Leapfroggers

Traditionally, marketers for tech gadgets ignore late adopters such as me. The standard practice is to lure the early adopters who in turn create buzz, eventually persuading the masses. The recent Wired article, Clive Thompson on Why Gadget Makers Should Target Late Adopters, makes a case for why marketers may want to rethink this strategy and show people like me a little love.

Marketing academic Jacob Goldenberg’s recent work suggests that laggards, which make up about 16% of the population, are a crucial high tech demographic for marketers because of their “leapfrogging” tendencies. Laggards may hold out on buying every new product on the market, but when they get around to buying they often skip several generations of products and end up leapfrogging ahead to the latest and greatest version.

According to Goldenberg, the economic impact of converting leapfrogging laggards is huge and can really drive profits. Also, word-of-mouth endorsements from these late adopters are especially powerful (i.e. “If Erin is using this thing, it must be easy and accessible”)!

Thinking about this potential shift in marketing strategy, I wonder what it may take for tech marketers to effectively reach me. They would have to meet me where I am, which until recently was not tech blogs. More mainstream avenues, perhaps my favorite New York or Lucky magazines, might be more effective. The message would have to be simple, emphasizing how the new product or service would add value to my life—I won’t be sold on cool, new features, because I likely won’t understand how I benefit from them. Speak my language.

Many late adopters like me have the motto, “if it ain’t broke…” and the lens “is this worth my while?”—show us that it is worthwhile, give us a fair price and you may win us over after all.

Striking a Balance

When talking to my computer science-studying, game-loving buddy, Jeremy Pope, I wanted to pick his brain on what websites, apps, and tools that he can’t live without. I got a few cool new ideas from him, but what also came through loud and clear in our conversation is how important it is to set boundaries.

I liked Jeremy’s perspective “The point of technology is to enable us to spend more time doing the things we love. When it goes beyond that it becomes a distraction.”

Being that Jeremy works and studies computers and technology, he has made a conscious effort to set boundaries and pull back, for instance when away from work, he purposely only checks his email a few times per day. He also makes the most of his time on a computer, aiming to be productive for a finite amount of time versus getting lost in the vortex.

On mobile: I asked Jeremy to sell me on a smart phone, and he kind of did (although I don’t have any immediate plans of going out and buying one I definitely see the value). Simply stated, with the iPhone he doesn’t worry about anything because anything he needs to do, he can do on the spot. Jeremy gave me many convincing examples of the iPhone’s utility, especially when traveling, but also spoke about the need to develop self-restraint. (For a review of cool iPhone apps, check out the app trail). Jeremy’s response to my complaint of how people are constantly glued to their phones is that it is just a symptom of the relative newness and novelty of the device and will hopefully fade over time.

On what he can’t live without: Definitely not the iPhone! Jeremy also loves his Google Toolbar for accessing his bookmarks (I wish I tried this before my Delicious.com experiment, it may be more up my alley). He touted the benefits of using Mint.com for money management (I will investigate Mint in a future blog post since I could definitely use help in the budgeting department). He also gave me a little demo of Google Voice (Google’s free voicemail service which miraculously allows you to make free domestic calls, unifies multiple phone lines to one common number, and sends you sms text versions of voicemails among many other benefits) which seems pretty awesome.

On social networks and geo-location social networking: Jeremy relies on Facebook for news and events updates from his friends, which is consistent with how all of my friends engage with Facebook. LinkedIn is the go-to for professionally networking. Most people, including myself, like to keep their professional and personal online worlds separate.

Jeremy toyed around with the geo-location networking application, Foursquare, more so when he was single and out on the town. He enjoyed the fact that it is super real-time, fun, and game-like; “a great example of technology helping you do what you want to do, be with your friends.” Since I don’t have a smart phone I am off the hook for trying geo-location networking apps, phew.

Although Jeremy has briefly tweeted, he now just uses Twitter for finding out about local events through following groups such as “Brooklyn Weekend events”. I may give that a try at some point, but for now I don’t have any trouble finding weekend fun, mainly through word-of-mouth, New York Magazine, and e-newsletters like Daily Candy and Going.

What goes around comes around: Jeremy and I agree that there is a bit of a pullback happening now. People want to get back to what’s real and authentic and are attempting to reconnect to local businesses and agriculture, seeking out the local, fresh, and handmade, to counterbalance the global disconnect from the organic in our fast-paced, technology-driven lives (Brooklyn Flea, anyone?).

