It starts tomorrow. I feel really honored to speak at Digital London, a new conference that has been hitting all the right notes in its organization. Just look at the speaker’s roaster and the various tracks [PDF]. I’m really looking forward to it.

Here’s Adam Malik and me talking a bit about the changes that digital is bringing to businesses. Think of it as a teaser to my talk on Wednesday, March 13, in which I’ll focus a bit more on why mobile is the gateway to the so-called ‘consumerization of  IT’ trend, and more generally, on what I like to call the rise of context.

My colleague and friend, R “Ray” Wang will talk tomorrow morning about ‘The Future of Digital Solutions, Content & Services’. You will have to catch him for me as I will be chairing the Innovation, Technologies & Platform track at the same time with Matt Brittin from Google, Anastassia Lauterbach from Qualcomm, Dave Tansley from Deloitte and David King from Logica.

On Wednesday morning, I’ll be chairing the ‘Digital & Technology Futures’ track with Stephen Bates from RIM, Dr. Mike Short from IET, Niall Murphy from Evrythng, Benjamin Woo from IDC and two ExactTarget fellow, Phil Cool and Andrew Chothia.

In the afternoon, I’ll be speaking during the ‘Next Generation Innovation’ track.  From digital commerce to mobility, I think I’ll feel at home in there.
The title of my presentation? ‘The Next Generation Customer Experience’.

You can still register if you want to see us.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: Digital London and the Digital Enterprise

The employees are customers requiring the same attention than “traditional” customers. Welcome to the new B2C. A business to constituent approach —your constituents being your workforce here.

A peer to peer workplace

What do you do when you’re unable to fix that crash you had with your computer at work? You call that guy. That person you know will fix the problem.

You’ve been doing it all along. You create nodes. You talk to people, not to title holders, not to org charts.

We’re in a nodal economy. We’ve always been there, whether in the workplace or not. A P2P economy, a peer-to-peer, person-to-person economy. Boosted by the use of the social web and the advancement/declining costs of hardware though, the tools are finally catching up to this reality.

My Constellation Research esteemed colleague Alan Lepofsky says it better than I ever could:

It’s undeniable that work is very different today than it was just two or three years ago. We’re interacting with larger audiences via social networks both inside and outside our companies. We’re more open about core business processes like trying to sign a new customer, hiring and on-boarding employees and rewarding our peers. We’re connected all the time via smart phone, tablets and even our cars. Work has changed. [source]

This is possibly the most important change companies are facing. Not the technologies and the processes per se. But those in the context of people —employees.

Am I talking human behavior? Yes. But let’s start with the technology part.

The consumerization of the workplace

You’ve probably heard this term a dozen times: the consumerization of IT. To some, it embodies changes that affect only some specific departments insides companies —IT, in short—, but it is actually much deeper.

To grasp it, think about that smartphone sitting in that table in front of you. It’s more powerful than your computer you had a decade ago. Think further. That computer from a decade ago was more powerful than your desktop at home. There you have it in a nutshell.

From top-down to bottom-up

It used to be that innovation went top-down, from the public sector —whether military or universities— to industries and corporations to finally reach the consumer.
The trend is now reversing. Your personal smartphone is more powerful than the one provided by your company. And there are chances that the laptop you possess is also more powerful than the one sitting on your work desk.

Research In Motion’s success with its BlackBerry lines of phones was clearly one of security and infrastructure, but it also embodied the top-down approach: the phone was given to you by your company, set accordingly. By simply putting it on that coffee table during lunch break, you created a “Blackberry-envy”, the traditional imbalance between the haves and the have-nots. Whether those were colleagues or friends, they suddenly wanted one, hence the subsequent success of RIM in the pure consumer-tech segment. From the top management to consumers. Top-down.

Besides RIM’s failings at maintaining its competitive edge, Apple’s iPhone is the poster-child of the opposite trend. That phone started as a pure consumer technology handset, no companies were seriously thinking about adopting it for a long time. Fast forward to 2012 and companies like Halliburton are getting it for their workforce. The debate about whether Apple is enterprise-class or not is almost moot. It didn’t have to proclaim itself “enterprise”, the market is doing it —for better or worse. The consumers are doing it. From the bottom to the top.

It is the exact same trend that we’re witnessing with companies enabling “bring your own device” (BYOD) policies. Want to use your Samsung Galaxy for work? And your MacBook Pro with that? Let us set it up for you. It’s an irresistible trend that is being adopted —or forced upon, depending to whom you talk to.

Am I simplifying the debate? Yes, of course. I’m not saying that Apple’s iCloud is to be compared with business solutions. But it is not the argument here. The argument is about how people perceive and use technology.

Processes and technologies in the workplace were always supposed to be made for people. To allow them to do their work more efficiently. And that’s the key: putting people in the center means thinking human behavior.

The Facebook standard

We all shape our behaviors according to our upbringing, to our culture(s), to our environment. We constantly adapt to our context, although with a pace of its own that doesn’t always match the technological one. Now, think about the amount of time you’ve actually owned a smartphone —for iPhone users, it can date back to 2007— and think about when you signed up on Facebook —yes, Facebook.

The iPhone and Facebook —to only quote the two most obvious choices— did shape your behavior. The foundation of your current software use skillset was impacted by that glass screen and the apps you play with. Your Facebook time did shape your vision of online interactions (e.g. the etiquette, the behaviors), but also the social experience through a screen (e.g. the UX/UI).

The consumerization of IT? People are asking to bring their iPhone to work. People are expecting to internally interact with a Facebook-like experience.

Have a look at many of the internal social communication tools on the market and you’ll see that almost all vendors are taking a page from the Facebook experience. I’m not saying it provides the best experience overall, but it’s a shared and lasting experience amongst people. If it understands people, it will be adopted by people. In this case, it almost becomes a de facto Facebook standard.

The mobile ignition

Mobile technologies are reshaping where and when we work —that’s pretty obvious—, but also how we work.

If you re-read the above, you’ll realize that I’ve been insisting on the smartphone. For a reason. The starting point of the consumerization of IT trend can be traced back when consumer smartphones became ubiquitous. The BYOD policies only gained traction when IT departments realized the staggering number of “rogue” devices accessing enterprise networks —rogue often meaning a smartphone.
And if Facebook shapes how people’s behaviors on networks, half of those interactions are made through a mobile phone.

The agent of change is the smartphone —and its cousin the tablet. It will continue to be one. It is shaping when people interact —24/7. Where people interact —blurring the line between the private and work persona. How people interact —in contextual nodes. And why they interact —that need to be social.

It’s always back to the people.

I’ll be discussing this further with my colleagues Yvette Cameron, Alan Lepofsky and R “Ray” Wang on March 19, 2012 in Miami, Fl. USA as part of SABA’s People Summit: From Concept to Reality: The Future of Work. We’d love to have you interacting with us there. Register here.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: The Transformative Impact of Technologies in the Workplace

When Ray called me a year ago to ask me if I’d be willing to join a new company he was setting up, I didn’t hesitate much. I actually didn’t hesitate at all. I felt like a total junior compared to him & some of the guys he was bringing along.

On November 10, we officially launched. And look where we are now. We’ve been gathering even more stars in our Constellation — losing some in the process, even though they’ll remain with us forever, as stars’ signature never really dissapear. We’ve gained lots of traction, clients, media coverage, mentors. And we’re organizing our first event, a TED meets LeWeb meets Web2.0 conference —pesposterous? You know what they say, shoot for the moon, you’ll end up in the stars. In Constellations.

And we’ve been named best New Analyst Firm of the year by IIAR. What more can you ask?

Well, I’ll ask more. I’ll ask that you keep bearing with us. You might think many call themselves disruptive just for branding reasons. Constellations’ shapes are disruptive by nature. They embrace new stars, leave others become brighter. Constellations like brightness, wherever it comes from. We all shine together.

Look at the sky tonight, you will see some new bright lights reflecting from Scottsdale.

Welcome to Connected Enterprise 2011.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: Welcome to Connected Enterprise 2011

The best experiences in life come unexpected. This was one. I wasn’t expecting that a conference in west-central Poland would be so key for my thirst in understanding innovation around the world. I’m still taking it all in.

