Facebook as a country

It's funny to see how Facebook, seems to be evolving from a social network to a country. Which seems kind a logical since they have more than 175 million active users (which would make it the sixth most populated country in the world).

Should they also evolve from a company board of directors to a government?

This is what CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to say about it:

Facebook as a democracy... makes sence to me, only thing is, Facebook doesn't run on tax payers' money, it runs on advertising money.

Barack Obama or Al Gore?

These past months, Obama has become the archetype of the e-marketeer. But what Al Gore is doing on a smaller scale on  wecansolveit.org, the platform of his movement to fight global warming, is as brilliant. Every fundraiser is confronted with the question of how to give return to sponsors. And every movement, be it political or social, ponders about how to create e-activism. Al Gore brillianty addressed these two challenges in a smart mechanism. By sharing their ambassadorship on social networks, by signing petitions, by inviting friends to support the cause, by sharing content, people can earn points. And for every 1O points earned, a donor/sponsor gives 1 dollar to support the cause (http://apps.facebook.com/wecansolveit/) How effective can you get ?  Gore creates ambassadors with a highly engaging cause. These ambassadors are ànd esteemed for their ambassadorship ànd see immediate, tangible results of their actions.  And donors really see their support. Measured in terms of real people. Seems so logical. And yet brilliant.  Hat tip to Jesse for pointing this one out to me.

Belgian elections2.0 -- Bruno Tobback's MySpace trial and ERROR

Last Friday I read a message from the guys that organize the Je M'en Fous parties in Gent in my MySpace bulletin board. Instead of the new line up for their next party, they announced that Bruno Tobback launched his MySpace page today.

Before even surfing to this page, I felt kind of bad about this. First of all, I love MySpace's message board  system. Instead of getting an overload of flyers in your mailbox, you now have a place to see what's happening in your favorite club or when a new album is launched.
But a party organizer that talks politics is SPAM for me!

Especially when they use a trusted channel (my MySpace bulletin board) to send a non relevant message (I don't expect them to talk about politics, they should tell me the new line up or something related to their parties).

But this post is about Bruno Tobback... and unfortunately, I didn't feel any better when I actually visited his MySpace page.

Most social networks are build around common interests or beliefs. For MySpace this is obviously music and entertainment. Bruno Tobback's space contains three of his favorite music groups, a song of Patty Smith and a bunch of pictures of meetings and visits. The goal of this initiative is written down in "about me" section: Bruno believes in 2 way communication (nice!) and invites us for an event.

I am not saying that Bruno Tobback shouldn't have his own MySpace page, but to use this medium as a purely push communication channel is, in my humble opinion, not the optimal way. It is like participating in a community without playing by the rules. especially since there is no link between the nature of the message and the medium that is used.

I guess recent success stories of Fixkes (5923 friends)  or Debby&Nancy (5004 friends) have inspired Bruno to launch his MySpace page. And it is true that Debby en Nancy have made loads of friends through MySpace and eventually have organized a very successful off line event. But they played it by the rules of the game. They put content on their site, they made previews of songs available, they build a relation with their friends by communicating on a regular base...

Unfortunately Bruno is in good company when it comes to people/brands that have wrongly used online communities. For instance Nokia created a MySpace page for Henry Neelde, the main character in their Great Pockets campaign for the launch of their N95... Same mistake here... a MySpace page without any reason to be. And because an online community rules itselves, it is no wonder that this results in only 412 friends after several weeks. I guess Nokia had hoped for at least a tenfold...

If Bruno Tobback wants to use MySpace successfully in his election campaign, he should build upon the dynamics of the community and first of all make friends on MySpace, not just use this platform as another channel to push a message.

For the moment, I lack a reason to become Bruno's friend because he is only advertising for his Ja!Dag Instead I would like to know more about him (more content) and why he wants me to become his friend -- will he send regular updates about his campaign? Can his friends vote for a musical act on his Ja!Dag? Will he continue to update his space after the elections?

As for now I feel like MySpace is used as a traffic builder to the campaign site.. which is definitely a missed opportunity. But then... it only takes a couple of hours to make it better..and who knows, still turn it into a success?

How the geotagging is making the world a tiny bit smaller

You might be following the adventures of Jesse in Thailand. On his blog Rationalgeocrapic.com, he's currently videoblogging and photoblogging about his trip to Thailand. When you click on his pics, you'll notice that they are hosted by Flickr and that you can actually see on a map where exactly this pic has been taken.  That's the whole concept of Geotagging: matching data and physical object with a digital map based on the GPRS-coordinates of that object in the real world.

Steve Rubel has an interesting column this week on adage about this subject. He predicts that things like Google Maps, Flickr geotagging or Frappr.com is only the beginning. 

In the months ahead, geotagging will become part of virtually every website you can think of -- from consumer review sites to news, blog platforms, search engines and more. It will connect disparate online sites into solidified virtual networks all based on location data.

As geotagging becomes more popular, it will open up new avenues for advertisers. For example, a marketer who wants to target influencers in the Big Apple will, in the near future, be able to easily find the most influential bloggers in New York and buy ads across all of them.

