Facebook has just rolled out a new piece of functionality allowing you to comment within your friend’s minifeed.

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=20877767130

“Now you can easily converse around friends’ statuses, application stories, new friendships, videos, and most other stories you see on their profile. Just click on the comment bubble icon to write a comment or see comments other people have written”

Although this may not sound particularly interesting, it signifies an important step for Facebook in further positioning itself as THE social network, challenging the rise in FriendFeed (a growing online lifestream). This notion of lifestreaming is where social networks are heading because it allows for the aggregation of information from multiple sources meaning people can comment/ discuss/ debate things (essentially their life as it happens) at one destination without having to go to multiple sources.

What does that mean?

It means that Facebook is quickly establishing itself as the one-stop social network allowing you to DO everything in one place. What will be interesting is to see how ‘lifestreaming’ will take off once the iphone is released, and people use their Facebook minifeed from their mobile.

The iphone will allow for even greater portability of information as people can update their mini feed (their life) ‘on-the-go’. As you walk out of a clothing store, you can tell all your friend’s about your new jeans as well as upload a photo. This will obviously integrate with GPS which Twitter is already doing, allowing you to access Facebook and find out if any of your friends are in your geographic location and see what they are doing RIGHT NOW.

This signifies an even greater shrinking of time and faster distribution of conversations as micro updates on our life transform the way we articulate ourselves to others via a data stream.

What are the implications of this?

Technology is transforming our consciousness in a profound way. Many are saying we are seeing an ‘atomisation of information’ which is exactly what lifestreaming is about. I may not have spoken to you in 2 years, but I am still keeping tabs on your life and engaging with you in some way - I know what people in my year are doing, how they FEEL, where they’re travelling, if they’re struggling in life etc. I know what you had for breakfast, I know where you work, and if you like your work, if you’re lazy at work. It disconcerting to allow ourselves to be so trackable. How is all this data collected and organised?

I think lifestreaming fundamentally undermines meaningful conversations and connections in the real world though some believe data portability and aggregation into feeds facilitates conversations which would otherwise never occur (keeping up to date with people you rarely see).

Will technology/Facebook eventually become the facilitator of all our anecdotes to our friends?

Will we get to the point where lifestreaming is so integrated with our lives that we feel the need to post something online as soon as it happens?

I believe we will, and mobile phones will allow this to occur at an absolutely micro level.

Eg.

‘on bus stuck in traffic’

‘out at club and beer just cost $8, what a rip off!’

‘just did a poo’.

I think lifestreaming is going to have a profound effect on our relationships with others, and it brings us one step closer to living in the virtual world. The anthropologist Leroi Gourhan described humans as an orchid, having a big beautiful flower (brain) and an atrophied body - a genetic monstrosity. As our bodies continue to atrophe and our lives continue to be articulated through technology, our need for a body diminishes.

Eventually, our consciousness will just be downloaded onto a hard drive and we will become the world wide web. Although first we need to identify what consciousness is.

This is cool! Updates from NASA on the Mars Phoenix via Twitter

Truly shows the incredible rate at which information is transmitted. Better yet, these are micro updates meaning we get quick insights as they happen - I found out that the ice on Mars was actually water as soon as NASA posted it. I was excited during the lead up as I was told about the tests and the anticipation felt by the scientists. Way before the media told me, I already knew! And better yet, I cared because the message was shared with me by a person!

Although Twitter is not a new technology, it delivers information in a new way. It offers large corporations a way to personalise their company - a face to its name. It’s easy to hate a company, but hard to hate an individual (unless they are a knob of course). I feel somehow connected to NASA as I read the Twitter updates. NASA now has a voice and I share their excitement and connect with the ‘brand’.

Barack Obama has focused his campaign on a grass roots approach and this includes the use of Twitter. It’s brilliant and although some may question the impact of only having 40,000 followers, these people will be the troops who rally up an army. They are frequently connected to Obama via his regular updates which gives the illusion that Obama is their friend - he is speaking to YOU in an informal way. Of course he also has Myspace (over 400,000 friends), Facebook (over 1,000,000 supporters), Youtube, Flickr, Linkedin, Digg, and the popular Barack Obama is my Homeboy campaign.

This, in my opinion is far more potent than commercial political tv advertising and really does mark a ‘change’ which is what Obama stands for.

In conclusion, every organisation should have a Twitter account (as well as other social media channels).

People like to look good

People don’t like to look bad

These two phrases underpin most people’s behavior in life and are especially relevant in advertising and usability/ information architecture.

