Pandora Squared - Web and Business Architects, Consultants, Social Media Marketing, Software and Blogging hope not hype

For the Pandora Squared blog, we are currently using the popular rails blogging platform – Typo. While it has served us well for the last few months, there comes a time where we want to bring everything into the fold and start using our own product.

It’s a strange thing for a company that builds its own blogging and social software platform to be using a blog made by someone else. At the time when we were starting Pandora Squared, we felt it much more important to get something up so that we could broadcast to the world, rather than spend the time tailoring our full social software package purely for a blog. Now that we have a mature and flexible system that can be deployed easily and quickly with as few or many features that we need, there is no reason why we can’t get something of our own up.

It’s not entirely straightforward, we have a large amount of posts that need to be converted and a few typo-specific features embedded into our posts so its not quite as easy switching the new code over. Over the next week we are going to be making the transition and blogging the steps that we have had to go through to move between systems. A fun ride to eating our own dog food, so stay tuned.

Here is an interesting trend about blog for the last three years. Obviously, blogs hasn’t reached it’s tipping point yet, but it is a matter of time. The fundamental concept behind blogs enabling individuals to reach millions of audience is very powerful thing, it is an expression of freedom and democracy. So, why hasn’t it been a norm yet? Well for one, people are afraid to expose themselves. There are more people who are introvert than extrovert. So, introverts (like me) are more protective of their identity.

Before I was converted by the famous Web 2.0 preacher – Kevin Leversee, I have no digital identity. I am afraid of posting my life story online, besides I see no reason to do so. What will I gain if I blog? nothing, except to waste a few minutes talking about myself. As introvert, I am naturally shy to expose myself. But I later realized that blog is not about me… its about my career, my beliefs, my principle. Its not about what I will gain, but what I am losing. I am losing my digital identity and I need to build one quickly if I’m to pursue my career. I can share my knowledge, experience and opinions. I am building a digital identity of me and I don’t want to lose this opportunity.

Blogging is a very powerful thing… with the audience within your reach, you can influence so many people’s opinions and beliefs. Well, I guess there is something to gain after all. With blog comes great power, with great power comes great responsibity. If this power is abused, we will reach the death of blog immediately. When email reached its tipping point, spammers get into business and killed email marketing campaigns. When we start seeing blogs selling viagra everywhere… it has then reached the tipping point and you will see the death of blog… sad. But then again, the good will always prevail… so someone will come to the rescue blogs by organizing contents and providing credibility – like technorati.

What happens when I enter your name in one of the top search engines or a social network?

Your search – “andie beckman” – did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

• Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
• Try different keywords.
• Try more general keywords.

Does this person exist? They say they graduated from here, and used worked here but yet I see no reference.

No reference on LinkedIn No reference on MySpace

No reference = no Existence

So what are some solutions?

• Write a Blog
• Comment on a blog post that you like
• Create several profiles on social networks
• Create a Personal Website
• Start or participate in a conversation online

You personal brand is directly correlated with a Google search of your name and remember everything online is indexable.

social development

We have just made the transition across to using FeedBurner for all our feeds on Pandora Squared. What I was expecting to be tricky process, actually turned out to be a no brainer. With a simple redirect in our web server config we now have our feed point to the new url. No need for anyone to update anything, it just works plain and simple.

So what does it do?

• Better statistics for the blog feeds (this is in addition to our Google Analytics and Measuremap)
• Broader Compatibility with Readers and Aggregators
• Email Subscriptions (can now be seen on the sidebar along with number of subs)
• Outgoing link tracking (lets us see who actually clicks on an outgoing link)
• Browser readable (check out lots of cool stuff here… http://feeds.feedburner.com/PandoraSquared)
• An API (something we can look at integrating later)

Shel Holtz explores how social media is affecting internal communication processes within organizations and companies.

Holtz Law, which he himself coined, states that Whatever succeeds on the Internet will find its way onto intranets.

