Archive for the ‘Digital Strategy’ category

Adapting to the Digital Age

June 10th, 2009

576digital-age

Read-Write Web has a characteristically well-thought-out post about the new world of thinking digitally instead of physically. You can particularly appreciate the part about computer-phobia.

Who among us, working in a tech-related field, has not had an acquaintance who waved away our computer-jargon with the retort “I don’t understand computers!” Or gotten a phone call from a relative late at night, who needed help with their home computer?

At the same time, software engineers, web designers, and graphics artists seem to be at a loss when it comes to dealing with the physical world. A great programmer is stumped when their car stalls, a brilliant web designer will have their website in perfect order while their desk is buried under three feet of junk, and many IT professionals tend to let their health go, developing the expanding waistline and fluorescent-lighting complexion that goes with spending all your time in a cubicle or a server room. » Read more: Adapting to the Digital Age

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A Case Study in Humor in Marketing

March 2nd, 2009

Saw this story over at 37Signals and had to pounce on it for an object lesson. Every now and then, you get an opportunity for inspiration, but it has to be timely or it’s going to fold.

So, the back-story: In the United States, Barack Obama just got elected President… yes, you know that, but let’s move along… so he’ll be vacating his US Senate seat, and the responsibility to find his replacement falls to Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Whom, you might not have heard, blatantly solicited for a bribe to appoint somebody, effectively putting the seat up for sale to the highest bidder.

Now you understand the newspaper ad published by Leather Creations Furniture. Smart, and timely! And it’s not at all controversial like most political humor, since Blagojevich has been arrested and is not only admitting to it, but is rather, ah… non-repentant about it.

Just a tip for you savvy web marketers – look around you, pay attention to what’s on the public’s mind, and pounce on it for your marketing strategy.

Peter Brittain

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Why Aren’t There More YouTubes?

January 29th, 2009

Web start-up guru Paul Graham recently talked about Why There Aren’t More Googles. The basic gist of it is that venture capitalists tend to be too conservative, investing in businesses that are based on already established revenue models. Nobody wants to bet on the new horse. But the most innovative start-ups are the ones that end up raking in a fortune!

But when most people think of the fairy-tale dream start-up story, they think of YouTube. Founded in February of 2005, sold to Google in November of 2006 for $1.65 billion USD. Start your site, and twenty-one months later, you’re a millionaire. Wouldn’t that be nice?

The difference is, it takes an innovative, forward-thinking company to recognize and acquire an innovative start-up. Google itself was an overnight success story, pushed through to greatness mostly by the sheer stubbornness of its founders. Having run that gauntlet themselves, they know how to recognize a good idea headed by a tough entrepreneur. This is a skill that Old Guard companies like Microsoft fail to grasp – so much so that bloggers all over the web are asking whether Microsoft is doomed, and has prompted Paul Graham himself to pronounce Microsoft dead.

Microsoft… dead. Imagine what a huge gap that would leave. Like the huge multinational banks in the United States which are getting bailed out during their economic turmoil, Microsoft seems almost too big to fail. If they did, there would not be another Microsoft. Their niche instead would rapidly be filled with the New Guard: smart, innovative, small companies that think fast and take risks… and know how to cooperate with the competition!

Peter Brittain

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Will a Myst Revival Happen Online?

July 10th, 2008

The original Myst was one controversial game. It broke ray-traced 3D graphics into the mainstream, became the reason for people to buy CD-ROMs when they first came out, and completely broke every expectation that people had about video games. To this day, the Myst series remains the ultimate accomplishment of creating an absorbing, immersive virtual world. But half the gamers out there today still say they hate it.

Now Cyan has announced their plans to open-source Myst-Online. This is becoming a cliche for projects that take too long to finish and lose momentum. Sometimes it’s the project’s salvation; getting the community involved and letting users take part in the process of shaping it takes care of those blind spots that the company missed, when they didn’t know what the users wanted. Sometimes it’s also the kiss of death; open source projects are harder to monetize and tend to die off after giving birth to their own successor.

3D gaming remains out of reach for the web. The best you can hope for is pre-rendered ray-traced scenes; a 3D first-person shooter even on the level of Half-Life just isn’t doable from a web browser. Even our best Flash, AJAX, and Java technology seems to be incapable of doing more than puzzle games and flat-map games. And before anybody says “Second Life” or “Spore” – that’s running on your PC, with a web connection to a server, same as any MMORPG. And it doesn’t have near the polygons.

We have to wait for computers to get more powerful, but whoops, right at the peak time for the market, computers are slimming down, into notebooks and UMPCs. So when, if ever?

Peter Brittain

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How to Promote Your Site With Blog Comments

February 10th, 2007

Any blogger reading right now has no doubt bristled like an angry cat at the headline. Blog comments promoting a site immediately suggests comment spam. Well, that’s just what we’re saying: don’t spam! But anybody with a blog that allows comments has seen comments that work, which contribute to the discussion, and then the URL in the comment is tolerated.

The basic method is that you search Technoratti or Google BlogSearch to find blogs in your topic space or niche. Then go there and hopefully leave a comment that won’t get deleted, with a link back to your site.

The important thing is that you make participating in that blog’s community your first priority. Helpfully point out a mistake, add a note and a link pointing out some other aspect of the subject of the post, answer a question posed by another commenter, or even just mention that you also covered another view of this topic on your own blog.

One important strategy that is often overlooked: the sites that already link to you! Whenever a blogger links your site as a reference and you notice some traffic coming from it, go there and leave a comment thanking them for the link… and also fill in your site’s URL in the appropriate field. There, now you have two links, from a site that likes you already! You can also add a link back on your own site, thanking the blogger for mentioning you and pointing your readers to that site for commentary on your subject.

This is how the blogosphere builds friendships.

The important thing is to be a good web citizen above all else. Spam your link to irrelevant sites, or worse yet, hire a third-world freelancer to do it, and you’re heading for trouble and ill will all around. Further tips on blog comment marketing here.

Peter Brittain

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If SVG Graphics Ruled the Web

February 10th, 2007

Just saw the new release of a recommendation from the W3C, as usual with W3C announcements, it is depressing.

It is so because we have had SVG way back in 2001, and have had vector graphics since almost the dawn of the computer era. We could have been building web pages out of pure SVG, and never would have had to worry about image resolution, JPG artifacts, or GIF patents. Even bandwidth would have been less of a concern.

Unfortunately, a certain large corporation which controls a major share of the web browser market didn’t want it that way. » Read more: If SVG Graphics Ruled the Web

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Consumer, Producer, Prosumer

December 20th, 2005

In the Capitalist system, there are producers, who make stuff, and there are consumers, who buy stuff. Traditionally, the original World Wide Web adapted the model of producer/consumer. Producers made the websites, and consumers visited the sites and did business with them.

The new WWW model, however, with the advent of the social web, has modeled itself more on the prosumer model. “Prosumers”, as defined in Wikipedia, are the mixture of the two concepts of the word professional or producer and the word consumer. The social web is interactive; it beckons visitors to not only be an audience, but to get up on stage and act themselves. » Read more: Consumer, Producer, Prosumer

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