Paul Isakson

Building on @LenKendall's 'Hierarchy of INTERNET needs'

Len Kendall recently published a thoughtful post proposing a "hierarchy of Internet needs" based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The prompt for his post was Facebook's switcheroo on making their @facebook.com email address the only visible email address for users without their consent. Len's take on a hierarchy looked like this:

His explanation for the uproar caused by Facebook's move to drive use of their version of email was that they violated the second level of his newly created hierarchy, stability. In other words, they disrupted a formerly stable part of Facebook that displays our personal contact information to suit their needs without asking us. The remaining four sections Len created are organized based on how he views their priority.

He describes the pinnacle of our Internet needs as, "a completely editable internet" which "would encompass customizing how and where we consume information, writing code to manipulate what others have already built, and editing how we interact with devices by adding connectivity to them (internet of things)."

I hadn't really thought of something like this before, but I've spent a bit of time with Maslow's model for various reasons, so I wanted to wrestle with Len's idea a bit. I liked where he was heading, but for me, something in his order felt a little off. What peeved so many people with Facebook's email maneuver wasn't about stability. It was more likely due to people feeling that something very personal (how they prefered to be contacted) had been violated.

I also don't feel like the pinnacle of the web is malleability for most people. A large majority of people don't care about creating content. According to Forrester, only one in four people are interested in going beyond a few status updates or photo uploads to Facebook. Based on that, I can't see many people wanting to write code to manipulate what others have built and editing how we interact with devices. 

So, if Len's take isn't quite right for me, what is? Well, after some thought and playing around with a few sketches, here is where I'm at:

For me, the baseline is accessibility, stability and utility—I can access the Internet, I know and trust that it is working (even if I'm not using it at the moment), and I can generally find my way around to what I'm looking for. The next step above that is openness. With the basics behind me, now I expect to openly access a variety of information and content, and if I'm interested, to be able to create a bit of it on my own. 

After that comes connecting, sharing and communicating socially with others, and being able to manage a personal profile/presence on the Internet. I debated here if this should be above or below openness. Not all of the world gets to experience a fully open Internet, but they can connect socially, albeit, with limitations there as well. I chose to put them in this order based on the idea that some form of openness is neccessary for the creation of the places where people can socially connect. 

The next need state up the ladder is feeling completely secure in being your authentic self on the Internet and sharing your personal information (data) with businesses and digital-based entities. For me, this is what Facebook continually screws up, including their most recent kerfuffle. So far, a great number of people just don't feel secure with (trust) Facebook (or Google, Apple, Microsoft, et. al for that matter). Currently, this is where we are sticking and having a hard time evolving beyond.

That leaves the pinnacle of our Internet needs to being when we feel completely secure with our data being "out there" so that personally relevant and useful information/content can be brought to us whenever, where ever, and however we need it. We no longer have to actively seek things, beyond asking a question possibly. And yes, this is where things get a little "big brotherish" potentially.

So there you have it. At least for now. If you've got thoughts for altering it further, or pushing it back to what Len had, share'em below or at some place of your own like I did here. Feel free to drop a note in the comments with a link to your take, if that's what you choose to do. Lastly, if you want to play around with editing the diagram, here is the quick Keynote file I used for it and here is a PDF.

The dilema facing advertising when it comes to hiring young talent

The ad world got a bit of good news today when TechCrunch reported on a new longitudinal study of business students conducted by Berkeley. The study's finding?: Happiness isn't about money. The bad news for advertising? Happiness is about respect. From the TechCrunch post:

“The joy that comes with an influx of money wanes quickly as people become accustomed to how wealth shapes their daily lives. Yet respect and admiration from one’s face-to-face groups might bring sustained [Subjective Well-Being],” concludes a new Berkeley study, which finds that the respect of one’s peers is far more predictive of an MBA’s happiness after graduation than their income. ...

What the Berkeley study shows is that entrepreneurs who work tireless hours creating new products, or tech giants who push game-changing ideas, are sincere in their explanation that the effort isn’t about the money. But, it’s not altruism either. Rather, it’s about wanting to look at yourself in the mirror, and your friends in the eyes, and feel worthy of respect.

I think that this points to a very real reason that advertising is having a hard time recruiting and retaining new talent. Specifically younger talent.

Telling someone you work in advertising doesn't bring you nearly as much respect from your friends and peers as does working at a start-up or a tech company. Plus, we all know that starting salaries in advertising are still crap, so money has never been a good reason to get into the business in the first place.

Advertising used to be one of the few jobs that allowed you to get paid for being creative while working in a non-corporate environment. That's not the case today. If agencies want to bring top talent to their shops, they've got to find a way to make the work they're doing something people admire and respect as much or more than the alternative career paths available to them.

