Open up your mind and say, ahh...

In 2005, whether you were using a dumb phone with T9 Word or a BlackBerry with a physical keyboard, you were probably texting without looking at your phone, at least occasionally. It was just part of the times, like Brick Breaker, or Nelly. Then, in 2007, the iPhone showed up with its bold, buttonless design and erased all of that functionality. Texting suddenly became a two-thumb, eyes-on affair–a Dark Age of text entry we’re still suffering through today. Fleksy wants to change that. And what sets it apart from all the other alternative keyboard apps is that, from the moment you try it, you get the sense that it just might be able to.

Ioannis Verdelis and Kostas Eleftheriou, the two Greek computer scientists behind Fleksy, didn’t just set out to make a better touch-screen keyboard. They set out to make one as good as the keyboards we were using in 2005–or at least to make one that lets us type as well as we were on those infinitely more primitive devices. Their software is currently available in beta for Android and as an iOS app, and while it’s still rough in places, that core, no-look functionality is already there to a remarkable extent. I loaded up Fleksy on my iPhone, directed my gaze elsewhere, and thumbed in my best approximation of the word “difficult.” Without having to learn anything new, and without letting the app figure out what kind of thumb-typist I am, and without even pausing at first to make sure my fingers were lined up in any particular way beforehand, Fleksy got it right on the first try.

The founders claim Fleksy can recognize words even if you miss every single letter in them. Or if you’re not even typing on the keyboard section of the screen at all. The reason it’s able to do so, Verdelis explains, is that in addition to using conventional autocorrect cues like context and word frequency, Fleksy was built from scratch to accommodate the sorts of errors we make on our mobile devices. Errors, unsurprisingly, that are totally different from the ones we make on our laptops–and ones that demand a totally different approach to autocorrection.

“Most other touch-screen keyboard technologies, including those built-in and most third-party ones, use technology that derives from research done for Microsoft Word and hardware keyboards,” Verdelis says. Essentially, those keyboards look at the buttons, or letters, you tap, and then attempt to suss out your intended words from there. But on a smartphone, that’s a problematic approach for one huge reason: Those touch-screen buttons don’t really exist, and we’re not very good at using them.

On our laptops, the tiny bumps on the “F” and “J” keys keep our fingers oriented. With time, you learn to find them every time you put your index fingers down on the keyboard, and your other digits just fall in place naturally. Touch-screen keyboards don’t offer this type of tactile feedback, so our thumbs can never be sure where they are–at least not without our eyes double checking. As a result, we’re not missing letters every so often on our smartphones; we’re missing them as a matter of course. Occasionally, we drift off and miss entire words at a time.

But still, that doesn’t mean we’re typing poorly. We’re just not typing in quite the right place. “A user will be typing,” Verdelis explains, “and the overall pattern of the word might be the same, but he’s missed all the buttons because his finger has been 10 pixels up … So rather than look at buttons, which don’t exist, we look at where you touched the screen and the pattern of the words you’re trying to type.” That’s Fleksy’s secret sauce. Instead of looking at the on-screen buttons you happen to be tapping, it looks at the patterns between those taps and from them deduces what you meant to type. It erases the very possibility of not typing in the right place.

The solution is a smart one, and it’s clearly effective. But for the last several months, Fleksy has had the added benefit of being in the hands of a large, concerted group of test users: the visually impaired. The developers introduced an early version of the app to the blind community last summer at a conference for the National Federation for the Blind, and they quickly amassed a user base numbering in the thousands that has generated a great deal of insight, feedback, and, of course, raw typing data.

For the rest of us, though, the current version of Fleksy will only be so useful. The Android beta is the newer of the two versions, so it still needs considerable polish, and the iPhone version, shackled by Apple’s unwillingness to let users swap in alternative keyboards on a system-wide level, is constrained to a standalone app. And while the word-to-word accuracy is astonishing right from the start, that iOS version version relies on a somewhat complicated series of swipes for spaces and punctuation–upping the learning curve for true adoption considerably.

Verdelis hopes that someday Apple might reverse that policy, but he and Eleftheriou think there’s plenty of room for their technology to flourish regardless. In fact, their real vision is for Fleksy to become not just a replacement available to users but a replacement for suboptimal stock keyboards at large. Verdelis says he and his partner have seen “incredible interest” from hardware manufacturers about building the app into next-gen smartphones, and they’re currently in talks with a handful of potential partners. Hopefully that pans out. We could certainly use a more enlightened way to text.

