crowdfunding: Sticknfind raises 1 million dollars via Indiegogo – #mwc13

This piece was originally written on behalf of the Orange Live Blog during a Press trip at Mobile World Congress 2013 last week

No, you aren’t dreaming! 1 million dollars were raised by Sticknfind by Jan 2013

No, you’re not deaming! The SticknFind startup raised closed to 1 million dollars on the Indiegogo crowdsourcing platform.

And The founders of SticknFind are no rookies either for they have been pioneers of Bluetooth products since 2003 and 2004 and they have been working for the automotive industry and have won many awards since then declared Jimmy Buchheim in his introduction yesterday. He and his teams have also developed the Blutracker project in the past can track various items within 2,500 ft range also funded through Indiegogo ($180,500 were raised for that project) as well as Meterplug, an intelligent plug which measures your real electricity consumption and displays the consumption in local currency (close to $128,000 on Indiegogo too). “This has been a very successful company” CEO and founder Jimmy Buchheim said. He started the new company in early December: “it wasn’t easy” he said, but he looked very pleased with the funding he got from the crowdfunding platform. Indeed, I know of few people who wouldn’t be happy with that!

Jimmy Buchheim, SticknFind CEO and founder shows the SticknFind tracker

why go through crowdfunding?

“The most obvious way, apparently, was to design our product, produce it and pitch it and then sell it to some industrialist, but this wasn’t easy for us to do. So we decided to go the crowdfunding way because the input from the users is sometimes more valuable than what you can get from a company” Buchheim said. He added “industrialists want to change the product to suit their needs and not that of their clients, and talking to VCs ends up with having too many cooks in the kitchen and this is how it starts to get bad!”

So, what is that innovation which users have found worth investing one million dollars into?

• First and foremost, it’s about an “amazing tracking feature” to put it in the words of Buchheim’s: “a lot of Intellectual Property went into the tracking mechanism” he said. What it means is that it gives users the ability to measure very precisely where an object is located : “the resolution is amazing, the system is able to measure very short distances”,
• Secondly, the find it feature which enables the sticker to send a notification if the paired object comes into range. Users get alerts on their phone if they leave the object behind them. You can place the sticker on a camera; on your car keys etc. and you can even measure the temperature of an object too (this would, for instance, tell you whether the object is outside or inside),
• Thirdly, the easy zooming capability enables one to find keys in a 150ft (45 metres) range but SticknFind was able to extend that reach to 300ft (90 metres). Based on feedback from users, they produced prototypes with 3 different manufacturers. “It took us a lot of tuning” Buchheim added, “they are made of very small parts and it required extensive work but we eventually identified the right kind of plastic so as to find the right mix [i.e. neither too rigid or too rubbery] in order to increase the reach”.

SticknFind will start shipping next week. The company started production last month, that is to say early compared to their initial promise (end of March), and the device will be available from retailers in April. This is the first generation of trackers, Buchheim said, “we are creating a new market and it will trigger huge applications. People and companies are losing a lot of money with stuff they lose” he said. What of generation 2 then? “It will be even smaller”, Jimmy Buchheim promised,h “you could even have it on your toothbrush!” in said in jest.

“This is the true Internet of things” Buchheim declared. The price for 2 stickers is $49 and $89 for 4 and there will be packs of 10 available. The app will be free and available on Google Play and IOS and it will be working on the Blackberry Z10 too (April release). And the battery lasts for two years so won’t even need to change it that often. A free SDK will be released to developers. The SDK will also be made available for Mac OSx (by March) and Windows 8 (from April onwards).

There are many applications for SticknFind, including industrial applications such as the keeping of inventory (100 and even 1000 items can be working at the same time the SticknFind CEO said).

The system, because it uses Bluetooth 4.0, only works with newer phones (Iphone 4S or newer or Samsung Galaxy SIII etc.) but no additional accessory is required to make it work. “The only way to make the battery work for 2 years was to use the new generation of Bluetooth, otherwise it wouldn’t have lasted more than a few days” Buchheim declared. As for security, pairing is limited to devices when they are 1 m apart and “you have to tap it to activate it so that it’s safer”.

This technology is really innovation at its best, it fill in a requirement, is available right now, and is both simple and ground-breaking; no wonder they raised so much money from Indiegogo.

Synthesio report on Social Media Week 2013 puts me (and Nigeria) on the map #SMW13

It’s very flattering that my name appears on the list of “influencers” who took part in the social media week events of last week. Synthesio has put together this report which is very interesting and shows some of the countries and cities which are head and shoulders above the rest in terms of twittering and social media usage. Strangely enough though, Italy shows up on top of the list, above France and… even more surprisingly, England. Even more strange, we see Nigeria in the list of the most important countries of that social media week. I would have thought that people in Lagos had far too many fishes to fry at this very moment in order to become Twitteratis . Or is it that there is a glitch in the report? Identifying and measuring “influence” is definitely a very difficult and risky sport which contrasts with its apparent obviousness.

Social Media Week is a worldwide event connecting people and organizations globally, through collaboration, learning and sharing ideas. This week, 10 cities around the world celebrate the tremendous social, cultural and economic impact of social media.

Social Media Week has become an incredible platform and community that has grown to more than 100k members – this year, SMW celebrates its fifth birthday and marks this milestone with a unifying global theme that represents the connectedness and openness of the collaborative, digital world. This global theme is evident when examining overwhelming buzz around the event all across the map.

At Synthesio, we eagerly jump on the opportunity to track global conversations around an event of this magnitude with such a web frenzy surrounding it, so we decided to take a sip from our Twitter Firehose and track all Twitter conversations surrounding Social Media Week 2013, to provide you with engaging insights into the overall reach of the event, trending topics, and finally, our list of top influencers driving the conversations.

So, now it’s halftime for SMW13 and we invite you to stand up, stretch, grab a drink, and enjoy the Synthesio SMW Halftime Report. Congrats to the top influencers in the U.S., France, UK and Singapore, and don’t forget to check back for the full Post-Game Analysis!

via Social Media Week 2013 – Halftime Report – Synthesio #SMW13.

