Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Imagine Ford attempting to sell a car without lights. No doubt, they’d be bucking all sorts of laws, but consumers would never buy it, either. Who would fork up a few hundred bucks a month for a car with no lights? Who would settle to drive a car only during the day? Absurdity!

But expensive bikes are sold without lights every day.

Sparse is a new Kickstarter-backed company that wants to reimagine the world of bike accessories. As silly as that car/bike analogy may seem to a serious biker, Sparse agrees: There’s way too much to worry about when you hop on a bike these days.

“Getting on a bike as your primary mode of transport is more complex than getting in your car–you have to be mindful of weather, distance, attire, and all that stuff that we all need,” CEO Colin Owen writes. “The checklist is simply a bit longer when on a bike vs drive. It’s an underserved and under-considered region of the market.”

The company’s first product will be the Sparse Bicycle Lights. They’re a pair of die-cast aluminum LED bike lights, two standouts in durability, subtle style, waterproofness, and even security. The rear light fits on most popular seat posts, and it can’t be stolen without removing the seat. The front light doesn’t just fit on your handlebars, it replaces a spacer in their stem, integrating to actually become part of the bike itself. On top of the theft-deterring design, the company plans to announce some further security measures coming in the future.

For Sparse, it’s one of countless low-hanging pieces of fruit in the bike industry. Despite just launching their first successful Kickstarter campaign, Sparse already has 450 potential product sketches sitting on a wall. 450! That’s not just a lot of ideas, that’s sheer absurdity. You have to wonder, how any company can come into a major, established market and immediately bring with them such a massive pile of disruption? Sparse sees opportunity in the industry because of the lack of regulation stemming from a misunderstood customer.

“There is a shocking lack of standardization in the industry. One quick example: seat-post sizes. There are currently 22 (22!) different seat-post sizes in use (and that’s not counting the non-round aero posts). Some folks slam their seats against the frame. Others ride them such that the clamp can barely hold them,” Owen explains. “People attach bags, reflectors, lights, pumps, chains, and who knows what around these posts. From a manufacturer standpoint, addressing that space (and this could be said for almost every region of the bike), is just a difficult problem and one whose solution will have countless exceptions.

“Culturally, the bike industry is stuck in a rut of optimizing for performance in racing. Most folks in the industry are, by our own highly unscientific survey, hard-core bike nuts. They port that interest over to the job and optimize the bikes via metrics that aren’t fully aligned with the daily rider.”

In other words, bike manufacturers are selling highly customizable performance to the masses–treating the entire world like their geekiest contingent–killing usability and peripheral standards in the process. Sounds like the PC industry about a decade ago, right? And we all know what happened there.

If you’d like to order Sparse’s first pair of lights ($120), the Kickstarter campaign has ended, but you can no doubt inquire on their site.

After weeks of trying, I’d nearly found the real person behind a Twitter bot. It wasn’t the person who started the bot–chances are, that was just a computer program. Instead, I was hunting for the woman in the profile picture, the person whose identity had been stolen. The Internet is a big place; this isn’t easy to do. But I’d tracked the photo of a short-haired, punkish 20-something–used by @Arnitamj5, a bot calling itself Arnita Barayuga–to an abandoned MySpace profile of a Dallas woman named Elizabeth. She didn’t seem to have any other Internet presence, but I found one of her old MySpace friends on Facebook, figured out that he worked at a Dallas bike shop, and called it.

“So, listen,” I told him. “This will be the weirdest call you’ll get today.”

“Today?” he said.

“Probably all month.”

Then I explained: My goal was to draw a straight line from a Twitter bot to the real, live person whose face the bot had stolen. In the daily bot wars–the one Twitter fights every day, causing constant fluctuations in follower counts even as brands’ followers remain up to 48% bot–these women are the most visible and yet least acknowledged victims. And it’s almost always women, isn’t it? Bots are like a sorority party at 3 a.m.–a massive compilation of young, pretty faces who talk a lot of nonsense. But the women they portray are actual people, somewhere in this world. Who are they? And how were their photos dislodged from their original place?

This is a mostly pointless exercise, I knew: The story behind every photo would be different. And what would one of these women say–that she’s flattered to find her face spamming everyone on Twitter? Clearly, no. But it seemed worth doing, if only to tell one story, to have one answer. So I asked Elizabeth’s old friend: Did he still know her? He did, he said, though she’s since gotten married and changed her name. He promised to pass my message along. After four days of silence, though, I did more sleuthing and found her on Facebook under her married name. Then I emailed my plea: You’ve become a bot, Elizabeth. Can we talk about it?

Silence. Can’t say I blame her.

So I started over.

Bots are cheap. The company Buy Real Marketing will sell you 1,000 of them for $17, or 25,000 for $247–meaning the value of each is about a penny. And who’s buying them? Anyone. A brand’s social media manager will never admit to it, but chances are, gigantic companies have invested in this cheap form of image building. Why wouldn’t they?

Athletes definitely do it. A publicist for some major players–people at the top of their game–told me it’s common in his world. He once tried it himself, just to see what happens. He ordered the $17 package from Buy Real Marketing, via its website buytwitterfollowers.org. “They didn’t come in right away. I thought at first I’d been scammed,” he said. “But sure enough, within three days, they just poured in. It was exactly 1,000. To me, it shook the whole foundation. It made Twitter meaningless.”

The publicist gave me the names of a few people who also bought from Buy Real Marketing, and I dug into their followers. The bots were easy to spot–and these bots, no surprise, follow plenty of other celebrities and big brands. There’s no way to know if these were purchased follows or just pure coincidence, of course, but the list is wide-ranging. One bot from this batch followed Kelly Osbourne, former Formula 1 racer Tiago Monteiro, the Huffington Post, and an “Internet marketing consultant” named Trent Partridge, among 2,000 others.

