We need a Senior (or aspiring Middleweight) Interactive Designer for a 9 month contract at one of the UK’s most progressive digital marketing agencies.

This is a rare opportunity to get one foot inside the door of Blonde. First and foremost the right candidate will be a passionate and inspired digital designer, able to take a digital brief from concept through to completion with an outstanding portfolio to back this up. A solid understanding of web technologies / trends is a must, with Photoshop & Illustrator skills a necessity along with good Flash skills. Any motion graphics and 3D experience is beneficial but not essential.

We’re looking for the best emerging talent to work in our Edinburgh office.

If you think you fit the bill please send your CV and examples of your top 5 pieces of work to info@blonde.net.

This contract starts at the beginning of March. No agencies please.

The trouble with the Internet is it’s become too darn accessible. For every digital work of art, there’s an optimised-to-the-max site bumping genuine articles out of search engine listings, re-routing traffic to unhelpful destinations and making a fair amount of cash on the way. There’s no craft here anymore… right?

Shortly before Christmas I went to see my friend Alan at the Museum of Modern Art, who had very kindly offered to give me a tour around the conservation studios.

The tour consisted of four main areas: paper conservation, the mount cutting studio, lining and framing and the painting conservation studio. Rather ignorantly I’d never really given much thought to the conservation of historical works of art and had, pretty much, just taken it all for granted. The education on restoration was fascinating… like taking a pinhead sized sample of paint, casting it in resin, cutting the block into slices and then taking a section to put under a special microscope to view the layers of paint, so the painting can be restored authentically and flawlessly.

Look here’s a photo taken on my trusty iPhone:

The conservation studios at the Museum of Modern Art, Edinburgh

What also made an impression was the painstaking dedication each team had to their part in the restoration process.

Their crafts.

A painting that needed restoration was given the time and attention it deserved; it was finished when it was finished and no deadlines were imposed to hurry the work along.

Perhaps the trouble with Digital is it the ease at which work can be replicated. We always seem to be in such a hurry to get work out, because if we take too much time, there’s every possibility that somebody else will get there first. But if we get there first, what if somebody trumps us with a better solution? It’s exhausting!

Perhaps the thing about craftsmanship is that it’s actually very difficult to copy.  It is indeed a fine art of a finely tuned skill and genuine creative talent. In the context of digital marketing, finely tuned skill and creative talent might even be defined as “Brand”; that intangible blend of characteristics, where there is a unique and original strength in the sum, but virtually no value at all in the parts. Digital marketing becomes a craft when it appears to seamlessly meet the demands of an audience, without the audience having to explicitly communicate anything at all… without an audience knowing it’s an audience. I would argue Google, Amazon and Facebook are examples of companies which pursue digital craftsmanship.

This reminded me of some questions that were recently asked in an EEC talk by Alexis Ohanian from Reddit, essentially enquiring what distinguished those individuals and companies which made substantial amounts of money as start-up ventures and…. Well, those which didn’t.

I think this brief post by Seth Godin sums up the case nicely:

“Craftsmanship

Find a calling and then deliver.

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’” – Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Inspired.

User engagement is the outcome of the experience.

This is an interpretation of a wonderful talk from Jesse James Garret @ UX week 2009.

Big news yesterday. Forrester introduced a new category of social behaviour to their Social Technographics model.

Welcome the “Conversationalists”.

Full details of the rationale behind this addition can be found in the Forrester Groundswell Blog post. But the new category has been introduced to recognise the rapid fire, short format status update posting that is epitomised by Twitter and which is now a major part of life on Facebook.

The Conversationalists take their place on the second from top rung of the Technographics ladder as shown below.

Some of the initial commentary has focussed on the positioning of this new behaviour category on the ladder, contending that its relative importance is currently being overstated. (Check out some of the comments on this post on the We Are Social site).

But I think there are bigger issues.

We are huge fans of, and subscribers to, Forrester. And we actively use the Technographics model in planning comms strategy for most of our clients.

Thus far, the model has been very easy to explain. Each behaviour category, from Creators to Spectators, does exactly what it says on the tin. Simple, intuitive, and precisely descriptive.

And, equally important, up until now none of of the various behaviour categories overlapped. People overlapped, in that one person could exhibit more than one of the behaviour types, but the behaviour types themselves were discrete.

The Conversationalists moniker is not so straightforward. For two reasons.

1) It is neither single-minded nor precisely descriptive of the behaviours it claims to encapsulate.

2) It describes a behaviour type that overlaps with at least two of the existing categories.

Let’s look at each of these issues in turn.

