An old college friend who avoids social networks addressed an intriguing problem recently:

“I’ve just decided what it is I don’t like about Social Networking… it’s the idea that it, when push comes to shove, my people can bury your people… Please, tell me I’m wrong, that the end result doesn’t allow those with the most connections to dominate society further for their own benefit at the expense of those with the fewest connections. Much like the rich vs. the poor struggles of yesteryear, only now we can rise above money – look, it’s purely about fame and how well you’re liked.”

As an indirect middle finger to bullies of the past who gained advantage by physical body size, bullies in the social networking world are often the geeks! One of the reasons people are racing to Google+ is that it’s easier and more natural to organize friend groups based on the way humans naturally organize themselves rather than feeling like you’re a database admin trying to maximize the efficiency of a friend database.  

Somewhere deep within Facebook are the tools and settings to make sure the people you care about show up before the “bullies.” Also, perceptions are skewed when Facebook’s algorithm tends to give people exposure simply for talking more rather than saying something you’d necessarily care about. Google+ Circles seem to move this in the right direction by making it easier and more intuitive to share certain info with specific groups.

I’m not 100% sold on Google generally, as it often behaves as one of the biggest bullies out there. I think all of this is perhaps the greatest social experiments we’ve ever witnessed, certainly the most public. And like all things, once our fascination with the technology wears off we can just get back to being people. Until then, I agree that human nature seems only to fight against the true potential of this technology: to bring us together and make people more efficient and benevolent. It unfortunately tends to provoke paranoia, greed, and ego as well.

Humans and other primates are intoxicated by celebrity. Social media has elevated many of us to a level of semi-celebrity, but still lends power to those with means and connections above the masses. I’m not sure this will ever change, as I do believe it’s part of our very nature, for better or worse. I share the dream of technology enabling collective good, but feel that we are quite far from fully realizing it.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

It’s funny, I started writing this a week ago when this was just a rumor, but now that’s it’s official I can use facts.

On Tuesday, Apple announced a variety of things around the corner. The most notable is iCloud, which is a set of fully integrated apps that tie all your Apple devices together. This replaces the MobileMe service and makes it free, which is a welcome change as I was never thrilled with the performance of that service versus the promise.

Check out Gizmodo’s great 8-minute version of the keynote if you don’t want to spend two hours of your life watching the whole thing.

The word “cloud” has been tossed around a lot in the past couple of years. If you’re not sure exactly what that means, here’s how I see it:

Technically, a cloud is a bunch of computers linked together to distribute the workload they’re given. Much in the same way that a single computer may have two or more processors to distribute the task load, you can think of a cloud as any number of computers working in harmony to get the job done.

Philosophically, a cloud allows you to store any amount of data or serve any number of applications. Most importantly, it allows you to access data and applications from any device or location. Anytime, anywhere, anyhow. The goal is true ubiquity of personal data for you.

Competition exists with companies wanting you to use their cloud versus the cloud next door. Ideally, all devices would work with all clouds and we’d all just be able to access our information from any terminal, regardless or brand or creed.

Apple is making a significant play here to unify their tight ecosystem of devices and software. They are in the best position to do this, as they have the most control over their ecosystem, delivering software, hardware, and networks that tie together.

Similar things exist on Android and other platforms, but like many things in the “Wild Wild West,” they may offer more or different capabilities but they’ll likely take more tinkering to get going. Apple tends to “just work.”

I recently presented at the SIPA 2011 Publishing Conference in D.C. on mobile (about 4 hours after this announcement) and one of the hot topics on people’s mind was the huge gap between how great the iPad is and how limited it seems to be when it comes to full-on productivity.

The iPad is here to stay through 2015 at least, as the following chart clearly indicates. Android tablet growth will be much slower than the phones since Google’s decided to license its Honeycomb tablet OS. This will be good for quality and consistency of apps, but creates a barrier for developers that will slow growth.

While Microsoft is late to this game (again), their advantage is the embedded standardization of MS Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). Getting these staple apps fully useable on the iPad and other tablets is essential for sales teams and other professionals, giving Microsoft a shot at this volatile market.

I’ve heard creative approaches such as running MS apps on a server and using the iPad as a thin client or dumb terminal. In this usage, the iPad is just used as a remote screen for a computer somewhere in the cloud. This grants full software capability, but the dependence on a constant Internet connection is a deal breaker for some.

