GalaxyAdvisors Blog: May 2007

Book Promotion Reports for Coolhunting

May 17, 2007 5:47 PM
Among our objectives on this Coolhunt program was a desire to find new ways to publicize the release of a new book on the Internet. The publisher, AMACOM Books, who paid to have this online program produced, is hoping for sales at the end of the day to cover the marketing costs. The authors, who benefit modestly from sales and more from reputation enhancement, desire that the book gets an opportunity to reach its target audience.

At Patron Saint Productions, we try to find novel ways to bring books to the attention of readers without bothering those who aren't interested. It's a delicate operation, blending these interests into an online publicity campaign. I think you might find this behind-the-scenes look at some of the results to be interesting.

Access to the following reports normally is limited to campaign insiders. We are able to make these reports available here with the blessings of AMACOM Books:

Discussion Group Postings Report

(Microsoft Word document)

Shows the 50-plus discussion groups where we posted a message about the Coolhunt program and offered to send an excerpt from the book upon request.

Blog PR Report

(HTML document)

Shows a couple dozen blogs we approached -- besides those visited in the Coolhunt. We visited blogs listed in the Author Questionnaire completed by Scott Cooper, as well as blogs found through our own searches. At these blogs, we either posted comments or asked the blogmaster to post an announcement about the Coolhunt program. We offered the blogmasters free review copies of the book.

Review Copy Requests
We pitched media contacts, offering a review copy of "Coolhunting" and a press kit. Here is a list of the media who responded to our pitches and requested a review copy of the book. Due to privacy concerns, we are not releasing their contact information:

Kristin Clarke, CAE
ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership
CATEGORY: Magazine, Journal, or Newsletter
TOPICS: leadership, business

Geoffrey P. Lantos, PhD
Professor of Business Administration
Stonehill College
TOPICS: business, marketing
NOTES: Marketing Program Director at Stonehill College, and Book Reviews Editor for Journal of Consumer Marketing, Journal of Product and Brand Management

Roy Bragg
San Antonio Express-News
TOPICS: San Antonio, general interest

Mary Beth Guard
Executive Editor
Bankers Online
TOPICS: banking, finance

Mark Gibbs
GibbsBlog
TOPICS: technology, computers
NOTES: Contributor to NetworkWorld

Marie Leone
Senior Editor
CFO.com
TOPICS: finance, business

Jason Thibeault
CTO/Co-Founder
GoWare, Inc.
TOPICS: technology, computers

Paul J. Wilczynski
Krislyn Corporation
TOPICS: business

Ari Herzog
TOPICS: travel, entertainment
NOTES: Freelance writer and reporter for such publications as The Boston Globe; launching new blog

Mordechai (Morty) Schiller
TOPICS: marketing, Judaism

Allan Alter
Executive Editor, CIO Insight
TOPICS: technology, computers

Chris Locke
TOPICS: business, Internet
NOTES: author of Cluetrain Manifesto and Gonzo Marketing

Alan Chumley
TOPICS: public relations, media

Guy Kawasaki
How to Change the World
TOPICS: entrepreneurship, business

Dion Hinchcliffe
Web 2.0 Blog
TOPICS: technology, Internet

Tom Davenport
Babson Knowledge
TOPICS: business, management

Coolhunt Log #20 - Friday, May 11, 2007

May 11, 2007 11:18 PM
Coolhunt Log #20
Friday, May 11, 2007

On Stage:
Scott Cooper, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Peter Gloor, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Steve O'Keefe, moderator

MODERATOR: This is the last day of our month-long coolhunt. Could you tell us where you're calling from?

SCOTT: I'm calling from my home office in Newton Highlands, MA.

PETER: I'm calling from Switzerland.

MODERATOR: Today, on our last coolhunt I was hoping we could go over where we've been and talk about where we're going in the future with social networking. Can you tell me what you think about the list of all the sites we've visited that Gary Michael Smith posted last night?

PETER: I can't believe we've visited so many sites.

SCOTT: I was pretty impressed when I saw the list.

MODERATOR: Some of the things that jumped out at me is that we had a very protracted and good discussion about who are the news originators, places that have reporters doing research and bringing out facts. Then we looked at how searchers for information would find sites -- the whole yin and yang about new forms and old forms of finding information.

SCOTT: I was struck after looking at the list and reading some of my emails. In an email from the New York Times about a column from David Pogue, Asking the Crowd to Spread the News. He says that we haven't even scratched the surface about the audience supplying materials. Why isn't there a website that says, "Yes, this is going around and you'll be vomiting for two days"? There should be a map of such information. I just reminded me that we really were coolhunting over this past month.

WEB: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/asking-the-crowd-to-spread-the-news/

PETER: I would like to know what all the other crowds are thinking and reading. I think it's a double-edge sword, creating news stories and making them available. You know what to expect from certain branded, boilerplated sources. If old-time media does it right -- whatever that means -- there will always be a place for those types of news providers. Getting access is
another story. Will people stumble across it or will there be more organized dissemination that will tell me all the stories that I'm normally interested in.

MODERATOR: The New York Times really never has had an opportunity to know what readers thought about its stories until recently. Now this has changed with journalists' blogs. Let's go to the Apple Store. If you look at this cutting-edge site you'll see "moving stills" as well as video in the advertising and display of presentations. Going into the store and looking for a particular product such as a power cord you'll find eight matches. Under the description of the product is a customer rating. You don't even have to drill down into the product because the customer rating is so important. Based on the rating, the shopper will drill down into the sites of particular products. I'm used to seeing customer reviews on books such as those with Amazon.

WEB: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore

SCOTT: We make that obvious in our book Coolhunting by writing that power is gained by Amazon by giving power away in the form of user reviews.

MODERATOR: Reviews probably are only going to grow and wisdom of the hive will grow as well because reviews probably will not ever be removed.

PETER: I noticed the rankings on our Coolhunting book based on ratings. One reviewer says that Amazon nearly always processes orders quickly, but if you have any problems you can almost never get a person on the phone the settle it.

WEB:
http://www.amazon.com/Coolhunting-Chasing-Down-Next-Thing/dp/0814473865/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-2487262-1981740?ie=UTF8&s=books&q


MODERATOR: We looked quite a bit at citizen reviews and ratings. We looked at tagging, digging, rating, and reviewing as well as censorship. Look where it asks if reviews are useful to you, allowing readers to rate the value of the comment. Where does the helix stop?

SCOTT: I think it's linked to the other discussion we had about the news business. If you let the swarm through all these mechanisms, it's empowering the swarm to take early steps toward self organization. I rarely buy books from Amazon -- preferring to go into bookstores -- but I'll look at reviews and listen to snippets of music online. And the reviews will often give totally opposing viewpoints even though they're listening to the same thing. So the collective intelligence allows the swarm to feed off such information.

PETER: This mix can tell us where the next big trends are. The New York Times has added a new feature allowing readers to dig or post information. This will allow them to know more about what people think about the Times' articles.

