Three Reasons Google Should Acquire Delicious from Yahoo

December 17, 2010 10 Comments

So the news is out. Yahoo plans to shutter Delicious, the largest social bookmarking site. Which is shocking, particularly among the tech savvy and socially oriented. Delicious is iconic for its application of social sharing and collective intelligence. Hard to believe Yahoo wants to shut it down.

But wait…this doesn’t have to be the end. Why not seek alternatives to shutting down the service? Might there be a logical company to take on Delicious, and all the value it holds? Why yes, one company comes to mind.

Google.

Delicious fits Google’s mission

Hmmm…what is it Google wants to do? What defines their corporate philosophy? Ah yes, here’s Google’s mission:


“Organize the world’s information.” Now, doesn’t that sound like the kind of thing that applies to Delicious? Millions of people organizing the world’s information, according to their own tags. Which makes it easier to find for others. Crowdsourced curation.

For that reason alone, Google would be wise to take on Delicious.

Glean new insights about what people value

Google’s pagerank is amazing. It’s incredibly good at finding nuggets. But it’s not perfect, as anyone who regularly use it knows. The use of links is powerful, but is a limited basis for identifying valuable web pages.

What people elect to bookmark is a different sort of valuation. Which is important, because not everyone blogs, or creates web pages with links to their favorite sites. But there is a distributed effort of indicating value via bookmarking.

This activity would be a valuable addition to Google’s search results. Take a look at this thread on Hacker News (a bunch of tech savvy types) about Delicious:

I added that highlighting. And here’s what Michael Arrington said when Yahoo experimented with adding Delicious bookmarks to its search results:

I have previously written that Delicious search is one of the best ways of searching for things when a standard search doesn’t pull up what you are looking for. After Google, it is my favorite “search engine.” Adding this information into Yahoo search is a great idea.

Google could leverage the activity of Delicious users to improve its search results, or at least give users an additional place to find content. Mine the tags to provide more context and connections among pages.

Note that Google, and Bing, are exploring different ways to apply social signals from Twitter and Facebook. Inclusion of Delicious in the search process would be consistent with that.

And Google would still benefit from its Adwords program here. Which would be a monetization strategy for Delicious, which has no ads.

Great PR move with the tech community

Google finds itself in a fight with Facebook for employees. Google is public, Facebook is pre-IPO. Social is hot, and Facebook is dominant in that. Google isn’t.

But as Allen Stern notes, Google does have a special appeal to the tech crowd for its developer-friendly moves. Stepping in and taking over a legendary Web 2.0 site like Delicious would be a good fit with that reputation. Enhance the usage of the data and make it easy for developers to access.

More importantly, Delicious holds a special appeal among the geekier set. Many of us are still active bookmarkers, and use the service. Google is known for being a geek-centric paradise, with a bunch of high-GPA, advanced degree types on its campuses.

What do you think it costs to run Delicious “as is”? I’d hazard a guess that it’s not too much. And Google is throwing off some serious cash ($10 billion in last 12 months):

So they do have some capacity, but obviously need to invest it wisely.

For a relatively low cost, they gain a treasure trove of data on relevance and value, and a solid boost to their PR. Seems like a big win to me. How about it Google? Why not step in and take over Delicious?

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Using Open Innovation to Be Competitively Unpredictable

November 22, 2010 3 Comments

During a Twitter Q&A organized by open innovation thought leader Stefan Lindegaard, Psion Teklogix CEO John Conoley posted this:

How interesting is that? Using open innovation to be “competitively unpredictable”. I love that concept. Let’s understand where John is coming from.

First, have you heard of Psion Teklogix? They make “rugged mobile computers”. Think Blackberry or iPhone, but industrial strength with specialized purposes, hardware, and made to withstand punishment. From an enterprise perspective, the chart below by VDC Research provides some perspective on mobile computing for work. I’ve outlined in red the section where Psion operates:

Psion’s computers are used in a variety of industries for inventory tracking, couriers, field service and other demanding jobs. The company is #3 in its industry (Motorola occupies the top spot). A key part of Psion’s strategy is to make its rugged mobile computers modular and customizable. This customization allows them to be adapted to different uses. Building on this modular and customization philosophy, the company has developed an ecosystem of third party vendors who make components that plug in with Psion’s products.

I had a chance to talk with Todd Boone, Director of Market Development for Psion. He described the company’s open innovation efforts.

Pace of Change in Mobile Has Accelerated

Before talking about open innovation, first understand this. Todd Boone noted that the pace of change of mobile computing has accelerated in the past several years. Anyone tracking the space probably gets that intuitively. This means is that the uses of mobile, the emergence of new competitors and the changes in technology change more frequently. As an example, on the consumer side, how long have Apple and Android been so influential in the mobile sector?

Indeed, VDC Research noted the changing dynamics of the rugged mobile computing market in a recent article:

Another critical challenge facing rugged handheld vendors is the increasing level of competition from smartphones and other emerging devices – especially for field mobility applications. While smartphones do not have the same level of integrated I/O capabilities nor the level of ruggedness offered by rugged handheld devices, their proliferation in the enterprise (and lower adoption cost) are making them target devices to support more sophisticated enterprise applications. Plus, in the field mobility market the rugged handheld community is most challenged from an OS perspective. Although there is a strong application and developer community supporting field mobility applications on Windows Mobile devices, customer expectations in terms of user interface and experience – especially for field mobility applications – is increasingly influenced by consumer oriented smartphones.

For companies operating in the mobile space, such dynamics make it harder to “know” everything, and to have the resources to respond accordingly. Nimbleness and flexibility are needed to address the unpredictable course the mobile sector takes.

As Todd Boone explained to me, Psion needed a strategy that leveraged their modular platform strategy while recognizing they can’t realistically know all the emerging use cases and technologies out there.

Answer? Open innovation.

Ingenuity Working

On March 4, 2010, Psion launched Ingenuity Working (IW), a site built to expand its open innovation activities. Psion CEO John Conoley described its mission this way:

The open, online community in Ingenuity Working brings us closer to our customers and their thoughts and will allow us to socialise and commercialise innovation. We are using social media to bring our developers and resellers together with our customers, all over the world. Essentially, everyone will be putting their heads together to help create technology that best fits a company’s individual requirements – that has to be a good thing.

In talking with Todd, I learned that the initial thrust of the IW community is focused on partner vendors, rather than direct feedback from end-user customers. In some ways, this is similar to P&G’s open innovation approach.