This led me to Documents to Go, which is a native iPhone/iPad app that allows me to edit MS Office files directly on the device. I’m still getting used to it, and formatting retention isn’t 100%, but it seems to solve the issue of office productivity for many issues. Perhaps some day apps like this will exist in the cloud, but no matter how good the server infrastructure is, full adoption will always depend on local bandwidth for the user, which is far from perfect.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Technology

We’ve reached the end of a significant phase with eMainstay, a client with whom Astek has spent the last three years building the My25 web-based meal-planning software to improve health and reduce management costs for communities housing people with developmental disabilities.

In order to broaden the market for the software, which has proven highly successful in numerous USDA-funded studies, eMainstay approached Astek to develop a robust new My25 prototype for the software and online community development. We chose video as the form to convey our vision for the future of our software and a truly innovative approach to household-oriented meal planning.

The videos below say it better than words. Bon Appetit!

My25 Business Overview

My25 Online Toolkit Intro

Extra special thanks to Vin Design, Kathleen Ermitage, and Sedgwick Productions for their multiple contributions to the ongoing success of this project.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Marketing, Technology, Web

You may have noticed a new kind of square barcode popping up all over the place, which are most likely QR codes. Actually there are a few different kinds of barcodes, but they all have the same basic purpose – using your smartphone’s camera to access information encoded on anything in the physical world.

I think of this as putting hyperlinks on any surface you see – anywhere. This is huge.

It’s the best thing I’ve seen bridging the real world of signs and paper to the virtual world of Web and mobile. With the right app you can transfer information such as contact data from a name tag or view the trailer for the movie review you’re reading. The possibilities are endless and they aren’t limited to scanning the physical world since you can scan a code on an LCD monitor and take the information with you.

Earlier this week I noticed an otherwise unmarked white cargo truck with QR codes on the back and sides. I didn’t get a chance to scan the code to see if it was a subtle marketing experiment or used for logistics tracking, but I did get the picture below.

In addition to seeing these pop up in magazines recently, I saw one Tuesday night on a Dance Flight program by DanceWorks Chicago, who recently became an Astek client. The link goes to an extended program with videos and other multimedia material you can’t get on paper.

Try scanning the QR code above. I use QuickMark on my iPhone, which works quite well scanning screens and paper. You can download QuickMark here.

Social media writer and consultant Rachel Yeomans recently posted an article spotting a QR code on Facebook for Net-a-Porter’s new mobile site:

For an example of the Microsoft Tag, which I think is a bit too colorful to be practically incorporated into most branding, I scanned an ad from the current issue of Entertainment Weekly (yes, someone else in the office has a guilty pleasure). Scan the code below to view a YouTube trailer for The Green Hornet on your mobile device. You’ll need to download a tag reader free from Microsoft.

If you’re envisioning a world in which we all wander around scanning each other for information, well, you’re probably not too far off. But this is all an interim step until the technology becomes so ubiquitous that we don’t even need our phones to do the scanning. At that point privacy and social concerns will take over the conversation from technology.

You can generate your own QR code to try out the technology. Post a comment if you’ve seen some interesting QR codes out there or think of any great uses for this technology.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

The Working Wardrobe, an Astek blog consulting client, just made #4 in Forbes’ list of The 20 Best Fashion Blogs for Professional Women. Hats off to Rachel Yeomans and her team for achieving such an honor in little more than a year of publication.

After working with Rachel to establish the initial strategy and infrastructure of her blog, nothing gives us more joy than seeing it soar like this. Once a publication is off and running, the majority of the hard work is in the diligence and discipline of writing and editing. In addition to that, Rachel has a natural ability to cleverly leverage social media channels to reach the people for whom she and her team write.

The Working Wardrobe is a publication geared towards the working individual–be it on finding a job, maintaining that job, interviewing for that job, or changing jobs–all the while knowing what to wear for that specific occasion. Please join us in congratulating The Working Wardrobe for their ongoing success!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Marketing, Social Media, Web

A few weeks ago I was interviewed about Astek by Alice Truong from Medill. She wanted to write a story focusing on how a small company like Astek gets through a tough recession. We’re very happy with the way it turned out, and encourage you to read on.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Marketing, Web

We get this question regularly enough that I wanted to share a few quick talking points you can use to convince your boss that engaging with social media is not optional. The longer you wait, the more you’ll miss. A common reaction to social media is that companies don’t want to use another marketing channel, or they don’t have time to join yet another social networking site. Well, it’s time to make time. The good news is you can control how much you get involved — just be sure to get involved.