The other day I was sitting in a park which had a drinking fountain in the middle. Now this drinking fountain has quite the reputation as the water stream is way too powerful and when people drink from it, they get a squirt in the face.

I sat on the grass in anticipation, waiting for someone to come and cop the money shot. I was soon rewarded by a businesses man dressed in a nice charcoal suit, with a big round face providing more than adequate surface area to be splashed. He put his face down to the metal (first mistake) and then turned the water on. A powerful stream of water came out like a firehose all over his face, and all over the top of his suit.

He jumped back in horror and his first reaction was to look around the park to see if anyone was looking. I was of course and I laughed, fairly uncontrollably. He had been made to look bad and he tottered off shaking his head and cursing the fountain. It’s like when people trip on a crack as they’re walking on the pavement and they try to cover it up by doing a little jog “hey, I meant to do that”. Or else they look behind them at the pavement as if to say “who’s the idiot who put a crack there”. You my friend, are the idiot.

We exist in a state of equilibrium, and when that is destabilized, it is possible to undermine someone and make them look or feel bad/stupid. This is the basis to great comedy like Commedia d’Arte and is the reason why we love Funniest Home Videos and The Chaser’s War on Everything.

People hate to look bad and when they do, they react with anger, embarrassment and shame.

So how does this relate to the digital world?

It’s the reason Apple invests so much in usability testing. When I pick up the iphone (which is damn sexy) I know exactly how to use it, and it makes me look good. When my mum asks me to show her how to use her Samsung phone I struggle and it makes me look bad. It makes me look stupid and I think Samsung phones are stupid.

The catch phrase to web usability is Steve Krug’s line “don’t make me think”. I’m sick of seeing self serving agency websites which are supposed to show the creativity of the agency, but are so difficult to navigate and find information that I feel stupid when browsing them. In my opinion, people won’t be impressed by the form if they can’t work out the function. Be creative with web design, but don’t detract from the usability.

The same is true with social networks. Facebook took off because when you go to Facebook, it’s easy to work out what you are suposed to do. I find Twitter fairly intuitive too which is why I use it over Plurk which I find has a daunting interface. Plurk probably has better functionality, but ease of use will win over technology most of the time.

This extends to virtually everything - when I walk into a shop, I want to find things easily or I will get frustrated and walk out feeling like an idiot - like when I go into trendy Sydney shops and can’t tell the girls jeans from the guys and the shop assistant laughs at me (though that warrants another rant on the state of masculinity).

When building websites, writing copy, concepting campaign ideas or even pitching an idea in to a client - make them look good and don’t make them look bad. If you squirt water in their face they will go somewhere else. Another website is one click away, and once you make someone look bad, it’s hard to turn them the other way. Whether online or off, test your assumptions rigorously against these two catch phrases:

Are you going to make your users/target audience look/feel good or are you going to make them look/feel bad?

I think advertising is going crazy at the moment over SMO using guerrilla tactics, fancy viral videos, flash games, and a multitude of other fickle engagement strategies to get people talking or thinking about their brand online. There is a false perception, I believe, that if you can get a lot of people to view something, that automatically translates to success. But how is it successful? It’s not that difficult to get people interested in something - I watch funny youtube videos all the time.

However I think that frequently, advertisers do not understand the difference between interest and action. You can release a viral video and get 100,000 people to be interested in it, but few may act on it - or even know that it is associated with a particular brand. Shifted Pixels raised some important questions in a recent blog post on what brands should consider before employing a social media agency.

What is the point of advertising? TO SELL. Pure and simple - at the end of the day, it is to sell, and getting the attention of consumers momentarily in the social media space is of low commercial value to a brand. Social media optimisation should not be viewed as a short term strategy that is campaign based. Doing this often just creates a shark fin on a graph - Momentary interest which can grow exponentially, but then you suffer a huge drop in interest (which is also exponential) which makes you a blip in the highly contested world of the internet.

Andrew Chen wrote a great article using Metcalf’s Law to understand how applications grow exponentially on social networks and the danger of the corollary: Eflactem’s law. Andrew argues that growth and retention relies on perceived value by users, and as you lose users, the value of your network decreases exponentially.

Creating value takes time. If you are using Twitter, build a following of hundreds by posting great content every day. Answer people’s questions and engage with your ‘friends’. SMO is about bringing your brand down to the personal level. Brands should no longer be anonymous - it’s an incredibly powerful marketing tool to have a representative of your company having conversations with consumers - like Matt Cutts from Google. Even though Google is enormous, Matt’s blog brings it down to the personal level.

Google is my friend!

