Idea Couture has its roots in digital innovation. Frog, Adaptive Path, my good friends at Normative Design, and many other leading innovation firms also have amazingly strong foundations in the digital world. Three years ago, I left the interactive industry to pursue innovation consulting, and while I expected a painful transition, what I found was that infusing big problems with the sensibilities of the interactive space, no problem is insurmountable. Now, all of these firms call upon that experience to tackle problems much larger than designing websites.

I believe that interactive people are the world’s best innovators.

While today, the process of innovation is often labeled “design thinking”, people from the interactive space don’t really need to call it anything other than their job. The process of innovation has been intuitively embedded in user experience since people first started thinking about how websites work. What’s even more incredible is that the interactive space has only reached one billionth of its potential. While we draw on foundations of industrial design and architecture, we’re blazing trails in other unexplored territory.

Digital people are inventors

In a typical design process, defining constraints of a project is one of the very earliest steps. In the interactive realm, a constraint is treated like an opportunity to push the boundaries of a medium. As a result, people are more than willing to hack the rules or create new rules to make the optimal solution work. Their analytical yet lateral ability to solve problems is second to none. Interactive people are inventors.

Interactive people understand systems

Anyone who grew up in a web firm lived the life of the ugly stepchild. If you were building websites in the early 2000′s, you knew that your entire existence hinged on an appreciation of multiple service and experience paths. You were building within a larger organizational system and context – you were one piece of a puzzle. Interactive people are systems designers.

Empathy is at the core of innovation

A web design process is inherently user centred. It requires an in depth understanding of a person’s goals, and your job is to help them achieve those goals. That being said, interactive people understand that an end user’s experience is a reflection of both what you design and their own environment on the other side of the screen. We deal with issues of accessibility, issues of screen size, mobile considerations, situated experience, and more. Interactive people understand user centred design.

Digital people communicate

Since the beginning of my web career, I’ve understood design thinking tools. Prototyping, wireframing and storyboarding are all essential processes in the digital space. Apply those same skills to a service design problem, or to a product design problem, and suddenly abstract concepts make complete sense to your clients. Interactive people apply the design thinking toolkit every day.

Digital people understand performance

One of the largest barriers to innovation is the burden of proof. Since the very beginning of the digital era, people have been measuring websites to communicate the success of innovation, and drawing relevant parallels where no previous parallels existed. Digital people balance business and user objectives.

Interactive designs are always iterative

The day after you build something, you switch to optimization mode. There’s an inherent appreciation in digital that solutions can be elegant, but can always be improved. The idea of constant improvements and iterative design are fundamental to digital processes. They’re also core to the beliefs of innovators.

The medium is in its infancy

Ask an industrial designer to talk about the web, and they’ll base most of their thinking in what’s current. Talk to an interactive designer about the web, and they talk about visions for the future. Every day, some new considerations enters our design lexicon. And every day, some new startup is experimenting with these tools to push the boundaries of what is possible. Digital people are adaptable and flexible.

Innovation in product is innovation in digital

To solve product and service design problems, we need to migrate towards platform thinking. A product is no longer just an object – it’s a hub of connected information and interactions. Yes, strong industrial design can create an object of desire, but without inherently and intuitively applying digital sensibilities to that product, it will arguably be less competitive. Industries like music and publishing are transforming before our very eyes, and who are the best people to lead us into this unexplored territory?

Any of these qualities on their own are factors we look for when hiring innovation consultants. But what’s incredible about interactive people is that, more often than not, they have all of these qualities. And I know this is just a starting point in a long list of skills. I’m not trying to discount the capabilities of industrial designers, researchers, or architects who have found their way into the innovation space, but I do truly believe that the inherent understanding of all the qualities outlined above put former interactive practitioners in a unique position to solve big, important problems.

So did I miss any?

Mix these all up and what do you get? An global event demonstrating what immense creativity, collaboration, innovation, and an aggressive time crunch can produce — Global Service Jam 2011! Participants from San Paulo, Rotterdam, Oslo, Berlin, Stuttgart, Shanghai, Seoul, Sydney, Barcelona, and of course, Idea Couture office locations, Toronto and San Francisco, were given a theme, (Super) Heroes, and 48 hours to produce service design concepts. The weekend was about pushing the boundaries, pure imagination, and applying the design process to the creation of new service concepts. Post-its flew, coffee was consumed, connections were made, and great fun was had by all.

