Update of the UpdateFinland Google Roadshow

Yesterday was my last presentation on the UpdateFinland Roadshow. Our presentation was called Working in the Cloud and I basically used Zipipop as a case study of what it means to be a company running its day-to-day operations almost entirely through web-based services, i.e. the cloud.

My aim was to introduce the subject as simply as possible (see presentation at the end) and I know that I managed to convert some to the benefits of cloud-based IT; although I feel it's going to need a good deal more advocating to get Finland floating on upwards into the cloud en-mass.

There are undeniable benefits in costs, productivity, and improved work environments that will definitely give early-adopters a head start. All the big players (namely Microsoft and Lotus) have, or are working on, cloud-based enterprise solutions; however, Google seems to have taken the initiative with over 2 million businesses and 7 million students already using Google Apps solutions. And in the US they have even started to take the message out into the physical world with billboards.

Google has also upped the ante considerably with last weeks opening of the Google App Marketplace — an iPhone App Store business model but with a focus on business apps. And this is exciting for developers around the world, since it opens up a level sales channel using a proven business model; and we are now considering placing our App Engine-based Zipi Web Builder service there after it has been polished up.*

Google just announced that, alongside a dedicated Lotus migration tool, they now have Microsoft Exchange migration. So reasons not to jump in (or up?) are rapidly diminishing. And for startups the question is a no brainer. For most SMEs, the internet banking level (SSL) security used by Google Apps is more than sufficient, although I appreciate some very large organizations have unique and important concerns regarding data storage. But with the new server farmers being opened up around the world, it would not surprise me that, in the not so distant future, you will be able to choose the location where your data is stored and backed up — which would should placate some European laws regarding the movement of data.

(Update 19 May 2010: Google can already guarantee that some data is stored in Europe and they have also agreed to parts of the European Safe Habour Agreement* for data handling. Also the further Google has to move data in regards to the user the more it costs them – therefore it is most likely to go to the nearest server farm; which in Finland will shortly be the 200+ million euro sever centre in Hamina.)

However, hosted services are already very popular with Finnish students (particularly Google ones: Gmail, Docs, Calendars, Sites, Blogger, etc) – so it is only a matter of time before they demand more collaborative IT environments and start to influence IT decisions within businesses.

It has been a great experience getting to know some of the Nordic Google Team and it was interesting to have the opportunity to slightly adjust my presentation over the three days to try and align it better with the attending audiences (mostly middle-aged SME owners and employees). I guess the X, Ys and Digital Natives don't need any more convincing and already have their heads in the cloud — even if their employers are not quite there yet. But if you are stuck in a organization with outdated and expensive systems, please do try to convert them — and please do send them in our direction if you need any help doing so ; )

However, it looks like I've also managed (fingers crossed) to sell some social media marketing work, so we will continue to be very busy with that while we actively encourage people to Go Google and build up this relatively new side of our business operations (which we are selling under our ZipiTools banner).

* Here are few links to the Safe Harbour sites courtesy of Verkkoaps.fi:

The Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman (Tietosuojavaltuutetun
toimisto) Safe Harbour in Finnish.
http://www.tietosuoja.fi/25914.htm

Google statement where they agree to bound to the Safe Harbour:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=107819
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60762

And the FAQ:
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS RELATING TO TRANSFERS OF PERSONAL DATA FROM
THE EU/EEA TO THIRD COUNTRIES
http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/privacy/docs/international_transfers_faq/international_transfers_faq.pdf

Zipi Doctor Appointments

Are you experiencing any startup pain? If so we know how it feels, since we've been there too. You probably have a lot of questions on your mind. But don't panic, we might be able to help you out, since we are now offering early-stage startups one free appointment per month at the Zipi Offices on Museokatu 42.

The focus is on social media related issues, however, we can also give tips in concepting, design, social media marketing, et cetera. Tell us your situation via email and we'll try to help make you fitter.

dr.zipi@zipipop.com

For more established startups we are already undertaking comprehensive analysis, customer profiling and strategic consultations. And we would like to expand this service to investors to help them analyze potential investment opportunities.

The analysis is largely based on these prinicples. And our Finnish readers can find out more about the process in this presentation.

Intention Broadcasting: Published Paper

In light of the clear interest in this blog post by Jeremiah Owyang about the Intention Web, I thought I should start promoting my short paper on Intention Broadcasting that was published as part of the Proceedings of I-KNOW ’09 and I-SEMANTICS ’09 Conference 2-4 September 2009, Graz, Austria. It is a summary of my final MA thesis that I undertook at Media Lab, Helsinki, which is now part of the new Finnish Aalto University. Abstract: Social media innovations, together with rapidly improving data sharing methodologies, are enabling individuals and groups to instantly disseminate, or ‘broadcast’, messages across many diverse networks. This phenomenon, combined with the growing use of social media services for sharing and coordinating intentions, led me to develop the concept of “intention broadcasting”. Read it here in Scribd or Download the PDF.

Zipipop's Guide to Building Successful Social Media Services

This presentation outlines some of the key things we have learnt through studying, developing and consulting in the social media sector over the last three years. It provides some principles for concepting, developing, marketing, and analyzing “social media” services.



Note: Slide 22 was partially inspired by a conversation with Marko Artisaari, in relation to the reasons Dopplr created its Social Atlas "public space". He made the very interesting point that very few services that focused primarily on catering for exclusive groups were very successful.

The Death of Middle Management

Networking is nothing new. It has helped human beings cooperate, collaborate and coordinate since time immemorial. And it has helped individuals rise above their own capabilities and extend their personal influence. However, social media is now significantly altering the nature of power within networks.

