The lines between science fiction and the world as we know it are certainly blurring. While we don’t have autonomous machines walking among us today, the technologies in both robotics and artificial intelligence are progressing significantly. We may not have cloning machines, but 3D printers have become an essential tool in the prototyping of new products. And while we’re a long ways away from the ubiquitous computing vision presented in Wall-E, where people live their lives with no awareness of the digital environment they live in, our behavioral dependency on ubicomp, even now, makes it seem as though Pixar’s view of the future is a possibility (albeit, a bleak one).

Ubicomp is not Black or White

Ubicomp is a vision of the future. But if we think of it as all or nothing, we’re sure to miss out on an incredible transformation of society. The ubicomp vision presented in films, academic literature and Microsoft promotional videos seems to be an “all” – everything, every object, contains computing capabilities and works perfectly in unison with its environment.

If we accept that a full-fledged, overnight transformation to a ubicomp society is never going to happen, then we can recognize that we’ve already taken several giant steps towards integrating ubiquitous computing elements into our every day lives. Behaviorally, we’re already well on our way. We’re living in the gray.

Ubicomp & You

Small ubicomp interactions have been around for quite some time. You probably don’t realize it (that’s sort of the point), but there are hundreds of examples of invisible interactions with sensing, inferring, data transferring machines that have made their way into our lives already. From sensors at stop lights that help manage traffic flows to weight sensors in elevators to the automatic shutoff switches that turn off your iron when you’ve let it idle for too long , simple, single function computing has been making our lives safer and more efficient for over a decade. However, most of the examples we have from the past decade represent little technically-enabled blips in our life line that are the ubicomp equivilent of dipping our toes in the water.

This is not the future but the past.

These days, ubicomp has taken on a significantly more important role in product design, serving as a key form of product differentiation. In fact, it’s difficult to find a category of products that hasn’t in some way been “upgraded” with new computational capabilities.  And with this new form of invention, streams of products are  seamlessly replacing the skills humans have relied upon for thousands of years. It’s no longer about efficiency and safety, but about enhancing (supporting, replacing) skills.

Stop light sensors change the rules of how the world works, today’s ubicomp is changing who we are as a species.

Case  1. GPS & Where We’re Situated

For thousands of years, humans have relied on instincts, heuristics and tools to tell us where we are. Maps & compasses required a distinct set of skills, and in their absence, we relied on the stars to direct our path. Fast forward to today, and it’s difficult to find a car that doesn’t contain a GPS system. Humans have embraced the GPS technology so fully that there are literally hundreds of online stories of “car meets lake,” when enthusiastic GPS owners trus their electronic maps over their own visual skills. This isn’t an evolution of the tool. GPS is a complete overhaul of a skill (and clearly before the technology is perfected). We’re always somewhere, and ubiquitous is fulfilling the need of telling us where that is.

Case  2. Ambient Communications & What We’re Doing

While GPS is causing us to lose a skill, the ability to push status notifications to social networking sites has created a new behavior – updating. The desire to feel connected by letting the world know what where why and how we’re doing everything has created a consumer-side demand for devices that facilitate that process. Mobile phones, often considered the gateway to ubiquitous computing, are currently the tool of choice to provide these updates, but with examples of ovens that automatically update Twitter when fresh bread comes out of the oven, input sensors that update facebook when a baby kicks in the woumb, and shoes connected to communities of runners, there are plenty of examples of trigger-based communications that automatically inform the world when something worth mentioning happens. The demand for updating has demonstrated an interest in ubiquitous computing products that do the work for us. Real time is the new status symbol.

Case  3. There’s an App for That!

Over the past year, Apple has successfully popularized the catch phrase there’s an app for that. Since the iPhone app store’s introduction, more than 2 billion apps have been downloaded (with a half billion downloads in the last quarter alone). The total number of apps in the store currently exceeds 85,000. With an app for every scenario, there is a clear, consumer driven demand for computing to take a more prominent role in our lives. People are appifying every aspect of their lives, relying on a form of ubicomp to do everything for them, from telling them the whether when they’re already outside to calculating their tips to keeping them entertained on the street car in to work.

