It’s funny how many forgive and forget when it comes to Google. One would expect the abysmal failure of Google Wave 2 years ago, stifling the public’s tolerance of giving any Google grown ‘social’ product another go. It seems though the leading search engine provider has succeeded in breaking its novice status with the creation and execution of Google+, now with 25m users and counting. Google’s best kept secret? Not anymore.

Having worked with online products for so long, I appreciate how difficult it is to nail an online platform that hails simplicity and sophistication at the same time. Add to this the already cluttered online community space that is dominated by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn amongst others, it’s quite exciting to see Google+ take the lead in what I would label as social media’s next generation of platforms. Why I draw this conclusion boils down to a couple of factors:

Google+ gives ultimate control to the individual. Unlike Twitter and Facebook where the rights of sharing is dependent on the message recipient’s willingness to connect with the sharer, Google+ allows the end user to freely add Google+’ians into user groups and share messages based on their personalised circles of individuals. It’s asymmetrical in nature, and it’s just what social junkies are looking for.

Google+ evolves the equation of a sticky platform. Think of a restaurant that you regularly eat at. What makes you go back there? It’s a combination of things: the food, the service, the atmosphere, the people you dine with. I used to think that the community for social networks was the primary determinant of a user’s loyalty (the key reason that I gave Facebook another go despite being dubious about its utility in my life). It seems now that being a ‘regular’ in the longhaul also requires a continued investment in keeping features (equivalent to the restaurant’s atmosphere and menu) on the platform attractive. And what’s cool about Google+ is that you don’t need an online tutorial or help tips: the environment is predictable to the end user, the Google+ diet is easy to digest!

Since its launch we’ve seen tweaks in the Circles module and YouTube sharing, driven primarily by screening usage (which is not surprising with Google’s advanced web analytics capabilities) and listening to user’s feedback. Crowdsourcing is a cool way of learning more about users and ensuring users remain engaged on the network.

This approach breathes the importance of iterative development, the importance of being agile with managing a living and breathing platform as more information about your users and their behaviours surface.  Twitter started off with attractive features (the concept of ‘followers’ and @ mentions and RT or quotes) but responded too late to third party applications who offered more convenience in features such as shortened links and in line influence scores from Klout.

It’s great to be reminded that the social media space will never stop evolving and I’m pleased to see Google+ taking a decent leap in the right direction.

What I look forward to? I see a richer user experience across other Google web properties as a result of first hand insights from Google+ users (for example, improved relevancy on Google Search); more functionality on its mobile app, particularly for Android powered mobiles; further integration of video chat properties within its cool Hangout feature and a Google+ API.

 The past 5 months have left me pondering the topic of modern leadership and what makes a great (and sustaining) leader. To me, an inspiring leader must not only articulate the purpose of any venture or project clearly and in a way that makes sense for me, they must also connect and relate to my job at hand, the challenges faced and seek to then give constructive advice on the best mode of action.

What I’ve also noticed is that the digital world has significantly influenced what others expect from a leader. The interactive nature of the social web has meant any individual irrespective of skillset and experience has equal right to voice their opinion and be heard. In the same way, the next generation breed of up and coming managers who live and breathe with an online presence will demand instantaneous gratification: this means finding direct access to a discussion that has traditionally taken place behind closed doors. Gone are the days of effective dictatorship (which might I point out is very different to taking a directive stance – proven useful particularly in times of uncertainty and constant change).

To be truly collaborative, modern leadership is about incorporating typical elements of the social web: being accessible any time by your team, involving people on big ticket items right from the start (rather than after the event) and aligning your approach using the available tools these days (eg. Creating a Yammer community dedicated to sharing ideas) that encourages creative contributions on a daily basis.

Social leadership isn’t a new phenomenon (see Charlene Li’s briefing at SXSW last year), it’s here to stay as long as we humans are!

The answer could be a host of other potential reasons:

~ It builds brand awareness:  sites branded ‘Beta’ typically signal a work-in-progress product, a type of status that brings in technology enthusiasts who in turn are most vocal about their product experiences. Free press!

