Michael Coulson

Want to learn to ride a bike? Increase your number of Facebook followers? Radically revamp the way that your organization talks to customers? It’s all about change management. It’s about creating the circumstances in which an individual will follow a new path and try something different.

We all act out of self interest. In the information age, hell, it’s self-preservation. People quickly learn how to unsubscribe to survive the daily deluge. But we especially resist information which will lead to real change–ideas or suggestions that take us out of our comfort zones and the habitual behaviour of our daily routines.

Here are three approaches that Sequentia uses to better understand audiences and construct experiences and content whereby change can occur:

Use all inputs to understand the audience. If you want an audience to change, you must get inside their heads. What are their online habits? What motivates them? What would it take to convince them to do what you’re asking? To move people from awareness of a product to intent to purchase, you must first group them in a way that makes sense to the task at hand. For instance, with aspiring bikers, we would begin with a survey to understand their digital habits. Where do they “live” online (Facebook? Twitter? Biking communities?). Do they follow biking blogs or subscribe to magazines? Digging further, I’d want to understand the cultural pressures at play: are their friends members of biking clubs? Road or mountain bike? Is biking considered mainstream or alternative to this group? To collect this information, Sequentia uses digital ethnography.

Make the message suit the medium. If the medium is not the message, then it certainly affects the message. Once Sequentia has created an experience or piece of content that we believe will resonate, we adjust it to suit the channel (Facebook, Twitter, email, forums). The style of a Facebook update is not the same as a work blog or downloadable white paper. Each channel has its own unique culture and tone that must be emulated so that the content is not immediately cast away.

Analyze and adjust. Are people saving your content? Clicking the call to action? Forwarding it on to their friends? Learn what works and what doesn’t and adjust accordingly. Begin to bucket the audience by product knowledge (e.g. awareness to intent) and then work out what content will help drive them along the continuum.

Change takes time. Since we rarely have it, our marketing goals are seldom based on realistic expectations. We all crave the “a-ha” moment of learning to ride a bike, but conveniently forget that it took nearly six months of watching an older sibling, succumbing to peer pressure, and finally relenting to the inevitable skinned knee to achieve a “sudden” breakthrough. With some of our clients, we have found that they will archive and follow a call to action as long as 18 months later.

Some ideas take time to gestate. And those that require a change in behaviour take even longer.

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[Comment on this blog on sequentia, where it was originally posted]

What’s the common thread running through a philosopher, an Egyptian reformist, and a social media marketer? They’re all looking for universalities of human behaviour. If you can pinpoint what people really like to do – or are predisposed to do – you have a better chance of creating compelling content, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or software that promotes engagement and community.

Despite what we might hear about new technology, how people behave and what motivates them has not changed considerably over the past few centuries. The Social Sciences long pre-date the Social Media. And while my dad might have heckled me about my degree in political philosophy, I’ve found it to be not only applicable but useful in developing successful online communities. Here are three philosophic approaches I’ve found particularly useful over the years:

If you love something, set it free
Philosophers from the Enlightenment such as Hume and Locke understood that humans are governed by desire and therefore will act selfishly. The ability of individuals and groups to freely form is imperative to a functioning democracy, and a strong society must strike a careful balance between individual freedoms and the needs of the public. When it comes to online communities, allowing individuals to start their own topics or groups is an integral part of supporting long-term, organic growth. In an increasingly apathetic world, online forums offer a place where everyone can play a role, enfranchising people through more than a simple vote.

Don’t confuse equality of treatment with social equality
There has always been an inherent idealistic streak in technology circles — what Morozov is now calling cyberutopia. This mentality was evident in early online communities such as the WELL and ECHO where forums (with their ability to make race, ethnicity or sex invisible) were seen as great levelers.

But if you follow the progression of online community software over the past 20 years, you see that there has been a growth of rating and ranking mechanisms. (Lithium has dozens of built-in levels and Gawker recently required that only people with rank could post). This shows us that while it’s important to treat your community members equally, you must also provide them with ways to express their unique personalities (photos, avatars, custom wallpaper), interact in the way they choose (forums, newsgroups, email, Twitter) and proudly display their place in society (status points, “kudos” etc).

