Short Musing on the Internet and the Evolution of the Mind

“The Internet is a brain. There, I said it. It has taken me far too long to publicly utter those words.” - Jeffrey M. Stibel

Comparing the Internet to the central nervous system, to a “hivemind” has become something of a cliché over the years. Yet in thinking about the realm of Social Media, the increased proliferation of the myriad options people have to connect to the world and each other using the Internet, I became fascinated with the converse – how really UNLIKE the human nervous system the Internet actually is. While perhaps no single model or comparison may do justice to the complex system of human communication and information processing that has developed, a discussion about this may guide the understanding of certain aspects of it.

The nervous systems and ultimately brains which developed in organic creatures and finally humans were essentially tools enabling adaptation to the environment: i.e., survival equipment. While initially designed and used to enhance human activities, the complex web of information networks that exists today has de facto become an environment in its own right. We as humans must acquire skills, upgrade our (individual and collective) technical arsenals to adapt to it, to keep up with it – to survive.

One key element (defense mechanism? usability feature?) of the human mind is the sometimes uncanny ability to filter, categorize and selectively process information. If our minds and bodies responded to every stimulus from the environment, our systems would overload in no time – so the brain is able to filter out irrelevant “noise”, focus on and respond to threats and rewards. Harnessing the potential of this fantastic and ever-growing construct that is now the broadly defined “WEB”, and more specifically Social Media networks, requires that same ability to segregate, filter and classify endless stream of stimuli that courses within them. To do otherwise invites inevitable paralysis or incorrect conclusions and adverse (re)actions by the participants – be they individuals, groups, corporate entities or nations.

We as a human race now possess a new, constantly growing and evolving tool that has potential on par with the one that gave such unprecedented advantage to the Homo sapiens over other forms of life on the planet - the original computer encased within each of us: our brains. The ever-growing, highly complex, adaptable and fast system of information transmission and processing is now in the form of the global telecommunications network. We also have at our disposal something never present in the natural world (the very real limits posed by our ultimate energy consumption laid aside for the moment): a nearly complete lack of constraints in the potential complexity, speed and energy in using this system. However, realizing the promise and benefits offered by this network is very much an active, conscious process. 

The mere presence of opportunity is insufficient; to be “lucky”, one must also be thoroughly prepared. We all need better skills and sharper tools in this new environment – the first of which must be an accurate understanding of it. The evolutionary leap has just begun, only now in many ways humankind is both the selector and the selectee in this new process of evolution.

Posted by Csaba Dancshazy on March 1, 2010 at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hello (Social) World.

I could probably talk for weeks at a time about printing, publishing, and enterprise content management (ECM) as a former technology research analyst. In fact, that was largely my job until 3 weeks ago, when I first joined the Cymfony Insights team. Researching content management, social media, analytics, and automation technologies; I focused on improving companies’ internal and external communication processes - from print to digital to social. Turning my attention to Cymfony, I intend to take advantage of this technology and research background to deliver unique insights about the social media channel, where it’s headed, and how to extract as much market information and leverage from it as possible.

While we are only on the cusp of the social revolution (no Marxist commentary intended), social media monitoring has already catalyzed a vast methodology shift in market research. No longer limited to standard measurement approaches such as surveys and focus groups, burgeoning online content – both social and traditional media – enables a new kind of monitoring. Focused on mashing disparate data sources, dynamically analyzing them, and responding in real-time, perhaps “listening” is a more appropriate term for this methodology.

As we get comfortable in the third millennium, it’s worth considering how far we’ve come from the first blog post and how much farther social media will take us. Penetrating every aspect of our culture, social media has the potential to re-define the way we work and the way we live. In the meantime, the Insights team (and this new member) is dedicated to providing visionary and credible studies of this exciting new world! (Twitter: @omriduek)

Posted by Omri Duek on January 25, 2010 at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Traditional Media Still Rules!

This article in the NYT yesterday shows that traditional media still leads the blogosphere in breaking news by an average of 2.5 hours.

Since the emergence of blogs, companies have developed paranoia that a blogger can create a crisis faster than you can type "meme". This study states that only 3.5% of the "memes" tracked originated on blogs.

In other words, 96.5% of the time, bloggers are talking about what they read in traditional media. But what is most interesting is how the blogs pick up a meme and propagate it, lengthening the news cycle and keeping attention on a topic well after the traditional media has moved on to the next story.

A couple of caveats about this study: it looks specifically at news (and only online news, not offline publications), and not mentions of brands or companies. The dynamics of how people talk about brands in social media are likely to be different.

