So now Google jumps into the fray with their Friend Connect, a universal profile that will allow people to maintain one single profile across a number of different social sites. This concept has been talked about for ages now, and I guess it’s good that we’re seeing it come into fruition, with a number of other high profile sites such as Facebook and Myspace making similar plays.

It’s all about data portability, and that has to be a Good Thing, but I really do wonder how each of these sites intend to capture those ‘first use’ users that haven’t stepped into the social web world? Surely the valuations of all the major social players are based on the numbers of people registering with them, their data, and the friends that they bring with them - and as such, are we going to see a shift in how we measure their success on the back of this?

Via: Mashable

Wow. I happened across a white paper produced by IBM & Cambridge University, with the title ‘Succeeding Though Service Innovation‘. It’s a first stab at trying to draw some shape onto what is essentially a fragmented, cross-disciplinary domain, and I have to say, it’s pretty bloody good.

We’ve (at LBi) been talking about service design for a couple of years now, but in that time, I can honestly say that noone has come close to defining exactly what it means, how to do it effectively, or how we hire good people to do it with us. Instead, we see components of ’service thinking’ crop up within discrete projects, aligned to the ascendent position that digital thinking tends to have nowadays. And that can be quite frustrating - especially if you take a more holistic view to solving design challenges.

This paper throws a couple more challenges (and while I can relate to this in the context of working for an uber-agency, it’s just as relevant for small businesses, manufacturers, government, etc):

• one of the things that I feel, now I’m all grown up and working in the industry, is the overwhelming sense of ‘misfit’ within most of the organisations I come into contact with. I’ve a diverse background that spans the arts and science, and I have also been busy developing specialisms within the area I’ve been working within for the last 10 years. But what this means is that I could apply for a number of different roles within different departments in my company - and actually, would be pretty well stimulated by be able to do this. But that breaks the model. So…I’m T-shaped when most companies either want you to be I-shaped, or go into management. This paper points at the need for organisations to mature, and support broader, polymathic skillsets, and indeed, allow them to increase the value they can give back to the business
• Service science / design / thinking requires a truly robust and eclectic model for partnering, if you’re serious about delivering anything. Most businesses tend to operate within sectors or value chains, and this means we need to break out of our silos and start engaging with partners in places we wouldn’t ordinarily look.
• More soon!

But really, the bit I love most about all this stuff is the potential for designing around problems that are rooted in issues caused by our failing environment. It’s gonna take some brave and ambitious souls to start solving some of these problems, for sure. Anyone want to start a business?

Hot on the heels of my post about My Starbucks Idea, I thought I’d share a couple of pieces of Brand 2.0 love that I’ve come across recently:

• The church of co-creation and community, Communities Dominate Brands: go here for some deep insight into how some companies are recognising the (well-documented) need to get closer to their customers, and embed them into their processes.
• Understanding what co-creation actually means: by Corante.

I’m starting to think of brands as being porous - for the reason that the word ‘porous’ implies a flow into something, but in a gradual, slow-but-sure way. It’s not like most large businesses move (to use Tom Peters’ phrase) at the speed of light, and yet they’re waking up to the fact that they have to constantly shift and adapt to the changing needs of their customers. So…porous.

This is fabulous example of a global company reaching out to its customer base and giving them the opportunity to share their ideas on how to reinvigorate its customer experience. Of course, the idea is only as good as Starbucks’ willing to adopt any of the suggestions that are made - and from what I’ve seen, they’re taking steps to do just that.

I’d like to see more companies taking this kind of approach - and it ties into some thinking I’ve been doing recently around brands and how they become more porous… 

The team here at LBi have been working with Multimap to make improvements to the site, and start the job of integrating with Microsoft’s Live Search product. It went live yesterday, and among the improvements are:

• 45-degree angle high resolution photography - aka ‘Bird’s Eye’
• we’ve tweaked the route planner so that it displays within the main panel of the interface rather than being cramped into a ‘palette’ on the left-hand side of the screen; additionally we’ve introduced more realistic signage to help users scan long lists of instructions
• you can now find a business through Multimap - putting them in the local search market; 

I’m currently finding the Bird’s Eye view photography works a treat with the Wikipedia overlay visible - it really does allow you to explore an area, and the content from Wikipedia brings the photography to life with a bit of backstory…

And now, Multimap are providing all mapping services for UK users of the MSN portal - a move that hasn’t gone uncriticised, but ultimately one that should allow the Multimap crew the resources and technology platform to push forward the boundaries of online mapping services.

The project was fun to work on - as always it’s great to be involved with the Multimappers - and despite a few teething issues which should be worked through during the next couple of weeks, the site has taken a step forward. Things have moved a long way since we started in 2006 with a blank sheet of paper, and a challenge to the Multimap leadership to throw away their ‘classic’ approach to interface design ;)

My colleague Warren Hutchinson posts about an honourable mention at the Webbys for the work that LBi did in helping Multimap redesign their site. I’ll leave it to him to big the team up, but just wanted to add my ‘well done all’ to the mix!

I spent Easter at an amazingly quiet, relaxed seaside town in Cornwall - called Polperro. Fantastic atmosphere, friendly people - and of course some great scenic walks along the coastal path.

More photos from the trip here.

“the eerie and inexplicable sadness that lives at the heart of certain works of art”

Nick Cave, summing up what he looks for in music. A cool Guardian piece on this ‘feeling’. Wow. Inexplicable sadness seems to be a theme that’s cropping up a lot these days…and this picture gives me the same feeling, for some reason…

I had the sudden realisation, the other day, that my current daily routine takes in a number of different statistical feeds - and this set me to thinking that *this* is part of the reason that creating your own content is fun. It’s the sense of audience that gives you more of a perspective on the stuff that you put out there.

So, I check out my Flickr stats on a regular basis, then I check my blog stats, and finally, less frequently, I check out LastFM stats for Inaura, one of the bands I used to play with.

It’s this stuff that is ’sticky’ for me - and I’m not normally obsessed by stuff like this…

“It sort of sounds cool,” Watts says, tucking into his salad. “But it’s wonderfully persuasive only for as long as you don’t think about it.” 

Duncan Watt’s provides a counterpoint to Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point theory, in which ideas are spread by super-influencers. Watt has spent years looking at social dynamics, and is convinced that Gladwell’s ideas are too simplistic, and should be placed in a more complex, and likely more unmanageable context.

His argument doesn’t mean that he doesn’t believe that some people are more influential than others (all the marketers can breath out now) but instead thinks time should be spent looking at the environments in which ideas spread. He suggests that instead of a ‘viral’ metaphor, we should be using a ‘forest fire’ as the way we think about how this stuff works - and fire spread when the environmental conditions are correct.

And no, I know that ‘complexifying’ isn’t a real word :)

Via FastCompany