The online field has been one of the mainstays since I started writing online in 2003. My act of writing online was partly to understand online as a medium.
Online has changed in nature. It was first a destination and plane of travel. Early netizens saw it as virgin frontier territory, rather like the early American pioneers viewed the open vistas of the western United States. Or later travellers moving west into the newly developing cities and towns from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
America might now be fenced in and the land claimed, but there was a new boundless electronic frontier out there. As the frontier grew more people dialled up to log into it. Then there was the metaphor of web surfing. Surfing the internet as a phrase was popularised by computer programmer Mark McCahill. He saw it as a clear analogue to ‘channel surfing’ changing from station to station on a television set because nothing grabs your attention.
Web surfing tapped into the line of travel and 1990s cool. Surfing like all extreme sport at the time was cool. And the internet grabbed your attention.
Broadband access, wi-fi and mobile data changed the nature of things. It altered what was consumed and where it was consumed. The sitting room TV was connected to the internet to receive content from download and streaming services. Online radio, podcasts and playlists supplanted the transistor radio in the kitchen.
Multi-screening became a thing, tweeting along real time opinions to reality TV and live current affairs programmes. Online became a wrapper that at its worst envelopes us in a media miasma of shrill voices, vacuous content and disinformation.
This post may take a while to get into, so please bear with me, but I want to take two examples that showcase where I was going on immersive experiences.
User experience problems barring the way for immersive experiences
I gave my parents my first iPad in September last year so that we could stay in touch, and detailed some of the challenges that they faced in getting to grips with the device. There were two things that sprang out of this that I found of interest:
Special purpose devices like the digital TV EPG (electronic programme guide) or a satellite navigation device interface seemed to be easier to grasp
Modern interfaces weren’t as intuitive as we think
All of this is ironic given that the long term goal of HCI is to design systems that minimise the gap between the user’s cognitive model of what they want to do and the computer’s understanding of the user’s task.
From the late 1980s through to the dot com boom, technology was genuinely exciting. We got a whole new genre of fiction: cyberpunk, there was tremendous advances and glorious failures in innovation. Devices like Sony’s Glasstron display made wearable computing seem like just around the corner. Computer performance leapt forward, you could really feel the speed difference between processor chips or going from one games console generation to another. And there was a large degree of form-factor experimentation in computing:
These weren’t necessarily accessible to the average consumer, they were aspirational in nature. Culture including film, art and music promised an immersive cybernetic experience from The Lawnmower Man to Cyber Dog club wear. Virtual reality arcade games to the PowerGlove for Nintendo’s NES meant that William Gibson’s vision of the internet seemed just around the corner. Yet despite the early promise of this technology we ended up with mere interactive experiences that put up a barrier between the user and technology.
If we come forward to 2013, the killer applications of the smartphone aren’t a million miles away from the proto-instant messaging and chat services provided by CompuServe and AOL before the modern internet got started. In order to get the technology to work better it is time to break down the cognitive barriers and revisit immersive experiences.
There are two ways of providing immersive experiences:
Immersing the consumer in the device
Immersing the data in the environment
An example of immersing the consumer in the device is easy to find. From Sony’s Glasstron headsets, to augmented reality application Layar and Apple’s iOS 7.
One of the problems that virtual reality helmets back in the early 1990s was the feeling of motion sickness that it induced. This also seems to be happening with iOS 7, in fact there is now a name for the condition: cyber-sickness.
An example of immersing the data in the environment would be 3D projection mapping or a cinema screen and a digital taxi adverts with geofenced campaigns. The problem is one of scale. Incorporating the data into the environment at least doesn’t make people ill.Where this will take us all is exciting and largely uncharted territory.
I was talking to colleagues during the week and thought it would be timely answer the question, what does Google moving search click-throughs on to HTTPS mean for PR people?