That said, it suggests that it may be more important to reach out to bloggers to dampen a meme that is damaging or to give a push to one that is positive, than it is to try to get the bloggers to start the meme in the first place. But with only a 2.5 hour lag, you have to act fast.

The story summarizes a study done at Cornell University -- it's well worth a read!

Posted by Jim Nail on July 14, 2009 at 04:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Bride 2.0

Although I read blogs for a living, the thought of consulting blogs and message boards to plan my wedding was far from my mind.  That is, until I read a post that referenced a wedding blog in passing.  Now my wedding includes lots of ideas I picked up from other bridal survivors.  One example is table numbers.  I never knew how creative you could get with labeling the tables.  Instead of large numbers or cardboard signs, we will be displaying notebooks at all of the tables.  Not only will the notebooks function as table numbers, but they will also provide guests with a place to record notes to the bride and groom (idea credited to oncewed.com).

This led me to contemplate where else social media would be valuable, and why this would be true.  I settled on: Any industry where a consumer would become emotionally involved.   At Cymfony, we have seen it time and time again, when there is something on the line, whether it be money, a new car, or the perfect tablescape, consumers turn to social media to give or get advice.  Additionally, as they become more prolific, blogs and message boards are gaining a more authoritative reputation.  These aren’t unintelligible rants, but thoughtful opinion.

What I get from bridal blogs that I don’t get from wedding magazines or official websites is advice without strings attached.  I know that when I click through to see how something is done I’m going to get a series of pictures taken in someone’s living room, not an online marketplace.  I have a trust in these women, I feel that they are only there to help me and are looking for nothing in return.  It’s almost like they are my cousin sharing a wedding planning notebook from her wedding last year.

                This changes the media – marketer – consumer landscape.  We are no longer a captive audience looking to follow the methods and ways as spelled out by the publishing house.  Just as banner ads have lost their efficacy in online marketing, so too have magazines and company websites when dealing with matters of emotional importance.

Posted by Kate Kurtin on June 26, 2009 at 04:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Notes from OMMA Social Panel: Authentic Conversations

I just finished a great discussion about how marketers can create authentic conversations in social media here at OMMA Social. Here are the highlights....

Alan Wolk, of the Toad Stool, made an interestesting analogy: "DM was to web 1.0 and PR is to Web 2.0".

Ro Choy of Rock You, addressed the common barrier that many companies are afraid of negative comments, "The more authentic, the less negative comments you get."

Michael Sanchez of CafeMom, responded to an audience question about the potential to "frack" your brand with dispersed, short comments and conversations across the spectrum of social media, saying, "Social media gives you more opportunities to get the communication right."

Craig Engler made a parallel comment as a result of his experience dealing with some criticism that popped up in social media when the SciFi Channel launched their new branding as SyFy: "When you explain what you are doing, people understand and often change their tune."

One of the questions we kicked around was "Why is being authentic so hard?" It occurred to me during the conversation that, as marketers, our first instinct is to focus on making the topic and message authentic for the brand image and personality. But this is only 1 of 3 dimensions of authenticity that need to be right:

  • Be genuine to the medium: social media's unique and compelling differences from other media are self expression and community. Any brand participation in social media must make space for these characteristics.

  • Get the voice right: corporate speak is definitely out. Having an individual like your CEO is great. Having people across your organization can be better. Just have a conversation and if you can't answer a question because you don't know the answer or for business/legal reasons you can't answer, just say that you can't answer the question.

Posted by Jim Nail on June 23, 2009 at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

On Travel: Lower Price vs. Higher Quality

Even in this economy, the cheaper option doesn’t always score high on preference measures.


Hi, I’m Cathy, an Analyst here at Cymfony.  I take the lead on technology clients, but with my marketing background in travel, I recently had the opportunity to work on a study for a travel client and came across an interesting angle on consumer sentiment towards price points. 

Anyone can tell you that consumers are becoming more price sensitive than ever in these economic times.  Across common goods and services, “budget” brands and wholesalers are gaining traction; “premium” brands are struggling.  In social media, positive sentiment is stronger for budget brands. “Value” is the most resonant discussion theme in message forums, indicating prioritization of cost over inherent product attributes.  

Does this mean all companies should work towards significantly lowering price points to compete in the marketplace?  The answer seems to be, “Not necessarily.  In social media, “premium” brands equated with high quality AND high price still trump “budget” brands when it comes to measures of consumer preference.  Looking closely at what people are saying, customers still strongly prefer a better product or a higher quality experience in spite of tough times compounding the price barrier.  While discussion suggest that the pragmatic mind gravitates to cost as a priority, many posts indicate that raw emotions crave goods and services of the highest quality.  Clearly, there is opportunity to tap emotions that are not “selling out” to cheaper alternatives.  

