AniBlurbs (Column)

About AniBlurbs | Anibal do Rosario in English (Wie is Anibal do Rosario | Over AniBlurbs in het Engels)

Anibal do Rosario is een Interactive Strateeg: Een leergierige, no-nonsense “Digital Native” die van zijn passie zijn beroep heeft weten te maken en continue op zoek is naar de ideale balans tussen creativiteit (gut-feeling) en meetbare resultaten (data).

Heeft in relatief korte tijd samen met andere professionals, mooie resultaten weten te boeken op diverse Online Marketing projecten voor Triple A merken. Commercieel en creatief; goed op de hoogte van de technische (on)mogelijkheden en daardoor een bruggenbouwer tussen die disciplines.

Af en toe wellicht een tikkeltje left-field, maar daardoor ook écht een frisse blik en altijd met de eindgebruiker scherp in het vizier. Want de mondige consument geeft enerzijds totaal niets om jouw merk, organisatie of onderneming; maar anderzijds staat zij open voor authentieke, open communicatie.

Ervaring heeft Anibal de afgelopen elf jaar opgedaan met:

• Retail;
• Direct Sales;
• Webdesign;
• Entertainment (Dance);
• Webshops;
• Online Marketing/Strategie en
• Arbeidsmarkt Communicatie…

En dit in projecten aan bureauzijde voor o.a. de overheid en diverse AAA-merken zoals de Koninklijke Marine, Shell, UWV, Rabobank, Vodafone en aan opdrachtgeverzijde bij internet startup Dance-Tunes.com (een dochter van ID&T en Q-dance), GAMcard, en maakt momenteel onderdeel uit van het team achter Factuurdesk.nl, ePGB.nl & ZoekPgbZorg.nl.

Mede hierdoor beschikt hij over een ruim arsenaal aan kennis en ervaring op het gebied van ondernemen, Organisatiekunde, Management, ICT, Sales & Marketing. Hierdoor is hij niet alleen in staat is om full-service te denken en te handelen, maar vooral ook om op het juiste moment de juiste mensen bij het proces te betrekken.

Neem direct contact op met Anibal >>

Succesfully optimizing the conversion rate of your website strongly depends on the way the user experiences your site. CoTweet’s Creative Director and co-Founder, Kyle Sollenberger, has rounded up ten design fundamentals on User Interface Design over on Think Vitamin. Below you’ll find a small subtract of some of the key takeaways to keep in mind with UIX:

Know your users’ goals
“Obsess over customers: when given the choice between obsessing over competitors or customers, always obsess over customers. Start with customers and work backward.” –Jeff Bezos, CEO amazon.com

Your users’ goals are yours, so learn them… …Find out what interfaces they like and sit down and watch how they use them…

Stick to web-wide Interface Design conventions
Users spend the majority of their time on interfaces other than your own (Facebook, MySpace, news  sites, etc.): There is no need to reinvent the wheel…

Consistency
“The more users’ expectations prove right, the more they will feel in control of the system and the more they will like it.” – Jakob Nielson

Your users need consistency. They need to know that once they learn to do something, they will be able to do it again… …A consistent interface… …increases their efficiency.

Provide feedback
Always inform your users of actions, changes in state and errors, or exceptions that occur. Visual cues or simple messaging can show the user whether his or her actions have led to the expected result.

Don’t EVER punish your users
No matter how clear your design is, people will make mistakes… …Design ways for users to undo actions, and be forgiving with varied inputs; no one likes to start over because he/she put in the wrong birth date format…

Iterate, iterate, iterate
…It is often said when developing interfaces that you need to fail fast, and iterate often…

As Creative Director of CoTweet Kyle -“@iamkyle”- Sollenberger oversees all design activities—from the layout, appearance and usability of products to the representation of corporate identity. Be sure to check out Kyle’s full post and more examples on Carsonified’s Blog.

“…there is a group of executives inside the company that believe “Pay With Facebook” could end up a bigger revenue source than Facebook’s advertising revenues. We’ve estimated Facebook’s advertising revenues will reach $475 million in 2009.

To get an idea what kind of challenges Facebook will have to overcome to get there, consider that during the second quarter, eBay subsidiary PayPal’s revenues were $669 million, up 11% y/y.

It got there with:

• 75 million active registered accounts
• A total payment volume of $16 billion in the quarter
• With accounts containing approximately $3 billion in stored value that is spent every 2 weeks
• Supporting 19 currencies
• With a .30% fraud rate

Facebook can’t approach any of those numbers yet, but it does possess one distinct advantage — nearly 300 million monthly active users.