“In a way I’m a minor part of this pullback from the digital age where I’ve been so engrossed I’m stepping back now” says Jeremy. For me, I am cautiously exploring, stepping forward, one toe in at a time to see what’s worth my while.

A Mind for Gaming

Jeremy Pope, is my go-to friend for all things digital. He's managed to turn his curiosity and passion for gaming and technology into a solid career with a promising future. Recently, over a couple of beers in our shared Brooklyn neighborhood, Jeremy and I talked tech.

As an early adopter of technology, Jeremy fondly recalls his first pre-Windows computer at age 12 (in contrast, I still had a Brother word processor throughout my undergrad). He's worked in the video game industry for 14 years, first at Acclaim and Rockstar Games, then he started his own company, Cashmere Productions. Jeremy is currently producing video games on a freelance basis and is pursuing a degree in computer science at Brooklyn College.

Video games often get a bad rap, especially from parents and health advocates that consider gaming as a contributor to childhood obesity (remember when kids used to like to play outside?).

Personally, I love games, particularly Ms. Pacman, Scrabble, backgammon, and anything on the Wii, especially Guitar Hero. I like how they occupy a certain part of my brain, forcing me to focus and be creative. Check out my mom and I rocking on Christmas! Gaming isn't always antisocial.

Speaking with Jeremy helped me to understand how and why gaming (in moderation) is appealing and beneficial. Basically, video games put achievable challenges in front of you and offer you small rewards, which get you into a happy “flow state”. Video game challenges build, driving you towards a larger goal, which leads to a greater sense of satisfaction once accomplished.

Currently, Jeremy is working on creating a game that hones in on meditative gestures, such as stillness and presence, to keep players in a flow state. Jeremy aims to take advantage of what video games have to offer--real time feedback--to create an experience with similar benefits to a yoga class.

According to Jeremy, "everything that you can do with TV and books, you can do with video games, and more...games get people thinking about big ideas and subjects that they wouldn’t be accustomed to." For example, Jeremy and his gaming colleagues are currently obsessed with a new Facebook game, Power Planets.

In Power Planets, you are given a planet for only 48 hours, then it’s handed off to someone else. Players (or rulers) have to balance earning points and/or money with more socially conscious efforts--you can be greedy or (ecologically) green, or try to balance these often conflicting qualities. In a nutshell reflecting how the real world works. You have the opportunity to craft a Utopian planet or if you get stuck with a planet lead by a slumlord of a planetary ruler, try to make the world a better place.

This game sounds compelling, but also time consuming. I barely have time to hang curtains I bought at Ikea 6 months ago let alone fix an entire planet.

Life is imitating the art of video games. As Jeremy notes, "the internet is becoming more game like, as is everyday life". Retailers are rewarding customers for their loyalty, like my local Duane Reade. Their Flex Rewards program attempts to keep consumers in a flow state issuing points for each purchase. Members receive even bigger discounts at the end of each month when certain point quotas are met. Now if only I could remember where my rewards card is when I get to the register.

Social Media Revolution

Wikipedia defines a fad as "any form of behavior that develops among a large population and is collectively followed with enthusiasm for some period, generally as a result of the behavior's being perceived as novel in some way." Fads are pretty awesome, especially in retrospect, like Cabbage Patch Kids, the Atkins Diet, tight-rolling your jeans, ratting your bangs (in junior high I looked like this family), and Crocs (can that go away already?).

A trend is less fleeting than a fad and evolves into a relatively permanent change. Social media is definitely not a fad, it's a trend. One that is changing our lives in profound ways. We can largely credit those pesky millennials for this trend.

Check out this short, recently updated YouTube video, Social Media Revolution, based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman to see how this trend is evolving.

This video evoked a little fear and excitement in me, but no doubt reinforced why I need to get with the program!

Social Bookmarking: Can You Digg it?

Recently, I started to hear more about social bookmarking sites, however I didn't understand what these sites are, how they work, or why I would want to use one. Wikipedia defines social bookmarking as "a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources." According to Wikipedia, the concept of online bookmarking has been around since the mid-nineties, but it didn't really catch on at the time. In 2003, Delicious pioneered tagging and coined the term social bookmarking and it has been taking off like wildfire ever since.

Today, there are dozens of popular bookmarking sites and apparently many great uses for them.