Engagement with external parties occurs via discussion forums, blogs and a “secure zone” for each partner. In these arenas, there is a two-way exchange of product ideas and use cases. An example can be seen in the section of IW devoted to discussions for developers of Windows/CE/WM/Embedded.

Now that’s some esoteric stuff there. But here’s the thing. It’s groundbreaking in the rugged mobile computing industry to have this all ‘hanging out there’. It becomes free research for competitors too, in a way. Which one may view as a risk of this whole endeavor,

Here’s how Todd describes the Psion open innovation vision:

Rather, we think it’s the opportunity to drive the market to a new reality. A market that drives itself in a way that is inherently beneficial to customers and partners alike based on the real-time, open dialogue that starts prior to any development activities taking place and continues through to product maturity. Real success will come, I think, when marketing and engineering no longer make product decisions but rather our community of customers, partners and developers does.

Psion is early in its open innovation initiative, and plans to improve and evolve its program. The company is engaging partners on hardware, software, standards and a wide variety of use cases. These efforts complement its existing offline channels and research.

Becoming Competitively Unpredictable

Finally, that great quote from Psion’s CEO about embracing open innovation to be competitively unpredictable. I asked Todd for a bit more context. What exactly does that mean?

He noted that typically, large companies describe their roadmap for the next several quarters or years in terms of product development. The challenge with that approach is that it’s company-centric, and its effectiveness is limited by the increasing rate of change in the industry.

The other dynamic is Psion’s orientation toward creating an open platform that can be configured for different uses. This platform philosophy is a core strategy.

So by engaging with external parties, Psion is looking to (i) stay on top of emerging market changes; and (ii) leverage this large collective intelligence to develop applications and hardware for its configurable platform.

Ideas which would be hard to forecast out over the next 6, 12 or 24 months. If you’re a competitor, this makes it harder to know what Psion will do.

In other words, they become competitively unpredictable.

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Phone Cameras + Social Are Expanding the Historical Record

November 8, 2010 12 Comments

"There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy."

In a critique of the rise of Instagram (current photo sharing app du jour), Laurie Voss argues that the rise of cheap, low fidelity cameras on phones is undermining the data contained in them. And it’s not just that these pictures are lower quality now, it’s affecting their value for future generations:

With these rubbish phone cameras we take terrible photos of some of our most important moments and cherished memories. I am not complaining about composition and lighting here; I’m not a photographer. I am talking about the quantity of meaningful visual data contained in these files. Future historians will decry forever the appalling lack of visual fidelity in the historical record of the last decade.

I read that, and at first though, “Yeah, that could be an issue.” But then I realized that, well no, it’s actually the opposite. The rise of cheap phone cameras is actually increasing the historical record. This even has disruptive innovation undertones to it.

Why?

Picture = Moment + Equipment

When thinking about recording data for history pictorially, I consider two elements:

  • Moment
  • Equipment

"The line at 9 am at the Pleasanton @sfbart stretches for blocks. Huge crowd downtown today for #sfgiants parade."

Now moments are always going to arise. They may be significant moments, such as Janis Krums’ iconic picture above after a US Airways plan crash landed on the Hudson. Recently, the San Francisco Giants were celebrated for their 2010 World Series title with a ticker tape parade in downtown San Francisco. When I arrived at the Dublin/Pleasanton BART the morning of the victory parade, I was shocked by the number of people waiting in line for get to SF.

Just as important as the moment is the equipment. I’m not talking about the quality of the photographic equipment. I’m saying, “do you have something to take the picture?”

Before I got a phone with a camera on it, I had no way of photographing any moments. I could tweet about them, email a description of them and tell people about them. But there was no visual record at all.

I wasn’t carrying a camera around with me. Just not something I wanted to deal with as I also carried my ‘dumb’ phone.  And wallet. And keys. Just too much to deal with.

But a camera included with my mobile phone? Oh yeah, that works. I’ll have that with me at all times.

Which is a much better fit with the notion of capturing moments. They are unpredictable, and do not schedule themselves to when you’re carrying a separate camera.

As for the “quantity of meaningful visual data” being reduced, I think of it mathematically:

The X/Y variable represents the decrease in data per picture. If Y is the “full” data from a high resolution photo, then X is the reduced data set. The loss of scene details, the inability to discern people’s expressions, etc. Yeah, that is a loss due to low quality cameras.

The B/A variable represents the increased number of pictures enabled by the proliferation of convenient low quality cameras. If A is the quantity of photos with high resolution cameras, B is the overall number of photos inclusive of the low quality cameras.

Multiply the ratios, and I believe the overall historical record has been improved by the advent of phone cameras. In other words, “> 1″.

Sharing Is Caring

Something the higher quality, standalone cameras have lacked is connectivity. They miss that aspect we have to share something in the moment. The fact that I can share a picture just as soon as a I take it is extra incentive to take the picture in the first place.

I share my kids’ pics with family via email, and other pics end up in my Twitter and Facebook streams. You know how painful it is to upload photos from the camera and share them? Very.

Standalone cameras are like computer hard drives, locking data off in some siloed storage device somewhere. Good luck to historians in extracting that photographic data.

Convenience Wins Out

This is the disruptive innovation of convenience. People are swapping the separate cameras for the all-in-one mobile devices. And like any good low-end innovation, the quality will increase. Meaning more pictures with better detail and fidelity.

I mean, imagine if there were a bunch of phone cameras at Gettysburg?

Only known photo of Abraham Lincoln (center, without hat) at Gettysburg

We’d have thousands of pics, and it’d be a Twitter Trending Topic. As for the lower data per picture, damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead. Phone cameras will enrich the historical record for future generations.

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iPad’s Climb Up the Disruptive Innovation Cycle

October 5, 2010 15 Comments

Blockbuster’s recent bankruptcy filing was yet another chapter in the Clayton Christensen annals of disruptive innovation. A major brand with convenient locations that got disrupted by a website and the U.S. Mail. Note that we’re seeing the backend of the disruption, when it all seems so clear.

How easy is it to see such a disruption beforehand? “Not very” would be the honest answer. What distinguishes a truly disruptive technology or business model from a flash-in-the-pan idea? Keep in mind the basis of a disruptive innovation:

A technology initially addressing low-end market needs that slowly moves upstream as its capabilities evolve.

From that perspective, think of all the things out there that have stayed low level and did not disrupt industries. Disruptive innovation is like a Category 5 hurricane: powerful, slow-moving and rare.