Get your staff blogging and spreading the brand essence! Don’t be an advertiser, be a friend. If someone says something negative about your brand online, approach them and appologise - offer them a discount, or give them something free.

If you are using facebook - have a group which offers users discounts, promotions, and content which is updated frequently. Invite key members to try new products and make them feel like they are connected to the brand in a meaningful way. Update your blog’s content daily and network with bloggers relevant to the space you are in - Create a 2 way dialogue that is actually meaningful.

Nielson suggests we are now bombarded with around 3000 messages per day which has resulted in lower cut through and responsiveness from consumers due to an information overload. Worse still, only 7% of television advertisements can be differentiated from the rest, meaning advertising is becoming less relevant, more generic and is yielding lower returns on investment.

The human brain does not have the capacity to interpret this much information which results in what Georg Simmel called the ‘blasé attitude’. The basic premise is that the human brain interprets the world via a process of differentiation and modern society is now so complex that we are seeing ‘an intensification of nervous stimulation’. The blasé attitude is a response to this – the reason we don’t talk to the people sitting next to us on the bus. It’s not that we stop perceiving the things around us, it’s merely blunting the discrimination because we don’t have the capacity to comprehend it all.

Don’t do some stupid gimmicky campaign which no one will remember in one weeks time - sure, you may get 50,000 views and the client will be happy, but this won’t translate to any revenue for the company.

SMO is about building your brand into conversations over time and we need to move away from viewing it as a quick win. Listen to your customers - Using buzz metrics, Nike realised one of the keywords that kept coming up was ’sweat shops’ so they focused on campaigns to respond to this. SMO is very broad, but ultimately it comes down to creating high value for consumers. You’ve just got to work out what constitutes ‘value’ to you target audience.

My interest in social media from an advertising perspective begun about 3 years ago when I was working in cafe’s as a barista. The success of a cafe relies heavily on positive word of mouth, and the way to create positive WOM is to ensure great service, good food, and top notch coffee.

It seems strange, but I have learned more about social media optimisation from working in a cafe and engaging with cafe culture than I have reading articles, books and talking with advertising people. The key is to differentiate yourself by being the best - to be remarkable as Seth Godin might say. Then, there is a natural talkability. People will argue online and offline whether you are better than another cafe, and they will champion you to all their friends.

The reason cafe’s are a great example from an SMO perspective is that everyone has their favourite one. Where to get the best coffee is often debated and everyone loves to find a new great place to try out. It is a topic many Australian’s like to talk about and this can be seen with the explosion of PR articles in traditional print. Suddenly everyone is talking about the importance of freshly roasted coffee, and what goes in to making the perfect espresso.

If you own a cafe, be an active participant in the coffee world – an active member in coffee forums, coffee related blogs, CRM programs etc. Get involved in coffee competitions, write articles for print, post ‘how to’ videos on youtube for making the perfect coffee, and network as much as you can. Doing this influences the opinion leaders - the coffee nerds - the people who drink double ristretto’s - the people whose friends all ask them where they should be getting their coffee.

I have seen cafe’s invite coffee geeks to their cafe ‘after hours’ for coffee tasting sessions, to talk about their espresso machines, and check out new beans from around the world. These people then talk about you online, to their friends, and their friends talk to their friends.

If you own a wine celler, get the wine enthusiasts in for wine tasting sessions and make them feel special. Give them special member cards and watch as your sales jump. Perhaps give away free bottles of wine to these members and ask them to write a review on your blog. Because the same is true for wine enthusiasts - their friends all ask them where to buy a great cheap wine, and they will recommend you – in fact they will care about you which is a difficult thing to achieve – to make people care.

Strategies like these connect the opinion leaders deeply with your brand who then champion it to others. Over time this builds your reputation and equates to sales which are sustainable and consistent.

The coffee world is fantastic at this and this is where I have seen the best strategy. For cafe’s, advertising isn’t about fancy tv commercials or radio. It’s about making sure that everyday, the regulars get an amazing coffee, the cafe remembers their name, and they get a bit of love and feel special. It’s consistent dedication to quality and this is far more effective than any short term campaign. Doing this is also a retention initiative, and we all know that retention is easier than acquisition.

One day, long long ago, I was walking along Manly Beach with my friend Stephen when we ran into a guy giving away everything he owned. Naturally we walked over to see if there was anything good we could score for free. I asked the guy why he was giving everything away and he told me it was in the name of Jesus. He told us that when you give things away, you get things in return and it starts a cycle of reciprocity.

