bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

I saw the launch of Disconnect, a Chrome Browser extension that keeps your web browsing anonymous so I thought I’d give it a go for a couple of weeks.

In short Disconnect blocks the many tracking cookies that let advertisers target ads based on your behaviour, i.e. search for a barber on google and then you find more ads targeting you around barber.  Or shop online at a store for shoes and suddenly find yourself being targeted by ads from that advertiser.

And now it’s not full on study or experiment just my first hand experiment of what I’ve found.

What I noticed is that ads blended back into the background.  For the fair part I stopped paying attention whereas when I wasn’t using it I would notice these personalised ads a lot more.

I think for advertisers, it shows that ad targeting does work when it has real utility & value through personalisation.  For consumers, there is an upside to tracking, websites for the most part need ads to survive and more personalised ads are a friendlier way of monetising.

It’s still early days yet people are still figuring it out and its quite fragmented but I think it’s about to go through a period of consolidation and thus less confusion for customers.

I was finally listening to this Chris Anderson podcast over at EconTalk re: Makers Economy.

Chris talks to the fabric of the internet and the true web generation, whereby sharing is ingrained.

In the past, tinkerers would sweat their projects, all encountering the same problems.  You could go from city to city to see people tackling the same issues and hitting the same roadblocks.

With this interconnectedness of the internet you can see who else is working on it and work together and have additive innovation rather than parallel frustration.

For me this is natural and way more efficient, now imagine what it will be like once the 14 year olds of today are 24! Once they set their mind to something, a global community can work together to achieve it.

Both Google & Apple know that the limiting factor to technology development is adoption.  If consumers aren’t on board, adopting the product, it’s going to be short lived.  As great as the technology is if no ones using it there’s no point.

So they both take different paths,

Apple, prepare the masses for it, through small continual changes. Significant changes every two years and tweaks in between.  Apple 5, the 5S coming out soon – mirroring their past lifecycle of a significant change every other year.  This means continual momentum and time to think it through.  The argument can be, that you’re holding technology back but are you if you’re getting continual adoption? Surely at some point this pace of change will speed up.

Google, does the opposite, it pushes expectations, to ready us for the change. They don’t mind if someone else executes, it they want the future faster.  This approach means a  lot more thrashing people get uncomfortable with the change but a few get it.  They build on it early and help foster the eco-system.  The key here is to hold on during the initial change.

Both work (clearly) just interesting to see as entities the different approaches.

Last week I made the big move to New York, one that was decided a while back but came together pretty quick.

My wife Esther and I are here now – naturally moving to a new place, everything is new – especially coming from New Zealand to New York.

One of our first considerations, is places to live, so we’ve come up with this plan. We’ll test different neighbourhoods.  Lets stay there for a week, get a real feel, wander the streets, dine and meet the locals.  An experience you can’t if you just wander over for a half day.  Ideally it helps us settle in faster – and if we don’t like a place a weeks not too long before we’re off.

Using AirBNB we can stay in different neighbourhoods each week, first week is Chelsea, next week is Williamsburg. Then not sure week after that.

AirBNB allows people to rent out their apartments online, we’ve used it before as gives a nice local experience but also I’m not always up for hotels. You can often check in/out at odd times, we don’t have to tip and generally a bit more laid back.

Anyway, it ends up about 20-30% more expensive than renting straight away, but we think it’s worth it – in fact I’m surprised it’s not more expensive (but older rent controlled apartments real rental is probably way below market so the owners are killing it).

Just a wonder of using the internet to create a market by connecting travellers with locals.  To do the equivalent only three years ago would have been a nightmare. If you haven’t tried AirBNB give it a go, it’s a real experience.

The key is taking small incremental steps, such that the end (large) result isn’t a surprise.

Windows 8 has found this, with the big step up from Windows 7. Trying to bring the touch screen interface across both platforms (mobile & desktop). Users have struggled, the start menu is gone, it’s been too big a leap.

Whilst yes it is overdue to update – people rely on their desktops each day. When you significantly change that it makes them uncomfortable.

It would have been better, to keep growing the desktop experience and changed consumers perceptions with it’s tablets. Then keep up the updates. I think Apples on a good track to doing this, each year they’re releasing small incremental changes – slowly but surely working towards a significant change.