Which brings me to the Apple iPad. Are we witnessing a disruptive tropical depression?

DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION LADDER

The graphic below (via wikipedia reproduced on the TouchDraw iPad app) describes the levels of usage for disruptive technologies.

Disruptive Innovation Cycle

The target of the iPad here is the global laptop market. In that context, the beautiful, sublime, innovative iPad is solidly…in the low quality usage band of the chart above.

What represents the iPad’s “low quality use”?

  • Email
  • Surfing the web
  • Facebooking
  • Tweeting
  • Playing music

“Low quality” is not a pejorative term here. It’s a reflection of the computing power needed for the listed activities. This is the iPad’s entre into the laptop market. Consider how much of your own digital activity is covered by those items listed above. IPad already offers a great experience here.

Indeed, the Best Buy CMO recently confirmed the iPad’s move into this end of the market.

MEDIUM QUALITY USE

When you see those low quality uses, they’re primarily consumption oriented. If they are production oriented, they’re pretty basic. But there are things that can be done at the next level, medium quality use.

Games are well done on the iPad. They take advantage of the touch aspect of the device. In my opinion, games on the iPad are quickly moving up the quality ladder.

For the office, there are Apple’s apps. The Pages word processing app looks like a winner. For document production, Pages appears to fill the bill. Especially without a Microsoft Word app on the iPad. The other major office apps – spreadsheets and presentations – are available as well.

I really like the graphics program TouchDraw on the iPad. You can create very nice graphics, for business use, with just your finger. The simple graphic above was done with TouchDraw.

While I couldn’t possibly survey all apps that address different activities, I get the sense that a number of them qualify for medium or high quality uses. The question is the breadth of apps addressing the “power use cases” of laptop owners.

Finally, a word about the keyboard. I love it. I find it very easy to type out this post. It’s not without its imperfections, but generally I’m flying around it as I type. One disclaimer: I hunt-n-peck to type. I’ve never learned real typing.

GAPS THAT NEED TO BE CLOSED

In my experimenting to see how much I could do with an iPad instead of a laptop, I’ve found several areas that need to be shored up to move the overall experience to the medium quality use level.

Safari usage: Safari is the browser used for the web on the iPad. It is surprising how many sites aren’t built for usage via Safari. For example, wordpress.com, surprisingly in my view, doesn’t work well with Safari. Google Docs? Similar issue. Doesn’t work well, or at all, with Safari. I’m embedding HTML tags in this post-by-email blog post.

I cannot accept an event into my Google Calendar via Safari. I cannot create a WebEx meeting from Safari, and the WebEx iPad app doesn’t allow you to create an event. In short, doing business via iPad is tough.

As the iPad continues to gain market share, expect better support by websites for Safari. Which will dramatically improve the end user experience with the iPad.

Graphics uploads: Want to add a graphic to a document, presentation, wiki, blog or email? Hard to do. We’re used to having graphics on our local drive, and a simple button to upload/embed that graphic.

Where’s my master upload button on the iPad?!!

Answer: there isn’t one. The graphic above is one that I emailed to Flickr, grabbed the embed code and pasted it into this post. Which works fine for publicly accessible graphics. But not so much in the work context.

I’d like to see the native Photos app become a universal location for accessing graphics in any app.

Stuff at my fingertips: The ability to easily click around different apps on the PC tray at the bottom of my screen, and to click quickly among different websites via tabs, is a great productivity benefit. If you’re like me, you’re zipping around easily.

With iPad, it’s slower going back-n-forth. A lot of clicking the home button to get to other apps, or clicking the button on Safari to view other sites. Which is a pain, reducing the pace of work.

iPAD’S INEVITABLE CLIMB UP THE DISRUPTION CYCLE

So the iPad is still fundamentally in the low quality usage band, but with some clear indications of moving up. I’ve taken to using my iPad for my non-work hours computing needs.

My full expectation is that slowly, but surely, Apple and the third party app developers will improve the utility of the iPad experience. It will take some time.

But the key observation is this: Apple has the time to enhance the iPad. Two points:

That’s why I expect iPad to get better over time: market momentum. How about you? Are you thinking the iPad, and even the new crop of competitor tablets, will disrupt the laptop industry?

Sent from my iPad

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Email’s New Freight – Posting to Social Sites

September 30, 2010 5 Comments

This post is a test of something I have not yet tried with wordpress.com: posting by email. It’s meant to be mostly an experiment.

But it’s also a realization that in a mobile world, email has a new found importance. Delivering social content payloads.

In a separate effort, I’m trying to get things done (GTD!) with my iPad versus my laptop. I’m curious how much one can get done.

One thing I want to do is to write a blog post. Surprisingly difficult! WordPress.com doesn’t fully function on Safari (where is that scroll bar to get to the bottom of my post???), and the wordpress iPad (er…iPhone) app is pretty poor. No surprise it only has 2 stars.

However, there is post by email. And to get a photo “out there” to Flickr, you can email it. Who knew? Mobile drives email

One final test. I’m pasting some embed code below. If wordpress accepts it, you’ll see a cool pic from Flickr. If wordpress doesn’t recognize it, you’ll see a bunch of funky code.

Driving Wheels of the Frisco 4500

Sent from my iPad

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Beyond Social CRM: The Open Innovation Revolution

August 25, 2010 11 Comments

The idea of bringing customers into the process of defining the products and service of your organization is one that is gaining a lot of steam. One manifestation of that is the increased interest in Social CRM. In this scenario, companies engage their social customers for feedback and marketing purposes. Taking it a step further, Mark Tamis and Esteban Kolsky see the higher purpose as organizing the business around the newly social customers.

And then there’s Stefan Lindegaard.

Stefan is a leading open innovation consultant and author of the recently published book, The Open Innovation Revolution. He sees things advancing even further. From page 13 of his book:

Open innovation is about integrating external partners in the entire innovation process. This should happen not just in the idea or technology-development phase but also in all other phases toward market acceptance. User-driven innovation is great because it directs your innovation efforts toward market needs. Open innovation takes you to the next step by providing more opportunities through external partners as you address those market needs.

Stefan is on to something. To illustrate his point, I put together these two graphics, based on a hypothetical product delivery value chain. The first graphic might be properly termed, “lightweight open innovation”:

Here’s where Stefan sees the (r)evolution of this:

That’s quite a feat there, isn’t it? Incorporate a greater range of external input throughout your company’s innovation process. As Stefan describes it on page 12:

User-driven is highly related to open innovation, but it has to go further to become open innovation. This happens when you not only get ideas from external sources but also let external players become key players in the process of turning ideas into a business.