What’s more, the rousing success that is Facebook Connect — the service that allows users to log in to participating third-party sites using their Facebook IDs with one click — hints that Facebook users might appreciate a similar “one-click” simplicity when paying for merchandise on the Internet.”

Be sure to check the whole article at BusinessInsider.com

Privacy concerns aside, one can imagine that Facebook’s One-Click payment solution, along with the social sharing of articles and posts through Facebook Connect, could be the panacea for newspaper publishers looking for ways of monetizing content beyond the stale and flailing “generate-pageviews-sell-banners” business model.

How so?

Well, besides the general mentality that digital content should be “free”, one of the major issues in monetizing content on the web by surrounding it with a “Pay-First wall”, is the fact that visitors don’t know in advance what (quality) they’ll exactly be paying for; consumers fear buying a shrink-wrapped magazine purely based on its cover, only to be disappointed afterwards.

Whereas on iTunes or with Steam you usually know that what your getting is guaranteed to have a substantial replay-factor or, in the case of iTunes, since the price is relatively low, you can afford the risk of a dud every now and then.

This, arguably, is not the case with ubiquitous news, or in-depth articles.

Utilizing Facebook’s micro-payment solution combined with Facebook Connect however, publishers will have the opportunity of using a “hassle-less” One-Click online payment solution, powered by trusted(?) recommendations of friends: “Hey Todd, here’s an article I just read about Obama’s healthcare reform,  touching it from a viewpoint I believe you’d find interesting, check it out. Cheers, Brian.” Ching!

Farfetched? For a showcase of the true power of social sharing: Think the Bit.Ly-shortened links being universally shared on twitter, spreading idea’s, content (and malware) virally. Only this time it’s done by folks with verified Facebook ID’s so you know they’re actually real and can be trusted.

Off course, should the scenario sketched above come to fruition, Facebook will have to get a piece of the revenue pie too, but the publishing moguls ‘d be wise to carefully re-consider jumping into their fabled “No-Can-Do” reflexes, since it’s becoming increasingly clear that the other option for them and their companies’ stakeholders is not having a pie to share at all…

(PS please note that I deliberately left all privacy concerns regarding Facebook out of this exercise, since I believe that we should topple the online publishing troubles in a concentric way; shilling away to the core, tackling the multifaceted problem layer by layer, instead of pre-maturely obstruficating any possible solution by thinking in limitations only.

This, however, does not imply that I don’t see the possible dangers of Facebook not only owning your social graph and personal data, but also knowing when you bought what (and whom approved said purchase!) and where you’re likely to go to form a political opinion or otherwise.

Though I feel and see that having this kind of aggregated combined profile data of possibly more than 300 million people in the hands of one party could pose a real threat when falling into the wrong hands, I urge you to go and take a look over at Alexander van Elsas’s blog, as he has already indentified and dissected this problem with great abandon.)

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Deze bedrijven gebruiken mogelijk informatie (niet jouw naam, adres, e-mailadres of telefoonnummer) over jouw bezoek aan deze of aan andere websites om advertenties weer te geven over goederen en services waarin je wellicht geïnteresseerd bent. Als je hierover meer informatie wenst of als je wilt voorkomen dat deze bedrijven deze informatie gebruiken, klik je op deze link.

Weave Identity is a very interesting component from Mozilla Labs (of Firefox fame) and a possible disrupting one for the Facebook Connect’s, OpenID’s and OAuth’s of this world:

“Offering a single sign-in solution for the web is currently a hot topic. Google, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace and countless other sites are all offering to host your identity for you. Many of these key players on the social web are also offering tools to allow third-party sites to let you log in using the identity you have hosted with whoever your provider is – Google through FriendConnect, Facebook through Facebook Connect and Twitter through its recently debuted OAuth-based system. But in the end, who knows how long any of those sites will last? It seems to make more sense to hand these duties off to something more permanent than the hot site of the moment.

That’s where Mozilla’s latest implementation of Weave starts to make sense. You can store your credentials anywhere, including on Mozilla’s servers or your own web server.”

Source: WIRED’s Webmonkey

If the Weave add-on is implemented as a standard feature in the next version of the 2^nd largest browser in the world, it stands a reasonable chance of becoming THE default Online Identity Manager/Social Media Passport; allowing you to safely and seamlessly log in to your favourite Social Networks, blogs and communities, across multiple platforms (Windows, Mac OS) and various devices (think Mobile, Netbooks, Thin Clients).

