Archive for May, 2011
By Ben Haber
A recent survey from iPass collected data on business workers and travelers around the world, and discovered that people check their email constantly. How much, you ask? 35 percent of people check email first thing in the morning before doing anything else. Email comes before getting dressed, showering and eating breakfast.
Email addiction can also be disruptive. 32 percent of people admitted that their mobile technology causes friction in their personal relationships, and 90 percent of this friction comes between partners. While email addiction can be annoying for a partner at any time, I’m guessing that a significant amount of this friction comes at night, to the tune of 38 percent of people occasionally checking email while they’re sleeping. But it gets worse: 8 percent of people admit to checking email in the middle of the night every single night.
While we all can agree this would not be identified as “healthy” behavior, the Economist argues that these email must have some kind of dividing line:
Many jobs now demand constant connectedness, leaving little space for life outside of work. Indeed, while 64% of those asked said it was unacceptable to take a call in a public toilet, 29% confessed to talking on the loo. The line between work and private life has to be drawn somewhere. At the toilet door, perhaps?
Now it’s your turn to be honest with us. What’s the worst situation, place or time you’ve ever checked your work email?
May 31st, 2011
By Jason Fidler
Isn’t it odd to now think of the internet as an entity with a historical identity? Like a separate civilization it has grown from relatively simple infanthood into a complex and chaotic system of ever-changing rules and values. Web historians tend to break down the contemporary history of the internet into two separate phases, termed Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Web 1.0 signifies the now-ancient era of simple information gathering. In 1993 the WWW was released, allowing websites to link with each other creating a web of information. Web2.0 is commonly thought to have gained prominence through user-generated content, such as blogs. The participatory aspect of Web2.0 will probably be remembered most for its apex platform, Facebook.
This begs the question: What is Web3.0? Where does the internet go from here, and what will the next web revolution look like?
Many believe that we are currently in the beginning stages of Web3.0 as defined as location-based services. Advances in mobile technology have allowed us to take the internet wherever we go. “Online” is no longer relegated to your office desk or bedroom, and naturally companies are now using this new situation to their advantage. The bourgeoning augmented reality movement allows for the digital manipulation of your vision of the real world, in real time. Your street becomes the landscape for a new video game, your living room wall a canvas for a Davinci. Foursquare, Facebook Places, Yelp and the like now not only want to know what you do online, they want to know what you do offline as well. It is easy to take this for granted as we are currently living in the developing stages of location, like standing inside of an airplane not realizing you are going 600 miles an hour, but take a step back and view it from a historical perspective. The internet is now a part of us, no different than the shoes on our feet or the ring on our finger. In short, the web has evolved to go off the grid. Is this Web3.0? Maybe.
Others have a different theory of Web3.0. They use the term “semantic web” to describe it as the next step in web personalization. A little tougher to explain than location-based services, the semantic web essentially refers to the ability to teach machines to use the internet in the same way as humans do. Machines will be able to understand the semantics, or meaning, behind the data they receive and store, allowing for an exponentially higher level of personalization for the end user. Perhaps it’s best to use a hypothetical example:
In 2014 you will be searching the web on your iPhone 10.0. You type “I’m hungry, I want to eat somewhere totally sweet” into Google. The browser will then bring up a list of places in the area that, based on previous information, it knows you will find “totally sweet” meaning in normal language, “good.” Google will know that you don’t particularly like chicken salad, but love a good burger. Google will also know that you have been on a diet recently, and will suggest some healthier options as well. On the way to the restaurant Google has recommended, that girl whose profile on Facebook you look at a little too much just checked in to a different restaurant down the street. Google will let you know, but notify you that the place specializes in fattening mayo-heavy chicken salad. After that, the decision is up to you.
The semantic web will allow machines to act as human replacements in a manner never before seen. Everything from the way news is distributed to the way national economies interact with each other will have the potential to be handled by computational algorithms. We have already seen the origins of this technology. Watson, the famous computer Jeopardy wiz, is a semantic web prototype. The technology behind Watson allowed it to understand natural human language (well, as natural as the Jeopardy questions are) and also evaluate the human strategy behind what is going on in that particular game of which he is a part. Is this Web3.0? Maybe.
Finally, there is a third theory as to what the next web revolution has in store for us. Some have theorized that, while location and semantics are cool, the truly innovative change will take place when we have developed the ability to let computers generate original content themselves. Computers won’t just interact with each other as humans do, they will conceive originals ideas and content and then proceed to interact with each other. Think this is the innovation of an unknown time in the distant future? Think again. Computational Biology researchers at Aberystwyth University in England have developed a robot appropriately named “Adam” that can actually think of new scientific hypotheses, develop testing procedures, and then determine if its hypotheses are true or not. The machine has actually discovered new scientific knowledge independent of human assistance. If applied online, is this Web3.0? Maybe.
As you can see, there is no clear consensus of what will be defined as Web3.0. Will it be one of these options? Will it be all three in tandem? Will it involve capabilities not yet conceptualized? The speed at which the web is developing is still accelerating, and as more of human time and energy is spent in front of the screen, the ideas to alter our own lives through that screen will simultaneously become more grandiose and more easily attainable. Perhaps it’s time to start thinking of Web4.0.