Android users can grab the beta here; the iOS app is available in the App Store here. More on the app can be found on the Flesky site.

Illustration: Shutterstock

The clickwheel of the first iPod worked by measuring electric field disturbances in one dimension. The first iPhone touch screen functioned similarly, but in two dimensions.

This week, Microchip Technology, a large U.S. semiconductor manufacturer, says it is releasing the first controller that uses electrical fields to make 3D measurements.

The low-power chip makes it possible to interact with mobile devices and a host of other consumer electronics using hand gesture recognition, which today is usually accomplished with camera-based sensors. A key limitation is that it only recognizes motions, such as a hand flick or circular movement, within a six-inch range.

“That’s the biggest drawback,” says University of Washington computing interface researcher Sidhant Gupta. “But I think, still, it’s a pretty big win, especially when compared to a camera system. It’s low-cost and low-power. I can completely see it going into phones.”

Gesture recognition technology has advanced in recent years with efforts to create more-natural user interfaces that go beyond touch screens, keyboards and mouses. Microsoft’s Kinect made 3D gesture recognition popular for game consoles, for example. But while creative uses of the Kinect have proliferated, the concept hasn’t become mainstream in desktops, laptops, or mobile devices quite yet.

Today, Microsoft, along with other companies such as Leap Motion and Flutter, are working to improve upon and expand camera-based technology to new markets. For smart phones and tablets, Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon mobile device chip includes gesture recognition abilities, via its camera, but few mobile devices make use of gesture control.

Despite the six-inch distance limitation, the electrical-field controller could have some interesting advantages compared to camera sensors. “It’s really complementary,” says Fanie Duvenhage, director of Microchip Technology’s human-machine interface division.

Power consumption is a key issue for battery-powered devices. Microchip’s controller uses 90 percent less than camera-based gesture systems, the company says, and it can be left always on, so that it could be used to, say, wake up a smart-phone screen from sleep mode when a person’s hand nears.

The controller works by transmitting an electrical signal and then calculating the three-coordinate position of a hand based on the disturbances to the field the hand creates. Whereas many camera systems have “blind spots” for close-up hand gestures and can fail in low light, the Microchip controller works well under these conditions and doesn’t require an external sensor (its sensing electrodes can sit behind a device’s housing).

Perhaps most interesting, the controller could easily go into electronics that don’t have a camera, including car dashboards, keyboards, light switches, or a music docking station. In fact, Microchip Technology already sells components to 70,000 customers that make these products. Duvenhage says he imagines interesting uses in cars, such as controlling an in-car navigation system, or in medical or kitchen settings where users might not want to touch a button or screen.

The controller comes with the ability to recognize 10 predefined gestures, including wake-up on approach, position tracking, and various hand flicks, but it can also be programmed to respond to custom movements. Similar to the programming of voice recognition software, Microchip Technology built the gesture library using algorithms that learned from how different people make the same movements. These gestures can then be translated to functions on a device, such as on/off, open application, point, click, zoom, or scroll.

The precision is about the same as using a mouse, but the system has limitations. It can’t yet distinguish between, say, an open hand and a closed fist, or simultaneous movements of different fingers, an area the company wants to improve.

Today, less than a year after acquiring the German startup that developed the technology, the company is making a development kit available for sale, and Duvenhage says they’ll be looking to customers to see what uses they create. Microchip plans to reach mass production levels by next April, and it expects to see the first products using the technology on the market sometime next year.

Part of an ongoing series dedicated to small businesses

As you read this, the business landscape is shifting right under your company’s foundation. How customers make decisions, how they discover, communicate, and share, how they influence and are influenced, is evolving considerably. In fact, customer behavior is not only changing, it’s fragmenting and opening the door to new touch points. Your business will now have to compete for the customers you know and additionally, a new breed of customers that you need to know. And, to earn their attention and ultimately their loyalty, you will need to better understand the top technology trends and how they’re impacting customer behavior.

At the heart of this customer divide is technology. But this isn’t about the technology we once knew, such as PCs, laptops, iPods, ebook readers, DVRs, etc. This change in consumerism is the inevitable result of disruptive technology and how it has affected behavior and reshaped expectations. Smart phones, social networks, apps, gamified everything, Google Glasses, self-driving cars, smart appliances, the list goes on, are placing consumers at the center of their own universe connected to one another through shared experiences. This plugged-in and always-on customers are learning to see the world differently. They’re empowered and they’re entitled. As a result, disruptive technology is grooming customers to expect information and opportunities to find them.