~ It enables collaboration and buy-in: anyone who’s worked in large corp will know that you’d be sentenced to a life-of-foolishness if you don’t first test with your stakeholders. By stakeholders I refer to not only customers (who could ultimately become advocates of your product), but also senior management whose influencing power will help keep your business idea or product alive in a large organisation.

~ It could help you win more moolah: venture capitalists take calculated risks, and would potentially view your actions as sensible, building a pretty solid and measurable case to consider investing in your product or business model.

Test just enough though, then move on quickly. There’s definitely the need for speed…or else you might see the opportunity dissipate or be taken by an unforeseen rivalry.

2010 for me was a year lived in snippets: short spurts of high quality time dedicated to the numerous developments and events unravelled on the web and in my life. Even this post only warrants a 30 minute sprint of reflection and fast typing as the final hours of 2010 unfolds in the wake of new years eve celebrations!

Courtesy of: Getty Images Australia

I’d like to share some of the things that have enlightened me over this year as a hyperconsumer of media:

The evolution of the social web: Facebook takes over as the most visited  web site over Google.com. Whilst comparing a social networking site with an  advertising/search platform might sound flawed, it is clear that a growing  number of individuals are finding their time spent on social networks more  appealing and rewarding than before.

This growth in numbers has paved the way for enhanced features, including  Facebook new messages and Places as well as niche like players such as photo  sharing site, Instagram emerging to address the growing sophistication of social  web contributors.

Even the good ol’ web browser is now embellished with a social element: new browsers such as Embedly, Cortex and Readon.ly are designed to simplify the process of viewing and sharing content to social networks.

The heightened importance of search and order: as information sources and the reliance on the web grow, the ability to find, organise and rediscover content becomes more and more paramount. Beyond the basic search bar and Twitter lists arrangements, there’s a call for better semantics (structured relationships within data) and tools to help extract and process data.

The likes of  Needlebase captures key sources and explores visualisation formats to present this data back to individuals in a meaningful format. Quora is also a great example of how search capability is evolving (I’m hooked!). Data storage is consequently inclined towards being cloud based, with Amazon and Google riding this trend.

The diversification and personification of smart devices: the launch of the iPad earlier this year (1m shipments in 28 days) and the iPhone 4 in July were among the hype this year. With talks of HP’s Slate, Motorola’s Galaxy and Google’s Android Honeycomb tablets coming out in 2011, the key to success in any smart device will focusing effort in achieving a great UI and attracting a sticky developer community for cool apps that enrich one’s interactions on their device.

It’s become such a part of our lives that it’s now seen as evocative: everyday devices that has the power to impact things such as relationships, ideas, emotions and memories. Spot on.

Courtesy of: Getty Images Australia

Creative destruction to traditional business models: enter Murdoch’s great paywall experiment. Since March, Murdoch’s vocal push for a subscription service across his newspapers has seen some adoption from its The Times base, however one questions the lack of creativity with his approach. For example, one better approach could have involved adapting content streams to younger readers, or taking on a more segmented approach with their advertising models. Create value first, then charge for it.

Wikileaks. Need I say more? You’ll find all the commentary out there using Google’s cool News Timeline feature (here). The point I’d make here is that we’re only seeing the start of such activity as consumers become more equipped as creators and catalysts of content.

On a personal level, I’ve completed my MBA, conquered laser eye surgery, and sought out a new job with new challenges. What hasn’t changed is my passion for social media, connecting with interesting people at the meetup circuit, and of course, fitness! Thanks for dropping by and here’s to an awesome 2011 – cheers!

Great ideas were in flight across 3 clear strategy streams: the creative strategist (@michaelwatkins from Mudomedia), the strategic consultant (@paulalexgray from Brainmates), and the strategy executor (@katydaniells from DaemonTWO) –  all of which might I say are important perspectives to consider when seeking success in a campaign or project. And yes, strategy is also about execution – business fundamentals since the Kaplan/Norton days!

