The problem: people are not especially altruistic.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is an essential concept for anyone dealing with humans as part of their job. It’s quite simple: we have different levels of needs, and it’s hard to focus on the higher levels (example: creativity) when we don’t have the lower levels taken care of (example: breathing).
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Giving a homeless person money is arguably part of the “Esteem” level. While one might suggest that it’s self-actualization, I posit that most people like to advertise when they are donating to someone. While some morality is involved, a great deal of our motivation is gaining respect of others.
However, more important to humans than Esteem is Safety. This doesn’t just mean physical safety – it also includes financial security. And dealing with the homeless exposes our brains to the possibility that we too could, potentially, end up with no money and no home.
So the Safety requirement of our brain is fighting with the Esteem part of our brain…and most of the time, we just look down and walk by that homeless guy with the Street Spirit.
Part of the problem with Street Spirit currently is that it’s full of political articles about the homeless. While, again, it’s admirable that the AFSC wants to help inform us, this is again triggering the Safety-fearing part of our brain. Not only do we have to confront the potentiality of homelessness when buying Street Spirit, but we also have to read about it? No thanks. 99% of people I know who buy Street Spirit don’t ever read any of it.
The solution: make this a product that we want to buy. Appeal to both our need to seem like a good person AND our personal desire for entertainment.
Make Street Spirit an all-comics newspaper and the homeless will make a lot more money.
We all love comics. Pretend all you want, but anyone who reads a paper is just waiting until they have read enough of the real content to feel justified in reading the funny pages. The opportunity here is this: nobody reads newspapers anymore, but they still want to read the funnies.
Seriously. Find some independent comic strip artists (or see if you can’t get some big-namewebcomicartists to contribute) and try this just once. I guarantee you’ll see a huge increase in sales. We get our Esteem, the homeless get some cash, and the world is a slightly better place.
If you’re not familiar, follow the link. I won’t claim any superiority here: I absolutely and completely thought this was real, and spread the story. It was clever and well-done, and the creators deserve credit. However, this is a terrible thing for people in the social media space.
Cheapo executives are now going to re-focus on the notion that if you hire the right people and post on Twitter enough, something is guaranteed to be viral.
I’ve been in this position before: “create something viral, Evan, and keep it cheap”. The problem is that you can’t fully predict what will become viral. Sure, there’s more and more science around virality that can increase your chances, but at the end of the day there is still too much chaos to be able to really predict what will go viral (one article states “Mind-opening and emotionally rich articles are more likely to make the most emailed list, as are more practically useful, surprising, and positive articles.” Wait, so you mean GOOD articles?). You can post at 11am, include pretty girls, make sure to make it lo-fi, etc…but you can’t guarantee a hit. Much like a musical hit, it’s part talent and part randomness (or part huge-amounts-of-money, at which point you can’t really call it viral).
Don’t point out Old Spice Guy – I think (thankfully) that most executives saw that there was both a great deal of effort put into this campaign as well as a staggering of the different parts – they were ready for the character not to catch on and to nix the YouTube campaign.
But White-board Girl is the epitome of cheap & viral: written on napkins, shot with a cheap camera, not promoted by celebrities. I wouldn’t be surprised if within minutes of the announcement that she was fake that executives were emailing their underlings saying “do this”.
Am I suggesting that viral content isn’t something we should strive for? Absolutely not. But viral content is fire, fire, fail, fail, aim, aim, fire, fire, fail, MAYBE win. Don’t bet on anything more than that.
I’m pretty Apple-neutral. I adore my iPod (though I specifically bought a 5th generation because I like it better), I use Windows, I own an Android phone but I absolutely appreciate the genius of Apple design.
In the press conference this morning, Steve Jobs admitted that they knew about the iPhone4 reception issue before releasing the phone. Again, I understand – all products have flaws, and I don’t really think there is anything wrong about not highlighting them. People can make their own decision based on reviews.
But Steve Jobs specifically told us that this wasn’t an issue. He told us that we were holding the phone wrong. He lied so he wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences. That’s just wrong.
My #1 rule for fostering a loyal community: be honest with them as much as you possibly can.