Holtz tells the communicators should lead and take the charge to get executives and employees to blog. In Lawrence Ragans Communications, Inc.’s Journal of Employee Communication Management, Holtz tells how blogs should be harnessed as a communication channel instead of a technology.

In the Journal he identified some possible examples for how blogs can be utilized:

1. Projects: project teams can set up a group blog to maintain an ongoing record of decisions and actions. Project leaders can also maintain a blog to announce to the rest of the company the current status of the project and what was accomplished today.
2. Departmental: Departments can maintain blogs to let the rest of the company know of current offerings or achievements.
3. News: Employees can contribute industry or company news to a group blog, or cover news they have learned in their own personal blogs.
4. Brainstorming: Employees in a department or on a team can brainstorm about strategy, process and other topics.
5. Customers: Employees can share the substance of customer visits or phone calls.
6. Personal blogs: Even though this sounds like a time-waster, a personal blog can prove valuable in the organization.
7. CEO blog: What a great way for the chief executive officer to get closer to employees.

If companies are sincere about knowledge management, blogs represent a startlingly good channel for it.

And blogging phonemenon has indeed penetrated the enterpise. Corporate executives have launched blogs to provide a more human voice for the organization or to position themselves as thought leaders. Managing a work force means treating them like people, not mindless drones who live to serve company’s ill-defined will. And if companies can utilize social media to their advantage, employees are engaged effectively resulting in improved productivity. He has called on communicators of companies he knew that have already incorporated social media within their organizations.

So far, feedbacks have been positive and it seems it will be for the next years.

An article on New York Times Politics Faces Sweeping Change via the Web, by Adam Nagourney tells about the transformation of American political campaign strategies by today’s internet technology.

For once, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that internet publicity through e-mail, interactive websites and candidate and party blogs appears to be far more efficient, and less costly, than the traditional tools of politics.

Popular online communities or social networks such as Friendster and Facebook (I wonder why MySpace isn’t included?)are being considered as means of reaching groups of potential supporters with similar political views or cultural interests.

This revolutionary development hasn’t been confined to politics but also to other sectors such as the music industry, newspapers and retailing — as they try to adjust to, and take advantage of, the internet as its influence spreads across American society. Bloggers have demonstrated the power of their forums to harness the energy on both sides of the ideological divide.

The percentage of Americans who went online for election news jumped from 13% in 2002 to 29% in 2004, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center after the last presidential election. A Pew survey earlier this month found that 50 million Americans go to the Internet for news every day, up from 27 million in March 2002, a reflection of the fact that the internet is now available to 70 percent of Americans and is still reaching more and more people everyday.

We’ve always said that internet has changed, it is now a sea of conversations brought about by the rapidly increasing number of bloggers talking and interacting with virtually everyone. Conversations that are navigated by search. And to keep you from drowning and keep afloat, you have to lead in search or be part of the conversations.

AP has an article about Toshiba’s mobile bar code technology. Testing in Japan and debuting in April 2007 this technology will enable shoppers to receive bloggers product reviews and ratings. A picture is taken of the bar code, then sent and crunched by Toshiba’s servers with a positive or negative response in 10 seconds or less.

I wonder where comparative shopping fits in and who will be jumping on board as partners.

Foogle where are you?

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Taken from Wikipedia Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through viral processes similar to the spread of an epidemic. It is word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it harnesses the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.

Its good to see that location specific services haven’t been forgotten. Ben Barren gets some coverage on his upcoming Australian Blog Search Engine – Gnoos over at SMH.

###Jakob I have to say a certain part of our relationship has to change. You see, it isn’t you, it is me, and I have evolved past you. So it seems has the Internet.###

Jakob Nielson of the Neilson Norman group misses the Web 2.0 (wikipedia link) meme entirely. His Alertbox “Search Engines as Leeches on the Web� misses the mark and with every point he is making I am yelling at my monitor Of Course Jakob! Search Engines, they are leeches and they do suck out the value, and it is a good thing…

Web Two Point 0h! Is not about technology Web Two Point 0h! Is not really a movement at all, more or less it is the personal Jesus of the Internet Always-on Age.