The Value of Open Innovation

And what is the value of taking open innovation to a more integrated, advanced level? Procter & Gamble illustrates the benefit. In 2000, P&G CEO A.G Lafley set a goal of having 50% of the company’s products derived from external sources. To accomplish this, the company consciously engaged external parties through its Connect + Develop initiative. Through Connect + Develop, P&G conducted a two-way exchange of ideas and feedback with industry, leveraging a dedicated staff of over 50 people. The results?

  • In 2000, the success rate of new products was 15-20%. By 2008, the new product success rate rose to between 50 – 60%. (pdf)
  • R&D investment as a percentage of sales is down from 4.8% in 2000 to 3.4% in 2006. (link)

The company attributes its success to its open innovation model. And the advantage continues. Diversified, globally-based P&G’s stock price is up 7% over the past 5 years, while the diversified, globally-based businesses of the S&P 500 are down 2%. That’s a 9 percentage point spread.

P&G sees a key benefit of its ambitious open innovation model as this: to be the preferred partner of choice when external parties have a good idea. Think about that. The volume of good ideas that can occur outside your organization is significant. When individuals, academics and industry players do have these ideas, who’s at the top of their mind for partnering? That’s a significant, sustainable competitive advantage.

The Open Innovation Revolution looks at a number of aspects companies need to address to integrate open innovation more fully into their company’s processes.

It Starts with a Vision and Planning

The initial steps are crucial for establishing an open innovation strategy. Stefan observes that you only get “one-and-a-half chances to do this thing right”. So what are the key considerations for organizations considering open innovation?

  1. Establish a clear mandate, a strong strategic purpose and an ideation theme
  2. Conduct a stakeholder analysis
  3. Develop a communication strategy
  4. Build a common language
  5. Include organizational approaches that achieve TBX (T = top; B = bottom; X = across)
  6. Strive to be innovative instead of working to become innovative

His book addresses each of those elements. He also includes examples of companies (often Danish) incorporating these steps.

The step that most resonated with me is the first one, establish a clear mandate. When this is done, it moves the initiative from an interesting suggestion to an approach supported culturally, with processes, management buy-in and identified key players.

But it’s also the hardest and is less amenable to bottom-up experimentation. I say that as someone who has read the value of bottom-up viral adoption and experimentation in the Enterprise 2.0 world. If an organization is going to engage external parties in the co-creation, co-development process, you’d better make sure you’ve got legal and senior management signed-on.

And Stefan emphasizes the issues that will be faced internally at companies as they seek to establish their open innovation mandate. A favorite term of mine is “corporate antibodies”. These are the people inside an organization that will seek to sabotage an open innovation initiative. Why?

They don’t see the effort as 2+2=5. For them, it’s 2+2=2

Essentially they fear having their own projects derailed, and potentially losing their power inside the organization. This is where senior management needs to push the effort, and even crack a few skulls if needed. Here’s how Stefan relates it (page 32):

Mads Clausen, former CEO at Danfoss, was very good at taking managers aside and looking them straight in the eye while telling them that he really believed in this innovation initiative and that he hoped the manager shared his approach.

Innovation leaders must also educate executives on open innovation and, more importantly, must make the consequences of executive decisions very clear.

In Chapter 8 of the book, Stefan addresses strategies for overcoming corporate antibodies.

People, Networking, Roadblocks, Personal Brand and Time Management

Throughout the rest of The Open Innovation Revolution, Stefan discusses a variety of elements that factor into open innovation success.

With people, he has identified two archetypes: innovation leaders and intrapreneurs. Innovation leaders work at the strategic and tactical level to build the internal platform to handle open innovation. Intrapreneurs work at the operational level on initiatives. Key questions he answers are: how to identify and develop these people?

With networking, he applies concepts of social network analysis. And spends some time talking about how you individually can go about your networking. Networking’s value is in finding new ideas and connecting with people globally, and even internally.

Roadblocks include the corporate antibodies, but other issues as well. Top executives may not “get” open innovation. Also, radical innovation is too high a threshold to seek.

Personal brand is a useful term, and one that immediately puts some people off. One interesting tidbit Stefan notes is that establishing a personal brand is seen as manipulative in many countries, but “less so in the United States.” In the chapter discussing personal brand, he includes some worksheets to help you think about your own.

Time management is no doubt an issue for most of us. He includes Parkinson’s Law, which I hadn’t heard of but immediately recognized as true: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” He provides advice and frameworks for better managing time.

Admittedly, the personal branding and time management sections weren’t quite my cup of tea. But my guess is they reflect conversations he’s had over the years with many employees of companies who are figuring out open innovation. For example, remember his note that Europeans and the rest of the world outside the U.S. are reticent about this personal branding thing.

Start Thinking about Open Innovation

An area which I’d like to see more is a description of how open innovation works operationally. For instance, do you have existing personnel lead the interactions with external parties? Or is it better to have external connectors lead the coordination? What are the intellectual property issues to be considered? What are the contractual models for sharing the benefits of the effort?

Perhaps this is fodder for a future book by Stefan. But as it is, The Open Innovation Revolution is a smart, rich introduction to the concepts underlying this emerging practice. Stefan knows his stuff, and readers will come away with a better sense of how to prepare their organization, and themselves, for the coming revolution.

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How Much of a Relationship Do Your Customers Actually Want?

August 3, 2010 9 Comments

On the Harvard Business Review, Matt Dixon and Lara Ponomareff wrote a piece that caught my eye, Why Your Customers Don’t Want to Talk to You. Consumers increasingly prefer self-service, and the authors speculate:

Maybe customers are shifting toward self service because they don’t want a relationship with companies. While this secular trend could be explained away as just a change in consumers’ channel preferences, skeptics might argue that customers never wanted the kind of relationship that companies have always hoped for, and that self service now allows customers the “out” they’ve been looking for all along.

For managers hell-bent on deepening relationships with their customers, that’s a sobering thought.

That last line is particularly relevant to the new thinking: that companies need to engage their customers in “conversations”, which social media is enabling. A related question to ask is, do they really want a “relationship” at all with companies?

What exactly is a “relationship”?

Let’s start with an important point: what exactly is a “relationship”? Put simply, it’s a two-way connection I have with you based on some form of interaction(s). In that sense, buying a product from a company qualifies as a “relationship”. But that’s insufficient. We want to know how deep is the relationship?

