I know that many people have been really puzzled by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s long stint as the “governator” of California. Those thinking he would be too stupid for the job should be happy to learn that there now seems to be proof that he is in fact stupid:

Arnie is a facebook user.

Remember the old post I wrote about facebook users performing worse in school? Well, the governator has an account, and obviously, he expects all students to be on facebook. At the beginning of this week, he mentioned that one smart solution to improving public finances might be to say hasta la vista to text books – the kids of the new millennium don’t need them anyway. In the world of any, they can find whatever information they want, and do whatever exercises they need, anywhere, anytime.

“He’s sooo stupid…”

Rested, dizzy, scared – MD’s back once again.
I bet you haven’t missed me, not with swirling, twirling, guestblogger Bigge at the wheel.

Bigge – thank you so much for freemium yourself here, gracing us with your smart perspectives on the world of any! Hope it pays off.

I’m a bit dizzy, not used to people thinking up even grander, more bombastic schemes than myself. But now we know to settle for nothing less than mastering the universe…

The infinite unknown of the universe is a rather scary place, and I just received news that this very blog can be a dangerous, very scary place, too. If you only knew…

This week has come to an end. I’d like to thank MD so much for this opportunity. To me it has been a great honor and a great time. I hope you all found at least something interesting to think about, even if you of course don’t necessarily have to agree with everything. After all, that is perhaps the greatest strength of internet, its ability to gather ideas and mash them together to new ideas. So keep the dialogues going!

By the way, something less fun happened to me this week. Wednesday my consultant job was cancelled. So if you found something interesting in my posts and need somebody who’s eager to do good digital/social media communication, please don’t hesitate to contact me at     anders   [a]   flodqvist    punkt   se, 070-408 73 41 or visit my website at www.whataguy.se. (And thanks to MD for the allowance to write this, I would never have taken up this space with such a personal thing without your permission.)

That’s it, but I’m sure I see you all again in the commentary section in a very near future. Have a great weekend!

And finally, this one’s to all students, but especially to my good friend Lisa who’s a newly graduated teacher. Way to go Lisa!

*Knock, Knock* – Bigge, have you gone insane?

What? No, I haven’t. But by universe I don’t mean a couple of billion solar systems loosely strung together by a force we still can’t explain to the fullest unless we are named Stephen Hawkings. I’m talking about a fictional universe for storytelling crossing over different genres.

In accordance with the expectation society creating a universe for people to play with is a great idea. Let’s say you are writing a book. Here are some rules for you:

Rule #1; Don’t just make it ONE book. Make it a franchise, preferably with several continuous books, videogames, cartoons and everything else you may come up with within your budget. (You’ve seen it before. Think Harry Potter, The Matrix and Pokemon.)

Rule #2; Make it epic. Put in a lot of characters with strong personalities even in the smaller roles and a lot of stories strung together.

Rule #3; Be generous. Publish short stories and other material for free online. Let anyone who wants to play with the story do so in whatever way they like, writing short stories, making movies, photoshoping, and tell your lawyers to, in any circumstances, to stay away from your fans!

- But why, Bigge? Isn’t that bad branding? Letting the whole brand out to everyone and everything? They might do evil things to my hero.

No, it’s GREAT branding! Because whatever makes your readers engage (keyword! keyword!) in your story, they will get a stronger urge to see what will happen in the “original” story later on. And with more material in your universe, even fan made material, there is more to discover in your universe and build expectations upon.  Remember, we are living in a dialogue now and you can’t stop it. So why not let people in instead?

- Ah, I see! But do I have to be J.K. Rowling to do this?

No, you don’t. For example it could also be used for art projects or advertising campaigns. Or yjust for the fun of it as a hobby. Come up with a story (fictional or non-fictional), have fun making up franchise satellites and give people the opportunity to co-create.

And since it’s Friday, I thought it would be neat with a film tip instead of a book tip. It’s made by fans of The Lord of the Ring trilogy and their all amateurs. The budget was less than 5 000 $. Fan participation at its best! (The movie is quite long, about 40 minutes.)

There were some problems in the beginning of this week to get going. Because of that I promised you two posts today. So here we go!

Summer is here and some of you (like me, yeay!) finally got your graduations. Now all that’s missing is a job. So how do you get your ideal job? Try freemiuming yourself.