People value honesty incredibly highly – I’ve had to deliver devastating news to customers before, and taking the time to tell them the whole truth of the issue often results in a surprising response: gratefulness. Yes, people often respond to bad news positively if you’re actually honest. There’s so much dishonesty in the world (especially the corporate world) that people are just relieved to know what’s going on. Ever had a mysterious ailment? If you’re anything like me, what’s worse than being sick or hurt is not knowing what it is or how bad it is. We, as humans, want the truth.
Apple could have saved money and face by being honest, at least once the initial reports came out.
Had they noticed the buzz in the first week they could have simply announced (hell, via Twitter if they had an account): “Yes, we’re aware of this. Yes, it’s a problem. Most phones have it, it should only affect a small percentage of calls and people.” You know what? Most people probably would have been fine with that. And if they weren’t? Offer free bumper cases to people who came in and requested them. It’d still save a lot more money than shipping them out to people (many of whom probably haven’t experienced this issue, but will ask for a case because of all the hoopla).
In short: even Apple’s might can be damaged by dishonesty. I’m impressed that Apple is actually admitting the truth and listening for once. I hope they keep it up (and their stockholders should too).
Everywhere I look, I feel like I see the tech press dissing physical keyboards on smartphones. TechCrunch, specifically, seems to use a phone with a physical keyboard for 3 days, declare the keyboard stupid, and then go back to misspelling things on their iPhone soft keyboards.
[The G2 Android Phone] is much more usable as a device. And we can thank one thing for that, as well as for much of its much improved design: The removal of the physical keyboard. – From HTC Killed the Physical Keyboard. Smart Move.
(I happen to love my G1, TechCrunch. As does everyone I know who has one.)
The argument against physical keyboards seems to be that they waste space, which strikes me as incredibly odd. From an interface perspective, a keyboard that slides under the screen doesn’t waste space. From a bulkiness perspective: really? Why do you need/want a phone with the thickness and weight of a granola bar? I like sleekness too, but you may want to have your doctor check you for osteoporosis if you really find the G1 too heavy to handle.
I want to make a very clear statement here to phone manufacturers: I heart physical keyboards. In fact, I refuse to buy a phone without one.
I’m not saying they’re for everyone – I’m sure soft keyboards are just fine for some people. But there are several reasons physical keyboards are a smart choice:
1) Some people, including myself, have big fingers. It’s really hard to hit those tiny soft keyboard buttons, and I spend WAY too much time fixing spelling errors than actually writing. Wasting time = bad.
2) Physical feedback always wins. While the slight force feedback and click noises of a soft keyboard are a nice touch, they don’t help me feel find my way around. I learned to type on a computer keyboard with actual keys, and that’s how I’m used to typing. Not to mention, the snap of sliding the screen back to get to the keyboard is just straight-up enjoyable.
3) Fast writers. My brain is usually slightly ahead of my fingers even on a computer, and using a soft keyboard makes it impossible for me to communicate my thoughts in any form of real-time.
4) There’s a reason that soft keyboards come with automatic spelling correction and word completion – because they are hard to use. iPhone users may be used to taking 5 minutes to write “hey I’m drown at the zebra, do you witch to come buy?”, but I find those messages obnoxious to read and embarassing to send.
5) The two aren’t mutually exclusive! You can have a physical keyboard and still provide a soft keyboard. If you’re a TechCrunch writer and you hate physical keyboards, you can simply NEVER OPEN IT. Magic. Everyone is happy.
So please, phone manufacturers: don’t stop making physical keyboards. Please don’t. Because if you do, I won’t buy your phone (or recommend them to my friends). And you wouldn’t want that, right?
Video goes with piracy almost as much as music does. For both mediums, a new phrase may need to be coined: “piracy is the sincerest form of flattery”.
I’m not joking, not really. While this is only speaking from my personal experience and conversations with others, I suspect that most piracy is not for profit. People grab their favorite clips and post them online because they think that they are hilarious and need to be shared with the world.
In the last few years the struggle between studios and privacy has been one of threats, inaction, and bitching.
This year we’ve seen a dramatic turn from the bitter fighting over video rights online to an embrace of the open nature of the web. It’s truly amazing, and not something I expected to see happen so fast. Let’s look at two examples.
Hulu
Hulu is a project that I (and many others) harbored intense skepticism towards during it’s development. The whole concept of the television studios ganging up to create a rival to YouTube seemed childish, and we all expected them to do a horrible job.