In the days before social media an individual's power within a hierarchical network was largely based on their position to moderate privileged information and give instructions. And although this has not gone away entirely, the power of social media to rapidly spread information is freeing up the information and eroding this power. In addition, the information sources are becoming more traceable and it is becoming harder for people to claim or limit the ideas of those further down the food chain – or indeed, information to be hidden from management – since the "conversations" are opening up in the online space for all to see. This is leading to what we are calling The Death of Middle Management.



The new power leverage comes from being recognized as generous thought leaders, who "gift" value to the network. In addition, we will also gain credibility and influence by our ability to rapidly gather and compile relevant information for the task at hand. And a large part of this ability comes form being able to obtain information directly from your networks. This is the reason why Zipipop's CEO Helene Auramo sometimes calls Twitter "People Google" – since you can have questions answered by real people in your network.

The new networked economy requires that we find existing or, even better, growing networks to which we can connect with: "As the number of nodes in a network increases arithmetically the value of the network increases exponentially. Adding a few more members can dramatically increase the value for all members." (Kevin Kelly, 1999). This effect can be seen in the success of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter; however, it also applies to business in general and to our personal ability to influence.

"In the network economy, success is self-reinforcing; it obeys the law of increasing returns. The great innovation of Silicon Valley is not the wowie-zowie hardware and software it has invented. Silicon Valley's greatest "product" is the social organization of its companies, and most important, the tangled web of former jobs, intimate colleagues, information leakage from one firm to the next, rapid company life cycles, and agile email culture. This social web, suffused into the warm hardware of jelly bean chips and copper neurons, creates a network economy."

The beauty is that network effects can raise the boat for everybody.

Zipipop's Brand Friend Concept

"You shouldn't expect users to actively participate with a brand (especially a new one) in social media without out doing some initial friendship building."

* (Updated 4 Febuary 2010)

Over the last few months we have been developing Zipipop's concept of Brand Friend and it has recently been generating considerable interest. So we thought it was about time to start sharing some of the main findings more publicly.

Over the years we have noticed that one of the main reasons that social media campaigns fail is that they expect customers to engage immediately on an intimate level. However, just as you can't walk up to someone on the street and expect them to immediately be your friend, you shouldn't expect users to actively participate with a brand (especially a new one) in social media without out doing some initial friendship building.

Our Brand Friend concept was initially inspired by an Ed Cotton blog entry elaborating on an idea by Esther Dyson in which they explore the basic idea of brands behaving as friends. The basis of Esther's idea was that brands could be invited into our social media environments as friends to benefit from a symbiotic relationship, i.e. you let the brand have knowledge of your personal activity and it can then offer you personalized, contextually relevant offers. However, we felt that this great premise needed to be expanded into something approaching a concept with a more concrete framework to make it even more useful.

In its simplest terms, our Brand Friend concept recommends that – particularly in the context of social media – brands should behave like friends. And like many "simple" ideas, it has subtle and powerful consequences.

Brand Friend is related to the notion that communication and customer service must now be viewed as core components of marketing. This relatively new approach has been made possible – and essential – due to the explosion of conversations now taking place across the vast social media ecosystem.

*

The Conversation Prism (developed by Brian Solis together with Jesse Thomas ) gives an indication of just how many conversations are taking place inside social media.

Bloggers, Twitterers and the plethora of other social media users have become "The New Influencers" and brands must learn to engage with them in order to maintain a strategic competitive advantage; however, many social media endeavours have failed miserably as a result of failing to realize that effective interaction is an earned privilege – just has you have to go through a delicate series of stages developing a real-life friendship.

We created the Brand Friend concept as a way of reminding people of this common sense approach and as a strategic model for brands to reach the position of mutual respect and cooperation that ultimately benefits us all. It is still a work in progress and we highly value your opinions. We will be publishing a more comprehensive presentation of the concept in the near future.

One of the most poignant things to bare in mind is that customers can easily fall into the Anger stage at any time: however, if brands monitor the social media conversations – and there are now many tools for doing this, Google Alerts, TweetBeep, etc) — and respond quickly to issues they can quickly bring people out of anger and even bounce them up into a high level of friendship. When people have emotion towards a brand they are still engaged and the real problem arises when they become indifferent. Therefore it pays to be fast and friendly.

Credit:

We had the pleasure of developing the Brand Friend concept together with our French summer intern Tiphaine Guillot. Although last summer may not have been the warmest, she left with our warmest regards. Tiphaine – the door is always open and best of luck with the future.

* The Conversation Prism is a useful summation of areas of web activity, however, we feel that it contains some confusion differentiating between types of services and technology, eg – the voice/SMS category.

Startup as Band

The world of startups and bands have much more in common than you might imagine. They often start out in grungy garages and go through similar teething pains: balancing ambitious and talented young people in small groups producing creative content on shoe-string budgets. The members have to make massive commitments in the pursuit of a high-risk dream. And the odds of succeeding in a startup are probably not that much better than being in a band.

Raw talent alone can make you famous (a la Google's Sergey and Larry), however, if you want to kick-start your start up its time to start thinking about what kind of band you are.

Every startup needs its lead singer. At Zipipop we have Helene Auramo, who appears regularly in the Finnish media talking about social media; for example, she has just been featured in the new edition of the popular Finnish cultural / design magazine "Image" (see above). The feature title is "Pop Star". Helene is a big fan of Gwen Stefani; which is not a bad comparison to her personal brand image: sassy, sexy and savvy.

Internet entrepreneur as pop star is not new. Probably the most famous is Kevin Rose; who founded digg.com and hosts DiggNation on his own Revision3 internet television distribution company.

In Finland, in addition to Helene, we have Taneli Tikka who definitely knows a thing or two about putting across a pop star image. I don't know him well enough to suggest who he could be compared to though. Any suggestions?



