Join the public conversation

This morning I posted about how the social networks are challenging IM or SMS. Just wanted to stress an interesting point about this. If you watch conversation posted on comments, logs, walls or so, a lot of the conversation is actually quite personal. It seems as the personal conversation is going fra private to public. Even in the networks offering both a private mail option and a comment wall a lot of the conversation is held in the public sphere. This is really interesting.

IMs are very private and difined by privacy and the lack of disruptive elements. Here we see a tendency toward wanting the conversation to be public as if the content of conversation is being a part of the users creating their identity. If this is really the reason for taking conversation fra IM to social networks then IM haven’t got the weapons to fight back because they service is born and bread in the private sphere.

What will this mean for interacting with the users? Will marketing in the conversation be an option? Or is the public conversation a no go for marketers?

Hatch and Bloom – New ideas and design agency

Some of the most talented people I know just broke free and started their own agency. It’s all very new but they already landed a client and seem to address the business with a refreshing enthusiams and energy. I had the honour of spending half a year with them at designit some years ago, and hope that they’ll succeed in their new agency. Wish them all the best. Here’s their “launch” video.

Reminds me a bit of Apple “think different”, but anyway I like it.

Visit their blog

or their site (not ready yet)

Social networks challenging IM?

A while ago I was going crazy cause some of my friends really got into the myspace thing, which in it self isn’t a bad thing. I’m there too – but mostly to figure out what is happening there. But they started sending messages to me on my comment-board. Which is ok as long as it is just comments, pictures or fun. But the comments started taking form as appointments and so. – and for a while I missed all the fun because I still rely on my cell as the place to contact me if going out for drinks or coffee. So I was going mad, cause I had no intention of starting to check my myspace once a day (or more). I’m more the visitor of the month there.

So I started thinking a bit more about this tendency. Could the social network challenge the cell texting or the Instant Messenging? Many of the networks are different cause it isn’t real time interaction, but with the major networks applying services as “online status”, IM-functions and so in to their sphere will this be the new way to have direct interaction with your friends in the future? Myspace has its myspaceIM and facebook just launched an application to integrate twitter into their service.

Three days ago imediaconnection published an article about this phenomenon taking off. John Gray VP of interactive marketing at Enlighten started the discussion. No conclusions, cause it doesn’t seem to affect the IM numbers – not yet. But he raised this issue as a trend to watch. Read his view here.

And it is an importante discussion, cause in reaching the teens IM has become an important player. John says here:

According to Pew Internet & American Life Project, 75 percent of all online teens use IM to communicate, making it a popular choice for media planners and buyers eager to target this influential consumer group. Marketers know platforms like AOL’s AIM have some of the highest conversion rates in the business. Consequently, they have made IM placements an integral part of their youth-centric campaigns.

So I’ll try to watch this trend and post some conclusions as soon as they appear.