MSKYNET, a company that allows businesses to create and analyze the usage of 2D barcodes called SPARQCodes, launched a service today that helps local businesses connect their customers with their online presences, such as Facebook, Twitter, Gowalla, and Foursquare. MSKYNET raised $550K in seed funding back in August.

SPARQCodes are very similar to normal QR codes, but differ slightly because they link to a URL instead of embedding their payload data in the QR code itself. The new feature, which is called ‘Connect N Share’, is very straightforward — it makes it easy for businesses to generate QR codes that link to the business’s presence on Twitter and/or Facebook. The idea is to direct customers who are waiting in line or for their food to scan a code that they see on the wall, which leads them directly to the business’s Facebook page.

Setting up your QR code printout using the new feature is actually pretty slick. First, you type in the name of your business — the web app will try to automatically find the matching Facebook and Twitter accounts (you can tweak this if it guesses wrong). Enter your address, and it will try to pair it up with your Foursquare, Gowalla, and UrbanSpoon accounts. Add a logo, hit ‘Build it!’, and you’re done. The site will spit out a printout with your QR codes, directing visitors to your business to scan them.

Businesses with more substantial social media presences can direct users to a list of sites that are relevant — a restaurant might also include Yelp in their mini-portal, for example. Founder Jesse Chor says that the company is mainly targeting small businesses and franchises, which tend to value a social media presence, but do not usually have the technical expertise to make their own QR codes.

There is one caveat to this: customers will have to log into your Facebook or Twitter account to like or ‘follow’ the business if they are not logged in already, so the experience may not be as seamless as ‘checking in’ via a smartphone’s native Facebook application for example.

The codes and the analytics that come with them will be provided free of charge, but businesses will have to pay to include additional social media services that may crop up over time. Chor also stated that MSKYNET will charge for “customer retention programs,” in the future, but did not elaborate on what they might be.

MSKYNET is far from the first company to offer QR code analytics (see here for a good list of other services), and it isn’t the first to target local businesses either — Google has its own business-facing QR code features, too, as do some other QR code companies.

i tested it and i like it. It stuff like this that makes peoples's life easier. I like the fact that it goes straight to whatever app is relevant, an address turns up your Google maps, an event pops up your calendar, an app directs your to your appstore. very smart and efficient. tracking aside, it does provide anyone(free) with a tool for creating just the QR code where previously other QR code generators falls short. It lets you use not just web addresses but fields for you to create events/ maps etc.

do give it a spin.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

The role of social media is expanding rapidly and many organizations of all types are trying to stay afloat amidst the changes. Meanwhile, a small group of innovators pulls the industry onward.

In the past few years, the social media marketing role has become increasingly present, leading the way to more strategic social media programs. Enter the social media strategist.

Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst at Altimeter Group, a digital strategy consulting firm, recently spoke at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Summit about the career path of the corporate social strategist, touching on current responsibilities and challenges, as well as the future of the role. His presentation was based on months of research funded by Altimeter, in which 140 enterprise-class social strategists across various industries were interviewed. Other online sources, such as LinkedIn () and blogs, were consulted to gather job descriptions, profile work histories and catalog the ebb and flow of new hires in the social media space.

Owyang presented seven key tips for building a successful social media program and focused on how social media strategists can facilitate those successes. Read his tips below and add your thoughts in the comments.

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1. Be Proactive, Not Reactive

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Owyang pointed to a funny, but oh-so-true anecdote that happened while he was collecting research for this study. While interviewing a social media strategist, the phone conversation was stopped abruptly as the strategist confessed, “Jeremiah, I’ve gotta go. There are two people standing in front of my office demanding Facebook Pages.” If they didn’t get the Pages (), they were going to build them on their own.

While it’s somewhat hilarious to imagine two professionals camping in front of their colleague’s office until they get their doggone Facebook () Pages, it’s equally as sad to realize that these instances actually happen in the corporate world. If this is happening in your organization, take a step back, look at the chaos, take a deep breath and then do something about it.

