“Can I send you a link?”

“Nah, I’m at work. Email/Facebook/Twitter it and I’ll grab it when I get home.”

That’s probably a conversation that many of you have had before over IM. Conversations over IM have typically been laced with some type of sensitivity regarding the content that’s transmitted, especially when one of the participants is at work, or somewhere else where the potential for “eavesdropping” or snooping of some kind. Most companies are gradually allowing the use of IM clients in the workplace, but not without a system to monitor traffic and content over what they view as a “company owned resource.”

The internet is rife with stories recounting embarrassing situations involving risque material that would have been better viewed outside of work. All it takes is one click to trigger content filters or other software designed to keep an eye on what people are viewing online.

Don’t ask me why this particular image was included. I just found it amusing.

The latest version of Windows Live Messenger, arguably the most popular IM client in the world, was recently released with a long sought after feature which could change the way IM conversations take place (especially if you’re nerdly leanings resemble my own). You can now sign-in to WLM from mulitple locations at once, and have completely separate settings for conversations in each place. If you have a machine at home that’s always on for example, you can use it to save your conversations while you log on from work, or when you’re mobile.

I think this is interesting because save for Google Talk (which is massively underused), no other messenger client has this as a native feature. There are several 3rd party plugins that are available to accommodate this, along with some registry hacks that can accomplish the same thing. But why muck about in the registry when you don’t have to?

Anyhow, it’s a handy little feature, and I thought I’d give it a mention.

At least it was, about a month ago.

It should come as no surprise that “disaster marketing” has just as much impact as any other type of marketing effort that’s out there. In fact, media outlets know that when it comes to selling a story, there is absolutely nothing that will do it quite like news of impending doom.

Once disaster strikes, it’s nearly impossible to avoid coverage of the event in the media. Every outlet sets up some sort of task force comprised of elite, special forces trained… journalists to cover all aspects of the event in order to protect YOU THE PUBLIC. Well, until the next story hits anyways. As far as the media is concerned, it seems that the ability to strike fear into the public only lasts as long as the public’s attention span.

Look at the most recent episode of global fear-mongering: The H1N1 virus, somewhat erroneously identified as “Swine Flu” – which you can also thank the media for. The H1N1 virus is actually a potential variant of a virus that has shown to be endemic in humans and birds (as well as in swine). But I guess the Avian Flu (H5N1) trend was too “2007″, so the decision was to go hog-chic this time around.

So H1N1 was destined to destroy the world. The flu pandemic caused so much fear in fact that thousands of pigs were slaughtered, under the mistaken impression that it would help to stem the spread of the flu, despite a lack of evidence that any pigs were even infected to begin with. Masks were donned, reminiscent of the SARS outbreak a few years ago. Schools closed. Travel stopped. Bacon afficionados wept. News stations promised round-the-clock updates and “front line” reports the minute they occurred. It seemed like we were all in for an era of trepidation not seen since the Black Plague.

Well, until American Idol announced their winner anyways. In fact, even before that, people simply started to lose interest in the swine flu outbreak. At least on this side of the Atlantic. Search inquiries started to drop around the beginning of the month (link). But… how could people be so willing to throw caution to the wind like that? The entire population is at risk! Millions could die!

Well as it turns out, to date less than 100 fatalities have been recorded since the pandemic began (source). In comparison, the flu (multiple strains) kills tens of thousands of people per season (though precise numbers are hard to determine). So, while the spread of the virus still remains a concern, the public’s beginning to see that there really wasn’t as much to fear as they were first told.

In fact, there’s probably much, MUCH more to fear from the still-deepening financial crisis that’s occurring across the globe. But it’s a lot easier to convey the effects of a flu bug to the public, than it is to explain the effects of toxic mortgages, derivatives, and the parallel banking system. Hell, I’ll freely admit I don’t completely understand it myself. I just fished out those terms from Wikipedia.

So I guess if we want our next fear-fix, we’ll have to wait for the next potentially crippling disease, natural disaster, bee dissappearance, or Coldplay album release to make its way to the newswire.

Back in 2002, the individuals behind Clueless Mailers distributed a massive diagram that illustrated just how endemic the problem of spam really is. For the first time, you could actually see how various networks connected and collaborated with one another across the globe, to ensure that you had an endless supply of messages in your inbox promising you untold Nigerian fortunes and more manhood than you can shake a stick at… so to speak.

Click to check out the full version of the map

Well, there’s now an updated version that you can access at Spamworld which uses the Google Maps API to track known IPs of networks that contribute to spam traffic on the Internet, in real time (There are other lists out there, but it’s difficult to glean where their numbers are coming from). Looking at the map, it’s not that surprising to see a large number of spam coming from Asia. Which is not to say that the Asian populace is being shady on purpose. It’s merely that there are a lot more people there, and hence the opportunity to set up a relevant infrastructure is that much higher. Almost 2300 IPs carry spam traffic from Turkey, which is almost equivalent to the number from China. Equally strange is the absence of information out there that attempts to explain why.