The question about what is innovation is one that fascinates me. I remember this debate with my Constellation colleagues over what metric or set of data could be used to measure and value innovation. There was no definite answer. There will never be one. Innovation is as much an input than an output. And innovation takes as many forms as there would be definitions anyway.

But still, innovation is my focus. Just that I’m not trying to define innovation as a metric, but as a process.

My presentation itself was a process. I was putting some finishing touches to my e-nnovation talk when the news that Steve Jobs had passed away hit my screen. For an entire morning, I was not able to work. I was not able to focus. It touched me in ways that are too personal for me to share.

I never met my greatest mentor. I wanted so much to be like him. But, his message was the opposite. Be yourself, with passionate intensity.

Naval nailed it. I scrapped my presentation. Restarted one. It is not perfect. But it is what I wanted to do that day. Be myself.

The five lessons

I arbitrarily chose five lessons that we could derive from Steve Jobs’ legacy. Connect the dots. Never fear failure. Marry art & science. Possess a sense of vision. Create the future.

This is, for me, the essence of I2C, innovation-to-consumers.

——use Safari 5+ in order enjoy the fully-animated presentation.

Here’s the gist of my speech.

Connect the dots

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something —your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

We’ve known videocassettes, we’ve known CDs and DVDs, we know hard drives. We’ve gone from analog to digital. We’ve gone from purely physical to bits. This is where you start when you want to innovate. You understand the trends. You pay homage to the past. Respect it. And then hack it.

By understanding it, I don’t mean looking at the past’s content, but by realizing that we’re witnessing the death of friction, the multiplication of screens & platforms and that many goods are becoming purely transient —in so far as their physical envelope is being taken away from them.

Never fear failure

This is one I’m constantly hearing when I work with the startup ecosystem. There’s a reason why. With fear of failure comes no breakthrough. No innovation.

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

That quote is not perfect, as Don Dodge would say in a talk unrelated to Jobs the following day: sometimes you just have to keep on making mistakes on the same idea. At one point, you’ll nail it. But, do hack your culture, be honest with yourself and the feedback provided by your peers —whether you want to dismiss it or embrace it.

Apple’s history is filled with failures, one pundits like to mock when they address fanboys. But still: the Newton, eWorld and the Pippin. We now have the iPad, iCloud and the iPhone, one of the most successful gaming platforms around.

Plus, what is the true meaning of a success —the evil twin of failure? As Benjamin Joffe brilliantly mentions in many of his talks, the meanings are culturally-sensitive. Just look at ‘Quality’. In the US, it means that something just works (as advertised I could add). In Japan however, it means perfection. In South Korea? New. And in China, quality is linked with the status it provides.

The status. Remember that one.

Marry art & science

I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, artists, zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.

Be elegantly human. In an earlier article about the reactions to the proposed Netflix/Qwister businesses, I laid out some basics consumer behaviors traits. Human behaviors that shouldn’t be forgotten.

Apple was able to work upon those. By often staying close to what humans expect from products or services —an art—, it offered bridges. Bridges from the CDs to the hard drives world —the iPod. Bridges from digital to bits.

No, it was not the first company to offer a portable music player. Nor the first one to offer downloads. Nor even the first one to link the two. But it was the first one who understood that humans were on the other side of the machine. Be elegantly human.

In a nutshell, humans are loyal to their habits. We don’t want to lose the comfort. Especially because it’s our own comfort. We also tend to value this current comfort more than a later comfort. Innovation needs bridges.

Possess a sense of vision

You can’t just ask customers what they want and they try to give that to them.

It is important to understand that although rational, not all humans activities are rationalized. Meaning that we all do stuff according to habits, needs or enjoyment. And we’re not always aware of those divisions.

Innovation must take time as a factor to consider. Pietro Zuco touched this concept when he wrote about targeting iPhone applications for the right type of time. There’s busy time —usually work. There’s free time —where its allocation is freely determined by us. And there’s dead time —in a doctor’s waiting room for instance.

This is key. Key because the success —or failure— of every innovation is not due to pure circumstances, but by, again, looking at what consumers are doing. There is a competition for this time.

And the competition is more complex than it looks. It also evolves.

Angry Birds —and the whole “social” or “casual” gaming craze— is just a shot in the past. Remember those pinballs and arcade games? One penny, one game. One limited time span.

Let’s go further. Taking inspiration from both late talks with gaming industry expert Francesco Fondi in Tokyo and Michael E. Porter’s Five Forces, a famous theory related to business development, I’ve created a framework for the competitive rivalry in consumer-oriented innovation.

I’m proposing four threats in this rivalry:

• — The Threat of Time
• — The Threat of Substitute Entertainment
• — The Threat of Price
• — The Threat of New Entrants

Yes, there’s actually a more general threat than time and attention, one that the gaming industry has, for the major part, yet to grasp: The Threat of Substitute Entertainment, i.e Twitter is a direct competitor of Angry Birds. Having a beer with friends is a direct competitor with your XBox gaming time. All human activities are in competition —even if they can overlap. News reading can be pitched against listening to music. Window-shopping against updating your LinkedIn profile.

Let me stop here for now. My research is on-going, I need to brush the rough edges of this theory.

Create the future

Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

Once you have the start of the drawing —connecting the dots, once you have surpassed your fear of failure, once you’ve understood humanity as an art as much as a science —don’t be just a salesman and once you’ve risen above what the past teaches you —the vision, you can start imagining the future.

The future is virtual. And we already live in a virtual world.

You car is virtual. You, like the Chinese thinking “new”, are also buying for status. For the image it provides you. For the lifestyle it makes you feel part of. Or for the sentimental value it triggers. That’s virtual.

Look around you and think. How do you assess value to the things that surround you? How do you value your possessions?

Yes, you live in a virtual world. We all do. It’s there. Around you. All the time.

So, don’t discount those virtual items that are all the rage in Asia. I might not buy any, but I’m still from a generation that has known VHS tapes. I rationalized content as physical. It never actually was. It was always virtual, just with a physical box. The next generations will not have these stigmas from the past. Those dots we have a hard time connecting sometimes will just feel natural for them.

It will be their reality.

It’s my choice to make it mine.

I’m naked, I’ve got nothing to lose.

So do you.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: Lessons in Innovation, from Humans to Virtuality

Technology is a glittering lure, but there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash. If they have a sentimental bond with the product.

With the introduction of the timeline, Facebook shows that it’s not an engineering company. It’s not even a social network. It’s the carousel the fictional Donald Francis Draper brilliantly pitches in the famous ‘Mad Men’ episode.

Facebook understands social sciences. Facebook understands human behavior.

As humans interact with brands —whether one finds it a positive or negative evolution, will Facebook take that spectacular step for them too?

A sentimental bond.

Facebook Pages always felt constrained to me. They never offered the same quality of engagement that a personal profile would give —and for good reason: Brands are not people.

Pages are half-hearted. While they obviously provide a potent platform to engage with users on Facebook, they were never given the display of an identity. And I don’t even think Pages are the true force of Facebook for brands (more on that below).

Still.

Brands have personas. Brands have a past, a present and a future. At its essence, branding is about storytelling. The Timeline experience was made for them.

The itch.

I decided to undertake an exercise. An exercise of style, sure, but more like an exercise in branding experience.

Apple is not on Facebook. Yet. Below is thus a fictional future, a result of my imagination .

From top to bottom:

• The Billboard. The cover image feature for personal profiles —here’s my customization— shouts “branding” since I’ve seen it. Perfect for the latest product —still not the iPhone at the time of this writing.
• The History. From Apple’s foundation, to 1997′s coming back of Steve Jobs, to today. Brands have a past, a present and a future.
• The Fans. You, me and all the Apple fanboys.
• The Application box and its Selector. Here a feature of Apple’s main areas of interest —as shown on its website.
• The Storytelling. Quite evidently, the stories. No more falling from a cliff —as in the current news feed, but in chronological order.
• The Product Display. A featured story, here images of the iPad line. A Facebook version of the point of sale display.

The glittering lure.

The exercise was worth it. First and foremost, it cemented my belief that Pages would need a slightly different set of tools.