We have less data to use as part of a scientific approach to developing messaging as HTTPS moves inbound search words private. For non-mainland Chinese audiences we are reliant on Google advertising keyword data rather than what has been working driving traffic to their site. For instance, when we think about how we use websites, what might work in a sales situation, may not work when we are looking for information or customer support
When creating content for websites, there needs to be a greater focus around the quality of the content rather than the classic focus on keyword density, since there are less clues on organic searches with HTTPS. This is a key advantage for PR people over ‘content marketers’ who have focused on creating content that is just good enough. We can still see which posts are the most popular for traffic coming from Google and then look to infer what works by looking at commonalities across the pages: content themes, likely audience intent etc.
HTTPS reduces intelligence. Inability to draw conclusions whether our content has an effect on consumer behavior, which keywords were used to reach the intended website, and the penetration of our messaging in the public lexicon when they search and arrive at the specific site. For example, a campaign to promote the ‘Bold washing powder’ causes a rise in searches for “Bold washing powder” to arrive at the P&G UK website, now we no longer able to draw this conclusion. In essence, it is much harder to prove online behavioural change from offline PR activity
A move towards increased link building for client’s websites; blogger relations and responding to posts becomes more important, since there is less of a focus on keywords
Client spend on search advertising is likely to increase as it becomes harder to prove the ROI on tactics used to bolster organic search traffic
More to think about HTTPS here. More on Google here.
This is the first in a number of posts that are designed to expand upon a post I published in May about eight trends for the future. They appear in the order in which I bite them off, chew them around and verbally masticate as posts on the blog. For this post I am looking at digital interruption.
The U.S. civil rights movement
I started thinking about the civil rights movement in the U.S.
By the late 1950s the US civil rights movement found that discourse and letters hadn’t moved the needle meaningfully and it took events like Rosa Parkes sit-down protest and the Stonewall riots to move the process forwards towards a more equal rights for all.
If one looks at the process in terms of mechanism, rather than the politics behind it; the Greenham Common Women, the tunnels dug by road protesters like Daniel Hooper (aka Swampy); they are an extension of the tactics used by civil rights movements decades before.
The first digital protest
The first digital-powered civil rights protest was the burning of draft cards by young American men from May 1964 onwards. The cards were printed with a font that could be read by an optical card reader connected to a mainframe computer, allowing the processing of draftees more efficient. 46 Americans were subsequently prosecuted for destroying their draft cards.
Digital interruption: learning from the Max Headroom takeover
Analogue interruption of media as a form of protest hasn’t worked that well in general. Whilst pirate radio stations routinely disrupted analogue broadcast transmissions, there weren’t a form of protest media, but generally a form of expression.
Probably the most famous hack was the Max Headroom broadcast interruption in Chicago.
The takeover likely to have been done by transmitting a more powerful microwave signal at the transmitter on the Sears Tower used by local broadcast TV stations. The people behind the Max Headroom takeover have never been caught, though there seems to be a number of people on Reddit who have a good idea who they are based don the some of the discussions you can Google. There were two things with analogue interruption:
You had to have a good deal of specialist knowledge to do it
It was quite hard to not get caught, similar media interruptions that occurred earlier by the likes of Captain Midnight (aka John MacDougall) who was busted the previous year whilst protesting at HBO’s unfair charges to satellite dish owners
The roots of computer hacking come from a wide range of sources from the political movement of the Yippies providing guides to phone phreaking (getting the phone network to do things the telephone companies wouldn’t like – giving you free calls etc.) to researchers finding flaws in early mainframe programs in the mid 1960s.
By the 1980s, bulletin board services had started to become popular; mainly because local calls were bundled with the line rental of a phone and so were effectively free in the U.S; allowing a pre-internet digital culture to build up. Bulletin boards also existed in other countries but the relatively high costs in regulated telecoms markets across Europe was a major barrier to take-up.
Computer viruses that were propagated disk-to-disk could extend their reach; particularly as magazine cover disks were often compiled with shareware and freeware originally downloaded from a bulletin board as a service to their readers. Magazines were also paid to distribute trial versions of commercial software and dialers for the likes of CompuServe.
It is interesting to note that the online chat function which drove the adoption of services like CompuServe and AOL whilst mirroring much of the bulletin board function; drew their paradigm from CB radio; with CompuServe’s online chat function being originally branded a ‘CB Simulator’.
