• Upgraded from iPhone 3G to 4: I only had the 3G for a short time, but was very happy with the 4. Slimmer feel, better screen, lower profile, etc. Definitely a good move.
• Upgraded to IOS5: Overrated, but the homepage notifications are very cool. Getting the cloud features set up are a bit confusing.
• Upgraded Macbook from Snow Leopard to Lion: I just did this over the weekend and so far so good. Will have to do a little tinkering to get used to, but did have to switch the scrolling direction back to the old style. Not entirely sure why Apple reversed it. On a positive note…the upgrade was beyond easy.
• Retired the iPod: I really should say it retired itself, but when it turned off and never back on again I just put it down. I used to still use it for running and just other random uses – like not wanting to use my phone to play music on the stereo. However, I have given up the IPod (for now…I just won a shuffle so this conversation might be moot).
• Signed up for Neflix Streaming: I have turned my Netflix account on and off about 10 times in the last 7 years. Back in the DVD days, sometimes it was convenient and other times not. As On Demand got better…ordering DVDs just seemed a pain. However, I now use Netflix to stream old TV shows like Friday Night Lights and Mad Men while traveling. Also, great on the xBox as there is a good library of movies for kids (I have two of them).
• Signed up for Spotify: Got on the list early and fell in love with Spotify almost immediately. Upgraded to Premium shortly thereafter and enjoy Spotify on all devices. Have it hooked up to Facebook, which people either love or hate, but what I am listening to always makes for interesting conversation now.
• Stopped using Pandora, Last.fm, and “other” applications: See above.
• Stopped Daily Coupon Sites: Loved em at first, just sick of them now. However, I still won’t take myself of the mailing list…not sure why. Something makes me feel like I would miss something.
• Dropped Logitec / GoogleTV: A big disappointment. In several places I have written about Google TV and its promise. I still believe SmartTV is on its way, but the least Google could have done was make what promised to be a good experience minimally viable. Beyond the clumsiness of the user interface, my Logitech box stopped working.
• Got Flipboard: Very cool app for news.  Flipping is much better than scrolling.
• Got Instagram: I only wish I could do what some other folks do (taking multiple applications to create an instagram – otherwise called instababs?). Seen really cool stuff from others and have had some fun myself.
• IMDB: Have had the app for a while now, but outside of banking, email, and other functional apps, IMDB is possibly my most used app. I love when someone asks “who is that actor?”
• Joined Google+: Got on board, but don’t really use it. We will see about next year.
• Joined Diaspora: Same as above, but with less enthusiasm.
• Wait listed for Bank Simple and So.cl: I suppose these will both be part of the story in 2012.

I think this covers my big technology moves for 2011. I am sure I forgot some, but this is at least what I can remember in 15 minutes. Would love to hear about technology moves in 2011 from anyone else.

What is significant about this is that it covers more than 25,000 companies and more than 25,000 brands. That alone is incredibly impressive. More so is that the index is refreshed with new data every 15 minutes. It is built on Big Data technology, complex analytics, a custom scoring algorithm, and includes a tool kit for companies that are tracked to communicate internally about their social presence.

Dachis Group presented the tool this week to the public via Webniar to discuss its power as well as its purpose. In short, to gain insights, take action, and measure performance. Its true power will be in how Dachis Group uses its full capabilities with clients and on engagements, but the fact that it is semi open is a pretty gracious move by Dachis, in my opinion.

It will be interesting to see how the tool gets used and how it evolves over time.  Thanks to Dachis Group for putting it out there and giving those evaluated an opportunity to get some value from it.

I am really curious to see if anyone has any other thoughts about this.

Here is the skinny, exploration and experimentation are the words of the day and most firms fit squarely into one bucket or the other. Here is how I think of them:

• Social Exploration:  This is more of less the term being used for “we are looking at it.” This also typically means that corporate marketing is playing around with social networks like Facebook and Twitter as a PR channel and a few folks are trying to figure out what might be involved with enabling advisors (and meeting resistance – budget, priorities, loose business case, etc).
• Social Experimentation: This can be characterized as limited pilots – both in terms of the amount of advisors able to use social channels, scope of use, and incorporation within the overall business.  Some firms are moving past initial experimentation into broader experimentation, which means advisors outside of the pilot group, but I would still call this experimentation. Experimenters are also using some forms of social within the firm as well.

