Reaction Paper 13 - Annenberg Media

This past week I got to hear a presentation about Annenberg Media, which I previously knew little about. Annenberg Media originally stared as Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in the late-80’s after a grant from Walter Annenberg. Using media and telecommunications as a platform, Annenberg Media offers educational curriculum and content for teachers and educators at public schools. Their main goal is the professional development of K-12 teachers, by providing resources to help teachers increase their expertise in their fields and improve their teaching methods. Annenberg Media is one of the only public entities in the nation offering original educational content.

At the same time, the education material was distributed solely to schools through the organization’s own digital satellite channel, called the “Annenberg Channel.” In 1995 they developed their first website, which was essentially a brochure site directing them to the Annenberg Channel. Now, the Channel is nearly obsolete, as all materials are streamed on demand on the Learner.org Web site – part of Annenberg Media. The learner.org website is functional. All of the programming and content is contained there, as well as information for educators, teacher resources, and links to purchase the content. But at the same time, Annenberg Media now finds themselves at a crossroads. They have prided themselves as an organization for being able to provide educational content in a cutting edge style, via media platforms and utilizing new technologies. But now they recognize that the game is changing, and changing quickly.

During the presentation, I asked them how they plan to stay relevant in the face of the changing landscape. Do they have plans to develop a more robust web experience for Web 2.0 – with social networking features and user-generated content? The answer is yes and no. The social networking aspect is something that is very new to them, and they aren’t exactly sure how to respond. Should the website have a function where teachers create profiles and accounts? Should there be a chat forum and/or other opportunities for teachers to connect with one another? These are things they would like to have in the future, but aren’t exactly sure how to achieve them. With respect to user-generated content, that is an area where they want to move slowly. In one sense, it motivates a higher level of user interaction and participation, which is an one of the objectives. At the same time, Annenberg Media has been generating its own original educational content since the organization began. They don’t want to compromise the quality of the curriculum. That makes user-generated content a more difficult thing to achieve.

Personally, I believe they will have to step back at some point and retool their website in order to stay relevant in the future. I believe the model is strong. They have a lot of good things going for them. Namely, they have a core based of dedicated and fanatical users – being the educators who subscribe to the materials. I myself remember being taught some Anneberg Media-based materials when I was in High School. So the material itself is still relevant, and highly regarded. But there are other groups that are doing the same things they want to be doing. Mainly, the best example is Educause.edu. I am going to stay in touch with the work of Annenberg Media, and use them as a benchmark of how education and new technologies will blend together moving forward.

Reaction Paper 12 - Text Msg in Class

If You Text in Class, This Prof Will Leave

I got a kick when reading an article a last week about my alma mater, Syracuse University, when noted philosophy professor Lawrence Thomas threatened to walk out of if he ever caught another student text messaging in class. And then the following week, he actually did walk out of class. There was a student – in the front row no less — in a large lecture sending multiple text messages.

Dr. Thomas walked out on the class – the second time that he had done so. He then sent the university’s chancellor, his dean, and all of the students an e-mail explaining his actions and his frustration at the “brazen” disrespect he had received in class. The e-mail was promptly forwarded throughout the campus, and made its way to other publications. Some students filed petitions against the professor, claiming there were only a handful of students involved in the incident, and the whole class shouldn’t be punished. Even worse, was the firestorm of reactions in response to the ethnic and racial overtones of the teacher’s e-mails. In the e-mail, he noted that the student who sent the text message is Cuban, and that last year. He also said he likes ethnic diversity on campus, but not if it means a lack of discipline and respect.

I have never considered the cultural and ethnic implications of technology and text messaging. Perhaps it is because I am white, and I therefore see everything through my own lens. I was not aware that there is an ethnic group that is known for its penchant for text messaging. As a white man, I too enjoy text messaging. I have been guilty of checking text messages in class as well, although I know it is wrong to disturb the class. I do know that it’s very popular in Europe, where mobile devices are more widespread.

It is interesting how much has changed since I graduated from Syracuse, which was 2002. In my Freshman year, not a single student brought a laptop to class. By Senior year, I only remember one student with a laptop in all of my classes, and I remember because I though she was being so precocious. I myself did not even own a mobile phone until my Junior year, which was 2001. I have always been behind the curve with respect to technology. I still find it a little unnatural to see so many students with laptops in class nowadays. I have sat next to enough students to know that they are not always taking notes either. Most of the time they are checking e-mails and other websites. I can certainly sympathize with Prof. Thomas, because I imagine that must be disruptive and discouraging for a teacher. Both of my parents are university professors, and I have heard them complain enough times about unruly or disrespectful students. I asked my father about this incident. He can’t stand when a student’s cell phone rings in class. He also doesn’t understand the proliferation of laptops. He accepts it, because he doesn’t want to be seen as the crusty old professor that doesn’t allow them. But his biggest complaint is the typing of all those keys while he is trying to speak.

