User-generated content is defined by Wikipedia as “on-line content that is produced by users of websites as opposed to traditional media producers such as broadcasters and production companies.” If you’ve been at all involved in interactive marketing over the past year you’re no doubt knee deep in articles and opinions praising user-generated content. And I do believe that there has been a fundamental shift in the way the web is used today - users expect to be able to interact with other users on the web, create their own content and respond to other users’ content. And there’s no going back (thankfully). But sometimes user-generated content just isn’t as good as content produced by professionals.

Case in point, one of my favorite websites is The Onion. If you haven’t seen The Onion, you’re missing hilarious parody news stories like:

- “CNN Renews ‘This Week At War’ For Next Eight Seasons”

- “Frito-Lay Angrily Introduces Line Of Healthy Snacks”

- “Tom Brady To Learn Receivers’ Names By End Of Month”

Great stuff. The Onion is produced by professional writers and they won’t even accept submissions from the general public. If you want to write a story for The Onion, well you better submit a resume and work there full time.

I recently read about a new website on one of my favorite blogs (HipMojo.com) that is attempting to be The Onion in the new world of user-generated content. It’s called Uncyclopedia. Essentially it’s a place where users can write their own content and stories (a mix between Wikipedia and The Onion really). While the idea is interesting and certainly there is a need for it, the stories just aren’t as funny as The Onion. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, if the content isn’t good then there’s really nothing you can do to keep users coming. For example, a few of their headlines are:

- “Wikipedia Celebrates 1,500,000 Articles Written By Monkeys”

- “Paper To Become Plastic”

- “Snakes In A Car Filming Goes Bad”

While those stories are slightly humorous, they really don’t hold a candle to The Onion, which puts out quality content on a weekly basis. So while I’m a big believer in user-generated content, we’re still living in a world where content is king and that’s not going to change anytime soon.

Life isn’t easy at 5 foot nothing. Take it from me. When I first learned to drive, I realized that I had a choice. I could either press the pedals or see over the dash – but not both. Nothing fits. Pants are always too long and heels are only so high. I have to hurl dishes into my kitchen cabinets. And to top it all off, I’m a lefty.

Products are designed for average users – not for people like me. It’s about what’s most profitable. It’s about the 80-20 rule. I get that. But what about the people who get left out of the design process? What about me?

I’ve met several people over the years who have shared my plight with average product designs. None have been more memorable than my former student of statistics, Jonathan. Jonathan was blind. One day, he asked me to print the content of my course website so someone could read it to him. Jonathan told me that most websites weren’t made for people like him – even with the existence screen reading technology.

I wanted to understand. I downloaded a trial version of Jaws and listened to my favorite websites. I was horrified. Sites with the most organized visual designs were often the most confusing to listen to. My stats website was no exception. At that moment, I decided that I would not let my website fail Jonathan like so many others had – I would give Jonathan the same online experiences as every other student.

I spent months learning about the web accessibility standards. I listened to my site again and again. I tested my links with Bobby to find the flaws I couldn’t hear. I worked closely with Jonathan to understand the experience of a real, non-sighted user.

Jonathan thrived. He used his earphones to explore my site in the student computer lab. He loved to learn about stats – and that’s really rare for an undergraduate. By semester’s end, I found Jonathan helping several of my sighted students with their homework.

The web is one of the greatest tools in human history. But it’s not just a tool. It’s a place — a place where non-sighted people cannot go. Will the day ever come when people take this more seriously? Will the day ever come when potential clients are beating down our doors for online accessibility evaluations and repairs? With pioneers like Bruce ‘BJ’ Sexton taking on giants like Target.com, perhaps that day is closer than we think.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling small, I think of Jonathan and what his life without the web must be like. Even if major companies are legally forced to include him (see the Section 508 website), it will likely take years to get their sites up to standard. Jonathan will have to wait a long time before he can surf the web like the rest of us. Meanwhile, I’m online all the time. Online, being small means nothing. In that space, I fit. In that space, I am capable of anything. Jonathan helped me see and appreciate something that I took for granted – a charmed virtual life.

MTV has a new show called Blastazoid. I randomly saw it the other day while trying to find something to watch in high definition (HD). If you don’t have HD yet, you probably don’t know that there are currently only certain channels that are available in HD and personally now that I have it, I find it hard to watch programs that aren’t available in HD. It’s like trying to watch TV without a DVR - it’s like you’re living in the past or something.

Anyways, because nothing else was on in HD that I wanted to see, I started watching Blastazoid. What I thought was really interesting about this new show is that they do a version of MTV Cribs within video games. So for the Scarface game (Scarface - The World is Yours), you have none other than Tony Montana showing you his crib. It’s a great idea, blending video games and popular TV shows and I bet we start seeing a lot more of it.

