Every now and again I am surprised with some of the digital footprint ideals. Here is one. You start to build your babies digital footprint before they are born by blogging about them and what you are going through. I am not sure if this is "baby" marketing companies trying to find and sell you more or just a bad idea. Anyway here's to the new generation of bloggers who cannot write.
There have been several stories recently blaming the ease and ability to track digital footprints that lead to some who are less wise about their comments losing out…..
CNN Mideast Affairs editor Octavia Nasr lost her post after tweeting her respect for a militant cleric.
Helen Thomas was pressured to retire after she made a comment at Jewish American Heritage Month celebration that was later posted online by the rabbi’s son that many considered to be anti-Semitic.
Australia's Queensland Liberal-National Party (LNP) expelled 22-year-old Nick Sowden, a Young Liberals member, after he tweeted racist remarks about President Obama.
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/career/?p=2191&tag=content;leftCol
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/DavidWyld/fired-over-twitter-tweets_n_645884_53765606.html
The Huffington post lists 14 examples – the first is after an interview at Cisco Systems, Connor Riley (aka @theconnor) confessed in a tweet that she would hate the job but relish the "fatty paycheck." When a channel partner advocate for Cisco Alert stumbled across her Twitter account, theconnor's fate was sealed. "Who is the hiring manager," the Twitter sleuth wrote. "I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web." The story became an overnight sensation and earned theconnor the unfortunate nickname "Cisco Fatty." Someone even created a website called CiscoFatty.com.
Of the 250 plus comments – most people tend to agree that you cannot blame the technology. Be careful with your views, not much to ask really.
Do you want your web browsing (digital footprint at a stretch) with you? Mozilla’s new Firefox Home app aims to give users all your bookmarks, tabs and browsing history, on your mobile, it is not the web, but it is a move in the right direction. Firefox Sync manages to store a digital footprint of all the things you do on your browser up in the cloud, pinging it down to your iPhone to pick up just where you left off.
Firefox Sync application when fired up on your home computer, and the Firefox Home app will pull all of your personalised browser data and chuck it onto your iPhone. Whilst you’ll still be using the Apple Safari browser to do the surfing, it’s now a lot easier to get all of your settings just so when on your phone.
Firefox Sync http://www.mozilla.com/en-GB/firefox/sync/
Here is the wordle image of My Digital Footprint (the book)
And this one links to the site
FT - Orange weighs dropping 'all-you-can-eat' mobile data plans (Source TelecomPaper)
Orange is thinking about changing its pricing approach for mobile internet services because 'all-you-can eat' plans were 'unsustainable', France Telecom-Orange CEO Stephane Richard told the Financial Times. If it starts charging heavy mobile data users more, the operator would be following AT&T and O2 UK in this direction. Richard explained that Orange thinks, as do its peers, "that the explosion of data traffic on mobile networks cannot be managed with unlimited pricing plans". The operator "must consider different approaches combining limited access and quality of service", he added. The CEO also revealed that France Telecom could spend as much as EUR 7 billion on acquisitions to meet its stated objective of doubling emerging market revenues over five years. While stressing that there were no ongoing talks, he said France Telecom was 'potentially interested' in Orascom Telecom's African assets.
I question if the operator has thought through this strategy - http://blog.mydigitalfootprint.com/could-consumer-ignorance-hurt-mobile-advertis
Article today in SF Gate http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/05/BU4V1E8D9V.DTL
What would it take for an individual to erase his digital footprint? Is it even possible to exit the Internet? The short answer is no.
Virtually unlimited mobile usage tariffs means that advertising is perceived as free from the users perspective, as there is no additional cost of bandwidth to the user. These tariffs have lead to an unprecedented growth in mobile applications and the emergence of a new eco-system. However, "all you can eat" pricing models for mobile have become increasingly risky with the advent of new devices and operating systems from Apple and Google. With the prospect of a return to a pay per something, users may change their view of "free" advertising and this could lead to a change in behaviour, as they will be un-willing to pay for the bandwidth for the advert. Whilst this may seam ridiculous to anyone who understands, explaining to the user they have the wrong perception or that this is not the reason for a significant monthly bill, could be difficult. This viewpoint therefore opens the debate; "Could some selfish business decisions be destroying the mobile eco-system that has just been created and what scenarios are worth considering?"
We have all benefitted from the introduction of unlimited mobile tariffs. Voice, SMS and data usage has exploded. Economically it made sense to the operator as they had spare capacity and in reality "unlimited" has caps but these caps are set so high that a user was unlikely to reach them.
Mobiles (smart phones) have evolved and today, web site and applications (inc games) for mobile are now built with an advertising model in mind and with this has come the download requirements of, in some simple cases, banner ads to some thing complex such as video and multimedia. With network improvement, the ability to deliver a near web experience, advances in connection management and now the iPad, users can find it easy to get close to, or pass their "unlimited" data caps.
Mobile applications driven by adverts work and the application method of delivery made up for a number of early shortfalls in network constraints and mobile web browser capability. However, due to the improved experience and performance of the mobile there are now less reasons for a Brand to have a specific mobile version. However, in this move adverts are also served in full form from the web to the mobile. This transition will become more important as Apple looks to force applications to use their own iAd serving technology and analytics. These forced change are likely to speed up the migration from mobile specific application to webapp - just adding a web address and icon to the mobile desktop and also removes the dependence on apps stores as the controlling point.