We at Idea Couture sponsored the San Francisco jam, where 16 participants, mostly strangers, met at the California College of the Arts last Friday to kick off the event. There is no doubt that service design is a growing discipline that corporations around the world must employ to build the most innovative and meaningful experiences for their clients, and we put these tools to practice for our clients every day. Seeing the energy and enthusiasm for this type of work is inspiring for everyone, and we’re pleased to have played a part in encouraging the practice and adoption of service design.

Check out the final service design concepts here, submitted by teams all around the world: http://planet.globalservicejam.org/projects. Bet you can’t stop at just one.

To learn more, follow #gsj11 on Twitter or check out the official Global Service Jam page. May the power of service design continue to proliferate through the world!

It’s hard to dispute that voting platforms have quickly become one of the most popular tools in the cause marketing playbook. As with any new marketing method, these platforms have been a lightning rod for criticism. This week alone, I’ve had several healthy debates with thought leaders in the CSR and Social Innovation space about their value for communities:

“They waste precious, limited charity resources”,

“They tick off the donor list”,

“They celebrate popularity, not good ideas”,

“etc…”

Yesterday morning, I was up at 5AM to attend the Year 2 Aviva Community Fund winner’s event. After another year overseeing Canada’s most successful social media and cause marketing platform, I felt inspired to share a bit more of an insiders view of how these competitions work, and why they are an extremely good thing for causes when used strategically. I have no doubt, there’ll be plenty of disagreement regarding my point of view, as I already hear it on a daily basis. I look forward to some healthy discussion.

“only a few ideas win, everyone else loses”

As someone who curates competitions and sits on the board of a charity, I’ll be the first to say that the allure of a big pot of money is seductive. You’ll be hard pressed to find an organization or school that’s overfunded, so inevitably some organizations are disappointed or angry  when they don’t win.

But to look at these competitions with the singular view that the prize is the only outcome is extremely short sighted. Well designed cause marketing platforms are marketing assets that can leveraged by both sides of the equation. Some organizations are disappointed by the outcome, while others recognize the opportunity that is presented to them the whole way through.

These programs are about marketing, and that marketing is symbiotic. Yes, brands like Aviva and Pepsi win by associating themselves with causes. But charities also win trough promoting their needs through national platforms. Having spoken to many, many, many organizations who have participated in these types of programs, far more ideas get funded than the ones announced. Smart causes use these marketing platforms as a way to bring their needs to national attention. They organize themselves to “win”, whether they get funding through the program or not, by using these programs to educate interested individuals about their needs.

Most importantly, they build a new and expanded audience, which in and of itself is an asset asset.

“they’re just a popularity contest”

Voting, and especially social media voting in a cause marketing platform, is a popularity contest. That popularity brings people to a branded site which creates exposure to the contest organizer. The formula is pretty standard there. Ultimately, a degree of any competition has to do with the ability to rally support – be it a student council vote, or voting in the AMEX Member’s Project. Inherently there’s a hope that a democratic process like voting yields a valid outcome.

The way that I view the Aviva Community Fund is in two phases – the marketing phase, and the cause phase. The marketing phase (up to selecting the finalists) is 100% participant chosen, and 100% the result of an idea’s ability to rally voters. The cause side (judging) narrows the finalist ideas to the winners using detailed criteria designed to identify the most deserving projects with the biggest impact. I reiterate, we find the best idea from a sub-set selected based on popularity. The most deserving ideas get funding.

One final thing to remember. If there’s issue with the popularity contest, we can’t forget that the dollars for programs like this come directly from the marketing budget and not a CSR budget. The result is money (which would normally go to advertising) being directed to causes.

I sure can tolerate a popularity contest if it means $1,000,000 goes to deserving ideas.

“they take a lot of work to enter”

The rationale that these competitions are a distraction is an uninformed rationale for why these platforms are bad.

First, from a pure mechanics perspective, user experience practitioners design these competitions to be as easy to use as possible. For example, in designing our idea submission forms, we deliberately made our forms as simple as possible with the recognition that good ideas come from anywhere. That means our submission process needs to be as easy for a major not for profit to complete as it is for a grade 2 student. To enter the first round of our competition, we’re talking maybe 15 minutes. Add in voting, creating a few images, and shooting a video, maybe 2 hours? The mechanics alone are a negligible distraction.

