For a good while now I’ve been thinking about buying a video camera and was settling on something like the Canon HF10 packed full of features and with a price tag at over £500. Then along comes Santa with a Flip Mino costing a little over £100 and with a feature set so limited it doesn’t come with a manual.

On paper these products are not at all comparable, but I now have a more usable and superior camcorder for my needs for a fifth of the price.  As a result, I think the maker of the Mino, Pure Digital Technologies, is disrupting the traditional digital camcorder business. More on that later, but first what’s the Flip Mino like?

It’s extremely quick and easy to get recording.  Press the ‘on’ button and then the big red record button on the back of the Mino and you’re off. You can zoom, but there are no options to change other record settings.  You get video at 30 fps and at VGA resolution and that’s it.   That’s easily good enough for the web (see video example I shot with the Flip Mino below) and not bad on TV playback either.

Getting video off the Flip is very straightforward.  Plug the built-in USB connector into your Mac or PC and use the Flip Share software to transfer or edit videos.  Uploading to video sharing sites is a breeze.

Any gripes? A couple. The touch sensitive buttons on the Flip are not that touch sensitive (!) esp. on zoom which can be irritating.  The Flip Share software runs slowly on my iBook G4.  That’s pretty much it on the negative side.

So why is this such an exciting product and is it going to disrupt the likes of Canon, Sony and JVC?

Well, the Flip Mino does fulfill a number of the key criteria for being a disruptive product as defined by Clayton M. Christensen, i.e  a good-enough, low-cost solution to a job that enough people are trying to get done that creates a new market at the low end of an established market. Specifically:

1. It creates demand from non-consumers (people like myself) who haven’t previously owned a camcorder.  The Mino is very affordable and simple to use and therefore accessible to consumer segments put off by the complexity and cost of the established camcorder market. On a related note, Adam Richardson has posted a good discussion of product simplicity and how it affects consumer adoption that also references the Flip.

2. It helps consumers do more easily and effectively a task they were already trying to do by other means.  In this case, record and share ad hoc moments online anywhere they want, when they want.  Before the Flip the three main options were:

- the limited video capability on a mobile phone or digital camera - available as a secondary or tertiary feature and often hard to really use

- the bulky, feature-rich camcorder that could be wheeled out for set-piece occasions

- or webcams that tied you to the computer.

Flip is not alone in this new market - Kodak’s Zi6 pocket video camera targets a similar set of needs.  But both Kodak and Pure Digital Technologies are new entrants in the camcorder business - the incumbents have not yet responded.  This is classic behaviour in markets experiencing disruption.  Sony, JVC, Panasonic and Canon appear content to continue competing amongst themselves on levels that are no longer or marginally relevant to most consumers, e.g. recording format, storage capacity, power of zoom and video resolution.  In so doing, they have missed the needs being addressed head on by the Flip and Kodak Zi6 in a different part of the market.

However, like all good disruptors, Pure Digital Technologies is moving up market by adding incremental innovations to its product set that pose a more direct threat to the established players in their mainstream camcorder market.  The new Flip Mino HD records higher resolution video (1,280×720-pixel) at 30 fps in 16:9 widescreen format, whilst at the same time retaining the ease of use, low price point and form factor that makes it so disruptive in the first place.

I just wish I had one of these new HD Flips.  But that’s OK.  When it’s available in the UK this year I can give the old one to my partner and keep the HD version for myself .  And this also shows just how much the camcorder market will change - it’ll no longer be just Dad who has one, but everyone in the family can have an affordable personal camcorder in their pocket.  If the incumbent consumer electronics giants don’t wake up to this new market reality (and massive growth opportunity) soon they will really suffer. Anyone remember DEC, the once dominant player in the mini computer market disrupted by the PC?

A text book case of new market disruption and the Innovator’s Dilemma I reckon.