Consumers are price-watching across the board but have their eagle eyes on premium brands. Furthermore, conversations indicate that they are more keen on opening the wallet if they believe they are getting a sweet-ENED deal on a better product.  We see statements like “I’ve tried them.  It was more expensive but I had a good experience, so when there was a price drop, I immediately took advantage” or “I heard good things about them, so I’m just waiting for a discount.”  An itty bitty savings can potentially multiply desirability for a premium product (more so than a huge discount on a low end product) and push the consumer over the edge to close the sale. Savvy marketers believe this in their gut. Now social media analysis validates this belief in the voice of the consumer.

Posted by Cathy Buena on June 5, 2009 at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Will Google Wave be the Fifth Wave of the Internet?

The Internet has evolved through four waves since it entered everyday usage: communication, content, commerce and community (aka social media). Will Google Wave usher in a fifth wave: Collaboration?

I know this blog has been really quiet for a while. Quite frankly, nothing has inspired me much in the social media space. I guess I spent too much time as a Forrester analyst and while lots is happening in, I can't get all that excited about yet more social networks (sorry, Spoke, Naymz, et al: you're too late and I have too much invested in LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo, and even Eons to start up on more networks).

And while social media monitoring is booming, and we have some great new technological capabilities we are introducing, we're finding it isn't the technology driving our success with clients. It is the good old-fashioned application of smart people like Kate and Jessica who understand our clients' businesses and boil down the social media maelstrom into clear insights.

Then I read about Google Wave which The Official Google Blog describes as "equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more."

As I read the post where Lars Rasmussen describes the process of defining what this product would be, I found myself nodding at the questions they were asking and the problems they were trying to address: email and IM designed to mimic non-digital communication tools, eliminate the divides between different modes of communications, and others. This reaction is a stark contrast to my feelings about Twitter or even most mobile phone apps.

But better collaboration tools hit home with me. I find myself working more and more closely with colleagues in different offices, clients across the country, vendors and other resources. In my private life even, I am collaborating more and more with other volunteers at my church and other organizations I am involved with. In all of these cases, keeping track of the email chains, document versions or trying to remember which group or wiki or site any particular project is on is becoming a burden. I can already think of half a dozen projects where a better collaboration platform would make my life much easier.

Past Internet waves have frequently been natural evolutions: going from reading about a product online to being able to buy it eliminated the wait and inconvenience of going to the store. Community has made communications to large groups of friend and associates a whole lot better than ccing endless names on an email.

But beyond keeping the community informed of the minutest details of your life and thoughts, what's the real advantage? Collaboration strikes me as being a great candidate for the answer to this question.

So I can't wait to try Wave. Who knows -- if it makes me more productive I might just have more time to blog....

Posted by Jim Nail on May 29, 2009 at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Did Facebook just set the stage for sharing revenue with consumers?

In case there was any doubt before, the backlash against Facebook's change in policy to take more control of consumer-created data and content shows that consumers will militantly protect what they create. Will users next demand a cut of any revenue that Facebook derives from their work?

The various takes on this story hit on many angles, but miss what is potentially the most important implication: yet another barrier to a solid business model for online media.

  • Ad Age focuses on what happens when companies post things without thinking them through. Old story that we've heard a million times and more interestingly from examples like Motrin Moms.

  • Consumerist -- who kicked off this flurry -- gets into the weeds of intellectual property ownership. There are some interesting issues here -- if you are an IP lawyer.

  • Paul Gillin notes this is the second time Facebook has had to reverse a policy related to consumer data usage and hopes that the company will listen to its Bill of Rights and Responsibilities Group. Will Facebook take some of their own medicine and involve their members in creating a solution?

  • Ben McConnell at SWOM cites how the incident shows how important Facebook has become and doubts that a traditional advertising model will fit with the "social utility" of the site. An ongoing debate but the need to find a revenue model is increasingly urgent.

    No, I think the real message here is that online will not obey even the most basic principles of the offline media model. Traditional media relied on the implicit deal that the reader gets free content, but in exchange they have to be exposed to ads. Even this basic assumption of the media model doesn't seem to translate online.

    Consumers have total ownership of what they create despite the fact that they do not pay for the service to upload, store, and display it online. Facebook can't rely on an implicit quid-pro-quo to provide this raft of services in exchange for the right to use some of that content in ways that help them pay for all those servers, bandwidth, etc.

    No, a consumer can take their content away at any time. So if Facebook comes up with any revenue-generating model that the user doesn't like, the user can take their content away, no penalty, no problem.

    The next small step is that the consumer can then take their content away if they don't get a piece of the revenue pie.

