Imagine this scenario: five hundred students in a high school whose smartphones and laptops are all connected to each other but not connected to the Internet. The students can share everything and everything is free. Access to the network is only by invitation. No authority can shut down this network, because it doesn't really exist.
Now, imagine millions of people empowered by this technology.
Shelly Palmer technology consultant and visionary predicts something like this in his last book "Digital Wisdom" that I'm reading:
"Sometime after 4G is deployed on a large scale, people are going to find a new kind of app available for every device. It will offer the ability to create a peer-to-peer (P2P) or Mesh connection to any device within radio range and not require (or even allow) an Internet connection. It will not use a commercial wireless network. It will not be 3G, 4G or any G. It will simply use the WiFi radio in the device to connect to the other devices that are friendly," he writes.
Palmer calls these networks ProxyNets. In a way, that could be an extension of the existing social media networks... with a huge difference: these networks are invisible to the government.
Is this a new technology that will disrupt the existing social Internet?
Enterprise social networks are increasingly relevant for knowledge transfer between employees and for internal corporate communications. This way of collaborative work save significantly resources and increase productivity.
Just think in the hassle of searching for the right people of a project, the daily exchange of information, the difficulties of sharing documents and doing the proper follow up...
That is why, in my view, most companies will have their communication take place through enterprise social software.
And since employees are already registered at Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, they understand the logic of the networks and got the skills to do an easy transition.
Shortly we will launch a social platform for an educators and writers community in Spain and Latin America. With this innovative way of communication we are offering many simplifications and time savings...
I think there is a great future for this social software. Just think about it.
Digital leadership means making choices about how to most efficiently use your digital tools.
And a good exercise is a Facebook cleanse.
It might be rude to remove friends without previous notice. That's why Shelly Palmer, a New York technologist and consultant, suggests as a protocol to post a message in your personal profile saying something like, "I'm doing a Facebook Cleanse, like or comment here if you want to remain my Facebook friend."
If people don't like the post or comment, you can unfriend them. The goal is to achieve a manageable amount of friends.
For a digital leader, a social network is not a popularity contest. You must have a list of friends or followers that you can handle.
Nowadays you find entrepreneurs everywhere, and that is great. However, I would ask them one single question:
Are you building a profitable business or a business to profit from?
In other words: Is your market the financial services community?
As Shelly Palmer technologist says, "in Information Age Start-up land, you can fund and refund and exit a company with big audence numbers even if the company has no revenue or viable business plan to acquire revenue."
These guys tend to think that something that is valuable to millions of people must really have a value, and you just need to get really big to figure out how to make a profit.
In my view, the idea that "millions of users must have value" is fraud. It is not a business model, and these kind of entrepreneurs are just financial people. They are not creating growth.
The new BlackBerry Z10 is a confusing smartphone. Try to unlock the phone, find email or get back to the home screen. Good luck!
Mashable did a little experiment and results are clear –see them on above's video.
Question is if there is room for any smarphone which works differently than the iPhone and Android.
(BlackBerry Z10 consolidates all messaging into a single interface called the Hub, it can run up to eight apps in the background, and it has an extremely high-resolution screen at 356 pixels per inch.)
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar says that most people cannot maintain more than 150 meaningful relationships. Cognitively, we're just not built for it. Once a group grows larger than 150, its members begin to lose their sense of connection. We live on an increasingly urban, crowded planet, but we have Stone Age social capabilities.
"The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us,"Dunbar has writen.
Among the Sillicon Valley social networks' engineers and designers, Dunbar's ideas are regularly invoked –on what has come to be called Dunbar's Number.
Path, a mobile photo-sharing and messaging service founded in 2010, is build explicitly on the theory–it limits its users to 150 friends. “What Dunbar’s research represents is that no matter how the march of technology goes on, fundamentally we’re all human, and being human has limits,” says Dave Morin, one of Path’s co-founder in a report published in Bloomberg Business Week.
In other words, our processing power for social activity is limited.
So how many Facebook friends or LinkedIn connections you say you have?
This is the main goal of Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's CEO.
She says that "beyond voice calls, texting and maps, people are most lkely to read their email, pull up the weather, check the news, share photos, get financial quotes, check sports scores and play games – all services, notably, that Yahoo already provides."
Here is the problem: Yahoo doesn't have its own mobile OS or software, nor its own browser nor social networks. So, what is the solution? To build parnerships in order to deploy its services.
Mayer says: "Yahoo has always been a very friendly company. We work with Apple and Google in terms of the operating system. In terms of social network, we have a strong partnership with Facebook. We're able to work with some of these players that have a lot of strength in order to bolster our user experience that we offer on the Yahoo site."
What I can say? I'm skeptical. Who is using Yahoo nowadays?
However, it is worth to watch this interview in order to get inspired in terms of where the mobile technology is and where it goes.
Check Twitter's new video sharing service called Vine, that allows users to shoot and share six seconds long and set to loop automatically (similar to an animated GIF).
For now, it is an app available only for the iPhone and iPod Touch (Twitter is working to bring the service to other platforms).
"Like Tweets, the brevity of videos on Vine (6 seconds or less) inspires creativity," explained Twitter.
The app is simple: users aim their cameras at what they want to capture, tap the screen once to start filming and tap it once more to stop.
Why this app now? Well, video could be a lucrative area for Twitter to play in – video ads account for more than half of all videos viewed.
I tested the app, and it is OK. I'd have integrate in the Twitter's app.
Turn your Android phone or tablet into a remote and send YouTube videos to TV with the touch of a button, with no wires, no set up.