In the case of the community fund, we also built in a philosophy of progressive disclosure into our submission process, which basically means that the further you progress into the competition, the more we ask you. We needed to balance the needed for judges to evaluate an idea with the amount of effort required to enter the competition, and we didn’t want people to go through the effort of developing complex budgets until they saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

“they’re a distraction to the focus”

Aside from the mechanics, what people are probably really upset about is the effort it takeout to collect come up with ideas, market the idea, and collect votes.

On the ideas creation, I would say it’s the role of charities and community leaders to come up with new and innovative projects to help people. If anything (and I’ve been told this), we’re giving organizations a reason to think about how they can help serve their communities better. I think that’s a pretty positive outcome.

On the marketing side, perhaps one of the best outcomes of these programs is their ability to act as an educational tool. On one hand, we embed marketing education in all of our program design to help causes capture as large an audience as possible. On the other hand, idea creators and supporters are learning about how to market their charities in the age of digital media. I know from first hand conversations that participation in the Aviva Community Fund, for example, has taught a number of organizations about how to use social media.

On the votes point, see my next section.

“we’re draining our database”

If you have issues with these programs creating a distraction, perhaps you should reframe your thinking a little. Maybe a distraction is exactly what these organizations need in order to realize the level of commitment, passion, and interest out there by people who don’t have the means or desire to respond to the one tired message in the marketplace, “Donate now”.

While some people struggle with the burden of the vote, I actually think it’s refreshing to hear charities ask for help in a way other than from my pocket. Voting competitions allow charities to tell a different story, and to get people to act in a different way. Since there is less commitment in giving a vote than a dollar, I think (and have heard) that these voting platforms allow smart organizations to collect new donors as opposed to disenfranchise them. And meanwhile, any smart marketer knows to segment their database.

Voting platforms are an opportunity, and an option

Maximizing the potential of voting-based cause marketing platforms is hard work. I doubt anyone, including this year’s amazing Aviva Community Fund winners, would disagree. But to criticize them without assessing why they exist or what their potential is can be a really short sighted perspective. While it’s easy to make sweeping generalizations, if you actually take the time to analyze how some communities take advantage of these opportunities, you’ll see that they benefit as much as the brand putting on the competition.

And of course, if I still haven’t convinced you, just don’t enter. But I promise you, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

There is no shortage of recommendation tools on the web. Amazon recommends books, Pandora recommends music, YouTube recommends video, just to name a few of the more popular online services. While the added value is obvious in the realm of personalized content discovery, if we keep adding streams of information, diminishing returns will inevitably ensue. More is not always better, because there’s only so much that we can digest. This notion reminds me of an article published last year regarding the volume of ‘friends’ we actually maintain relationships with in our social networks. Similarly, in regard to media consumption, the signal to noise ratio does not necessarily improve if that which was once signal converts to noise as new signals are introduced into a system. We simply only have room for so much.

I’m in the mood for an info purge. A digital cleanse, if you will. And I’d like some assistance with this, please. I want to improve my personal signal to noise ratio by not only adding real signal, but by shedding some noise as well. (I’m writing this post, of course, because I want to improve yours as well.) Sure, Google Reader provides trend analysis that illustrates which feeds I’m really reading, but I’d like to see a recommended unsubscribe-list. I’d also like to see Twitter provide monthly ‘un-follow recommendations’ based on my click-throughs (or rather, lack thereof) and trend analysis of those that I follow. I won’t have to accept these recommendations, but it’d be a nice start.

It should be said that I recognize significant value in following/subscribing to channels that reside outside one’s comfort zone or direct areas of interest. It is in these places that we often discover the seeds of new inspiration, and in general, grow our intellectual capacity across the horizontal plane of knowledge. I’m quite fond of this as a general learning principle. In fact, I think it’s critical to both personal and collective growth. But it’d be nice to have some help, some assistance in weeding out the nonsense.

Mashable recently posted an article about how Twitter users have changed in the last year. Consider that the number of users with more than 100 followers has tripled from 2009 to 2010. Now, this may simply reflect the broadening adoption of the service and sophistication in which people are using it. After all, those with 5-100 friends is almost the same. This statistics says nothing about a change in the signal to noise ratio. But I’ve got a gut feeling about this one. I know what my behavior is like on the platform, and I think I perform more active curation that most, and I’m definitely feeling the occasional swell of spam so I can only imagine how the passive Twitterers feel from time to time. I’m writing this post to call attention to this phenomenon and to motivate you to take action. I think we’ll all be better for it.