The thinking of Mark Granovetter is relevant, provided helpfully by Lithium’s Michael Wu. Four elements determine the depth of a relationship:

  1. Time spend together
  2. Emotional intensity
  3. Intimacy (mutual confiding)
  4. Reciprocity

Now, apply those elements of relationship to the way you think about companies from which you buy. What’s the emotional intensity you have with the power company? Do you find yourself confiding with Amazon.com when you purchase something? How much time are you and your bank spending together?

Those questions point to a more commonly understood definition for relationship: high scores on the four Granovetter dimensions. But scoring high on those dimensions is an insurmountable hurdle for most companies vis-à-vis their customers.

The job your product is hired to do

This idea that companies need to think in terms of the “job their product has been hired to do” is one I learned from Clayton Christensen, Harvard professor and author of The Innovator’s Dilemma. It’s understanding why the customer buys your product, and what needs it fulfills. “Needs” often being different than thinking in terms of the features a product has.

This is what defines the relationship customers want to have with a company.

Leading social CRM thinker Wim Rampen argues this in his post Social CRM – What Relationships Should You Care For, And Why? In the post, he states this:

From a company’s perspective, a relationship with your Customers is not what you need most. You need most to understand what job it is your Customers are trying to get done.

Wim is spot on. That’s the innovation mantra. Nicely applied to social CRM.

The depth of a customer’s relationship depends on the job you’re hired to do

My interest in having a relationship – the deeper, more commonly understood definition – with a company is directly proportional to the complexity of the job I’ve hired you to do, as follows:

Here’s how the different jobs size up.

Efficiency, simplicity, convenience

In a consumer-based world, we have but only so much bandwidth for purchasing things which require lots of our time to engage and use. Mostly, we need commodities.

And you know what? We need ‘em fast, reliable and without taking up a lot of time. In this bucket o’ jobs-to-be-done, spending a lot of cycles engaging with many companies in ongoing relationships just will not cut it. How would you get anything else done?

It’s as Jon Husband shared with me on Twitter:

<Do they even want a relationship with companies? #scrm #acinsights> I don’t

The nature of relationships in this scenario is transactional. And there’s nothing wrong with that. My bank gives me efficiency, low cost and no hassles. I’m loyal, but I don’t have a deep relationship with them.

They just happen to satisfy well a job of convenience and efficiency I need done.

Episodic interaction events

Mountain Dew ran a great social media campaign called DEWmocracy. DEWmocracy got consumers involved in a number of initiatives:

  • Ad agency selection
  • New flavor selection
  • New drink names
  • Package creation

The campaign was a great example of an episodic event to drive interactions. This was relationship-building beyond the core product offering. What made it successful is that it extended the job-to-be-done. Sure, Mountain Dew tastes great, and you can enjoy cans of it. That alone really points toward convenience and simplicity, the lowest=level relationship.

But Mountain Dew was able to elevate the complexity of the job. It got people involved in the support processes for the production and distribution. Genius, and of course, risky. But many consumers responded. They found it fun to participate, and Mountain Dew reciprocated, as Ad Age notes:

Once you’ve engaged consumers, you can’t stop. Mtn Dew made an effort to let consumers know why it was taking their advice, as well as why it wasn’t.

Now that DEWmocracy has mostly run its course, the relationship will become shallow again. Until the next event. But it has raised market awareness, and established what the company is about in consumers’ minds.

One last note here. Old Spice’s recent social media marketing blitz was not an example of addressing the job-to-be-done. It was pure marketing awareness, a point well-made by Jacob Morgan. And it worked.

Complex job, long-term usage

SAP. When you think of SAP software, do you think, “lightweight, simple-to-use, rip-n-replace anytime?” No, you don’t. SAP software is legendarily complex and powerful. They are a huge company with thousands of customers, billions in revenue and myriad business applications.

This is a complex job-to-be-done.

SAP maintains a strong customer community and extended ecosystem (including the SAP Developer Network) to manage its relationships with customers. Which makes absolute sense considering the complexity of the job-to-be-done. Customers want a relationship with SAP. Frankly, they need it.

Complex jobs often mean several things for customers:

  • Recurring need to interact with the company for information
  • Higher switching costs, increasing the need to understand what the company’s future direction is
  • Variety of use cases, meaning many ideas for future product versions

It is in these situations where the popular notion of “relationship” most closely matches what customers seek.

The core focus is the job-to-be-done

Clayton Christensen wrote this with regard to the way companies should consider their customers:

With few exceptions, every job people need or want to do has a social, a functional, and an emotional dimension. If marketers understand each of these dimensions, then they can design a product that’s precisely targeted to the job. In other words, the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy.

That’s the perspective  from companies toward customers, not so much for relationships, but for product features.

The job is also the fundamental unit of analysis going the other way, customers toward companies. Understanding the complexity of the job-to-be-done points to how deep a relationship customers want.

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When Should Management Push Enterprise 2.0 Adoption?

June 23, 2010 10 Comments

After the Boston edition of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, IBM’s Rawn Shah wrote a great follow-up post outlining ten observations from the event. A couple points that I found myself agreeing with wholeheartedly were:

Adoption is about transforming human behaviors at work – More folks are starting to recognize that it is not trivial to bring communities and other social environments to life.

‘Let’s get beyond “adoption”’ – This was another sentiment I heard several times, but I attribute it to short-attention span. The general statement was ‘adoption’ was last-year’s thing, and we needed a new ‘thing’.

The underlying philosophy of his post contrasts with that of Paula Thornton, who finds talk of driving adoption to be antithetical to the true nature of Enterprise 2.0. As she described in a post from several months ago:

If you have to “drive adoption” you’ve failed at 2.0 design and implementation. The fundamentals of 2.0 are based on design that is organic — meets the individual where they are and adapts based on feedback — it emerges. The ‘adoption’ comes from rigorous ‘adaptation’ — it continuously morphs based on involvement from the ‘masses’. If done right, you can’t keep them away…because you’ve brought the scratch for their itch.

While I empathize with her design-driven perspective, I personally find there to be more to people’s adoption patterns. Sometimes the superior design does not win. Existing network effects may prove a high barrier to adoption of something new. Embedded history makes the current approach valuable. And other reasons intrude.

In considering adoption, we have the push strategy (by management), and the pull strategy (viral, organically spreads). Both are viable approaches. The key factor is to determine when each needs to be employed.