Coke is also getting in the game with a commercial they ran playing off of the popular game Grand Theft Auto. Check it out.

I continue to be fascinated by the economy of virtual worlds. There are many virtual worlds which I have participated in (lived in?) where there were some exchanges between those economies and real US dollars. I remember the first time I saw someone selling 100,000 gleepglops in Star Wars Galaxies on eBay and bids showing up for $100’s of US Dollars and me being amazed that someone would pay that much. Keep in mind that was without the seller throwing in level 20 wookie trained banthas.

When I was first introduced to Second Life (a little late in the game) the thing that impressed me the most, and continues to impress me, was the incredible ease of exchange between Linden Dollars and US Dollars. This was the next logical step, why not control the economy and make a profit in the exchange? Brilliant!! For those that don’t know, there is a system to draft US money directly from a credit card while in game/world to purchases Linden Dollars. It’s all highly automated and doesn’t take away from the experience at all. There is even an exchange rates page on the Second Life web site.

So today, as I was paying $1700 US for 16 acres of virtual land (the going rate for a private island) I was forwarded an email about the “first” virtual world millionaire. Yeah, millionaire. Apparently Anshe Chung (1^st L – Ailin Graef) is reportedly the first person to have a virtual fortune worth the equivalent of 1 million US Dollars. She allegedly gained this fortune from an initial investment of $9.95 US. Through the acquisition and reselling of land, goods and services through multiple accounts (not sure how many) she has a Second Life empire under her control. I was amazed at this until I realized that I was about to push “submit” on my order for my own virtual island. It makes sense that if land is at a premium, then amassing and reselling land could make you a lot of money.

If you were wondering, like I was, why an island costs so much and why more land isn’t available (that would help drive down the cost) here is the answer: It turns out that currently each server run by Linden Labs is capable of running around 16 acres of virtual world, or 1 island. So, in that context $1700, while steep, isn’t all that bad for a dedicated server (the monthly maintenance is on par as well) and they aren’t able to get new servers online as fast as the demand. It takes 550 servers just to run the 36 square miles of property Anshe Chung owns alone (according to her press release).

As we sit down at our desks this Monday after digesting a weekends worth of Thanksgiving meals and leftovers, many of us will find ourselves going online to shop in the cyber equivalent of “Black Friday,” which has traditionally been the busiest shopping day of the Christmas season. For retailers, both online and off, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are the most important, if not the most wonderful, time of the year. Shopping is as intertwined with Thanksgiving as Football - speaking of which, how about that Tony Romo? The reality of the importance this time of year has for retailers was underscored during the Great Depression when Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving a week earlier so retailers would have more time to sell their products before Christmas. The new tradition took hold and is the reason Thanksgiving is celebrated during the third Thursday of November each year.

Cyber Monday is the new way consumers and retailers have found to ease the holiday rush and allow time strapped shoppers the ability to spend themselves to the limit in the comfort and security of their office cubicle. Retailers have realized over recent years that time has become the new luxury for shoppers and that offering convenience is the way to better business. Online shopping is, or at least should be, about convenience. The key elements of convenience being:

• Checking the availability of a product without driving to a store
• Performing price comparisons quickly and easily
• Finding out about popular (or even unusual) products for each type of person on your gift list
• Having presents delivered to distant friends and family
• Reminders of past gifts and easy repeat purchases - I had to work that one in there, its really cool - check it out.

The benefits of shopping online are clear to consumers; for retailers it has been a mixed bag. Pure online retailers like Amazon have captured large amounts of revenue but have not yet realized significant profit, while traditional retailers like Walmart have fought back with redesigned websites but have faced their own issues providing a satisfactory experience to their online customers. While the news headlines will likely state that online shopping has grown by some impressive percentage this holiday season, the experience online has only recently begun fulfilling its promise of convenience to consumers and has yet to expand its value proposition beyond that. In coming holiday seasons expect to see more elements of social networking mixed into the online shopping experience. Online shopping is not a zero sum game with offline shopping. By offering unprecedented convenience, fine tuned suggestive selling, and creating a new virtual, social, and entertaining element to the online shopping experiences retailers will be rewarded with incremental increased spending by shoppers - to the benefit of retailers and gift recipients alike.