As for Prof. Thomas, he has threatened to quit his job in the text messaging continues in class. The Chancellor of the school has refused to comment publicly, knowing full well that taking a position on either side of the argument will bring more harm than good. I think the incident will blow over in due time, but I do like to see the professor trying to take his classroom back.

Reaction Paper 10 - TechSoup and the NetSquared Conference

Today I spoke with Daniel Ben-Horin, Executive Director of CompuMentor. CompuMentor has been operating for the last 21 years, providing technical support, expertise, and mentorship to nonprofit organization. They launched the site TechSoup, and are also hosts of the Net Squared Conference. The next NetSquared Conference is to take place on May 27^th in New York, hosted by Cisco. Their mission is to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations. They are breaking down barriers of knowledge and access to technology tools for nonprofit organizations. During the NetSquared Conference last year, they awarded seed funding to 21 projects through the Mashup Challenge, an initiative designed to provide deeper insight into the social issues affecting communities, by the use of web-based mash-ups. A list of the winning projects are listed here. One thing that they all share in common is that they are very much community based. A majority of the mash-ups rely on Google Maps, as is the case with most mash-ups out there. (Google Maps is the leading source of mash-ups by about 10 times the next competitor).

One of the more remarkable projects to come out of Net Squared Conference is Maplight.org. MAPLight.org brings together campaign contributions and how legislators vote, providing an unprecedented window into the connections between money and politics. They currently cover the California Legislature and U.S. Congress. In my mind, this project is so remarkable because it taps into the greatest advantage to the socially conscious web-based experience – transparency. Transparency is the key to the experience. That is what attracted me to Kiva.org as well, is that it provides a level of transparency that wasn’t easy to accomplish prior to the web. When you make a donation online, you are able to track your payment, you are able to see how much money is being raised against the project goals, and you are able to hold the Microfinance institutions accountable who are handling the loans. Maplight takes this to a new level, by being able to effectively track the flow of money, and holding legislators accountable who are handling that money. It is an unprecedented phenomenon. Other added benefits include the added knowledge that you gain in the process that was previously unavailable. Also, there is again the sense of community-driven action, and a higher level of involvement in a process.

As Daniel Ben-Horin explained, there’s a whole new generation of online tools available – tools that make it easier than ever before to collaborate, share information and mobilize support. These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, and more. What most people are calling “Web 2.0″; he calls the social web. The power of the social web is the emphasis on interactivity, user-generated content (UGC), and the community aspect. Although the web is world wide, its power comes from the relationships that it enables. These relationships can transcend locations and boundaries.

There are other projects that have come out of Net Squared that are worth noting. Another Los Angeles based project is Healthy City, an initiative of the community-based nonprofit The Advancement Project. Health City is another Google Map mash-up that provides a layout of the county of Los Angeles, and lists any and all service providers within a certain zip code, from health clinics, police stations, schools, service providers, and any other information you want to access for that neighborhood. That is a project that can service any members of the Los Angeles community, and it will eventually spread to include communities across the country. I will be sure to keep an eye on what happens in the next Net Squared conference.

Customer Evangelists

Another list from Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba at Church of the Customer. Here they outline six steps to creating customer evangelists:

1 Customer plus-delta (Continuously gather customer feedback)

2 Napsterize knowledge (Freely share your knowledge)

3 Build the buzz (Create intelligent word-of-mouth networks)

4 Create community (Encourage communities of customers to meet and share)

5 Make bite-size chunks (Devise specialized, smaller offerings to get customers to bite)

6 Create a cause (Focus on making the world, or your industry, better)

Reaction Paper 9 - More Evangelism

I don’t want to abandon the topic of customer evangelism because it is such an important factor to any business, and it keeps popping up everywhere I go on the web. In Techcrunch this past week, the top 3 stories were about Fubar.com, Facebook, and Digg. According to a list of most-trafficked social network sites (done by Compete), Fubar now ranks 14^th. But apparently it is the fastest growing site, increasing it’s traffic by over 3 million percent in the past year. That is phenomenal growth for a site that is essentially an “online happy hour.” Just like Field of Dreams, ‘if you build it, they will come.’ It is hard to tell whether or not the site can maintain or sustain such rapid growth. After signing up and browsing, I find the site to be busy and disorienting. And I am not sure exactly who the target audience is after finding some profiles. It is a happy hour, but you don’t have to be 21, so perhaps it attracts the younger sets who want to feel older. Whatever it is, there is a contagion among the customer base. And there must be a high level of evangelism of the core users. Any company that grows by three million percent must be considered a success, and it must have the people talking.