1. Low cost of entry

The key thing to realize with social media is that it costs very little to get started. Free tools like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are available to connect directly to people and get your message out. Free services like Google Alerts give you a glimpse into what people are saying about your company. Free blog hosting makes getting started easier, though we usually recommend spending a nominal amount on some custom branding and consulting so that your blog stands out and is found on search engines.

Rather than money, what social media requires most from you is time: time to participate, time to contribute, time to engage. If you are fighting an uphill battle in the office, then you may have to consider investing your own time off the clock to get the ball rolling and produce some tangible results. Try one or two services at a time until you become comfortable with the medium. You are better off fully engaging with one or two social media tools than signing up for all of them at once.

2. The conversation is happening. All you can do is join.

Social media is less about delivering a one-way message and more about engaging with your clients. The fact is that people are out there having public conversations about your company or products. Social media is your opportunity to meet them on their own turf to talk about their experiences, complements, and complaints. Think of it as an opportunity to gain insight into the mind of your clients rather than a burden.

It’s important to listen before you join a conversation, as you would at a party. Make sure you understand the conversation and represent yourself honestly and transparently. Be sure to disclose your relationship with the company and express your genuine opinion, update, or concern. People will often tell other people about the interaction just because you bothered to reach out. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing.

3. Demonstrate credibility

You are good at what you do. Your boss is even better. Your clients know that, but bringing in new business requires convincing new people that you have what they need. Starting a company blog and/or podcast, commenting on other sites such as forums and wikis, contributing to the body of social expertise that is being constantly updating and expanded are all ways to show people who you are and how you think. And chances are you offer services with which even long-standing clients aren’t familiar, which could lead to more business when they see what you publish.

What results can you expect?

People respond positively to increased customer service with responses to comments wherever they are, access to real representatives from a company not hiding behind phone banks, and direct timely expertise in the form of blogs and commentary. These are all tools that work together to deliver leads and expanded trusted networks.

As long as you consistently represent your brand and exercise full disclosure, people will remember where the information came from. It won’t happen overnight, but over time you will see benefits as people become more deeply aware of what you offer, whether or not you’ve done business yet. If you combine social media with traditional relationship building, you’ll increase the chances of earning their business.

This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter | Other ePiphany Articles

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

10,000 Revolutionaries in Moldova used Twitter and other social networking services to protest the Communist government. The New York Times provides a good description of the situation and phenomenon. On the other side of the pond, Baltimore police are starting to use Twitter to fight crime.

I believe social media puts us all in the middle of a revolution, but evidence to this fact is typically more tame in the U.S. I see it as an extreme form of the power of collective voice, but it does have the negative impact of making us focus on the shiny objects (tools for social reform) rather than the message and results.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Social Media, Technology, Web

The point is well taken, if with a grain:

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Social Media, Technology, Web

And it’s a good thing. Since the newspaper industry, much like the music industry, resisted the Internet rather than embracing it, they shot themselves in the foot. Rather than proactively identifying opportunities they missed the boat entirely and are now suffering badly. Reminds me a bit of how Kodak could have OWNED digital photography if they had a bit of vision a few years ago. Instead they are playing catch-up, too.

In the newspaper’s race to play catch-up, they started giving it all away for free since that was the culture. We all grew up on a free Internet (I even remember when we used to think there would be no ads. HA) and that is being threatened in various ways.

The opportunity now is for newspaper’s to collectively demonstrate their worth by asking people to pay for the content they provide. Everything business has to do this, they have just been around so long they took their status and distribution model for granted.

I’ve been a little hard on mainstream media and probably sound like I want social media (blogs, etc.) to replace it. That’s not quite right. I believe they are complementary and both necessary. We need in-depth reporting and someone who can afford to put a correspondent in Iraq. We also need citizen journalists who are not influenced as directly by big business.

Here is a good explanation of why media must charge for web content. I think the key to pricing lies in micropayments, which use new technology to charge a very small amount of money (cents not dollars) for each piece of material you consume rather than paying full price for a newspaper you only read part of anyway. We just need to find a way to make it work on a small, local level.

Read this great article describing some real world ramifications of a future without mainstream journalism from The Atlantic. Kinda scary.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web