Category Archives: Personal

A collection of personal thoughts and stories

The Facebook Personality Test

First published February 2, 2012 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I’ve always believed that you could learn everything you needed to know about a person by asking them who their favorite Beatle was. To back up the efficacy of this bulletproof psychological profiling tool, there are several online Beatle personality tests.  I mean really, if you can’t build an online quiz from it, how valid can a psychological tool be? I, personally, am primarily a John Lennon, with George Harrison undertones. But for the test to work, you actually have to know the Beatles on a fairly intimate level, and their status as a cultural baseline is regrettably eroding.

Now, you could use a more standard but much less interesting approach; say a Myers-Briggs personality sorter, or the “colors” test. I seem to bounce back and forth between “INFJ” and an “INTJ.”

But a recent paper by Ashwini Nadkarni and Stefan Hofman (both from Boston University) in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences offered a more timely way to sort out the extroverts from the introverts (and the neurotics from the narcissists). It seems our usage of Facebook may provide a remarkably accurate glimpse into who we are.

For example, in their review of previous studies, Nadkarni and Hoffman found that people with neurotic tendencies like Facebook’s Wall, while those less neurotic prefer photos.

Several columns back I bemoaned the fact that the more we use social networking, the less social we seem to become. It appears that wasn’t just my perception. A 2009 study by E.S. Orr et al discovered that shy people love Facebook and spend way more time on it than non-shy people.  Ironically, for all the time they spend Facebooking, their friend networks are much smaller than their more gregarious but less-Facebook-engaged counterparts.

Narcissists also spend a higher-than-average amount of time on Facebook — over an hour a day.  They use the social site to promote themselves through profiles and photos. Conversely, multiple studies have shown than many Facebook fans use it to pump up low self-esteem. Through self-promotion and validation through virtual connections, they’ve found a kinder, gentle and more accepting world than the one that lies outside their bedroom door.

Studies have found that more socially awkward Facebook users have found that the less intense and demanding connections formed online can actually help them expose more of their personalities than they can in a more typical social environment. Some are more themselves on Facebook than they are in the real world. It’s not really creating a new persona, but rather exposing the one you’ve always possessed but felt too fragile to put out there in your day-to-day interactions.

Finally, what does it say about you if you use Facebook only sparingly or not at all? Are you hopelessly disconnected? Not at all. The more individualistic you are, the more goal-oriented you are and the more disciplined you are, the less you tend to use Facebook. Ironically, if this matches your personality type and you do use Facebook at all, you probably have a very healthy network of friends. I don’t know where I fall on the scale, but I probably spend less than an hour a month on Facebook — and for some reason, I seem to have a network of close to 400 friends.

Maybe it’s my irresistible INFJ/John Lennon-like qualities. I hope that doesn’t sound too narcissistic.

 

 

Look at the Big Picture in 2012

First published December 29, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Another year’s pretty much in the can. And because I’m working on idle this week, trying to catch my breath with my family before plunging headlong into 2012, search marketing falls somewhere behind the recent releases on Netflix and trying out the new Wii game on the list of things preoccupying my mind. So, don’t expect any salient and timely search news from me!

When I look back on what has preoccupied me over the last 12 months, I will say that much of it has been spent “stepping back” and trying to look at the bigger picture. As online interactions have taken a bigger and bigger chunk of our lives (you’ll notice that both of the recreational options I mentioned have online components woven into them), trying to understand how our actions play out against a broader online backdrop has been the thing I think about most often.

We digital marketers tend to take that “bigger picture” and break it into pieces, trying to make sense of it by focusing on one small piece. Digital marketing lends itself to this minute focal depth because of the richness of each piece. Even the smallest chunk of an online interaction has a lot to explore, with a corresponding mound of data to analyze. We could spend hours drilling into how people use Linked In, or Twitter, or Google+ or Facebook.  We could dig into the depths of the Panda update or how local results show up on Bing and never come up for air.