All the while giving you complete and FULL control over your online identity (you can even store your Weave login credentials on your own server!), which positions it directly opposite of the Walled Garden approach that Facebook is fast becoming notorious for.

The ease of use, combined with the fact that your average internet user hasn’t even heard of Google-, Facebook- and Twitter’s Online Identity Management solutions make Firefox Weave a serious threat to the aforementioned parties. After all: Wouldn’t it seem more logical and feel safer for her to let the browser take care of her online identity?

“Something that often goes unsaid in the discussion about online identity is that while most websites right now require usernames and passwords, many people actually use the password manager feature in the browser-effectively turning their browser into a limited identity manager.”

Source: Mozilla Labs

By offering this One-Log-In-To-Rule-Them-All^TM feature as a standard option in the browser, much like Yahoo’s- or Google’s toolbar, a lot of the hassle and security issues associated with web based ID alternatives are removed from the user’s table:

“User experience in general suffers as protocols for federation (e.g. OpenID) involve complex redirects which jump the user from page to page and leave them open to phishing attacks…”

Source: Mozilla Labs

And there’s another major USP that promises a bright future for the Weave project: Firefox is an Open Source initiative, and even though OpenSocial, OpenID & OAuth are Open Source projects as well, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google and Microsoft are commercial parties with a deep interest into becoming your single sign-in partner, so they can monitor the sites you visit and the time frame in which you did: pure data mining for marketing purposes. In a time where privacy issues are within everyone’s crosshairs, this could become Mozilla’s trump card in the battle for your Online Identity.

Of course, there’s nothing stopping Google (note that they have 300 Million accounts!) from implementing such a feature in Chrome -it’s very own browser- using Friend Connect, or Microsoft from doing the same with their Live toolbar/Live Passport and Internet Explorer. The point is that the former hasn’t yet managed to get any serious foot in the browser market. And though the latter is the current incumbent in browser market share (for now), it has failed for almost 10 years to make it’s .NET Passport/Live ID efforts a true cross-web success, even as younger initiatives from the likes of Facebook and twitter have taken off in the past year or so.

All in all, it’ll be very interesting to see how the developments around Identity Hosting continue to evolve…

[Update: Netlog now accepts Google FriendConnect, more on TechCrunch.]

Honda recently did a take-over on Vimeo.com which was much talked about by marketing insiders.

Instead of posting or explaining the concept here, I’d like to suggest you’d first take a look over on the site and experience it for yourself -especially if you’re a creative/interactive professional and haven’t seen it already.

[Performance warning: close down any other browser tabs/windows or any other application that has a direct net connection right now, I know I suffered from some serious lag the first time.]

Apart from the novelty(?) factor of this kind of creative content-integration, I’m not quite sure where the real added value for Honda and its customers lies in this particular case.

I’ll get back to that thought in a moment though; first I’d like to point to a section on the page that caught my attention. It clearly depicts how a viral starts spreading (see the 2 images below):

Honda Insight - Vimeo Take over Stats

The table contains the statistics of said video on a daily basis, i.e.: how many times it was watched, “liked” and how many comments were made on the page itself, all in relation to each other and non-cumulative (note that the numbers are displayed on a per day basis!).

Clearly, the usual exponential viral mechanisms are at work here, which is fascinating in of itself, yet I believe that despite these pretty impressive numbers this mini-campaign as is will not enjoy a widespread viewer base and live up to its true potential, mainly because of the following 4 reasons:

1. The content isn’t “spreadable”;
2. A lack of a clear call to action;
3. The quality of the content itself and
4. There’s no follow-up.

The content isn’t spreadable, technically speaking:
Notice how I didn’t embed the video right here as I usually would, instead referring you to Vimeo, because there was no other way you could undergo it the way it was meant to be experienced.

In other words: people will first have to go to the Vimeo page and have a true broadband internet connection(!) to experience it smoothly and in full effect; detach the video from the context of this page and it becomes just another (attempt at a) cool viral. Pure branding, zero capitalization of the ensuing conversations.

Nowadays it’s more effective to take a channel-neutral and/or federated content approach to reach out to your audience on the net, and part of that means making your content spreadable through widgets, embeddable video’s, etc.. The Vimeo video is embeddable of course, but the page -and thus the experience- is not.