Perhaps there a lot of server clusters in Turkey that are unwittingly being used by bots and other computer networks as a relay point for spam from elsewhere. Perhaps it’s a viable economic venture for a small group of people in Turkey that have figured out how to exploit the system. Who knows for sure?

But it gets a little weirder than that. Try doing a Google Search for TurkTelecom (Search for “TTnet” – I’ll leave the actual URL off of here) and see what happens. On the first page of results you get links for:

- A Chinese Parts Manufacturer
- A forum about the Nissan Twin Turbo
- A few Training Networks
- An Internet Services Company that has a rock band … or something
- A Textile Company
- The Mongolian Embassy (which,… strangely is linked from the proper TTnet parent domain)

It’s only when you get to page 2 that you actually hit anything that resembles the TTnet site. You’ll also find the Wikipedia entry for the site, which is an orphaned article that has very little info. It has an Alexa rating below the 5000 mark, making it one of the top 5000 visited sites in the world (to put this into perspective, a site like Wired.com falls just over the 1000 mark, whereas McDonalds.com is over the 8000 mark).

It’s an interesting little paradox. This prolific hermit of a entity phases in and out of existence depending on how you look at it.

The only thing that’s missing from that title is some reference to the Swine Flu and the NHL playoffs.

But, SEO-friendly titles aside *ahem*, I just wanted to fire off a quick post about a group of people that decided to say and do something about a recent article that made it’s way into the limelight:

This article was quite typical of those that most certainly got parents everywhere ready to voice their discontent at yet another evil demon of the internet.

However, as reported on Apohenia, this was merely an example of the media grabbing a snippet of information and running with it in order to garner more readers/consumers. Not really a shock there, hm? Anyways, if interested, be sure to check out the article in the Apophenia post which provides data that contradicts the study that the media latched onto initially.

In the last post, I attempted to guess at the future of advertising with respect to the gaming experience. I suggested a scenario whereby you’d be able to order a pizza while playing a game, without ever having to leave the gamespace. Well, it turns out that this was in fact attempted (sort of) by Sony and Pizza Hut back in 2005. While playing EverQuest II, as a player you could enter a command into the system which would then bring up the Pizza Hut website.

This is not exactly what I had mind, as all this really does is launch a web browser which is outside the game world. But it was certainly a step in the right direction. Merging elements of real life into the game environment is something that’s evolved over the last few years, and it’s been met with equal amounts of positive and negative feedback from both consumers and game developers. The major concern amongst the gaming community is that the inclusion of marketing material into a game detracts from its creative value; if you put an ad for Coke or Pepsi into a game, the entire game essentially becomes one giant advertisement. On the other hand, the industry has to be open to different revenue models that will allow it to remain competitive. At the end of the day, someone has to get compensated. So where’s the middle ground?

Well, there are some companies that have been trying to strike a balance. IBM, SonyBMG (there’s that name again), and Nike among others have all set up permanent residence within SecondLife, an online world which has been eluding a specific definition since its inception in 2003.

Once a brand makes a transition like this into a virtual world, it changes in a way that marketers and gamers don’t fully understand yet. If you walk into a store “in the real world”, you interact with a brand. It’s the goal of advertising to make this happen (in order to facilitate a transaction). If you “walk” into a store in SecondLife, the distinction between marketing and brand-interaction becomes blurred. If you end up making a transaction, the experience is really no different than if you walked into a physical store.

The difference between SecondLife and other online worlds however, is that SecondLife has no inherent storyline. There’s no plot distract from, which makes advertising seem less intrusive. It’s almost part of the experience itself. The open ended nature of many modern online games allows for the same kind of “freedom” when it comes to in-game ads. As players find themselves in between a particular set of tasks within the game, they usually congregate in common areas, which provide prime opportunities for advertisers to engage them. At this point, it’s merely up to the advertisers to do what they’ve always been tasked with doing: Provide consumers with an engaging message that persuades them to [trans]act. This doesn’t mean billboards and banners, which seem to be the predominant form of IGA (in game ads) right now. This means being as immersed within the game world as the gamers are. This means understanding their behaviour, and responding to it in a way that is as engaging as the game itself.

An example of such behaviour involves something as simple as traveling within the game world. One of the more tedious aspects of online gaming involves plodding/flying/otherwise moving from place to place. Such a thing can take several minutes, hours, or in some cases, days. So what if a company like RedBull offered an in-game service that would take the player to their desired destination (giving them wings as it were… sorry) for a nominal price (real or virtual)?

Makes sense, no?

Well this little experiment seems to be growing a little larger than I had originally anticipated. Over the last few days I’ve switched everything over to another server, which will allow me to have more control over some of the features and functionality I’d like to implement over the next little while.

Further, you can now access the site using either of the following 2 urls:

http://www.approachingtheta.com

http://www.apptheta.com

Whether or not you want to pronounce that “Approaching the T.A.” is entirely up to you.