But think back to what, at one time, was another holiday season pastime. Some of us remember when we used to get a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas. You’d dump out all 5,000 of those little photographic morsels and then begin to piece it together into a coherent image of something (usually a landscape involving a barn or a covered bridge). Success came not only from examining each piece, but also in using the image on the boxtop to help understand how each piece fit into the bigger picture. Without understanding what that bigger picture was supposed to look like, you could examine each piece until the cows came home (again, often a topic for jigsaw art).

So, much of my 2011 was spent trying to understand what the picture on the top of the puzzle box was supposed to look like. What would ultimately tie all the pieces together?  In physics terms, I guess you could say I’m been looking for the Unified Field Theory of online marketing. And you know what I realized? You won’t find it by focusing on technology, no matter how cool it is. Foursquare marketing or search retargeting or hyperlocal optimization are all just pieces of a much bigger puzzle. The real picture emerges when you look at how people navigate the events of their lives and the decisions they must make. It’s there where the big picture emerges.

A few weeks ago I was speaking to a group of marketers about the emerging role of mobile.  This was no group of digital slouches. They knew their mobile stuff. They had tested various campaign approaches and honed their tactics. But the results were uneven. Some were hits, but more were misses. They knew a lot about the pieces, but didn’t have the boxtop picture to guide them.

My message (for those who know me) was not a surprising one: understand how to leverage mobile by first understanding how people use mobile to do they things they intend to do.  Don’t jump on a QR code campaign simply because you read somewhere that QR codes are a red-hot marketing tool. First see if QR codes fit into the big picture in any possible way. If you do that, you might find that QR codes are a puzzle piece that actually belongs in another box.

After delivering my sermon about the importance of understanding their respective big pictures, I asked my favorite question: “How many of you have done any substantial qualitative research with your customers in the past year?” Not one hand went up. This was a group of puzzle assemblers working without any boxtop picture to guide them.

If you want to sum up my past year and fit it into one final paragraph for 2011, it’s this: Understand your customers! Spend a good part of 2012 digging deep into their decision process and their online paths. Make it personal. Stalk if necessary. Ask questions that start with “why.” Observe. Make notes. Broaden your online reading list to include blogs like Science Daily, Futurity, Neuroscience Marketing and Homo Consumericus. At some point, the bigger picture will begin to emerge. And I bet it will be much more interesting than a landscape with a barn and some cows in it.

Is There a Search Marketer in the House?

First published December 8, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Once, just once, I’d love to hear an announcement come over the PA system in some public venue: “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. Is there a search marketer in the house?”

Let me explain. Recently, a friend of mine was at a soccer tournament with our school team. One of the other parents had a sudden heart attack. My friend, who is in the medical field, swung into action and applied CPR. When the first response unit took over, one of the attendants told my friend that he had saved the parent’s life.

Longtime readers will know I’ve had a long-running identity crisis about my choice of career. This recent incident led me to wonder if there will ever come a time when my knowledge and experience will be considered critical. Will I ever save a life?

It doesn’t even have to be that dramatic. If you’re a mechanic and see a stranded motorist on the side of the road, chances are you can help. All I could do is pull over, gaze in confusion under the hood, kick a tire and explain why you should really optimize your landing pages to get the most from your search marketing campaign.

My father-in-law, who has been a carpenter all his life, can walk into most any home and fix the drawer that sticks, or put up a set of shelves. That same father-in-law can’t help a sharp and panicked intake of breathe every time he sees me pick up a power tool. My wife has acquired the same habit. Neither can explain exactly what I do, and they’ve both known me for a quarter century.

Even an accountant will constantly be asked for tax advice, a lawyer about a particularly sticky divorce, or a veterinarian about Pookie’s unfortunate habit of passing noxious gas when company’s over (and yes, Pookie is a dog). Each of these careers contributes something to the greater good of mankind. But a search marketer? We’re just not in hot demand to make the world a better place.

In my fantasy, after the aforementioned announcement, I raise my hand and confidently stride forward: “I’m a trained search marketer. What’s the problem?”

“Thank God you’re here,” says the announcer, pointing to an obviously troubled man staring at a laptop. “This gentlemen here is extremely upset.”

Beaming with quiet confidence, I gently sit down beside the man and say, “Sir, I’ve been a search marketer for almost 20 years. How can I help you?”

