Seems like every other day there’s a new Google announcement, some bit department is cranking out yet another slice of Google magic.
Every one of these press releases, which aren’t really press releases more like stories they leak to the web via the many blogs has more often than not, a video.
Google promo videos are relaxed, seemingly shot in one take, with little to no super gizmo check me out sauce.
Google cranks out these videos day after day after day. They’re totally out to leverage the web meduim on all sides where ever leverage can be displayed an coverage gained.
This really a totally different approach to PR related video. Before the days of YouTube and Google PR videos were polished with tons of graphics, celebs hosting them, you could see the time, energy and money in the video. Google tosses all of that out the window and put their own people, not professional talent in front of the camera. They crank out a crap load of video that is shot by team for their team and ok, sure for you as well.
The residual effect is approachable, friendly, almost academic, and honest. More companies should follow suit and do the same, generate more noise, more clarity in video commuications and less zip zang wow.
The problem i’ve always had with zip zang wow is that it takes time, a polished script, polished effects, polished talent, schedule, setting, props, editor, director, lighting, time.. money.. crap. Yep all that polished stuff takes too much time and money and for what, 3 minutes of fame in a tweet that in 10 days time nearly forgotten?
Its not to say that commericals should follow this cheap make it fast and hello friendly communication model- but clearly PR communications from Google is changing the way people get to know Google and peer behind the curtain. Google in some ways lets us all know its ok just to communicate what the big idea is without all the fluff.
Thats a sigh of reflief to a video editor like me. I wish i could just edit the essential bits at time and remove the wow shambo shindig of zippy oo la la coolness.
Its like Google is a taking a page from reality tv or even just analyzing what seems to really fly well on youtube- raw pure honest context type video, no effects plz, gimme the skinny. Sure their product demos have graphics and all and they make great use of the now standard way of doing talking storyboards that CommonCraft established years back.
I’m constantly impressed by their ability to just seed the web with their ideals, products, experiments, and brand power. Impressive stuff.
So the big news this week, aside from the killer new twitter tracking feature in ParsePlz, is that soon facebook and twitter status updates will be included in your next search experience in Google and Bing.
That’s awessome right? HA! Actually it’s good and bad, mostly bad.
The Good
People want, yern for more context, more tasty context. Lately folks have been making all kinds of jabs at plain old every day search in that its not “emotional” like twitter search, and that its not “real time” like facebook search. Just about everyone into facebook or twitter has played around with looking at the real time aspects of getting the fire hose of data on whatever you want to know about a topic, now, right now, this very second. Its a big big tasty fish.
Now for the longest time, that data stream of real time now hasn’t been apart of the Google and newcomer hot shot search engine Bing from Microsoft (which we should note that Bing is actually more Yahoo inspired than a real piece of Microsoft infused enlightenment).
So while it looks like search is about to get richer, and more useful I think the bad parts of search is about to get slapped all over the good parts of status.
The Bad
Search is all about what? Finding what you need? For you and me, yes, to Google and Bind, its a vehicle to sell ads. Advertising people. The big push here is not about getting you and me more relevant data its about harvesting our status, our minds, our mental feed and slapping a billboard on every thought we express freely in our little social environments. We’ve had the pleasure of using the power of twitter and facebook for free too long. Did we really think these playgrounds would be free forever? Nope, cause now your next tweet is going to part of a larger game in search. Your cool tweet about whatever is gonna be harvested, analyze and ponied up in a search result- and in that same space, there will be ads, and soon to be something much worse.
Money motivates people in different ways. Gaming the web is a constant art form. There are scores of people out there that at this very moment are spamming the crap out of everyone trying to manipulate the masses to get ahead. Don’t fool yourself its a huge biz. And sadly because of status now being part of search, I think there’s a very good chance that our favorite spaces to think and express our bit of goodness each day are now totally leveragable for evil.
Your Status is an AdWord
See i think your status is basically prime material for adwords hijacking. Think about it. Your status is now shared and sucked into Google and Bing, you’re part of the bigger game now. In one view, its all nice, you tweeted about “cats” you may get sucked into a “cat” related search. Seems to make sense, so where does it go wrong?
