User generated content

Peter Coffee at eWeek has some interesting thoughts on UGC. I particularly love the description of the schoolkid entering a competition to design a web page for his class: "It's blank," his sister observes. "Well, duh," he replies. "This is the era of Web 2.0. Users get to generate their own content. Let's say you want to know what the latest news is. All you have to do is type it out in this box that says 'News' and then you can read it."

Google - spreadsheet surprise

This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been following Google - they've created an online spreadsheet to complete their collection of Gmail, Writely and Google Calendar.

It will be interesting to see how popular it becomes, especially given the sweeping UI changes due with Office 2007.

Old school animated giffs

There's an interesting article on clickz about an AKQA designed advert for MSN Messenger. The ad that they've created is a single animated gif, with some very funky background music. Interesting to see that a technology that was innovative 10 years ago is making a comeback.

Windows Live slowly starts to make sense

If you've been as confused as I have about what Microsoft is trying to do with it's Live products, there are some interesting pointers in Redmondmag. The exciting thing is that MS really are creating a developer platform for the Live services. There's an example of this on Channel 9 - where they show some examples of applications built on the MSN Messenger API. During the interview they make reference to another interesting site - worlds best apps.

Interesting stuff - even if it isn't fully baked yet.

Net Promoter and Blogs

I've been thinking a bit more about the Guardian's Amazon Article. In particular I'm wondering how this links in with the work that we've been doing around the Net Promoter metric. The Net Promoter metric is based on a single question can (supposedly) tell you everything you need to know about your customers - " would you recommend us to a colleague". The idea is that word of mouth marketing can make or break a company - even in a B2B environment. It's not necesarily the word of mouth marketing that is causing the success, but it definitely acts as a barometer for the level of customer focus.

However, if blogging becomes as all pervasive as some think then it will definitely be the word of mouth marketing that is causing the success or, as Scoble points out, if your company isn't blogging then it will be seen with a level of suspicion.

Of course, it's still not the blogging that makes a company client focused, it's what the you do with the information that you learn - just the same with Net Promoter.

I think we can all see where this is going...

So I'm taking bets on the next application to be relased by Google. See if you can spot a trend - first there was Gmail (Web email), then they bought Writely (Web word processor) and now they launch Google Calendar. Anyone want to take a bet on numsum (online spreadsheet) being Google's next purchase?

I'm off to buy the GoogleOffice.com domain name ;-)

Microsoft Origami - how to NOT do customer evidence

If any of you have been following the Microsoft Origami saga, this is a good example of how not to promote your customer work.

Microsoft are allegedly releasing a new product codenamed origami. They've put together a web site to create a buzz around the launch. In an unusual move for Microsoft they're trying to do this in a viral way - the actual announcement isn't happening until March 2, and the site isn't giving too much away. However, Digital Kitchen (a nu meeja shop) post examples of their client work on their web site - including a product video for the Origami product (a handheld device)!

Needless to say, DK took the video down pretty quickly, but not fast enough - it's now been captured by lots of other sites and it's doing the rounds of the blogs.

You've got to hope that this was a deliberate ploy by MS, otherwise someone at DK's going to be feeling pretty unhappy.