Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Today, Mozilla’s Messaging group launched F1, a Firefox extension that aims to make sharing content around the social web much easier.

For webmasters and web surfers alike, seeing a row of a half-dozen “share this” buttons above or below every piece of web content can be both visually distracting and existentially confusing.

Many companies are building work-arounds for this common interaction design problem of the digital age, and Mozilla has just thrown its hat into that particular ring.

F1 gives users an all-in-one frame above the content they’re viewing. Once your accounts are connected, you simply click the tiny F1 icon in the toolbar to share the page you’re viewing with friends on Facebook, Twitter and Gmail. (Those three services were chosen as the first three supported sharing mechanisms for F1 because of their popularity and OAuth implementation.)

In an ideal world, if every web user was a Firefox F1 user, publishers wouldn’t have to provide the usual slew of sharing buttons, and users wouldn’t have to connect their social accounts and login credentials to scores of websites around the Internet. Sharing would be more secure, simpler and (let’s face it) a lot easier on the eyes than it is now.

Here’s a brief demo of the new feature:

As a Mozilla Labs project, F1 is still being expanded. As Mozilla designer Bryan Clark wrote today on the company blog, “Eventually, the system should know which sharing service you use, and offer to use those! That will require sharing services to advertise to the browser that they offer a sharing API and the browser to see which services you use.

“Furthermore, sharing is not a standardized activity, so some protocol is likely needed for user agents to offer users the service they want without having to know about all of them.”

He also emphasized that publishers can also experiment with this feature; interested parties should check out the F1 wiki for details.

While we’ve seen similar cross-browser, all-in-one sharing frames and toolbars in the past, this offering from Mozilla is particularly well designed. In fact, we wish there was a cross-browser standard for social sharing; all these buttons have got to go at some point.

What’s your take on F1 so far? Let us know your opinions in the comments.

No one knows how to get around a city faster than a cabbie, which is why Microsoft is looking to taxi drivers to improve online mapping tools.

T-Drive, designed by Microsoft Research Asia, reportedly provides far more useful information than Google Maps or Mapquest. The tool can shave drive times as much as 5 minutes, the company says in a research paper (.pdf) outlining the findings.

To develop the tool, Microsoft engineers sifted through three months of data gleaned from the GPS units in 33,000 cabs throughout Beijing. They wanted to identify shortcuts cabbies use to avoid traffic signals, congested intersections and other headaches. “These factors are very subtle and difficult to incorporate into existing routing engines,” lead researcher Yu Zheng told Technology Review.

The engineers used T-Drive to merge the GPS data with satellite map information. According to the paper Zheng is presenting this week at a conference in San Jose, California, more than 60 percent of the routes provided by T-Drive were faster than those than those from other online mapping tools. Current tools generally use data on speed limits and the length of a road to determine drive times, and they often cannot identify shortcuts or faster routes like T-Drive can.

“This is the reality of all the Web maps,” Zheng said.

At least half the results provided by T-Drive were 20 percent faster than other tools, providing an overall time savings of 16 percent. That amounts to cutting your time behind the wheel by 5 minutes for every 30 minutes of traveling, according to the research paper.

There is of course a catch: The system only applies to Beijing and doesn’t include real-time info such as traffic accidents. But the researchers are confident the system will be able to provide real-time data in any city with a lot of cabs.

T-Drive is one of several mapping tools trying to make your commute less hellish. University of California researchers are working with Nokia to develop a system that uses GPS info gleaned from motorists cell phones. And tech startup Waze lets drivers share their real-time routes with social networking sites.

Photo of taxi cabs in Beijing: Aquafortis / Flickr

If you’ve ever wasted time at a catered affair, you know the water glass trick. Half full glass, wet finger, hold the bottom of the glass and then slide your finger around and around the top of the glass.

As you move your finger, the glass will vibrate. Move it just right (a function of the amount of water and the thickness of the glass) and the glass starts to sing. Do it really well and it sings so loud you might be able to shatter the glass and get into all sorts of trouble.

This is what most marketers seek (not the trouble part, the singing part).

The market awaits your innovation. Things that might make it vibrate and resonate don’t work. Then some do. It’s not always obvious before you start what the right entry point is, what the right product is, what the right speed is. And knowing that you don’t know is the most important place to start.

Honing your music or your presentation or your business plan or your store’s inventory are all efforts to resonate. Smart marketers are hyper-alert for what’s working, for what’s starting to get people to prick  their ears. Just like the glass, you have a touch, you adjust, you listen, you adjust again.

The smartphone revolution shows no signs of weakening, and Google’s Android as well as Apple’s iOS are leading the way. 80.5 million smartphones were sold worldwide in the third quarter of 2010, a 96 percent increase compared to the same period last year, a new report from Gartner has found.