As a full service interactive agency, we work with many companies to help them understand the best way to run their email marketing campaigns. One of the mysteries of email marketing is when and how often email campaigns are sent. Over the last several years I’ve read countless analyst reports that attempt to pinpoint the right time, day and frequency an email campaign should be sent depending on the industry (i.e. retail, travel, b2b, etc.). When asked by clients and colleagues when and how often a campaign needs to run, I’m often reluctant to quote these statistics as they try to replicate them for their own campaigns. The fact of the matter is that frequency and timing of an email campaign should really depend on when you have content that is most relevant to the recipient. Now I’ll admit that’s easier said than done, but it is possible for any organization that’s willing to take this approach.

The simplest approach is to tell a client their industry typically sends an offer campaign 4 times a month, and that reports/statistics show that recipients have a high open and click-through rate on Thursday between 10am and 11am. I would have certainly provided sound strategy to my client and we’d end up sending an email once a week on Thursday between 10am and 11am. Granted we’d probably get average and perhaps above average results but so would everyone else.

I’d argue that we all know relevant content sent to a recipient when they want it will achieve the best possible results. For example, getting a lunch coupon for Chick-fil-A at 11am because I clicked or hovered over a banner ad in yahoo mail or hotmail will result in a higher conversion rate of that coupon than sending a blast campaign to everyone in my mailing list once every month. Yet the vast majority of campaigns are sent on a pre-defined frequency and time, typically to an un-segmented list (i.e. the message isn’t relevant to every recipient), and the content/offer is normally pretty generic. These campaigns still achieve good results but the approach can trap organizations into a routine as you scramble to get content based on a fixed schedule and start comprising on creative, content versions, segmenting, and testing in order to keep costs down mostly due to low ROI (cost of production and broadcast fees vs. revenue generated).

We should expect more from the web! So I’d rather tell a client they should send a campaign only when they have unique and valuable content that is relevant to a unique recipient. Stop sending “blast” campaigns to the whole mailing list and don’t create filler content because of a set frequency that recipients find generic. Introducing the concept of life cycle campaigns, trigger-based campaigns, personalized and dynamic segmented content campaigns regardless if the client is ready technically or logically can be a tough sell to any marketing department. Those who understand it embrace it, and those who don’t typically get caught up in the cost of running these types of campaigns, the sophistication in the logic and technology needed, and the change/risk of doing something so different. What we all need to realize is that the power of the tools we have, real-time data, and analytics that are at our fingertips has made this level of campaign available to any organization and can achieve far higher ROI than the typical blast frequency strategy.

This past Sunday, Second Life experienced a “terrorist attack” where martial law (not kidding) had to be declared. No one got hurt, but it was an “attack” that ended up shutting down an entire economy. Apparently a programmer of some sort created spinning gold rings in the virtual world that once touched by users (who obviously will touch anything) began to replicate and chase people around. The worm script continued to multiply and infest the 2700+ servers Linden Labs operates. The immediate impact was a bad user experience in the form of lag and dropped connections for users. Linden invoked a sort of martial law to lock people out while they cleaned up the mess.

Although this terrorist attack didn’t necessarily instill fear or take lives, it did have a similar residual effect as 1^st life terrorism, the loss of production. I wonder how many businesses were impacted by such an attack, one so massive that it put the world at a stand still. I’m sure money was lost as this was one of the largest online game attacks in history. It makes me wonder how this sort of event will continue to evolve as our interactions with virtual worlds evolve. My guess is this was a typical “see if it can be done” hacker, but what will happen in the future when people start to use Second Life (or any other virtual world) in a more integrated (to your 1^st life) manner? Will virtual classrooms be shut down by people protesting the school? Will virtual economies be cut off because one country disagrees with another? Email distributed viruses that were once a “see if it can be done” sort of thing have now become channels for “real” terrorist activities, why not our virtual worlds?

There’s an elephant in the corner. And here lately, he’s gotten bigger.

Interactive marketing agencies have long been packaging and distributing ‘online personality types’ by use of online surveys. Media-Screen recently joined in with their Netpop | Portraits research program. Five broadband ‘personality types’ were born out of an analysis of 4,000+ survey responses.

The Netpop | Portraits survey reached thousands of broadband users, a noteworthy accomplishment. But there’s something that interactive agencies often don’t mention about this type of research – and it’s a big problem that’s really hard to ignore. These types of research programs are not studies of broadband users. They are studies of broadband users who are willing to respond to online surveys. And there’s quite a difference.

If we really want to explain and predict online user behavior, it’s going to take more than an online survey to get what we’re looking for. Surveys are great at reaching thousands of users. But we don’t just need numbers, we need to reach the right kinds of people. What are the characteristics and behaviors of users who don’t complete online surveys? How would these things, if known, impact the Media-Screen ‘online personality’ findings?

