In that last post I spoke about this concept of ‘artificial indicators’ - in summary – an artificial indicator is something designed by the developers of a platform to help you make sense of the huge amount of information in their platform (or a third party platform for that matter) since our brains are not designed to comprehend the vast amounts of data that humanity creating.

Examples of these platforms are:

Google, Facebook, Apple App Store, Twitter

Examples of Artificial Indicators:

Some examples of artificial indicators are: Page Rank, Most Popular, Number of Likes and the less obvious ‘Edge Rank’, Followers, Trending Topics, etc.

How did these platforms come to be?

One of the big transitions of the last decade was a fundamental movement from the web as ‘the wild west’ where every company had to have a website to the blog where every individual had to have a website and finally to growth of privatised platforms that sit on top of the web and use it as a ‘transport layer’ – where the human ‘context gaps’ can be filled.

Many search companies started this trend of ‘artificial indicators’ with the idea of search indexing. The artificial indicator was not the act of indexing the content per-se, but rather the way in which the algorithm for aligning the search text with the results. Google was the most famous of these with it’s Page Rank. This was also the beginning of ‘gaming the system’ with the idea of Search Engine Optimisation becoming an industry unto itself over the period of the first dot-com boom.

A paradigm shift occurred over the last decade as we saw the prevalence and acceptance of the web move the idea of ‘purpose based’ communication tools to ‘platform’ communication tools. This is like the hybrid of the blog with the bulletin board – this idea of a generic platform started hitting critical mass with MySpace and then Facebook. At the same time as this person to person communication on the web came to the fore the idea of filtering content based on behaviour was also emerging as a powerful trend with the super retailers like eBay and amazon.

So today we find an interesting predicament – because we have moved to ‘platform’ rather than ‘purpose’ – the platforms have boomed, yet-  it has created a kind of ‘context monopoly’ where there can only be a single incumbent for the platform to be attractive. The alternative is to re-introduce purpose and marginalise an element of your audience (example in point: MySpace vs Facebook where MySpace has had to focus on its relationship to music in order to attract a following)

Similar outcomes afoot in the space of mobile – in the era of ‘the wild west’ the operators desperately tried to introduce and control a  ’walled garden’ operator driven experience as soon as the internet was becoming available for GPRS and the first generation of 3G handsets. This was rejected by users as the operators simply could not provide the content, experiences or connectedness that consumers were demanding – the web and email was a miserable experience on these devices, but it was there – and this was a point in time when RIM was a shining light and the Blackberry revolutionised the experience.

Then in 2007, the doors were blown off when Apple released the iPhone. Operators were supplanted by an operating system that facilitated the growth of the mobile web as we see it today. Within 24 months  Google’s Android simply added another nail in the coffin for operators making their ‘value added services’ pointless and turning their network in to a commodity. This ‘operating system’ model on the mobile devices leveraged the learning of the ‘wild west’ web of years previous and added the tools to provide a simple experience for users through ‘app store’  and ‘itunes’ – and thus another set of privatised platforms was built on top of the commodity of the mobile internet.

Where are we now?

What we see is a desire to simplify the experience. To not have to think about the details. Packaging up the experience in a digestible form is precisely why this prevalence of ‘context monopolies’ thrive. It’s actually a function of human nature – the more people use technology, the less they care about the technology and more about the objective.

Because of the inherent lack of ubiquity bound up with the ‘wild west’ web and mobile experiences, this generation of proprietary ‘platforms’ answer the people’s craving for consistency, reliability and simplicity. A set of common denominators that we all know. That are easy to learn and come with implied trust and an ‘understood’ set of artificial indicators. All of the platforms I have described in this article share these same attributes.

The byproduct of these privatised platforms having lots of users is that they are compelled to monetize these platforms as commercial entities. The other is that they will generally want to open them up to continue to grow and evolve the platforms with a developer community and . With these platforms comes arbitrary rule sets. Rules for users, third party developers and advertisers on how they can interact with the platform. This in turn can have unforeseen flow on effects and affect other users, developers or advertisers. Sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

This is not a new problem,  the rules of taxation have had this effect for time eternal… The fine line between evasion and avoidance follows a similar guise as ‘gaming’ a platform versus ‘exploiting’ it. Marketers, developers and advertisers are painfully aware that they need to move with the flow of the platform and it’s developers to stay on the cutting edge of that platforms capabilities – not for the sake of technology but to know how best to execute real strategies on these platforms within the rules and regulations.

