Web app of the day = the wonderful Muxtape

It’s been doing the rounds over the last couple of days - delivering that most delicious combination of social media with the charm of the mixtape. Simple, beautiful, lots of fun.

So, since there’s nothing like hopping on board, for your listening pleasure - and to get a glimpse into my, er, somewhat eclectic (others may say highly dodgy!) musical taste - check out my contribution

I love digital storytelling, and the latest innovation by Penguin is an absolute corker - exploring the intersection between literature, the web and gaming.

We Tell Stories was conceived by Penguin as a digital writing project, challenging selected authors to create new forms of fiction for a digital audience.

The project claims it will “create new fiction and offer a unique, immersive and innovative experience to readers everywhere” - and on first inspection it looks like they’re bang on brief.

The first story, ‘The 21 Steps’ by Charles Cumming, uses Google Maps technology to literally take the reader on a journey as they navigate through the story - its utterly delightful, and such a creative and different way to read a story.

Over the next 6 weeks, writers such as Mohsin Hamid, Naomi Alderman and Nicci French will be publishing their own interactive tales, with the added bonus of a hidden seventh story:

But somewhere on the internet is a seventh story, a mysterious tale involving a vaguely familiar girl called Alice. Readers who follow this story will discover clues that will shape Alice’s journey and help her on her way. These clues will appear online and in the real world and will drive readers to the other six stories where they will have the chance to win some wonderful prizes, including The Penguin Complete Classics Library, over £13,000 worth of the greatest books ever written.

I love the way that Penguin have embraced the digital space to bring together the age-old pastime of storytelling - the bread and butter of their business - with the modern world of digital interactivity, alternate reality gaming, and user participation. They’ve already dipped a toe in the water with their wikinovel experiment A Million Penguins - I’d predict that their willingness to explore this space further can only be richly rewarded, if other sectors are anything to go by - as the early adoptors begin to generate new avenues for revenue via digital channels and leave their slower moving competitors struggling to eke out revenues from their existing offline ventures.

Update: Check out Behind the Buzz for a full rundown on all the other many varied ventures Penguin have embarked on - they’re clearly absolutely committed to exploring the best ways to navigate the digital landscape to best connect with their consumers, and as far as I’m concerned, are doing a bloody great job…

[ Full disclosure - this has been produced by Six to Start, the company started by my friend Dan Hon: Dan’s past work totally rocks and this is no exception - I urge you all to check it out ]

Sarah Lacy’s keynote interview of Mark Zuckerburg at SXSWi offers a fascinating insight into the impact of real-time social media conversation - and the perils for those who attempt to engage with an audience who are deeply entrenched in this world, without fully comprehending how that world works.

For those who haven’t seen this dissected in minute detail elsewhere - or watched it here - the root of the problem was that Lacy gave a long and rambling interview, from a very business-focused perspective which was totally out of sync with the expectations of her audience - a room full of developers, designers, techies and geeks who wanted to hear about the API, platform and how Facebook was going to develop going forward. The interview went from bad to worse, as Lacy meandered around recounting anecdotal stories about her subject rather than actually interviewing him, leading Zuckerberg to retort “You have to ask questions!”.

This didn’t just lead to heckling (although there was plenty of that as well) - as the interview progressed, the increasingly hostile audience were twittering their rising discontent about its conduct (and the interviewer), with their live micro-blogging offering a clear and decisive real-time response to how the session was going down.

As Jeff Jarvis points out far more astutely, the simple fact was that she wasn’t listening. The world of social conversation offers journalists, speakers - and brands - the opportunity to research what an audience wants, and to assess how they’re doing. A week prior to the keynote, Lacy could have blogged to ask SXSWers what they would like to see discussed with Zuckerberg. Even once things started going downhill, she could have opened up the discussion to the floor to ask them what they wanted to know there and then.

Now, by way of excuse, this may be the fault of the conference organisers rather than Lacy herself, as it appears her brief was to focus in a specifically business-centric direction, and not to take audience questions, since there was a separate Facebook developer-centric event for this purpose.

But what was clear was that the audience at SXSW are savvy digerati who are used to publishing their thoughts and views via blogs, Twitter, Meebo, Facebook and so on. They’re active prosumers who are used to having their say and weren’t content to passively listen to the conversation taking place on the stage - they expect to partake actively in both online and offline conversations. On the one hand this is nothing new - anyone who’s ever presented to an audience will know that interaction is the key to getting people engaged and involved, yet on the other hand I think the growth of active participation in social media and personal publishing tools will mean that active participation will come to be expected as standard.

Equally, this demonstration of how badly wrong things can go when you simply don’t listen to your audience should serve as a salutory lesson for brands/agencies about the perils of ignoring what your consumers are saying about you, and of failing to ask them what they think and what they want. If the customer is king, shouldn’t they be involved in the conversations right from the very start?

See also (amongst others):

Wired | Scoble | All Just Words

A modern love story, from the absolutely fabulous Geek & Poke

There’s an article in the Atlantic Monthly (subscription only, but summarised here) which highlights a recent neuroscience study examining how multi-tasking affects both the mind and our body:

“Multi-tasking messes with our brains in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning.”

As the article points out, finding out that that multi-tasking doesn’t make us more productive isn’t new news.

But as usage of always-on social networking and micro-blogging tools such as Twitter or Facebook proliferates in both volume and frequency, alongside the increased use of tabbed browsing, RSS feeds, Blackberries and IM, could our ‘always-on’ multi-tasking actually be making us even less mentally acute?

Studies have apparently shown that mentally juggling several tasks switches on the areas of the brain which deal with in visual processing and physical coordination - but at the same time “simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning.” Moreover, multi-tasking appears to boost levels of stress-related hormones (e.g. cortisol and adrenaline) - which can wear down our systems through biochemical friction, in the long term potentially leading to brain atrophy.

If this is true, not only does my endless switching between various apps serve as endless procrastination to avoid doing anything potentially productive, but may also be hastening the inexorable decline of my grey matter into a steaming pile of mush. Who said modern technology wasn’t life-improving?!

[ via A Better Course ]