MisEntropy

The +1 TV remote revolution

I subscribe to a mailing list called Idea A Day that sends out one idea each day. Any one can contribute an idea and most days it looks like anyone does. Usually you receive ecletcic but whimsical and impractical suggestions that make you question the whole exercise. But just when you least expect it, there turns up a cracker making it all worthwhile.

A few days ago, this idea popped up : "Supply two remote controls with every television instead of one."

It's such a fabulous idea, I wonder why no one has come up with it before and why no manufacturer practices this. It's simple, practical and would hardly cost anything - but imagine the difference it could make. Of course, one could always add to one's collection by buying additional universal remotes, but how many of us would do that anyway?

My initial thought was it would be a handy thing, in case you break or misplace your remote. And for people living by themselves, that's what an additional remote would continue to be.

But as I started turning it over in my mind, I started seeing the similarities between the additional remote and the the kind of radical shift that Wikipedia's 'Edit' button brought about - a change in this case for consumption, and not for content creation. Every channel change (or any setting change) would be merely be 'provisional' - no matter how much you willed it otherwise. Any change you make could easily be reversed or changed further again by someone else (in the same room as you, unlike with Wikipedia) the very next moment, ad infinitum. The "tools" to control the TV were no longer solely yours.

How would that affect couples and families watching TV? Would it make make them more accommodative? What kind of protocol, agreements and behavioural changes would that bring about? How would it change the equations - and negotiations - between parents and growing kids, and between a couple? How would it change what they think of the TV? If TVs always came with more than one remote, how would that have changed programming?

I was also intrigued by the possibilities for social change. What would an additional remote do in patriarchal societies and households? Could we promote individual rights and freedom - surreptitiously - by making sure families in all parts of the world start off with TVs with more than one remote?

And the commercial possibilities. Will families that have a TV with 2 remotes, pick up a second TV earlier than those who don't? Could TV manufacturers use this as a tactic to promote rapid uptake of 2nd and 3rd TVs?

Of course, it would be naive to think that additional remotes cannot be lost, broken or 'misplaced' - so that things return back to business as usual. And with the spread of time-shifting technologies like TiVos, the migration to online video and, with an overwhelming part of the world population already with access to difficult-to-dislodge single remote TVs, much of this could remain a fantasy.

I feel there was a fork in the woods a while ago with an arrow saying 'Interesting times' and we took the other path. Or probably, there is a parallel universe where the world is currently being upended by the +1 TV remote.

[Original pic by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla]

What traffic in Mexico City can teach us about social media

[I wrote this piece quite a while ago for a collaborative book on social media, but ultimately chose to go with another piece.]

In ‘Traffic: Why We drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)’, author Tom Vanderbilt explains how a right of way is negotiated in some places:

"Eye contact is a critical factor at unmarked intersections in Mexico City. Look at another driver and he'll know you have seen him, and thus dart ahead of you. Not looking at the driver shifts the responsibility to him (assuming he has actually seen you), which allows you to proceed first - if, that is, he truly believes you are not aware of him."

Experiments in the lab confirm this. In one study, subjects were shown pictures of equidistant cars approaching an intersection. One had the right of way and the other didn't.

When confirmed eye contact was made, most subjects thought that the driver who had the legal right-of-way would/should claim it. When no clear eye contact was made, the subjects had lesser clarity on who had the right of way - thereby absolving the driver without the legal right of way of any responsibility if he wrested it.

Avoiding eye contact is a strategy employed not just by motorists but by pedestrians too.

Motorists are willing to slow down or stop if they think that pedestrians have not seem them approaching. However, if the pedestrian has made eye contact with the motorist, this is less likely to happen.

So what has all this to do with social media?

Put very simply, our traditional mass-media approaches to advertising are all about avoiding 'eye contact' with our consumers - lest we be forced to change our well drawn out strategies and plans. So we put the pedal to the metal and zip past intersections and pedestrian crossings, all the while staring rigidly ahead - so that no one can 'expect' us to slow down, stop or change directions for them.

