It can be seen as a relief too many people (and I include myself in this categorie) that human beings do not working on the same scheme as brand. For exemple, a human being lives his life continously and is aging continously and thus goes through different steps all along their lives. A brand is not! A brand is not aging. A brand works everyday to still fit with the segment it should fit with whereas the people in that segment are changing everyday. Sometimes Dorian-Gray-illed-people buys brands for younger people but they are ill (and quite many)… and that is not the point here.
To keep up with their segment brand, regularly, launch new products, new formula, new packaging, new concept-stores,… New things. So marketing people works for month in an excited fever to the “next thing” on their market. I still wonder what will be the next thing for breakfast cereal, may be dinner cereal that helps to have wonderfull night… Anyway, the key thing in that process is when the launch will be. From this point everyone is building a retroplanning and prepare the event.
That is not exactly the same in the Internet industry (may be some actor are not exactly like pearltrees and have reproduced the schemes of the old eceonomy)! At least at pearltrees. We are in alpha and will stay at this step quite a long time. It means pearltrees functionnalities will move contineously through weeks, month and years… And that is really good. The only thing is that there is no yardstick to refer to. There is no possibility to launch (or everyday).
The whole thing is to optimize (what do I say ? to who? when? where?) in order to get to the best return on participation to the discussions on the web. How to participate to maximise the direct and indirect share of voice…
I am very interested in this rock-band name. I think it grasp a strange state of mind that appears in the whole society and especially in the web 2.0 world. Sometimes I wonder if, with comming summer, people do not feel tired of being participative, tired of this collective spirit…
Two facts :
a decrease of the number of comments on big blogs like RWW, techcrunch, mashable,…
rumours insisting on the fact the new facebook is less interesting than before
Sometimes I feel like if Twitter was the only one that would keep the magic alive… Fortunatly, this just a feeling. I think, there are are more on more users that participates to web creation. Moreover, webusers seem to be more mature. I think webusers are becoming more selective (about where it is interesting for us to participate) and more qualitative (we pay more attention to the quality of our participations) as to their paraticipation activities. Webusers are not “cansei de ser sexy”, they are managing their efforts to be more sexy! And, that is great…
I love this video because it exactly shows how collective histeria comes. First, the guy is alone, it is a bit ridiculous to see him dancing like this all alone. When the second guy arrives there is a kind of risk : will they fight? Will they stop togther laughing of themselves… When the third guy arrives we understand how exciting it is just to free-dance like this on the grass during a sunny afternoon. Suddenly the balance turns from look at those funny guys to that is so cool, I want to be with them. And people start to scream, and a first group of people arrives, the another… more and more screams and everybody gather in a collective joy.
It is here the first collective joy or histeria, I have ever seen from start to end in three minutes. I think it shows and explain what happened on larger scale for beatlemania or facebook success. It is very interesting for pearltrees. Let’s try to identify the factors that makes this collective histeria happens :
everybody hear and can see what happens => communication or visibility
it takes one minute before the first group join and the collective hysteria starts at two minute laters => time
a surnatural excitment from those who are experiencing the free-dance => testimonial
people that shows there is no cost of entrance (no shame) => Free or not expensive
The second challenge which is not in the video is how long will they dance? That was in the bealtes amazing creativity, in facebook amazing platform and that will be in pearltrees amazing interaction between the community and the platform.
I have often written about the hints, the signs that reaveals that something has change somewhere. Especially about when a social media can be considered as a success. Today, once again, I am amazed by the ability of twitter’s team to understand how they are a media and how they demonstrate their will to be THE media of the future.
I think, being a real media is not only bringing the freshest information or the brightest analysis or the most astonishing photo… Which twitter is still good at. It also consists in being conscious of one’s own subjectivity and so to choose something to fight for. That what’s journalists once did, before they send their soul (and profession) to capitalism.
And yesterday twitter decided to reschedules their maintenance to allow iranian protests to continue. I do not think that any giant website has ever taken the side of a revolution like they did yesterday. I do remember that yahoo and google accepted the Chinese restriction on their services to save their market shares… Wikipedia is well sheltered behind its consensus stand, and youtube and friends just stay in the laws steps.
I think yesterday, twitter won its medal for being on the higher step of the mediatic scale.
This morning I received an email from a web service that was saying :
“Today is a sad day for us. We have decided to terminate the X service as of the end of the month (June 30th, 2009). The service received excellent reviews and had an enthusiastic core user base. However, we were not able to demonstrate (especially in these economic times) that X would ever be prevalent enough for us to adequately monetize the business, either though ads or subscriptions. This is obviously very disappointing, but building the X platform was a lot of fun, and it was wonderful to see how many of you used our tool to express yourselves in a deep and meaningful way.”
On monday, the founding team of pearltrees was signing with its shareholders a new fundraising that will offer us an opportunity period of two years. Will opportunity knock for pearltrees where this team, where this project failed? Tech media are selling a dream, the dream that innovation leads to success undoubtedly because they just deal with success, they never talk about the deads. It is just like the rock n’ roll bands myth that haunts a lot teenagers (and sometimes olders) minds. I think, it is a good sign for pearltrees to receive that message just when we are about to start a new period that could seems easier than the founding time. I think the hardest period just starts now.
Still, I am sad for these team, for their efforts, for their common dream. But, I know them, I know their background and think they will do a great job with anothr project.
PS : I warmly recommend you this movie “being there”, which the last one of Peter Sellers, it deals with the relativity of fate and success.
Since several days I enjoy looking at the “trending topics” column in twitter. And very often those trending topics are about old TV stars : David Carradine, Zak Morris, …
I guess we cannot really abandon our tender childhood, and TV was at the heart of our childhood. Who will be the has been people in twenty years? Google, facebook, MSN, Twitter?
