Question 94 of 365: Should we buy and sell our screen real estate?

My wife and I sold our first house this weekend.

It was the place that both of our children started their lives. It was the first place that we could truly call our own. And, it now belongs to someone else. It is theirs to experience and tell stories about. It is theirs to raise their kids and try not to kill the grass in. And I am happy about the whole process.

However, signing those final papers and seeing the check get deposited in our bank account made it all so surreal. It also brought home the idea that it isn’t something that happens every day. I had never before sold a piece of earth to another human being and I don’t anticipate doing it again for a long time. But, the feeling was so nice and so other worldly that it made me want to think about space in a whole different way.

I owned that piece of land, that space, for a period of time. And with a few notable exceptions (doing illegal things within it), I could do whatever I wanted to with it. While I own many objects, a house is the only space that I have ever owned (although, I guess you could argue a car is a moving space I own, but let’s not get too semantic). And then I started thinking about the spaces that I own online. While I am a huge advocate for the cloud, I don’t think that I can make the case that I really own much of what is up on the internet with my name on it. If all of the hosting services I pay for and Google (which, I mostly don’t) went under, I would be left with nothing. So, I went after a more literal definition of space that I can own.

I own my screens.

I own the displays in my devices that let me interact with all of the data that exists in the same way that I own my house that lets me interact with the other people in my family. Our family owns couple televisions, a couple computers, some cell phones, and an iPod or two. This screen real estate is owned outright. And while, I never had thought about it this way until I sold my first house, what if I were to sell part of that screen to someone else?

What if I wanted to sell 1/10th of my laptop screen to an advertising firm? What if I wanted to lease 1/4th of my TV to my favorite entertainment company? What if I wanted to create a commodified market for screen real estate, where users could actually set the price of their own screens depending on their willingness to click on products and services and the percentage of their screens they wanted to part with.

It seems to me that the companies and advertisers have it exactly backwards. They are dealing with a middleman, a reseller of real estate. They are buying ads from Google or from a television network, when they could be buying it directly from the users. They could be working directly with the customers who will be the ones actually buying their product rather than working with a company who will not. I get that Google is the one distributing the ads, but I don’t think we need a distribution service at all if I am accepting the responsibility for selling off 20% of my screen. I am no longer a passive part of the contract with content providers and marketers. I am no longer trying to fast forward through commercials because I have selected the ones that I want to see. If I have leased my screen, then I must sit through the ads that companies want to push.

And I am now choosing what to be sold. I can choose only technology advertising, or food, or local. If companies really want to get smart, they will stop talking to mobile and location-based ad gurus. They will start talking to users about just what kinds of things they would be interested in selling their screen for.

For example, I would sell 1/10th of my computer screen to a running banner of local deals on food, new technology products, and books and periodicals. I would love to be pushed that information in exchange for a few hundred dollars a year. I would be a more informed consumer and I would be able to afford more of those want-based (rather than need-based) purchases.

Unfortunately, at the moment, it seems as though many people don’t think that I own my screen enough to sell directly to me. They think that they have to go through a different company that provides the software or the web-service to reach me. It is almost as if Google is putting up billboards on my front lawn and then selling other people the opportunity of putting up ads. But, if they would have just asked me in the first place, I would put up signs for them, so long as they give me a good deal on landscaping or driveway sealing.

Let’s cut out the middleman. Let’s establish a marketplace for screen real estate. Realtors optional.

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Question 78 of 365: Should your brand be a person?

The is no lack of branding going on in the twittersphere or on any of the social networks that have built huge organization promotion services (Yelp, FourSquare, Facebook). Once a company or non-profit has seen potential to get more eyeballs on their product, they have launched head first into the arena. It is just unfortunate that so many of them have no idea what they are doing.

It has become an expectation on any webpage to see your affiliate Facebook or twitter presence mentioned. It has become even more of an expectation that people will be talking about your brand on those services. So, the logic goes that if you put up a twitter account, a blog or a facebook page, you have secured your right to guide the conversation and (hopefully) the people to your corner of the internet.

And yet, I see mostly this:

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

When, I should be seeing mostly this:

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

The Difference I see is that restaurant highlighted in the first image opened without a person behind the brand (2299 W. Littleton Blvd, Littleton, Co by the way… awesome coffee shop and wine bar) and the second opened with huge fanfare from the twitterati of Boulder, Co. There were nothing but people (and burgers, I suppose) behind this brand. They give away food because of twitter, they have conversations with others because of twitter. They have even gotten other people to take photos and post them on twitter, just because they have engaged the audience with people, instead of merely products.

It just isn’t enough to have a Facebook page or Twitter account, you actually have to have a real person behind it. There needs to be a man (or woman) behind the curtain if you are going to be the great and powerful Wizard. And you need to go out and have a conversation if you want people to start talking about yourself. Go out and get early adopters who talk about your stuff. Follow people who matter in the community. Start commenting on their ideas. Be a person in a community, not a brand among other brands. (Offering free stuff, access, or learning is never a bad thing as well).

