Research News: May 18 Edition

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Jenni Nelson

Undoubtedly, the biggest media story this week is the Facebook IPO, which was filed today.  As I write this, Facebook’s current value is $104 billion.  Not bad for an eight year old company that’s run by a 28 year old college dropout with terrible fashion sense.  

On the surface, Facebook’s future looks bright.  But like any other meteoric rise to super stardom, there’s always a contingent of haters who relish a figure’s fall from grace.  Or in this case, pessimistically predicting what and when will be Facebook’s ultimate demise.  Let’s take a look:

An AP/CNBC poll done earlier this month found that there was a fairly even split between those who think Facebook will fade away as other new social networks emerge and those who believe it will stay successful for the long haul (46% and 43% respectively).  The largest complaint among respondents had to do with privacy concerns.  Only 13% “completely trust the company to keep their personal information private” while 59% have little/no trust when it comes to Facebook keeping their proverbial lips shut. 

Further, when it comes to F-commerce, only 8% said they would feel safe actually making a purchase on the site.  Even among Facebookers who are on the site several times a day, half would not be comfortable making a purchase on the site.  This will be troublesome for marketers who have sacrificed other online channels, particularly their own website, in favor of just a Facebook page.

Second, Facebook is a monopoly, or so says Steven Johnson in Wired.  As it strives to become “a medium unto itself” sharing a link to another site is growing increasing difficult.  The new seamless sharing functions basically to keep us on Facebook.  Say your friend likes/comments on an article she read on HuffPo.  You click on the story expecting to be taken to that site.  Nope.  You’ll get a popup urging you to install the HuffPo Facebook app, which then shares all the stories you read on that site, NSFW and otherwise…  If we don’t like it, tough.  We have no other options except to delete our accounts – this is where it becomes monopolistic.  As D.E. Wittkower wrote in the WSJ  “the monopolistic, public-utility-like aspect of Facebook’s business model of trading on network effects [the more people who use it, the better the site becomes] ought to make users concerns that they may be exploited or abused.”

And let’s talk advertising on the site, paid advertising that is.  As more and more users log on from mobile devices that don’t show paid ads, marketers are going to be even more reticent to invest in anything beyond their brand pages.  And new/more/better ads are the bulk of Facebook’s Strategy for raising revenue.  In fact, General Motors – the third largest advertiser in 2011 in terms of dollars spent – announced earlier in the week that it will cease purchasing ads on Facebook mid-year.  Will GM prove to be the first of many defecting Facebook advertisers?  Probably.  Especially given that there’s not a measurement for how effective the channel is (Does anybody pay attention to the ads on Facebook?), and dollars can be invested elsewhere without abandoning the site completely.

So, what will happen to Facebook?   No one can say with certainty.  Regardless, we’ll all be watching, captivated.  Just like every other rags to riches story.

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Digital DNA: Monday May 14 Edition

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Dan Wallace

One unmistakable quality of digital media is the sheer SPEED of it. New things pop up and die out at an increasingly frenetic pace, and no one can really keep track of it all (despite the occasional boast to the contrary). It’s evolution in hyperdrive and it has birthed some amazing things, but sometimes the process kills something before it has a chance to find its feet.

More on that theme below, illustrated in 3 examples:

1) If there’s a universal complaint about the speedy nature of new tech, it’s summed up pretty well in Farhad Manjoo’s Fast Company article, “Why Tech’s Hunger for Overnight Hits is Bad for Business.” Manjoo points out that it took a decent stretch of time (a year and a half, an eternity in the tech world) for Apple’s iPod to rack up 1 million in sales. A product with a similar sales curve would today be labeled an out-of-the-gate failure.

In general Manjoo argues that the tech business has become a lot like the movie business, and it’s hard to disagree. The movie business is buoyed by blockbusters, and is a place where a movie like John Carter is labeled a flop on the basis of its Thursday night pre-screenings alone. But then you have an Avengers, and in response studios increase their reliance on blockbusters as their primary currency.

