Social networking etiquette

August 14th, 2007 • 4 comments Social Media

Ever since facebook.com opened it’s doors to the general public, the original inhabitants of the space (a.k.a former and current college students like me) have been dealing with some really important etiquette rules. For example, when you add someone on linkedin – do you also add them on facebook? Linkedin is like inviting yourself to someone’s office – fairly acceptable but facebook feels like inviting yourself to someone’s home- not so sure if that’s so acceptable.

Also how do you respond when colleagues, former bosses or people you simply admire and want to maintain a professional relationship with, add you on facebook? Can you realy decline, "Uhh – no thank you. I’m not sure I want you seeing my wall." Or my photographs. Or following my updates on twitter.

Facebook was a sanctuary – not anymore. It has become sadly become yet another social front that has to be maintained. My friends have become used to messaging me privately instead of writing on my wall as have I learnt to return the respect. Writings on walls are deleted in no second and for current college students who have some 300 plus photographs of themselves on facebook – I’d delete them before I launch on my job-hunt. Or atleast make them invisible. It’s like being found on a crime-scene — so many tracks to cover, hide and sometimes, create new ones if necessary.

I’m no Master, but I’ve figured out some pointers that, hopefully will help you as they helped me maintain a dual existence on facebook.

1. Always have a limited profile, but have it with just enough (general) information on it so that the person doesn’t know it’s a limited profile.
2. Try to not add people upfront – have them add you. This will automatically let you grant them access to limited or full profile and help you avoid the embarrasment in case you forget to limit someone while adding them. If you want them to notice you – send them a private message and hopefully, they’ll get the hint and add you.
3. This might be a tough act to follow but sadly it has come down to it: be careful about the photos you post on facebook and your photos that your friends post. De-tag yourself from photos your friends post so you won’t be easily found. Limit access to your photo albums under limited profile views.
4. Don’t twitter too much on facebook – really, if you are having a sucky Monday morning – your facebook followers don’t always need to know that. Esp. if your current boss is on facebook.

Google’s faux-pas

April 12th, 2007 • 4 comments Social Media

Go to:

1) www.google.com

2) Click on Google Maps

3) Click on GET DIRECTIONS

4) Type New York in From

5) Type Vienna in To

And notice:

Google directions ask you to drive all the way up to the Atlantic and then SWIM ACROSS THE ATLANTIC (3462mi) and then drive up to Viena. (Click on the screenshot for larger view)

Why not just say, ‘Go to JFK. CATCH PLANE. Land in Viena."

ROFL. (Thanks Paul for sharing!)

Zoodango – offline social networking

February 21st, 2007 • Culture Briefings, Social Media

Zoodango (what a catchy name!) is a natural iteration of a social networking site — instead of keeping your relationships online, it allows for offline connections.

Like any other social networking site, you build a profile that includes professional and lifestyle information (a cross between linkedin.com and facebook.com)  Users can then request in person meetings at events or public venues like Starbucks with the other members on the network.

I don’t think their techonology is revolutionary. Neither can I make claims about the longetivity of this site. But the reason I profile it here is to highlight a new learning curve in social media – we are slowly moving beyong simply forging friendships and/or connections online to strengthing them in the offline world.

Not that this never happened before this site was launched — people have always connected to each other via blogs and other social sites, but I think the launch of a site that exclusively promote face-to-face meetings gives this non-traditional (for some!) means of meeting people some sort of legitmacy. It is more of a cultural statement than a cool spotting.

Trivia – The founder/CEO of zoodango.com is current on the L.A Apprentice.

Democratizing education

February 15th, 2007 • 7 comments Culture Briefings, Social Media

It’s been two years since I graduated college and there couldn’t have been a more perfect time for me to learn about this.

I read about the OpenCourseWare Consortium in today’s Wall Street Journal. More than 100 universities and other organizations worldwide have joined hands in creating a body of open coursework available to public with the idea of sharing knowledge and democratizing education. (it also works as a great recruiting tool for these universities, but I choose to look at the non-commerical aspects of this fusion of education and technology)

In USA, universities like MIT, Yale, University of Notre Dame, UC Berkeley, Tufts and Stanford among others have opened a diverse offering of classes (ranging from esoteric topics like Modern Theoretical Physics to timely topics dealign with American cyberculture) for the public.