There’s no call to action:
The concept itself doesn’t trigger the visitor to do anything: You just sit and watch, just like on TV…

The creative team apparently embraced the technological and creative possibilities that the internet offers in marrying video with a webpage, yet somehow failed to capitalize on the buzz that it generated and thus at the opportunity to generate leads.

Honda’s rich media take over is no interactive advertising but more akin to an online guerrilla advert, which could have been done offline, possibly generating more buzz and brand-awareness outside the digerati niche.

Then again, it was created by Wieden & Kennedy (Amsterdam), a traditional agency with it’s roots firmly grounded in offline advertising campaigns.

The quality of the content isn’t worth spreading:
If it’s aimed at the Marketing/Tech/Creative niche: they’re already accustomed to these “Breaking-The-4^th-Wall” take-over actions by now on YouTube or dedicated viral mini-sites, and this example isn’t remarkable.

If it’s not aimed at said niche, then one has to wonder why on earth it was posted on a niche social video site like Vimeo.com in the first place…

Adding all the numbers together from the stats image above, there are over a 1.750 likes, 300+ comments and 177.000 views generated in less than two weeks(!), pointing to a cult hit and/or people watching it more than once (it’s not clear whether Vimeo filters out non-unique views/cookies).

On the other hand, the numbers in the table don’t depict all mentions of the video across the Social Media space, and it was only posted a few days ago, so this is just merely the tip of the iceberg. Here’s hoping that Honda’s campaign team has access to social media monitoring tools from Radian6 or TrackUr and have activated their BackType Alerts to keep a clear overview.

All in all, in terms of buzz and people interacting with the page this is no bad example of content integration at all, it’s just a shame there’s no apparent follow-up or integration in, say, a 360˚campaign for maximum effect.

Now of course at this very moment we have no idea what Honda’s campaign objective was in the first place: It could be a proof of concept, trying it out for a small fee, with little risk, before scaling it up on YouTube allowing the numbers game to come into play, leading to massive exposure and off course more ways for the community and consumers/prospects to interact with the brand.

As I’m a firm believer in the merits of content-integration instead of plain display bannering, for me personally it will be very interesting to see how this plays out and if Honda will release an evaluation on their company blog or industry titles like Ad Age or ReadWriteWeb.

Microsoft dares to take a peek: fast forwarding 10 years into the future of the interwebs; location based services seamlessly integrated with flexible Miniware (thin-clients!) and all topped off with a sweet layer of Augmented Reality…

Very Star Trek indeed, yet, it shows us that beyond the technology, the real challenge is going to lie in syncing all these services from various international competitors (Open Source and Interoperability Standards anyone?) AND getting the User Experience Design perfect.

Check out the inspiring video below:

MS Office Labs 2019

“…many advertisers in the past gave most of the credit for a sale or conversion — which in the web world could include anything from visiting a website to printing an online coupon — to the last ad clicked on or seen by a consumer. But that means brand-focused sites such as NYTimes.com and MarthaStewart.com and even social-media sites such as Facebook and MySpace lose credit because they are often not where a consumer will see that last ad. And when they lose credit, they lose advertisers, and when they lose ad revenue, well, you’ve read that story.

“Publishers have a lot to gain,” said Steve Kerho, VP-analytics, media and marketing optimization at Organic. Mr. Kerho has been doing lots of analysis on how online-display ads affect search and conversions and found that in some cases, a display ad can increase a search ad’s click-through rate 25% to 30%. If he had simply measured the clicks from search, he would have missed the display ads’ influence.”

Source: Adage

So… If we’d translate the above model to, say, a real world situation; that’d mean that the sales guy in the local electronics store should get a piece of the provision pie, and maybe you’re neighbourhood whiz kid should be offered a small fee too, since they were the ones that influenced you before you decided to shell out on a new bleeding-edge desktop and order it directly by mail-order, no?

Of course, the conclusion presented above is preposterous to say the least. Not giving full credit to the last click shows a lack of common sense and of everyday reality:

If we’d were to apply this model to the offline advertising industry we’d might as well start charging less for TV ads during the Super Bowl or advertisements in general, since it has never been empirically proven that said ads actually sell significantly more cars, to name but an example.