Giving Pages the ability to add third-party applications, even as welcome pages, has been well used —if not overused— by brands. Now, if I truly think about it, most of those are actually annoying from a user point of view —and the user experience is the focus of Facebook.

Remember when we were able to add applications on our profiles, through ‘boxes’? Exactly. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook decided to simply disallow the possibility of using specific code on Pages. It would piss some brands off and certainly leave some developers in disarray, but Facebook has always had a kind of “Take no prisoner” approach to its UX changes that I truly admire. I call it focus.

A deeper bond.

The focus is now on the activity streams. The signals given and received by users. With the extension of the vocabulary of signals beyond Like (Listen, Watch or Want come to mind), brands should be focused on signaling applications. Not custom welcomes on their static Pages, but applications that talk and engage with their customers. Living applications. Evolving applications. Applications that communicate and signal seamlessly with people —the Washington Post social reader being an example of this evolution.

The power is in the ecosystem. In the organic discussions. Much less in the more static Pages.

Think about it, a user can signal the music he’s listening to via Spotify, a brand could signal the start of a live stream by pinging all its Fans, like for that iPhone event next week.

In my above rendition though, I went for a tamer Application box. A display of customized elements. It wouldn’t disturb brands as much, especially the smaller ones, but I’m not sure such an experience would be satisfactory in the long run.

Nostalgia.

Another very evident element of the move towards a Timeline for brands would be the surfacing of the past. Like for all of us who suddenly re-discover past updates and pictures, brands would have to take a serious look at their Facebook past.

What would Nestle do? Would it keep the controversial statements when it got hit by comments about its environmental record —a ‘campaign’ launched by Greenpeace?

This leads me to one last important difference in this imaginary Page: I have left out the possibility of showing “Everyone” as a default view. It never made complete sense for me to leave it as is anyway, unless the Page goal was to be a discussion forum. I wouldn’t think Facebook would shut this completely though —again, its focus is on the user.

Around and around.

This was only a pure exercise. A brainstorming session with myself —feel free to flame me. I have no knowledge of Facebook willing to move towards a Timeline model for Pages. I even expect them to come up with something much more disruptive than what I’ve designed here.

My point was and remains that a deeper bond with brands is possible on Facebook. Facebook understands human behavior. Like that Greek named Teddy.

Technology is a glittering lure, but there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash. If they have a sentimental bond with the product. My first job I was in-house at a fur company. This old pro copy writer. A Greek named Teddy. And Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is “new.” It creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with a product. Nostalgia. It’s delicate but potent. …

Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It let’s us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.

—Don Draper, in ‘Mad Men’, ‘The Wheel’, season 1, episode 13 (2007).

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: Facebook Page Timeline for Brands

I think it’s a smart move. Mark Suster tells it better than I ever could:

the real threat comes from the change in technologies that rule the old business obsolete. Streaming. It’s clear that in the future movies & TV will be delivered to our homes from the cloud. Indeed for many this is already the case.

To win the future he needs to attack his core assets by building new ones. Very few companies ever do this. It would be like if Microsoft undermined its Office franchise by aggressively pursuing a Google-Docs-like strategy. Yeah, I know they did, but too little, too late, too lame.

Having two entities focusing on separate business models will allow them to iterate individually, unconstrained by the limits of each other.

But it’s smart move with a caveat.

Let’s put the branding decision aside and consider this: consumers exhibit latent inertia in favor of repeat purchases.

Repeat that sentence again. Mark brilliantly shows why it makes sense for a company to adopt such a strategy, I’m reversing the stance and tackling the problem from the consumers’ prism.

A prism? More like a brouhaha of discontent. An uproar that reminds me a lot of the deluge of expletives following each and every one of Facebook’s UI change.

Let’s trim my sentence to its essence: consumers exhibit inertia. It is how we, as humans, are hard-wired. Whatever it is we say, we tend to favor comfort and the well-known instead of the relative darkness that novelty is. And it is a reality businesses cannot discount. Netflix shouldn’t.

Inertia

Inertia has two components.

One, the body in motion has a tendency to remain in motion. In the Netflix example, consumers buying DVDs keep on buying DVDs, small price changes notwithstanding.

Two, resistance to change. People buying DVDs resist the idea switching their content viewing pleasure towards a new —unknown— form of content digestion.

There will always be some form of persistence in consumers choice, a higher probability of choosing a product that we have purchased in the past. It has to do with loyalty. It has to do with security. We’ve had videotapes and discs for years. We know them. We feel safe with them.

Loss aversion

The correlated effect of inertia is loss aversion, a potent dynamic in human behavior. There is a utility premium required to trigger purchases of novelties.

In order to watch DVDs, you have your home entertainment system set up accordingly. Streaming movies requires a different set of tools. Not only consumers show inertia in their will —and ability— to adapt to a new form of technology, they show some aversion to losing a place where they feel comfortable in, their current —and more than satisfactory— setup.

My father still records memos on micro cassettes. Have you tried to find those nowadays? Unless you go to specialty shops in Akihabara, you probably will have a hard time. The market has moved towards flash memory devices. But it just doesn’t work for my father, he has a series of equipment all based on micro cassettes and doesn’t want to lose the comfort and habit that has allowed his current rate of productivity.

The learning curve of a new technology is hindering —once familiarized with one system, consumers tend to stick with it.

In our current case, early adopters and generations that have not lived long enough with physical containers of content will easily switch to content streaming, the others will take longer and will need to be provided with incentives.

The dynamics of catering for those two types of consumers are widely different. The rate at which consumers adapt to change varies a great lot and, in order to iterate fast enough, dividing the company makes perfect sense.

Even more sense as we’re witnessing virtual goods at work.

Content as a virtual good

Content is a virtual good. It has always been. You could touch its container, whether a videotape or a disc, but you were and will never be able to actually touch the content. Still, that content is the reason why you buy or rent the physical container.

The physical touch versus a creation of the mind. This is one of the forces behind content disruption. Music is going through it. Information —as in newspaper— is struggling with it. The movie industry experiences the same.

The absence of physical touch or the endowment effect at work.

The —disputed— theory of the endowment effect states that all of us tend to value a product or a service more once we own it. When you negotiate the price of a product you own and want to sell, the fact that you’re setting the price higher than the one of the potential buyer is obviously due of your will to maximize your past investment in it —thus not underselling it— but, less evidently, because you feel its value higher as it is …yours.

Now it can be stated that a purely virtual good diminishes this endowment feeling. Streaming unwillingly diminishes the value of a DVD content: it’s harder to grasp that you own —or temporarily own, as in renting— content without its physical container. The DVD yields higher value not only because of its actual manufacturing, but also because of its feel.

This is why the entertainment industry as a whole struggles. Content is valued higher if endowment is at play. Netflix’s and Qwikster’s futures are offering us a non-endowment world versus a endowment world experiment.

A real life lab experiment

Will consumers move away from DVDs and adopt streaming? I’m dead certain of it.
Will Netflix be able to move customers away from Qwikster over time? Probably. But fast enough?

There’s the caveat.

How will Netflix educate its Qwikster customers about streaming? How will it display compelling offers to move from one model to another to customers who undoubtedly will become ready over time?

There’s no bridge.

Take one example: the movie review systems will be totally separate. If I rate a film on Qwikster, it’s not showing up on Netflix. I don’t want to lose my history of votes and the community reviews that I might have carefully curated.

Talk about adding another hurdle into my loss aversion!

Will consumers display a preference for an immediate reward —the known DVD mail-in model— and discount the value of a later reward —the new world of streaming?

It’s up to Reed Hastings. But if Qwikster cuddles its customers in a cocoon of nice red enveloppes too much, Netflix will inadvertently have slowed the market switch towards its new and daring business model.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: The Consumer Inertia

I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

— George S. Patton.

They waited for the battle. And they found it. They found it in a crisis, this paroxysmal moment when a crucial decision changes everything.

They are the journalists. The crisis is the creation of the CrunchFund.

The first line of attack: CrunchFund’s incestuous relations with TechCrunch.

The whole debate about the fund’s access to deal flow via TechCrunch is laughable.

If the CrunchFund gets access, the credibility of TechCrunch will be damaged. Its credibility will be put on the line. Competitors will emerge. TechCrunch will fall.

