The subject of good design has been popping up a lot recently both in our business and out on the web.

In 2007 Apple went from 0% to 27% market share in the smart phone market via the introduction of well designed hardware and intuitive software that the average person can access and utilize. Further, through both software and hardware design differentiation Apple maintains a gross margin of 33.6% versus Dell’s GM of 18.5% .

A nice visual analogy of Apple’s design approach versus Microsoft’s is depicted below:

An even more interesting stat comes from a January Reuters article:

In data provided to the New York Times, Google disclosed that it received more traffic from iPhones this Christmas than from any other mobile device, despite owning only 2 percent of the smart-phone market and less than 1 percent of the overall mobile-phone market. That means that while fewer people own iPhones, those who do possess the device use it to access the Internet much more than those with competing handsets.

Apple is essentially a design company. Their hedgehog principle is good design. They innovate and command market share by making technology simple to use by everyone. The simple fact that both of my parents are making active use of the web, web services and multiple (and synced) devices illustrates that with good design, you can teach an old dog new tricks (sorry Mom and Dad!).

As the world becomes more technically complex, design is commanding a more important role in our lives. Tech has been notoriously bad at making its amazing advances and productivity tools accessible by a mass audience. This is changing rapidly. The devices of yesterday are becoming real products before they come to market by necessity…the market is demanding it. William Davidow wrote a great book about the difference between devices and well designed products years ago…and its a worthy read for any marketer, product manager, engineer or CEO.

From a January article in the Journal:

With all the fuss, PC makers have begun hiring more people with degrees in industrial design and related disciplines — and listening to their opinions. “We found people designing from the outside in, not the inside out,” says Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of Intel’s mobile systems group. “This was the revolution.”

So as we go about marketing our customers campaigns and offers via our Advaliant performance marketing platform, we are seeing the fruits of this ‘differentiation by design’ ethos.

Our customers come to us with a simple goal in mind: acquiring new customers. Many of them have their own creative that they wish to use and some of it is very well designed and the user experience is well thought out. Generally, we have seen these campaigns perform better than the lesser designed ones that make their way onto the platform.

Recently, we have been taking some of the offers that don’t convert well into our design studio and creating an alternative design direction and user experience (with client approval, of course). We then split-test these offers versus the original. Nine times out of ten the re-design performs better. The reason: we have taken the time and effort to make sure each campaign is designed to more simply communicate the benefit to the customer.

Not surprisingly, our expertise in the area of helping our advertisers generate more appealing campaigns has kept their loyalty and engagement with our platform. Further, because the campaigns perform better, our affiliates and publishers are happier because better designed campaigns help improve their bottom lines.

While direct response performance marketing can be a complex process, the same principals in the use of design to differentiate has enabled us to deliver our business constituents more value from our platform.

Got any other examples of good design making a “direct to bottom line” difference? Please share below!

So last night I dusted off one of my favorite movies, the 1973 classic martial arts film Enter The Dragon. While watching it I began to see some great marketing wisdom in the dialog and found it be extremely timely and quite relevant concerning a current project I am engage in. I thought I would share with you the highlights of Enter The Dragon: Competitive Marketing.

“Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory”

Too often we have tight timelines, many moving parts, multiple contributors, and general the general chaos and distraction of life surrounding us while we are getting our go to market plans ready.It is very easy to focus solely on the tasks at hand with out stepping back and looking at the big picture. Often that picture is pretty fantastic, even while the current project you are working on may be a pain in the ass. Don’t forget that you are part of a team, and a business unit, and company all striving for the same thing - success in business and a great quality of life, however that is defined by both your industry, your company, and your family. Look up from your desk, take a walk, talk with a colleague and acknowledge the goodness in your efforts.

“Boards don’t hit back”

Practice. Practice. Practice. and then practice some more. Run your presentation by a group of peers before the keynote. Double check that persona one more time before running the scenario. Go back through notes, your email, your gut checks. Because there comes a time when you will be faced with real competition and must respond in real-time, to real threats, and must fight real battles in your market space, or at a closing meeting with a new client, or with the CMO of your company about how you think that a solution based positioning isn’t really an advantage for the market pentetration of the product and wont differentiate it in an already over crowded…. anyway. I digress.