So, what do you need to freemium yourself? First of all, everything you give away for free should be free, or almost free, to produce. This is because freemium means giving away things for free to a lot to get a few (in this case one) to pay for your premium offer (in this case you).

Second, think about what you could offer for free within your area of expertise. Then try to make it in or translate it into a digital form to make it distributional to a large audience for free.

In freemium, generosity is everything. Be generous with what you can do. By giving away one great idea you create expectancy for what you might do next. I come to think of Linus Torvalds, the creator of the open source project of Linux. He gave it all away for free, but became one of the most famous men in computer technology, meaning he can choose from practically any job he wants.

Blogging may be another effective way to freemium yourself. Blog about your specialty. After all, they can’t get access to your brain over and over again from just reading your blog, for that they need to hire you. That way you also put but your knowledge and your personality in you freemium.

And if you can’t come up with a good freemium idea, google and be inspired by somebody else´s idea. After all, in the world of any, you don’t HAVE to think for yourself. There’s already plenty of good ideas out there.

My main goal by this post is that hopefully thinking of job applications in terms of freemium may help your creativity to break free from that white paper and get going to make the application that lands the job for you. And in the meantime, make sure to have fun with your freemium package!

(Today’s book tip is in accordance with the ideas of nextopia already a modern classic: Chris Anderson, The Long Tail. Already read it? Reread it while you wait for Andersons book Free that will be released this autumn.)

(Because of recent events I’d like to state before today’s post that everything I write on this blog is my opinion and mine alone. I’m not representing any other physical or juridical persons and I am at the moment not connected to any company upon which these opinions should be laid.)

Are you out of ideas? If you can’t come up with those bright million dollar ideas you’re looking for then just search for it in the box.

In fact, in the world of any the chance is bigger that somebody already came up with that bright idea you aimed at than that they didn’t. And what do a lot of people do when they get bright ideas? Well, obviously they put it in the box, a.k.a. the internet. All the facts and more ideas than you will ever need is already out there. This changes how we most efficiently may use our creativity. Instead of using it to get new ideas, you could use it to try out and refine the ideas you find in the box.

A demonstration in how this may be used is the Swedish party Piratpartiet. (I’m not making a political stand here. Every Swedish citizen should make up their own mind for the election; I just find the method they’re using for their campaign interesting.) The party encourages everyone with an idea to post it in the online forum and if three members of the party find it to be a good idea then the party automatically gives them  permission to go on with the idea. And with only a few days left, they’ve almost reached the european parliament. This is called mass collaboration and is made possible by the world of any.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (well, at least the time reference is correct), the development of our culture was dependent upon mass collaboration. But today everything is owned by somebody. And our urge to own those rights, sometimes even to our basic behaviors like how we use our language, it actually SLOWS our cultural development down. There is simply constantly greater risks in elaborating with existing material.

Now, some of you will most certainly call me an idealist =) But my purpose haven’t been to force any personal believes upon you. My purpose is to point out the possibilities, also for companies, of sharing ideas. If companies quit suing people, they can take advantage of people’s will to participate. And they will do so by using their customers’ ideas. For free! Just consider the Lego saga. Were they themselves the first to start animating their toys and putting the movies on youtube? No. Did they encourage their costumers to start programming the computer chips in their toys? No. But neither did they try to stop them and today Lego has more fans than ever. Their greatest asset is their customers, and it’s all because of the “box”. Compare this with the music industry. Their worst enemy is… well, their customers. See the difference?

Of course, mass collaboration is still most frequently used by non-commercial interests. So don’t hesitate to “steal” somebody else’s ideas. Just don’t forget to put them back in the box again for others to use when you’ve refined them.

Tomorrow it’s movietime!

(Today’s book tip: Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams, Wikinomics.)

I’ve read marketers asking that very question in blogs. Let me tell you at once just to be clear, it’s not.

However, there are two pitfalls here. The first connects to yesterdays post. You need to understand that the communication patterns within the media are totally different today than just a few years ago. Everyone can communicate with everyone everywhere and whenever they like (i.e. the world of any). And new technology gives us the opportunity to filter out megaphone communication better than ever, making way for “telephone communication”. Because of this, as a marketer your biggest competitors to gain your costumers attention are no longer other companies but your costumers’ friends. And, I’m sad … no, I’m not, I’m actually GLAD to say, you can’t compete with that.