Through his tears, I can see a small twinkle in his eye that indicates that he’s dared to hope again. “I don’t understand it. I just can’t get this damned site to rank.”

“Well, here’s your problem — your title tags aren’t optimized. And your incoming links have no anchor text. I can fix that.”

As I take the laptop from his trembling hands, a single person in the circle of onlookers who have been drawn by the scene starts clapping. Slowing, it spreads around the circle. In minutes, uproarious cheering and clapping surround me. Outwardly, I respond with gracious humility, but inside, I’m high-fiving myself and saying, “Yah..who’s da man? I’m da man!”

Maybe there should be a medal for search marketing bravery.

The View Above the “Weeds”

First published November 10, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Yesterday was not a good day.

It was a day that made me wish I had never gone into this business — a day that made me long for a warm beach and a mai tai. I don’t have these days very often, but yesterday, oh boy, I had it in spades!

I’ve been doing search (yesterday, I used a different, less polite noun) for a long time.  And I have to be honest, some days it feels like a thousand leeches are sucking the blood out of me. Given that, it was impossible to muster up much enthusiasm for the roll out of Google+ Business Pages or the raging controversy of Facebook’s “LikeGate.” Really? Are those the most important things to litter our inboxes with?

On days like yesterday, when I get caught in the weeds of digital marketing (where the blood-sucking leeches tend to hang out) I sometimes lose sight of why I got into this in the first place. This is a revolution. What’s more, it’s a revolution of epic, perhaps unprecedented, proportions. In macro-economic terms, this is what they call a long-wave transition or a Kondratieff wave (named after the Russian economist who first identified it). These cycles, which typically last more than 50 years, see the deconstruction of the current market infrastructure and the reconstruction of a market built on entirely new foundations. They are caused by change factors so massively disruptive, often in the form of technological innovations or global social events (for example, a World War), that it takes decades for their impact to be absorbed and responded to.

The digital revolution is perhaps the biggest Kondratieff wave in history. One could tentatively peg the start of the transition in the early to mid ‘90s with the introduction of the Internet. If this is the case, we’re less than 20 years into the wave, still in the deconstruction phase. To me, that feels about right. If history repeats itself, which it has a tendency of doing; we have yet to get to the messiest part of the transition.

These waves tend to precipitate what’s called a “regime shift.” Here is how the regime shift works. Companies started in the old market paradigm eventually reach a stagnation point. In our particular case, think of the multinational conglomerates built around market necessities such as mass distribution, physical locations, supply-chain logistics, large-scale manufacturing, top-down management and centralized R&D. In this market, bigger was not only better, it was essential to truly succeed. Our Fortune 500 reads like a who’s who of this type of company.  But eventually, the market becomes fully serviced, or even saturated, with the established market contenders, and growth is restricted.

Then, a disruptive change happens and a new opportunity for growth is identified. At first, the full import of the disruption is not fully realized. Speculation and a flood of investment capital can create a market frenzy early in the wave, looking for quick wins from the new opportunities. Think dot-com boom

The issue here is that the full impact of the disruptive change has to be absorbed by society — and that doesn’t happen in a year, or even 10 years. It takes decades for us to integrate it into our lives and social fabric. And so, the early wave market boom inevitably gives way to a collapse. Think dot-com bust.

As the wave progresses, the “regime shift” starts to play out. Established players are still heavily invested in the existing market structure, and although they may realize the potential of the new market, they simply can’t move fast enough to capitalize on it. Case in point, when industrial America became electrified in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the existing regime had factories built around steam power.  Steam-powered factories had a central steam engine that drove all the equipment in the factory through a complex maze of drive shafts and belts. The factories were dirty, dangerous and inefficient. New factories powered by electricity were cleaner, brighter, safer and much more efficient. But even with the obvious benefits of electricity, established manufacturers tried to retrofit their existing factories by jury-rigging electrical motors onto equipment designed to run by steam. They simply had too much invested in the current market infrastructure to shut the doors and walk away. New companies weren’t burdened by this baggage and built factories from scratch to take advantage of electricity. The result? Within a few decades, the old manufacturers had to close their doors, outmaneuvered by newer, more nimble and more efficient competitors.