You could manipulate your own tweets to hijack adwords.
Step 1, Do Your Homework. Research adwords to find out which ones are hot right now traffic wise.
Step 2, Use the adword in our status update regardless if its connected to your update or not. Your goal here is to see if you can be listed with other like content in a search attaching to that adword.
Step 3, Take it one step further, include a short url that can’t be deciphered easily into your status update so that people will think your talking about the search term they’re looking for, and think behind your cryptic url could be some sweet discovery goodness.
Step 4, Sell ads on the site you are sending people too. Might as well sell out that space you’re gonna direct fooled traffic to.
Step 5, Make it look like you’re not deliberately trying to manipulate the scene. The final step is to make it appear you’re just on it, into it and so forth.
Step 6, Get ready for everyone else to do the same.
Ok maybe not everyone else but I did joke the other day when this status in search annoucement was made that soon we’ll all be making room for ads in our own tweets and I could really REALLY see that happening now. Because we’re going from a space where our status was between us and our friends/followers to search and the whole planet, and to think that NO ONE will try and manipulate their tweet/facebook feeds to be apart of some gaming of the system effort is hilarious at best. I’m sorry but the web and where its at today, suggests otherwise.
Trends You’ll Likely See Next
With status going out the window and into every search on any search engine soon, your life even though it wasn’t all that private before this even, is REALLY REALLY not private any more, which could lead to a few things:
Privacy Backlash, this annoucement could be the tipping point in the social media privacy blacklash I’ve been thinking about for years now. Eventually our transparancy with the interweb will end, and seeing our own tweets in search may just be the nail in the coffin that does that.
Lockdown. Many of us are unlikely to bail completely on social media but we’ll definitely go into mass lockdown mode. That means we’ll shed anyone who’s non-essential and do whatever we can to lock out our status updates from search engines. We’re likely to see some great twitter de-friending happening as well as we lockdown who all can see our plate of goodness. We’ll shed non-essentials like no tomorrow. The early adopters will cause this initial shift as joe-normal has no idea about the impending infusion of our status with search engines. As early adopters leave/lockdown/flee they will gravitate torward new networks that protect their status and leverage other different powers.
Expert Spam
While there’s a wave of people fleeing the scene, the experts of social media will leverage and cherish this new status in search ability and try to be the expert of everything to promote their brand/biz. Same in biz in general, every tweet/status update is an opportunity now, its not just a way to say howdy, every tweet is an opportunity for search, and as such, needs to be recognize and structured to leverage the opportunity.
Gold Farmers Embrace Twitter and Flood Facebook
Think of gold farmers, they pownce on MMORPG’s and can be heard in every street corner selling their gold, shouting out to everyone all day 24/7. Status spam for gain is likely to occur because twitter and facebook are enabling it. The farmer will follow and will manipulate the scene. This chatter, this noise will drive us away. Just as we collectively learned to ignore banner ads, we’re slowly going to learn to ignore status updates, first starting with ignorning short urls we can’t easily figure out where they lead to. We won’t be fooled. We won’t be anyone’s jackass. We’ll protect ourselves any way possible, we’ll excuse ourselves from the experience if need be if the noise and fakery is too great.
Peaked and Downward Spiral
Facebook and Twitter have a good chance of being potentially peaked out at this point of the game because they are taking our status and merging it search, where as.. i wonder if they ever asked us in the in the first place if we wanted that. This move is driven more by advertising potential and less on real applicable use for the everyday man. While its easy to say more search context is good, its also important to note that it crosses the line in what people currently precieve as transparent and or free. I would wager that 90% of the people in social networks today don’t realize how transparent they are, how profibleable they are, how easy it is for anyone to zip down their fly and get to know them. They just don’t know. But soon.. we’ll all know too well.
Hope?