“A proactive mindset is required,” Owyang said. “You cannot wait for the company to catch up to you. You have to go to the business units and tell them what is required [to participate in your company's social media program] before they ask you for a Facebook Page. Make a list of requirements: dialogue, ready for conversations 24/7, ongoing commitment, two-way communications. Make it clear what’s expected, before they ask you.”

Being proactive and having guidelines will help alleviate stressful moments like the one described above, where being reactive is usually status quo.

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2. Be a Program Manager, Not Evangelist

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As social media programs become more sophisticated, Owyang believes that employees currently in the social media evangelist roles will move on to “the next thing,” evangelizing new technologies. But with an ongoing need for social media programming, a new role for social media program managers will emerge.

“Quickly switch hats,” Owyang advises social media strategists who want to stay relevant to businesses that have evolving needs. “It’s time to take off the evangelism hat and put on the program manager hat. A new skill set is going to be required, and a program manager is responsible for resources, timelines, Gantt charts, ROI models, analytics, data modeling, resource management, project management. It’s a very different skill set than the evangelist role that we’ve seen before.”

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3. Educate Your Business Units

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“Educate your business units ahead of time, and give them the information that they need,” said Owyang.

He is an advocate of testing employees to measure digital and social media proficiencies, pointing to Intel’s Digital IQ test as a great example of aptitude measurement. “You can take this online test before you participate in social media and become certified in that particular program,” he said. “That’s one of the more advanced programs that we’ve seen.”

In its official Social Media Guidelines, Intel clearly defines Digital IQ training as a responsibility for all employees taking part in social media on behalf of the company.

It’s important to not only lay down guidelines, but to also provide training for employees who want to learn more and get involved in the social media program.

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4. Organize for Success

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Five ways companies organize their social media teams

 

 

 

During his presentation, Owyang presented five models in which companies organize their social media teams — decentralized, centralized, hub and spoke, dandelion and holistic, as pictured and described above. He highly recommends that social media programs be organized in hub and spoke or dandelion models in order to scale.

In the hub and spoke model, there’s typically a cross-functional team that’s serving multiple business units, with the strategists at the center of the formation — 41% of the organizations that Owyang interviewed fell under this category.

Within large companies with multiple brands or units, such as Microsoft or HP, the dandelion (or “multiple hub and spoke”) model is common, where multiple social media strategists lead individual business areas or brands across the company.

There are three steps necessary in order to reach a hub and spoke or dandelion organization, according to Owyang:

1. “Set up governance: policies, legal, some executive buy-in.”
2. “Roll out processes: who does what, where, when and how — a triage system. How does information flow through your company? Publish that diagram on the Internet ().”
3. “Launch an ongoing education program.”

“If you do those three things in that order, it’s very likely your company will form in hub and spoke with you in the hub,” stated Owyang.

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5. Be an Enabler

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It is unrealistic to think that one strategist can stay at the center of every social media effort or that he or she could even hire enough community managers to stay on top of an entire enterprise’s social activity. In light of that reality, Owyang believes that it is crucial for social media strategists to slip into the mindset of an enabler. He explains:

“Remember, social media does not scale. You cannot manage every social media program, campaign or effort. You now have to become an enabler to teach the business units to do it on their own — that’s the only way you’re going to be able to scale anyway. You become an internal consultant, an internal resource to help the entire business.”

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6. Deploy Scalable Social Media Programs

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Communities, advocacy programs, social media management systems (like CoTweet () and HootSuite ()), and Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) — the practice of connecting social networks to your existing CRM system — are all worthwhile social media efforts, according to Owyang, because they are scalable.

“Dialogue does not scale,” Owyang reiterated multiple times. “One-to-one communications does not scale… You can’t possibly do it. What scales? Community programs — getting your customers to do the work for you. Advocacy programs — Microsoft MVP, Intel Insiders, SAP Mentors, Oracle Aces, Walmart Moms — those are advocacy programs, when you take your best customers and you give them a platform and let them do the work for you, and you don’t pay them. Those are scalable programs.”