A kinder, gentler marketing?
Immanuel Kant extended the importance of freedom to ideas, noting that individuals must be free of the dictates of external authority. Of course, to free the individual from authority, his moral philosophy (the “categorical imperative”) espoused a code of conduct whereby an individual must “act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings).” Or what we more commonly call The Golden Rule.

This notion has been slowly seeping into the marketing world since before the Cluetrain Manifesto. The move from mass marketing to the trenches of one-on-one has forced marketers away from spin doctoring and into a personal relationship with the end consumer. In fact, I think that decency is a natural offshoot of technology enabling more connections between people. As more relationships prosper, actors realize that “to make friends and influence people,” they must act ethically towards one another.

To put it another way, when acting as a group, people do not act as Kant had hoped. This is true with corporations, whose shareholders act in self-interest for a better bottom line. And it is especially true with nation-states. The furthest you get from the individual, the less likely people are to act civilly.

While I’m not a cyberutopian, I do think that more connection points and more opportunities for people to meet one-on-one could have an inherent civilizing effect. I suspect that the answer lies in the hands of the growing cadre of community managers, whose day-to-day job is handling super users and flame wars, while striking a balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of the community as a whole.

At Sequentia we have been practicing a methodology where we directly engage a representative group of the target audience to solicit their ideas and participation in the end community. It has been immensely successful, and I have a hunch that we may be looking at a new model for political engagement – one that harnesses the universal human need to be listened to and included in the process.

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Today felt like an out of body experience. Toronto was turned into Berlin or some other city that has riots. And I was right in the middle of it.

You see, once a month I play in an 18 pice swing band at the Rex. This was a special day, because the Toronto Jazz Festival was on. Or so I thought. Here's my story.

I knew about the G20 problems and started my voyage downtown from yonge/lawrence two full hours early.  I checked the TTC website and it showed all clear. So I drove to yonge and lawrence subway, and parked the car on Bedford Park. As soon as I got on the subway, the doors closed and the announcement came that call cars were cancelled south of Bloor. Which mean that I  couldn't go over to St George and go south from there, I would have to hoof it and I had a gig bag, trombone and stand, so i figured that would be a fair walk. Which meant I'd likely end up getting a taxi, so I hopped back on the northbound at Eglinton and went back to get the car. Now, one of the guys in the band happens to be a policeman, and he had sent an email that essentially said where the protests were happening. So I went over to Bathurst and was downtown in no time - around 2:30. I went east on Dundas thinking that I would just pop down St Patricks and park north of Queen, but of course as soon as I got close to Spadina it was clear that the traffic was shut down. So I headed south, parked on Queen and started on foot to the Rex. As soon as I got to Spadina, they had blocked off the whole road and weren't letting anyone across.

That was my first view of the hundreds of police in riot gear. I spoke to a nice, yet intimidating guy who was about 6' 4", 240lbs, all muscle and flak jacket, and he just grunted "I'm not from here, can't tell you whether you can make it or not". So I called the band leader at this point, thinking that everyone was having trouble and that it would be cancelled. Of course, he reported that "everyone's here, ready to go", ie. "not sure what your problem is Mike, but you're the only one".  I was staring at literally 400 police in riot gear between me and the Rex, and apparently I was the only one with a problem. While I was on the phone, the policedwarfwoman beside hulk hogan interrupted to say that if I went south to King, I MAY be able to make it over far enough east to head north again. So I trucked my 40lbs of gear south across back alleys to Richmond, where it appeared clear.

As I headed east, past Spadina, more and more police were arriving, so when I got about halfway down Richmond, I realized that they weren't going to let me go any further East. So I turned back and realized that they had now blocked Spadina off entirely. Which meant that I, along with about 8 other poor wandering souls, were trapped in a half block and couldn't go anywhere "until the crowd dispersed". So I went back over to the cops at spadina and pleaded my case. Of course at this point every policeman was in full riot gear and were eyeing my great big black gig bag rather suspiciously. But he let decided to take pity on me and made a hole in the police lineup to let me go south. Here is the shot north as I turned the corner. Hard to imagine that I work on this very corner:

I headed away from the growing chanting at Spadina and south to Adelaide, where there were no visible police lines going eastward. I walked all the way to Simcoe St. and plucked up the courage to head north again towards the line of police across Richmond. As I got closer they all started to put on their gas masks. Clearly not a positive sign. Undeterred, I went right up to one of the guys, and told him my dilemma, and asked if there was any way I could get to the Rex, only one block away. He said "no, you can't get there from here, and you'll likely just run into some yahoo's, so it's best you just go home". I must have been deaf or stupid at this point, because I headed over to University to CONTINUE to see if I could find a way around to the east. It was about 3:15 by this point. Here is what I found looking north from Adelaide at University. FYI, every single van that you see was full of police in riot gear, waiting to jump out.