It’s a Hollywood industry of showers, not growers, and it happens in new tech too. Look at the rapid growth of Instagram (acquired by Facebook), or Draw Something (acquired by Zynga, only to see the user numbers decline from their peak).

2) With 800 million active users, Facebook is undoubtedly a blockbuster. But as the company approaches the date of its Wall Street coming-out party with an IPO expected within the next week, it appears that mobile might be Facebook’s Achilles heel.
Buried beneath the stories about how Mark Zuckerberg wears a hoodie when meeting with banking execs, Facebook has revealed details on its internal operations in preparation for the IPO. In the process they’ve admitted that they haven’t yet figured out what to do with mobile.

According to Facebook’s S-1 securities filing, “We believe this increased usage of Facebook on mobile devices has contributed to the recent trend of our daily active users (DAUs) increasing more rapidly than the increase in the number of ads delivered.”

In other words Facebook is having trouble monetizing the mobile user experience, and the see-saw is only getting more unbalanced as more people flock to mobile. This isn’t just a problem for Facebook — it’s an issue for mobile as a consumer channel. Face it, there isn’t much real estate on a smartphone screen. How should advertisers serve up a message in that environment?

Facebook hasn’t cracked it yet, having inserted its sponsored stories into mobile feeds without huge success. And in light of the larger theme, how much time will Wall Street and the user base give Facebook to find the right balance?

3) Apple’s iPad is undoubtedly one of tech’s biggest blockbusters, but magazines for the iPad have been slow to realize their potential. This week saw the announcement of Us Weekly’s new iPad edition, accompanied by some interesting thoughts from media icon Jann Wenner.

Wenner, who was dismissive of the gold-rush mindsest surrounding iPad magazine editions as recently as last year, sees the new Us Weekly edition as a nuanced, realistic approach to the format. Gone are bells-and-whistles like lights, sounds, and video. The new edition doesn’t even have separate formatting for landscape and portrait orientations. But that means that the print magazine can be ported to the iPad with very little in the way of extra production.

Lower overhead = lower profitability threshold. Also take into account that successful print magazines have more luxury when it comes to experimenting with digital and tablet formats, and it will be interesting to see how “quick and simple” plays out as a media strategy.

The most interesting quote comes from Wenner, who says of the iPad, “It’s a great device, but not necessarily a great device to read magazines.”

This discussion of blockbusters reminds me of the principle of the “Network Effect,” which states that things increase in value as more people use them. You might have gone to The Avengers because everybody else was seeing it, or you might have bought an iPhone to share the same apps with your SO.

There’s a piece about the Network Effect in Sociological Images, in which the principle is illustrated in a funny way by way of a dance mob at the 2009 Sasquatch Music Festival.

Watch this video if you’re interested in sociological phenomena and/or shirtless dancing dudes:

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Research News: May 11 Edition

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Jenni Nelson

Dish Network is offering its subscribers a new DVR, the Hopper, that completely skips over commercials with the single push of a button.  This “Auto Hop” feature is not just the fast-forwarding of yore.  By clicking Auto Hop before your show starts, you will either briefly see a black screen or the first frame of the first commercial before the show resumes.  That’s it.  Done.  No more commercials for the duration of your program.  Now, the Hopper isn’t for all programming.  It’s limited to prime time shows from the big four broadcasters that are viewed at least a day post-air.  The Hopper costs $99 upfront and then $10 a month thereafter.  Dish has not confirmed how many Hoppers have been purchased to date, but does say it’s a “big number.”  Obviously, the broadcasters are concerned, as the bulk of their revenue comes from advertising.   What’s going to be affected?  According to Nielsen’s State of the Media report for Spring 2012, the drama genre stands to lose the most.  It accounts for 41% of primetime viewership, 58% of timeshifted viewing, 35% of TV ad spend and 29% of product placements.  Unfortunately for broadcasters and advertisers, drama has the largest audience of women at just under 47% compared to other genres.  In fact, women spend over 61% of their timeshifted viewing watching dramas according to Nielsen’s report.   A smart first move for advertisers would be to work product integrations more into dramas and less into reality programming, as reality makes up 58% of placements during primetime while drama is 29%.