Other forms of protest such as flame wars and trolling which came out of the bulletin board culture could be seen as incubators for similar behaviour on Internet platforms from Usenet groups to Facebook pages.
Underlying internet technologies have facilitated a step-change in protest; on the one-hand functions like emailing a politician or an online petition have become increasingly ineffective. ‘Peaceful’ consumer protests against the likes of the UK’s Digital Economy Act were ignored by the politicians and petitions supporting Edward Snowden achieved nothing but provide the authorities with a list of trouble-makers.
Brands that have come under attack on their Facebook pages like Nestle have demonstrated a remarkably thick skin, showing the online people power via social media is often a fallacy.
Consumers were taught by the body-politic that vigorous discourse and petitions don’t work compared to the face-to-face interactions with corporate lobbyists from industry bodies like the BPI, the MPAA or the RIAA.
From this lack of effectiveness came the modern digital interruption. Denial of service attacks have been happening for years as a prank or financial shake down but first came into their own as a form of political protest with the use of the low orbital ion cannon (LOIC) program by members of Anonymous to attack sites related to the Church of Scientology and the RIAA. Whilst this form of protest is illegal in many countries, it is seen by those who use it as a form of civil disobedience; similar to overloading a switchboard with protest calls or a picket line.
People involved are jailed and since Anonymous, like democracy is as much an idea as an organisation; the attacks continue.
Website blackouts by authoritative brands themselves have proven to be much more effective. On January 12, 2012, Wikipedia, Reddit, Flickr and a host of other large sites were effective in overturning the RIPA and SOPA pieces of proposed legislation in the US.
On their effectiveness MPAA chief executive Chris Dodd was quoted in the Los Angeles Times:
“It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and who use their services,” Dodd said in a statement. “It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today.”
It was a tacit admission that whilst consumers could do without films and music, internet search, email and Wikipedia were now must-haves. The web blackout scared politicians because of the services ubiquity to modern life. They couldn’t be ignored like the petitions or emails and be dismissed as a fringe influence.
The world will break down into two types of organisations:
Social
Anti-social
From a communications point of view anti-social means not engaging for a specific reason, be it regulatory or not wanting to change controversial business practices. Conversely a social organisation not only communicates with it’s audience but also acts on what it hears from co-creation to changing business practices. Reputation management opportunities for agencies will occur when a client organisation tries to fall between the two categories and need to be guided between one or the other. Key skills will include:
Closing down social presence to deny digital interrupters an attack platform
Being conversant with techniques to help harden non-social online presence
Management consultancy to bring about business process change as part of making an organisation a social one
Irish cookery teacher terrified into handing over website name to Lady Gaga | Irish Business | IrishCentral – the smart thing would have come to an agreement with the Irish cookery teacher and agree to licence the name to her for cookery blogging purposes only. Instead they’ve risked a social media shit-storm for a box-ticking exercise. In this day and age, that’s an act of gross negligence and incompetence by whoever signed off on this and I feel for the Irish cooker teacher involved. More Irish related content here.
Quitting Facebook: What’s Behind The New Trend To Leave Social Networks? Eurasia Review – Reasons for quitting Facebook were mainly privacy concerns (48.3 percent), followed by a general dissatisfaction with Facebook (13.5 percent), negative aspects of online friends (12.6 percent), and the feeling of getting addicted to Facebook (6.0 percent; other/unspecific, 19.6 percent).
At the end of last week Steve Ballmer announced his imminent retirement and the formation of a committee to find his successor. The narratives that went out with the media painted a picture that was a decade or so of opportunities squandered.
As with most narratives it hides a more complex truth that doesn’t neatly fit in media storytelling.
When did Steve actually take control of Microsoft?
That’s the big question that I don’t feel was answered or really taken into account by the media reports, Ballmer had the financial responsibility when he was appointed CEO in 2000, but Gates set the direction for the company for at least another six years until his retirement in 2006. As one of Microsoft’s largest shareholders; Gate’s still holds sway over the company that he founded.
