Dad blogs: The most recent online Influencers

In his 2007 book The New influencers Paul Gillin argues that in the Social Media era the real opinion leaders are bloggers who attract millions of readers daily and can make or brake a new product but endorsing it or disapproving it. Next to the well known influential blogs that without doubt can play a very important role as PR tools as I have mentioned before, a new category of “amateur” bloggers seem to emerge, capable of influencing million of people: the mom bloggers for some time already and recently the dad bloggers! An interesting article in the  New York Times

To Twit(ter) or Not To Twit(ter) Part II

My first impression of TWITTER is not very positive as regular readers of this blog know. With 7 million users Twitter is not as big as Facebook that recently reached the 200 mil users but it is at the moment a hot item in the press and blogs. News about Twitter appear on daily basis expanding our knowledge on this phenomenon. To the surprise and maybe contrary to the popular wisdom Millennials are not the early adopters; according to a recent study of comScore Twitter seems to be more popular among older Internet users rather than the youth: Nielsen found also that "42% of the users are aged 35-49, while 20% were 25-34. Many (62%) of those across both the aforementioned age ranges used Twitter only while at work, perhaps indicating the tool is being used for business purposes. Thirty-five percent accessed Twitter from home only".
But this is not all the surprising news about Twitter: A recent report of O2 found that small businesses in the UK (17% of them already) are increasingly using Twitter it as part of their (internal) communication mix. Big businesses like Business Week are also jumping in the Twitter Bandwagon. Twitter is also quickly adopted by mainstream mass media like the CNN as a promotional tool. CNN has been even engaged in a competition with the actor Ashton Kutcher who will reach first the 1 mil followers on Twitter!! Mr. Kutcher has about a million "followers" in Twitter who obviously have nothing better to do than following what their idol is doing every moment of the day! Considering the zero cost of the medium not a bad deal at all.
There is already some more controversy: CNN informs us that scientists are already warning that "social-networking tools such as Twitter could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering". According to CNN "The report that will be published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition, studied how volunteers responded to real-life stories chosen to stimulate admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain".
In short Twitter is becoming a controversial issue. One of my unanswered questions is whether the use of Twitter (mainly by the population segment - see above - that has so enthusiastically embraced it) could lead to productivity losses next to the loss of sense of morality as the above study suggests.
As I wrote in my previous blog I do not think that Twitter will be the new YouTube at least in its original form. What we see happening is that indeed it is increasingly used as a business communication medium rather than a personal communication tool informing people what their networked friends are doing every moment of the day (that most people would not like to know anyway). If Twitter goes to the commercial direction it has more chances to be successful. Let's wait and see.

Academic Social Media Part 2

As I mentioned in my previous post more and more Social Media applications appear online targeting academics, students or people interested in scientific work. One category of such applications are university web sites posting learning material online, a concept pioneered by the MIT and now becoming increasingly commonplace. Prestigious universities offer their courses in podcast formats. A good example is Stanford on iTunes U offering a wide range of Stanford digital audio content via the iTune store. There are also portals offering similar content: Academic Earth is a site presenting thousands of academic lectures in video from top scholars. A very nice way to advertise Universities and their products!

Other forms of Academic social Media are sites allowing the creation of personal profiles where the members can upload their slides presentations and find thousands of presentations of others. SlideShare is a well known example. There are also a few sites presenting overviews of theoretical approaches and models. I often use the site 12manage when I look for new or exotic theoretical frameworks, this site is quite uptodate. Some interaction is also possible, visitors can interact or post comments.

The third category of academic social media includes sites where academics / researchers can create personal profiles and upload their research work as well as find the work of others. Such sites are meant to promote scientific collaboration by creating online academic social networks but I am not sure if copyright conflicts will arise. Examples are LabMeeting targeting in principle the medical scientists, Mendeley, Academia and Questia that also has a special interest page in Facebook and also offers to its users a Twitter connection.

Which of these applications and many others with similar format will survive in the virtual knowledge marketplace remains to be seen. It seems that some of these approaches are interesting for schools and universities as marketing tools, allowing them to increase their online exposure and connect with the increasingly "Social Media-minded" public. I find the "switching cost" of using some of the applications high since it is required to register and download / link your papers when creating a profile. Maybe the Web 3.0 will make many of these things redundant, we have to wait and see.

p.s. my thanks to Remco van den Elzen for drawing my attention to this issue

To Twit(ter) or Not To Twit(ter)

It is for some time now that I wanted to write about Twitter, the latest upshot of the Social Media and current web fad that spreads like wild fire among Millennials. If you wonder what Millennials are (and also want to have some fun) have a look also to this Video.
For those who do not know yet what Twitter is: It is a combination of online community, instant messaging (messages called Tweets of up to 140 characters) and blog (micro blog) allowing people to inform their network what are they doing every moment of the day and occasionally spread news (like the Mumbai attack, the landing of the American Airlines jet in the Hudson river and the crash landing of the Turkish Airlines jetliner in Amsterdam) faster than the traditional mass media and even faster than YouTube!!
I have a Twitter account for some time already but I have not activated yet, I opened the account out of professional curiosity. After a first look to it I was not sure what value would add this application to my already digitally overloaded life and decided to wait until I knew more about it.
I know now something more about it and I can share it with you to help you make up your mind if you haven't done it yet. Participating in a seminar a few weeks ago (80% of participants belonging to the Millennials segment) I noticed that many people came with their notebooks and of course the first thing that crossed my mind was that they wanted to make notes and maybe look to their email from time to time. I know how a Twitter session looks like so I quickly spotted two guys that I could look to their screens having a Twitter screen on that was constantly updated with the twits of their friends ( the guys were busy with at least 3-4 more things online at the same time but this is normal with multi-tasking people). If my sample ( two out of two = 100% ) was representative then practically everyone with a notebook in the room was doing the same. I really wondered if these guys heard a word of what was said in the seminar but this is another story; I could not help wondering if it is normal that I found the whole thing a bit of nonsense.
The answer to my question came after looking to a recent interview of the Twitter CEO Charlie Rose who declared that in "five years normal people will also use Twitter". This was a big relief, the normal people do not use it yet!! This interview was followed by the news that the Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google, referred to Twitter as " A Poor Man's email system" (despite the fact that Google has also a Twitter account!!). Maybe a reaction to accusations that Google is out because it is too slow! According to some circles Google can find things on line a few hours after they happen and not the moment they happen! What a shame!

