside your door without tripping over a Black Swan.

The discovery of a Black Swan sets in motion a recurring chain of events. First, we have to acknowledge its existence. Let’s call this the Black Swan Googling stage. Then, we have to talk about it. This would be the Black Swan Twitter stage. Then, we have to rationalize its existence, creating an explanation for it — the Black Swan Wikipedia stage. Then, it becomes an accepted part of our new worldview, the new normal. What used to take centuries to filter through the civilized world now happens in the matter of days, or, at the most, weeks.

After all, when I woke up yesterday morning, I didn’t know there was such a thing as a white salmon. Today, my world has changed forever.

Our Indelible Lives

First published June 3, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

It’s been a fascinating week for me. First, it was off to lovely Muncie, Ind. to meet with the group at the Center for Media Design at Ball State University. Then, it was to Chicago for the National Business Marketing Association Conference, where I was fortunate enough to be on a panel about what the B2B marketplace might look like in the near future. There was plenty of column fodder from both visits, but this week, I’ll give the nod to Ball State, simply because that visit came first.

Our Digital Footprints

Mike Bloxham, Michelle Prieb and Jen Milks (the last two joined us for our most recent Search Insider Summit) were gracious hosts, and, as with last week (when I was in Germany) I had the chance to participate in a truly fascinating conversation that I wanted to share with you. We talked about the fact that this generation will be the first to leave a permanent digital footprint. Mike Bloxham called it the Indelible Generation. That title is more than just a bon mot (being British, Mike is prone to pithy observations) — it’s a telling comment about a fundament aspect of our new society.

Imagine some far-in-the-future anthropologist recreating our culture. Up to this point in our history, the recorded narrative of any society came from a small sliver of the population. Only the wealthiest or most learned received the honor of being chronicled in any way. Average folks spent their time on this planet with nary a whisper of their lives recorded for posterity. They passed on without leaving a footprint.

Explicit and Implicit Content Creation

But today — or if not today, certainly tomorrow — all of us will leave behind a rather large digital footprint. We will leave in our wake emails, tweets, blog posts and Facebook pages. And that’s just the content we knowingly create. There’s a lot of data generated by each of us that’s simply a byproduct of our online activities and intentions. Consider, for example, our search history. Search is a unique online beast because it tends to be the thread we use to stitch together our digital lives. Each of us leaves a narrative written in search interactions that provides a frighteningly revealing glimpse into our fleeting interests, needs and passions.

 Of course, not all this data gets permanently recorded. Privacy concerns mean that search logs, for example, get scrubbed at regular intervals. But even with all that, we leave behind more data about who we were, what we cared about and what thoughts passed through our minds than any previous generation. Whether it’s personally identifiable or aggregated and anonymized, we will all leave behind footprints.

 Privacy? What Privacy?

Currently we’re struggling with this paradigm shift and its implications for our privacy. I believe in time — not that much time — we’ll simply grow to accept this archiving of our lives as the new normal, and won’t give it a second thought. We will trade personal information in return for new abilities, opportunities and entertainment. We will grow more comfortable with being the Indelible Generation.

Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps we’ll trigger a revolt against the surrender of our secrets. Either way, we live in a new world, one where we’re always being watched. The story of how we deal with that fact is still to be written.

Google vs Apple: an Open and Closed Case

First published May 27, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Yesterday, I was eavesdropping on a debate about open-source vs. closed systems. I found the debate fascinating because two of the most important contributors to what our search experience might look like live at opposite ends of this debate. Apple is adamant about locking down every aspect of the user experience. Google wants to open it up to any and all comers. The third player, Microsoft, sits somewhere in between. The debate was about who might prevail. I was uncharacteristically silent during all this, because I had to think about it before throwing in my two cents. Now, 24 hours later, it’s time to toss in my ante.

In theory, open source should win hands down. The open environment allows a cooperative ecosystem to evolve, guaranteeing a rate of innovation simply not possible in closed system. But I think it depends on where we are in the maturity of the market. Open source allows for more innovation, but it’s also an open invitation for more things to go wrong. This can be deadly as you try to push along market adoption.

