Today @dens told us about foursquare 3.0, which launches tonight. There are some big changes that make this platform even more valuable to brands:

1) Loyalty – going beyond Mayorships, and six new types of Specials

Anybody who uses foursquare know this: “it’s become harder to both hold down Mayorships and win back the ones you’ve lost.” (I show up everyday too, but the Mayor is getting all the love. WTF!?)

To solve this, the platform now gives merchants more ways to reward loyal customers:

• Swarms
• Groups of friends
• Regulars
• Newbies
• Mayors
• Simply to everyone

On top of that, “the Places screen in the app, you’ll now see a list of all the Specials nearby, so it’s easier to find places that reward foursquare users.”

Why is this important? More ways to reward customers, encourage discovery and drive store traffic.

2) The Explore Tab – a recommendation engine for the real world

The platform will turn all the check-ins and tips they’ve seen from us, our friends, and the larger foursquare community into personalized recommendations.

The idea is pretty simple: tell us what you’re looking for and we’ll help you find something nearby. The suggestions are based on a little bit of everything – the places you’ve been, the places your friends have visited, your loyalty to your favorite places, the categories and types of places you gravitate towards, what’s popular with other users, the day of the week, places with great tips, the time of day, and so on.

Why is this important? More and more our decisions are influenced by filtered social data. This is a no brainer online, with things like Facebook’s Open Graph, Hunch, Netflix and Amazon all helping us sift through the fire hose of data to make better decisions and discover new things. Now, this same thing is starting to happen in the real world. (Where most brands live.)

3) The Me tab – A personal expertise builder

The same data mentioned above, will be applied to individuals to help build an expertise profile.

As we started to tinker with our recommendations algorithms, we started to see “expertise” starting to emerge from the data – we’re seeing friends that have been to every karaoke place within 10 miles or tried every burger in Los Angeles. The new “Me” tab surfaces some of this, letting you seek guidance from your friends on the categories and places they explore most.

Why is this important? Again, we’re relying on our social graph to help us make decisions. The clout of a recommendation depends on the authority of the person making that recommendation. For our most personal contacts, we have a sense of this already. But for the weak-ties, we need some indication of who is credible. This is a powerful mechanism for doing that because “expertise” is tied to real-world actions.

4) An enhanced leader board, that rewards you for a variety of things, including hanging out with old friends.

Why is this important? This makes the app more engaging and rewarding, which means more people using it more often.

All of these additions contribute enormously to the power of this platform. You really have to give props to foursquare for continuing to innovate in this space, creating new ways for us to use mobile to extend the power of social into the real world.

Solving for unmet needs is a great reason to innovate. And a great way to spot an unmet need is to look for situations where people are hacking a solution.

A few months ago I noticed that people were hacking a solution to make their books more social: taking pictures of specific passages or screenshots on their iPad and then using Twitter or a blog to comment on specific chunks of text. It makes sense. This is how we consume content these days, in desecrate chunks that can be curated and socialized.

Here is Russell Davies talking about how he uses Stickybits to dog-ear passages in a book — in this case, Clay Shirky’s Cognative Surplus.

My latest technique with a physical book is to scan it into stickybits and then add photos as ‘bits’ every time I want to dog-ear something. That way you end up with a page with all the marked bits on it, including a record of where and when I was reading. (Though they aren’t great pictures.) As back-up I’m also doing actual dog-earring and sticking pictures of some bits on flickr too. That’s probably going too far. Pictures here will be a mixture of the two, the best ones I’ve got.)

And here is David Armano using his iPad + Twitter to do the same thing with Seth Godin’s Linchpin.

These are hacked solutions: examples of early adopters who can see the potential in new technologies and are able to do the requisite “systems integration” to create something useful.

But for most people, the value is created when somebody does the systems integration, packages it up, and markets it so that it is clear what job is getting done. Or makes it clear that there is a job they need/want to get done in the first place. (Often the most valuable products fulfill an unmet need that is such a part of “normal” routine that people don’t even realize they are “hacking” a solution. Then you wonder how you ever lived without it.)

Well, lo and behold we are seeing innovation in the “social books” space.