How many of these icons do you recognize?

Use #1 - Marketing: When you submit your business, website, or blog onto a social benchmarking site, you increase the likelihood that search engines will find and index your site. Using bookmarking services is a great strategy for generating traffic and in some instances can work too well and crash your server.

Worth your while? Why not, what do you have to lose?! Social benchmarking sites are free, and fairly easy to use. The downside is that there are so many of them to choose from, and to my knowledge there is not a standard process for submission. You've got to do it the old fashioned way, one at a time.

I'm experimenting with posting my blog on a few directory sites (Yahoo, Bing, and Google blog listings, Blogpulse, Bloglines, and Technorati) to see what will happen. Maybe someone other than my mom, boyfriend, and professors may read it.

Use #2 - Being Social: I have never felt the urge to click a little icon to announce to the world what I've read and whether I dug it (Digg anyone?). I understand that some people enjoy this; we need these people, otherwise these sites wouldn't be worth visiting. Bookmarking and ratings inform us of what is newsworthy at the moment, according to the masses vs. "the man," hence social media. Verdict: Worthwhile for others to post. I will stick to being an occasional voyeur for now.

Use #3 - Organizing yourself: I have been using Internet Explorer for years (and am mildly embarrassed about it). I know there is something better or faster out there, perhaps Chrome or Firefox, so have recently been testing out different browsers. The jury's still out on which I prefer.

One of the reasons I've been reluctant to switch browsers is because I heavily rely on my bookmarks and didn't want to start from scratch with a new browser. I didn't know that I can use a social bookmarking site solely for personal organization. Storing my favorite links online will get me through this fickle phase and will mitigate the multiple computer issue (like Dropbox did for my school files).

Taking action: I just signed up for Delicious and imported all my bookmarks from Internet Explorer to start. This transition will take a fair amount of time up front to get organized, and of course time to get used to the change, but hopefully will be worth it.

I chose Delicious because it was one of of the original bookmarking sites and is still one of the most popular. Delicious is tied to my Yahoo account so it was easy to set up, and it seemed more geared towards personal use than some of the other that I checked out, like Digg and Stumbled Upon.

I am the type of person that doesn't like too many choices; more than three and I am overwhelmed. Just like the web browsers, I am sure there may be better ones out there than Internet Explorer, but it takes a fair amount of time and energy to test drive them all. Delicious will have to do. At least the name sounds kind of cool and sexy.

Your Brain (and Personality) on Computers

An Ugly Toll of Technology: Impatience and Forgetfulness, another article in the Your Brain on Computers series, explores the notion of how excessive use of personal technologies may slowly be reshaping our personalities, causing people to become more impatient, impulsive, and forgetful. Advancing age and living in New York has already brought out some of those qualities in me, now the computer too, no!

Dependence on technology detracts from our relationships. Having hundreds of Facebook friends doesn't necessarily translate to, nor is it a substitute for, healthy relationships in "real life". It drives me crazy when I am out on the town, look around and see everyone playing with their phones. Come on, is this awesome concert or party not enough entertainment for you?

My position in this blog isn't meant to be anti-technology, but this NYT series brings to light many of my concerns about over dependence on technology. For me, the most significant message is that people should strive for balance and be self-aware.

If you enjoy your online activities more than anything else, then you might want to check out the expert insights provided in the online discussion, First Steps to Digital Detox.

Your Brain (and Bodies) on Computers

The article More Americans Sense a Downside to an Always Plugged-In Existence, included in the New York Times (NYT) series "Your Brain on Computers," highlights the results from a recent NYT/CBS news poll. According to the poll, most Americans feel that technology, such as smart phones and computers, have made their lives better and easier, but some indicate that these devises are intrusive and increase their levels of stress.

Younger people in particular report that these devises make it harder for them to focus, and people in general just can't shut off after work with almost 40% of respondents checking work email after hours and on vacation.

Come on people, there is more to life than work! Not only is this addiction to technology changing the way our brains are functioning, it's also contributing to the overall health decline of the American workforce. Clearly, living a sedentary lifestyle and being chronically glued to our computers is a huge contributing factor to the obesity epidemic and the cause of many musculoskeletal issues.

I'm an active and fit person, and also embarrassed to admit that I am suffering from tennis elbow due to my excessive computer use. I wish it was from tennis! Too much work and not enough play, maybe this is my body giving me a sign.