If you click on a profile photo in Twitter, the photo will open in a tab of its own–and oftentimes will be larger, or more broadly cropped. I’d drag that onto my desktop, then run it through two image search engines: Tin Eye and Google Images. Each one scours the web for visual matches. After dozens of searches, a pattern emerged: Most bot photos had a long digital tail, having been posted on dozens of sketchy porn sites or blogs devoted to the barely legal. Occasionally, I’d be able to track a photo back to what seemed like an original source–like when a bot’s photo showed up alongside many others of the same woman, all posted to the fratboy site Barstool Sports. The site claimed her name is Aurora. But when I reached out, as was always the case, nobody cared to explain where the photos came from.

Then, finally, a reliable source: I tracked two bots back to the 2009 SUNshine Girls calendar, a lingerie showcase produced by the Toronto Sun. (I guess newspapers have to make money somehow.) The calendar only offered the models’ first names, and the paper’s photo editor wouldn’t connect me with them. But after a little Internet stalking–this is how reporting works, people!–I found a connection.

One of the bots, @Karriehga, which went by the name Maralyn Estes, showed a photo of a beautiful blond with dark eyes and hair poofed back like a Kentucky prom queen. This was Amanda the SUNshine Girl. And some clever Googling led me to a blog that included her full name. That allowed me to find her Facebook page, which didn’t list an email address, but did show that she recently clicked “like” on an events planning company. I figured that’s where she now works, so I called. Amanda, it turns out, was on maternity leave. “You can leave a message, and she’ll call you back in a few weeks,” her boss Darlene told me.

I didn’t have time for that, I said. Darlene asked why. So I began to explain.

“Wait, wait, Amanda was a SUNshine Girl?” Darlene yelped, and started laughing. “I didn’t know that!”

Oh, boy. Sorry Amanda.

But after that, Darlene said she’d help me get in touch. I hung up, relieved. Then I looked at my computer screen, which still had @Karriehga up. It had just tweeted something, as these things regularly do. Usually they’re just snippets of text yanked from websites, just something to keep their profiles active.

This time, though, the tweet seemed like a warning: “Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”

In the meantime, I contacted Buy Real Marketing. I expected this to be equally difficult, given the sketchy nature of what a company like this does. But its work is perfectly legal–in the name of viral marketing, big brands have done far worse–and so all I had to do was call a toll-free number and hit a few buttons. Then I reached a tired-sounding woman named Judy, who spoke to me on a scratchy phone connection. I identified myself as a reporter and asked to interview someone, but she volunteered herself for the task. So I asked her: Judy, who are the faces on your bots?

“These are not bots that we have on Twitter,” she said. “These are real people.”

Me: “So there are no bots?”

Judy: “No bots. Not even spam.”

Me: “I mean, I see a lot of what certainly look and function like bots. But they’re not bots?”

Judy: “They are real people. They just log in, like, once a month so they are considered active.”

Me: “I see. Are the profile faces them?”

Judy: “Yes, exactly.”

Me: “So, the pictures of the people who are on a…”

Judy: “Some of them are. We can’t really control them. These are real people, and they have their choice of freedom on what picture they place there.”

And that’s all she was giving me.

Amanda’s email showed up the next morning: “I heard you contacted my employer Darlene yesterday and would like to talk to me. I’m interested in knowing what this is all about.”

She gave me her number. I called immediately.

Amanda lives in Bowmanville, Ontario, just outside of Toronto. Her husband is a police officer there. The night before, as they puzzled over Darlene’s message to call me, her husband began telling Amanda about all the facial recognition software that’s becoming available to law enforcement. It freaked her out.

Truth be told, she’s been trying to distance herself from the SUNshine Girl thing. (We’re helping out by not publishing her last name. That’s one less Google result to worry about.) It’s not that she’s embarrassed; back in the day, she even did live promotions for the calendar. But these days she has to worry about what employers think. Darlene doesn’t care–thankfully–but Amanda used to work for the government. She figured it was best not to flaunt her past.

And now, this. In the past day, I’d found five other bots using the same photo of her.

“It’s kinda of creepy, to be honest with you. The whole thing,” she says. She’s on Twitter but rarely uses it, and had never heard of bots. “I’d like to find the source and tell them to stop using my photo, you know? Because you never know who’s going to see it, and I don’t have control over what someone’s saying. That could ruin who-knows-what.”

I told Amanda that she could report the bot as spam, and hope for the best. She said she’d do that, but that she likely wouldn’t do any more. After all, what’s there to do–sue? Sue who? She doesn’t even own the photo; it’s the Toronto Sun‘s property. But she appreciated knowing. She thanked me.

Four days later, Amanda’s bot @Karriehga was still live. It tweeted, “Let’s commit the perfect crime… I’ll steal your heart, and you steal mine.”

To say nothing of a face.

Guest post by Bryan Rhoades, global content strategy, Intel

Today’s web is an endless 24/7 cycle fed by content and social actions. In this cycle, brands are realizing that content is currency and social actions are the transactions in this marketplace for eyeballs and attention. To remain relevant, not only do brands need to produce more interesting, useful and more timely content, they need to adapt to a new “social publishing model” to best feed the social graph and this hungry cycle.

I’ve listed two ways below that our brand, Intel, is tackling this content and social publishing challenge.