(Actually I hereby challenge thee naysayers to tell me why the fledgling automotive industry in the US can’t be saved by throwing more money against Interruption Campaigns now that the going is though… Odds are it’s because it just doesn’t work that way nowadays…)

Publishers would of course love to use such a model, since suddenly those abysmally low Click Through Rates on social networks ´d become a license to print money, yet that’s not where the problem lies: it’s about engaging with the visitors of the Facebook’s of this world if and when they feel like it, adding value to the community, giving them something to talk about or a good reason to get rid of their friends. The engagement model is a far more viable one since it makes it very clear for all stakeholders what the true value of those brand interactions are for everyone.

Conjuring op schemes to charge more for a product -display banner- that, on it’s own, has failed to truly deliver on its promise up until this very moment, is not the way forward out of this recession. The research budget would be well better spent on innovation, adding value to the visitors, strategic alliances -you name it, just do not waste it on taking undercover pot-shots at “Go -Emperor CPC- Gle” et all.

There is one thing that does ring true about the statement that a conversion shouldn’t be attributed to just the Last Click alone; and that’s the reoccurring coincidence that carefully crafted, creative Crossmedia campaigns drive word-of-mouth & website traffic, allowing for a tighter control on conversion, ánd they also have the uncanny ability to tip the Attitude scale in your Brands’ favour. A little…

It’s common sense and it’s what marketing should be all about: influencing as many factors as you can to get the prospect to turn into a consumer, making her loyal, spurring her on to buy more and in the end becoming a brand-ambassador.

The communication mix as well as the quality of your product combined with the customer centricity level of your organization all contribute to that end.

As well as a million other tiny factors (does the sun shine, did THAT girl on the train give you a smile, do you have enough money to spare, etc., etc..)

Yet, if we’d follow the philosophy of Mr. Kerho to it’s conclusion, it’d mean we’d have to split the Cost-per-Click revenue and spread the wealth over all communication channels and creatives -and not just the display banner- in order to get a somewhat “fairer” representation of value/conversion for money.

[The Adage article starts with this quote: "The great paradox of the web is that it's an interactive medium and everything can be measured. And that's wonderful -- unless you're measuring the wrong thing."

I'd think what they should be stating is: The single greatest asset of the web is that it's an interactive medium, perpetuously capable of reinventing itself. And that's wonderful -- Unless you don't keep your feet firmly on the ground and try to look at opportunities with a positive mindset!]

“We are currently facing some of the most difficult and life threatening challenges with severe climate changes, the absence of clean water and food in large parts of our world, financial issues. These are all very physical problems. You may wonder what Social Technology can do about them. I imagine it could do at least 3 things:

1. It can help us create awareness of the problem
2. It can help us discuss and find solutions that can actually work
3. It can help us create enough momentum to force ourselves and our governments to act”

Source: Alexander van Elsas’s Weblog on new media & technologies and their effect on social behavior

“The borders around our job truly change like they never have in the past. The borders of the country we live in don’t have the same power they once did because we are no longer held to them in the same way. With Social Technology everything changes – our world changes – we change.

But it is because of those very things – those changes – that I don’t believe we will see real Social Technology within our lifetimes. These types of changes are too radical and endanger too many positions of power. So the dream will probably remain a dream.”

Source: Steven Hodson: The impossible dream – Social Technology

“According to a 2008 IDC white paper, 2007 marked the “crossover” year, when there was more digital data created than data storage to host it. The IDC report also projected that by 2011 the amount of digital data created will be more than twice the amount of available storage.

Bottom line?

We don’t produce storage capacity at the same rate we produce digital information.”

Presuming that the scenario sketched above (taken from ReadWriteWeb.com) is true, in what ways can we tackle this dilemma? We already know that the use of streaming online video (mainly spurred by YouTube, Hulu and Tudou) will massively outstrip broadband uptake and network capacity in the coming years if no action is undertaken swiftly. So… Who’s responsible and what to do?

“…While most people agree that certain digital information is preservation worthy or of historical value to society, what about the digital pictures you took on your last holiday? Who is in charge of preserving them so that the next generation can access them?

In a nutshell, you are…”

The article also has some recommendations;

“…here are three things you can do right now:

1. Make a plan: Determine who is going to be in charge of your digital data once you are no longer capable of looking after it.

2. Make multiple copies: When it comes to valuable data, store it in different formats at different locations.

3. Migrate to new technologies: Don’t wait for storage media to become obsolete, migrate to new technologies and formats as they become available.

Finally, with some cloud services offering free data storage, it’s worth considering moving some of your data online…”

Read the full article on ReadWriteWeb.com.

