Digital Hive

Yes but what TYPE of community do you want?

I discovered a great post from Church of the Customer about the various types of communities. Everybody is talking community these days (myself included) but are we being specific enough about what type of community we mean?

Ben McConnell offers an interesting POV on 4 distinct flavors of community (see graphic at left), and provides examples of each.

An informative yet quick read which I recommend highly.

Politics unusual - Bloomberg for President

I saw an interesting poll in the online WSJ today (click at left to enlarge) - about Bloomberg potentially running for president. Now we all know WSJ readers are NOT a nationally representative sample of likely voters, so take this with a grain of salt, but I was intrigued to notice that the largest % of respondents (38%) want Bloomberg to enter the race and are likely to vote for him (or so they say).

I find it fascinating that this independently wealthy mayor of New York is so well regarded for a bigger role, without much of a national stage track record. He's Giuliani with a fortune and without the 9/11 halo, right?

Perhaps this is just an extension of the Fred Thompson mania earlier this year - when an undeclared candidate was near the top of the polls. I'm not sure if this indicates general malaise with the "products" officially on offer at this point (Giuliani, Romney, Hilary, etc.) or people really really love Bloomberg or what.

Thoughts?

Digitas planning is famous!

Check out this great Huffington Post blog posting by our very own George Scribner!

His thesis is very compelling: the Internet is now the most trusted medium for news.

"In a world where you have to consult and cross-reference multiple sources to decide what's true about anything (whether it be a news event, a mutual fund, or a movie), the Internet is the best -- and only -- medium that allows one to do this."

A highly worthwhile read.

Today's youth: taking TMI to a whole new level

A big thank you to the Chicago office's Julie Fleischer (aka JFly) for sharing a terrifically interesting New York magazine article about kids, the internet and the end of privacy. If (like me) you've been scratching your head about why today's youngsters seem so comfortable putting the intimate details of their lives online to be seen (and later Googled for all eternity), the article has some clues.

It's well worth a read in its entirety, but here are a few things I found particularly interesting:

- They all think they have an audience, and this thought impacts how they behave, particularly when in public view

- The potential for self-documentation to deepen the intimacy of daily life (rather than lessen it)

- “For me, a fundamental principle is that if you like something, you should show your love for it; if you don’t like it, ignore it, don’t waste your time” - an interesting take on the rationale for participating in UGC

- This snapshot of one young woman's online identity - across multiple platforms/sources

I love this quote included in the article: “When it is more important to be seen than to be talented, it is hardly surprising that the less gifted among us are willing to fart our way into the spotlight,” sneers Lakshmi Chaudhry in the current issue of The Nation. “Without any meaningful standard by which to measure our worth, we turn to the public eye for affirmation.”

Don't offer me too much functionality!

Snaps to Organic's Three Minds blog for shedding light a very interesting piece of recent research from the University of Chicago. As described in a NYT article the study documented that when people are offered a choice between multifunctional and singly functional objects, they prefer singly functioned.

The experiment had people choose between a plain pen and a pen equipped with a laser pointer. The plain pen was selected in virtually all instances.

This seems to fly in the face of what we think as interactive marketers - aren't we supposed to give people lots of functionality? Isn't that marketing as a service?

Well, maybe not.

"What happens, the researchers showed through other studies, is that connecting one tool or method to multiple goals weakens the mental association between that means and any one goal. Take jogging, for instance. Participants in one study were informed that jogging both strengthens muscles and increases the body’s level of oxygen. But after the researchers subliminally reinforced the participants’ association between jogging and one of those goals — strengthening muscles — participants irrationally deemed jogging less effective for boosting oxygen."

It seems to have more to do with the meaning of the functionality than with the functionality. I guess the learning for us is: if you're giving people lots of ways to interact with a brand online and you don't want to confuse them or inhibit their response, make sure it all hangs together as part of a single experience, message or takeaway.

Thoughts?

Welcome to Plannersphere

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I just discovered a Ning social network for account planners called Plannersphere. I haven't explored it fully yet but so far so good - reasonably robust membership, interesting posts and commentary.