Hello Viking

Cullect Call

One of the challenges of the information age we're in is too much information. We've been using all the major feed readers to aggregate and sort the useful from the less so. It's been a decent experience. Netvibes is beautiful and simple. The GoogReader is very straightforward. Very Google. And then we stumbled across Cullect. Or rather, we had lunch a couple times with Garrick van Buren, the guy who invented Cullect, "the most shareable feed reader."

We're hooked for several reasons:

1. Cullect will import/read almost anything. You're at a blog, news post, whatever--just hit the browser menu button you've added, and the content you want is in your "cullection." Unlike del.icio.us, there's no back-and-forth redirect, or a pop out like Tumblr. Yes, the page reloads, but it's a tiny distraction.

2. Cullect displays everything. If a blog post contained a video, from wherever, it's automatically embedded within your cullection. If there was a "tiny" URL, Cullect automatically extracts the original URL and displays it. If there's an Mp3 file, Cullect displays player controls. Cullect will also display all of the referring URLs for blog posts, and direct links for embedded content.

3. Cullect is easy to whip through. Granted, it's not perfect (yet). But a few simple keyboard commands let you zip past the current item (type "j"), or go back one item (type "k"), or collapse an item to just its title (type "c").

4. Oh yeah, you can share anything from Cullect. That's why it's "the most shareable." As an example, let's say you've got 20 feeds coming in. You want to sift through the latest feeds for a specific term. So you click the "Latest" tab to get the most recent feeds, then in the browser's URL you add "/[searchterm]", hit return and Cullect filters all of your latest feeds to display only the ones with that search term. But wait! Now you add ".rss" at the end of that URL and you've got an instant RSS feed to give clients, friends, etc. Meaning, they'll get a new filtered feed of your feeds. Perfect for sharing specific slices of news and information with co-workers and clients.

5. It's always improving. We asked Garrick for Search, and 2 days later, the functionCu was included.

6. It can be subscription based. Cullect does offer a basic service for free. And it rocks. But we like the idea that more service requires some kind of modest payment, i.e. $6 a month for the mid-level offering. We'll gladly pay that just for the access afforded users in point #5.

So check out our "Important Reading" from the Hello Viking Cullection over in our righthand sidebar. Another benefit of Cullect--you can create widgets for different slices of your feeds (Latest, Important, Recommended). Cullect uses an algorithm to filter "importance" based on things like number of referring posts. This approach provides us with a highly customized news feed that's particular to Hello Viking's tastes and preferences.

And you can check out--and share (without being registered!)--our cullection at http://cullect.com/166.

Free!

Chris Anderson's latest in Wired, "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business" is definitely worth your time.

From an opening anecdote about razor magnate King Gillette, Anderson outlines the economic and technical forces that have evolved to create the business ecosystem we all work within today:

"It's now clear that practically everything Web technology touches starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are concerned. Storage now joins bandwidth (YouTube: free) and processing power (Google: free) in the race to the bottom. Basic economics tells us that in a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost. There's never been a more competitive market than the Internet, and every day the marginal cost of digital information comes closer to nothing."

It got us thinking.

If, as Anderson puts it, "The moment a company's primary expenses become things based in silicon (i.e. digital advertising infrastructure), free becomes not just an option but the inevitable destination," we've all got a lot of soul searching to do.

Advertising won't go away. Nor will it become entirely free to create or distribute.

The lesson here is to think differently about what advertising does, or is supposed to do. And to constantly evaluate our roles within this mutating system. Then be open to unusual thinking as it reveals itself.

2007 in friends and music and other favorites

Hello Viking started six months ago.

Since then, we've had the opportunity to collaborate with wonderful people at Spring, Dentsu America, Venables Bell, 1nteractive, Arnold, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Pinnacle Air and BlueCross BlueShield.

Thank you David, Shannon, Ted, Trish, Rey, Mike, David, Colleen, Lissette, Pierce and Woody.

And thanks to all the amazing people who collaborated with Hello Viking, sharing their skill, wisdom and experience. We look forward to working with you all in 2008!

Amidst all the excitement, we chalked up a few other favorites:

Cornelius' Sensuous
(Especially love "Fit Song")

Common's Finding Forever
("Drivin' Me Wild" might be our single of the year)

Fountains of Wayne's Traffic and Weather
(Okay, "New Routine," "Strapped for Cash" and "Yolanda Hayes" might also be our singles of the year; and we really dug the FoW show at First Avenue)







The Police reunion tour
Okay, so the crowd on the floor was 45+. But these guys were on fire.