Anyway, I was thinking which other band members would startup "types" be. In Zipipop's case, I feel that Markku (Chairman) would be the lead guitar / band manager; Tuomas (Creative Director) song writer / driving bass; Taro (CTO) innovative mixer/DJ. Diana (the unofficial 6th member of Zipipop) lyrical keyboard player. And I would like to think of myself as song writer / rhythm guitar.

Helene and I co-founded Zipipop, and like all the best creative partnerships, our differences complement each other. Creative partnerships work best when there is time together, but there is also time apart. This is why it is great that she has her Digitytot project in addition to Zipipop and I have my little kid (and maybe a secret film project, but it is too early days to talk about that). Here is a quote from an excellent book I am currently reading called Life's a Pitch:

"One of the greatest creative partnerships was, of course, Lennon and McCartney. They influenced each other profoundly, but they often developed songs on their own. Many of the songs attributed to both of them were actually written by just one: yet the personality of the other still hovers in the background. That was proved when they stopped writing as a team. Without McCartney's softening touch, Lennon's work often became crudely strident; and without Lennon's attack and edginess, McCartney's work frequently descended into sentimentality."

Zipipop is rapidly making a name for itself and with Markku Silén now on board (Finnish press release) the future looks bright indeed. However, we also look forward to seeing Finland's future entrepreneur pop idols.

It is not if, it's when

It is not a matter of when mobile advertising really takes off, it is only a matter of when. Just check out these two quotes from two of the biggest players in the internet and advertising world:

“In a few years mobile advertising will generate more revenue than advertising on the normal web.” Eric Schmidt, Google CEO (2008)

“Mobile is the most overhyped thing that I have ever heard of in the short term but the most under hyped thing that I have ever heard of in the medium term.” Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP Chief Executive (2008)

Therefore I was delighted to be invited to speak on a panel at the IIR Mobile Advertising Amsterdam conference last month. There was some complaints that it was the same old same old, however, I still found useful facts, inspiration and much to ponder upon.

I was there to introduce the importance of knowing people's intentions – both for providing useful services but also as a way to make services more appealing to advertisers. Since if you know people's intentions you can offer advertisers a chance to influence them.




It is interesting to note that in the mobile sector one of the few services to be maturing and generating significant revenues is turn-by-turn navigation, and this is a service that deals with clear intentions, i.e. intentions to get from A to B. This knowledge is enabling them to provide preference-based, contextually relevant advertising, i.e. where is my next preferred service station. Could it be that services that can clearly identify their users’ intentions have a better chance of succeeding?

So what other key things stood out during the conference:

Mind your PPPs

The three Ps (Privacy, Preference, Permission) came up again and again. The idea being that you need to obtain all three from people before you can feed them advertising. And it turns out that many European mobile operators are busy creating opt-in databases of users willing to receive advertising in return for benefits.

This makes perfect sense since the mobile is a particularly personal devise that advertisers need to treat with the greatest respect. These same criteria should be applied to the web in general and I am wondering when a PPP component will be integrated into browsers, so that ad feeds can provide more personal and contextually relevant adds.

Click through and creativity

Thomas Curwen, a market planning director, introduced the notion that the obsession with click through is damaging to mobile internet since it underplays the importance of brand awareness and attitude shifting that can be obtained from more conventional "impression-based" advertising.

Another theme of the conference – also forcefully pointed out by Paul Berney (Managing Director EMEA, MMA) – is that currently the mobile industry is not making enough effort to engage with agencies. And Curwen also made an easily missed point that currently advertising "creatives" are just not excited by the perceived potential of mobile advertising – particularly for winning awards. Blyk (the service that provides free mobile usages in exchange for personalized ads) showed some of the most created mobile adverts and campaigns I have seen.

Mobile web browsing is different

One of the biggest problems highlighted with mobile advertising has been the lack of accurate statistics of mobile web usage that the media planners and buyers need. And it was interesting to hear about the GSMA MMM (Mobile Media Metrics) project for sharing data between the UK's top mobile providers in order to deliver more useful information about mobile and mobile internet usage.

Data presented by Nielsen showed that not surprisingly news, sport and weather are popular web sectors for mobile users. Also, it is important to bear in mind that mobile internet is accessed at different times of day than desk bound usage. Again it is not surprising that around 60% of respondents said that they use mobile internet while traveling; however, about 50% said that they use it at home – which suggest that it is becoming easier for them to engage with their mobile device than it is to sit down at a computer. There are also peaks around lunchtime and some restaurant campaigns in London have used this fact to great success.



The Four Rules of Engagement

Jonathan McDonald was both a great host and a significant presence at the conference. He gave a fluid and engaging presentation that was half prep talk and half a imploration to the industry to pay attention both to ancient aspects of human behaviour and the the impact of the modern fluid, transparent nature of the internet. The days of marketers not playing straight are numbered due to the speed which negative information can spread around the web through blogs, Twitter, etc.

I was particularly inspired by his Four Rules of Engagement that he effectively agures should be applied to all aspects of life but in particular to marketing:

The Rules of Engagement:

1) Transparency of Offering (make it crystal clear)
2) Relevancy of Communication (not assumed, but assured)
3) Value of Incentive (not necessarily monetary)
4) Ease of Interaction (make it intuitive)

Read more about how to apply these in this excellent blog entry.

The iPhone Effect

We all know about this so I will just show these stats to remind us about the effect of an intuitive interface, reliability and unlimited data plans.



Summary

Mobile ad spending may currently only be about 1% of radio spend, however, this was also the case with internet advertising around ten years ago. However, it is predicted that mobile internet will develop much faster. And don't think of mobile internet in terms of screen size and connection speeds, think of it in terms of context of use – in particular location and time.

Commitment Levels in Service Design

We are in the process of concepting a web-service for the City of Helsinki (overseen by digibusiness.fi) that is designed to enable entrepreneurs, consultants and related organizations to better find and share information. To filter and fine-tune the concept we are using a framework that we have developed based on the work of some highly regarded web practitioners and on our own list of in-house criteria.