On the other hand, if the CrunchFund ends up actually being compartmentalized from TechCrunch, investors will be happy enough to bank on a fund which will undoubtedly leverage TechCrunch’s reputation. And startups won’t shy away from an important group of investors who seemingly have vast networks where it matters.

That should be enough to recall the troops.

But it’s not.

The second line of attack: TechCrunch’s failed ethics.

Part of the strategy we’re seeing today is goes along with the twisted logic surrounded editorial exclusives: when TechCrunch gets one, it must be via bullying methods. When the NYT gets one, it’s more often called investigative journalism.

TechCrunch always fails. It has to. It’s not news, it’s a blog, you see.

But a blog that has proven its relevancy, its access to critical information and its influence. You know, like, traditional newspapers. And one can’t deny that it has a comparatively good track record at recognizing its mistakes and disclosing ties that could be misinterpreted.

That should be enough to recall the troops.

But it’s not.

The real target.

It can’t be enough. Because we’re exiting rationality.

I feel the same disgust when I was reading some veiled attacks agains Yuri Milner’s origins. We’re talking envy here.

And we’re talking one target: Mike Arrington.

The fact that he’s been investing in startups for a long time, that he’s always been extremely straightforward in his disclosures and that he never shied away to harshingly criticize companies he had a stake in doesn’t seem to matter.

Because it doesn’t actually matter to those who are after him.

I thought our job was to tell the truth.

— Larry Doyle.

Not all is quiet of the western front, you see.  We’re witnessing one of the journalists’ last stand. An attempt at defending the walls of information by biassing the use of the word integrity.

The truth? Information doesn’t need journalism, like startups don’t need MBAs.

Integrity doesn’t need journalism to exist. It is information itself that needs integrity and transparency to be relied upon, whomever it comes from.

Those of us who went into journalism in the ‘50s or ‘60s, it was sort of a liberal thing to do. Save the world.

— Peter Jennings.

In 2011, journalists just seem to try to save themselves. Those who want to change the world go to the Silicon Valley.

Welcome to the battle for a new journalism.

Its freedom fighter is called Mike Arrington.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: Arrington: One Man’s Terrorist, Another’s Freedom Fighter

Instinctively, we tend to say yes. And indeed since television doesn’t offer the interactive feature that the web does, behaviors cannot truly be compared.

Now, the specific question I asked was if the consumers were the same or not. I think that whether online, in front of the TV or reading a book, they can be paralleled. It’s not because someone if offered new tools that he becomes an entire different persona. There are differences and alteration in how one learns about the world, be that news, product information, advertising consumption or interaction with fellows. But one remains very similar to what he was. A consumer is a human being first. And human behaviors do not change quick.

This is key to understand, as brands try to gather who is the new consumer. He is not new. He is the consumer who has been offered new tools. It is thus a new layer of analysis that has to be added, not an entirely new analytic framework —even if some of the current frameworks are broken and need replacement.

This is one part of the debate that I’ll have at the keynote opening of the Social Media World Forum Asia conference tomorrow. Thomas Crampton of Ogilvy, Tak Miyata of Mixi, Craig White of MOL Global —owners of Friendster— and I will try to shed some lights on those shifting demands creating by the new tools given to consumers and what brands can learn.

Do cultures influence behaviors?

The ever-lasting debate about local/regional values v. globalization will certainly be central. Every culture adopts social media in different ways. Mixi is a prime example of a successful social network that only applies to one country/culture. On the other hand, Friendster arguably failed on becoming a South-East Asian-specific social network.

Jeremiah Owyang and myself debated about this in Paris prior to LeWeb last December. Facebook being born in the US, are the social values, from interaction to privacy, influenced by its culture, thus not being fully adapted to other countries? And thus, are international brands forced to adapt to a model not totally fit to their audience?

It will be fascinating to retake some of that debate with Tak, Thomas and Craig here in Singapore, the de facto hub for the entire SEA region.

Keynote panel: Social media and the changing demands of global consumers.
Thursday, September 1, 9.20am SGT/GMT+8.

You can follow the event via Twitter, by searching for #SMWF. Live updates will also be provided via the official @SocialMediaWF Twitter account.

There are tons of fascinating tracks during the two-day conference. I will be participating in a few others.

How having an online presence can impact your employment prospects.
Thursday, September 1, 12.30pm SGT/GMT+8

My position has long been that an online presence is the new curriculum vitae.

[…] personal blogs are their new resumes.
Not the pretty static LinkedIn, but their personal blogs. There to be googled & show value over time. There for you to find your next star.

I will chair most of Day 2 of the conference and moderate three panels directly.

Keynote Q&A: Brand management.
Friday, September 2, 9.20am SGT/GMT+8

I will tackle a debate on how leading FMCG brands are leveraging social media for marketing in the region. I will discuss with representatives of 3M, Asia Pacific Breweries, Unilever and SingTel.

Strategies for developing online communities.
Friday, September 2, 10am SGT/GMT+8

I will then move to a key topic for many brands, the one of creating and managing a community around them. I will be sitting with people from Yahoo!, Research in Motion and Sulake Singapore.

Examining the social shopper.
Friday, September 2, 12pm SGT/GMT+8

Finally, I will examine the social shopper in Asia, an interesting experiment for me after having done so in London last March. Is there a daily deal fatigue on this side of the world as well? Let’s see what Deal.com, NTUC FairPrice and Bagspace’s experiences are and if they’re keen to laugh about Groupon’s adjusted consolidated segment operating income.

If you’re around, please come and say hello.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: SMWF Asia 2011: Changing Demands of Global Consumers

If you’ve been in London and are all about elegance, you surely know the 6 St James’s Street.

Just ask a cab to drive you to “Lock’s”. From Vienna to Louisiana, from Chelsea to York, you’ll feel a bit like Indiana.

Yes, I’m talking about Fedoras. And yes, Lock & Co is probably one of the best shop there is for hats.

Established in 1676.

But it’s not in London that the action is taking place. It’s in Colombia.

From & Co to .co

Fast-forward some 335 years. June 2010 to be precise. Twitter rolls out t.co, its official shortener.

after using both tinyurl and bit.ly as its URL shortener, the company opted for the T.CO domain to help ensure greater control over its brand. All tweets with embedded links now pass through the t.co shortener as an enhanced security wrapper, but still display the original source to the reader. [...] Likewise, Go Daddy launched [the] X.CO [...] shortening service

+ Get Shorty: Why Little URLs are such a Big Deal

A one letter domain name? Holy cow. How did they do that? Well, they took it to Colombia, the owner of the extension. An extension finally available worldwide.

Amazingly enough, I didn’t think Colombia when I first started seeing the marketing push last year. I just thought company. That’s what 300 years of semantic history does to your mind.

I must admit it though, I had some reservations about that domain at the beginning. Wouldn’t users type .com out of habit instead?

What’s in a domain name?

Domain extensions matter, but with the advent of potent search, email & social sharing, it’s not as relevant as brand building and search ranking.

In my totally unscientific panel —family & friends, all involved in non-tech activities, although some very tech savvy— almost no one ever type any URLs anymore. Besides Google.com or Facebook.com that is.
It’s mostly Google searches, links from emails and Facebook.

In Japan, it’s even more impressive. Portals are reigning strong. And you don’t see the URLs in print advertising, only the search term you’re supposed to type on your mobile phone.

It makes sense. It’s all about the call-to-action. QR codes or photo-recognition software that pulls out a link on your phone —the new screen— are much better that any URL that nobody will end up typing.

Plus, let’s be real, with roughly 77m .com registered, getting a new domain has really become a nightmare.

All of the good .coms are gone [...] It’s not unusual to see a raw startup with $250,000 or $500,000 in funding having to shell out $25,000 to $100,000 for a serviceable .com domain name.

+ .CO Internet Domain: Doing it Right

Ravikant is absolutely right. And what matters to —relatively— cash-strapped startups does also for most brands.

What do you do then?

Domain hacking? Even startups jump at the opportunity to lose those when they scale —del.icio.us became delicious.com.