First, we built a new social publishing platform called “iQ” that we use to feed the graph and better integrate our owned and paid media strategies. The iQ by Intel platform leverages the social actions of our global employees to curate content that is grabbing Intel’s collective attention. In addition to original content, we source and surface content from these social actions (FB Likes, RTs, +1’s) combined with an intelligent algorithm that filters content based on social data points like recency, bit’ly clicks, shares and defiance from the norm, etc.

iQ is a blend of content flowing from the social actions of employees (referred to as “Flow” content) and original content developed by the brand (or our partners like The Creators Project and contributors, that we refer to as “Stock” content). This “Stock & Flow” approach is relatively new, but in our case borrowed from others in the industry, including the popular Percolate publishing platform. iQ blends original Stock & Flow content to produce a very timely branded storytelling platform to feed the social web and our own social properties on Facebook and Twitter. We believe this to be an effective way to get our story (and the World’s technology story) into the social graph.

Secondly, social publishing is a challenge for brands and businesses. They have not historically been structured for publishing. However, brands are excellent at producing the more traditional “Stock” content like video, TV commercials, campaigns, websites, etc. But today’s Facebook status update or ephemeral tweet requires daily and oftentimes sub-daily content. Traditional Stock content is great when you have it, but no brand is resourced for the daily TV ad or video.

At Intel, we are implementing a 3-tiered approach to content production (see “Social Content Tiers” diagram below). The top tier includes the longer-lead or more traditional content that brands have been generating for years, i.e. the videos, TV spots, the programs and partnerships that are highly produced and require greater resources. In the middle we have quicker, several times a week stories, visual graphics, blog posts and really anything interesting we can get our hands on. At the bottom is the highly frequent and ephemeral content. These are the daily and sub-daily Facebook status updates, Google+ posts and tweets from branded accounts and employees. Looking at content in this manner helps us to better manage the content pipeline. iQ manifests this process and is an engine towards output.

We launched “iQ by Intel” as a BETA in English just over a month ago. So far, we’re seeing great results in its aiding of social content publishing and feeding our social properties with content. Its “touch-friendly” design is built for the next generation of devices and its sourcing of content through curation, including direct publishing from Twitter through #iQ tweets from employees, has been successful.

Lastly, iQ and our publishing model allows us to tell our bigger technology story. Intel is an ingredient in almost every technical ecosystem on the planet. We are lucky as far as brands go that we can help tell this story, that we can follow technology to all of the beautiful places it goes, and also narrate on the challenges and obstacles facing our modern world.

Follow @bryanrhoads on Twitter

This is part of a series on brand journalism / brand publishing as told by the businesses that are paving the way. Please send me a note if you would like to tell your company’s story on its move to what Tom Foremski dubbed EC=MC, Every Company is a Media Company.

Disclosure: Intel is a client of Altimeter Group

Collaboration. Everyone talks about it, but only a few know how to do it well. Here’s Motley Fool’s chief collaboration officer on best practices for working together better.

 

Collaboration. It’s a $1 billion industry, according to an ABI Research study on worker mobility and enterprise social collaboration. And it’s projected to grow to $3.5 billion by 2016.

No wonder lots of ink has been spilled on this business buzzword on everything from how to start (hint: build trust) to doing it better with social platforms, to using it as a way to achieve that holy grail of business: innovation.

Two years ago, the Harvard Business Review even touted the need for another C-suite executive: the CCO. A chief collaboration officer would be charged with integrating the enterprise as companies scramble to innovate from within. Authors Morten T. Hansen and Scott Tapp argued that with a little flexibility, existing execs such as the head of HR or the CIO could take on that task.

But in an ideal scenario, this most critical of business strategies would have a dedicated individual toiling to make collaboration part of the daily doings of the company. The CCO would have their place among the top brass. Despite the highly trained focus on the benefits of collaboration, according to Jacob Morgan, a principal of the social media consultancy Chess Media Group and scourer of collaboration practices, there’s only one CCO in the U.S. And The Motley Fool has him.

Todd Etter, one of the founders of the multimedia financial-services company that dishes advice on stocks and personal finance, has held the title for the past two years. Now, The Motley Fool is well known for its tongue-in-cheek approach to management (all the employees are called “fools”), and its “rule breaker” investment advice, but the company’s stuck to a core philosophy of  enhancing productivity through unconventional practices such as unlimited vacation and an Etter institution, The Foolympics, a two-week event in which employees compete for small prizes (and bragging rights) in challenges that range from brain teasers to business puzzlers to physical competitions. Etter says it’s “silly,” but tapping into the diversity of things the staff loves for five or 10 minutes at a time bonds employees and enhances overall productivity. 

They even have proof. Last year, voluntary turnover was 1.6% at the company, as compared to CNN Money findings of 2% at SAS, 5% at Microsoft, and 8% at Zappos. Not to mention the cost savings. Motley Fool’s head “People Fool” Lee Burbage says the cost to hire and train a new employee averages about 1.5 times their salary.

Tom Gardner, Motley Fool’s cofounder and CEO says that when you’re working on a project, the easiest route is often to just do it yourself–but it’s not often the best idea.

“You don’t have to compromise, you don’t have to teach someone, you don’t have to deal with other people’s timetables,” Gardner says. “Doing it yourself works well for the short-term, but it’s toxic if you’re trying to create a workplace culture that supports learning and employee development.”

With than in mind, Etter –who just happens to have 20 years experience as an improv teacher (we’ve reported on how well that works in corporate environments) and is member of the National Puzzlers League– shared some of his best practices to encourage better collaboration with Fast Company.

Understand What Collaboration Is…and What It Isn’t

Etter says there’s a big difference between working alongside other staff members and actually collaborating. He was surprised to find out exactly how true this was at a recent Foolympics that featured guest speaker Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball and The Blind Side. For the event, Etter created a puzzle based on the titles of Lewis’ books to encourage engagement between bites of salad during lunch. 