SCOTT: I notice that U.S. newspapers in general are so far ahead on this. Peter reads the New York Times and a Swiss newspaper and I read the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German daily newspaper, and the foreign papers are less user-friendly regarding blogs, comments, etc., not allowing web 2.0 services as with U.S. news services. A couple years ago there was an article about the bloglessness of German politics. Politicians still think that handing out pens at a supermarket is more effective, or setting up a table and giving out something for free, including a printed copy of their campaign platform.

MODERATOR: We've seen that in many cases, elitists are afraid of the wisdom of the crowd as with the censorship of Google in China and suppression of news in Afghanistan. Can you talk more about this battle between the receiving elite and the growing power of the crowd.

SCOTT: Here's one specific example of the enabling of the swarm. I listen to a lot German lieder and British art songs. Gramophone, a venerable record review magazine in England that's been around for about 100 years, had long been the arbiter of taste and quality for such vocal music. Reviews from "experts" makes one wonder if they ever actually listen to the music. But now, blogs and forums by younger people make for a much broader discussion of what makes for good music. These experts no longer have hegemony because of new technology.

WEB: http://www.gramophone.co.uk/forum.asp

PETER: "Elite" is the wrong word. Not all bloggers are equal. It's a meritocracy.

SCOTT: Let's talk about what "elite" means. First, it comes from the French for "select." More often than not the elite select themselves. Mike Arrington has not set himself off as one of the elite. He's just a guy who wants to provoke and share in a conversation, whereas others end a blog reminding readers how much of an expert they are on a topic.

MODERATOR: It was fascinating during our visit to Debian that the group had quite an elaborate structure, unlike something like YouTube. The web right now is struggling to come up with guidelines for bloggers' epics. You seem to be saying that the rules already are in force by people blocking you from email.

PETER: In the standards world, there is the International Standards Organization (ISO) group in Geneva. In the networking world, it competed against the much more self-organizing and less hierarchical Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and lost. If given free reign, the crowd is much more capable of setting up its own ethics and rules of operation than a formal group. It's a stable, robust, and self-correcting system. The crowd is very efficient in policing themselves.

SCOTT: Regarding the code of conduct among elitists in the blogosphere, such as Tim O'Reilly who issued a call for a bloggers code of conduct because of the case of Kathy Sierra (Creating Passionate Users) where she was threatened by readers as reported by the BBC and the San Francisco Chronicle.

WEB: http://headrush.typepad.com/

SCOTT: See his "Lessons Learned So Far."

WEB: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04/code_of_conduct.html

MODERATOR: Also, see the Word of mouth Marketing Association.

WEB: http://womma.org/

MODERATOR: One person meritocracy is another person's cesspool. People who contribute often are driven offline by the rude behavior of others who post vitriol material. You're saying that the hive can narrow the range into some kind of consensus. How do we deal with the issue of poor manners, spammers, etc.

PETER: The few bad apples such as spammers spoil all our fun but sometimes the entire swarm is spoiled. I think people have learned from the mistakes of the past. Most is self-correcting and self-policing. Many just withdraw from a community when they don't like it, making it self-correcting. I'm quite an optimist.

SCOTT: So am I. I have to say that the swarm on MySpace is self-protecting, keeping off bad programming. I don't know the answer, but I feel that MySpace is populated by so many teenagers, making it a problem. I think it'll work out it's own problems, though.

MODERATOR: Allowing more content to be posted on your sites by the hive is labor-intensive.

SCOTT: You could create a site like Wikipedia and let users create and update it.

PETER: In our case we had to change our community model and start asking for registration in our second version of a website to limit users to a higher quality.

MODERATOR: I wonder if the verification letters required on some sites was a hive-generated concept.

PETER: I think it was a professor who developed the "captcha" algorithm. It's again a great example of the power of the swarm.

MODERATOR: Regarding prediction markets where large groups of people steer decision making on a large scale such as in the stock market, how about using prediction markets in medicine? An op-ed in today's WSJ basically argues that Congress needs to back prediction markets for the gambling industry.

SCOTT: A lot of the ways in which prediction markets could be used turns our stomachs. The military had to take down one model because Congress said it was immoral. But whether you like it or not, it still proves the point about the value of collective intelligence.

MODERATOR: The article talks about a lot cases. A consensus plan suggests that a safe harbor will encourage experimentation. The goal is to allow the federal government to have prediction markets. I'd like to move to my last point on altruism, people releasing copyrights and companies letting go of trademarks. Everything we've covered in the coolhunt seems to say that if you drop your protection and let things go, you'll be better off.

SCOTT: There's a growing recognition for the need to consider stakeholder rather than shareholder value. This is a first step toward altruism. It's a step in the right direction.

PETER: It's a great starting point. The point is that all those communities are driven to a certain extent by altruism. The programmers are motivated by recognition of their peers, and ultimately the well-paying jobs. Prediction markets only work if you have real skin in the game, if you have a stake at risk. In the SpineConnect case they hope to start a company with their
altruistic endeavors. You need to have a healthy respect for your own well-being as well as be concerned with the well-being of the entire society.

SCOTT: Aristotle said "For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it."

MODERATOR: We've been speaking for the past month with Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper, the very generous authors of Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing. Gary Michael Smith, professor at the University of New Orleans, has transcribed our journey to over a hundred websites, and has posted them at http://swarmcreativity.blogspot.com/. Any final words
gentlemen?

PETER: This has been an extremely enriching experience.

SCOTT: I'd like also to add Rachelle to the list to thank.

MODERATOR: We're going to post some of the documents from this campaign to give those who are interested the opportunity to view them. I'd like to thank everyone for listening and invite them to comment.

Copyright Notice: Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this log as long as the contents are not altered and this notice is intact.

Thank you.

Coolhunts for 4/16/07 to 5/11/07

May 10, 2007 11:58 PM
Monday, April 16, 2007

New York Times online
http://www.nytimes.com

Technorati
http://www.technorati.com

Treehugger
http://www.treehugger.com

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Micropersuasion
http://www.micropersuasion.com

Twitter
http://twitter.com/steverubel/statuses/26737381

Who Is Sick?
http://whoissick.org/sickness/

HealthMap
http://healthmap.org/

Open Directory Project
http://www.dmoz.org

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

They Rule
http://www.theyrule.net

Free Beer
http://www.freebeer.org/blog/

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Creative Commons
http://www.creativecommons.org

Innocentive
http://www.innocentive.com

Rite Solutions
http://RiteSolutions.com

Friday, April 20, 2007

Galaxy Advisors
http://www.galaxyadvisors.com

IMDB
http://www.imdb.com

TeCFlow
http://www.ickn.org/ickndemo

Digg
http://www.digg.com

Monday, April 23, 2007

O'Reilly Radar
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/03/freebase_will_p_1.html

Mashable
http://www.mashable.com/

MySpace is Better Than Porn
http://mashable.com/2007/04/20/myspace-porn/

Pete Cashmore post
http://mashable.com/2007/04/21/web-startups-and-the-lying-liars-that-lie-about-them/