Apple launched OS4 with a 7th temple, which is the ability to deliver a fabulous advertising experience as "most of it sucks". The move is to deliver emotion and interactivity as this will help the developer community who want to build advertising revenues in exchange for free apps. This advertising experience does come at a cost - bandwidth. OS4 also introduces background processing (multitasking), "yippee!" says the developer. However this means that the phone can hack thought the battery really quickly and chat to the network constantly. Pushed updates become streaming.
Changes to the OS and how much data phones require for a great experience mean that the unlimited data package become very attractive to the user and advertiser as they don't care about bandwidth, developers love it as they can deliver the real time applications and services they want for mobile. However, for the operators who are already struggling with capacity, this becomes a real headache and introduces value chain conflicts.
If the operators choose, and the evidence is currently pointing to this fact, to remove from the market unlimited packages, or such a high cap it is perceived as unlimited and lean back towards some form of pay-by-how-much-you-eat model then there could be some significant changes to the market as the users, device and applications guys try to reduce a swing to a doom loop scenario.
Here's the crunch. For those reading this we can find arguments why all of the above is not a concern, however, the issue may not be the reality of the situation we find ourselves in, but from the user perception, it could be very real. If the user believes that there is a cost, irrespective of reality; they may change behaviour!
The simple newspaper headline that reads "Your paying for advertising" is difficult to counter with the argument that informs a user how big an advert is in bytes and that there is a trade for free services. If the reason for adverts is interactivity and engagement then a technical explanation may not be that useful or that someone is exploiting your data to sell you more.
Behavioural or targeted adverting depends at some level on understanding the user which is an output from the analysis their data - My Digital Footprint. If users find that the real monetary cost of sharing that data is too high, it kills the input. If users find that the real monetary cost of engaging with ads is too high, it kills the value.
Given that eco-systems require trusted players who can balance risk and reward together and be reliant on complex inter-dependences; mobile is no different. However, it would appear that some of the players are trying to play for themselves rather than the community.
in this scenario the user decides to restrict their use and applications to focus on a few that are a priority and will not experiment or discover. This could have a significant impact on social media tools and applications.
in this scenario the user decides that they are unwilling to pay for the bandwidth and introduces a blocker service to prevent their costly bandwidth being used. This in turn destroys the fee advertising model and an outcome could be that the user ends up paying for applications.
in this scenario the operator decides to become selective about which handsets can have unlimited (capped) data plans and which handsets are forced to have a PAYG data pricing model. This forces users into a choice and device manufactures start to work with the operators to produce devices in tune with the network to gain a competitive advantage.
in this scenario PAYG could lead to more applications being downloaded by sideloading on the PC or by WiFi. If so, developers could be affected in ways that are hard to predict. But it may affect apps being advertised on the device.
in this scenario the operator changes the pricing and this in turn creates all the dis-benefits for the advertisers, device guys, applications developers and users. Mobile slows and mobile operator valuations dive.
in this scenario the middleware and platform companies work with the operators and seek out methods and processes to compress, reduce, focus, profile and select data and services that should use the limited wireless network, that is expensive. Can data/ ads be cashed locally on the device and selected as needed or side load them using wifi or other alternative networks, or put on hold until bandwidth cost is not an issue.
a somewhat difficult scenario to comprehend, but in this scenario the advertiser takes on the cost of the bandwidth. However this is full of complex conflicts such as - I want to deliver the best ad, but it costs to much.
in reality - this is not a scenario.
Those reading this know that 'most' mobile advertising is very bandwidth lean, as it a blend of:-
i) an invitation with the consumer to interact, normally in the form of a banner. The reality being that for most consumers most of the time, this is likely to be negligible in terms of cost across a month.
ii) a landing page, which they land on if they click on a banner - again negligible.
iii) call to action at the landing page, which unless it involves rich media (eg video), is also likely to be small in terms of bandwidth
We know that users respond differently to ads and services on a mobile to the web but it is possible that the Apple OS4 interruption of advertising will be heavier on bandwidth, however, over 50% of iPhone ads are viewed over WiFi (2010) probably driven by speed as opposed to cost reasons. One could postulate that this trend would therefore be accelerated with the re-introduction of pay-as-you-go pricing!
All that said, users are users and their perception is how we need to live our business life - from their view point not ours. Reflecting on the original question; "could consumer ignorance hurt mobile advertising?", one could say this is the wrong question and it should be "is the mobile eco-system strong enough to defend itself against selfish desires of certain key players?"
I have been on a search for a context button. What is it and why do I want one?
When writing about my, your, our digital footprints it has become obvious to me that just putting the date and time on a post is a bit of a nonsense. It is far better to leave the date out as it ages the blog post and if it is old it may get skipped (why read old stuff). However, when searching I want the date on articles so I can tell if current or relevant.
Date ages me but what I do want, however, is a content button. When someone comes to http://blog.mydigitalfootprint.com I think it would be good to have a button that says CONTEXT on each blog. The button takes you to a service say from WSJ, Times, Guardian, NEWco etc and provides key (contextual) stories of the day/ week/ month that are relevant to the blog. It could be presented as images, text or video, lists etc, but is a summary of what was happening about the time a blog was posted and hence provides some context. I would love it if users could decide about the top stories by category on the day, which then provides the historical context of that day in history.
Please let me know if you have this service or want to develop it.
