Skip to content

Better Search through People #3

picture-3

Mummy are we there yet?

In the past few years I’ve written couple of posts about the opportunities and challenges of search through people (rather than through better algorithm). Couple of quick wins I had recently through my network reminded me to revisit this topic as the last post I wrote was pre-twitter/facebook.

Quick recap - search as we know it still has more muscles than brain. You google something and get 3 zillion results in 0.14 second and now you have to start searching the results. So effectively, when you google something all you get is a massive filing cabinet which you still need to go through in order to find what you’re looking for. It’s easy when you’re looking for a very specific, encyclopedic kind of information (bio of Mozart) but not so easy when you’re looking for nice hotel in Barcelona or a solution for your unique DIY problem.

The idea that for every question I have, someone somewhere has the answer is fairly obvious, yet very appealing. The challenge of connecting me to this someone has a business potential comparable to cheap renewable energy. Few steps in this direction were taken in the past with google and Yahoo answers but these prove somewhat futile (although i must admit that ironically, yahoo answers comes up high on google search…).

The challenge is overcoming basic human motivation hurdle that stem from the asymmetry between the person’s need for an answer and the other(s) who might know that answer. It’s natural to drop everything in time of need and fire up a question to the air, but how do you get anyone to listen and respond? You cannot expect everyone to sit all day and wait for someone to ask them a question they might know the answer for…

The solution then, must come through networks and communities. LinkedIn created their own version which seem to work better (anyone has some data??). Within a community some rules apply:

1. The more people are attached to the group, the more likely they are to contribute

2. People will have stronger motivation to contribute when their contribution is recognized and the benefit they provide to an individual or the collective is made salient.

The most recent and interesting development as far as I can tell is Lazy Tweet:

The idea with LazyTweet is to embrace and extend the questions being asked on Twitter, progressively enhancing Twitter discussions, with the lowest friction possible, while opening those questions up to a wider audience. Think of this as Yahoo! Answers for Twitter

Here lies the problem: thinking of it as Yahoo Answers for Twitter negates the idea of a community to some extant and therefore, I believe, will hinder it’s success. The benefit of taking the idea of better search through people to Twitter has solved one big problem of immediacy - having these random questions on your twitter stream increases the chance for someone to notice.

On the other hand, the volume of questions on your stream (if you follow @lazytweet) is getting a bit disproportionate and out of context (at least for someone like myself who cannot follow more than 120 people or I’ll start losing context and interest very quickly) and it’s becoming counter productive to the project and it brings us to square one - community and context. My educated guess is that your chances to get an answer from your close network (the people who follow you) is higher than getting it from the people who follow @LazyTweet and this is not a big surprise.

Better search through people - are we there yet? Not really but we’ve made a good step forward with the rising popularity of social networks. I now think that the google way will win. Our salvation will probably come from a kick ass algorithm of the semantic web.

What ya think?

Share This

Posted 02 July 2009 † asi § culture § musing § new technology § search ‡ Comments (0)

All culture is inherently recombinant etc.

ji-lee_7

Read it all over at Faris’s, I simply like the work of Ji Lee:

“In 1913, Marcel Duchamp took found objects from the streets and placed them in museums. 96 years later, if Duchamp were alive, he may want to do the very opposite”.

His google-me business card is full of awesomeness - I want one!

google_me

Share This

Posted 30 June 2009 † asi § art § culture § digital § random ‡ Comments (2)

Waiting in line

I hate waiting in line. That’s one of the only things I’m genetically resistant to any cultural assimilation. I’m israeli and I can’t stand waiting in line ;-)

I’ve been thinking of getting myself a pro account on Vimeo for long time now but in the past year I’ve got way too much premium accounts and services that I don’t really need. I paid for most them on the false assumption that they will make me more motivated and dedicated to the craft (photography, productivity, connectivity etc). For some, like Last.FM I’m paying because I just love this platform so much I offer to pay for the value I get of it.