The Sea & Cake at the Varsity Theater
We love seeing Archer and Sam. They were fantastic, in a fantastic venue.

moo.com
They love to print and we love the work they print. Beautiful website interface.

Michael Clayton
Might be our film of the year. Tony Gilroy's script was awesome.

Must not forget Basecamp. Or HighRise. Two brilliant web applications from 37Signals. Hello Viking probably wouldn't be as organized (and thus as successful) as it has been without these two awesome applications. And we found ourselves almost totally in agreement with Jason Fried when he spoke about 37Signal's process and products at this year's MIMA Summit.

And we got geeked about Twitter.

And Flickr.

Curse you, Guitar Hero III. You threaten to curb productivity in 2008.

Which one is it?

As Armano tweeted, "Just watch it." (Great dissection of the issues in the current Writers strike.)

Test this.

We attended a very pleasant Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association "salon" this evening featuring Jamie Roach, founder and president of Offermatica.

Our Twitterings from the presentation are vague, but we were excited by Jamie's logic. Optimization and testing can be avenues to increased creativity, more relevant messaging and greater overall efficiency.

If you have a reasonable-sized audience (and budget), why wouldn't you engage in a variety of tests with all factors of your website?

It's as much about providing balance to a culture of guessing--which occurs inside even the brightest marketing organizations--as it is about providing mechanisms for continual learning. From a creative standpoint, this kind of testing isn't about rating the worthiness of a singular idea, it's about the democracy of concepting and the reality that any testing means more than one idea is required. In essence, a culture of testing will produce and "air" more ideas than a culture that doesn't test.

Jamie also mentioned Cliq, a new blog-promoting tool sponsored by Offermatica. We'll test it out.

And kudos to MIMA for hosting the event in the swank Minneapolis Club, with its fascinating wall of genteel past presidents.

We'll be back.

[blank] killed the campaign microsite star?

You saw this coming, didn't you? Of course you did. Interesting piece in Adweek today on the eventual, obvious, presumed "death" of the Campaign Microsite.

"Digital advocates often proclaim the imminent death of the 30-second spot, but the interactive industry might now be witnessing the demise of its own version of the commercial: the campaign microsite.

The growth of social media is causing marketers to realize they cannot expect consumers to always seek them out. Web widgets and video-sharing tools make it easy for any user to take content that formerly might have lived only on a brand site with them wherever they go. And social media sites help them share that content with friends."

Our 2¢: Nothing dies in advertising. The campaign microsite will continue to play a strong role when and where it needs to.

If your audience isn't hanging out in Facebook or MySpace, then perhaps a microsite can act in that role quite effectively. And it's quite easy to provide many if not all of the social networking tools and utility within a microsite (AddThis, anyone?).

Given today's wonderfully complex mix of online venues, the campaign site is simply another option.

Perhaps it's a clearinghouse, or a jumping off point. At the very least, the campaign site does offer the greatest degree of control and distribution.

If you follow Jaffe's three (new) roles for advertising: To Empower, To Demonstrate and To Involve -- it's clear social media/networks are quite wonderful for involving and empowering; whereas the campaign site has unique strengths in its abilities to demonstrate. But it's all part of a coherent whole -- each element crafted or adopted for a specific role in the marketing mix.

To suggest the demise of the campaign site is at hand is quite sensational, but hardly accurate.

Who do you trust?

We were intrigued by a report on the Discover Small Business Watch by the Center for Media Research that discussed the economic confidence among 1,000 small businesses with five or fewer employees. Most of the article discusses economic confidence and cash flow. But we perked up towards the end...

"The buzz that general-interest networking sites are generating hasn't struck a chord with the Main Street small business crowd... " Rachakonda said. 55 percent of respondents said they would not consider using a service or small business that they heard about on a social or business networking Web site.

The study found that younger business owners use online networking the most. In the 18-29 age group, membership at general online networking sites reached as high as 41 percent at some of the more popular online networking communities. Membership among older age groups at the same sites is still significantly lower.

So we've crafted this poll.

Where do you wind up on the issue of utilizing social networking for business? Who do you trust?