Going .ly? Yeah right. I never understood how people could trust their entire brand presence on a government known for its past erratic ways. Let’s be serious people. It’s your brand you’re building, not a personal LOLCat blog.

Well, if you have USD 200,000 readily available and a good legal team, you could always try filing for your brand as a top-level domain (TLD). We might soon have .canon. But it’s not tomorrow you’ll see a .papadimitriou

Shortening .com

Turn the .com — .co problem around: in a world where inputting URLs does not matter as much as it used to, .co becomes a naturally shortened .com.

It’s fully backed by the Colombian government. Google ranks .co generically —meaning it doesn’t rank it lower because of territoriality. And CoInternet.co, the company licensed to handle the TLD, is actually implementing processes to avoid too much cybersquatting.

Lori Ann Wardi —she’s @dotco impersonated but also the Director of Marketing— told me during our recent Geeks On A Plane trip in South America that one & two letter domains are considered premium. By pricing them high enough, she wants to ensure they’ll actually be used, acting as case studies for the rest of us —ppp.co is taken, as is pp.co, my banker will hate me if I call him for p.co.

Think Amazon, Kindle & Zappos. Soon you’ll also think a.co, k.co & z.co.

That’s for tech. But if one of the oldest companies in the world still running today is named Locks & Co, why not give a shot at its descendant?

.co has what it takes to become the new black for brands. A new & Co. A new sign of trust.

Like that hat Indiana Jones wears, it could be timeless.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: Forget & Co, The New Black For Brands Is .CO

I was invited by the Social Media World Forum to talk at their conference tomorrow. The topic? Socialisation of the internet.

Are we moving to a post-digital age? This is the central question. Isn’t it too early to discuss this? Already post-digital? We might always have been there without realizing it. The excitement and -sometimes useless- buzz around social and its related technologies might have hidden the fact: it’s only a layer, not an end.

Velocity has been altered, friction is being lowered but human behavior is another matter. Consumer behavior and, in some respects, socializing behavior, have seen changes, changes that brands must obviously analyze, but human-rooted behaviors have not. At least, not as much as people want to believe. We’ll see what the audience thinks tomorrow. Interesting debate in perspective.

And, to stay on topic, I’ll be also chairing two panels around social commerce in the afternoon. One around the social shopper and one dedicated to group deals.

I promise I’ll try to get as much data out from the panelists as I can. Let’s get rid of the buzz and see what really has legs in that market!

I’ll also be chairing the entire Tuesday afternoon, hope you won’t get sick of me if you decide to attend. I promise I will check my iPhone on stage, take pictures of the crowd and run around like a Tasmanian devil. Or not. But I’ll smile.

Here are my tracks:

Keynote: Socialisation of the internet

Tuesday, March 29, 9.30am GMT

Discussion: Examining the social shopper

Tuesday, March 29, 2.30pm GMT

Discussion: Group buying and daily deals services – the battle of the voucher companies

Tuesday, March 29, 3.00pm GMT

There are many more fascinating sessions going on that day and on Wednesday. I encourage you to check the schedule. All the details are on the official website.

On a personal note, I’m particularly happy that Josh is coming. I don’t get to see him often enough, so just two weeks after SXSW? Awesome! Celebration will be in order.
He’s going to talk Gowalla and LBS at 2pm on Tuesday with Mike Butcher. Another highlight.

I’ll be in London until Thursday if you’re around and want to catch up with me. Next? Geneva.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: SMWF London 2011: Social Shopping & Post-Digital Age

Heart-wrenching.

I was in the Philippines when the hurricane Ondoy hit Manila. And although not comparable, I can vividly remember what it is to experience a big natural disaster.

I’m shaken.

Those who know me will tell you that I’m an eternal optimist, an upbeat person. But this is hard right now. Talking about the web industry and technology trends in Japan seems a bit futile.

Feeling helpless doesn’t cut it for me, though. From the moment I’ve received this Twitter direct message from a friend who was hiding under his table while the earthquake was hitting his home to today, I’ve done whatever I could to help, like so many others here in Austin -this is just incredible. I’ll have much more on this, but, for now, if you’re at SXSW, do donate to SXSW4Japan.org. Now.

My panel is still taking place tomorrow. There have been changes in its composition.

Both Hiroko Tabuchi -currently reporting from the NYTimes in Tokyo- and Michi Kaifu won’t be able to make it. I’m sad that these two brilliant women won’t be here, but I know that their energy is directed to a much greater good. As much as I was honored to have them at South By SouthWest, I’m thankful that they’ll be doing their best to help from their respective ends.

Ko Orita & Naoki Aoyagi were able to come and they will not only share their wealth of knowledge, but will candidly talk about their experience during the earthquake and how the web was key in the most critical hours. I’m also very happy that my good friend Serkan Toto, one of the best Japan specialist out there -and who experienced the tremor in Narita Airport, being stranded there for 51 hours- will join us, as will my long-time friend Ken Brady, who possesses an amazing experience as an entrepreneur in the virtual world space in Japan.

Thanks a million to Hugh, Monica and all the SXSW organizers for bending the rules for me, allowing the last-minute change. You were nothing but exceptional during this week.

Here’s the updated schedule:

Japan Web: A New Beginning or the Galapagos

Tuesday, March 15, 11.00am
Hilton, Salon K [ Official schedule | Plancast | Sched ]

Japan remains a big question mark. Sometimes qualified as strange, sometimes thought as very innovative, often unknown to many. Can you name one Japanese startup? Can you name one Japanese web service that you use? Do you know Facebook is almost inexistent there?

With the recent successes of Twitter (almost 20% of worldwide tweets are in Japanese), the iPhone (shaking a very insular mobile market), is Japan opening up to the US and the world? Similarly, with Rakuten, the Japanese eBay, acquiring Buy.com & opening offices in the US, but also entering China and elsewhere, are we witnessing a new era of Japanese companies’ expansion?

Japan remains a land of opportunities. A country where innovative models are popping up every day. Let’s learn about Japan.

Panelists:

Ko Orita (@koo), President, Digital Media Strategies
Naoki Aoyagi (@naoki), CFO, Gree
Serkan Toto (@serkantoto), Japan Correspondent, TechCrunch
Ken Brady (@kenbrady), Digital Strategy, Wieden+Kennedy
Paul Papadimitriou (@papadimitriou), VP & Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

You can follow the panel on Twitter via the #SXJapan hashtag.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: SXJapan: Japan Web A New Beginning or the Galapagos

In 2010, I was lamenting that no interactive panel seemed to be talking Japan, a hotbed for innovation and a big question mark for pretty much all the attendees I was talking with. To cut the story short, what an amazing surprise to have witnessed no less than 3 other Japan events after my own panel was greenlighted.

My panel will take place on March 15 at 11:00am. I’m proud to have only Japanese nationals represented -a promise I had made to myself last year-, two women -I really wanted to fight for that- and such variety of backgrounds: the CFO of Gree -Japan’s biggest social gaming network-, a brand & advertising connoisseur, an IT & telecom specialist & the Japan business correspondent of the New York Times. Wow.

You can follow the action live via Twitter. Follow @SXJapan & the #SXJapan hashtag on Twitter -not to mention this handy list of all panelists. Some updates will also be made on the Facebook page.

I owe a lot to my friends Joi Ito, Hitoshi Hokamura and Motohiko Tokuriki. You were awesome in helping me out, thanks so much. A shout out to Dave Olson & the HootSuite Japan team who have been working the community out, and to Kogure for spreading the word out in Japan.

So now, without further ado, the Japan schedule.

Tracks:

Big in Japan: Outreaching to a unique market

Sunday, March 13, 12.30pm
Hilton, Salon D [ Official schedule | Plancast | Sched ]

Web and mobile technology have developed differently in Japan than any other country with hardware, features and social communities which are completely unique to this singular market. But Japanese companies are now realizing this introverted market position isn’t sustainable and are now looking towards technology from outside and exploring way to create technology for outside of their country.

Japan has ubiquitous high-speed coverage and a voracious appetite for tech gadgets, however, their tools have developed with entirely different features than other countries. For example: Japan’s “Galapo-phones” commonly include streaming TV and multi-character sets, Mixi and Gree each have more than 30 million users on their social networks, and Yahoo is a whole different experience from US counter-part.