Anyway, I’ve been using Vimeo for uploading videos of Thalia and while I always thought of buying the premuim account for the sake of for more upload space, I held back and waited for the time I will be absolutely certain I need it. So far with 1-3 videos a month, it wasn’t a necessity.

Until today, but not because of space.

I uploaded Thalia’s first miaow video proudly filmed today, (finished in 4 minutes) and received this message on the screen:

picture-11

That was, funnily enough 10min after I read the fantastic piece of Faris on Content Republic where he describes so fucking eloquently the (fascinating) total flux of the content industries in the superhighway that is the interweb and the search for new creative business models. It’s damn hard to get people to pay for a content or a service they can get for free and Faris is giving some fine examples of businesses that managed to break the old binary model of paid-for-consumers or funded-by-ads when they started to ask ‘if we aren’t selling the content, what else will people pay for?’ which immediately reminds me another incredibly clever dude who said that “This isn’t a transition from Business Model A to Business Model B, it’s a transition from Business Model A to Business Models B to Z.”

So Vimeo’s value proposition kicked me right there. You said wait in line to me and I immediately think of check-in, post-office, daddy-donky and Fabric and Waitrose and the tube and the bank…..and I become restless on the inside.

I’m now the proud father of a 10 months old who can miaow and a happy owner of a Vimeo Plus :-)

Share This

Posted 25 June 2009 † asi § Uncategorized § i like ‡ Comments (3)

The law of the few?

Not really a silly moment in techno a-la Taitos but a very telling video from the point of view of understanding human behaviour, herd, infectious, imitation, influencer and how we can spontaneously come together and have fuck loads fun

Cheers Tom

Share This

Posted 04 June 2009 † asi § UGC § culture § digital § i like § music § random ‡ Comments (6)

I’ll show you a tribe

picture-1

For couple of years now I have this fantasy of taking a year off, go back to academia and do a year long ethnographic research + photo book (although i’m the lousiest photographer on earth) + dedicated blog etc with one of the most fascinating urban tribes/communities - the messengers.

I don’t know if my fascination with the messengers is due to their anarchistic flair, their sense of themselves as part of something greater than a job, the general distinctive style and behaviour, or that mixture of work, rather sporty and physically demanding activity with jackass-like nutcase booze-fulled attitude - probably all of the above.

This community is a goldmine for social psychologist to look at the dynamics of social identity, herd, spread of fads and fashions, rituals, behavioural codes and all those things that make us drool ;-). And of course the way the couriers style diffused and influenced broader popular culture - case in point: the massive spread of the fixies (look around you and you’ll notice 2 out of 5 bicycle in London are single fixed gear)

So I was both delighted and disappointed to find this article by Ben Fincham from the university of Brighton who did exactly what i’ve been dreaming of and wrote a fantastic article on this wonderful subculture of the couriers and their unique balance of work and life. It turns out that these nutters have annual global and local gatherings and races that literally replicate their conditions of work. I have to go to one of these some time.

If you want to read this captivating article (rather academic but fantastic read nevertheless) please email or leave a comment and i’l send it to you.

Take a look at some of these videos from around the world:

Kyotoloco

Courier Tattoo competiton

London Calling

R E S P E C T

Share This

Posted 03 June 2009 † asi § amazing stuff § culture ‡ Comments (10)

See you later

picture-8

I know i’ve been really bad with blogging recently but I honestly been completely flat out at work and now i’m off to lie on the beach and eat my mama’s food as well as my favorite restaurants in Tel-Aviv

see you later!

Asi x

Share This

Posted 21 May 2009 † asi § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (1)

Everything is Important, Nothing is Important

WARNING: if you do not wish to read completely incoherent and insignificant quasi philosophical rambling you should turn your head NOW.

picture-29

Few weeks back, and unfortunately not for he first time I stared at 1467 items on my RSS reader and with trembling hand clicked the ‘mark as read’ button. The new(ish) reality of being a father and starting on a new uber-manic job at hyper, left me me with far less time than I had before to read the blogs I’ve collected over the years.