Gardner says Lewis’s team was a shoo-in to win but they came in dead last. Etter says it was likely because the team hadn’t worked together before and weren’t quick to provide feedback and challenging positions. 

Use Responsibly

Etter says he’s always trying to find a balance between the Motley Fool’s core values of competition and collaboration. So he tries to mix up events and offer only small prizes such a store gift card to avoid overzealous competitors and sore losers. “The reward is the event,” he says.

“Too much of anything will start to be criticized,” adds Etter, so he makes sure to have a variety of events and is careful to do small internal tests before rolling out to the company’s 200 employees. Most companies sign up for a ropes course once and call it bonding. Etter presents such physical challenges in addition to pub trivia quizzes (with financial trivia mixed in, natch) and quick puzzles to start long meetings. 

Brainstorm Effectively

“Brainstorming is a two-way street,” says Etter. One thing he teaches his improv workshops is that you have to create but you also have to listen. The “Yes, and…” technique ensures you are building on an original ideal. “Brainstorming is more than just throwing it all out there. Otherwise you have 30 ideas and picking one may hurt you,” says Etter. Instead try to figure out how to riff off two or three. “That’s fewer ideas but more conversation and thought about what is suggested,” he says.

Hack the “Hackathon”

Though Etter confesses he wasn’t aware of Facebook’s famous “Hackathons,” a.k.a. cram sessions designed to spur innovative solutions, he does say he wants to start doing more intensive exercises with Motley Fool’s programmers. Taking a lesson from the “marshmallow challenge” inspired by a TED talk in which teams compete to build a structure out of spaghetti strands holding a marshmallow aloft, he’s intrigued by the results observed so far among his colleagues.

“There are no guidelines, other than the end result to get the marshmallow as high off the table as possible,” says Etter. The lack of instructions is a constant theme in his own puzzles, Etter says, because it pushes the team to discover patterns and come up with creative solutions.

But he’s also found that teams often spend too much time planning and not enough time building. “Kindergarteners are the most successful,” Etter asserts, because they don’t plan they just start on the structure. 

“If it collapses they are are only four minutes in and start over.” Conversely, business school students fare worse because they busy themselves drawing up strategies and run out of time before the first strand is place.

This carries larger lessons for collaboration, says Etter. “You have to modify and adapt as you go.”

Images Provided by Motley Fool

It may seem like we have entered a golden era of product design, in which the world’s most valuable company has built its entire business on a dozen consumer products while heightening our appreciation of the subtleties of industrial design immeasurably. So why do I get a pervasive feeling of doom and gloom when I hang out with my product design pals? Maybe its because all of the action has moved to software and apps. There is a real startup frenzy out there with designers playing a meaningful role this time around. Yet it is still damn hard to get a VC to go along with any startup involving hardware unless you have already locked in distribution with Best Buy or Walmart.

When will hardware hit the masses, with MakerBots and 3-D printers on our desktops? The answer is pretty unclear. But in the meantime, you’ve got to love Kickstarter for creating a marketplace (or at least the impression of one), where the hardware plays can rise to the top. So I wanted to build on the comments I made in a recent New York Times article on the topic. I am thrilled to see a nascent hardware startup economy emerge around Kickstarter and not surprised that it is stealing headlines. So here is a broader take on the phenomenon from the point of view of someone who is immersed in the world of product design.

The Pebble, which has raised nearly $9 million.

1. Kickstarter Has Rescued Musty Categories

Product design is governed by the laws of supply and demand. There is a tremendous supply of talent, yet very few products actually make it to market. So most designers have a huge stockpile of high-fidelity concepts and beautiful renderings gathering dust. While a number of these concepts turn up on Core77 and Co.Design, they have zero paths to market. Now you can argue that we don’t need another slab phone/pad with a slightly different chamfer or bezel. But there are a whole host of neglected device categories desperate for attention, like watches, bathroom scales, and thermostats. These devices feel woefully out of sync in an iProduct world. Perhaps the biggest service that Kickstarter has done is to reinvigorate these categories to the point where bigger players might see their potential and escape from “Slab Land.”

2. People Now Believe, Gee Whiz, Tech Can Be Real

Ubiquitous Apple advertising has trained consumers to believe the magic and fill in the gaps when presented with a single image of a finger touching a beautiful screen or of a person sitting lazily on a couch. Renderings that would have seemed like science fiction 10 years ago are now taken at face value, imbued with a high degree of credibility. Part of that is due to amazing strides in technology. And part of it is due to the discipline in Cupertino. Apple has never shown us concepts; only real products.

Now, consumers can look at one image of the Nest thermometer or the Fitbit and fill in all the blanks (while rushing to pre-order). Eric Migicovsky, the inventor of the Pebble Watch–the biggest sensation on Kickstarter to date–conveys this perfectly in an insightful Co.Design post: “We really wanted to emphasize the use cases,” he says. “We wanted to say, ‘Here’s an example of how you’re going to use this in your everyday life.’”

Kickstarter’s first runaway hit: The Tik Tok watchband for the iPod Nano.

3. Imbuing Customer Relationships With a Sense of Ownership

Consumers don’t just want to understand the story. Increasingly, they want to be part of it, which is something even Apple won’t let them do. Let’s face it: There is nothing original about your iPhone other than your lock image. Even the funky case you bought is being sported by thousands of other people. There is actually something sort of horrifying when someone plops their iPhone on the counter, and it has the same case as your own. It strips away that “think different” mantra pretty fast. While people love their Apple products, they are looking for a stronger link to the products they use. They want to get closer to the source. Kickstarter offers anyone the opportunity to be the first to discover, invest, and share a new product concept within a circle of friends, which alone is worth some money down even if the product never actually makes it to you doorstep as promised.

A Windowfarm kit funded on kickstarter.