Everything starts with surveying the landscape for how you reach customers today and how their behavior and expectations are shifting. But this is also about the people you don’t reach now. This research will help understand how to appeal to a new type of customer as well.

If you thought that having a social media strategy and presences in the most popular social networks was enough, think again. What of adding social buttons to your website or in your email blasts? Still not enough? How about developing apps for iPhone and Android platforms? Nope. That’s not the right approach.

It takes research to truly understand how customer segmentation is materializing and how new technologies introduce opportunities to engage effectively with each group. More importantly, it takes interpretation, strategy, and a culture of innovation to recognize and prioritize these new opportunities and execute against them while windows for engagement are open.

Just like customer service, sales, and marketing, technology and your ability to translate trends into opportunities, are now part of your everyday business strategy. To what extent disruptive technology impacts your customer landscape, differs from industry to industry and it is your research that reveals where to concentrate and balance your focus and investments. To help, I’ve assembled a list of 10 current trends to evaluate . But, this is just the beginning. Use this list to build a regiment of research and innovation within your business now and over time.

10 movements to review for opportunities…

1. Social Networks from Facebook to Twitter to Google+ and how they’re connecting to influencers and businesses (note: pay attention to nicheworks as well such as Path and Instagram.)

2. Geolocation check-in services such as Foursquare and Facebook location updates to share locations and earn rewards or opportunities for discounts

3. Crowdsourced discounts and deals including Groupon and LivingSocial and what’s valued and why

4. Social commerce services like Shopkick and Armadealo and how they create personalized experiences that are worth sharing

5. Referral based solutions like Yelp, Service Magic (now HomeAdvisor), and Angie’s List to make informed decisions and how shared experiences can improve your business, products, and services

6. Gamification platforms such as Badgeville and Fangager, and why rewarding engagement improves commerce and loyalty

7. How your consumers using mobile devices today and what apps they’re installing. Also, how they’re comparing options, reviewing experiences and making decisions while mobile?

8. The online presence your business produces across a variety of platforms such as tablets, smartphones, laptops and desktops. You must realize how consumers are experiencing the online presences you create and whether or not they deliver a holistic and optimized experience for each platform.

9. The consumer clickpath based on the platform consumers are using. Are you steering experiences based on the expectations of your customers? And are you taking into consideration the device or network where the clickpath begins and ends? Are you integrating Facebook F-commerce and m-commerce into the journey?

10. The expectations of connected consumers, what they value in each channel and platform, where they engage and how your business can improve experiences and make them worthy of sharing.

What would you add?

No company is too big to fail or too small to succeed. Simply knowing your customer is one thing. The connected customers does not replace your traditional customer, they simply introduce new opportunities to grow your business. How you’re marketing, selling, and servicing customers today are in many ways missing these important customers and thus limiting your ability for engagement and growth.

Understanding how connected customers make decisions informs more meaning strategies and ultimately effective and engaging programs, products, and services. Now more than ever, the future of business isn’t created, it’s co-created.

Originally published at AT&T’s Networking Exchange Blog

Chart: Shutterstock

Photo: Daimler

You may talk to your car, and some in cases it may even talk back. And you’ve probably thrown a few choice words at other drivers in a impromptu bout of rage. But cars are silently communicating with each other and with transportation infrastructure in two field trials that kicked off this month near Frankfurt, Germany, and in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler is spearheading what it’s calling the “first ‘social network’ for automobiles.” But instead of sharing lolcat pics and mundane musings, the 120 vehicles in the project will be communicating with one another as well as with infrastructure to avoid accidents and traffic jams, along with a range of other applications. Daimler claims it’s the largest ever field trial of vehicle-to-X communication (V2X) – a combination of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication – to show how the technology can be used to decrease accidents and increase driving efficiency. But in sheer number of vehicles it pales in comparison to a similar V2V field trial that the National Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) is conducting in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The European trial is part of the sim^TD (Safe Intelligent Mobility – test field Germany) research project spearheaded by Daimler Research and Advance Development and sponsored by the German government. Other participants include automakers Opel, Audi, BMW/Mini, Ford and Volkswagen, along with automotive suppliers Bosch and Continental, Deutsche Telekom and several research institutes. The trial consists of 120 vehicles that will be hitting the roads of the Frankfurt Rhine-Main region until the end of the year. According to Car and Driver, the fleet includes specially equipped Audi A4s, BMW X1s, Ford S-Maxes, Mercedes-Benz C-Classes, Opel Insignias and Volkswagen Passats.