There were hundreds of them on every street.

So at this point I realize that there really is no way around. Even if I could summon the strength to lug my gear further east and am able to go north to Dundas, I know for a fact that the police aren't letting anyone south to Queen St. So I have no fricking idea how the rest of the band made it to the Rex. As soon as I made it back to the car and turned on the radio, this was happening:

Suffice to say that I'm happy I got out of there. The strange thing of course, is that the guys say they had a near capacity crowd at the Rex and it was a great gig. Was I in a parallel universe?

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Rob - we'll miss you!

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I was manning the phones last week during jazz.fm's pledge drive, and found out that they had sold 56 tickets at $750 a pop to individuals interested in co-hosting a half hour show with their favourite on-air personality. My understanding is that Ross Porter (president) had decided to try this out, offering first 5 sessions, but that they sold so quickly they offered up an unlimited quantity.

I think this came as a huge surprise to jazz.fm, and indeed, they are going to have to make some significant changes to their programming line-up because of it. Kudos to Ross for having the guts to try something completely different and for sticking with it when it snowballed. Many in the interactive field would point to this as an indicator of how all broadcast media has been impacted by the dawn of the Internet. But since jazz.fm's followers are largely boomer+, I would hazard a guess that few made the call because they suddenly believed in their right to have a voice.

In fact they made the call because of a basic human need to see their name in lights, and the irresistible opportunity to commune with their favourite radio personality in a jointly-created half-hour programme. Jazz.fm was a vibrant community long before the Internet, with a very active and cohesive following connected by the thread of radio but also by the strong bond of live music. While it may be true that Ross was inspired to try new things because of  a shift that is going on with broadcast media, it is clear that the preconditions for success were already there.

However, this breakthrough indicates that the jazz community is ripe for interactive communication on a whole other level. I've already seen it in musician blogs and instrument communities - but jazz.fm has some real potential to connect to their existing community with multiple lines of communication (I wanted to say "multiple threads that will weave a stronger social fabric" but a small amount of bile came up in my throat). They have done a good job with the new website, and I understand they have a twitter account (@JAZZFM91), a Facebook page, and a newsletter, so here are a few more ideas:

• Create a home for the community to flourish (hosted on jazz.fm or via Ning or some other): You've tapped into the power of personal involvement, now give everyone a voice. But don't just make it open season - anoint community leaders, give people roles and tasks like "this thread will be to create the seminal big band era concert list and the results will be played on jazzfm" etc.
• Create a platform for musicians to connect to their following. Musicians are notoriously bad at self-promotion and networking. Create a format that ensures that their success reflects upon jazz.fm and builds a stronger community. A simple way to get this started is to allow musicians to create and host discussion threads or chats, but it could go as far as personalized jazz.fm home pages, easily customizable, with twitter feeds and calendar entries that fold into the overall what's "In The Clubs".
• A mobile app (iPhone or other) that shows what's playing on air, the club calendar, and some fun element that keeps people coming back like a jazz trivia game

No doubt a killjoy will point out the average age of the jazz.fm community and suggest that "my dad never goes online". But to this I would say a) 80% of boomers are connected and b) jazz isn't dead or dying - and the youth of today all expect this - so build it now and they will come...

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UPDATE: October 2010 - I've had Bell IPTV without ANY problems for nearly a year now.

I’ve had Bell’s fledgling IPTV service – http://entertainment.bell.ca – for 6 months now, and believe me when I say that I’m sad to report that it’s not ready for prime-time.

Full disclosure - I was one of the first people hired on the Bell IPTV team back in 2003 and I still feel an affinity for the group, but mostly for the overall effort to bring more interactive television to my living room. I don’t want to belabour this article with a lot of details on how the service is lacking. Nor should I, since one individual’s experience can’t be taken as indicative of the entire user base. However, my suffering exposes the fact that this is a very complex system, with enough potential points of failure to make it extremely difficult to launch successfully.

