Petaflops and the PS3

What is a petaflop? At first glance I thought this was an unfavorable review of the latest PETA campaign, however a petaflop is the capability of a computer to do a quadrillion floating point operations per second (FLOPS). That's the equivalent of every person on earth doing 75,000 simple math problems per second. Anybody remember "Chisanbop" ?

The reason this is important is because it is the milestone reached by Stanford's "Folding@home" project. Folding@home was designed to simulate protein folding and perform molecular dynamics simulations. The data gathered here would be used to understand the progression of diseases such as Alzheimer's, mad cow, cancer, and even Cystic Fibrosis.

Aside from the OSX, Linux and WIndows folding applications available, there are over 600,000 Playstation 3 users registered who participate in the folding@home project as well. If you feel so inclined you can download the program here and let your computer (or PS3) fight disease when you are not fighting space aliens.

Monetizing Social Networks

Robert Young has an interesting post on GigaOm about monetizing social networks. His main prediction is that "social networks will prove themselves to be the most effective brand communication platforms on the Internet."  Robert continues on making four observations about better positioning social networks to make money.

1. Social network sites are bad platforms for call to action ads.
2. Social networks are people powered so advertising needs to be done with people not at people.
3. Social networks are too cluttered with ads. To increase CMPs you need to create scarcity.
4. Scalability is key; therefore, automation is critical.

As new and old media companies rush to fill the demand for social experiences online, monetization will decide which projects are successful.  I look forward to Turner's Super Deluxe as an example of applying the learnings of '06.

How to handle citizen marketers

Guy Kawasaki interviews Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell, authors of the new book "Citizen Marketers" and the blog "Church of the Consumer."

Guy asks the pair how companies should handle events like the Diet Coke-Mentos video.

Answer: There are three different ways to respond to amateur grassroots efforts like that:

1. Say nothing and let the citizen marketers have their time in the spotlight. It’s a safe and conservative approach.

2. Use your company website or blog to point to the citizen marketers in the spirit of “what people are saying about us.” This opens the door to ceding control, and that’s a good step. Just remember that citizen marketers don’t follow instructions. This approach requires company spokespeople to have a sense of humor. That wasn’t the case with the Coke, whose spokesperson was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as scolding people for not drinking their precious beverage!

3. Quickly build a program around what’s happening. It can be beneficial but also tricky because it can taint the grassroots nature of what’s happening. Keep it simple. The “firecracker” nature of something like Diet Coke and Mentos has a short half-life. Better to openly solicit ideas from the people or community involved and keep it simple. Follow the lead of the community. And keep the company lawyers locked in a cage.

Second Life crosses million user mark

According to the Second Life blog, in-world residents now number over 1 million.  Not only that, they expect to sign up 50,000 new user today alone.

Second Life has been in the news lately with a number of major brands moving in-world. Recently Wired Magazine, Reuters, Intel and IBM all revealed Second Life projects. Advertisers like BBH and Leo Burnett are also moving into the new space. From an article in the New York Times today called "A Virtual World but Real Money," there are over 30 companies now in-world with scores trying to figure out how and why to join.

The buzz around Second Life could not be much stronger. Many marketers may be searching for a little perspective. 

Second Life is not a game.

Think back to the original definition of cyberspace by William Gibson: "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding, (69)."

Second Life is a virtual location where people can meet to have conversations, make friends, create items, build buildings and make money.

Second Life is not free.

Well, its free to create a character but not to own land or build objects. Many brands choose to create islands so that their brand will not be influenced by other brands or residence's creations in close proximity.  A private island costs $1,250 to create and $195 per month to maintain, before construction begins.  While that is a drop in the bucket for major brand budgets, it still represents a commitment to exploring a new medium.

Second Life requires a fast computer and Internet connection.

Rendering out virtual worlds requires horsepower.  To really see texture details you need a good bit of video ram.  For today's gamer the graphics will look 5 years old. Second Life, as its is presented today, requires patience and a willingness to suspend desire for graphic quality found in most current games. 

With so much momentum its hard to predict what will happen next for Second Life.  However, the population of multi-player virtual environments continues to grow rapidly and marketers may find that the best place to engage consumers is in a world in which they are already immersed. (Chart from MMOG Chart)

Grasshopper, there is no kimono

It's become clear that a fundamental shift in thinking that needs to take place if marketers are to make the transition to a media 2.0 world. We've all heard (and probably said ourselves) expressions about "opening the kimono" and how the internet was the medium that required doing so -- well, true, but not far enough, because the entire concept retains media 1.0 artifacts of thought that can critically damage your brand -- as evidenced by the Walmart/Edelman "flog" fiasco.

In a 1.0 world, there is a "kimono" -- a veil of separation between your brand and your marketplace -- that marketers choose to open and close to varying degrees at various times and in various media. Marketers in effect wholly own their brands and play the role of geisha, cleverly and seductively showing a little ankle in order to entice markets into a branded relationship.

In a 2.0 world, it's clear that brands are co-owned with your markets. This isn't a new lesson -- the New Coke debacle/triumph (depending on where you are re that conspiracy theory) illustrated this concept years ago. New media vehicles just exacerbate the issue. When you have truly wrapped your head around co-ownership, you will find that you have very different notions about how to use these vehicles. 2.0 blogging for Walmart? Well, on the one hand, your brand co-owners will expect a highly authentic blog from Walmart leadership, addressing the real issues and opportunities facing the brand in the marketplace. Marketing campaigns that incorporate blogging are fine -- but are either openly "made up" -- think about an interactive ad campaign in which an obviously manufactured teen cartoon character blogs about back to school -- or "authentic" - in which, say, four real moms (and a single-parent dad) blog about getting their kids back to school and the real challenges they face. OK, these ideas are off the top of my head, but serve the purpose to illustrate the  principle at work here: wake up and smell the sake, folks -- there is no kimono.

NBC Universal's Five New Media Principles

NBC Universal's digital czar, Beth Comstock commented on how NBC is going to deal with the new media environment at Mipcom, a programing trade show.

She said NBC Universal needed to "create the best, most innovative content, get used to sharing control, tap the power of the community, develop a keen understanding of constantly changing consumer behavior and, finally get used to the idea that the media marketplace from now on is going to be full of contradictions and tensions."

The Adage article goes on to highlight the difficultie s facing media executives in keeping up with consumer behavior.  At THINK we realize the media environment is changing rapidly and we believe the only way to keep up with the behavior is to be a part of the "consumer-led republic."

Telling stories on blogs, making videos for YouTube and building characters and buildings in Second Life are just a few of the things we have been up to lately.  The best way to know the consumer is to be the consumer.

Jakob Nielsen: Participation Inequality

Jakob Nielsen looks at the participation of users in communities and discusses strategies in increase contributions.

Thesis: In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

Jakob reviews the research and gives and overview of the many problems caused by a lack of contributing users. Companies interested in feedback suffer from unrepresentative samples. Product and service reviews site have a similar problem; all the reviews are written by the same people, a "tiny minority" of the total site viewers.

Fixing the contribution problem: You can't.

But you can try and make it more a little more equal.

Jakob's areas of improvement:

• Make it easier to contribute
• Make participation a side effect
• Edit, don't create
• Reward - but don't over reward - participants
• Promote quality contributors

See also:
Drooping Tail and Log-Log Charts
Zipf Curves and Website Popularity