Live with Vinton Cerf!

On the final day of the WebbyConnect 2007 conference, one of my many dreams came true. I got to meet and speak with Vinton Cerf, one of the key players in the creation of the modern internet, and currently Google’s Internet Evangelist. Tall, isn’t he? Judging from the photo I’m a little happy about this.

Vinton, or “Vint,” gave today’s keynote address, summarized below. He also attended the two morning sessions where he asked questions, spoke with admirers, and had a few choice words to say about SEO (search engine optimization).

For more photos from WebbyConnect, be sure to check out the WebbyConnect photos on Flickr.

And now, the morning sessions (all photos by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images for The Webby Awards, available on Flickr):

The Art of Internet Judo

The first session’s panel included Rei Inamoto, Global Creative Director of AKQA, Amanda Kelso, Head of Production for Digital, Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), and Nicke Bergstrom, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Farfar. David-Michel Davies, Executive Director of the Webby Awards was the moderator.

Rei Inamoto presented AKQA’s campaign for Halo 3. The challenge, Rei said, was how to engage fans over a 4-5 month period of time, from the time the campaign started to the launch of the game? One factor working in their favor was that gaming audiences are willing to go very deep and interact.

AKQA worked with heavily with the content writers from the Halo team, developing an ARG - alternate reality game - as marketing. This introduced an interactive narrative to tell the backstory of Halo.

There were five episodes created, each timed for release about one month apart. Each episode had a Challenge (phrased vaguely, in the form of a riddle to be solved), which led deeper content and clues. When the challenge was solved by 100 people, an “unknown truth” was unlocked to the general public. A unifying symbol was used throughout the various levels.

Some of the elements on this campaign included:

• Email to the Halo in-house list
• Coordinated live “protest” rallies that drew attention to the unifying symbol and pointed to the first step in the ‘challenge’
• A ‘landing’ web site with a hidden URL to be found, which led to
• A site with an audio file containing a secret password
• When the first 100 people solved the riddle and gave their passwords, a video containing more of the Halo backstory was unlocked to the public. The video contained clues to the next episode.

Fans quickly generated their own content around the Halo story, exponentially expanding the reach of the campaign:

• Wikipedia entries
• Other wiki sites
• Images from the video
• Translations of binary code included in the video
• Frame-by-frame analysis of the episode videos

Nicke Bergstrom presented Farfar’s “Heidies” campaign for Diesel. Nicke first showed a few background slides on Farfar. Farfar team members hard at work in costumes. The Farfar team accepting awards. Nicke about to jump off the roof of an outdoor Swedish sauna in wintertime, hoping to gain the newest phone from the Nokia executives he’s meeting with (he did).

Nicke hates the internet buzzwords, hates the advertising idea of “buying time.” Instead, he prefers the concept of “creating time” with the audience.

For Diesel, Farfar created the Heidies campaign to promote Diesel’s new underwear line. The campaign created two new internet personalities, “Heidi 1″ and “Heidi 2,” who enacted the scenario of kidnapping a Diesel employee in order to force Diesel executives to give them (the Heidies) a print ad, make them famous. The scenario was streamed live to the net via six cameras, and encouraged audience participation with:

• chat
• polls, i.e. “What should we do to become famous on the Internet?”
• Photos taken by the participants and posted live to Flickr
• Visitors affected the action by making suggestions and responding to polls.

The video was hosted on YouTube, then posted on Diesel.com. Since Diesel.com already had a high traffic volume, this leveraged that traffic to bump up the video’s visit numbers and rankings on YouTube. Overall, the campaign generated a huge fan response. Websites were created by fans to talk about it, customers came into stores asking for Heidies brand underwear (high retention).

And the kicker? Zero media dollars spent.

Amanda Kelso of BBH presented the Mentos “Trevor the Mentos Intern” campaign. She began by touching on how BBH spends a lot of time considering what a brand really means. Recently they’ve worked on Axe body spray and Levis. She mentioned their Smirnoff Raw Tea campaign, “Tea Partay,” which used white Hamptons residents rapping about tea to communicate the product with humor. There were quite a few ‘remixes’ of this video, generating broad audience response.

In the “Trevor” campaign, Trevor was given tasks by the general public, such as calling someone to sing them happy birthday in a heavy metal style. The public could communicate with him via

• chat
• calls
• email
• his online scheduling calendar

The interactive site included a live web cam on Trevor (he worked on-camera 8 hours a day), Flickr photos, and links to Trevor’s Facebook, MySpace, and blog.

Discovery: it turned out to be a huge amount of work to maintain the live site. Many people helped Trevor moderate the comments, emails, etc. Staff produced v-films of memorable sequences and posted them.

Unexpected effects: the member of the site D-Listed decided to bombard the site. Various techniques were tried to counter the attack, such as changing technologies, but nothing worked well enough. Finally, Trevor put up an “I Love DListed” sign visibly in his office space. This ended the attack.

Learning: Brands must learn to expect to be hacked or attacked, and embrace, rather than repel, any negative feedback. Be prepared with a response.

Audience Question: RE Halo, why go after those 100 people?

Rei: because they are the leaders / influencers. They actually build the brand.

Audience Question: RE Mentos - who was the audience?

Amanda: Teens & young adults.

Amanda, Rei, and Nicke: we had no media spend, but the other elements of these campaigns were very expensive.

Amanda: These technologies aren’t inexpensive, you spend a lot to set it up.

Rei: In 2005 the buzzword was “Viral.” In 2006 it was “User-generated.” In 2007 it’s been “Web 2.0.” Some clients and agencies think these are cheap methods, but just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean you should do it. What are you trying to say to the audience?

Nicke: Clients often think the buzzwords are magic. They try it and when it doesn’t do the job they say, “yeah, this Internet doesn’t work!”

Audience Question: was there any advance testing involved?

Amanda: Lots of scenario planning in advance, but no test group. For other campaigns BBH does use an ambassador network.

Rei: It’s important to always have Plan B. People hack the server, post unwanted content, etc. Sometimes Plan B must be created on the fly.

Question: Where do you draw the line between too edgy versus too conservative?

Nicke: Retouched ads are more annoying than the live site, more spammy and worse for young girls.

Amanda: There are of course liabilities for the brand, the ramifications must be thought about and the brand protected.

Question: How do you deal with a PR attack?

Rei: Be clear about your intent - to create, to entertain.

Question: are you monitoring online buzz about the campaigns?

Amanda: Yes, you have to, and you have to respond to it live. See MarketingPilgrim for free tools for buzz monitoring.

Nicke: To clear out annoying people we would shut down the entire site for 5 seconds or so. The unwanted people would go away. But trying to prevent them with ground rules, changing what they typed, etc., just provoked them further.

Question: what about costs for these campaigns?

Amanda: for the Mentos campaign, less than any site they’ve worked on in the past 2-3 years.

Nicke: the streaming was expensive, but the campaign was perhaps 1/10 the cost of other campaigns they’ve done.

Question (from Vinton Cerf): any spillover from other media?

Amanda: yes, we worked with a PR firm.

Vinton: so, there was a recursive effect. By using YouTube, other advertisers are essentially paying for your advertising. What was the concrete payback?

Rei: for Halo 3 had $170 million in sales in the first 24 hours of availability. It was the biggest game launch in history.

Amanda: the Mentos campaign just ended, so we’re still waiting for full results. However, on the older Diet Coke and Mentos project Mentos saw a 20% increase in sales in the U.S. last year, which appears to be a direct correlation.

Nicke: I wish the campaign had also been offline, had an offline component. It did not spread to people who weren’t already somewhat interested.

Throwback Blogging: PR Still Works

This session’s panel included Aileen Budrow of MTV Networks, Michael Maslansky of Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, and Gerry Byrne of Fidelis Global Management. The moderator was Jeff Stern of the Daily Reel.

(many apologies - I ran out of steam after that last session and took very few notes until Vinton Cerf answered a floor question -sn)

Audience question: Do you include Search in your PR strategies? Do you optimize for search?

Answer from Vinton Cerf: Let me just say this: Search Engine Optimization does not work! All those people trying to optimize their content are interfering with our efforts to deliver relevant results.

(Vinton then hinted at secret algorithms which, like the IRS checking random tax returns, could tag sites or pages for closer review.) “And, of course, the IRS doesn’t reveal its checking algorithms because that would enable people to fly under the radar.”

(I followed up with Vinton after the session, in the hallway. When I mentioned that one of my company’s services was search optimization and that we have, indeed, seen SEO work, he clarified: “What I’m talking about is people who generate thousands of sites just to link to their site and manipulate their search rankings, that kind of thing.” He radiated a kind of righteous exasperation about these kinds of attempts, repeating that they required so much time to deal with that it distracted effort away from improving result relevancy. You could tell he views this from an engineer’s perspective.)

Keynote Address: Vinton Cerf

With apologies for “not being an advertiser or a businessman,” Vinton began with an overview of the internet penetration world wide:

• Approximately 3.6 billion telephone terminal, including 2.5 billion mobiles

Samples of internet user distribution and penetration rate per area:

• Asia has 436.8 million internet users, but only 11.8% penetration rate. Asia has the most potential upside for internet expansion.
• Europe has 321.0 million internet users, at 39.8% penetration. Significant upside potential here, as well.
• North America has 232.7 million internet users, but has a high 69.5% penetration. Not much upside left here.
• Latin/Central America has 110.0 million internet users at 19.8% penetration
• Middle East has 19.5 million internet users at 10.1% penetration

Vinton showed a diagram of the original Arpanet, compared with a 1999 map of the internet, illustrating the explosive growth since 1969.

Socio-Economic Effects of the Internet

• Consumers becoming producers; the contribution barrier is practically zero
• Innovation
• Social networking
• Game playing, and the confluence of virtual and real worlds (example: People paying real money for Second Life services and the reverse).
• New business models, i.e. eBay, iTunes, Google, Amazon, VoIP, etc.
• Group interactions possible, not simply one-to-one
• Listen, play, print, view - all possible over the same protocol

Today: the physical implementation remains expensive. Very high cost for Google’s physical architecture. But less expensive than it would’ve been in, say, 1979; in 1979 three terabytes of memory would’ve cost $100 million. Today it’s only $2,000 - $3,000. The biggest challenge remains finding enough electrical power to run the physical aspect.

IP on Everything

(see the IP on Everything t-shirt debuted in 1992 here -sn)

The goals for the internet were:

• the network would remain data-agnostic
• packets could be sent by any system
• the web wouldn’t know what it was transmitting
• future-proofing, so IP (Internet Protocol) carries anything digital

Other parts of the world have a much higher possible bandwidth than the U.S. For instance, in Sweden you can get a 40GB dark fiber connection. Other countries such as Japan, Hong Kong, and France offer (or shortly will offer) similar capacities. For various reasons, the U.S. is far behind other countries in this.

We’re looking at a potential exhaustion of the current IP address version, running out of address spaces around 2010 or 2011. (see the IP Report site for stats and charts on this -sn) Next up to deal with this: IP version 6.

Legitimate reasons for ‘discriminatory’ (unequal) access to the internet include:

• game playing - games may need low-latency, so this data possibly should be tagged for this
• malware or virus filtering
• bandwidth - charge more for greater bandwidth

However, trying to prevent anti-competitive use of the underlying transport services, allowing access for users to all services on the web.

Vinton displayed a graph (above, photo from the WebbyConnect Flickr area) generated by Sandvine showing a deep packet inspection data display. This shows the various types of packets being transmitted across the internet during a period of time. YouTube takes up a very visible portion of the available bandwidth each day.

Key elements driving internet-media interaction include the possible transmission rate and the available storage space.

• If transmission rates are low and available storage is low, nothing works well.
• If transmission rates are high but available storage is low, then realtime and pre-recorded media can be streamed easily
• If transmission rates are high and storage is high, then realtime media can be streamed OR stored, and the same for pre-recorded media. In fact, pre-recorded media can be delivered to the end user at faster than real-time rates. Vinton mentioned that this is a largely unexplored space of opportunity for the video world.

IPTV

IPTV is the television model becoming the internet video model. With differences. IPTV allows:

• streaming and downloading
• mixing of all media together as IP packets. For instance, video delivered along with interactive elements or other tie-ins for additional functionality or promotional activity. The elements could contain ‘activate-able’ objects which could be branded, allowing users to decide what they want to look at further. This would pre-qualify customers via their expression of interest.
• multiple streams to multiple screens or speakers in a particular area (a house, for instance). “That’s the beauty of packet switching.”)

Mobility and Mobiles

There are over 2.5 billion mobile devices and counting. This explosion will create new:

• ways of payment. For instance, using mobile plan minutes to pay for purchases.
• challenges regarding the physical interface
• uses for mobile devices, such as becoming a centralized hub of connection and interaction in place of a laptop device. The mobile device would create a local network between interactive devices such as a keyboard, screen, and the internet, for example.
• More geo-location based services. “Transforming, huge opportunity as more and more geo-indexed information becomes monetized.”
• Navigation systems of various types

What’s next:

We’ll see more and more internet-enabled devices. (Vinton showed some existing examples, including fridges, photo frames, automobiles, even surfboards with embedded web access. -sn) The devices will be programmable using Java, Python, etc. Coming up we’ll see items like wine corks, clothing, and universal remote controls being internet-enabled. Imagine controlling your devices from anywhere! (except if you get hacked by the neighbor kid).

Challenges:

Vinton touched on three major challenges:

• intellectual property treatment. Perhaps the current model needs to be adapted to the new reality.
• Complex objects that can be rendered or interpreted only by a computer. For instance,
  • 3-D interactive objects
  • complex spreadsheets
  • interactive environments
• Bit rot! This is by far the biggest challenge. As systems and software changes, digital objects will be lost. Imagine, for instance, trying to read a 1997 Powerpoint file in Office 3000.
  • We need to somehow preserve the interpretive programs to read the objects.
  • and the Operating Systems that run the interpretive programs
  • and the hardware that runs the O/S’s
  • For thousands of years!
  • We have NO practices in place to preserve these objects and keep them accessible and usable. There’s a very serious technical problem trying to preserve information over long periods of time.

Question: can you expand on the potential for bandwidth growth in the U.S.?

Vinton: There is evidently very little incentive here in the U.S. to provide high-bandwidth access like other countries have. There’s not very much competition for broadband services. The availability and use stats that are reported are probably not very accurate. Wireless possibilities are still just possibilities.

Question: How do we design sites for the future?

Vinton:

• Use standard unicode character sets.
• Expand or find resources that can localize content to other cultures and languages.
• Plan for mobile access. A significant portion of the remaining Earth citizens will encounter the internet for the first time via a mobile device.
• Plan for the 2008 internationalized domain names - domain names in non-latin alphabets/ character sets.

Question: are the problems in the U.S. over bandwidth caused by old-timers in power?

Vinton: Yes, most politician rely on old business models. One solution may be simply generational change. However, now newer business models have proof behind them to convince.

Politicians first thought of the internet as only an outbound medium - they were surprised by the inbound responses of their constituency. Those politicians who miss the importance of listening and paying attention to and responding to this input will suffer. We’re starting to see some change in this area.

Question: Tell us about your work on the Interplanetary Internet.

Vinton: I’m working with JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories) on protocols for interplanetary communications. We’ve been testing in various terrestrial locations, solving such problems as delay and disruption of communications caused, for instance, by planetary rotations. We’re now confident we have solid protocols and plan to test them:

• 2009 - test new protocols on the International Space Station
• 2011 - test on the Deep Impact project
• Further propagation of the network, protocols and standards mission by mission to gradually build a solid, dependable communications system in space.

Question: Google has grown so large and dominant, are there any internal checks and balances in place?

Vinton: That question contains a hidden assumption that Google is bent on this type of ‘domination’, which is not true. (further comments to this effect.)

(Vinton concluded his talk at this point -sn)

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I took a lot of notes the second day of the Webby Connect conference, so grab a cup of tea and make yourself comfortable before you sit down to read this. You’ll find notes from Michael Eisner’s keynote address near the end. (All photos by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images for The Webby Awards, available on Flickr).

See, Hear Everything (Except This)

Today’s first presentation panel was composed of Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr and Shawn Gold, head of Marketing and Content Development at MySpace.com. The moderator was Roy Sekoff, Founding Editor of HuffingtonPost.com.

Roy began with a brief introduction about privacy online, calling it “The New Privacy.” So much information is now “out” there on the web: personal blogs, resumes, pictures, community space information. And this information has both positive and negative repercussions.

For example, resumes can be found by potential employers, pictures serve as a resource for millions, and personal blogs can create connections. But personal information can also affect the safety and even employability of the individual.

When other types of information are made public it’s viewed more as an intrusion. For instance, medical information, online viewing habits, phone habits. With current data mining capabilities, all of these personal data points can be mined and correlated, providing information for targeted marketing and personalized come-ons.

Where does it cross the line into “creepy big brother-dom?” Is the loss of privacy just the price we pay for being connected?

Caterina: sites like Flickr would not even exist without this lack of privacy. Flickr didn’t borrow metaphors from old technologies (like cars used to be called ‘horseless carriages’). Instead, Flickr benefits from a culture of generosity, where the site becomes about contributing to others. Which involves a certain reduction in privacy.

Shawn: Users perceive the benefits to counterbalance the loss of privacy. For instance, using Flickr has an advantage of gaining pictures of an event you attend without having to carry a camera - because others are willing to post photos and tag them appropriately. On the web, loss of privacy is balanced by benefits such as

• romantic benefits
• better connections
• creative benefits
• professional benefits

Caterina: a recent study showed 15% of all newlyweds today met online.

Shawn: Kids today are growing up under surveillance. After 9/11, homeland security, school security, etc. So they don’t have the same sense of privacy as their elders. To them, the web is theater and community. Their friends equal their audience. They see themselves as being only 1 degree of difference away from being truly famous.

Caterina: There is evidence of a counter-trend, in a 25-year cycle of inward- versus outward-facing trends. The next reaction may be to restrict personal networks to select people. Research shows most people communicate regularly with only 7-12 people, no matter how large their virtual networks may be. Research by Dunbar shows the human brain is wired to “know” only 150 - 200 people.

Shawn: This may also be a life-stage thing. New, younger people put it all out there as part of their identity development. Upcoming trend: more control to the user for privacy, what advertising they see, access to them and their information, etc.

Caterina: Rumors of a company / tool that can erase a person’s online ‘footprint.’

Roy: have seen evidence of this (relates a specific incident).

Roy: Is anything on the internet private?

Collective answer: not really. Don’t put anything out there you don’t want everyone to know. A single PHP coding error and “boom” - all your photos are public, for instance.

Roy: references the Navy’s presentation on how parents view ‘millenials’ (kids coming of age now) and how millenials view parents. (I made a note to look for this)

Roy: what about the legal implications of privacy for companies?

Caterina: Fickr very strict & careful. Users tend to follow the lead of what they see already posted up there. “One person puts their junk up and the next person comes along and says, hey, I’ll put my junk up too.” The Yahoo acquisition of Flickr actually resulted in a more liberal guideline set. Still many challenges.

Shawn: At MySpace, EVERY photo posted to it (around 8 million per day) is viewed by eye in a semi-automated process, then looked at more closely if certain patterns such as nudity, gang symbols, etc. warrant the attention. Every video uploaded (over 60,000/day) has a 15-frame slice previewed, more if warranted. Other reporting tools and fallback systems are in place, as well.

(at this point I lost track of who was speaking in my notes)

Attentiontrust.org - users taking back control of their “attention,” selling it as a commodity to advertisers. Why don’t we own our own shopping histories, for instance? Consumer control as a major upcoming trend. We need to create awareness / understanding that our EVERY move on the web is being tracked in one way or another.

People do actually read privacy policies. It’s tough not to have a lot of legalese, but it helps to have “translations” available that extract the most salient points.

Targeted ads generally increase the ad’s click-through rate. Some view targeted ads as intrusive, but there are positive benefits as well, such as:

• targeted ads less likely to waste a user’s time
• better CTR generally means better relevancy for the user
• MySpace aiming for better, fewer advertising
• this requires input from the users, creating more dialog

Advertisers are tapping into the cultural exchange going on in social networks. People sharing songs, ideas, creates a transfer that advertisers are trying to be a part of.

21st Century Swiss Army Knife

This session’s panel was composed of Frank Nuovo, Chief of Design for Nokia, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, and David Pescovitz, Co-Editor of BoingBoing.net and Research Director at the Institute for the Future. The moderator was David-Michel Davies, Executive Director of the Webby Awards.

Frank Nuovo from Nokia gave a presentation on the company and their design experience past, present and future, which was interesting but seemed more than a little self-serving, or simply not attuned to the audience. There were some interesting bits, though:

• Nokia has launched over 425 models of phones since 1982.
• Nokia’s first internet-enabled device was created in 1986 - the “communicator”
• Other stats & such on Nokia - not that I don’t like the company, but hey, I’m not a potential investor here.
• Some experimental layouts for texting in other languages, such as a stylus-enabled screen for Chinese symbols.
• When a device contains so many functions and features, what do we call it? a phone? camera? internet device
• Latest venture Frank is working on is very high-end, luxury mobile devices. “People like their technology to mature, become fashionable, luxurious, personal.”
• Vision for the future: multipurpose devices presented as jewelry, unobtrusive and decorative while still being highly functional.