What CEO Ilian is showing is an iPad app, but this app could work on other devices, including e-readers. You see the familiar bookshelf with your books, but you can also connect with your friends on Twitter and Facebook and within the Social Books app itself to see what books are on their bookshelves. As you read a book, you can highlight and create notes, as well as see the highlights and notes of your friends (in different colors). Excerpts could be shared via Twitter or Facebook with a link back to an excerpt page, along with a link to buy the book. There is an activity stream view, where you can see all the comments and recent reading activities of the people you follow.

Cool.

But where else are people “hacking” solutions? Where else is there opportunity for innovation?

How about… when we use our mobile phones to do product research in-store and on-the-go? Here’s an example of a what might be considered a broken process:

Whenever I hand her a phone in the car to look for directions or a local resource she still looks as if I ‘d just handed her a rabid ferret. But she knows very well that I can get just about any product information we need on a smartphone. “Google it!” she commands from the steam-cleaner aisle at Best Buy.

While it might be challenging at times, eMarketer gives us some proof that we are indeed using our mobile devices to make purchase decisions:

A global retail study, conducted by Microsoft Advertising and Carat, which found that 38% of US shoppers said they used their mobile devices to help make a final decision to make a store purchase. And 31% of those polled purchased a new item after using their phone in-store.

Is that right? 82% of people who used their phone to help make a purchase decision ended up buying something?! With numbers like that, you would think retailers would be packaging (or at least promoting) a dead-simple mobile solution? Not so much:

According to Brandanywhere’s Mobile Indexer, only 4.83% of retailers have websites designed for the mobile web…. Let alone a packaged solution designed to help customers make a final purchase decision.

Opportunity? I think so.

So does Amazon.

…you can simply scan the barcode or say the product’s name and the app will match an item and provide pricing from Amazon.com and other online merchants. If the product is listed on Amazon, customers can then purchase the item with one click.

They get it. By packaging a dead-simple solution to this problem, they effectively turn every other brick-and-mortar retailer into their own storefront.

Bravo, Amazon.

So what do you think? I am wrong? Any other hacked solutions out there that represent an opportunity?

In my last post, I talked about mobile strategy. The point was that things have changed. But not really. The problems being solved remain, and strategy should reflect that. Mobile is simply a tool, uniquely suited to get certain jobs done. Getting it right requires an understanding of the available mobile technologies and usage scenarios. Here are seven that I can think of:

What are the available mobile technologies and how are they currently being used?

1) Mobile ads

Many highly-engaged ‘eyeballs’ in hightly-contextual situations – yes, mobile ads have huge potential. The introduction of iAds earlier this year opened people’s eyes to the possibilities of mobile ads, and Google’s purchase of AdMob proved how big the market is. (Google’s Mobile Ads Now a $1 Billion Global Business)

This excerpt, from an AdAge article, sums up the current situation:

SMS messaging is still the largest ad format in mobile, projected to hit $327 million this year. However, Apple’s iAd, as well as Google’s bet on mobile display through AdMob and its growing suite of rich-media units, will soon unseat text messaging as the primary mobile-ad medium. Mobile search and display ads are expected to pass messaging in 2012. Upticks in mobile search and display also coincides with growing smartphone penetration; Nielsen says there will be more internet-enabled phones than basic-feature phones in the U.S. at some point next year. Search and display also rely on faster and more pervasive mobile-internet connectivity.

2) Appvertising

Distinct from in-app ads, these are branded apps, usually meant for the purpose of engagement or to create a “cool” factor. The benefit here is that the level of interactivity goes way up when you leverage the functionality of the phone’s hardware. (Although, this might not be such a unique advantage with the introduction of iAds.)

The problem is that apps are notoriously un-sticky. What’s more, there are hundreds of thousands of them, so your app has to really stand out, which often means the app itself has to be advertised.

It is my opinion that, as a stand-alone offering, it doesn’t make much sense to have an app that is soley for the purpose of advertising. Though it is being done, and in some cases with decent success. Here is one example: Juicy Fruit’s “Sweet Talk”

Usually, the most successful (and elaborate) of these apps are actually branded gaming apps that take advantage the phone’s sensors and its always-on-us status. For example, with Nike Grid, the idea is to “run from phone box to phone box, street by street across London to claim the most streets in just 24 hours.”