However, I have just added a new "commandment" to our list that I have never seen directly discussed – commitment. What levels of commitment do you expect from your users? Depending on the type of service you have to think about this very carefully.

Case-study: Jaiku & Twitter:

Compare to Twitter, Jaiku’s superior discussion abilities generate a compulsion that one should be actively responding. And it is wonderful how responsive Jaiku users are; however, many people don’t have the time to be constantly on top of such services. So if you miss a comment that was left a day or two ago, you start ‘to feel a bit bad’ that you did not react more quickly. Whereas with Twitter, it gives the feeling that it’s fine to simply post status messages with no or very low levels of engagement.

Some research from Amsterdam University describes this phenomenon in the following way (I have highlighted the words I feel are related to commitment):

"The pace of Twitter reinforces the feeling of situated connectivity and enables group formation. This situated connectivity advances a pure form of Wittel’s definition of sociality (Wittel 2001), in which relations are briefly intense and are solely based on particular points of interest and not on history. Users of Twitter can express themselves, without necessarily making a lasting impression. The ephemeral character of minute to minute diaries and the website’s non-directive character make the platform rather open to spontaneous reactions. Discussing or eavesdropping is minimized by the medium’s pace. Therefore, comments are relatively simple and explicit, which makes Twitter easily accessible to new users, because of the absence of pressures to comply with the intellectual level of the audience." [Bouman et al. 2008]

Twitter's interface physically fragments discussions which serves to further insulate users from extended critique (unlike Jaiku's comment discussions) and reduces the average number of responses "required" for any single Tweet. So rather than Jaiku's committed specific discussions, Twitter creates more loosely formed general conversations that are easier to dip in and out of. However, for specific communities (e.g. IT researchers) Jaiku's forum-like capabilities can prove to be more useful.

To further reduce Twitter's commitment levels aggregator services like TweetDeck nicely collect peoples "replies" and will notify you as they arrive. And TwitterMail can even email you the notifications.

Some services track and display user activity, however, this can sometimes have the negative effect of making casual users feel inadequate – resulting in them detaching further. And network theories suggest that a large number of week ties are more useful than a limited network of strong ties:

"The shape of a social network helps determine a network's usefulness to its individuals. Smaller, tighter networks can be less useful to their members than networks with lots of loose connections (weak ties) to individuals outside the main network. More open networks, with many weak ties and social connections, are more likely to introduce new ideas and opportunities to their members than closed networks with many redundant ties. In other words, a group of friends who only do things with each other already share the same knowledge and opportunities. A group of individuals with connections to other social worlds is likely to have access to a wider range of information. It is better for individual success to have connections to a variety of networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked (called filling structural holes). "Wikipedia, accessed 22 April 2009]

Summary

Facebook does a brilliant job of accommodating both the avid and causal user. There is no end of the interaction opportunities available for the avid user, but a once-a-weeker can still drop in, catchup, and feel the benefits.

My current gut feeling is that if your service is aimed at a diverse range of users then you have to design for low-levels of commitment; however, if the network is very specific users might benefit from more high-level commitment expectations.

So think about how the experience would be for both the committed and the casual user and ideally try to accommodate both.

Intention Broadcasting Introduction Video

Intention Broadcasting – An introduction from Zipipop on Vimeo.

Social media innovations, together with rapidly improving data sharing methodologies, are enabling individuals and groups to instantly disseminate, or ‘broadcast’, messages across many diverse networks. This phenomenon, combined with the growing use of social media services for sharing and coordinating intentions, led me to develop the concept of “intention broadcasting”.

Bashing into things and falling over

"One of the differences between big companies and startups is that big companies tend to have developed procedures to protect themselves against mistakes. A startup walks like a toddler, bashing into things and falling over all the time. A big company is more deliberate." Paul Graham

Like all startups Zipipop too has been doing its fair share of 'bashing into things and falling over'; however, I guess the difference between success and failure is the willingness to make mistakes, learn from them and keep on going. Of course any damn fool can make mistakes, but the difference is between plain stupid mistakes and intelligent, diligent, well-intended mistakes that might have led to remarkable achievements.

Whilst licking some of our wounds, we have recently been doing some serious soul searching: On a specific level, we have been reviewing Zipiko to analyze why it is not growing as fast we would have hoped (see Rethinking Zipiko). And, on a bigger level, we have also been asking ourselves – from all that we have learned – what does it take to make a successful social web service. And in the process we developed these 10 Commandments.

At Zipipop we sometimes indulge in a bit of lighthearted hubris and, although we currently stoop a little humbled, our ambitions remain straight and tall – since if you aim for the top of the mountain you might only make it half way up, but, if you only aim half way up, the heighest you will ever go is half way up. And our goal is to see the view from the top ; )

So while we purse our dreams and trudge our way up the mountain, why not let us give you a helping hand up. Based on our hard won knowledge and experience, we can tell you where best to place your belays and guide you past some nasty precipices.

As well as public speaking and consultancy work, we are also now offering web-oreintated video production. Please contact us to discuss what we can do for you.

The 10 (+2) Commandments of Social Service Development

Thou shalt have PERSONAL PASSION:

What excites you? You have to be totally in love with a project at the start because towards the end your love will fade away and, until it starts making money, you might even end up hating it. If you start with just a good idea you will never even finish it. And you must always eat your own (dog)food.

You shall find a NEED:

If you wish to make a profit your ideas need to be valuable, ie – people must be willing to pay for them? There are plenty of good ideas that are perfectly worthy but have no business value. So find ways to turn your passions into pennies. Otherwise create a non-profit social enterprise or go into research.

You must provide CONTENT:

Users must have content from the beginning. This can come in the form of community driven, user-generated content (Facebook) or readily available content from other sources (Spotify).

