A couple weeks ago Faris posted this great little informal interview with Clay Shirky:

[Web communications platforms] don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.

This quote has been ringing in my head since I first heard it. Shirky uses this insight to underscore his assertion that email is actually the most powerful online social tool we've got right now. Its relative significance, compared to newer tools like Facebook or Twitter, is derived from the fact that email use is now familiar and common enough to be taken for granted. Shirky references the recent presidential election as an example of email's power to influence and persuade, as messages were furiously forwarded from friend to friend and family member to family member either to support or to argue against emerging narratives about the candidates, their personal histories, and their policies.

The more I've thought about Shirky's assertion, the more I've begun to recognize other evidence of a renewed appreciation for email as a publishing platform and communications tool.

Back in July, internet celebrity and start-up superstar Jason Calacanis announced that he was officially going to stop blogging, and start writing a regular email newsletter available only to a limited list of readers.

In September, actress Gwyneth Paltrow announced Goop, the latest extension of her emerging celebrity as lifestyle brand (a la Tyra Banks, Christy Turlington, and Oprah). Goop is a weekly email newsletter written by Gwyneth herself (there's an image of her autograph at the bottom, so it must be her writing, right?); its subjects include fashion, fitness, culture, food, and travel ... basically, things that are important to the people who care about what's important to Gwyneth.

On the non-celebrity side of things, 2008 has seen a number of relatively new email newsletters flourish: Very Short List, Photojojo, UrbanDaddy, and Brooklyn Based. These newer lists joined the ranks of veteran newsletters like Daily Candy and Flavorpill.

While everyone's writing about how the economic downturn means the end of ad-supported blogs, the email business seems to be going strong. When I spoke to Ben Lerer, founder of the awesome Thrillist, he said that they "have seen explosive growth like never before" in the past few months.

What does email offer that other newer tools don't?

To the reader, an email feels like a one-to-one communication, whether it's actually one-to-one, one-to-few, or even one-to-many. This key difference in the audience's experience of email cultivates a sense of intimacy between author and reader, and helps to strengthen the author's reputation in the eyes of the reader.

Both Facebook and Twitter are primarily broadcast communication tools; even though they include one-to-one capabilities with direct messaging, the main forms of messaging are automatically sent from the author to everyone who follows them. This undermines any feeling that the reader might have that the message was carefully composed for them.

Ben Lerer pointed out that email offers much needed curation of content. Not everyone has time to go out and read 1,000 different cool blogs every day to dig up one or two gems. At a time when we have more incoming streams of information than ever before, people appreciate being served on a silver platter, and someone who's willing to risk their reputation to tell you that what they're sharing with you is worth your time.

Also, there's a huge difference in the quality of attention. When users check in on Facebook they are confronted by a torrent of activity from their friends. It is assumed that you'll miss some things, because there are simply too many discrete messages to keep track of. So, the reader learns to filter on the fly and tune out certain messages. Twitter users have a similar experience. A Twitter power-user who follows many people and is online most of the day has to learn to ignore certain people. And the novice Twitter users don't check in that regularly, and therefore miss messages simply because they weren't listening at the right time.

When a reader comes across a blog, even if they're a loyal reader, they're reading in the outdoors; it's the difference between seeing stick on a trail in the woods and seeing the same stick mounted on a white wall in an art gallery. "There's also something to be said for the quality of an audience that's opted in," said Lerer, rather than coming across your content as you hop from one link to another.

Email offers an amount of devoted attention unmatched by any other emerging online communications tool. As a result, email messages are afforded the luxury of being substantive in their content (generally the more meaningful, relevant, and useful the content is, the more successful the newsletter).

And this difference makes email a uniquely powerful tool in the influence arsenal. When I think about the three variables that contribute to influence, popularity, reputation, and the ability to inspire action, email offers a unique way to cultivate relationships and inspire action. It makes sense that people like Jason Calacanis or Gwyneth Paltrow would turn to email, because they already had huge popularity. What they needed was a format that makes their readers feel special; compared to blogs and the broadcast platforms that Facebook and Twitter have become, email actually feels very intimate. Even if there are tens of thousands of other subscribers on the list, when they read that email they feel like it's a direct message from the sender, and in effect it is.

Ultimately, it comes down to the loyalty and respect that you can earn among your audience. Successful communications are about cultivating a reputation for always delivering valuable information to your audience, and translating that attention into action. Right now, email still seems like the best opportunity to do that.

So, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke are going back up to Congress today to explain why they changed their mind and decided not to spend the bailout money on bad mortgages, and instead now plan to spend it on a direct infusion of cash into the banks. Can you imagine if it worked this way for digital agencies?

1. Decide how much money you want to get paid. - It doesn't matter why, just make sure it's a really really really big number (if your client doesn't look like you just slapped them in the face when you tell them your price, then you're probably not asking for enough).

2. Tell the client that the entire internet is going to go down if they don't agree to your fee. - This step is key, because the client needs to feel like they could never even begin to understand what you're going to do or why you need to do it.

3. Get paid. (This is the real genius of Paulson's method.) Make sure that the client gives you your money up front. This will give you the flexibility to do what you want without worrying about whether or not the client will be happy.

4. Do what you wanna do... or don't. Now that you've cashed your big fat check, you can pretty much just tinker around and try out different things that may or may not work, and then just vaguely explain it to the client later.

Hmmm...wait a second. This doesn't sound too far off from how a lot of digital agencies already operate.

I have a Tumblr blog. Here are a few highlights from this past week.

Watch this ridiculously adorable girl make up a story in French.


Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.

Remember my Axis of Influence? Well, Soulja Boy has decided to put it to the test:

Soulja Boy, known for his YouTube hit “Crank Dat” is launching a Make Soulja Boy Go Platinum In A Week Project. This is like if I wrote a BuzzFeed trend called the “Get Peggy One Million Hits in One Week” Project.

Helge Tennø's blog is quickly becoming a favorite. Here's a new presentation, The New Brand Landscape.

We are all Millenials, the presentation sets out to illuminate some of the changes that has taken place during the last eight years. Stating that changes in nine “ideas” during the last years has had such an impact on us that we are all a part of the digital evolution.

I love the beautiful videos people are making with their digital SLR cameras. This is a great stop-motion video of one guy's visit to London.


London (harder, better, faster, stronger) from David Hubert on Vimeo.

Swedish dance bands from the 1970's were AWESOME!


Frank Rich sums up the election in his op-ed, "It Still Felt Good the Morning After."

Let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.

MyDD has some pretty charts and graphs breaking down the youth vote.

Next Friday Nov. 21st and Saturday Nov. 22nd the Convergence Culture Consortium will host the third annual Futures of Entertainment Conference. This incredible conference, inspired by and lead by Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture, brings together some of the most brilliant minds in new media, from academia, the marketing industry, and the entertainment industry. Over the course of 2 information-packed days, attendees are treated to long thoughtful panel discussions on topics like finding value in new entertainment, making the audience matter, comic books, and transmedia extensions. The part I'm most looking forward to is a one-on-one conversation between Henry Jenkins and Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth of Networks.

You can register for either one or two days. I went last year, and it was the best conference I've been to all year. I highly recommend it.

Get your tickets here.

The era of the million dollar flashturbation micro-site is finally dead. We thought we had killed it with Web 2.0. We thought we had killed it with AJAX and Ruby on Rails. We thought we had killed it with Facebook and Youtube. But, now we have the foundering economy to thank for finally putting the nail in the coffin. In 2009 brands won't be able to justify the shocking price tags for sites that do more for the trophy shelf of the creative agency than they do for a brand's bottom line. 2009 promises to be a challenging year for brands and creative digital agencies alike, as budgets are slashed and belts are tightened. But, these financial constraints create an opportunity. 2009 isn't the year to do less work, or to do the same work for less money. 2009 is the year to do more work than ever, but at lower cost (and risk) than ever before.

2009 is the year to create micro-experiences instead of micro-sites.

I had coffee with Sean Howard yesterday, and he told be this great little anecdote from Bill Buxton's book Sketching User Experiences.

A ceramics professor comes in on the first day of class and divides the students into two sections. He tells one half of the class that their final grade will be based exclusively on the volume of their production; the more they make, the better their grade. The professor tells the other half of the class that they will be graded more traditionally, based solely on the quality of their best piece. At the end of the semester, the professor discovered that the students who were focused on making as many pots as possible also ended up creating the best pots, much better than the pots made by the students who spent all semester trying to create that one perfect pot.

In the past few years we've seen thousands of successful little projects spring up like weeds across the web. Web development is incredbibly accessible and collaborative now. And the cost of executing small ideas is practically nil.

Noah Brier has been a big proponent of this kind of iterative experimentation, and has built a number of sites on his own: Holy Crap Facts - a catalog of surprising facts, How Much Does it Buy? - a translator for dollars into familiar goods and services, My First Tweet - a public database of people's first messages on Twitter, and Brand Tags - a place to aggregate the collective perceptions of familiar brands. These sites cost Noah time and effort, but compared to your average branded microsite, these sites cost nothing. Released in May of this year, Brand Tags now has over 1.2 million tags.