3) Mobile utility apps

Which brings us to mobile utility apps — IMO the most powerful and worthwhile reason for building an app. Earlier I wrote about digital utility. From my point-of-view, digital utility occurs when the app is an addition to the product ecosystem such that it simultaneously creates unique value while strengthening the value proposition of the overall product.

The example I wrote about was Nike+. Nike realized that by creating Nike+ they could bring all the components of the running ecosystem together — shoes, music, data, people — allowing for innovation and thereby strengthening the product and creating a more compelling way to get the job done.

One caveat: the functionality the app is providng has to be truly compelling. The app has to get a job done that legitimately needs being done — not just be a gee-whiz gimmick. If the effort to find, download, and remember to use the app is greater than the need for that job to get done, it’s likely people will not use it. The key here is to find unmet needs or problems that need to be solved to which the solution would not have been possible before smartphones and ubiquitous mobile Internet. I’m sure there are many. Other examples are the Tesco app and Amazon’s price comparison app.

Oh, and one more point to make: the app doesn’t necessarily have to be an ever-green utility. Sometimes the value is in meeting a temporary, but still important, need. For example, the New York Road Runners Marathon App, which allowed real-time tracking of the marathon, went for $3.99, and shot to No. 1 during the race.

4) Mobile websites

You would think this is a no brainer. The number of people accessing the Internet through their mobile devices is growing rapidly. Often they are browsing at times when they are looking to make a purchase. Almost as often, they encounter a clunky, meant-for-the-desktop website. When this happens it’s a pain point in the customer journey; friction is created.

People are looking for information on their phones because they want to buy stuff: MAKE THAT AS EASY AS POSSIBLE. Having said that, please don’t expect people to download and continually use a branded app just so they can see what’s being sold or so that they can locate a store. (See above point about mobile utility.)

Quick info-bites are a job for the mobile website. Mobile sites have huge potential to be better than the actual site because they strip away all the distractions and give you want you want when you want it. There is so much potential to create a great experience by proving easy access to exactly what the user wants.

Other benefits of the mobile web over an app? 1) Stickiness is a non-issue; everyone has a browser. 2) The Web (or at least HTML5) is truly cross platform – iPhone, Android, Berry, Windows, Simian — it covers them all. 3) There is a lot being done with HTML5 — just look at what Google has done with it.

Here are some fanatastic mobile web experiences.

5) Mobile platforms

Does having a mobile presence require building something? The answer is no. The most-used apps are Social Networking and Gaming apps [source]. There are many mobile platforms out there that are leveraging this behaviour and providing ways for brands join in: Facebook, Fousquare, Gowalla, Kite, SCVNGR, GoldRun,the list goes on.

Location-based services, for example, fall under this category. These platforms can be fun, useful and compelling (think loyalty rewards and CRM). Like Facebook, the infrastructure and user-base is already there — and growing exponentially. The hard part is evaluating how your brand will fit in and use the platform to provide value in some way.

5) Augmented reality

Right now, augmented reality is largely seen as a gimmick, although it has great potential for storytelling, service design, and cross-media advertising. Its unique advantage is that it’s a visual bridge between the online and offline worlds. I expect to see big things, as this space develops.

Some examples are Airwalk’s Invisible Pop-Up Shop, where users must go to a specific location to ‘capture’ a virtual special edition shoe; H&M’s interactive mobile display window, which turns the storefront into a game; and IKEA’s Portable Interior Planner, which let’s you virtually arrange a room with different pieces of furniture. These are just a few of many examples where digital information is layered over the physical world to create a better user experience.

6) QR codes

Augmented reality provides a visual bridge between the offline and online worlds; QR codes are like hyperlinks between these two worlds. This space is still very young, but growing rapidly (scanning up 700% this year), and quite a bit is being done already:

Gap Uses Barcodes to Deliver In-Store Info

Gap is using 2D barcodes to connect online user reviews with its physical retail locations. New in-store displays direct mobile users to a ScanLife mobile site where they can see a video of Gap’s Head of Design and read more about the featured Black Magic jean collection including tips and peer reviews.

QR Codes Come to TV

From the comfort of their sofas, mobile-phone users can scan a bar code embedded in commercials on certain evening shows on Bravo and instantly obtain additional information about a product and a discount to buy it.