But social media is about the opposite approach. It's less about right of ways and wanting to wrest them at any cost - it's about acknowledging our consumers, slowing down to let them pass, being receptive to their choices and letting them influence our journey.

Therefore, a good way to test your social media strategy is to ask the question 'Is it enabling eye contact with our consumers or helping us avoid it?'

If it's the latter, you ought to know it’s just a mass media strategy in social media clothing

[Original pic by ·júbilo·haku·]

The missing link in crowdsourcing

From a review of William Rosen's 'The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention':

"The author dismisses the more traditional explanations about why the industrial revolution began in Britain—such as an abundance of coal or the insatiable demands of the Royal Navy—concluding, instead, that it was England’s development of the patent system that was the decisive factor. By aligning the incentives of private individuals with those of society, it transformed invention from a hobby pursued by the idle rich into an opportunity for spectacular commercial gain open to anyone with a bit of skill and a good idea. That allowed England to harness the creative potential of its artisan classes in a way that no other country had managed before."

It's worth noting what makes the patent system tick. It is not primarily an outlet or a mechanism to unleash the creative potential of anyone and everyone, but instead a system that "aligns the incentives of private individuals with those of society."

In my opinion, this is what's missing in most crowdsourced advertising efforts until now. Instead of putting together a system which "aligns the incentives of private individuals with those of the brand," advertisers are hoping that an upwelling of creative expression will pour out - if only an outlet is offered.

Any such alignement of incentives doesn't necessarily have to imitate/recreate the patent system in a brand communication context. Indeed the incentives that individuals seek may differ for each brand and they aren't always monetary.

Instead, merely considering what the incentives are for potential contributors at large and the particular brand in question and how to align them, will give any crowdsourcing effort a fighting chance to be working contraption rather than just a PR-worthy curiosity.

It's an uphill task, but not an impossible one. Until the patent system came out, it's not to hard to imagine ordinary workers in the 18th century "writing" their own version of the open letter that follows (via), urging society and capitalists to leave them alone - to their boring jobs and lives.

Well, many of them are busy inventing now.

Chief Not Listening Officer

The obvious - and rightful criticism - to the current fashion for Chief Listening Officers is that everybody in the organisation should be listening, not just one designated person or department.

But as this report suggests, Chief Listening Officers aren't really performing the touchy-feely task enshrined on their business card but instead bringing hard data-analysis skills to the torrent of online chatter about the brand. In fact, Susan Beebe - CLO at Dell - describes her job as building "complex queries."

I am in no doubt the need for such a role exists. What I question instead is the need for the grandstanding title.

In fact, listening is only one half of the CLO's job - and definitely not the more important half. As Susan Beebe clarifies in the comments in the this post, "It's important to not only "listen" but prioritize and disseminate that information back to the relevant business lines so they can take action on the information."

What the CLO is doing primarily is "prioritising feedback", choosing one thread of discussion over the other, ignoring the feeble - but probably revelant - voice, even while delivering on a delusional self-satisfaction to the brand that it's "listening" to everything directed at it.

In fact, if you have anything to say to the brand you'll have better luck routing it through anyone in the organisation except the CLO. While anyone in the organisation can ignore feedback and fail to act on it, it takes a CLO to do so and justify it as his/her job.

The critics are only partially right. It's indeed everyone's job to be Chief Listening Officer. Even better if everyone knows and agrees whose job it is to be Chief Not Listening Officer.

[Original pic by Un ragazzo chiamato Bi]

Information Osmosis and the case against Chief Culture Officer

Seen from the point of view of information, a modern company is a fortess - a fortress that's very good at erecting barriers to the natural flow of information from outside in and vice versa.

While these impermeable walls of opacity were (and probably continue to be) essential to being in business, they also raise the cost of doing business - by making it expensive to haul information across the border, both ways.

Expensive two-way communication across corporate borders may seem the natural order of things - but I don't think it is.

In nature, when water is transported across cell borders it happens through a process called osmosis. Osmosis itself extracts no energy from the cell to transport water - instead it is a property inherent in water, coercing it to perpetually flow from an area of low solute concentration to an area of high solute concentration. Provided the barrier is permeable (or semi-permeable.)