Nielsen State of the Media Spring 2012

In the big picture, will the Auto Hop feature be a game changer?  I don’t think so, not by itself anyway.  First, we already have the means to skip commercials (albeit not completely), whether via existing DVRs or streaming online.  Second, with cable subscriptions at already crazy-high prices, how many folks are going to shell out another $120/year for this, especially given that the programming its available for is limited?  Third, those that have the funds to support the higher cable bill are the same demo that’s likely to be already viewing online anyway.  Fourth, Dish is number three when it comes to pay-TV distributors.  Even if every single one of their 14 million subscribers bought a Hopper, it’d still only be 12% of total US TV HHs.  Until Comcast and DirecTV have a similar product, and all expand the eligible program list, I would say the Hopper is worth watching, but won’t be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

 

If it seems like everyone’s got a tablet but you, I have bad news.  Orangutans at Miami’s Jungle Island are now using iPads to communicate.  Jungle Island is one of a handful of menageries experimenting with the devices in “mental stimulus” programs.  Our primate cousins (humans share 97% of our genetic makeup with orangutans) use software originally developed for people with autism where the screen shows various objects, a trainer says the name of one of the objects and the orangutan presses the button that corresponds to the object verbalized.  They also draw and play games.  Orangutans are extremely intelligent, but lack the physical means to speak – they have no voice box or vocal cords (who knew?).  And if we didn’t see enough of ourselves in these animals, their behavior toward tablets demographically mimics ours when it comes to technology in general.  The younger ones have no problem working with the device while their elders show little interest in even engaging with it.  So even with millions of years of evolutionary development, some things never change.  Oh, and guess what’s next for the orangutans: Skype!  Read more at: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ORANGUTANS_IPADS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

 

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Digital DNA: Monday May 7 Edition

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Dan Wallace

How can brands talk to customers? What’s changing and what’s brand new? These are perennial questions in the business of media, but here’s a few points worth a think:

1) With Tumblr no longer a rising star but now firmly a mainstream destination (58 million uniques in March 2012 alone), its owners are looking for new ways to monetize. Lots of brands aready have their own Tumblr presences (you’re following http://haworthmedia.tumblr.com, no?) but until now there was no paid advertising built into the Tumblr model itself.

That’s changing, and Tumblr’s pay-for-exposure “Radar” placement is the first crack in the wall. For a $25,000 buy-in, Tumblr will place an advertiser in a premium spot on Tumblr’s internal dashboard (which page owners see when setting up their posts).

Check the image for an example. The first takeaway is that this isn’t a traditional ad space; it’s a highlighted “bit of content” from an existing Tumblr blog. In fact, the Radar example in this image isn’t a paid ad at all — it’s just something that Tumblr plucked from its user base. In this sense, the Tumblr Radar ads are similar to sponsored tweets on Twitter, i.e. they’re native to the format, deemphasizing traditional creative compositions in favor of flexibility and immediacy.

The second takeaway is that this ad is only viewable on the behind-the-scenes dashboard; it’s not forward-facing within the Tumblr experience where the end user will see it. Whether this will remain the guiding principle behind Tumblr ads — or whether this is really just the first crack in the wall — remains to be seen.

2) What’s going on with digital video? Despite evergreen claims that online viewing will kill traditional TV viewing, people are watching more TV than ever. Traditional, time-shifted, and online viewing metrics are all up.

But a deeper look at the numbers reveals some interesting shifts. In some cases, TV ratings go UP after people are exposed to Netflix and other all-you-can-eat online content libraries. This effect is most noticeable when it comes to serialized “destination” TV shows, like AMC’s Mad Men or Breaking Bad. People like to catch up on previously-aired seasons so that they can watch the latest episodes live. According to a study by Bernstein Research, AMC’s ratings grew 86% among online streamers but only 71% among non-streamers.

