Details Magazine has a cover story in its August edition.  Noting:

“Exalting the handmade, the painstakingly crafted, the authentic, is not just for hipsters in Portland and Brooklyn anymore—small-batch has mass appeal. How the artisanal movement became our national consumer religion.

Yes, indeed it has.  Of course if you’d downloaded and read Future: Present, you’d be well aware of that trend and its implications for your brand.  The eBook will be free only for a few more weeks– so download the pdf or the audio while it’s still free.

This is just so brilliant I had to steal it from Mashable–  mostly so I won’t forget it.

You shouldn’t either.

Ricky Van Veen’s 10 Web Content Urban Legends

Myth #1). People will want to watch your branded content: Why would anyone watch this? If you don’t have a good reason, don’t make it. If your goal is 75% to entertain and 25% to sell a product, you already have a handicap.

- Brands need to be flexible. IE, College Humor is a racy site — so if you want to partner with a media outlet like this, its content will be racy. Embrace that. To remedy this issue, you can present content that is not explicitly branded, and then reveal your involvement later.

Myth #2). People will be patient with your content: 35% tune out soon after starting to watch a web video. Also, one third of web activity is executed while watching TV.

- So, get to the point — quickly.

Myth #3). People will find your content: Your video will not necessarily go viral. Over-saturation is not the key, either.

- Have a strong seeding strategy.
- Team up with an established brand or platform.

Myth #4). The Internet is a level playing field: A link on Drudge Report yields more results than some dude’s blog.

- Tap into power users.

Myth #5). We have no idea why things go viral: There are no rules for making a viral video. But all viral videos give the user a reason to pass it on. This all has to do with identity creation: What does passing this video on say about me?

- College Humor has a hit strategy: Only hit for nines and 10s.
- The shorter the better.
- The hook comes within the first 20 seconds.
- Sweet spots College Humor taps into: Topical issues and “Candycorn” (cultural touchstones that everyone knows, but doesn’t actively think about).

Myth # 6). Experience beats documentation: We have a new generation that puts documentation above experience. It’s all about Flickr feeds and Facebook status updates. It’s basically high-tech bragging.

- if you’re a marketer, create experiences that allow people to show off how cool they are.

Myth #7). You should build your own community and tools: The web values simplicity and openness. Don’t limit the openness of your project. Make all tools open and easy to share. Don’t build your own features — if you want people to share photos and whatnot, use Facebook and Flickr. You get much more exposure and reach in that way.

Myth #8). Keep things professional: Show the people behind the scenes. It gives your site personality and makes it sticky. Personality drives your brand. Post photos of staff as well as videos and other content. Perez Hilton does this really well, according to Van Veen.

Myth #9). Traditional media is irrelevant to the web: TV is not over. Content creators are always working to get to TV and film — that’s where the money is. The average American watches 151 hours of TV a month, so that’s nothing to sneeze at. You get a stamp of approval thusly.

Myth #10). People will create good content for you: This is the biggest myth of all.

Just brilliant.  I’m going to frame it and hang it on my wall.  Thanks Ricky.

People don’t buy what you make they buy why you make them. Simon Sinek has a model for inspirational leadership starting with the question “Why?”. He discusses the diffusion of innovation model that I’m a big fan of Thanks to Jon Sinton for the link.

Small is the new big– The Artisan Movement
In a attempt to get “authentic” Starbucks is “de-branding“. consumers want artisanal zeal from their brands. Wall mart has the price position– every other brand position up for grabs next year. The recession kicked the chessboard.

People talk about “authentic” but words matter, and authentic is the wrong word. “Authentic” is defined by what it isn’t. In a culture full of pre-fab formula, finding something made with passion more than margin becomes more valuable as we value care over quantity. In all things I’m looking for consumers to look for “signs of the hand” to communicate value.

Social Media in the Enterprise
“e-mail is the new snail mail”. It’s really not about Twitter and Facebook in the office. It’s about MindTouch, Yammer and Openfire. In 2010 your employees will do whatever it takes to work faster and smarter. If you don’t provide the tools, your employees will find their own. This creates all kinds of problems, not the least of which is Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. I’m looking at you IT department.