As we are poised to enter possibly the worst global downturn since the Interwar years, a 1920s theme could turn out to be remarkably relevant! Weimar Republic anyone …

On a brighter note, I do hope this theme conveys a little more of the spirit of the original Fumoirs, as described in the French version of the Wikipedia thus:

“C’était un lieu de convivialité, qui pouvait être à mi-chemin entre le cabinet de curiosités et le boudoir.”

In other words, a place to kick back, share ideas and explore new things.  

And have a puff of course.

Bonne année à tous. Happy new year

The power of consumer reviews is undeniable in influencing purchasing behaviours.  However, I think it’s time we got our telescopes out and took a peek into the firmament to see what is driving reviews and ratings behaviour - in particular to assess whether review sites actually give a balanced perspective on the good, not so good and sometimes bad businesses or products listed thereon.

The 5-star-ratings model is the de facto standard for review sites.  But is the distribution of stars uniform over the 5-point range?  It would appear not … as this distribution from Yelp in September shows.

A whopping 67% of all reviews on this very popular site gave either 4 or 5 stars.  A measly 15% of reviews gave businesses 1 or 2 stars.   Why is this the case? and should we be worried about it?

I’ve just finished reading an intriguing report by Jupiter Research on the use of Web 2.0 technologies in Retail that highlighted a couple of very salient findings. For a start Jupiter underlined just how central reviews and ratings are to online purchasing decisions today as it found that 77% of US online shoppers look at product reviews and ratings.

But what really caught my attention was the difference in consumer behaviour after a positive and a negative shopping experience online.  Consumers are, according to the research, more likely to take a survey (43%) after a good experience than a bad one (17%), more likely to tell friends about good experience (31%) than a bad one (21%), and more likely to write a product review about a product they liked (9%) than one they didn’t (4%).

So it does appear that as consumers we really only want to tell the good news and this results in reviews being skewed towards the top end of the scale.  If this pattern of behaviour holds true then I would argue that the 5 point scale is potentially flawed as it presents an illusion of objectivity and a paucity of insight -   If 67% of the restaurants in a town I want to visit have 4 or 5 stars, how do I then choose between them?

And this gets me onto a second concern which is the trouble an aggregated star rating system has in conveying the richness of a product or service experience.  Julian Blom at LBi sent me this picture that illustrates the problem beautifully.

In this case a ‘neutral’ three star product rating is given based on the reviews of two consumers with polar opposite opinions.  This example shows that any aggregated rating system suffers from the degree of freedom it has from the original consumer experience.

Compound this distance from the original experience with the fact that consumers tend towards giving positive rather than negative reviews and I can’t help thinking that star-based review systems may have some fundamental limitations.

Looking beyond the instant gratification of a star rating, an alternative approach to getting deeper insight into a product or service experience, and the quality of the business providing it, is available through sites such as Get Satisfaction that enable consumers and businesses to interact openly around product or service issues.

A quick comment on the Small Business 2.0 event: I enjoyed it very much and hats off to Dan and the Conference People team for putting it together.  It was a very telling sign of the times that the audience was not a bunch of “2.0″ nerds, but small businesses either looking at how to branch out from established marketplaces and become really multi-channel, or wanting to get more from the Internet than their traditional web site has given them to date.  There is a clear convergence of interest from SMEs with very different online backgrounds looking into how the Web can become a more effective part of their marketing and sales strategy.  I sincerely hope there will be more Small Business 2.0 events because the need is evident.  

And on that note, I will no longer feel like a miserable sinner and am getting back into the blogging saddle again … yeehaa!

Whilst companies such as Eutelsat and SES Astra went about growing pedestrian but very profitable businesses distributing digital TV to the Direct-to-Home and cable markets, billions of dollars were pumped into projects of truly galactic dimensions to build new global communications infrastructures in the sky.  The two exemplars were Teledesic and Iridium.  Although, these two projects targeted different markets (Teledesic was all about high bandwidth applications, whereas Iridium was global voice communications), they had many similarities:

1. Backed by titans from the high tech sector: Microsoft put $30M into Teledesic, and Motorola was the lead investor in the $5bn investment in Iridium’s network

2. A large dose of philanthropy: both companies exhibited a strong belief that satellites could bridge the digital divide and bring IT and communications services to the Third World.  But forgot that whilst the need was there, nobody had the money to pay for the services brought by these billion dollar networks!