4. Delivering On Hollow Promises

But there are a few areas in which Kickstarter truly suffers. The path to market is very different for a book, restaurant, or gadget. It comes down to more than just the amount of money raised, as I noted in The New York Times piece. If you invest in a book, it is pretty reasonable to expect you might get a copy. But what about a smart-watch gizmo? It is much more of a gamble. With the increased complexity of software and services, the $7+ million that the Pebble Watch has raised will go very fast.

The downside of Apple-style marketing is that we have very high expectations for the seamless integration of software, services, and support in the finished product. Even Jawbone, which has raised more than $260 million in investment, had to do a complete recall of the Up health care monitor wristband due to the complexities of launching this kind of product. Plus, consumers as investors might reasonably expect the folks at Pebble Technology to provide a projection of how the millions they have raised might actually be spent. The percent amounts going toward offshore manufacturing, low-wage factory workers, and fuel costs for transport would make for a very different story on Kickstarter.

5. A Sacrifice of Craft

Last year, I visited Shanghai with Max Burton, one of Frog’s pre-eminent product design gurus who led the Nike watch team for many years pioneering some of the same unibody production techniques later adopted by Apple. Max and I are both watch geeks. He was planning to take some personal time to visit one of the factories he used to work with to look at the small-scale production of one of his own designs. This is about as close to the story as it gets, so I was happy to commit $500 to be one of the first in line for Max’s creation. Unfortunately, he came back empty-handed. Not only were the tooling costs out of reach. But it would have been impossible to reproduce the level of engagement that he was accustomed to from his Nike days. A significant part of the craft is in the manufacturing process, working back and forth, through numerous prototypes, to get to a satisfying design. That process is largely out of reach for a hardware startup.

The 999 bottle visualizes your eco-impact.

So how do we build on the enthusiasm within the product design world and create a more sustainable market for hardware startups? Here are a couple of closing thoughts:

1. Kickstarter should not be a shopping site

Product designers are blurring the line between investing and pre-ordering at their own risk. The biggest return on an investment in the Pebble Watch may not be getting the watch in the mail. It is in generating interest among bigger electronics companies to reconsider categories that they previously dismissed (like watches). You are voting with your dollars for the products you want to see in the world, regardless of whether they end up being made by startups or the big guys. It would be great if Kickstarter could create competitions around some of the more mundane gadgets in our lives–like thermostats or hotplates–to see what the design community can come up with.

2. Different Forms of Sponsorship

For that reason, it would be interesting if product designers could figure out a different way to personalize the investment, short of promising a product in the mail at some point. My guess is that a lot folks would be very happy with a signed form model from a standard 3-D printer. In fact, this might end up being more valuable and memorable than a watch gizmo that you will wear for a couple of years and then dump in a drawer. In recent years early Apple models and signed memorabilia have received high prices at auction. Designers could send out models in a variety of different form factors to gather feedback and support their user research. What about a limited edition of signed sketches? It is easy to see how you could offer different artifacts at different investment levels, all of which would help educate the public about the craft of creating a great product. I would love to see more creativity in this area.

3. Teaming With Industry, to Revive Unused Tech

At Frog, we work with so many clients that have valuable technologies sitting on the shelf. They don’t have the endless time, or creative resources to envision how these inventions could fit into people’s lives as meaningful products. And they have no cost-effective way to gauge consumer demand or interest for new product categories. I would love to see a few organizations, whether corporations or universities, open their kimonos and release some unused technical capabilities to this community, providing a marketplace for designers to explore applications in health, energy, or other markets–particularly ones with the potential for major social impact. They could work with Kickstarter to create sponsored competitions in which the designer and the technology organization share the IP that is created around the design, with the public voting along the way for their favorites. This could be a great way for companies to build a meaningful design community just like the developer communities they are constantly courting. The IP issues would be challenging to navigate, but Kickstarter could have the platform–and financial platform–to make this happen.

The Biggest Lesson From Kickstarter

At the end of the day, we all want a more meaningful connection and a more substantive say in the physical products we interact with. This is particularly true of the connected gadgets that are leaching into every facet of our daily experience. As Frog’s executive creative director of global insights, Jan Chipchase, is fond of saying: Opting out of these technologies is no longer an option in many societies. As we adapt more and more to the capabilities of so-called smart devices, we are looking for more meaningful ways to make them adapt to us as well. If we can’t do that with our smartphones, thanks to Apple’s closed ecosystem, at least we have a shot with smaller categories like watches that are equally personal. That is the true lesson of Kickstarter and the emerging hardware startup economy.

Guest post by James Stewart, Director at Geneva Film Co

The debate surrounding 3D’s viability across all platforms continues to rage. Nay-sayers maintain that 3D is merely a “flash in the pan”… a “fad”… soon to fade into technological obscurity. Yet visionary artists and innovators continue to drive 3D technology deeper into the very fabric of our screen-based culture. For brands, agencies, and content creators, is it worth it? In a word: YES.

THE 3D REVOLUTION

James Cameron’s Avatar set the stage for 3D’s emergence in 2009 by showcasing, to a global audience, the true potential of this immersive technology. From that time, a 3D revolution has been slowly changing the media landscape, project by project, day by day, year after year. Once considered a hollow gimmick, 3D has matured into a full-blown phenomenon. In fact, of the 10 movies that have ever crossed the $1 Billion mark, 6 are 3D films with Avatar topping the list. And there is little sign of this trend slowing down. 2012 will see blockbusters like The Hobbit, Men In Black, The Amazing Spiderman, and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus hitting theatres in three dimensions. The format continues to gain greater acceptance by audiences and critics alike. The epic 3D adventure Hugo by cinematic master Martin Scorsese is a prime example, topping this year’s Oscar nominations with 11, winning 5.