    I can't wait to see the group "I want my 15% commission of the revenue on my Facebook page". Hey, maybe I'll start that group!

Posted by Cymfony on February 18, 2009 at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The Big Super Bowl Ad Winners: Not Pepsi, Coke or Bud

This Ad Age article cites our respected competitor, Collective Intellect, saying that Pepsico dominated the social media discussion of the Super Bowl ads. Not so fast. Movies outstripped Pepsico's performance, and Transformers beat brand Pepsi in the immediate post-game discussion.

I have to run for a plane so I can't make this pretty. I'm not sure why they didn't mention any of the movies, so let me lay out the numbers that TNS Cymfony has tracked in the first 36 hours following the game:

Advertiser

Volume Index

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

737

Star Trek

500

Anheuser-Busch

476

GI Joe: Rise of Cobra

455

Doritos

387

Pepsi

309

Land of the Lost

261

Fast and Furious

221

Coca Cola

215

Hulu

198

  • Five of the ten most talked about advertisers were movies.
  • In the 36 hours following the game, these five advertisers accounted for 37% of the social media discussion.
  • Add in 5 other movies that advertised and the movie category accounts for 42% of the immediate post-game discussion.
  • Transformers had a 13% share compared to brand Pepsi's 5.4%
  • Pepsico has a 15% share during this immediate post-game period.

If I subtract the movie volume from the total volume we tracked, the Pepsico share becomes 27%, still short of the 40% share they claim, but closer.

If I look across the entire period Cymfony tracked to date -- 12/28/08 - 2/2/09 -- movies maintain a 33% to 19% lead over Pepsico's share.

I've read some posts where consumers have said they don't count the movie advertisers when they decide on their favorite ads. I guess neither does my competitor. But the fact is the movies have siphoned off a signficant amount of the discussion that could have gone to other advertisers.

* Volume index represents the amount of discussion for each advertiser, relative to the median amount of discussion for all Super Bowl advertisers. Eg. Transformers received over seven times the amount of discussion of the average advertiser.

Posted by Cymfony on February 3, 2009 at 06:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A trend emerges in Social Media

Hello, my name is Kate and I have been working at Cymfony for just over a year.  In that time you could say that I have become the go-to person for all of our food clients.  It started with a simple project looking at peanuts and now has exploded to bars, crackers, and most recently cereal.  Throughout this time spent knee deep in food discussion, Jim Nail has been consistently asking me to blog about some of my findings.  Not wanting to bore you with talk about inulin (a particular form of fiber) and high fructose corn syrup, I have been hesitant to put my thoughts on the subject out here until one very dominant trend emerged.

The topic of today’s reading will be on what I call ‘the weight watchers.’  These individuals are not necessarily in the Weight Watchers program, but they are consumers who regularly and learnedly discuss weight management on the web.   In every food study that I have worked on, whether it is about the intersection of food, health and wellness, or an investigation on why one cereal brand has been the most popular brand in the last twelve years, the weight watchers emerge as the dominant voice.

This group is made up of two large sub-groups: weight conscious women* and the body-building men.  Both of these groups are very conscious of what foods and which ingredients they put into their bodies.  Additionally, both groups keep avid food diaries, and in many cases, these are online journals.  The weight watchers have all been through tough times and have struggled to get to where they are.  They are an online community that is simply there for support and encouragement of the new members.

Discussions on food are quite different than discussions of other products that we analyze. Social media tonality for most of our clients is usually neutral**, but with all of our food clients to date, the tonality breakdown has been 80-90 percent positive.  The biggest reason for this is that weight watchers go online to offer advice and to educate, not to complain or ‘bash’ a brand or product.  Additionally, most of the discussion drivers*** for our food clients have also been positive.  This shows that the weight watchers are online advocating products.  This is the group’s most defining characteristic, with all of the things to complain about – high price, high calorie count, etc. weight watchers only comment on what they deem helpful to another blogger.  When comparing two similar products, a post will typically only explain why one product is preferred over the other, and not call attention to the lesser product’s flaws. 

We also see that discussions about food take place on a variety of sites, including general discussion sites and general health sites such as ivillage.com and answers.yahoo.com, as well as specialty weight loss sites you might expect like calorie-count.com.  This shows that food conversations online are diverse in topic and location.

                Next time I’ll talk about where health management fits into all of this and what those trends look like!

 

 

* With social media it is very difficult to discern age, gender and life stage.

** Meaning that a majority of the documents collected speak neither positively or negatively about a brand being tracked.

***Discussion drivers are the topics with the highest volume.  We look at a wide range of discussion drivers, including taste, recommend, price, health, etc.

Posted by Kate Kurtin on January 26, 2009 at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack