Jaffe Juice

3 clips this week from my trip to Miami for Womm-U and our geek dinner:

1. Chatting with my new hero, author JC Hutchins about what can only be called a social media miracle with his book, "The 7th Son"

2. Yahoo!'s Ideologist, Jason Anello, talks about 3 emerging trends to watch

3. "Who are you and what do you do?" - in honor of Mitch Joel, recapping the geek dinner that Rohit Bhargava and myself attended in Miami, organized by ringleader Jay Berkowitz

For those of you who read this blog regularly (that is when I actually get to posting! HA!), you'd know my position on Second Life hypeing and dehyping by the Mainstream Media.

...but I got to thinking about the MSM with respect to "fringe" Twitter.

As 1938 Media's Loren Feldman so eloquently put it, Twitter is for "Geeks, Weirdos, Shills, Middle Aged Women looking to get laid" (I guess I would fit into the middle aged woman category then!)

And although the incredible guys over at Common Craft created "Twitter in Plain English", I'm not sure (despite the rave reviews) that this does anything to "rise the tide" and help newbies to take the plunge:

So I guess my question is whether we need to embrace the necessary evil that is mainstream media and accept the inevitable....new technology might tip within the innovator and early adopter through people like Robert Scoble, but in order to break out of the fishbowl, we need the help of the mainstream (media)

fyi, I'm jaffejuice on Twitter. Just over 2,000 followers, but won't rest until I get to 20,000 (surely there are more geeks, weirdos, shills and middle-aged women looking to get laid that read my blog and listen to my podcast???)

Where: Los Ranchos, 401 Biscayne Blvd., Miami FL
When: 7-10pm, May 8th (Thursday)
Who: Me, Rohit Bhargava, Jay Berkowitz, JC Hutchins and more...
Why?: Just because...

More info here

Forget the Long Tail, this is all about the Linkory Tale. You see the problem with stories living on forever, is that they need to be remembered and written down first.

Enter Linkory, one of crayon's newest clients. Officially:

Everyone has memories.  We share them with friends and family throughout our lives. Linkory.com is the only place that makes capturing and sharing memories fun, easy and free.

Your posting of a particular memory will act as the first link in a chain. Others in the global community with similar experiences will add to the chain. This powerful and exciting Linkory process will reveal the complete recollection of an event, enhance the experience for all participants, and generate an historical sequence. You will reunite with family and friends and connect with others who share common or related memories.

Recall huge world events:  Where were you when 9/11 happened, what were you doing when you heard about the death of Princess Diana or when the Berlin Wall came down? Were you in Myanmar in September, 2007?  Post your photographs and describe your visit to the 1969 Woodstock Festival, your attendance at the Simon and Garfunkel concert in Central Park or the Olympic Games. Share your experiences with others who were in your military unit , at your university, or at a summer camp with you. You can choose to make your memories public, or you may limit who may view and contribute to your Linkory.

In this small world,  Linkory.com is indeed a powerful collaboration and social networking space that connects all of us, globally.

For the first time, the world's history is being written in real-time, collectively and un-edited.  Linkory.com is the future of history.

Linkory isn't a social network per se; instead it provides a suite of conversational tools pivoting around the simple (yet profound) act of memories; life experiences; personal history or just personalized accounts or interpretations of events as they happened.

Like many start-ups in the conversational space, Linkory's success will be determined by the number of memories and the proficiency and extent to which people tag, link, share, embed and comment accordingly. In many respects I see Linkory as a very busy hub, with millions of commuters passing through on a continual basis. On the other hand, I see the Riddler's giant memory bank in the sky (although less sinister)

Either way, I love the idea of people coming together to share in moments that united, divided, mesmerized or shocked us. It can be as serendipitous as "Remember when South Africa won the Rugby World Cup in 1995" to "where were you on 9/11?". In the former case, two people could have been at the same game at the same time, but sitting in completely different places in the stadium...and yet today, they live next door to each other in San Diego. Or with 9/11, it could be a myriad of people from around the world expressing their pain and shock in unity.

Scott blogged about it here on the crayon blog. He also created a memory for Blogger Social '08 (you know, the one where I feigned illness in order to maintain my high maintenance primadonna reputation!) You'll notice btw that Greg (blogged about it here and thanks to his post, Bon Jovi is seared into my memory for all the wrong reasons!) added to this memory (one of the features/functionality associated with the interface)

I've already added my personal memory (as fresh as Friday), documenting my swearing in as an American citizen. I've also included a few photos and a video.

