I love it when little bits of ‘human’ appear in the midst of all the 1’s and 0’s of the web. For the second time now I just spotted the tiny ‘Get some sleep’ message from Google and it made me smile. It’s so small it looks a bit funny (I put the red thing on), but those little touches are great and more and more ‘human’ is beginning to break out of the sign up pages and 404 messages and into bigger things on the web these days. More to come on this and for now, I’m going to listen to Google and ZZZZ.
Ages ago an article in Marmalade magazine (RIP) really struck a chord with me - it predicted that people would get sick of nice brands like Innocent and start wanting to be treated a bit rougher. The ‘nasty brand’ would begin to emerge, one that gave it back once in a while, took the piss out of its customers a bit, engaged in a bit of friendly banter and wasn’t quite so nice etc.
Well Faceparty today took that to the extreme and told its users that it’s ’shut the whole site down and fucked off to the zoo” because of their recent behaviour. In could of course be a big stunt to reinforce its anti-corporation stance whilst generating lots of online buzz at the same time . . .
Listen this is our HOBBY, not our business. there was a time when you understood that - back when the net was run buy [sic] the people like us, and not by massive corporations - just because MySpace and Facebook sold out to the corporate world, doesn’t mean we did - we said no. Stop expecting “customer service” from us, cos WE DON’T HAVE CUSTOMERS - IT’S A FREE FUCKING SITE - too many of you treat us like we owe you something. And quit the “you need us attitude” cos we really fucking don’t. We don’t make money from you - it’s free. The things you pay for only cover the costs for the things you use.
On a serious note too - it does make you think about the variety of FREE internet things you use everyday and what you expect from them. Um, Twitter!!!?
Last Saturday in London saw lots of people (including me) head down to Interesting 2008, a truly unique conference (I think just in its second year) ran by Russell Davies.
People like Ged, Roo and Annie Mole have already done some good write-up of the event so as something slightly different, I’ve given each (well nearly, I actually missed loads in my excitement) presentation down to a single word, added a few sneaky ones and ran that through Wordle to create a visual summary of Interesting 2008.
1 - It all just felt right. Everyone was nice. Nothing was nasty. It was great to have some kids there. Some rough edges. All very real.
2 - Lloyd can really sing. I even saw him run past with a freshly boiled kettle (no lid mind!).
3 - People are up for getting involved in things. People leapt at the chance to play the recorder on stage. At the end everyone packed up rubbish into bin liners, put all the chairs and tables away. Co-created content and all that.
4 - Most conferences are shit. The last one I went to was Internet World. There’s so much that needs to be changed with the old-school conference format.
5 - It was nice not to hear the words “social media’ mentioned all day. The only appearance of Twitter was on someone’s screen as they were setting up. I didn’t Tweet once during the day. (OK I did, before and after, but you know what I mean).
6 - Meeting people offline (or achieving “fleshpoint” as Ian refers to it as) is just the best, especially when you’ve known them for a while online.
7 - Russell Davies is very funny. He tickled me by ending an announcement with ‘now go back to your business’.
8 - Music pretty much rules the whole Earth. It is GLUE.
9 - There’s so much interesting, genuine stuff out there, so why on Earth do some brands insist on creating their own synthetic stuff instead of getting involved with genuinely interesting things that come from somewhere a lot better than a brainstorm.
10 - It’s a bit rubbish when you’re sat at a conference (or in a meeting for that matter) and everyone’s just on their laptops doing something else. There was a noticeable lack of laptops there and instead much more scribbling in notebooks, analogue style.
“To Thine Own Self Be True”
That’s what was written above the stage at the Conway Hall venue and I think that said it all for me. Interesting was basically a coming-out session for geeks and interesting people. That’s why it’s so frickin’ cool and every single person did such a great job. Quite a number of people introduced themselves as geeks and thoughout the day there was a mixture of both proudness and shyness when it came to people opening up and revealing their inner-geekiness. But I think everyone had that in common - be it food, hoovers, music and graphic design, lego or toilets - sharing something you’re so passionate about is always interesting and the best way of connecting with hundreds of other human beings in a room
And finally - here’s an image which I think captures the whole day nicely.
