It’s Christmas morning, and you’re 5 years old. You rush downstairs before everyone else and start tearing into that one gift that’s been teasing you with its shiny wrapping and big red bow for what seems like forever. Shreds of paper begin to rain down as your eyes widen at the sight of… a brand new chemistry set.

That’s pretty much how I felt about Google Wave when I first looked received my invite. It could be awesome… later, once I actually figure out what to do with it. But because it’s in limited beta right now, there aren’t really enough people that I can interact with in order to take advantage of all of its features. … Ok, a chemistry set isn’t really a social device, but you get my drift.

Don’t get me wrong. I “get” why it’s awesome. I just haven’t been able to experience it for myself. Depending on how long it’s in beta (which is likely to be quite some time, given their track record with their other products) I suppose the userbase will grow, and soon we’ll all be engaged in really rich conversations about the most recent episode of House, or how much I loathe green peppers or something.

That’s one of the things that amuses me about the mass audience (myself included). We seem to crave really cool, ever advancing technology to perform the simplest of tasks. The vast assortment of new applications dedicated to interesting ways to churn out 140 character posts on Twitter is proof of this. What do any of these apps do that’s really THAT much different from sending a text message to one or more people? Further, given that there IS a difference, how many of us take full advantage of even the most basic features? Given the iconic nature of the image below, I’m willing to bet it isn’t many.

If you’ve seen any of the trailer videos for Google Wave, they make a pretty good case for how it could be used in the course of daily events. A near seamless blending of email/IM/texting etc., making the sharing of information that much easier. But given the ever present challenge of convincing people to change their online habits (IE is still the leading web browser, despite Firefox/Chrome/Safari being better products in my opinion), I’m a little apprehensive about how fast this will take place. This isn’t merely a new tool, it’s a new toolset that’s going to require people to change the way they think about how they communicate.

I guess, as with most things, we shall wait and see. If anyone else out there has access to Wave and wants to give it a spin, drop me a line at my Gmail account (Chris DOT Baboolal).

As I fell asleep last night, a thought began to coalesce which accurately summed up what I’ve learned so far from being on Twitter. About a half hour later I woke up in a daze and wrote down that thought, hoping to expand on it at some point today. Of course, when I looked at that note this morning it was apparent that my moment of clarity was anything but (hence the title of today’s post – 2 points to anyone who gets the reference):

Fortunately, with a little caffeine and some online radio tunes, I’m able to recover some of the highlights. The early-adopt / early-abandon method was definitely taken by a LOT of people, as evidenced by several accounts that only 1 or 2 posts in the first couple of days since joining. There’s a strong, active community of people (celebs and non-celebs alike) that post no less than a half a dozen random thoughts per day. And then there are some that post one or two well-crafted thoughts with attached links whenever the mood strikes. Of course, there’s a healthy number of hybrid Twitterers (Tweeters? – forgive me, I still haven’t really absorbed the clique-lingo) that fill out the scatterplot as well, of which I consider myself to be one of.

From what I gather, people haven’t come to a consensus about exactly WHAT Twitter is. To some it’s a blog, to others it’s a megaphone, and still yet to others it’s like some sort of lasso, used to corral the random thoughts of others for later processing. As I posted some time ago, it’s not unique, but I suppose all that matters is that it’s still standing.

Some other random highlights:

Brent Spiner – Still amusing, still weird, still strangely compelling to read.
Alan Cross – Yet another channel to follow one of radio’s most knowledgeable and entertaining personalities.
@EverySpam/PornBot that has ever added me to their list – Perpetual proof that there will always be a mechanism out there to add noise to balance out the signal.

As I was writing the title for this post, I wrestled with whether or not it even needed to be said. Yet, incidences of crime amongst kids and teens attributed to violent video games still continue to make the news (as recently as last month, in fact). I’ve never understood the tendency for the public to imbue video games, movies, and most other forms of media with the responsibility of teaching children right from wrong. “What message is this sending my child?” “How can they be allowed to teach this to children?” Those are just some of the questions that are hurled at the producers of media that contain the blood, guts, and gore that we’ve come to accept as somewhat commonplace.

So, I saw the following article come through my RSS feeds this morning: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/07/games-for-tweens/ After reading it, I wondered where all of the acid-tongued criticism was, and why it wasn’t being being doled out for these games as well. Then I took a step back and asked a larger question. Why are we holding these games (and their movie counterparts, where applicable) responsible for setting the moral compass for these kids? To what degree is society willing to transfer [what should be a] parental role, into the hands of the media?