When I plot our current situation against the timelines of past waves, I believe that given how massive this wave is, it could take longer than 50 years to play out. And, if that’s the case, there is still a lot of deconstruction of the previous marketplace to happen. The good news is, the building of the new market is a period of huge growth and opportunity. There is still a ton of life left in this wave, and we haven’t even realized its full benefits yet.

On days like yesterday, when my to-do list and inbox conspire to burn out what little sanity I have left, I have to step back and realize why I did this. Somehow, way back then, I knew this was going to be important. And yesterday, I had to remind myself just how massively important it is.

Steve, I Wish I Knew You

First published October 13, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I wish I had met Steve Jobs.

My heroes from the world of business number exactly two: Walt Disney and Steve Jobs. Walt died when I was 5 years old, so it’s not surprising that our paths never crossed. But theoretically, I could have met Jobs. It was not beyond the realms of possibility. Unfortunately, I never got to meet either of them. And for that, I’m immeasurably saddened.

The thing I admired about both of them goes beyond what I have seen in the recent stream of accolades that has issued forth since last week’s news of Jobs’ passing.

Jobs, and Disney before him, had an amazing ability to know what it was we wanted before we knew it ourselves. It wasn’t business or technical acumen, although both men had it in spades. It was the uncanny ability to ride on the edge of reason and intuition while placing bets on the future, getting it right more often than wrong.

If I knew more about them, I suspect I’d add Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to the list, but the fruit of their labors predates me, so I don’t have the same appreciation for what they did in their lifetimes.

Yes, Jobs (and Disney) shaped huge parts of the world we know today. Yes, our lives have been changed thanks to the mortal time they spent with us. Yes, they had passion. But more than anything, they could reach deep inside themselves, draw a spark of intuition and from it, start a fire in our hearts. That gift comes one in a generation, if we’re lucky. In my lifetime, I’ve only seen it twice.

As smart as Jobs was, he had many contemporary counterparts in the IQ department. Bill Gates and Larry Ellison are no slouches when it comes to mental acuity. More recently, Mark Zuckerberg’s intellect has been lauded on celluloid, no less. And anyone who seems to cross Larry Page’s path is awed by the hammering intensity of his engineering brilliance.

But the genius of Disney and Jobs was of a different sort. It came from being able to take our collective pulse, and somehow knowing what would make it quicken. They could pluck unrealized dreams and transform them into the treasured stuff of our lives.  It was more art than science, more love than logic, more passion than profit. It was, from our awed viewpoint, magic. It seems to me that Bill Gates and Larry Page have little time for magic.

There have certainly been more financially successful companies. Disney was on the edge of the bankruptcy for much of its history. And when Walt did hit a home run, he quickly ploughed his profits back into his next long shot.

Apple wouldn’t be around today if Microsoft hadn’t come to the rescue in 1997 with a $150 million dollar bailout. That amount seems miniscule today next to Apple’s  $370 billion market cap, making it the most valuable tech company in the world (ironically, worth more than half again as much as Microsoft’s $227 billion.)

Jobs and Disney had the ability to create entirely new categories of consumer demand: full-length animated features, theme parks, personal computers, computer animated movies, personal music devices, smartphones and tablet computers. Each of these innovations owed much to the personal vision of the leader.

I’m not sure what Apple’s path will be in the future. I suspect it will bear an eerie similarity to Disney after Walt’s untimely departure in 1966, where management asked the same question about every decision: “What would Walt do?” I have no doubt that the words “What would Steve do?” will be heard often in Cupertino. I’m also sure that it will be some time before we see the likes of another Steve Jobs or Walt Disney.

The gift they had is not often given. I’m just thankful that they both chose to share it.

Google and the Great Wall

First published August 25, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

“Have you heard of Google?”

This question was asked by a group of traveling Google product engineers who had just entered the rural Indian village of Ragihalli, thirty miles outside of Bangalore. It was a Google version of a “walkabout,” a 2007 foray out into the world to see firsthand how Google was wrapping its ever-extending tentacles around the globe.