Some examples highlighting the kinds of arbitrary rules and the impact that changes to those rules have to developers and advertisers.

Apple

http://toucharcade.com/2011/04/18/has-apple-adjusted-the-app-store-charting-algorithms/

http://toucharcade.com/2011/04/19/apple-throws-down-the-gauntlet/

Facebook

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/04/19/facebook-makes-badoo-change-its-viral-mechanics-leading-to-a-75-drop-in-dau/

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/04/20/ad-ly-removed-monetizing-news-feed/

Twitter

http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2011/03/11/twitter-tells-developers-to-stop-developing-new-twitter-clients/

Google

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/internet/20110228-google-changes-search-algorithm-to-block-content-farms-promises-higher-quality-results.html

Some great reading from the last few weeks:

Share Buttons on Third-Party Sites and Facebook Now Provide Micro-Sharing Options

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/05/09/share-buttons-micro-sharing-groups-wall/

Facebook Partners with Web of Trust to Protect Users From Malicious Outbound Links

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/05/12/web-of-trust/

Facebook Sponsored Stories Ads Have 46% Higher CTR, 18% Lower Cost Per Fan Says TBG Digital Test

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/05/03/sponsored-stories-ctr-cost-per-fa/

Facebook Launches Three New Sponsored Stories Types for Pages, Apps, and Websites

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/04/26/sponsored-stories-pages-apps-websites

Facebook Canvas Apps vs Facebook Connect for Websites: A Quick Guide to What’s Best for You

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/04/22/canvas-connect-websites-best/

AdMob Survey Shows What the iPad is Good For

http://gigaom.com/apple/admob-survey-shows-what-the-ipad-is-good-for/

Snoozing And Losing: A Blockbuster Failure

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/make-it-a-blockbuster-night

Some links to recent campaigns we have launched

Infamous 2 launch app

http://www.facebook.com/PlayStationAU?sk=app_197545966947399

Sony Playstation Escalation Pack (using Lite Engine) – designed by the team at Sony Playstation, and it looks fantastic!

http://www.facebook.com/PlayStationAU?sk=app_181234068597471

Gillette Champions – just because your a local team doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be treated like professionals…

http://www.facebook.com/GilletteAustralia?sk=app_131282930276526

Intel Win an Island

http://www.facebook.com/IntelSG?sk=app_207152969312540

a truly integrated Facebook and mobile campaign – also available on iPhone/Android at http://m.intel-island.com

available in multiple languages across APAC

ARU Qantas Wallabies – Rugby Rewards

http://www.facebook.com/Wallabies?sk=app_219950488023951

Hong Kong Tourism

http://www.facebook.com/HongKongTourismAustralia?sk=app_165523130173396

American Tourister for South East Asia

http://www.facebook.com/theamericantourist?sk=app_199003023471699

New policies for custom apps on Pages
Two new policies for custom apps have been added to the Facebook Platform Policies. To summarize the changes: apps on Pages cannot auto-play without people interacting with the app, and users must grant explicit permission for you to use analytics beyond those of your individual Page in order to customize their experience. See sections 1.7.a and 1.7.b for the full language of the new policies.

My sister and her family live in Tokyo. Last week was scary – and to be honest it still is with all of the after effects of this disaster. Thankfully, she is safe. She is still coming to terms with the impact – the enormity of the situation. She is not the only one. Many people around the globe are looking for ways to ‘get it’ – to try and comprehend the magnitude of this disaster. Not long after this grave event, the New York Times posted a page that let people see the before and after of satellite views depicting different areas affected by the quake or the subsequent tsunami: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/13/world/asia/satellite-photos-japan-before-and-after-tsunami.html – I used this tool and started to comprehend a few things about the dire situation this part of the country is now in.

These tools for ‘visualisation’ are becoming the norm – ways of seeing the world of data around us that we cannot otherwise comprehend. It might sound strange, but it seems that in a way we have become obsolete. Our minds are fed the complexity and enormity of world events, technology, huge numbers of people’s points of view – yet we are not capable of processing it. Information overload is the catch cry of the new millennium – and it’s true. We have created an ecosystem of media and information platforms we are not naturally capable of comprehending.

The problem with this is that we lose track. We rely heavily on artificial indicators to help us find our way around this unrelenting tide of information that is simply beyond our comprehension.

