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Archives - June 2008

Community is not a place

25.06.08 | Permalink | 3 Comments

[courtesy gapingvoid]

Adam Tinworth’s taken media owners and publishers to task for their little-understood and poorly-implemented attempts to ‘do community’ in a terrific post: Why Media Gets Community Wrong

Most media people don’t realise that blogging is a community strategy. They think of it as a publishing process and, perhaps, as articles published with a particular tone of voice. They certainly don’t think of it as a conversation.

Adam’s post is particularly focused on journalists and publishers, but it’s woefully true of brands’ and brand-owners’ approach to online communication - and the source of much frustration when dealing with clients!

Building a load of forums on your website doesn’t tick the ‘community’ box. I know you think it’s absolutely fabulous and incredibly modern to have a ‘community’ section on your site, but as Adam points out “making that your only point of community interaction with your readers is roughly like inviting some guests round - and then not letting them out of the guest bedroom.”

Or adding a blog, which you think is oh-so-web-2.0 - except that you don’t allow comments. Or if you do, don’t participate in the conversation. Or listen to what your commenters are actually telling you. Because, after all, it’s much more important to have control over what’s published, and to ensure that only the nice stuff gets posted, than to actually engage with your reader, isn’t it?

To really, genuinely engage with your readers you have to embed it [community] in everything you publish to some degree

And for brands, this is no different. Community isn’t a place. It’s about people. People own their communities, brands don’t. And whether you’re a media owner, a publisher or a brand (or all three), isn’t developing a relationship with your reader or consumer the ultimate goal? And which relationship would you rather be in - one where you’re talked at, or one where you partake in two-way conversation?

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The Participatory Decepticon

22.06.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments

Image is everything. Sucks but it’s often true. And nowhere more so than in the political sphere - whereby the image projected via TV/video coverage can frequently sway voters more than any carefully-written manifesto.

This isn’t anything new. Kennedy and Nixon were neck-and-neck in the polls until their famous televised debate of 1960, when the power of these televised images was revealed in post-debate polls.

Political candidates today know the power of image, however whilst they might try to harness this for themselves via carefully-orchestrated campaigns, today the real battle takes place via the stuff they don’t control.

Massive amounts of pro-Obama content on Youtube undoubtedly played a significant role in his galvanising of popular support (and being dubbed the President of Youtube). And Hillary Clinton’s integrity took a severe kicking when various videos debunking her claim to have endured sniper fire in Bosnia racked up millions of views on Youtube.

Video footage can still make or break a candidate’s reputation - except that now the power to capture, edit & distribute content is in the hands of the many, rather than the few. Jamais Cascico has written a really thought-provoking piece examining the potential dangers this opens up:

What happens when not only have the tools of documenting the world become democratized, so too have the tools for manipulating our interpretations of reality?

Cascio predicts that we’ll see a rise in participatory deception - the deliberate propagation of manipulated video footage to discredit given individuals or groups. Although he believes such fakes wouldn’t last long before being debunked, an onslaught of clips propagating a given rumour would nevertheless have a definite lingering effect.

It’s the flip side to the Participatory Panopticon. The Panopticon was Jeremy Bentham’s model for a prison in which all inmates could be watched at all times - and has come to take on the broader meaning of the modern ‘Big Brother’ society where we’re all under constant surveillance. Except that in the participatory panopticon, we’re the ones voluntarily undertaking the surveillance - constantly watching everyday life, capturing it, and posting it online. And rather than ’surveillance’ (from above), this has been termed ’sousveillance’, or watchful vigilance from underneath.

The online attention market wields massive power - so it doesn’t seem unlikely that the Panopticon should evolve into a Decepticon - I just wonder how long it’ll take before this becomes a fully-fledged reality…

[ Open the Future: the Participatory Decepticon - via PSFK ]

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Back to regularly scheduled programming

18.06.08 | Permalink | 0 Comments

Bloody hell, it’s great to be back to normality after being away on a pain management course, being swamped in pitch-related madness, a couple of days off by the sea, and then back into more pitch madness.

Hence blog hiatus.

And overflowing inbox.

So lots of things I’d ordinarily have blogged about are a bit, well, old hat.

NESTA Innovation Edge

[photo courtesy of ]

Like seeing Tim Berners-Lee, Bob Geldof, Charles Leadbeater, Sam Pitroda and Gordon Brown (yes, that Gordon Brown) speak at the NESTA Innovation Edge Conference, as well as catching up with Neil, who’s already blogged the day.

Tim Berners-Lee was utterly awe-inspiring (the phrase “that’s why I invented the web” was a particular standout) and his discussion of his Web Science research initiative absolutely fascinating - the central point being that it’s not about technology in and of itself, it’s human behaviour enabled and facilitated by technology:

The web really has to be thought of not as a system of connections between computers, or even as links between web pages, but really as humanity connected.

[ See the rest of the session on Web Science at NESTA ]

The World’s First Internet Balloon Race

Or the World’s First Internet Balloon Race (as others have already observed).

Beautifully executed, it deftly brings the joy of the real-life balloon race into the digital space, encouraging participation by offering all manner of elegant widgets and applications to users - and best of all, engaging site owners as partners in the whole event.

It’s not just viral, social, web 2.0, or whatever other buzz words will no doubt be attached when describing it. It’s bloody genius. And utterly delightful.

Naked Anonymous

Or Untitled Anonymous, the recent anonymous art exhibition put on by Naked, featuring pieces submitted by employees from across the agency (including an exceptionally underwhelming entry from yours truly)

Conceived by the always-fabulous Kyle and Hass, it was a fantastic experiment and experience, and fantastic to see everyone from all different disciplines get involved. In their own words:

We wanted to see how well creativity would function when it has to speak for itself, stripped naked of everything but the expression – no title, no statement, no background.

So we briefed everyone who works at Naked London (the strategists, the creatives, the founding partners, even the cleaning lady) to create a piece of original art to be shown in an exclusive, one-night-only exhibition.

The twist was that every piece of art would be shown anonymously and without a title (this would all be revealed in a special online gallery the following week).

Phase two of the project has just gone live and the creators, titles, statements and inspirations have all been revealed.

You simply click on the work to discover the information.

So, just a few of the things I would have blogged, but, er, didn’t.

Normal service should now resume - back to your regularly scheduled programming…

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