Deleting all those posts with one click as well as occasional 24-72 hours breaks from Twitter (and life goes on believe it or not…) made me think that not only are we still nowhere near solving the problems of information overload, finding the important signal in the sea of noise etc but also, I cannot escape this (fortunately rare) depressing thought that everything is important and therefore nothing is important(?).

Looking at this for example, makes me both very happy but also a bit depressed

I really don’t mean to be quasi-existential here but when every ephemeral act is stored, when we can live without the things that usually seem very important to us, when we have the option of reaching a million people, and the reality of reaching no one….

So maybe Gandhi was right when he said “Almost everything you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you DO IT”. (whatever the f**k he meant by that)”

‘naff said.

Share This

Posted 14 May 2009 † asi § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (6)

This is how I measure social stuff

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about measurement of social marketing activities lately and I think I might be on something. I’m far from solving all the challenges of measuring ‘digital’ and even further to suggest ways to measure the effect of digital on the bottom line (e.g “Driving Purchase Intent” etc.). But I think we’ve developed an interesting combination of areas and metrics that can potentially tell a good story on the effectiveness of our social activities and might give a good indication on ROI (although attaching VALUES to these metrics and benchmarking are still very problematic) .

This has been developed through the work on the cadbury’s going fairtrade blog and other HyperSocial projects. There is actually nothing original in this measurement model. It is built on existing methods and tie together the things we are all talking about for some time now, so credit and thanks to all of you that contributed through conversations, blogs, wikis etc

This model fits best to social projects like company blogs, social networking presence (i.e. facebook fan page) or even the good old microsite and can work on both permanent projects and more short term, campaign-based activities. You just need to tweak and attach the right metrics that tells the right story on your project. And that’s what it exactly does - it tells a story that help you and your client to evaluate what you are doing. Next step is to start building KPIs into these metrics but that’s for another post.

We look at four interrelated areas:


1. Reach: Simply put, we are talking - is anyone listening?

This is the most basic area of measurement and one which is the easiest to attach value to (and the one that naturally client cares the most about). Under reach you measure the relevant metrics of traffic.

* Unique visitors,
* Returns,
* pages views
* A deeper level of performance under reach is conversion to friends and/or RSS subscribers. These are your loyal people.

2. Engagement: Are we interesting? Are we doing something people want to interact with?

This category measures everything that happen on-site and indicates that you are doing something interesting or fun. Look for metrics that indicate that people like what you’re doing:

* Dwell time - do people stay long enough or are they shooting off quickly?
* Conversation rate (comments per post or posts on wall etc.)
* Clicks/UV’s if there are deeper areas
* Uploads / downloads
* Other things you wish people to do - plays, interactions (e.g poll participation, votes etc)

3. Influence: What is the impact we make on the wider web?

Here we simply ask - are we interesting enough for people to talk ABOUT us? Are they sharing us with their friends? The words Buzz and spreadable give me a seriously bad sensation in the back of my throat, but are to common to snub for the sake of this post. You can think of engagement as metrics for ‘owned’ vs. influence/impact as metrics for ‘earned’. Look for any metric/indication that tells you that you create impact off-site in relevant communities. We have to be really honest with ourselves as to who is talking about us, in which contexts and is it part of our objectives ((does this creates positive impact on the brand or on the agency that created it? ).

* Trackbacks - a behaviour in decline but still a good indicator
* Sharing (through Twitter, Social Networks, blogs, forums)
* Mentions on mainstream media (earned, not paid for)
* Social bookmarking (delicious, digg, reddit etc)
* Better visibility on search

4. Sentiment: Are we making people happy? Do they like us?

Here we measure both quantitatively and qualitatively how are we affecting people. This should be measured both on-site and off-site (you can theoretically have very positive comments on your own space but some nasty, cynical conversations outside in the wider web - you want to measure both). Simply count and analyse all relevant traces people leave behind or conversation they create elsewhere:

On-site: (usually fits with the metrics for engagement)
* comments,
* email they sent you

Off-site:
All conversations about you and mentions of you (fits nicely with the metrics for influence -blogosphere, twitterverse, forums etc)

Simplez hey?