Han: “Your style is unorthodox”
WIlliams: “But effective”

Many times we have to look deeper than our established bag of tricks, especially in a market that is fast moving, constantly changing, and that requires creativity, confidence and stamina to win. And not just win once, but to win repeatedly. I have always considered myself to be a bright guy, and the smartest thing that I do is to surround myself with people smarter than me. (or is it I. Smarter than I.. have to call my wife on that.)

Anyway, the point that Williams was making is that one should strive to be effective no matter what the method of action may require. I call on those around me to shake up my snow globe of ideas and see if they find patterns or data or insights that I may have missed. The way we finally get to a result may be a little odd, but those results are not.

“Never take your eyes off your opponent, even when you bow”

You never know the exact moment of opportunity and must be ready to either strike or defend in real-time. Defensibility in the market space is a one of the primary reasons certain startups don’t get handed their lunch by the fourth week of school. Great companies are constantly looking to defend and strengthen their position at every opportunity. And its not so much the “best offense is a good defense” mentality. It’s more to the point of be aware of your surroundings. If you are looking to gain a position in the market, you are damn certain your competition is looking to do the same. Just be sure not to get caught looking. Be prepared to act.

“Provide your customers with products they need and, uh, charge a little bit to stimulate your market and before you know it customers come to depend on you, I mean really need you. “

Ok, so in the flick they were talking about drug smuggling and corruption, but its the classic case of creating a need in the market, fanning it with desire, and capturing the trust of your clients. During my storied career as a tech sales guy I never really sold the product (which might be why I eventually was fired.) What I did sell though was need - need for the product or service that we could provide. And I would compare that to my competition, noble warriors all, but just not quite as good as what we had to offer. And then I would show them how they could trust me, and that I had our mutual best interest in hand. Oh, and if they bought now I would take off an additional 12% on signing. Need + desire + dependency. Its not just for romance novels anymore.

“You must attend the morning ritual in uniform.”

Come prepared. Most reasons we miss that window of opportunity is that we don’t recognize it as it is coming toward us, see it only as its passing by, or see it early but just cant get ready to anything about it. Come to work ready to work. Go to a house party ready to party. Be present and appropriate and provide both context and content for whatever you are doing. And that goes for your marketing plan as well. A key word here is ritual. Practice, reverence, and habit can be key to developing a winning marketing strategy.

Enter The Dragon is only one of many examples of films that provide nuggets of introspection and learning within the dialog. Now its up to you. I would love to hear about your movie insights and how they align with your industry. Post them in the comments. If they are especially good, I’ll send you the movie of your choice as a “thank you”.

Bonus points if you can define Market Readiness from The Big Lebowski. Have fun.

Nine Inch Nails are giving away their newest album titled, The Slip, on their website. There is no gimmick. There are no strings attached. Simply go to their website and download the album free and clear. Hell, you even get to choose the quality and the format you want it in (i.e. mp3, m4a lossless, FLAC, and hi-definition WAVE 24/96).

Why would a band like NIN do this? First, they got rid of their record label. You don’t think Universal, their previous label owner, would allow this do you? Second, NIN understands that selling records is now a very tiny piece of the puzzle. Instead of trying to futilely retain control by cracking down on file-sharing and preventing your music from being played in online radio and podcasts (like most majors do), NIN has embraced the shifting technological paradigm.

Other major artists are doing like-minded things like this. Madonna recently left her longtime record contract with Warner Bros. in favor of signing with Live Nation - a concert promoter. Why would she do that? More on that in a minute. Coldplay is also testing the free-song-download model this week by offering their new single called “Violet Hill” from their website. Better move fast - after this week it goes away.