“Users’ online lives are becoming more complicated and getting out of control for mainstream users. What if there was an easy way for normal users (non-power users) to ask the Internet to help them.”

This, in a nutshell, is the elevator pitch from US start-up Siri on their secretive CALO (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes) project.
Together with DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) they’re working on a new, revolutionary web interface, geared not towards the digerati, but the mainstream.

“The CALO project is building an automated assistant to help manage and improve your life. The technology spans all aspects of interaction–natural language processing, speech recognition, and planning and reasoning capabilities–and interfaces with all kinds of systems, such as email and contacts…”

Siri co-founder and Vice President of Engineering, Adam Cheyer. For more, see CNET.

(Credit: SRI International)

If we zoom in a little further on this announcement and take in the background info, we can actually see that Cheyer is actually referring to the Semantic Web or Web 3.0; a place of “Virtual Warmth” where Intelligence at the Interface allows the internet to pro-actively make recommendations to the user, much like a personal assistant:

“The interfaces we use to interact with the world’s information are getting smarter. Web portals gave us someone else’s idea of the content we should see. Then came search engines, which let us tell the system what we want, one query at a time. We are about to see the next wave -intelligence at the interface- in which the system knows about us, our information, and our physical environment. With knowledge about our context, an intelligent system can make recommendations & act on our behalf.”

(Credit: Tom Gruber)

Source (via CNET): Tom Gruber.

Siri itself claims to have her business model and partners in place and is committed to success, though it is common knowledge that that hasn’t stopped other revolutionary tech-driven initiatives from failing in the past: in the end consumers must be convinced and budged to re-learn their online habits AND download and purchase the software.

At this point it seems Siri is ready to release its (possibly) Disruptive Technology during the first half of 2009, and they’ve got some impressive pedigree on board allowing them to become the biggest Nightmare Competitor since Google: their payroll includes engineering and strategic wizards from internet and tech giants/godfathers such as Xerox PARC, Google, NASA, Motorola and Yahoo!.

Microsoft have already revealed some of their amazing achievements with their Surface Computer (interface, see the video above) & their Sphere, and scientists and digerati alike admit that the way we humans interact with the screen (The Office-trashcan-directory-folder Analogy) is anti-natural and the main reason non-power users such as my grandmother still don’t know how to send me an e-mail to stay in touch…

[And let's not forget the major leaps in productivity we could enjoy from innovations like these; the various office suites such as Open Office.org, Microsoft Office and Google Apps are said to be "productivity packages" but I suggest you'd take a stroll into any office anywhere in the world and witness for yourself how counterproductive most professionals are using it, even now in 2008!]

As the social divide grows between tech/web savvy people and those whom are not, I believe that ventures such as these -looming recession notwithstanding- could give a major and much needed boost to not only internet usage and web-app uptake by the mainstream, but to (new forms of) education as well: we really need a more democratic way of spreading (access to) knowledge.

Hopefully these developments shall be one of the many small steps in making the web a truly leveraging force for education, productivity and true interconnection worldwide.

Internet Strateeg Jim Stolze wordt bij BlueShots.TV geïnterviewd door Ilse Media’s CEO Joris van Heukelom.

Naast Jim’s (levens)visie is vooral zijn kijk op de onbewezen effectiviteit, gebrek aan accountability en vooral ook “zend-denken” van de traditionele reclamewereld (doorspoelen naar 06:39) “spot-on”; verplichte kost by all accounts (pun intended). [ let wel: Online kan er m.u.v. Google ook wat van: zie ook deze post van een andere grote denker op dit vlak; Alexander Vanelsas ]

Zeer zeker de moeite waard om naar te luisteren en van te leren dus, vooral ook gezien het feit dat er onder druk van de marktomstandigheden nu dan eindelijk een opmars van Results- en Permission Based Marketing zal plaatsvinden.

Het concept van zijn programma is als volgt: Twee stoelen, twee mensen. In Curriculum Vitae gaat presentator Joris van Heukelom in gesprek met succesvolle professionals met een dynamische carrière. Professionals die beschikken over een interessant CV dat altijd in beweging is. De gast en diens CV zijn voor Joris het materiaal voor een indringend en open minded gesprek. Curriculum Vitae, over de mens achter het cv. Ditmaal in de “blue chair” dus de man achter Marketing Podcast.

