Gary Gale

Posts about online

The Plains Of Awkward Public Family Interactions And The Bay Of Flames

2010-10-08 09:34

tracking your location, xkcd, the webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language has branched out into making maps. The updated map of online communities shows the volume of daily social activity across all of the online world, and not just the high profile ones that get the press coverage.

Click through for the full size versions and loose yourself in the plains of awkward public family interactions, the Bay Of Flames and other geographical wonders.

Not content with pointing out the fun you can have with tracking your location, xkcd, the webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language has branched out into making maps. The updated map of online communities shows the volume of daily social activity across all of the online world, and not just the high profile ones that get the press coverage.

Click through for the full size versions and loose yourself in the plains of awkward public family interactions, the Bay Of Flames and other geographical wonders.

Genius or Desperation?

2010-03-04 21:02

I'm sorry Facebook but your ad targeting systems are wildly inaccurate and reduce that valuable screen estate to the right hand side of my browser window to irrelevant line noise. Google's and Yahoo's ad targeting is pretty darn good but looking at Facebook right now offers me:

Omniture Research; which Obama used, apparently.
Free laptop from Vodafone Business; I'm not self employed so a business tariff is a non starter.
Everyone plays Mafia Wars; except me and most of my friends.

So when I do actually look at a Facebook ad, it's because it's caught my attention, like this gem from the Royal Mail.

You already have the LP, the CD and the MP3 ... now get the Collectible Stamp.

A click through yields the latest campaign from the Royal Mail which exhorts us to buy stamps (but not use them, but to collect them instead, at least I think that's the premise) which reflect the classic albums we already own in a variety of formats (but what about 8 track or cassette tape?).

Given the amount of competition the Royal Mail faces and the fact that 25% of First Class letters fail to arrive on time, I'm not sure whether this latest ad campaign smacks of genius or of desperation.

The Theory of Stuff

2010-02-01 12:33

Anne Elk (Miss), I have a theory. I call it my Theory of Stuff. I'm sure that other people, far more learned and erudite than I, have articulated such a theory but I've yet to come across any evidence for this and for now at least, it remains mine and it contains three buckets, looking something like this:

Once again, this is not the post I set out to write. The one I set out to write was called "In Search of Location's Sweet Spot" and it's sitting in draft and not yet posted. That's because before I can submit that post I need to write this one as a warm up act. Just like Anne Elk (Miss), I have a theory. I call it my Theory of Stuff. I'm sure that other people, far more learned and erudite than I, have articulated such a theory but I've yet to come across any evidence for this and for now at least, it remains mine and it contains three buckets, looking something like this:

On the far left hand side we have the stuff bucket. Whilst stuff may sound vague, it's entirely intentional. Stuff is defined as a collection or set of items, things or matter. Though I was focussing primarily on location data and location based mobile services, this applies equally well to other businesses and markets. It could be stock, inventory, left handed widgets or a plethora of other things. On the far right hand side we have people bucket. The exact number of people doesn't matter, for small businesses the number will probably be small and for large businesses the number will be, err, larger. These people are your customers, your audience. Hopefully they have money as well. And then in the middle we have the secret sauce bucket. Again, it doesn't matter what this is but it's very important to look at what the secret sauce actually does.

The secret sauce is a bidirectional pipe that connects stuff to people.
It allows you to expose your business's stuff to the people who are your customers, hopefully adding value along the way.
It also allows you to extract money from the people in exchange for access to your business's stuff. In the Internet industry we call this monetizing your audience.

In order for your business to succeed, you need to have all three of these buckets in place. Have people and secret sauce but no stuff? Fail. Have stuff and secret sauce but no people? Fail. You get the idea. Take a look at every business that is succeeding, especially those that are online and where the stuff bucket contains data, and you'll see that they have all three buckets in place. Take a look at those businesses which have failed or are failing, especially those that are online, and you either see one bucket missing or there's just not enough of it. Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344) Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

An Open Letter to Asda and Walmart

2009-10-24 20:08

Let me explain. As a family we tried out Asda, as their prices are extremely competitive compared to those of their competitors, so on the 19th of October we booked a delivery slot for an online shop; the order wasn't particularly large or complex but it was still in excess of £100.00. The only delivery slot available was from 8.00 PM to 10.00 PM the following day.