Android accounted for 25.5 percent of worldwide smartphone sales with 20.5 million handsets sold, which makes it the second biggest smartphone platform, behind Nokia’s Symbian (which is growing, but not fast enough to retain its market share) and Apple’s iOS, which now has 16.7 percent market share with 13.5 million handsets sold in Q3 2010.

Symbian and RIM are hanging on, both showing growth as far as the number of devices sold is concerned, but the table above makes it painfully obvious that Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS have the momentum, and this is unlikely to change in the near future. On the other hand, the only clear loser is Microsoft, whose market share fell from 7.9 percent in the third quarter of 2009 to 2.8 percent in Q3 2010, with only 2.2 million devices sold.

Gartner sees two ways to succeed in the smartphone market, one fitting the description of Apple’s iOS and the other of Android. “Any platform that fails to innovate quickly — either through a vibrant multi-player ecosystem or clear vision of a single controlling entity — will lose developers, manufacturers, potential partners and ultimately users,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. Unfortunately, RIM, Nokia and Microsoft’s smartphone strategy have only recently starting to take shape resembling one or the other, and it’ll take time for them to catch up with Apple and Google.

Looking at Gartner’s numbers for all phones and not just smartphones, worldwide mobile phone sales totaled 417 million units in the third quarter of 2010, a 35 percent increase from the third quarter of 2009, with the top five mobile phone makers being Nokia, Samsung, LG, Apple and RIM.

We’re looking at the blueprint for the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo’s tricked-out smuggling space ship. How cool is that? There’s really nothing more to say, except you can download the full-size image (jpg). And we want some Arakyd Industries ST2 concussion missile tubes installed on our car. That would make the commute more fun.

FuriousFanboys via Jalopnik via the West End Games‘ Star Wars Sourcebook.

You’ve probably never heard  of Georg “Schorsch” Meier, but he was quite famous in his day. The man could ride like nobody’s business.

Meier won the European Championship for BMW in 1938. Impressive as that might seem, he topped it the following year by winning the prestigious Senior TT on the Isle of Man. Meier led from the start and was the first non-British rider to win the TT. As if that weren’t cool enough, Meier also drove for the Auto Union grand prix team in 1939.

Following World War II he won five German racing championships on a pre-war BMW Type 255 Kompressor supercharged motorcycle. He also owned one of Germany’s largest BMW dealerships. Meier died in 1999.

We’re telling you this only because today would have been Meier’s 100th birthday, which is as good a reason as any to run these fantastic pictures of him in action.

Photos: BMW. Georg Meier on the Isle of Man in 1939.

Over the years, social networks have lured us from the confines of our existing realities into a new genre of digital domains that not only captivated us, but fostered the creation of new realities. As George Bernard Shaw observed, “Life is not about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself.” Such is true for social networks and the digital persona and resulting experiences we create and cultivate. It was the beginning of the shift in behavior toward an era of digital extroversion, self-defined by varying degrees of sharing, connections, and engagement.

On Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, et al., we were attracted by the promise of reigniting forgotten relationships and enamored by the sparking of new connections. These relationships evolved into our social graphs and ultimately our interest graphs and forever changing how we discover, share, and learn. We are now the architects of our own experiences, forever changing the information super highway and the paths for connecting people, information, and events. In doing so, we literally make the world a much smaller place.

With each new connection we wove, we were compelled to share details about ourselves that we might not have divulged in real life. And the more we exposed who we were, our aspirations, our hopes, and our challenges, the more we rewarded with responses and requests for new connections. The distance between what was, what is, and what will be, was then defined by what we share, who we know, and what we consume. In social media, we are measured by our actions and our words as well as who we know.

Our concerns of privacy or the lack thereof, now require education. We shed the semblance of privacy in order to unlock a new sense of digital freedom. Indeed, we are the last generation to know privacy as it was and is now something that has to be taught in order to cast digital shadows that unlock opportunities rather than close doors.

The Social Genome

The activity that defines the social web is as diverse as the personalities of its inhabitants. We are driven for many reasons to share and interact online and the motivation for doing so, changes with circumstances, intentions, and experiences. I call this behaviorgraphics.

The social landscape is populated by individual presences, but charted by its connections and how in turn, they move information between them. These conduits represent the opportunities for brands and media to participate in and steer the sharing of useful and mutually beneficial content.  Much in the same way that people align through diverse behavior, Forrester research tracks how this behavior factors into the adoption of social technology.

Two and a half years ago, Forrester introduced Social Technographics. To this day, it’s widely regarded in its ability to help us understand the need to create targeted content designed for the groups of individuals who each process information differently. As social media moves across the adoption bell curve from the left to the right and also from the edge to the center, we see that individuals within each of the categories shift in usage, both up and down.