With meteoric growth in Twitter and network tools, Japan aims on becoming the regional leader for emerging social web technologies — much like their early leadership in consumer electronics and gaming industries. This presents opportunities for collaboration and partnerships but localizing requires more than translation.

This panel will discuss the unique characteristics of Japanese web and mobile market including tactics for connecting to markets, identifying opportunities, and outreaching to audiences, plus understanding unexpected cultural nuances and consumer expectations.

Panelists:

Fumi Yamazaki (@fumi), Blogger
Robert Laing (@robert_laing), CEO, myGengo
Rocky Eda (@rockyeda), Head of CEO’s office, Digital Garage
Steve Moch, General Manager, Mangahigh.com
Ryan Holmes (@invoker), CEO, Hootsuite

This track, focusing on entrepreneurship and localization, was proposed by Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite. You can follow the panel on Twitter via the #bigjapan hashtag.

Japanese Mobile Leaders Forum

Monday, March 14, 11.00am
Hilton, Salon H [ Official schedule | Plancast | Sched ]

“Japan” “Mobile” “Social Media” – what do you see when you have these words together? Cyber utopia? Shrinking Galapagos? Ninjas with high-tech swords? It’s about time we know what the real scenes are in Japan. With the leaders of the mobile social media in Japan, we will discuss what the Japanese mobile social media world looks like, where they are headed, and how the “outer world” will affect / or be affected. Needless to give examples like the explosive rise of Twitter in Japan, the question is not whether the country is the “land of the rising sun” in mobile social media or not – it’s how high has the sun risen, and why.

Panelists:

Eiji Araki (@eijiaraki), VP Products, Gree International
Serkan Toto (@serkantoto), Japan Correspondent, TechCrunch
Taisei Tanaka (@mochihada), CEO, Geisha Tokyo Entertainment
Tak Miyata (@takmiyata), Executive VP, Mixi
Takahito Iguchi (@iguchi), CEO, Tonchidot

This track, focusing on mobile and social media, was proposed by Takahito Iguchi, CEO of Tonchidot. You can follow the panel on Twitter via the #jpmobilesummit hashtag.

Japan Web: A New Beginning or the Galapagos

Tuesday, March 15, 11.00am
Hilton, Salon K [ Official schedule | Plancast | Sched ]

Japan remains a big question mark. Sometimes qualified as strange, sometimes thought as very innovative, often unknown to many. Can you name one Japanese startup? Can you name one Japanese web service that you use? Do you know Facebook is almost inexistent there?

With the recent successes of Twitter (almost 20% of worldwide tweets are in Japanese), the iPhone (shaking a very insular mobile market), is Japan opening up to the US and the world? Similarly, with Rakuten, the Japanese eBay, acquiring Buy.com & opening offices in the US, but also entering China and elsewhere, are we witnessing a new era of Japanese companies’ expansion?

Japan remains a land of opportunities. A country where innovative models are popping up every day. Let’s learn about Japan.

Panelists:

Hiroko Tabuchi (@hirokotabuchi), Japan Business Correspondent, New York Times
Ko Orita (@koo), President, Digital Media Strategies
Michi Kaifu (@michikaifu), CEO, Enotech Consulting
Naoki Aoyagi (@naoki), CFO, Gree
Serkan Toto (@serkantoto), Japan Correspondent, TechCrunch
Ken Brady (@kenbrady), Digital Strategy, Wieden+Kennedy
Paul Papadimitriou (@papadimitriou), VP & Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

This track, focusing on the industry and the web culture, is the one I submitted. You can follow the panel on Twitter via the #SXJapan hashtag -which will also cover the rest of the events.

Japan Technology Summit

Wednesday, March 16, 11.00am
Hilton, Salon K [ Official schedule | Plancast ]

The Japan Technology Summit will provide an hour-long exploration of the new media scene in Japan. Speakers will cover the hottest new technologies in this country, as well as identifying key players and key companies, current investment opportunities and the kinds of programs available for technology entrepreneurs. If you need a crash course regarding the newest tech-related developments in Japan, then be sure to attend this session!

The Technology Summit is a new two day event that immediately follows SXSW Interactive. This session will be hosted by Serkan Toto and will feature Koichi Yamamoto, Ryo Shimizu & Takahito Iguchi.

Now, SXSW wouldn’t be SXSW without the parties, correct? Here are two!

Parties:

Domo, Yobongo, Soundtrckr, Who’s Free & Gatsby Want To Buy You a Drink

Saturday, March 12, 5.00pm
Ten Oak [ Facebook | Plancast ]

Domo, the new service of Tonchidot, is partnering with other location-based services. Drinks, networking and partying!

Japan Social Tech HootUp

Sunday, March 13, 1.30pm
Paradise Cafe [ Meetup | Plancast ]

HootSuite leads this meetup about Japan’s tech culture and industry. Fun swag prizes included.

That’s all right now -I’ll update if needed. Hope it quenches your thirst about everything Japan during SXSW Interactive!

Now, on to packing my luggage -and my 3 iPhone external batteries.

This article was modified to correct the title of one of the panelist. It was altered again to reflect the new composition of the third panel after two panelists cancelled due to the Japan earthquake disaster.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: SXJapan: All the Japan Events at SXSW Interactive 2011

I was recently invited to attend the Monitoring Social Media Paris 2010 day, on December 10 in the French capital. It will be a day of brainstorming and reflexion on the role of social media with some proeminent marketing, PR & new media professionals, like my Constellation partner, Brian Solis.

As the social business industry is slowly taking shape, I hope to see more and more gathering of people talking about business objectives, data and case studies, instead of the old -and easy- route of barking about how transformative social media can be and parroting Mashable articles.

The agenda of MSM10 -that’s the official tag of the event- is really interesting. It compares well with the previous events which happened in London, San Francisco, Boston and New York City.

Cool thing is that I’ve got two tickets to offer. That includes the conference, catering and the networking session. I know that most of those who are reading this are in Asia, but, you never know, this might lure you to the beautiful city of Paris.

Just send me a tweet to @papadimitriou by telling me which will be, for you, the most interesting trend in new media in 2011. I know it’s broad and there’s no ready answer. That’s on purpose. I’ll just pick the two I found the most interesting (and might even mention you in a forthcoming interview).

It’s real-time, so you’ve got until Monday 5pm CET. Tweet away & I’m hoping to meet you next Friday!

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: Monitoring Social Media Paris 2010

Constellation [ˌkɒn.stəˈleɪ.ʃən] from Latin constellātiō  cōn, with, and stēlla, star, astral body.

That word actually has many meanings. Here are three.

- A formation of stars perceived as a figure or pattern.
- An image associated with a group of stars.
- The configuration of planets at a given time.

Here’s one more.

Constellation Research is a next-generation research firm.

And, starting today, I’m joining this network of member analysts who seek to approach research from a cross-disciplinary approach.

Now, wait. Don’t I have my own consultancy? Yes, and it stays. How?

You see, there’s a lot to say about being a next-generation network. The idea here is to maintain independence of the members -who all have their own practices- while (net)working together to better serve those who seek insight, guidance and advice. Better serve clients in a word. Eating my own dog food: I bark often enough about bad customer service not to apply my own advice to my own self -open leadership, shared resources, honesty (I sometimes call that one the no BS policy), rigor and else. You can work with me alone or get access to the network. It’s customizable.

But independence has an even stronger meaning here. Independence as a group means independent research. Independent guidance. Independent minds.

And what minds. It’s very humbling to bealong those who joined this opening wave of member analyst. Just read on.