The next bucket  is Social at Scale and I don’t know of any single firm that can claim this (if you do…please tell me). This next bucket pushes social media into the DNA of the firm. It allows social media touch points and techniques to be considered part of the relationship process versus a fringe activity. It becomes a standard communication media, a source of insight, inputs into CRM, a part of meaningful relationship building, and most simply – a set of activities that allow advisors to do their job. This will not happen overnight, but that is what the vision should be.

So I skipped over insight from the BDI event, but if you read my words above you get a sense of what I walked away thinking. Also, I would like to give a shout out to:

Lastly, for a sense of the conversation around wealth management and financial services, check out  #BDI1 on Twitter, the sponsor of today’s session in NYC. For event details, go here: Financial Services Social Communications.

So…Gordon walks into a kitchen, meets the folks, tries the food, checks out the kitchen, watches the restaurant operate and then completely implodes. I have only seen a couple of episodes, but that is his general approach. The anger is derived from extreme displeasure of the restaurant on all fronts. By the way…if you watch a couple shows, you might be angry too.

However, Gordon channels this into his mission – turning the place around to create a better dining experience . What does this mean…better food, better service, better operations.

To get there Gordon works with the staff, figures out a new menu, cleans up the kitchen, redesigns the seating area, and gives everyone clear goals going into the restaurant’s new opening night.

So as I am watching this show, I am thinking this is interesting. Gordon is more or less following the same approach I do for digital strategy work, but for the food industry.

Think about it, he starts with the current state (people, processes, and technology – the kitchen) and benchmarks them against best practices. He then begins building the capabilities by creating the right menu, right experience, and right store front. After the foundation is established he makes sure each staff member knows what to do and how they will be measured.  Then he opens the door and evaluates again, this time making adjustments on the fly until he gets where he wants – a successful client experience and restaurant operation.

In a nutshell.. .strategy plus rapid execution. What impressed me the most about Gordon’s version of this…is that he got it done in 5 days.

So here is my point, I think digital strategy work needs to sound more like Gordon Ramsay’s approach. Imagine if Gordon took 6 months to turn the restaurant around. It would be out of business. Fortune 500 firms have a bit more luxury to take time, but truth to be told, there is still plenty of opportunity to reduce time spent on strategy and implementation cycles around digital (and with most other things).

Anyway, my parting advice is to think more like Gordon Ramsay and less like Days of our Lives in terms of length, complexity, and approach when it comes to strategy development and subsequent execution.

Lastly, for those of you with any interest in seeing Gordon in action, see the Kitchen Nightmares YouTube Channel.

As I began reading though the introduction by Rob Stokes – CEO of Quirk, I became stuck on the operating model he introduced for the agency about a year ago. Essentially, the agency began organizing around four core functional areas with discrete, but interrelated responsibilities:

• Think: research, plan and develop strategy
• Create: build digital assets – web, email, mobile, social properties
• Engage: driving traffic to assets
• Optimize: make assets work better

Before this, Quick was mostly organized around 15 or so departments such as search (paid and organic), creative, email, etc. Basically the tactical teams that define skill sets. Within the new model, the tactical skills roll up to a broader function and I would imagine occasionally cross functions depending on the assignment or need.

At first glance, I have to say I like this model. I personally can imagine Think, Create, and Engage as being part of linear process with Optimize being a building block that is holds up the rest of the functional areas.

Is this a good operating model for an agency or internal digital teams? Is there any innovation in this? What are the best operating models for agencies and internal digital teams?

So sure…this puts pressure on Facebook to stay up to date with features and functions and they have to work hard to remain relevant. That is what this last effort was geared towards. In a nutshell, what did they do:

• The Ticker: Made it easier to see updates in real time. It might be distracting right now, but people will get used to it and it is really simple to update/comment from the ticker.
• Lists: Similar to Google+ you can break up your feed into groups of people and send updates to groups of people. Facebook tried this with groups a while back, but that did not seem to go over too well.  Google+ did it better and it is not rocket science for Facebook to iterate on that. This version of filtering seems to hit the mark a bit better.
• Top Stories/Recent News:  Truth be told, it is a great feature. Essentially the concept is, show me what is most relevant based on my behavior and connections or simply show me everything. There is a time and place for both views. This could still use a little work, but again having more control over what shows up is great and the ability to toggle easily between the two views is helpful (I will admit toggling was easier in the previous version, but it looks like they are working on this).
• The Timeline:  The concept is cool, but I do see some opportunities for selective memory happening in the timeline and also some groans as things people don’t want to show up – show up. In some cases, time can heal all wounds, but the timeline might make that a bit more difficult. So…jury is out, but I like the idea.
• Photos:  Over the last couple of weeks, Facebook changed the photos in a couple of ways. More resolution and using a white background. This makes the photos look better overall. Also, they have increased the size of photos and media within the news feed. Obviously Facebook noticed that people tend to post a lot of media, why not make it easier to read. I think this was a good pickup.