Social Media in Marketing Communications
That’s not to say the marketing department won’t continue to be obsessed with consumers in the social media space. Listening is the new speaking. This is the most radical mindset whipsaw ever. Quit worrying about what to say in social media and start learning to listen and share. Consumers expect you to be as accessible as their friends, but not as chatty. Say something useful, or don’t say anything at all. Advertising better have a call to action or it will be skipped faster than a pizza delivery scene.

Search, groups and filters are critical for listening. Computers still won’t be able to get sentiment. You have to do that work yourself. Saddle up.

Customer collaboration– Everything is beta.
Related to social CRM, ya gotta give to get. The responsibility of prototyping still rests on the enterprise. Customers don’t invent–they react. Test test test. Know that failure is the price of innovation. To get the profit from Innovation as a noun you need to realize the expense of innovation as a verb. You can’t have one without the other. This is a lesson for many wining companies next year

The Cloud –and the Backlash
“The Cloud” is big and with the advent of netbooks and smarter smart phones the cloud is where people are released from the confines of the desk. Cloud apps fail occasionally though, and users REALLY hate that. Business disruption is a cost of entry. The cloud is cheap and smart–it’s not going away despite inevitable setbacks.

SAAS and all it permutations will be all over the news– they have been for years. The difference in 2010 is that small and mid-sized companies will be reliant on them and some robust cloud services will fail for short excruciating bursts of inactivity.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water though. Many of us remember email failure in years past. The cloud is here to stay and it will make many knowledge workers more liberated than ever.

The Beginning of Going off the Grid
Just as corporations embrace the social web people will begin to disconnect because it will feel less like fun and more like work. This disconnection will happen slowly and it will be costly and thus an air of snobbery will come with this uncoupling. The exodus will be slow and mostly unnoticed, but it will be happening. MarComm with people that you have no relationship will get even tougher, and metrics even more unreliable as people block behavioral analytics scripts and begin to spend less time on Facebook

This is good news for big/legacy media. Cheap entertainment continues to be useful even as people pay for more content. There will be stimulus for small biz but hiring won’t start until Q4. We’ve had record increases in productivity. It’s easier to invest in productivity technology than people. Count on it.

Location-based gaming will be the exception to this nascent disintegration as people begin to enjoy going out again and sharing their experiences with their peers and friends.

Dick Hardt explains digital identity.

So Sidewiki has a bunch of communication pros knickers in a twist but I, for one, do not see Sidewiki as cataclysm. Yes, its potential for abuse is barely enormous– but we’ve been here before and so far so good, honestly.

BTW- I’m certain that more than a few people will read this diatribe of moderation and spam my site to prove to me how bad it really is. So be it. I suspect that that time would be better spent on Halliburton’s site (which has NO sidewiki entries as of this writing), but that’s just me.

No longer can corporate leadership sit in a bubble and complain that they don’t know what the customer is thinking. Now It’s right on their website. How bad can that be? Senior leadership craves real input. There it is on their home page. Careful what you wish for.

The fundamentals of what Google Sidewiki is and what it does are here and here. I won’t rehash it. What I will do is try to give some depth to the POV I put on twitter Tuesday.

1. For the love of all things holy: Get There first

• This means (provided David Hurowitz hasn’t beat you to it), provide your company’s info and desire to help. Comcast’s Frank Eliason did a perfect job on the Comcast site. Check it out.

2. Welcome constructive comments in sidewiki itself

• Perhaps is goes without saying but welcoming comments and discussions is always a good idea. One of the things that makes Frank Eliason’s entry so good is that it seeks to move discussions off side wiki and into more manageable channels. That’s good for both sides.

3. Monitor continually

• While I’ve not found anyone spidering Sidewiki as part of automated social media monitoring, (Amber at Radian 6 says they are working on it. If they are working on it, it will be here shortly. ) for now, two visits a day should suffice for all but the largest and most visited sites.

4. Report every abuse

• Reviewing both the page and the tool itself, you can see how to report abuses and vote down useless whining. Hey, it’s your site. if its not constructive nobody wants it there except for vainglorious trolls who are looking for attention. Again those of you who would disagree, by all means, fire away.

