E-pisteme - How the World's Information is Organised.

In October I wrote a post taking credit for the invention of the word e-pisteme. I was being both facetious and ambitious. Epistemology is not a subject I know a great deal about and to be honest I'm not at all confident of my knowledge of the subject matter. Nevertheless, I think that e-pisteme is probably a useful word that bears some explanation.

In a brilliant but dense book of 1966 called Les mots et les choses (translated to The Order of Things Michel Foucault set out a disciplined and thorough argument illustrating the relationship between culture, history and perception. His thesis was, roughly, that human experience is structured according to the prevalent culture within which an individual lives. He organised history between the Renaissance and the late 19th Century into different epistemes. Each episteme consists of a set of ideas and beliefs that structure the language, art, science, politics and commerce of the age.

In his preface, he makes reference to a short story by Jorge Luis Borges that quotes a fictional chinese encyclopedia that divides animals into "
(a) those that belong to the Emperor,
(b) embalmed ones,
(c) those that are trained,
(d) suckling pigs,
(e) mermaids,
(f) fabulous ones,
(g) stray dogs,
(h) those that are included in this classification,
(i) those that tremble as if they were mad,
(j) innumerable ones,
(k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush,
(l) others,
(m) those that have just broken a flower vase,
(n) those that resemble flies from a distance."

Foucault's point was that this is an altogether non-sensical approach to organisation to a modern western reader but, within Borges' fiction atleast, it represented a sensible system.

Effectively, the episteme within which we lives defines the way that we structure our knowledge, experience the world and interact with others.

When you consider that Google's mission statement is to "organise the world's information" you realise that there might well be plenty of opportunity to apply an epistemelogical approach to the changes brought about by the internet.

My ambition with this word is to try to find tangible examples of an epistemelogical shift driven by the internet. This means going beyond the banal observations about 'the democratization of the media' or that 'You' are the person of the year.

It's quite possible that someone more knowledgeable and dedicated has taken this idea further or that there are bigs flaws in these ideas. Either way, feedback would be appreciated.

State of Online Advertising Research

I went to a couple of sessions of a IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Europe on Friday afternoon. They were presentations of research prepared by various members and associations within the IAB.

For the most part the presentations were continuing to emphasise the uptake and consumer enthusiasm for the internet. It's the kind of research that, in the UK at least, was useful about two years ago, before broadband was ubiquitous. Now, stating that x% of people in the UK are online is a bit like saying that y% of people in the UK live in London. It's a big number but is not surprising to anybody and has little practical application.

The next step forward for online research, with the exception of isolated client-specific projects, will be when there is the critical mass to really unravel what it is that people do online and how this relates to their 'real' lives. Heather Hopkins , at Hitwise, publishes interesting perspectives on a pretty regular basis.

Online advertising has got to the point where it's no longer enough to say how many people are online. We now need to make a pretty sizeable leap to the types of insights that are delivered 'offline' around segmentation of populations, understanding of purchase 'triggers' and analysis of offline and online interaction.

We're working on a couple of isolated but forward-thinking projects in the agency. For the most part, however, within the industry there still isn't the budget and expertise to deliver strategic media/marketing thinking that effectively includes online.

UGC heading for the Trough of Disillusionment?

A colleague pointed out this recent article on Net Imperative about the lack of commercial opportunities for User Generated Content sites (specifically UGC video sites).

I don't think it's surprising to anyone in the industry that it's hard to get revenue from UGC video. There was certainly speculation around the wisdom of the YouTube price tag. Nevertheless, video sharing sites have taken off so much in terms of consumption that it's been relatively easy to ignore the fact that they're almost certainly still money-losing propositions.

My colleague point to the article as an indicator that UGC is entering what the Gartner Hype Cycle refers to as the 'trough of disillusionment'.

BMW-branded content

I've come across a really interesting marketing program by BMW in the US. It's a website/blog/ongoing podcasts and a series of events of really high quality content. I don't think I've come across another non-media brand that has succeeded in using internet to become a successful content provider yet. Who knows if this program is successful. If the content is anything to go by though, it should be.

Below is a videocast by Malcolm Gladwell. I'd recommend checking out the site. I visited it after watching a talk given by a sociologist called Barry Schwartz on a blog called Business Evolutionist ,

Cola bores.

I just read an interesting post on a blog called This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics . It's an interesting blog by a guy called Grant McCracken, who writes about how business defines culture.