Now Google & Bing could try and weed out some of these game manipulation issues, but Facebook and Twitter are selling us all out by taking our status beyond where we felt it was. YES you could blockout, but ya know I bet thats hard for people to do. Block out has its own signature, its own little smell, a smell of wait you don’t want to share with us? Its like being called out on the playground for being too good for everyone else. Its a peer pressure mind trick and facebook and twitter know it, and Google and Bing and betting on the likelyhood you won’t block out your status.
We’re probably 9-12 months ahead of what may be. I feel much of what i’ve said here today will come to pass, and we’ll know more the minute we start seeing how status pops up in search, to what degree, how much and more. But one thing is for sure, transparency no more, your everyday data is now part of the biggest most billion dollar game of them all, search and the hive mind of the planet.
#damassinlaws
After drawing the Spank Ass Sunday this one popped in my head as well. I could see someone telling their friend.. ” i gotta go dam ass inlaws…” and their friend replying.. “oooo a new meetup?”
SpankAssSunday
Last night I saw a tweet where the guy was saying something like ‘I’ll be at #rethinkthis, #ignitethat, and #someother event” and I was man.. here we go we’re going into these branded hashtag flagged event existance.
If you were in my office 6 months ago you would of see a wall of yellow post-its, all with trends i’ve had in my head for the past year or so. Eventually I took my 25 or so trends off the wall to make room for other stuff but during that time I managed to pull off what I came to call- the great turk trend experiment, online with my trusty turk army.
I wanted to take a few of my trends, named uniquely by me, and ask my turk army online via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk what they thought of my trends.
I simply told them the name of the trend, from there they had to tell me:
What the trend was about?
Is it gonna happen?
What brands would benefit from the trend?
My big goal here was to see how well random people could figure out a trend that I had created based on whatever patterns I saw around it. How close could these people get to what I was thinking about? More so, what new information, specifically their own and not Google’s search engine results, could they bring to the table around that trend? It was too tasty to pass up, I had to try it. I crafted my survey and picked 5 trends out of my bag of 30 or so.
Cloud University
Filter Nation
Subscription Based Living
Hyper Connected
Cheap Luxury
Right away you’re thinking about those trends and what they mean to you. That’s exactly what I wanted my turks to do. About 50 turks completed my survey in just under a day, not bad, love that speed. They were paid $1 dollar for their efforts. Like anything though, the quality of turk data will vary. But I persisted regardless. Let’s look at some of the results.
Cloud University
What’s it about?
Is it gonna happen?
33 % said meh, or middle, and or maybe
25 % yes
24 % no
Who benefits?
NASA, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, MIT, wikipedia
————————————-
Filter Nation
What’s it about?
Is it gonna happen?
30 % said yep (despite many having no idea what i was talking about)
19 % said no, won’t happen
Who benefits?
Flickr, Google, Pepsi, Nortons, Brita
————————————-
Subscription Based Living
What’s it about?
Is it gonna happen?
38 % said meh (another reason why i hate 5 scale questions with turks)
34 % said yes, happening now
04 % said no won’t happen
Who benefits?
Nutrasystem, Microsoft, Google, Any company that sells products, Amazon, Walmart
————————————-
Hyper Connected
What’s it about?
Is it gonna happen?
60 % said yes!
Who benefits?
Everyone! (well just about everyone)
————————————-
What about Cheap Luxury? See the data file for data around that one, but ya’ll get the gist here.
What I got out of it…
Clearly some folks struggled to use their minds vs using google to try and help them comprehend my curiously strange trends. Some trends really connected with folks, hyper-connected, while others baffled people. But most of all I liked the exchange, the either hopeless I have no idea or the oh yeah I know this notions.
If you want to dive into the data, you’ll find it here online.
Some of this data is crap dan, of course it is. I always tell people that 30% of your turk data may be garbage, and alot of that is based on how poorly turks typically get paid, and their general expectations around surveys, they expect them to be lame and pretty uneventful. Most of my studies on turk have been the opposite, always trying to give turks something fun to do for their time. Plus we gotta remember the nature of the purely random sample of people whom which you have no idea where they really are (though i figured out most of that, thats for another blog entry). As for additional info to the table, i liked some the answers, some we’re very entertaining to read even. All goes back to more stuff to chew on… not bad.. not bad at all.
