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I hesitate to write this post because I am bored silly of using, thinking and writing about Twitter. I am also certain that everyone else is just as bored of hearing about it. Nonetheless, I must plough on because ‘It’ (I will seek hereafter to only refer to Twitter as ‘It’) looms larger in my mind with every passing day. The latest prompt for this sensation is that I have just conducted my first classic ‘Google’ search on It – and not as a test.

This happened thus:

1. Seeking a particular article (about how a senior executive at US newspaper the Globe had said – on the back of redundancies – that, from now on, it was all about the web) I headed for It’s home page since it was in a tweet that I’d seen the link.

2. I attempt to find the relevant tweet using It’s search engine, which is hidden away at the bottom of the page.

3. I give up because I can’t limit searches to just people I follow and, on the word ‘globe’ – which is the only proper noun I know related to this article – all I’m finding is guff about Kate Winslet.

4. I head to Google News and find an article that tells near enough the same story (newspapers utterly disrupted by the web) and get on with my life.

So what does this five minutes of web minutiae tell us?

Read more…

OK, so New Year was a few days ago, but Monday 5th is when UK PLC gets back to work after the holidays. First order of the day is taking stock.

Here’s a selection of the predictions and analysis of 2009 I’ve found most interesting:

1. The Economist’s The World in 2009: The must-read overview of the coming year in politics, business, science and technology. The predicted Corporate Crunch as a follow-up to the Credit Crunch will come as no surprise, but better to be armed with the facts…
2. The Futurist’s Top 10 Forecasts for 2009 and Beyond: From urbanisation to nanotech, the Futurist has the big trends covered here. So, some of these may not happen in the coming year, but sometimes it is healthy to take the long view.
3. JWT’s 10 Trends for 2009: Ad giant JWT won’t tell all about their predictions for 2009 unless you give them $250 (someone tell them about freeconomics, please) but the summary tells you most of what’s on their minds right now from “recessionary living” to the “collective conciousness”.
4. Trendwatching.com’s Half a dozen Consumer Trends for 2009: i’ve yet to see a dull report from Trendwatching and this one’s no exception. Feedback 3.0 and Mapmania are two trends which particularly rang true for me.
5. Web Worker Daily’s Four Disruptive Technologies for 2009: The one to watch for me is the rise of Android / Linux phones.
6. Eric Schmidt on What’s Ahead in 2009: A video from Google’s Public Policy blog, I like this look at 2009 as it is about what *needs* to happen rather than what might happen.
7. Mark Andersen’s tech predictions for 2009: Another video, this time from the formidable futurist Mark Andersen, CEO of Strategic News Service. Peter Day of the BBC’s World of Business also interviewed Mark about his predictions for 2009 – you may still be able to download it if you hurry to the programme’s website.

Hope you enjoy them, and feel well-armed to take on the year…

: : Bonus link: How could I leave out search guru John Battelle’s predictions for 2009?

: : : And another: Read / Write / Web’s 2009 predictions are  must-read…

Inspired by a ‘recently compiled top ten list of New Year’s resolutions’ sent to me by local estate agent RA Bennett & Partners…

1.       Get into shape

For digital, that means redundancies. No digital media owner, agency or advertiser, particularly if they have US paymasters, is likely to end the year with more staff than it started. But, it’s an opportunity for those businesses to assess the parts of their business that deliver real value. The worry is that they’ll throw the baby out with the bath water. Creative talent, marketing and – particularly – investment in technology are not places to cut costs though it might look that way to the spreadsheet operatives. However, they should feel free instead to cut back on fancy offices, encourage remote working, and spend less on making their clients feel ‘special’. Good clients want good work, not good jollies.

2.       Get more organised

Thanks to its high-speed growth, digital businesses have evolved in very organic ways – so much so that too few people can answer the questions ‘what do you do?’ and ‘who do you report to?’ in any sensible terms. I’ve seen job titles like director of difference and always wondered what that person writes on their to-do list every morning. So company structures need to get simplified. Once everyone knows what their job is, actually doing is a lot easier.

3.       Give up smoking/drinking

What is digital’s drug? The thing it knows does it absolutely no good whatsoever, but it just can’t give up. For me, it’s ad banners. Of course, everything has its price and the price of ad banners is becoming so commoditised as to be approaching free. Some businesses can build profitable models on them i.e. ad networks (and sometime soon ad exchanges). But, traditional publishers, agencies and advertisers have fought for too long to support high-cost and high-talent businesses on the back of them, chiefly because they’re the closest thing we have to a traditional media model. Personally, I’m looking for online businesses this year that monetise what they do in other ways – in-text, subscriptions (yes, subscriptions!), directories, strategic sponsorships are four that spring to mind for media owners.