• R “Ray” Wang, the driving force behind Constellation. A former Altimeter, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester, he has a long history with enterprise applications as well as other leading-edge technologies. He headed up the analyst relations program for PeopleSoft, and at Oracle, he served senior product management roles for both the ERP and CRM product lines. He was voted Analyst of the Year for both 2008 and 2009 by the prestigious Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR). [Twitter | Blog | RSS]
• Phil Fersht, a well-known industry analyst covering business process outsourcing (BPO) and IT services worldwide. He is the founder of the acclaimed global sourcing blog “Horses for Sources”. Before that he worked for 15 years at AMR Research (now Gartner Group), Deloitte Consulting, Everest Group, and IDC. [Twitter | Blog | RSS]
• Maribel Lopez with her deep industry knowledge in covering the communications industry. Over two decades of marketing and industry analyst experience, covering the massive shifts in the communication market. Maribel has worked in marketing at Motorola and Shiva corp and as an analyst for IDC. She also put in over 10 years at Forrester Research, most recently as Vice President of the tech industry strategies group, covering network and service strategies, enterprise communications, and consumer markets for voice, video, and data. [Twitter | Blog | RSS]
• Oliver Marks, partner at the Sovos Group, who provides consulting to end-user organizations on the effective planning of collaboration strategy, tactics, technology decisions, change management and roll out. Oliver previously managed the Sony WorldWide collaboration extranet, and has worked with the American Management Association, Sun, Docent/SumTotal Systems, Harvard Business School and McKinsey on major initiatives around knowledge transfer and change management. [Twitter | Blog | RSS]
• Vinnie Mirchandani, a thought-leader on trends in software, outsourcing, and offshoring. He has personally assisted clients in negotiate technology contracts valued in excess of $5 billion and has advised companies on IT risk management, globalization and sourcing issues. Vinnie is the founder of Deal Architect and is a former Gartner analyst and an outsourcing executive with PricewaterhouseCoopers. [Twitter | Blog | RSS & RSS]
• Sameer Patel, a partner at the Sovos Group. Sameer is a recognized expert in accelerating business performance via the use of collaboration and enterprise social software. He has more than a decade of experience managing initiatives for large organizations to help drive sales and marketing intelligence, partner network optimization, innovation, customer acquisition, and employee productivity via communication and collaboration technologies. Sameer’s clients have included Ingres, Sun Microsystems, Computer Associates, KPMG, McKesson HBOC, WR WrigleyCo., The Sabre Group, Grupo Televisa (Mx), and Cardinal Health. [Twitter | Blog | RSS]
• Frank Scavo, the co-founder of Strativa, a management consulting firm providing business and IT advice to end-user organizations. He has over 20 years of experience in IT strategy, IT management metrics, enterprise applications, and business process improvement, serving end-users in a broad range of industries, including manufacturing, life sciences, consumer products, high-tech, distribution, retail distribution, and information services. He is especially skilled at aligning business and IT strategy, developing the business case for new systems, and facilitating the selection of enterprise systems, such as ERP, CRM, and supply chain management. He is also an expert in benchmarking IT spending and staffing levels for end-user IT organizations. Frank is a Certified Fellow in Production and Inventory Management (CFPIM) by APICS, the Association for Operations Management. He is also the President of Computer Economics, an IT research and metrics firm, founded in 1979. [Twitter | Blog | RSS]
• Alan Silberberg, a leading analyst in Gov 2.0. He speaks on transformational change, crisis and brand communications, and government 2.0 and the crossover into business and technology. Alan has government and private sector experience, having served in the U.S. White House, at Paramount Pictures and numerous technology companies as an advisor, founder or investor. His clients have included the Vatican Global Licensing group, currently elected officials, and former elected officials as well as numerous technology startups. He is focused on the business side of Government 2.0 and how the technology platforms create commercial ventures and new markets. He is the founder of Gov20LA which is the first west coast un-conference for Gov 2.0 tech. [Twitter | Blog | RSS]

Not to mention the board of advisors: Paul Greenberg [Twitter | Blog | RSS], Dennis Howlett [Twitter | Blog | RSS], Erin Kinkin, Esteban Kolsky [Twitter | Blog | RSS] & Brian Solis [Twitter | Blog | RSS].

Ok, humbling was not enough. Seriously.

Here’s a handy RSS bundle for all their blogs (on Google Reader). And a Twitter list of the current members & advisors.

The research agenda includes a number of emerging trends and technologies: enterprise applications, legacy system optimization, cloud computing, mobile computing, social networking, business analytics, game theory, and unified communications. Knowledge provided both in open and syndicated forms.

Knowledge is the keyword here. And you guessed it, I’ll be focusing on my traditional areas of expertise, brands and consumer interaction. More details about the services are on the Constellation website. Management consulting, executive sessions, thought-leadership, private and public keynoting will still be a focus of mine, don’t worry. That’s my forte -along with being opinionated- and will remain as is.

I have to add a more personal twist here. Many of those who know me are aware of the immense admiration I have for Altimeter -the firm Ray just left- and my personal friendship with Jeremiah Owyang, one of its main partners. I’ve already been asked a dozen time the question and, in the spirit of total transparency I’ve taken for some time now, I want to be clear on that one. I haven’t changed a iota about what I think about Altimeter. I”m in total admiration of Charlene Li, I love my good friend Debs -too long I haven’t seen you!- and I’m still in awe about Jeremiah’s skills all the while I remain a close friend. Those who are looking into something more there are just taking a road to nowhere, sorry. And just go reading what both Ray and Charlene are saying about their new relationship.

Talking about what everyone is saying, I’m the press contact for EMEA/APAC while Brian is the one covering North America. Just feel free to contact us for more.

Official press release

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: Constellation: A Formation of Stars

Whatever you want to call it, the redesign that was unveiled yesterday is a big departure from the simple stream we’ve been used to since the microblog’s inception.

Now, I’ve always argued that adding features was not the prime concern when looking at a product. User experience via the user interface is what matters.

Being a very text-based person myself, I was not sure how Twitter would be able to make it work while not looking like Pownce, the now-deceased social network that added inline-media in its stream.

But Twitter seems to have made the right call.

Users are on Twitter.com

Know your users/consumers behavior. While third-party clients are all the talk amongst geeks, an overwhelming 78% of the Twitter users go to Twitter.com. Twitter.com is what most users see everyday. Not Tweetdeck, not Echofon, not Hootsuite, not Seesmic. Twitter.com.

➡ Top 10 Twitter Apps

Users want media-rich experiences

Again, know your users/consumers behavior.

Most of the users are not purely text-based like I am. Does any single article on the web get the number of views a viral YouTube video can get? Probably not. We’re drawn to images. They play with more of our senses.

Look at the success of Facebook. It reigns for its ability to aggregate everything on the stream, from pictures -it is now the largest photo-sharing site on the planet- to links, from videos to questions.

It reigns for its ability to create a virtual Ἀγορά, agora, the place where people meet, exchange, sell, buy and speak in public.

It is what makes Facebook so attractive & sticky. A destination website that you don’t have to leave. Add the ‘Like’ -what people liked outside of Facebook- and you’ve got a holistic experience.

Twitter understands that. It has outgrown the innovators and early adopters -people like me. It has become a huge water cooler experience, where people stop to listen to what’s going in on, tell people what they’re up to, joke about non-sensical stuff, get the most recent news, exchange with like-minded people, show their latest pictures, pitch their product and what’s not.

Twitter works because it amplifies real-life gestures. Reading, writing, watching, demonstrating.

Adding rich-media will only further grow this sense of belonging to a public place. To the Ἀγορά.

How the redesign impacts brands

How so?

• Users will stick to Twitter.com

Up to now, links shown on Twitter.com would have to be clicked, leading to a new browser window. With more that 25% of the tweets containing a link -whether it’s a URL for a website, a picture or a video for instance- the redesign will alter the users’ behavior. A lot.

Taking cues from the newly release Twitter for iPad application, media will now open in a second pane on the website. Flickr pictures and YouTube videos. Etsy product images too. No need to leave the website.

• Users will expect richer experiences

The redesign is an opportunity. What Twitter has allowed you is to make your channel less dry. Or richer. Pick your words. Pick your videos and pictures.

Brands using Twitter need to assess which platforms they are using and if they want to switch services in order to satisfy users who will undoubtedly be less and less willing to leave Twitter.com

Current limitation is that Twitter has only partnered with sixteen service -including Twitpic, Flickr, DailyBooth, YouTube, Vimeo and Brightcove. Only those sixteen will show something on the new right-pane to begin with.

• Users will focus more on content consumption

An often-overlooked aspect of Twitter is that people are not only there to share. They’re also there to listen, watch, click. Not everyone tweets, you know.

