Tazo tea’s web site is beautiful, and they are running a very interesting viral campaign.

Check it out!

Once you’re on the site, select “Consult the Tea Leaves.”

Welcome home
-Z

Today I attended the Gilbane Conference on content management and new technologies like corporate blogs, rss and wikis. The keynote debate on these subjects impressed me. The speakers were easy to relate to and shared personal anecdotes regarding their experience applying these technologies with corporation.

These two speakers made their point about new technologies by citing case studies and personal experience:

David Berlind, Executive Editor, ZDNet — Blog

Ross Mayfield, CEO, Socialtext, Inc. — Blog

David Berlind described how his family used a Wiki to discover members separated by the holocaust and how it united through creating a family tree. It was very refreshing to hear real language, not “conference speak.” He also shared a great anecdote about monitoring his son’s Myspace page.

Ross Mayfield shared exceptional case studies of his company, Socialtext, Inc. replacing a European banks intranet with a Wiki. See: http://www.socialtext.com/customers/customerdrkw/ He’s someone whose opinion I respect.

I’m curious if the estimates about the rise of Wiki use, due to its increased simplicity, will infact grow at the rate mentioned.

It began with two games in middle school: the Oregon Trail and SimCity. At first, I played these simulations as I would any video game. However, I quickly became immersed. Oregon Trail became my daily obsession, and I even plotted with my friends at recess about ways to hunt and survive the cholera epidemic plaguing our characters. We associated ourselves with our success in the game, and as children, derived a sense of pride from our abilities. This all consuming feeling carried with me at times when my virtual life piqued.

SimCity consumed me shortly there after. There’s almost a godlike feeling in playing SimCity, and to be transformed from a short and irrelevant middle schooler to the king of your own kingdom provided a sense of importance lacking from the everyday. While in school, I drew sketches of my cities, which I applied as soon as I came home. I visited a prehistoric version of a chat room and discussion forums for gaming strategies. Again, feelings of addiction, empowerment and completely fascination overwhelmed me.

It was at this time I discovered CompuServe, Prodigy and America Online 1.0.

I’ve always loved characters and language; after all I was an actor for 4 years, which made instant messaging was the ultimate satisfaction. This was in the early days, perhaps the halcyon days, of AIM, before LOL, JK or BRB were commonly used terms. I remember finishing my homework after school, still in middle school mind you, and immersing myself in stranger’s worlds’ online. What I liked most about the whole process was the opportunity to discover someone, and in turn, to be discovered. People confided in me. They revealed their hope and their desires. Some even shared mundane details, while other invented or reinvented themselves. I caught on quick, and love the ways in which language; tone and pace determined online identity.

When I began High School, people were slowly catching on to IM. Those of us who had screen names were still classified as geeks. I began speaking with a handful of similar predisposed geeks online, some from my school. We’d gossip, exchange homework assignments and find satisfaction from our communication, as if we were children thrilled to share a private message with each other by a string telephone.

I realized the instant messaging formed one of the most addictive communities to which anyone could belong. One night, I went over to my friend Sarah’s house to find her mother staring blankly at the screen. She said nothing and did not acknowledge that we entered the room even. However, every 5 or so minutes, she’d laugh and talk to herself about a joke or comment shared in her chat room. I’m not sure she ever slept, and to this day I can see how strung out she looked basking in the artificial screen light.

My first online community was the Harvard University Class of 2003 list serve. We exchanged thoughts about current events and ideas, and it turned into a social group that I still enjoy to this day. What made it so effective was how excited and desired to find out and share information about college, prior to attending it, and they turned to each other for that information. People composed entries as if they were blogs. True friendships were forged and social groups made, which actually had an impact into the ways in which relationships developed our freshmen year of college.

In college, I communicated with instant messenger and on online communities like Facebook, Friendster and Myspace. Instant messenger was an effective resource for turning classroom crushes into offline interests, or acquaintances into friendships. Here’s how it would unfold:

In class, study groups formed. People shared their screen names rather than their phone numbers, and often times, those screen names were left on throughout the night. Sometime, I would instant message a classmate late at night to commiserate about a problem set. While we may start our conversation over academics, often times we began speaking about a variety of other topics which we would never address in person. This ranged from personal details to family history, and the next day in class, our chemistry would entirely change.

At the time, I used Friendster and Myspace as I way to invite people to get to know me online. I placed a link in my IM profile and enjoyed knowing that people were visiting my site, which either found my fascinating or were searching for my information. There was mystery, then, and things to reveal, which is why these communities worked so well. I remember receiving several phones calls from friends asking my opinion about their ‘romantic prospect,’ by directing my to her Friendster page.

I never really got into Friendster or Myspace. I have 100s of friends on each, and a great profile, but it was something used to support my IM presence, not to supplement it.

