I have come across two great examples recently where doing good is good business. I sense this is more than just a coincidence and is really a trend that should be monitored if not co-opted by other firms. The two things I came across are uniquely well conceived online marketing plans/ideas. So before I riff on the broader implications of the do-good trend let’s take a look at each example.

The first is from Microsoft and launched last month. It’s a new marketing plan involving their Live Messenger product. You may recall it by its previous name MSN Messenger. It is a popular and mature product that is free to use and ad supported. Many of you might not have noticed the rotating banner ads at the bottom of Live Messenger, they are easy to miss, but between pay per placement and pay per click they generate a modest profit. In a brilliant marketing move Microsoft has put a spin on the term “IM” and has created the “I’M Making a Difference” campaign. The essence of the campaign is that by choosing from one of the several worthy charities such as the Boys and Girls Club, Multiple Sclerosis Society, Sierra Club, etc and inserting a corresponding symbol at the end of your display name, Microsoft creates an ad revenue share with that charity.

So at no cost to you some of the revenue Microsoft receives for showing the ads that you are ignoring is sent to the charity you have chosen. An “i’m” symbol shows up at the end of your display name that shows that you are participating in the program. It is a brilliantly simple and well executed idea and should serve to increase users brand affinity for Live Messenger, which is a perfect complement to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates’s epic charitable efforts. The halo effect for the advertisers should not be ignored, perhaps leading down the road to higher placement fees which leads to more net dollars for everyone involved. An excellent, and rare, example of making something you are already doing help others. I encourage others who use Live Messenger (over 250 million have a version of it installed) to give it a try.

I came across the other “do good” idea a few weeks ago. The company is Green Dimes, and it has been up and running for the past six months. The company has built an internet based business model around junk mail. No, not the Viagra ads you receive in Outlook, but the junk mail you receive in your mailbox at home. They state that each year the equivalent of 100 million trees are used to create the junk mail we come home to every day and promptly throw in the trash. They act as a well connected intermediary to several “Do Not Mail” lists and let you customize which junk mail you actually want to receive. In a nice marketing twist they plant a number of trees on your behalf. Even their 1 year plan plants 12 trees. They keep a running tracker on their home page of how many trees they have saved/planted and how many pounds of junk mail they have stopped from being delivered. It’s a well conceived business that is venture backed and, to use the classic marketing phrase, “makes a great gift”. Several catalog dependent companies such as Mrs. Fields cookies have noticed a growing number of opt out requests coming from Green Dimes asking for recipients to be taken off of the company’s bulk mailing list. A note to catalog marketers to think about perhaps integrating their email and snail mail preference centers into one area.

So, do two examples of businesses doing good business by doing good make a trend? Actually, there are many more examples, some of which you may know of and I have yet to come across. So, please comment away on this post if you know more good examples.

The broader trend I see is that, increasingly, customers want to see, or will want to see, everyday companies doing their part to be good citizens. Particularly for the younger generation of consumers, this may become a requirement to prove your brand’s credibility. Old line businesses such as with British Petroleum’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign and Charlotte-based NUCOR Steel’s “It’s our nature” website stories have been well done. However, those two firms have much to prove as far as whether their intentions lead to credible actions. So keep an eye out on your competitors, they may be more green or charitable than you. Whether they are or not, it may well be time for you to take the initiative to position your brand as a leader in this area. And you might enjoy the monetary benefits while you help everyone else enjoy the more tangible benefits of your efforts.

I forget what exactly we were talking about the other day, but I brought up the subject of my less-than-adequate skills in the art of tact.  My coworker jokingly commented that I didn’t know when to put on my ‘tact hat’.  Jocularity ensued – especially since that phrase is a bit tricky to say.  I proved this theory to be true later that day when reviewing a project with coworkers (sorry Amy and Nalini).  To nicely pair out this personality trait of mine, I’m a master at sticking my foot in my mouth.  Usually, I end up insulting someone in a backhanded, yet unintentional way.  It’s kind of like asking a woman ‘When’s the baby due?’ – only, she’s not pregnant.  I guess my only redeeming quality in all this is that I recognize – almost immediately – when I do it.  Some of my more positive-thinking friends and coworkers have tried to spin it into things like ‘you’re just passionate about things’ and ‘you’re opinionated – in a GOOD way’.  Regardless, it doesn’t excuse my behavior and, intentional or not, it not a good thing.