Slap A QR Code On That Product So That People Can Like It

Facebook like buttons are now everywhere on the Web… But what about when you are walking along the street and you see something in a window that you really like, or in a magazine, or a product you are holding in your hands? … A new service called Likify, created by Belgian company Boondoggle Lifelabs, just launched that allows marketers to add QR codes to products and signs, and then link those QR codes to a Facebook like button.

And it’s not just hyperlinking. Services like Stickybits creates a way for people to attach digital content to physical objects. Why? It allows the object or place to tell a story: who’s been there? what was happening? where has the object been? etc.. You can imagine the possibilities for discovery and storytelling.

What if you could give any physical object a story simply by sticking a barcode on it and appending a message to that barcode? The message could be a photo, a text message, a video, or a voice note. All anyone would need to unlock the message is a phone with a special barcode scanning app.

7) Mobile payments

A one-click point-of-sale that’s always in your hands AND connected to your most complete social graph. Now, that’s powerful stuff! Mobile payments have huge potential — it’s no wonder the big guys are all trying to get in on the action. While an ‘iWallet‘ might not be here just yet, it’s almost certain that it will be in the near future.

Right now, a few retailers are dipping their toes and some are cashing in big time. (In the summer, Amazon announced that its customers now order $1 Billion of products per year via mobile — most of those via smartphones.)

The other form of mobile payments is in-app purchases. Right now the majority of in-app purchases are for virtual goods used in games, but there is no reason to think this couldn’t extend to digital content. (for more info, read: One Third of Top-Grossing iPhone Apps Are Free)

A look at the top-grossing iPhone apps today finds 34 of the top 100 apps are free, but make their money through in-app purchases of mostly virtual currencies as well as other premium features. Remco van den Elzen, CEO co-founder of analytics firm Distimo, said he believes in-app purchases now represent about 30 percent of all iPhone App Store revenue.

So that’s it. Those are the seven ways mobile is being used today. Did I leave anything out? Any thoughts are welcome.

In the past year, and increasingly as of late, mobile has been getting a lot of attention. The stats are impressive; they show how quickly adoption is occurring and shed light on how the technology is changing our behaviour — and business. At the same time, there is still tons of innovation, a lot of hype, and much confusion; it can all become a little overwhelming. Yet, still, mobile hasn’t really taken off, say, in the way social media has.

To grasp it all it might be useful to step back, start with a bird’s-eye view of the situation and work our way down.

What makes mobile technology so powerful?

• Mobile lies at the intersection of the analog and digital worlds. It is the bridge that connects the two. It is unique in its ability to span all channels, and be a tool for interaction with all touchpoints – TV, radio, print, social, web, and retail, in-home, out-of-home — anywhere, anytime.
• Mobile’s ability to connect offline/online gives it great potential for augmenting a product ecoystem and strengthening a company’s activity system — providing digital utility.
• It is a constantly-present concierge that guides the consumer through their path-to-purchase — from awareness and evaluation, to the purchase itself, to the delivery of value, and through to post-purchase support.
• It is always with us, and it contains our most complete social graph.
• More and more is being used as a tool for personal data collection. (think sensors, gps, always-there cameras, etc)
• It allows for hyper-personalization, and is ideal for managing and building customer relationships and brand loyalty.
• It will inevitably be our method of purchase in the not-so-distant future, replacing credit cards, debit cards, and loyalty cards. It will be the point of purchase — across physical and digital channels.
• Capabilities and adoption will only increase with ever-imporoving devices and wireless infrastructure.

Is there a “mobile” strategy?

It’s easy to see that it’s not adequate to think of mobile as just another channel, the way we do social media, or the Web, or TV, or print. It is not a single mass medium; rather, it is many media and channels in one always-on, always-on-us device. It’s a fragmented app universe, it’s the mobile web, it’s social networks, it’s location-based services, it’s text messaging, IM, and phone calls.

Things have changed. But not really. The problems being solved remain; strategy should reflect that. Mobile is simply a powerful tool, uniquely suited to get certain jobs done by leveraging emerging forms human behaviour, facilitated by technology. I’m going to list what I think are some possible “mobile” strategies:

• Leverage the opportunities created by the convergence of online and offline.
• Reward customers for digital interactions by providing physical-word rewards or vice versa.
• Encourage and reward curatorial behaviour (across online and offline); utilize the data to create personalized offerings.
• Encourage and reward exploration — along the purchase path, in-delivery, and post-purchase.
• Encourage and reward collaborative behaviour.
• Reduce friction to obtaining timely, contextual information required to make a purchase decision.
• Reduce friction to completing a purchase by designing innovative point of sale mobile interaction scenarios.
• Integrate mobile into service design to augment and personalize the experience.
• Surface, reward, and utilize rich behavioural data created by social-mobile interactions.
• Facilitate and reward activities that strengthen the value proposition of the product ecosystem.