While it’s important to set up channels for communication with customers, make sure your programs can expand as the company and community grow.

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7. Transcend Marketing

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The report found that 71% of social media programs fall under the domain of marketing or corporate communications. In order to make an impact, though, Owyang says that social media programs must transcend marketing. Strategists should take note and act accordingly.

“Over time, think about how you can be more than ‘marketing,’” suggests Owyang. “Think about how you can apply [social media] to support and service and the physical, real-world customer experience — and improve products and experiences.”

Owyang’s seven insights into succeeding as a social media strategist should have social media programs shaping up in no time. What would you add to his advice? Let us know in the comments below.

View Jeremiah Owyang’s WOMMA Summit presentation below:

 

 

 

 

Overall many good points.

I agree alot with the becoming enabler part. But then again, this applies to everything. Eventually as one grows, one will most likely stray from what one has set out to do. So by moving in a mentoring position, one can assure there will be people (perhaps alot) to do do what one has moved out of.

Be a program manager? i dont think so. There are specific characteristics of good program managers, not any one can just slip on those shoes. It takes alot of discipline and organisational skills to say the least. I say stay as an evangelist, continue being specialised in what you specialise in, leave those tedious stuff to those who can manage them.

Jamie Turner is the chief content officer of the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine for BKV Digital and Direct Response. He is also the co-author of How to Make Money with Social Media, now available at fine bookstores (and a few not-so-fine bookstores) everywhere.

Given the hundreds of social media tools available, and the thousands of different ways to use them in business, you’d think that getting Fortune 500 companies on board would be a complex and daunting task.

But it’s not. The truth is, there are only five different ways the Fortune 500 use social media. Seriously — just five. And once you know what they are, you can figure out which ones would be most useful for your business.

These five social approaches, though different in many respects, all have one thing in common: Each of the Fortune 500 use them to generate a profit. After all, they’re not using social media just to be social. They’re using it to make money.

In order to make money with social media, you have to set up your campaigns to be measured. And I’m not talking about simple metrics like number of followers or unique page views (although those are important). I’m talking about real metrics like leads generated, prospects converted and profits realized. Those are the kinds of metrics that enable you to track the success of your social media campaign on an ROI basis. And when you’re tracking your social media campaign on an ROI basis, you’re making your CFO happy (along with your CEO, your CMO and everyone else in your company).

 

 

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1. Branding

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Some companies use social media strictly as a branding tool. Typically, this means running a YouTube () campaign that (hopefully) gets a lot of buzz around the water cooler. While using social media strictly as a branding tool might be considered “old-school” these days, it can still generate some positive sales growth.

Take Toyota as an example. Its YouTube mini-series featuring the Sienna Family has generated more than 8.3 million impressions. Those are not passive impressions fed to consumers during a TV commercial break, but engaged views attained through social sharing. When people share your commercial with their friends, they’re reinforcing your marketing for you, and it’s the best kind.

Of course, one of the most successful campaigns of this type is the Old Spice YouTube campaign that has more than 140 million impressions and, according to Nielsen, helped sales increase 55% in three months, and a whopping 107% during the month of July alone. Part of what made this campaign successful was that Old Spice set it up so it could quickly respond to viewers’ comments about the videos. By engaging the viewers in the videos, Old Spice improved the stickiness of the campaign and, best of all, enhanced the viral nature of it.