Yub
http://www.yub.com/

Prosper
http://www.prosper.com/

Daugter needs to take summer college classes Max State Int.
http://prosper.com/lend/listing.aspx?listingID=124674

Groups
http://www.prosper.com/groups/

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

New York Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/technology/23link.html

Wikipedia, Virginia Tech incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_Massacre

BostonNOW
http://www.bostonnow.com/

Assignment Zero
http://zero.newassignment.net/

JoVE: Journal of Visual Experiments
http://www.jove.com

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

O'Reilly Radar
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04/thoughts_on_the.html

Hive-Mind Backyard Beekeeping
http://www.hive-mind.com/bee/blog/2007/04/beekeeping-and-hive-mind.html

Debian.org
http://www.debian.org/

Debian Social Contract
http://www.debian.org/social_contract

Constitution
http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution

SpineConnect
http://spineconnect.syndicom.com/

Thursday, April 26, 2007

InTrade
http://www.intrade.com

U.S. Politics section of InTrade
http://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/contractSearch/

Hollywood Stock Exchange
http://hsx.com/

Iowa Electronic Markets
http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/

Slashdot
http://slashdot.org/

Blog post about the stock option crisis at Apple
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/07/04/24/2134257.shtml

Friday, April 27, 2007

We Feel Fine
http://wefeelfine.org/

Trip Advisor
http://www.tripadvisor.com/

Citizendium
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page

UNcyclopedia
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Monday, April 30, 2007

Read/WriteWeb
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tripadvisor_the.php

New York Times Online, Got Roomfulls of Stuff? Now sites will help keep track of it
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/technology/30ecom.html?th&emc=th

Tuscaloosa News
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/technology/30ecom.html?th&emc=th

Zebo
http://www.zebo.com/

Groups tab
http://member.zebo.com/Main?event_key=DIAL&execCode=FGRP

Get Free Get Wild
http://groups.zebo.com/getfreegetwild

Michael profile
http://www.zebo.com/8272628

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Zebo
http://www.zebo.com/

GoLoco
http://www.goloco.org/

Minggl
http://www.minggl.com/

Kyte TV
http://www.kyte.tv/home/index.html

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Dailytech
http://www.dailytech.com/AACS+Key+Censorship+Leads+to+First+Internet+Riot/article7129.htm

MediaVidea
http://mediavidea.blogspot.com/2007/05/day-on-planet-of-digg.html

China google censorship
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/magazine/23google.html?ex=1303444800&en=9721027e105631bf&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

38pitches
http://38pitches.com/

Thursday, May 3, 2007

The Wall Street Journal online
http://online.wsj.com/public/us

The Financial Times of London
http://www.ft.com/home/us

All Things Digital
http://allthingsd.com/

NOLA.com
http://www.nola.com/

The Boston Globe
http://www.bostonglobe.com/

Boston-online.com
http://www.boston-online.com/Blogs/

OpinionJournal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/

TheWashingtonPost.com
http://www.thewashingtonpost.com/

Friday, May 4, 2007

The New York Times, Are Book Reviewers Out of Print?
http://www.nytimes.com/

Emerging Writers
http://emergingwriters.typepad.com/

Bookslut
http://www.bookslut.com/blog/

ElegantVariation
http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/

Curledup
http://www.curlup.com/

Shelfari
http://www.shelfari.com/

BookExpo America
http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/

PublishingTrends
http://www.publishingtrends.com/

Bookcrossing
http://bookcrossing.com/

Monday, May 7, 2007

Hybrid Vigor
http://hybridvigor.net/

Cooperation Commons
http://cooperationcommons.org/

Alliance for Discovery
http://breakthroughdiscoveries.org/

The Peer to Peer Foundation
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Main_Page

Howard Rheingold
http://rheingold.com/

MIT Media Lab and Architecture departments
http://mobile.mit.edu/

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Forrester Research
http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2007/04/forresters_new_.html

Boredom Drives Open Source Developers
http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/05/07/1235250.shtml

Forbes Special Report on Networks: Community
http://www.forbes.com/2007/04/18/immigration-charity-religion-lead-cz_tp_07networks_0419community_land.html

Xanga
http://www.xanga.com/

Post about shoplifters at Wal-Mart
http://www.xanga.com/TheTheologiansCafe/589173273/i-am-a-thief--i-stole-from-walmart.html

TechNews
http://technews.acm.org/current.cfm#310579

Samuel Bowles
http://www.santafe.edu/~bowles/

Science Magazine last December
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/314/5805/1569

ArXiv
http://www.arxiv.org

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

TechCrunch
http://www.techcrunch.com/

ZoomInfo
http://www.zoominfo.com/

Spock
http://www.spock.com/

Wink
http://wink.com/

google belgium yahoo
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070503/tc_afp/belgiumusinternet

copyright
http://www.afp.com/english/links/?pid=copyright

ZDnet
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070503/wr_nm/belgium_google_dc

Democratizing Innovation
http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

Thursday, May 10, 2007

SpineConnect Demo
https://demo.spineconnect.com/sc/app

SOLAS XLIF Discussion link
https://demo.spineconnect.com/sc/groupinfo.svc?groupId=72

Possible XLIF with decompression?
https://demo.spineconnect.com/sc/case.svc?contentId=1187

Add a Case
https://demo.spineconnect.com/sc/CaseType.page

Friday, May 11, 2007

David Pogue, Asking the Crowd to Spread the News
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/asking-the-crowd-to-spread-the-news/

Apple Store
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore

Coolhunting Amazon ratings
http://www.amazon.com/Coolhunting-Chasing-Down-Next-Thing/dp/0814473865/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-2487262-1981740?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178920742&sr=8-1

Gramophone Magazine blogs and forums
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/forum.asp

Kathy Sierra, Creating Passionate Users
http://headrush.typepad.com/

Tim O’Reilly, Lessons Learned So Far
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04/code_of_conduct.html

Word of Mouth Marketing Association
http://womma.org/

Coolhunt Log #19 - Thursday, May 10, 2007

May 10, 2007 11:42 PM
Coolhunt Log #19
Thursday, May 10, 2007

On Stage:
Scott Cooper, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Peter Gloor, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Raymond Miles, Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the Haas Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations Group, University of California - Berkeley
Scott Capdevielle, CEO and Founder of Syndicom and SpineConnect
Steve O'Keefe, moderator

MODERATOR: I'm calling from my business office in New Orleans. Could you tell us where you're calling from?

PETER: I'm calling from my home office in Switzerland.

SCOTT: I'm calling from my home office in Newton Highlands, MA.

MODERATOR: We have two special guests with us today. Raymond Miles is Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the Haas Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations Group at the University of California at Berkeley. We also have Scott Capdevielle who is CEO and Founder of Syndicom and SpineConnect. Ray and Steve, can you tell us where you're calling from?

SCOTT C: I'm calling from Derango, CO.

RAY: I'm calling from my office at the Haas School of Business in Berkeley, CA.