This year, we learn something new about the way individuals are embracing, using, and ignoring certain designs and intentions of social networks. Social networks, for the most part, are still on the rise with “Joiners,” those who maintain a profile on a social network, growing by 8% since the last Social Technographics report was published.

Contrary to this growth, content-based networks, those that require users to create content, have seen no substantial growth since last year.  In the U.S., only 10% of online consumers actually upload videos for example. These “creators” though, represent the elite group who power social content within these networks and it is their content that is consumed and shared within multiple networks. And, the audience for their content is only growing with 68% currently defining the “Spectator” group, 19% in the “Collector” category and 33% commenting their way to “Critics.” Most markets around the world saw an increase in “Spectators” and this is likely to continue.

The 3C’s, Consumption, Creation, and Curation

Bucking the trend of growth in the “creator” category, Twitter, for instance, grew by 30 million users in the last few months.  Twitter isn’t so much driven by pure creation as it is rich with a combination of curation and consumption. And, while the services require its users to “create” content, doing so within 140 character doesn’t constitute creation in the same way a blog, YouTube, or Flickr account demand. It’s worth noting however, that creators still account for almost 41 million US online adults.

According to Forrester Consumer Insight Analyst Jackie Anderson, “The initial wave of consumers using social technologies in the US has halted. Companies will now need to devise strategies to extend social applications past the early mavens. This means that it’s necessary to understand how consumers in a target audience use social media.”

I recently conducted a survey with Vocus to understand the qualities that equate to influence and the characteristics that define an influencer. The number one reason we found that consumers follow or Like an individual or brand is the consistent creation of compelling content. I believe that it is the discovery and consumption of compelling content that helps individuals shift from consumption to assume a contributing role of curator…a meaningful step before creator. Curation drives a significant volume of Tweets and it is also curation that balances the art and science of engagement between creation and conversation.

Businesses must join the elite and integrate the creation of compelling content into the social marketing mix. Doing so gives consumers reason to share, expanding the role of curator within the 3C’s of Content and earning authority and influence in the process. I highly advise Forrester to introduce the Curator into the next version of its Social Technographics Ladder.

An Audience with an Audience with an Audience

According to Forrester Research, overall adoption of social technologies has effectively reached saturation. 80% of people in the US engage with social media, which is equal to the number of people who text via SMS or  equivalent to the ubiquity of those who own DVD players.

While it’s new, its value is not to be minimized. Social media users already number in the hundreds of millions, providing the reach of traditional media but also the precision of one-to-one service and attention. Forrester notes that just a handful of “Mass Connectors” will create 256 billion influence impressions in the US this year.

As our social graphs propagate, the information that passes within it also multiplies. Individuals are not only socializing, they are sharing information and creating content. In doing so, updates serve as social objects, becoming catalysts for increased interaction and overall reach. As a result, participants and their social presences are amplified within existing social graphs and now also extend across a rising category of nicheworks or interest graphs – social graphs united around common interests and themes.

We are the architects of our own experiences and we are also the hubs of relevant content, resembling production foremen as we develop workflows and processes for consuming, curating, and creating content.

As sociologist Robin Dunbar once theorized, we are limited to the number of meaningful relationships we can manage as human beings. That number is estimated between 130 – 150. The average number of friends maintained on Facebook today is 130. Coincidence? I don’t think so. The numbers are consistent across other social networks. Today, MySpace users connect with an average number of 107 individuals and on Twitter, the number is 77 (today). I believe these numbers are only going to grow.

I call this “Social Graph Theory.” There’s a reason why Twitter recommends people “like” you and Facebook also suggests “recommended friends.” The networks realize that as your networks both grow and contextualize, your presence increases exponentially in value and they can sell against it. Social Graph Theory suggests that the size of our social graph will grow year over year, leaving behind Dunbar’s number and establishing a new genre of relationships (strong ties), relations (purposeful ties) and associations (weak or temporary ties).

As you’re presented with like-minded individuals and at the same time, as your organic friend requests escalate as a result of everyday social networking, the size and shape of social and interest graphs will only expand. You will spend more time adding than subtracting…until you have to. With every new node that defines our social network, we increase value beyond just the host networks. Brands realize that by connecting with the right people, their presence and value proposition can also rise with the tide.

Forrester groups social catalysts in two categories…

Mass Connectors: Those who create a great number of impressions about brands and services in social networks such as Twitter and Facebook

Mass Mavens: Individuals who create and share content about products and services in other social channels such as YouTube, blogs, forums, or ratings and review sites.

Indeed, a minority of social media users, defined as the elite influencers, drive the majority of the conversations across the social Web.