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2. e-Commerce

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If you can sell your product or service online, then you’ll want to drive people to a landing page on your website where they can buy your goods. How can you accomplish this? Just do what Dell does. It tweets about special promotions for its folloers on Twitter (). Right now, the DellOutlet account has 1.5 million followers. If you crunch some hypothetical but fair numbers on the back of an envelope, Dell’s ROI might look something like this:

DellOutlet followers: 1.5 million

DellOutlet followers who actually see the promotional Tweet: 50,000

Followers who click on the link in the Tweet: 500

Prospects who purchase a computer based on the Tweet: 50

50 purchases x $500 computer = $25,000

That’s $25,000 in revenue just for sending out a tweet. Not bad for a day’s work. Of course you’ll have to put in the effort to build your Twitter community in the first place, but those are certainly resources well spent, given the potential return.

 

 

 

 

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3. Research

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Many companies are using social media as a tool to do simple, anecdotal research. Sometimes, this involves building a website that engages customers in a dialogue. Starbucks has done this famously with MyStarbucksIdea.com. When visitors land on the site, they’re asked to provide new ideas to Starbucks on ways to improve the brand. Visitors can share ideas, vote on which ideas they like the best, discuss the ideas that have been submitted, and even see the results of their suggestions in action.

But you don’t have to build an entire website to keep tabs on your customers’ needs. Got a blog? Great. Ask your visitors to leave suggestions in your comments section. Have an e-newsletter? Terrific. Use the tools from ConstantContact, ExactTarget or MailChimp to include polls and surveys in your e-newsletter. Active on Twitter? Wonderful. Then use Twtpoll, SurveyMonkey or SurveyGizmo to drive people to a survey page on these sites.

The bottom line is there are plenty of ways to keep your finger on the pulse of your community’s needs, using social media tools that are readily available to both you and the Fortune 500.

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4. Customer Retention

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A good rule to remember is that it costs three to five times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. Given that, wouldn’t it be smart to use social media as a tool to keep customers loyal and engaged? That’s what Comcast and Southwest Airlines do. They communicate via Twitter, Facebook () and other social media platforms to help solve customer service issues.

When Frank Eliason at Comcast first noticed that people were making comments about his company on Twitter, he probably wasn’t very happy. After all, if you’re going to Tweet about your cable company, it’s likely a complaint. So Frank took things into his own hands and started Tweeting back to the disgruntled customers. His tweets offered suggestions and tips on how to fix the problems people were having with their services.

Research has indicated that if you take a customer in a heightened state of anger and help them out, they’ll actually become brand advocates. In other words, they start promoting your brand to others because you reached out to them and helped them at a time of need.

That’s what happened with Frank and Comcast. Customers went from being disgruntled to being brand advocates — all because they were pleasantly surprised when Frank reached out to them via Twitter and helped solve their problems.

If you find yourself reading negative comments in the blogosphere about your brand, don’t shy away from them. Engage with them. You’ll be surprised how effective it can be.

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5. Lead Generation

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If you’re having difficulty selling your product or service online, you may want to invest in a social B2B lead generation strategy. At my company, we use social media to drive prospects to our online magazine for marketers. When prospects get to the website, they can read a blog post, watch a 60-second video or download a white paper. Once we gather their contact information, we (gently) re-market to them by reminding them of all the great results our partner generates for its clients.

This hub-and-spoke system works like a charm. Why? Because B2B and professional service firms are often sold based on a relationship. Much of the decision process is based on a vendor’s reputation and trustworthiness. What better way to build trust than by providing helpful, useful information to the client prospect via social media?

 

 

 

 

Remember, when you’re using this hub and spoke system, you don’t want to limit yourself to just the big five (LinkedIn (), Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and MySpace ()). You’ll also want to use e-mail marketing, speeches, e-books, webinars, blogs, videos and other social media tools to build trust and awareness

Matthew Latkiewicz works at Zendesk.com, customer support software. He writes for and edits Zengage, Zendesk’s blog about customer engagement. He also writes about wine for McSweeney’s and imagines stuff at his own website, youwillnotbelieve.us.

Just as early television shows were essentially radio plays shot on film, the earliest attempts by online marketers mimicked the worlds of television and print. While banner ads and pre-roll commercials are still with us, of course, a new generation of marketing professionals and companies are exploring techniques more native to the web: multi-platform marketing campaigns that encourage interactivity.