In short, I have had hardware issues (replaced STB, wifi gated to 10mbps), network issues (spent an entire month trying to figure out why my TV would pixelate and studder, until the problem mysteriously went away) and account issues (secondary STB removed from account, EPG occasionally blank etc). I kept copious notes on each and every failure to try and help out the Bell service team. And I should say that they pulled out all the stops to resolve my issues (reason enough to be an early adopter because you get the best techs in the business coming to your aid).

But this list isn't the reason that IPTV is in serious trouble. I believe that they will work out the kinks and eventually deliver a great service. In fact, there are several reasons IPTV won't succeed in the near-term, but the primary one is that when your TV goes black, you have to reboot a router. Now, if cable failed more often, people might welcome the fact that they have something they can do at their end to solve the problem. But the kinks were worked out of cable long ago, and people are used to getting nearly flawless service. Most TV users don't even know what a router is, let alone how to reboot it. At a minimum, IPTV has to reach cable's service level before it can be an effective challenger.

If you're familiar with interactive television and all the possibilities, it's easy to ignore the primary goal of delivering high-quality video. The Bell execs know this and have been working to build a solid service.  Alas, with all its promise, IPTV in its current state is at best a me-too offering (because it adds VOD, where satellite has only near-VOD). And while whole-home PVR is very cool, it's a retention, not acquisition play. Here's where it all comes down to product management/marketing. Because IPTV is true, two-way TV, it DOES have the ability to differentiate from broadcast cable.

The problem here is two-fold: the Bell team has to a) correctly pinpoint the thing that users will latch on to and b) market it in a way that resonates and won't cannibalize their existing satellite business.  The problem is that these are competing needs, i.e. if you nail the thing that attracts new customers, you'll also attract satellite subscribers. Double acquisition costs make this a losing proposal. Unfortunately Bell has got their fingers into enough stuff to make it difficult to make the right product decisions.

But this is less about Bell and more about how disruptive ideas rarely come from within large enterprises. Over the next few years, broadcast TV's inadequacy will drive more and more people to the Internet as the de facto delivery mechanism for all forms of video, because it provides ultimate control over how and when content is consumed.  And the Internet is a harshly competitive, level playing field where only the truly innovative will thrive.

And then, ironically, the Bells/Rogers of the world will pour the necessary capital into their plants to match what's going on online, and put their massive brand marketing budgets in gear to win consumers back to truly interactive TV.

Other challenges / observations:

• Satellite converts will have had the ability to record their PPV, but once on IPTV, they'll suddenly find that they can't record VOD on their PVR's. You try and be the lucky marketer that has to explain studio windows to consumers (for ex, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_release)
• How do you market DSL and TV together? Access and programming amount to ~$150/month. Like One-Bill, it seemed like a good idea to give subscribers all the info on one bill, until they saw that they were giving the lion's share of their monthly entertainment wallet to ONE company.
• As an Internet-aholic, the biggest reason I'm still on IPTV is that I get 21mbps downstream  (when the TV's are off) and around 7mbps up. That's incredible and it makes my work life a lot easier. Ironically, it also leads me away from the TV, to stream the shows my PVR missed, over the Internet.

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Here are a few thoughts about broadband video that have been building up in my brain over the past months. Please leave a comment and let me know if anything strikes a chord:

• Paying for content isn't going away: Advertising isn’t bearing the costs of premium content and that’s why we’re seeing a movement of the Hulu’s and YouTubes’ of the world towards paid. The broadcast industry is in upheaval over the shift in spending away from ads, but there will always be a market for good content and I think subscription to great movies and series (a la HBO) long ago proved itself as the model. People too often get hung up on delivery mechanism, but soon enough TV’s will all have Ethernet jacks and once again it’ll be the big brands like Comcast or Rogers that will grab the lion’s share of viewers because they’ve spent the time and money building programming, brand awareness, and trust.  (Yes, you disgruntled customers can argue that you’ll switch at the first opportunity, but you’re not a majority, especially in Canada where we tend to stick with our brand - it is the land of the Queue after all).

