Digigen & The TinMan

It would make a change for us to be able to get Google to do what we want them to do. Grown sick of the slightly arrogant…. “Did you mean?”, then these tips could be for you. Taken from the Google guide, these are billed as advanced tips on how to use Google more efficiently and get exactly what you want…

Link here for the Full Guide

Two pieces of information have crossed my desk over the last few days. The first one was a chart taken from the guys over at The Relationship Economy, which is below. There is a good write up of what this means over at the relationship-economy blog. (link here) My take on it is that the boom of the internet which has been powered by free services (Google, YouTube), has been even more amplified by its underpolicing and the ability for any user to take any domain name. I am in fact guity of this with about 10 domain names unused to my name. The relative cheap costs of setting up, hosting, and running a domain have spawned new entreprise from both legal and illegal entrepreneurs – genuine businesses and domain squatters. This has led to the boom in hostnames highlighted below and the ever growing difference between hostnames and Active names.

The second piece of information that has crossed my desk is in relation to the removal of latin only URLs. The basics are that all URLs use latin alphabet e.g a to z. The changes from ICANN will mean that any alphabet can be used to create domain names suffixes. (Surely in part due to the boom in China of internet usage over the past 2-3 years and the need for a better way of using the internet).

“The change, which will come into effect in November, relates to the portion of an internet address that follows the final or penultimate full stop. At present, users in countries such as Russia, Japan and China are free to type in the main body of an internet address in their own languages, but must then revert to Roman script to add suffixes such as “.ru”, “.co.jp” or “.cn”.

From November, suffixes written in a user’s native language will for the first time be translated into simple (ascii) characters that can be read by a computer.

“This change will have a great impact in opening up the internet to a wider audience,” Phil Kingsland of Nominet, the national registry for .uk domain names. “It will reduce existing complications and barriers to direct online access.””

ICANN believe this will broaden internet usage from 1.5bn to 5bn once the changes are implemented. However, for more frequent internet users its probably been awhile since you actually typed in a full domain name and worried about the suffix e.g. is it .co.uk or .com? Therefore, the changes aren’t probably particularly big.

Also, the changes only affect particular countries and as they don’t affect the whole domain URL, just the suffix, are they actually that big a deal. This is especially the case when users have to switch from one alphabet to the other just simply to fill in .xx or .yy.
It will be interesting to see how this develops, but I can’t see it causing massive issues and certainly I don’t think it is going to be a driver for an additional 3.5bn internet users. The only thing that will do this is cheaper computers and better developing world access to faster broadband, something that even ICANN can do nothing about. Finally, it certainly won’t reduce the number of squatters which I believe ICANN have more of a role in than anything else.

There doesn’t seem to be a clear answer to me. I have read three different studies in the space of three days….

1) The IAB have announced that online advertising has outstripped TV advertising in terms of spend in the UK. A 4.6% growth in the first half of the year has pushed online past TV 6 months ahead of schedule because of the recession. “More marketeers are pushing ad spends online because of its reliability for delivering accurate figures and accountability”

2) Meanwhile, according to the NYT (Bits) online advertising continues to fall because of the recession. Down 5.4% from April to June compared to the same period in 08. “The decline in spending by ad category was concentrated in industries “that were themselves depressed,” Mr. Deighton said, among them automobiles, classified, financial services and retail.”

3) Then I saw this, Barely Anyone Clicks on Online Ads anymore article. I am sure the internet walked away from this week feeling slightly bruised and battered especially when “The number of people online who click display ads has dropped 50% in less than two years, and only 8% of internet users account for 85% of all clicks, according to the most recent”

Market patterns are clearly fluctuating depending on the market you are in. TGI suggests on a macro-level that advertising messages do not help users in making decisions about products as much as they did, instead they are making decisions based on branded content/commercial messages.

Its clear that content is key moving forward and creating interesting branded content experiences will enable online “advertising” to regain some of its credibility which seems to have slipped if two of the three reports above are to be believed.

Seemingly this Sunday is proving quite a good one for some digital thinking from brain MBB. Normally reserved for one post a day or one a week, this is the third today and perhaps they may be some more to come tonight.

The term Social Graph was initially coined by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook about a year ago, but has since become the choice of term for all those “Social Media Gurus” out there. A Social Graph is effectively your level of connection and interaction, your connectedness within platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Your Social Graph is where the smart platforms will monetize your connectivity. I believe this is where Facebook will make a significant income and help justify their valuation.

But what does it mean to us, the consumer, Joe Public. Well, the Social Graph won’t just make money for Facebook. It will make money for you as well. So you aren’t laughing at those people with 2,000 connections now are you? Effectively, the Social Graph allows you to become an affiliate.

An especially powerful affiliate in my eyes as 78% of consumers say they have bought products within social networks on the recommendation of a friend, 45% have bought products based on any recommendation in a social network. There is clearly money to be made.

If you imagine that for every person you have a connection to, in my case 200 on Facebook, there is the potential that another 10 per person may see your message. If I post a recommendation on a product into my news feed it will go into 200 other news feeds, plus be seen by a potential audience of 2,000. Say for example, I am working on a CPA basis of £5 and I get a conversion of 5%, (Car Insurance perhaps?) that would give me a return of £500 simply for a short recommendation on Facebook. Suddenly the proposition seems pretty attractive.

There are companies who do this sort of thing already, BzzAgent is one that springs to mind. However, the ultimate is the more genuine of being able to act as an affiliate for a brand you really love.
Fancy figuring out your potential income from your social graph? http://apps.facebook.com/viralloop

A new series from me, kicked-off with a really exciting new product design/manufacturing/distribution company, Zazzle. Billed in Fast Company as the potential new “Amazon of custom goods” Zazzle is a really exciting company to have a look at. One of the problems I feel sometimes with projects I work on is that we often ask companies to customise a product, create a new product etc. However, clearly for clients this does cause issues, they can’t just flip the switch on a machine and get it to create something slightly different. My gut feeling is that Zazzle could provide this service to these companies at a fraction of the cost.

Although it seems pretty basic on the face of it, zazzle.co.uk, there is plenty of potential depth to the site and opportunities. Keds is the first obvious example, although Disney were actually the first brand to use the company. Keds allows shoppers to customise all elements of their shoe to give every single customer their own unique shoe. “Zazzle integrated both software and hardware into their factory in China”. There is clearly a massive commitment from Zazzle to make this work, something that all potential retailers/manufacturers could think about.

I see a number of different ways brands could use this, here are some of them:

1) Creating customisable prizes to competitions. Imagine Little Big Planet allowing customers to design a new character and then the one which is most voted is turned into a vinyl toy. Little Big Planet could then go on to sell this in stores like Magma and Forbidden Planet.

2) Creating customsied, campaigning t-shirts. Giving consumers who participate in a campaign the opportunity to print their own tshirts based on numerous designs. This could have been perfect for something like T-Mobile Trafalger Square where all users could have customised t-shirts to say “I was there”

3) Customised products. We talk alot about co-creation, but often brands treat it as a nice to do and don’t follow through. The Zazzle platform would allow brands to truly co-create and customise with consumers. I see it being pretty efficient as well.

p.s. you can order that t-shirt here on Zazzle

http://www.zazzle.co.uk/digigen_youve_read_the_blog_now_get_the_shirt-235530760484313059