Apple Closes the Loop

There is a reason why Apple is the darling of the early adopter. The company insist on things working. And you can only do this when you can lock down each and every aspect of the user experience. If there’s one thing Apple understands at its core (sorry, couldn’t resist), it’s how to make a user happy. The Jobs BHAG of creating “insanely great” products only works if all that insanity leads to an expected end result. And I challenge anyone who’s used both a Mac and a Windows box to tell me that the Apple user experience isn’t more refined, more elegant and more delightful.

In the early days of market adoption, this stuff is important. You don’t want to drop way more cash than you should on a new tech-toy only to find the interface is clunky, amateurish and full of glitches. With Apple’s meticulous attention to detail, you know that whatever is available on your new iToy will work near-flawlessly. Sure, the code-police from Cupertino are overly dictatorial, which isn’t winning them any friends in the programming community, but the apps that are the end result are ridiculously simple to use and frequently beautiful to look at.

Google’s UX Challenges

Now, look at Google. I tried to find a polite way to say this, but couldn’t, so I’ll just lay it on the table: Google sucks at interface design. For years we’ve been lauding the simple, spartan look of Google search. The fact is, simple was all we needed for an ordered list of text results. Google’s algorithm provided enough power in the backend to make up for an anemic interface. But today, now that everyone’s caught up in the algo department, Google’s interface looks like a Grade 8 coding project.  The new 3 column search format follows in the footsteps of Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendars and most other Google interfaces: it looks like it was designed by an engineer.

In my company, we tried to move to using Google’s suite of tools based on the fact that in an open-source environment, we should see more rapid innovation. Well, that and the price was hard to argue with. But the fact is, everyone on our team is completely fed up with clunky Google interfaces that seem full of quirks. It doesn’t feel like we’re using leading-edge innovation, it feels like we’re using freeware. And I, for one, expect more from Google.

Google … Give me that GUI Feeling!

That’s the problem with open source early in the market adoption model. There’s not enough maturity in the market to force developers to worry about nuance. User experience is considered the polish — the last thing to be applied. You can’t lock down all the details needed to guarantee a consistently acceptable user experience.

I still have tremendous respect for the innovation engine that sits at the heart of Google, but if I had one piece of advice to pass along, it would be this: Worry less about changing the world, and  more about polishing up the Gmail interface. You can always change the world tomorrow, but today I’d like to retrieve my email from something that doesn’t look like a dog’s breakfast.

The Human-Technology Connection: Enabling Change

First published May 6, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Aaron Goldman scooped my column on Apple, Siri and search (although, looking at the column, I think I can claim partial authorship) so I’m going to broaden the lens a little bit. This is a theme I’ve discussed in a number of recent presentations, as well as at least one prior column, and I think it touches on why the news from Apple and Siri is potentially so important.

Humans Will Be Human

I’ve said before that “technology doesn’t cause our behaviors to change, it enables our behaviors to change.” The difference is subtle but profound. Let me give you an example.

I recently moderated a panel discussion on social media in the B2B marketplace. One by one, the panelists marched out their supporting evidence (14 zillion people access Facebook every 12 seconds, that sort of thing) and their own opinions. The consensus was: things have changed. Indeed, they have. But at the top of the session, I said this wasn’t about technology, this was about people. And people are social animals. We follow the herd, and more importantly, we communicate with the herd. One could feel the “Groundswell” (a pun and plug in one!) literally surging through the room.

At the end, we turned to the audience for Q&A. A middle-aged woman, definitely falling on the Digital Immigrant side of the tech-savvy divide, stood up and called the entire panel out: “I don’t buy it. I don’t buy all this technology is making us more connected. I haven’t seen any evidence of it. In fact, I’ve seen the opposite. I’m a professional recruiter and I can’t get a candidate to pick up the phone and talk to me. I need to get to know them and I can’t do that through an email. I need to have a conversation. I think technology is isolating us, not connecting us.”

It’s All About Options

The panelists pointed out the generational differences between her and her candidates, saying that this could be the cause of the change of behavior. But I wanted to probe a little deeper, because I wasn’t so sure technology was the culprit here:  “I suspect that when you’re recruiting, your motivation to connect with a candidate is not always the same as their motivation to contact you,” I said.