Is Twitter a “conversation”?

For some people it might be. But the people whose Twitter streams are a constant flow of @replies are the exception rather than the rule in my experience.

Twitter is a lot of different things to different people. That’s why it is not easy to explain to the uninitiated. Sure there are sporadic outbursts of conversation but certainly in “our” world it is primarily an information/content/ideas exchange. And “conversation” doesn’t accurately describe the nature of that exchange.

The short format status updates of Facebook and Twitter allow you to do similar things. In fact some people annoyingly do exactly the same things at the same time on both, simultaneously posting the same content, verbatim, to both streams.

But, for most people that I’ve spoken to, the whole tone and purpose of Facebook is very different to that of Twitter, even if the status update functionality is similar.

“Conversation” is probably a more accurate description of what happens via Facebook updates.

And that brings us onto the second issue of overlap.

“Conversation” is also an accurate description of what happens in the comment threads of many blog posts. And, in a more lowbrow manner, in the comment threads that accompany YouTube videos.

So there is significant overlap between “conversing” and “commenting”.

To a lesser degree there is also overlap between “conversing” and “creating”, to the extent that regular micro-blogging can be construed as content creation.

And then we have the overlap between Conversationalists and Joiners. Joiners maintain a profile on a social networking site and/or visit social networking sites. Conversationalists update status on a social networking site.

In fact Conversationalists actually feel like a subset of Joiners, exhibiting a particular aspect of Joiner behaviour and doing it at least weekly rather than at least monthly.

All this matters to us because we actively use the model to influence communication strategy. We frequently conduct primary research to create bespoke Technographics profiles for specific audiences.

For instance, we found (perhaps not surprisingly) that people on the UK Hip Hop dance scene indexed through the roof against high-end Creator behaviour. Being able to categorise and quantify this gave us the confidence to create a community hub that largely depended on user generated content.

Hitherto, constructing questionnaires and research methodologies to generate bespoke Technographics profiles has been relatively straightforward because none of the behaviour categories overlapped. If we are to embrace the Conversationalists, this will be more tricky henceforth.

This is a hot topic right now.

Mr Murdoch has created more than a bit of a stir with his comments about Google and the ownership of content. This interview with Sky News in Australia is worth watching. It’s 37 minutes long but well worth finding the time for.

It [monetising content] became a hotter topic for me as a result of a conversation with a content provider.

And hotter still as a result of the confluence of a couple of blog posts that I read subsequent to that conversation.

The content provider is The Daily Mash, the UK’s biggest satirical website.

I met up with Paul Stokes, one of the founders of the site and ex Business a.m. client, for a couple of drinks and a chat.

And it was interesting to hear him talk about the monetisation of his content. His site publishes a steady stream of high quality, highly amusing, unique content to a large, loyal, high quality and growing audience.

He also has an open-minded and creative attitude to generating opportunities for brands to engage with that audience. But it appears that getting traditional media agencies to think beyond variations on the display advertising theme isn’t as easy as it should be.

That really chimed with me. Blonde has picked up a couple of really interesting clients recently, based purely on their desire to explore more innovative approaches to achieving online objectives than clickable rectangles (banners). A desire to explore that clearly wasn’t being serviced by existing suppliers.

There is a structural obstacle at play here for any agency whose business model is based on taking a cut of money spent on paid for media. For more and more clients the emphasis is shifting away from bought media to owned and earned. Paying for space is becoming a last resort in digital channels.

Enter this post by Norwegian planner Helge Tennø.

He talks about a book called Business Model Generation, which contends that there are three basic models for business : customer relationship businesses, product innovation businesses, and infrastructure businesses.

Helge argues that “media” has allowed itself to become an infrastructure business in a world that requires it to be developing customer relationships.

“I would suggest media position itself to the relationship business, and be selling completely different, more scarce and more valuable products to brands. What I would like to see is a change of business model focus. From infrastructure destruction, to creating valuable relationships – providing new and interesting products for brands to sponsor in order to increase the value being created between media and the participant.”

That quote from Helge is a pretty good description of the direction in which Paul would like to take The Mash.

We also talked about the potential opportunities afforded by mobile applications.

The Guardian’s iPhone app sold nearly 70,000 downloads at £2.39 each in its first month and is being touted as a potential £2million annual revenue stream.

The Viz Roger’s Profanisaurus application is also apparently doing well at £2.99.

Then on the way home I read this post from Bud Caddell, which contains an idea for an interesting alternative model for monetising content.