4.       Change your job

New Year is the time to ask oneself what it is one would actually like to be doing – and is good at doing – with their working life. At the core of that is taking a broader view of whatever value it is that a company delivers for its customers. Why, really, do customers come to you? Is that really what you are focused on doing for them? And have you worked out ways of getting them (or others) to pay for it? If it’s a struggle to answer those questions, then a good rethink is in order.

5.       Reduce debt

Obviously. Because who knows what the banks will demand from us personally, and as businesses, this year to keep their shareholders and the regulators happy.

Yesterday, ICann the governing body for internet domains announced they will be allowing anyone to bid for almost an unlimited list of new domains. At a $100,000 for control of a domain, .hotel, .schools etc are all up for grabs.

Icann doesn’t expect there to be a huge rush and claims they simply want to recover the cost of setting up the infrastructure (they are a non-profit org.).

Some restrictions – no cyber squatting, anything too dodgy (they reserve the right to refuse) and no personal names unless you’re a business.

They will also allow non-Roman character sets in the domain, which is going to cause problems for international businesses as the Roman keyboard is well established.

Until recently, non-regional domains like .com caused problems for search engines as they attempted to provide more localised results. But these days you can set your geo-location at least in Google, and the others are likely to follow.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of this move by Icann – people are generally used to guessing the domain extension and if a lot of companies decide to use it, there’ll just be more confusion.

The barriers to owning and managing a top level domain is too high for most companies, though we will definitely see some of the more generic commercial domains being bought. I can imagine domains like .hotels, .property and .bank getting bought. And any companies within these industries having to buy their name, even if they simply redirect it to their existing domain.

You may see more creative use of domains in time, maybe celebrities and sport teams using them as merchandise. I’m sure most football fans would happily pay 20 quid to have their team domain in their name.

We’re exhibiting at the NMA Online Marketing and Media show…and it’s getting busy!

Our Head of Business Development David Tradewell is taking the floor at 2pm this afternoon delivering a workshop  on our connected  approach to digital marketing using case examples from Channel 4, Lipsy and More Th>n.

There has also been much intrigue around our NetworkSense Maps we are offering visitors to our stand today and tomorrow at the show. Visualising your online network and understanding how your customers are engaging with
your brand online is essential. If you are planning on popping in to the show, please come and see us for a NetworkSense map of your brand.

There are also some interesting sessions to come this afternoon in the conference include Speakers from O2 and Lovefilm.com. You can also enjoy a cool glass of Pimms with us if you are quick!

The show is in Islington at the Business Design Centre in London…see you soon!

Did you read my post about Amazon? Well here’s one about a company I hadn’t heard of. Zappos sell shoes on the web. Stupid idea. I remember when it all went down at boo.com during the dot com bubble! No one thinks buying shoes online is a good idea. What if they don’t fit? You need to go to a shop to try them on to make sure you like them. The fact a shop has a really limited selection is just something you have to accept.

Zappos storefront is so-so… but they do have 133 pairs of etnies to choose from. I notice across the top that shipping is free… and returns are free too… for 365 days! A whole year! Oh, and the reviews from their customers aren’t simply good, they’re outstanding:

Customer service heaven

Zappos.com: 3 steps to great customer service

Zappos has otherworldly customer service

Check the comments:

” Zappos really does go above and beyond, and I’m just as comfortable there shoe shopping as I am in the store.”

It seems they have the problems I thought existed sorted by getting products out to people very quickly, very efficiently and by making returns easy and free. They do in fact have a giant warehouse next to a UPS depot and phone-based customer service is available 24 hours a day. Their philosophy is explained on their site.

So far, not bad. What makes them so interesting? How about the fact that they pay their new employees to leave? Employees get four weeks training at full salary and then are offered $1,000 to quit. Why?

“Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for… and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later.”

Here’s a great quote:

“Companies don’t engage emotionally with their customers—people do. If you want to create a memorable company, you have to fill your company with memorable people.”

… and this is making them money. In 1999 gross profit was next to nothing. In 2002 it was $32m. In 2005 $370m and they have a target of $1bn in 2008. Tony Hsieh, the CEO, says that:

“Our business is based on repeat customers and word of mouth. We view the money that we spend on customer service as marketing money that improves our brand.”

Why I am interested in this? Because here is a company that not only could not have existed a few years ago but is making the network work for its customers, both on and off-line. How on it are they? Out of 1,600 employees 327 are on twitter. They’re that social; this article explains it well. Each one of those employees is a public expression of commonly held values and creates a palpable feel that people make this organisation.

Every year each employee is asked to write a few words for a book that describes the company’s culture to better express what they do and who they are as a group. You can buy a copy here. I remember doing this for myself back in October 2005 shortly after joining what was then Spannerworks; if you want to see what I wrote then let me know. It would interesting for us all to do a similar thing to see how we understand ourselves. ‘Know thyself’ as the old quote goes….

