Twitter’s New, Fantastic, Super Design?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

Judging by the breathless and enthusiastic reaction to Twitter’s new look and feel (aka “A Better Twitter”) you would think that Twitter had reinvented the wheel or discovered slice bread.

In a post that I wrote this on the Sysomos blog, I ask if:

“….the new design for Twitter.com is really that significant or whether it’s simply Twitter making changes to something that was, frankly, utilitarian but far from compelling.”

My take is Twitter really had no choice but to put a fresh coat of paint on Twitter.com given that, frankly, it reeks of bad usability, particularly compared with the growing number of alternatives that Twitter users are embracing.

From what I can tell without having actually seen the new Twitter in action, it looks like a step forward – perhaps not a major step forward but one nonetheless.

Canadian Social Media Case Study: Loblaw

By Mark Evans in Social Media 5 Comments Tags: , , , ,

According to the Toronto Star, Loblaw’s President Choice Financial unit has decided to become more aggressive with its marketing by rolling out TV ads featuring executive chairman Galen Weston that promote its no-fee checking accounts. The move is seen as a way to counter a similar product from ING Canada.

My first react was “That’s interesting.”, followed by “I wonder if President’s Choice Financial is using social media in any way to differentiate itself”. The short answer is “no”, which did not come as a surprise given Loblaw’s cautious overall approach to social media.

At a time when social media is all the rage, it’s a head-scratcher as to why Loblaw hasn’t embraced it given the company’s status as one of Canada’s leading retailers. A PC Financial blog, for example, that would provide consumers with personal finance information and insight – as well as putting the spotlight on its services and products – seems like a no-brainer, particularly in the competitive banking market. A blog or other social media services would offer PC Financial some new and different ways to engage with consumers, especially given PC Financial is mostly an online operation.

It would be easy to make the same arguments for Loblaw’s grocery business, which has relationships with millions of Canadian consumers on a regular basis. This should create an excellent opportunity for Loblaw to leverage social media. For example, a President’s Choice blog would be a great way to highlight new products, as well as offer consumers information about shopping for and preparing food. In many respects, it could do what the popular President’s Choice “Insider’s Report” did in the 1980s.

But, for some reason, Loblaw is dropping the ball when it comes to social media. For all the new opportunities that social media provides, Loblaw is taking a half-hearted approach. Of course, you could make the same argument for many Canadian retailers, who are significantly behind their peers in the U.S.

In terms of Loblaw’s social media portfolio, it consists of:

- A gardening blog that appears to have one post/week, although it is difficult to tell given the way the blog is structured. Most of the posts haven’t generated any comments.

- A Twitter account (@worthswitching4) with 562 followers that was very active in June and July but has only had three tweets since July 27.

- A Facebook Page with 9,097 “Likes”. Of the limited things that Loblaw is doing with social media, the Facebook Page is the most active with regular updates and engagement with users. That said, it’s pretty obvious there is a lot more that Loblaw could do with the Facebook Page, including the use of customized tabs beyond “Weekly Deals”.

- A Facebook Page for Joe Fresh, its clothing retail business, which has just over 9,000 “Likes”

- A Facebook Page promoting Loblaw’s sustainable seafood policy with 1,439 “Likes”. Given the company’s tepid overall approach to social media, it’s interesting to see something so specific.

If I were providing social media strategy to Loblaw, I’d suggest jump-starting its current activities, as well as:

- A President’s Choice blog, led by Galen Weston, who has become the face of the company through his involvement in TV ads. Weston doesn’t necessarily have to write any of the posts but a blog could be a great vehicle to extend his profile and role as Loblaw’s lead salesman.

- A Facebook Page that featured more interactive content such as polls, surveys and contests. I’d also suggest embracing video, not only featuring Loblaw’s TV ads but videos that provide information about Loblaw’s different products and services.

- A Twitter account (@loblaw and/or @pcfinancial) that provided a regular flow of information and insight.

- A President’s Choice Financial blog focused on the online banking, personal finance and small business markets.

BCE’s Puzzling Stab at Convergence

By Mark Evans in Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about BCE’s decision to acquire of all CTV – a decision apparently inspired when BCE CEO George Cope watched Canada’s women’s hockey team win Olympic gold on his wireless device – a moment he described as when the “penny dropped”.

