FIOS Report

Several of you have asked me to report on my FIOS experience. FIOS, for those of you outside the US, is a fiber optic internet/cable TV/phone service from Verizon (a major US carrier) that’s gotten much praise for the quality of the infrastructure and speed of the internet.

Here’s my experience, as a series of bullet points.

SIGN-UP
Verizon made a major push in my area, sending out door-to-door salesmen (mostly college students) to sign people up. They were also offering free 17 inch LCD TVs or $200 gift certificates to Best Buy. Comcast, the entrenched local cable provider seemed to just throw up its hands in defeat and made no attempt at counteroffers.

INSTALLATION
Installation was a little rocky. There were a series of mishaps involving a last minute call from Verizon trying to reschedule, a technician who never showed up and a missing piece of equipment. Plus a lot of time spent on the phone trying to iron everything out. But in the end, the service was installed and everything was up and running by the time I got home from work that day. FULL DISCLOSURE: One of my Twitter followers is a corporate blogger for Verizon and he offered to help smooth out the process. I don’t know much his assistance helped smooth out the rough patches, but there were definitely more rough patches than I would have liked.

USING IT
Verizon FIOS promises “blazing fast internet” and it delivers. My DSL speed, as measured by Speakeasy.net, was about 4000 on download, 2500 on upload. With FIOS, it’s about 14000 on download and 5000 on upload on a wireless connection. More importantly, you can actually feel the difference: sites load faster. There have been a few instances where speed has dropped off considerably, and I'm definitely keeping an eye on that, especially since we're connecting through a Verizon wireless modem and not an Airport.

HDTV
The TV service is also quite good, with clear pictures (no noticeable difference from Comcast HD) and a good range of HD channels. In addition, there’s a robust menu that lets you search both saved, on demand and live shows simultaneously. Right now it’s a bit overwhelming, but I suspect that as I get used to it, it will be useful.

My only complaint about the TV service is that there is no HD On-Demand (which Comcast has a large selection of- both feature films and TV programs) though the FIOS website says that HD On-Demand will be rolled out at some point this year.

All told, so far so good, though I'm keeping an eye out for those times the speed drops off.

Breaking 200

So for the first time (to my knowledge, anyway) - The Toad Stool has broken through the 200 barrier, landing at #181 with a bullet.

Thanks to all of you for your loyalty and support.

The Evolution of Twitter

I’ve been wondering how much usefulness Twitter is going to have as a conversation device. I mean I like it a lot and all, but I do wonder if other people are going to start using it to send each other links to articles about Britney’s newest hairstyle or to live tweet from a Jonas Brothers concert.

Maybe. And it wouldn’t surprise me if they did, if Twitter took off and became the most social of all social media.

But I have my doubts. You see, the same way most people don’t want to “create content” they don’t really want to take the time to constantly update Twitter and/or read other people’s updates. As I expounded upon in Social Media Is Only Social If You’re Alone, most people are in actual daily contact with the people they care about most. The phenomenon of living thousands of miles from your nearest and dearest is largely confined to the BoBo classes. (And the immigrants who work for them, but that’s a different story.)

So one way I can see Twitter evolving (a thought inadvertently spawned by a comment from one of Steve Rubel’s followers) is as a forum for experts. You sign up to receive tweets from experts in various areas of your choosing and they provide you with a certain number of expert tweets during the day. Links and/or advice.

A system like that would work either by charging a flat fee (e.g. $10 for 3 experts) or letting each expert define his or her own value and seeing what the market would bear. “Expert” itself would be defined fairly loosely, from a marketing “expert” like that Tangerine Toad guy to an expert bridge player to an expert in knitting or embroidery. In the latter, “how much can I charge” system, anyone would be able to be an expert, so long as others were willing to pay to for it. Factor in the “free-conomy” theory, and you could start giving your wisdom for free until such time as people are willing to pay for it.

And then, finally, there’s the distinct possibility that both systems could exist concurrently- that Twitter will evolve into a two-headed beast with both peer (conversaton) and expert areas.

We’ll just have to wait and see how it all play out.

Friday Fun

Someone sent me this video, which was allegedly done by a 20 year old as part of a contest for the AARP (American Association for Retired People)

Watch it with the sound ON and watch it all the way through.

Very nicely crafted.