When reading these, it’s easy to see that many of them make sense on their own, irrespective of if they are labelled as mobile. Again, in certain cases, mobile simply provides a more effective way to get the job done. And, IMO, that’s how any problem-solving mission should be approached: First, what is the job that needs to get done and why? Second, what is the best way, using what we know about technology, human motivations, and corresponding behaviour, to get that job done?

Of course, that requires an understanding of available technologies and usage scenarios. Even those who are convinced mobile is important, may not be entirely sure of all available use cases, how and when to use each, or how these elements fit with everything else.

Continue reading: 7 ways mobile is being used.

Foursquare is rolling out a new rewards platform that, IMO, pushes them miles ahead of anything else out there — including Facebook Places. Their first trial is going to be built on top of Safeway’s existing loyalty program, enabling users to link their Safeway loyalty accounts to Foursquare, and earn rewards from check-ins.

This is huge. Why?

1) It’s designed to handle the scale required for a national retailer. Why? –>

2) Employees are taken out of the equation. It’s seamlessly connected with existing loyalty programs, which means no having to convince the cashier that you can indeed redeem your coupon. (Which also means not having to train thousands of low-level employees — hence the scalability.) This also makes the user experience much more enjoyable.

3) Brand loyalty is more than deals.

Loyalty is about the local merchant remembering your name and order. Loyalty is about getting a sign on a table at Arby’s saying only the mayor can sit here. The foursquare platform allows for that.

4) It’s designed to reward to user behaviour, irrespective of in-store check-ins. The platform takes the opposite approach of most loyalty programs, which attempt to push new behaviour through incentives, rather than reward existing behaviour. How?

When participating customers earn Foursquare’s “Gym Rat” badge, they might be offered a SoBe Lifewater; or, if you often check in bright and early, Foursquare will recognize you’re a morning person, and may offer Tropicana orange juice or Quaker Oats–all specials on PepsiCo products, redeemable at Safeway stores.

5) It provides rich consumer data by going beyond in-store behaviour.

Collecting consumer data outside the venue is incredibly valuable for tailoring an effective rewards experience. Before, check-in services offered minimal insight: users check in at Starbucks; earn and redeem vouchers for free coffee; and therefore drink coffee.(As if Starbucks couldn’t have assumed that about their customers.)

6) It helps brands understand how location drives behaviour.

How can consumer goods makers utilize geo-location? Imagine the potential of Foursquare’s new program: Do we feel like drinking Gatorade after checking in at baseball practice? Do we want an AMP Energy drink when checking in at the library? A Mountain Dew when checking in at the ski resort?

Looks like pretty powerful stuff. It will be interesting to see what kind of traction this gets.

[via Fast Company]

I came across this a little while ago. It’s too good not to re-blog, so here it is.

For his daughter’s recent graduation, Mr. Attique Rabbani, the owner of a small software firm in Bangladesh, wrote this short letter to her, giving her some small (AWESOME) pieces of advice on what NOT to do with life.

Here they are:

Do not ever work
Picasso used to paint all the time, Henry Moore sculpt the whole day. Others would have thought they were working themselves to death. They actually were reenergizing and reinvigorating themselves. Do what you enjoy doing. Do not ever work.

Do not try hard
Let it simply flow. Jimmy Hendrix did not play guitar. He simply let his feelings flow unabated. Muhammad Ali used to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. (Do not go into boxing though!)

Do not go into any competition
Quality has no competition. Only mediocrity has competition. If you do what you do at the highest quality you have no competition. Quality creates a moat around yourself.

Do not market
Create your own demand. People are always on the lookout for the good. People seek out winners. Therefore be a winner all the time.

Do not read
Fire your imagination and creativity. Read not what is written but read into the writer’s mind. It is Einstein, one of the greatest minds of our times, who said that imagination is better than knowledge.