Take the example of Angry Birds in the App Store… It became a self fulfilling prophecy – it was very popular, because it was a great game – however – because it came early to the app store and the App Store’s minimal number of artificial indicators (Most Popular) created a ‘feedback cycle’ that propelled it to stratospheric heights. Bob Warfield has nailed it several times with his article here:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/efficient-marketing-means-doing-something-different/

Now – if you took a moment to digress and read Bob’s article, you will start to understand where I am going with this:

If you don’t fall in to a category on the platform you have chosen to market on – You Are Lost.

As an advertiser then, there must be a few ways to deal with this issue of being Lost:

1. Game the system – timing to market and optimisation on the system itself – be it Twitter followers, Google page rank, Facebook Likes.

2. Increased relevance – stand out as a beacon in the tide of noise with clarity and depth. Relevant, meaningful content can never be ignored as a robust tool.

3. On-platform optimised and targeted media – this is a form of ‘artificial indicator’ that the platform provides to target your message directly.

When all three are used in synergy – something special happens! You start to get found – and the more you get found, the more you get found – simply due to the nature of the feedback loop style of artificial indicators. Look at Page Rank, Edge Rank, Popularity, Followers, Likes – all of these are artificial indicators we rely on to guide our decisions en-masse when using our digital platforms of choice.

Anyway, I hope you subscribe to Bob’s blog – absolutely worth reading regularly.

In other news since our last update… well – feels like the whole universe has changed since the introduction of iFrames on tabs.

An interesting article from the Facebook Developer Blog on using OpenGraph to find what movies your friends like

http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/481

A great eBook for non-profits is available here called “The Goodness Engine” for some ideas around digital strategy with NFPs

http://www.deepfocus.net/hackathon/#ebook

“In an experiment, 41% of Facebook users were willing to divulge highly personal information to a complete stranger. This according to IT security firm Sophos, which invited 200 randomly selected Facebookers to befriend a bogus Facebook user named ‘Freddi Staur’ (an anagram of ‘ID Fraudster’). Of those queried, 87 responded to the invitation, among them 82 people whose profiles included personal information such as their email address, date of birth, address or phone number.”

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070814/facebook-privacy/

Finally, a GREAT piece on the emerging landscape of social commerce

http://www.simplyzesty.com/brands/emerging-trends-in-social-commerce

San Francisco is hosting the 2011 Inside Social Apps conference and the CTO of Facebook, Bret Taylor sat down and spoke about what the year holds in store for the Facebook platform.

The key takeaway from the interview is that “Mobile is the primary focus for [the Facebook] platform this year.” – This means that the many disparate platforms that currently exist for using Facebook on PC browsers and mobile devices and browsers will start to be aligned in functionality and capabilities.

I have been saying that this would happen for the past year… The impact of this focus on mobile will see changes to the way mobile devices deliver the Facebook experience to allow the use of Facebook Social Apps on these devices as well as Newsfeed and Notification integration with Facebook apps.

The most interesting thing about this conversation with Taylor was his point about HTML5; it is becoming the de-facto standard for developing applications that ties together the next generation of computing platform (Tablets and Phones) with the last (Desktop).

As we have all seen the proliferation of ‘smart’ mobile devices in both phone and tablet form factors appear over the last 12 months – we find the common thread between them all is the web; more specifically Webkit and it’s support for the emerging HTML5 standards.

This common thread of HTML5 connecting all the desktop operating systems and the mobile operating systems (and form factors as well as input models like touch versus mouse) allows developers to move from writing code for completely different platforms to simply creating front-end variants of their code using one technology and one service delivery mechanism.

With regards to Facebook, my expectation is that this will mean changes to the way we make apps – possibly adding the idea of a “mobile canvas” on top of the current “tab” and “canvas” app contexts to allow Facebook to continue to control the environment developers work within.

Also, expect to see the Facebook advertising formats extend on to these new platforms – again, most likely to appear on the “mobile app canvas” space. Consider the fact that there is no advertising in any of the many Facebook mobile platforms at the moment – which means a huge lost revenue opportunity for Facebook every second they are not owning that space.

Lindon, UT (PRWEB) July 22, 2009 — iTOK announced today that they have received the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum’s “Top 25 Under Five” award. The “Top 25 Under Five” award recognizes the 25 fastest growing companies in the region that have been in business less than 5 years.