One Wall Street analyst decried 3D to be “over” in 2010 when only 38% of the $1Billion grossing Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides box office could be attributed to 3D (down from the standard 55% – 80%). If 38% of your customers were demanding a 3D feature would you consider it dead, especially if that feature was selling at a 15% premium? Hugo’s opening box-office was 75% from 3D screenings. The latest box office hit is another 3D re-release: James Cameron’s Titanic. The 3D reboot debuted in China and earned the second-highest opening day ever in the country, selling approximately $11.6 million worth of tickets. It’s a hit across the UK and U.S. as well.

3D COMES HOME

The 3D revolution is no longer being waged on the sliver-screen alone. The real in-roads are being blazed by the growing list of 3D-capable devices that allow consumers to experience the brands they love in 3D, anytime and virtually anywhere. This is no accident. The success of any technological innovation can always be traced back to the moment it found its way affordably into the hands of the consumer– from the personal computer, to High Definition TV, and now 3D. At the center of this surge is the 3D TV market, which showed promising growth in the 4th quarter of 2011, and is tracking for even larger gains through 2012. According to Research and Markets, the global 3D TV market size is expected to exceed $100 Billion by the end of 2014. Which begs the question: in what industry would a product worth $100 Billion in sales be considered “a passing fad”?

3D GOES MOBILE

2011 saw the launch of several “glasses-free” 3D mobile devices, including the LG Optimus 3D Max, the HTC EVO 3D (both of which offer the ability to record and take photos in 3D using dual cameras) and more recently, the Gadmei 8” 3D Tablet. These relatively inexpensive devices offer consumers the full 3D experience in the palm of their hand. This evolution of 3D technology has opened the door for a wide variety of 3D creative needs, from mobile games, to applications, to advertising geared toward the mobile 3D market. The stage is set for brands and their agencies to leap off the screen and into the hearts and minds of the customers in ways never thought possible before. My company, Geneva Film Co., has produced 3D spots for Lexus, Sprint and others, bringing global brands into this next dimension. These projects– produced mainly for cinema– will next find their way to 3D TV and mobile platforms. As the popular YouTube 3D channel has shown, mobile user-generated 3D content can be an immersive experience with huge “viral” potential. In fact, YouTube not only allows stereoscopic 3D footage to be uploaded online, but also offers users a chance to convert their 2D HD footage to 3D with a click of a button online. It’s almost too easy.

3D CONTENT = RETENTION

Another exciting avenue currently being explored is 3D content in the classroom. Several schools across Europe have already started utilizing 3D projection. Astudy conducted on behalf of Texas Instruments showed a 17% increase in test results for those students who viewed 3D content as part of their normal curriculum. It also found attention-levels soared, with 92% of the class paying attention, versus 46% in the traditional 2D learning environment.

This type of 3D retention and engagement is not limited to the classroom. A similar study also conducted by Texas Instruments showed that viewers presented with 3D advertising content were as much as 20% more likely to retain that information than those who saw a 2D counterpart. These promising statistics bode well for Brands who develop 3D content as part of their marketing activities, as well as for agencies and content creators who offer this type of 3D impact to their clients.

3D’s GOT GAME

On the front lines of the 3D revolution are the Gamers: fearless consumers who are always ready to embrace new technology to elevate their gaming experience to a more immersive level. The Nintendo 3DS has sold over 15 million units worldwide and continues to gain traction in the US market thanks to a price cut that saw sales numbers soar. 3D-ready game consoles like Sony’s PS3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 now feature franchise titles like Grand Turismo and Call of Duty in immersive 3D splendor. This in turn propels 3D TV sales as gamers scramble to update their home systems to be 3D ready. By its very nature, gaming and 3D technologies are a match made in heaven, tapping into the very essence of what makes 3D so exciting: it just feels real.

3D CONTENT IS KING

Ultimately, content is still king. Like the HD revolution that preceded it, 3D now has the platforms to support widespread use in every aspect of daily life. However, without content to bring these devices to life, consumers will have little reason to buy. As a presenter at both TED, and Cannes Lions, my experience has been that the enthusiasm for 3D has been palpable. Despite initial trepidation by production companies and agencies, overall 3D content continues to expand. 24/7 3D channels like ESPN3D, 3net and Sky Channel are paving the way. 2012 will see the London Olympics broadcast in 3D, with the opening and closing ceremonies, men’s 100m dash, gymnastics, swimming, basketball promising 3D action. Hollywood is also offering more Blu-Ray 3D movies than ever. As more and more content enters the market, giving a greater number of consumers a reason to introduce the growing list of 3D devices into their daily routine, 3D will quickly become a primary format for content across all media platforms. For the brands and agencies bold enough to lead the way, the sky is the limit. Is it worth it? Let’s just say we won’t have the Star Trek holodeck without 3D.

Via Brian Solis: http://www.briansolis.com

Groupon has offered up another enticement to use its service: A feature called G-Pass that let you jump the line for GrouponLive events.

Prior to G-Pass, which was announced Wednesday, if you bought tickets to a GrouponLive event, you got a voucher that you had to exchange for actual tickets. G-Pass provides seating, ticketing and barcode-scanning info on the voucher, meaning you don’t have to take that extra step.

Groupon partnered with Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, for GrouponLive last May. The program uses Groupon’s local reach to market event tickets sold via Live Nation.

G-Pass launched in beta in October 2011 at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Joe Louis Arena in Detroit and several Harlem Globetrotters events around the country.