[VIDEO VERWIJDERD, ZIE UPDATE ONDERAAN POST]

Normaliter zou ik het betreffende filmpje uiteraard hier ter plekke embedden, echter die functionaliteit laat nog even op zich wachten, of zoals ze het bij BlueShots.TV zelf verwoorden:

“Binnenkort kun je met een embedcode per format altijd de laatste aflevering van je favoriete Blue Shots programma op je website zetten. Beschikbaar per 1 november 2008.”

Stay tuned…

[Update: De BlueShots video's zijn inmiddels "embedable" echter ze zijn helaas niet aan te passen aan de lay-out van je website: Zodra je probeert om zelf de afmetingen handmatig in de HTML code aan te passen, gaat er een ping naar de servers van BlueShots en co., en wordt het een auto-play film.

Daarnaast kun je niet meer bij de control/mediabay, dus kun je het filmpje vervolgens ook niet stopzetten. Iets wat om meerdere redenen vrij irritant is: De eerste reden is uiteraard dat de gebruiker c.q. bezoeker geen controle heeft over zijn webervaring, en de tweede reden is dat er ongevraagd dataverkeer plaats vindt zonder dat de gebruiker daar om heeft gevraagd.

Aangezien breedbandinternet daarbij nog steeds niet overal (in Nederland) vanzelfsprekend is, kan het daarnaast zijn dat het laden van de homepage van mijn Online Column ontoelaatbaar en onnodig lang gaat duren (omdat ik de laatste tijd nou eenmaal veel video’s hier heb staan, die overigens wel aan de eisen voldoen).

Om de bovenstaande redenen heb ik het betreffende videointerview voorlopig dus verwijderd, totdat er een verbeterde versie van de embedfunctionaliteit wordt aangeboden door het team bij BlueShots.]

Coming up with One Big Idea to resolve the issues of Poverty, Child Starvation or any other (in)directly linked anthropocentric crisis such as Global Pollution, Global Warming or the Energy Crisis -Peak Oil- for that matter requires consensus: Is there a problem? And if so at what scale? Consensus.

Professor Hans Rosling’s infamous presentations at TED back in 2006 and 2007 shook up our Western beliefs of developing and underdeveloped countries, if not challenge the very definition of what we should label as a developing country in the first place, based on the correct context of data. Consensus on the data upon which one can act.

Up until recently (2006) Pluto was known as a planet, nowadays its part of a different celestial class of its own, thousands of scientist worldwide went through several heated debates before consensus crystallized out of the fog of intellectual war.

Just as there had to be worldwide consensus to recognize the scale and possible implications of the root-rot in our global financial systems before tackling that challenge head-on, the same consensus and sense of urgency has to be developed towards Poverty and the other great issues of our time.

But where to start?

First of all I don’t believe that we’re ever going to have this global consensus -at least not with regards towards Poverty, for one simple reason: the very human nature of not acting unless the Danger is imminent and tangible. (The Global Financial Crisis forced our governments to act aptly and directly, because in light of the gargantuan consequences there simply was no other option.)

We shouldn’t attribute this to culture, greed or unwillingness, but to biology and more specifically our inner brain: A small genetic gift from our Prehistoric ancestors, which also seems to be the key to many addictions like drugs, smoking or drinking too much liquor. So, one might argue that we don’t have a software problem, but that ours is more akin to a hardware glitch so to speak.

Yet I do believe that in spite of all the above, we’re not excused of acting. Warren Buffet has once stated that we’ve all picked a lottery ticket at birth and so we should be happy and thankful to be born on the right side of the fence, in the right timeframe: Nothing should be taken for granted.

Whichever worldview you hold, you’re inherently part of an ecosystem and thus you profit -roughly speaking- from trade rights, education, infrastructure, communications, municipal services, place of birth, local history and the like. Not all of this stands on itself and not all of this can be accounted towards just paying taxes; If there’s anything the Financial Crisis has reaffirmed it’s that we’re part of a global village and what we’ve taken so far should be given back in some way or the other…

So in my humble attempt to join and contribute to the global poverty discussion on over 9.000 websites and blogs worldwide today, facilitated by BlogActionDay.org, here’s my part of the solution:

Free Education Through Free Internet Access.

Poverty has many, many causes, but if there’s one thing we can have consensus on, it’s that there’s a significant correlation between low education and poverty: I’m cutting some very rough, sharp corners here, but arguably one could state that education leads to knowledge, leads to opportunity. Not to say that access to education in and of itself is the full solution, but we should at least enable the poor regions in the world to gain access to the levering power of the web, now more than ever.