The value of education is non-negotiable. And when world-class institutions such as these make a select few courses available to everyone, it forms a telling story of how our culture has evolved and how traditional hierarchies are suddenly shiftless.

I’m thrilled! It’s only after graduating college that I’ve appreciated the anticipation of sitting in a classroom not knowing what I was going to discover. With Opensourceware, I will be able to enjoy learning again. More so because this time around, it doesn’t involve homework, midterms or grades!

Visual DNA networking

January 24th, 2007 • 3 comments Social Media

Imagini, has to be the next coolest thing after Flickr. Based wholly on the premise of ‘ A picture paints a thousand words," Imagini uses brilliant images and photographs to decode personalities.

For example, in the screenshot above, one of the first questions you will be asked is, ART IS and instead of four to five choices that usually read like 1) monalisa 2) pantheon 3)something i don’t understand, etc Imagini gives you a selection of 15 different images. You pick an image that resonates most with you. A dozen such questions later, you are presented with a cool book called your Visual DNA. Check out this book below!

But the smart folks at Imagini are not limiting the use of this technology to decodifying personalities. They provide this tool to measure behaviors of web-users. By tracking their motivational and aspirational responses, Imagini claims to better decode the web-shopper to potential clients like Mircosoft, Vodafone and Nectar.

In the last one hour alone, I’ve forwarded this link to about six friends and family. It’s such a novel idea! I’d definitely be more likely to fill out a visually enticing survey opposed to those dodgy ‘multiple choices’ and ‘on a scale of 1 to 10, rate this..‘ Although I can’t be too sure about the quality and authenticity of the results of such a survey. I’m sure the Imagini folks are hard at work on it.

Another super cool feature Imagini offers is it’s Gift-Finder. Based on a similar pattern, you answer about a dozen questions visually (either about yourself or your friend, depending who you are buying a gift for) Once you are done answering, it decodes your personality and offers you a page full of gift choices!

It’s such a remarkable technology that I wonder how no one thought of this before.

I’m not sure what else is on their agenda, but whatever is next, I can gaurantee it won’t be disapppointing. (to say the least) Oh and btw, Imagini is not a Silicon Valley wunderkid, for a change, this groundbreaking idea comes from across the shore…London

PS- The results you see on the screen-shots are not mine.

Search Lists.

January 9th, 2007 • 1 comment Marketing/ Advertising, Social Media

I tried a few new search engines today. I just googled, "new search engines." Ironic, no?

• Chacha, a new search engine based on a human-assisted search model. My take? Cool feature. I did manage to get an accurate result albeit it was not Google-quick. But in an age when we are expecting technology to simplify online search, will we end up relying on humans?
• MsDewey, was my amusement toy for a while. But I quickly outgrew her. Search be simple – not annoying.
• Quintura, still in beta, but I quite liked it. I’m so used to scrolling down a couple links on Google search results that I was slightly surprised when Quintura nailed down my search with it’s first response. Give it a try. The interface is simple, no gimmicks. Plain old search. How will it compare with google?
• SingingFish, an audio/video search engine. Too many of those out there now.
• Tiltomo, visual search. Again.

Yet another look at what the coming year will bring in terms of innovation in technology. Wikipedia’s next big innovation is apparently in improvising search technology. Sometimes the number of technology companies that launch everyday make my head buzz.

A hundred itsy-bitsy pieces and widgets on my desktop, a few add-ons on my browser and a couple other things on my computer– this should all make my life easier. Instead, it only gets complicated. So distracting. And half of these cool tools are plain useless. Web 2.0 – a bubble or the myth of the bubble?

Fortune Innovation Forum Part 5

December 6th, 2006 • 1 comment Culture Briefings, Social Media

Note: This is PART 5 of a multi-series on the Fortune Innovation Forum I was lucky to attend last week.

I actually wanted to mention this earlier –  Lexus, one of the sponsors gave each attendee a tiny USB drive and Adobe provided typed notes of the concurrent sessions that were going on all day. It was an extremely utilitarian sponsor gift. Attendees saved the Adobe PDFed notes of the sessions they weren’t able to attend on their USB drives. At events such as this, sponsors often overwhelm the audience with useless gifts like keychains and mugs and bags and whatnot. The USB drives were a refreshing change.

