Out­per­form rivals by using Adop­tion Cycle

In the Web 2.0 Adop­tion Curve, I asserted that exec­u­tives had a career-defining oppor­tu­nity to leapfrog com­peti­tors by using risk man­age­ment to man­age through the Web 2.0 adop­tion cycle. The cycle will also fea­ture a back­lash against—and invest­ment gap in—Web 2.0 begin­ning next year.

Here I’ll dis­cuss in more detail how to avoid the down­draft and out­per­form com­peti­tors over the next sev­eral years. Web 2.0 will trans­form orga­ni­za­tions and soci­ety because it changes how peo­ple dis­cover, build and main­tain rela­tion­ships. All orga­ni­za­tions need to under­stand these dynam­ics, so they can become stronger and more relevant.

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I have such an insane cou­ple of weeks com­ing up that I need to blog it just to remem­ber where I’ll be. (Here is the full cal­en­dar of 2009 tech and social media conferences.)

But these are among the best of the year, right at our doorstep: NTEN’s Non­profit Tech­nol­ogy con­fer­ence, New­Comm Forum, Inbound Mar­ket­ing Sum­mit, SOB­Con, Dig­i­tal Hol­ly­wood and EconSM. (They’re pricey, but I also know how much it costs to put on a decent con­fer­ence.) If you’re plan­ning to attend and want to meet up, direct-message me on Twit­ter.

NTC

What: Non­profit Tech­nol­ogy con­fer­ence
When: April 26–27-28
Where: Hilton, 333 O’Farrell St., San Fran­cisco
Cost: $549 for mem­bers, $749 for non-members (dis­clo­sure: I have a press pass)
Details: http://nten.org/ntc and Agenda
Am I speak­ing? No
Live cov­er­age is here.

Com­ment: I’m look­ing for­ward to attend­ing NTC this year after spend­ing the last few months work­ing on an ini­tia­tive to help non­prof­its and social change orga­ni­za­tions. (An announce­ment is com­ing soon.) A high­light includes Clay Shirky at 8:30 am Monday.

New­Comm Forum

What: Social mar­ket­ing, jour­nal­ism, tech inno­va­tion and much more.
When: April 27–28-29
Where: Mar­riott, 55 Fourth St., San Fran­cisco
Cost: $395 one-day rate. New­Comm Forum + Inbound Mar­ket­ing Sum­mit — $1,095 (save $200 off reg­u­lar price with dis­count code NCFCOMBO2)
Details: Pro­gram overview and Agenda

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On April 30, 1:00 PM — 2:00 PM EDT, I will be offer­ing a free webi­nar on how to Twit­ter for busi­ness, includ­ing lots of case stud­ies and a whole bunch of use­ful infor­ma­tion. Ana­mi­tra Ban­nerji is the fea­tured speaker. Ana­mi­tra works on com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions of Twit­ter as part of the Twit­ter prod­uct man­age­ment team. The title is How To Use Twit­ter effec­tively for busi­ness, advo­cacy and pol­icy:

Find out the tech­niques and strate­gies for effec­tive Twit­ter use that can make the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess and fail­ure, that can dra­mat­i­cally drive up under­stand­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion of your mes­sage. Learn what to avoid so you don’t run into social or legal trouble.

The webi­nar is free and is part of a three-part series. Please reg­is­ter now!

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Today, I reported from ad:tech in San Fran­cisco for ad:tech. Ten times a year all around the world, peo­ple asso­ci­ated with the online adver­tis­ing indus­try con­vene for ad:tech. Every year the con­fer­ence rolls into San Fran­cisco, I attend. This year, ad:tech hired me to report on the event for their blog.

Just a few years ago, ad:tech was a dinky con­fer­ence held in the base­ment of the Mar­riott. Every booth was that of an search engine mar­keter (SEM) or search engine opti­mizer (SEO). Today, things have changed dra­mat­i­cally and the online ad indus­try has become highly nuanced with many ven­dors tak­ing posi­tions to own unclaimed ter­ri­tory in the ad buy­ing and sell­ing process. Since its days in Marriott’s base­ment, ad:tech has grown up to San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

I’ve been in and out of the ad busi­ness for many years and I’ve noticed that adver­tis­ing is always a good barom­e­ter of the econ­omy.  It’s the first indus­try to get hit when things are look­ing bad, and it’s also the first to respond when the econ­omy is on the upswing. While I don’t know about the bal­ance sheets of all the indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies, the con­fer­ence was packed and the mood was positive.

Here’s my mid­day show report of the first day of the conference.

I’ve got lots more video cov­er­age includ­ing an end of the day show report, a one-on-one inter­view with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, plus some great insight from ven­dors and atten­dees on the show floor.

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I have been see­ing lots of arti­cles like Steve Rubel’s Twit­ter Is Peak­ing; Get Ready to Fol­low The Geeks Onward and Larry Green’s response post, Dear Twit­ter: Fail­ure is not an option (for brand­ing).

Why I am so accept­ing of all of these Fail Whale “Twit­ter is over capac­ity” pages is because nobody could have antic­i­pated the sud­den and over­whelm­ing ubiq­uity of Twit­ter in the last 90 days.

I don’t know how much tele­vi­sion you watch, but Twit­ter is every­where. The last time Twit­ter had this sort of chal­lenge, they stood up to the chal­lenge — I didn’t expe­ri­ence one Fail Whale dur­ing the Inau­gu­ra­tion of Barack Obama, for example.