(I make the same point using grapes, raisins and coconuts in my chapter in Age of Conversation 3.)

So also with information. The natural propensity of information is to flow to where it is needed - without the need for anyone to grease its path. A company builds secure borders around it precisely to impede this natural flow and profit from it.

But a border built to impede outflow can also be very efficient at doing the opposite.

And it's not just at the borders that the influx of information is resisted. In Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky writes about how the modern corporate hierarchy was designed to make the inward journey for information perilious.

"In addition to revolutionising management structure, McCallum wrote six principles for running a hierarchical organistion. Most of what you'd expect (number one was ensuring a "proper division of responsibilities"), but number five is worth mentioning: his management system was designed to produce "such information, to be obtained through a system of daily reports and checks, that will not embarass principal officers nor lessen their influence with their subordinates." If you have ever wondered why so much of what workers in large organisations know is shielded from the CEO and vice versa, wonder no longer: the idea of limiting communications, so that they flow from one layer of the hierarchy to the next, was part of the very design of the system at the dawn of mangerial culture."

One way of countering this is to airlift information (and along with it culture from the outside) to the very kernel of the organisation - the C-suite. And that's what Grant McCracken is suggesting with his idea of Chief Culture Officer.

I am inclined to be skeptical of any idea that introduces a) a new job title and b) an expensive kludge to stand in for the natural state of things. This one does both.

It is true indeed that companies could and should resonate more with the culture around them and do everything to avoid being blindsided and blown off-course by unforeseen developments.

That can be achieved by making the borders more porous and by flattening the hierarchy to put everyone, including the CEO, on the periphery - not just close to the rank and file but close to the information and culture that permeates on the ground.

Both can be achieved without a Chief Culture Officer. Both can be achieved with the right approach to social media.

When we are exhorted to "Listen!" on social media, it's not just advice to obsessively seek out what people are Twittering about our brand. It is also a battlecry to leave our mental and coporate doors ajar, so that when information and culture want to waft in they can.

Grant McCracken's own choice of the perfect Chief Culture Officer, in my opinion, proves the case for the opposite.

Steve Jobs is able to read and ride culture not because his designation or responsibilities are that of a Chief Culture Officer. He's able to do that because he's a CEO with a porous mind and a propensity to live on the periphery.

[Pic via Allie Oop Photography]

Facebook and Privacy : The Great War of 2010?

Though Europe had been ravaged by notable and protracted wars over the centuries - when the war of 1914 broke out, there was a sense that this was different from everything that was seen before. Which is why it was simply called The Great War. The Second World War called for a relook at the naming strategy and The Great War, only slightly diminished in significance, became The First World War.

In the accounts of historians and journalists and in the ensuing geopolitics, these two wars were/are outliers. They were military conflicts in a never-ending line of military conflicts, but both together have effectively repositioned every war before or hence. There is a sense that everything changed because of them - on a canvas that enveloped the whole world.

In it's short lifespan, Facebook too has battled its users over their privacy a few times. Though almost all of these conflicts have ended in a retraction by Facebook - like the geopolitics of pre-20th century Europe, nothing actually changed. A resolution was only a means to postpone conflict to a later more opportune moment.

So as yet another skirmish has played out and is seemingly resolved, I can't help but wonder if this is the one that's pivotal enough to be seen as the Great War in the conflict over Facebook and data privacy.

Looking at Facebook's past record however, it doesn't really seem so. In a way, winning its first privacy battle over the Newsfeed feature has made Facebook bullish over every subsequent privacy incursion it has initiated. Only when the memory of that (rightful) victory and exoneration fades, will Facebook see that its perseverance and prescience over privacy are often misplaced.

The mother of all conflicts then is not behind us, but ahead of us.

[Original pic by opensourceway]

"The Fate of Grapes and Raisins" - my chapter from Age of Conversation 3

'Age of Conversation 3: It's Time To Get Busy' is finally available. In it, you'll find 171 lessons in social media from prominent thinkers from around the world.

I have contributed a chapter that reveals the underlying force facilitating the flow of information in and out of the company and how best to tap it. It is titled "The Fate of Grapes and Raisins: What to expect when you add social media to the communications mix."