• New tech means new revenue opportunities: I foresee studios dicing up their content and creating a bunch of related webisodes.  I hesitate to use the term because it’ll be associated with the meager results from shows like BSG , but I firmly believe that current movies only scratch the surface of revenue potential because they are mired in the high-margin technology of DVD’s.  This single-product, shrink-wrapped thinking doesn’t take advantage digital manipulation (slice and dice the product in hundreds of ways), new delivery mechanisms, and new forms of social marketing. Disney has done this in long form for years with spin offs like Aladdin’s “The Return of Jafar”  and “Aladdin and the King of Thieves” , but they need to think about all the other ways that  people would be interested in consuming their favourite characters.  This is the power of the sequel times ten. And most importantly, this content could be subject to different rules – i.e. different release windows (short pre-quels to gain momentum – like a trailer but better) and licensing (open it up to mashups?).

• Back to the future with easy-to-consume subscription models: Silverlight will continue to gain momentum on Flash, and adaptive bitrate technology will get so good that streaming will grab a large share of the user base, leading to a growth in subscription offerings – which, if you don’t see the irony, is cable’s current model.  However, as a large proportion of people are still pack-rats, not everyone will be satisfied with a “copy in the cloud”, and will want their own personal keepsake.

• Video will cease being just a memory capture device and become a communication tool: This is something I wrote a while back, before Cisco paid $590m for Flip and before Apple added video capture/edit to the iPhone: Video is the most natural method of communication because it is the most effective and lifelike. Nothing else includes the realm of information we receive from body language, voice inflection, facial expression, etc. As mobile devices become incredibly powerful, bandwidth and storage limitless, individuals will be able to capture and send full motion HD instantaneously. Anyone who has been in a video conference will know it will never replace f2f, but it certainly will grow in everyday use. (I can just hear the headlines now: "Written communication dead", "Our children can't read" etc etc). So while we saw a growth in people taking pictures with their cell phones (of the thing they wanted to buy etc), they will be able to send a video just as easily, or even enter into a video conversation instead of a phone call because they want to see a person's reaction.

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I get pretty excited about TV moving online and then run up against another technical wall and realize that things just are never "just around the corner".

I was experimenting with Xbox Live Marketplace, checking out the movie listings and marvelling at the need to purchase points to view a flick and Microsoft's unabashed hubris when it comes to owning a category. But since this is my job I jumped through all the hoops - using my Microsoft Live ID (not used for anything else) to log in, create a "gamer" name, purchase a small amount of points, chose a movie from the dismal selection (~400 movies, mostly old), and right through to the end when it asks me to choose my Xbox. Now, as a person doing this for a living, I take careful note of all the warnings, pop-up boxes, how they craft their consumer communication and all things usability-oriented. But not once did the website suggest that you had to have an Xbox to download the movies.

If you work at Microsoft, you may be snickering now, thinking that I was naive to believe that I could download on my MICROSOFT powered PC. But it gets better. Since there were no warnings on the site, I figured I'd just ask for my money back. But when I called, the call rep response essentially boiled down to: "but you already purchased the product". What he's saying, but probably doesn't know, is that the DRM keys to this movie were downloaded - TO MY PC - when I purchased it. And even though I never downloaded the movie, he can't give me my money back because they have no technical ability to reclaim the keys. And even though I have no Xbox in my house, I now have 60 MSFT points and the keys to a car I can't drive.

I wish I didn't have to run across this kind of can't-see-the-forest-for-the-technology problems every day, and that more uncompromising product guys were around to see that every part of their service functioned so that it made sense to a consumer (yes, Steve Jobs - did you have a better suggestion?). When that happens, the computer will cease being "technology" and just be the thing that I was after - movies, TV, concert tickets, a way to talk to friends, something you don't have to reboot.

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Broadband video is here, and it's going to take a growing share from the TV incumbents, cable and satellite. The real question is how and when - what are the specific catalysts that are going to force cable's hand? There are a bunch of structural conditions like people getting used to on demand through PCs and PVRs. And online video streams rising, partially spurred on, ironically, by initiatives from the very people who have the most to lose, like TV Anywhere and Hulu. But what I’m trying to pinpoint are the individual ruptures – serious seismic events – that will make everyone take this seriously or abandon their current way of working entirely.