Things changed with the Facebook.com, and online community both simple and relevant. Talk about viral marketing, in 2003 it swept through campuses like wild fire. The facebook is restricted to college student email addresses only, and college students referred each other to sign up. Within a matter of months, it felt like most the school was online. Students formed subcultures inside the facebook and created online clubs to celebrate popular cult icons. Many students became obsessed with collecting friends. Others were content to share comments with their closely constructed social group. This community is a sociology case study in the making. In the 2 years I’ve been a member, the Facebook has grown from a community of 1000s to 5.4 million and expanded from a handful of college’s to over 2200. They are even expanding into high schools.

Facebook has become so pervasive that many colleges are holding special seminars encouraging their students to be mindful of what they publish – as future employers may consult the site.

Since that time, no online community has caught my attention. Either has IM for that matter. While it’s novel to IM with co-workers, and everyone goes through a Link-IN or Ryze phase, I haven’t connected myself to anything that provided that sense of communal identification and utility online. I’ve exploring photo sharing (i.e., Flickr and company), and even Dogster.com, for Pet enthusiasts. My latest interest is with Avitars. Imaging chatting as a programmable cartoon character with strangers online whom you can kiss, hug, touch and dance. I’m sure it’s just a fade, but you may enjoy it: http://www.imvu.com/.

When I think to the periods of my life when participating in an online community was much useful, several observations come to mind:

à A rich online life did not necessarily diminish my involvement in offline activities. In fact, many times it provided opportunities to create friendships and reveal information that was not otherwise available.

à My involvement in online communities piqued when people continuously commented on my profiles, or I used my profile to share a side of myself that I do not reveal offline.

à There is distinct difference in meeting someone offline that connected with first online, than referring someone’s online profile who you know offline first. I’ve found it easier to accept new insights about acquaintances I have already met than to accept friend I am meeting offline for the first time who differs greatly from my expectation.

The chief question I have right now is post college (post friendster, myspace and facebook), beyond professional networking and traditional photo sharing, is there an online community that can appeal to my demographic, or does the +25 demo not as inclined to be involved in online communities, because of their interests and life stage?

I am embarking on a new venture to address that question. I’ll share the findings as we discover them.

Recommended links:

Student’s perspective on facebook
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=32031

Article on Social Networking:
http://www.sacredcowdung.com/archives/2005/11/a_functional_vi.html

Article on Myspace – + 30M Users
http://www.clickz.com/features/article.php/3565776

Newest Online Community Promise
http://www.imeem.com/

CBS chairman Leslie Moonves is speaking with Google video to explore new opportunities on the internet to boost his reach and bottom line. His statement to Reuters’s this week pinpoints why content providers like CBS, and the Citizen Media – or consumer generated media (CGM) – is becoming an increasingly more powerful and pervasive force.

“They need our content, we need their technology,” he said, referring to broader discussions with Internet companies. “We argue about which is more important. I think ultimately my content, no matter how you get it, content is still the most important thing,”

While I agree that content is king, I argue that the scope of this kingdom is defined by the way in which we discover the media. While search continues to enjoy fresh content from blogs, online posts and digital media, other ways of finding information are rapidly gaining attention. Tagging, for example, is one of them. In online communities, ranging from Facebook and Flickr, consumers indicate nature of their concepts through particular keywords.

The keywords provide many functions. They label the pictures, and they also provide a scent by which others kind find them. Now we can not only search by keywords ranked by search engines, but we can also utilize how ways in which we describe websites to one another to discover them.

Try this exercise. Search http://www.google.com/ and http://del.icio.us/ for the same term. Which did you find more effective? The latter utilizes popularity and consumer tagging to discover your results. Others sites which do the same are www.revver.com, http://www.flickr.com/ and http://www.blinklist.com. While tagging presents many exciting opportunities, it also is open to an advertiser’s agenda. This brings us back to the initial point. While content is king, our internet can be hijacked by savvy advertisers promoting their own agenda and exploiting tags. Kings are a dying breed, as citizen media has replaced them.

Relevance, inevitably, rules. How we discover authentic information, distinguish it from irrelevant content and parse through the surplus of ideas to find the ones which relate to us will determine what becomes of the CGM model. I would like to see the king, traditional media, usurped to be replaced by a natural aristocracy where consumer generated media competes with its traditional counter parts to improve the quality of both.

Resources worth reviewing:
http://www.clickz.com/experts/brand/cmo/article.php/3515576
http://www.consumergeneratedmedia.com/

welcome home – z

I’m in San Francisco. Today we discussed business and tomorrow we’re headed to wine country. It’s always the case that the time shortly after meetings, when your mind is free to wander and roam, that the best ideas come. For me, they come over white wine.

On the plane ride over, I read a little of everything: Gladwell, Orwell, Ad Age, and poetry. Let me share a few things I liked with you:

From the Tipping Point: “The word Maven comes from the Yiddish, and it means one who accumulates knowledge…The fact that Mavens want to help, for no other reason than because they like to help, turns our to be an awfully effective way of getting someone’s attention.”

From Orwell’s Politics and the English Language: “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms…”

From some poems I brought with me,
“We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.”
- Louise Glück

How often do you look at the world and question what you see? Not question for other people’s benefit, but question privately to discover something fresh in what seemed so familiar.

Welcome home – Z