J. Nystrom Design

I stumbled upon a new service today. Well, actually it was more of a twitter poke, but – hey that’s how we roll today on the Interwebz. A service called TWanswers, provides you with the answers on almost every question. It searches through Yahoo!Answer and WikiAnswer to get an answer to your question. Sometimes you get the exact answer and sometimes you get an archieve similar questions.

I tried out one of the most basic questions of aggregated information search: What’s the temperatur in Stockholm today?

Since twAnswers just works with these static sources of information I didn’t get any answer, but the service created a question on WIKIanswers so other people could answer it later.

I also tried out if it could find the cheapest web hosting and got this:

It seems right now like this is just another fun service, but it got really good potential. One thing to remember is that twAnswers only is one month old. If they add few more sources with dynamic information (like trueknowledge is working with) they’d got a killer service that actually would be easy to monetize on.

This service is also a way for Yahoo! to increase the traffic and usage of Yahoo!Answers, so if they understand the value of this they should support it. I’m excited to see how this thing will evolve in the future.

Good news: A lot of companies have finally picked up micro blogging! Bad news: Some of them don’t have the slightest idea of why, but they are convinced that if they can reach out to everyone they should just do that. Reach out to everyone. And that’s a really bad idea.

Let me tell you why.

I realized that the combination free publishing and infinite reach mostly generate a lot of rubbish. Companies starts posting to Bloggy and Twitter without knowing what they were doing, to whom the were speaking and why they were there.

A few companies don’t have a clue, some at least knows one way media and thinks that the Twitter is the same thing as Myspace, meaning that they try to get as many followers as possible. In an old media perspective biggest reach was always the best, while todays media instead focuses on most relevant.

Why microblogs are great

The only thing that make you relevant is by adding value to your existing and potential customers relationship to you, cause that’s what twitter, facebook, bloggy (ah! I’ll even throw in qaiku) is all about. Relationships!

And the only way to build relationships with them is by conversation. – Ask what they think, tell them what you think and be open about why you are in that digital arena. Do you want to generate sales? Need input for product development? Want feedback on your new products?

All those are good reasons to use micro blogs. You build something with people and by being open of what you want to achieve, you’ll build confidence and a mutual relationship. The beneficial of transparency could easily be summed up in:

— If you show your intentions, and that is shared with everyone, sooner or later someone will contact you and help you out just because both of you’ve got common interest.

But what if we flip things around? What aren’t great things to use micro blogs for?

- Are you trying to get a lot of followers? – Direct traffic to a site? – Or just want to spread the word about your product?

Then you’ve stopped listening and just want to make people do something for you without being willing to do anything in reurn. Compare it to walking up to a stranger in the street and tell them what they should have for dinner, where they should buy it and then tell them to come back to you for more great tips.

That’s just insane, but since Internet still is “new media” (it’s only been around for like 20 years) people still act as it would be separeted from the rest of the world. It’s not.

The simple netiquette of micro blogs:

Yeah: -Add/follow people you think are relevant for you and your business. That is, that person contributes to you, or in rare cases, if you think that person would be interested in following you. Every time you start following someone, that person will likely get a notification, so that could work as a “poke” or something like that. Get the person attention so they will check out if you are worth following.
No-no: Start following everyone you see on the web. You’ll be consider a spammer immediately.
BIG NO-NO: Stop following in order to start following again, so a new friend request will be sent. That will likely get you suspended.

Yeah: -Comment people you follow, comment even before you follow. Like a first date. It’s a relationship, remember. . Post things you think will add value to be one of your followers. Share things that you think are important, that will attract people who also think such is important.
No-no: Send provoking posts just to get comments.
BIG NO-NO: Go in into threads and post irrelevant stuff. Even worse; post provoking comments just to get attention. Old fashion forums has a name for those. Trolls!!

Yeah: -Add links to your blogg, your del.icio.us, your Flickr and (of course!) your website. That will let people know who you are and makes it easier to build trust. Upload an avatar.
No-no: Be totally anonymous and think that “Google me” is a good About page. It’s not. That’s like when someone asks who you are and your response is”Ask someone else”. Just post a link to something!
BIG NO-NO: Demand attention without telling why it should bee given.

What do you think are good micro blog manners? Share your thoughts!

Den gamla bilden av att det digitala och det analoga livet är åtskillda börjar tack och lov blekna. Vi är alla samma personer oavsett vilket medie vi figurerar i. Vissa finner det ena mediet bättre än det andra, men trenden går mot att vi värderar de båda världarna lika. Nätkompisar = Kompisar, alltså.

Nu är det dags för nästa steg. Vi behöver broar mellan den analoga och digitala världen så att de kan inegreras i varandra och att informationen kan flöda fritt mellan dem. Ett steg för att föra ihop det analoga och digitala är att utforma fysiska manifestationer av digitala ting, vilket Björn Jeffery berörde i samband med sin föreläsning på APG. Under ett TED visade David Merill upp Siftable som ett utmärkt exempel på hur teknik kan göras mer konkret.

För networking har Pokens, en form av digitalt visitkort dykt upp. Den tillåter dess användare att utbyta digitala profiler, så att man senare kan mötas upp på någon tjänst där båda finns. TheJennie har kört ett upprop kring Pokens och jag har såklart hoppat på.

Men vi behöver mer. Företaget Violet lanserade Nabaztags för någo år sen, som är ett intelligent förmål i form av en liten kanin, som via wifi och bluetooth kommunicerar med olika tjänster, andra intelligenta föremål och kan ge dig värdefull information utan att du ska behöva koppla upp dig.

Du kan till exempel få din mail och rss-feeds upplästa, kunna ta emot och skicka voicemail till vänner eller rentav interagera med andra genom att röra öronen på den.

Utöver Nabaztag:tag, finns även digitala frimärken , Zstamps, som man kan applicera på vardagsföreål för att tilldela dem digitala egenskaper, vilken man därefter kan aktivera med en mir:ror, som sin tus launchar olika applikationer på ens dator.

Personligen älskar jag idéen om att göra internet mer fysiskt och vardagligt, men jag är fortfarande lite besviken på att Violet inte har varit särskilt kreativa när de ska beskriva vad deras produkter ska vara bra för. Det krävs mer än att den ska var söt och kunna göra roliga saker innan jag lägger €150 på avancerad, men dåligt förpackad teknik.

Ambient devices är ett annat företag som jobbar med intelligenta objekt, men har fokuserat på en lite mer stilfull inriktning. Deras Ambient Orb, illustrerar kursutveklingen på börsen, luftföroreningar eller vädret genom att skifta färg. Kul, smakfullt och ger mig lite av den känslan jag får av att titta på sci-fi.
— Tänk när, inte tänk om.

Nätet har växt klart i sin kokong. Det är dags för det att kliva ut i den fysiska verkligheten för att blomma ut i sin fulla potential. Vi får se vad nästa fysiska manifestation av digitala tjänster blir.