SCOTT C: We're going to start with a website that we've built to help surgeons connect with one another. I can give the user name and password so those following along can log in. This is our demo server. Direct your browser to www.demo.spineconnect.com/sc. Log in using "demouser" and "password."

WEB: https://demo.spineconnect.com/sc/app

SCOTT C: I was a student at Berkeley and started reading books on organizational design, and I kept running into books by Ray Miles. After reading one particular book I became enamored with the concept so I looked him up and went to his office. Finding him sitting there at his desk we starting talking, and he ended up becoming a consultant to my company and a mentor to me. I started working on a concept later and came to Ray with some needs I saw about being an entrepreneur. Roadblocks I saw included the fact that innovators were at a tremendous disadvantage when they were working with a large company. So back in 2000, Ray was trying to understand why open source software organizations were out performing groups who kept their information more concealed.

RAY: We saw that when knowledge was freely exchanged everyone prospered more.

PETER: As a recent example, we found that the more companies collaborated over the course of a year the higher their productivity and high levels of success.

MODERATOR: so what you're saying is that When there's networking across and between corporations, the performance exceeded those of the more closed off ones?

SCOTT C: What Ray discovered back then is that there's a new organizational form. I wanted to know if I could apply that to medicine, and we chose spine surgery. Orthopedics is the fastest growing medical field in terms of innovation. We had to figure out what would be an appropriate way to use open source. Historically, "Hallway Consult" is the way info was transferred among professionals.

MODERATOR: Can you show us how people interact with this software?

SCOTT C: Click on the Groups link at the top of the page. We find that primary growth is through the fellowship program. this site has become popular when fellows have finished their 1-year training but want to stay connected. Click on the Browse button on the left panel and click on Browse Group. Then click on Cleveland Clinic. Then you can submit a request to join this group. You can also create your own group by clicking on the second button, "create a group," in the left panel.

SCOTT: Thus far, it appears that these are largely communities of practice. Peter and I have recently been discussing differences between COINs and communities of practice. I'm curious: what innovations have emerged from the collaboration among these groups and surgeons?

SCOTT C: What we recognized is that if we wanted to create a collaborative network, we had to get the members together first. Once you create a group you can invite members by sending an invitation. When you look at a member's profile you see their training, interests, and other groups they're members of. Back to the menu bar, select Groups, then click on the SOLAS XLIF Discussion link.

WEB: https://demo.spineconnect.com/sc/groupinfo.svc?groupId=72

SCOTT C: We've created a "Technology Fellowship" page here because we understand that people learn more effectively by being trained by their peers. SOLIS is a society and XLIF is a product and a procedure.

MODERATOR: It stands for eXtreme Lateral Interbody Fusion, which sounds painful.

SCOTT C: When you first join, you need to go through the training, then you're free to post your case to get the feedback from the expert doctors who have driven the technology. Now, click on the case "Possible XLIF with decompression?"

WEB: https://demo.spineconnect.com/sc/case.svc?contentId=1187

SCOTT C: What you see here is a surgeon describing his patient in much detail. You can view case the specifics of his case, as well as x-rays, right there by clicking in the proper section on the site. Participants will discuss the case and how they would approach the it if it were theirs.

RAY: This is appropriate collaborative behavior conducted on the web, which had to be learned since doctors were not use to collaborating using this technology.

MODERATOR: How has it been received by users?

SCOTT C: People have been excited about creating a network of supporting peers. Surgeons are doing more cases because they're getting more confidence by hearing more feedback from their peers.

PETER: How do you get participation?

SCOTT C: There's no reward in the open community. Fundamentally, when people reach a certain level in their career, they get success by sharing their knowledge.

RAY: Scott and his group recognized themselves as examples of excellent consultation. There was recognition, but it was coming from Scott and his group, which was very useful early on, but it carried over to surgical colleagues once they saw the usefulness of this site. Now, appreciation for the site -- and the consequent recognition -- has been growing and has become the norm across the group.

SCOTT C: The surgeons now are coming to us with queries about new applications, so we created a research tool. We wanted to know where we could improve, and the users opened up to their communities. It is important for data collection and reporting to be useful. Go to Add a Case on the left side, select the Private Group radio button, then Continue. This page allows you to add images and files.

WEB: https://demo.spineconnect.com/sc/CaseType.page

SCOTT C: In one situation, a doctor posted his case here and was contacted by someone who currently was reviewing a peer-reviewed research paper on the topic. He gave useful, unpublished, information that probably helped the patient greatly avoid a potentially dangerous and painful surgery. So far we have 10 patents in various stages of submittal for spinal implant treatments and devices. We created a process and methodology to enable teams to form to create patents rapidly. So now we have mechanical engineers with medical device experience involved, as well as patent attorneys, at a cost of less than $1,000 per patent. It's a manual process right now that had to be architected via software and currently is in a design phase. The allocation of equity is part of the software.

RAY: These Colab Comm (surgeons and other skills) have behaved pretty much as we thought they would and they do agree on the distribution of shares. The contributions of the team leads everyone to behave correctly in the allocation of equity. This is becoming model behavior, and we had predicted that this would be emergent -- that collaborative communities would develop the capability to behave in their relationships.

PETER: Who brings in the other experts such as lawyers and technicians?

SCOTT C: I've gone out and talked with dozens of patent attorneys and mechanical engineers to find those with an entrepreneurial mind and attitude. And I've been introduced to the surgical community by others as well. We envision creating a learning community and connecting everyone. Our community is a qualified open community.

PETER: You need 10 years of training just to understand the language.

MODERATOR: Right. Some of the names of the links are such that I can't even figure out what they are about.

PETER: Even looking at programmer's open source community sites, they seem pretty rude to outsiders.

SCOTT: At what point in the innovation process do you find that those involved begin to want to protect their property?

SCOTT C: A venture comes to me typically, and I agree to facilitate a round of interviews with all essential personnel required to take this to submit a patent. I ask the inventor to divide the pie and figure out how much work and what kind of work and complexity is going to be involved.

SCOTT: Do you have any instances of innovation where there's no desire for remuneration?

SCOTT C: I had a knee surgeon come to me about these plates that he uses as standard equipment. He wanted to create his own plate and didn't care if he made any money. He just wanted to stop paying $1,000 for something that should cost $50.

SCOTT: Have there been any discussion of a creative commons approach to some of these innovations?

SCOTT C: You could use the knee plate example and our own example of developing commodity products where patents have expired. We're a small company and doing what we can to keep on our core mission. We'll probably open more in the future to a creative commons format.

RAY: What Syndicom has done is take what we've anticipated would happen and make it happen. Within a domain where everyday behavior was different, it has changed to be more collaborative. These are true collaborative communities where innovation develops. You're tapping into the creativity of the community in a much more generous way than what's happened in the past.

PETER: This seems to be one of the most advanced social communities I've seen. While the software may be nothing more than a beefed up version of a Yahoo group, true innovation has grown from it. I'm wondering if all this trust building is because they know one another only online or is it because they've known each other from face-to-face acquaintances at conferences?