Facebook was in the news for testing a new instant messaging service that will be launching soon, much to the chagrin of the third parties have who have built widgets, apps, or other forms of instant messaging services on Facebook. Only 2 or 3 years ago, Facebook was once in the position that Fubar is now, experiencing massive growth all at once. Now that they have captured the market, they must continually create programs or developments to please the consumer base. A funny thing with Evangelism is that when things are going well people are talking, and when a site is doing things that are disagreeable, the people are screaming. A phenomenon that Facebook is no stranger to.

The same goes for Digg, whose users are an impassioned lot that always seem to be screaming about something or other. In last week’s news stories, the anger appears to be justified, as Digg may be involved in an acquisition. The core Digg users quickly mobilized and raised their voices in opposition. The Digg community has shown an amazing unity in voice and focus in action. Time and again they have gotten there message out there so quickly, it would make any political campaign jealous. I wonder if the Digg creators had envisioned such a strong community when they first started. And I wonder how a company goes about creating such a strong community. In the end, it all comes back to the same core issues – good content and good people. Build a site with good content, and cater to your consumers. Facebook has figured that out. They have always sought to create the best platform, with open source software that invites participation and innovation. And when things don’t go well, the customers let them know about it.

Fubar can learn lessons from the social networking sites that are above them on the popularity list. The most important thing that they can do as a team is cater to the users, and try to foster an interactive and engaging atmosphere. A funny thing with regards to the list of Social Network Sites, is that MySpace is still three times more visited than Facebook. I didn’t realize they were still doing so well. Anyway, here is the list to check out:

 

 

 

 

Y Combinator 2008 Firms

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/14/y-combinator-demo-day-roundup-for-spring-2008/

Mark Hendrickson, March 14, 2008 The fledgling startups listed below will present their ideas and initial products to investors at this spring’s Y Combinator Demo Day on March 18. Of the 19 companies in this batch, 10 have already launched and only one remains in stealth mode. Most of them have been in development for only three months. Chatterous Chatterous Addmired Snaptalent RescueTime RescueTime MightyQuiz Tipjoy 8aWeek WebMynd BaseShield Insoshi Mixwit Omnisio Deluux Wundrbar YumDots Kirkland North Joberator

 

Reaction Paper 8 - Marketing Evangelism

The Church of the Customer Blog by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba is a great source of information for evangelizing, marketing, and managing an online community.  I included Ben McConnell’s “10 marketing resolutions for 2008” in a post below because I find them to be so relevant. I also want to address another post that he had a couple months ago. In the blog he asks, “what type of community, exactly, do you want to create?” Here are the four possible ways to describe a community:

1. Clique
2. Network
3. Cult
4. Nation

These 4 communities exists on a scale, the axis representing ‘size’ and ‘devotion.’ Therefore, a Nation represents the greatest scale with the most fervent users, while a clique is the smallest in scale with the least devoted users.  When creating a social media site, I imagine everyone starts off with a clique community. Every site must begin with a core group of users, who most likely share many similar traits (such as, they are related to or are friends with the developers). Even a large networking site like LinkedIn at one point started as a clique/niche site. There were probably other social networking sites similar to LinkedIn that were existence several years ago. So how come LinkedIn broke through while other sites did not?  Did LinkedIn offer superior services and a better performing platform, or did they just get lucky?  LinkedIn successfully positioned itself as a social networking site that focuses on professional relationships, which was probably unique at the time. But were they first to the market?  Is that what it takes sometimes – to be the first player in a market that people notice?  I don’t know the answer to that question.  But I do know, in life, sometimes it is better to be lucky than to be good.  

 

LinkedIn is also unique in that they are able to get many customers to actually pay to use their service. The business is built around premium services. The average user pays $200 to $300 a year, some pay over $2,000 a year.  It is hard to imagine any users on the Internet paying a subscription service fee to use a social networking site. In this day and change, a company that charges a subscription fee is just providing an opportunity for a competitor to come and offer that same service for free. I would like to know about any social media site that has a revenue model that is not ad-bases. According to Ben McConnell in the Church of the Customer, that model is us – word of mouth. “It’s a sustainable, long-term form of word of mouth that can build brands. There’s countless ways to think about making that happen, which is part of the challenge.” Even they are trying to monetize on word of mouth by creating a Ning site based upon that very concept – The Society of Word of Mouth (SWOM) -

Church of the Customer Rules

10 marketing resolutions for 2008

By Ben McConnell

What might marketers and entrepreneurs tackle in 2008? Here’s one list, in no particular order.

1. Vow to do more attracting than selling.

To use a high school analogy: Be the charismatic kid with a winning smile, a charming personality and a good dose of humility. Don’t be the tard who farts and throws firecrackers at cats in that desperate vein of “Look at me! Look at me!”

