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Filed under: brands, community, online media, politics | Tags: Anatoly Drozdov, banks, Belarus, border control, Charles Schumer, Guy Kawasaki, IndyMac, International Monetary Fund, knock knock joke, machine, nobodies, panic, Reuters, Senate, Soviet, Tipping Point, totalitarian, Twitter, USA
The Belarus “powers that be” has recently released an ill-thought out directive. Reuters reports:
Belarus’s central bank said on Wednesday it had advised commercial banks to inform the police about anyone who approaches branch customers expressing doubts about the business in a way that could cause panic.
Belarus, where much of the economy remains in state hands, says it has suffered few effects of the world financial crisis, but the ex-Soviet state has requested a $2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund as a “security cushion.”
“We are asking the banks’ security service to monitor the behavior of customers inside their branches,” central bank spokesman Anatoly Drozdov told Reuters.
“If they see someone is speaking loudly to other customers about whether the bank is in a critical position or advising against making deposits, they can ask the police for help. That person may then be detained for an identity check.”
If the customer was found to have had no intention of undermining confidence in the bank, he would be released.
There is an old knock-knock joke that I like:
Knock Knock
Who’s there?
Soviet border control
Soviet border control w…
DON’T ASK QUESTIONS!
The world is getting tougher for these regimes. Never could they completely suppress the freedom of the mind and soul, no matter how they punished speech and actions. But now, every time they try to crackdown, eventually, they are exposed as the domineering institutions of which they are. As I have written before, our modern world has no place for these groups. There is simply too much power in the common man’s voice. Guy Kawasaki straightforwardly remarked, when discussing Twitter,
But mark my words: [...] Nobodies are the new somebodies
That is, we are. All of us. We are the somebodies. And no matter which totalitarian machine tries to stop that, whether it be governmental, political, educational, cultural, or corporate, we will fight back with the weapons of discourse and dissent, founded in the freedom-seeking characteristics inherent in every man and woman.
Maybe one day, Belarus can be like America, where it’s okay for even a Senator to undermine a bank.
Filed under: communication, community | Tags: blaze, Cache Valley, cats, communication, communities, fire, Logan, Utah
While on my Thanksgiving holiday, I noticed the today the front page of the small town newspaper at my wife’s parents. Take a look:
It is heartening to realize that in many less well-known areas, the “simple life” is the norm. There is also a lesson here about understanding your audience. A large city editor sent to “save” this paper may demand a focus on more mandarin matters. In doing so, the editor ought to be most aware of how his community currently and wishes to communicates, rather than how the saving editor thinks they ought to converse.
I am not advocating always pandering to the lowest level your audience. I am simply stating, sometimes people care more about cats than wars—and if that is your target group, you should be well aware.
Filed under: community, innovation | Tags: beta culture, communities, early adopters, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Nicholas Carr, product cycle, Vista
Lifehacker quotes a Gizmodo rant against the “beta culture”:
We have surrendered in the name of progress and marketing and product cycles and consumerism. Maybe those are good reasons, I don’t know, but looking at the past, it feels like we are being conned. Deceived because the manufacturers of electronic products have taken our desire to progress faster and even embrace the web beta culture as an excuse to rush things to market, to blatantly admit bugs and the rushed features sets and sell the patches as upgrades.
Of course, comments centered around the notion that beta releases are usually free, but, as “tamoriel” points out, if companies are releasing beta quality as final—that is where the problem lies.
That last clarification is easy to agree with, but the earlier premise doesn’t seem accurate. Sure, there are some offerings where beta quality is treated as final (*cough Vista*), but typically, the beta culture is actually better for us than the alternative.
Early adopters have always had to face bugs, it is a part of being in that group. Things just don’t always break like they should in a test environment. But when an organization can embrace this stage, and, in so doing, they create a relationship with their top users in which the users can benefit (free service, having voice, etc) and reciprocally can help form the product or service into a better design, you have a true positive user-provider exchange. It just needs to be done well (see a 2006 “Beta Culture” piece by Nicholas Carr for a deeper look into this qualification).
Instead of hiding the offering until launch, and then give consumers a guesswork-led design, the secret is to get your end-users to truly design with you. That’s why the “beta culture” works.
Filed under: community, marketing | Tags: Cheney, drip, Duncan Watts, Fast Company, Fox News, Gonzales, Jon Stewart, Malcolm Gladwell, Nigerian email scam, Oprah, scam, Seth Godin, The Daily Show, Tipping Point
As I was reading about the Cheney-Gonzales indictment, I saw a link this story:
Oregon Woman Loses $400,000 to Nigerian E-Mail Scam
She explains how she lost so much (it was not all at once):
Her family and bank officials told her it was all a scam, she said, and begged her to stop, but she persisted because she became obsessed with getting paid.
[...]
Spears first sent $100 through an untraceable wire service as directed by the scammers. Then, more multimillion dollar promises followed so long as she sent more money.