Trying to stay objective I would warn those jumping into the Twitter train of the danger of addiction. What I saw in that seminar points only to something like this.
On the other hand one should think very seriously whether his or her life on a 24 hours basis is so important and interesting that everyone should know about it. It sounds like some kind of exhibitionism (although the devoted twitters will say that it is a form of communication) that we see more and more entering our life and found normal by many.
As to the commercial value of this application as a marketing tool I can imagine that it could spread very quickly news and advertisement although the users do not seem to be interested for such things. Yet many companies are already opening Twitter accounts like last year when everyone was talking about the unlimited commercial potential of Second Life (that proved to be hot air for the biggest part).
One matter of concern should be what the effect of Twitter addiction can be on working peoples' productivity. It would be interesting to see a study about such effects. As to the highly praised speed of Twitter to spread news very quickly I wonder what is the problem if you hear about the breaking news 10 minutes later in the TV or radio?

Finally what will be the future of Twitter? Is it another fad or it is here to stay? One thing I have learned the last years is that making predictions for such things can be quite tricky although my predictions about SecondLife on June last year seem to be correct. I have the feeling that the public that stormed SL last year is the same one loading the web with tweets now so I expect something similar to happen again. When they will have enough of it they will swarm around something else and the Twitter will disappear from the headlines.

p.s. 1 Interestingly one of the ministers of the Dutch cabinet is twitting, he irritated the prime minister sometime ago when he published a photo from a cabinet meeting online.
p.s. 2 I will keep tracking Twitter and inform you of developments

The New Innovation Wisdom

An interesting article (also in videocast) from Google's chief economist Hal Varian in the McKinsey Quarterly. Varian explains the many effects the web has on industries and calls managers to re-think of conventional thinking. Useful note for everyone involved in innovation today

The YouTubing of TV (and our life)

After the YouTubing of Mainstream Media and the YouTubing of Entrepreuneurship we have now the YouTubing of TV! As the YouTube blog announced on 15 January "YouTube has partnered directly with major TV and set-top box manufacturers to bring YouTube into the living room". It goes on "Well, now that's possible via YouTube for Television, initially available through the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii game consoles at www.youtube.com/tv. Currently in beta, the TV Website offers a dynamic, lean-back, 10-foot television viewing experience through a streamlined interface that enables you to discover, watch and share YouTube videos on any TV screen with just a few quick clicks of your remote control. With enlarged text and simplified navigation, it makes watching YouTube on your TV as easy and intuitive as possible". and ends with the nice advice :" So grab some popcorn, gather your friends and sit back and enjoy the YouTube TV Website".
A new, not unexpected, move of YouTube in line with the Red Queen Effect that I wrote about earlier.
With so many thousands video downloads per hour I am wondering how many productive hours are lost every year for manking all these (mostly lousy) videos and what is the total cost of this in global scale. An interesting subject for a Master or even a PhD dissertation.
It would be even more interesting to calculate and add the hours (and costs) of those looking to the YouTube videos. I have the feeling that the total costs would scare even YouTube.

The Internet as University marketing tool

While the use of information and communication technology (ICT) as education strategy is a hot item receiving a lot of attention it seems that ICT as education marketing strategy receives a very low priority. This is my conclusion from many visits to university or in general educational web sites. The web sites of most universities are notoriously bad and structured around contexts and philosophies of the previous decade. With few exceptions most sites are targeting the internal rather than the external publics and often score very low in usability.
While I haven't found much research evidence of this I suspect that educational institutions are missing opportunities in the market place because of poor design of their web sites and bad visitor experience. In an article published in EDUCAUSE Quarterly Meredith Weiss comes to a similar conclusion. Weiss seems to agree with this thesis suggesting a number of approaches that could turn the educational web sites into sources of value. To my pleasure the author is suggesting, among other approaches, the methodology described in my 4S Web Marketing Mix model as a basis for designing of educational web sites.
In the age of the Social Media and customer empowerment educational institutions should seriously think about learning to use the new media effectively, adjusting their marketing to the requirements of today's student. Ignoring the Internet as marketing tool is a very serious strategic mistake.

Are these your students? I think so

For those of us who are not sure yet about the impact of the New Media / Social Media on everyone of us this interesting video made by students about students will help to make up our mind. Interestingly the lecture hall in the video looks a lot like one of ours here in Twente. The students could be ours or from any other EU / N. American country for that matter. Is the prophesy of Herbert Marshall McLuhan about the (digital) global village a fact?