SCOTT C: We've actually seen surgeons who have shared cases online but haven't met until a conference. In our second year now we've seen surgeons go abroad and do surgeries with donated equipment. When they leave, the surgeries go back to the way they were done prior to the surgeons' visits. But we're now trying to change this by having surgeons train others abroad using our software.

MODERATOR: Have you done anything to address language issues for international doctors.

SCOTT C: No, to date everything has been in English, but we haven't had any problem since English seems to be a common language among surgeons.

MODERATOR: How about remote surgery?

SCOTT C: We have one customer who has asked about his, and we might approach that in the future. But our current process really just augments current procedures.

RAY: We had not found anything like Syndicom, so when we wrote our book we created a fictional company. So what Syndicom has done is to become this company -- in real life.

GARY: Are there any plans to create a print version anthology of particularly interesting cases that can be researched and read at a glance, such as the knee plate case or the one where the patient avoided the dangerous and painful surgery? This could prevent surgeons from having to sift through so many cases.

SCOTT C: Good question. We actually do put out an email newsletter to highlight cases. Also, a couple surgeons have approached me to publish a compendium of cases.

MODERATOR: We are out of time. Thank you, Scott, Peter, and our special guests Ray Miles and Scott Capdevielle. Listeners, please post your comments to the blog -- whether they're about any connection problems you're experiencing or commentary on the subject of today's coolhunt. The transcript of today's coolhunt will be posted with previous ones at The Swarm Creativity Blog: http://swarmcreativity.blogspot.com/. Join us on Friday for the next installment of our live, online coolhunt with Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper.

Copyright Notice: Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this log as long as the contents are not altered and this notice is intact.

Thank you.

Coolhunt Log #18 - Wednesday, May 9, 2007

May 10, 2007 11:28 PM
Coolhunt Log #18
Wednesday, May 9, 2007

On Stage:
Scott Cooper, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Peter Gloor, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Steve O'Keefe, moderator

MODERATOR: I'm calling from my home office in New Orleans. Could you tell us where you're calling from?

PETER: I'm calling in today from my home office in Switzerland.

SCOTT: I'm calling from my home office in Newton Highlands, MA.

MODERATOR: I'd like to encourage everyone to see the review of Coolhunting in the Wall Street Journal. Any comments on the review from the authors?

SCOTT: Wow! I like that it's above the fold. I like that it also reviews Chasing Cool, and uses our book to talk about the misconceptions of the other book. They mention how we differ from the marketer authors of the other book by our different definition of "cool." And even though we never mention Jessica Simpson in our book, it's nice that the reviewer points out that our definition of cool would have nothing to do with someone like her.

MODERATOR: It also mentions Paris Hilton as another example of what the crowd wants to see the most of, although it may not really be what the crowd wants. Did anyone post any messages yesterday?

PETER: I posted a comment at Forrester Research, sent a message to the editor at Forbes, emailed Sam Bowles soliciting a comment, and I couldn't think of what to send to Xanga.

MODERATOR: We have some special guests tomorrow, don't we Scott?

SCOTT: We coolhunted to SpineConnent, and Scott Capdevielle contacted us and offered to give us a tour of his website. His mentor was Ray Miles of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and Ray should be a guest as well. Today, we're going to TechCrunch.

WEB: http://www.techcrunch.com/

SCOTT: We'll scroll down to the article War of the People Search. Michael Arrington is a blogger we've mentioned before. I'm very interested in talking about how the use of people searching on the web fits in with what we've been talking about. We're writing another book and are very interested in this topic.

PETER: Mike is probably the most popular bloggers in the web 2.0 environment. He is an influential trendsetter.

SCOTT: He's a coolhunter and a coolfarmer.

PETER: Exactly. You can read his posts and reactions to posts, and see that he's very positive. He mentions the CEOs of search companies such as ZoomInfo.

WEB: http://www.zoominfo.com/

SCOTT: Let's search Peter Gloor in ZoomInfo.

MODERATOR: We noticed that there's no way to comment on the Wall Street Journal's book review of Coolhunting. We need to talk later about online copyright law. Back to ZoomInfo, we notice that the site matches names with job titles and companies.

PETER: You'll notice that there's a number of Peter Gloors because it's a very common name. I'm the fifth one, but one even states that he's not the Peter Gloor at MIT.

MODERATOR: So, about half of these are you but the profiles have not been consolidated into one profile?

PETER: That's correct.

MODERATOR: ZoomInfo is not user-generated content. Profiles are created by ZoomInfo and contain numerous references that they hope are correctly associated with the correct person.

PETER: They must be using statistical information to find information. I think they are doing an extremely good job putting together a conhesive, comprehensive history.

MODERATOR: While you see Peter's PhD and Master's studies work, my name only shows the grade school I attended, which I still think is amazing.

SCOTT: In the second paragraph of Michael Arrington's blog is the article You're nobody until. . . . It's funny and sad about a woman who is an epidemiologist who added her husband's name and fell off the face of the virtual earth. ZoomInfo is a fabulous way to get basic information.

MODERATOR: One of the reasons ZoomInfo an important site is because the swarm puts it there by popularity among browsers.

SCOTT: If you click About, then go to About Michael Arrington, the first link PANEL, you go to another story by Askteruck. It says he cuts through marketing BS to modernize the people search, and Google is probably looking at these engines to see which one it wants to buy. There's a fascinating slide by a guy named Dustin, a link to Facebook data. It takes us to Flickr that shows the slide getting six hundred million searches per month!

PETER: It is all about social networks, us being social creatures, and us using the web to find out about it. Thirty percent of all searches are about people.

SCOTT: Now let's go to Spock. What's interesting about Spock is that it makes it possible to tag people, adding keywords, to enhance profile searchability.

WEB: http://www.spock.com/

PETER: Compare wikipedia and ZoomInfo: Wikipedia shows that people can correct mistakes, whereas in ZoomInfo the information stays forever. My hunch is that there is a correction way but only by writing to ZoomInfo to ask them to make a correction. In one case, a professor was labeled as a movie director when in fact he only made a 3-minute film years ago. It took him two years to get Wikipedia to change it because they thought he was trying to take away someone's credential.

MODERATOR: Great article about the bad article problem at Amazon regarding correcting bad data, which seems to hang around a long time. I've tried to get negative comments removed from Amazon but it's remarkably difficult. Last year, all the anonymous reviewers' names were revealed for about 2 days at amazon.ca. Journalists discovered this and downloaded enormous
examples of authors glowing about their own books.

PETER: This is a great example of the power of transparency. Such examples make people much better behaved.

MODERATOR: The Arrington panel discussed the issue of how these databases get corrected, and it was mentioned that it's policed by the community.

PETER: I'm using the same effect in my class, a virtual mirror to every student so they can see how they're viewed by others.

MODERATOR: I just did an experiment by searching Michael Arrington in Wikipedia and ZoomInfo. At TechCrunch you'll see 151 profiles whereas Wikipedia has only one profile. ZoomInfo offers snippets of info. I hope we'll have time to talk about that copyright issue.