Biz Stone from Twitter gave a brief background on how Twitter started:

• Question: is there a simpler or easier way to stay in touch with friends?
• Inspiration: the “status” line in IM platforms - leveraging this concept
• Test: colleagues tried it out, and after first thinking it was silly they were hooked.

Twitter continues to be basic, simple, staying agnostic about how to get the messages between people. The simple question is “What are you doing right now?”

They’ve opened their API framework, now over 250 third-party applications are built on it.

Twitter provides social alchemy - unexpected results from this type of communication. For example, influencing the dinner decisions of a friend (unknowingly) by communicating your own dining experience.

Twitter provides user choice - you can tune in when you want, there are no expectations about staying connected at all times.

David Pescovitz of Institute for the Future presented on the growing mixture of ‘web’ or ‘virtual’ reality into ‘real’ reality. According to him, ‘cyberspace’ as a concept is played out. It is quickly becoming no longer a place you go to via a portal. With mobile devices, this is less and less how we experience the internet and unlikely to be how we experience it in the future.

The internet will become a layer on top of ‘reality.’ Some current examples:

• Second Life “mixed reality” parties - where a screen of a virtual gathering is projected into a realspace, and the realspace gathering is projected into a Second Life gathering. Blurring the lines between reality and virtual reality.
• Virtual games overlaid on the real world - i.e. PacMan via special headgear/goggles.
• Digital ‘graffiti’ overlaid on more and more surroundings. For instance, reviews, history, comments, ratings, tagged onto buildings, newspaper stands, streetsigns, etc, with the ability for anyone to add to the localized discussion. This allows you to learn more about your surroundings in a contextual way, when you’re actually there and the information is the most useful.

David ran a mockup demo of a potential device that would allow someone to see and interact with this ‘virtual graffiti’, envisioning the device as eyeglasses with an uplink to the internet(s), that would allow:

• viewing of ratings (i.e. for restaurants within sight)
• viewing of reviews by other customers
• IMs based on online experiences
• Directions
• Traffic info and past statistics (i.e. for intersections, accidents, etc.)
• Photo captures - both allowing and displaying others
• Recording and live transmitting of whatever’s being viewed
• Biological data, i.e. blood sugar levels, both transmitting and receiving, twitter-like
• Surveillance alerts, when cameras, etc. are detected
• contextual news updates
• subscribed news updates
• Activism support
• Facial recognition
• Ability to ‘tag’ the real world like we currently do the web

David-Michel: What’s better, keeping it simple so there’s a quick adoption and learning curve, versus more features?

Biz: Twitter stays simple, but allows others to build complex items on top of it via the API.

Frank: Less can be best, but other forces such as marketing often counterbalance this. A new generation’s view of simplicity may also be different than others. Also depends on the output - designing multiple abilities into a physical device more challenging then online/virtual.

David: These shifts are generational, and they’re happening more rapidly than in the past.

(I missed some content here about spam, but was drawn back in by a slightly contentious discussion between Biz and Frank about Twitter versus email that sounded like an old-school versus new-school debate:)

Biz: Twitter untethers people from their computers. It delivers a sense of connection and communication without requiring them to hunch over a laptop. More control and more choice.

Frank: There’s still a place for email, it has a purpose in business as a legal document. You have to ask What is the potential problem of being this casual, of sharing this information. Lawsuit potentials, problems with other cultures not wanting to be as public.

Biz: Practical applications include receiving Twitter status from airlines (JetBlue does this), transit systems (BART does this) via subscription.

David: what happens when everything, every object has a status? “Zillionics” - when object begin to blog. When objects can sense and report their ongoing status, and there’s an endless stream of data. The challenge then becomes pattern recognition; how do you find valuable information in this huge stream of data? How do you recognize patterns?

Biz: 90% of Twitter users make all of there twitters public. (brief discussion as to the patterns available for mining in this data)

David-Michel: Is all of this just about people hooking up?

Collective response: YES.

There are different drivers, including finding a mate, business, parenting, etc. And one person can be in different modes within a single day. Discussion of the need for giant “mode” buttons to indicate/filter what kind of information we receive depending on our current need/mode.

iRun: the Online, Web-Based Candidate

This session panel included Steve Grove, head of News & Politics at YouTube, Viveca Novak, Department Director of FactCheck.org, and Andrew Rasiej, Founder, Publisher, Personal Democracy Forum & Tech, President.com. The moderator was Karen Tumulty, National Political Correspondent for TIME Magazine.

Steve: citizens and voters using online media to hold candidates accountable, and communicate their needs to candidates. It’s the new Town Hall for political discussion.

Andrew: Most campaigns have actually regressed from 2004 campaigns because the candidates are terrified of the loss of control. Compare the 2004 Howard Dean campaign with the campaigns of 2008.

The political establishment no longer has control over the process - but they largely choose to ignore it. Or don’t get it. For examples:

• the Obama campaign shut down a 160,000-member MySpace page created by a supporter about Barack rather than pay the supporter a requested $39,000. Short-sighted and not cost-efficient.
• Howard Dean raised $22,000 online, then spent it all on TV ads

Conclusion: politicians are focused on the money, and on the audiences that will contribute. Which is not necessarily the online audience.