Powerpointis: a Marketing Disease (2)

My recent post on the true nature of infographics has prompted me to dish out this 10 year-old post by Giancarlo Livraghi which used to be available on my Visionarymarketing.com website. Even though some of its references are a bit outdated, nothing has changed since then, except that the means of propagating false and fabricated information have never been so powerful.

By Giancarlo Livraghi

Many of today’s diseases can be traced back to the origins of our species. It’s easy to imagine a prehistoric painter, who had found a quick and easy way of drawing a buffalo, covering cave walls with colourful celebrations of hunting success, regardless of his actual competence in bringing home food for his family or his tribe. The “PowerPoint syndrome” is a well known disease, clearly diagnosed not only by brilliant cartoonists such as Scott Adams, but also in a variety of analyses of corporate efficiency and communication. It’s called “disinfotainment”. It has been found that it can seriously disrupt corporate communications. Some companies, including Sun (now Oracle), have banned it from their organization.

In the September 2003 issue of Wired magazine there was an article Power Corrupts, PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely by Edward R. Tufte, professor emeritus at Yale. (His monograph, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, is available from Graphics Press.)

AP/Wide World Photos
Tufte satirizes the totalitarian impact of presentation slideware.

Here are a few quotations from his interesting comments

Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn’t. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: it induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly lead to a worldwide product recall. Yet slideware – computer programs for presentations – is everywhere: in corporate America, in government bureaucracies, even in our schools. Several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint are churning out trillions of slides each year. Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.

Presentations largely stand or fall on the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content. If your numbers are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won’t make them relevant. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure.
At a minimum, a presentation format should do no harm. Yet the PowerPoint style routinely disrupts, dominates, and trivializes content.
The practical conclusions are clear. PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector. But rather than supplementing a presentation, it has become a substitute for it. Such misuse ignores the most important rule of speaking: respect your audience.

Of course presentation tools existed long before electronics. There were blackboards, slides, etcetera. Some of the most beautiful paintings and sculptures of all times were used to present or support an idea, a way of thinking, an attitude, a project or an action plan. But most of today’s powerpoint presentations can’t be called a work of art – or even an example of effective presentation. Visual aids can be used effectively. To focus on key points, to emphasize relevant data, to make things clear. But it’s unfortunately easy to do the opposite – to muddle, to confuse or to deliberately warp facts, issues and concepts.

We know that data, balance sheets, statistics, trends, projections and forecasts can be manipulated in many ways. Fifty years ago this was explained very clearly in a wonderful little book by Darrell Huff: How to Lie with Statistics. It was published in 1954, it’s still being reprinted, and it’s as relevant today as it has ever been. Darrell Huff explained how data can be misused and misrepresented – by mistake or by deliberate manipulation. He also showed how they can be additionally warped in a visual presentation. For instance numbers can be shown using two-dimensional shapes instead of lines, columns or bars. The height of the picture indicates the actual quantity, but the perception of difference or change is twice as large.

By using pictures the effect can be even stronger. The perception is three-dimensional. If we use the picture of an animal to show the increase or decrease of a species, or a cow to represent milk production, we can make it appear doubled when it actually increased 30 percent. And further misperceptions can be added by using movement. Can that be done with money? Yes, of course. Instead of figures or bar charts one can use banknotes, coins or moneybags. It’s called “dramatizing”, but it’s cheating – as Darrell Huff explained fifty years ago, when there was no electronic slideware to make it easier.

Visual resources, as such, aren’t honest or misleading. They are tools – and the result depends on how they are used. A well planned presentation can be “truth well told”. But if it’s deliberately manipulated it can be a cheating device – or, if it isn’t carefully planned and tested, its effect can be quite different from what the presenter had in mind. Standardized tools and styles can make things even worse. Presentations follow a predefined pattern, bore the audience with repetitive mannerisms instead of catering for its interests and questions.

An effective presentation needs serious work, care, competence. It needs to be tried and tested, finding the most effective form for its specific content, with precise coherence of visual and textual devices to its intent and purpose. Even when technical resources were less easy and more expensive (costing time, care and commitment as well as money) there were mistakes and mishaps – as well as deliberate cheats. But it didn’t happen as often as it does now, because more effort and specific competence were needed for its preparation. Things are made worse by the powerpoint intoxication.

It seems so easy. An elaborate show can be put together in a few hours. The abundance of tricks and devices encourages exaggeration. The result is often depressing. The resources offered by standard slideware are always the same. As a result presentations often look the same, though they are dealing with totally different subjects. That is confusing and boring.

We often see a presenter, imprisoned in a predetermined format, unable to answer a simple question. Because he or she is trained to repeat, without any depth of understanding, a presentation put together by someone else. Even when people prepare their own presentations, they often get lost in the mechanics of form and format – and miss the point of what they were supposed to say.

Another ridiculous consequence is that, after a meeting or a convention, instead of a written document what is left behind is a copy of the slides. It’s obvious that slides prepared to support a presentation are not the appropriate format for reading – and lack depth of explanation and information. But haste, habit, and mindless subjugation to technology lead to the production of useless papers that confuse the issue (even when they are not deliberately deceiving).

There are also messy results of “personalization”. It’s easy, with word processing, to change a name. Too easy. A document (or presentation) that on page 1 shows the name of a person, or a company, in the publishing business reveals on page 12 that it was originally written for a car dealer. Things get worse in the case of online communication. It’s annoying enough to receive a three megabyte powerpoint attachment to tell us something that could have been said more effectively in six lines of plain text. But there are also websites that contain materials poorly adapted from something tat had been obviously prepared for another purpose. In addition to the well known and widespread disease of cosmetics prevailing on content.

After many years of serious discussion about usability and content management, the best website makers know that substance matters more than appearance. (See The architect and the gardener.)  But many site owners want things done poorly. Because they don’t understand that the internet isn’t television. Or because they are infected by the powerpoint bug. Or because they don’t want to commit manpower to produce meaningful content. So we are still plagued with a proliferation of empty boxes, shiny appearances with nothing inside.

The powerpoint syndrome isn’t just the misuse of specific technology. It’s a cultural disease. The abundance of resources for makeup and glitz leads to exaggeration and superficiality. Where appearance prevails on substance, scams and cheats are more easily disguised. We must learn to tame the wild proliferation of expressive tools to bring them to obedience, to the service of what we have to say. If and when there is something that is really worth saying.