As usual, I have a moral to my little anecdote – be careful how you treat people.  Also as usual, I can apply this to what I do.  In this instance, it occurred to me that User Experience isn’t just about how pretty, usable and useful your site is.  It is also about how to talk to – and treat – your customers or users.  How you talk to them, what you say to them and how quickly and often you respond to them is just as integral to the process.  Colleen wrote about writing for the web and mentioned Tone and Brand, which speaks to how you talk to your users. But there is more.  It also matters how your customer service responds to users/customers.  It matters what you say to them, and how you say it, offline as well as online.   It matters how you market to them, how you treat their information (email, etc) and whether you know who they are.   It even matters how your error messages on your site are constructed!

So, in addition to what you say, think about how tactful, respectful and courteous you are.  And don’t stick your foot in your mouth.

User experience is like a delicious cake.  (And I love cake!)   Just as a cake requires a variety of quality ingredients, user experience requires the “good stuff” from many disciplines, ranging from cognitive psychology to communication to information architecture to visual design.  And just as a master pastry chef knows how to combine these ingredients in the right way, user experience experts know how to combine the best and most pertinent aspects of these disciplines, “baking” them into a satisfying experience.

An important, yet sometimes forgotten, ingredient in user experience is effective words.  It sounds so basic—precisely why it’s so important.  Like flour in a cake, words are almost always a part of user experience.  Below are a few principles and simple examples to make a website or interface wordalicious:

Concision – Pick the right words, not more words.
Users don’t typically read; instead, they scan.  Therefore, it’s critical to make the most of the words in an interface by selecting them carefully.   For example, the headlines on news  websites, such as cnn.com, convey the crux of each story in very few words. 

Clarity – Say what you mean.
Again because users scan, it’s important to pick words that are clear to the targeted users.  Generally, simpler words are better than more complex ones. Even if the targeted users are well-educated, they will recognize simpler words more quickly than complex ones.  For example, e-commerce websites say “shop” or “buy” rather than “procure.”

Tone and Brand – More than words.
Just as graphics and colors give a website a certain look and feel that conveys a company’s brand, words convey a company’s brand through tone. One way words create tone is through their connotation—their implied, subjective meanings beyond the dictionary meanings.  It’s important to pick words and phrases with connotations that resonate with users and are consistent with a company’s brand attributes.  For example, Virgin Mobile creates a fun, informal tone through wording, even in its log in instructions.

The revolution has started.  Ryan mentioned in a recent blog post about the game console moving in the direction of becoming our new home-based PC.  And why not?  Consoles such as the Xbox 360, PS3 and the Nintendo Wii are beginning to have many of the same capabilities as our computers and they hook up to the mother of all monitors - our constantly getting bigger, flatter and better TVs.  Many of these boxes now come with the ability to browse the web and interact with other players in real time; and let’s face it, those systems make our home computers look like Commodore 64’s*.

Now there’s something a little different happening. Microsoft has just announced that starting on May 7th, 2007, Xbox 360s will be upgraded to include MSN Messenger, allowing Xbox LIVE subscribers to communicate with anyone that uses Messenger IM, either on a PC or mobile device.  There are an estimated 260 million people that currently use MSN Messenger as their IM platform.

I’m telling you, this is the beginning.  The game (no pun intended) has just been blown wide open.  It was cool back in the day when you started to be able to interact with other users on a given gaming console (like with Xbox LIVE) and even cooler when PS3 announced it was going to create a virtual world called “Home” for their users. But now that we can start interacting with people from our PCs that are currently on their Xbox 360, everything will change.

For instance, there still has not been a great way for someone on a computer to interact with someone on a mobile device and I think that’s mainly because it hasn’t been something that people have asked for.  If I happen to be sitting at my computer and someone sends me a text message, I can’t (easily) receive that message on my computer - I have to grab my cell phone and text them back.  The change to open peoples’ minds to the idea that they can chat from their PC with their friend who is on a gaming console will start the process of people asking the question - “why can’t I communicate with someone from any device I want?”  If I happen to be on my phone, or in front of my computer, or on my gaming console, or in my car, why can’t I receive my messages in that setting - one that is conducive to that setting? If someone texts me in my car, I should be able to receive it in a verbal format instead of trying to read and text back via my phone while I merge into traffic going 70 mph in rush hour (I’m really good at driving with my knees not that I’ve ever done that of course).