That trend, however, is reversed when it comes to kids’ shows. Presumably because kids are less demanding when it comes to fresh content, a backlog of Dora episodes on Netflix seems to be “good enough” for a lot of streaming families. Nick Toons, for example, saw its ratings grow 5% among non-streamers, but drop 11% among streamers. Because those numbers are consistent across most kids networks, it may indicate a permanent change in how kids content is distributed online.

3) Those big wheels are in motion, but there are still a lot of smaller ways in which brands can communicate their identities. And with Haworth helping to launch Sealy’s latest campaign this week, here’s one way in which they’ve helped covered the bases behind the idea of “Whatever You Do In Bed, Sealy Supports It.”

Launched last summer, Sealy’s “In Bed” mobile app is simple in concept. It’s basically an interactive version of the old fortune cookie game, where you add two words on the end of whatever message is inside your cracked cookie. Like “A secret admirer will soon send you a sign of affection… IN BED.” The app allows users to take photos of signs, then overlay the IN BED tag to complete the joke.

The first thing this does is enable sharing, thanks to built-in tools for passing along to Facebook friends or posting to a gallery of all app users. The second thing it does is make it easy to interact with the brand’s central premise. Essentially a good app is like a very, very engaging online ad, with the time spent engaging helping to compensate for the lower number of people who will download and use it (vs. a display ad).

 

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Digital DNA: Wednesday April 18 Edition

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Dan Wallace

Billion-dollar deals and hologram celebrities have been dominating the digital and tech news. Let’s take a deeper look to discover if things aren’t more interesting beneath the surface:

1) At the 2012 Coachella music festival, audiences were treated to a surprise performance by Tupac Shakur — a performer who died in 1996.

The late Tupac appeared in the form of what looked like life-sized hologram, joining Snoop Dogg on stage for a real vs. virtual duet. Watch the video and I think you’ll agree that the effect is surprisingly lifelike, successfully pulling off the illusion of a three-dimensional hologram:

But behind the scenes the tech turned out to be much simpler. MPC, a special-effects company, stitched together a Tupac video using a combination of old footage and CGI motion capture, then projected the video on stage using a 19th-century magician’s trick known as “Pepper’s Ghost.” By reflecting the video’s image onto a transparent foil screen, they pulled off an effect that looks far more advanced than it really is.

But focusing on the underlying tech kind of misses the point. The key takeaway is that the illusion WORKED, and for audiences at Coachella (and even for YouTube video watchers) it really does come across as magic. Imagine pulling off a similar trick by using OOH installations, inviting people to participate in a way that comes across as fun (and not vaguely creepy in a bringing-back-the-dead way).

2) Speaking of vaguely creepy, mobile apps have gotten much more sophisticated in how they track user movements. Underneath their casings, smartphones are basically GPS locators that are “always on.”

One app that puts a spotlight on this is Placeme, currently available for iOS and Android. Placeme’s tracking system is entirely voluntary, but once a user opts in, the app taps into the smartphone’s GPS to paint a data picture that tracks the user everywhere, day or night.

Unlike Foursquare, there’s no need to check in at locations — Placeme knows where you are and pins your locations on a map automatically. The effect is both immensely useful (no need to remember where you were last Friday, or how to get back to that restaurant you said you liked) and, yes, vaguely creepy.

I think the important thing is that, even though Placeme is an opt-in service, the ability of your phone to track you in this fashion is native to the handset. The phone is already doing this, even if passively, and therefore it won’t be long before this level of personal tracking is considered the default setting.

3) On April 9, Facebook purchased the photo app Instagram for $1 billion. Now that the dust has settled, what’s the reasoning behind Facebook’s mega-purchase and what does the company hope to gain?

An interesting piece by Mitch Joel speculates that Facebook snapped up Instagram to solidify its hold on mobile. Facebook, according to this story, was built as a web/desktop platform and has never been truly successful at replicating the Facebook experience in mobile. By contrast, Instagram ONLY exists in mobile, bringing a level of sophistication to the mobile user experience that can only benefit Facebook.