Malls are great at this, they’re specifically designed to take you the long way.  Escalators that are easy to go up, tiresome to go down.  Toilets at either end of the mall.

This works well for the mall, not so much for the user.

Like lines at a concert, people will naturally be guided by you, if you guide them.

Whether it’s:

• Your onboarding process, once someone joins the team
• A support request
• The first 90 day experience of your customers

Simulate that process – is that really what you want people going through?

I’ve finally completed Hackers by Steven Levy, it goes through the history of hackers.

And not hackers in the sense that we know them today.

But in the sense of tinkerers, explorers of knowledge, creators of shortcuts (or hacks).

They lived by the premise that information wants to be free… a fundamental ethos of the internet.  Information sharing, makes us all smarter and that’s the ultimate aim of the hacker.

It’s funny, in this, I see a lot of digital marketing culture, transparency of information, results and you can see what you’re competitors are up to.  It’s the ultimate hackers marketplace.

Well worth a read.

..

Also worth a read, Growth Hackers on Quora.

Is that we set the agenda.

We set the context, tone, flow and end result.

Whether its a brochure, a video, a blog post once someone is consuming it you get to guide that conversation.

And that’s a massive opportunity, do not waste it, use it to move each and every consumer forward towards your shared goal.

Instead of building the full product, build the rules & intelligence.

Then let others build the interface on top.  Even let multiple people do it.

The best UI wins.

It’s easy to do, in fact in survival situations we gradually do it. Walking in big circles. Unless…

Unless we have a set target, or a goal, if we can keep that in sight we tend to get there.

The challenge is to reduce your possessions till you only have 100 things [2].

Each pen counts, each book counts, item of clothing. You just need to get down to 100.

It is possible, tough, but possible. I once got down to about 76 I recall. It’s now much higher.

But it’s a nice exercise and ethos, what is it that I need? what is adding value? What am I keeping – just because.

It’s almost a classic argument.

A blog is like a house you built yourself from the ground up.

Using a Facebook Page is like renting a shop on a popular street.

If you build the blog, you have to make it interesting enough for people to stop by. You can do what you want.

If you lease, it’s already built & people are already there ready to buy. You just need to personalise and leverage it.

Like most things, you probably want to lease first to get a feel for it, then buy later once you know what you’re doing.

Wow what a new experience, well, since I was flatting anyway. I came in early, had breakfast at a local cafe called Shaky Isles to do some writing and got my breakfast on a chopping board.

The cafe market in Auckland is pretty fierce and this is what happens when competition heats up, organisations have to innovate to hold attention, things like this arise.

And I like it.

On the web when ad space isn’t sold, they plug it into what’s called run of site.

Which means their competitors can bid for that same ad space.

It also means that the number of ad inventory available is vastly over quoted.

Publishers should hugely inflate their value IF when there wasn’t any premium spots available they showed no ads.  It makes them more novel, exclusive and notable.    Thus achieving the purpose of the ad.

• Makers, Chris Andersons latest book, as he does over and over highlighting a new trend starting to snowball. He looks at the world of invention & entrepreneurship blending & how that plays out today.
• A Man and his Ship, a biography of William Francis Gibbs, the Steve Jobs of the shipping era. Follows his life and his mission of making the infamous United States liner a reality.
• Checklist Manifesto, told through medical case studies, implementation of checklists & manuals in a world of complexity, where even the experts cannot remember absolutely everything. Major failure from experts usually a series of simple in-bane mistakes.

And for a few Kindle Singles, I enjoyed:

• Wired McAfee single, talking about his shift to Belize, written just before the recent stream of events.
• A quick summary of Warren Buffetts favourite three books, a nice way to digest wider advice.
• Gutenberg, looking at the man who invented the printing press.

Other notables:

• One Click: Looking at Jeff Bezos and the growth of Amazon. An excellent book which is a must read to know the man behind Amazon but also the early years which formed the company.
• Grouped, looking at how the web has reformulated itself so that your peer groups influence your decision making and moving from a 1-1 relationship with the web.
• NewsJacking, latest David Merman Scott, reminding us of guerrilla marketing in the digital (real time) age. A great prod.
• Stealth of Nations, I have written about it before, but looking at the effect the informal economy has around the world. Marvellous read.