And Noah's not the only one out there who's doing this kind of work. Look at Twistori, Umbrella Today, and Obama is Your New Bicycle. Look at the flood of iPhone apps. These are compelling experiences that are worth talking about, yet none of them were built by a multi-million dollar corporate agency. If you've got a good idea, build it quickly and cheaply. If it catches on: great. If it doesn't catch on: build something else quickly and cheaply. Rinse and repeat.

And if the multi-million dollar corporate agencies want a piece of the action in 2009, they're going to have to learn how to make a lot of pots.

Gavin wrote this excellent post on Friday in which he mapped the key elements of influence (on the social web):



Influence is always a hot topic. Everyone wants to know who has it or how to get it. So, it's nice to be reminded of what it means and how to recognize it. I agree with Gavin's break down here. And I like how it reveals less discussed, but still important, territories of influence like Niche (little reach, much respect) and Hype (much reach, little respect).

I want to add to Gavin's map a measurement of the action that the individual (or brand) can inspire among their followers. Ultimately, being well known and well respected only gets you so far. The final test of your influence comes when you actually make a recommendation or ask your readers to do something. Do they take action? Here's the new 3D map, with three axis: Popularity, Reputation, and Action.



Update:
I've altered the labels on this diagram slightly, to try to address some of the confusion in the comments. Also, it's important to note that each of these variables, popularity, reputation, and action exist independently from each other. It is possible to be strong in any one of these aspects, and yet be weak in any of the others. Most importantly, it is possible to achieve both popularity and even a strong reputation, yet still not be able to instigate action among your followers. How to achieve each of these goals is a whole other conversation, one that is already well under way, and one that I'm sure I'll pick up in the near future.

Now we have a new quadrant reserved for the most successful influencers who have found a way to channel their popularity and reputation into collective action. Perhaps they have a tribe of readers who buys every one of their books when they come out, like Seth Godin. Maybe they've used Twitter to inspire evangelists and get loyal customers, like @zappos. Or maybe they've channeled a nation-wide movement into a successful campaign for President, like Barack Obama (I promise that I'll try not to use Obama as an example in every one of my posts about the social web for the rest of the year, but it won't be easy).

Ultimately, it requires all of these aspects to become a phenomenon in your market (context is always key). But, even if your popularity is relatively weak, you can still achieve success by instigating action.

If you have any examples of influencers who fit into these various quadrants, please leave them in the comments.

Much has been discussed about how Obama harnessed the social power of the internet to help him achieve victory in the Presidential campaign. Now, he's in the fortunate position of having earned arguably the largest, most engaged, and most powerful social network of any person or brand in history.

• 2,765,814 Facebook Fans, and hundreds of other niche pages and groups


• 121,620 Twitter Followers


• 869,903 MySpace Friends


• 129,906 Youtube Subscribers


• 7,142 Flickr Contacts

And his own social network of organizers and activists on my.barackobama.com has over 1.5 million active members.

This engagement contributed to Obama's win. With 64,975,682 votes cast (more than any other candidate ever), he earned the most youth votes in recent memory, approximately 21.6 million-23.9 million; and the highest percentage of youth participation since the voting age was changed to 18 in 1972. Obama also won the highest portion of youth voters ever, 66% to 32%.

These numbers add up to millions of individuals who care about what Obama does, and have already taken deliberate action to help him accomplish his goals. They have chosen to listen to what he has to say, and more importantly they have told him through comments, message board posts, group emails, photos, and response videos, what matters to them.

Now Obama is faced with a similar challenge and opportunity as many brands and corporations who have recently made successful forays into the social web. Now that my campaign is over, and we built this network of fans, what do we do next?

Stay active, stay engaged, and stay human
All of these connections you have made are with real people. You have built up a community of trust and reciprocal relationships. These individuals are still visiting Youtube and Facebook everyday. They're still Twittering every day. They're still interested in what you have to say. Be clear with them about what comes next. Tell them about your next goals, and invite them to help you create them.

Listen, listen, listen
The best thing that the social web has to offer is the opportunity to listen to the people who share your interests. Obama and the brands who are in similar positions should be actively listening to their fans to stay in touch on an hourly basis with the things that are important to them. Use search tools to monitor buzz and identify emerging issues.

Give them something to do
Social networks work best when the members feel like they have something to do. When your big campaign is finished, give your fans something smaller to work towards, or a smaller experience to participate in until your next big thing comes along. These smaller goals don't have to be outward facing (in fact sometimes it's better if they're not). Inspire conversation among the community. Ask them to talk about what they think you should do next. Ask them to introduce each other to compelling content and experiences outside your network. Ask them to give you advice about how to be a more effective community leader.