The importance of mobile is illustrated in this quote by Simon Khalaf of Flurry: “In 1999, there were 38 million broadband Internet users worldwide. Today, there are 1.2 billion people getting broadband Internet access on their phones.”

Of course it could be simpler than that. Instagram has more than 35 million users. That’s huge for a relatively new app, and photo sharing is a huge online activity — and also one of the backbones of the Facebook experience. If Mark Zuckerberg got spooked by the rise of Instagram (and the possibility that a rival like Google might snap them up first), he no longer needs to worry. For Facebook, a $1 billion spend might be no big deal, and also serve as a signal to Wall Street that they’re a major tech player.

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Research News: April 11 Edition

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Jenni Nelson

With the recent demise of the printed version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, I was reminded of a Wired 2010 cover story, “The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet.” Authors Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff wrote that the global proliferation of mobile devices, more importantly the apps we use on these gadgets, could be the death knell for the World Wide Web. Because we are increasingly getting our information from, and communicating by, specific closed-platform “specialty software” that serves one purpose, i.e. the app, the need for, and use of, an open-platform, free Web is losing ground.

Fast forward to last week.  I found a paper published by the Pew Research Center’s The Future of the Internet series. Pew, along with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center asked 1,000+ media experts, stakeholders and critics to hypothesize where we would be in 2020 regarding the Web/app debate originally posed in Wired. Keep in mind this is not a scientific study, rather a discussion, so figures given are by no means a representative measure. However, 59% of those participating agreed that “the open Web [will] continue to thrive and grow as a vibrant place where most people do most of the work, play, communication, and content creation.” 35% agreed with the opposite; “The ease of use and perceived security and quality-assurance characteristics of apps will be superior when compared with the open Web.” Of course, there was a healthy contingent that said the Web V apps question is a “false dichotomy” to begin with and the future would be a mix of both.

When I originally read the Wired piece, I equated the Web to the encyclopedia, and an app to a pocket travel guide. One is a large source of information on virtually every topic, while a pocket travel guide offers data on a specific subject/time/place. It serves a situational need. The Web is where we browse, discover, create and share. Apps -to some extent – do the same, but in fragmented bits. So my pocket travel guide/app was great when I was walking the streets of Rome, but the encyclopedia/web is what made me want to go to Italy in the first place. In essence, I learned about Italy on the web, but the app guided me when I was actually there.

Personally, I tend to agree with the false dichotomists. I don’t see apps replacing the Web, nor do I believe apps are a fad. Without a doubt, apps have a place in the digital landscape.  And so do their open-platform predecessors. It is an interesting discussion, but obviously one that falls prey to what a lot of media theories do – by contextualizing in black-or-white terms we miss the shades of gray.

 

 

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Digital DNA: Friday April 6 Edition

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Dan Wallace

This week got a surprising injection of futurism. Back in February we first discussed Google’s plans to introduce augmented-reality eyewear, but on Thursday the company officially announced its Project Glass project and gave a peek of what’s in store.

That announcement, plus a couple other recent items round out this week’s roundup:

1) First, the magic glasses. Early reports about Google’s wearable computer indicated they might be clunky sunglasses akin to Oakley Thumps. Not true according to the photos, which show a relatively subtle silvery bar positioned above the user’s right eyepiece as the only visible bit of hardware.

How to they work? According to this short video, the glasses could respond to GPS coordinates and the wearer’s voice commands to beam real-time info directly into the user’s field of vision. As you watch the video you’ll see the glasses provide subway closure updates, walking directions, video calling, and the ability to take photos.

Ah, but how do they REALLY work? There’s the rub — it’s all hypothetical. While there are some prototypes of the glasses out in the field right now, it’s almost certain that the prototypes can’t yet do the stuff in the video (which Google has admitted is for conceptual purposes only). One MIT researcher has his doubts that the type of tech shown in the video will be available any sooner than a few years down the road, though I’d certainly be happy if Google surprised us.