PETER: It occurs to me that all the ZoomInfo information may not be authorized. I notice my information may have been taken
from bio information that I've given at conferences.

MODERATOR: I put my picture on ZoomInfo because it looked like a valuable site for reputation management. I think this shows that people are more interested in the Internet for a) themselves and b) others in that order. It looks like ZoomInfo allows you to groom your own information more than Wikipedia -- the former inviting you to post information whereas the latter asks you not to. You're not supposed to add your own information on Wikipedia.

PETER: Enforcing the rule that someone else must write about you as in Wikipedia shows that another human being must feel that you're important enough to be written about. My hunch is that they have editors to whom others can complain if they feel something is incorrect.

MODERATOR: We don't mean to condemn Wink and Spock by not looking at them. We just don't have the time.

PETER: I actually tried Wink but was pretty disappointed because it didn't find me. And being a researcher in social networking, I know I left traces in MySpace, etc. so I feel I should have been found.

WEB: http://wink.com/

MODERATOR: I'm going into a discussion on copyright now. Go to Google to do a search by typing in "google belgium yahoo." The first and fourth results take you to the same place.

WEB: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070503/tc_afp/belgiumusinternet

MODERATOR: Now, go to the copyright link at the bottom of the page.

WEB: http://www.afp.com/english/links/?pid=copyright

MODERATOR: Google recently came to a settlement on this, linking to websites in Belgium. Papers in Belgium say that pointing people to articles in Belgium newspapers is a violation of copyright law. U.S. law says using snippets are fine, though. However, you can't make money from using others' snippets. Also, titles are not copyrightable. So the Belgians are saying that snippets are too much to use legally. The other article I wanted to take you to is on ZDnet. Type in "journalist at center of youtube case" in the search bar and you get 20,000 matching results -- none of which are the article.

WEB: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070503/wr_nm/belgium_google_dc

SCOTT: I put "journalist center YouTube Case" and I found it as the 8th or 10th article.

MODERATOR: This is a helicopter videojournalist who had some of his content put on YouTube without his permission. He was the first to sue YouTube for copyright infringement. The decision in this case could dramatically shape precedent of such cases. You can see a discussion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This is a very interesting case where Google is saying it
has the right to post what it wants.

PETER: I'm on Google's side here.

SCOTT: Me too.

PETER: It's such much more valuable if we can get access to information. But the journalist is afraid of losing market value but really is giving them more visibility, making them more accessible. It's altruism. I once discovered in a website that someone had cut up one of my books, scanned it in, and put it on their website. I ended up linking to this site.

SCOTT: We've talked about this other time -- how giving things away for free can have great value. Our colleague at MIT, Eric von Hippel, put his highly successful book Democratizing Innovation online for free download, and it hasn't hurt the sales. He also has an earlier book from 1998 on his website, also downloadable for free.

WEB: http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

MODERATOR: SethGodon.com sold 20,000 hardback copies of a self-published book that he posted online. It'll be interesting to see if publishers will become more altruistic in the future.

SCOTT: Peter and I have been talking a lot about -- for want of a better word -- altruism in business. Altruism is not far from self-interest in this regard. We believe that if you give away, you'll reap benefits. One of the principles we incorporate in coolhunting is to gain power by giving power away.

MODERATOR: Letting go of content can actually increase value.

PETER: Ecofarms combines making lots of money while trying to make the world a better place.

GARY: If we could take a minute before we end this coolhunt I'd like to go back to Wink.com. Type in "Gary Michael Smith" then "New Orleans" for location. I notice that 19 of the 20 links are actually me. Why so many?

SCOTT: It seems to be culling information from Google and other search engines since it's not really giving personal information such as what schools you attended, where you worked, etc. But I notice that the Gary Michael Smith I've been working with on these coolhunts over the past month is the same Gary Michael Smith who wrote a book I bought for a friend.

GARY: That has to be The Peer-Reviewed Journal about setting up the editorial office of a peer-reviewed scientific specialty research journal.

SCOTT: No, actually it's The Complete Guide to Driving Etiquette.

MODERATOR: We are out of time. Thank you, Scott. We've been talking today with Scott Cooper and Peter Gloor, co-authors of Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing. We also were joined by Gary Michael Smith, our transcriptionist who also is author of several books. Listeners, please post your comments to the blog -- whether they're commentary on the subject of today's coolhunt or about any connection problems you've experienced. The transcript of today's coolhunt will be posted with previous ones at The Swarm Creativity Blog: http://swarmcreativity.blogspot.com/. Join us Thursday for the next installment of our live, online coolhunt with Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper and our special guests Raymond Miles, former dean of the Haas Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations Group at UC Berkeley and Scott Capdevielle, CEO and founder of Syndicom and SpineConnect.

Copyright Notice: Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this log as long as the contents are not altered and this notice is intact.

Thank you.

Coolhunt Log #17 - Tuesday, May 8, 2007

May 8, 2007 10:55 PM
Coolhunt Log #17
Tuesday, May 8, 2007

On Stage:
Scott Cooper, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Peter Gloor, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Gary Smith, moderator

MODERATOR: I’d like to welcome everyone to today’s coolhunt for Tuesday, May 8. We are hosting daily conference calls with the authors of Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing published by Amacom Books. You can view logs of previous Coolhunts at The Swarm Creativity blog at swarmcreativity.blogspot.com. On stage today is Scott Cooper and Peter Gloor, MIT research affiliates with the Sloan School of Management, and co-authors of Coolhunting—Chasing Down the Next Big Thing. I’m Gary Smith and I’ll be moderating today’s Coolhunt. Authors, can you identify yourselves so we’ll know your voice and tell us where you’re calling from today?

PETER: I'm Peter Gloor and I'm calling in today from my home office in Switzerland.

SCOTT: I'm Scott Cooper and I'm calling in today from my home office in Newton Highlands, MA.

MODERATOR: I'd like to remind everyone of the rules of the Coolhunt. We do at least one site, one blog post, one comment on another blog, and try to make one personal connection via email or phone. This is the final week of our 4-week program. I’m going to mute the audience now to keep down any potential background noise, but listeners can make comments by pressing 6 to unmute themselves. Peter is going to start the coolhunt today, so where are you going to take us first?

PETER: Today we're going to look at social networks, particularly how altruistic they can be. A good starting point is the Forrester Research blog. Charlene Li has come up with a way of grouping everyone on the web by activity: 52% are inactive, another 33% are spectators (such as going to YouTube to watch videos), and there are 19% who will go to FaceBook or other social networking sites.

WEB: http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2007/04/forresters_new_.html

SCOTT: I recently read an article on Slashdot that stated the reason that 52% is inactive is because they're not bored.

PETER: They have better things to do!

SCOTT: The article stated that a lot of the collaboration that happens on the web can all be traced back to the boredom levels of the people who are involved. I don't really believe that, but I thought it was funny. I can see the headline: "Boredom Drives Open Source Developers."