Karen: Is the internet filling the needs of those disillusioned with regular media?

Viveca: There are advantages to online information, but these sources can also be a tremendous tool of disinformation. There are too many places to track to ensure accuracy. It’s easy to trash an opponent by quoting a blog or other non-authoritative source. Online ads can be very engaging, then slip in inaccurate information. It’s difficult to keep up with the information flow - falsehoods spread more quickly than fact-checking can follow.

Karen: What has gained the most traction?

Andrew:

• doing something extraordinary. For instance, Michael J. Fox unmedicated
• mis-steps, such as Hillary announcing online and inviting conversation when to those who live in the space and knew how it worked this appeared disingenuous, not real
• viral ads, such as the Apple/Obama ad. It may not have gained any voters for Obama, but it sure woke up the Clinton campaign.

All politicians misunderstand the internet, viewing it as just another top-down interface like any other platform.

Steve: Many politicians and their staff do get that it needs to be a conversation, its a spectrum and an evolutionary process. They’re getting used to the medium.

Viveca: But why is Ron Paul hugely a rock star on the web but polling offline at only 1%? Partially because his beliefs align with the internet-user mentality.

Andrew: he has very loyal, very internet-savvy supporters.

Karen: Is the internet really a mind-changing, persuasive medium?

Andrew: Yes. The conversations are happening online. Blogs. MySpace pages. Outside of what the mainstream media is paying attention to. But they’re happening.

Question from audience: Where is the “get out the vote’ online effort?

Viveca: This is exactly where Howard Dean fell apart.

Andrew: no clear tool right now to allow more and better interaction.

Discussion: the internet has become a place where mainstream media goes for content and to track the progress of a campaign.

Keynote Address: Michael Eisner

Michael Eisner presented a speech about Change with a capital C, promoted his new companies The Tourante Company (an investment firm) and Vuguru, and talked about his vision for media on the internet. Again, please note this is a summarized and paraphrased report of the speech:

Change can be slow - like watching Regis age - or catastrophically quick, like an earthquake. Some things haven’t really changed, like movies are still movies, and people still go to see them in theaters. Other things, like TV, are still similar but are being profoundly affected by new technologies. DVR use has increased from 7% to 21% - which creates a challenge for dealing with time-shifting effects produced by the DVR technology.

Change is fun. Companies with a too-narrow view of what they do, however, aren’t open to change (gave an example of Topps not going after a broadcasting deal because they considered themselves a trading card company rather than the broader definition of a sports company).

The world is no longer flat - the world has become a point. We’re all connected, all together on the head of a pin.

Example: Michael was riding JetBlue (he defended - “I like JetBlue, I buy two seats. I like the movie screen.”). By the time he landed and got online, someone from the same flight had posted his photo from the plane along with a post wondering if his finances had gone south.

This affects everyone’s behavior. Anything you do can be recorded, posted immediately. We’re all connected. I consider this good news.

The barriers seem to be gone:

• money - getting online is less and less expensive. It used to be expensive to get your voice heard, not any longer.
• time - quick and easy to post, connect, communicate
• language - translation sites, tools are available
• time displacement - we’re all on a 24/7 day.

One thing that’s stayed the same: bad writing and bad acting.

One thing that’s changed: the need for credible writing has increased. Kids polled say they believe everything they read online.

There was always user-generated content - example, America’s Funniest Home Videos showing home videos long before the internet.

(segue to brief history of The Tourante Company and how he decided on the name while bicycling in Italy - the signs going down the curving road said ‘tourante’ - hairpin curve).

User-generated content is unfiltered anarchy. There’s a place for experts, otherwise the world becomes full of unprofessional, unrestricted “stuff.” There’s a place for the editor, for the filtering system, to filter on culture, humor, and taste. There’s not a computer in the world with a brain that’s half as interesting as the brains in this room.

Is there a business around professionally-produced entertainment (online)? Yes. I believe this will be dominant in the future. Each new technology, telephone, radio, TV, cable, etc. has be additive, not subtractive. There is still a definite place for gifted editors, writers, producers, etc.

One dominant feature: regular old entertainment makes you feel good, maks you laugh, cry, get educated, etc.

It should be responsible - human beings filtering what actually goes out.

The first amendment specifically says the government doesn’t tell us what to say, which makes the exercise of good taste even more important. The new world still has old world responsibilities.

(brief segue into description of vuduru.com, which presents “one great thing every day” via a human filtering system).

I’m excited about the opportunities!

Question from the audience: Do you use Union workers?

Answer: No, there is no room for the restrictions most unions place on the use of the created content. There are plenty of talented actors, etc. Some unions allow enough flexibility, but studios these days have less money, advertisers are very far behind the curve in understanding the new online business model, and so are unions. Advertisers are hesitant because they don’t understand what they’re going to get.

(I think I missed a question here -sn)

Revenue sources for online media are still uncertain. Different models include

• product placement (some success seen here)
• 3-second ‘brought to you by’ clips embedded
• 15-second promotion after a 90-second spot
• 30-second pre-roll (like CNN does - Michael hates this)
• 15-seconds in the middle of multiple segments

So far, I haven’t seen anything that works great. Users will accept some low level of advertisement, I think.