The point is, we’re at the beginning stages of major change.  And I’m curious if any of you see these changes coming and what your perspective is.

* Not that there is anything wrong with the Commodore 64, my first love computer

I know many of you have been waiting on this since they canceled the series (Max Headroom) in ‘88. Here is something that just hit on Znet that brings us one step closer:

“Researchers from Illinois and Florida are developing a networking system which will create virtual representations of real people to improve our knowledge. They will use artificial intelligence and natural language processing software to enable us to interact with these avatars. The goal of the project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is to give us the possibility to interact with these virtual representations as if they were the actual person, complete with the ability to understand and answer questions. We should see the results at the beginning of 2008 — if the researchers succeed.”

Full Article is Here

The concept of virtual teachers is really cool, but I would imagine it’s a stone’s throw* away for more advanced entertainment applications… which, of course, is a hop-skip-and-a-jump* away from advancements in marketing.

*technical terms for iterations in close succession.

I recently attended the 8^th Annual Information Architecture Summit where talk of Web 2.0 was all the rage. The theme of the conference was ‘Enriching IA’ with a focus on:

• Rich information: More and more information becomes available to users and systems alike, and these days most of the information comes with metadata, built-in links to other information, and API’s or micro-formats that allow for mashups. How rich is your information?
• Rich interaction: The web is moving towards a more interactive environment, and desktop apps are adapting web metaphors. How does this affect the way you design applications?
• Rich relationships: We’re all already linked through information; and social computing is increasing the possibilities to exchange information. Is your information a social lubricant or is it an obstacle for building relationships?

Web 2.0 obviously dips into all of these areas. As tagging and open APIs allow users to define metadata and create visualizations and overlays of information with things like Google Maps, Mashups and Many Eyes, the web is becoming a users’ market. Users also are sharing and communicating and networking at breakneck speed. Sites like MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr – to name a few – allow users to share and tag their own ‘information’ and to create their own content that they can then put out for all the world to see. So if users are controlling their own content, does that mean Information Architects (IAs) will go away?

Hardly. Web 2.0 may be the next new best thing, but it ain’t the whole ball of wax. There are some User Experience gurus, however, that feel that IA is going away. Josh Porter claims that:

“IA as it has lived will soon die. Not because it wasn’t valuable, not because IAs didn’t do great work, but because the Web is moving on. The problem is that IA models information, not relationships. Many of the artifacts that IAs create: site maps, navigation systems, taxonomies, are information models built on the assumption that a single way to organize things can suit all users… one IA to rule them all, so to speak.”

I need to point out two things here:

1. He says “IA as it has lived” and…
2. “IA models information not relationships”.

One can interpret the first statement to mean that IAs must adapt or die. I’ll agree with that. What career doesn’t follow that process? The second assumes that everything on the web is ABOUT relationships. It is with this statement that I have the most trouble. I’m not convinced that everything on the web is appropriate for Web 2.0 ‘methods’. Does all information need to ‘build relationships’? Does he mean relationships of data or metadata or social relationships? I can’t help but think that the alternative to ‘one IA to rule them all’ is ‘all IAs to confuse them all’. In other words, personal content, metadata, taxonomies etc., means the most to the people who create it. If everyone created their own street signs, where would we be?

Needless to say, I’m skeptical. For one, IA is more than JUST deliverables like site maps, navigation schemes and taxonomies. It is about solving information problems, creating good experiences (on and off the web) and helping people find information (which still applies in a Web 2.0 world). Peter Morville points out a study in which Amazon tried a tagging experiment. What they found was that:

“tagging works well when people tag “their” stuff, but it fails when they’re asked to do it to ‘someone else’s’ stuff. You can’t get your customers to organize your products, unless you give them a very good incentive. We all make our beds, but nobody volunteers to fluff pillows at the local Sheraton.”