“iTOK is the leader in remote technical support because we focused on our core business,” said Seth Bailey, iTOK’s co-founder & CEO. “Our first goal was to get our service model right so we could grow profitably. Now we can scale to meet the needs of our large, national customers.”

iTOK is the leader in remote technical support because we focused on our core business

Our first goal was to get our service model right so we could grow profitably. Now we can scale to meet the needs of our large, national customers.

Our greatest asset is our customer base that continues to do business with us year after year

Likewise, we are grateful for our dedicated team of employees that work very hard to keep our service levels so high.

This is a tough economic climate for all businesses, right now, especially start-ups

These Top 25 winners overcame great odds by growing their revenues and creating jobs. They represent the spirit of entrepreneurship that will serve this state well.

The founders started iTOK in late 2004 to provide remote computer help and maintenance to customers at their homes or home offices right through the Internet. Their flagship PC Care membership service provides quarterly maintenance to keep computers running smooth and clean, giving their members peace of mind. iTOK services their members directly or through partnerships with some of the largest Internet service providers in the nation.

“This is a tough economic climate for all businesses, right now, especially start-ups,” said UVEF 2009 chairman Roger Andrus. “These Top 25 winners overcame great odds by growing their revenues and creating jobs. They represent the spirit of entrepreneurship that will serve this state well.”

About iTOK:
iTOK is the leading provider of US-based remote technical support for home and home-based business computers. Since 2004, iTOK has been building a team of trained, fluent English-speaking support representatives based in Utah that eliminates the frustration of working with the cheaper foreign-based computer service companies. With the click of a mouse, a user can immediately connect with a service representative, get help on a technical problem and schedule routine maintenance, all while working with someone who knows their computer, their issue history and their language. iTOK provides service to thousands of customers directly and through major broadband service providers.

For more information about iTOK, please visit www.itokhelp.com.

This is just another slap in the face after the last government launched their multi million ($185,000,000) dollar client side filtering software which was not only broken by a child the week it was released – today has shown that the take up rate for the software was abysmal and further – the whole thing was fundamentally flawed (read more).

When can the government FINALLY realize it is NOT in the IT business. Market forces exist for a reason – if you want to find a brilliant internet filter which parents can use – put it out to tender for existing vendors who have years of expertise in the space. Spend the money on public education and public awareness – which is what the government SHOULD be doing with our money. Heaven forbid you actually try to catch online criminals by funding the federal police appropriately.

Ultimately parents have the responsibility to protect their children and there are many free and paid products which do a spectacular job such as OpenDNS (www.opendns.com)…

As a citizen, taxpayer and parent I am FURIOUS!

Over 2008 I saw SourceForge move towards a services based model to attempt to support the projects which reside on it. In and of itself this is a great idea, however the real problem was that the world of web based applications had rocketed ahead whilst the core platform of SourceForge felt like it lagged behind.

Google Code was launched way back in August 2006 and has adopted the typical Google approach to its developer platform. This approach means that adding content, code and downloads is super simple and whilst the Issue Tracker in SourceForge was turned off for all our projects since it was so cumbersome, the Google Code Issue Tracker is just a joy to work with.

Overall, we feel that the impact on development and team collaboration will be vastly improved by making the move.

The Pixolüt Industries projects on Google Code are:

BizBlox

PreNIS

xReplace

How?

I have been fortunate enough to work with the owners of various sized businesses over the past decade – I found that nearly all of these businesses faced similar problems; problems around effective sales process, marketing, time keeping and project management. The other major issue for them was the cost of IT and the people required to maintain it all. This cost generally hit those businesses at the worst possible time and it was not usually a small cost either…

The thing I noticed was that over the past year or so there has been an influx of really powerful business tools available on the internet which are provided as subscription services. This Software As A Service model is specifically suited to small-to-medium sized businesses since it reduces the need for in house servers and IT staff costs to maintain them. No big investments and great support.

The idea for SaaS Mentor came about when I started working on a simple approach to consulting for small-to-medium sized business which used several Software As A Service packages as the tools to provide a unique solution for a business problem. This consulting gave big results quickly and made the process of transformation easy.

So, If you know a business owner who may need some help, I would ask that you forward the link to this page on to them and let them know what we’re doing. If you feel like your business could benefit from this kind of strategy or that something in your business is not quite right, I would love to have a chat with you and see if what we’re doing could work for your business. Just email me: joe@saasmentor.com.au