 

2. Adopt the 5th P.

If your company relies on the classic marketing model of the four P’s, add a fifth one: Participation. Build a model of how customers, partners and employees can meet, share and participate with the company or with one another.

3. Build a niche.

The future is micro-specific. It starts with people who share highly specific characteristics that defy traditional demographics. Define an ideal customer to the n’th degree, like unemployed college professors who wear corduroy sport coats (with elbow patches) and drive old Volvos.

4. Conduct a word of mouth audit.

Put every customer-facing experience up for review, from reception to the floor person, to accounts payable. Does the customer experience generate good word of mouth, or bad word of mouth? Adjust then measure again.

 
5. Create a social network.

Do it on Facebook, or Ning or the good ol’ analog way: a customer advisory board. Any form of social network among customers, partners or employees (current or former) is a tangible asset. Treat it as you would your grandparents (respectfully), not as you would your younger brother whom you randomly punch in the head.

 
6. Vow to eliminate a stupid rule.

You know what it is. Customers (or bloggers) have already told you. So eliminate it already. For extra points, give it a funeral.

 
7. Create a social media training program.

In 2008, expect word of mouth and customer evangelism to be accelerated by social media considerably more than it was in 2007. What people say online will reach deeper into the B2B world, too, like long-term services contracts and enterprise-wide computer systems. Understanding the basics of social media, how it works and the effects it can have on reputation and sales should be part of annual training programs.

 
8. Ban use of the word “consumer.”

Nothing says “I’m like Borat” more than using “consumers” to describe your customers, or end-customers. If you call the sales channel your customers, then their customers are your end-customers. To call them consumers is so Borat-like.

 

9. Raise the ethics bar.

Be a hero to people who still believe in ethics. Make 2008 the year you set higher standards for ethical behavior. Make the standards clear to employees, partners and vendors. Enforce them. Gaming the system is for congressmen and crooked military contractors.

 10. Do what you love.

It may be trite but if you don’t love what you’re doing, how can you expect anyone else to?

Reaction Paper 8 - Social Network Platforms

Several weeks ago, Max Levchin made news with the funding of Slide.com, a popular tool that allows users to create slide shows and pimp out their photos for social network pages (started in ’04). Slide is essentially an API for Facebook and all the rest, but it’s attracting the big bucks. It just raised $50 million in a fourth round of funding that values the company at more than $500 million, with major investors like Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price.  News article.

As a founders and Chief Technology Officer of PayPal at the tender age of 23, Levchin knows the web. He is probably the largest widget/app out there. He keeps a smart blog called ‘You’ve Gotta Be Kidding Me.” His recent post is titled Developer incentives in social networking platforms, in which he breaks down the essence of a successful social network site. More accurately, he says that a good way to consider social platform design is from the perspective of game design. The goals of a good  platform are to:

1. Attract and keep top developer talent
2. Encourage development of net-positive products
3. Maximize constructive competition among developers
4. Minimize objectively net-negative developers & products

Simplicity, consistency, and fairness are also keys to proper development, according to Levchin. I find it interesting that he lists these 3 rules.  Simplicity I completely understand. It seems to me that consistency and fairness both essentially relate to trust – trust between the user and developer.  If a user goes to a site and the site keeps changing, and the functions keep changing, then that is motivation enough to abandon the site.  Facebook has become the most successful social network platform because they have performed well against the above list of rules. They have top talent, they have kept the platform open and marketable, giving a perceived notion of fairness and encouraging competitive development practices.  If someone is able to develop the best killer app, then that will be exploited and disseminated.

On that note, Levchin also has some interesting things to say about viral marketing, which was the topic of my last paper and of increasing interest. According to him, the platform’s most valuable control is distribution. “Perhaps the hardest task in social platform design is creating the rules and limits applying to viral channels.”                Valuable distribution is the key. It is easy for a viral marketing to essentially become spam.  One must be wary of saturation, another surefire way to turn off users.  The goal is to have reach, frequency, consistency, and valuable traffic.   

            Again back to the Facebook model, it is easy to see how fickle users become. On one hand, some products are able to attract such a large userbase because of strength in numbers. If all of my friends are using a certain product, then I inevitably will have to use that product as well.  Conversely, if you introduce one product that is perceived as a threat or an infringement upon security or privacy (i.e. Beacon), users will flee to the next bright thing.  It is sort of like the bar scene. The point of going to any bar is to be there hanging out with my friends and meeting other new people.  I don’t care about the architecture or the space, I care more about who is using it.

Doesn’t Suck

From Dean Hunt

(http://deanhunt.com/your-website-sucks/)

<a href=”http://deanhunt.com/your-website-sucks/”><img src=”http://www.deanhunt.com/images/suck.png” alt=”My website doesnt suck”/></a>