The topics however had me pondering over the following:

1. Deciding if social media is an appropriate activity to undertake requires common sense

Once you decide on your business objectives, use common sense to derive your plan: understand how your customers tick – where they spend their time, who they hang out with and what they like/dislike and understand your options in targeting them with your product or campaign.

2. It also requires humility

Head honchos within enterprises also need to recognise that social media is a playing field that can’t be learned unless you actively play in it (again common sense). As Jye quotes Katie Chatfield, it’s an ‘emergent discipline,’ in which ‘we’re all still making up the language as we go.’ This involves letting down one’s guard, and acknowledging that there is room to learn (this is what makes social media so enthralling!).

So, as social media evangelists who preach versatility and untapped potential in this space, we need to:

1. Educate and gain buy in from the top

Start with educating C-level management about the benefits of social networks. Success stories such as that from Deloitte and their adoption of Yammer across the employee network signifies that CEO’s can be convinced about radical proposals. It’s the CEO who will have the authority to infuse adoption throughout the organisation once they’re sold on the idea. [For Deloitte, the useful life of email has apparently been set to 5 years since Yammer's rollout].

2. Be thoughtful with the pitch

C-level management are concerned about the bottom line, shareholder return, and corporate reputation. Elements of a social strategy can provide benefits in all these elements. Measuring changes in brand sentiment, dollars spent on listening and conversing with online communities (labour and systems) can all be directly attributed back to net profit.

3. Respect where they’ve come from

Tonight there were a few throw away comments on bureaucratic government organizations and cagey staff unwilling to trial new things. Accept these as fact and use it to your advantage. There’d be a valid reason explaining why there is process to follow and resistance to change – understand their motivations and take them head on.

Source: Slatteryit.com.au

Agile Australia 2010 was a solid, intensive 2 day workshop themed around delivering business value with Agile, consisting of an eclectic group of speakers from blue chip organisations and specialist consulting firms.

So much great insight was wrapped into the two days (the only conference I’ve been to where all 450 or so attendees stayed until the final workshop!), that it warrants three separate blog posts – here’s the first: successfully adapting Agile practices require a new mindset (and sometimes new blood).

Firstly, I should make it clear that Agile in the context of project management and product or software development is based around short cycle releases (we’re talking weeks as opposed to months), frequent feedback loops with customers and quick iterations that tweak and improve an output to address this feedback. A good place to learn more about the principles behind Agile is the Agile Manifesto site and Martin Fowler’s New Methodology digital handbook on the topic. To this point comes the following key takeouts:

1. Don’t underestimate the difficulty of unlearning habits and rituals. Ben Hogan of Agile Coach refers to the power of one’s comfort zone and the rather arduous process of moving from current status quo to a new desired state.  Transforming an idea for change to one that is accepted and realised by staff requires leaders rather than managers, and investment in change management. This ensures staff is embedded with a genuine belief and commitment that the change is for the better.
2. Being Agile puts people first, rather than process first. The infamous  Martin Fowler does a frank comparison of Agile against traditional waterfall to demonstrate the fallacies that is the latter:

• Waterfall demands predictive behaviour, whereas Agile requires adaptive behaviour. Agile recognizes that accurate crystal balling is impossible to achieve (otherwise we’d all be millionaires!).

• Documentation and planning is still central, but only if it finetunes your development needs. Possibly my favourite point as it knocks down the popular myth that Agile follows a chaotic, freeform structure. As Jay Jenkins from Renewtek puts it, ‘Agile strips away waste, not documentation.’

• Success of a Waterfall approach is measured by an ‘according to plan’ mentality, whereas Adaptive’s success is measured by business value: was customers happy with what they were given and has it evolved from what was originally in plan? Change is encouraged rather than opposed by the business (shock horror!).

• Hence, recruiting small teams of people who are aspirational, highly skilled and self organizing are key ingredients to making this transition. Establishing an ‘A-Team’, as Craig Smith calls it, touches on teachings from Dan Pink’s Drive (a brilliant book I might add!) – the notion of an individual being given autonomy, seeking mastery and finding purpose in what they do as ways to drive high levels of motivation. Reference to Atlassian and Thoughtworks hackathon style days demonstrate just that.