And in the meantime, take a look at this funny remix of the original vid in which the user added contextual advertising:

2) In another example of sci-fi tech, LG announced that they’ve started producing flexible e-ink displays. As seen in the photo, the plastic screen is fully bendable, which makes it much more resilient than the shatterable screens of the popular e-readers currently available on the market.

Because e-ink (i.e. the kind of display used for Amazon’s Kindle) better captures the experience of reading words on paper, then in theory a flexible display might caputure the experience of slipping a note into your back pocket and not stressing out if you sit down on it.

Pricing will obviously be a huge factor, but assuming manufacturing costs eventually get cheap enough then this kind of tech could have some creative and playful uses.

3) Finally, don’t miss Haworth’s newest communications outlet: HAWORTH’s 25 UNDER 25 on Tumblr.

Haworth’s Tumblr outlet fills the middle ground between long-form blogging and the kind of short, 140-character bursts that make up Twitter. Balancing Tumblr’s ability to juggle both words and visuals, Haworth’s team of young talent has been sharing their observations on the latest in media and culture.

You don’t have to be a Tumblr user to bookmark the site or add it to your RSS reader. If you’re already on Tumblr, then please follow! Check out HAWORTH’s 25 UNDER 25 here!

 

 

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We think differently about media.

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Haworth

At Haworth, our differentiation comes from changing the conversation in media. We nurture a team of curious, forward-thinking people who love their craft, and the chance to apply it to a great list of brands. We have a culture of contagious energy about all things media.

And we’re at it again – introducing Haworth on Tumblr. HAWORTH’s 25 UNDER 25 have been let loose on Tumblr to walk, talk, live and breathe media. Agree with them, argue with them, or just observe the conversation. But be sure to follow along and don’t hesitate to let them know what you think!

Be part of the conversation: http://haworthmedia.tumblr.com/

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Digital DNA: Monday March 26 Edition

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Dan Wallace

Thursday night I moderated the i612 panel The Future of Digital Gaming, held at the Graves. We had a fun back-and-forth discussion between audience members and panel attendees, who included top talent from Xbox Live, GSN, WildTangent, and Miniclip.

Our discussion of mobile gaming brought about the strange realization that the top 3 mobile games right now are essentially “Scrabble, Boggle, and Pictionary” — proving that, while it’s true that there’s nothing new under the sun, there’s always a new way to repackage a classic.

Here’s media 3 insights from the past week:

1) On Wednesday, gaming juggernaught Zynga made a major acquisition by snapping up rival developer OMGPOP. The price tag? A rumored $200 million.

OMGPOP is the producer of the wildly-successful app Draw Something (the Pictionary stand-in mentioned above), while Zynga — who became famous for Farmville — already owns the Scrabble and Boggle clones Words With Friends and Scramble With Friends.

Not only does Zynga’s acquisition allow the company to complete the gaming trifecta, it broadens its audience pool by welcoming the estimated 15 million daily users of Draw Something. Many Draw Something users are new to mobile gaming entirely, and don’t fit the existing social gamer profile.

Social gaming is a hits-driven business, and Zynga is hoping to stay at the top of the heap and take a chunk of the ad dollars aimed at this engaged audience.

2) Renee came across a new eMarketer study which sheds new light on how people are using media and just how big a deal multi-tasking really is. According to eMarketer’s data, U.S. adults consume 11+ hours of media content every day (after double-counting the simultaneous usage of multi-tasking).

Usually this multi-tasking seems like a distraction from the main event. TV watchers, for example, often have their phones in their hands and use them to check their email or play games like Draw Something. This is a headache for TV programmers.

But as the study points out, multi-tasking can sometimes be an opportunity. When multiple devices are used to build attention around a single source of content, audiences can become active participants instead of passive viewers. “I may be using my iPhone or my iPad to GPS a location that’s in a TV show,” says Mullen’s Edward Boches, as quoted in the article. “Or I might be watching something and there might be a historical reference, and I’ll quickly just Google something. It’s not that I’m trying to do two or three different things at the same time. It might be that I’m using one device to augment the experience of another.”