100 Percent People
I love the web works. A video i screwed around and put together 2 years and thrown up on Youtube keeps on truckin and recently has acquired the ears and eyes of our friends in Russia. Sweetness.
Mute is too nice really.
I really like what Brizzly is doing with its twitter web client thing app that they won’t give me a beta invite for and they really should for all this cool exposure i’m passing their way talking about how mute should really be upgrade… and beathe.
I’ve had a twitter app idea locked in my head for about a year or so. I too see the need to mute twitter friends because at times ya know.. ya just want to mute them and its not that you want to unfollow them just mute their energy and stuff.
Here, Brizzly’s internal dev team takes the feature to the next level.
There are no barriers to build any more. You have no excuse for not trying, experimenting and getting your feet wet in the biggest sandbox since the dawn of man and the ability to draw in the sand.
I hear objections all the time, lots to build but wanna do it right- so right that you never build because you can never measure up to your own sense of expectations, meanwhile dozens, thousands and millions of others pass you by while you fester over requirements and perfected outcomes of what could be.
Go and get half ass, stop wasting time with perfection its highly overrated.
Perfect as you go, refine as you go, iterate faster, stop reading this and get sketching, draw up an idea, manifest it online, there are hundreds of tools to make, you realize that, just to make and express has an almost limitless expansive opportunity out there.
You create limits in doubt, you manifest impossible obsticles in your own mind, you are the limit of where you are today. Take a sec for pity, got it, ok now then let’s make something.
And don’t give me that arugment it doesn’t need to exist, no customers, no adoption, who cares, do you want it? I’m not asking if there’s a market you’ve seen in some biz report, do you want it, do you need it, would you use it, does it have a passionate spark in you? Do you think you’re crazy to make it? That’s the indicator to make it then. If you believe then you can make, and damn everything else. Will you be judge in time, sure, critizied, oh yes, down right laughed at and abused, most definitely but YOU MADE SOMETHING.
Software online today is basically painting or any other craft, its less about making the next big thing and its more about expressing yourself and what you want to do. Pick up a software paint brush and get started.
Email me your works of art.
Microsoft seriously needs to transcend beyond being just an OS provider. The OS is dead folks, it just doesn’t matter any more. The browser is king its the gateway, its more important than an OS. Sure you need an OS but but its like a key part in my car, dont care, just there- the fun is in driving it.
Microsoft waited too long and let the web get out from under them, they are consistently 3-4 years behind the curve of the real buzz of the web. They need to de-identify the brand. Drop the wars with Apple and focus on killer experiences ahead. Break new ground and give people more browser love. They’re a dying brand. We all see it, know it and wonder if they’re super cars will be collectable one day.
Frog Design.. Today’s Neo
I’ve been thinking about voices of “emerging now” lately. The ever spinning what to be next around the corner now. I’ve singled out a hand picked list of various voices, in this entry I want to talk about one of them - today’s neo.
Neo is symbolic to me as a metaphor of uberness, he wears leather well, probably better than I ever could. He’s equiped with insta-bullet time and who wouldn’t love that.
Today’s Neo is Frog Desgin. Around ever cool corner on the web you’ll see Frog looking back at you as if you’ve been missing from the party all year long. Not many innovation houses, D firms, dudes and gals with might spread around as much as Frog does.
In some ways they’re like the Mimbari of Babylon 5, they’re ships are elegantly designed, they have an all inviting cause to help all living beings, they are truly enlightened and striving to be in the scene more and more… for all we know they may even have two casts like the Mimbari, a warrior guard of old design being held back by the new web friendly awe inspiring sect of design.
IDEO, just to note, is more like the Vorlons, they’ve passed on into the great divide of book publishing and speaker engagements.
For the record, Lextant, my own inner temple of goodness is right up there with Neo, probably more like a Morpheous type in that they like stay in the background a bit more than the Neo types out there. In the world of Bab5, Lextant may be more like the Centauri, I always did their set design and cool warships.