The true colour of brands and true nature of infographics (1)

today’s selection is…

Thanks to my favourite stumble upon gimmick for finding new content and subjects, I discovered this very interesting piece of infographics about the true nature of brands according to their colour. I do not know what these graphics, beautifully crafted by the way, “[tell] about your business” as the headline says, but I certainly know what it means about the way that we read, understand and are influenced by pictures. A long time ago (2003), I published a piece on my  visionarymarketing.com website by Giancarlo Livraghi, an Italian publicist and the author of a book in Italian entitled “the cultivation of the Internet“. Giancarlo, in that piece, was describing what he called PowerPointis, a concept he had come across while seeing Colin Powell use pictures to convince the UN that the war on Iraq was justified. His point was that most of Powel’s pictures were fabricated but weren’t questioned because it’s hard not to believe pictures. This theory was accredited later in a Hollywood film based on a true story (Green Zone - 2010). I will re-publish this very important piece in a forthcoming post.

Imago ergo sum …

Infographics, mostly those like this one which are beautiful and laid out with excellent taste, go straight to the point and are easy to grasp. They are emotional and aesthetic. They appeal to our feelings. Besides because they are so simple and didactic, they are taken at face value, so much so that no one dares point out that they could be wrong. All you need is a click of the mouse and hey presto! The picture is multiplied and shared throughout the world. It is no longer cogito but imago ergo sum (see this piece in French).

Yet, infographics are also simplistic and exaggerated. They save time but at the same time, pictures tend to deprive readers from their critical eye. Most of the time they are non representative and show surprising results. They often refer to “a study the world’s top 100…” (Brands in this particular case) but who selected the sample? What are those brands? Who commissioned the study? Where are the results to be found? What methodology?… Such questions are and will remain, most probably, unanswered.

ING Orange account doomed to failure? not so not so…

A close look at the details underneath is even more enlightening. I just focused on the orange colour for a reason (disclosure: I work for Orange). As this colour is used by the company I work for, I’m very happy to realise that it is popular for high-tech according to this infographics and that the colour code is consistent with the brand values which we all like. I also read that this colour is said to be unpopular for banking whereas ING has been using this colour-code very successfully not only in the Netherlands but throughout the world and especially in the US where it is well known and associated with this colour.

I do not need to go any further. Looking at a nice picture like this makes me think of looking at a horoscope: it’s fun, entertaining, slightly puzzling, but this is not knowledge. Knowledge requires sources. Knowledge, requires contradiction. Knowledge can use pictures; but it certainly can do away with infographics.

The magic left the building with Jobs

Reblogged from Mario Sundar:

• 

I remember the moment Steve Jobs scrolled through his music and uttered those magical words - "scrolls like butter" - while illustrating the beauty of the original iPhone.

It's moments like this that you lived for, as a technology obsessed professional in Silicon Valley. And with Jobs we got to watch the Michael Jordan of technology, courtside, at his best.

Read more… 712 more words

This Is Not What Social Media Was Meant To Be today's selection is ... LinkedIn's Mario Sundar's piece is, despite its title, not just about Steve Jobs, it's about the way that PR is done, and the fact that Social Media wasn't meant to become what it is now. He describes a PR exercise by Zuckerberg and Facebook officials which lacks both the lustre and pizazz of Apple's classic keynotes. I am not an Apple admirer I must admit, even though I own Apple products and acknowledge that they are beautiful products, but I'm not in synch with the philosophy behind Apple. Yet, Jobs's keynotes were undoubtedly personal and performed with style. What is most annoying is indeed, as Sundar remarks, all those who try to mimic Jobs's methods... not always with great success. As pointed out by Herman Mellville: "It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

LinkedIn Reaches 200 Million Member Limit

By Yann Gourvennec

As an early adopter (beginning of 2004) adopter and future “ambassador” of LinkedIn, I am very pleased to be able to reblog Deep Nishar’s post about the professional social network reaching the 200 million user bar today. A great achievement for what I consider one of Social Media’s best tools in the market. For memory, as of Dec 2011, LinkedIn only had 136 million users. The growth has been staggering, as stated in this earlier blog piece.

200 Million Members!

We recently crossed an important and exciting milestone for the company. LinkedIn now counts over 200 million members as part of our network, with representation in more than 200 countries and territories. We serve our members in 19 languages around the world.

I’d like to thank each of you for helping build the LinkedIn network into what it is today. It’s been amazing to see how our members have been able to transform their professional lives through LinkedIn. You truly grasp the power of LinkedIn when you start to focus on these individual success stories.

Take for example, Akshay Chaturvedi from New Delhi, India who was able to use LinkedIn as a launch pad for his career. Not only was he able to lead an international project at AIESEC for a project on AIDS right out of university, with the help of LinkedIn, he was recruited by KPMG and continues to receive career guidance from his LinkedIn network. Then there’s Robyn Shulman who stepped out of her comfort zone from teacher to now a published writer and leader of a ESL Bilingual Educators group on LinkedIn. She has rediscovered former talents and changed her life through LinkedIn. One of my favorite stories comes from Leonardo Brant from Brazil who founded Cemec, an organization to help Brazilian professionals and entrepreneurs think creatively about their business challenges. Today they use LinkedIn as their digital classroom to exchange information and foster a meaningful community to share relevant knowledge. Everyday we hear stories like these from our members and we look forward to hearing many more.

So, who are LinkedIn’s 200 million members? This infographic captures the diversity and magic of your professional peers.

via 200 Million Members! | Official LinkedIn Blog.

New Innovation Blog Launched

A few years ago, I used to be a regular contributor to bnet in the UK but the site pulled out of the European market in 2010. Fortunately, a new project has just been launched and I’m very happy to embark on it. It is named innovation generation and it is sponsored by our peers from Alcatel.You can find my first piece on that blog under the following title: Governments Ease Into Cyberspace. Below is the announcement for the new website; stay tuned for more info …

We are living in a truly connected world. That’s something most people might take for granted when they make a phone call or watch TV, but when you consider how a wireless network brings books to your e-reader, an Ethernet network keeps your savings account secure, and a cloud holds most of your online identity, it becomes a pretty powerful proposition.