“It’s your job and top of mind, but for them, you’re just an interruption in what they were already doing. They may not be ready to have a chat with you,” I continued. “Twenty-five years ago, when we were starting our careers, the phone was the only choice for instantaneous, ‘at-a-distance’ communication. But now, we have many choices, thanks to technology. So, they have options and they’re picking the one that’s appropriate. They’re time-shifting the interruption to a time more convenient, when they’re more motivated to contact you. I suspect that if we had that choice 25 years ago, we would have done the same thing. Technology hasn’t changed us, it’s just given us more options to do the things we really want to do.”

The Human Act of Searching

So why is that important for Siri, Apple and Search? Well, just as we had to adapt to the phone as an instant communication channel, we’ve had to adapt to the interface that search gave us to seek information. Let’s face it; typing words into a box is not the way we evolved to communicate. We talk. We touch. We listen. We see. We’ve had to adapt to a non-organic, structured format — 10 blue links in a list — because we had no choice. It was all the technology would allow at the time.

Also, separating the acts of retrieving information and doing something with the information is not natural for us either. We’re used to a tighter connection between the two. Information is seldom an end point. Doing something with the information is a much more common objective.  But up to now, search could only really act as an information retrieval tool.  It was powerful, and we adapted quickly because we recognized the power, but it wasn’t natural.

But look at what Siri and Apple are trying to do: On this platform, search is asking for something, getting it and immediately doing something with it. Sound familiar? It should. It’s what we’ve done for most of our history as humans. And that’s what technology, at it’s best, should do: give us more ways to be human.

Google and Microsoft: Signs of Hubris, Signs of Humility

GoogleVsMicrosoftFrom my admittedly limited vantage point, I’ve noticed a subtle but significant shift in what’s coming out of the respective campuses of Microsoft and Google. And it’s not so much the innovations, although it certainly resonates there. This has to do with attitude and culture. This is the touchy-feely stuff that I chalk up to gut instinct, with no empirical backing. So, take it for what it’s worth, but I will say that my gut has a pretty good track record.

The Age of Cockiness Returns

Google has come full circle. They started with a cockiness that was understandable, given their immediate success. Google was everyone’s online Golden Child. The founders (from which the brash attitude was inherited) surrounded themselves with an equally cocky, equally audacious group of young geniuses. The collective culture was bold, arrogant and had little patience for the mediocre or mundane. They also had little respect for anything beyond the bounds of “Google-world.” If it wasn’t part of Google, it somehow was less relevant, less valuable and less interesting. This was a company that fully intended to conquer the world, and it seemed that world conquest was within reach. Google was getting their fingers into everything, and it seemed that everything they touched would turn to gold.

Then, four or five years ago, Google’s attitude changed. They started reaching outside the walls of “Google-world,” sincerely looking to forge relationships with partners. Googlers developed a quieter confidence: less bold, less brash.  They actually sought others’ opinions. Now, it appeared that Google might be accepting the fact that conquering the world might be, at a minimum, a collaborative effort.

But in the last year, I’ve seen a return to Google’s original attitude. The humility is disappearing and hubris again rules the day. It’s almost as if, now that Google is the king of the hill and is drawing more than their fair share of scrutiny, much of it negative, they’ve gone into defensive mode. They’ve circled the wagons and drawn more inside. As I said, the changes are subtle, but noticeable. I believe they’ve grown up as a company and have had to face some harsh business realities. But in the process, they have responded by becoming defiantly self-confident and dismissive of dissenting views. They seem to once again be retreating into the safe and welcoming arms of “Google-world.” Somehow, though, this time the cockiness rings a little hollow.

We Really Want You to Like Us

Contrast this with Microsoft. Microsoft was the company everybody loved to hate. For years, it was the brunt of jokes in the search marketing world. The only question with Microsoft, it seemed, was which foot were they going to shoot themselves in next? Miserable failure after miserable failure exasperated everyone, both inside and outside of the Redmond mother ship. If Mack Sennett (or the Three Stooges, or Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen — pick your cultural context) ever ran a software company, surely this would be it.