May 19th, 2011
By Ben Haber
The valuation of social networks has always been a tricky subject. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn and others have been valued very highly at certain times, even though some aren’t yet profitable, and many not even have any revenue.
However, this morning LinkedIn officially IPO’d at $45 a share, and the stock price immediately shot up to over $100 per share (as I write this, it’s hovering around $110). While this gigantic share price leap is agonizing for shareholders that sold stock at $45, Facebook has to be watching this occur with a giant smile.
As the big dog in the social media world, Facebook not only is a stable of today’s life, but a very profitable company at this point. They’ve figured out how to turn their massive amount of data and information into a growing revenue stream and attract advertisers that want to directly reach their target audience. When (someday) Mark Zuckerberg and company decide it is time to IPO, they know with absolute certainty that their stock price is going to go through the roof, and will be one of the most highly anticipated IPOs in history.
May 19th, 2011
By Ben Haber
During the first two weeks of May I went abroad on vacation, but did much more then change locations. While I was away I turned off my phone shunned myself from all social networks – including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – and took a break from the fast-paced world of social media.
While I did use the Internet for the basic purposes of looking up directions, train schedules, etc., I thought of these two weeks as a cleansing period, where I could be disconnected from the (social) world. At first it was strange not to be constantly updated by friends and online connections, but after a few days my new reality began to feel normal. However, what I noticed most upon returning home, was the different feelings I’ve had towards Facebook and Twitter.
As I left for the airport I forgot about Twitter almost immediately and didn’t think about logging in until I received an email alerting me of a DM after returning home. Even then, it took three days for me to check Twitter. I’ve also found it awkward to begin using Twitter again after a 2 week hiatus, as tweeting (and mostly, reading all those tweets) feels more like a project then a welcome activity.
On the other hand, I went through Facebook detox the first few hours of my trip, wanting to log-in while waiting for my plane at the airport. While that feeling passed once I was in the air, upon returning home one of the first things I did online was check Facebook, and I spent some time on the site checking to see what friends had been up to while I was away.
Reflecting on my vacation and social media hiatus, I’ve come to the conclusion that Facebook is a much more natural fit to human behavior (at least for me). The way it organizes information and enables people to observe and interact is easy and interesting. I felt like I could easily see what I had missed while I had been away. On the other hand, Twitter didn’t pull me in, at all. It organizes information for real-time monitoring and engagement, and in no way was I functioning in real-time. It took me a few days to catch up to that speed (I’m still not there), and at points it feels like I need to re-learn the fast-paced Twitter environment.
I’m curious to hear from others that have taken a social media vacation, and how you’ve adjusted upon returning home. Please share your stories and experiences in the comment section below.
May 18th, 2011
By Guest Author
This is a guest post from Dan Walsh, an Account Executive at Racepoint Group. Follow him on Twitter @DanWalshed.
“If you ever watch somebody reading a copy of Vanity Fair, they spend as much time looking at the ads as they spend looking at the content,” Mr. Grueskin said, “because the ads are actually useful for readers.” (Ads having value on their own, he added, is “something that we as journalists have a hard time getting our heads around.”)
- From NYT’s “For Journalists, A Call to Rethink Their Online Models”
I’m curious about what others think of that statement.
Clearly the goal has always been for ads to be useful (hence the importance of targeting – why would anyone pay attention to an irrelevant ad?) but I’ve rarely considered them to be valuable. As users, we’ve been conditioned to avoid looking at the tops and sides of pages and sponsored links. Simply put, the current advertising model is broken and showing an increasing number of cracks as time goes by.
When BusinessWeek blew up their newsroom in 2009, it was interesting to see Senior Writer Steve Hamm wind up at IBM as a communications strategist. It certainly wasn’t a move that I expected. In Steve’s words, “I work on communications strategy and create content.” Most of that content winds up here: IBM’s A Smarter Planet Blog. If you haven’t checked it out before, it’s worth a look – there’s been a ton of thought provoking posts generated here over the last 2+ years. To me, this is what passes for “valuable” ad content.
In the future I think we’ll see this type of content integrated into a number of news sites. If done right (read: not overtly promotional), brands can help fill the gap in long-form journalism created, in part, by Google News (need to be first!) and the current ad model (low CPMs result in pressure to “get more page views” leading to a struggle over writing for quality vs. writing for quantity).
Of course not every brand can go and hire a former BusinessWeek writer to head up this effort, but don’t worry: PR practitioners would be more than happy to fill that role.
May 12th, 2011
By Guest Author
This is a guest post from RJ Bardsley, a Senior Vice at Racepoint Group. Follow him on Twitter @RJBardsley.
If you’re on the West Coast and just waking up, run, don’t walk to your nearest news source. What you’ll find is a blistering barrage of news from some of the biggest and coolest tech brands this morning. Here is a quick run down of what hit the Wall Street Journal today.