User-generated content providers will accept very little payment, any revenue split. (the implication seemed to be these providers are unsophisticated and don’t know how much their content could be worth - sn)

Professional content providers find it hard to get their costs covered.

The current thinking about the internet is that it’s driven by search. Michael believes it is driven by story-telling.

The internet allows for huge distribution, but how to monetize this distribution is another issue.

(there was a bit more, but I didn’t catch it. Audience response was positive and warm -sn)

Internet Comedy - Pushing the F**king Limits

This session was composed of Jason Marks, VP Programming and Development for Heavy Networks; Lou Wallach, SVP, Original Programming-Television and Digital Development, Comedy Central; and Rich Webb, Co-Founder and COO of The Barbarian Group. The moderator was Sean Mills, President of The Onion.

Jason showed an example segment from a series titled “Honesty” where everyone spoke exactly what they thought, as an example of being funny and edgy without using sex or violence.

Lou showed an example of creating open-template characters that can then promote many different products. An ongoing series with characters trying to act out the movie “Hot Fuzz”.

Rich showed clips from SuperDeluxe.com - funny!

Lou: our core viewership (at Comedy Central) is men ages 18-34. This is the same group as early web adopters, so the transition for us was easy, going from television to the web. We have clear branding, so viewers know what to expect. Consistency and reliability of our productions. Some webisodes are leading to on-air, planning to drive traffic back to the Comedy Central site. In some cases, the web is serving as an incubator of ideas, talent. TV is the ‘mature’ side. Advertisers want the eyeballs present on the web, but are often wary of the content not fitting their image.

Rich: it’s important to push the limits, that’s our job. The client will push back.

Jason: The web allows more liberty for ‘weird’ content. There’s more ways to be funny, rebellious, non-traditional. Likes to set up a series that can be continued.

Lou: online comedy is sponsor-driven, so it’s self-regulating. But creatives should drive the business, not the other way around. Censorship is unnecessary for bad content - it doesn’t get watched.

Sean: Where are the lines for branded content?

General response:

• Never try to fool the audience. They’ll never come back, and will hold a grudge.
• Ask yourself: does the piece hold together without the branded portion? If so, then good.

Rich: People really don’t care who made it or why, they care if it’s entertaining and they’re grateful for it.

View related topics: michael eisner, online advertising, online privacy, webby connect

michael eisner, online advertising, online privacy, webby connect

 

More than just 5 words

Reporting live from the St. Regis Resort at Laguna Beach, California, your faithful interactivity reporter Sandra Niehaus scopes out the newest, hottest web conference around, Webby Connect.

What’s so great about this conference?

For one thing, it’s organized by the folks who produce the Webby Awards. Which means there’s a “deep bench” of speakers across a broad spectrum of specialties. How does having Arianna Huffington, Michael Eisner, and Vinton Cerf as keynote speakers strike you? And which also means they know a thing or two about organizing an event. Take their choice of venue (see the above photo) as an indicating factor.

Today was the first day of this three-day conference. Activities actually began the previous evening, with a welcoming get-together hosted on a patio overlooking the hotel grounds, for networking and catching up.

This morning’s official schedule began with a continental breakfast and great conversations, then on to a series of panel presentations. (All photos by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images for The Webby Awards, available on Flickr).

Your Favorite Video is a Commercial

The first presentation, titled “Your Favorite Video is a Commercial” included Tommy Means of Mekanism.com , Rob Master, who has the enviable title of “U.S. Marketing Director, Skin” for Unilever, and Rick Webb, co-founder and COO of the Barbarian Group. The moderator was Teressa Iezzi of Creativity Magazine. This presentation focused on the uses of branded content and online video as a marketing strategy. Some highlight points were:

• An online or digital component is useful as a centerpiece of a 360-degree advertising effort. So, for instance, an interactive web site or group of online videos that are promoted via multiple methods. One example used was Mekanism’s “Clearification” campaign for Microsoft’s Windows Vista. This campaign featured an interactive web site that was gently - not overtly - pointed to by multiple methods including an HBO comedy special, live comedy concerts, etc.
• When creating a branded, “viral” online campaign, it’s all about the storytelling. The episodes become soft, wrapping stories around the brand and becoming more about the brand’s ethos than about the brand itself. An example of this was Unilever’s “Axe” body fragrance and body wash campaigns.
• Having a very clear sense of brand ethos is supremely important. If you know who and what you are as a brand, you’ll be more comfortable with, even embrace, any reactions to your advertising efforts. An example was the multiple parodies of the multiple award-winning Dove “Evolution” video.
• The choice of using interactivity depends on your audience’s willingness to engage. Low desire = text communication. Medium desire = video. High desire = multiple videos or repeated viewings of a video. Higher desire = other interactivity, such as gaming or creating one’s own videos on the site.
• Measuring success for a viral campaign is not straight-forward. Some insight can be gained from straight metrics - how many views a video receives, how many visitors visit the site, and so forth. But the panel quoted use of multiple indicators, including views, traffic, blog chatter, and other audience feedback. Metrics reinforce, but don’t tell the whole story. They don’t show, for instance, the cultural impact of a truly successful viral marketing campaign.
• Having a fluid approach to a viral campaign is important. Put the campaign out there, watch indicators and feedback, and adjust the messaging based on metrics.

Experts. Masses. Who Knows Best?