Vehicles will be connected to each other and to infrastructure via a form of Wi-Fi that has a range of just over 300 yards, according to Mike Shulman who is directing Ford’s participation in both trials and is the automaker’s technical leader of Active Safety Research and Innovation. The vehicles in the European trial will constantly keep each other posted on road hazards and traffic, much the same way an annoying acquaintance keeps you updated on his status by posting to Facebook every few seconds.

One beneficial scenario provided by Daimler: If there’s a traffic jam on the autobahn and it’s concealed behind the crest of a hill, vehicles barreling down the road at 100 mph-plus would be alerted to avoid rear-ending the last car. The company also points to possible environmental and convenience benefits of V2X systems, such as coordinating traffic lights according to traffic density to make driving more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly, and even being able to seek out and suggest routes to the nearest available parking spots.

By comparison, the NHTSA Ann Arbor trial will last an entire year and include 3,000 vehicles driven by ordinary people, but equipped with Wi-Fi communications and other technology such as radar and cameras. The reason the U.S. trial requires a lot more vehicles and a lot more time is to gauge how a large pool of vehicles interact with each other over a longer period to gather enough data to determine the effectiveness of V2V communication to reduce accidents, says Ford’s Shulman.

One group will drive the cars for the first six months and then a second group will drive the vehicles for the last six months of the trial. “They’ll drive them to work, go shopping and wherever they want to go,” Shulman told Wired. “The drivers were carefully selected so that they work in the same area, drop their kids off at school in the same area and have the same shift time. The idea is that, over this year-long period, we could see how well these cars really perform. Are they getting the timely warnings? Are they getting a lot of false warnings? What’s really happening that we haven’t seen on a track but under real-world conditions?”

In addition to the number of cars and duration, the big difference between the two trials is that the U.S. version is solely focused on reducing accidents. “NHTSA has done a study that says that more than 80 percent of the crashes could be impacted by V2V technology,” Shulman says. He adds that the federal agency is conducting the trial to determine whether V2V technology can be deployed to effectively prevent injuries and fatalities – and whether to mandate it on new cars. “They’re going to look at whether to apply this to new vehicles and other modes of transportation like trucks, buses and motorcycle, and even pedestrians and in aftermarket devices,” he adds.

“The Europeans are not looking at regulation; they’re looking at this as a voluntary deployment, at least for now,” Shulman says. “They’re looking at it more as a mobility application, using vehicles as a probe to show travel history and congestion over routes and determine the best routes to take based on real-time congestion. It can warn of traffic and construction up ahead, but it’s not for that last second before a crash. It’s more for information to the driver or information from the vehicle back to the traffic management center.”

Shulman says that the European trials should be thought of as, “not the first step, but a long-term step, and there’s other benefits that driver could enjoy as we get this technology deployed. We’re trying to learn from both and bringing harmonization where we can, and move toward the concept on the connected vehicle. How we’re approaching it is it will go on different paths to different places.”

We’ve all suffered through a lunch, date, or meeting with a monologist–you know, a person who, oblivious to social cues, dominates the conversation, shows little interest in others around the table, and, when someone tries to shove in one’s oar, raises his voice to drown out the hope of a dialogue.

The question is, how to call out the offender on his obnoxious behavior when you can’t get a word in edgewise? One way is to throw his words back at him. Two Japanese researchers have created a gunlike instrument that does just that. Using the principle of delayed audio feedback, their SpeechJammer records speech and plays it back with a split-second pause, effectively stupefying and silencing the speaker.

Kazutaka Kurihara, a researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, thought up the idea after participating in a demonstration of delayed audio feedback at a local museum. “When I spoke to a microphone, my voice came back to me after a few hundred millisecond delay, then I could not continue to speak anymore,” Kurihara tells Co.Design. “Around that time, my research interest was about developing a system that controls appropriate turn-taking at discussions and was looking for technologies to enforce some discussion rules for participants. Then I came up with the gun type SpeechJammer idea utilizing DAF. That’s the destiny.” He recruited his friend, Koji Tsukada, a “gadget master” at Ochanomizu University, to help him realize the concept, consisting of a direction-sensitive mic and speaker, a distance sensor, a laser pointer, and a microcontroller.

Kurihara stresses that the intent isn’t only to shut up blabbermouths but to allow space for the less vocal to join the conversation. “Fair discussions are essential for resolving conflicts through communication,” he and Tsukada write in their paper. “However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately interrupt other people when it is their turn in order to establish their presence rather than achieve more fruitful discussions.” SpeechJammer was conceived to correct such abuses and allow all participants to have an equal say in proceedings.