We’re looking at a fundamental shift in the music business. The recorded product is now the bait and not the fish. By giving away the product for free, artists are doing two things. First, they get to collect your email address. This is very valuable because they now have a way to interact with their fans and tell you about other things you maybe interested in. That leads me to number two: Concerts and merchandise. I get emails all the time from my favorite artists telling me about when they’re playing near me and about new fan items they have available. So, instead of getting $10 out of me for a digital download on iTunes, they potentially get $100 or $150 out of me in the form of concert tickets and merchandise. Plus, the goodwill generated by an artist giving away their latest recording (as opposed to getting a lawsuit notice from their record company) doesn’t hurt their public image any.

This brings me back to Madonna and the deal with Live Nation. She’s essentially brought her career under one roof. Live Nation already promotes your shows and sells your merchandise, why not have them facilitate the release of your music? At this point what does a record company really bring to the table?

Need another example? Bret Michaels has been all over your TV lately as the star of the VH1 show, Rock of Love. His band, Poison, once 80’s superstars have been seen a nostalgia act for the last 10 years. I would argue that they are doing as well as ever. Sure, they haven’t had a radio hit in more than 15 years, but does that really matter anymore? Each summer for the last few years they embark on a 40-city tour. They play to venues that average about 5000 people - and they sell them out. Let’s say the average ticket price is $50 - that’s $250,000 per show, or $10 million for 40 cities. I know that some of that goes towards paying for touring costs, staffing, venues and such, but still, it’s not a bad summer’s work. Considering the average recording artist makes a paltry $1 for every unit sold, there’s no reason for Poison to release a new album when the lion’s share of their income comes from merchandising and live performance, not new releases.

My guess is that record companies will continue to kick and scream over new technology. They’ll continue to bemoan their declining revenues and blame it on piracy. But, if artists as big as Madonna, Nine Inch Nails, and Coldplay are testing these waters, clearly there is a change in the tide.

There is a great article over at Go Big Always today about online media companies dropping the ball when it comes to social media.

“You’d think media companies would be all over social media. I mean, media is their business. No one should be better than they are at leading the way. They’re sitting on a gold mine of assets. Awesome writers, tons of video and images, lots of “Social Objects.” Media companies are the ones who can get the conversations started and keep it going.

But they’re getting their ass handed to them by blogs. Bloggers are on top of the active conversations and participate in the dialogue without forcing you to jump through hoops before you can chime in. They, like companies in other industries embracing social software and principles, are beating the crap out of the later adopters.”

There are essentially two schools of thoughts at work here. The first is that you force participants to sign up to your site - name, email, password etc. This allows you to gather their information and monetize it down the road. The second, better option, is that you let people contribute freely to the conversation with no strings attached.

Instead of forcing them into giving up their personal information, how about giving them something of value in exchange for it? If your site offers something that unique, eventually users will sign up for more access. The true benefit of social media is engagement. When you force people to disclose personal information in exchange for the privilege of interaction, you are putting up an unnecessary wall in front of them. In the end, you’re defeating the whole purpose of utilizing these social tools in the first place.

Media companies have always been shortsighted. You only have to look as far as the RIAA suing their customers to see what I mean. Many companies, unfortunately, still seem to be heading down the wrong road. 

I received beta codes for both socialthing! and Ping.fm through the social web, yet both experiences couldn’t have been more different, and yet so similar at the same, again proving that the social web is about interactions that are platform agnostic in intention, but directly tied to the platform or forum that becomes the channel. We met Matt Galligan, founder and C-E-Oh! of socialthing! at SXSW for an interview about the launch of the beta, and how they see themselves in the social media space. After the interview, he gave us a few beta invite codes as well as an invitation to the socialthing! party later that next evening (which we greatly enjoy Matt, thanks!). I received my invite code to Ping.fm from reading my twitter feeds, and although I wasn’t fast enough to get the codes that @chrisbrogan provided, Sean at Ping.fm was kind enough to shoot me off one and I am stoked that he did.

After only a couple of days on both, I am really excited about what I see. To me this is the closest combination to my killer social app that I have used. It is the Pushmi-Pullyu of the social web.