So really, is all of the above worth complaining that much about. Take a couple of weeks, get used to the changes, and if they still bug you say something. This is now the 8th or 9th major change since Facebook has become mainstream and at the end of each cycle, everyone settles in. With this last iteration, Facebook is giving us more content to engage with while reducing the flow of content – not an easy task.

I suppose sometimes they feel like a parent saying “we know better,” but if we trust the Facebook team we find that more often than not they are right in the long run. And, when they make a mistake they will admit it.

At the end of the day, I give them credit for continuing to try and appluad them for actually finding a way to help me engage with more content and people in this latest round of changes.

Over the last year or two, Diaspora has been telling the world it is coming and making a lot of big promises. They have also spent some time claiming that new features in places like Facebook and Google+ are inspired by their work (based on what people in the know might have shared).

While I love the concepts they espouse, I am curious to see if they can actually do this in such a way that is more compelling than the current options out there. Also, this sounds to me a little like  MySpace – “we give you the tools and you design the experience.” This was an interesting experiment, but had a big impact on why MySpace did not succeed.

Therefore, I ask the question…what is the point of too much control for people to have over their own experience. This might just be the next experiment to answer that question.

If you are curious about Diaspora….below is the latest email to people on the beta list, which offers a fairly good explanation about what Diaspora is.

Thanks again for your interest in joining the Diaspora* community, and for your patience. We’re working on getting your invite out to you as quickly as possible, and we’re still committed to getting it to you by the end of October. We’re pushing out hundreds of thousands of invitations as quickly as we can — thanks for bearing with us.

As promised in our previous message, we want to tell you a little more about why we believe so strongly in Diaspora*’s mission: to build a new and better social web, one that’s 100% owned and controlled by you and other Diasporans.

Diaspora*’s distributed design is a huge part of it. Like the Internet itself, Diaspora* isn’t housed in any one place, and it’s not controlled by any one entity (including us). We’ve created software that lets you set up and run your own social network on your own “pod” (or server) and connect your network to the larger Diaspora* ecosystem. You can have a pod all to yourself, or one for just you and your friends, or your family, giving you complete ownership and control over your personal social information (including your identity, your posts, and your photos) and how it’s all stored and shared. Or you can simply join one of more than 20 open pods.^[1]

This means you can do what you want. You can express yourself candidly, and be your authentic self. You can go by whatever name you like on Diaspora*. Pseudonyms are fine, and this both protects you (if you want to say something your boss or your parents disagree with) and opens the door to real connection. Here’s how one blogger and Diasporan put it:

This kind of authentic connection brings back the social freedom that made the Internet awesome in the first place. And this is just the beginning.

You can make great connections with anyone in the Diaspora* ecosystem, not just the people on your own pod, because the pods are linked together.

You can also use Diaspora* as a home base for your outbound posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, writing to them all from Diaspora*. In the future, you’ll be able to monitor your inbound streams from Diaspora* as well.

Yet our distributed design means no big corporation will ever control Diaspora*. Diaspora* will never sell your social life to advertisers, and you won’t have to conform to someone’s arbitrary rules or look over your shoulder before you speak.

And because your information is yours, not ours, you’ll have the ultimate power – the ability to move your profile and all your social data from one pod to another, without sacrificing your connection to the social web. Over time, this will bring an end to the indifferent, self-serving behavior that people can’t stand^[3] from the walled gardens that dominate social networking today. When you can vote with your feet for the environment where you feel safest, the big guys will have to shape up, or risk losing you.

We’re still building this move-your-profile capability, as well as other key features. It’s hard work, but we’re building the future we want to see, with incredible community support.