1. Bandwidth ceases to be an issue for most, and MSO’s value-add of QOS and bundling is much less attractive (2+yrs)
2. Cord cutting actually starts to be an issue (2-3yrs)
3. Bandwidth prices soar as MSOs try to inoculate losses (2-3yrs), but flatten out over time (3+yrs) because it is a commodity and competition forces prices down (wasn’t google buying fiber? Will gov’ts step in here?)
4. Online video actually starts to make money – advertisers seek out targeted buys and pay higher CPMs to get qualified customers (3+yrs)
5. Studios/rights holders begin to realize that they can make 100% by going direct (4+yrs)
6. Studios/rights holders narrow (or even eliminate) release windows for a proportion of their catalogue that makes sense (5+yrs)

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The number of unconferences (and references to) seems to be growing, which is great. However, in several articles I've read, people are refering to it as a new phenomenon, which is far from the case.

I took place in my first "unconference" in 1996, back when these things were called Open Space.  Open Space or Unconference - the experience is a truly inspiring one.

Let me put it this way: Imagine sitting in a packed lecture hall. You are completely comfortable in your anonymity, just one of several hundred other students who are much more interested in last night's pub adventure than what the prof is talking about. But then he defies the odds and manages to finger YOU out from the huge crowded hall.  In a second your pulse races, while you try to come up with an answer or at least an opinion that won't look stupid. Everyone is listening.

What an unconference does is strip out the organizers, the speakers, the podium, the hall, the agenda - in fact the whole implicit safety net of any large group meeting process. You can't sit at the back of the hall, safe in large numbers. Now the onus is upon you to suggest topics, join meetings, speak up if you want to, or otherwise exercise the "law of two feet" .

Suddenly you are very awake, with the clarity that comes from being put on the spot, knowing that your voice is going to be heard. By stripping out the process, the spotlight falls upon the participants. And while I could get all overly preachy and idealistic and start sprouting notions about the dawn of democracy and how technology - specifically social media - is putting a voice back in the hands of voters, I think we all recognize that we are still on the cusp of this transformation. But there are undoubtedly huge shifts underway that are redefining the way information and ideas are spread, how content is created, how commerce is enacted.

I was reading today about Darwin's 200th anniversary, and the brou-ha he created that still persists. One idea in particular from "The 10,000 Year Explosion" (referenced by Margaret Wente)  struck me. The authors theorize that the growth in agricultural societies and subsequent population boom gave rise to more rapid genetic changes.  If, as they say "Fast change causes rapid evolution,"  then certainly humanity may be in for some major shifts in the next couple of thousand years (relatively short time frame).

But it also strikes me that the dissemination of information is rising much faster, that this access to ideas could speed up the process of technological change just like genetics. As an example, I'm sure we're all familiar with the case where someone comes up with the answers to solve business problems immediately, right from their browser - much much faster than what was possible only 10 years ago.

If the changes that we have witnessed over the past couple of decades continue or are accelerated, what is the impact to society? Does evolution speed up?

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I was reading this Visible Government begin to take shape here in Canada. And while I suspect we have a long way to go before we see any type of mass online dialogue between the state and society, I think the seeds (pay parking tickets, renew health cards) are well planted and I'm eager to see them take root.

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When I first started living in the online world fifteen years ago, a lot of people were still grappling with the ephemeral, intangible nature of the web, i.e. "anything on a hard disc is not real and one step away from deletion" and "online community relationships are not real, won't last". People still lose data, and there are a lot of pretty shallow relationships on Facebook. But the online world now takes up such a large part of our lives that it's hard to grasp the extent of the shift that has happened in the public consciousness. Recently, an old friend and ex-host from Sympatico forums was reminiscing about all the great people we had in that group, and she sent a link to some of the stuff that is still online.

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A lot of time has been spent dissecting Gladwell's work in the past 9 years, so I won't go into my own criticisms. I'll try and stick to the positive and spend some time on stuff that resonated with me, or that I've seen actually work "in the wild". The importance of group size - aka Dunbar's number. Gladwell gives many great examples of why group size matters, including why the Gore company splits its factories into smaller groups never surpassing the number 150. Essentially, splitting people up into smaller groups helps form more effective bonds. It's why I generally prefer startups to big companies. It also has import for social media, and those trying to build online community. It's impossible to keep track of conversations in huge online groups, but more importantly, your brain simply can't keep track of that many people. We've all seen the resulting disconnect, where individuals become disenfranchised from the organization and lose sight of the bigger picture. At Bell there was a famous story about how the first DSL lines were installed in a depressed neighborhood in Toronto, because it was closest to the central office (i.e. easiest to install). Now, this is just bad judgement, but it's less likely to have happened in a small company where the engineers would have closer ties to the marketing types. In a related point, it was clear to me long before Gladwell's book (shout out to Lisa Kimball, Group Jazz) that there is a natural chasm between early adopters and the silent majority. And that getting past this chasm is all up to the connectors and mavens, or what we call moderators and superusers in online community.  These individuals, and their ability to mobilize, goad, encourage, coddle, and otherwise inspire the silent majority to post/participate/share is at the root of what makes a community reach "critical mass", or an idea/product start to spread through society like a virus. More on this later...