A Decision Framework for Pushing Enterprise 2.0 Adoption

The graphic below outlines a basis for determining when Enterprise 2.0 adoption must be pushed, and when to let adoption be pulled:

The two key factors in the framework are user-centric and organization-centric.

The X-axis highlights a key reality. If a current approach/technology is working well enough for users, there is an inertia to making a switch of any kind. This principle is nicely captured in the “9x problem”, an explanation by Harvard professor John Gourville that was highlighted by Andrew McAfee. The 9x problem is this:

Users will overvalue existing products/solutions by 3 times, and undervalue the benefits of a new products/solutions by 3 times.

We’re for the most part risk-averse (e.g. technology adoption lifecycle is back-end loaded), and giving up existing ways presents a level of uncertainty. It’s the devil we know versus the devil we don’t. We place a value on the certainty of current methods, even if flawed.

The other part of the 9x equation is that users will place an uncertainty discount against new products/solutions enumerated benefits. Yes, it’s true. We don’t always buy everything we’re told.

The Y-axis speaks to the value of E2.0 to organizations. Certainly there will be use cases that can drive high value for the organization. And just as certainly, there will be those use cases that contribute little to organizational value.

Let’s run through the different approaches mapped on the graph, clockwise from top right.

Requires a Top-Down Push

Situation:

  • Existing ways are ‘good enough’ for employees
  • Executives see great potential for value from adoption

What might this be? Imagine management has seen too many examples of people missing key information and connecting the dots well with others are working on. An enlightened C-level type knows there is an opportunity to pick it up a level.

So some sort of social software – e.g. wiki, collaboration groups, etc. – is selected to make this a reality. But guess what? People keep emailing to one another and saving docs to the LAN.

Why? Because those are the tools they know, there is no learning curve and everyone operates on a shared set of processes and assumptions. Things work “as is”.

This is where management needs to wield its power, and come up with ways to influence employees to alter their entrenched behaviors that work “good enough”.

Mix a Push-Pull Strategy

Situation:

  • Existing ways are actually not “good enough”
  • There is high value in large-scale adoption

This is the home run of initiatives. Solves a “what’s in it for me” need of individuals, while also presenting a great chance to advance the value of the organization.

An innovation platform is a good example here. A place for individuals to express those ideas that fire them up or just plain solve annoyances. Which get lost in the email inbox.

But the opportunity for new ideas that deliver to the bottom line gets management’s attention.

Pull works here, as word spreads about the initiative. But management has an interest in making sure everyone is aware of the initiative, as soon as possible. Push tactics are good supplements.

Let It Grow Organically

Situation:

  • Existing ways are actually not “good enough”
  • There is low value in large-scale adoption

This is a tough one. Clearly the “Enterprise 2.0 way” can solve a problem for employees, but its adoption cannot be seen to lead to high impact on company value. An example here? Hmm…tough one. Enterprise bookmarking might be one area. Solves the, “how do I find things?” conundrum, for me personally and for others. But hard to see just how it will increase firm value. At least on a standalone basis.

Best to let these initiatives grow of their own accord. Let their value emerge, often with stories.

Don’t Waste Your Time

Situation:

  • Existing ways are ‘good enough’ for employees
  • There is low value in large-scale adoption

Suffice to say, this one should be killed before it ever starts.

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Should BP crowdsource solutions to solve the Gulf oil spill?

May 26, 2010 17 Comments

Clifford Krauss of the New York Times reports on BP’s latest effort to cap the oil leak, called “top kill”. He notes the following:

The consequences for BP are profound: A successful capping of the leaking well could finally begin to mend the company’s brittle image after weeks of failed efforts, and perhaps limit the damage to wildlife and marine life from reaching catastrophic levels.

A failure could mean several months more of leaking oil, devastating economic and environmental impacts across the gulf region, and mounting financial liabilities for the company. BP has already spent an estimated $760 million in fighting the spill, and two relief wells it is drilling as a last resort to seal the well may not be completed until August.

Let’s hope for the best. Given the challenges of the previous efforts, it sounds like it will take a monumental effort to stop the leaking well.

Which begs a question…should BP be tapping a larger set of minds to help solve the leaking well? Can they crowdsource a solution?

In a way, they’re already doing it. Sort of. You can call an idea hotline to suggest ways to stop the oil. They even have the number posted on their home page.

But why not take it a step further? A formal crowdsourcing effort. I’ve heard that the folks at Innocentive asked this on an NPR report. Another vendor also pitched its idea management software, however BP didn’t bite. Spigit hasn’t pitched BP, but would certainly be willing to help.

There are some very good reasons to open it more publicly, and cast a call across the globe for ideas:

  • Diversity of ideas increases the odds of finding something that will be useful
  • While no one idea may solve it, visibility (as opposed to private phone calls) increases the odds of finding parts of ideas that lead to viable solutions
  • The brain power of enthusiastic participants across the globe is a good match to BP’s in-house experts
  • Potentially a good PR move, as the company demonstrates that it’s leaving no stone unturned to solve the leak

Crowdsourcing has proven its value in other endeavors, such as products, government services, technical problems and marketing. Surely it could do well here. But what might hold BP back? Three reasons:

  1. Little previous experience with crowdsourcing
  2. Deep technical domain experience is required
  3. Site becomes a place for public criticism

Are they valid? Let’s see.

Little Previous Crowdsourcing Experience

If a company hasn’t previously mastered open innovation and crowdsourcing, a crisis is a hell of a time to give it a go. This is far from comprehensive, but I did find a couple examples of BP’s forways in the world of crowdsouring and open innovation.

Headshift wrote up a case study about BP’s Beacon Awards. The internal awards recognize innovative marketing initiatives, and BP created a site for employees to submit ideas and vote on them. This example has a couple elements of note:

  • It’s an internal effort, where “mistakes” can be made as the company gets comfortable with the process of crowdsourcing
  • It was for marketing ideas in a time of relative calm, not time-is-ticking ideas during a crisis

BP also touts its open innovation efforts. Open innovation means working with others outside your organization to come up with new ways of tackling problems. In  a post on its website, it discusses its work with partners:

The need to work with others to solve tricky problems has most likely been around since humans learned to communicate, pooling their skills to achieve a desired mutual goal. In today’s world, collaboration between partner organisations has become highly sophisticated, particularly so in the energy industry where new challenges abound, be those in security of supply, cleaner energy sources, or the bringing together of different scientific and engineering disciplines to focus on a common problem.

Certainly the oil spill qualifies as a tricky problem.