3) Finally, Scott discovered an intriguing use of near-field communication in the world of magazine advertising. We’ve talked about NFC technology in this space before (notably here, here, and here) but this looks like a first.

Lexus is embedding an NFC chip into a print ad running in an upcoming issue of Wired magazine. Users who have an NFC-enabled smartphone (the tech is currently limited to devices running on the Android platform) will receive a ping offering more Lexus info fed to their phone, with the prompt triggered by the proximity of the ad itself.

Previous NFC advertising tests have involved out-of-home ad units where the NFC chip can be easily embedded. It’s not clear how small the Lexus/Wired chip will be, but if I had to bet I’d guess it will be something like a sound chip, which will require Lexus to run this ad as a (relatively expensive) heavy-stock insert.

The need to embed a physical NFC chip somewhere might limit the rollout of this tech, and it’s true that most people don’t yet have NFC access yet. But that will change over time, and it will be interesting to see how this ad performs as a baseline for user responsiveness and whether an NFC “ping” will prove to be a pleasure or an annoyance.

 

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Digital DNA: Monday March 19 Edition

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Dan Wallace

A few developments from the past week are good examples of larger trends, and help illustrate the changing ways we use media. Here’s the highlights:

1) Public interest in the KONY 2012 movement swelled and crashed in just over a week, demonstrating the fickleness of crowds and the difficulty of sustaining attention in a distracted age.

The KONY 2012 video, produced by the non-profit advocacy organization Invisible Children, related the horrors perpetuated by Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony including the forced conscription of young Ugandans as child soldiers. The half-hour video spread via social networking (in the form of “you must watch this!” status updates) and a trending Twitter hashtag, and racked up 100 million views in only six days.

Almost immediately, counter-accusations arose. Observers pointed out that Invisible Children supported military intervention in Uganda, and had kickstarted visibility of the KONY video by shrewdly using viral networks from previous youth-oriented projects and by encouraging celebrity retweets. The KONY backlash also went viral, and mentions of the movement dropped off from high point soon after.

Regardless of the issues surrounding Invisible Children and Ugandan politics, the entire phenomenon is interesting – and problematic – because of the way in which it perfectly follows a digital-age template:

  • Massive awareness and passalong, but potentially little tangible benefit (e.g. donations or sales) – a phenomenon dubbed “slactivisim”
  • Sudden drop in interest as the Internet moves on to the next big thing, sometimes occurring in mere days

The whole thing is worth looking into as one example of a larger sociological phenomenon. In that vein, this type of mass interaction is undoubtedly going to be a tough nut to crack for marketers who want to create ongoing, sustained engagement with their audiences.

2) In a “video killed the radio star” moment, the Encyclopedia Britannica ended a 244-year streak by announcing it would no longer print its hardcover, multi-volume set of encyclopedias.

But the Britannica isn’t extinct. In fact, the company has been evolving for years now, long before the rise of Wikipedia (its early competition was Microsoft Encarta ’95). Britannica says that it makes $35MM from online sales and only $5MM from print.

Challenges remain, given the open-information movement of Wikipedia and the like, but Britannica’s willingness to chop off its printed-encyclopedia arm demonstrates a commitment to finding a way forward in the new digtal age.

3) The interactive portion of Austin’s SXSW festival wrapped up last week. Among the buzzed-about topics is location-aware software, and how mobile apps can create better localized experiences.

One example, profiled in a Time article, is the mobile app Geoloqi. It uses location-aware smartphone data to provide customized results without needing to rely on users to “check in” at specific spots.

As the article puts it, imagine traveling to Los Angeles. When you land, your smartphone instantly cross-references your arrival time with the bus schedule and alerts you about the departure time of the next bus that will get you to your hotel. Once you’ve boarded,you know your phone will alert you when you approach your stop, allowing you to take a quick nap while you’re still en route.

Assuming that this kind of stuff remains opt-in (so consumers know exactly what they’re getting into when sharing their location data), it all sounds pretty nice. More to come on this type of tech, and you can read the Time article on Geoloqi here.

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