Yesterday, I had a discussion with a PR professional about the possibility to make pearltrees a mass market interface immediatly. I think, it is just impossible for now (and the next following months). However, I am certain it will be a huge success by the next 4 years. The issue there is what does make a success that slow?
Have you ever been confronted to pure novelty? Something you have never seen before and you do not even know what is it? The chances for you to be interested in that “thing” are very thin. So the possibility for you to find the right use of that “thing” and for you to use it the right way is just impossible. That is I think the main “brake” to innovation today. The world is no more drived by inventors like the beginning of the 20th century but by business that is not very tolerant to long term bet. Conclusion, we are living in a world of repetition and not innovation.
Fortunatly, stubborness, marketing and communication do exist! Stuborness because, when you have something very new to offer, you have to knock every door and to come back unlessly to present, explain your innovation… Marketing, because it is the art of selecting the people that are the most about to understand your innovation. And communication because, it will help you to use known symbol in order to make the innovation understandable.
The maccintosch is the very good example for this. All the work was to invent a friendly interface in order to give the more people possible a direct an simple access to computers. How did they make it? A computer was a tool for work. So the whole interface is based on a analogy with the most familiar thing for a worker : his office! That is the very role of communication : to create common.
So how to make an innovation a success :
Be stubborn : never desperate or give-up your ideas
Be a good marketer : you are alone starts by meeting the most adequate people others does not matter at the beginning
Communicate : use common pictures to symbolize every function of your innovation
I am often amazed about how our minds, our way to think, can be frameworked by our habits. Since my early years I have always felt suspicious about steady confortable positions. I think I have been a good ad man because my role then was to unstead convictions.
No, I am working on the web and I have to convince every webusers that “searching” is not the only valuable use on the web. It is strange when I present pearltrees everybody tells me “Where is the search engine there?”. I suddenly realised that every website has its search engine : wikipedia, flickr, facebook, delicious, digg… The point here that pearltrees is not about “search” in the web but rather to “discover” the web.
Let’s take an exemple to make things clear. When you go to a city you have never been before, you can have an adress book with everything you need : hairdressers, the places you cannot miss, several hotel offers and grab a taxi to visit each point. You will reach your search but you won’t discovered anything.
To discover the city, the best thing to do is to call a friend of yours, living there for many years and ask him to show you his favorite hairdresser, the charming places he likes wasting times on sunny days, and having dinner with some of his friends in the city and eventually have a rest at his home. Then you would have discovered a town (through the eyes of a friend).
There stances pearltrees! Imagine that everywhere you go on the web some friends of yours would be there to make you discover all those websites you have never known before. How do you reach them then? Through connections! You make a map of what you aim to discovers, then you see all the connections with the websites you wanted to see. You choose the connections you want to visit and then the discovery starts. From map to map you will discover what you wanted to see just like if you had been guided by some friends. There is no “search” in pearltrees but you will discover great websites, great discussions, and great people.
You are not forced to search, you can also discover. (trust me)
Writing my last post “I do not beleive in truth”, I figured out that I melted two ideas (at least). One is the impossibility for any human being to establish “truth” and the other point was the superiority of discussion over any synthesis effort.
This last idea is fundamental as to me. I remember my old philosophy lesson with the teaching system of Socrate that was all based on discussion, dialogue. May be I have been too much influenced by how I pictured it. I had the idea of walks, under the sun,… Anyway, it is incredibly rich to follow a discussion because all the aspects of a argumentation are fully developed. And I think that somehow, on twitter, facebook, blogs, friendfeed, the real benefit is the discussion and the pleasure to discuss.
Within pearltrees we are thinking about pulling down some fences between seperated discussion to create one global discussion about a single topic (the topic would be the pearl). Today any user (if logged) can comment any pearl. So discussion exists on a pearl. The question becomes more complexe when two users have the same pearl in their own account. Today, the discussion are localised and melted even if it is the same pearl that is discussed. The idea now would be to melt any conversations about a same pearl.
I think it is very interesting and that would postulated that discussion is the benefit.
I have just read a rww post about Visible Past. This project looks amazing. You can visit historical sites in virtual 3D and find some information while visiting. We all can see how great it can be. Nevertheless, the information is based on a wiki-format and I am more and more unease with this way of presenting information.
As to me, a text that is telling historical facts cannot be objective. It is always oriented in way by the writer or the group of writers that produced it. It would not be a problem if it were not presented as “truth”. I mean the wiki-format is the result of a common agreement of several writers on a text, that does not mean it is true. In my opinion the idea of “truth” must be abandonned since it has been interpreted by a human being. So all the format that gives the idea of “truth” ( and there are a bunch of them : newspapers, TV news,…, wiki-format) must be cast in doubt.
That does not mean I do not believe that information is impossible. I do believe that discussions are always more powerful than a unique source because they give the idea a diversity by their inner form. And when it comes to historical pieces, we always should consider all the discussions that the historical has generated.
The story Origin of the world of Gustave Courbet is really interesting to this point. First, it is has been comissioned by a Turkish Diplomat called Khalil Bey. Ruined by gambling, the painting passes from hand to hand some of them were pretty famous Edmont de Goncourt, the red army, Jacques Lacan and is now exposed at the musée d’Orsay in Paris. During this journey, the provocative masterpiece has generated a lot of discussions, it has been hidden behind a curtain, behind a wood pane, exposed and duplicated in Jacques Lacan living room and eventually exposed to everyone at the MET and at Orsay. Today, they are still discussion about the Origin of the world, its title and its subjects. Religious people will contest it whereas positivist will applaud. The fascinating thing would be to follow the discussion from the turkish erotic painting amator to the last visitors of Orsay today. Is there any truth there?
I do not believe in truth, I believe in discussion.