It is the services that run on these networks that are the lifeblood of society, and the potential for innovation here is limited only by our own creativity.

Enter Innovation Generation. It’s a generation that’s not confined to baby boomers, Gen Xers, or smartphone-toting Millennials, but rather encompasses everyone living in today’s globally connected society. Our goal here is to explore the potential for personalized, interesting, and, of course, innovative new services that can increase the quality of life and work for end users while also increasing the value of the service provider in the process.

How are service providers delivering these new services to businesses and consumers? How can they get more from their infrastructures than they already do? What are the opportunities for business model innovation? How can service providers improve the customer experience?

These are just a few of the questions we’ll strive to answer on Innovation Generation. If you’re a global communications service provider or enterprise IT leader, Innovation Generation is your guide to navigating the challenges and opportunities in creating innovative business opportunities for your company and your customers. Here, we explore innovation at all levels of today’s connected businesses, from software to services to groundbreaking business models – with an eye on what’s practical, what’s clouded by hype, and what’s going to help the bottom line.

These are services that are transforming industries like utilities, transportation, the public sector, healthcare, oil and gas, manufacturing, defense, railways, and even the government. And service providers are at the heart of it.

via Innovation Generation – Named Documents – About Us

Dailymotion to bloggers: what if you earned money from others’ content?–#blogbus

Luc Dumont, SVP international Business Development Manager, demoed the most recent developments at Dailymotion from their Redwood Calif. office on day 2 of our blog tour, in front of our blogger bus bloggers on the second day of the tour. Dailymotion is a video hosting platform which was created in 2005 in France. It can boast 100 million daily users per month and 25-30 million videos are hosted on the platform. There are 220 million unique viewers a month even though the company is only 113 employee big. It also now part of the France Telecom- Orange group (disclosure: I work for the Group). Dailymotion is the 2nd largest video platform behind Youtube and 80% of its audience is coming from outside France. Whereas the head-office is in Paris, US operations are based in NYC and International operations are managed from Redwood, Calif. [this post was originally composed on behalf of Orange for the http://live.orange.com blog]

the most exciting segment in digital

“This is the most exciting segment within the online business” Luc Dumont said by way of an introduction. The premium aspect of video is very visible in the US with very aggressive players like Netflix, Google and Amazon. “Increasingly, our business can be summarised by its player” Dumont said. This player runs on various platforms and works, obviously, with content. Dumont described all the developments initiated by Dailymotion and namely what they call the Dailymotion Publisher network. In essence, this is a service which enables content providers (websites/bloggers) to create video portals automatically or manually and earn money from other’s content. Applications are submitted directly to Dailymotion who screen them and validate them (in order to ensure that the platform is valid and compliant). Content can come from either other users or well established content providers like Reuters or the Wall Street Journal. Already 1,000 users and websites like msn or Starmedia (owned by Orange) are using the service. “There is still space for a second video platform player” Dumont said, and Dailymotion is determined to be that one. The Redwood office was opened in November 2011 and the California based headquarter is working on the international development of the French start-up which has already stopped being French.

Luc Dumont today at Dailymotion’s headquarter

Here are my notes (taken on the spot) from that meeting …

the various platforms that Dailymotion is running on:

• Everything was built from the inside and it resulted in the Dailymotion.com. It’s a very large site now (see above numbers). Curators are preparing videos for users.
• Social networks is the second platform. Social has been part of the DNA from day one and accounts for 1/3 of our traffic, Luc Dumont added. “It’s a great tool and there is space for a second or third player” he said. “People don’t care about who runs the video, they just consume video”
• Dailymotion Publisher networks: is a new product whereby a special relationship is struck with publishers like Yahoo!, msn and the Huffington Post
• mobiles and tablets (15-20% of traffic as of today)
• connected TVs: partnerships with as many manufacturers as possible
• consoles: ditto

5 major trends for the future of IT and the Web – #blogbus

The Orange Blogger bus tour – of which I am the organiser on behalf of Orange of which I am the Director of Internet and social media – was stopping by San Francisco today and the whole day was hosted by Orange Silicon Valley

Georges Nahon delivered a very inspiring keynote today before our panel of bloggers in which he shared his vision with regard to what is happening in IT in general, and in the Valley in particular. I will begin my account of Georges’s visionary presentation by detailing his conclusions. As I always do, I have taken detailed notes of the pitch and they are made available at the end of this piece. If there is one thing that should be remembered from that pitch is that the Web is everywhere and in everything that will be happening in the future. Something which established players don’t like according to the Head of Orange Silicon Valley. However, Nahon insisted on the fact that it won’t be the same Internet we used to know.

Facebook will be “Yahooed!”

“Social” has been going through a rough patch over the Summer, with the now infamous Facebook IPO, dubbed “IPOcalypse”, IPO meaning “It’s Probably Overpriced” Nahon said facetiously. Yet, Europeans are wrong when they interpret these issues as the end of social media, Georges Nahon said in essence. Social is here to stay, and beyond, it will change everything which takes place on the Web, even though Facebook itself will probably be “Yahooed!” Georges added.

But the worrying thing I got from his pitch is that, according to his analysis, next to the World Wide Web that we all know, an increasing number of companies, including Amazon, are creating a “non-searchable adjacent Web” which sounds very much like the end of the Web as Chris Anderson announced in Wired a few years ago. I think Georges is right indeed, there is a growing concern that Net neutrality is being sacrificed for the sake of user experience. Time will tell, but there are indeed worrying signs.