Oops. Forgot to post the link to the Zappos blog.

Here’s a top tip when you’re posting pictures in HTML – expect many of you know it already. Sometimes, if the original image is too big, it won’t fit properly on the screen. With the iCrossing internal blog, for example, it ends up overlapping the middle column.

If this happens, you don’t need to manually resize the picture itself – particularly handy if you’re linking to one hosted elsewhere. If you use the visual editor on Wordpress or a similar platform, you can simply drag a corner of the image outline to resize it.

If you use an HTML editor, check the line of code that embeds the image, which might normally look something like “img src=’path to image goes here/image.jpg’”. It may also specify “height=’number in pixels’” and/or “width=’number in pixels’”. Take out the height bit altogether, and change the width bit to “width=’100%’”.

This should scale the picture to the full width of your post, keeping the height in the correct proportion. Obviously, choosing a lower percentage will make the picture smaller still.

As an agency with its roots in search, we are very aware of the capabilities of the major engines across all aspects of search but also their growing offerings in display. In fact, we have tremendous success by buying on a CPC basis through Google for our clients, especially in North America.

There is an ongoing discussion within the industry and within our agency as to the direction media buying will take.

On one hand, the growth of Google et al in this sector is likely to increase CPC and even CPA traffic, something that will happen exponentially with the acquisition of DoubleClick and the launch of Google Ad Manager.

However, from another perspective, ‘good’ publishers are in a position of strength and can choose the way in which they sell the first 60-80% of their inventory. What they do with the remaining 20-40% is up to them, but we don’t necessarily want to focus on buying this remnant inventory anyway.

Last week though a major publisher took a big step in one of these directions; ESPN.com has announced it is cancelling its arrangements with its media house and also the ad networks it does business with. Instead they are moving more to a direct model selling what is likely to be more premium custom packages.

Google et al will continue to grow in this sector, but if publishers like this decide not to fuel the ad networks growth then we won’t be seeing an entire CPC marketplace anytime soon.

And it makes sense for publishers to do this. They own the product and if ad networks continue to grow they will hold too much of the power and could lower the overall effective CPM rate that a publisher can achieve.

I’ve been reading a very interesting interview with Douglas Merrill, Google’s CTO, for those not familiar with the name. His goal is the same as mine – world domination – not really, I kid – it’s simply to give Google workers the technology they need and keep them safe. That’s what I try to do for iCrossing workers and hopefully without falling into the draconian “protection trap” that so many coporations end up in.

Like Google we have a very tech savvy group of employees at iCrossing which means everyone enjoys much more freedom than most organisations, but I’m thinking why can’t we take it further. Why not the complete freedom to do anything? Focus totally on choice – and let you guys choose from a bunch of different computers, different operating systems, different phones, different tools and support all of them (Jim don’t have a heart attack). It’s not cost-efficient, but on the other hand, wouldn’t productivity soar? OK, we don’t have the benefit of the cash filled pockets of Google and would have the odd financial constraint, but surely we could explore some unauthordox approaches.

Perhaps we could try the Google model of support. Massively more self-service from network hubs and ”tech stops” – take your laptop to a drop-in area in the office for instant ideas, instant solutions, instant kickings – a personal, informal drop in help desk – where solutions are handed out there and then and also get blogged about instantly which the iCrossing community is expected to refer to and self-serve.

Most CTOs would throw a wobbly at the security risks, but if you beef up perimeter protection, build security into the infrastructure as a feature, look for unusual journeys across the enterprise and look to the community to police it can work. Malcolm and I were talking about network audits – tedious, dull, time-consuming, authoritarian – the “unorthordox” alternative is to randomly stream what people are surfing, saying, doing onto community plasmas. Then the whole community can say “Hey, who’s surfing porn and putting my work at risk?” – it is also a pretty cool pictorial snapshot of the day.

Un “author” doxy is decentralised, agile IT, that’s why Scott, Shuo, and David are deeply embedded in business units and not locked away in a glass tower.

Un “author” doxy is looking at how IT supports an internal, enterprise relationship economy that will ebb and flow and change direction. Brand marketers don’t control brands – people do, IT doesn’t control organisations – we do. I intend to do a lot more thinking about the unusual, the unorthodox and I’d love to hear you views.

We finally have the ultimate tool in the search marketing industry…

Yesterday our London office was scaled by the internationally famous human spiderman, Alain Robert. Robert defied the cold to climb the 27 storeys of Victoria’s most ugly office tower, sans cordes, in protest at climate change.

Insane videos galore at http://www.alainrobert.com/en/video.htm.

Spiders, search engines, world-wide-web… forget it!  ‘Tis the season to be silly.