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Technology Review has a great article that gets inside the world of 4chan and its founder Christopher Poole to reveal a world where anonymity is prized, anything goes and there is no history. It's a place where the ugly side of the web that many want to censor is free and rampant and is in many ways the alter ego to the corporate web.

Poole is attracting interest from investors, TED conference organizers and Facebook employees who flocked to a recent talk he gave on their campus.

"Visited mostly by young men in their late teens and early 20s, 4chan is loosely organized by topics of interest--music, games, TV, animation (Japanese and otherwise). But nearly half its messages are posted in a single random-topics section known as /b/, and /b/'s anarchy sets the tone for the site in general. It's out of /b/ that swarms of gleeful online troublemakers--trolls, in Internet parlance--occasionally issue forth to prank, hack, harass, and otherwise digitally provoke other online communities and users. From /b/, as well, the Internet at large absorbs a steady stream of catchphrases and sight gags--LOLcats, rickrolling, and other ubiquitous Internet memes that seep up from the endless, dizzying churn of /b/'s vast reservoir of inside jokes. Often intended to shock, shot through with racism, misogyny, and other qualities deliberately chosen from beyond the contemporary pale, the words and images of /b/ have become an online spectacle: "Lunatic, juvenile ... brilliant, ridiculous and alarming," the Guardian newspaper's website once called it. "The id of the Internet,"...."

I guess a trip inside the world of 4chan is a journey that has to be made by any planner serious about understanding the mind of young males today.


Posted by Ed Cotton Good news coming out of London this week, Ogilvy has been inspired by the efforts of all the out of work architects and designers who've set-up pop-up stores and stands to sell their wares, now the giant ad agency is doing the same with a social twist.

The enlightened folks at Ogilvy decided that small, local businesses in the Brixton areas of London could benefit from some of company's strategic and creative thinking. It's a cool PR coop, but it's also a great idea and something more agencies should pay attention to.

Agencies exist in physical locations and probably should kind of responsibility to contribute to their neighborhoods and broader community. Obviously, many think that their pro-bono efforts are probably good enough, but perhaps these contributions need to be smaller, more focused, truly connected to their communities and less interested in the potential of creative awards. 


Posted by Ed Cotton At the Nike analyst call earlier this week, an analyst asked a question suggesting we were witnessing the bursting of the "Sports Bubble". Below is CEO Mark Parker's very smart response.

Suggesting the company knows how to respond to a changing world where new engagement is taking place, as well as new activities.

"I’ll just jump in. It is an interesting thing, a sports bubble that you mentioned. You mentioned a couple of things. Attendance may be down in some cases but I think viewer-ship is actually up. So I think that is something you have to think about a little bit. You talk about traditional access to events which has been a metric that most people use, versus really what maybe a new access is which is really more like immersion. We are seeing kids online anywhere from 20 minutes to 2-3 hours as they immerse themselves in the new access points to sports whether it is through the athletes, through communities that are talking about it and it is 24 hours a day. So that has changed incredibly.

I think the other thing you think about too is the traditional sports, the stick and ball sports versus the new action sports and the different communities and environments that are being created around some of these and some of the things we have talked about as we build our brand in some of these new areas. For us it is all about a focused effort around each one of these sports and their communities. I think we have talked a lot about that consumer experience and how we continue to build the brand and reinvent the brand, connecting with these kids. I think the bubble may not be as much a bubble. Maybe if you are in the old and not transitioning to the new you may feel like you are in a bubble and it is about ready to burst. But if you are part of the new it is really almost an infinite landscape from which to engage with consumer in new and energetic ways."

Posted by Ed Cotton Shared Egg is an interesting project that attempts to visualize the connection points between friends. It maps the common areas that bring people together using a combination of interests and brands. It illustrates that brands can be the connective tissue between people; people share a love of brands and an have affinity for them.

Here's the big map...




Here's an isolated look at the Nike relationships within the map....



It raises some interesting questions..

1. How do brands connect to bigger themes, interests, ideas and emotions?

2. How are brands leveraging those connections?

3. How do brands enhance those connections?

4. How do brands bring communities together?

While many have questioned the role of brands in social networks and communities, Shared Egg illustrates that people can be connected and linked by brands. It still remains to be seen how brands best leverage this opportunity to activate and build out these connections and these communities.


Posted by Ed Cotton Prosper is one of the few 2.0 success stories in the world of finance. The peer-2 -peer lending community seems to have gained some traction and with close to 500,000 members, it's caught the attention of some of the bigger players in the financial world.

Clearly, community is critical to Prosper’s success and as a demonstration of Prosper’s desire to ensure it thrives, they hold conferences (Prosper Days) for their community, the next one is in February of 2008.

The sessions include presentations from key executives, brainstorming and a keynote from the author of Freakonomics.

This is the second year Prosper has hosted such an event, videos from this year’s Prosper Day can be seen here.

It’s all too easy in a web 2.0 world to rely on the Internet to do everything, despite increasing communication and collaboration technology, there's something about meeting face-to-face that technology can’t replace.

Web 2.0 companies and others with communities need to  give significant thought to and consider the value of events to galvanize and energize their bases.

Via Bankwatch



Posted by Ed Cotton The important ad news of the weekend is Chevron's 150 second advertising buy on Sunday's 60 Minutes.

It's big, bold and epic and the purpose is to educate, inspire and try its hardest to improve the negative perception of the oil business.

Of course, the ad tries hard to be real and genuine by employing the talents of Lance Accord and a  voice-over from Campbell Scott. The result is a somewhat restrained flashback to the glory days of big corporate advertising in the mid 1980s. You can't help but feel the production dollars that were thrown into this as the multiple locations fly across the screen.

You are left with the feeling that this is a company that wants to create the impression that it wants to have a conversation, but by the looks of things you can tell its going to be very one sided. The kind of conversation where you can't get a word in.

Despite all the good intentions of the campaign, you get the message that a big oil company has created the longest and perhaps the most expensive ad ever created on American television.

It's brave of Chevron to start this tough conversation and get the ball rolling, but you can't help feeling that this could have gone much further.

This is evident because the campaign uses an old web site , complete with "token forum" that's difficult to navigate and contribute to. When you read the small print it becomes clear..

"One a topic is closed, you will be able to view all of the previous comments, but no longer be able to submit new ones. We will then have an independent organization review all of the published comments and summarize their findings, which we will post on this site within 60-90 days."

Net- We will publish a report

This isn't good enough, Chevron needs to act and do something not publish a report and let it gather dust.

It needs to start and maintain a real conversation that isn't token, but is dynamic, real and acted upon.

Where are the Chevron employee pages on Facebook?

Where are the and the hundreds of Chevron employee blogs?

Where is the the pitch to the world for ideas and open innovation?

Reading between the lines, you can't help feeling that Big Oil wants to educate us.

Sure, there's a very important job to be done, but if you want to win the battle of hearts and minds, you've got to get down off your high horse and out into the streets.

You've got to create real, vibrant communities on the internet and you've got to respond in a tangible way to those voices in the community. 

Educate doesn't mean dominate.

Big Oil needs to find a way to show us its humanity.

Perhaps before it does this, it should go back to the classroom itself and read up on what Procter&Gamble, Sun and Dell have been up to recently and learn how to reach out and invite the outside in.


Posted by Ed Cotton