Find and connect to NETWORKS:

The new networked economy requires that you find existing or, even better, growing networks to which you can connect with. Nowadays this means providing and making the most of existing APIs. "As the number of nodes in a network increases arithmetically the value of the network increases exponentially. Adding a few more members can dramatically increase the value for all members." (Kevin Kelly, 1999) Facebook is the prime example of this and Twitter is currently making the most of network effects.

Define thy DISTRIBUTION strategy:

What channels are you going to used to spread your service? Considering connecting through such services such as: email, Facebook, micro-blogging, calendars, etc. Blog, micro-blog and make friends with bloggers. Be honest and think big to avoid being boring. If you are not comfortable immersing yourself in social media find an advocate who is.

Never underestimate the power of CONTEXT:

What is the context of your service? Both in terms of community and space. Identify communities that will connect with your service and determine where and how they can access it. Context will have a huge impact on how your users related to your service. Should it be designed to work best on large screen or mobile formats? Should it be a desktop web application?

Work hard to find the PLAY:

Do you have any game elements? You should think hard about what makes it fun: reward systems, role play, social interaction / recognition, etc. Amy Jo Kim has identified the following key components: collecting, points, feedback, exchange and customization.

What are your levels of COMMITMENT:

Some users can be put off if the commitment levels are too high. To find out more read this blog entry Commitment Levels in Service Design.

You shall implement your METRICS:

Are you getting your stats? Right from the beginning you need keep a close eye on the frequency and direction of user usage, so that you can iterate and fine-tune.

Thou shalt not be afraid to CONFORM:

Genre films (Westerns, comedy romance, etc) work best when they meet around 80% of the audience's expectations – with only about 20% innovation. This is a safe ratio to follow when designing your user experience. "A convention is a cultural constraint, one that has evolved over time. Conventions are not arbitrary: they evolve, they require a community of practice. They are slow to be adopted, and once adopted, slow to go away … Use them with respect. Violate them with great risk." – Norman, D. A.

Know thy TYPE:

Are you creating a lovable or a pragmatic service? For a lovable service you can push the boundaries and risk some annoying elements because the users will be inclined to in their hearts to forgive you. Or you can go for a service that is efficient and makes a big effort not to be annoying and users will be grateful for your consideration.

You shall do a controlled RELEASE:

If your service has too many problems you will end up shooting yourself in the foot and all your marketing efforts will be wasted. Web users are super fickle, so don't build up their expectations too high. Instead invite them to help you develop though closed-Beta releases.

The Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Web

During some thesis research I came across an interesting parallel between semiotics – a key part of communications studies – and the development of the web.

Semiotics is the study of sign systems and can be divided up into syntax, semantics, and pragmatics:

“Syntax deals with the structure of symbols, semantics with their meanings, and pragmatics with their contexts of usage. These terms were picked up by the early logicians and computer scientists and, especially the first two, are frequently the objects of attention in computer science.” Munindar P. Singh

The development of the web – a symbolic system itself – seems to be developing in a similar fashion:

The syntax (structural codes) are relatively established in the original Syntactic Web, semantics (meaning creation) in the web is still immature – particularly in regard to connecting and producing meaning from data. However, the Semantic Web is under development and there is increasing interest in the idea of the Pragmatic Web (which I have previously blogged about).

If you would like to read a more in depth article I wrote around this subject please click here.

Thank you Finland

The work we are doing at Zipipop is intimately and symbiotically tied to the thesis research I am currently undertaking as the final part of my MA in New Media at Media Lab (University of Art and Design, Helsinki).

Finland may not have the most investment opportunities; however, for a startup like ours, it has offered us a unique opportunity to undertake the initial development of our company under the protective wing of Finnish higher education.

Finland does not charge tuition fees (even for foreigners) and local students even receive student benefit; however, this is not sufficient for living, so most students do some supplementary paid work. And currently there is considerable flexibility in combining studies with external work. This is partly the reason why Finnish youth stay in school longest in the OECD countries: with 43% of all Finnish 20-29-year-olds enrolled in education (highest among OECD countries, average 25%). (OECD’s annual Education at a Glance report)

I met my co-founder Helene Auramo on a creative management course in Media Lab. At the time she was taking part in the cross-institutional International Design Business Management course, while studying at the Helsinki School of Economics (from where she has now graduated). Within no time we realized that we had a shared passion for all things entrepreneurial and – with an enthusiasm only the naïve can possess – we decided to start Zipipop.

From the outset, we were then able to tailor our studies directly towards the development of Zipipop, eg – I did an extensive personal study project on Zipipop and Hele did considerable social media marketing research. So, although we were studying, we were almost working full-time developing the Zipi World. In addition, we benefited greatly from the bright, passionate and informed people at Media Lab and the Helsinki School of Economics.

In June 2007 we moved into our first office and started officially working full-time with the occasional 'relevant' course to sustain our student benefits – this was the same situation for the first four Zipipop partners. To pay company costs and supplement our income, we started doing some external 3rd party work and were fortunate to receive some governmental development grants.

Zipipop, however, has now become a fully-fledged company with a growing international reputation and additional non-student partners – so the time to cut the university umbilical cord is nearing. Therefore, we are approaching, and have been approached, by a number of potential angel investors.

That said, we will continue to cultivate our ties with the universities since, apart from enjoying and benefiting from the relationships we have there, student groups have been proven time and again (think Facebook) as one of the best ways to secure uptake of new internet services.

But on a personal level, I would like to thank Finland for offering me this unique opportunity to learn, grow and – fingers crossed – develop a company of international significance. Of course I had to win my privileged place at Media Lab, however, how many other countries would provide such no-strings-attached opportunities to a foreigner?