Bud suggests a model that is based on rewarding subscribers for sharing your content. The greater the degree and reach of sharing, the greater the level of subscription discount. So loyal subscribers are happy, accessing great content at a reduced price. And you’re happy because you’ve recruited a highly engaged and cost effective sales force to recruit new subscribers on your behalf.

Sorted!

Or maybe not based on this final post by Andy Sernovitz – “Nobody wants to talk about something if everyone is talking about it”.

It’s all about maintaining the perceived value of your content. In Bud’s sharing model the subscribers are very important to business growth. But they also need to feel important, and that means restricting the supply. Think Spotify or Google Wave invitations.

To be continued…

Fraser is back after paternity leave today.

He has called to say that he’s running 15 minutes late.

And he sounded sleepy.

So his development team colleagues have made him “breakfast”.

A short post about a physical aspect of human interaction with technology.

Everyone laughs when I warm up for the over 40’s sprint race at the local primary school sports day.

“Taking it seriously eh?” (snigger)

Actually yes and no.

Or rather no and yes.

No, of course I’m not taking the race seriously. Not that seriously anyway.

But yes I am taking seriously the fact that at “my age” not warming up before running 80m is likely to do me an injury. Although I do exercise regularly, neither my leg muscles, my hip joints nor my hamstrings are used to running flat out from a standing start.

Now to bring this back to the virtual world.

We were talking yesterday with Dr Richard Marshall of Rapid Mobile Media about all manner of mobile things.

This finished with a chat about our personal preferences when it comes to mobile devices. Richard actively chooses an Android device over the iPhone largely on the basis of the keyboard. He doesn’t like the iPhone’s keyboard interface.

Which I, on the other hand, now feel really comfortable with. Once I came to trust the predictive text algorithm I found that I can more or less type in any old rubbish and the finished article will say more or less what I wanted it to say first time.

At least it does in the vertical plane.

It all falls apart if I try to type with the iPhone held horizontally. The keys spread out and my 43 year old finger muscles just aren’t used to it without a lengthy warm-up. Which I don’t have time for.

This keyboard stuff is all very personal.

But it’s obviously important enough to affect the choice of mobile device.

Then, earlier today, I was chatting with Scott Liddell at the Edinburgh (social media) Coffee Morning.

He’s recently made the move from PC to Mac.

And, having been a big user of Vista keyboard shortcuts, he’s effectively having to re-learn how to type.

(Whilst loving the overall Mac experience obviously. “They just work” you know.)

This People & Technology thing isn’t just about software.

Here’s a test for you.

Read this post.

Read it in its entirety.

In one go.

Without breaking to check email or Twitter.

If you’re anyway engaged with what Forrester would hate me calling “social media”, reading a post of that length, in the context of everything else that you could (and tell yourself should) be reading, in the context of everything that you should be doing, ain’t easy.

And that’s the whole point of the post.

And I quote.

“For the last couple of years I’ve jacked in to this increasing bit rate of downloadable intellectual breadth and I’ve traded away the slow conscious depth of my previous life. And you know what? Now I’m losing my self. I used to be a free standing independent cerebral cortex. My own self. But not any more. Now I’m a dumb node in some uber-net’s basal ganglia. Tweet, twitch, brief repose; repeat. My autonomic nervous system is plugged in, in charge, and interrupt ready while the gray wrinkly stuff is white knuckled from holding on.”

Breadth versus depth of information and knowledge.

The post argues that we are at the point where this is an either/or decision. If you wish to retain any vestige of “normal” life then staying in touch both broadly AND deeply is out of the question.

I made no resolutions for 2010.

But I took a complete break from blog reading, blog posting, and Twittering over the festive period.

And, as a result of so doing, gave some thought to this breadth versus depth issue.

And, as a result of so doing, decided to re-balance my approach to all things e-social.

In favour of more depth.

The fact that Jim Stogdill’s post seems to have touched a nerve (broadly and deeply as it happens) is indicative of the fact that many people are feeling the same way.

For the time being this information overload, this Information Surfeit Disorder, may only affect the geeky few. But, over time, it will also affect the (increasingly socially engaged) many.

And so we need to contend with this issue both personally and professionally.

We need to wrestle not only with how we manage our personal consumption of information.

But also how we manage our clients’ content and campaigns in the context of this overload.

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, multiple Ningworks (typically 38 Minutes), Digg, Reddit, Yammer, Google Apps (I include Mail, Docs and Wave), LinkedIn, Plaxo…. and there are more. I have also very recently started blogging and even though I knew it would be difficult to find the time, it really is difficult to find the time…

I’m now increasing my social fatigue by reviewing aggregator tools (+ mobile apps) to help me manage the various profiles I’ve set up. As Twitter and Facebook profiles become integrated in more and more apps/sites through Open ID mechanics, I find myself experiencing a degree of difficulty managing my personal PR. What exactly am I saying … to who … and where?

