Market Camp Silicon Valley

At the first marketing camp unconference in SV and it's good place to be. It was terrible to wake up in the 7am hour on Saturday, but the sheer number of people here sacrificing their Saturday represents both personal commitment and possible productivity pain.

I think this could be a great thematic direction for SVForum, as this was the first large scale marketing conference that I've seen where the egos were secondary to the learning. Like the unconferences for hacking and technology, this featured directed topics, lots of discussions, and Q&A. This was the place to learn what's on people's mind: What do marketing people think and worry about? What marketing issues are top of mind?

As a problem solver, it was fascinating to see what people consistently had questions about. What did I gather was the major direction? Marketing people, or at least people tasked with marketing, are saddled with tactical issues. Several of the sessions had topics covering strategy and planning, but most were limited by the generic for of "How do I do X" or why are things changing?

The undertone is that business is changing. Many of the "How To" questions were based on several areas that I followed:
- How do I best use Twitter?
- How do I best use Facebook?
- How do I measure return on effort and return on investment?
- How do I grow (users, engagement, customers, etc)

If I could take one thing away from this conference, marketing automation and the training around it is really solving problems. This particular audience seemed more tailored to startups, small business, and consultants, so the defacto vendor mentioned over and over again was hubspot. One caution here - several people stated that while hubspot was good to start, it was painful to leave.

I'll be looking for the final slides here.

Wisdom or Wisecracking of Crowds

I was following up on a report on KNTV where they discussed lawsuits against users who gave bad reviews when I ran into a thread from a reporter on yelp.

The reporter request was ligit, and I even saw the televised broadcast of the special report. The topic seemed important, as any commenter on Yelp or Facebook could be subject to a lawsuit for libel and slander. Worse yet, precedent could be set by any firm able to sway a jury to their way of thinking about online commenting. If anyone on the forum/comment list could be targeted, wouldn’t it be in their best interests to help the reporter?

The problem, it seems to me, was authenticity, familiarity, and reputation. Without any of those three, the reporter didn’t stand a chance of getting the breadth and depth of responses she deserved. The reporter, Vicky Nguyen from KNTV in the SF Bay Area, has a profile on the TV station site here, but even so, that did not help her. Let’s look at some errors that hurt her trust, reputation, and authenticity factors in getting the responses she was requesting.

Authenticity: The reporter made an honest appeal for feedback and introduced herself. She stated that she was a reporter looking for feedback on a story. Her appeal seemed transparent and open, but there was a problem with her appeal. The reporter chose a screen name that I cringed at immediately “KeepItReal I”. I’ll simply say that the name sounds like someone is trying too hard, but in the interests of brevity, I’ll stop there.

Familiarity: While the reporter did not commit the complete noob error of FPHR (First post help request), she did not have a long enough history of participation on the site or engagement with other users that people could trust that username was not a joke. Sometimes trust can be gained just by familiarity, but there is little you can do to remedy a new, young, or lightly engaged account.

Reputation: Closely tied to Familiarity, Reputation frames how users act with you or toward you. As the sum total of your experiences with the site, your reputation helps others categorize you as a lurker, commenter, value-adder, conversationalist, influencer, leader, troll, or even spammer. If the reporter’s reputation was one of influencer or leader, she may have received the feedback she needed. Without the right reputation and a history of belonging, it’s much easier to dismiss comments by a typical lurker as those of a troll or spammer.

Due to the the above factors, it was unlikely that the “wisdom of the crowds” would play out, and, in fact, the reverse happened. The online responders made innuendos, jokes, and otherwise ignored the ligitimate request for help from the reporter. The response amounted to nothing more than the wise-cracking of the crowds, which may be the expected response for attempting leverage unfamiliar communities.

Valley Arrogance and the Niche Market Blinders

What? Arrogance in Silicon Valley? Surely you jest.

It's true, and no matter how many times I've seen companies flail and fail, as engineers and marketers insist that they're "right", this phenomenon is alive and well in the SF Bay Area. This is both good and bad, depending on where you sit, and what you do on a day to day basis. At its worst, this phenomenon is typified by the "who uses that technology/service" remarks and the "I've moved on to X, which is much superior". At it's best, the press and investors-types call the technology or service "revolutionary" in hindsight, the 30+ also-rans fall by the wayside, and no one snickers because at least one worked.

While every market shifts, the true value of a technology or service is firmly established when the technology, company, or service makes serious money. The "moved on" comments become justified when the new technology, service, company overshadows the previous generation and a new way of business is established. Why does this matter? From a business perspective, respect typically comes from generating revenue, not just buzz and coolness. In my experience, many, many more people have been fired, reprimanded, and demoted for choosing cool technology that did not do the job at all, did not do the job better - to justify cost incursions, or generate enough added value than those who stuck with established, working products & services.

The saying used to be "nobody gets fired for buying IBM", and versions of that phrase still largely ring true. Here's a few examples the come to mind. Feel free to add better ones in the comments if you have them.
- Apple Newton & General Magic's Magiclink: I loved both of them, as did everyone here in Silicon Valley, but they died a tragic death as the love didn't spread very far
- Windows NT vs XP: While "everyone" was supposedly on XP in 2004, I ran into numerous businesses AND government agencies that still used NT. If you didn't know that your enterprise software may not have sold at all.
- Vadem Clio: Another valley love-fest for this "convertable tablet", very cool, and everyone adored it when they saw it, even years after the company went out of business
- Facebook vs. MySpace: Silicon Valley types seem to pan MySpace while trumpeting Facebook, even though MySpace still makes significant revenue today, and has made more for the past three years while people were cheering the superiority of Facebook
- Twitter vs. Google: Twitter gets a sureal amount of buzz about real-time search, while Google continues to dominate search, besting Cuil, Powerset, A9, and other Google killers over the years

Many will and should argue that "when the main stream gets it, it's too late." It's too late for what? Bragging? No, there are two different forces at work here. Building an innovative, valuable service/business that's disruptive is one thing, while establishing a sustainable trustable business is another. It often takes innovation and value creation to establish a sustainable trusted business, but what you often see is bragging and chest beating by startups who do something differently, because they can. Forget about the successful operating companies that have not been bested by the startup. The user bravado, which accompanies the early adopter myopia, when translated, is basically "I use a cooler service than you, but ignore that it makes less money and appeals to less people than what's out there".

The point here isn't that I favor any of the old or new companies/services/products, but that buzz, coolness, and Silicon Valley boasting can really mean little without the revenue, longevity, and trust of being an established business. Arrogance from believing you are the best is a weaker foundation than pride, accomplishment, and satisfaction of actually being the best and/or dominant market force.