Much thanks indeed, Richard

Intention sharing makes us unique

As part of my thesis research I have a number of search terms logged into Google Alerts,including: "Intention Broadcasting" (a term coined at Zipipop) and the more general term "intention sharing". Google Alerts can be frustrating since it continually throws up old links; however, it does keep you up-to-date and occasionally produces some gems you could easily miss. Not so long ago it throw me a link to an article entitled: The Role of Cultural Transmission in Intention Sharing.

It argues that our relatively high-level ability to communicate shared intentions is a uniquely human attribute that has helped us to develop languages. Conversely, a low level of it has restricted language development in animals. It also simulates how cultural transmission effects our intention sharing abilities.

And since we are producing an Intention Sharing platform this obviously struck a chord in me. Human communication, intention sharing, and coordination skills have resulted in our current world dominance (if you ignore those cockroaches who will most likely out survive us). But, at the same time, a huge chunk of the world's problems arise from a failure to communicate and coordinate intentions.

Therefore, if Zipipop can continue to develop services that vastly improve our abilities to share and coordinate intentions, then … we really can change the world :)

* (image sources unknown – I did try to trace them back. Let me know if they are yours)

Sharing Life

Zipiko has on a number of occassions been compared to Dopplr. Take this Techruch entry for example "Zipipop (from Finland) is a start-up that is developing Zipiko, a mobile service for sorting your social life on the go, as in, broadcast where you’ll be at a certain time in the day. Think Dopplr, but on a much more granular level perhaps."

And according to Dopplr's latest press release it “is leading the way in intention sharing services online." This is interesting to Zipipop, since we have previously blogged about Dopplr being an early example of what we are calling intention broadcasting systems (IBS). However, Dopplr is not a fully-formed IBS, since it lacks the fundamental 'coordination' phase; which means that you can easily end up getting too much direct and sometimes intrusive calls/messages. A complete IBS should be handling and coordinating the meetups more passively – something that Zipiko does well.

However, the Zipiko system is not able to let you know which city your buddies are going to be in until they have already arrived and shared an event. So it dawned on us that there is a good potential here for cooperation – especially since we are both in the business of intention sharing and we also happen to we live in the same neck of the woods.

So in the spirt of Zipiop's first official slogan 'Sharing Life', this is how it could work:

Dopplr allows people to know when they will be in the same city and then Zipiko allows them to easily arrange their get-togethers – kind of a Blogger/Twitter, macro/micro relationship.

@Dopplr posse – Let's meetup at somewhere, sometime soon: As Bogie says, "This could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship."

An Intention Broadcasting Model: Preliminary Thoughts

I have recently been developing our Intention Broadcasting (IB) concept into something approaching a more fully-fledged theory. My first objective was to come up with a model of how an intention broadcasting system (IBS) should work in a general sense. The second was to identify existing and future implementations of IBS-based services.

I initially studied some Situated Cognition theory to see if there were useful correlations and, out of the key principles, the following were of particular interest: affordances, problem solving, goals and intentions. And The Young-Barab Model (1998) of Dynamics of Intentions and Intentional Dynamics.

In any environment there are different kinds of affordances (possibilities for action) that allow us to carry out intentions to achieve certain goals. However, the process of reaching these goals is hindered by contextual problems that can only be solved on the fly and through interaction with the real world.

Intention Broadcast Systems – Key Phases

The key phases that I have identified in the dynamics of an IBS are as follows:

Intention: the agent has an intention to do something
Goal Adoption: agent sets out on a particular path to achieve the intended goal
Affordances: agent adopts an IBS as the best method of achieving intended goal
Broadcast Transmission*: agent passively broadcasts intention to target audience (avoiding multiple intrusive communications)
Reception: the target audiences tune into to receive relevant intention via streams (channels, groups, etc)
Censorship: a collaborative rating system is often required to help protect both the broadcaster and audience from bad intentions.
Coordination: systems for involved parties to overcome contextual problems though interaction and collaboration.
Outcome: Goal accomplished

*Ideally the target audience would all be actively using the service and receive the message passively or through system-based notifications; however, in the real world some people will need to be contacted via more conventional methods, eg – SMS & email; however, the IBS can at least automate the sending and collating of the messages and their responses.



First Sketch Comparing Conventional Strategies with the Dynamics of an Intention Broadcasting Model

The sketch above shows an example of how intention broadcasting is much better at solving some real-world problems. In this instance I have chosen to use organizing a get-together as an example, however, I will later go on to explain how it can work in other situations.

Agents A & B both intend to have a party and they adopt this as their Goal:

Agent A goes conventional and uses a combination of affordances (calling, SMSing and emailing) to let the audience (friends) know that he is planning (intends) to have a party. All these methods are intrusive and can make the receiver feel under pressure. The replies have to be manually collated, adjustments made, and updates sent multiple times. This is a laborious process and Agent A will eventually succeed in concluding the situation or the frustration will become overwhelming and the goal abandoned.

Agent B, however, opts to use the Zipiko intention broadcasting system. Agent B broadcasts the intention to have a party and her Zipiko friends can passively see the plan on the listings page and click to join. Friends can also be sent free SMS invites, even if they are not registered on the system. The system then automatically and instantly updates attendees on who is coming, sends reminders and informs about cancellations. Using the Event Messaging Board collaborative adjustments can be made right up to the last-minute.

So the benefits are clear, however, if a theory is to be successful it has to be proven to work in many different contexts.


INTENTION BROADCASTING IN THE REAL WORLD

IB systems can utilize any method of one-to-many combined with one-to-one ICT broadcasting strategies and almost any situation where you can define a clean intent/desire/need you can build an IBS to help out. And already aspects of intention broadcasting are appearing on the web. Here are some current examples:

Travel: Dopplr allows you to broadcast your intention to travel to a particular destination so that friends and colleagues can know where you are and 'serendipitously' meet up with you.

