Gamifying LinkedIn to drive engagement?

LinkedIn has changed again recently… 

Once upon a time you chose your key skills/ tags. You encouraged a few people you had worked with to write a few words of public recommendation. End of story.

Yet with recent changes, LinkedIn is encouraging members to endorse the skills on the profiles of your contacts in a broader, less effort intense way.  Whether this is a good thing or not in a world where wisdom of the crowd arguably counts more than ever in the way we process and trust information is debatable.  Does it make your claimed self-defined skills less credible if no-one endorses them? What if those skills were gained a while back working in a different context, and possibly amongst a crowd of people less digitally active or savyy?

I don’t have the answers but the questions arise.

What’s also interesting from my observations and a few conversations with friends. Is how LinkedIn have gone about encouraging these quick click “light” endorsements: On a site that’s generally more serious and functional in mindset, and all the better for not being plagued by endless achievement based status posts from the Zynga game of the month, all of a sudden appeared some pictures of my contacts with skills asking me to click to endorse person X with skill Y. 

There are rather a lot of parallels with many of the big social games… easy, quick, engaging. Photos and the question “Does X know about Y” make it hard not to at the very least entertain the thought if not respond.  It makes you think about your contacts and is really rather compulsive… once you start and the picture/skills tiles keep refreshing, it’s really rather easy to lose 5 minutes, just waiting to see who / what pops up next, given some of the skills would appear to be drawn from profile data beyond just the keyword tags.

 Smart experience design from LinkedIn at the very least.

 Maybe it’s the social gaming element that is behind the fact that so far, based admittedly on a small panel of my friends, over only a short period of time since the feature went live, that there seem to be more endorsements from women than men, and they are generally fair / on occasion generous ones.

 Gender bias towards gaming behaviours and benefit of the doubt/ assumption that if they were doing XYZ job then they must know about said subject seem to prevail.

Right, perhaps I’ll hop off and play some more. It’s rather fun. 

Food for thought...or rather fuel for action?

I love this video piece from Nike to highlight the health issues associated with today's increasingly sedentary kids.  Frightening when you stop to think about it, a generation likely to die 5 years younger than their parents generation.

An inspiring, simple, and effective piece asking kids what they'd do with 5 more years to live.  Good question.  My particular favourite was the kid that wanted to teach his sister to eat tuna :-)  What a selfless thought - unusual in little kids to have such an outward facing perspective.



All this, to help the cause Designedtomove.org - well worth a mooch around. Sure it might help Nike sell a few more trainers but, it's the contribution to the bigger cause that I like about it.

 Technology might be a contributing factor in the problem, but I'm sure with lateral thinking it can also be harnessed to help solve it too.  It just needs some left field thinking about, just like the Westpac Impulse Saver app, which remains one of my recent -ish favourite examples of technology well applied to insight.

Kids love playing games, they're competitive, they're tech savvy. Technology has already been harnessed to help us track activity (think NIKE Fuel band amongst many such things, apps, hardware or a combination), now it just needs to be accessible and affordable - not many parents will be giving their 5 year old an iPhone and trusting them to use it responsibly.

Sound & Motion: Moments of posterity with Picle

I love the idea behind the MadebyMany Picle iPhone app launched for SXSW earlier in the year, and which I have quite probably bored a lot of people with already, if mostly in person.

Memory is a multi-sensory, multi-dimensional thing and whilst we are all adept photo-sharers, facilitated by the magic of the technology in our pockets and the platforms available to us, until Picle, our memory capture was limited to sound via services like Soundcloud or Audioboo, full video via YouTube et al or image.  Picle adds sound to image and makes that "postcard" moment so much emotionally richer. Smart.  I don't always want to capture/upload/share an HD video, or take the trouble to view it on my mobile when the signal is patchy, Picle's provide that snapshot moment but enhance it.

Now if only someone could add smell into the mix.  That would really send the food bloggers into meltdown. But imagine the potential for the Masters of Wine, virtual wine sniffing at the very least!

For starters I'd settle for an Android version of Picle to add into the mix though. Please!?

Meanwhile enjoy this collection of moments shared via Picle. Human, humble, mostly happy :-)

Picles from around the world from Made By Many on Vimeo.

Another tab I can close having looked at it for a month, with blogging intent but no time! Result.

Just imagine what an amazing record of human life and history we'd have if this estimate of the number of photos ever taken all had a soundbite attached. Mindboggling.

Great technology is no excuse for a bad idea

...just one of the quote's from today's Contagious Magazine Now Next Why event doing the Twitter rounds. Wise words indeed, and some that should be heeded by adlands all over the world. Just because you can doesn't mean you should!

But as a counter to the many bad, trying-too-hard examples that populate the webs' trends blogs everyday (this week there's been various debates around Nestle's GPS enabled chocolate bar prize promotion for example), sometimes you see an example that just makes you want to applaud. Ideas that combine good insight, with good harness of technology and good design to provide smart solutions: I offer you (via the ever fab Trendwatching) the phone charging handbag. Nice thinking and collaboration from Vodafone UK & designer Richard Nicoll.

Genius. Now if only they can develop a version that means if I throw my handbag on the floor as I walk through the front door and it will charge contact/wire free.... and then it will monitor the charge levels of my phone and kindle and wirelessly charge as appropriate...

Digital Dissent & Discontent

Nul posts for August, and I'm only just going to squeak in for September. Rubbish.

Yes, I've contributed to other digital spaces but not my own. Poor show. It's not even been for a lack of digital treasure or disaster. Just a lack of time either to keep a finger on the pulse properly or process it enough to put fingers to keyboards.