Update:
Obama has already started to indicate how he plans to continue this movement online. On Thursday, his transition team launched the beautifully designed change.gov. On this official site, visitors are invited to share their stories about the campaign, their hopes for this incoming administration, and to apply for jobs. Also, Chris Hughes, the young creator of Obama's social network my.barackobama.com, encouraged members to stay tuned for the next chapter: "The site isn't going anywhere. The online tools in My.BarackObama will live on. Barack Obama supporters will continue to use the tools to collaborate and interact."

In the moments following the announcements by major news networks that Barack Obama had been elected the next President of the United States millions of people turned to their digital cameras and mobile phones to document the moment and then to the social web to share their experience with their online friends.

Flickr filled up quickly with mobile uploads and later with regular digital photos from people at the official celebration in Chicago's Grant Park.



taken by Kookybites

People took photos of the TV screens they were watching. And we saved screen shots of the websites we were reading and the home pages of a news paper's website.

12 Seconds turned out to be a perfect format for capturing such a fleeting experience. Julia Roy was with me and the Undercurrent crew at the CNN Grill and captured the reaction of the room.



CNN Grill Goes Wild on 12seconds.tv

Also, Current TV partnered with 12 Seconds to collect reaction videos and mix them into their broadcast.

This Youtube user recorded his neighbors in the East Village in NYC flooding into the streets and dancing on top of a bus.



And of course Facebook activity has been completely overrun with documenting and reacting to Obama's big night. Check out a search for recent mobile uploads. How many election night photos do you see? Here's a great shot of people celebrating in the streets of Seattle by my friend Steve.




For my part, I streamed a live video from my Blackberry to Qik (and announced the broadcast to my followers on Twitter). The video quality is obviously poor, but what's important is that I was able to share my experience in real time with a global network of online friends. (Look for the brief cameos by Eddie Izzard and Julia Allison at the 1:30 mark).




So, when we talk about being being born digital, or what it means to be a digital native, this is the kind of always-on connectivity we're talking about.

Sometimes it felt like this day would never come. And now that it's here, it's almost too much to take. Here are a few websites and blog posts to help you make it through the day.

The earliest voters in the country voted this morning at midnight in Dixville Notch, NH. The town went for Obama in a landslide of 15 votes to 6.

Keep an eye on TPM Election Central and TIME Magazine's The Page for breaking news.

Watch the DailyKos' Election Scoreboard as results start coming in tonight. They'll be receiving the exact same results that every major news organization gets as they're reported by the states.

Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com has a fantastic hour-by-hour what to watch for article up on Newsweek. He tells you which are the important states to watch as they begin closing. (If Obama nails down Pennsylvania early, and adds on Virginia it's pretty much over.)

Over 120 million votes were cast in the 2004 election. This year people are predicting that we could see as many as 135 or even 140 million votes, and the highest percentage turnout since 1960. Certainly George W. Bush and his miserable administration is to thank for that. I can't help think, however, that the internet and the ways it's enabled people to become more involved in the process, and has helped to organize our effort has played a role. I was talking to Bud Caddell yesterday, and he raised an interesting question, are young people who have grown up on the social web going to feel differently about the value of participating in our democracy? I think that they will; I think that people who have grown up on Digg, Wikipedia, Youtube, have a fundamentally different appreciation for group participation and collective action and how small contributions by many people can add up to something pretty awesome.

And in case you still need motivation to get out and vote, remember New Hampshire back in January:



GO OBAMA! FIRED UP! READY TO GO!

I spent the weekend designing and coding a thorough overhaul of my website, mikearauz.com. I've been plotting this redesign for a while, and I'm very happy with the way it turned out.



Websites are most valuable for the introductions they make, and the relationships they foster. While I definitely want people to read what I write, it's more important to me that we establish some kind of ongoing connection. This is why the "main navigation" on the page actually takes you away from mikearauz.com to my profiles across the social web: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Delicious, Flickr, and LinkedIn.

Also, the pictures, videos, and links that are pulled in from my Tumblr blog and posted in the right-hand column don't offer permalinks. I think this is appropriate, because they are all links to someone else's content, and someone else's permalink. The intention is to make introductions between my readers and the content creators at the other end of those links. I benefit more from having made the introduction than I would from trying to take the traffic.

This is an approach that more brands should be taking with their websites. The objectives for a branded microsite should not be visits and length of stay, but rather the number of ongoing relationships it inspired. How many fans did the site lead to on existing social networks like Facebook and MySpace? How did the brand enhance its reputation by introducing its visitors to other fans, to compelling content elsewhere on the web, and to other fans who were creating that content?

Let me know what you think of the new design in the comments. Thanks.