the Internet

Right Brain Renaissance

Submitted by bt on Tue, 09/28/2010 - 13:24

In A Secret History of Consciousness, Gary Lachman (among many other very interesting musings) muses that the Internet could be the harbinger of a right brain renaissance. The decisively non-linear, highly contextualized way content is displayed and digested online, he says, moves markedly away from its hugely linear predecessor, the printed page.

Language functions such as grammar and vocabulary have long been attributed to the same hemisphere said to control linear reasoning—the left. But because the way we consume information while moving across web pages involves not just language, but visual and audio cues across many more complex spatial relationships, it’s the right hemisphere that’s getting the workout when we go online.

Right Brain Workout

Submitted by bt on Tue, 09/28/2010 - 13:13

Speaking of right brain, I recently had the good fortune to work with an interesting social business, TeamWorks. Far outside my B2B marketing technology wheelhouse, the positioning and awareness building done for this cooperative business network was a welcome stretch for me and a rare opportunity to go full-on right brain with the production of a new video declaring for TeamWorks who they are, what they do and where they’re headed. I wrote, produced, directed and edited this 8-minute piece for an audience of potential donors and advisors—in two very full weeks—giving my right brain one mother of an exhilarating workout.

>>Check Out TeamWorks on YouTube

Right Brain – Left Brain Integration

Submitted by bt on Tue, 09/28/2010 - 13:00

Last fall, it was data-driven marketing I declared as the new black when I cited a recent NYT article glamorizing what had traditionally been the realm of geeky good with numbers types (like, ahem, yours truly). Data-driven marketers, it said, are a hot new business persona that looks something like Madison Ave. meets Wall Street: Don Draper meets Gordon Gecko. At last! Those who actually enjoy manipulating spreadsheets, know the difference between a mean and a median, love to talk about outliers and statistical confidence, experimental design and hypothesis-driven adaptive strategies could come out. “Hi my name is Bonnie and I’m a dataholoic,” I could finally admit—and become fashionable!

The Zen Internet

Submitted by bt on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 09:30

the Internet

The very transitoriness of the Internet is a sign of its perfection

To the mind which lets go and moves with the flow of change, transience becomes ecstasy

Rebirth from moment to moment reincarnates the value afresh each moment

To hold the Internet is to loose it

The Internet is miraculously natural without trying to be so

The pleasant and the painful are inseparable

To learn is to survive to become ignorant

The Internet essence is immediate and instantaneous

The ultimate reality of the Internet cannot become the object of knowledge

Living in the Internet is a constant awareness of watching

An awakening to the startlingly obvious may occur at any moment

Rigid control shuts out the experience of learning

Ends are achieved neither through repression nor indulgence

Regarding each new manifestation as our home puts us at home in each new manifestation

The Internet unfolds as we walk upon it

And Speaking of Publishing ...

Submitted by bt on Wed, 01/14/2009 - 11:32

Couldn’t agree more with Seth Godin’s latest blog about the future of publishing both online and off. Although we will miss the morning town paper if it goes away entirely, Godin correctly calls our attention to the point that what we’ll really miss is quite a small percentage of it. 98% of the information traditionally packaged by the city paper is better served online anyway—stock quotes, weather, entertainment reviews. And with less felled trees.

Not sure Site entirely agrees with Godin’s statement that “we don’t use this to support that online. Things support themselves.” To our eye, purveyors of good content are still too timid to ask to be paid for it outright, but we’re optimistic that we’ll see a few breakthrough publishers this year that stop wrapping “free content” up in advertising noise and start asking their audience to pay for what they value.

Sustainable Publishing Online - It's a Good Thing

Submitted by bt on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 10:56

Surprisingly courageous remarks from Jonah Bloom at Ad Age about where the publisher-advertiser-consumer relationship is going in 2009. Noting that online publishing has outgrown the amount of online advertising that might support it, Bloom thinks publishers need to find new revenue models if they expect to survive. Site has been wondering about publishers relying too much upon ad revenue for a while now and is interested to see if Bloom’s predictions for the coming year pan out. As online marketers, we’d love to see endlessly expanding ad budgets. But as online business people, we’d like to see more creative—and sustainable—online business models that break out of the old ad-supported content mold.

Internet Marketing - Good News, Bad News

Submitted by bt on Wed, 12/17/2008 - 10:48

First, the good news. For those who make their living online, an impressive 68% of advertisers plan toincrease digital spending over the next 6 months.

Now, the bad news.

Passing the holidays in lovely Tucson, AZ, Site notes that although our beloved desert hideaway of 750,000 citizens has doubled in size in the past 20 years, its town paper, the Arizona Daily Star, has noticeably shrunk. With each passing year, the news recedes and the ad space grows. Site loves the Internet, but still can't help but morn the waning of a great American tradition--the town paper.

The Truth About Viral Marketing

Submitted by bt on Thu, 09/18/2008 - 15:03

Check out what Marketing Profs had to say about viral marketing. For once, the math looks right. 10 people tell 5, or a million tell 500K. So many expect the opposite - 5 people to tell ten each.

I also liked Dunay's reference to Duncan Watts' theory, also noted in Site's Random Acts of Social Marketing post of a few months ago. Watts says it's the network itself, not any individual contributor that makes the most difference in the successful spread of a virus. Today on MarketingProfs, Dunay rightly cites not the message content, not the viral mechanism, but the network properties of the "bored at work" segment as the determining agent in the spread of a meme.

Random Acts of Social Marketing

Submitted by bt on Tue, 03/18/2008 - 09:05

An interesting debate about the nature of social trends has been launched by Duncan Watts, a network theory scientist who challenges much of Malcolm Gladwell's assertions about social trends in his breakout best-seller, The Tipping Point.

Central to the debate is the relative importance of influencers - those critical dialed-in, friend-laden, early-adopters behind whom the rest of us tag along mimicking their behavior and consumption habits. Gladwell's Tipping Point expands upon a several decades-old theory that puts extra weight on these anointed influential few who marketers and politicians love to court. Indeed, if we agree that "one in 10 Americans tell the other 9 how to vote, where to eat, and what do buy", all we have to do is find and persuade that 10% and we're home free.