Marketers who take advantage of the Internet ()’s unique capabilities have the potential to build increasingly engaged customer communities. Here’s a look at three major trends.

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1. User-Generated Content Contests

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Doritos hosted its first Crash the Superbowl campaign in 2007. Like a lot of big companies, Doritos bought a commercial slot for the Superbowl, but instead of hiring a production company to make a 30-second spot, Doritos turned to its consumers. “Grab your camera and create your Doritos commercial,” the company advertised. Anyone could create and submit a spot. These spots were put to a vote online, and the finalists received $10,000 and the winning spot ran in the very expensive Superbowl slot.

More than 1,000 people submitted videos, and Doritos generated a lot of attention for the campaign, ranking high in a number of surveys that tracked buzz and impact of the Super Bowl commercials.

These kinds of campaigns are very popular on the Internet at the moment and they range in scale. SolidWorks, makers of computer-aided design (CAD) software, worked with the design firm Small Army to build a campaign that involved its very active community. Christine Washburn, VP of marketing at SolidWorks, says, “We wanted to do something that would involve them and be very visible for new potential members of the community.”

Small Army came up with Let’s Go Design, an interactive web series. Users submit design ideas in response to challenges proposed by the show. Ideas are voted on and ultimately incorporated.

What works: Activity and participation around the brand.

If users get involved, they can win. And the voting structure generates even more activity. Washburn reports that SolidWorks’ “web traffic is up by a factor of four in comparison to previous campaigns.”

When this doesn’t work: Your brand doesn’t carry either the same kind of mass appeal as Doritos or the committed fandom of SolidWorks.

Branding consultant Lisa Merriam wrote a case study of a failed contest campaign by a company called Levia. It tried a campaign similar to Doritos, asking consumers to submit a video about the healing power of light.

Doritos is a mega-brand [with] millions and millions of passionate consumers. And Levia®? You probably never heard of it. Levia® is a device that uses light to treat psoriasis. The set of people who suffer from psoriasis and who have heard of Levia® and who have the technical know-how to produce video and who care enough to come up with winning concepts about light’s power to heal is an infinitesimally small set of people — certainly not a crowd.

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2. Making a Consumer Community

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Marketers have jumped on the relatively recent explosion of online communities. If customers have the ability to talk to one another, why not create an incentive and a space for them to talk about your brand?

One way to accomplish this is to offer customers something they might actually do in real life. Marketing agency Movement Strategy, for instance, recently created an online forum for two of its NBA clients, the Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks. The site — NuggetsVsKnicks.com — operated during an actual game between the Nuggets and the Knicks, giving the fans a place to cheer on their team (and trash talk the other). By integrating with Facebook () — users cheered by “Liking” their team — Movement Strategy was able to give a real-world analog to the digital interaction.

What works: Campaigns that encourage community among their customer base can really help to build loyalty.

When this doesn’t work: When the campaigns are lazy.

It’s not fair to say that most company Facebook Pages don’t work, but often the conversations there offer a relatively low level of engagement. Contests, questions and announcements all encourage participation from the customer, but not necessarily participation with each other.

A lot of brands use Twitter () contests in a similar way. A few years ago Squarespace (), for instance, gave away an iPhone () a day to anyone who mentioned Squarespace in a tweet. While this kind of activity can generate a lot of buzz, the actual customer engagement in the brand is low — the equivalent of dropping your business card in a fishbowl.

Even worse is when Facebook and other social network integration is used as a gimmick. Last March, Absolut sponsored a short film by Spike Jonze, the director of Being John Malkovich. The film, titled I’m Here, was designed to be shown on the web. Before watching, the viewer is first walked through an invitation process using Facebook Connect. The friends you invite are cleverly integrated into an introductory cut scene, during which, you “enter” the theater to watch the film. Their photos appear on the VIP passes of other people in the theater. The whole thing works to give you a sense that you are watching this film with people who you know.