What’s clear from all of these examples is that there is a consumer driven demand for ubiquitous computing in our lives. While we may not be living out Pixar’s fantasy of the future, the foundation of who we and what we do is changing based on the availability of ubiquitous computing. I’m not here to convince you that it’s a good or a bad thing (I have my own opinions). But no matter how you feel about it, our evolution to a ubicomp world is happening.

Look around a bit and I’m sure you’ll notice.

I recently bought a kayak from one of these last types.

It started during a Twitter exchange between myself and a friend in which I mentioned I wanted a kayak. Kayak ownership always struck me as far-fetched since I live in downtown Toronto and I don’t have a car, nor do I have a cottage.

I gained a follower that day, @davrutick, the president of a company called Folbot that makes folding kayaks. Until that moment I never knew such a thing existed. I followed him back and explored his website. Not only was it attractive and informative, it included a blog and a customer forum, the former frequently and thoughtfully updated by David AvRutick and the latter a surprising resource for all sorts of in-depth discussion on the company’s boats, their strengths and shortcomings, other kayaks, comparisons between Folbot models, comparisons to traditional hard-shell kayaks, and general chatter from customers new and old. Though hosted at folbot.com, they maintained a hands-off approach to the forum. Conversations inside it seemed refreshingly honest.

Between these two sources and the president’s enthusiastic tweets about everything from the kayaks, to Tabasco sauce, to his daughter’s softball practices, it wasn’t long before I felt I had a grasp on the Folbot vibe and culture even though they’re located in South Carolina. Since they only sell online and the product isn’t cheap, it takes a pretty high level of open communication to successfully sell these things. Each boat is made to order and comes with a lifetime guarantee, which several forum posters attested to the company honouring. Ongoing Twitter updates show the stages of handcrafting and testing as different models are constructed and assembled at weekly QC meetings. One blog post detailed how one of the kayak models was recently improved based on feedback a user had posted in the forum. It was as interesting as it was reassuring.

When I purchased, I tweeted the president that I’d done so and asked if he might take a couple of photos of my boat being made, since he’d asked in the past for requests for factory photos. He sent me 20 shots including most if not all the steps in the build, right up to the point where it was packed in the box waiting for shipping.

After it arrived, he tweeted at me to check that I’d been able to assemble it without any problems, and he has since commented on photos I’ve taken of it and in it.

Aside from it being a fantastic craft on the water and the fact it conveniently breaks down into a duffel I can haul on public transit or on a trailer behind my bike, it’s the best customer service I’ve ever received, and an example of one way to seamlessly integrate social media into business culture.

Kayak shell being sewn

Kayak shell

Testing and QA

Ready to go!

We have seen social media take a new and increasing role in the word-of-mouth (WOM) consumer influence paradigm; word of mouth traditionally meant consumers speaking directly to one another and sharing experiences with products or services which have had an impact on their lives (good or bad).  Of course, communication between people (most of which may be potential consumers) is what social media is all about. This is one of the reasons why social media is so interesting for marketers; a consumer hearing a recommendation (or negative comment) from a friend or acquaintance can be so much more powerful and authentic than a company communication.

Not only does social media offer a medium where consumers can share potent product and service experiences, but the range is impressive as well….the definition of ‘friend’ or ‘acquaintance’ has perhaps shifted from years past, meaning we may now be open to receiving advice from a wider range of people.

The challenge is that market research, as an industry, seems to be struggling to keep up with the measurement of the new WOM paradigm. While usage and attitude toward social media can be tracked (such as hours per day, channels used, etc) can be tracked, specific interactions are less easily measured. It can be very difficult for respondents to recall on a survey instrument, when and where they have noticed brand mentions and/or brand communications online, even though these touchpoints may have had an impact on perceptions of the brand.

This means that currently, measurement of the online and social media WOM impact is often left to web analytic firms. It must be said that the approach may also be flawed, in that measurement of web ‘page views’ and social media ‘product mentions’ a) do not take into account touchpoints that are unseen and unsold (such as a poorly placed web ad that is simply not seen), and b) must guess as to what these metrics mean for the brand.