Another highlight of the conference was the Innovator’s Studio I mentioned earlier. I spent a few hours here -it was worth missing the main conference to stay a little longer at the studio! The studio was meant to overwhelm and bombard our stimuli. Andy Stefanovich of Play urged attendees to be disruptive and allow for confusion to reveal their identities at the studio. The focus of the studio was larger than enabling you to think innovatively for your company and organization – the studio first wanted you to express your individual identity and then that of your company’s.

Executives in crisp business suits picked up brushes dripping with paints and painted, they played games, looked into apartments across the street via powerful binoculars and even checked out live human beings from a libary to chat with. What struck me most about the studio was that every PLAY employee was smiling and genuinely happy. I loved it that it was so easy to chat with them and have a conversation. It was also much easier to strike up conversations with other attendees in this environment — a relaxing, easy atmosphere is perhaps a solution to innovation!?

I’m trying to interview Andy for Being My Boss – trust me, you’d want to spend a day just talking with him. His introductory speech, although brief, was the most uplifting speech I heard at the conference. I will try to conduct a podcast with him – he deserves to he heard, not just read.

***

Fortune Innovation Forum – Part 4

December 6th, 2006 • Comments Off Culture Briefings, Social Media

Note: This is PART 4 of a multi-series on the Fortune Innovation Forum I was lucky to attend last week. Click here for Part 1 , PART 2 and PART 3.

Stanely Bing, Fortune magazine’s technology columnist had a light-hearted, almost comedic presentation on the downfalls of innovation. His 15-minute speech sparkled with humor and one-liners that were hard to forget.

The Big idea according to Bing was that Innovation has both merits and demerits. And often the demerits are underplayed. Innovation can induce strong liabilities like dysfunction, idiocy and change for the sake of it. He touched upon the importance of a slow, gradual change touched with a hint of practicality.

• Innovation is nice but so is knowing where your desk is located.
• Only people with bad expense accounts are in favor of constant innovation
• Innovation has it’s place -somewhere around  San Fransisco
• Innovations lead to organizations run by children and idotic crazies.
• Innovation organizatons are over-run by consultants, but consultants always come with body-bags.

Agreed?

Fortune Innovation Forum – Part 3

December 6th, 2006 • Comments Off Culture Briefings, Social Media

Note: This is PART 3 of a multi-series on the Fortune Innovation Forum I was lucky at attend last week. Click here for Part 1 and PART 2

One of the highlights of the conference was the panel discussion on Bringing the Next Net to Mass Market. The panel was an eclectic mix of old and new media: Steve Berkowitz, Online Services Group, Microsoft, Bradley Horowitz, Product Strategy of Yahoo! Inc, Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg.com and Om Malik of GigaOm

The next net, according to Malik is Mobile technology and Broadband. He couldn’t have said it any clearly. Mobile tech has picked up in Asia and is slowly gaining more precedence in Europe. We’ve been a tad bit slow but serious innovations in the mobile arena will dictate the next few years in the communication industry. Mobile companies should not have the kind of monopoly over phones and plans as they currently exert in America. My hope is that will change as competition stifens and new entrants level the field.

Horowitz of Yahoo! made an interesting point (which hadn’t occured to be before) about how Yahoo! Groups were essentially a less-glamourous form of social networking and how Yahoo! acquiered companies del.ici.ous and Flickr are in a way an extension of the Yahoo! Groups. He spoke briefly about the new tool Yahoo! Answers and made a point how Yahoo! still attracts abt 100M visitors a day as oppossed to 80M/day by Myspace.

Kevin of Digg.com touched upon how his success with digg.com was mostly serendipitious. Word-of-mouth and blogs played a big role in spreading the word and making digg.com popular in the circles. I was a little disappointed with Kevin, I hoped he would share more from the perspective of a young, new media agent.

Berkowitz of Microsoft said something that I can’t remember now because most of it sounded like a press release and a press plug for Microsoft. Also, I am not a fan of the company so I might not have paid enough attention.