I feel sick for her; and as I was wondering “how does some one fall for that?”, I considered the activities that I become “obsessed with” because of their “promises”. When does Seth Godin’s drip, drip, drip become a Nigerian email scam? In our projects, are we really heading toward a “Tipping Point” with a few influential “hubs”, or do we adhere to Watt’s statement that:
A rare bunch of cool people just don’t have that power. And when you test the way marketers say the world works, it falls apart. There’s no there there.
Watt’s has got it kind of right. There is no bunch of cool people everywhere, in every industry. But then again, we do have Oprah (from a 2005 BusinessWeek article):
Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the Oprah phenomenon is how outsized her power is compared with that of other market movers. Some observers suggest that Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show could be No. 2 [...] But no one comes close to Oprah’s clout: Publishers estimate that her power to sell a book is anywhere from 20 to 100 times that of any other media personality.
Typically, it is a drip, drip, drip—little tipping point—drip, drip, drip—little tipping point. If we don’t start to see the “promises” slowly realized, we may be putting too much hope in rewards garnered by our personal Nigerian email scam.
Filed under: brands, community, leadership, marketing, online media | Tags: BusinessWeek, CEOs, Forbes, Johnson & Johnson, Logic + Emotion, moms, Motrin, social media, TwitScoop, Twitter
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twitscoop The motrin story is1more proof brands need to monitor social
networks – the graph + reading first tweets tells it all: http://bit.ly/eR8x
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twitscoop Motrin ad makes moms mad on twitter, follow it here:
http://tinyurl.com/6khfzv #motrinmoms
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I received these Tweets yesterday. At the same time, motrin.com went down. Today, motrin.com continues to be down. It’s actually inaccessible. These same Twitter moms knocked it down (I guess they don’t like being condescended).
For more information, see Logic + Emotion—they give a nice running commentary of the “headache”.
In other news, BusinessWeek has noted that a large number of CEOs do not support social media, reasons ranging from lack of knowledge to lack of relevance. Consider this:
While 62% see social media as having an impact on a company’s reputation, only 48% say it can change sales.
Time will likely tell that Johnson & Johnson (Motrin) may disagree that perception.
Filed under: community, politics | Tags: BCS, blogging, communities, Dodge County, Dodge County Independent, editor, ESPN, Facebook, Flickr, Ivan Maisel, Kasson, MN, movements, MSNBC, obama, Randy Carlsen, small towns, Twitter, voting, Wired, youth, YouTube
Last night, I got really riled up for the first time this autumn. No, unfortunately, it wasn’t for anything political. Nor was it for the Cubs total collapse; that just made me sad. No, it was for Ivan Maisel’s ridiculous defense of the BCS. Yes, that shows my priorities. I almost added to the chorus of voices calling him clueless, but then I realized—that’s probably what he was looking for.
So I am instead going to focus on a story that wasn’t simply asking for as much attention. I find it interesting to scan the small town newspapers across the nation, likely because I grew up in a small town and I get a kick out of the activities, opinions, and culture that pervades that type of life.
In the Dodge County Independent (out of Kasson, MN), Randy Carlsen, editor of the Dodge County Independent wrote last month:
Presidential candidates are going after the young vote. They feel that youth will be the ticket to the White House. Try again!
If either of the presidential candidates had any sense at all they would be going after the senior citizen vote.
[...]
When I turned 18 in August of 1973 I was excited about going to the polls and voting in my first presidential election. I think today most young people are more excited about turning 21 so they can go into a bar.
Ouch. Of course, when we see the images of the campaigning and the prevalence of the youth vote in polling stations and political rallies, we may have reason to disagree. Well, it turns out, the candidates did have some sense. MSNBC reported:
Youth vote may have been key in Obama’s win
It is a bit disingenuous to say the youth of our nation are the lazy, unconnected ones. Instead of looking first to this commonly target demographic, consider the fact that after decades of civic isolationist creep, it is the youth that are using blogs (even if they are dead), YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, et cetera to not only connect, but to push ideals and create communities. We are creating movements. A force for advancement that we haven’t seen the likes of in this nation for decades.
That defines the youth of today. I guess there was something else that riled me up.
Filed under: community | Tags: CNN, communities, homes, Marilyn Mock, Samaritan, Tracy Orr
I talk a lot about communities here—just look at the category and tag clouds to your right. The reason that communities are so powerful—in movements, in marketing, and in simply living—is that it is important for us to be connected with others. We can feel that inner desire to reach out, to support.
The cool thing is, people are really on a whole pretty good. There is lots of negative news about rotten individuals, but then a story like this comes out.
“Are you here to buy a house?” Marilyn Mock said.
[Tracy] Orr couldn’t hold it in. The tears flowed. She pointed to the auction brochure at a home that didn’t have a picture. “That’s my house,” she said.
Within moments, the four-bedroom, two-bath home in Pottsboro, Texas, went up for sale. People up front began casting their bids. The home that Orr purchased in September 2004 was slipping away.