For brands and businesses looking to engage in social media, a unique understanding of the “egosystem” is not open for discussion. The 5th P of the marketing mix is crystal clear. People account for everything here and businesses must recognize the channels for influence as well as identify the influential voices leading conversations and steering decisions. The next step is to develop engagement programs that activate the various roles of the social consumers and empower them with useful and beneficial content and incentives to convert conversations into clicks to action.

Image Credit: Shutterstock – edited

On stage at the SAS event in Las Vegas, I told people in the audience that one metric to watch with the advent of social media was velocity. I’m talking about the following:

• Time between mention and response.
• Velocity of growth (versus total growth).
• Velocity of mentions (how fast does a space get inundated with mentions).
• Speed of sentiment shift (how fast does something get hot or cold).
• and no doubt, there will be more.

Every time my inbox gets swamped and it takes me more than a few days to respond, I fail at this metric. (You can argue that it’s not to be expected, except that if it’s your request in my inbox, you feel the sting when I don’t reply. Believe me.) Every time I see something negative flood past my Tweet stream while I’m otherwise occupied so that I can’t respond, I fail at this one.

It’s not that I’m even capable of responding as fast as I feel people believe I should. It’s not that I can keep up with volume all the time (I can’t). But whether or not I can, I believe velocity is a metric to watch.

How quickly do people take an action? How quickly does sentiment shift? At what rate do people join something or opt in or subscribe or buy something?

And more interestingly, how do these social media tools change the rate at which a prospect becomes a lead becomes a customer in the sales funnel? That’s a velocity metric I think some businesses will really need to understand.

Your Thoughts?

Whether or not you want to hold yourself to velocity’s whims, do you see that as a metric that’s going to change how people interact with things? Do you track velocity in any particular ways today? What’s your take on the matter?

With the launch of 501 Mission Place comes the same conversation about whether it’s right to charge a nonprofit for education. My thoughts on this have always been the same: nonprofits are businesses with a cause in mind. They consume services and products just like other businesses. They deserve some consideration in such matters, but free isn’t the only price point with a nonprofit.

Nonprofits Need Money to Run

The same people who complain that someone charges a nonprofit for a product or a service are the same people who hit me up multiple times a month for donations or support for their cause. Yep, at the very heart of every nonprofit is a need to sustain itself through donations and grants. I donate plenty of my own money every month to various causes (mostly homeless, children, autism, and cancer). One goal of 501 Mission Place is to help people improve their ability to raise more funds in a sustainable way. After another conversation with a CFO for nonprofits, we’re even going to look into conversations of budget and money management.

Nonprofits Buy From For-Profits All the Time

Having talked to people who run charities and nonprofits, there are all kinds of operation and infrastructure expenses built into such organizations. The goal is to minimize overhead so that more of the donated money goes to the target cause, but there’s always some overhead. Education is a decent kind of overhead because it’s the kind that hopes to provide a yield for the expense. As I run into nonprofits at events all the time, I know that they buy conference tickets and airfare and hotels and pay for meals. 501 Mission Place is a for-profit platform that offers a reduced rate from most online education community platforms (most of the other HBW platforms will cost $47 a month, so we took almost 50% off the rate to be sensitive to a nonprofit’s budget).

Ultimately, it’s a Decision

You don’t have to pay for 501 Mission Place. You can visit several great free resources all over the web. chrisbrogan.com is free, by the way. I write about nonprofits here every once in a while, and other stuff I write for businesses is still applicable to nonprofits. I’m a huge fan of NTEN, so check that out, too. Whether or not you decide to spend your money on 501 Mission Place is your choice, and I respect your choice.

Money Isn’t Evil

Every nonprofit and charity I know needs money to exist. They shut down all the time from lack of money. Seems to me that money is the lifeblood of every nonprofit I know, because just sitting around wearing ribbons and wanting to change the world isn’t really helping many people, is it? Systems need resources to survive. I charge a small amount of money per month with the goal that you’ll figure out ways to make much more than that for your organization based on the information the group gives you.

Decide for Yourself

I invite you to join 501 Mission Place, where we help nonprofits figure out how to grow, help with your specific challenges, and give you a network of engaged people seeking to take on the world’s issues and bring them to a new level. With our leader and facilitator, Estrella Rosenberg, and a bunch of smart minds like John Haydon, Marc Pitman, Rob Hatch, and you, we’ll do what we can to improve your cause’s effectiveness.

It’ll cost you $27 to figure out whether it’s for you. That’s the cost of a hardcover book. Sometimes, books are great but don’t apply to us. Not everyone got what they needed from Trust Agents, and that’s okay. So, you decide. Swing by 501 Mission Place and see what’s taking shape. We’re already hard at work trying to give people their money’s worth.