While this post is most focused on companies who do a bad job of promoting their brand on social media, I believe that all organizations need to be doing a better job of placing people on the front lines of defending their brands. Non-profits should not let the conversation out of their sight just because they have always promoted with traditional methods. Schools should not just be pushing out information from their online presence, they should be using it to listen and to engage everyone. And for all of those organizations who can’t find the time or the personnel to manage a Twitter or Facebook account. Here is the easiest way to create a good conversation:

1. Sign up for a twitter account using someone’s gmail address, but instead of putting the regular gmail account use the + sign, like this: orgname+twitter@gmail.com. This will allow you to filter all incoming mail from that address and forward it to as many different people that are managing the account as you want.
2. Set up those filters immediately after setting up the account.
3. Go to http://tweepsearch.com/ and search for some folks with similar interests. Follow them.
4. Go to http://tweepi.com/ and look up some of those folks that you just followed and then follow their follower that look interesting (you can follow everyone on a page in a single click, which is awesome)
5. Have everyone on your team sign up at http://hootsuite.com and have them add the twitter account to their Hootsuite.
6. Have everyone monitor the account, post interesting stuff, and start to talk with the people that have already been followed.
7. Set up a few twitterfeeds so that your account is always posting something interesting (Go to http://delicious.com and search for something in your brand’s area of interest. Grab that rss feed and put it into an auto-tweet system like http://twitterfeed.com so that any time that someone posts a really good link to delicious in your topic, you automatically post it to twitter and gain followers by having relevant information about your topic).

All of this can be done in an afternoon. As long as you care enough to have the conversation about your issues and passions, people will be there to have the conversation with you. While I am not a marketing guru, I do know when I am talking to a real person. I know when they are trying to engage me in a conversation, and I know when they are trying to sell me something.

I will state this as plainly as possible: I want more people on Twitter and less brands.

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Question 38 of 365: How does color influence our actions online?

I am not a graphic designer. I am not a marketing guru. I am not a color snob. However, I did run across a really interesting reverse image search that made me think about how colors are associated with everything we do on the web. From the Twitter bright blue or Facebook‘s dark blue to the Microsoft Red, Green, Yellow and Blue, to Google‘s slightly different Red, Green, Yellow and Blue; we associate every click with a color. We even understand what can be linked together by having the underlined navy color present on a page. There are rules about such things. The ways in which colors are used on the web influence the ways in which we act.

So, my question becomes, how is color training us to be active participants on the web? How is it asking us to collaborate? How is it pacifying us? How does it cause us to consume more or work less?

As someone who is in no way qualified to answer some of these questions, I feel like I should start with something specific. Let’s take the examples of color that I mentioned: Twitter blue and the four colors of Google.

The following are companies who all use some form of the Four Colors of Google for their brand:

• Zoho
• The Olympics (with black added in, but I think it still counts)
• Kestrelflyer
• Joomla
• eBay

What do these companies and organizations have in common, and why would they all choose to go with a four color logo that seems to have been designed with the same aim in mind? My feeling is that these four colors represent a standard of quality. These four colors represent something that people will want to put their trust in. They say to anyone who wants to look that the company in question takes all kinds and then strives to be the best at one thing (at least one thing, that is). These colors have been embedded into the fabric of the web as the face of leadership (or at least the hope of leadership, in the case of Joomla and Kestrelflyer). I find myself gravitating toward these services precisely for this reason, even if subconsciously.

Now, Twitter blue represents something else entirely. Here is a smattering of companies who want to be associated with that color:

• Skype (it was a darker blue a few years ago, though)
• Portal (for xBox)
• Vimeo
• Miami.com
• Today’s Parent Magazine

Each one of these companies wants to be thought of as something new, something fresh. Each one is looking to make a name for itself in a different space. They may not share a lot in common in terms of the technologies they employ, but each one is looking to be recognized, to stand out from a crowded field. The Twitter blue has come to mean all of these things as it continues to expand just what is possible with “the new.”

While we may not be able to derive any definitive conclusions about the way that color affects our overall habits on the web, I believe that we are being trained by the use of color to feel certain emotions and to react in a certain way based upon the colors that are chosen for a brand. This may not be anything new to a graphic designer or marketing guru, but it is certainly a revelation for me in thinking about my own habits online.

While content is important, as is service and quality; in an increasingly visual world, we must take into account all of the types of persuasion being pushed at us. Color included.

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Online Schools on Twitter

I realized that my last post lacked a little context, so I am giving it now. Yesterday, an online school (http://twitter.com/iHighVirtualSD) decided to follow me on twitter. It got me thinking. How many other online schools are already in this space (either as entities or as representatives who put their virtual school into their own profile)… I used http://tweepsearch.com/ to find these:

• http://twitter.com/EDgal
• http://twitter.com/Micki_Wingate (hasn’t posted since July 23rd)
• @virtualparent
• @Connections4U
• @MsLivFLVS
• @Carrie_Jean
• @julie_rose_
• @jennobles
• @baldy7
• @bb915
• @kurquhart
• @magzmom
• @glad2be
• @schultzem
• @crescentprephs
• @onlinehigh
• PennFoster
• LaurelSprings
• @unkwillow
• @Online_Courses
• @catalyst11

I am sure that there are more out there, but my point is this: Some of these twitter accounts are people, and some are representing an organization. While I may want to pay attention to an organization’s updates, I am not intersted in engaging them in a conversation. The schools that use twitter most effectly are going to be the ones who realize that it is a two-way medium and not something to simply broadcast whatever PR sounds good to the person holding the keys to the account at the moment.

I guess I am still looking for a good twitter profile that speaks for many, speaks to many, and listens to even more.