It’s a move that obviously has convergence written all over it based on the idea that owning CTV will let BCE exclusively distribute content to its wireless, IP-TV, satellite and Sympatico.ca customers. This is yet another strategic makeover for BCE, and something that bleeds of competitive scrambling, if not desperation.

In theory, this will achieve three things:

1. It will make BCE’s distribution channels more valuable
2. It will give BCE a golden opportunity to squeeze more dollars from its customers
3. It will help BCE customers who want CTV content away from Rogers, Videotron and Shaw, as well as keep its own customers who have been fleeing to Rogers and Videotron in Eastern Canada.

On the surface, it may seem like a solid strategic approach but my take is the same flaws that doomed the original convergence movement will inevitably doom Convergence 2.0.

The biggest problem is consumers want content neutrality. Consumers want to get content when, where and how they want it. They don’t want to have to be a customer of a certain carrier or cableco to get content. Instead, they want to pick and chose their content – be it from Hulu, Netflix, CTV, CBC, NBC or Apple.

What consumers are willing to pay for – and even pay a premium to get – is a high-speed connection so they can access the content they want. It’s one of the reasons why high-speed ISPs have been able to raise prices and create different tiers of service with little resistance from consumers.

This is particularly true in Canada where high-speed competition doesn’t exist. In most markets, there’s friendly competition between the carriers and cablecos. While speed is often used as a competition differentiator, price is something that rarely, if ever, comes into play, probably because the margins on high-speed are so sweet that the carriers or cablecos don’t want to kill the golden goose.

Given this oligopolistic landscape, BCE didn’t need to purchase CTV. But George Cope probably believed he had no choice given his many of his major rivals own content: Shaw owns Globe TV, Rogers owns SportsNet, CityTV, Omni and a stable of radio stations and magazines, while Videotron has access to Quebecor’s media portfolio.

If anything, it speaks volumes about Canada’s media and telecom landscape in which cross-ownership has been allowed to thrive even at a time when the Internet has let more content than ever be available to any one with an Internet connection. At the same time, Canada’s digital border is alive and well, which explains why we still don’t have access to services such as Hulu and Pandora.

The only losers in this growing content contest between the cablecos and carriers are consumers, who may be forced to dance with specific partners as opposed to have a dance card that lets them choose whoever they want.

Snakes & Lattes: The Anti-Web Cafe

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

August 31, 2010 Snakes and Lattes, a pro board game, anti-internet cafe on Bloor Street West has 1500 games on site. in Toronto TORONTO STAR/STEVE RUSSELL Cafes have become places where data is consumed as much, if not more, than coffee.

With free Wi-Fi being offered by major chains such as Starbucks and Second Cup, the majority of people in cafes are armed with laptops and a willingness to hang out for a long time.

For cafe owners, it’s a mixed blessing because free Wi-Fi draws customers but these customers also take up valuable real estate because they stay a long time without consuming a lot of product – at least product that costs money.

So it was interesting to stumble upon Snakes & Lattes in downtown Toronto, which does not offer free Wi-Fi or, for that matter, Wi-Fi at all. Instead, S&L has more than 1,500 board games that people can play for $5/table. It means that instead of staring into the digital abyss, people are playing a game and interacting with each other.

In this day and age, this is a pretty awesome (and old school) thing that S&L is trying to encourage. It’s also pretty fantastic marketing given it must be difficult for cafes to differentiate themselves now that everyone is offering free Wi-Fi to lure Internet users.

Here’s hoping that games rather than data will give S&L the competitive edge it needs to survive a crowded marketplace.

Five Questions With….the Toronto Public Library

By Mark Evans in Five Questions With..., Social Media No Comments Tags: , , ,

When you think about the library, perhaps you envision images of quiet book-filled sanctuaries. In some respects, many libraries are still like that but in other ways, they have changed their stripes completely. Many libraries have embraced the Internet and the growing availability of digital content to serve customers in new and different ways.

Among the libraries to climb on the digital bandwagon is the Toronto Public Library, which launched a major overhaul of its Web site earlier this year. I had a chance to do a quick interview with Katherine Palmer Director, Planning, Policy and E-Service Delivery, about how the process was done and some of the different things the TPL needed to consider.