Perhaps there’s an ideal quantity of junk that is non-core to our interests yet potentially useful. 1 in 5 feels too high. Maybe 1 in 10? Yes. I’ll try that. I’m planning to spend some quality time before the year’s over with both my Twitter and Google Reader, to refine my feeds to a more tolerable and value-adding configuration. I suggest you do the same. For approximately every 9 “core” feeds that I’ll follow, I’ll permit 1 “non-core”.

What’s my favorite consumption method, you ask? Flipboard on iPad.  With Facebook, Twitter and full Google Reader integration, it’s the best I’ve ever had. Pulse is in solid second place. Very smilar functionality, but very different experience design. They both allow me to integrate all my sources on the iPad while provided tools to share, and also store items via my preferred archiving mechanism, Instapaper (aka Read Later).

Let’s call this the Great Purge of 2011, a digital cleanse in an age of exponentially increasing streams of information that undoubtedly cause mental clutter, less focus and less retention. On that note, I intend to blog a whole lot more in 2011, and I hope that as you purge your streams you choose to continue to follow me and the entire Idea Couture / Noodleplay team!

AMR @amrubin

That’s a big question that I don’t think the world of crowdsourcing community has quite figured out yet.

Cause Marketing is Not CSR

Here’s an important level-set in the discussion of these platforms – branded cause competitions are a form of cause marketing, not CSR (corporate social responsibility). The difference is small but significant. Cause marketing is a marketing relationship where there is an expected brand benefit, where CSR plays in the realm of philanthropy. In cause marketing, it’s corporate first, cause second.

One of the big debates against these programs is that, “If these companies are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, they shouldn’t make people work for it”. This is a classic example of confusing CSR with CM. I couldn’t disagree more. Cause marketing is not a replacement for existing CSR programs. These programs aren’t just a re-allocation of philanthropy dollars, they result of net new new dollars being contributed to causes from a marketing budget. There needs to be positive brand return, or the program will disappear. So if a little charity work means a lot of new dollars being made available for causes, I’m all for it.

So why does CSR vs. CM matter?

Beyond executing against a program’s rules, cause marketing initiatives have no real responsibility to go any further than giving away a stated prize. Community idea competitions usually result in hundreds or even thousands of new ideas being submitted. Some of those ideas are unnecessary or impossible to implement, but many others represent a bottom up voice for what’s needed in the community.Whether intentional or not, these platforms have given a voice to ignored communities, marginalized populations, and scrappy causes. They have the ability to bring attention to there needs in ways that used to be reserved for behemoth not for profit organizations.

But as with any competition, there are winners and losers. Cause marketing idea competitions make plenty of ideas come to fruition. As a marketing competition, it can’t be reasonably expected that the marketer take responsibility to manage and push forward every idea submitted. In the case of the Aviva Community Fund, we partnered with Benevity in 2010 so that registered charities can use the platform to connect donations as a way to migrate from CM to CSR platform and to let the ideas live on. But we can’t expect that a soft drink or credit card company follow up on every idea – it’s not good business.

The result is that many important ideas get forgotten once the next round of voting starts.

Government and community idea competitions
Idea platforms showcase community needs. So nothing could be worse than a community need being flagged in a competition, then going unfulfilled or un-evaluated. The crowdsourcing competition model uses voting as a way of making idea evaluation manageable, but just because an idea isn’t popular or because the idea creator doesn’t know how to use facebook doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good idea.

In a previous blog post about classifying crowdsourcing platforms, I introduced a concept called Crowdsourcing Researching -using crowdsourcing as a tool to articulate previously unknown or unmet needs. These ideas platforms are an amazing Crowdsourcing Researching tool to understand community needs. FixMyStreet is a great example of how this can work in government, and with many municipalities moving towards philosophies of open government, listing to the crowd has to be a vertical of activity.

My hope (dream, aspiration) is that in the long term, these competitions find ways to formalize their relationships with government as a way to ensure that all ideas receive the attention they deserve. For the winning ideas, they get a fast-track to implementation under the Cause Marketing program rules. But for all other ideas, they find a formalized way to be reviewed by government agencies to ensure there’s an opportunity for implementation. Idealized, yes I know, but important.