3. Some very costly experimentation in new technologies - LEOs and MEOs for the interested (whereas we at Eutelsat made do with the old faithful GEOs)

4. Complete failure - Teledesic wound up before getting a satellite off the ground in 2002 and Iridium went bankrupt in 1999 (although it came back to life in a different form in 2001)

Google’s adventure is remarkably similar.  $20M contributed so far into a project estimated to cost $750M to launch 16 LEO satellites into orbit to bring Internet services to the “other 3 billion” people in the Third World. umm …

As JFK said: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard“.  I wonder whether a similar sentiment has taken hold in the Googleplex.  Could this be hubris from a cash-rich tech behemoth at the apogee of its market dominance? They have after all remade the planet as Google Earth, so now let’s look to the stars … And will this well-intentioned project burn up on re-entry as the fundamentals of the business model unravel?  I really hope it succeeds, but fear that like its predecessors it’s destined to fail.

I’m very flattered.  Blogging despite being a social medium is an individual activity and to build up readership takes the long haul.  Blogging communities such as Fuelmyblog are great sources of support, ideas and inspiration and of course readers.

So thanks Fuelmyblog! And now let’s do some blogging.

What we all want to do with social media is dialogue and share. For large enterprises, the opportunity is to engage with their customers in a more transparent and effective way than ever before possible through ‘linear’ marketing campaigns. But it ain’t easy…

Here’s my take on the obstacles facing Big Corp:

1. Understanding - social media is typically approached as just another route to market and this leads to a campaign approach with businesses majoring on ‘viral’ marketing and tapping up the blogosphere as a PR channel. By thinking in campaign terms, ’social marketing’ is driven by the tempo of the marketing plan and is at the mercy of the quarterly campaign focus. However, conversations involving your business can start at any time and judging when and how to engage simply can’t be planned. Inconvenient I know, but nothing you can do about that!

2. Skills and confidence - marketing in Mega Corp is coming down to a reporting, budget and program management function with the doers being the rostered agencies. As a rule, traditional marketers, including those with an online background, have neither the skills, nor confidence to enter into a conversation with their customers using blogs, podcasts, and video or through forums, or social networking sites.

3. Process: One reason that marketers are uncomfortable getting stuck into the social graph as their day job is that they are not empowered to do so and may even be explicitly barred from doing it. In effect turning your marketing team into ’spokespeople’ for your business is not something companies do lightly. But changing or indeed writing for the first time policies that enable employees to take part in online conversations is essential if businesses are to benefit from social media as a customer engagement tool.

Also the team developing an engagement plan using social media needs the freedom to procure services they need from a variety of suppliers most of whom won’t be on the roster. I’m convinced that as social marketing becomes core to the ‘plan’, purchasing of marketing services needs to become more like software procurements (project based) and less driven by the dictates of who is on the roster.

An outcome of these obstacles is that forward-thinking marketing departments that do see the potential of social media often turn to their agencies to define the strategy and lead the campaign. This approach is simply doomed to fail. Effective social marketing demands as its foundation transparency and proximity to the customer and cannot be done by proxy. Social marketing even transcends the boundaries of the marketing department. The best people to engage with your customers are those closest to the topic of conversation with the customer and this could be someone from the product, customer service or sales team.

So my advice to any enterprise looking to put Web 2.0 into the marketing mix is don’t get worked up about digital influence or going viral, but simply look at what your customers are talking about, understand what matters to them, and let your people join the conversation.

The story of the growth of this label is fascinating, not least because it was started in the 1950’s by a brother and sister who were white, yet it made its name by discovering and promoting some of the most well-known African-American artists of all time, supported by thoroughly ethnically integrated backing bands.