There’s been a lot of commentary on this subject before, and I’m certainly not going to be the last one to voice my opinion on it. I feel that it’s necessary to maintain a dialogue on this issue though, as whenever an incident occurs that’s supposedly linked to a piece of “corrupt” media, cooler heads seldom prevail. The witch hunts, calls for sanctions, boycotts, and bans usually begin, well before someone opts to take a serious look for root causes.

In 10 years or so, if a contestant for a reality show like America’s Next Top Model (God help me if that show is still on in 10 years) flips out and kills an entire town, I wonder how much blame would be placed on games like those in the Wired article. Or what happens if a girl falls into a manhole while texting on her cellphone? Will the city get blamed, or is it technology’s fault that she didn’t see the large void in the pavement? Oh wait… nevermind.

As far as the Digital space goes, a mountain of information has been absorbed into the collective consciousness of the world in the last couple of weeks. So much so that it’s hard to measure or even comment on exactly what it means.

The Chinese government hobbles Google, Twitter becomes the de facto source of connection for the Iranian election conflict, Bing says hello world, the Palm Pre makes a surprisingly impressive entry into the marketplace, and the web itself felt the strain of half a dozen celebrity deaths.

With each of these events comes the maelstrom of online commentary, as people attempt to reflect and organize the information into digestable units. But in recent weeks it seems that there hasn’t been enough time to consume one event before another explodes onto the scene.

How do you think this affects our overall ability to communicate about events that occur all around us? Do these things go into a queue for future processing? Do some things get filtered out? Is it possible to process them all in parallel? All of the above?

“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.

From Wikipedia:

LiveJournal was started on April 15, 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick as a way of keeping his high school friends updated on his activities.

Today, some 10 years later, it boasts some 10 million users (with the usual percentage of duplicate/inactive accounts being taken into consideration). It’s an established platform with a rich community, and a feature set that lets you choose your level of involvement. I remember when it was released, it wasn’t met with an incredible amount of fanfare, but it got enough attention to grow into a pretty sustainable organization. It played in a space with few competitors, each of whom managed to carve out their own niche in the marketplace. It predates MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, and many of the other global players in its space.

There aren’t that many celebrities with LJ accounts (I’m informed that Dave Coulier may have had one at one point, but he’s the most *ahem* famous one that I’ve heard of). I’ve never heard of it making the news. In fact I think it’s safe to say that there just aren’t that many people that know about this service and it’s lovable, pants-eating mascot.

Enter another mascot. Except this time it’s not a goat. It’s an unassuming little blue bird that represents the most talked about phenomenon in social media since Facebook and MySpace. Just this past week, the battle over who was to be crowned the “Twitter King” took place. I’m not sure who won that battle aside from Twitter itself, which got more free publicity than they could have afforded on their own. Which brings up another point; Twitter has no business model, or at least not one that’s apparent anyways (they’re largely funded by venture capital).

What’s more, is that Twitter does less than LiveJournal. Much less in fact. It’s limit of 140 characters per post aside, if you actually look at what Twitter does, it’s hard to fathom why this thing has soaked up so much of the limelight. Well, maybe it’s worth asking other Twitter users just why this thing is so useful. The Twitter site features a rotating set of testimonials that should shed some light on the issue:

“If you aren’t familiar with Twitter, it is one of those things, like MySpace, that sounds totally ridiculous and stupid when you first hear about it. But once you start using it, you realize how much fun it is.” – Eric Nuzum, Author of The Dead Travel Fast

“Twitter is the first thing on the web that I’ve been excited about in ages.” – Jason Kottke, Blogger

“Incredibly useful.” – Wired

“When I first started doing it, I thought, ‘geez, not another website to worry about updating and checking’, but now I’m glad I did it.” – point_chevalier, livejournaller

… Alright. So I’m gathering that its immediate benefit is unclear, but it’s fun, “incredibly useful” to all of Wired, and exciting? Further, the point of testimony from the apparent LJ convert “point_chevalier” seems questionable at best. There’s got to be something more to this. I mean, if the US Prez and Britney Spears are on the trolley, then surely I’m missing something no?

Perhaps it’s got some indefinable charm. Something that’s uniquely Twitteresque. … Something that Pownce and Identica don’t?

Now, those who know me often suggest that I’m a naysayer when it comes to new technology like this, but that’s not entirely true in this case. Firstly, it’s not new. The technology has been employed in the past to do exactly what Twitter is doing. And secondly, it’s not that I’m saying Twitter is bad per se. I’m just trying to understand exactly why it’s been the one to receive so much attention when it really isn’t any different from existing platforms.

For the record, I’m neither a “Tweeter” nor do I have an actual LJ account. It’s just not my particular brand of vodka.

I am now going to have a sandwich. Ham and Swiss on white. I may also have a drink. Or not. Stay tuned for more.

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.