The program is the latest enhancement to Groupon’s service. Faced with a slew of competitors in the daily deals space, Groupon has been using its lead position in the segment to experiment with new ways to expand its business. In addition to G-Pass, Groupon recently rolled out a $30-per-year VIP program for its “best customers” that provides early access to deals and first dibs on reservations. Other recent product intros from the company include Clicky the Value Wheel –a gamification of daily deals — and a Scheduler app designed to help businesses fill out their appointment calendars.

The launches come as Groupon is reportedly being probed by the SEC after it restated its 4Q financials last month.

Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, slobo

Marketers, educators, parents, it seems that almost anyone in the Generation X or Boomer demographic is scratching their heads trying to figure out Generation Y aka the Millennial. After all, it’s the first generation to seemingly possess digital prowess as part of their DNA. And, it’s the first generation to receive both a birth certificate and a social profile or presence upon delivery into this world.

A study published in 2011 by security company AVG and Research Now surveyed  2,200 mothers from around the world and found that 81% of children under the age of two currently have some type of digital footprint. 92% of U.S. children have an online presence created for them by the time they are 2 years old. In many cases, a digital presence is born before the child, with sonograms (23%) actively published and shared on social networks and blogs.

With every day that passes, Gen Y becomes far more important to the economy than we can realize. Yet the gap between how Gen Y communicates and connects and how businesses, educators, governments, et al. approach them is only widening. I often wonder whether or not we are simply trying to talk to ourselves in our approach when in reality, we are talking to strangers. This is important as without understanding what’s important to them and why, without learning their behavior or decision making cycles, or without empathy, we cannot reverse engineer nor create a meaningful and engaging journey. We cannot create bridges from where they are to us nor can we expect them to use them.

How well do you know Gen Y?

Here are some interesting points for discovery that get us thinking beyond what we think we know today:

59% update their social status in class.

29% find love through Facebook while 33% are dumped via TXT or Wall posts (SRS) – abbreviation for seriously

Millennials watch TV with two or more electronic devices

Only 11% define having a lot of money as a definition of success

Gen-Y will form 75% of the workforce by 2025 and are actively shaping corporate culture and expectations.

Only 7% of Gen-Y works for a Fortune 500 company as startups dominate the workforce for this demographic. Gen-Y expects larger organizations to hear their voice and recognize their contributions…increasing the need for an intrapreneurial culture.

Millennials trust strangers over friends and family. They lean on UGC for purchases.

They are 3x as likely to follow a brand over a family member in social networks

66% will look up a store if they see a friend check-in

73% have earned and used virtual currency

Gen-Y believes that other consumers care more about their opinions than companies do – that’s why they share their opinions online.

Gen-Y’ers are more connected on Facebook than average users managing a social graph of 696 Facebook friends versus 140.

If knowledge is the key to enlightenment, then perception and imagination are windows to engagement and relevance. We can learn all we want about Millennials, but if we can’t translate that into meaning or substance, we will continue to miss opportunities to build lasting relationships.

The gap isn’t just widening because of the growing pervasiveness of Millennials in our economy. As I introduced in The End of Business as Usual, anyone who places increasing emphasis on technology as part of their daily routine, in many ways, their behavior mimics that of Millennials and as a result, they prove elusive or immune to traditional marketing and service. In the book, I refer to this class of consumer as “the Connected Customer” and their behavior is noticeably dissimilar to that of their traditional counterparts. The connected customer is the stranger you must get to know as in comparison to the customers of the past, this group is only growing and it’s traversing demographics. As such, the connected customer becomes what we can or should now refer to as Generation C where the “C” represents connectedness.

No longer can we blame it on the youth. We must blame, if anything, the disruption of technology. Nowadays, age ain’t nothing but a number. It is how people embrace technology, from social networks to smartphones to intelligent appliances, that contributes to the digital lifestyle that is now synonymous with Gen-C.

A recent study published by Nielsen brings Generation C into light. In just one image, we can begin to comprehend the disruption of digital revolution on society. Call it the social economy. Call it the mobile or the app economy. Call it the connected economy. Whatever we call it, this incredible transformation that we’re witnessing, is indeed nothing short of a digital revolution.

The Last 10 Years

274 million American have Internet Access, which is more than double that of 2000.

81 billion minutes spent on social networks and blogs

64% of all mobile phone time is spent on apps.

42% of tablet owners use them daily while watching TV.

For the first time, the numbers of laptops have surpassed desktops within TV homes.

Women Rule Gen-C

In 2009, I discovered that in social media, women rule. As you can see in Nielsen’s report, women too rule Gen-C.  Specifically, they rule social media and online video and TV viewership. With smartphones, men and women are tied in adoption. With tablets however, men rule.

Gen-C, By the Numbers

If you compare Nielsen’s graphic with that of IBM’s research on Social CRM, you can appreciate the full dimension of Gen-C as every demographic, in their own way, is adopting disruptive technology. And, it’s only becoming greater.

Platforms for Digital Access

Every digital experience has its springboard. Whether it’s a PC, tablet, smartphone, and soon, a connected TV, our ability to every platform unifies the 5-C’s of engagement, create, connect, consume, communicate, and contribute.

274.2 million Americans have Internet access

169.6 million visit social networks and blogs

165.9 million people watch video on a PC

70% of time using tablets is spent while at home versus 30% on the go

Content accessed on tablets is 1) News at 39%, 2) Sports at 34%, and Books at 31%

On smartphones, 117.6 million visit the Internet

App usage peaks at 5 p.m. among adults

Smartphones are used by 44% of all mobile subscribers in the U.S.

Video Continues to Kill the Radio Star: Engagement is Cross Platform

Nielsen found that consumers increased their online video consumption by 7% from Q3 2010 to Q3 2011. As you can see in theimage below, online and mobile video consumption is significant.

Younger demographics watch less TV and watch video more online and on mobile devices.

With each generation, TV viewership rises with age.