UPDATE: Thanks to Paul Soldera and TSR for pointing out this Argentine political spot (and Silver Lion winner at Cannes 2006) that may have provided the inspiration for the AARP spot.

Whose Kool-Aid?

So yesterday, sometime around noon, Steve Rubel (the PR guy, not the late Studio 54 owner) tweeted about my "10 Things I Hate About Twitter" post and all hell broke loose.

Okay, not really, but The Toad Stool was getting about 400 hits an hour for the next few hours off of this five word tweet. (That's at least 10 times the normal amount for that time of day.)
At first I was thinking it was proof of the growing popularity of Twitter, but upon reflection, I'm thinking it's as much due to that as it is to the cult-like status of Steve Rubel.

Among the many comments I received, there was one that got me to thinking. One of Rubel's minions, while chastising me for having non-utilitarian Twitter friends, mentioned that he only links to people who provide him with great insights via their useful links.

And that lead me to wonder if the ultimate path of Twitter is to be a place where we learn from experts, rather than share with friends. I mean at some level it makes sense: Twitter, by virtue of its non-reciprocal Follower/Following paradigm, could allow us to follow people we deemed experts and leaders. Which could be anyone from Steve Rubel to Steve Jobs to Steve Nash.

They'd send out links, wise thoughts and whatnot, for their followers to absorb on a daily basis. Heck, we could even monetize it and charge a fee for their wisdom. I've suggested that using a celeb's tweets from a relevant event would be a good marketing use of Twitter, so why not take it to the next level?

Worth contemplating.

PS: A formal thank-you to Brian Morrissey and Bill "Make The Logo Bigger" Green, who jumped onto Rubel's Twitter thread to point out that my post was tongue-in-cheek and not a Luddite screed from a true hater.

Corporate Blogging Conundrum

Where's My JetPack? always has some of the best cartoons on the web. He does them himself, too.

I particularly love this one he did about the potential pitfalls of clueless corporate blogging.

Spy On Toad

Or, more accurately, Toad on Spy.
Agency Spy, that is.

She's been running a great series on Social Media, featuring Strawberry Frog, Brian Morrissey, Ian Schafer and now, yours truly.

Check it out here.

Or read it here:

Part Cuatro: Social Media And The Ad Biz

March 25, 2008

Social media… is it the Saviour or the Antichrist? Who knows? So far, we’ve got three parts to this tale of woe:

Part 1- A look at StrawberryFrog’s new social media campaign for Scion
Part 2 - AdWeak takes a look at the troubles of measuring the metrics
Part 3 - Deep Focus’ CEO shares some details about his agency’s social media practice

This morning, we decided to ask Tangerine Toad, an advertising blogger who spends oodles amounts of time blogging about social media, to take a stab at creating a primer of sorts about brands and social networking sites.

“Social media can prove to be a real landmine for marketers who cling to old ways of thinking. They’ve failed to grasp the crucial fact that while traditional advertising is all about delivering product news in an engaging manner, social media is all about delivering customer utility in an unobtrusive manner.

As a live demonstration of this sort of utility, I’ve pulled together a quick primer for those who are afraid they’ve missed the boat:

Your Brand Is Not My Friend

Remember this above all else. I am on Facebook or Twitter or a community message board to commune with my friends. Not your brand. And it’s kind of creepy when you insist on interrupting us with your unwanted presence and unwanted messages.

Unless, of course, you are a Prom King Brand. Prom King brands are those brands inexplicably imbued with a sense of cool (Apple, Starbucks, Virgin et. al, plus most any movie, TV show, sports team or music act.). I actually do want to hang out with those guys and be their friend. I’ll gladly add their badges to my Facebook page and even wear a hat with their logo on it. So they get to play by different rules.

If you’re not a Prom King brand, you’re not totally screwed. You just need to find a way to provide people with something they actually want. This is a tough one for most traditional marketers since they (a) have trouble accepting the fact that people don’t really feel passionately about their brand, and (b) nevertheless insist on inserting the brand’s granular offline marketing message into the social utility space where no one wants to hear it.

Now a good example of a non-Prom King brand that’s done Social Media right is TripAdvisor.com and their Cities I’ve Visited Facebook app. (Which is just that—an interactive map where you can kill an hour or two checking off all the places you’ve been to and then comparing it with your friends maps.) There’s no obsequious branding message lurking about the app and popping up like some latter-day Uriah Heep—the only message is that travel is a lot of fun and the only branding is a TripAdvisor logo. That’s it. They make their point, get out of the way and let you enjoy yourself. At its peak, the app had over 7.8 million users.