At the time I thought he was a lunatic (I’m sure he was, but not in the way I thought), however thinking about this 10 years later, he was a remarkable man. Stephen and I got a tape from the guy which had one song on it called “hungry hippo”. The lyrics were “we’re the hungry hungry hippos da da da da da we’re the hungry hungry hippos”. It was a random, bizarre, low budget recording which repeated the same thing over and over. The song had us in stitches for hours and we sung it together for months. In fact if Stephen reads this post, I know he will piss himself laughing again.

It’s funny how something so simple and seemingly innocuous can provide so much enjoyment. That man has made me think about this cycle of reciprocity and has influenced me so strongly that I will remember that day forever. And now I pass this story on to you - giving something away (however small) can have a profound effect on the receiver (in ways you would never expect), and if we all made an effort to pass something on the world would be a better place.

What stirred up this memory was Tom Kelshaw’s post on the viral waistcoat which is an experiment to see if a physical object can go viral. I hope this is successful, though if that waistcoat came into my hands, it would go no further. That thing is cool as shit!

Below is an article I recently had published in Digital Media Magazine. It was restricted to 1000 words so it is quite superficial. Comments are welcome!

A new process of harnessing the power of social networks and online communities is delivering strong results to some, yet the true potential of Social Media Optimisation is yet to be realised.

SMO is the current buzz word that advertisers are trying to work into their marketing mix. It is the art of utilising the connectivity of social networks and online communities and leveraging user generated content to spread your message in a viral way.

There are two vital criteria for successful SMO: your target market must be engaged with social media in some way (remembering, however that over half of the Australian population now has a presence on a social network),and secondly, your target market must use the online environment in the information search phase of their decision making process.

SMO is still largely ignored by big brands who continue to invest heavily in conventional media and find it difficult to keep up with the rapidly changing digital landscape. The fact is, methodologies and approach to SMO need to change every week as we discover new ways to engage segmented demographics, snowball information virally, discover what people will find ‘interesting’ and produce relevant content that people will pass around. Oh, and realising new technologies which assist this.

SMO and viral go hand in hand and both rely on content being of interest. However, the big question is: what is interesting? How do you differentiate your content from the millions of other people all trying to muscle in? How do you remain relevant in a space with a whole new set of politics, decision makers and opinion leaders?

A great example of interesting content going viral was a recent blog called ‘90 day Jane’. The blog detailed the activities of a girl who claimed she would kill herself in 90 days documenting the process via her blog. Amazingly, the blog received 157,530 hits within a week. It was quickly taken down shortly after.. But is this the only blog out there talking about killing yourself? No, so why did this one go viral so quickly?

I think what made 90 Day Jane go viral (beyond the gimmicky name) was the way the content was positioned which ‘pulled’ people in. It aroused feelings of contempt, intrigue, excitement, shame and ambivalence.

It challenged people’s very notion of self preservation. Such acts of transgression challenge the status quo and engage people to react and debate with others. It also raises a number of questions around censorship, responsibility, governance and morality which go beyond the scope of this article.

The example of 90 Day Jane shows just how fast the transmission of information can become global. Businesses need to be able to tap into this if they are going to remain competitive. With this transmission of information comes the requirement for businesses to be able to respond to change if they are to remain relevant to consumers.

I believe we’re seeing an evolution in advertising through both the democratization and de-politicization of information and its transmission through communities. Users increasingly control the ebb and flow of what is distributed across the net. We are seeing a de-politicized method of communicating that is not censored by large publishers with vested interests. Everyone still has their bias, but it is more democratic because content is ranked based on popularity and relevance (albeit Google’s notion of this).

However it is still important to understand the mechanics of power and influence online. In fact Business week recently named owner of Techcrunch, Michael Arrington as one of the 25 most influential people on the web.

Advertisers can no longer push their message onto people in the online space. They need to work out how to build their brand into user’s communications and leverage opinion leaders. This is a major objective for SMO.

Building a brand into online communications can present problems for companies if they are the victim to negative comments. An example of this was last year’s Whirlpool forum attack on 2Clix who’s software was criticized in a large thread. 2Clix estimated they lost $150,000 per month over 7 months equating to over one million dollars in lost revenue. There were 195,000 users on whirlpool at the time and this does not include the multitude of anonymous visitors viewing the posts (http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/1753).

In the modern world, people and technology are inextricably linked. As our ways of communicating online shift, new technology is developed to facilitate that interaction. Conversely, new technologies create demand and alter current ways of communication and notions of community.

From an SMO perspective, advertisers need to understand there is a bilateral relationship between social change and technological evolution and as an advertiser; how do the two of these work cohesively to produce new modes of communication, meaning, connections, categories and ontology?