Burning Question of the Day:

For Horowitz of Yahoo! – How is that with all these excellent ideas for the future of internet and amazing acquisitions and other innovations you still charge $20/year for 2GB of Yahoo! Email when Gmail offers it for free?

Lesson of the day:

Innovation happens at Ground Zero and does not have to be groundbreaking. Often, true innovation lies in simplifying things.

Fortune Innovation Conference – Part 2

December 6th, 2006 • Comments Off Culture Briefings, Social Media

This is PART 2 of a multi-series on the Fortune Innovation Forum I attended last week in New York. Click here for PART 1.

I was looking forward to attending “Customer Created Content Companies” workshop to be led by Om Malik of GigaOm. Several workshops were held concurrently and they were booked to capacity. I managed to squeeze in and find some standing room but I realized within the first 15 minutes that I shouldn’t have bothered. About half the attendees left the room within the first 10 minutes and I stayed put for another 5 before exiting.

Om Malik severely underestimated the intelligence of his audiences. He began the workshop by asking his audiences if they had heard of companies like Threadless (Yes) JPEG (Yes) Slim Devices (Yes) About two people in the room had heard about these companies which have successfully harnessed the creativity of their customers. Malik’s big idea for the workshop was that you should compensate your audiences and share the profits. He gave many examples on how other companies were involving their customers but he failed to highlight the most important aspect of consumer created content. That just because everyone is doing it, doesn’t mean your company should join the bandwagon. It may just not make sense for you to do it!

I think if busy managers and executives are taking time off from and paying $2K for a conference, they aren’t looking for examples on how other people have achieved the next big idea. They are looking for construtive feedback on how they can achieve the same in their industries, withstanding the limitations and parameters the industry offers.

Also Malik reiterated the importance of paying your customers and sharing profits. I’d encourage everyone to think of it more as rewarding and appreciating your customers. Design Sponge, a popular design blogger has built a community of readers with her blog that now routinely meet in various cities once a month to discuss their businesses. This is an amazing example of involving your customers (in this case) readers creatively. Design Sponge isn’t paying these women to do that! It’s not about paying and sharing your profits, usually when you create a company or a website that resonates with your readers, they will WANT to be involved. And this doesn’t happen artificially. I was put off by how easy Malik made it sound.

Later that day in a panel however, Malik’s inputs about the future of innovation were eloquent and hit the bullseye. I wondered why his brilliance didn’t shine through in his workshop.

Fortune Innovation Forum 2006- Part 1 (Gary Hamel)

December 6th, 2006 • 3 comments Culture Briefings, Social Media

Note: This is Part 1 of series of posts on the Fortune Innovation Forum I was lucky to attend last week in New York. I attended the conference with hopes of gleaning more insight about innovation and how it can be applied to entrepreneurship.

The primary focus of the conference was sustaining innovation within management. Gary Hamel, who is known for coining the word/concept core competence (?!) opened the first day with a 90 or so minute presentation on continous management innovation. His presentation failed to impress me – while is was most certainly provocative, it lacked a certain element of realism. It was one of those ideas that looks great on paper but incredibly difficult to translate in real-life. His assumption that every employee within a company thinks of his/her job as a career threw me off. His presentation was peppered with examples of how other companies (Google, Grameen Bank, Toyota, Whole Foods, Visa) have successfully managed to instill innovation in their company culture but it lacked solidity. Haven’t we read enough articles about Google and Whole Foods in Fast Company and Fortune?

In all fairness to Hamel, he did inspire the staid, white-collar, internet-illiterate executives that crowded the auditorium. He is a powerful orator and often hearing someone convincingly tell you what you might have already read, is more effective. Perhaps it’s why people pay such obscene amounts to attend such conferences?

I’m not a big fan of concepts and fancy words and diagrams and processes that these consultants come up with and invariably become famous for. That’s the problem with academics and consultants I think. Hamel reminds me of that saying, Those who can, do it. Those you can’t, teach.