Social Media is a great research tool. As Ian Schafer mentioned in his previous piece, people actually say what they think about you and what they say isn’t always flattering. But you need to hear it. Need to hear that your new product isn’t as great as you think it is. Or that the only thing you’re doing right isn’t the thing you suspected. It’s where you want to start having conversations with your consumers and not dismissing them as “cranks.” Because a brand that listens to its customers is a brand they may someday call a friend.

Social Media is still in flux. We’re all still figuring this out daily. Unlike Web 1.0, most of the change in this space is driven by new technology. That means you have to stay up on what’s going on (e.g. do you know what Kyte is?) and keep an open mind as to what each new technology might make possible. Or, to put it another way, to always bear in mind that YouTube was originally supposed to be nothing more than a simple site where you could post videos for your in-laws.

Good luck.”

10 Things I Hate About Twitter

So I’ve kind of gotten addicted to Twitter over the past few weeks. At its best, it’s like an ongoing coffee break that you can pop in and out of over the course of a day and find out all sorts of interesting gossip, not to mention articles worth reading and other time sucks.

That said, there are a number of things I find frustrating about it and given that Twitter is still in its nascent stage, I thought I’d put them into the ever popular list form. (Hat tip to Brian Morrissey for his input on this.)

1. I WISH I had the ability to temporarily turn certain people off. Especially people who feel the need to live-tweet an especially boring commute to the office or conference or concert or something else I am not interesting in learning about in 5 minute intervals. (That said, I wish I had the ability to produce cogent, lucid, amusing grammatically correct live tweets the way some people do. I completely lack the ability to be completely in the moment and participating in the event while simultaneously outside of it and commenting on it.)

2. I WISH I didn’t have to hit “Refresh” on the Twitter.com web page every time I wanted to see an update. Not a tech genius here but can’t imagine an auto-refresh feature would be that difficult.

3. I WISH there was a good Mac-compatible app for Twitter. I’ve been using Snitter and testing Twitterific, but they both have their faults. I don’t mind Snitter’s functionality, but it has the (fairly major) flaw of sometimes talking hour-long breaks from providing updates, no matter how many times you hit “Refresh.” And Twitterific loses me with those god-awful bird noises. (UPDATE, November 2008: I have been a big fan of Twhirl for the past several months. It's exactly what I was asking for.)

4. I WISH I was able to IM with people on Twitter. Sometimes someone brings up something you want to discuss with them in private and the back and forth Direct Messaging is just way too slow. Even a built-in link to an external IM app would help.

5. I WISH making my Twitter-stream private didn’t result in the odd-yet-annoying technical glitch of forcing me to follow every single person who elects to follow me.

6. I WISH the logical next step of the aforementioned problem—to remove all my new-but-unknown followers from my “People I’m Following” list—didn’t automatically result in their simultaneous removal from my “People Following Me” list. (Note: If this has happened to you, I swear it was not my intention to remove you, so please feel free to re-follow me- I’ve made my feed public again.)

7. I WISH people would stop welcoming new followers: this isn’t AM radio.

8. I WISH people would realize how odd it sounds to twitter about how you are currently playing with your children. Children are sentient beings who get that Mommy or Daddy can’t simultaneously be playing with them and typing about it on Twitter. Not to mention that (to paraphrase Chris Rock’s famous routine) you’re a parent: You’re supposed to be playing with your children. This is also true of people who twitter about how they are currently at dinner with various friends and relatives. All I can think of is 7 other people sitting there aghast as you blithely type new Twitter updates throughout the meal. (SEE ALSO: Wolk, A.: Social Media Is Only Social If You’re Alone.)

9. I WISH people would not feel the need to tell me what they are eating for lunch every day. Unless maybe it’s something really gross or unusually delicious. I mean I’m just as guilty of the occasional mundane tweet as the next guy, but some people's need to go into detail about the minutiae of life is indeed baffling.

10. I WISH I had the willpower to turn off the Twitter feed during the day. It wastes so much time. Yet it’s always so much more interesting than whatever else I’m doing.