The other important parameter is that within social media monetary economy is only the second most important economy. The most important economy is the social economy. And in a social economy the value exchanged is social interactions. (I.e. you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, and if I don’t, you will find somebody else who does.)

This I think will alter marketing a lot. As social media follows our natural way of communicating you can’t overlook this form of communication. One way for companies to tackle this is simply not to try to outplay your customers’ social connections (because you can’t) but to use them. Facebook is a great example of this. What is their product? Well, it’s the town square, a place for people to meet within the Facebook brand.

But if your product isn’t the town square? The same logic still applies. You can’t outplay your customers’ will to rather hang out with their friends than your brand. So don’t. Instead, let them all in to have fun together by offering them something to do within your brand. Participation is after all within the natural pattern of communication.

One example of this is Heinz. They invited all their customers’ to participate in a contest by asking them to make Heinz next commercial (social activity). First prize was 50 000 $ (economic prize) and getting the commercial broadcasted in national television (social prize). As a bi product they got loads and loads of commercials at youtube produced for free and “directors” sending them happily to their friends. To read more visit the Heinz competition site.

You’ll find another great example of social marketing by googling for “this is not a game”. Just google and let your fantasy do the rest. And if you need something more to get going, also google or Wikipedia for “I love bees”.

So, how come some marketers question social medias advertizing potential?  Because they think of the monetary economy as the foundation of their marketing activity and try to apply social media upon that. So practically what they are doing is saying that they want to have a social exchange with you and then they break the rules of social economies. (You don’t demand your partner to pay you money after having sex, do you? Or offering payment? Same rules!) Instead you need to build upon a social foundation and apply your monetary economy on top of that. You can still make business proposals, but it is crucial to find points when it is okay to switch over to a monetary economy. In the Heinz case it’s worth noting that the competition itself doesn’t sell anything (look at it as branding), but it creates advertising material and lets the costumers decide which of it they like and which it doesn’t.

That’s all for now. Tomorrow I’ll give you my thoughts on collaboration.

(Today’s book tip: Lawrence Lessig, Remix.)

First I thought we’d make a little journey together. Our destiny: the 17th century.

It’s a bright sunny day in the little village. People strolling by are greeting us. Over at the town square there’s a small gathering, seems to be some sort of debate going on. At the end of the square another group is meeting up at the church stairs small talking before mass. In the other end there is a market. Costumers and retailers are arguing about prizes. Everyone is dialoging everywhere.

Then came mass media. Our minds were twisted into NOT participating. It became the standard. If we wanted to make our voices heard, we had to nestle our way into the media that could chose to publish or refuse our ideas from whether it suited the owner’s purposes or not.

In the world of any mass media is simply catching up with our natural way to communicate. Dialogical. We don’t have to be either the listener or the speaker; we can be both at the same time. Just like outside church or in the town’s square, the local world of any.

We are entering the fourth big paradigm in humanity. The information society with its new technology, but with the same old communication patterns. Media 2.0 is no news, it simply adjusts to our natural way of communicating. It’s like the 17th century getting out of the village and going global, we’ve just added another dimension to it. You no longer have to constrain your dialogue to the local village. Now we all live in the global village. (Which changes quite a lot, but not the communication patterns.)

So now I delivered my thesis that new technology doesn’t make us communicate differently but exactly like we are meant to communicate. I know there´s a lot of you out there interested in marketing and the economies, and I actually do have one thesis to deliver within that area building upon this, but since my rhetoric teachers told me that there should only be one main thesis per speech I’ll let you ponder on that one until tomorrow .

Welcome to the old new world!

(Todays book tip: Henry Jenkins, Convergence culture)

Sun is shining and now I get to hang out with you smart guys for a whole week!

I once saw a restaurant with a note on the door saying “Closed because of reasons”. I was supposed to post the first post yesterday, but it didn’t work because of reasons. (I love that explanation!) But to compensate I’ll throw in two posts this Friday.

First of all I want to thank MD for that flattering introduction. Didn’t put any pressure on me at all to deliver Just kidding, I hope you all will find this an interesting week.

But before we get going, I want to make something clear. I’ve studied within the humanities and we humanists tend to hail perspectives. That means there is no right or wrong (even though there might be better or worse).

I just wanted to point that out since during this week I will make some statements. But they aren’t right nor wrong, however certain I may sound. So hopefully you won’t hesitate to participate by commenting on the posts, because I’m really eager to take part of your perspectives.