Check it out and perhaps add your own personal immigration experience as well.

Of course, you can always add your own memories here and be sure to provide a link to your own memories on this thread. I'll send a signed copy of my book to the one that inspires me the most.

On Friday, my wife and I were officially sworn in as American citizens. We drove out to Hartford with our 2 oldest kids and after receiving our certificates headed to the Capitol building for an amazing tour/meet 'n greet (including registering to vote)

I've captured the experience in more detail, using our new client, Linkory. If you are so inclined, check it out, along with a video and some photos.

I also tweeted about it and someone mentioned that I'm the first person ever to tweet about this kind of memory (you know how much I love being first - grin)

Finally, I have to thank Cam Beck for a beautiful gift (it's a Marine Corps 230th Anniversary Silver Dollar). Cam is testament to both the power of the social media community and what it is to be American.

Let's see how many responses we can get.

Q. How many social media experts does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. It depends - is it a physical or a virtual lightbulb?
A. Actually I wrote a blog post about it last week...
A. You expect me to answer this in 140 characters or less?
A. A wise crowd
A. The community will decide
A. You'll need to buy my book to find out...
A. I have no idea but I hope they Qik, uStream or ooVoo it live...

I just took this poll on Inside Flyer and thought I'd share the community's results with you. In short, it is pretty amazing to see how two related industries - air travel and hotel - have such different loyalty levels (at least when it comes to switching)

There's no question that the beleaguered airline business has done a better job (relatively) at differentiating it's otherwise commoditized serviced (A to B) than the hotel game.  Compare flat beds and in-seat on-demand entertainment systems to wireless broadband internet (free or fee) and plush pillows for example.

Here are the results:

"Changing Programs"
(Mar 31, 08)

We're all too familiar with the ultimate contradiction in the 30-second spot game - as every year goes by, we seem to be paying more for less. It makes no sense that as viewers continue to fragment to cable, favor video production over consumption or just switch to alternatives from DVD viewing to gaming, somehow marketers are conned into continuing to invest in the cluttered swill of wastage that is continually suffocating the last bit of life in the dying field of creativity.

According to Mediaweek, viewers aged 18-49 for network syndicated spots, viewership has gone DOWN by an average of 12% and some as much as 21% over last year. That equates to about 3 million viewers on average. But Media Agencies are still trying to use scare tactics on advertisers, boasting the fact that ad spots that are not locked in already will cost 30-40% more over last year.

Hat tip: Lori-Laurent Smith

...but wait, there's less!

I opened up my USA Today in my hotel room and looked at the latest Prime Time Nielsen ratings. Last week American Idol, the network's top rated program pulled in 24.7 and 23.2 million viewers for its Tuesday and Wednesday showings respectively.

And here's the kicker: there's another box which breaks down viewers 18-49 (didn't it used to be 24-39? I'm sure these numbers would be worse) and has the same AI numbers at 11.9 and 11.3 million respectively.

In other words, 52% of American Idol viewers are 50 and older??? I'm obviously assuming that a significant chunk of this viewership is 17 and younger...but I'm curious, to what extent do Nielsen numbers cover 17 and under? Irrespective, is it even possible that such a large percentage of viewers of the most watched program are outside of the (inflated) "coveted" demographic?

And just in case you want another example of a more adult program, Desperate Housewives has 53% of its viewers outside of the 18-49 demo, Brothers & Sisters has 55% and CSI has a whopping 64%.

Where am I going wrong here? Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but if I'm not....

Enjoy

My gratitude and thanks to USPS and Deliver Magazine for their continued partnership and support of Jaffe Juice. Audio comments to +1 206 203-3255. In this episode, ZuckerberGate, self-policing marketing, politicians, character blogs, Mark Kingdon and much much more.

Direct download here

iTunes subscription here

0m - hello after too long away. My whirlwind/wide tour continues, which explains my anemic blogging and podcasting presence

6m25 - Feedback from Tim Brunelle and my trip to Minneapolis, including "Foster the Accidental", Friendship 2.0 the difference between professional, personal and private.

15m55 - Audio comment from an avatar, Jeff Radek, on 10 listener meme AND the relevance, rules and resonance of branding a "character" or persona.