Jakob as a pioneer has massive value for anyone who does business on the web. However we keep seeing more and more the differences now versus just five years ago. A mere five years ago where we had say resellers of shoes, the way to beat your neighbour was spend 10% of your site budget on usability, add permission marketing stuff and Viola! You hit eBusiness on the head.

Not so fast.

Your user will leave your Web Site if they know they can find a clothespin for $1 cheaper. Commodities and quick consumer based ecommerce has had to fight ferociously to keep customers and retain business. Look at online classifieds, how easy is it to build a site that scrapes and provides jobs, houses and travel? Trust me it is pretty easy.

To succeed today, you have to have real value past the price point, make all your products and information search readable and have budget to spend on search. And most important be part of the users conversation.

Our vision of the Web 2.0 Personal J: Everything is the conversation and everything is search. We are at an age where we see the death to the walled gardens of information. No more relevant are the big ego centric brands or portal destinations offer massive amounts of information and for personalisation require a user to log in and submit their personal information. Already the evolution from top down command and control structure into heterogeneous public news and information sites has occurred. Powerful editorial content merged with portable user generated media is the now the norm, and all this feeds into RSS aggregators and allow open API’s to mix and mash. It’s like remixing music only its entire web tools and information and even access to your products and services.

Usability within your site while important must also now include improved search ability. Jakob’s group should now evolve and ask:

• What is your search strategy?
• How do you embrace social software?
• Where are your API’s?
• What is the usability of your RSS FEED? (Jakob’s group hasn’t even looked at that yet)

We have added our own notes taken off of Jakob’s most recent Alertbox: Search Engines As Leeches

• Email newsletters NO. How many newsletters are in your inbox? Do users really care about your Yogurt or insurance newsletter…NO. Newsletters for them to be in anyway effective must have COMPELLING VALUE to that user.

• Request marketing YES! Have users tell you want they want, and then alert them when you have it. This is always a good thing, should be offered for phone, SMS, email and RSS.

• Social Software YES! Make visible the invisible. You will see in the course of the next few months that instead of the big one size fits all YASN’s (Yet Another Social Network) privately branded sub networks will start sprouting up. Business and Networking events like CES or Alwayson-Network Innovation Summit will have social networking ability online, incorporating member management into Friendster and Myspace type functionality. Users will have one common ID, much like the efforts pushed from SixIP or www.foaf-project.org where you as a user keep your information and you choose to allow that social network what information it can have. As a marketer or business owner, how much more valuable is your network when you enable and embrace the conversations that are already happening in market? (I will give you a hint is now more than squared)

• RSS (Syndication feeds) RSS YES! Everything must be available for Syndication, from the jobs you have available in your www.company.job domain (link to .job info), to your investor information, vendor announcements, your companies market facing blogs, and the top rated discussions you may have in your user generated media forums.

• Mobile features Everything of value must be available online through WAP or 3G type sites. Everything is moving to Internet Protocol your information, content and everything will soon need to be machine readable and available. Sensis.com.au is pushing interesting things to market with Mobile advertising, sports events, shopping malls; all these will soon incorporate search and social software tools and games. Bay Area mobile technology stars such as Genplay and Digital Chocolate are exploring this today.

Jakob follows up his Alertbox by saying the end goal is to have users come back. I feel he misses the cluetrain entirely.

Markets are conversations…The real goal should be to provide real value and have real interaction. If you provide value and communicate with your market not to them or at them, enable your market and the conversations open up your API’s the end results will speak for themselves.

The Internet is no longer a place of places; it is a river of micro content pushed and aggregated and a big huge mess of conversations.

And in the end, everything is search…the discrete event of that user’s desire line.

You better make sure you are part of that users search result, or you better be part of that user’s conversation.

-Kevin Leversee (disclaimer, Genplay is a client of Pandorasquared)