Real Estate: Igglo enables potential customers to broadcast their intention to live in a particular neighbourhood or even block and attempts to match the desire. Also, potential sellers can advertise their intention to sell their property (secret selling) in order to gauge the real market value; and if they see an offer then can’t refuse then all the better.

By shear chance both these services have also been developed in Finland. Finns are famous for not talking so maybe this more passive way of communicating is appealing to them ; )

Micro-lending and Peer-to-Peer Banking: Kiva.org is an organization that provides micro-lending to entrepreneurs around the globe. The entrepreneur will post (broadcast) how much they need and what the loan is for (generally from $250 to $500); you can select (tune into) the person, gender, country, type of business and elect to assist this person. Could this phenomomen could spread to conventional banking.

(Note: I am aware that there is a Finnish organization also involved in micro-lending but can't remember the name. If you know please add it to the comments).

In light of our open attitude (see previous entry) you will now be privileged to read, for the first time, about some complete IB-systems currently being concepted during Zipipop's 10% time. We reserve all rights to implement any of these ideas and if any financiers are interested in helping us we are all ears:

Buying/Selling (project codename: Share Swap): The customer broadcasts an intention to buy a product (either new or second-hand). Sellers see this intention and make direct offers. Buyers benefit in having to do no legwork, can see and compare offers in one place, and get more open independent expert advice.

Sellers benefit from the direct contact to active customers, a better understanding of customer needs, and save money on inefficient, and often unwelcome, general marketing. Both benefit from the collaborative feedback censorship system that rates people (as in Ebay); and transactions can easily be resolved in the coordination phase.

This can also be used to buy/sell trade or consultancy freelance work, eg – people always need skilled labour and organizations often need freelance work, but it is not always clear who to contact or what is a fair price. So they could broadcast their need for some freelance work. Freelancers could then tune into (via channels, groups, etc) the offers that are best suited to them. And the censorship filter helps customers avoid the cowboys (British slang for incompetent workers).

(13/09/08 - Check out for freecycle.org)

Personal Opinion Polls (codenamed: POPs): You intend to do something but you want feedback before doing so, eg – you want your friends to advise on which wedding dress you should buy; or which guy you should date.

The need for this kind of service is just starting to express itself on micro-blogging services. See here for an example.

Baby-sitting (codename Baby-sitting Project): Broadcast your need (intention for finding) a babysitter. Use the collaborative censorship rating to evaluate trustworthiness.

In fact, I have been playing with the concept of an Intention Exchange System that could encompass many IB needs in one service: like a stock exchange but with the trading based on intentions. Interested bodies could tune into all the different kinds of broadcasted intentions that are relevant to them and make offers. The exchange could be facilitated by swapping items/services of similar value, system credits (that could be exchangeable for real money), or via real world credit systems, eg – Paypal, etc.

(Relevant Off-Topic Sidetrack: Many years ago, when I was in the film business, I remember reading about a young filmmaker who had been touring his award-winning film around the world for a year. He consider the period his reward for all the hard work, but, just when he was getting all the attention and offers of more financing, he suddenly realized he could not answer the "What next?" questions that were flying at him. We are sure that Zipiko is going to be a big hit, and, therefore, we are already preparing to make the most of the opportunities this will bring our way; however, we are fully aware of the tremendous concentration of will and effort still required for many years to come to take Zipiko to where we want it to be.)


FINE TUNING THE WEB

So we can see a familiar pattern arising that can affect huge sections of web activity. IB essentially farms out (crowdsources) the work of searching for things on the web by matching needs with solutions in a much more efficient manner.

As I have demonstrated, aspects of intention broadcasting have been developing in a fragmented way for a while, however, with this new model it is now easier to identify and develop fully functioning IB systems. The next stage is to see how IB fits into the bigger picture regarding the emerging practices related to the semantic and pragmatic web.

And then that little question of making sure that 'ordinary' everyday people see the benefits and make the switch to such systems.

Zipiko will be the first full-on 'proof of the pudding'.

Startup Ideas and Painting

'Fecundity' by Richard von Kaufmann (2004)

During the first year at Zipipop we constantly debated how open we should be with our ideas. At the very beginning we even made people sign NDA's and this had some benefits: people realized we 'meant business'; they (maybe) felt privileged being invited into the inner circle; and it forced us to think hard about how we wished to present ourselves to the world.

However, since ideas are only valuable if they can be implemented, we soon realized that fast implementation, and accredited distribution, are by far the best way – in an industry that moves at breakneck speed – to protect a web-based idea.

By freeing up and putting our ideas 'out there', we were then able to more effectively garner input from the bright and busy intellects that flock around Zipipop; enabling us to refine our ideas faster and thereby making the implementation stage quicker and more efficient.

There are some that say that ideas are cheap and to some extent that is true. However, I really like this article about startup ideas by Paul Graham because it distinguishes between good ideas and valuable ideas: valuable ideas being great ideas that people want and are willing to pay for.

He also shows that great ideas come out of a long process of trail, error and adjustment. Zipiko has only been in development for less than five months, however, the fundamental idea came after more than a year of brainstorming and 'do-search' within Zipipop.

First we developed the idea of POPs (personal opinion polls), one of which was a date-picker, this then inspired us to work on a more full-on event organizer designed to cope with every imaginable scenario. For a small company (only three partners at the time) we clearly, in retrospect, bit of more than we could chew. But then we got hit and carried along by the mighty Facebook wave.

As a 'test' (or a subconscious excuse to deviate from the 'monster' project), we decided to do a couple of Facebook applications to see how we could later integrate our services into the exploding platform. We caught the tail end of the wave as it swept over Finland in the summer of 2007, and we soon became know locally as the Facebook company. For many months the event organizer was put on hold as we implemented a whole bunch of in-house and third party Facebook apps.