All this from what I can see boils down to two things: accepting continuous improvement in development, integration and delivery of product as the only means to delivering value to our customers, and placing trust in your people to make critical decisions on the fly. Both of these are rationally easy to comprehend and agree to, but in practice very difficult to realise.

Source: http://pubsub.com

Which is a nice segue into my next post on Agile Australia: the importance of teams, collaboration, trust and adaptive leadership.

How we choose to live boils down to perspective and attitude. As human beings we experience the joys and hardships that shape us to become who we are. And in moments of dystopia where we can only see how bad a situation might be, it’s worth reminding oneself that these trying times bring great opportunities to  grow as an individual. I experienced that with my recent Laser Eye Surgery, which failed to correct my eyesight in the 2^nd round of operation. Feeling like it was the end of the world, I learned a week later that a once very healthy friend of mine had developed Scotoma which will eventually impair vision across both eyes.

This coupled with an open minded approach to hearing, seeing and adapting to your surrounds also help create opportunities that might not be there in the first place. The digital world is made of twenty-something, energetic, creative entrepreneurs who thrive on experimentation. This can be as natural to any older person if we took on the same tenacity as these young-bes. My 62 year old dad is an excessive iPad/iPod consumer, who has a love for BitTorrent (he will remain anonymousJ) yet also persists with playing one of 100 vinyl records each night.

Life also involves being bold with making choices. Whether it’s right or wrong is only a matter of opinion and not the point – it’s the fact that you make a calculated decision that helps you take that one step forward in knowledge, experience and character is what counts.

So, what are we waiting for? Embrace every moment and proactively seek new opportunities to learn!

22 July, 6.30pm (tonight!): Continuing the ASR debate on online measurement.

Venue:  The Supper Club in Darlinghurst. Hosted by Media Monitors. Overview of topics and registrations are here.

27 July, 8pm: Shhh Sydney - launch!! Its premise is built on the belief that a meaningful experience can be discovered when a group of people share a space in a silent way.

Venue: 655A Darling St, Rozelle. Created by Alan and Miles. To register, click here.

14 Aug, 10.30-5.30pm: Social Innovation BarCamp. An un-conference about social innovation related topics from an unplanned set of speakers (love the free-form approach!).

Venue:  College of Fine Arts, Oxford St & Greens Rd, Paddington. Created by Michelle & Kate. To register, click here.

Another good source for digital media, marketing and technology centric events is the Digital Ministry Events page.

A final plug: Regular Product Maven meet ups in Sydney (Twitter hashtag: #pmms) will also continue on the first Wednesday of each month at Cook & Archie. Updates on these events are found at our Posterous site.

If I’ve missed any event, add them in the Comments field. Hope to see you at one of these events soon! <Ciao for now>

I’ve come to realise that understanding customers by traditional characteristics– social class, demographics and worker type, is simply not enough. Enter Personas.

Personas, as the name suggests, indulges in defining characteristics about your customers, as a person or individual. It is based on a fictional person’s preferences, cultural tendencies, role within an organization (for business), behaviours and personal/career goals, which, if simulated effectively during research, should effectively represent multiple individual consumers of your product or service.

What Personas do is compliment, rather than replace, existing customer segmentation for a business so that more informed decisions are made. My recent experience with developing Personas for the Media Monitors group demonstrates its versatility – rather than just steer product development and interface design (which was the original intention), our HR department has taken a chapter out of Personas to recruit staff, whilst our CEO refers to our Persona profiles to justify decisions made on corporate strategy.

The process of learning about current and ideal customers is also uber fun. Commissioning Different, a research company who specialises in user design for the project, we were a fly on the wall for a few hours as 12 of our customers went about doing their usual business (observational research). We were also heavily involved in bringing the Personas to life: choosing a face and name (a female staff member specifically asked for a more ‘handsome, meterosexual-type’ representation for one of ours!) to the size of their family and the type of job they’re in.