By prompting a new experience, Twitter makes it easier for people to understand what it is about. Facebook users trying out Twitter will be more familiar with the environment, with the type of interaction they’ve been accustomed to.

It’s a big deal. The success of Facebook is based on both people easily sharing and people easily consuming content.

Twitter has suddenly become less difficult to explain and new users will be drawn by the new interface -or, at least, not put off by its inexplicability.

But these new users will be different. They will be consumption-driven. Think YouTube: most users do not upload videos, they merely watch them.

Twitter is becoming a read/watch/share platform. In that order. Not only the share/read/click it was up to now.

• Users will get better recommendations

The platform is really encouraging the growth of its social graph.

With the introduction of the second pane, Twitter has beefed up its profile recommendation system -the “follow recommendations”. Users will now see four profiles instead of two, making it easier to create new connections.

Add the recent roll-out of the profile-specific common followers feature -“you both follow”- and the “followed by” information and you’ve got an opportunity for brands to be discovered and promote other accounts, like product-specific ones.

I actually find this system overall better than Facebook’s. The “Likes in common” remains overwhelming, misplaced and underused. Twitter’s lighter options make a lot of sense.

• Users won’t see your account background image

It’s a smaller implication, but it’s there. If you’re using the account’s background to convey data, like contact information or else, the new widescreen layout is crushing it to oblivion. Simply forget it.

Truth to be told, I was never a big fan of it in the first place, no real call-to-action there, no linking.

• Users will get more used to location

The new layout also introduces maps. Locations through Twitter -or via Flickr pictures- are now shown with an accompanying map.

Not only users will take notice more than they might have been until now, but it might trigger their will to try location-based tweets -and third-party location services.

Take note of this emphasis.

What the redesign left unchanged

Some key Twitter-specific design choices were not altered by the redesign.

• Users will still see the tweets chronologically

While the second pane allows for a different experience, the stream itself will not change. Compared with Facebook and it’s relevancy algorithm that pushes the information on top of its newsfeed, Twitter still relies on a purely chronological stream.

It means that brands need to push users to actually visit their Twitter channel and be smart about content so that it gets retweeted/shared enough to garner the attention by landing in other users’ streams.

• Users will still have a hard time having a conversation

Twitter still relies on clicks to see reactions to a tweet or replies. And an account not following another one is prevented, by design, to see its replies in the streams.

Compare that to the threaded conversation model on Facebook. I needn’t say more.

It cuts noise, but makes it hard to have a real conversation. While brands are using monitoring tools which automatically thread conversations, keep in mind than the vast majority of users don’t have this capability on Twitter.com.
Be smart on how you answer your consumers.

What Twitter didn’t announce

• Analytics

The use of third-party providers for the current redesign allows companies to chose a media sharing service which includes some measurement system, but it’s not enough. Like relying on external services -think bit.ly- to garner measurements on clicks done through tweets is not enough.

Analytics is a tool sorely missing for brands on Twitter.

Analytics could also uncover the dark matter of Twitter: the good portion of users who do not tweet -or only occasionally so. Have they actually been to your account for instance? It’s currently impossible to monitor these behaviors.

The creation of a Twitter-branded URL shortening service, t.co, however hints at a potential package for businesses that would include metrics. This might be around the corner.

• Verified account guidelines

The “verified account” status is still hard to get for businesses. While we’re not exactly in the age of cybersquatting anymore, Twitter should make it easier for brands to submit a request for verification, with simple and clear guidelines.

I also expect that to arrive in the coming months.

• Rich sponsored tweets

It doesn’t seem that Sponsored Tweets are media-rich capable. Yet. I’m sure Twitter’s ad platform will be enhanced shortly.

Twitter’s new strategy: Twitter.com

Twitter is for news. Twitter is for content. Twitter is for information.

➡ Twitter is NOT a Social Network

Read that again. Kevin Thau‘s second sentence. Content.

It’s a refocus on consumption of content.

It’s the new strategy for Twitter. Mark my words. If you look at the company’s behavior these past months, with the Twitter Economy -the API-based ecosystem that saw third-party service providers strive- being cannibalized, the path is clear.

The redesign is yet another stepping stone after the creation of the aforementioned URL shortener and the acquisition of Tweetie -now Twitter for iPhone and, newly, for iPad.

You gotta go on Twitter.com or use tools that will mimick the experience closely.

It’s a refocus on Twitter.com.

This is where the company will make money, not on third-party services.

Twitter has not just added a pretty layer over an existing platform. It’s truly a new Twitter. A Twitter that means business.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: Twitter.com Is The New Black For Brands

I’m not perfect, but I’m almost there.

I was thirteen. This is what was written on a keychain my German class teacher offered me after I rushed a print job of the class log on my dot matrix printer in the wee hours of the morning, while I could have done it way before.

Paul has the beard of an adventurer while wearing one Harvard T-shirt. The paradox between the Ivy League career and his apparent wish to sail away shows in his personality. He talks without having been invited to, asserts his truth, then discards any answer, all focused he is on chatting with the girl next to him.

I was sixteen. I got profiled in the Journal de Geneve —which used to be the most prestigious newspaper in my hometown, Geneva—during a political debate its journalists organized at my high school.

You came into the room, scanned it and acted like you decided no one was worth it.

I was twenty. I was invited by my girlfriend of the time to a birthday. That perspective was given to me by someone who attended that night, years afterwards.

Imperfect, opinionated, shy.

Me.

But it read into: disorganized, self-centered, arrogant.

Me too.

Ouch.

Age is a matter of perspective and choice.

I’m still shy. Believe it or not. I always hid behind my mother when I was a kid. I’ve learned to make up for it. By talking too much sometimes. I do care.

I’m still opinionated, even more than I used to. But I’ve learned to focus. And I’m still trying to shut up when necessary. I do listen.

I’m still not perfect. Far from it. I’ve had successes and failures. Did mistakes and still do. I’ve learned and still am learning. I do learn.

I’ve become a better person. Or so I think. These descriptions were the feedback loop I needed to aim for more. Age is a matter of perspective and making the right choices. Aiming at becoming a better man is what makes the whole journey fascinating.

Introspection.

But it’s not enough. Creating happiness is what makes the whole journey worthwhile.

Smile.

With introspection and smiles around, life is beautiful. Every. Single. Minute.

The good times. The bad times. And the ugly times. Every. Single. Minute.

I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe.
I’m just some random guy, really. With too much luck sometimes.
And even if I try having no regrets, trust me, remorses haunt me.

I’ve been lucky as hell. Really lucky. Lucky in the good and the tough times. Lucky to be surrounded with amazing people. You, old & new friends. Really lucky. Even while being geographically close to no one, always on the road, you, my friends, are always there.

You’ve been there every step of the way. Been the ones I needed to become better. Been following my crazy work life, going from freelancer, to startup guy, to business consultant, to lobbyist, to communication consultant -or whatever you want to call my current job. Been following my multiple change of locations. Been following the many lives I already had.

They say cats have nine lives. I might already have consumed a few. Switching to a new one when I realized I was not good enough of a man.

Remorses haunt me from the times I’ve actually hurt people. Even if it was not on purpose. I did it. I can’t go back in time. But each time, one life was consumed.

Primum non nocere. Do no harm. Rule #1. Father’s a surgeon, you know.

Nine lives. Nine shots at creating more smiles.

A gentleman will walk but never run

I’m still imperfect, opinionated & shy. I will always be.

To all my friends, thank you for being there. I always hated having heroes. But the heroes are the guiding light. You are my heroes. I will try my best to make you happy.

Αν τον όρκο μου αυτό τηρήσω πιστά και δεν τον αθετήσω, είθε ν΄ απολαύσω για πάντα την εκτίμηση όλων των ανθρώπων για τη ζωή μου και για την τέχνη μου, αν όμως παραβώ και αθετήσω τον όρκο μου να υποστώ τα αντίθετα από αυτά

➡ Hippocratic Oath

I turned thirty-five yesterday.

But I might still be the guy talking to the girl next to him. I’ve got a few lives left to correct that one. Or not.

Don't steal. Always link back. Ask for reprint rights. The original article was posted at Paul Papadimitriou: Turning Thirty-Five Or The Many Lives Of A Cat