We at Idea Couture have a few ideas as to how to tackle these issues, but feel it would be interesting to hear ideas from the community on how this can be handled.    If there are creative ways to both a) track consumer interaction on social media, and b) measure the impact of this on perceptions of the brand (or, perhaps more importantly, sales of same!),  please let us know your thoughts!

My hat is off to the folks at Best Buy for their gumption and audacious embrace of social media. Case in point, this week saw the launch of twelpforce, a twitter-based service where anyone can tweet customer service-related questions to @twelpforce that are then answered by any of the hundreds of Best Buy store employees who have signed up to be part of the ‘force’. As well, some online marketing/ promotional tweets are posted for all to see.

Below is a twelpforce commercial that summarizes the idea nicely:

This innovative offering reinforces the company’s focus on service, which I think is an astute strategy given the competitive pressures that they are facing from all sides. One way to keep your customers happy is to deal with them on their own terms, and opening up another channel / option for customer communication is to be commended.

Of course, when you’re breaking new ground, it’s impossible to launch without a couple of kinks. After observing the first few days of furious twelpforce activity, I have a couple of quick question marks and suggestions.

1. Are 140 characters enough to convey enough detail about my question?
   The answer is ‘it depends’. In some cases, the question requires just a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, e.g. @TWELPFORCE do you guys sell macs? However, the limitations of the medium become apparent when the customer needs to provide some more detail in order to get a tailored product recommendation. See below for a dialog with a customer who is looking for a laptop (Note: I’ve disguised the customer`s twitter ID):

@twelpforce; what is the best laptop from $600-$800
@[BestBuyCustomer] There are so many choices! What are you looking to do? You a gamer? Student? You have a lot of music and pict… via @agent15616
@TWELPFORCE student /play games
@[BestBuyCustomer] Depending on what type of games, you may need to spend a little more to get a decent graphics card. via @agent15616

I’m left wondering how many meandering threads of tweets will be required to answer a question that could be taken care of more quickly via other channels.  I’ve visited various tech forums in the past, and below is a more typical information-rich post from one of the users of Best Buy’s own community forum site:

I am looking for a nice computer for a laptop that would be good for running Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Movies, and music. It needs to be under $1200.

I want it to have at least:

4gb memory

Graphics card with 1gb memory dedicated

250gb Harddrive

Large screen

I prefer Hp but i am willing to look at other brands as well.

Do you have any recomendations?

Thank you.

I hope that as twelpforce users grow accustomed to this new tool, they begin to understand what sorts of questions are twitter-appropriate. Perhaps Best Buy could provide some suggested guidelines for inquiry types as well. In many cases, a directional answer from an expert would suffice.

2.   Promotional messages are getting buried in the support conversations.
In addition to the customer service / guidance tweets, @twelpforce also offers up some promotional content. Below are some examples:

Trouble with your iPod or MP3 Player? Bring it into Geek Squad / Best Buy for us to take a look at it for you! (via @… via @BBYAppleValley

Geek Squad Virtual Agents are ready to take the hassle out of computer repair. Help is just a click away. http://bit.ly/vV3… via @BestBuy687.

However, the vast majority fall into the customer service category. If you look at the stream of tweets on the @twelpforce page, you’ll feel like you’ve placed a bug in the middle of their call center, viewing myriad snippets of many support requests. Absent any voyeuristic tendencies, odds are that you won’t be reading through them all, and so I fear that most users won’t ever see the promotional messages. Perhaps the promotional tweets should be taken care of via another distinct ID to preserve the focus on service that the twelpforce name suggests.

3.   Is there a way that can we all benefit from this collective knowledge?
Twelpforce works very well on a one-on-one basis, i.e. when a customer tweets a question and gets a response. From what I’ve seen, it’s clear that many Best Buy employees are both knowledgeable and eager to help and voice their opinions. However, I’m wondering whether there is a way that we can all benefit from this collective wisdom that is being amassed. When you think about it, a potential knowledgebase is growing before our eyes.