The technology behind the idea might be overkill: Under ordinary circumstances, thrusting a mic-equipped gun into a person’s face should be enough to throw anyone off his game. But in the case of, say, the upcoming presidential debates, we can imagine it being an entirely effective (and somewhat hilarious) way to impose time restrictions.

Image: Everett Collection/Shutterstock

In the battle for your mobile wallet one company has been noticeably silent: Apple.

Google has its own mobile payment service: Google Wallet, and Microsoft even announced in June that it would be adding a digital wallet service with NFC capabilities to Windows Phone 8 that would store credit card and mobile payment information.

So, where is the world’s favorite fruit company?

In its announcement of iOS6 mobile payments were left off the agenda. The company unveiled Passbook, a service for keeping track of tickets and coupons, but not credit cards.

According to the Wall Street Journal, some Apple engineers fought for mobile payment functionality. However, the decision –- a very intentional one -– to leave mobile payments out of iOS 6 was made anyway.

The reason?

“Apple is always a comfortable number two,” said Piper Jaffray Analyst Gene Munster to the Wall Street Journal. “They let their competitors do their market research for them.”

Mobile payments are expected to hit $600 billion worldwide by 2016; however, most mainstream consumers are still not adopting them. NFC, the technology that allows you to tap your phone on a surface in order to pay, also isn’t expected to be available in most merchants for another few years.

According to the WSJ, Apple doesn’t want to be the one facilitating mobile credit cards payments when the service isn’t ready, for fear that customers will blame Apple for merchant’s failures during the process. Under that logic, we may not see Apple deploy NFC or mobile payments in the iPhone for some time, and especially not in the upcoming iPhone 5.

What do you think about NFC? Would you like the ability to make payments by taping your iPhone at a point of sale or is the technology still a little too new for your comfort? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Via Mashable: http://www.mashable.com

The Boston Celtics know how to win. And while the team is now preparing for the next NBA season, Peter Stringer, Senior Director of Interactive Media is on the court every day. With 6.5 million fans on Facebook and 600k followers on Twitter, Peter’s work is just getting started. Serving customers in today’s hottest networks is one thing. Catering to a worldwide community of rabid sports fans requires in a series always-on digital arenas takes a different level of engagement altogether.

As part of an ongoing series that celebrates the experiences, vision, and strategy of those leading transformation, Peter shares with us how the Celtics approach social and digital strategies to compete for attention and affinity before, during and after each season.

What is the prevailing mission and purpose for the Boston Celtic’s social media strategy?

Fans have an insatiable appetite for news, information and inside access to the team, and we try to provide that across as many platforms as possible where we’ve established an audience. For the Boston Celtics, that currently means Celtics.com, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest. If our fans are congregating on these platforms and discussing our team, we want to be the dominant voice in that conversation.

From a business standpoint, we want to learn as much about our fan base as possible, and turn those passionate fans into customers. To achieve that, we are actively collecting data from them in exchange for opportunities to win tickets, merchandise and unique Celtics experiences. We want to know where they live, what other brands they like, if they already buy tickets, etc. We have a product that our fans are incredibly passionate about, and therefore, they’re willing to make that value exchange.

What are some of the unique challenges you face as a sports franchise?

Social media and sports dovetail very nicely, so in some ways my job is actually easy. But the challenges I face are much more practical in nature. For instance, when you’ve got a massive audience like we do, you can’t afford to make a mistake. That toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube. You want to be sure that the message you send out is on brand, not only from a marketing perspective, but also from a basketball operations perspective.

I take great care in managing our social media properties to be sure that they reflect our team and brand in the right way. The Boston Celtics have a reputation built on 17 championships and 60 years of history. I don’t want to tarnish that with one poor tweet that doesn’t hit the mark or sends the wrong message. It can be tempting to try to be funny, sarcastic, or irreverent, but risk usually far outweighs the reward.

Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but that’s the lens through which I see our social channels. I look at every tweet, Facebook post and Instagram photo as an official statement from the Boston Celtics. And at the end of the day, the social media channels should reflect the team’s brand as a whole, and not attempt to create it’s own identity. After all, our product is our players, head coach, and the team’s incredible legacy. So I try to channel their voices, their thoughts and their moods and deliver them to our fans.

What is the current size of the communities you manage and what has overall growth and size of your social media footprint evolved?