When was the last time the TPL updated its Web site?
The last major redesign was 2002, although we have built a children’s section and a Web section for teens. The thing we did do right was we did a lot of work with customers. We did a long usability phase, finding out what they liked about the old site, and what didn’t work. When we introduced the new Web catalog in 2008, we got some good feedback.

What kind of input did you get when putting together the new site?
We got a lot of feedback through beta phase about the new site. We launched in beta last December. We got a lot of good technical folks giving us good feedback about what was working and not working. We were able to make changes such as putting the help screen in the right places, changes to the “Your Account” feature, and search got better too because it’s so complex.

What about social media and the role that it is playing?
I think we were pretty early adopters in using what was available and what we could use with our technology. Now there is so much available to use, we can more easily integrate into the new platform and new technology because it works so seamlessly. It was a great fit to use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

How has social media been embraced by library users?
It’s still an emerging group but it expands our reach. With Twitter, we have had some good exchanges. Facebook is pretty popular, especially when we have some significant offerings in terms of programming, and on YouTube, we have been posting our whole videos of our programming.

Those are picking up speed, and it’s a great opportunity for us. It puts us in the main library Web site context, and we engage with customers directly to share information about programming, answers questions, and provide feedback.

We also have a blog that focused on the Web project. It was useful to track how we worked through the process. We had a high level of transparency. We would hear from people, and post what we heard about it.

Your customers feel they are “owners” of the library. How was that reflected in the creation of the new Web site?
In terms of engagement from a technical level, they were involved. They do have a strong ownership so the very tech savvy wanted us to be innovative, while traditional users wanted to get to the things they needed. The other thing we wanted to make sure to happen is [the new Web site] is a great opportunity to put all of our offerings front and centre. We can put more information available on different screens – programming, recommended Web sites and book recommendations. That is one of the things we are challenged by is growing awareness of our services and getting folks to use the widest range possible.

Media is Changing. But How?

By Mark Evans in Media 1 Comment Tags: , , , ,

I was fortunate to be invited by the Digital Journal to participate on a panel last night about the future of media – a subject that attracts a lot of attention as traditional media valiantly scrambles to stay vibrant and viable.

For the most part, the panelists were well behaved and provided some great insight into how the media world is changing. In particular, it was interesting to hear from Anjali Kapoor from the Globe & Mail and David Skok from Global News about how their organizations are evolving and embracing change. Polar Mobile’s Kunal Gupta provided some great insight into how mobile devices are changing content consumption, while Facebook’s Elmer Sotto talked about the role that Facebook is playing as a distribution platform.

The question everyone in the room wanted to know, of course, is what the future holds for media. Everyone involved in the media business or interested in the media is looking for insight about what’s over the horizon. What they got from the panel was that everyone recognizes that things are dramatically changing but no one knows what exactly is going to happen.

For example, there was an animated discussion about how mobile users are consuming lots of content. Kunal talked about how mobile users consumes 100 pages of content on Time.com’s wireless application, compared with 14 pages of content for Time.com’s Web site. There was also a healthy discussion about the iPad and whether it could be the saviour for the newspaper and magazine businesses. And we talked a little about how location-based services might be an interesting opportunity.

That said, you could sense the frustration in the audience. They’re not looking for glimpses of the future or tidbits about what’s currently happening; they’re looking for tangible information about what’s coming. They want insight about the bleeding-edge technologies or services that will impact media.

As much as no one wanted to disappoint the audience, the truth is no one really knows. If we did, one of us would probably be working for a red-hot start-up focused on revolutionizing the way media is created and consumed.

Instead, people have to live with the fact the media world continues to be a volatile and evolving environment. The good news is that a growing number of media companies have embraced the fact they need to change or die. It means there’s a lot of self-analysis happening, as well as a growing willingness to experiment.

To me, the future of media and who ends up surviving all this upheaval hinges on who creates the best content. As a former reporter, I truly believe that story telling is as important, if not more important, than ever. Whether it’s a video, newspaper or magazine article, Facebook update, blog post, photo or tweet, content is still King. How we economically create this content and how we consume content is still very much in the air, which leaves lot of room for more panels on the future of media.

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