What are your thoughts?

Having spent the better part of the last two years working on the  Aviva Community Fund and MIT Global Challenge platforms, and working on ways to see ideas live beyond the length of a competition, I can tell you that this new form of bottom up innovation represents an important evolution in how problems are solved in the world. And as long as they continue to be brand building powerhouses, private organizations are going to continue to collect important community ideas. What do you think should happen to private competition ideas?

On a related note about karma, BP is at the top of the bad karma list for sure for its oil spills in the Gulf. During moments like this, it’s usually the true test for the public relations department to come out and perform some kind of crisis management or publicity “clean-up”. Check out @BPGlobalPR on twitter – after reading a few tweets I realized that their PR strategy is to be truly honest. In fact, BP is admitting that they are the bad guy and they are also selling “BP cares” t-shirts to benefit healthygulf.org.

If twitter activism is not enough to keep you informed and entertained, JESS3′s oil spills Firefox plug-in will certainly put a smile on the face – If you visit the site, your screen page will be covered in oil whenever the word “BP” appears. While the above mentioned might not have immediate impacts to the act of bad karmas, it sure is a great outlet for more public awareness and engagement.

Organizations are increasingly turning to open innovation platforms as their source of innovation.

Open innovation platforms (or crowdsourcing platforms) are a way to involve consumers in the process of innovation. Here at IC, we have built examples pretty amazing open innovation platforms – the Aviva Community fund and the MIT Ideas Challenge that are helping prove the case. You can also check out Open Innovators for dozens of other examples of programs that work. As our fearless leader Idris Mootee recently wrote in his article What you don’t know about Crowdsourcing and why they often fail, it’s not a silver bullet for innovation. But when used in a defined way as part of the research and development process, they can be quite successful.

Solving the worlds problems one 2×2 at a time

A lot of organizations struggle to wrap their heads around open innovation platforms because they toil with their purpose in the innovation cycle – what is the role of the platform within the innovation pipeline. With that in mind, I’ve spent a bit of time sketching an organizational principal for open innovation platforms. Obviously an organization can choose to involve external parties at any point in the innovation process – but the emphasis of this thinking is focused on what would be classically viewed as research through development (as opposed to the commercialization).

Do you have a problem? X AXIS
The first decision criteria is “Is there a defined problem”.

On one side of the equation, many organizations are submitting or asking explicit questions to the audience for solving – they have a defined problem to be solved. For example, Innovation Exchange solicits “Challenges” (specific problems to solve) from major corporations. I call this “innovation inspired by the business” – the key driver of creativity is based off of a fundamental business-side need or problem.

On the other side, some organizations just want good ideas that align with their brands – they have undefined problems and look to the crowd to both explicitly state challenges and opportunities. In short, they hope the crowd both provides both self identifies the problem and articulates a solution to the problem. An example of this would be the over-mentioned “my Starbucks ideas”. I call this “inspired by invention”, as it often manifests itself through the creative ingenuity of the crowd. It could just as easily be called “Innovation inspired by needs”.

When can the crowd play? Y AXIS
The second decision criteria is “When do you involve the crowd”?

On one side of the equation, organizations involve external participants early in the innovation process. Involving customers early results in raw, often messy ideas that may or not reflect any possible reality. I think of this as a platform for actively soliciting feedback for “opportunity collection” because there tend to be a lot of undefined directions that can be pursued or that can inspire lateral thinking.

On the other side, organizations can involve participants late in the innovation process. At this point, organizations are often looking for full concepts, designs, or solutions that represent a full solution to a problem. Examples of this would be Google’s Lunar Prize, where the criteria for winning is to “successfully land a privately funded craft on the lunar surface and survive long enough to complete the mission goals of roaming about the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending a defined data package, called a “Mooncast”, back to Earth.”. This is an example of “solution collection” – getting many external participants to come up with multiple, well articulated solutions.

The quadrants of organization-led open innovation platforms

Based on this model for understanding open innovation platforms, there are four primary opportunities for organizations to use open innovation platforms to drive the innovation process internally.