The Big IDEA according to Hamel:

• Dynamic shifts come from management innovation
• He presented examples of companies that have no hierarchy and companies (Google, W.L Gore) that allow their companies a percentage of time to work on their pet projcets. He pushed the idea that these innovative management practices should be adopted by other companies as well.
• Leadership has to be about how people can serve their goals while simultaneously serving the company goals. (This makes sense, I wouldn’t want to work for a company where I was a mere pawn of the machine)
• A survey he conducted showed at LSE showed that people in general believe that it takes a crisis to change the company. He encouraged companies to change that paradigm and think differently. Work against the grail.
• I loved the analogy he drew between innovations and cities. Cities are factories for social innovation, he said. They are diverse and there’s something new everyday. The chance for serendipity doesn’t diminish.
• Future starts at the fringe (Remember what Joshua Onysko of Pangea Organics said about the future and the fringe?)

Your thoughts?

Blog-books

December 5th, 2006 • 1 comment Social Media

A few months back the kind folks at Blurb offered me to be a part of the beta-test program that would allow me to create and publish a free book out of my blog-posts. Unfortunately, my indecisiveness (over what my blog-book should consist of) got the better of me and I missed the deadline for the free book but with their wallet-friendly prices ($19 for a 40 page full-color, soft cover book) I’m thinking of giving it another try. Just for posterity.

These blog-books can make a great holiday gift. For small-businesses, get your story with your products published on one of these. Abundant possibilities…

Three-dimensional surfing

November 17th, 2006 • Social Media

   I love this idea! This is another service I can totally see myself using and enjoying. 3B , in a nutshell, is a virtual 3D tour of the internet. Download the applet, create an avatar (very Second Life like) and stroll around 3D cities, villages, stores and hundreds of other destinations. What I like most about this site is taht it seems to have incorporated social networking, virtual living, shopping and web-surfing into one neat package.

Happy surfing. Perhaps we’ll bump into each other in one of the 3B villages!

Another social networker…

November 17th, 2006 • Social Media

I’m so tired of these new social networking thingies popping up all over the web. Although I’ve gotta admit, Klostu, has an intriguing personality. It claims to be the mother of all communities — connecting all message boards and communities from the web.  Btw, looks like clean, rounded fonts and symbols is a huge trend these days.

From the site,

Klostu is a unique new platform which brings together existing disparate message board communities and their members into what is essentially a super social network – a network of social networks. Klostu provides members of boards (and even blogs) advanced profiles with a growing range of social tools and useful widgets. Klostu profiles appear within the boards and will move seamlessly from one board to another, wherever the user may travel on the boardscape.

My life in a comic-book

November 17th, 2006 • Social Media

Cheap paper, loud VROOMS, speech bubbles and flimsy covers — all remiscent of comics books. (Although the current Manga books are quite slick looking) But anyways, imagine photo-quality comics starring your favorite people and perhaps, even yourself! Now that will give DC Comics a run for their money, no? 

This has to be one of the coolest tech-inventions in recent months!  For $24.99, Comic-Life gives you the tools to create amazing and very real-looking comic strips out of your photographs. It includes the works: neon pull-outs, sound effects (blam!) and even thought bubbles.

You can even print out your self-created comic on photo paper to give it the ultimate polished edge. I guess I have an idea for my sister’s birthday gift…

It’s the faith…brands are more about relationship than gimmicks

November 10th, 2006 • 1 comment Culture Briefings, Marketing/ Advertising, Social Media

Atoosa Rubenstein’s (Editor-in-Chief of Seventeen magazine)recent resignation has caused quite a stir in the media industry. At age 26, she was the founding editor of CosmoGirl. After bringing the infant magazine to new heights (in advertising and revenue) Hearst moved her to reinvigorate the flailing Seventeen magazine. The first issue that was released under Atoosa’s editorial direction revived the magazine’s 5 year slump in sales and since then, Seventeen’s ad sales and circulation has dwarfed all other teen titles.

