The Steve Rubel Stream

20 Jul 2010

Presentation: Six Digital Trends to Watch

One of the best aspects of my job is that I get to learn from incredibly smart people. Working for Edelman is like playing for the Yankees. Richard Edelman has an approach to talent that in some ways resembles the late George Steinbrenner (not the Howie Spira side of George, but the good side). The firm consistently attracts all-stars to the team and puts them in a great position to succeed. The result is that every day I get to hit the field with pros like Mike Slaby or Richard Sambrook or Carol Cone - it's all very inspiring.

One of these people is David Armano - who I work very closely with - and we recently tag-teamed on this presentation on six trends to watch. For more head over to David's blog. As always, we're eager to hear your thoughts.

Six Digital Trends To Watch by Steve Rubel and David Armano

View more presentations from Edelman Digital.

15 Jun 2010

Mind Map: Three Digital Trends for the New Decade

Three Digital Trends for the New Decade

Have you tried mind mapping? I am a mind mapping fanatic. I find that it really helps me think through challenges and develop innovative solutions. Chris Brogan too is a fan. He uses it to plot out his projects and ensure he's on target.

I have been giving a talk recently on the three key trends that marketers will need to adapt to in the new decade: 1) the move from a a web of pages to a web of streams, 2) the challenge in becoming more digitally visible in an age of too much noise and 3) the need to become more data driven in everything we do - and with a do-it-yourself attitude (DIY).

Recently I gave a talk on this topic at a conference in Amsterdam and the folks at World of Minds created a mind map of it, which you can find here (PDF) or on Scribd.

What do you think of these? I love when others mind map my speeches and also large events because you get to see how others interpret your thoughts. I have long wanted to create more mind maps here. If I did, what kind of maps would be valuable? Let me know in the comments on Twitter.

14 Apr 2010

Three Trends Slates Will Accelerate

A little over a week ago I moved my MacBook Air off my desk at home and jumped in using a slate to cover 90% of my work/personal needs (basically I just use my laptop to manage the slate). In the office, I only used my HP desktop for complex tasks that required it - like PowerPoint.

My verdict: if you are a knowledge worker and your computing needs center mostly around the web and text, as mine do, slates are ready for prime time. I am going to continue using my iPad as my primary device. And I hope to try HP's slate when it comes out (HP is an Edelman client).

I believe the slate format is the future - perhaps not mainstream today, but they will be soon. However, as the slates take off they're going to have an impact on marketing and media as well. Here are the three trends that I believe the format will accelerate...

1) Media Reforestation

Media is in a rapid state of evolution as consumption moves from atoms (e.g. print) to bits. I believe all tangible forms of media - everything you can see, touch, taste and smell - will be in sharp decline or extinct by 2012 in the US, and eventually globally.

Mobile devices, especially slates, are going to accelerate this trend. The experience of reading the Wall Street Journal on the iPad is better than the web site or the print edition. If News Corp. prices it reasonably, I will subscribe. I believe many millions will too.

Everyday a newsprint reader dies and is not replaced. However, newspaper readers will be around forever and slates give the medium a real shot in the arm. However, that's not to say there won't be pain - the economics are different.

2) The Attention Crash

On my iPad right now I have four feature-length movies, 2500 songs, two email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, six ebooks, dozens of articles I want to read (thank you Instapaper!), many news apps, games and more.

Now I am an extreme information junkie. Not everyone is. But these devices put infinite choices at our disposal. Yet the fact remains, we only have one brain.

We're deep into a crisis of attention. Slates will accelerate attention apnea. We will start and stop tasks, jumping from one to the other. The end result, more media snacking, fewer meals, And when we do consume meals, it maybe quality content like movies, news apps and TV shows that reign. Time will tell.

3) Work-Life Blending

The great thing about slates is the value they offer for the cost - $500 - as well as in their portability. This week I attended several meetings inside and outside the firm and I spotted iPads at every single one. Yesterday I attended a brainstorm at a major NGO that included people from around the globe. At one table of six there I saw four iPads. Most of these devices I suspect were purchased by individuals not their employers.

Slates, like instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook and the like, are going to sneak into corporations via the back door, though I suspect some employers will buy them for knowledge workers.

The trend here to note is that these devices blend our work/personal lives. Slates didn't cause blending but as more of us bring them to work, it accelerates. IT managers will need to provide sound guidance to ensure these devices and smart phones protect corporate information, while not stifling productivity. A byproduct: this is will likely encourage companies to become more social since slates and smart phones bring social networking deep inside the firewall.

That's what I see in my crystal ball. Slates largely accelerate trends that smart phones started. Now I may be wrong of course. Time will tell. But I see a lot of promise for these devices and potentially many winners, not just Apple.

1 Mar 2010

Ads Drop Dot-Com URLs in Favor of "Facebook Us"

The following is also my March Forbes.com column.

Today it seems that many marketers are literally tripping over themselves to invade social networks in force. There's almost a land grab underway as businesses rush to set up hubs on the "big three": Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. You can definitely sense that we've passed a tipping point.

All at once, businesses large and small are increasingly recognizing that they need to go where the people are. And with 100 million Facebook users in the US who spend an average seven hours on the site each month (Nielsen), it's surely a no-brainer. When your local pizzeria is promoting their Facebook page at the register, as mine does, then you know that marketing has changed. The same applies to Twitter and YouTube.

However, with this land grab, a controversial shift is underway. The trusty dot-com URL, at least its role in marketing, maybe dying.

