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Archives for June 2008

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Paper Prototyping

Have you saved your paper sketches from that million-dollar idea you had while drinking at the bar?  You know, the one you wrote on the back of a napkin? It turns out that many web sites have had a paper phase.  Its actually a common theme that connects our humble web efforts with software projects throughout a quarter century.

Deeplinking has posted a short gallery of some early stage drafts of web sites you may be using today.

Included in their selection was this impressive video on how to interactively paper prototype.

This video is paper-based prototype for Daum’s web mail service, Hanmail.net made by Ajax.

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Social Media Shouldn't Be Scary

Outside of the tech industry, skepticism and fear are the norm when it comes to social media. But it is simply about finding the best way to communicate with an audience. Social media consists of the same content already in use: text, audio, images, and video. The difference lies in its ability to open up new channels of communication. – Digital Web Magazine – Integrating Social Media into a Web Content Strategy

Think of social media as an opportunity to converse with your customers – to pick their brains and understand exactly what they want from your product or service.  As this article discusses, social media is just a means to communicate with your customers – one that has not been previously available.  Every different type of social media does not need to be on your website in order to effectively start conversations with your customers.  The most important first step is to decide to have a conversation instead of just a one-way marketing plan.  Then find out what types of social media your customers (and potential customers) are already using to narrow the types of technologies that make sense for your company.

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Google's AdPlanner

The New York Times is speculating [no longer speculation] that an announcement from Google at the Advertising Research Foundation meeting this week will unveil a new product called AdPlanner.  Details are understandably sketchy, though the NYT quotes an anonymous source on the product as saying it will help Ad Agencies to find demographics that match an ads target audience.

Valleywag, though, makes the logical connection by envisioning a tool that could eliminate the need for Ad Agencies all together.  If Google is successful and all the data that an Ad Agency needs is available through this tool, it could easily be rebranded for the direct market.   This is certainly within SOA for Google; they use technology to eliminate redundancy and establish direct, dependent markets.  Some of these efforts like AdSense, AdWords and GMail are clear winners.  Others, like Google’s little know newspaper and radio ad placement drive, are mired in the mud.

My personal opinion is that Google will succeed in creating a very useful tool that will in no way replace the unique talents and skills of Ad Placement Agencies.  This is going to raise the bar for Ad Agencies expectations on reporting and information within content networks which can only be a plus for the Ad Agency’s clients; business owners buying up online ad space.