This tour is also how Steven Levy starts his book “In the Plex,” a somewhat privileged view inside the world’s most successful start-up and an examination of “how Google thinks, works and shapes our lives.” Along with India, the gaggle of Googlers touched down in Tokyo, Beijing and Tel Aviv over 16 days in the summer of 2007.

I’ll do a quick review of Levy’s book in the next column, but today I wanted to share how my own path crossed that of the very same group of Googlers (I believe) on the Great Wall of China, about an hour north of Beijing in Badaling. I had just spoken at a search conference in Xiamen, China and added a few days of sightseeing in Beijing with Chris Sherman, the conference organizer.

We started scaling the wall — and for the better part of an hour, climbed too many stone steps to count, snaking up from rampart to rampart. Ahead of us was a group of fellow tourists that were obviously from the U.S. We were a little too far from them to pick up any snippets of their conversation, but in between numerous stops to catch our breath and ease our middle-aged joints (at which point we were usually passed by a sprightly Chinese octogenarian) Chris and I chatted about our mutual profession. At one point, Chris quipped, “There has to be a search analogy in here somewhere. Something about how tough it is to get to the top of Google.” He didn’t realize how prophetic his words would be.

We finally got to the top of the public section of the Wall, which ended at a guard outpost. We arrived there about the same time as the other group from the U.S. With no one else around, we offered to take each other’s group pictures. After we exchanged favors, one of the group asked us where we were from. Chris happens to hail from Boulder. Our anonymous photographer had attended university in Colorado.

“So, what do you guys do?” our new friend asked. My regular readers will remember I shudder with dread every time I hear that question. I was about to offer some vague and generic answer about being a marketing consultant when Chris piped up, “We’re search marketers.”

“Oh Puhleeze, Chris,” I thought to myself.  We’re zillions of miles from home, on the last outpost of the Great Wall of China, with the only other Westerners within sight being the handful of tourists we were sharing our particular viewpoint with. Could there be a less relevant way to start a conversation? What would be the odds that they would know what the hell a “search marketer” was?

Quite good, as it turned out. Our new friend got a wry smile on his face and replied, “Bet you can’t guess where we’re from!”

Yes, it was the same group of Google engineers on their world tour.

On the same trip, I also met U.S. journalist, author and expat James Fallows and had the opportunity to chat with him. He was offering a Western perspective (regularly published in The Atlantic) about the complex and often confounding emergence of China as a world power. Twelve of these reports were collected into a book called, “Postcards from Tomorrow Square.”

It’s next on my reading list.

An Internet Marketer 50 Years in the Making

First published August 4, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This past weekend, I turned 50. In the deluge of smart-ass cards I received, there was one that was at least noteworthy for the twist it took in insulting me. It reminded me that when I was born, “cable” referred to something that held up bridges, a “cell” was something that contained criminals and the “net” was used to capture a fish.

As I paused to reflect (something you’re allowed to do more often when you cross the half century mark) I thought it would be interesting, given the ever-accelerating pace of technology, to look back and see just how far we’ve come in the past 50 years.

Perhaps it was coincidence, but the year I was born was one when America’s eyes were firmly focused on the future. Kennedy was in the White House and just that year had promised to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. As the decade dawned, futurists were working overtime imagining a glossy, if somewhat sterile future that involved flying cars, moon colonies, videophones and robot servants.

Imagine my surprise when, after a little research, I found that the seeds of what would eventually become my career were being sown before I ever emerged on the scene.

The year before I was born, in 1960, AT&T introduced the dataphone and the first known modem, Digital unveiled the PDP-1, the first minicomputer, and a gentleman by the name of Bob Bemer introduced the now ubiquitous backslash.

In 1961, Leonard Kleinrock started laying the groundwork for the Net in a paper entitled “Information Flow in Large Communication Nets,” published just 60 days before my birthday.

Eight years later, on Oct. 29, 1969 (just 96 days after the first moon landing), the Internet would be born in Kleinrock’s UCLA lab when his server became “Node 1” of the Internet and he sent the first online message.

I would be willing to bet you’ve heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin but until now had never heard the name Leonard Kleinrock.