So BP has experience in crowdsourcing internally on marketing ideas, and in open innovation with academia and industry partners. Not too shabby, and that argues for their having a favorable disposition toward crowdsourcing.

Deep Technical Domain Expertise Is Required

OK, I’ll admit. I have no idea how I’d stop the oil leak. Maybe I could come up with an idea as I give my kids a bath (“so you take the rubber duckie, and move it over the drain…”).

The BP oil leak occurred deep underwater, an area subject to different conditions than oil companies have had to deal with. BP is sparing no level of expertise to fix the issue, reports the New York Times:

Several veterans of that operation are orchestrating technicians in the Gulf of Mexico. To lead the effort, BP has brought in Mark Mazzella, its top well-control expert, who was mentored by Bobby Joe Cudd, a legendary Oklahoma well firefighter.

Didn’t even know one could be a legendary well firefighter. But the challenges of doing this in the Gulf are different. Popular Mechanics has a scorecard of each previous effort by BP to stop the leaking well. Do you remember one effort called “The Straw”? It is capturing a part of the oil, siphoning it to a surface ship. But it’s not without its risks:

The real gamble was in the original insertion—the damaged riser’s structural integrity is unknown, and any prodding could have worsened the spill, or prevented any hope of other riser- or BOP-related fixes.

Given the highly technical nature of these efforts, and the myriad complexities, does it make sense to crowdsource? I’d say it does, in that a proposed idea need not satisfy all elements of risk mitigation and possible complications. That puts too high a burden on idea submitters. Start with the idea, let the domain experts evaluate its feasibility.

Keep in  mind that people outside a company can solve technical challenges. Jeff Howe wrote in Wired about the guy who tinkers in a one-bedroom apartment above an auto body shop. This guy solved a vexing problem for Colgate involving the insertion of fluoride powder into a toothpaste tube.

Site Becomes a Place for Public Criticism

If BP were to set up a public site that allows anyone to participate, I can guarantee that some percentage of ideas and comments will be devoted to excoriating BP. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if much of it became that. A free-for-all that has nothing to do with solving the oil well leak.

A public forum receiving press attention during an extreme crisis presents angry individuals with a too-tempting target to make mischief. BP could spend more time deleting or responding to comments than getting much from it. The anger is too strong, too visceral on the part of many across the world.

Charlene Li talks about meeting criticism head-on in her book Open Leadership. Perhaps one way BP could handle this would be to set up a companion forum where criticism could be moved to. Keep an idea site dedicated to just that…ideas.

But I can see how BP understandably would not want to deal with such a site, as it potentially becomes a major PR pain on top of the existing maelstrom.

This reason strikes me as the one most likely to keep BP away from a crowdsourcing initiative to complement their other efforts. What do you think? Should BP be crowdsourcing solutions to the Gulf oil spill?

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Wanted: Cars that Use Collective Intelligence to Improve Driving

May 20, 2010 8 Comments

Credit: woodleywonderworks

Every week, I drive in my car from Pleasanton, CA to San Francisco. You get some time to think when you make that drive. An idea that has occurred to me is…

We ought to be making better use of the data our cars generate.

It could make a difference in term of driver awareness, and safety.

This notion is consistent with something I heard Tim O’Reilly describe at the Web 2.0 Summit  last year: “web squared”. Which is an odd sounding term, I’ll admit.

Odd, but important. Here’s how O’Reilly and John Battelle describe “web squared” in a white paper:

The Web is no longer a collection of static pages of HTML that describe something in the world. Increasingly, the Web is the world – everything and everyone in the world casts an “information shadow,” an aura of data which, when captured and processed intelligently, offers extraordinary opportunity and mind bending implications. Web Squared is our way of exploring this phenomenon and giving it a name.

In the white paper, the increased use of sensors is a driver of this new trend. Sensors can track data on machinery and objects that can be turned into collective intelligence. Stanford futurist Paul Saffo sees sensors as the next great wave of technology innovation.

That’s some background for you. Now…how would this web squared collective intelligence be applied to driving?

Useful Data Goes Uncollected

As we drive, our cars produce a treasure trove of information:

  • Speed
  • Braking
  • Use of windshield wipers
  • Windshield wiper cleaning fluid usage
  • Steering wheel turning
  • Headlight usage

But none of it is collected. We see it, control it, on board as we drive. But that’s it. It’s not shared with anyone else. It’s just something we do while we drive.

Turning this Data into Collective Intelligence for Better Driving

Here’s what I would love to see. We’re driving along, and quietly, various data about our cars is collected and transmitted to the cloud. This data is tabulated in real-time. What such a system is looking for variances. Points of change. Because it’s these points of change that present the biggest headaches and safety issues for drivers.

Below are several ways that the data from cars can be used for effective collective intelligence to make driving safer.

Data Benefit
Speed Alert that traffic slows dramatically in 5 miles
Braking Alert that cars are slamming their brakes in 1 mile
Windshield wipers High frequency wipers in use 1 mile ahead
Wiper cleaning fluid Drivers unexpectedly cleaning windshield in 1 mile
Steering wheel turning Drivers veering sharply left in 1 mile
Headlights Drivers turning on headlights in 1 mile

Notice the way this should work. Not an alert for conditions right where you are. After all, you’ll know about those. It’s what’s coming up ahead of you where the value of such a system would work.

In the examples above, I imagine alerts for things happening 1 mile ahead, or even 5 miles. There’d be a visual and audio system of alerts. Think of it like a Twitter stream. Of data about conditions ahead. It’d generally be quiet, unobtrusive. Unless something materially changes in the road ahead of the driver. Kind of like a Garmin GPS unit telling you to “turn right in 1 mile”.

Such a system would take full advantage of GPS. As the data is relayed from cars, their location is noted. As a person drives, her location is noted, and plotted relative to identified upcoming changes.

Collective Intelligence Works at Scale

Collective intelligence requires a reasonably high participation rate to be of value. Sporadic, spot updates don’t provide sufficient data for this desired innovation to work.

Which means these systems would need to be built into cars. On-board computers that systematically track these variables and have the ability to transmit them to satellites. Like a Garmin GPS or GM OnStar unit.

And since scale is required, you’d want common standards among the automakers – GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, etc. No need to balkanize such a system.

It’s Just an Idea

As I noted at the start of this post, it’s just an idea for now. But it seems like a really good application of the web squared concept. I’d love to have better information on driving conditions, and there’s a wealth of data that can provide highly localized reports. We just need to be able to tap it.