Do not run after money
Do not run after money. You will find that money runs faster than you do. Bring total mindfulness to whatever you are doing. Hit Nirvana. Money will feel ignored. It will stop running and fall back on you head over heels. In a heap.

Do not run after success
Carry on doing what you like doing without unduly bothering about success or failure. Success is also like charm. If you think you have it surely it will elude you.

Do not take advice
Advice is what others did not take but wish to give. Your mind is your best guide. Certainly keep your eyes and ears open. Absorb everything but add your own pinch of salt. Filter out what does not suit you. (Do not think I put this at the end on purpose. Honest.)

[via Sokanu: The Blog]

I came across this quote the other day:

We don’t do advertising any more. We just do cool stuff, it sounds a bit wanky, but that’s just the way it is. Advertising is all about achieving awareness, and we no longer need awareness. We need to become part of people’s lives and digital allows us to do that. - Simon Pestridge, Marketing Chief, Nike UK

It really resonated with me. Yes, Nike uses digital to become part of people’s lives. But not as in, “it’s always there and I can’t escape it.” Instead, they use digital in a way that people willingly integrate the brand into their lives. Why? The part about “cool stuff” — because it creates value for them.

Products = Value = Brands

The idea of great products creating brands is not a novel one:

To build brands that mean something to customers, you need to attach them to products that mean something to customers. - Clayton Christensen

This is obvious and fundamental. However, traditional marketing channels and approaches aren’t equipped to make a product better. More desirable, perhaps. But not fundamentally better. I think one of the biggest advantages digital has — especially social and mobile — is that digital can enhance existing products and even create new products that add real value.

What am I talking about? First, two things need to be defined.

1)What is value?

The term value refers to social value, emotional value, and functional value. Things like social status, fun, safety, simplicity, convenience, productivity.

2)What is a product?

A product is something that  creates value. Or as defined by Christensen, “a product is a job people need or want to do.” It is an experience, a service, a moment — digital or physical — though, increasingly both.

A product is not a feature.
A product is not (just) a technology.

A product is an ecosystem of features that work together in a purposeful way to create value.

Digital can strengthen the ecosystem and get the job done.

Adding new features into the ecosystem can allow for innovative combinations that create new “products” that strengthen the value proposition and/or create value in a novel way. Marketing should be about discovering ways to do this; in ways that connect with core customers in a meaningful way, tapping into shared values, and meeting an unmet need.

Nike+ is a great example. Say the job people want to get done is ‘running’ which might actually mean several things. Maybe they want to get in shape, they want to be healthy, they want to be part of a community, etc. You can’t get these jobs done with shoes alone. Nor with just an iPod. Nor with just a website. It takes an entire ecosystem working together to create the whole product. Nike realized that by creating Nike+ they could bring all the components of the ecosystem together, allowing for innovation, and thereby strengthening the product — creating a more compelling way to get the job done.

The slides below, taken from Peter Merholz’ presentation, “From the Outside In”  illustrate this point. The first slide is the Nike+ ecosystem, and the second is the extended ecosystem, along with the innovations that strengthen the overall product.

Nike isn’t the only brand that gets this. Here are some more examples where digital made the product more valuable:

Baker Tweet
MySkyStatus
Food52 Recipes On Stickybits
Tesco Groceries app

Creating ‘digital utility’ requires a true understanding of 1) the business’ strategy (the system of activities it uses to create value) and the 2) true needs of the customer (which is really an understanding of what job they need or want to get done). Topics I will save for later posts.

Here is an interesting article from The New York Times: Jobs Data Highlights the Challenges for Washington.

The good news: The United States economy added 151,000 jobs in October.

The bad: It’s not nearly strong enough to make a dent in unemployment. Nearly 15 million people are still out of work, and the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 9.6 percent.

To put it into perspective, even if the economy suddenly expands and starts adding 208,000 jobs a month — as it did in its best year this decade — it would still take 12 years to close the gap between the growing number of American workers and the total available jobs, according to the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project.

Obviously something has to change. We need a paradigm shift in our definition of employment. It’s not about getting a “job” anymore. And, besides, why would you want it to be?

Eric Ries talks about a revolution in entrepreneurship, and how there are more entrepreneurs all over the world than ever before. I quite like how he defines a startup:

A human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under extreme uncertainty.