Diaspora* is a genuine community effort. More than 160 people have contributed to our code, putting us in the top 2% of all open source projects tracked by Ohloh.^[4] Hundreds more volunteers have translated Diaspora* into 13 of the world’s spoken languages so far, with another 32 translations in progress. Thousands of Diasporans have given us more than 3,000 points of feedback. (We’re listening closely, and building the features you’re asking for as fast as we can.) And of course, thousands of donors have helped pay for our development, and hundreds of thousands of people — including you — are patiently waiting for access to try it out.

Thanks again for your patience. We can’t wait to see you here, and to build a brighter future together.

As usual all comments are welcome.

In thinking about my experience over the last decade…here is what I recall, where I think we will end up, and my thoughts on the disruption I expect Spotify to cause:

Circa 2000: The Napster Era – My first exposure to finding and sharing music in a digital format. Paired with a CD burner, it was a fun time (only to be cut short by the music labels).

Circa 2002: Enter the iPod – MP3 players go mainstream and I get one for Christmas. I spend months digitizing my music collection and buying tracks or albums from the iTunes store. Very irritated when my computer crashes and I have to start over.

Circa 2003-2006: Music Acquisition Days – I have tons on digital music now and have multiple ways of acquiring new collections. At points I am on a mission to just grow my database – friends, online sources, etc. I am also using external hard drives to back it all up.

Circa 2007: Music Management – Now that I have so much music, just playing my collection on random is not that fun. Too much variety and some junk. Now its time to curate the collection and create playlists.

Circa 2008: Music Discovery – I begin working with a music start-up that is trying to create a business around playlists. As part of this, I get a ton of exposure to the world of music blogs, online radio, torrents, and everything in between. This sets me off on a great music discovery mission and I am giddy over the options (iMeem, Lala, Pandora, Last.fm, Indieball.com, Daytrotter.com, IndieRockCafe, etc – and that is not even scratching the surface). There are lots of places to go and finding needles in the haystack are fun.

Circa: 2009: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow –  During a short period of time, it seemed all of the big players raced to establish the number 1 music distribution service across several business models:  Pandora (ad supported radio), iTunes (music store), Rhapsody (subscribe to database of music), and MySpace (social network and store). Each of the leaders gobbled up companies like iMeem and LaLa to add to their feature bench and most companies faded due to poor performance, undifferentiated offerings, royalty issues with the labels, or in many cases – no sustainable business model (really…people are still learning this one).

Circa 2010: Cloud Music Emerges (almost) - 2010 saw two new entrants, Amazon and Google, launch long awaited cloud offerings. In addition to buying music you could store all of your music and stream back to yourself. They provided an interface that merged music on the local device with music stored in the cloud and basically an overlay on top of iTunes. It felt kind of bolted on and not all that practical, but at least it gave me a cloud-based benchmark.

2011: Spotify Hits the US – After a long awaited period, Spotify finally becomes available in the US. Admittedly, the user interface needs a ton of work, it’s not as social as expected, and users need to go to complimentary sites like ShareMyPlaylists.com for an iTunes genius type feature. Despite all of that, Spotify is the real game changer. It solves almost all of the problems experienced in each of the predecessor periods.

Since this is may be a bold statement, let discuss Spotify’s impact (and how I think it is totally disruptive):

- iTunes: Spotify has 18 million tracks and I rarely find something missing except for older albums or indie albums still on the newer release side. Anything that is really missing I have anyway, or can get, and then Spotify will pick it up. SO…goodbye iTunes…you are fired as my primary music player.

- Pandora/Last.fm: It has been a great run, but I now have an ad-free radio inside of Spotify. I won’t give up on you either, especially when I just want to hear some new strings of music, but you are now second fiddle. I think you should strongly consider asking if Spotify will buy you.

- Amazon/Google: Your efforts were shoddy, but now you really have no purpose. You just got the wind taken out of your sales.

- Bit Torrents (and its ecosystem): As the modern day Napster, you just became somewhat unimportant. With the risk of copyright infringement penalties high and low-cost (or free) access to music, there is not much need to share via peer-to-peer file services. You will thrive for a while until a similar video services makes you truly outdated at least for music.

- Music Stores: This is the final nail in the coffin. You will still play a role for the next decade, but more symbolic than anything else.