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Deep down I guess we all wish the start-ups whose ser­vices we like to use would stay as they are for­ever. Take for exam­ple Vimeo, a really great ser­vice with an awe­some com­mu­nity that never quite made it into the mainstream.

It is basi­cally clear now that Twit­ter will not be one of those ser­vices. If the recent Ash­ton Kutcher (@aplusk)/CNN (@cnnbrk) race to 1 mil­lion fol­low­ers taught us any­thing it’s that Twit­ter is only going to get bigger.

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So many folks are scold­ing stars like @oprah and @barbarajwalters because they’re not following-back the thou­sands of fans who are fol­low­ing them.

Here is a case in point from Lena Clax­ton and Ali­son Woo, Don’t Make Oprah’s Twit­ter Mis­takes:

Right now by only fol­low­ing 10 peo­ple, she’s using Twit­ter as a broad­cast medium. The power in Twit­ter is in speak­ing AND lis­ten­ing. And for some­one who already has a huge plat­form to speak to her audi­ence with her TV show, she might con­sider using Twit­ter to LISTEN and engage in conversation.

Stars don’t need to follow-back. They’re stars.  Their brand is secure and we don’t even need to engage in a con­ver­sa­tion with us, nec­es­sar­ily.  And, if Bar­bara Wal­ters and Oprah Win­frey do a good enough job at nod­ding, wink­ing, and shar­ing insights into their lives, their process, and their expe­ri­ence, that’s good enough, because they’re stars, they’re not like us, and they don’t really need our approval.

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Adam is an insight­ful fel­low. He put into words what I have been think­ing: celebri­ties are not ruin­ing Twit­ter because nobody is forced to fol­low celebs — or any­one — on Twit­ter. Please read Celebri­ties Are Not Tak­ing Over Twit­ter for the rest of the below insight­ful excerpt:

Celebri­ties like Ash­ton Kutcher, Shaquille O’Neal and Brit­ney Spears are not tak­ing over Twit­ter.  A well pub­li­cized event like Oprah tweet­ing on her show won’t help.  Ash­ton vs. Larry King, in a con­test to see which account, @aplusk (“a plus k”) or @cnnbrk can reach a mil­lion fol­low­ers first is a pub­lic­ity event that had lots of ben­e­fits for both in terms of build­ing large net­works, but they are not tak­ing over.  Any way you slice it, their efforts are futile. They can’t take over Twit­ter because of one sim­ple fact: peo­ple choose who they fol­low.

The Twit­terati Ver­sion 1 are bit­ter and jeal­ous but they should be ecsta­tic because they,  the first Twit­terati, were, in fact, ground zero for some­thing that has taken the world by storm.

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A blue­print for social net­work­ing investments

Web 2.0 and social net­works have gained per­cep­ti­ble mind­share dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2009, and con­ver­sa­tions with clients, fel­low speak­ers at con­fer­ences and online con­ver­sa­tions are clearly show­ing the reap­pear­ance of a famil­iar adop­tion curve. Here I’ll dis­cuss the Adop­tion Curve for Web 2.0 and Social Net­works and pro­vide rough mile­stones, so you can use it to gauge your invest­ments in Web 2.0. You can avoid some of the extremes that the major­ity of the mar­ket will experience.

In addi­tion, I will also show how Web 2.0 pro­vides a rare oppor­tu­nity to develop com­pet­i­tive advan­tage ahead of the market.

Hav­ing been on the front lines of Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers Consulting’s E-Business Strat­egy prac­tice dur­ing Web 1.0 (the Inter­net bub­ble), I am not sur­prised to see the famil­iar bub­ble pat­tern devel­op­ing, so this is a rare oppor­tu­nity to rec­og­nize it and pro­duce tremen­dous value by avoid­ing some of the mis­takes most com­pa­nies make when adopt­ing dis­rup­tive technology.

What I want to draw your atten­tion to is not the dis­rup­tive tech­nol­ogy itself, but rather the market’s per­cep­tion of the tech­nol­ogy. The Web 1.0 bub­ble was caused by dis­torted per­cep­tions of the tech­nol­ogy, what it could do, and when it could pro­duce value. Com­pa­nies’ per­cep­tions of the value it could deliver were unre­al­is­tic. How­ever, the Inter­net has pro­duced fan­tas­tic value; it just took longer than most peo­ple thought. There­fore, a rare oppor­tu­nity presents itself: What if exec­u­tives could under­stand the Web 2.0 Adop­tion Curve and make more real­is­tic investments?

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Girls in Tech from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

For years I’ve bemoaned the lack of women on stage at the scores of tech con­fer­ences and events I attend. Girls in Tech is out to change that.

I caught up with founder Adri­ana Gas­coigne and exec­u­tive man­ag­ing direc­tor Robyn Cohen at Web 2.0 Expo ear­lier this month.

Adri­ana describes Girls in Tech as an orga­ni­za­tion geared toward the empow­er­ment, edu­ca­tion and engage­ment of women in tech­nol­ogy. Here are some of their initiatives:

A few days ago they launched the Girls in Tech Uni­ver­sity, offer­ing a cur­ricu­lum to col­lege stu­dents and oth­ers who want to ramp up their involve­ment in the tech sector.

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