If you are not the initiator of the question/topic, then it’s difficult to glean anything useful from the stream of tweets. With only half of the conversation on display on the twitter page, you would need to check out the asker’s page and seek the tweets to try and piece together the conversation. Unlikely.

Something I’d love to see is some sort of organization and curation of this content so that it can help others. Maybe a ‘best of’ or ‘most frequently asked’ page that is categorized and searchable…something in the spirit of Yahoo! Answers perhaps?

4.   Transparency is refreshing…up to a point.
I love some of the moves toward transparency that Best Buy is making with this initiative. A shining example is that the Tips & Expectations page providing twittering guidelines for employees is publicly available.

However, there are some limits that I would set. For instance, there have been several tweets from employees asking other employees whether they could respond to the customer’s question (customer user name disguised):

Anyone who can help @[BestBuyCustomer] with a suggestion on the best software and backup method for a PC? http://bit.ly/… via @Coral_BestBuy

Having worked in a call center during my college days, this reminded me of a familiar scene – putting the caller on hold , setting down my headset and asking fellow agents on my team whether someone knew the answer to a customer query that I couldn’t answer. The only difference is that with twelpforce, the ‘caller’ is not on hold…they can hear the agent asking their colleagues for help (and adding one more tweet to your stream).

The positive here is that team spirit is on full display. However, this is a level of transparency that we don’t necessarily need as customers seeking counsel.

5.   Gut check for twelpforce agents: Before you hit ‘send’, think about what your tweet is contributing.
It’s heartening to see that the majority of tweets solve customer problems and…well…add real value to the conversation. Others – not so much. I attribute this to the novelty of the medium, but there are some earnest twelpforce employees who should maybe think twice before adding to the conversation.

There are two types of examples that come to mind:

a)   The ‘Hello world’ tweets from new employees who announce that they have joined twelpforce and are there to help.

b)   The ‘I don’t know’ tweets from employees who don’t know the answer to the question, and decide to jump in and say so (Note: IDs disguised), e.g. @[BestBuyCustomer]  Sorry, I do not have any expertise in that field, I’m a GS employee, can anyone help him out via @[BestBuyEmployee]

Some additional coaching may be required to ensure that when a customer takes the time to write in, the reply tweets that they received productively advance the conversation.

To reiterate, I see tremendous potential in twelpforce and kudos to Best Buy for being so responsive to its customers. To paraphrase the in-flight scripts from the airlines, they know we have a choice in ever-growing marketplace for electronics, and a fearless dedication to service is a differentiator that would sway my purchase decisions.

Call me old school, but I have remained skeptical, and a non-tragedy yesterday reminded me why – Jeff Goldblum is still alive, well and delivering lines somewhere in his trademark style (I’m a fan).

As many of you know, some questionable individuals chose to exploit yesterday’s high-profile tragedies to exercise their brand of decidedly unfunny humor. Given Michael Jackson’s impact on pop culture, yesterday was another rare instance of a ‘Where were you when you heard…’ moment, and for many it was a ‘Where were you when you read the tweet about…’ moment.  The blinding speed of social media on full display.

However, many of us also received tweets about the tragic passing of Mr. Goldblum (along with Harrison Ford and others), sparking a torrent of questions and disbelief. I can only imagine the temporary (but utterly unnecessary) horror that was maliciously perpetrated against the friends and family of the very-much-alive Mr. Goldblum et al. The ‘news’ became so widespread that Goldblum’s publicist was compelled to release a statement. Granted, the invisible hand eventually cleared up the confusion, but it took time and many, many requests to re-tweet the ‘Goldblum is not dead’ voices of reason messages.

What a mess.

In my mind, it conjured the growing tide of arguments that ‘Twitter is the new CNN’. Hmm…maybe not so much just yet. If yesterday is an indication, we might be over-estimating our current collective intelligence.

I don’t know about you, but I’d sacrifice a bit of immediacy in exchange for some good old-fashioned fact-checking with my serving of news (dead vs. alive…that sort of thing). Things may get better in the future, but there was a culture of ‘(re-)tweet first, ask questions never’ that was displayed in high definition yesterday.