Why? Because someone sitting near me offered me a pack which I though was a really, really nice touch. The whole day was about sharing stuff and it felt so apt that it should be an old school box of Sunmaid Raisins. Something so familiar and nice. Amazing packaging. Free from crap. An icon. Something that evoked so many memories of school lunch boxes and being a kid. Something that I hadn’t had for ages but still love. So thank you Sunmaid Raisin provider. Your little gesture of kindness left me feeling satisfied that Interesting 2008 really was all I hoped it would be and a little bit more.
Bonus video: Just for the fun of it. Here’s 30 odd people trying to playing recorders (thanks to the Guardian), including Ben who I spent the day with too along with Ged, Will and lots of other people. (captured by Ged on a Flip video recorder thingy)
Sorry, yet another link to something from Noah Brier (via TIGS). A good one though. If ever there was an example of ‘do as thy say’ then this is surely it. A while back (thinking about it, because he was in the middle of building this) Noah quite rightly said that a brand is what people say it is, not what you (the marketer/brand owner says it is. Someone else, I can’t quite remember now, recently said a brand is not what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is. Both very true, humans rule.
Brand Tags, a side project by Noah, lets people say one word about a brand and collates these into tag clouds for a selection of brands that you can browse. It really is rather clever indeed and has indeed made the front page of del.icio.us today. Nice one Noah, who I’ve just seen has started celebtags too - this feels like the start of something.
Check out what people say about Apple, eBay and a whole host of other brands (including Starbucks, cropped tags below).
Also worth taking a peek at this presentation which inspired the idea.
The other day, amidst the global flow of information coming at me via the interwebz, I stumbled upon this little gem that made me smile and feel all content for a second as it fits in 100% with where I’m at. It’s a clip of Noah Brier talking at the PFSK LANY (thanks for pointing out Noah) conference about how brands now have to act like people. Nothing completely radical about that statement, but for me explains in a nutshell what this internet thing is all about for brands.
Brands need to be human in order to participate in the web and social media enables them to do so (as well as lots of other web-based things that don’t get labeled as such). Brands that don’t behave like human beings and do lot’s of nasty things won’t be very popular (just like in the real world) and those that do all the same things as kind, caring, smart, creative, collaborative, honest, transparent, open, considerate people will gain the love, trust and respect of people online. It’s as simple as that. There, I said it. And I feel a whole lot better for it.
Now are you are human or a non-human brand? What was the last way in which you showed people you were human? Did you admit a mistake? Did you say sorry? Did you share something valuable? Did you help make someone’s life a little bit better?
More to come on this. Human brands and beings is something very close to my heart.
I’m offline for a few hours and look what I miss - what must surely be the first ever marriage proposal done via Twitter. Congratulations Emily and Max! Quite literally everything is happening on Twitter these days.
Right, it’s Friday and this is funny. Really funny I thought. It had me LOL, genuinely LOL - GLOL to be precise. Not quite ROTFL or even LMAOROTFL but GLOL none the less. See what you think. In a nutshell, man writes about a particularly crazy woman that bought his fridge. Funny entry gets picked up by the interwebs and ends up on the front page of Popurls. I read, agree and then perpetuate the cycle. Have a good weekend everyone. I think I need it and so do you.
Here’s a snippet:
3. Please call me only once with ALL your questions. I left for the day, and had 5 messages on my answering machine, the last one was at 11:30 pm. Frankly lady, you were sounding a bit too crazy by the end of the day. It’s a fridge. A small metal box that keeps shit cold. I don’t have the fridge’s family tree. For all I know the fridge’s was conceived by a slutty young Maytag that graced some hillbilly’s side porch. I don’t know the exact age of the fridge. I bought it a few years ago, I used it for a couple of months, ok, I lied, I used it a whole year. The fact is, you’re not buying a race horse, you’re buying a used fridge.
