Digital Nativity: Insight on the new Cultural Paradigm – Born Digital
There’s been a cultural paradigm shift. I’m sure you’re all aware of it, though if you’re like me, perhaps haven’t given it a name. In case you’re interested, here’s some insightful reading on the subject of the new cultural paradigm, from Born Digital:
There is one thing you know for sure: These kids are different. They study, work, write, and interact with each other in ways that are very different from the ways that you did growing up. They read blogs rather than newspapers. They often meet each other online before they meet in person. They probably don’t even know what a library card looks like, much less have one; and if they do, they’ve probably never used it. They get their music online—often for free, illegally—rather than buying it in record stores. They’re more likely to send an instant message (IM) than to pick up the telephone to arrange a date later in the afternoon. They adopt and pal around with virtual Neopets online instead of pound puppies. And they’re connected to one another by a common culture. Major aspects of their lives—social interactions, friendships, civic activities—are mediated by digital technologies. And they’ve never known any other way of life.
Sniper Assassin 2 – Games Reduce Your Bounce Rate
Adding a game to your site might improve your bounce rate. Plus they’re a lot of fun to play. Check this bad boy out: Sniper Assassin 2. Play a game. Think you can beat my high score?
Easter Egg in Google Maps – Personal Street View of Mountain View HQ
Google Maps with a personal touch. Search for the Google HQ in Mountain View and take a peek at the whole Google team. My personal favorite is the guy with the True Love “Candy” sign. Anyone know who he is?
Great Easter Egg in Google Maps! Stay on the lookout for more. :)
Look What Happens While I Don't Post – 2009 pt. 1
I don’t post for a week or two and look at all the stuff that happens!
Brain-computer interface, developed at Brown, begins new clinical trial
BrainGate, an investigational technology being developed to detect brain signals and to allow people with paralysis to use those signals to control assistive devices, is about to begin a second, larger clinical trial. The system is based on neuroscience, engineering and computer science research at Brown University.
If you’re squeamish about eating sushi then we doubt this is going to help. Chef Robot, on display at the International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo, is really just FANUC’s M-430iA sanitary food and pharmaceutical robot with a fleshy appendage — guess the rest of the human is right there on the serving tray.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have developed an ultra-dense memory chip that is capable of storing data for up to a billion years (besting silicon chips by roughly… a billion years). Consisting of a crystalline iron nanoparticle shuttle encased within a multiwalled carbon nanotube, the device can be written to and read from using conventional voltages already available in digital electronics today. The research was led by Alex Zettl, who notes that current digital storage methods are capable of storing mass amounts of data, but last just decades, while, say, some books have managed to last nearly a thousand years, though the amount of data they contain is quite small. The new method, called shuttle memory, is based on the iron nanoparticle which can move back and forth within the hollow nanotu . Zettl believes that, while shuttle memory is years away from practical application, it could have a lot of archival applications in the future.
People who may be affected by a class action lawsuit against Google have been receiving some interesting notices in their inboxes lately. It looks like certain AdWords advertisers are on track to split a $20 million settlement starting September 14th. The lawsuit stemmed from accusations that Google would sometimes exceed advertisers’ daily budgets. Google, while denying any wrongdoing, agreed to compensate them with $20 million in a mixture of cash and AdWords credits, and now it’s down to the settlement hearing in September to determine exactly what will happen next.
Is a Social Media Follower Worth More than a Registered User?
The question is posed:
Is a Follower on Social Media Sites Like Twitter|Facebook Worth More than a Registered User for Your Service?
I believe he or she is. Because our traditional genetic|societal common sense compels us to “hold on to things“, we all have a tendency to fetishize things we feel like we “own”. In the case of contact information, many value an email address over any other form of contact. A “friend” on Facebook? A “follower” on Twitter? A “subscriber” to an RSS feed? Are these types of relationships really as valuable as the relationship formed with an email address? Are these followers on Social Media really worth as much as a registered user who provided their email address to use your service, or receive your newsletter?
I say yes. Even though the average click through rates (CTR) on Twitter is 4%-54% and the average CTR for email is 2%-12% (for B2C) leads us all to instantly acknowledge the better average/min/max performance of Twitter over email marketing, I think we should ignore click through rates in our present discussion because so many factors influence performance of CTR. I’m also going to focus on Twitter instead of Facebook|Myspace|Youtube|Vimeo|Plurk|etc. to save time, space, and focus.
The value of growing and maintaining community on social media to complement building and email contact list is not visible until you grow and maintain it. The value is the community instead of the simple contacts. People using social media tend to share things. Social, remember? Coupled with a sense of community, conversation in social media will evolve into a veritable echo chamber. The message reverberates and repeats. The message is retweeted. Shared. With Social Media (like Twitter) message is treated as a social object. In contrast, with email, the message is more often treated as a transactional object. Kept in an archive if read. Nobody else can see the message. Which leads us to the next big benefit of communicating with followers over social media: transparent, interlinked relationships.
If you’ve been in sales or marketing for any meaningful time, you’ve definitely heard of relationship selling|marketing. The relationship in this model is often kept behind closed doors. The transparency is on your phone bill or in a few folks memory. By communicating over social media, you put your relationship in terms every web user and every search engine understands: hyperlinks. Think about communicating entirely over Twitter to all your followers. Each tweet including a hyperlink back to your message on a page on your website (instead of lost in an email). All that exposure. All those impressions. Thousands of people seeing your message. Marketing bleedover. And not just social media marketing bleedover. Search Engine Marketing bleedover, too. Remember, the links shared on Twitter will be indexed and influence SERPs rankings on Google. And obviously on Twitter’s search.
In addition to community and transparent hyperlinked relationships (which impact SEO), another big benefit to social media communication is the permanence of the message instead of the perceived permanence of the contact. Messages on Twitter have permalinks. That means they are permanently linked. Email communique’s are often deleted (about 75% of the time, they aren’t even opened [don't quote me though]). A tweet doesn’t need to be opened. It is permanently there, visible, improving your SEO ranking, branding your business. Sweet.
Finally, I almost always use my Boxbe email address when registering for a service, which means I never ever hear from services I register for via email (even when they try to contact me [I'm a jerk, I know :) ]). Contrast that with my opening every communication that heads to my Twitter profiles and Facebook profile.
Before I go deep down this road, I’d be honored to hear what you think. Do you think a follower on social media is worth as much or more than a “traditional” registered user for a web service? If not why? If so, why? Preemptive thanks for your contribution. :)
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