More on theme, there’s a great post over on The Social Capitalist by Karl Long entitled “The Medium of Business is Behaviour” that explores the relationship between Design and Business and how both have the ability to influence behaviour (through power and empathy). Purely speaking, companies use a blend of business and design to accomplish this. It’s caused me to think about the response that both of these entities evoke from the public at large. Consumers have just as much ability (if not more) to influence the behaviour of business, though this manifests itself almost purely through [purchasing] power. Consumers don’t really have to put a whole lot of effort into empathic decision making when they’re engaged in a transaction.

It’s a good read. Hop on over and take a look.

The stream of consciousness that led to the writing of this post was interesting, if not a little chaotic. I was responding to some instant messages from within Gmail when another one popped up on Windows Live Messenger. I started thinking about how many instant messaging/sharing services/social networks and platforms there are out there and how that diversity affects the way that we communicate with each other. Copying and pasting links into email/ims used to be the predominant way to show someone something of interest online. Today however, you’d be hard pressed to find any application or web-based product that didn’t have some sort of sharing/messaging component attached to it. Granted, many of the major players have worked in some form of interoperability. But there does seem to be a constant battle between merging forms of communication and yet remaining as distinct as possible. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of social bookmarking. The need for this separation is obvious, if you consider that each method of communication represents the voice of a brand that’s trying to be as loud as possible in order to remain competitive. Enter aggregate sharing services like Share This, Add This, and the Sociable plugin for WordPress, which attempt to inject some order into the chaos.

Click the image to enlarge.

So what does this mean in terms of how we communicate online? What does this mean to marketers?

Well, there are a couple of things worth noting here. The tools that are germane to both of the communication pathways I mentioned will continue to get released. As they do, people will continue to have a myriad of options for spreading viral content. I think the key will be having an understanding of the longevity of the message that underlies that content. Viral videos for example, have a relatively short window to get people interested enough to execute a call to action and visit a website or submit an email address. If those destination websites are interesting in and of themselves, you might be lucky enough to score a conversion and/or get people to return. That being understood, the viral content that got them interested in the first place might be spread through focused bursts via”smaller” channels; IM, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. But if those users find a compelling reason to act afterward, that’s when they might choose to increase the size of the audience for that content and make use of the aggregate sharing services. It’s almost as if the focused pathways allow for a type of proving ground among smaller peer groups in order to decide if the content has the appropriate “A-ha” factor before it proliferates throughout the Cloud.

Finally, I completely appreciate the fact that as of right now there is no easy way to spread the content of this post anywhere. That will change as I adapt to a theme that allows for extra widgets.

I figure the first post on this blog should explain the name, which in turn should give readers a sense of what it’s all about. In the 1998 film Pi written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, protagonist Max Cohen is seen sitting in a cafe explaining to onlooker Lenny Myer that when you divide each successive number in the Fibonacci sequence into one another, the result “approaches Theta.” He then explains that Theta is a Greek symbol representing one of the key numbers in mathematics linked to The Golden Ratio, a mysterious and profound concept that manifests itself across several aspects of our Universe.

What’s interesting is that (like many ideas derived from the movies) this is only partially true. In actuality, the symbol Phi is more closely linked to this concept than Theta. But unless you’re either versed in mathematics or take the interest to research it further (the latter applies to me), you’d be among those confidently distributing “the Theta hypothesis” at your next dinner party.

What I’ve realized is that there are a lot of similarities to this albeit unintended deception in the world of Digital Marketing, a world that I’ve been a part of for the last several years. At some point, we’ve all met a Max Cohen who attempts to explain a concept like Online Segmentation or CPM ad campaigns, but fails to do so because of errors in communication or what have you. We’ve all been in Lenny’s shoes, blindly adopting the explanation and treating it as gospel. In fact as far as the world of Digital Marketing is concerned, I’d wager that there are thousands of Theta hypotheses out there, influencing corporate decisions and consumer behavior.

The important question doesn’t really have to do with the perceived “wrongness” of such hypotheses though. I think there’s a lot more value in examining the responses that are generated as a result. Let’s look at the recent atmosphere surrounding two social networking darlings. Facebook has been receiving seriously negative feedback in light of its new layout, whereas Twitter is positioning itself to be the next emerging giant in the marketplace. Should Facebook focus on figuring out “what went wrong”, in order to self-correct? Should they primarily try to understand what Twitter is doing correctly that’s driving their success? Or is there more value in evaluating the landscape for what it is; constantly in flux. It could be that by the time they’ve re-evaluated their Theta hypothesis and executed a new strategy, consumers will have moved on, even beyond Twitter, to the next greatest thing.

The over-arching theme for this blog involves looking at Digital Marketing from that perspective. Rather than wrestling with the semantic innards of concepts like Social Networks, Microsite Campaigns, Mobile Subscriber Turnover and the like, I’ll be discussing how those concepts drive responses and stimulate change (if any) in an industry that refuses to remain static and easily understood.

There’s also the fact that “Approaching Phi” was a rather unwieldy blog name. But I digress.

Enjoy.