Georges Nahon, head of Orange Silicon Valley, on the first day of the blogger bus tour

Here is how I summed up Georges’s 5 trends for the future of IT:

1. Tech is all about mobile: “Twitter is a mobile-first company” and thriving he said, “Facebook isn’t and is suffering”. 10% of Internet traffic is made of mobile traffic. Yet, 25% of US users are using the Web from mobile only, but in Egypt, this number soars up to 70%, and India is close to 60%! And 68% place their mobile next to their bed while sleeping at night.
2. The default is now social: and social meets mobile (over 50% of smartphones connect to Facebook). Social graph (Facebook), interest graph (Twitter) and influence graph (Klout) are the new frontiers of the Web and “they are here to stay … for a long time” Nahon said. For many, Facebook is the new web (“find us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter). What is the future of search? it is social and both Google and Microsoft are working on it… “and Facebook search is coming fast” Nahon added.
3. Another Web: At the same time, traditional web development is slowing down, and Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Mobile will continue develop their “non-searchable adjacent webs” as Nahon called it.
4. The Cloud as a new frontier: “The new guys are Amazon, Zynga, Rackspace and even people like Google were taken by surprise” Nahon said. But there are even newer guys you may never heard of such as Bluejeans, Alfresco, Joyent and many many more. Explosive data growth is also forcing companies to develop solutions for data reduction. And “the next big thing isn’t Software, it’s data” Nahon concluded on that subject.
5. All video will be on the Net: most players in that field are coming from the Internet world, not the media world. “We think that the future of TV is to be streamed” Nahon said. There is more innovation than ever before in that area he said. Nahon added though that the concept of app-centric TV on smart TVs wasn’t entirely convincing. Time Warner see their future in apps but another trend is Social TV (described by Nahon as “a descendant of interactive TV which never worked”. 85% of tablet owners use their device while watching TV he said. What are they doing? Social websites, Zynga, Search, Craigslits (an old web survivor!) according to Nielsen.

the future of the World Wide Web

So, what is the future of the Web? Georges Nahon highlighted 10 trends in that area too:

1. the web is becoming data centric
2. apps will rule consumer and entreprise innovations and html5 will infiltrate apps and web services
3. non searchable adjacent webs will continue to develop and the web will be fragmented and site-less (mobile, apps)
4. the web of sites is dead and Facebook like buttons are the new hyper links
5. Real-time multi-user game cloud platforms will influence enterprise cloud technologies: the main issue will be “latency” ‘as already explained on that blog)
6. 4G/LTE (which we all were using to day via local mifi devives) will trigger innovation
7. mobile payment will kick off from 2015
8. all video will be on the web
9. Enterprise IT will shift to the cloud.
10. Facebook will rule the web during the next 2 years and Google will be in catch-up mode and within 3 years they will be “Yahooed!” Nahon said
11. Amazon will continue to diversify and will create more online commerce/entertainment clouds and mobile devices (tablets/phones). “Amazon is belittled in Europe” Nahon added, “and it should be considered as a major player, for Bezos is the new Steve Jobs”.

Started as an R&D organisation and evolved towards what they are today (scouting organisation). 60 people, 40 of  which are in a position to file patents and they file 20 per annum. Often, it’s about reviewing the strategy. Statement from Prussian general “no plan survives contact with the enemy” e.g. 5 years ago, no one had seen the iPhone coming. Even analysts. An none of these people has seen Apple becoming a major player in the Telecom industry => be prepared for the unexpected. There were times in which you telcos could go to the ITU organisation and get things sorted but this isn’t the case anymore.

Essentially Orange wants to get prepared for the future. One of the key elements for Silicon Valley is capital investment. In Bay Area only, venture investments represent $3.2 bn 46% of total investments in the USA (San Jose chronicle on Q2 results). Texas only represents $ 179 m (3%) despite the huge tech firms in that state. The core subjects is ICT and media but not only.

The software industry in Q2 of this year received the highest level of funding. (34 out of 39% other source) $2.37 bn i.e. 32% of the total.

Market capitalisation: Apple + Cisco +Oracle +Google +Intel have a total of $ 1,261.82 bn (IBM is only $236b or FTE $37b). What this hides is the myriad of small companies which help these companies become what they are.

my tips for social media management in Romania and elsewhere (5/5)

This is the script of an interview I gave for a Romania business journal “Business Review Romania” in June 2012. The interview is published in instalments. This is part 5 of 5

Name a few examples as to how social media management has helped Orange get more brand awareness?

In most markets in which it operates in the consumer space, Orange has a very good brand awareness not to say the best. So social media isn’t really used for this at Orange. We tend to use it more for image, co-creation (like with the http://sosh.fr entry level offer in France), brand and user experience (see http://pinterest.com/liveorange or http://pinterest.com/orangefrance to name but a few recent examples), charity (check the French Orange foundation blog http://www.blogfondation.orange.com), user relationship (like Orange helpers in the UK: http://oran.ge/KqyW3r) and brand nurturing (like Facebook Romania https://www.facebook.com/orangeromania for instance). These are only a few examples from different countries but there are many more than this.

The only counterexample I can think of is the one I’ve been involved in for 3 years between 2008 and 2011, and it is related to the b2b arm of Orange, that is to say Orange Business Services (http://orange-business.com) . It is understandable that being in 220 different countries and territories as Orange Business Services is, means that there are vastly different levels of brand awareness in each of those geographies. Social media can come be useful in the areas in which we are not operating in the consumer space in order to boost the knowledge of Orange Business as well as our skills. It has proven very successful in many instances, we have even been able to use the blogs to initiate sales at a later stage (this is ‘pre-commerce’ again).

---

[1] Check my personal blog for this topic at http://visionarymarketing.wordpress.com/category/b2b-marketing/

[2] http://bitdefender.com

[3] http://ronewmedia.ro

[4] Small Office, Home Office, i.e. very small or independent companies

[5] Media Aces is the French association of enterprises involved in social media, of which I am the President. My work on the four different types of brand in social media is available at: http://bit.ly/4brandtypessm

[6] Oscar Wilde quotes at: http://oran.ge/owildetalk

[7] Check the ‘worldwide’ tab on the http://facebook.com/Orange page

[8] http://timeline.orange.com

[9] Re. Andy Sernocitz ‘Word of Mouth Marketing’ check http://oran.ge/asbooks on Amazon

my tips for social media management in Romania and elsewhere (4/5)

This is the script of an interview I gave for a Romania business journal “Business Review Romania” in June 2012. The interview is published in instalments. This is part 4 of 5

What do you think the ratio for the implementation of social media campaign should be in the entire media budget of the company? How was this situation at Orange?