As for me, I’m not jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon just yet. At least not to the degree that everything must be 2.0. Sure, it’s cool, it has its uses and it has great potential, but I do believe that there is content out there to be organized for the sake of the users who don’t want to fluff someone else’s pillows.

Have you heard the buzz stirring over the past year or so about Google looking to provide TV spot placement? Well, Google has selected partners Echostar and Astound Cable for a trial that will allow Google to provide an ad-sales system for national television commercials, with inventory running on 120-plus cable TV networks.

By using an auction-based system, Google has been able to create some nice efficiencies. Pricing is on a CPM basis and advertisers only pay for actual impressions delivered.

And the usability (at least in writing) seems crazy-easy – and cool. Users will be able to log into their Adwords account and then access their TV spot account. From there they can select where their ads are running based on the 120 available channels. Advertisers can target by demographic, daypart and channel. And, if you’re completely stumped on where to place your ads, Google even has a “recommendation engine” that will provide you a suggested plan based on your target audience.

Of course … this wouldn’t be a Google technology if there wasn’t some killer statistics. The system will provide real-time commercial ratings for Google spots. According to Google’s release, users will be able to report aggregate statistics on how many times an ad was viewed – and EVEN if it was watched through the end!

Now THIS is how technology can meet traditional marketing to create some really powerful data. This means no more guesswork for marketers. Using Google’s TV spots, marketers will able to evaluate the effectiveness of their campaigns and make changes that will create an immediate impact on their ROI.

What do you do with your Wii?

For the past few gaming console cycles both Microsoft and Sony have been using the concept of convergence as a selling point. I like the idea of only having one box (Xbox or PlayStation) to do all my gaming, DVD playing, TV recording and music playing with… but that’s not the topic of this post. This is about the convergence of my gaming console and the internet.

With the launch of the current generation of gaming consoles (Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii) I think we finally have legitimate contenders for converging day-to-day web browsing with our gaming systems. Part of this is from the increasing number of web accessible software (Gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Other stuff Google made or bought, etc…), but the rest is in this latest generation’s embracing of the internet. Two of the main 3 players in the space have more advanced navigation and browsing which we’ll look at below. Surprisingly, (or is it not surprising at all?) Microsoft’s Xbox is the only one that leaves out a web browser, and they are the ones that have lead the way in “convergence” marketing.

PlayStation 3

• The PlayStation 3 uses a version of the NetFront browser by Access Co. as its internal web browser. It is the same browser used in the PlayStation Portable (Sony-branded NetFront 2.81) with the same interface, menus and virtual keyboard.
• Some of the unique features are that you can have six browser sessions active at any given time, you can punch in addresses and text using the controller, a usb keyboard or a bluetooth keyboard.
• Still uses regular game control pads to navigate, but will emulate a mouse with one control stick and let you scroll with the other. See video of it in action.

Nintendo Wii

• The “Internet Channel” is a version of the Opera web browser for use on the Wii by Opera Software and Nintendo.
• The Wii browser allows users full access to the Web and supports all the same web standards that are included in the desktop versions of Opera, including CSS and JavaScript.
• Opera Software designed the Wii browser to suit a “living room environment”; in contrast to the appearance of the Opera web browser on computer monitors, fonts are larger and the interface is simplified for easier use.
• Uses Wii remote to control mouse, but does not currently have drivers to support a full keyboard.

After seeing these two browsers and looking at the price tag of my Wii ($250) vs. the price of my wife’s Dell Laptop ($700), I started to think we may actually be close to a better, cheaper alternative. If she is only using the computer for communication (email, IM), photo viewing, and money management, then a “terminal” with usable controls (not there yet) and full browser capabilities is all she would really need. I haven’t seen stats on how much browsers are used in gaming consoles, but I have to believe that with 1.5 mill PS3’s and 1.8 mill Wii’s and counting, that eventually we are going to see other moderate web users do the math I did above and realize they can get everything they need from one outlet.

As web marketers we will have to continue to watch the way in which users actively browse through these (and future) gaming systems. From a technical point of view it will be important to understand the browser’s rendering capabilities. Looking at usability we’ll have to understand the input devices better (joysticks, wands, etc). And from the behavioral aspect we’ll have to grasp how the user is transitioning from their gaming environment to our web sites.