But in the last year (roughly about the same time Google started circling the wagon) I’ve seen a different Microsoft. It’s humble, but it’s also ready to deliver. They’ve knocked the chip off their shoulder and seemed to have put the bumbling behind them. They’re executing and cranking out some pretty decent stuff. Somehow, they’ve pulled back from the brink of irrelevance and are now ready to be a contender. I’ve had varying shades of criticism of Bing, but I’ve never said it wasn’t a much-needed step forward in their search offering. It’s miles ahead of anything Microsoft had done in search previously. But it’s not this battle that interests me. It’s the next fight that Microsoft chooses to pick. Given the change in attitude, I’m not sure I would be betting against them. As one Microsofter confided to me, “We’re at our best when we’ve had the crap kicked out of us.”

I have no idea what this means in the big picture, but I do know that the tone and temper of an organization is a pretty reliable indicator of future success. Perhaps I can sum it up best in this way. It’s almost as if Google is already prepared to defend themselves against future criticism. Microsoft, on the other hand, is doing everything in their power to rebuild a broken relationship by impressing the hell out of you.

Captiva-Ting Conversations from the Search Insider Summit

First published April 22, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I promised MediaPost a wrap-up (from the programming chair’s perspective) of last week’s Search Insider Summit. Honestly, from the moment that Brett Brewer from Microsoft first fired up Pivot to the final moments of day three, when Jen Milks and Michelle Prieb from Ball State gave us a glimpse into the minds of Gen Next, I couldn’t have asked for anything more from my presenters. I’ve programmed a lot of these shows now and have never had as much positive response as I have from this one. Well-done, each and every one of you.

A lot has been said about the new TED-style format. I actually had a few TEDsters reach out to send best wishes prior to the summit. They also wanted feedback about the success of the show. I think it’s fair to say that the adopted TED format was a hit. Attendees loved the pace of the presentations, the varying perspectives presented — and, most of all, the conversations that were catalyzed by the content.

Here are a few of the many highlights from three days of SIS:

Brett Brewer from Microsoft Labs – putting Pivot through its paces and giving us some jaw-dropping visualizations of data and how we can work with it. There’s some very cool stuff coming out of MS labs.

Mark Watkins from Goby – driving home the point that every search is launched from a relevant personal context, and if engines could somehow understand that, it would be a huge leap forward for Web search.

Matt Kain from The Search Agency – making us all realize just how important really-good hair is — and also how, more and more, we’re launching our searches through apps that offer fingertip functionality.

Mike Moran from Converseon – causing us to rethink our whole approach to search optimization. Imagine, optimizing our Web sites for people rather than algorithms!

Chris Copeland from GroupM Search – asking us to imagine what the online world (and our media plans) might look like if there were no Google, and also scattering oblique mentions of Tiger Woods, Jesse James and “Brokeback Mountain.” There’s not enough therapy in the world to drive out some of the images that Chris brought to my mind.

Scott Brinker from ion Interactive – giving us the job description for a brand-new role within organizations, that of the marketing technologist. Scott made us realize the time is ripe for an individual comfortable in the worlds of marketing and technology, one who can bridge the chasm between them.

Yvette Lui from Facebook – showing us how the landscape of information dissemination is forever altered, and why we search marketers have to understand the new reality.

And, in the last session of the Summit, Michelle Prieb and Jen Milks from Ball State University, giving us a glimpse at what the ever-demanding Gen Next wants in their online search experience. Hint: everything, aimed just at me and available instantaneously! Oh, and while you’re at it, don’t be evil!

The bar was set high, with these talks being just a sample of the many presenters who took the stage. As always, though, the conversations that happened in the hallways, during the roundtable breakouts, on the golf course, beaches and during the sunset cruise somehow managed to exceed the formal presentations. This is a show about connections, community and conversations. The best part of the Summit is, was and always will be the attendees. It won’t be easy, but we will make this show even better next time. Mark it on your calendar, because you really don’t want to miss it.

The Four Horsemen of the Consumer Behavior Apocalypse

First published March 25, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Right out of the gate, let’s assume that we all agree consumer behavior is in the throes of its biggest shift in history. And the cause is generally attributed to the Internet.