Obviously each project deserves a relevant set of metrics depends on your objectives but i think this framework gives you a god start. As i said this is just a first step. Attaching agreeable values and attaching reasonable KPIs is still a bitch and in many cases are still founded on guesswork. But for a long term projects, you can have an overall targets and as you go along you learn about the natural potential of your project. Try to figure out your baseline and work from there - more on this later.

So what do you think? Your feedback is hugely appreciated.

Share This

Posted 24 April 2009 † asi § planning ‡ Comments (7)

I’m looking for a nice person

hiring-th-h-f001

So HyperSocial is going really well and I need some urgent help.

I find it a bit tricky to write a job spec for the person I’m looking for but generally speaking I’m looking for a young and super-enthusiast generalist person to help me do some interesting stuff on the social web.

One key area I need help with is everything tracking, measurement and reporting so you will have to be very comfortable with sitting on a monitoring dashboard and finding some interesting insights and stuff.

I also need help with research and planning on some very exciting projects as well as day-to-day handling, talking to clients and generally having a good, busy times. You will be mostly working with me on HyperSocial projects but you will also get involved with the rest of the brilliant Hyper team.

I think that someone with 1-2 years experience in either digital, media or brand research (e.g. Hall and Partners) that absolutely loves the interwebs, got good strategic mind and wants to break into digital could be a good match (but not a must - if you come from a different background but have a strong urge and ability to do brilliant digital marketing and can convince me you are indeed the right person, you are welcome to contact me)

No recruiters PLEASE.

If you know anyone, please send him/her my way and if they will get hired i will give you a really nice bottle of champagne…

UPDATE: please don’t just leave a comment. email me with your story to a.sharabi@gmail.com

Share This

Posted 23 April 2009 † asi § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (2)

Two comments on tweenbots

tweenbots

Tweenbots is absolutely incredible project by Kacie Kinzer, a student at ITP. You see it / read about it and it makes you want to free-hug someone.

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

If you haven’t seen it yet go and take a look now (but please comeback to read the rest of the post ;-) )

It really moved me and I’ve been thinking about it the whole evening since I picked it up off twitter (thanks herdmeister). Here are my two comments:

1. Simple and genuine is much more compelling than grandiose and choreographed.

Brilliant idea is the new media budget. Here is yet another example how a personal project of anonymous individual takes off like a storm and gets everyone excited, sharing and talking. I’m not doing justice to this fantastic little experiment by comparing it to advertising but couldn’t resist thinking about all those recent ads that try to convey the feeling that people are good. Think Honda’s Let in Shine or do’er and Orange’s people are good together and more, which are all “about telling stories about the brand and making people again feel an emotional attachment to Honda”. A quick check on twitter reveals over 1500(!) tweets for tweenbots vs. just under 300 for Honda. There are various reasons why people find tweenbots ore exciting than Honda’s let it shine (apology again for comparing schnitzel and fish) but there are very obvious lessons we can learn about what makes people tick and how we should think about designing people into marketing. Tweenbots are simple and genuine and that’s 100 more compelling (personally, i should say) than grandiose and orchestrated.

2. We love stories that remind us of our humanity (even if we are humans to robots)

It’s funny how we cling to a minor anecdotal evidence to restore faith in our good nature. How genuinely excited we can get when someone demonstrates the good-will and kindness of strangers. Skim through the tweets and you’ll read assertions like “something that may make you a shed a small happiness tear”, “I know I’m having an overly emotional day when watching videos of people helping Tweenbots literally makes me cry”, ” it reinvigorates my happiness when it comes to other human beings”, “If you ever find yourself thinking that all people are bad, visit this website”. (Mind you, this is NYC, a fairly alienated city to say the list where the beggars and homeless can go unnoticed for years….)

Share This

Posted 16 April 2009 † asi § amazing stuff § art ‡ Comments (3)

Me elsewhere

Green Guys Global Blog







Close
E-mail It