The next year, Steve Russell created “SpaceWar!” — the world’s first computer game.

In 1961, Steve Jobs was in the first grade in Cupertino, Calif. and would soon start hanging around the after-school lectures at HP in Palo Alto. Seven hundred miles to the north, in the Haller Lake section of Seattle, little Billy Gates was also starting grade one and was just six years away from skipping math class at Lakeside School to write programs for the school’s new GE computer. Neither of these activities made them any more popular at school dances, but who’s laughing now?

This little trip down memory lane reminded me of a fabulous book by Kevin Kelly, “What Technology Wants.” In it, the Wired magazine co-founder posits that technology is a living, evolving force unto itself — one that relentlessly pushes forward, carried by the critical mass of cumulative discovery.

Technology wanted the double helix structure of DNA to be discovered, and if it weren’t Watson and Crick, it would have been someone else a few months or, at the most, a year or two later. The same is true for radios, electricity, the telegraph and the Internet. Although there are famous names associated with these discoveries, this isn’t a scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” If Edison, Marconi, Morse and Berners-Lee had never been born, we’d still have lightbulbs, radios, the telegraph and the Internet. The form and the timing might be a little different, but the discoveries themselves were inevitable. It was what technology wanted to happen.

And so, somehow, I feel a little better about the fact that even when a very, very young Gordie Hotchkiss entered the world on the evening of July 30, 1961 at Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary, technology was already making plans for me. It was making sure there would be an Internet so that someday, such a thing as Internet marketers could exist.

On second thought, maybe it really is a Wonderful Life!

The “Mikey” Mobile Adoption Test

First published July 14, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The time to get serious about mobile is here. I say that not based on any analyst’s report, industry intelligence or pronouncement from any of the companies who have billions riding on it, but rather due to the “Mikey” test.

What, you ask, is the “Mikey” test? I thought you’d never ask.

My friend Mikey (and, yes, he lets me call him that and yet we’re still friends) is a building contractor. Recently, he oversaw the renovations on our home. We were a little concerned by the fact that in the middle of renovations, during a critical period when kitchen cabinets would be installed, old walls would be ripped down, new ones put up and our bathroom floor would be retiled, we would be 3,000 miles away on the most remote land mass in the world, Hawaii.

“It’s all good!” said Mikey (he says that a lot, which is another reason why we’re friends), “I’ll keep you up to date with this!” From his pocket, Mikey pulled out a brand-new iPhone. “I’ll just take pictures and send them to you!”

I was shocked. Mikey and I have a lot of things in common: love of family, appreciation for a good hand-crafted beer, dedication to a job well done, becoming reluctantly middle-aged — but technology is not on the list. His wife, Rosie, does his emailing for him. He was the last guy I expected to get an iPhone, let alone use it to send pictures via email. But sure enough, each day we’d get an update from Mikey, complete with fresh pictures of the progress.

But my biggest shock was still to come. When we returned, Mikey asked us to go to the Lennox website and print off the installation instructions for our gas fireplace insert. As I dropped by after work to drop off the print-outs, Mikey cornered me and said, “Tell me, if I had an iPad, could I look up this type of stuff online?” I would have been less surprised if the neighbor’s cat made me a martini. Mikey is a smart guy, but an early tech adopter he’s not.

For those of us in the biz, the benefits of mobile are obvious. We’ve been crowing about mobile being a game-changer for almost a decade now, but those messages never seemed to move beyond our little circle. But some time in the last year, something fundamental switched. During that time, the Mikeys of the world have suddenly become aware of how mobile might be applicable to them.

Just this past week I did a workshop for a company that makes sandpaper. Mikey is a customer of theirs. Keeping in mind the Mikey test, I decided to check and see what percentage of search queries for their key terms came from mobile devices. Obviously Mikey isn’t the only one who got himself an iPhone. Over 20% of searches for sandpaper and other terms came from mobile devices. And that percentage has more than doubled in the past year. These are numbers you have to pay attention to.