- Microsoft buys Skype for $8 billion. This is the biggest-ever acquisition for Microsoft. Can they make it work? It makes sense – Skype will add a lot to MSFT’s gaming and communications platforms.
- Google Unveils Web Music Service… uh, watch out Apple? I don’t know about that, but Amazon and Spotify may be shaking in their boots a little bit. Google still has to secure licenses from the four major record labels. Expect the system to operate like a remote hard drive.
- Apple and Google will both testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on mobile privacy. Yes, location-based information is really neat, but it turns out people don’t really like it when you know where they are all the time…
- LinkedIn set the terms for its IPO: how does $3 billion+ sound? This could be the first in a flood of US tech IPOs. Expect Groupon to follow suit later this year and Facebook maybe next year. Freescale, the chip company also set price terms for its IPO yesterday. Can you say 1998?
- Silicon Valley wild child, NVIDIA, also announced an acquisition this week. It bought Icera, a UK start up focused on baseband chips. The move will make NVIDIA more of a competitive force in the mobile phone market.
- Gilt, the online luxury retailer (and @rdeplazes’s frequent digital haunt) has raised $138 million form investors. Yeah, I guess you really can say 1998…
- Video game maker Activision announced a 32% jump in sales.
- Apple and Conde Nast announced that many of your favorite media outlets – including Wired, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Allure, Self, GQ, and my personal favorite, Golf Digest – will be available for subscription on the iTunes store. Yey.
May 10th, 2011
By Guest Author
This is a guest post from Sarah Willey, a Senior Account Executive at Racepoint Group. Follow her on Twitter @willey774.
As @bmfalc described in her post yesterday, most of us were learning about the death of Osama bin Laden in real time through social media. But can you imagine what it must have been like for the man who unknowingly tweeted about the raid on Osama.
It all started from a man in Abbottabad (the town where Osama lived) when Mr. Sohaib Athar, known to thousands of followers as @ReallyVirtual, first wrote about a helicopter hovering above him at 1 a.m., saying it was a “rare event.” That was 3:30 p.m. EST on Sunday. Within minutes, he tweeted, “A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S”. After a while when the sound of the helicopter stopped following a blast, Mr. Athar tweeted “seems like my giant swatter worked !” That was followed by a Twitter discussion about what had happened. He wrote to “@m0hcin the few people online at this time of the night are saying one of the copters was not Pakistani…” Mr. Athar noted that “Since taliban (probably) don’t have helicopters, and since they’re saying it was not ‘ours’, so must be a complicated situation#abbottabad”
Over the next two hours, Mr. Athar, who describes himself as an IT consultant, exchanged messages with a few other Twitter users about what had happened, learning that there was a helicopter crash. They wondered whether it was an attack or an accident.
“And now I feel I must apologize to the pilot about the swatter tweets :-/” tweeted Mr. Athar. He retweeted Ibrar Ali (@ibi2010) , who said: 1 dead and 1 injured in Abbottabad for heli crashed.”
Mr. Athar seems to have gone offline for a few hours, resurfacing this morning to tweet: “interesting rumors in the otherwise uneventful Abbottabad air today.” Shortly thereafter, Mr. Athar figured out what had happened.
He retweeted a tweet from Munzir Naqvi: “I think the helicopter crash in Abbottabad, Pakistan and the President Obama breaking news address are connected.”
Mr. Athar was clearly unhappy.
“I guess Abbottabad is going to get as crowded as the Lahore that I left behind for some peace and quiet. *sigh*”
A short time later, another Twitter user confirmed the news. Mr. Athar tweeted “RT @ISuckBigTime: Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.: ISI has confirmed it << Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood :-/”
As the Twitter world discovered Mr. Athar’s tweets, thousands of followers have added him to their list of followers. As of 8:46 am EST on May 3, 2011, @ReallyVirtual had 93,321 followers and counting!
May 3rd, 2011
By Brittany Falconer
Late last night, much of the digitally connected and cable-wired world learned of the death of Osama Bin Laden. The nation learned through Facebook, Twitter, text messages, CNN, NBC, and pretty much any medium that required some form of electricity. Many of us were engaged on multiple platforms simultaneously, tweeting the President’s remarks as we tuned in to our news stations of choice.
In addition to retweets, emotional reactions and smart-alecky remarks, I noticed another sentiment in my feeds: “I wonder how many editors are ripping up the front pages of tomorrow’s paper at this very moment.” I admit, I was among the curious. However, I figured that the death of the mastermind behind 9/11 was newsworthy enough for those in journalism to pull a frenzied all-nighter.
Either my qualifications for what constitutes “Stop the presses!” are way off-base, or sometimes even the most breaking of news is no match for print media deadlines. While some publications such as The New York Times managed to keep up with the news, others, including USA Today and METRO, did not. Still others, namely The Wall Street Journal, decided not to waste trees, and printed copies with and without the headline news.
It’s not uncommon for me to read about news in Monday morning’s paper that I’d already heard about on Twitter Sunday afternoon, but this will be the first instance where my Tuesday morning paper will likely be featuring Sunday evening’s news. I’m curious to see if and how the editors will address the lag in news time.
May 2nd, 2011