To begin with, I do not like the term “campaign” which I find too military and aggressive. Eventually, social media marketing is a new form of marketing, more respectful, more centred on our customer’s interests and requirements, based on the principles of crowd sourcing and customer centricity. So I ban this kind of language as well as other terms like “targets” which are often times the staples of traditional marketing but are outdated and not applicable to social media marketing. Despite what most people think, social media marketing has to be thought of in the long-term, not in the short term.

using military analogies for communications? not a good idea … From bastille day

My second recommendation would be to build engagement and then spend money, not the other way round. First, I always start building the network using content. This is what takes the greatest part of our work and energy. Each time I am in charge of a new digital department, I start working on my content strategy and building the content, both externally and internally, which will fuel my digital strategy. Once I have done that, I can start crystallise communities around the content which we have created, as well as adapt the content to the liking of our audiences. The second step is to grow the network so that it reaches a critical mass. The third stage is to create synergies between the pages and the different platforms that we use: the Facebook hub on all Orange pages[7] is a good example of that, or Orange timeline[8] which groups or Twitter accounts around Orange. But it is also a matter of linking platforms and blogs to one another, both at Orange, and with Orange partners outside of the company.

Once I have sorted out all my budgets, and made considerable savings, then and only then can I invest my money, with great care, on advertising to promote this content and bring back traffic to my main platforms. This is a slightly more lengthy approach, but it pays in the long-term and is incredibly strong in terms of resilience.

My last recommendation would be to say to companies that they shouldn’t spend millions on word-of-mouth because word-of-mouth is supposed to be cost-effective; otherwise this is just advertising and advertising works best in traditional media[9].

My main frustration with regard to social advertising is to see that mainstream social media platforms have done very little to reinvent advertising so far. Innovation in that space is not on par with what we are supposed to expect. But this will probably change in the medium-term, hopefully.

As to Orange Group, this is how we work. I still haven’t spent a dime to grow the http://facebook.com/Orange page and yet we grew it from 40,000 people in May 2011 to over 215,000 a year later! Similarly, our Group Twitter account (http://twitter.com/orange) was brought from nothing to close to 9,500 followers in just a year, through sheer organic growth and content sharing.

Now that we have grown a critical mass, we might consider advertising to speed things up or bring them to the next level, but I do not expect those spends to grow out of proportion and much in excess of 10% of my overall budget, in the very long run.

 

---

[7] Check the ‘worldwide’ tab on the http://facebook.com/Orange page

my tips for social media management in Romania and elsewhere (3/5)

This is the script of an interview I gave for a Romania business journal “Business Review Romania” in June 2012. The interview is published in instalments. This is part 3 of 5

Can you give us 5 tips as to how company can manage a crisis through social media?

In fact, despite what most people think, and despite the usual romantic stories told about Internet crises and rumours, managing crises is a long-term rather than short-term exercise. Crises in social media in fact, reflect what is bad with your company, not what is wrong with your community management or the way you handle it. Here are my 5 tips about managing crises:

picture cc 2012 Yann Gourvennec (abstract album)

1. fix internal problems first: things that you do in your day-to-day business may be kept hidden, but not in social media. Eventually, social media tells more about the way that you are organised internally than about anything else,
2. work on the process: if you are making things up as you go along when a crisis arises, and then build the process as it happens, it means that you have done something wrong. You should work on that process from day one, before a crisis takes place,
3. make your PR go social: don’t put all your eggs in the same basket; your PR and social media departments should work hand-in-hand. There is nothing that the community management team should do without referring to PR when a crisis arises, and vice versa, there is nothing that PR is aware of that should not be communicated to the community management team, inclusive of the stances which have to be taken and displayed. Don’t take the Lone Ranger approach by letting community managers express themselves in the name of the company even though they haven’t received clearance for it. This applies to large companies and mostly listed companies, for which external communications are extremely critical, and may not be applicable to smaller enterprises,
4. prepare for the worst to happen outside normal working hours: my experience of crises online has shown that the worst problem often occur on a Friday night from 8 pm onwards or during the weekend, or at night. Work with vendors in order to set up round-the-clock moderation when necessary, in multiple languages when you are a worldwide company namely,
5. set up your alerting system: not to generate alerts in real time all the time, but mostly when something bad happens so that you know in real time when you have to do something when it is really necessary.

All these are applicable to companies with a strong brand awareness only. Listed companies rank high on the agenda with regard to crisis management issues and the need to industrialise the process around them. On the other side of the coin, other companies with weak brand awareness would gain from a negative crisis rather than lose. If your brand is entirely “under the radar”, and no one is talking about you at all, then having a crisis means that at least people will talk about you; even though the experience may be unpleasant. As Oscar Wilde once put it: “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about[6].”

---

[6] Oscar Wilde quotes at: http://oran.ge/owildetalk

my tips for social media management in Romania and elsewhere (2/5)

This is the script of an interview I gave for a Romania business journal “Business Review Romania” in June 2012. The interview is published in instalments. This is part 2 of 6

Give us 5 tips for a Romanian company (a corporation, and medium-size company) to build brand awareness with social media

At first sight, one may think that social media marketing is only devoted to large corporations which can afford to hire big enough teams to manage such new activities.

But I think it’s just the other way round.

One of the biggest beauties of social media is that it makes word-of-mouth marketing accessible even to those who have very little means. Hence, unless you are a small and medium-size enterprise with difficulties to cope with your own business and not enough time on your hands to visit your customers and do your everyday work, I would suggest on the contrary that you use social media to gain brand awareness and do business.

small is beautiful

In fact, with social media you don’t actually do business directly. You do what Bob Pearson would call “pre-commerce” (Jossey Bass, 2011), i.e. you create the conditions for people to buy your products or recommend them to one another.

As a rule, large corporations have already built brand awareness (this is why they are large, in essence); what such companies might seek in social media marketing may differ significantly from what small and medium-sized companies may be looking for.

SMEs and Soho[4] businesses are by definition lesser-known and  have to build their brand awareness in the first place.