Why is the Mikey test important? There are a number of reasons why this marks a sea change in digital marketing. First of all, Mikey is only interested in mobile because it lets him do things that are important in his job. This isn’t about checking restaurant reviews, looking up show times or updating your Facebook status; this is about getting the job done. That sets a pretty stringent bar for user experience, one that most industrial marketers haven’t even considered. They’re still struggling to make their website a place that doesn’t cause mass user suicide.

Secondly, If Mikey is looking at mobile, we’ve already moved into the steepest part of the adoption curve. That means things are going to move very quickly. Moving quickly is not something that industrial marketers are very comfortable with. If we’re already at 20%, with a doubling in the past year, expect next year to be at 40 or 50%. That is a pace of change that is going to leave a lot of marketers behind.

It’s time to think seriously about mobile — but don’t do it because I told you to.

Do it because Mikey likes it.

Each Day is a Gift

First published June 30, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I’m struggling with the onslaught of time. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m turning 50 in a few weeks. Maybe it’s that I attended the funeral of an old business colleague, friend and mentor who unfortunately was taken away much too early (at 66) due to Alzheimer’s. Or maybe it’s that my oldest daughter is graduating high school this week. Whatever the reason, I just want everything to slow down a little.

At the funeral, which was in a Baptist church, the pastor comforted the congregation by telling them that this life is really a trial run for the after life. The days we spend in our corporal form are “pointless… a cruel joke” with “little meaning.” He used the analogy of a dragonfly, which lives two lives, one in a larval stage as a nymph buried at the bottom of a slough (presumably analogous to our earthly stint) and the other as the aerobatic insect we’re familiar with.  He was a little shaky on his biology, but I got the point. I just don’t happen to agree with it.

I have a significantly different view of things. I think the days we spend here, each and every one of them, are precious beyond compare.  In fact, one of our company’s core values enshrines this: “Each day is a gift.” One of our staff added a fitting tag: “that’s why we call it the present.” If you believe in an afterlife, that’s fine. But don’t let that belief lift the burden from your shoulders of living each and every day to its fullest. It’s all too easy to let each precious 24-hour parcel slip away, as we get caught up in the day-to-day.

I also don’t believe our lives are pointless. Far from it. Our lives here are the whole point. At the start of each day, you’re given the chance to make a difference, to improve the world just a little bit. In Canada, the average life span of a male at birth is 78.3 years. That means, if I hit the average, in my life I’ll have 28, 579 chances to do something meaningful in my time here on earth.  I’ve already used about two thirds of those chances with questionable outcomes, but statistically speaking, I still have a little over 10,000 in my account. That, I believe, is a number I should pay close attention to, because each day, that balance declines by one.

Further, I believe that at this point in history, we can do more with each and every day than we ever could before. One person, now more than ever, can mobilize a significant force almost instantly, thanks to technology.  In last week’s column, I introduced a moral dilemma: the use of social media in rounding up the Vancouver rioters. Were we participating in the campaign out of a sense of justice or a need for revenge? Did our motivation really matter? Many of you weighed in with your opinions, which split on both sides of the question.

I’m not going to reopen the question of whether it was right or wrong. What I wanted to focus on, in light of this week’s topic, is the sheer velocity and power of the medium. Whether it was justice or revenge, the fact was that technology made the entire thing possible.

Technology puts tremendous potential power into the hands of every person, each and every day. It’s our choice how we use that power. The fact that you are reading my thoughts and opinions right now, as I sit in my office in British Columbia and you’re wherever you are, somewhere in the world, is thanks solely to technology. Without it, I wouldn’t have the opportunity.

So, how do we use that power? How did you use technology today to make a difference?  Does the fact that the five most popular Twitter users are, in order: Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Barack Obama, Britney Spears and Katy Perry worry you? Should it? Should we be concerned that the Dalai Lama’s website is only the 122,444th most popular site in the world and to this point, he hasn’t seen fit to tweet? Maybe it’s because he only has a little over 2,000 followers. Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian is getting close to top 1000 traffic status for her website (according to Alexa) and she’s just after Katy Perry on the Twitter popularity scale with over 8 million followers. No offense to Ms. Kardashian, but I find it troubling that she has 4000 times the online audience of his Holiness.