What does it take? Part 2

Wow. 23 votes cast so far in our poll asking, "What actions should CEOs be taking to demonstrate their understanding of the digital space?" And more important -- numerous, well-considered comments. Thanks everyone, for the wonderful conversation.

Here's a recap of the voting thus far from PollDaddy (great web app). Let's remember, this isn't a poll of CEOs, but a poll of those responsible to a CEO -- those in the digital trenches, doing the work. What do those of us doing the work today want and need to see from our betters?

What stands out for us, overall, is this:

CEOs need to put some skin in the digital game.
It might be Facebook, or attending a conference or blogging. CEOs need to participate, personally. Show those around you -- your fellow board members, your direct reports -- that you're personally invested.

We've got highlights from the comments following the image.

In the case of "Other," the suggestions were:

+ Run paperbag lunch sessions where CEO presents ideas/vehicles that have merit

+ I think execs should have a digital dashboard that they review on a weekly basis

+ Support initiatives encouraging their employees to explore the digital space

+ INVESTMENT AND INCLUSION: put gigerati on the board, invest in technology

+ Take an interest in the ops/financial/marketing value of their domain name

+ Recognize that 40% of their customers time is spent online, yet they invest 5%

COMMENT HIGHLIGHTS:

"The real question I face every day is how do you get an executive -- who has been at the top of his or her field for decades -- to admit that they now have a knowledge gap that must be addressed?"

"That Giant Sucking Sound you hear is the leadership vacuum in the corporate digital space."

"The net-net is, we just have to keep educating, no? We have to speak up and tell them, show them, when cool stuff happens..."

"If the company's business is primarily in the digital space, it doesn't make sense for the CEO to be focused on it. It's far better if they support initiatives encouraging their employees to explore how best the company's culture fits into the digital space."

- - -

All of this gets us thinking and asking, well, Who is doing it right, right now?

Which CEOs in your opinion are demonstrating a solid understanding of the digital space?

And how are they demonstrating it?

Let's keep the conversation going.

What does it take?

After attending the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association Summit 2007 and the MN Advertising Federation Show, and chatting with our friends working in the interactive space, we've got a question:

We have no illusions that any CEOs are going to answer this poll. Rather, we're curious what you -- the people who create, enable and guide the interactive work -- want from your CEO in terms of understanding and involvement. What do you want your CEO to know and participate in?

We'll post the results here and continue the discussion. Please share this poll and encourage your friends and co-workers to participate. The more responses we have from all of you, the better the survey. And everyone can share in the results.

(Hat tip to David Armano for the PollDaddy link.)

MIMA Summit 2007

So we joined the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association last week, and attended the 2007 Summit today.

(Check out our photos here. And our tweets here.)

Over 630 people showed up. The event was sold out. We got there a bit late and missed the first keynote. But overall, we had a really good time. Our highlights:

"Quantifying the Overall Value of the Web Channel"
Jason Burby, Chief Analytics & Optimization Officer, ZAAZ (Seattle, WA)
Interactive/digital work is inherently measurable--it's unescapable--which is both a blessing a curse. Because on the one hand, we finally have a basis for understanding what works and possibly why. On the other, we've got a massive responsibility to do something with the information. Burby's presentation was a solid exercise in understanding the role of metrics as a foundation for monetizing user behavior -- and then figuring out what to do about it all. We'll be buying ZAAZ's book on the subject.

"Unconventional Collaboration: Insights Gathered from Three Years of Collaboration at 37signals"
Jason Fried, Founder, 37signals (Chicago, IL)
We use Basecamp from 37Signals, so we were biased in favor of this presentation. It was really nice to discover we share many of 37Signals' operational practices: Working apart--working virtually, no (or extremely few) meetings, focusing on smaller decisions that can be solved quickly versus the paralysis of large problems. Plus, Jason sounds oddly like our friend Dmitri Cavander. What Jason proposes is powerful stuff, and it clearly works--the challenge is in scaling the methodology up to larger entities. But an awesome presentation, nonetheless. And we're buying 37Signals' book as well.

We weren't nuts about the huge bottleneck to get to the free lunch, so we ate across the street at Subway. But the open bar at the end was nice. One comment: Seems like a vast majority of interactive marketing people in Minnesota have very well-designed eyewear.

We'll be back.