While I don’t disagree with this assessment, I believe there may be some misattribution when it comes to cause and effect. Did the Internet cause our consumer behavior to change? Or did it enable it to change? The distinction may seem like mere semantics, but there’s a fundamental difference here.

“Cause” implies that an outside force, namely the Internet, pushed us in a new direction that was different from the one we would have pursued had this new force not come along. “Enable” is a different beast, the opening of a previously locked door that allows us to pursue a new path of our own volition. I believe the latter to be true. I believe we weren’t pushed anywhere. We went there of our own free will.

Free Will? Or Hardwired Human Behavior?

But, even in my last statement, language again gets us in a sticky place. “Will” assumes it was a conscious and willful decision. I’m not sure this is the case. I suspect there were subconscious, hardwired behaviors that had a natural affinity for the new opportunities presented by the online marketplace.

For most of our recorded history, we have assumed that rational consideration and conscious will forms the basis of human thought. If we did seem programmed automatically to respond to certain cues, this was as a result of being conditioned by our environment, the classic Skinner black-box approach. But when we were on top of our game, we were carefully considering pros and cons, making consciously deliberated decisions. These were the forces that drove our society and our behaviors. This theory formed the basis of economics (Adam Smith’s Invisible hand), Cartesian logic, and most market research.

But in the last few decades, this view of rationality riding triumphant over human foibles has been brought into question. In particular, there were three concepts put forward by four academics that caused us to question what drove our behaviors. These folks uncovered deeper, subconscious routines and influences that lay buried beneath the strata of rational thought. And it’s these subconscious behaviors that I believe found the new online opportunities so enticing. Let’s spend a little time today looking at these four thinkers and the new paradigms they asked us to consider.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman – Prospect Theory

Adam Smith’s Invisible hand, driven by the wisdom of the market, has been presumed to be the ultimate economic governing factor. The assumption was that each of us, individually making rational economic decisions, would ultimately decide winners and losers and capitalism would stay alive and well.

But Tversky and Kahneman, in their paper on Prospect Theory, showed that the invisible hand might not always be guided by a decisive and logical mind. We all have significant hardwired cognitive biases that often cause us to make illogical economic choices. For example, if I offered you $1,000, with no questions asked, or a chance to win $2,500 based on a coin toss, you’d probably take the sure bet, even though mathematically, the odds for net gain are better with the coin toss.

Prospect Theory shot some holes in the previous theory of Expected Utility, a model where we carefully weighed the pros and cons of a potential purchase based on a return on investment model. Emotional framing and risk avoidance played a much bigger role than we suspected, handicapping our logic and often guiding us down non-rational paths. Tversky and Kahneman single-handedly found the new discipline of Behavioral Economics and changed our thinking in the process.

Herbert Simon – Bounded Rationality

Simon’s concept of Bounded Rationality superseded Kahneman and Tversky’s theory, but it dovetailed with it very nicely. Even if we are rationally engaged in a decision, Simon argued, we couldn’t possibly optimize it, especially in complex scenarios. There were simply too many factors to consider. So, we took “gut feeling” short cuts, which Simon called “satisficing,” a combination of satisfy and suffice. We short-listed our consideration set by using beliefs and instincts.

To make the satisficing short list is the goal of any brand campaign. At some point, logical weighing of pros and cons has to give way to calls based primarily on instinct.  And, as Kahneman and Tversky showed, those instinctive calls may well be based on irrational emotional biases.

George Akerlof – information Asymmetry

The last piece, and the one that really drove the online consumer revolution, is George Akerlof’s Information Asymmetry theory. Traditionally, there has been an imbalance of information between buyers and sellers, to the seller’s advantage. The seller always knew more about what they were selling than the buyer did. This made purchasing inherently risky.

With an absence of information, consumers created strong beliefs about brands as a way to guide their future buying decisions. Brand loyalty, whether rational or not, filled the void left by a lack of information. Manufacturers and retailers carefully controlled what information did enter the marketplace, pushing the positives and carefully suppressing the negatives.

These three concepts, intertwined, defined the psychological make-up of the market prior to the introduction of the Internet. In my next column, I’ll explore what happened when these behavioral powder kegs were exposed to the fanned flames of the digital marketplace.