She stood and moved toward the crowd. Behind her, Mock got into the action [...] she bought the home [...] That’s when Mock did what most bidders at a foreclosure auction never do.
“She said, ‘I did this for you. I’m doing this for you,’ ” Orr says.
[...]
“All this happened within like 5 minutes. She never even asked me my name. She didn’t ask me my financial situation. She had no idea what [the house] looked like. She just did it out of the graciousness of her heart.”
Lest you think I am hiding something, Mock and Orr are going to work out a way for Orr to pay her back. Mock isn’t a rich “Good Samaritan” that goes around with money to burn. Things are tight for her too, but she was in a position to help. And that’s what Orr needed.
That’s why we have communities, that’s why we need to facilitate their creation. It’s so people can continue to have these types of experiences.
Filed under: community, innovation | Tags: 37signals, communities, Quiet Innovations, reciprocity, T-Shirts, Threadless
Since first featuring Threadless, as one of my “quiet innovators”, they seem to have been less “quiet.” This probably has much more to do with a cognitive bias on my part than anything else, but it is obvious that people love them. And for good reason. They are awesome.
The concept is simple:
*translation, you design it, the treadless community votes on it, and if your design is liked, you get paid.
Matt at 37signals writes about their “Community…no, really.”
A lot of sites pay lip service to the notion of building a community. Threadless actually does it. And it’s not just having a blog or a forum (though the site has those too). Check out the site’s navigation where “Shop” and “Participate” are given equal treatment
[...]
It’s no accident. Threadless isn’t just a place to buy stuff. It’s a place where people do stuff too.
And I love the comments to Matt’s post. They give us great insights in the pathway to Treadless’s success.
Threadless sends out the only newsletter that stops me in my tracks during work. While every other newsletter gets a ‘junk’ click, I can’t wait to see what is new from them.
Threadless personif[ies] everything that’s great about the web.
Threadless is an example of an actual real community online.
Their transfer of work to users is a brilliant strategy in not only sharing design cost, but also in creating and maintaining a community. There is a give and take factor that underpins the entire organization.
And so we come to reciprocity again. It is a key factor to community-building (if not the key). If you can figure out how to do that, you create one pretty strong and hard to assail position.
I am going to be purposely vague, the reasons being obvious. Over the last two weeks, a family member of a popular blogger went missing and was later found. Online posts, images, and messages proliferated when the word went out. But when the immediate crisis was over, there was a simple message:
Now that [removed] has been found [...] we are asking all that posted on Twitter, messageboards and their blogs to please delete the posts. We don’t want this following the family around for the rest of their lives and would appreciate your continuing support.
And now, if you go to those posts, you are likely to find “Error 404 – Not Found”, “Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.”, “This photo is unavailable”, a blank page, or some other message.
Communities become communities when reciprocity occurs. And in this case, it did. The circumstance was unfortunate, but the response was beautiful. That community exists in the truest sense of community. This blogging group has figured it out.
You want to bet that this organization continues to be pretty successful?
Filed under: community | Tags: London Underground, London, Tunnels, Mesa Verde, Cheyenne Mountain, Blitz, Daily Mirror, M16, Interservices Research Bureau, Port of London Authority, Ministry of Works, High Holborn, Fleet Street, Disneyland, BT
Have you heard about London’s underworld? I’m not talking about the seamy, corrupt place of black market transactions, but rather an actual underworld built during the Blitz.
There are pensioners living in London who can recall long, uncomfortable nights during the Blitz, huddling in the Underground as bombs rained down their homes. With thousands crammed together in confined spaces, you could meet all sorts of people but you never saw a spook from the Interservices Research Bureau, a branch of MI6, or from other government agencies such as the Port of London Authority or the Ministry of Works engineering unit. They had somewhere better to hide.
There was a secret lift behind an unmarked door near 33 High Holborn, where the Daily Mirror used to have its head office. Even Fleet Street’s finest did not know who used it, or where it led. n fact, it took selected officials to the safety of two secret tunnels, deep below London.
[. . .]
Officially, they did not exist.
image from The Independent: UK
So cool. It’s like when I found out about Cheyenne Mountain and Mesa Verde. In fact, when given the choice to see Mesa Verde or Disneyland as a 11 year-old, Mesa Verde was my pick. Places like this have always been magical to me.
What is additionally interesting about the recent revelation concerning these tunnels’ existence was the experience of journalist Duncan Campbell. As noted, these tunnels simply “did not exist,” but we learn (same citation as above) about Campbell that
He had an obsession about government secrecy. He phoned BT security one Christmas and told them “if you go down [to the tunnels], you will find a Christmas tree.” He had planted it. They still don’t know how he got down there.
As much as the government insisted these tunnels did not exist and tried to stymie the information of their existence to the public, the human desire to know could not be quenched. It was just another example of how a movement, even if just a movement of one, is near impossible to stop.