Defined Problem + Early Involvement = Crowdstorming. Articulating a specific problem to consumers and asking for many raw responses. This is pretty much like a massive brainstorm, and works as a way to stock the innovation pipeline early. Output: Lots of raw solutions to a specific problem with varying quality. Example: Fiat Mio

Undefined Problem + Early Involvement = Researching. Ask consumers to come up with solutions to undefined problems. The real value here is the articulation of previously unknown or unmet needs, collected through the initial articulation of customer problems used as a rationale for the solution. Output: Explanation or justification of previously unarticulated consumer challenges or needs with a small number of solutions of varying quality. Example: Dell Idea Storm

Defined Problem + Late Involvement = Prototyping. When you involve the consumer at this point, you’re really asking for a specific designed solution to a problem. Depending on how late in the innovation process they are involved, the output can be anything from concept sketches to fully-functioning prototypes. Output: Depending on how late the challenge is put to the crowd, and how defined the solution must be, expect a small number of solutions. Example: Supdaroo or one of my favorite sites, threadless.

Undefined Problem + Late Involvement = Adopting. Some organizations choose to build idea orphanages, allowing external participants to submit fully thought-out and conceptualized product concepts that may or may not align with their interests. Would-be inventors can submit their concepts with the hope of the organization moving on their idea. Output: Well thought out ideas that may or may not be relevant to the organization. Example: Lego Design By Me

Yes, no maybe so?

Obviously open innovation platforms differ in terms of where they play in an organization’s innovation cycle. In practice, each of the quadrants of the open innovation platform classification isn’t mutually exclusive. But in terms of understanding where their value lies, I think it’s a good starting point.

So what do you think? Agree with the classification? Have any recommendations on how to make it better? Have any great examples of crowdsourcing applications that I’ve missed? Join the comment thread and let me know. Also, if you’re interested in Open Innovation and the Virtuous Cycle, be sure to read Henry Chesbrough’s epic book Open Innovation.

From April 7th – April 10th, I’ll be attending and speaking at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization conference in Toronto. These are my thoughts, feelings, and (hopefully) epiphanies from interacting with the world’s best and brightest in the world of digital measurement.

WEDNESDAY – APRIL 7TH – 9:35 PM

eMetrics day one. First off, the conference director Andrea Hadley did an awesome job putting things together. As with any conference, the true direction of thought leadership happens over dinner (not on stage), and sadly my inbox had to take priority this evening. So at this point, all I can offer is a quick rundown and a few opinions from the first sessions of the day.

Kickoff

After Andrea gave a quick intro, Alex Langshur, President of the Web Analytics Association, talked a bit about the WAA. A good summary highlighting the emphasis on community beyond Web Analytics Wednesday, legislation of privacy information, and education. I’m a big supporter of the WAA’s agenda, so it was a great way to start.

NHL.COM

Theresa Locklear, the director of Web Analytics & Customer Insight talked extensively about the reporting practices of the NHL. I was impressed by their degree of transparency – sharing numbers, talking about real case studies (albeit, mostly wins), and highlighting a few examples of real life optimization success. She also showcased an analyst team bigger than many (five to be exact). Clearly the NHL sees value in data driven decision making.

But at the same time, something kept popping into my head. There were quite a few examples of web optimization in the presentation, and when I asked about testing, they said they did none. In my mind, that means the decisions are largely left up to heuristics. Can’t black box that.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative panel

I’ll be honest – I caught what I could of the panel. But I’m trying to buy a house right now in Toronto, and in this market when the phone rings, you answer. But I did see enough to have a few observations.

A. I’m not sure I fully understand the logic behind having five people with (or formerly with) “Analyst” or “Consultant” in their title debating the merits or uses of qualitative data. I think we lost an important perspective by having no pure qualitative researchers representing their field. Back in my old web days, I used to think anyone could do qualitative research. When you work with PHD’s in the subject, people trained in observing and interpreting human behaviour, you recognize that there’s a difference. A few discussions at the WAA Mixer after the session reinforced my thinking.

B. When did “Quantitative” and “Business” become interchangeable? As the discussion progressed, it felt like a bit of a B-School / D-School discussion – not in terms of one versus the other, but in terms of purpose. Research is used for a lot of reasons, and yes, in some situations one is preferred over the other. Tonight felt rigid, like every situation was an either/or but not a both. Marko Hurst was the exception who I thought represented both disciplines well.

So tonight was largely a technology, mathematics, and alienation free evening. A positive in my eMetrics journey. Looking forward to a big day tomorrow.

WEDNESDAY – APRIL 7TH – 7:54 AM.