While pioneers like Media-Screen have published exciting findings, I am of the opinion that the greatest discoveries in ‘online personality types’ remain to be seen. We are largely uninformed about a critical portion of the online population – users who abandon online surveys. And users who abandon online surveys may very well be the same type of people who abandon prior to conversion in so many other realms – making them perhaps the most worthy of study, at least in the conversion industry.

Surveys are a powerful method of assessing broadband user behavior. But alone, they are not enough. Complementary methods of data collection are essential if we want a holistic view of online user behavior. Let’s compliment our survey findings with studies of survey abandonment rates, to quantify the portion of users that we don’t account for. Let’s investigate where the people who abandon our surveys come from, where they abandon and where they go next. If we don’t, I’m afraid the elephant in the corner will only get bigger, at least for me. If we don’t, I’m afraid we will continue to sit in Plato’s cave – talking, writing and dreaming about shadows on the wall.

Just as everyone went from black and white TV to color, from VCRs to DVD players, and from Melrose Place to Desperate Housewives; everyone will move to using DVRs eventually. And the people that make the commercials, well they’re trying to figure out if they’ll still have jobs when the shift happens. They’re currently trying to figure it out, but so far, the efforts aren’t working too well. A while back Sprite put out a commercial that required viewers to pause at a specific time to view a code and then go online and enter that code into their website. Interesting and definitely different, but were many people really doing that?

This past Thursday night NBC tried some new things and then basically announced their plan to embrace product integration. First, they ran an actual advertisement for a commercial. Toward the end of My Name is Earl, right before a commercial break, an announcement came on that said, “Stay tuned for more My Name is Earl, and check out who Ellen is working with now”. Then the first commercial was an American Express spot with Ellen working with a bunch of animals (part of the “My Life, My Card” campaign). Then, during The Office, Kevin expresses his love for using the great shredder he has, shows how it can even shred a CD and then, what do you know, a commercial during the next break is for Target’s new shredder. And then later in the show, when asked where he got the great shredder, he proudly says, “Target”. Also during The Office, Michael Scott defends the restaurant Hooters and says to the camera that there are over 400 locations nationwide. Nice spin to poke fun at product placement while actually doing it.

Studio 60 and 30 Rock essentially based their entire shows on product integration in the past week.

So yeah, these are some interesting ways to go. But where is the creative thinking, the real innovative ideas? Pausing commercials to get a code is certainly different, but with the problem being that people want to skip commercials altogether, do we really think that getting them to spend even more time with them by pausing them is a good way to go? And product integration is a tough line to walk with the risk of lowering the content quality being so great. So why not come up with ideas that take advantage of the change? How about having commercials that, when viewed in fast forward mode, you see a message or code? So the only way you can see it is if you fast forward? The advertiser that recommends that people fast forward their commercial – now that would be doing something different.

Parrots don’t ride tricycles in the wild. It’s not their nature. You can watch them fly and hop and search for food all day, but you’re not going to see them riding tricycles. You can put a tricycle right in front of them, dangle treats in front of their faces and shout ‘TRICYCLE, TRICYCLE!!,’ over and over again. Nope. Not going to do it. But what if you want to defy nature – what if you want to get a parrot to ride a tricycle anyway? Where do you start?

Getting parrots to ride tricycles is like getting some users to convert. Some users seem like they just weren’t made to convert. Getting them to convert is like defying nature. And you can dangle money and vacations and free anything in front of them, but it’s not going to happen. How can you reward users with incentives for the behavior you want when they won’t produce that behavior to begin with? Well that’s a popular problem in the conversion industry. But behavioral researchers in Psychology have long known of a way to get around this problem – at least with parrots. We call it shaping.

With shaping, we don’t wait to reinforce a behavior that’s never going to happen. Instead, we reward successive approximations of the desired behavior until that behavior is ultimately displayed. Let’s get back to our parrot example. He doesn’t ride the tricycle but he will hop onto it every now and then. So first, we reward the parrot for hopping onto the tricycle with a treat. After he realizes the relationship between hopping onto the tricycle and the treat, we take it up a notch. We only give the parrot a treat when he hops onto the tricycle and puts his foot on the pedal. Next, we only give him a treat for having his foot on the pedal and pressing the pedal. Eventually, we get the parrot to ride the tricycle. And here’s what that looks like.

Does the power of behavioral shaping apply to web conversions? Can we reward successive approximations of converting behavior until users ultimately convert? Given that shaping has been so effective in so many other realms, I imagine we can.

For some inspiration, I leave you with several other animals who have successfully defied nature. Note that none of these animals produce these behaviors in the wild.

Twiggy, The Water Skiing Squirrel

Tyson, The Skateboarding Bulldog

Gongkam, The Painting Elephant