What did Steve Ballmer achieve?
Steve Ballmer is a hyper-achiever – he went from being the first business manager at Microsoft, to heading up some of the companies most important projects:
The Microsoft sales and marketing machine
.NET development environment
He even headed up crucial versions of operating systems development. Ballmer played a key role in the success during the 1980s and 1990s.
Gates was the architect but Ballmer was a master-builder.
Gates’ design also laid the foundations of weakness in the Microsoft model. Their winner-takes all approach to partners meant that:
PC manufacturers innovated in process to try and claw back hollowed out margins rather than being ready for the kind of disruptive innovation that Apple brought in the hardware space
This is what a consumer PC offering looked like in the late 1990s / early 2000s This is what Apple’s offering looked like I think the pictures tell you everything that you need to say on that front.
If you look at Microsoft’s mobile strategy, there is a succession of screwed over partners including i-Mate and Sendo. Other sectors that Microsoft’s tries to enter look at Microsoft’s history and become very wary. Nokia themselves have admitted that Microsoft’s ownership and bundling of Skype with it’s Windows Phone software was hurting carrier relationships that were key to shift units. The fear and distrust killed competitors at the business plan stage as Silicon Valley kept out of the way of the Redmond juganaut. But it’s also the reason why we have a vibrant open source community and open standards; to try and counterbalance Microsoft’s dominant position.
So Steve Ballmer was playing with less of optimal hand than the media would have you believe. In spite of this Ballmer managed to keep Microsoft growing at an enviable rate of knots.
From Ars Technica:
Under his leadership, Microsoft’s net income has increased to $23 billion, with annual revenue climbing from $25 billion to $70 billion, with an average annual profit growth of over 16 percent.
Now those numbers depend on how long you think Ballmer was actually the shot-caller, but the trend is undeniable.
Secondly, in many key areas like mobile and tablet computing Ballmer was hamstrung by Microsoft having invested too early. Robert X Cringely in his book Accidental Empires likened successful CEOs of a technology companies to surfers. Knowing when to hit a wave and when to transition to the next one. Microsoft had tablet computer products for a decade, smart TV/ set-top box and mobile / PDA software way longer.
Yet according to Ars Technica:
Ballmer is responsible for expanding Microsoft’s reach into a number of new areas, including the heavy push into the “post-PC” era with its focus on portable devices. Ballmer’s Microsoft also created the Xbox and poured tremendous resources into gaining a foothold in the home entertainment market, and it developed an actual viable search competitor to Google.
You could argue that search was a mistake, but as an IBM advert in the latest US edition of Wired magazine says:
80% of the data currently produced is unstructured – coming from sources like images, videos, tweets, posts and e-mails.
That statement alone shows how important search capability would be for Microsoft across their business lines and whilst the Online Services division has been a spectacular under-performer; the company simply cannot afford not to have a dog in the search fight. The work done on search will also pay dividends in enterprise products and emerging areas such as machine learning as a service.
Does Steve still matter?
Ballmer as a retired executive is still a multi-billionaire; he could still make a difference through his investments, probably more so than other retired Microsoft executives have done previously. So it is worthwhile keeping an eye on what he does next.
Why now?
Your guess is as good as mine:
Microsoft is making a lot of transitions, it is has re-organised for its next iteration as a devices and services company. That road will be bumpy. If one looks at the likes of Yahoo! one can see the benefit of shareholder goodwill that a new CEO gets. Ballmer doesn’t have that, he has set the course but won’t be able to see this through
Microsoft could be taking pre-emptive action, since they have seen the way Apple is in the midst of being Icahn-ed. They already pay a dividend, so changing leadership would be next most likely demand getting ahead of that activism keeps the board in the driving seat
A change in CEO would allow Microsoft to put an engineer back in the driving seat. Microsoft at its heart is an engineering culture, which is the reason why its marketing historically has been blunt but effective
A new CEO, particularly one from outside the company has much more leeway to make big choices like breaking up or spinning off parts of the company