5. Follow traditional crisis management fundamentals. Plan messaging in advance.

• (Again following the excellent example from Comcast) messaging on point– addressing the concerns and providing useful information to direct the communication in a useful way.

While Google Sidewiki may become a great place to slam brands, my sense is that it will bring way more good than harm. Fear of posting there will only lead to heartache. I saw many good companies thrown into utter (and completely unnecessary) chaos at entries on their Wikipedia page. Any digital communicator worth their salt can manage this. The good news is that you can effect what is said about you on Sidewiki. You can comment, refute, repair and address and redress any grievance. You can report abuse and you can vote about an entry’s relevance. Some have even suggested you can stuff the ballot box and push it down.

An old saying goes: “trust in God but tie your horses.” As with all things digital and social on corporate world, be TRANSPARENT. Everyone talks about trust. I think transparency comes first; and its harder. Like “word of mouth” or “viral”, trust is a result, not a tactic. Transparency is both the strategic and tactical means to an end called trust. Transparnecy makes verification easier.

It all boils down to this: the ability to ignore the haters, while listening to the critics. What likely scares all the communicators wringing their hands over Sidewiki is concern about their leadership understanding the difference. Nut up gang. Be active, vigilant and transparent on Google Sidewiki and you’ll find your fears dissipating and your social media confidence growing.

Sidewiki’s detractors should re-assess their concerns and have a swig of their own Kool aid. Control is gone– has been for years. Everyone whose written intelligently about Sidewiki–pro or con– knows this. Detractors must face the reality in the same way they’ve advised their clients about social media since the start. Yes, potential for abuse is high; but not any higher than Wikipedia. We managed that right? So lighten up. Let your communication team load-up the toolbar and get in the conversation. This is reality–it has been for years. With all apologies to the doomsayers, it may be the easiest most accessible form of social media yet. Close-talkers need social media love too.

Want more? check out this brilliant argument from Dan Rochman. He’s not very transparent, but his thinking is sound.

In 1993 AT&T gave a remarkably clear view of what things would be like in 2009. Remember these ads?

Because this is my blog I get to put up stuff that is funny sometimes. There is of course much for the mediathinker here:

First, Cracked.com may be the funniest site on the web. Well-written, interesting, smart and more than just snarky. Notice the pre-roll ad from Google. Notice the crawl ads below the content when it plays and recall this blogs last post about Simpsons being more valuable on Hulu than on Fox.

The clutter police of much to complain about of course but, in the end, this is the state of the art in video content revenue generation.

A spoon-full of sugar always helps the medicine go down. Enjoy!

From The Harvard Business Blog

Fast prototyping is essential.  Iterative approaches rule.

1. You can do a lot for a little. It amazes me when corporations complain that they lack adequate financial resources for innovation. With open source software, online market research tools, and the ability to create virtual prototypes, you can do a huge amount for $10,000. A lack of financial resources is very rarely a rate limiter.
2. Tight windows enable “good enough” design. Most Y Combinator–funded companies are expected to release a version of their idea in less than 3 months. That tight time frame forces entrepreneurs to introduce “good enough” software packages that can then iterate in market. This approach contrasts to efforts by many companies to endlessly perfect ideas in a laboratory, only to fail the real test of being exposed to real market conditions.
3. Business plans are nice, not necessary. Y Combinator doesn’t obsess over whether entrepreneurs have detailed business plans. Again, the focus is getting something out in the market to drive iteration and learning. After all, if you are trying to create a market, most of the material in a business plan is assumption-based anyway.
4. Failure is an option. One of the benefits of the Y Combinator approach is it forces quick decision making — if the team can’t produce a prototype, or the prototype bombs in market, the end comes quickly. And the low, up-front investment makes it easier to wind down ideas. Corporations that say they lack resources often have those resources tied up in the wrong projects. Saying no is not a bad thing.

I’m a big fan of Gerd. He does a great job explaining how mobile content will work. Not quite sure who is going to pay– but someone will.