The next session began after a generous break to allow for further networking plus a bracing cup of coffee or tea. The panel included Garrett Camp, Founder and Chief Product Officer of StumbleUpon, Nan Forte, Executive VP, Consumer Services for WebMD, Catherine Levene, COO of Daily Candy, and Joshua Schachter, co-founder of del.icio.us. Jamie Pallot, Executive Director of CondeNet, moderated the session.

This discussion clearly showed that user-generated content is valuable for some business models such as Del.icio.us, but not for others. Here’s the breakdown between the companies included on the panel:

• Del.icio.us - at the furthest end of the user-generated content side of the spectrum, but relies on the pre-existence of content that can be bookmarked by users. Considers itself a “shared memory” site where users can save important items and make them available with others. Search is an important component of the site. Each user becomes an information filter, in a sense, gaining credibility and reputation based on the quality of their bookmarks and groupings. Some companies, such as Adobe, have used Del.icio.us as a way to group and share online content related to their products that is not contained on their own web sites.
• StumbleUpon - a recommendation site in which users can influence the future web experience of other users by categorizing and recommending web content. Users can also gain reputation based on the relevance and value of their recommendations.
• WebMD - This site is a mix of expert and user-generated content. It contains largely expert-created content, but also some user-based content that is vetted and some community-building areas which allow for support group-type interactions. The main message here was that while health is definitely an area where expert input is needed, since each person’s health is individual and doctors’ opinions can differ there is also a distinct need for community-based sharing of more informal “I’ve been there too and here’s what I did” information.
• Daily Candy -This site is pure expert content, and it is this consistent quality that has gained the site a highly desirable advertising profile. Subscribers know they can trust the recommendations given. Advertisers know they can depend on the site to deliver highly qualified customers. Everybody wins.

One of the recurring themes of this session was credibility and reputation. Whether the content is generated by a user or an expert, the accuracy, relevancy and source transparency of the content over time supports or degrades the contributor’s reputation — and everything else flows from that.

Disruptive Innovation: Game Changing Ideas

After yet another networking break, during which many of us scurried to the patio to get warm in the sun, the third session began. This session’s panel included Beth Higbee, Senior VP and General Manger of Scripps Networks Emerging Ventures, and David Rudolph, entrepreneur and former SVP, Strategy & New Products, Turner Broadcasting. Spencer Ante, Department Editor, Computers, for BusinessWeek, moderated.

Both presenters had been tasked with creating innovation within a large corporation. In other words, to innovate in such a way that was not building existing brands or initiatives (because other groups handled that) but trying new, disruptive ideas. Both presenters spoke at some length about the difficulty of achieving this goal within a large organization because innovation can be seen as threatening, as low-ROI compared with doing the usual, and even as simply uninteresting. David Rudolph pointed out that most successful startups change their business models up to six times before becoming successful, so an innovative initiative within a large corporation can be seen as a waste of time and effort.

Both presenters stepped through a basic step-wise guide to “disruptive innovation” development. Beth Higbee presented what she termed the “Super-Basic” WRENCH guide she shows to other Scripps employees to acquaint them with the overall idea:

• W - Who: unsatisfied customers. These are the opportunity area for disruptive innovation. For instance, homeowners who are dissatisfied with using real estate agents to buy and sell homes.
• R - Reasonable: reaching a”good enough” solution quickly. For instance, a resource web site could be a “good enough” solution to serve the dissatisfied homeowners.
• E - Easy: the solution should be simple, convenient, accessible, and/or affordable for the “who”.
• N - Nons: these are the ignored customers or overlooked situations. For instance, real estate agents would be a ‘non’ in the case of providing a solution for homeowners who’re dissatisfied with real estate agents.
• C - Cheap: keeping the solution low-cost, using iterations to improve when needed.
• H - Holes: competitive weaknesses and blind spots provide opportunities for innovation.

This session was definitely more high-level than the others, but highlighted the efforts some major companies are making to stay fresh and innovative. However, these efforts seem somewhat doomed by inertia, politics, finances and legal restraints. Which is why people leave large corporations to start their own businesses.

Arianna Huffington

Last but not least on the program was keynote speaker for the day Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post among many other achievements. Arianna was a warm, confident and definite speaker, touching on many topics. She spoke about the lack of courage evidenced by current Presidential candidates (all quotes are paraphrased, because I don’t have a recording chip built into my brain quite yet): “They’re so afraid to say the wrong thing they forget to say the right thing.” About the need for reporting external to the usual reporters’ pool: “When I followed campaigns as a reporter, we reporters would all cover an event then go across the street, have drinks, and talk about what we just covered. And we’d all come away with essentially the same viewpoint.” She spoke about how the Huffington Post deals with credibility and accuracy for their reports and blogs: “If something is found to be inaccurate, the author has one day to correct it or their login is deleted.” And she spoke about what she sees as the next thing on the web: “We’re all so connected, I think the next thing will be ways to connect in order to de-connect.” Meaning, going online and meeting with others to find ways to balance one’s life.

The sessions and keynote address were followed by lunch, surfing lessons (while other, less ocean-inclined, attendees went shopping or visited the resort spa), and a fabulous dinner served under the stars.

All in all, not a bad first day! I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

View related topics: arianna huffington, disruptive innovation, online credibility, online video, user generated content, viral marketing, webby, webby connect

arianna huffington, disruptive innovation, online credibility, online video, user generated content, viral marketing, webby, webby connect