A number of new TV sets from Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, LG, Bang & Olufsen and others come now with "send to TV" feature. Also, you can install this app on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and Wii U consoles.
This lets you pair an Android phone with a TV on the same WI-FI network, and cue up videos using the YouTube app as your remote. Controls in the iOS YouTube app are coming soon.
Lance Armstrong interview –with disgraced cyclist admitting to use performance-enhancing drugs and blood doping– spread outrage all across the social media universe.
"Ruthless, lying, bullying, completely unprincipled, disloyal coward...", wrote celebrity Mia Farrow, summarizing the general feeling.
Beyond opinions, this 2001 Nike commercial video resurfaced. The ad features Armstrong having his blood drawn and asking the question "What am I on?".
"This is my body, and I can do whatever I want to it," he said yet in 2001.
Judging was based on creativity and originality of advertisement, visual storytelling and clarity of writing.
Advertising changes over the years, but the objective is still the same – to get consumers to take notice of your brand. And creativity is always required in order to tell a story in a meaningful way and make a consumer want to know more.
This social news Web site has begun the year by announcing that it had raised nearly $20 million in new financing from its investors.
A year ago, it raised $15.5 million in venture capital financing. Now it employs 70 reporters and editors.
BuzzFeed.com is a mix of polical scoops, links to viral videos and easy-to-digest lists (“13 Super Sexy Cinnamon Rolls", "19 Dogs You Need in 2013"). Apparently it is a media company for a social world.
Being a source in a press story and getting a quotation is an invaluable publicity for your business.
For that, you can send an email directly to an editor with story ideas or you can use this service: HARO - Help A Reporter Out site.
Helpareporter.com is a way to find a reporter in need of sources. More than 29,000 journalists submit queries to this site when they need sources for stories. If you respond to their active media request, you can be one of those sources.
To get the most out of HARO, sign up and/or follow HARO on Twitter, where it tweets urgent, deadline-driven pitches.
In order to be choosen by reporters, your responses must be short, specific and professionals, avoiding the hard sell.
The biggest one is designing around what is important to your company, and not what's important to your visitor. Users don't want to read about 'company goals' and 'corporate principles'. They need problem resolution. And companies must address the needs visitors had before arriving at the website.
Readers seek to be informed about a solution to a problem, to engage in a communal activity –such as sharing thoughts with other individuals with the same isue– or to be entertained.
Eight preventable errors:
Not having a clearly designed 'call to action', such as 'buy now' or 'sign up today'.
There should be a call to action on every page, giving visitor a chance to convert at every opportunity.
Clearly, the site must be designed around reaching its target audience segment.
Not communicating the porpuse of the website and the offering for the reader.
Don't just say 'leading the way', but complete the sentence: 'Leading the way in fighting hunger in New York' is much clearer.
Unorganized content layout, bad navigation. Also, out-of-date content.
Forcing registration and early submit of personal information. Complitated registration forms.
Hidding key features and not walking users through them in effort to keep a website 'clean'. One feature not to hide is the search box.
Unreadable text and fonts.
Using flashing graphics, animations and texts, gigantic JPEGs, harsh colors, huge amounts of banners with conflicting colors and themes. Please use more whitespace.
Too many badges and awards trying to impress.
These websites look cluttered. Website and company behind it should speak for itself.
Nowadays it is all about reducing expenses and optimizing business productivity.
Some key trends for IT departments this year that I've found after some little resear:
Death of outsourcing overseas –or the insourcing boom back in-house.
Some reasons: rising costs in India and China, impact of gas and shipping expenses, poor communication with outsources employees, better quality work achieved under in-house control...
IT outsourcing contracts have already dropped 20 percent since last year.
Gartner says that outsourcing services will drop by at least 15 percent through 2016.
End of the service desk.
Evolving cloud and mobile demands coincide with the emergence of cognotive technologies like IBM's Watshon, Siri's voice recognition and other smart operational technologies.
Cloud platform integration and increased automation.
IDC predicts that, by the endo of 2013, the cloud will make up 27 percent of all new enterprise spending.
Forbes writes a good article about IT management trends for 2013.
One of my last advices as a consultant is this: If your company does not have a mobility strategy, you must react quickly.
Because this 2013 is going to be the year of BYOD (bring your own device) and BYOA (bring your own app) phenomena.
Just notice what is happening with tablets.
These devices are being used in more and more business functions across the enterprise, specially in sales and customer care departments. Also, are being reapidly deployed with field services when larger screens are required for inspections and reports.
In Q3 around 28M tablet units have been shipped worldwide, up almost 50% over Q3 2011, according to IDC.
In November, Gartner stated: "Tablets will the key accelerator to mobility." By 2016, they will triple, to reach 53 million units.
It's the time to embrace mobile empowerment strategies.
Leading brands are developing content marketing strategies to reach their consumers. Definitely, content help to create memorable experiences.
Virgin Mobile has launched Virgin Mobile Live, a social newsroom that publishes content several times daily. The site is averaging over 1 million unique views per month.
American Express Unstaged is a program that live streams concerts. Fans view not only the event but also exclusive videos before and after the event.
Marriot's has two programs to provide rich content for engaging guest online:
- Navigators platform helps guests to discover the local city outside their hotel.
- RLife LIVE program helps guest to discover new music, films, arts, food and drinks inside the hotels.
Also, Marriot has relaunched RenHotels.com as not just a hotel website but as a discovery site.
L'Oreal's Garnier Fructis brand has partenered with Rolling Stone to create content marketing around discovery of new, emerging musicians and their styles. Also, L'Oreal lauched the Rolling Stone’s Women Who Rock annual issue.
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