I see two killer applications for geotagging: The first is people: Being able to connect with people based on the insight you have about their physical position will have tremendous added value, like for instance being able to discover on a map of death metal fans, that there's actually one living in your neighborhood. The second is local community life: a city consists of an infite layers of invisible information ranging from: "where are the cool pubs", over "where are the public accessible places for disabled people", towards "where are the wifi hotspots?". Every city has it's own set of information layers that citizens can build collaboratively. I'm looking forward to doing some cool stuff with this. Check out Mechelen.mapt.be as a kickass example of what I mean (disclosure: made by my good friend Jelle and my ex-colleagues at Memori)

http://www.Micropersuasion.com/2006/09/location_lo...
http://mechelen.mapt.be

Nice political campaign blog

Politicians who blog: Usually this results in politicians telling the same stuff they tell in their flyers, except with more pics from the kids and a little bit more extended. And yet a blog can be a great way for politicians to really prove what they are up to. We have local elections coming up in Oktober and a young socialist politician from my home town Gent is currently the talk of the town. Her campaign website www.lienbraeckevelt.be is a blog and it' s a great mixture of a diary and a creative approach to campaigning. She used the creative capital of her network of friends who made some funny and creative campaign clips. They posted them on Youtube, Lien embedded these clips into her blog and it got picked up by some A-list bloggers. I have to admit: the buzz and the movie clips were the bait for me to have a look at her website. She created a momentum for me to cut through the election clutter and open myself up for her message. Something I otherwise block my attention from. She's passionate, she has a heart for Gent and she has a creative network... which is for me an important criterium. looks like a local heroin in the make. ;-)

Thanks: Jelle

Web2.0 for people with disabilities

Smartmobs.com points at a winning entry in the Prix Ars Electronica, which is an European Award (Austrian to be precisely) for new media initiatives that aim at improving quality of life. One of the winning entries for the 2006 edition is Barcelona Accessible:

Barcelona Accessible illustrates how 40 people with disabilities use mobile phones to photograph every obstacle they come across on the city's streets. By means of multimedia messages they create a map of inaccessible Barcelona on the internet.

The result is a map of Barcelona’s inaccessibility for those confined to wheelchairs, a cartographic representation of the parts of town that are closed to people with handicaps. In this way, 3,578 architectural barriers and stumbling blocks have been documented on canal*ACCESSIBLE since December 2005

Link: Smartmobs.com
Link: Prix Ars Electronica 2006

Wow - I've got a reader and she loves my book

Wow, I've got my first book review for the book I've wrote on digital cities, called "van stedelijke website naar digitale stad". And it's actually a very enthousiastic review. Cathy Cardon from Cultuurnet posted it on cultuurnet.be, which is Belgium's main portal for the cultural sector. This is an excerpt from what she wrote:

Dit boek is ongemeen boeiende lectuur voor iedereen die betrokken is bij digitale communicatieprojecten. Politici en overheidsmedewerkers zowel als culturele en socio-culturele medewerkers, communicatieprofessionals en marketeers, maar ook ICT-specialisten".

I'm walking on sunshine today ;-)

Link to the book review (in Dutch): http://www.cultuurnet.be/front/inhoud/detail.jsp?id=149582.
Order the book (in Dutch): Van Stedelijke Website naar Digitale Stad (co-authored with Agnetha Broos)

Removed from my "things to do in life"-list: to write a book

It's finally there! This week we had a press launch for the publication of the new book I co-authored with Agnetha Broos, entitled "From City Council website towards Digitial City". Unfortunately for some of you, it's written in Dutch (entitled: "Van stedelijke website naar digitale stad"). Basically the book is about the power of social software and social networking for local communities, such as regions, cities, municipalities and neigbourhoods. The book is the result of a government funded research project I did in my previous job at Memori (pages in English: here) a research and consulting institute at the KHMechelen (pages in English: here), which is a Flemish institute for higher education.
The cool thing about this research project - and the book - is that it started in 2003, when the term Web2.0 didn't even exist. And when looking at it in retrospect, its essence is exactly all about what local governments can learn from this web2.0 revolution. And for all you Web2.0-haters out there: You won't find this meme in the book.

You can buy the book here on the publishers website. Many kudos to Uitgeverij Vanden Broele. It was very nice working with them.

Flemish Cities use Consumer Generated Content campaign

I haven't told this before on i-wisdom, but I co-authored a book that is entitled "From city council website towards digital city" and it's going to be released (in Dutch) on June 14th. It's based on a research project I  finished a year ago, when I was working at Memori. When I look back at it, it's basically all about the web2.0 framework applied to living in a local community. The book is all about how social networking tools can enhance the quality of life, the sustainability and the social capital of local communities. I'll be blogging more about it once the book is about to be released...

Anyway, I was going to blog about something else. Our Flemish Government has launched a campaign in which people are asked to take pictures of their city. The campaign is called "The city has awoken" and people have to take pictures in which this awoken aspect of the city is visualized. The best pictures are going to be published in Belgian newspaper and the one who took the best picture wins a workshop with one of Belgians most know photographers. Pietel, something for you? ;-)

Link: http://www.thuisindestad.be/html/fotowedstrijd/index.asp
Link:
PS: This is a presentation I did on the subject on an internation seminar on Virtual Communities (Pdf)