Having said that, I can deliver 5 general tips for enterprises which are ready to jump on the bandwagon of social media marketing:

1. first and foremost, know thyself and use social networks consistently with regard to your image, and your overall marketing strategy (for different types of brands and strategies, check the work the non-profit Media Aces[5] did with brand monitoring company Synthesio,
2. don’t shift your focus from business to social media: obviously, social media should support your business by enhancing your brand experience, awareness and/or visibility. If it distracts you from doing business, then don’t do it,
3. focus on content: if you are in b2b, it will have to be very professional (in-depth articles about your visions and technical prowess for instance); if you are in b2c, your content has to be essentially entertaining, mostly on Facebook, on which users rarely want to be bothered with serious stuff but are more interested in games, polls and interaction,
4. be yourself: there is nothing worse than bombastic boasts (such as “we are the leaders!” mostly when it’s not true and that you are only a leader of a niche therefore not a leader) or salespeople trying to sell their wares on social media. Think of keeping your readers/users and customers happy first, and then think of yourself. Be simple and natural, and when you produce content make it interesting for them, and not for you!
5. “socialise” your website: not by multiplying Facebook buttons, but by making your (interesting) content easier to share.

---

[4] Small Office, Home Office, i.e. very small or independent companies

[5] Media Aces is the French association of enterprises involved in social media, of which I am the President. My work on the four different types of brand in social media is available at: http://bit.ly/4brandtypessm

my tips for social media management in Romania and elsewhere (1/5)

This is the script of an interview I gave for a Romania business journal “Business Review Romania” in June 2012. The interview is published in instalments. This is part 1 of 5

What trends have you identified in corporate social media management at the moment? Does Romania align to these trends (or what must Romanian companies do to do that)?

I have highlighted 10 major trends in the management of corporate social media in 2012 in a post which is available at http://oran.ge/10smtrends. This post served as a basis for my presentation at the Ronewmedia conference which took place in Bucharest on May 16^th, 2012. Rather than repeat what is said in this blog piece and was again developed during my presentation, I will attempt to sum it up in a few words:

First, social media is reaching maturity stage and is no longer considered an innovation. Second, barring a few exceptions (if you sell extremely boring products like plastic tarpaulins for instance), social media is now part of everything we do, and has become an integral part of digital marketing; b2b is no exception, on the contrary. Digital marketers who have failed to delve into the nitty-gritty of social media, have missed something big and they had better catch up. Lastly, social media is no longer restricted to a particular team within the digital department; it has to be used by each and every one of us in business.

Very few companies are an exception to this rule; the impact on b2b marketing might even be more important than that on b2c marketing, however counter-intuitive it may seem[1]. As to Romania, it is obvious that we are talking of a country in which there is already a very high level of IT knowledge and expertise, as you know there are even some international high-tech giants which are Romanian such as bitdefender[2] for instance; so it would be irrelevant to treat Romania separately from the rest of the world. Having said that, there are real regional differences in social media adoption both quantitatively and quantitatively, but the results of these discrepancies are sometimes surprising. If I look at the profile of the users of the Orange Worldwide page (http://facebook.com/Orange) you might be very surprised to learn that Central and Eastern European users amount to more than 35% of our overall users: Poland is by far the biggest fan base in our portfolio, but Romania is not very far behind in proportion, given it is a smaller country. More than 5% of our users are Romanian in fact! And our local Romanian Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/Orangeromania) is also booming with more than 164,000 likers.

So, Romania and Romanian companies are not out of sync and are part of this globalised world like anyone else. Only a handful of emerging countries as well as Iran and Russia standout; the Ronewmedia[3] conference provided enough evidence of the latter in its first panel.

---

[1] Check my personal blog for this topic at http://visionarymarketing.wordpress.com/category/b2b-marketing/

[2] http://bitdefender.com

[3] http://ronewmedia.ro

social media lessons from Lincuplive

today’s selection is…

A piece on Alastair Walker’s blog this morning. I met Alastair at Lincuplive at the end of February; The lincuplive social media conference was a real success, with hundreds of entrepreneurs and social media enthusiasts from all over the country and speakers from foreign lands such as myself. The pitches were great and the content superb, I felt energised by the sheer enthusiasm and positivity; whoever knows Celia Lacy, Tim Dowxning and Glenn Le Santo, the organisers, will  understand why. But it’s not just that, it’s the people in the rooms, the questions, the urge to know which small business and startup owner were showing which really made you feel part of something. Last but not least, there was this team of bloggers from Lincoln university, the pride of that once very rural town which is awakening to other lines of businesses and proving very dynamic. And there was this chap Alastair, a former sports journalist, and a very nice bloke, who was leading this team of young writers in such a professional manner ! At the end of my break out session I remember one of students coming to me; she was very excited because the piece she’d written had been the most retweeted: indeed, social media works, that was even the tagline for the event, and we proved it in Lincoln.

Alastair Walker with his team at lincuplive

Working with The Connected Generation | Social media and SEO from the North

Working with Lincoln University students at a social media conference called Linc Up Live, gave me an interesting insight into the future, and a remarkably bright, fast paced future at that.

The students in action at Linc Up Live, Feb 2012

Think about it for a moment; we browse online, from Amazon to Pinterest, our butterfly minds bookmarking products, gig tickets, experiences that shape our view of the world. Websites welcome us back by name; our virtual friends share our blogs, photos, music tracks or news links. Ours is a connected world.

The generation that are studying at Universities across Britain today are perhaps the first in history to have a digital footprint since childhood, a truly social strand to their DNA.

All twelve of the Lincoln Uni media team who arrived at the Doubletree Hilton for Linc Up Live had their smartphones at the ready, Twitter profiles set up and a good idea of what the event was about. Fact is, almost anything can be researched in seconds via Google. From laptop to X-Box – we’re all connected.

via Working with The Connected Generation | Social media and SEO from the North.

evidence on engagement rates on facebook shows little interaction

Just before I post a 2 part piece on Byron Sharp’s “brand that grow” marketing opus, here is a link he added on his blog to a facebook “fan” survey which shows that engagement rates are extrelmely small; a conclusion I’ve already made a number of times, underlying the “cyberbabble” effect on facebook.

Even facebook’s own fans don’t talk much about facebook (on facebook)

Posted on February 6, 2012 by ByronSharp

One of the questions asked of Dr Karen Nelson-Field’s analysis of facebook fans engagement with their brands on facebook is whether the result is simply due to slack social marketing by the brands in question.

via Even facebook’s own fans don’t talk much about facebook (on facebook) | Marketing Science.

Social Media in Corporations: social media week panel in Paris (Feb 15)

today’s selection…

Is the announcement of this upcoming panel discussion organised by IABC France on the subject of Social Media in Corporations. I will take part in this panel which will be hosted by the American University in Paris. 