Just as the economy of the free web has proven to us that you can gain more by giving and sharing unconditionally, the same democratizing effect could apply to underdeveloped regions.

What can we do?

Google has partnered with HSBC to to deliver free internet access to the unconnected world by way of satellite already and they’re running their Project 10^100 contest, so if you happen to have an actionable idea waiting to get funded for a jumpstart, that would be a great start.

The BlogActionDay website has (links to) many more ideas aching to be implemented. Some are free, others are awaiting a micro-contribution; some idea’s are larger than life, whilst others take a more smaller approach. And while we’re at it: Let’s not forget to address poverty in the West too; we mustn’t assume that everyone living in the Developed World is living at acceptable standards and so here too there’s a lot to be done, starting with efforts to create worldwide consensus on Hidden Poverty as well.

Let’s create a Wiki of sorts where thought leaders from around the world can contribute and facilitate ideas to tackle poverty. And since all major social issues require an holistic approach to achieve sustainable results: Let’s give the underdeveloped those much needed 100 Dollar Laptops with free unlimited Wireless Internet access so they can learn, grow and contribute to the solutions themselves and then let’s use that community platform to tackle the Energy Crisis and Global Warming, together!

[This column is dedicated to the cause of Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty on the 15^th of October 2008.]

Martijn Ros (Brandmerck) did an interview with Andy Beal for his Graduation Thesis on Online Reputation Management in The Netherlands, though the core message is universal.

Andy -a speaker and consultant specializing in Online Reputation Management (ORM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing- is considered one of the world’s most respected Reputation Management experts, and has worked with many brand-leaders, such as Motorola, NBC, GlaxoSmithKline and SAS.

Beal’s current projects include his new book Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online, his blog Marketing Pilgrim and Trackur -an online Reputation Monitoring tool.

Two interesting outtakes, highlighting the arguments that every CEO/Marketer should keep in mind when conjuring up a business plan or marketing strategy:

“Martijn Ros: I am convinced that companies that have a so-called ‘interactive online profile’, and are known for their online presence through blogs and social networks, have a head start  when it comes to any unforeseen online reputation crisis. Could you tell something about the way you advise your clients when they want to create an interactive online profile?

Andy Beal: I absolutely agree with you. When a company creates an interactive online profile, it’s effectively telling its stakeholders -customers, investors, employees, etc- that it cares about the community and wants to be a part of the conversation. When an online reputation crisis hits, companies that have an social media profile are more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt and more likely to be able to respond quickly, within that channel.

I advise my clients to look for the “centres of influence.” Where are their stakeholders hanging-out online? When you understand the types of social media your stakeholders are using -maybe they prefer blogs over forums -you’ll increase your chances of successfully engaging them.

Martijn Ros: Do you advise organizations when they already have problems with their online reputation? Can you give an example of a case, and your approach in that matter (the name of the company can of course remain anonymous)?

Andy Beal: Right now, most companies only react to an online reputation crisis when they see it having an adverse effect on their Google reputation. When a negative blog post is on the first page of Google’s results, for your brand name, you tend to take notice. In these cases, I simply work with clients to help create and optimize positive web content. Our goal is to try and provide Google with positive web content that is more relevant, thus suppressing the negative pages.

The very smart companies are realizing that simply managing their Google reputation is akin to placing make-up over a cancerous mole. You have to treat the underlying cause -not just the symptoms. It’s with these companies that I work to help them address and fix the actual complaints their stakeholders have with their business.”

Read the whole interview over at Brandmerck.nl

Wel eens erbij stil gestaan dat het weglaten van witruimtes in je pagina opmaak (HTML) op termijn een significante besparing kan opleveren in je hosting- en dataverkeerkosten?

Lekker compact artikel aangaande peformance (of load) optimization en aanvullende commentaar daarop bij Webanalisten.nl.

Vooral voor diegenen die de noodzaak van het toepassen van load optimization op een website nog steeds onderschatten of niet willen onderkennen, (en daarbij zelfs stellen dat het met verliezen van -de loyaliteit van- bezoekers wel los zal lopen,) is het wel zo fijn om nog eens een overzicht van alle feitelijke argumenten, achterliggende technologieën en haken & ogen terug te kunnen lezen in het eerste deel van een artikelenserie door Vincent van Scherpenseel op Webanalisten.nl.