Ping.fm was very easy to hook up. After acquiring my credentials, It was a very simple process to associate my variety of “channels” into my Ping account. I am especially happy that they have added an AIM component as well, so that I can use iChat as my broadcaster. Ping.fm solves attempts to solve the problem of multiple social applications by allowing me to “ping” all of them from one interface, and an interface of my choice. I can text or email into my ping account and have it distributed to my many social footprints.

socialthing! approaches the problem from the other direction. After signing into socialthing! one of the first things i notices was the clever UI that they have used to associate my Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts. Once connected, socialthing! provides for me a Lifestream, an aggregated view of the services I have identified, and allows for a display order that is either time based or user based. A side benefit of socialthing! was that I quickly saw how many “friends” I had collected on Flickr that now, unintentionally, were clogging up my Lifestream. A quick run through of my Flickr friends will clean out those that no longer participated in an active conversation with me, or were no longer of particular interest.

I was recently having a conversation with Brooke, a banker friend of ours, and explaining to her  my perspective on social media applications like socialthing! and Ping.fm. The combination of these two applications fit neatly into her “moment of clarity” when she proclaimed social applications to be a social GPS of sorts. The push distribution of Ping.fm and the pull of socialthing! combined with the triangulation of the content and context of the messages provide for a time, a place, and a perspective based on your knowledge of the author. It tells you exactly “where they are” in a near real-time fashion.

I am clearly going to continue using these services, and will speak with both companies to see if we can acquire a group of invite codes for our readers. Are you using either platform? What are your thoughts? We would love to read your comments. 

It’s probably no secret to readers that I am a producer for the PodShow network. My show, American Cliche, has been part of their stable of shows for almost two years. During the bulk of that time my main contact there was Richard Brewer-Hay in their talent relations department. Richard was my favorite person at PodShow. Besides being a fun guy to be around, I always knew that when I asked him a question he would tell me the truth, point blank. I respect Richard a lot.

In January I got a call from him letting me know that he was leaving PodShow to start eBay’s blog. I was excited for him because it seemed like a great opportunity, but I didn’t really understand the scope of the project. To be honest, I feared this would be a tool of the PR department to try and falsely embrace the conversations happening in social media. However, today I read an interview on Fortune Small Business with Richard. Apparently eBay has agreed to a hands-off approach on the blog. Richard has complete freedom to write whatever he wants, unedited. It was also interesting to learn that he has “all-access” to every facet of the company from the CEO on down.

What does this mean for eBay? It has long been a concern of sellers that their voices have fallen on deaf ears.  In fact, to show their disapproval of fee changes, many top sellers staged a boycott a few weeks ago. According to Richard, eBay Ink, will be direct line of communication for eBay’s users to voice concerns and get a peek behind the scenes at every level. While the blog has yet to launch, it will be interesting to see what the content looks like. Will it really be unedited? There will no doubt be guidelines that Richard will have to follow in terms of what he writes. Or will there? Maybe eBay will use the Robert Scoble/Microsoft model and allow him to exist as an island - far removed from the sharp claws of the PR department.

I hope they do this right. eBay has a real opportunity here to engage their customers. In fact, the best thing a company can do in the digital age is make their customers feel like part of the dialogue. How transparent will eBay actually be? That remains to be seen. However, the fact that Richard Brewer-Hay is leading this charge gives me confidence that it’ll be done right. You can bet that a lot of eyes will be on them as they launch eBay Ink. If it goes well, expect to see more following suit. 

Have you ever wondered what the blogoshere looked like? 

Discover Magazine published an article about Matthew Hurst’s study on visualizing and mapping of the blogosphere.

Discover Magazine says “The blogosphere is the most explosive social network you’ll never see. Recent studies suggest that nearly 60 million blogs exist online, and about 175,000 more crop up daily (that’s about 2 every second). Even though the vast majority of blogs are either abandoned or isolated, many bloggers like to link to other Web sites. These links allow analysts to track trends in blogs and identify the most popular topics of data exchange”.