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Time again for our late Christmas/New Years web log. It feels a little greeting-card-ish to list all the things we’re happy for, buy we really really are lucky. So let me dodge the cliche bullet a bit and let Addie tell us what she liked about the years. Here she is, in her own words.

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I’ve heard The Tipping Point mentioned several times in the past week by influential marketers and technology pundits, and it’s giving me an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. First some background. In 1999 I left my job as the Symaptico “community guy” to work for a startup in SF called ThirdVoice that promised to “change the way people used the web” by enabling them to leave “sticky notes” on any website. I didn’t know it then, but by the time I arrived in September, ThirdVoice had already reached its nadir four months earlier when the three founders had made the cover of Forbes. ThirdVoice epitomized the rallying cry of the day: “sticky” applications were hot because they gave people a new means of communication - a seemingly unfettered method of staying in touch with friends across the Internet. Is this sounding familiar yet? One of the company’s trio of Singaporean founders, Thai-Wey Then, loaned me a copy of Gladwell’s book because I had been given the challenge of re-architecting the tool so that it would encourage more engagement and fewer one-off notes (sorry TW - send me your address and I promise to return it :-).  In other words it was my job to make the sticky tool stickier. At the time, we all believed that ThirdVoice had reached its own tipping point, and we were convinced that there was some small as-yet-unforeseen silver bullet that, when applied correctly, would shove us over the edge towards a Facebook future. Alas it was not to be. Gladwell’s theory that small groups of individuals - connectors, mavens and salesmen - are the key to spreading ideas like viruses through society was compelling but didn’t help us make ThirdVoice into the latest influenza. While we redesigned the software to promote discussions, it’s easy to see in retrospect that the idea of having thousands of disparate, unconnected discussions on a million plus websites was a flawed idea from the get-go. Possibly because of this, I developed a hunch that the Tipping Point was biased towards the role of individual actors over the structural conditions (lack of broadband, poor computer usability, the year of dot-bomb etc) that clearly played major roles in ThirdVoice’s demise. So now you understand that when I hear The Tipping Point invoked as a how-to manual in social networking and word-of-mouth marketing circles, my Spidey senses begin to tingle. Many many things have changed since then, and since the goals were eerily similar, it’s worth a deeper dig. In the early days we thought of ourselves as builders of “community”.  The focus was on the group.  The tools and approaches were explicitly built with a leveling effect that reflected the hippy-ish leanings of those earnest young ideologues that have been setting out to populate new frontiers for centuries. And I’m not ashamed to count myself in those ranks. Many of these communities still exist and many many more have been created that are flourishing. But somewhere along the line someone realized that what people really wanted wasn’t the focus on the group, but on themselves. So instead of listing the groups and new discussions on the home page, the new applications - Facebook, MySpace etc - launch with a picture of YOU, YOUR friends and what YOU’RE interested in. While the best community systems back then would show you all the posts YOU hadn’t seen yet, they hadn’t taken personalization to this extent. And what a significant step it is. I would argue that the pendulum has swung so far that the group has suffered and what we're left with is something vaguely resembling a phone book of your Dunbar number. Ivor Tossell even thinks we're "all a bunch of phonies" but I would say that this all ignores the fundamental fact that we're ALL ON FACEBOOK. The tipping point came and went and now we all have at our disposal an incredible communication tool that we really don't understand the import of - yet. Has technology created more connectors or Mavens? Probably not. Has it given us all the tools to connect to people faster and broadcast messages a lightening speed? Absolutely. I'm a little dubious about our ability as marketers to tap into connectors and mavens and utilize them, because I know from experience how hard this is. But this is already too long and I'll have to tackle that in another post ;-)

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