In my opinion, the reason Seventeen survived and ruled this multi-million dollar market was for two reasons 1) It’s historical association with teenage girls 2) Atoosa Rubenstein. Atoosa crafted the book to speak to the language of the audience it caters to. Atoosa of Iranian descent made sure Seventeen presented a diverse look and represented all skin colors and body-types. This distinction alone won many accolades. In another timely move, Atoosa did away with the monthly Editors Letter and chose to instead speak with her audiences via a MySpace blog. She struck a chord with these girls by often putting herself in the lien of fire by introducing a dialogue on religion in the magazine’s pages. She also endeared herself to her girls, (as she calls them) by including them in her personal moments, by sharing photographs from her vacation, photographs from when she was a not-so-pretty teenager and even photos from when she had put on weight. She also made the magazine incredibly price-friendly — because she understood teenage girls don’t buy $400 shoes and $1100 dresses. The success of Seventeen magazine, in my opinion, was largely because of the relationship Atoosa cultivated with her audience. Ofcourse but even magazines are a business and leaders often make bad decisions. In Atoosa’s case, the terrible Ms. Seventeen reality show, a la Trump’s Apprentice.

Irrespective of the hits and misses, Atoosa’s declaration to step down to start her own website for teens, youth consultancy and a book is a definitive nail in the coffin of teen magazines as we know it. It takes years to cultivate a real relationship with teenage girls — even if the Atoosa’s successor employs similar tactics, the teen girls will have moved on to digital zines leaving no time for the successor to forge a relationship with them. I think the first issue under the new editor’s leadership will speak to my claims.

With the close of Elle Girl and Teen People, this year has been somewhat tumultous and defining for the teen magazine industry. Both magazines have shifted online in an effort to speak with their audiences via a medium most comfortable to them. CondeNast is secretly working on it’s little teen empire. Atoosa is starting her own — and I think just because of the level of trust and the open relationship she shares with this fickle demographic, her website might just be the best. CondeNast, can do all they want, but unless they bring a real personality and a relationship to the mix, teenagers will view them as just another corporate site.

You could have it all — the jazziest site, expensive rewards, the works, but unless you take the time to know your customers and forge a relationship with them you’ll never earn their trust.

Honestly, sometimes I think people give too much importance to phrases and complex theroies on branding and marketing. I don’t think there’s a simpler science than marketing. You can give it as many fancy names as you want, but it comes down to really knowing your customers and pleasing them not your advertisers or your investors. Granted, this is a simplistic statement, but the essence of it cannot be diminished or argued upon. Building a relationship, that’s what its all about. And with the launch of Atoosa’s mega teen website and her youth consultancy, we’ll see just how right or wrong I am.

An informed rant

November 1st, 2006 • 3 comments Culture Briefings, Social Media

I am very vary of new businesses that think they are the "it." Most are tweaks (albeit, sometimes very good tweaks) on already existing technologies and businesses. And a lot are total replicates. Esp. in the tech sector. Some 80% of tech. entrepreneurs I speak with and know are more interested in selling their creation to one of the big mommas namely Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and such. The payoff may no doubt by huge, but really, do we need another search engine for vidoes or yet another user-created community website?

I recieve about two invitations a day to join a variety of social networks. With features like poke and pinch,I think I’ll pass. The recent news about Pop Sugar Blog network recieving $5Million dollars in funding gives me a queasy feeling: the return of the bubble? I am yet to read major news about any of these social networks and VC-pumped blog networks bringing in any real source of revenue. (exceptions allowed)

We live in a world where people from elite institutes become famous for coining phrases and people achieve the guru status for building measly so-called communities. After flickr, I don’t remember the last time a new business idea or technology took my breath away. I think what most companies need is not a marketing guru or another great idea – they need a critic.  Someone who’s not afraid to call a spade, a spade.  And someone who, for heavens sake, can tell them that the world doesn’t need another social network, another gossip blog, oh and another rant.

Savory -New York

August 22nd, 2006 • 2 comments Social Media

Some time back, I wrote about Turn Here – the travel website that features short videos of cities. If you loved that site and if you are in New York, most certainly check out Savory.  A super-easy wiki format and professionally shot local vidoes of new (and notable) restaurants in New York, Savory hits the nail. Each restaurant listed has a page to itself with links to reviwes in mags and papers, vital stats (cuisine, price, hours, mode of payment etc.) AND information on public transit and parking. Can’t beat that!