The awesome reality is that this day, today, you and I have something no previous generation could possible imagine: access to the accumulated knowledge of mankind, the ability to connect with other minds around the world and a voice with which to say something meaningful. Today, you have an opportunity to do something with that gift. And, if you’re busy today, you’ll have tomorrow.

How could all that possibly be “pointless”?

The Vancouver Riot Social Media Backlash: Justice or Revenge?

First published June 23, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In the 25 years I’ve lived here, I’ve never had to say this — indeed, I never believed I would ever say this — but last Wednesday, I was ashamed to say I live in British Columbia. I wasn’t the only one. I’m guessing the vast majority of the other 4.5 million people that call this Canadian province home felt the same way. In fact, the only people not feeling that way were the idiotic jerks that caused our collective shame. They were the ones using the Canuck’s loss to Boston in the Stanley Cup final as an excuse to wreak havoc on downtown Vancouver.

“You can’t cure stupid.”

We went into the night holding our collective breathe, hoping the sad scenario of the 1994 riot, after a similar Game 7 loss to the New York Rangers, would not repeat itself. The Olympics had given us hope that we could be placed on a world stage without burning it to the ground. But, as one police spokesperson said, “You can’t cure stupid!” Sadly, it proved to be true. B.C. is a breathtakingly beautiful corner of the world, but we definitely have our quota of stupid people, and last Wednesday, they all came onto the streets of Vancouver.

You’ve probably seen news footage of the riot and, if you were disgusted, I get it. I was too. But there’s another part of the story that also has to be told. To be honest, I’m not sure if it’s a happy ending or an even sadder one. I’d like to hear what you think, but bear with me for another minute or so.

Throw the Face”Book” at them

Even though it appeared that we had learned nothing in the 17 years since the last riot, there was one significant difference between 1994 and last week’s debacle. This year, it went viral. Much of the mayhem was captured by photo or video. Soon, it was posted online. And that’s when something surprising happened. For most of our history as social animals, there is not much we can do when some of our herd runs amok. There are reams of research on the psychology of mobs, but one of the common themes is a feeling of invincibility that comes from being part of a faceless, mindless crowd bent on destruction. Most times, there is no response or retribution for individual perpetrators of mob violence. They get off scot free. But not this time. The mob that trashed Vancouver may have been mindless, but they certainly weren’t faceless.

The next morning, a Facebook page was started by the Vancouver police. They asked anyone with photos or videos of criminals to post them for identification. Within a few hours, the page had captured over 50,000 “likes.” Within a few days, the police had over a million pictures and 1000 hours of video uploaded. As people were recognized, they were tagged so police could follow up with charges. The Insurance Corporation of BC offered police use of their facial detection software and crooner Michael Buble, who also hails from Vancouver, even launched a newspaper campaign asking for people to turn the guilty in through social media.

Social Justice or Virtual Vigilantes?

On hearing that, I felt that finally, justice was being served. We, the often-voiceless majority of law-abiding citizens, could do our part to right the wrongs. But, were we really interested in justice, or did we just want revenge? Is there any difference between the two? One blogger, Dave.ca, said “report the rioters out of civic duty..or revenge..either is fine.” Is it? If we are holding onto moral high ground, should we rally and become a virtual “lynch” mob? It’s brand-new territory to chart, and I’m personally unsure about which is the right path to take.

Let me give you one example. One of the rioters is a provincial water polo athlete and he was soon identified online. His name was made public. His father is a doctor. Since his son’s crime was made public, the father has had to suspend his practice and the family has had to move out of their home. Other exposed rioters have been subjected to violent threats and the comment strings are riddled with utterings that are in contention with the riot itself for sheer stupidity.

When I started this column, I was convinced it was going to be a bad news, good news story, where social media would play the role of the redeemer. As I did further research on the aftermath, it seems that it’s a bad news, good news, possibly worse news story.

Much as I’d like to think differently, I’m not sure mob rule, whether it’s pursuing mindless violence, or mindless revenge, can ever be a good thing. Social media has a way of exposing all that is human, at scale, and at velocity — warts and all. How do we handle this new accountability, this new immediate transparency into the dark things we’ve always kept tucked away?