Today is my start of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization conference in Toronto, an event I am simultaneously looking forward to and dreading. On the “looking forward to” side, there are many, many awesome speakers presenting. From Avinash Kaushik to Jim Novo (a hero in the space) to my always entertaining former co-conspirator Christopher Berry, it’s an all star lineup.  I’ll also be presenting the numbers behind the Aviva Community Fund, a marquee project for Idea Couture in the social innovation and cause marketing space.

On the “dread” side, I can’t help but feel this conference is going to be the end of my formal association with the digital measurement community.I’ve been a practicing Web Analytics analyst for about 6 years now – an old guy in digital terms. But even in that space, I always felt a bit like an outsider as a user experience strategist (researcher) first and an analytics practitioner second – a divide that is becoming an argument of validation versus prediction.

Meanwhile, many of the dominant conversations are distant and foreign. As Web Analysts, we focus our efforts on what will derivate the largest impact. Usually that means optimizing the user experience around the highest revenue-generating opportunities. Rather than focus our efforts on any one individual, we analyze patterns because it’s a better use of our time. But it seems as though we’ve lost our own way – now focusing in on technologies and methods designed to derive actionable results around strategies that most clients can’t afford to build in the first place.

Over the past six years, I’ve seen an industry migrate technologies, define definitions, formalize education, and find its way onto the book shelves of many of my friends (a big win when you feel you’re in a niche space). Our current direction has me concerned that everything’s about to get effed up.

For the rich few, yes, these new methods and technologies can (and will) create a competitive advantage. But for the poor greater, this only further creates barriers to entry – introducing alienating languages, foreign skills, and high costs. I’ve heard many people in this industry talk about how wonderful Web analytics is because it’s accessible to marketers and (with a little help), it can be understood all the way to the top. Because of this, there is power in our recommendations.

While I can’t be certain yet, I get the sense that digital measurement is going the way of the great black box – a fifedome for a chosen few to understand. It’s also focusing on things most clients simply can’t resource against. While, yes, the decision support may push us towards greater accuracy, we can’t forget the politics behind all of this. I’ve been in enough Marketing Business Intelligence briefings to know (whether right or wrong) who makes the final decisions. In the world of mixed quantitative and qualitative data, whoever tells the best story usually gets the most attention. Black boxes don’t make for good stories.

If you ever visit MIT, you’ll see that their floors look antiquated and cracked. It’s because, in many cases, the hallways of MIT were  where the building materials and construction methods were first developed, and they want every student to now, and remember the origins.

Evolution and revolution are both needed, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore where we came from. I’m hoping as the conference moves forward I see a little humanization in the midst of our attempts to automate human behaviour.

So, Facebook is evolving.

With emphasis on at least 3 core web services – search, chat and the upcoming email – Facebook is getting more serious about functions that Google, among others, are doing well at providing. It makes sense. So here are some quick thoughts on what 400 million users are experiencing on Facebook these days:

A bigger search bar, center stage.

Why it’s good for Facebook:

Keeps users in the site; search is clearly important, if it’s done well people may use it. Facebook controls not all but a lot of social capital on the web. Social search has obvious value for them (and us), but will it be enough? Not quite. Then… wait for it…. Bing! At least it’s trying now. With a lot of help from Microsoft meaningful search results can surface from within the Facebook wall.

Why it’s lame:

Integrated search is not executed well at all. Maybe I just don’t know about the secret and strategic plan to roll out reasonable usability at a snail’s pace? The search results don’t integrate with the Bing-driven web results that remain a click away from the sidebar. Google is always atop my browser, one click or keystroke away (F6 for those who don’t know). Why would I switch? Un. Bloody. Likely. Here’s a free tip for you, Facebook: if you can’t solve the true integration challenge, simply try placing Bing results right next to social results. Make that more visible right off the bat and some of us might actually intend on typing something into your search box rather than doing so accidentally. (But as of course that’s unlikely to happen, because we’ve got F6.)

Slightly more accessible chat.

Why it’s good:

Keeps users in the site; chatter is constant. Lots of people sign into this feature already. Maybe now the rest of us who don’t use it a lot will think of turning it on now and again. You know, because your chat box isn’t only available from the bottom-right anymore (a location also known as “the last place a person in the western world naturally directs their eyes towards”)

What’s missing:

3rd party email service integration, Facebook content integration, voice and video chat. Lots of work to do here, but doable, and potentially very useful. What else is missing? My objectivity. At some point in this post I began addressing Facebook as “you”. Ha.

