Thinking Sideways

Thinking Sideways – it’s a bit of a nothing term, but I figured it sums up the way that digital culture encourages us to consider the different challenges we face on a day to day basis.

Lo and behold, it means lateral thinking, finding alternative routes to solve a problem.

I find this interesting, largely because I think that digital culture itself is undergoing a kind of entropy, an unstructured order that is slowly becoming structured as time goes on.

4chan, once the backchannel, is now mainstream; Anonymous are anything but, with any criticism of online behaviour somehow finding a way of fitting them in; Google don’t innovate, they buy and re-badge.

What we’re asked to do when embracing digital culture, is to absorb information from a bunch of different disparate sources, and squeeze them through a funnel to bring structure and form.

This means that each action we take forces us to find ever increasingly separate elements and push them together to form an idea. To do that, with a decreasing number of potential factors, means we need to think around a problem, rather than through it.

This can be applied, I figure, not only to engagement (what’s the common point of interest to engage with a blogger) or creative (how can we juxtapose online vituality and offline anti-design), but also to account structure and team strategy (why put all your specialists in one basket).

Digital culture is slowly being brought into the mainstream – see the Family Guy effect - we must work to ensure we all think sideways to deliver better results, more innovation, and a better experience for savvier-than-ever consumers who deserve as good a service as possible; they’ve been waiting too long already.

The $250 Foursquare Badge

Foursquare badges are the latest form of social currency on the Internet.

As with tweets or Facebook status updates, people are trying to apply a monetary value to them, in order to ascertain which users are the most influential.

Badges also indicate a member’s status within a community: you have lots of badges, you are someone to be trusted.

So, what value would you apply to a highly sought after badge?

About Foursquare says…

One determined group of 50 foursquare jumpers — users who digitally “jump” around the globe solely to unlock badges — has proven just how dedicated they are to their craft, though, by essentially buying one of foursquare’s hardest-to-get badges. In the end, their desperate play to grab a badge netted about $250 for charity.

$250 for a sought after badge that has a high barrier to entry demonstrates the willingness a hardcore userbase has to collect the unobtainable, something of course we see in gaming communities all the time.

It also shows the growing importance for services like Foursquare to reward their most active and enthusiastic users in order to retain them from competitors, such as Facebook Deals.

What would you pay to get that Foursquare badge you long for? Leave a comment, or take the poll on Facebook!

ASA Guidelines Podcast – Edelman Editions

On Thursday I took part in an Edelman Editions podcast, discussing the impact of the new extensions to the ASA guidelines in the online space.

Taking part were my Edelman colleagues Mark Lever and Stefan Stern and Graham Hales, CEO of Interbrand.

You can listen to it here.

Let me know what you think, and if you’ve been affected by the changes.

Scoville – Growing the Foursquare Eco-System

Scoville is the latest companion to Foursquare, with geo-location services now beginning to show their value.

The idea behind Scoville is to share your favourite Foursquare check-ins with your friends through #toptuesday on Twitter, recommending places to visit to your followers.

Each week you elect your favourite places to be shared – these are then published to your Twitter feed and hashtagged accordingly. If you so wish, you can also set these updates to be automated.

It’s an interesting concept – not only are you sharing cool stuff, Scoville are attempting to drive a trending topic that will grow their awareness and subsequently generate interest in advertising revenue.

This means that venues should be looking to give consumers a reason to include them in their toptuesday lists to drive their own awareness.

There is scope here to expand to promoted venues, for example one per week, which may also provide a revenue stream once the service has become widely adopted.

Scoville’s beta programme is currently open to Foursquare Superusers with over 500 check-ins, a great way of making sure that the product is tested by users who appreciate what Foursquare can be used for.

The services that are cropping up around Foursquare indicate that there are some really innovative ideas in development whilst also demonstrating we’re yet to hit that tipping point; what an exciting prospect that is!

You can get more about Scoville on Facebook and Twitter.

Custom Profile Pages: 3 To Watch Out For

There has been a rise in minimalist custom profile pages as a response to the larger social networks. The use of one page to collate, publicise and share your online presence as a business card is an interesting development as users look to get more consumption of their content, for less hard work.

Here’s three to have a look at:

Flavors.me
Flavors was one of the first custom profile startups to make waves within social media and draw popular attention.

It makes basic tool available to all users, such as image uploading and palette customisation, allowing you a fair amount of room to make the page your own.

The Flavors team have taken a premium model approach, with a greater variety of fonts and layouts available to users who sign up and pay a few dollars for the privilege.

About.me
About.me has recently gained popularity and fans for its wide ranging customisation options, intuitive UI and friendly feel.

The young company has been given a chunk of cash by AOL to develop and try to corner this particular market.

What remains to be seen is how that money will be spent and if users are willing to invest their time in About.me, to re-affirm AOL’s confidence in their offering.

Whyhello.im

The newest kid on the block is Whyhello.im. Apart from the awesome name, the user experience is seamless and the presentation of your profile is, in my opinion, second to none.

The profile building process is extremely similar to About.me, but the customisation options have a similar level of variation, if not larger volume.

It’s also worth keeping an eye on Superego.me and Profile Stamp, two even newer startups which could be promising. If you want an invite for Profile Stamp, go here!