Apart from the valuable insights you'll gain, by picking up the book you will also contribute to charity. All proceeds from the sale of the book are being donated to the Make A Wish Foundation.

You can buy it in a hardback, paperback or Kindle edition by clicking on the appropriate link below:

Hardback ($24 or so on Amazon)
Paperback ($18 or so on Amazon)
Kindle ($10 or so on Amazon)

And do check out my170 co-authors:

Adam Joseph, Priyanka Sachar, Mark Earls, Cory Coley-Christakos, Stefan Erschwendner, Paul Hebert, Jeff De Cagna, Thomas Clifford, Phil Gerbyshak, Jon Burg, Toby Bloomberg, Shambhu Neil Vineberg, Joseph Jaffe, Uwe Hook, Steve Roesler, Michael E. Rubin, anibal casso, Steve Woodruff, Steve Sponder, Becky Carroll, Tim Tyler, Chris Wilson, Beth Harte, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Dan Schawbel, Carol Bodensteiner, Trey Pennington, David Weinfeld, Dan Sitter, Vanessa DiMauro, Ed Brenegar, David Zinger, Brett T. T. Macfarlane, Efrain Mendicuti, Deb Brown, Brian Reich, Gaurav Mishra, Dennis Deery, C.B. Whittemore, Gordon Whitehead, Heather Rast, Cam Beck, Hajj E. Flemings, Joan Endicott, Cathryn Hrudicka, Jeroen Verkroost, Karen D. Swim, Christopher Morris, Joe Pulizzi, Leah Otto, Corentin Monot, Karalee Evans, Leigh Durst, David Berkowitz, Kevin Jessop, Lesley Lambert, Duane Brown, Peter Korchnak, Mark Price, Dustin Jacobsen, Piet Wulleman, Mike Maddaloni, Ernie Mosteller, Scott Townsend, Nick Burcher, Frank Stiefler, Steve Olenski, Rich Nadworny, John Rosen, Tim Jackson, Suzanne Hull, Len Kendall, Amber Naslund, Wayne Buckhanan, Mark McGuinness, Caroline Melberg, Andy Drish, Oleksandr Skorokhod, Claire Grinton, Angela Maiers, Paul Williams, Gary Cohen, Armando Alves, Sam Ismail, Gautam Ramdurai, B.J. Smith, Tamera Kremer, Eaon Pritchard, Brendan Tripp, Adelino de Almeida, Jacob Morgan, Casey Hibbard, Andy Hunter, Julian Cole, Debra Helwig, Anjali Ramachandran, Jye Smith, Drew McLellan, Craig Wilson, Karin Hermans, Emily Reed, David Petherick, Katie Harris, Gavin Heaton, Dennis Price, Mark Levy, George Jenkins, Doug Mitchell, Mark W. Schaefer, Helge Tenno, Douglas Hanna, Marshall Sponder, James Stevens, Ian Lurie, Ryan Hanser, Jenny Meade , Jeff Larche, Sacha Tueni and Katherine Maher, David Svet, Jessica Hagy, Simon Payn, Joanne Austin-Olsen, Mark Avnet, Stanley Johnson, Marilyn Pratt, Mark Hancock, Steve Kellogg, Michelle Beckham-Corbin, Michelle Chmielewski, Amy Mengel, Veronique Rabuteau, Peter Komendowski, Andrea Vascellari, Timothy L Johnson, Phil Osborne, Beth Wampler, Amy Jussel, Rick Liebling, Eric Brody, Arun Rajagopal, Dr Letitia Wright, Hugh de Winton, David Koopmans, Aki Spicer, Jeff Wallace, Don Frederiksen, Charles Sipe, Katie McIntyre, James G Lindberg & Sandra Renshaw, David Reich, Lynae Johnson, Jasmin Tragas, Deborah Chaddock Brown, Mike O’Toole, Jeanne Dininni, Iqbal Mohammed, Morriss M. Partee, Katie Chatfield, Jeff Cutler, Pete Jones, Riku Vassinen, Jeff Garrison, Kevin Dugan, Tiphereth Gloria, Mike Sansone, Lori Magno, Valerie Simon, Nettie Hartsock, Mark Goren, Peter Salvitti.