Why there won't be an Instagram of videos

A while back, Adweek wondered if video apps will get some Instagram-like love. They point to Socialcam and Viddy as two of the top contenders. Why? Because you can apply filters to your videos and share them on social networks in the way that Instagram lets you do this with pictures? It's clear that they haven't put in much thought into what actually made Instagram successful.

Yes, Instagram lets some people cheat at creating an interesting image out of an ordinary or boring one. Applying a filter to an ordinary or otherwise boring picture can make it look better, or more interesting. But applying a filter to an ordinary or boring video doesn't make it more interesting. It just makes it look different.

The only similarity between shooting an interesting picture with your phone and shooting an interesting video with your phone is the fact that both are captured on the same device. Beyond that, they're nothing alike. One of the main things to consider in this is the process of getting your image or video from the phone to the web in the exact way you want it.

With pictures, an average user can shoot several shots of something or someone in a matter of a few seconds, pick the one that has exactly the right look, do some quick manipulations in Instagram or another photo app, and then proudly share it. Once the shot becomes public, there's not much their friends and followers can judge it upon beyond how it looks. If nobody reacts to it, it's not a big deal as you really didn't put much time or thought into it.

With video, it's a lot trickier for the average user to create an interesting video (outside of accidental strokes of luck where you capture something unbelievable, obnoxious, funny, etc.). It's a far more involved process and therefore, more time and thought intensive. First and foremost, it requires a longer period of time to shoot. There's movement to consider. There's sound to capture in addition to the visual. If you don't get something right on the first try, the same extensive effort is needed to reach the desired result on the second, third or fourth try.

Once you have the raw video right, editing it is more involved as well. It's not as easy to do on your phone as it is with a photo if you want to really get it right. Consider also that it takes more time to upload a video than a photo. Depending on the data connection for where you are, this might all together eliminate sharing it in the moment. And once you do have it publicly available, people will judge it on far more dimensions than how it looks. Because of all the effort a user puts into a video, there is more at risk emotionally in sharing it.

If this isn't making sense yet, consider the time, money, steps, people and effort needed to pull off a great print ad versus a great TV spot. Right, I probably should have started with that analogy. Anyway...

On the flip side of the equation, the user experience is also not anywhere close to being the same. Looking at photos on a mobile phone is far different than watching videos on a mobile phone.

On the photo side, I am not required to invest much time to see and "like" a significant number of images. With a few flicks of the finger, I can scan through dozens of pictures. Liking one is a matter of a couple thumb taps. I don't have to think too much or engage multiple senses. It's very much a visceral reaction.

That's not true with video. I have to invest at least a few seconds with each one. And I probably need headphones. And again, depending on my connection, this could take a great deal of time, having to let each video load and then watch it far enough to know if I like it or not before I move on to the next one. 

To bring this to a close, at a very, very base level, Instagram lets an average person create and share better than average photos. For the average person to create and share better than average videos, it's going to take a lot more than an app. I could be proven wrong, and I hope that I am, but I don't believe that it's possible for an app to do for video what Instagram did for photos. 

Netflix gets it right with Drive and Ryan Gosling

 

Netflix uses the Ryan Gosling "Hey Girl, ..." meme on Facebook and Twitter to announce that Drive is now available on disc and streaming. I love how this plays right along with culture. Nice work, Netflix.

Taking time to get it right

There are a lot of people talking about the importance of launching and iterating these days. Just put it out there and keep moving. Don't put off launching to make it perfect. It will never be perfect. Just make it good enough and go. Don't be afraid to fail, be afraid of not failing fast enough.

While I agree with the spirit of these statements and the context in which people are talking about them, there is a balance. If it's not good enough, you shouldn't launch it just to hit a self-imposed deadline. Especially with advertising. 

Nobody is dying to see your next ad, so why should you let yourself get caught up in rushing to get a new ad out there? This doesn't just apply to an ad though. It applies to any idea you create. Why hurry? Why not instead, take the time needed to get it right?

It's important to get the idea right because attention is at a premium. You're not just competing against your competitors for people's attention and you're not just competing against the other ads in the time/media space. You're competing against a million other things people could be doing instead of engaging with your idea.

Beyond that, every idea you release into the world determines how willing someone will be to spend time with your next idea. If you wasted their time this time, why will they pay attention to you next time? Every detail of the idea matters in a world where the options for how we spend our diminishing free time or our limited discretionary income are nearly unlimited.

If you want people to spend time with with your ideas, and even more, spread them for you, you shouldn't rush to get them out for the sake of getting them out. Instead, take whatever time is needed to make sure they're good enough for people to want to spend time with them, and good enough that people want to tell their friends about them.

Whatever you're creating, give yourself time to get it right.