Except in this case, the experience stops there. As soon as the film starts, the connection to your community ends. The introduction has nothing to do with the film itself and instead feels tacked on and gimmicky. Absolut hinted at what could be done but didn’t actually do it.

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3. Choose Your Own Adventure

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Perhaps the most exciting development in multi-platform interactive campaigns is the ability of the customer base to participate in and affect the outcome of a story.

At Blogworld 2010, Ford announced an online marketing campaign to promote its new Focus. The campaign, called Focus Rally, pits six teams against each other in a reality-style adventure game where the viewers make the important calls for the participants.

“It’s a little bit like a choose your own adventure here, but the people at home were choosing the adventure for these players. It’s kind of cool how interactive the show is going to be,” says Focus Rally producer Neal Konstantini.

Specifically, the Focus Rally competitors must rely on the network capabilities of the car and their social networks to solve challenges. “[I]f you’re in Albuquerque and you’re stuck and you run out of gas,” Konstantini explains, “you’re going to have to get on Facebook and tell your network, ‘I’m stuck. I need gas. Help me.’”

What works: When the web is integrated into both a compelling storyline and effective brand messaging.

When this doesn’t work: When you expect interaction to be what solely carries the campaign.

“It’s not enough to be interactive,” says Michal Ann Strahilevitz, associate professor of marketing at Golden Gate University. “It has to be truly compelling, engaging and persuasive to the target market. If you build it, they may or may not come.”

Choose your own adventure campaigns build off the Internet’s potential as a story-telling device. These kinds of campaigns “require the audience’s presence and participation in order to be complete,” says Mike Monello, co-founder and executive director of Campfire, an advertising agency in New York. Monello was one of the creators of The Blair Witch Project and used viral Internet distribution before there was a name for such a thing.

In a recent campaign that Campfire created for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week programming, the team produced a series of videos about famous shark attacks throughout history. Like Absolut’s promotion of I’m Here, Campfire used Facebook Connect to personalize users’ experience of the site and videos. But whereas Absolut’s choice felt tacked on at the end, Campfire accessed users’ Facebook information to build a personalized shark attack for the visitor. It integrated personalization into the branding and the storytelling.

“Telling stories is one of mankind’s most enduring traditions,” Campfire explains on its website. “Our increased connectedness has only made spreading them faster, more pervasive, and more effective.”

Amazon and Pampers Bring Diaper Shopping to Facebook

As individuals spend more and more time on Facebook, big brands looking to leverage that time are integrating more features and services into their Fan Pages.

Proctor & Gamble just launched a new e-commerce tab on its Pampers Fan Page, offering consumers a way to shop for diapers without ever leaving the site.

We’ll admit that we have a hard time feigning enthusiasm for online diaper shopping — on or off Facebook () — but the technology that powers the new Pampers web store has potential.

Proctor & Gamble partnered with Amazon and used its recently revamped WebStore e-commerce platform to power the Facebook app. That means that item selection, descriptions, reviews and checkout options are all handled by Amazon.com. The only real differences between a Facebook app and a standard Amazon WebStore implementation is that the Pampers store takes place inside the fan page.

Pampers is the first P&G brand to use e-commerce within its fan page, but the company’s press release indicates that it looks forward to rolling the capabilities out to other P&G brands in the future.

TechFlash asked Amazon spokeswoman Tracy Ogden about future plans for WebStore integration with Facebook, and while the company didn’t comment, citing its policy of not discussing future plans, this is definitely a feature that fits into the rest of the Amazon WebStore and Amazon Marketplace Web Service ecosystem.

Pampers may be the first example of an Amazon-powered web store on Facebook, but it’s hardly the first e-commerce example. At the beginning of the summer, Disney rolled out an app on its Toy Story 3 fan page that allowed users to buy movie tickets and invite friends to various screenings. Sony Pictures Entertainment has also integrated movie ticket purchase options into the Fan Pages for some of its films, including Eat Pray Love and Resident Evil Afterlife.