Social Media in Corporations – Empowerment or Surveillance?

Wednesday, February 15 at 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM Add to Calendar

A panel debate (in English) organized by IABC France and the American University of Paris.

As social media use becomes more pervasive in business, it raises questions about the way it is used both by employes and employers. Should employees be empowered to use social media, should employers use public social media data in their recruitment and how do you decide to draw the boundaries? In this debate experts from different backgrounds wil discuss these and other questions, relevant to anyone in the corporate world.

Panelists confirmed so far:

• Tim Cawsey, Corporate Communications at Gemalto
• Yann Gourvennec, Director Web, Digital and Social Media at Orange
• Andrew Hennigan, Consultant, Speaker and Writer on professional communications
• Nicholas Vieuxloup, Director of Operations at Viadeo, Social Media Club France Board Member

Moderated by: Matthew Fraser, Author, Associate Professor at AUP, Social Media Strategis

ONLINE REGISTRATION AT THIS ADDRESS

the end of social media … as we knew it ( via @wcgworld )

Today’s selection is …

My 2 cents on the future of Social Media for enterprises after 5 years of field practice as Director of Digital Media at Orange Business Services and – more recently – the Orange group. All of this courtesy of Bob Pearson on the Pre Commerce blog. I will soon expatiate on these views in order to prepare for an upcoming event organised by usefulsocialmedia, which is due to take place in London on that subject. 

Yann Gourvennec, Director of Digital and Social Media, Orange Group – “The end of social media … as we knew it”

Change is happening now. Four to five years of social media practice in the enterprise world have shown us that the social web is pertinent to business and – when used properly – it can enhance our online and even offline reputations. Yet, so many years later, social media can no longer be considered an “innovation”. We need to structure our initiatives if we want to get through the rough patches ahead and thrive beyond 2012. This implies that those who haven’t done so already cease to use social media as a standalone or lame advertising practice but integrate it into their core activities. For example, start with these good old websites of ours which need to be made social. I don’t believe that the Web is dead, but it is certainly being turned into something new, more interactive and more social, which encompasses social media; not the other way round. And it’s happening today.

via Insights for 2012 from Today’s Business Thought Leaders – Pre-Commerce.

about “tweetable” marketing “truths”

today’s selection is …

Pamela Vaughan‘s highly enjoyable “truth vs. myth” tweetable piece on Marketing at Hubspot. Enjoyable for sure, but you should take some of these facts and figures with a pinch of salt. Much as I believe in the power of social media, my field experience has shown that Facebook is not a catch-all tool for B2B for instance. There are many more effective ways of attracting leads when you are in B2B than writing up a Facebook post: Blog posts, affiliate marketing and well crafted, really meaty whitepapers (not those slapdash “bought from someone else” things but the real mac Coy which tell the world you are a true expert and know what you are talking about). Instead, you might want to recycle this idea of a safe tweettable piece with real myths and truths such as those taken from Scott Berkun’s Myths of Innovation opus.

42 Tweetable Facts to Squash Marketing Fantasies

We hear a ton of marketing myths everyday that have no basis on research or facts. They’re simply made-up fantasies that people have come to believe. But let’s face it, we marketers can’t afford to live in a fantasy world. Instead, we need to rely on cold, hard facts to guide is in the right direction toward inbound marketing success.

That’s why we’ve released our newest ebook to help you separate marketing fact from fantasy. Download your copy here, and tweet some of your favorite facts below! Some of them might surprise you.

Inbound Marketing

• Fantasy: Inbound marketing focuses exclusively on top-of-the-funnel objectives like attracting prospects & leads.
• Fact: Inbound marketing helps attract leads & also helps convert those leads into paying customers. (Tweet This)

Social Media

• Fantasy: B2B companies don’t need to waste their time on Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn.
• Fact: 39% of B2B companies using Twitter & 41% using Facebook have acquired new customers from it. (Tweet This)
• Fantasy: Facebook may be great for building buzz, but it has yet to prove itself as an effective channel for generating sales.
• Fact: 41% of B2B companies & 62% of B2C companies using Facebook have acquired a customer from it. (Tweet This)
• Fact: 51% of Facebook fans are more likely to buy brands they ‘like.’ (Tweet This)

via 42 Tweetable Facts to Squash Marketing Fantasies.

Amsterdam iStrategy conference digest – #istrategy

today’s selection is …

The very thorough and embarrassingly eulogistic review of day 2 of the iStrategy conference which took place in Amsterdam on October 26. The report was written by Bertram J. Croesn (@BertramCroes) a Spotzer Media Intern, and self-proclaimed Budding Writer, Marketer, Musician, and Observer of the World. Thanks Bertram for the nice words!

[panel discussion 1 on the morning of day 2 at the istrategy conference in Amsterdam]

[Review] #iStrategy Conference Amsterdam Day 2

As soon as I woke up in the morning, and without checking SEOmoz, I knew what the keyword for the day would be: opportunity! Given this unique chance to rub shoulders with the buffs in the industry, I inserted my spongiest of brains and proceeded to the Park Plaza Hotel near Schiphol International Airport, where the event was held. I was meeting up with my colleague and supervisor, Spotzer Media Group’s own Social Specialist, Nicolas Griffioen (@NicoGriffioen), who kindly provided me entrance to day two of the iStrategy Digital Marketing Conference (@iStratBuzz) here in Amsterdam.

Audience Engagement, User Experience and Social Monetisation

Upon receiving my nametag, we headed into the large conference area of the hotel, where we docked and prepared for the first panel discussion on Audience Engagement, User Experience and Social Monetisation. Here we got the inside scoop from social media celebrity and VP Brand Development at Tampa’s Head of Lettuce firm, Amber Osborne (@MissDestructo) as she shared some funny anecdotes on yams and experiences on what got her where she is today. I was particularly keen on hearing what Warner Music’s Ritch Sibthorpe (@RitchSibthorpe) had to say, mostly because of my interest in music and the industry. We got kicked off with a successful campaign they collaborated on with pop sensation Katy Perry. I jokingly tweeted that I wondered if I could slip him a demo, instead I did the next best thing.

via Nicolas Griffioen’s Blog : review of iStrategy conference day 2