Digital Moms and Social Media Part 1: Beyond Email and Google…

You are a mom. You consider yourself high-tech, or at least getting that way fast. You have children who are digital natives. You are an immigrant in their world.

Which technologies are you most likely to use in their digital world?

Email? Probably a given. Facebook? A lot more this year than last. These get you to other moms and their kids.

How about Instant Messaging or Texting?

Do you have a blog? Can you explain what RSS means? Do you browse the web on your mobile device? Do you video or audio podcast?

Which of the afore mentioned channels do you use if you are a mom in your 20’s? 30’s? 40’s?

RazorFish’s latest publication gives crisp data to these and many other questions. The landscape is changing as high-tech moms increasingly reduce the gap between their channels and the channels of their children. One sample chart is worth a look: (can’t see the small numbers?… click on the chart to go to the report)

Rodents Have Reality Webshows

Don’t have a blog, a podcast, or any digital channel of any kind to showcase your expertise to the world?

Get with it. Today, even Rats have a digital tribe.

http://www.herorat.org/

Thanks Paula.

Social Media is Depression Proof

I would argue for mini-depression-proofness in Social Media because we in the Tech world have been through a depression recently. Between March 2000 and let’s say Summer 2002, 30% unemployment and vanishing tech sector companies were the norm. Unlike real estate and financial industries, Tech has a very near-term memory of devastation. Many, like me, still have scars from those days. We are already the drepession era grandparents of Web 1.0, and we have taken precautions. We start on a shoestring budget, we pay as we go, we keep the lavishness in check until the check clears.

Before the Great Depression, over 250 car manufactuers existed in the U.S. alone. After the depression, the only automobile companies left were assembly-line-based manufacturers. Economies of scale demanded a car be made cheaply enough for a struggling depression era family to afford one.

The Social Media explosion of the past 3 years has produced a pre-depression level variety of shall we say “mobile” services, as pictured above.

Striking a pessimistic pose, let us say this current economic crisis ends up being a “mini-depression” as Bill Gross recently opined here.

What will the Social Media, or digital landscape look like after a real shake out? Will the boutique shops make it, unlike their depression era automobile counterparts? When the tide goes out, how many are swimming naked, as Buffett would say?

As long as a few services like WordPress, Typepad, Youtube, Google, and Yahoo survive, the rest of us Tucker-like companies will too. We don’t have an industrial revolution in progress as in the 1930’s. We have an information-based digital revolution in place. And we do not need assembly line efficiencies to survive. We need useful networks, useful digital literacies, and useful content to survive. It is still a Blue Ocean for many. Can you be connective, useful, relevant, engaging, and digital in your niche?  (accidental acronym C.U.R.E.D)

If yes, you’ll survive. If no, see this.

One could argue the plethora of Social Media companies grew out of the need to network with each other for support through the 2000-2003 Tech era’s difficult financial times, and the need to not be reliant on one source of funding, and the need to be independent of single location-based work forces or local economies. This is why many will survive the current devastating downturn, at least the ones started by Web. 1.0 grandparents. (anyone over 30)

Actually, it is time to step things up a bit. Great environment in which innovate.

Just a thought.

Top 100 Channels in All Countries and Outer Space

In case you need to find out which websites Icelanders most frequent, or who demands the most clicks in Turkey, here is a handy site. You can find any top 100 ranking in any country. Of course these people have been the best at it for years, but sometimes we forget to look.

Clearly, we are not all searching for the same thing in the web universe.

And while we are on the subject of searching in the universe, the image above represents everything orbiting our planet at the moment; satellites, various flotsam and jetsam. Talk about mobile content! How do we search that?

Free Business Model for Free

Decades ago, when I was an advertising art director in NY, one of our clients used advertising copy which pointed out a main competitor was going out of business.

The competitor was a home furnishing business. It had huge signs in the store front which said, “Going Out of Business”!

The “Going Out of Business” business sued our client. Turns out the furnishing store’s LLC was officially “Going Out of Business”, LLC. They never had any intention of going out of business.

Their model was to get people in the store who wanted something for free, then do hard upselling. I always thought that was a bit disingenuous. It also seemed to invite a customer in which was not in the mood to tolerate less than spectacular deals.

The internet seems to have a dynamic similar to this these days. Only less disingenuous.

My good friend Brian Newman featured a post about Monty Python giving away all their stuff on Youtube for free. The effect was not a going out of business sale, but soaring purchases of their DVD’s.

Chris Anderson, of The Long Tail fame, has been promoting his book “Free, The Future of Business” for some time, but his piece in the WSJ this week put it best. Give it away.

So if you are in the media business, or any business for that matter, and the money flow has been pinched off like a cement truck parked on a garden hose. You might want to seem to be “Going Out of Business” ala my ad client’s foe, but have an interesting offer which engages them in a non-traditional way.

As Monty Python famously said, “And now for something completely different”!