Connected Customers are Multitaskers

Nielsen also shared the engagement habits and online activity of connected customers. As consumers watch a program, they are online with 1) 57% checking email, 2) 44% surfing the web, and 3) another 44% social networking.

When asked what they were doing while online during TV, some very interesting answers emerged. 29% looked up programming information related to the show. 19% looked up product information related to an ad. And, 16% looked up coupons or deals related to the ad.

The Top 5 Sites Visited While Watching TV

1. Facebook

2. Youtube

3. Zynga

4. Google

How Gen-C Spends their Connected Time

On PC’s and mobile devices, Gen-C is always on. Nielsen found that during October 2011, Youtube was the top destination for all online video content, accounting for nearly half (45%) of American’s total streaming time.

Social networking represents 21.3% of all time spent online using PCs.

Online gaming accounts for 7.7%

Email, in many ways still the largest social network in the world, represents 6.5%

55.8% of mobile phone time is spent in miscellaneous apps, with Angry Birds most likely accounting for a notable share of that time (just kidding).

Text messaging continues to test the limits of thumb dexterity and the ability to find new ways to abbreviate our vocabulary at 13.4%

Browser usage represents 11.1%

Social networking equals 5.5%

Interesting that email and IM are among the bottom of all mobile functions at 5.3%.

From e-commerce to Mobile Commerce

As Nielsen and so many other research reports herald, mobile commerce is influencing transactions and decisions. Mobile is just one of the many channels for emerging commerce including social, F-commerce, and more importantly, syndicated commerce. 29% of of mobile consumers use their phone for shopping-related activities and more than 50% visit daily deal sites daily.

Mobile shopping activities include:

38% compare prices online while in shopping in a store.

38% browse products through websites or apps.

32% read online reviews of products.

24% search for or use online coupons.

22% have purchased a product.

22% scan barcodes for product or price information.

18% use location-based services to find retail locations.

My favorite state isn’t related to what people are doing, but what they would do if businesses innovated in their approach to commerce.

27% of male and 22% of female consumers would use their mobile phone to make payments in restaurants and shops if they could.

This is an EmerGen-C

Connected customers or Gen-C is only becoming more pervasive in society and ultimately your economy. If you look back at the Gen-Y behavior list and replace the words “Millennial” or “Gen-Y” with “Connected Customer” or “Gen-C,” the similarities are uncanny. Now’s the time to recognize how your customer landscape is shifting and to what extent traditional and connected consumers discover and make decisions differently. The customer journey is far more complex than ever before, where new touchpoints not only emerge, they introduce a new customer journey.

With connected customers, decision making is no longer signified by a simple funnel, nor can business models support decision making before, during, and post transaction across these distributed, but connected platforms. This is a time for augmented engagement strategies to cater to different types of customers differently not only based on behavior, but also based on their expectations, needs, and also the platform they use to connect, communicate, and make decisions.

Robots in movies may be evil more often than good, but they’re becoming part of our lives. And their tech is evolving so that they “feel” more like we do.

 

This happened recently, and we had to show it to you. NASA’s sort of recreated the look of one of the famous parts of Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco with an astronaut’s space suit and Robonaut. 

Bot Vid: Leap Tall Buildings In A Single Bound

Boston Dynamics has a bit of a rep for making scary military bots, but its latest Sand Flea robot is different. While still being designed for military or policing purposes, the tiny robot can leap over high obstructions in a single leap and could almost earn the epithet “cute.”

Bot Vid: Hand Shake Robot

Osaka University is demonstrating its robotic prowess by developing a robotic telepresence hand that can communicate the grip, force, and the body temperature of the remote operator. It’s all about adding a more tactile aspect to telepresence meetings.

Bot News

Robots at Foxconn. Foxconn’s again in the news because of its plans for revolutionizing its production lines in China, but in this case it’s because CEO Terry Gou has another way to stop employees working in illegal conditions: He wants to add thousands of robots to his factories.

Robot teachers. The idea of robot teachers has been around a while, but the technology is getting a new spin courtesy of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and a $100,000 prize competition to design a better automated “robotic” grading software. The idea is that teachers would assign more writing tasks if they didn’t have to grade them, and this would boost what’s seen as low writing skills in U.S. students.

RoboBonobo. A great ape sanctuary in Iowa has an unusual Kickstarter project underway: It wants to make a remote telepresence bonobo robot which the apes can control to interact with visitors. You may be skeptical, but bonobos are among the smartest great apes and have been taught to communicate using sign language–and the overall goal is to develop a super-clever touchscreen speech app so the apes can communicate with people better. As part of the Kickstarter project, if you fund it with over $500 you can get a Skype session with a bonobo.

Bot Futures: Tactile Robots

Giving robots human-like touch sensitivity is likely an important goal for the time when robots are more a part of our daily lives. Touch is incredibly important for things you may not imagine–such as detecting when you’re bumping into something gently, or for applying the right amount of force when, for example, helping someone out of bed.

Robot touch is actually something researchers at the University of Pittsburgh say is a “holy grail” of robotics, and they think they’ve got a technology that could enable it. It’s called Belousov-Zhabotinsky gel, and it’s pretty weird. That’s because if you don’t poke it or stimulate it in any way, it pulsates by itself.

The idea is that by engineering the BZ gel carefully it can be turned into a super-sensitive and soft sensor system for robots so that the machines could work out if their stiff, mechanical limbs are touching something that needs to be handled carefully–or, in the case of bumping into a human accidentally, to know it’s done so without necessarily having to “see” the situation happen and react accordingly.

It seems more and more likely that when robots do become a daily experience for us, they’ll be imbued with slightly human behaviors like touch sensitivity and, indeed, ethics.

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.