Does a new technology create demand for itself, or does our need for something demand the development of a technology?

For example, Google’s Open Social is a combination of both a technical development and a social need to make technology simpler.

There are currently thousands of niche social networks out there in the web. These networks are closed systems and require users to signup to each one individually, re-create their friend network and comments etc.

Google’s Open Social is an emerging technology which provides a standard for a way these social networks can interact with each other. Each separate social network can now connect to a super social network. This will undoubtedly add another dimension to SMO which digital agencies will need to quickly embrace.

Nielson has just released a research report which looked at box office performance of 400 recent films, and found that the films that grossed at least $100 million in sales were more likely to have been blogged about (not exactly profound!). (http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003723083).

Did the popularity of the films encourage bloggers to write about the films, or did the bloggers help make the films popular?

Can you quantify to what degree the former influences the latter? And how can you implement an SMO methodology which is fluid enough to understand such a complex process, yet scientific enough to prove results to clients?

For advertisers, effective SMO is not about trying to infiltrate forums and blogs to promote your brand. What we want to do is create interesting content with a strong ‘hook’ and bait other people to comment on it – to build our brand into communications by providing information that is remarkable, high value and relevant to specific groups of people.

The question is, what are you doing to understand and harness the power of SMO?

Well I am well and truly over this horrible weather - the rain, clouds, grey sky. I’m also fighting a cold which means I’m stuck inside reading and watching movies. I just finished watching The Forbidden Kingdom with Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Meh… It seems every movie Jet Li says it will be his last yet he continues to go on.

My dreams have been extra vivid lately which is strange because I never usually remember them. In the dreams I remember, I’m always running away from something more powerful than I am - a vampire, a monster, or a serial killer. But I can never get away no matter how hard I run or how desperate my escape is. I’m sure there’s some Freudian meaning there, but I balance it nicely with other dreams where I am the superhero and save the day.

A number of years ago I bought a few packets of mugwort which is a plant said to induce lucid and vivid dreams. I placed it under my pillow every night and it had an incredible effect on my dreams. Someone else I know who used it as part of their thesis on dreaming felt little effects, so perhaps it was just a placebo. Either way I recommend trying it - you can buy it from Happy High Herbs.

A few years ago there was a lot of hype going around about nootropics, more commonly known as ’smart drugs’. One which received a lot of attention was Piracetam. After a lot of reading, I ordered two bottles off the internet as it was over the counter in America but had not been approved in Australia.

I have always had a problem with memory and to be honest, I remember very little about my entire life. Memories dissolve into a blurry haze after just a few years and I can barely distinguish my years at school. So I began taking Piracetam and after only a short while noticed some interesting effects. The memories I formed had a much greater salience as though they were important milestones in my life. Yet the events that occured during the time I was taking Piracetam were on the whole entirely mundane or unimportant. It is difficult to explain this, and I can only liken it to something sticking out in your mind.

An example of this was a gig I went to - Cocorosie which made a huge long-lasting impression on me. It was an awesome gig - don’t get me wrong (I saw them again a few month ago), but my memory of it is uncharacteristically cemented in my mind.

There were other interesting effects of taking Piracetam, the most extreme was superimposing myself into my cat’s mind as he walked past me and I saw the world in a fuzzy black and white - as though I was seeing the world through his eyes. This was only momentary and it was not startling, but it was enough to get me to stop taking anymore Piracetam.

It was an interesting time and I never really speak about it, so I guess now is as good an opportunity as ever. Just thought I would share this.

On the weekend I went down south to a place called Lake Conjola with 5 other guys on a camping trip. There’s an island off the beach called Green Island which has some of the best surf in Australia. Unfortunately it was flat though I suspect with these storms it has picked up.

We didn’t do much down there except drink beer around a fire which we built. It was heaps of fun to get out of Sydney and hang with some kangaroos - there were heaps!

In the afterthoughts of the trip, the thing that is resonating with me the most is the absurd price we paid for the wood for our fire. For a 20kg bag of chopped wood it was $20. This lasted us one night so we got 2 bags for 2 nights.

The guy chopping that wood is making way too much money in my opinion. Now I don’t know where this dude gets his wood from, but I see plenty of fallen trees lying around. Well, actually I don’t - but when I imagine a forest, I envisage that quite a few fall down. And you have to trust your intuition, right?

I propose buying a truck, chopping wood, packing it into bags, and driving around camping sites selling it. Or better yet, I’ll start the company, put some money into it and HIRE some people to chop the wood for me.

I thought about this for a while, and then I went back to crocheting…