The visual study plot s the most active and interconnected parts of the blogosphere from collected link data over a period of six weeks. Green links represent one-way links (that is, blog A links to blog B), and blue links indicate reciprocal links (blog B returns the favor).

1 - On the map, white dots represent individual blogs, sized according to number of links. This one in particular represents DailyKos which is visited by 500,000 people every day.
2 - The popular site Boingboing, a “Directory of Wonderful Things”.
3 - LiveJournal users (an isolated, close-knit online community of bloggers).
4 - The blue blob represents a balanced sociopolitical discourse (most links are reciprocal).
5 - An outlying island of blue represents the linked-up world of bloggers who traffic in the latest news and gossip from the world of pornography.
6 - A group of sports enthusiasts in the outskirts, many of whom, unlike the lonely pornographers, have links back to the central hot spot of the blogosphere.

Christopher Smith and I leave for Austin Saturday morning just after 8 AM. This trip will culminate in several weeks of work in scheduling interviews, reaching out to companies, finalizing our production schedule, choosing sessions, RSVP-ing for parties, and tying up loose ends at the office. In short - we are ready to take SXSW by storm!

While I don’t want to jinx it by giving out names, I can tell you we have several top names in the Social Media and Online Design space lined up to get in front of our lense. Once we arrive in Texas that list is going to grow even bigger.

In addition to the celebrity interviews we’ll be doing, Christopher and I will be checking in each day with video updates and near-real-time blog entries. If there is a big announcement at SXSW, you’ll read about it on this page.

For those of you attending SXSW and would like to get together, please email me at SParent [at] MediaTrust [dot] [com]. We’ll be there from Saturday, March 8th until Thursday morning, March 13th.

I look forward to seeing you down south! 

Richard McManus of ReadWriteWeb put together a great presentation about how he defined the Web 3.0. 

I highly recommmend taking the time to look at the deck linked to below. In his presentation he characterizes two things VERY nicely.

1. He defines the term Web 2.0 as an era, like the dotcom era, that graduated the web from ‘read only’ to ‘read/write’ (slide 3). This is a key developmental ‘era’ as it leverages the crowd to load the web with valuable information that can later be translated, analyzed and made more consummable by v. 3.0.
2. He makes the distinction that in Web 3.o, web sites will become web services as sites become less important. He emphasizes that the data behind them (if structured) becomes the critical element. When this data becomes structured and machine-readable, the semantic or thinking web kicks in to make this data smarter as the transactions between people and computers are recorded and analyzed with the purpose of delivering user or scenario centric information.

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Do you share his perspective on the New New Web? Wed love to hear your thoughts.

Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action — and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group. As he points out, humans have been banding together to work collectively since our days of hunting mastodons.

About Howard Rheingold

Writer, artist and designer, theorist and community builder, Howard Rheingold is one of the driving minds behind our net-enabled, open, collaborative life. Read full bio »

As Howard Rheingold himself puts it, “I fell into the computer realm from the typewriter dimension, then plugged my computer into my telephone and got sucked into the net.” A writer and designer, he was among the first wave of creative thinkers who saw, in computers and then in the Internet, a way to form powerful new communities.

His 2002 book Smart Mobs, which presaged Web 2.0 in predicting collaborative ventures like Wikipedia, was the outgrowth of decades spent studying and living life online. An early and active member of the Well (he wrote about it in The Virtual Community), he went on to cofound HotWired and Electric Minds, two groundbreaking web communities, in the mid-1990s. Now active in Second Life, he teaches, writes and consults on social networking. His latest passion: teaching and workshopping participatory media literacy, to make sure we all know how to read and make the new media that we’re all creating together.

“With his last book, Smart Mobs, the longtime observer of technology trends made a persuasive case that pervasive mobile communications, combined with always-on Internet connections, will produce new kinds of ad-hoc social groups. Now, he’s starting to take the leap beyond smart mobs, trying to weave some threads out of such seemingly disparate developments as Web logs, open-source software development, and Google.”

BusinessWeek