Guest Post on the Gist Blog: Users “In Their Own Words”
I’m a little behind on getting this up here, but I recently had a guest post on the Gist blog. If you haven’t heard of Gist, it’s an exceptionally promising up and coming service for maintaining and growing your professional relationships. One could also describe it as Mint.com for your contacts, if Mint.com told you what tomorrow’s specials are at your favorite restaurant, and when your tailor is going to be on vacation.
If you’re interested, check out my guest post: In their own words: user Jamie Scheu says “Gist proved its value to me … within 24 hours”, and sign up for Gist already.
Augmented Reality: Bringing You New Reasons to Dislike People Before You Meet Them
“Technology,” warns Don Draper, “is a glittering lure.”
Applications for augmented reality are appearing everywhere: you can fight zombies, find the closest subway station, and measure a virtual flat-rate box on your kitchen counter before you head to the Post office. One of the slickest examples I’ve seen (not yet on the market) uses a robust facial recognition technology developed by Polar Rose to pull social information in real time just by looking at someone’s face. It’s called AugmentedID, and power networkers everywhere are drooling.
While many of us are caught up in the allure of augmented reality’s potential, few have played out the consequences of the rapid availability of this technology. Jamais Cascio decided to do just that in an article in this month’s The Atlantic, and conceived of a dystopian nightmare of real-life popups and social filtering (automatically removing people with differing political views from your field of vision, for instance).
We’re not that far off. He writes,
Although AR now relies on handheld devices, electronics makers like Sony are working on systems that you wear like sunglasses, making augmented vision more immersive. Here’s where the first familiar online phenomenon shows up: spam. Nearly every communication method we invent eventually conveys unwanted commercial messages. AR systems will be used for spam too, whether via graffiti-like tags, ads that pop up when you look too long at a shop, or even abstract symbols stuck to a wall or worn on a shirt that, when viewed through an AR system, turn into 3-D animations. (emphasis added — I would remove “nearly”)
Sounds cool — as long as there are only a few innovators doing it, and the executions actually add value. But it’s not hard to imagine this media opportunity spiraling rapidly out of control, as every logo ever printed becomes a point of “engagement” overnight.
The interpersonal implications are even more interesting. Cascio picks politics as an ideological differentiator to illustrate the drawbacks to instantly knowing everything about any individual you meet.
After California’s Prop 8 ban on gay marriage passed, opponents of the measure dug up public records of donors supporting the ban, and linked that data to an online map. Suddenly, you could find out which of your neighbors (or the businesses you frequent) were so opposed to gay marriage that they donated to the cause. Now imagine that instead of a map, those records were combined with an AR system able to identify faces.
You don’t want to see anybody who has donated to the Palin 2012 campaign? Gone, their faces covered up by black circles. You want to know who exactly gave money to the 2014 ban on SUVs? Easy—they now have green arrows pointing at their heads.
You want to block out any indication of viewpoints other than your own? Done.
This will not be a world conducive to political moderation, nor one where differing perspectives get along comfortably. It won’t take a majority of people using these filters to poison public discourse; imagine this summer’s town-hall screamers on constant alert, wherever they go. Yet this world will be the unintended consequence of otherwise desirable developments—spam filters, facial recognition, augmented reality—that many of us will find useful.
Now, I don’t necessarily buy that political partisanship will lead the augmented reality revolution. But here’s a far more likely scenario: augmented reality dating. Intelius recently rolled out an iPhone app called “datecheck” (video walthrough here) that performs an instant background check on anyone, reporting on details from criminal records to personal interests to estimated net worth. Imagine if this information was available in real time, based simply on facial recognition (e.g. someone you hadn’t met yet). The economist in me calls this access to near-perfect information “efficiency.” The realist in me calls this situation “everyone dies alone.” My favorite economist (and favorite professor), Steven Landsburg, would be torn.
Comedian Demetri Martin has a bit about bumper stickers that’s always resonated with me. He looks at the bright side of these eyesores:
A lot of people don’t like bumper stickers. I don’t mind them. To me they’re a short-cut to saying: “Hey, let’s never be friends.”
What happens when we’re followed around by virtual bumper stickers — not of our own choosing — at all times? Will we find new areas of commonality, or new reasons to discriminate? I worry about the latter scenario. Based only on your profile information, Facebook already thinks you’re fat; what will augmented reality present that’s any different? Some have argued that “what unites us is greater than what divides us.” But I bet you could find at least one ideologically incompatible perspective with every friend you have — after all, if your social network consists of ideological clones, what the hell do you all find to talk about?
I haven’t decided how I feel about this. I’m excited by the technology, but alarmed by the implications.
What do you think about augmented reality — good or evil?
The Future of Entertainment: Talk to Your Television
Just when you think you’ve seen everything… This is truly remarkable.
(Hat tip: @eschenck)
Social Media for B2B
(Note: This is a reprint of a post I wrote over on the Hill Holliday blog.)
Enquiro Research recently reported that 93.1% of business technology purchasing decisions are researched online. Not surprisingly, the use of search (and predominantly Google) comprises a significant share of the online research performed.
More interestingly, however, is the fact these same business buyers are startlingly active on social platforms. Forrester recently published the results of a survey of the online behaviors of business technology buyers, which found that they more socially engaged online than the average adult consumer.
Almost all respondents maintained at least a passive level engagement with social media: 91% of buyers in the business-to-business sector reported reading blogs, consuming user-generated video, or listening to podcasts. But social participation among B2B buyers runs much deeper — nearly half (43%) reported actively creating content on social platforms themselves. This figure is nearly double the average among all US online adults.
Social media is staged to play an ever-increasing role in actual purchase influence among business buyers. Groundswell co-author Josh Bernoff sums up the situation in a recent blog post: “What does this mean for you? If you’re a B2B marketer and you’re not using social technologies in your marketing, it means you’re late.”
Eye Tracking In Practice (Squidoo)
I stumbled onto this video via an old blog post from Seth Godin. If you have the time and the patience to really focus, it’s a fascinating look into how eye tracking works. Not something most of us come across every day.
Measure Twice, Cut Once
I like to think I’ve learned a lot of things from my dad (probably not as many as I should — but I’ll save that discussion for my memoirs). Amidst these many life lessons, one in particular — heralding from the field of carpentry — comes to mind often: “measure twice, cut once.” This expression is most commonly invoked in the vicinity of 2×4s and tables saws, but the philosophy can be applied to many different disciplines.
Take for instance, the discipline of creating branded microsites (incidentally, my current favorite is that for the Pomegranate Phone). If I had to break the process of building a microsite down into three steps, they would be:
- Pick a clever, relevant, unregistered .com domain.
- Build your microsite.
- There is no Step 3.
Of course there is a great deal more that goes into Step 2, which is no doubt why Step 1 is such an underrated part of the process. Nevertheless, there is no excuse for the following travesty of branded microsite creation:
http://www.thefirstworldwidewebsitewerenothinghappens.com/
Let it load. Explore it as much as you desire. Then look more closely at the domain. And the “contact” email address at the bottom. And then ask yourself… how could this site possibly have launched with the word “where” spelled wrong in three places on the site (including the domain)?
I considered suggesting that this domain had been purchased by some intern at Kit Kat’s (or more likely, Hershey’s) digital agency of record, but that would be an outrageous insult to interns everywhere. What’s even more funny/tragic is that the correctly-spelled domain is being squatted.
I’m flummoxed. Anyone care to provide any insight into this perplexing situation?
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