This is an open letter to Andy Bond, Chief Executive of Asda and to Mike Duke, CEO of Wal-Mart. As a British citizen who travels a lot in the US I understand that the "customer service" ethos which is so prevalent in the US doesn't travel or translate particularly well in the UK. I also understand that it's almost naive to expect that since Asda was taken over by Wal-Mart in 1999 any type of US values would transfer to the UK arm. I also understand that the UK supermarket business is highly competitive and that through Asda, Wal-Mart is competing head-to-head with Tesco, Morrison's and Sainsbury's. I understand and accept all of this. What I do not understand and what I do not accept is the sheer bloody-mindedness and rudeness of your staff, especially those of your online retailer business. Let me explain. As a family we tried out Asda, as their prices are extremely competitive compared to those of their competitors, so on the 19th of October we booked a delivery slot for an online shop; the order wasn't particularly large or complex but it was still in excess of £100.00. The only delivery slot available was from 8.00 PM to 10.00 PM the following day.

October 20th. 10.05 PM. No shopping. So I look online for some insight. "We know how important it is that we deliver on time but occasionally we can run into difficulties. In the unlikely event that we will be late, we'll always try to let you know." I liked the answer to the question "My delivery hasn't arrived yet?" ... "If your shopping hasn't arrived by the end of your delivery slot, please call our Helpline on 0844 8733333 (calls will be charged at a local rate, lines are open 8am-10pm, 7 days a week.)". Unless, of course, your shopping is due to arrive at 10.00 PM in which case if there is a problem, anyone at Asda has gone home for the night. But not my delivery driver it would seem, who rings me at 10.20 to tell me "we're running slightly late" and that "your shopping will be there at 35 past latest". October 20th. 10.40 PM. No shopping. October 20th. 10.45 PM. Shopping arrives with a giggle and a laugh; "We're running a bit late tonight (hee hee hee)". No apology, no contrition, no final bill so I know how much we've actually spent, it all seems one great big joke. Apart from the point where they knocked on the front door so hard it managed to wake both of my children up. A great joke, hilarious; only I'm the only one who doesn't seem to find this particularly amusing. So I look at my confirmation email ... "If you have any queries about ASDA Online Shopping you can contact us on 0844 8733333". Ah yes, this would be the helpline that closed at 10.00 PM. So the following day at around 9.30 AM, we ring customer service; they're open now. They promise to ring the store and the store manager would call us. October 21st. 2.00 PM. No call. So we hold while customer services rings the store; the store manager "isn't available and will call us back". October 21st. 5.00 PM. No call. So we call customer services who have, miraculously, been in touch with the store. They agree that this is appalling customer service, so appalling that as a token of their esteem they offer "Free delivery of your next order". This assumes there will be a next order and it works out at the grand total of £4.25. Obviously not that appalling so we say that it's not good enough. Asda's second, and final as it turns out, offer? £10.00 in e-vouchers, which again assumes that there will be a next order and which, by the way, needs to be redeemed in 2 months otherwise they're invalidated. Still not that appalling so we say that it's not good enough. So we're put on hold ... permanently as the call isn't picked up again and after another 15 minutes we hang up in sheer frustration. As an organisation, Asda may have had a consumer spend of almost £3.5B and a market share of 17% as of August 2008 but as of October 2009 my wallet won't be contributing to that spend and Asda's market share just dropped by one household's worth, which has gone back to one of their rivals. Photo credits: itslefty, juliebee and Tico on Flickr Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

Online There's More Than One of You

2009-08-25 16:40

Managing our digital identity through those sources we know about is a challenge for a significant percentage of the online population"

Then this morning, (ex Yahoo!) Cathy Ma posted a link to her recent blog post about the Personas project being run by Aaron Zinman at MIT. Personas tries to "show you how the internet sees you". So I duly surfed over to https://personas.media.mit.edu/ and plugged in my full name and some time later a rather slick Flash animation gave me this supposed "characterization of the person".

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article on this blog that highlighted the issues around managing our digital identity.

"Managing our digital identity through those sources we know about is a challenge for a significant percentage of the online population"

Anything but the most cursory of glances quickly showed that something was wrong. If this is how the internet sees me, where does sports, fashion and medicine come from? So I tried again, this time under my usual net nickname, vicchi. Some more chugging and analysing later and I had a second characterization of the online me.

It's different but it's still not right, sports are still there but now they've been joined by military, aggression and illegal. So I reran both characterizations and this time looked at what was going on and I went through the full spectrum from WTF to OMG.

The characterizer was looking at a selection of web references to Gary Gale and to vicchi, but it wasn't just me, it was any reference that could be found, which means that my supposed characterization is a mashup of all the possible Gary Gale's and vicchi's.

Sadly, this relegates the Personas project to merely an intriguing but ultimately flawed experiment, because unless you have a really unique name, online there's going to be more than one of you.