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Link to UK Word-of-mouth and criminal charges for falsely representing brands as consumers

27m45 - Upgrading the conversation to really focus on podcasting.

30m30 - Nearing the end of conversation starters and the podcasting partnership with USPS and Deliver Magazine.

45m15 - Hello again from Dallas and an overview of some audio comments to come in future episodes

47m25 - Kirk Skodis weighs in on SXSW's ZuckerbergGate

1h01 - Winners & Losers: My winner is Linden Labs for hiring Organic's CEO, Mark Kingdon, as their CEO; My loser are political candidates that continue to deploy TV-heavy campaigns instead of a conversationally focused committment.

So I've been traveling like crazy (hence the non-existent blogging and podcasting), but I have been capturing video throughout my various journeys around the world.

Here are some snippets from last week in Copenhagen, where I presented in a movie theater to over 800 people at a Danish Post conference

Another crazy week of traveling means another anemic week of blogging activity (and even less on the podcasting front, but I am *determined* to get my audio freak on this week)

• Organic's CEO, Mark Kingdon, departs  the agency for Chief Executive position at Linden Labs. Huge loss for Organic. Huge gain for Second Life. Either the smartest or dumbest move Mark's ever made, but sends out a huge signal and Linden is FINALLY joining the conversation AND not rolling over and playing dead. I think I'll hold on to crayonville island for just a wee bit longer....
• As I wrote in Join the Conversation (with attribution to Pete Blackshaw), customer service is the new media department. A new piece of research from SNCR places customer service in social media and conversational marketing context.
• Following on from this, a FT review on a book (the best service is no service) by a Jaffe namesake.
• Forget Viral Marketing; instead think "The Viral Expansion Loop"
• Hey Microsoft, see previous post. This is a painful attempt at viral marketing that makes me want to downgrade to XP or switch to a Mac even more. Hat tip to Brunelle.

• Two more bits of bait on Facebook fatigue. Is Facebook the New Second Life? You decide.
• Why podcasting is failing. I'm not sure I'd put it that way, but I certainly don't think it's growing like it should. Read on and let me know your thoughts. PS: Massive boo for the antiquated splitting of posts across multiple pages in order to inflate page views
• Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff launches a new video podcast, 5 things I learned this week. Take a view

• Avenue A/Razorfish's David Friedman puts out a thought leadership piece on Chief Marketer, talking about a 6 C model, which looks fishily similar to a certain 6 C model I introduced in "Join the Conversation". Other Jaffe Juice readers thought as much as well. To his credit, Friedman responded quickly and put on a little caveat on his piece at the end. It's a blatant steal, but that's not what irks me...it was the lack of attribution that bugged me. This is one of THE most important new marketing lessons to be learned. Step 1: Understand Creative Commons....
• The latest 15 streams of fame welebrity, Tricia Walsh Smith. Welcome to Divorce TV

Senator Obama, I don't have to tell you that you lost the Pennsylvania Primary to Senator Clinton. In fact you lost by 10 points, which was quite an anti-climax considering all the polls and mainstream media hype about closing the gap etc.

What troubles me the most is that you outspent Senator Clinton almost 2:1. I believe you spent in excess of $9 million versus Clinton's $5 million on predominantly TV ads. What troubles me more is how this year - at such a crucial time for America; where it is more important than ever before to reach out to younger, disenfranchised, disengaged or just apathetic voters - all the political candidates are essentially eschewing the full continuum of web/digital on one hand and social media/web 2.0 (or what I call conversational marketing) on the other hand, in favor of the most traditional; the most conventional; the most predictable; the most intrusive and quite frankly, the most insulting form of communication: traditional television advertising.

Isn't your ticket about change? Isn't your entire platform about doing things differently?

Come on Barack...it's time to walk the talk and lead by example. This year candidates (PLURAL as in ALL candidates) have given such lip service to Digital, Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Podcasting etc. when in actual fact they should be focusing more of their efforts (not ALL, but MORE) on the powerful strategic combination of community, dialog and partnership.

And Senator Clinton, what's the first thing out of your mouth after you claimed victory? "I need more money..." Don't outspend; outsmart. Join the Conversation, rather than trying to drown it out.

Prove to me (either of you) that you're listening. I'm about to become a new voter in the US and if you want my vote....reply to this post. I'll take it one step further, I'll give you my consulting time to advise you on how to best leverage conversational marketing for your campaigns IF you take the time to contact me.

Game on.