Facebook is obviously our biggest channel, with over 6.5 million followers. That makes us the second biggest Facebook fan page in North American team sports. We were growing by about 15-20,000 fans a day until last year’s F8, when changes to the News Feed throttled our growth dramatically. That seems to be true for most teams and brands, and our reach rate per post has been decimated by the Edge Rank revisions. Given how frequently Facebook tweaks their platform, it was bound to happen, but I think Facebook has really hurt brands in this regard. These days, only photo galleries really seem to get any penetration into News Feeds thanks to heavy sharing by fans.

We’re at about 580,000 on Twitter, and that number continues to grow. During the postseason it’s been escalating at much faster rate than normal, which is to be expected. The quotes, pictures and notes we’re tweeting are getting a lot more attention the further we progress in the NBA Playoffs.

As for Instagram, we just passed 200,000 followers today, and that growth has been driven by taking a unique, more artistic look at the team. The credit for that goes largely to our team’s creative director, Keith Sliney (@pantone356). I snap a few photos here and there from the road, or if I see something at practice that warrants sharing, but by and large, he’s the driving force behind that platform and I believe we’re the #1 or #2 sports property on the service, and among the biggest brands globally as well.

We’ve been dabbling in Pinterest this season with merchandise and photos from our Instagram feed, and that’s picked up some steam. We were also the first team to my knowledge to try running a “Pin It To Win It” contest based on Pinterest to promote our Celtics web store.

What are the expectations of fans and how are they engaged as customers and as stakeholders?

Sports fans expect scores, news and information instantaneously on their phone during every waking hour. They no longer want to surf to ESPN.com, Celtics.com or anywhere else. They just expect it to show up in their Twitter feed. And so for us, that means tweeting our news as soon as we can effectively (or realistically) break it. Running social media for a sports team is an around the clock job, because this type of news can break at any time.

The challenge here is that some of the news fans really want will never be able to come directly from the teams or leagues first. When it comes to trades, for instance, that news never breaks on a team’s official feed first, because we’re not allowed to announce anything until it’s actually official and approved by the NBA league office. By that time, players’ agents, league employees or even team executives have already leaked the story to reporters. So connected journalists have a huge edge in that regard, when it comes to breaking news first. However, we still have a massive advantage in audience size. A beat writer who covers us probably only has 10-20,000 followers, so it may take them time to get their tweet circulated. Our tweets, on the other hand, get a lot more amplification and tend to circulate quicker, especially when we have big news.

That said, we do spend a lot of time mobilizing and orchestrating our fan base. We were the first NBA team (and to my knowledge, pro sports team) to put our @Celtics twitter handle on our court, and we’ve been promoting #CelticsChat throughout our local TV broadcasts throughout the season. We curate the conversation from #CelticsChat into GameTime Live, our live stats and game-blogging application on Celtics.com that allows fans from all over the globe to follow the action and join in a conversation around the game.

But I think the biggest thing we can provide through our social channels is an inside look at the organization. For instance, last night’s Eastern Conference Finals Game 6 vs. Miami is a perfect example. I snapped a photo of a simple message on the dry erase board in our locker room that was authentic and symbolic. It said, “12:30 Flight – Pack for a Week.” The implication was simple for fans in the know; it was a message to our players that after we win Game 7 vs. Miami, we’re flying directly to Oklahoma City for the NBA Finals. It was a motivational message from the coaching staff to our players, and by sharing that picture with 200,000 fans on Instagram, and 500,000 on Twitter, we sent a message of hope to a fan base still reeling from a disappointing loss. It helped turn the page from the past to the future. It was simple, raw and powerful; the perfect combination of insider access and emotional marketing. We just shared our coaches’ marketing to our players with our fan base. It was one of my favorite things I’ve ever shared with our fan base, and I really think it struck a chord with them.

What were some of the challenges you faced to get here? What challenges do you still face?

Staffing and bandwidth remain a challenge for us. When I started with the Celtics in 2005, I was a one-man show and my job was simply managing Celtics.com, a site that had little-to-no basketball content and was simply a ticket sales driven property. Given my journalism background and existing passion for the team since childhood, once I got my feet wet, I started overhauling the site, revamping the design and emphasis into a content driven site. Then we started dabbling in video and production in the 2008 season when we won our 17th NBA championship.

In the following seasons as Twitter and Facebook emerged, to me they were obvious extrapolations of what I was already doing with Celtics.com. But every time you add a platform or distribution channel, you add additional work. We’ve yet to launch a mobile app, and part of the challenge is simply a resource issue. Professional sports teams spend millions of dollars on world class athletes, but our technology and staffing budgets aren’t anywhere near what outsiders would imagine.