WEB: http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/05/07/1235250.shtml

PETER: If you scroll down a little bit on the Forrester article, you see the motivation for people to become creative thinkers. At the highest level, 13% of all web users publish their own web page or blog, or post videos on YouTube, for example.

SCOTT: That 13% is comprised of online adult consumers in the United States, so these figures are not worldwide. And, according to Li, to become a creator simply means you have to do one of these things one time within a 1-month period. It's still a very high number, but it's just a snapshot in time that someone did something once.

PETER: On the other hand, it's my experience that people who have done these activities once are usually repeat users. They might not go back to the same blog, and they might not like uploading videos, but they are active on the web because they have discovered how fun it is to be active. Let's go to the Forbes Special Report on "Networks: Community" and look at what types of people comprise that 13%.

WEB: http://www.forbes.com/2007/04/18/immigration-charity-religion-lead-cz_tp_07networks_0419community_land.html

PETER: For example, we have self-help groups, and the largest group network of all, the church, as well as other charitable networks. As Scott and I have said many times, networking is not new. It's as old as man. Thanks to the Internet, it has become more global and much easier to network with each other.

PETER: Here’s an example of old-fashioned face-to-face networking. When a new member of a church needed a dentist, she solicited recommendations from her fellow parishioners. She got 30 or 40 recommendations, and they were all highly personalized. This is a very practical, hands-on way of coolhunting.

SCOTT: That's just like something I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, where I was looking at online reviews of a local Chinese restaurant, versus the official newspaper review.

PETER: The point is, if you know your friend’s tastes, then his recommendation becomes much more valuable than a stranger's. If I read the blog of a total stranger, I have no idea what he likes. If I talk with my friend whose taste I know and trust, his recommendations carry a much higher weight.

PETER: Another interesting thing on the Forbes page is that you can vote on your favorite networking site. We have looked at a few of them so far throughout this month of coolhunting. Even more interesting, you can view the results. I found the Xanga site to be very interesting.

WEB: http://www.xanga.com/

PETER: If you're interested in what a large population of people thinks about a topic, you can post about it here and wait for a comment. For example, let's look at this recent post about shoplifters at Wal-Mart.

WEB: http://www.xanga.com/TheTheologiansCafe/589173273/i-am-a-thief--i-stole-from-walmart.html

PETER: In one day, this post has received more than 140 comments. There is a range of comments in support of the concept and also against it. Now, I would like to talk a little bit more about people collaborating in social networks, and the altruistic uses for networking. Let's look at an article on kidney donors.

WEB: http://technews.acm.org/current.cfm#310579

PETER: This is a great example of the power of large networks. As you might know, there are potentially many more people needing kidneys than are available for transplant. What this professor has figured out is a way of matching people who are willing to donate a kidney with potential recipients. He has figured out an algorithm for this. This is incredible because it means survival for thousands more people. It's an example of a very altruistic use of social networking -- using it for the greater good.

PETER: As our last stop on today's coolhunt, I'd like to take a look at research by Samuel Bowles, Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute.

WEB: http://www.santafe.edu/~bowles/

PETER: Let's look at his paper that was published in Science Magazine last December.

WEB: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/314/5805/1569

PETER: This is a description of his experiments where he has shown that altruism is good for mankind, which is not necessarily an obvious conclusion. What Bowles has done is proven mathematically that altruism is good. In his research, the individuals who survived were the ones who were willing to sacrifice themselves in order to ensure survival of the other members of the tribe. He's proving, genetically, that groups that have an altruistic gene have a better chance of surviving than the ones that are trying to cheat each other.

PETER: He defines different levels of altruism, and for each he defines mathematical properties of what is needed to succeed. He models different types of behavior in groups of people, the groups where members of the team behave altruistically to each other; they do better in their activities.

SCOTT: We're still working these ideas out, but we discuss them in a recent article in the Sloan School of Management magazine -- the ideas of doing what's good, getting power by giving it away, concentrating on the swarm rather than focusing on making money. All of these are altruistic ways of doing business. The term "altruistic" has a certain connotation to people and when used in a business sense, it is incorrectly perceived.

PETER: Perhaps we need another word. "Swarm business" might be a good way of describing it. For example, Novartis, a pharmaceutical company, who instead of giving severance packages to employees it laid off gave them capital to fund startup biotech companies.

MODERATOR: This is a novel approach. But how would altruism play out in more competitive fields, such as scientific publishing where researchers careers -- and lives -- are contingent on getting that big NIH grant because of some cutting-edge research they just published in a peer-reviewed scientific research journal? If someone else gets hold of their research and publishes it in a journal that has a faster receipt to publication turnaround time than the one to which they submitted, they could end up having to go back into private practice to survive.

PETER: That’s an excellent point.

SCOTT: I don't have data to back up what I'm about to say, but it's an educated hunch. Two things are changing it. The idea behind Creative Commons, a willingness to share very widely in exchange simply for the recognition that it's your work. It doesn't get stolen. You don't worry about remuneration and proprietary concerns. Also, the new generation of scientific researchers is comprised of kids who've grown up in this world of social networking. There's a generational clash between the 60-year-old professor, wanting to keep his research secret, and the lab post-doctorals who have a completely different view of the world. They get online. For example, see ArXiv, at Cornell.

WEB: http://www.arxiv.org

SCOTT: This is a place where scientific publishers can upload papers. Popularity is judged based on downloads of the papers.

MODERATOR: In this case, the researchers will get much more visibility and recognition than they would ever receive from publication of their paper in the print –- or even the online versions –- of a peer-reviewed journal.

We are out of time. Our Coolhunts take place daily, Monday through Friday, from 2 pm to 3 pm Eastern time in the United States. I’d like to thank Scott Cooper and Peter Gloor, co-authors of Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing. Listeners, please post your comments to the blog -- whether they're about commentary on the subject of today's coolhunt or any connection problems you experienced. The transcript of today's coolhunt will be posted with previous ones at The Swarm Creativity Blog: http://swarmcreativity.blogspot.com/. Join us on Wednesday for the next installment of our live, online coolhunt with Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper.

Thank you.

Copyright Notice: Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this log as long as the contents are not altered and this notice is intact.

Coolhunt Log #16 - Monday, May 7, 2007

May 7, 2007 9:26 PM | 2 Comments
Coolhunt Log #16
Monday, May 7, 2007

On Stage:
Scott Cooper, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Peter Gloor, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Steve O'Keefe, moderator

MODERATOR: I'd like to remind everyone of the rules of the Coolhunt. We do at least one site, one blog post, one comment on another blog, and try to make one personal connection via email or phone. This is the final week of our 4-week program. Last week we found that Mike's book reviews beat out the New York Times book reviews. Scott, were you able to post to any sites.

SCOTT: I posted a message either via email or by commenting on a blog to every site we visited on Friday.

MODERATOR: I'm calling in from Toronto today from Annick Press. Where are you two calling from today?

SCOTT: Today, I'm calling from my home office in Newton Highlands, MA.