At the same time, Clay Shirky talks about cognative surplus, explaining how the Internet has lowered costs to participating in the creation and sharing of ideas, products and services. And how technology is enabling us to be creative and generous in ways that we never anticipated and haven’t yet fully taken account of.

I like how the opening for the film, The Future of Money (posted below) puts it:

We can go online in the space of 10 seconds we have 20 tabs filled with amazing initiatives and amazing people from all over the world. It naturally raises my standards and expectations in terms of what can I achieve. When I see all this stuff it’s sort of this feeling of overwhelming, what the hell do I do with this? On the other hand, when I’m clear, it’s just this complete bliss and ecstasy that there is just so much richness. And if you talk about wealth, I feel like I have the world’s collective consciousness at my finger tips and I just feel so RICH!

Some more good news: People aren’t just talking about this; it’s already happening all over the place.

Because transaction costs are approaching zero and because it’s becoming easier to find and connect with people, things like this are happening:

Skyara is a marketplace for exciting things to do.

The site provides people who can offer new experiences like a culinary tour, personalized yoga or a beer tasting with a platform to do so, hooking them up AirBnB-style with people who seek new experiences like foodies or yoga fanatics.

There’s also Fiverr, “The place for people to share things they’re willing to do for $5;” landshare, a service that connects growers with people with land to share; kickstarter, a funding platform for creative projects; freecycle, a community where people give and get things for free; and zoopa, the world’s first social finance company that lets people lend and borrow directly with each other online.

These are examples of collaborative consumption, where people see themselves as producers that create the value AND as consumers who can benefit from that value.

In this new world, what is value? What is wealth? If value exchange is built on trust, how is the Internet, and how we behave on it, redefining our definition of trust?

These are some interesting questions, discussed in the film below. Check it out. Think about it. Discuss.

This is the house an airplane interiors engineer for Boeing designs for himself. 182-square-feet, and inside is everything you could ever need.

[It's] 11-feet-3-inches wide, by 16-feet-2-inches deep, by 10-feet-4-inches tall with two beds, a full kitchen with a dishwasher, bathroom with a shower, a soaking tub set into the floor just inside the front door. On three living levels. There’s also closet space, a dining table and storage for two bikes. All of it contemporary and in cool blue, with accents of black, red and white.

Why did he do it? (Besides an affinity for really small interior spaces.)

“I wanted to compress my home to squirt me back out to the community,” he says, taking inspiration from dwellings in Scandinavia and Japan, places where space is dear. “That was one of the philosophical reasons. I want to be able to shop daily, not store a lot and eat really well.”

Although I’m not sure I’d want to live in an area this small, I agree completely with preferring location and access to community over size. Far away from the isolation and excess often associated with suburbia.

I also agree that less is more. Simple is beautiful. So much of what we have in unnecessary… It’s great to see such a fine example of good design: Nothing wasted, everything serving a purpose (or several).

[via Pacific NW | Tiny apartment shows the value of a good fit | Seattle Times Newspaper.]

Based on its study of 1,500 Facebook users, ExactTarget concluded that 38% of online U.S. consumers “Like”  a brand on Facebook.

Naturally, this is a question that comes up a lot:

What motivates people to “Like” a brand on Facebook?

According to a study by American Express OPEN Forum, here’s the breakdown of why users might “Like” your brand, illustrated by the percentage of respondents who said that they use Facebook for the listed activity:

• 40% to receive discounts and promotions
• 39% to show my support for the company to others
• 36% to get a “freebie”
• 34% to stay informed about the activities of the company
• 33% to get updates on future products
• 30% to get updates on upcoming sales
• 29% for fun or entertainment
• 25% to get access to exclusive content
• 22% someone recommended it to me
• 21% to learn more about the company
• 13% for education about company topics
• 13% to interact

Also…

• 65% of Facebook users only access the site when they’re not at work or school – typically meaning early morning or evening.
• Women indicate that their primary focus on the site is on maintaining relationships (by a margin of 63% to 54%)

IMO it makes sense that almost 40 percent of people fall under the “I just plain like the brand and I want people to know that” category. Often the brands that do the best on social are those that have a “likeable personality” that people can identify with, and use to define their own personal narrative — brands that help them tell the world who they are.

[via Mashable]