How did you get buy in?

Buy-in on social wasn’t really an issue here at the Celtics; I’ve been given a lot of freedom to drive the direction of our digital and social media platforms by our CMO and Team President and they’re very much sold on the importance of social media. As our Facebook and Twitter grew to become some of the biggest of the biggest in pro sports, and the audiences wildly outgrew our email database, it became clear that these channels would evolve into a large marketing channel and that’s exactly what’s happened. I’ve certainly done some evangelism internally, and I’ve done quite a bit of speaking around the country talking about what we do as a brand in the social space, so that helps as well.

What are some of the prime metrics that you use to define success?

From a success standpoint, I keep my eyes on how many tickets we’re selling via our social channels, and database growth. I look at the number of names we acquire for our database from each promotion we run, the best of example of which would be Celtics 3-Point Play, our first-of-its-kind Facebook application. On a more granular level, I look a News Feed reach and post sharing; ‘Likes’ and comments on posts are far less important in my view. Most comments are garbage anyway, and a ‘Like’ is almost meaningless unless the numbers are well above or below the norm. Sharing is far more relevant – if someone is willing to share your content with their friends, that’s a far better indication that you’re hitting the mark.

How does strategy materialize in the organization?

We revisit strategy mostly during the offseason, because during the season, there’s not much time to be plotting this stuff out. There’s always another game or practice to cover, corporate partner to satisfy or internal fire to extinguish. But on the whole, our strategy is simple: Our fan database is at the center of everything we do, and all of our digital platforms should be geared at building our database, which in turn gets us in front of more potential customers. “Engagement” is a great buzzword for social media, and it has its place, but monetization is the leader in the clubhouse for me.

How have you organized around social media to manage an extensive and engaged network? What does the social media organization look like?

I oversee our digital marketing and social media, and have a full-time direct report who generates a most of the written content we distribute. We also have a part time video producer, a full-time video host, and another part-timer who helps out on our game nights. We’re looking to add a technical developer this summer, and may potentially add additional staff as we continue to bite off more initiatives and create more content in the digital space.

Any special practices for internal coordination?

– Social CMS?

– Style Guide?

– Best practices?

– Training?

Given how small our organization is, a lot of this stuff isn’t formalized. As we grow, we’ll need to put more processes in place. For now we’re small and agile, but we certainly aim for consistency in our approach in terms of how we deliver against our digital and social media platforms.

Any final advice, tips, or cautionary tales to leave us with as we put your experiences into action?

I think to do social media right, you have to appeal to your fans’ passion points, even if your brand isn’t something they’re are organically passionate about. The only way to do that is to understand your audience and your customers. That’s easy for the Boston Celtics to sense, but probably a lot harder for consumer brands to decipher. I would advise figuring out who they are and what they want before you formulate your strategy. That means collecting data, surveying fans, keeping up with your competitors and studying leaders in the social media space.

Some of America’s most compelling brands are harnessing the conversational aspect of social media by setting up “listening command centers” to capture, monitor and utilize social media conversations. In doing so, they are monitoring online conversations about their brands, reacting instantly to viral buzz, and creating companies that consumers feel involved in–and in some cases, even bringing in bigger profits as a direct result.

One of the first to introduce this technology was Gatorade, which launched its mission control center in its Chicago offices in June 2010. The technology allows the company to monitor social media conversations about the company through a range of visualisations and data-streams.

It also enables fans to participate in the company on a new level. During the Super Bowl, Gatorade enabled fans to interact with NFL starts through Ustream, and they’re now running regular live social media events, such as having sports stars answer questions using Twitter and Ustream.

And this command center technology isn’t just for big companies–it can benefit public services and charities as well. The American Red Cross believes social media will play an increasing role in disaster response, as it can provide real-time information and give relief workers a direct line to affected individuals. Its new digital command center launched in March, just in time to respond to the thousands affected by dozens of tornadoes that ripped through 10 states.

Dell played a major part in helping the Red Cross launch its command center, modelling it after its own social media listening center and providing equipment and funding. Dell’s center launched in 2010 and has since been at the forefront of its marketing and customer response strategies. Said Dell’s VP of social media and community, Manish Mehta, “Ground Control is about tracking the largest number of possible conversations across the web and making sure we ‘internalize’ that feedback, good or bad … It’s also about tracking what you might call the ‘long tail’–those smaller matters that might not bubble to the surface today, but are out there, and deserve to be heard.”