He's written a post in reference to a Wall Street Journal article about Pepsi. [The article isn't online yet - the WSJ seems to have a very odd approach to commercialising its content online. The Economic Times (of India) has published a related article.]

Pepsi has announced a program where they will change the look of their cans over 30 times in the next year in order to stay hip with the youngsters. I have to admit that I misread McCraken's post initially and thought that Pepsi planned to change their logo every two weeks. That would have been interesting.

As it is, I'm not sure this announcement is particularly significant. Coke has certainly made a tradition out of seasonal packaging and both the cola companies have had tactical cans on a pretty consistent basis. I would have thought, too, that it will make for some pretty cluttered looking fridges in stores as different sets of cans are mixed together. I wonder how retailers feel about the idea of having to buy stock that looks almost immediately out of date.

It would be way cooler if they decided to change the logo every two weeks.

I want an iPhone

There are already a whole host of people posting smug announcements that they predicted the iPhone years ago. I didn't think that Apple would brave such a crowded market.

I remember hearing somewhere that Nokia was talking freely about how, in the grand scheme of personal electronic devices, the iPod was a drop in the bucket. The 40m unit sales of iPods pales in comparison to the number of mobile phones that have sold. I don't expect Nokia are particularly worried about the iPhone either.

It will be interesting to read the early reviews and find out whether they've managed to deliver on everything that the website is promising. You certainly don't want a phone that has the glitches that some of the iPods out there have had. I'm also keen to know how much it will cost and whether it will be available in the UK. Unless the reviews are really negative or it costs as much as a laptop I'll be lining up to get one.

Pepsi and Mentos

It's funny, it never occurred to me that Pepsi and Mentos would have the same effect as Coke and Mentos.






It certainly didn't have the same impact on search volumes (Coke, in blue, peaks in June and Pepsi doesn't).

Flickr - Beyond the Banner

I really like the (relatively) new feature on Flickr aggregates data about the camera used to take the photos taken.

It's called Camera Finder and it tracks the number of users using the top camera models and see different types of camera used by each camera. If I was in the market for a camera I'd find this really useful.

The Nikon sponsorship of the page is a nice buy. Their landing page for the D80 is pretty nice too.

Yahoo! Local Search on the Road

Silicon.com has re-published a piece of news from their American cousins Cnet news about a Sat Nav company that will be offering Yahoo! Local Search listings as part of their service.

It's my impression that Sat Nav services have, for a long time, been able to tell you where the nearest gas station or fast food restaurant is. This sounds as though it will take things a good deal further, allowing users to search for all kinds of services.

It's a good example of the mobile web being overlayed on top of the real world.

Mobile Codes Revisited

I've been doing some digging and I see that the Mobile Codes Consortium mission statement is probably not the biggest announcement for European QR codes this week. Scott Shaffer has written a post on The Pondering Primate about relationship between Google and China Mobile.

Google will be providing search functionality to China Mobile users, many of whom will have QR code readers produced by a China Mobile subsidiary, pre-installed on their phones. Shaffer surmises that it won't be long before Google offers its users a QR coding service and I have to agree.

Google, beyond being the almighty technology brand, has a significant customer-base that already uses a web-based interface for pay-per-performance information organisation services. They could easily commercialise a pay-per-code or pay-per-scan service. The precise terms of the system might be a bit complicated (you couldn't limit the number of scans of a QR code the way that you can with SEM campaigns, for instance.

It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Mobile Codes Consortium Mission Statement Announced

I posted a couple of months ago about the work that was being done by Tim Kindberg at HP Labs in Bristol to promote a standardised approach to mobile barcodes.

One of the topics of conversation was a 'Mobile Codes Consortium' - a project to gain understanding and consensus across the different industries that are needed to make the technology work.

A reader has kindly pointed out that a mission statement for the consortium has been posted on the Active Print website.

If the consortium succeeds in creating enthusiasm within handset manufacturers and/or mobile networks I don't think there's any question that this technology could take off.

The media planners in the room in November were certainly excited about the technology. In the near future it could be very useful for a specific type of campaign that supports a strong brand and targets early adopters. In the medium to long term, direct response campaign planners will likely get excited about the opportunities as well.

I do think, however, that the technology has greater applications outside the conventional definition of advertising. There is a great deal of potential applications related to local search and mapping as well as dynamic packaging and in-store display.

There is still the considerable question of mass adoption of the technology on handsets. I have no doubt that this would be greeted with enthusiasm by media planners and that in some isolated ways we'll also be able to bring it about a little bit quicker.

Any thoughts?