Upcoming email service.

Why it’s good:

While they won’t likely get my business in this area, if rolled out properly they could get a lot of newcomers rockin’ the …@fbmail.com or ….@fb.com – if they could somehow pry that domain from the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Why you’ll wait for version 2:

Facebook will probably push social context down our throats, ignoring that email experience that do not need to evolve into a frenzy of likes and threaded rambling. After all, Google provides Wave for that. If my email procedures get just 5% less efficient, a huge time-suck will ensue. I can’t risk that. This’ll be a tough one for Facebook to generate conversion from, but new adoption is another story.

Ready? Set? Now race to the middle!

In a way, as Google gets more serious about the social game and Facebook moves towards the domains of the Mountain View Machine, we’re looking at a race to the middle that will have some very interesting outcomes, and perhaps some friendly ones as well. Clever mashups are already around; check out Threadsy. Some cool integration there. Now if only it was executed by the data sources themselves, in collaboration with each other. Imagine if Google and Facebook innovated together? Unlikely, I know. But the economies of scale could be there for their servers appetites. Lotta pictures on that site. And growing. Okay okay, enough economic rationale. It’s complex and they are fighting for glory. One is focused on implicit results and the other, explicit. And yes, the fight is too good for now. Like most of us, I enjoy watching it. I also find value in multiple services. I enjoy many benefits from several cloud services, and as for the drawbacks, I try to minimize my encounters with them. I like that the industry is busy and competitive because it’ll make result in better products, ones of better value. Mistakes along then way, for sure. But reasonable competition for the masses. I like that they’re trying.

Trying… and killing it out there… here are some recent stats… go to Facebook the source.

More than 400 million active users

50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day

More than 35 million users update their status each day

More than 60 million status updates posted each day

More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month

More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week

More than 3.5 million events created each month

More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook

More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook

More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day

Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

To be diagnosed as having FTAD, a person must meet certain criteria. At least 2 or 3 of the following 6 criteria must be present at any time during a 5-6 months period:

1/. The first thing is tolerance. This refers to the need for increasing amounts of time on Facebook to achieve satisfaction and/or significantly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of time/ The often have multiple Facebook windows opened at any one time. 3 is usually a sign and over 5 you’re helpless.

2/. After reduction of Facebook/Twitter use or cessation, it causes distress or impair social, personal or occupational functioning such as wondering why your Vista is so fast and improved etc. These include anxiety; obsessive thinking about what is written on your wall on Facebook etc.

3/. Important social or recreational activities are greatly reduced and or migrated to Facebook. Instead of sending an email you post a message on your friend’s page about canceling a lunch appointment. You now stop answering your phone call from your Mom and insist she should contact you through Facebook chat.

4/ This is getting serious if you start express your affection to your girl friend through Twitter, take out to eat at your FB Café World and kiss your girlfriend’s home page.

5/ Your bookmark takes 15 minutes just to scroll from top to bottom or 8 of 10 people in your friend’s list you have no idea of who they are and you have over 1000 friends in your FB list.

6/ When you meet people you start introducing yourself by following “see you in Facebook” or your dog has its own Facebook profile. You invite anyone you’ve met and any notifications, messages and invites reward you with an unpredictable high, much like gambling.

As we spend more and more time online no questions it can be addictive. Some say that there is no such thing as Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD). I am not sure we’ve any answer for that yet. I am sure the pharma companies will be quick to say that there is medication solution out there with psychoactive drugs.

Call it Facebook?Twitter addiction or fetish, I see this as progress of enlightenment for the modern life. Our modern culture is unconsciously penetrated by the information (useful and useless) and we are all struggling with them. Social networks collapse the difference between culture and practical life and our culture is codified and distributed through the Internet. As a result the ‘culture’ industry is now being expanded beyond fashion, music and magazines.

Many of these information that we’re exposed to on the Internet does not at all ‘signify’ true information or freedom from deception but it has reduced significantly the impact of any mass deception. The needs of people to connect, along with the growth of social connectivity, would raise the quality of the social whole to a new and higher level. The organic composition of our social networks is growing. That determines network as means of finding self-identities and not only as resources. Addiction may not be such a bad thing after all.