Despite negative disruption for the above, there are other parts of the modern music system that have opportunity to benefit. Here are some predictions for those areas as well as some outcomes I hope to see:

- MySpace: MySpace is one of the few areas to hear artists voice from their perspective. It is easier than going to artist’s Web sites, it feels active due to its social networking origins, and its a great place to see and learn more about them.

- Aspiration: My hope is that MySpace is purchased by Spotify or creates a strong partnership. Imagine artists creating playlists that are immediately accessible and how easy it would be for individual users to post their playlists to Spotify and vice versa.

- Music Blogs: Music blogs are the heart and sole of new music. Blogs like Large Hearted Boy, Aurgasm, IndieBall.com,and Indie Rock Cafe will continue to be a source of music inspiration, commentary, spreading new artists, and helping to define the edges of music.

- Aspiration: My hope is that bloggers continue to do what they do, but Spotify links commentary/posts into artist bio pages or buys content as part of album or track reviews. Spotify should be carefully listening to the collective music blogs to determine what tracks, artists, and labels need to be added to the service and consider posting their own Spotify playlists. However, for this to work, Spotify will need to be really open and quick with getting new tracks into the service.

- Music Magazines: Similar to blogs, magazines are the commercial heart and soul of the industry. The likes of Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and Spin create the polished content everyone loves, but does not love to pay for anymore.

Aspiration: Again, similar to the bloggers, syndicate your content into Spotify. Become part of the bigger value proposition and get key pieces of your content in front of people while they are listening to music.

After spending a couple of weeks with Spotify and just doing the upgrade these are my thoughts. As usual, any and all comments welcome.

9.7.11. I have to open up this post with the fact that I am hoping to join the the BzzAgent campaign for the Kindle 3. However, for a company that does word-of-mouth marketing, they seem to have found another nifty way to create buzz – earning your way in.

Let’s start at the beginning, for those of you that don’t know BzzAgent, they are a word-of-mouth marketing organization. They have a database of BzzAgents, who are everyday consumers, but ones with a penchant for talking about the brands they use. To be a BzzAgent you simply sign up to the site, take some surveys to develop a baseline of preferences, and start providing opinions on products and concepts being tested within the BzzAgent world. Once you complete these activities you become eligible to be invited to campaigns.

This is where the other side of the business comes in. The BzzAgent campaign managers work with brands trying to learn what people like (or don’t) in their products, while trying to create buzz at the same time. The campaigns are pushed out to individuals based on likelihood to  use a product, and if they sign up, they are given access to the product (mostly free or heavily discounted), along with some direction on what to do (host a party, share samples, etc). In doing all of this BzzAgents create social interactions and impressions that influence awareness, sales, product development, etc.

However, BzzAgent just decided to change the game a little. Instead of BzzAgents passively waiting for an invitation, BzzAgent will now be promoting upcoming campaigns and asking people to earn a spot through creating content, sharing a video, etc. If this campaign is good enough…will people do it? I say yes…using this as a case and point.

So…let’s replay the last 25 minutes:

• I see the link on Facebook and its explanation to WOW them (and “like” it).
• I follow the link and sign-up for consideration
• I check out Amazon.com for more details on the Kindle 3
• I write this post
• I post to Twitter with a hashtag (imabzzagent)

As for the so-what…this campaign approach is creating great buzz well before the campaign hits the ground. I think it is an inventive way to get people excited about a campaign, insure you get the right people involved, and stretch the limits of when word-of-mouth gets started.

Nice job BzzAgent and Amazon on creating great buzz and stirring the BzzAgent community to act early, and socially, to win a spot.

Now…pick me too!

However, in reading a recent article on Mashable – Why the Google Motorola Deal is About More Than Mobile Phones, I picked up the piece of the puzzle most interesting to me: Google TV.

This past January, I said that IPTV could be great, but there is a lot of room for improvement. From a basics perspective, there needs to be better user interfaces, better integration with remotes, and a continued emphasis on sites providing ‘lean back” experiences, especially once a critical mass is there.

However, I started my list of to-do’s for IPTV with integration into the set-top box. While Google TV definitely suffered from usability issues, it suffers the most from being another device. By having the technology part of the cable box it should look to find an adoption curve more similar to digital video recorders (DVRs).

Anyway, without being long winded, I am just going to say that I am happy to see the promise of Google TV/IPTV getting a new lease on life. I do think the technology will come and it is just a matter of  how fast and who owns it.