Whatever the intentions, the people who actually built Hulu did an amazing job, and my personal TV watches has almost entirely moved to Hulu. I’ve heard many others raving about it, including the usually skeptical Michael Arrington.
Why do jaded Web 2.0 users like Hulu? They’ve done a few things right, and a few more great.
Giving The People What They Want Hulu could have gone the cowardly way and only offered up lame, old shows that nobody was interested in. Netflix faced this issue with their “Play Now” option…studios only OK’d stuff that was unlikely to get rented anyway (although their selection continues to improve, and I love watching SeaQuest on Netflix).
Instead, Hulu has provided some of the top shows on television: The Office, The Daily Show, House, The Colbert Report, The Simpsons, 30 Rock, Saturday Night LIfe, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Family Guy (a YouTube favorite, which currently has 88,100 probably illegal results).
Don’t Be Stingy When you hold all the power, it’s tempting to stingily hand out goods at the slowest rate possible. Hulu managed to resist this, and their shows often show up the next morning. It’s hard to beat the experience of waking up on a Wednesday morning and watching The Daily Show from the night before while still in bed.
Hulu does sometimes set experation dates on their shows, but they make this very clear. I think the average consumer understands that if they want constant access to a whole season they should buy a DVD.
Monetization Is Changing
In a move that is in some ways more innovative than any monetization work YouTube has done, Hulu has started offering the option to watch a full-length trailer or ad (like the Tropic Thunder trailer seen in this image) in exchange for not showing any other ads during the episode. I assume (and hope) that they’re tracking this and adjusting their advertising appropriately.
Innovation One of the most innovative features to come out of online video in the last few months didn’t come from YouTube or any of the newer “Web 2.0” video sites…it came from Hulu.
Being able to select any part of an episode and send/share it as a clip is probably the most obvious and brilliant answer to the multitude of Simpsons clips on YouTube. And Hulu does it very, very well, making sure to suggest that you might want to watch the rest of the episode after your clip is over.
Monty Python on YouTube
Along with Family Guy clips and embarassing teen confessionals, Monty Python is a common search on YouTube. With over thirty thousand results on YouTube, it’s safe to say that this is money lost for Monty Python, who aren’t exactly actively promoting their old (and brilliant) material.
But, in a move humerously described by John Cleese as “deeply disappointing”, the comedy troupe has started a YouTube channel and is offering high resolution versions of their videos for free. This is a brilliant move for several reasons.
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em
In their introductory video (embedded below), Monty Python jokes that “for three years, you YouTubers have been ripping us off, putting tens of thousands of our videos up on YouTube.” It’s funny, but it’s also true, and probably a bit irritating for them. Yet instead of throwing a tantrum, the Pythons made the smart move to work with the existing trends and technology instead of uslessly flailing against them. In admitting this, they give YouTubers some credit and foster a sense of belonging instead of reluctant surrender.
Transparency In Advertising
A lot of advertising I see online feels like an apology. “Sorry, I had to slip this in to be able to keep doing this for a living”. Worse, they are often purposefully ignored. “Ads? What ads? Oh, how did those slip into my blog?”
Monty Python simply asks their raving fans to do them a favor and click their ads. Simple as that. During a the “Ministry of Silly Walks” video I clicked a Bombay Sapphire ad. Would I have done that on a normal video? No. But I did it for Monty Python, and actually discovered a cool recepie widget on the Bombay Sapphire site.
Listen To The Wisdom of the Crowd
Again, instead of taking the stingy path and only putting up the less funny Monty Python skits (if there truly are any), our British friends took a look at the most popular Monty Python videos on YouTube and worked to get those up as the first hi-rez videos on their new channel. They listened, and will likely be rewarded by a number of views.
Is The War Over?
Nah, of course not. Many TV studious (notably ABC) have not gotten involved in Hulu, and many companies still work to try to sue people who are “stealing” their videos instead of working to satisfy these people. Still, it’s impressive to see the progress made this year and encouraging to think that even large companies can wise up and come up with something as smart as Hulu. Next up, the music industry?
Don’t give me that look. Clearly you don’t care about the homeless, because you don’t buy Street Spirit.
We all love comics. Pretend all you want, but anyone who reads a paper is just waiting until they have read enough of the real content to feel justified in reading the funny pages. The opportunity here is this: nobody reads newspapers anymore, but they still want to read the funnies.