I'm not alone. Amongst more than a handful of my digerati brethren, the sparky digital brains I respect and love to kick ideas about with, I am detecting an autumn of discontent.  I've been under too much pressure over the last few weeks for my brain to have the space to properly put my finger on the cause, but the fact that I'm detecting a trend should be setting alarm bells ringing in more than a few board meetings.  There's talent turmoil in the offing.

And it's not just agency folk either.  What I'm seeing is a growing discontent between the few marketers who really "feel" digital and the organisations that are constraining their attempts to adapt and innovate, and, on the flipside, senior level digital bods in agencies equally frustrated about clients that aren't making enough true commitment to do digital properly, leaving us bored, dealing with tedious detail, and fighting the same political battles over and over, not focussing on the future which is what we should be doing.

Just increasing your investment in digital 1% is not enough. We're in 2012 not 2007. I've seen cases recently where organisations are talking up digital and its importance to the future of the business but can't step back far enough to realise that they are never going to drive digital thinking through the business without proper training both at grassroots AND board level, AND a proper commitment to investment in IT infrastructure. Just for starters. What sort of message does it send to the organisation about your commitment to digital if you are still asking your staff to use a browser that was released in 2006?!  Ask most people whether they have more up to date tech at home or at work and the answer will predominantly be in favour of home.  Sure there's good reasons in a BYOD (bring your own device) to work / cloud technology world why data security should absolutely be taken seriously, but again that's about corporate focus and investment in the right places. Investment to ENABLE a business to work efficiently in a fast moving world.

Maybe it's a level of digital maturity occurring that's fuelling our frustrations. Sure, we're all guilty of getting bored easily, we like problem solving and moving on, but endless repetition makes our souls shrivel, a state we can only cope with if we're being challenged elsewhere. iPhone 5, iOS 6 releases, yadda yadda, these things don't excite us in the way they used to, we've adapted, embraced and moved beyond that. The digital brains know that mobile OS devices are the future, that they offer many greater possibilities  on so many levels that still aren't getting enough attention, but we're still dragging along the baggage of 3 years ago when social was becoming the shiny toy.  Everyone has a "counting paperclips" element of hygiene factors in their job, the "are you spending enough money on search, is your website optimised, yes you could have a Facebook page but what are you going to talk about and how are you going to ensure people see what you do say" conversations we all have to have repeatedly, but there's a lack of focus on the future that's getting nearer faster all the time.

Data data everywhere, but not enough work being done to assimilate it into manageable and moreover useful information to react to. Identifying the data points is a good start, working out what they can tell you is progress but pushing investment on how you fuse them together, de-dupe and not just analyse the outcomes but drive "so-what's" that businesses are set up and ready to action is still far too far out for many. Yet I've seen various forecasts recently that suggest that by 2016 (yes, that's just over 3 years) CMOs will control more IT budget than CTOs/CIOs.  Right now that feels a stretch.

How do organisations marry us  savvy, commercial digerati who might not be formally IT trained but tend to have geeky leanings with the IT nerds to make that shift happen?  I can see the opportunity but not the organisations open to investing in talent with fuzzy edged remits and questioning minds.

There's a a whole bunch of talented, intelligent, creative people around looking for opportunities to make a real difference to organisations that are ready to be challenged.

The definition of insanity is oft quoted to be doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results, so why are so many businesses just tinkering around the edges? Madness.

Celebrating sport not just Olympians

The Olympics are in full flow here in London, my train this morning was full of excited spectators, and the sun's still shining. The opening ceremony was by all accounts spectacular,  and worthy of it's hefty budget, so I'll be catching up on that at some point soon having been out the country on Friday. I've enjoyed watching Her Majesty the Queen & James Bond this morning.

But for all the hype, the buzz statistics about more tweets during the opening ceremony than for the entire Beijing Olympics, the medals tables, the marketing messages, so far this piece from non-sponsor Nike is the piece that's touched me most. Nice observation & sentiment, along the lines of sponsor P&G's "Thank you Mum/Mom" work, it's well executed, embracing and makes you feel good.  Video content alchemy. Watch:



Now admire this piece that sees Nike taking a different tack, leveraging technology to deliver innovation & participation. Good stuff.

Samsung : Empowering people to do what they want to do

Happiness came to my inbox two days ago. This is a rare thing.

Touchnote, possibly one of my favourite favourite apps (which for the uninformed means I can send postcards all over the world from photos I take on my phone (and / or upload from desktop, not that I use that function much)) has partnered with Olympic sponsor  & leading smartphone manufacturer Samsung.  They sent me an email to tell me that thanks to Samsung, I can "share great moments" free, i.e send postcards all over the world. At least until the end of August at any rate. 

The trade off - well I have to allow a little Samsung / Olympics Sponsor branding on the cards I send & my pictures get shared in their gallery.That's a value exchange I can live with.  

This is one of the nicest examples I've seen recently of a brand understanding that they can add value and bask in a halo of positive brand sentiment from helping people do what they want to do anyway rather than trying to shoehorn people into doing what the brand wants them to do.  

Along the way they are also cleverly "earning media"  - not only do I get a Samsung related Olympic sponsor message going through the postcard sending process, chances are I'm using an image I took on my phone so I'm linking device to brand which may influence favourability for future decisions, and, the recipients of my cards (and I can send as many as I like - 2 so far) also get exposed to the brand message. 

Super smart. Well done chaps. I wish more brands could recognise the benefit of partnership and generosity of action and spirit rather than contriving awkward interruptive experiences that real consumers see little benefit in participating in or interacting with.