Remarkable for its time and place.

Key to its success (and in sharp distinction to Motown) was its open-door policy of allowing anyone to come in off the street and play with the band. People came and went, participated, connections were made, talent emerged and became part of the Stax community.

I couldn’t help thinking that the open-door model is really what makes for a successful community-based web site. The record label was the platform. Stax removed the barriers to participation and created the place where individuals wanted to come together and be creative.  The label was also the social object around which the community could coalesce meaningfully. The label became successful once it had created a vibrant community (it’s ‘family’ as Stax and its artists described it) and a nexus for talent.  Cash followed community.

A really simple recipe for success that we could all do well to strive to emulate.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T

Agencies, hosting companies, and domain registrars will all be rubbing their hands together at the opportunity to breathe new life into their business models. But I can’t quite help feeling that the whole shebang seems just a little passé …

On the Web the first time round, we all rushed onto the beach flinging our towels down and claiming our individual space. After a while we caught on that actually everyone was having fun at the bar, so we left our umbrellas where they were and joined the party. That’s Web 2.0.

Social networking is largely domainless (who cares or knows what my Facebook URL is!). What matters are the interactions on the platform and between platforms through data porting. So my Tweet is syndicated to my Friendfeed and then displayed on my Facebook profile. The ‘address’ of this information is actually irrelevant. The important bit is the community with which I am sharing my content and time.

The social Web is changing the landscape of ecommerce too. Some recent research from Quidco found that 62% of shoppers consult online communities before making a purchase. And that only 27% of consumers go directly to the retailer. And the top three reasons …

1. communities offer me unbiased facts about products and services (32%);

2. I trust the views of communities more than merchants (27%);

3. communities help me find the best deal available (27%).

Given the above, is spending a fortune to ‘protect the brand’ with a custom domain (and then spending even more to drive traffic to it) a worthwhile activity? Or should businesses take part in the communities where customers are already talking about their brand, engage them and turn them into advocates? In other words, will a hotel chain get more customer value out of a .hotel TLD, or a series of positive reviews on Tripadvisor? I strongly suspect the latter.

This is really a big business dilemma as SMEs won’t typically have the marketing budgets to worry about securing a new TLD. That could turn out to be an advantage, as whilst the big brands buy better picks and shovels to take part in the new gold rush, small business can be down at the saloon mixing it up with their customers and doing real business.

From 9 - 11 June I spent my waking hours at the O’Reilly conference, Graphing Social Patterns East, in Washington DC. Lots of senior developer types from Facebook, Google and Myspace and the like presenting to a fairly geeky audience. As someone whose interest in social media is heavily skewed towards small businesses and commerce, I was a little disappointed that neither term was actually mentioned over the three days!

Content aside, what stood out from the opening minutes was the collective audience behaviour. As panellists talked, the audience went about its business: maintaining profiles on the social network of choice, tweeting like no tomorrow, and I kid you not, listening to iPods whilst updating Facebook. In short, we weren’t listening. For those with an interest in the conference proceedings, this was often enjoyed as a mediated experience. Following the GSP East Twitter Feed, or reading live blogging coverage from one of our fellow attendees took precedence over actually sitting back and digesting what the people just a few metres away were saying.

(With an absence of irony, the conference organisers did request on day 1 that mobiles were turned off less they disturb the sessions!)

What did I take away from this experience?

1. For those in the social networking biz, the tools of the trade seem to be at least as important as the content - in other words, the medium trumps the message. This is nothing new to Web 2.0 though: Nietzsche reflecting on how his writing style had changed since using a typewriter said “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Well that explains Twitter then …

2. The views of others take precedence over a personal and original standpoint - it’s easier and faster to consume another person’s perspective than think about something yourself for the first time (This point was drilled home to me by the UGC videos introducing each session, which were practically all derivative riffs on other people’s work).

So it appears to me that we may be suffering from a Web 2.0 induced attention deficit disorder. Quite a worry really.