However, right from the beginning we had a conscious plan to develop for mobile platforms, and in light of this Facebook was a good playground for us: the discipline of delivering apps with a clear purpose, inside a restricted screen space, has prepared us well for small screen challenges. And it was our Going for One? Facebook app that was the direct predecessor to Zipiko.

The Paul Graham article also makes some nice analogies to painting and it reminded me of one of the greatest things my high school art teacher would constantly tell us; "Don't wait for inspiration, just start painting and the ideas will come." This method is almost infallible, however, there are times when you will spend months fiddling on a large respectable oil painting that people might – if you every finish it – smile upon approvingly; and then there are those rarer – more valuable – works, produced in a flurry of inspiration – usually as a break from that never ending project – that people will rave about.

This last phenomena has parallels with many famous web services, for example: flickr – the photo sharing was just part of a bigger game project; PayPal – the service was originally supposed to be a way of exchanging credit between handheld devices; and closer to home there is Habbo Hotel – started as a project to help promote their friends' band.

So far we can propose that: Great ideas come form an abundance of mental doodling, brainstorming and 'do-search'; great ideas are worthless if left in the dark; and for a startup, great ideas need to come with commercial value.

In light of all this we have decided to publish some of our ideas, since even if we fail to implement them before competitors, we can at least gain some beneficial recognition from exposing them to the light of day.

Organizing Get-togethers: Zipiko vs Micro-blogging

At the Mobile 2.0 conference in Barcelona, we were asked by an investor group why users could not use Twitter and other micro-blogging services to organize get-togethers. We have been asked the same question a couple of times since. Here is the answer:

The screen shot above shows Jyri Engström talking about how to use micro-blogging to get your friends together for a last-minute beer. However, the likes of Jaiku/Twitter are not ideally suited for this purpose, since they cannot: reach everyday friends, automatically collate responses, send reminders and inform about cancellations.

Needless to say Zipiko can and is doing these things. In addition, we have recently added event messaging boards, so that collaborative fine-tuning can be made right up to the last-minute, eg - the plan was to picnic, but it is pouring down, so invite them to your flat instead (a real-life example). We are currently considering the implications of allowing update comments to also be sent to attendees via SMS - but this will probably have to wait until we have sponsorship.

However, you can watch the video and listen to Jyri's many pearls of wisdom. Below I have outlined his key ideas in relation to Zipiko:

1. Define the social object round which your service is built:

intentions

2. Define the key verbs for that object:

see, join, share (11.9-2008)

3. Make the object shareable:

We already have perma-links to events past and present, we already have a prototype Apple Widget and are planning others, and are working on a strategy to link to Facebook Connect.

4. To grow your userbase, think about what can you provide in terms of a gift users can offer their friends:

more fun together / time / free SMS

5. Work out a business model where you charge the publisher, not the spectators:

Intention Ads / Pro Services / Sponsored SMS

Why Did Twitter Win the Race?

I’m a fan of Jyri Engström’s theoretical work. And, although Jaiku (as we know it) has lost the race against Twitter, his experience helming a startup at the sharp edge of web development definitely enhances his insights. And I will be comparing his recommendations to Zipiko in my next blog.

I used to say that Jaiku was the best service I never used. However, I have recently rediscovered its joys. One feature that we prefer is the way that Jaiku streams the comments into conversations; whereas you can’t see all Twitter comments in one page. Now that Jaiku is currently closed (now open again, 27/8/2008) - to new users, I feel very lucky to have an account.

The Jaiku-Twitter battle is of great interest to us since Jaiku, like us, had Finnish roots and we must try to avoid the pitfalls that they fell into – but what are those pitfalls? We have been bouncing some ideas around the office and these are currently the most likely contenders: location, mobile app v. web-based/SMS, API and name.

Location: Twitter, being based in San Francisco, was able to generate buzz in the industry that spread out to the public; whereas Jaiku generated interest in Finland – but it kind of stopped here. Twitter was also used extensively at the crucial South by Southwest festival (Austin, Texas) in 2007 – we hope to do something similar.

Finland is an excellent place for doing controlled launches, since there is a small tech savvy population and the language naturally restricts growth. However, once we have ironed out the Zipiko system, we must immediately start doing some old fashioned legwork promoting the service in English speaking counties.

At the end of this month we are doing our first marketing campaigns at some key Helsinki universities, which we will then try to replicate abroad. And we will be looking into the possibility of a San Francisco foothold when we go there for the Mobile 2.0 conference in November.

Web-based/SMS v. Mobile Apps: Twitter put more emphasis on developing a web-based service using SMS to link to mobiles, whereas Jaiku initially put more emphasis on its mobile apps. However, Twitter has suffered recently from having to make some severe cut backs related to its SMS service due to high costs.

We are currently focusing on the web-based/SMS approach and, in regards to SMS, we are fortunate that our system will only generate a fraction of Twitter’s SMS load (one Tweet can generate thousands of SMS). However, we are aiming to put discreet sponsorship messages at the end of our SMS invites, which should appeal to advertisers and users alike since we can match both their needs more closely thanks to our knowledge of user intentions, eg – going shopping, see a great offer. If this proves successful then the more SMS the merrier.

API: Twitter had a more straightforward API from early on.

Name: This one is still being debated, but to my English ear Twitter not only matches the activity perfectly (birds and people twitter) it is more ‘sticky’, whereas people can’t even decide whether to say (Y)jaiku or (G)jaiku.

We thought very hard about the name Zipiko, which so far seems to being doing the trick. To zip somewhere is to go quickly and k looks good with z and ko rhymes with go. But you will decide. However, if Google had been a useless service would it be such a great name? After all:

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet." (William Shakespeare)

We welcome your advice on these issues so please do comment – especially Jyri.