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My Ten Favorite Tweets – Week Ending 051410

May 15, 2010 1 Comment

From the home office in outer space, where I’m blogging from the space shuttle Atlantis’s final mission…

#1: RT @georgedearing Pilot advertisers happy with initial results from Twitter’s new ad program // http://bit.ly/twittermarketers // #fb [ADWEEK]

#2: The debate about pilot projects in social business http://bit.ly/c3EViV by @leebryant #e20

#3: RT @amyjokim How to build a sustainable community http://bit.ly/bJtkes (practical tips for hands-on community management)

#4: Applies to enterprises as well: RT @sidburgess How Cul-de-Sacs Are Killing Your Community http://bit.ly/cGg6yi #e20

#5: Does Reputation Ranking Make a Difference in Idea Management? (via Spigit blog) http://bit.ly/cfPWa0 #innovation #e20 #reputation

#6: Customer Suggestions: When to Listen, When to Ignore >> Pragmatic Marketing #innovation http://post.ly/fMoz

#7: RT @jorgebarba Game-based marketing takes off from frequent flyer programs to social media | VentureBeat http://ff.im/-k2bW1

#8: Noticing an uptick in Foursquare friend requests lately.

#9: Would love a laptop like this: Future Designer laptop – ROLLTOP http://bit.ly/dkypIY

#10: My kindergarten son made this “spy” laptop computer today – no Flash support though… http://twitpic.com/1nk9pw

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Foursquare Check-in Etiquette

May 12, 2010 11 Comments

Anyone remember the early complaints about Twitter? That people were posting updates about what they’re eating for lunch? Robert Scoble noted this phenomenon in a blog post from last September about Twitter’s rise:

It tells me that Twitter isn’t lame anymore. Remember those days when Twitter was for telling all your friends you were having a tuna sandwich at Subway in Half Moon Bay?

I do.

Yes, Twitter has grown up and become much more than the report of what you’re eating for lunch. Which brings us to Foursquare and Gowalla.

These services are in their early stages, with Foursquare outnumbering Gowalla four-to-one in members. Some of us are experimenting with these location-based services. For me personally, it feels like those early days of Twitter (“What should I tweet?”).

The biggest difference since my early Twitter days is that I’ve got more experience with this sharing behavior, and I’m comfortable trying different approaches.

With that in mind, I wanted to describe some early thoughts on Foursquare and Gowalla etiquette.

The Check-in Sharing Hierarchy

Louis Gray wrote a post recently asking whether people are censoring their check-ins to maintain hipster cred. It’s a good, if somewhat painful, examination of the fact that we do have some serious hum-drum in our lives. People’s comments on the post are illuminating, as some admit this behavior, but also note that they don’t want to bore everyone.

There are three levels of sharing check-ins that Foursquare provides (Gowalla only has the latter two):

The three levels each have their own unique use cases, and their own check-in etiquette.

Share It with No One

I’ve done this before. I check in, but I don’t share it with anyone. Why? Two reasons:

  1. Just maintaining a record of my days’ activities
  2. Like to stay on top of the mayorships, badges and points

See, a valuable use case of checking in with Foursquare and Gowalla is the maintenance of a personal activity history. The combination of GPS location, pre-existing locations and one-click check-in makes it quite easy to create your personal record. Now, some of those check-ins are less-than-interesting. Like…

Checking in at a gas station

Now it may be boring, but I’ll bet there’s a badge out there for multiple gas station check-ins. Maybe someone will earn a Gas Guzzler badge (as opposed to the Douchebag badge). It’s all part of the fun. A festooned Foursquare profile.

But there is a role for curating your check-ins. I really don’t need to know about your gas station check-ins. That applies to my interests, and it applies to what I assume to be the interests of my connections on the location-based services. Sure, share your whereabouts, but please have some mercy on those who follow you. We successfully graduated past the “What are you eating for lunch?” stage of Twitter.

And good luck with that Gas Guzzler badge.

Share Only with Foursquare, Gowalla Connections

People that follow you on Foursquare and Gowalla are participating in another aspect of location-based social networks. The “keeping tabs” aspect. You see what others are doing in the course of their day. For instance, I was able to see that Techcrunch’s MG Siegler was in Japan a few weeks back, via his various Gowalla updates.

One commenter on Louis Gray’s blog post noted this use case:

I’ve also found a use case in ethically “stalking” various tech pundits (I hate that word) and found a couple of high value events I would otherwise have missed.

Personally, I look at things like work check-ins as de rigeur for this level of sharing. Whereas gas station check-ins may bore your connections, the work stuff is of greater interest. I’ll often see CEO Eugene Lee’s check-ins at Socialtext headquarters. As head of a major software company, I’m sure he has to travel a fair amount. So the check-ins to HQ tell me he’s working away in the office.

I check in to Spigit every day. Proud to say I’m the Foursquare “mayor” of Spigit, oh yes. But I’m competing with several colleagues for that title. I share these check-ins with my Foursquare and Gowalla connections.

But not with my Twitter/Facebook connections. Those folks didn’t decide to follow me based on my daily work check-ins.

Share with Twitter, Facebook Friends

However, I do share check-ins, even mundane ones, on Twitter at times. I’ll explain in a second.

First, interesting ones are a no-brainer. Should you find yourself with Anne Hathaway at a post-Oscars party, by all means, share that check-in! Or maybe you’re in a working session at the White House. Definitely passes the interestingness test.

There’s also a good use case for alerting your wider social networks as to your location for meet-ups. It’s a commonly cited use case for Foursquare/Gowalla.

However, I’ll admit as a father with a full-time job and a mortgage, my “interesting” check-ins are few and far between, and I rarely am trying to connect with others at Trader Joe’s. And I’m not alone. The majority of people will have mundane check-ins as they go about daily life.

It’s making the mundane interesting where the Foursquare/Gowalla art is.

Create “tweetable” check-ins. What’s going on around you that would be worth sharing? What will some people on Twitter and Facebook find interesting?

It’s something I do, and I admit it’s a bit of a game for me. “What can I tweet with this check-in?” I find it forces me to observe what’s around me, or step back from where I am consider the larger moment.

A couple examples below:

I’ll never do a straight  tweet of my check-in at a BART station. At least, I won’t unless I fat finger my iPhone, that is. But if I can report out the unusually cold weather we’re experiencing, yeah, tweet that!

As I said above, we’re early in this location-based check-in thing. Consider the observations above a start.

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