The Age of Conversation 3: It's Time to Get Busy

It's been a few months in the making, but the third edition of The Age of Conversation is now almost done and is expected to hit stores by mid-April.

Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton have spent an incredible amount of time and effort to round up contributions from marketing and social media thinkers from around the world.

As always, proceeds from the sale of the book are being donated to a charity - the Make A Wish Foundation with this edition.

The book features chapters addressing 10 topics: At the coalface; Conversational branding; Influence; Getting to work; Corporate conversations; Measurement; In the boardroom; Pitching social media; Innovation and execution; and Identities, friends and trusted strangers.

I have contributed a chapter to the book on the topic 'Pitching Social Media.'

You'll no doubt be hearing much more about the book in the coming days - and here's a peek at some of my co-authors on the project:

How to put together a corporate social media policy in 5 minutes

PolicyTool for Social Media is a policy generator that greatly simplifies the task of creating a working social media policy. Answer about a dozen and odd questions and before you can hop across to Facebook, your policy is ready for your to copy paste anywhere.

Based on my answers (and relative lack of paranoia) here's what a policy for my own company (if and when I start one) would look like:

MisEntropy Social Media Policy

This policy governs the publication of and commentary on social media by employees of MisEntropy and its related companies ("MisEntropy"). For the purposes of this policy, social media means any facility for online publication and commentary, including without limitation blogs, wiki's, social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. This policy is in addition to and complements any existing or future policies regarding the use of technology, computers, e-mail and the internet.

MisEntropy employees are free to publish or comment via social media in accordance with this policy. MisEntropy employees are subject to this policy to the extent they identify themselves as a MisEntropy employee (other than as an incidental mention of place of employment in a personal blog on topics unrelated to MisEntropy).

Publication and commentary on social media carries similar obligations to any other kind of publication or commentary.

All uses of social media must follow the same ethical standards that MisEntropy employees must otherwise follow.

Facebook and the myth of QWERTY's inferiority

Writing about the impending 'technological lock-in' of the social operating system space by Facebook, Reuters in a recent article compared the site to the QWERTY keyboard layout. (Via Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics.)

In the words of Reuters, technological lock-in is "the reason why the QWERTY keyboard layout, devised for typewriters in the 1870s, is still the standard despite the development of several more logical configurations. And Facebook, which has more than 100 million users in the United States and 350 million worldwide, appears to have nearly achieved technological lock-in, according to web marketing research company Comscore.com."

I find the comparison (to QWERTY specifically) rather ham-handed.

QWERTY is a standard. It's like driving on the right of the road or using a fahrenheit temperature scale. It's important people around you are doing the same - however, it doesn't preclude other societies/countries/cultures doing things in other ways.

There isn't any technological lock-in or any network effect with QWERTY as in with the Windows OS, DVDs or the internal combustion engine.

There's another reason why the QWERTY comparison is inaccurate. That's because the idea of QWERTY's inferiority seems to be a myth, albeit one that's almost universally believed to be true.

According to a Journal of Law and Economics paper forwarded to Straight Dope's Cecil Adams:

    "(1) the research demonstrating the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard is sparse and methodologically suspect; (2) a sizable body of work suggests that in fact the Dvorak offers little practical advantage over the QWERTY; (3) at least one study indicates that placing commonly used keys far apart, as with the QWERTY, actually speeds typing, since you frequently alternate hands; and (4) the QWERTY keyboard did not become a standard overnight but beat out several competing keyboards over a period of years. Thus it may be fairly said to represent the considered choice of the marketplace."

Even the unflappable Cecil Adams - who on most occasions combines an almost omniscient brain with wit that's stinging with truth - had to concede this one.

QWERTY, it seems, is a victim of our tendency to wrongly favour simplified narratives that capture and perpetuate the seeming triumph of the mediocre over the deserving.

Either that, or at least in some cases, history is being written by sore losers. I don't think Mr.Zuckerberg would mind that too much.

[Original pic by fujur]