It has become a bit like sitting in a hall of mirrors, watching myself from all angles, though not necessarily gaining any perspective.  I wonder if it’s a bad thing that we’re slowly … perhaps not so slowly … drifting into an age where we cannot experience anything without documenting it.  I used to grind my teeth at people in gigs who would spend most of the time viewing the concert through the screen of their mobile phone. What’s the point? I would think…. you’re missing the live experience. I feel the same about people who continually micro-blog on holiday; can’t you just leave us [your audience] alone for a bit?

Micro-blogging might not be a bad thing …  I’d like to think I still have an open mind on this, but it may raise the question: how can you be entirely in a space with a loved one(s), if you’re also pondering about talking about it [however briefly] online?

Don’t think that I’m setting a better example…. I went to a gig last night and then stayed up late drinking tea and chatting to a friend [soooo rock and roll]. Yet, even though it was late when I went to bed, I still had to log into Facebook and tell my audience about my day. I’ve become addicted to documenting all my highs and lows in online social spaces.

And then there’s the subject of photos…. I have some female friends who seem to be deliberately manipulating photos … they are planned, rehearsed and Photoshopped. And who can blame them….?  Take a look at this piece on OKCupid.com…  I’ve yet to see male friends organising photo shoots to get their best side, but I have seen many pictures that have clearly been taken from a bedroom, at arm’s length, possibly involving at least a couple of takes to get an aesthetically pleasing, but in effect, dull photo.

There was an interesting article on the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Blog on “Understanding Users of Social Networks”. The article makes a few points… not all nice …  not all that new either…?

“The biggest [social networking] usage categories are men looking at women they don’t know, followed by men looking at women they do know. Women look at other women they know. Overall, women receive two-thirds of all page views.

… A lot of guys in relationships are looking at women they don’t know. … It’s an easy way to see if anyone might be a better match.” Again, online networks act as cover.”

Social networking, particularly Facebook, can be a bit like watching late night crap T.V.; you don’t quite know why you’re there, but somehow can’t tear yourself away to do something more constructive.  I admit that I’m a Facebook girl, in the same way that certain Blondes associate themselves with Twitter. There remain some MySpace and even… ahem… Bebo users in the office, but we try not to mention them too often.

Evolution in social networking could be to focus on the profile, rather than the space (appreciate some of us are heading in that direction anyway) and lets throw in some AI (artificial intelligence) in there…. Why should our human minds have to do all the work? A possible solution, which has already been explored in parts, may accommodate technologies like this one:

“socially aware memory for companion agents”

So… creating avatars, based on various profiles/personas and to allow these representatives/programs/”familiars” to explore the Web. We would be able to pull and push information in a more dynamic, three-dimensional form; accommodating a degree of Search, C.V, business card exchange, RSS, calendar information, interests and perhaps even absorb other forms of ID.  Hmm, that’s a lot of waffle…. How about a kind of digital daemon (Pullman fans?) structured with Open ID access (independently owned)…. In fact I wonder if we could create digital daemons… whether these would become software products that people pay money to rent or own… Whilst ownership of this information remains controversial, I might be willing to review who I trust with this data if it cut me some slack in managing my profiles…

We have soft launched You Are What You App. The premise of this simple site is that your choice of iPhone applications probably reveals something about you.

And so it would seem. It’s the iPhone equivalent of having LLoyd Grossman looking through your keyhole.

The site appeals both to the iPhone exhibitionist and to the iPhone voyeur.

At the time of writing it’s early stages in terms of the number of active participants, but the average time on site is 7 minutes 30 seconds, suggesting that people are enjoying having a good nosey at other people’s apps.

I’ve already downloaded a few new gems as a result of seeing and reading about the apps that other people can’t live without.

There’s Byline, a mobile Google Reader app, which is perfect for keeping up with RSS feeds on the train.

Instapaper is an interesting looking application that allows you to save and read web pages offline at your convenience.

Around Me elegantly answers the question “where is the nearest x, y or z?”

And people are clearly sufficiently impressed with productivity applications like Omnifocus and Things to part with decent amounts of cash for them.

If you have an iPhone and a Twitter account please do add your apps to the site.

You Are What You App is our latest “hobby” project, following in the footsteps of WeMet for EdTwestival and EdTwinge.