I like covering new business ideas and entrepreneurial ventuers on my blog. The stories are often simple, yet very interesting. Like in this case -McBride thought of this idea when he wasn’t able to find a good resource to find a good restaurant in San Diego. Co-founder and wife, Jennifer, a producer for VH-1, loved Chris’s idea of restaurant videos. They started working on the idea last year and went live this April. I played around the site and it is pretty exhaustive!

Savory has plans to launch a San Fransisco and Chicago version soon. I only have one beef with them : the big cities are overdone! Maybe concentrating on the little-er cities makes more sense. I could be wrong but my guess is- being in NY/SF/LA, you are constantly deluged with information, websites and travel guides. There are just too many options!! But in case of smaller cities like Philadelphia, a concept like this would really hit it off. (or maybe I’m just partial to Philly!)

Burrp – new startup

August 21st, 2006 • 1 comment Social Media

The Interactive Imperative

July 6th, 2006 • 4 comments Social Media

 
When there are literally hundreds of web sites offering the same news, contests, prizes, and promotions, what really differentiates them from one another? Seventeen magazine’s decision to offer profiles of its editors on MySpace, the Weblogs created by Shop Etc. and Jane magazine, and Condé Nast’s plans for a user-generated teen Web site  such moves are unsurprising, even inevitable. But simply going digital and making the people who produce the magazines more personable doesn’t necessarily guarantee a greater level of reader engagement.

When ElleGirl decided to fold its print vehicle and run as a digital magazine, we thought that the decision may have been a bit premature. Readers like to touch and feel the pages of a magazine, and then recreate that experience online. The print experience triggers the need for the online experience. It also creates the opportunity for sharing with friends. While a two-way exchange is a mandatory evolution to ensure survival, digital components alone do not create an interactive interface. A structured balance enlisting a creative use of various online and offline outlets is the key to creating an interactive exchange between editors and readers.

Last spring, five editors with diverse backgrounds published the first issue of Is Not Magazine, a simple one-page, billboard-like sheet that appeared in the form of wild postings in Melbourne, Australia. The effort not only saved a few trees, but it challenged readers. Produced, printed, and "distributed" Down Under, the tiny magazine, or news-zine, pushed the boundaries of what the publishing world deems a magazine, a newspaper, or newsletter. Is Not Magazine erased existing myths of what a magazine is or should be.

Instead of simply posting content on its Web site, the magazine invites readers to participate in unusual ways. Readers can click on images of pieces that interest them from their camera phone and save for viewing later, or they can send, via text message, a 160-character Flash-enabled story, or write whatever they want on the posting itself. Is Not Magazine understands that interactivity is not limited to having an online identity. Readers’ short attention spans and the plethora of media choices have outpaced the lure of the digital age. Creativity and innovation are defining interactivity  and they are signaling the next big marketing idea.

The dynamic shift toward user-generated content and more active consumer engagement will only gain prominence in the future. While YouTube and Facebook offer users the ability to post their films and friend networks, respectively, Uth TV, a combination of both formats, has taken interactivity to a higher level. The site Uthtv.com is an online channel that invites users to both network and create communities and upload their movies and short films.

But the site has gone farther and provided users with a platform to be recognized for their work. A peer voting system brings the best work forward; selected users have the chance to turn their work into full-fledged productions and potentially paid work. In fact, two of the youth-produced shows have been nominated for Emmy Awards this year. Who knew such a concept could work?

Another impressive venture is the site impnow.com, which has integrated interactivity with the glamour of reality TV. The site lures youth by promising to serve as a launching pad for their entertainment careers. It’s "American Idol" meets "Survivor," played out in an online environment similar to MySpace. The thrill of networking with the potential for an incentive represents interactivity at the highest levels in both of these cases.

Still nascent, these are examples of online media opportunities that challenge the boundaries of traditional media and represent authentic interaction with users.

With 83 percent of youth online at any given time, according to Yankelovich Youth Monitor 2005, kids no longer trade phone numbers. Instead, they ask, "Are you on MySpace or Facebook?" By giving kids the ability to cultivate their voice and a platform to display their talents or their 15 minutes of fame, this new wave of media is giving birth to an entire generation of users that will demand innovative ideas. Publishers that don’t get this risk irrelevance, or worse: Consumers who just won’t respond and who definitely won’t interact.

Co-written with Tina Wells for Media magazine.