Whilst you might say that this level of detail is pointless and questionable in its representation of the entire customer base, I’d argue that any data is worth considering for validation purposes, be it a product concept, marketing campaign, or business case. Particularly when what you’re validating is radical, and rocks the ‘norm’ boat!

So now, as a Product Manager, I am better equipped to make the right decisions as:

1. The concept of a primary persona focuses effort when there is a resource clash. In addition to 1 primary persona, we have 3 secondary personas who, as Brainmates point out, should still be accommodated for, provided the needs of the primary persona is not compromised;
2. It articulates in detail the characteristics of a Persona, so that there is minimal uncertainty on who a company, product or brand is targeting;
3. Personas direct corporate strategy, and all the activities that support this strategy.
4. For Product people, products are designed and subsequently tested against a manageable set of requirements. As Step Two puts it succinctly, ‘design for a discrete set of personas and satisfy all users with similar goals.’

Here’s a comprehensive perspective of the Personas process, courtesy of Technomarketer.

Do you also have Personas for your company? How useful have you found them? Do share!

The event was precise with insights on individual experiences whilst still bringing a global perspective into the mix. I was pleased to see a broad mix of cultures, with representatives from Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern regions keeping the usual American and British contingent in good company.

I shared about Ralph Simon talking about innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, here are some other insights worthy of mention from the day (thanks also to tweets containing the #xmedialab hashtag):

~ Dana Al Salem: The more things change, the more things stay the same: shares how she built on the uncanny similarities between the Hippy (which she is one herself!) and the Gen Y demographic to create interest for her teenager-meet-band site, Fanshake.  To her, Gen Y is a hippy at heart, seasoned with empowerment, tech savvyness and high spending power.

Salem also recommends being selective with who you market to: targetting Trend-setters who are influential to their peers, instead of a random ‘shot gun’ approach which is hit and miss (sorry on the puns J).

~ Parmesh Shahani: Media convergence and development is a cultural, not technological process.

Youth & Culture: Indian Idol (source: @parmeshs presentation)

Whilst most people see India as highly developed and thriving, Shahani believes the boom is yet to come.  The emergence of educated, savvy youth and proliferation of sophisticated user cases with the mobile phone are considerations to this point. He also reminds us one must design a product or site for your customer, rather than yourself, suggesting the importance of validation across all different user types and cultural domains during development.

~ Nick Yang: The 34 year old founder of KongZhong and Wukong.com is a working example of how economically sound ideas, cast iron persistence and luck (a plug on feng shui!) can see through success. In less than 2 years and 2 months, he successfully floated both companies, and looks to take on Google’s search model with his predictive search concept. You can read more about his plans in this transcribed interview.

~ Yang claims that now is the ‘era of product.’ I tend to agree (no bias, honestly J), and here’s proof:  as the rest of Australia make a dash for iPhone V4, there’s already some really cool innovation already available: Ocarina by Smule is one which transforms the iPhone into a musical instrument. A whole new symphony genre has just emerged.. hear Led Zeppelin here (I kid you not). Updated, 30/6: St George today launched its own AR enabled app, named House Finder [video], with data powered by the Australian Property Monitors.

~ Practical applications of Layar were touched upon by Halcomb and Manson. With around 2m installs on the iPhone and Android, and 2.5k layers under development, countries like Japan are already taking advantage of Layar for virtual real estate and musical artist promotions. To that I’m very excited about the prospects of what augmented reality can offer in the next 12 months!

Presentation on LAYAR

Finally, if there was a prize for the most captivating speaker of the conference, I’d hand it over to Anand Giridharadas. The New York Times writer narrated his views on how the digital movement is challenging our ethics and priorities across online and offline worlds. Whilst traditional ways of sharing is well emulated in social networks by our behaviours, Anand points out that growing interest with personal branding may deter content distribution for the greater good.

Other useful sources circulating the interweb are here:

1. Brad Howarth’s blog
2. Paul Wallbank’s blog
3. Augmented Reality’s slidedeck
4. Stilgherrian’s live blog