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This was recommended to me my colleague Steve Ives. It’s from Loic LeMeur’s blog and tells a pretty good story about social networks, objects and disruptive innovation, he also elegantly introduces his own biz, Jaiku (twitter’esque micro blogging app) in to the talk. An ‘academic’/ educational approach but a gentle sell in and some interesting thoughts relevant to web social networking as well as mobile. Couple of note worthy points…
What makes a mega trend or factors a new service needs to have over an incumbent

• Simpler
• Cheaper (ideally free)
• Is it quick and easy?
• Is it cross-device and multichannel? (allows me to do it spontabeously)(
• Is it everyday?
• Does it bring people closer together?

Other interesting points –
Mass ‘amateurising’ increasing with blogs etc..
Web content and communities difficult to take to go…therefore new activities will begin to occur (‘Starbucks turned Coffee in to a mobile experience’)

Most popular opening q’s during a phone conversation.
Can you talk?
Where are you now?
…likely that future mobile apps/services will address this in a similar way to IM/chat apps do.

Having spent hours on FB recently and read some excellent reviews (see my delicious links). Thought I’d summarise my check list before my paper notes become unreadable due to coffee cup stains…
Great Apps have many of the following characteristics (in no particular order):

• Appeal to the frivolous (super poke) or our intrinsic giving nature
• Enable you to adorn your virtual space and illustrate aspects of your personality
• Facilitate sharing/ connnecting with other people
• Fresh content
• Apps which require low text input (max 2 lines)
• Understand the ‘social graph’ and tap in to this
• Challenges/Quizes which result in a personal metric (to compare with others)
• Cross promoted with other apps
• Keep you on FB
• Don’t command too much time/effort from users or space
• Have other platforms to help with their awareness/reach

Bad Apps seem to

• Spam your friend’s list (install process)
• Require some kind of web log in / interface. (e.g. Last.fm)
• Force you to download something new – FB’s Open App system is beautifully simple don’t make me download something?

Mark Earl’s book  Herd culture - how to change mass behaviour.
Take-outs/ personal Notes

• Individuals do not do what they are doing largely on their own but through the influence of others
• ‘Super social, we-species’. Not ‘I’ species
• We want to be together to cooperate
• Western societies think of individuals and causes, East thinks of groups, relationships and systems
• Cult brands (e.g. apple) serve an underlying social need to belong
• Understanding human interactions (C2C) is the key to understanding how to change mass behaviour.
• Mass behaviour is complex (as opposed to complicated)
• Markets often remain stable and then change seemingly quickly
• Early adopters may not be the ‘mass spreaders’ – they’re too busy thinking about the next big thing
• Celebrity endorsement can help achieve cheap awareness/cred but the media literate consumer will know the celeb is being paid
• Endogenous WoM significantly more effective than exogenous
• Reputation key to health of business- see Net Recommendation metric proposed by Reichheld in the HBR
• Belief businesses =great brands e.g. From Jamie Oliver, Howies, Naked etc…
• Understanding companies’ position in the market more useful at identifying what to do differently
• Cynics= disappointed idealists
• Co-creativity “Amarillo” with your consumers, network etc…key factor in success. Andy Bryant, Red Bee Media essay on creativity in the TV industry and the importance to engage with different networks

As with most my posts, much of this will mean more to me than you.

http://www.shufflebrain.com/ applying game mechanics to functional design to make them fun, compelling and addictive. Not specifically about UI but still interesting and worth a quick peruse of the 58 slides.

FaceBook App Stats – useful for checking on what’s hot and not on FB, growth trends – not found anywhere that shows any measure of ongoing utilisation e.g. ‘visit’ frequency, interaction, change
http://apprap.blogspot.com/

http://mashable.com/2007/07/07/appaholic/