Dell’s ground control center tracks around 22,000 daily posts about the company across a wide range of social media, and enables Dell to participate in online dialogue about their brand and use social media insights to improve their products and marketing.

The technologies that makes this listening possible come from multiple different monitoring platforms like Salesforce Radian6, Sysomos, Nielson BuzzMetrics, and others–the platforms capture millions of social media conversations from sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs, and presents them in a graphic display showing trend information, sentiment, geographical data, and share of voice.

Clemson University has also built a listening center with support from Dell and Radian6. Chief officer Jim Bottum believes Clemson may be the first academic environment to adapt listening command center technology. Students monitor the six large display screens and conduct research projects based on the data, including a recent project aimed at conversations about emergencies to help law enforcement agencies deliver better service in their communities.

Brands are not the only ones that realize the amazing benefits of command centers. Progressive agencies also get on board with the concept.

David Armano, executive VP of global innovation and integration at Edelman Digital, and his team just launched their first social intelligence command center (SICC) in its Chicago office. It combines four listening and engagement stations, a briefing workspace with cable television newsfeed, Polycom, and a content production section. The room is self contained and designed for real time monitoring, analytics, engagement and ultimately content production informed by the data coming in. It also has a full whiteboard wall where teams can actively work and plan.

“It’s essentially ground zero for real time communications,” says Armano. “Social intelligence or the insights we can gain from real time data is nothing without the ability to act upon it. Our SICC initiative is designed to not only master real time data, but act intelligently upon it.”

Taulbee Jackson, president and CEO of Radius and a member of the Super Bowl XLVI host committee, talked to me about the Super Bowl’s first-ever social media command center and his experience in managing the host committee’s interactive communications hub. “We had staff of about 50 people who worked two shifts for two weeks for fifteen hours a day. Our team was comprised of senior level social media managers, content developers, analysts, strategists and tech-savvy volunteers.”

Working out of a 2,800-square-foot space in downtown Indianapolis just blocks from the event, team’s objectives were clear. One: hospitality. “We are known for our friendliness, we wanted to make sure everyone had great experience at the Super Bowl coming from different parts of the country (whether it was on the aiplane, airport, street, cab, online)”, said Jackson. Two: safety. The team not only moderated conversations, it also was connected to other command centers in town that housed logistics and public safety teams so that in the event of the emergency their combined response would be instant. Three: create content and capture the experience to share with those who weren’t able to attend in person. Four: amplification. The team’s role was to amplify the positive experience fans had at the event.

The response rate of the command center staff was less than 3 minutes. Jackson says the event received over 64 million social impressions in one month from organic social amplification, which he estimates are worth $3.2 million. The main metric was the sentiment analysis, though. Real-time response and conversations moved the sentiment measure from 3.2 before the start of the event to 3.6 at the kick off (for every time someone said something negative online, 3.6 people said something positive).

Benefits of Listening Command Centers

So what benefits could a social media command center bring to a company or organization? The command centers enable brands to respond rapidly to trending topics in social media. For example, after Gatorade launched the “Gatorade has Evolved” campaign–which featured a song by rap artist David Banner–it was heavily talked up in social media, Gatorade was able to work with Banner to have a full-length version of the song ready to distribute to its Facebook and Twitter followers within 24 hours.

Listening command centers also allow consumers to participate in brand activities and shape their own experiences with the company. Thanks to its listening command center, Dell is able to provide almost instantaneous assistance to customers, and thanks to conversations and insights gained from social media, they’ve launched the (RED) line of products and FastTrack PC shipment, and redesigned the keyboard on their highest selling laptop after feedback that the apostrophe was positioned awkwardly.

The technology is being used for the more mundane day-to-day tasks of optimising landing pages and sending followers to the most high performing pages of the company’s website. Gatorade says it has been able to reduce exit rates from 25% to 9%, and has increased views of its product videos and other education material by 250%.

At Edelman, Armano says the company has used its SICC to train and act as a model to help several clients plan, design, and staff their own. “Not only that; internally for Edelman, the SICC initiative helps to break down traditional silos,” Armano says. “When analysts, strategists, content developers and media relations teams all see real time data in action–the silos melt away.”

Talking about companies and brands on social media is increasingly a two-way conversation, with listening command centers at the heart of marketing and customer interaction strategies. With application across a variety of industries, from Fortune 500 companies to the public service to education, it won’t be long before listening command centers are standard practice for engaging and monitoring customers.

Image: Flickr user Ludovic Bertron