Likewise, other e-commerce platforms like ShopTab, Payvment and BigCommerce offer their own shopping solutions for businesses and brands.

Still, Amazon remains a major player in the e-commerce and fulfillment space. Many businesses build either their own custom Amazon WebStores or use Amazon for fulfillment or payment processing.

If the P&G fan page is indicative of a future product vertical, and we think it is, this could mean big things not just for bringing e-commerce to Facebook, but for expanding the reach of Amazon WebStores.

What do you think of brands integrating web stores with Facebook?

i am really dreading the day where everything will be on facebook. everyones importuing blogs these days, games are here, your friends are here, news, twitter updates! and now, shopping! This means alot to all you ad folks. time to start relooking how you are looking at faceboko, its not just a social network anymore.

Inspired: Social media in China

I spent this morning at Westminster University, where I spoke to a delegation of around 20 Chinese government communications professionals about social media.  I'm aware of the irony of this scenario, and in fact when I was first asked to give the lecture I did wonder about the ethics of it all.  High profile stories of censorship, email hacking and quashing of free speech stand out to us in the West.

However dig a little deeper and you'll find that social media is thriving in China as much as it is in the rest of the world - and in some cases even more so.  The 'Great Firewall of China' might have KO'd the global social networks we all know and love, but as a result domestic services and networks have seen rapid growth over the last few years.  We have Twitter, China has several clones - TaoTao, Digu and FanFou to name just a few.  I've not tried any of them out, but I've heard that Digu actually has far more sophisticated functionality than Twitter.  Likewise Facebook may have been banned in China, but the vast majority of university students use the homegrown Renren Network, while Kaixin001 draws in tens of millions of users.

Patrick Searle from CIC Data was kind enough to share a few thoughts and background on social media in China with me.  It's essentially the same community-focused social architecture as in the West, the key difference being that the mainstay of social media in China is the good old fashioned bulletin board system (BBS).  Something the old timers amongst us will remember from the days of 56kbps dial-up!  What I find really fascinating, aside from the old school tech, is that Chinese web users will ask a question of the community before they go to a search engine.  Patrick puts this down to a number of factors, including the initial under-development of web technologies in China and the cultural significance of a Confucian way of thinking.  This overview of the Chinese social media landscape produced by CIC Data is particularly fascinating.

Going back to the lecture, any concerns I had about ethics were quickly blown away by the enthusiasm and open mindedness of the audience - even the slightly older generation who are probably quite bemused by the concept of an open and free media landscape.  My lecture focused quite simply on the basics, using a whole variety of case studies to illustrate good and bad practice.  The Number 10 social media activity was of particular interest, and everyone in the room saw the benefits of a government that could communicate rapidly, transparently and directly with the people it represents.

Doubt I've started a revolution, but it was good to walk away knowing that even in a communist government there's an appreciation of the benefits of communicating in an open and democratic way.

One question I get a lot is, Do you really only need to test with 5 users? There are a lot of strong opinions about the magic number 5 in usability testing and much has been written about it (e.g. see Lewis 2006^PDF). As you can imagine there isn't a fixed number of users that will always be the right number (us quantitative folks love to say that) but testing with five users may be all you need for discovering problems in an interface, given some conditions.

very interesting article. the author even included some simulations. Theres some formulas involved in getting that golden number, as much as i don't understand the binomial formula, the simulations got me.

This makes life much simpler.

Read the full article here

How Internet Works

for the layman, here you go.

Before that, do not expect something mind-blowing when playing with Google Wave. There are still hell lot of things which aren’t perfect and by default Google hasn’t come out with that many gadgets as such. Most of these are built by hobby developers who must have been trying out the Wave APIs and some of them are really useless!

Read more at : Ultimate List of Google Wave Gadgets and Tools

some really nice ones in there