Quite frankly, it made me appreciate the fact that we still have professional journalists left in the world. Thanks.

(By the way…loved him as Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park).

I couldn’t find one online playlist service with all these tracks so if you want to give a listen, you are going to have to go through them link by link. Here is the playlist (roughly in the order I received them):

1. Never Going to Give You Up – Rick Astley (via @richterj)
2. Just the Way I Planned It – Phillip Michael Thomas (via @exlee)
3. Mountain Jam (Live at the Fillmore) – Allman Brothers (via @mikekasprow) – At 33 minutes long, you may want to leave this for last.
4. Comfortable Up Here – Lil Wayne vs. Royksopp by The Hood Internet (via @lucascarlisle)
5. Beat It – Michael Jackson (via @cavacas)
6. Electric Avenue – Eddy Grant (via @aralph)
7. You Know I’m No Good – Amy Winehouse & Ghostface Killah (via @ellaportyrala)
8. N.A.S.A. – Spacious Thoughts Featuring Tom Waits & Kool Keith  (via @ellaportyrala)
9. Take on Me – A-Ha (via @jackiesiddall) – Login required for the link. This one was tough to hunt down.
10. Highway to the Dangerzone – Kenny Loggins (via @CtrlAltRicky)
11. Crazy Logic – Gnarls Barkley vs. Supertramp (via @aralph)
12. Poker Her Face – Kid Cudi Featuring Kanye West, Common and Lady Gaga (via @bhoyaknow)
13. Take Me to the River - Talking Heads (via @natearcher)
14. No Parents Allowed – Chester French Featuring Kardinal Offishall and N.O.R.E. (via @extraandrew) – Sound is a little rough, if you like it, you can download the mixtape here.
15. Your Ex-Lover is Dead – Stars (via @ejbrooks)
16. When a Man Loves a Woman – Michael Bolton (via @glinskiii)
17. As – Stevie Wonder (via @modholly)

I didn’t provide a theme (in retrospect I should’ve, next time I will), but two dominant genres did emerge – popular videos from the eighties and hip-hop mash-ups. Thanks to everyone who tweeted me a song.

http://blog.ted.com/2009/06/qa_with_clay_sh.php

The number 140 is doing magic.  How did they get this magic number?  There’s so much hype about Twitter and you can’t imagine how many times Twitter is mentioned when I’m watching CNN news. The news anchors are actively promoting their tweets. Is TV not enough? I’ve had probably more than a hundred requests for Tweeters but I still have not jumped onto the bandwagon. Sorry, I must have disappointed many.  I just struggle to write in less than 140 characters. I need at least 486 characters in order to say something meaningful. So, I have a problem. Think about it this way, most people who tweet are men (no formal statistic, just my guess) because most men are comfortable in communicating in 140 characters or less. We have fewer words in our vocabulary and usually say things short and sweet. On the other hand, a woman’s verbal capacity is far bigger. Women are better communicators in general and don’t usually get to the point so fast. So, the next big idea may be 300 characters Twitter for women?

Can we milk this 140 idea? I just wonder what will happen if we limit our everyday conversations to 140 characters per message? What about a social network that only allows 140 connections and your friends need to compete or stay active to remain in your network?  What about your wireless carrier sending you your month statement in 140 characters? I hate reading these monthly statements, as they can’t even design one that people can understand. How about Twitter TV? 140 seconds show? What about Twitter music? Here’s the big one…. Twitter Dating! 140 people you can meet in 140 days?

Twitter TV is real, they have teamed with Reveille productions and Brillstein Entertainment Partners to develop an unscripted series based on the site, which invites 140 character postings from members around the world. The show would harness Twitter to put players on the trail of celebrities in an interactive, competitive format. The producers call their proposed series the first to bring the immediacy of Twitter to the TV screen. I think I like the idea of Twitter Dating better.

Download the new #trvsdjam mixtape “Fix Your Face Vol. 2 – Coachella 09″ in exchange for one tweet! http://twitter.trvsdjam.com

]]> http://www.ideacouture.com/blog/2009/05/28/fetal-twitter-device/feed/ 0