Some companies are de-emphasizing spaces they own, like their web site, in all of their ads. Instead, they're pushing people towards spaces they rent where people are spending time - e.g. their Twitter, YouTube Facebook hubs.

Case in point: UniBall. During the Winter Olympic games I was surprised to see the pen manufacturer use its TV ads to point people to its Facebook page. There UniBall is giving away 10,000 pens. Nowhere in its ads does Uniball promote its own web site. It's all about Facebook. Clever.

Much the same, I noticed the New York Knicks basketball team in its outdoor ads had only three calls for action - an SMS code, Twitter and Facebook. Again no URL. A dot-com was nowhere to be found.

Finally, during a recent Mashable event in New York, Columbia Journalism professor Sree Sreenivasan pointed out that this is becoming the norm in the motion picture business. Perhaps this is a function of living in a world where people hardly use bookmarks any more and just Google.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. It's all reminiscent of the mid-1990s when URLs started popping up in TV ads and billboards. Or worse, when AOL keywords first surfaced in the early 1990s. These were curious at first, then later, welcome. Now I guess a URL is just boring.

However, this time it's different.

For starters, when marketers promote their social network hubs over their URLs they risk that more savvy consumers will see right through it. People could perceive it as a flat attempt to look cool and hip. Consumers already skeptical of advertising and this just adds to it.

Second, the use of "heavy artillery" - e.g. advertising - to round up more fans and followers is equally controversial. This would be fine if it lead to true person-to-person engagement. However, many brands are just using their Twitter and Facebook presences to spew out updates, without any thought to how consumers will benefit by essentially opting in. UniBall is providing value but others don't go to such lengths.

Finally, much the same, very few businesses treat social networks as personal, conversational spaces. Hardly any feature real employees. And a scant few aim to advance shared interests.

So while it's welcome that marketers are beginning to promote the hubs they rent in all of the relevant communities, few are really optimizing them into true relationship builders. Most are devoid of humans - e.g. employees - and many look like faceless companies that are trying to check off boxes or slap shiny logos on their site.

In some ways, it makes sense to me that marketers are emphasizing their spaces where people are spending time and where they can be easily found. However, at the same time, with so few understanding what it takes - people - to really build credible relationships, I wonder how long this trend might last and if a backlash is the works.

If I were a dot-com URL, I wouldn't write my will just yet.

4 Feb 2010

Facebook Could Eat the Web

Photo credit: mastermaq

Like almost everyone else on the planet, it seems, I am spending more time on Facebook than any other site. The lone exception is Google. The reason I know this is that Safari, my browser, lists Facebook as my most visited site when I access its top sites feature.

In addition to using Facebook to check in on what my family, friends and colleagues are up to, I have been using it as a newsreader for months. The screenshot below is my reader. This is something that the company suggested everyone do here. Although I suspect that most users haven't taken the steps top create a dedicated news list as Facebook suggests, there's not doubt that the social network is becoming a critical source of information. Yesterday, Hitwise published a fascinating report that illustrates just how large Facebook looms as a source for news.

But something bigger is going on here...Facebook is eating the web.

Yes, Facebook is becoming the web for millions and millions of people. As I have written before, there's already a wealth of amazing things you can do within the site without ever leaving. What's more, as I also speculated, the site giving rise to headless media companies like Zynga that don't need a web site to succeed.

In short, I believe Facebook is unstoppable. They aren't just the next Google. They're the next web.

Here's where I see things shaping up from here.

First, Facebook will move from being a solely place where people connect to each other to a site where people connect with businesses and, more importantly, the people who work for them, as I wrote yesterday. This, as my friend Robert Scoble, points out is an area where others dominate. But I expect Facebook will catch up fast. They will buy Yelp and/or Foursquare - or just implement similar technology - and become the yellow pages of the web.

Facebook may not even need to buy Yelp to make it happen. They are already slowly becoming the yellow pages. Everywhere I go I see signs like the one above telling us where we can find a local business on Facebook. In addition, last night during a fascinating session on the future of journalism (archived here), Sree Sreenivasan from Columbia Journalism School noted that movie posters don't have URLs anymore. They just tell us to go find them on Facebook. That's significant.

Second, Facebook will start to give web developers more tools to build entire rich micro-sites that exist solely inside the social network. Check out what 1800Flowers is already doing. Such a move will encourage more companies to focus 100% of their web marketing efforts on maximizing their Facebook presence. And why not? The site has 350+ million users, half of whom log in at least once a month. It's much easier to go where people are than to get them to come to you.

Third, Facebook will get serious about search. It's an untapped monetization pipeline that can bring in billions - especially when they couple social algorithms with crawlers. Phones too.

So what could derail Facebook? A lot. People could tire of it. But I don't see that happening. In fact, I see us putting more of our content inside Facebook and I see them making it all easily searchable and accessible from any device and leveraging connections to make it all even more powerful.

Now history says I will be wrong. AOL tried this and lost. But AOL did not have the algorithms and social connections that Facebook has in place, so I think we're in a different era. Facebook could eat the web or, perhaps more likely, become a parallel universe web. But, the question is this - will the web allow itself to be eaten or will two webs emerge? Time will tell.

Presentation: Six Digital Trends to Watch

Mind Map: Three Digital Trends for the New Decade

Three Trends Slates Will Accelerate

Ads Drop Dot-Com URLs in Favor of "Facebook Us"

Facebook Could Eat the Web

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