PETER: I'm just returning from a conference in Greece. I'm back in my home office in Switzerland.

MODERATOR: Scott, where are you and Peter taking us today.

SCOTT: We're going to start at the Hybrid Vigor website, and their blog. This is a research organization that focuses on collaborative problem solving for research applications. You can see at the top of the page the five areas of focus: Earth Systems, Health Determinants, Interdisciplinary Practice, Human Perception, and Understanding Risk. The director, Denise Caruso, writes a "Re:framing" column in the New York Times Sunday Business section, and she's the author of a book titled Intervention. Here in her column, she mentions how The Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University is arts driven, similar to how the MIT Media Lab is media driven.

WEB: http://hybridvigor.net/

PETER: In the article, Red Burns makes a point on not wanting to use competitive people as researchers. She says the twin forces that fuel innovation at I.T.P. are collaboration and diversity. For instance, based on an analysis of four different organizations, two key criteria -- likeability and competence -- emerged as the basis for creating four employee "archetypes": the lovable fool, the competent jerk, the lovable star, and the incompetent jerk. While research shows that everyone wants to work with the lovable star, and nobody wants to work with the incompetent jerk, when faced with the choice between competent jerks and lovable fools a little extra likeability goes a longer way than a little extra competence in making someone desirable to work with. What matters is that you have competent skills and are able to work within a team.

MODERATOR: Peter's referring to the third article where Professor Burns talks of selflessness, which is brought up in the book. We think normally that this stimulates growth, but research shows us that this is not true.

SCOTT: It's very important what Burns says about about competitive people missing the periphery -- the broad swarm of collective intelligence out there.

PETER: There are people who can predict trends, whether or not they're considered "experts." Both experts and non-experts lead to much better results because they complement each other. Google has lots of prediction markers, and they're doing their own research now on prediction markers by using people who are very good at predicting.

SCOTT: Back at Hybrid Vigor, go to Cooperation Commons under Links on the home page. This is an interesting group similar to Hybrid Vigor, but they're actually coming together to study cooperation in collective action. Scroll down to see the signers Howard Rheingold and Andrea Saveri. Click on the About tab at the top of the page. Here's a brief explanation of the Cooperation, to determine how swarm creativity can be used to solve problems. Rheingold coined the phrase "virtual community." All this helps to produce materials geared to promulgate creativity. The blog on this site is particularly interesting.

WEB: http://cooperationcommons.org/

PETER: I'm reminded of another website called Alliance for Discovery. At the site, click on Overview to see Julian Gresser in his attempts to create COINS (Collaborative Innovation Networks) such as the Ten Cube Project. (Benjamin Franklin had developed a form of COINS.) Here's you'll see his discussion of COINS. He also talks about a new power source developed by COINS, illustrating the power of COINS. I had dinner with Julian, who's a lawyer, and I learned a little about his background.

WEB: http://breakthroughdiscoveries.org/

SCOTT: Back to Cooperation Commons, and click on Resources, then External Resources and The Peer to Peer Foundation. It looks like Wikipedia.

WEB: http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Main_Page

PETER: This is because an open source piece of software called Media Wiki.

SCOTT: This is another one of the driving theoretical concepts on the web. It encompasses human to human collaborative projects, coordinated under peer governance. Down toward the middle of the page you'll see a list of topics that are being discussed and collaborated on. Click on Topics, then Open Music Practices. The list of articles listed gives you an idea of the broad scope for collaborative effort involved.

PETER: This is the power of swarms. The fact that a conductor composed music in collaboration with others is rare because this usually is done by one person. But one conductor composed entire operas by collaborating with jazz musicians who got to know each other during travel, and who also were similar in their own genetic mindsets. I bought a CD and actually got an email from the publisher thanking me and telling me that I'm the tenth buyer of this $15 CD.

SCOTT: This peer to peer example is a teaser to encourage those following along to look at other similar sites.

MODERATOR: It's interesting that you can find forms and other information by those who are willing to share.

SCOTT: Back at Cooperative Commons, go to Meta Collab. As it says here "Meta Collab is an open research, meta collaboration (a collaboration on collaboration) with the aim to explore the similarities and differences in the nature, methods, and motivations of collaboration across any and every field of human endeavour."

PETER: Now the risk of running totally open is that you open yourself to spammers. This is why it's mandated that you have to create an account.

SCOTT: And anyone can create an account by typing in hidden text to show that you're not a machine. Now, click on the link "work towards the development of a general theory of collaboration." This is the open, collaborative research page for developing a general theory of collaboration (GTC).

PETER: Do you know if he's quoting the German philosopher Niklas Luhmann? One of his main works is "Social Systems" (Soziale Systeme) from the mid-1980s, which I believe is one of his few works translated into English.

SCOTT: Go now to some work I'm doing at MIT's Media Lab. But first, go to Rheingold's website. Read About Howard by clicking on the link under the picture.

WEB: http://rheingold.com/

MODERATOR: He's the founder of one of the first virtual communities in 1985.

SCOTT: I'd encourage everyone to explore all the many links on this page by Rheingold. Now, go to mobile.mit.edu. This is a relatively new research lab at MIT by both the Media Lab and Architecture departments. It addresses the ways in which people use mobile technology (cell phones) to redesign connections between people to build greater virtual communities to improve lives using these technologies. Now click on Projects to see the list beginning with Smart Mobility. This is the bus system of the future for social networking portals to order busses and invite people into their neighborhoods. It involves all sorts of technological solutions. Click on Elens. Now, click on "Elense web site." I think this is one of the coolest things anyone is doing at MIT. Frederico and colleagues have gone to Spain to empower teenagers with cell phones to tag buildings in towns, building a virtual community to upload messages to reguide people to have a completely different experience than traditional tours provide. Now go to Field Trial to see how this is building a virtual community of these teenagers, a different way to social network.

WEB: http://mobile.mit.edu/

PETER: Another theme for consideration is the topic "Is social networking hype over its peak or not?"

SCOTT: I think this deserves a lot more time to discuss, tomorrow perhaps.

MODERATOR: This coming Thursday we have a special presentation.

SCOTT: SpineConnect founder Scott Capdevielle will give us a virtual tour of how their COINS was started.

MODERATOR: We are out of time. Thank you, Scott and Peter. We've been talking today with the co-authors of Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing. Listeners, please post your comments to the blog -- whether they're about any connection problems you're experiencing or commentary on the subject of today's coolhunt. The transcript of today's coolhunt will be posted with previous ones at The Swarm Creativity Blog: http://swarmcreativity.blogspot.com/. Join us on Tuesday for the next installment of our live, online coolhunt with Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper.

Thank you.

Copyright Notice: Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this log as long as the contents are not altered and this notice is intact.

Coolhunt Log #15 - Friday, May 4, 2007

May 4, 2007 8:49 PM | 3 Comments
Coolhunt Log #15
Friday, May 4, 2007

On Stage: Scott Cooper, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Steve O'Keefe, moderator

MODERATOR: Could you tell us where you're calling from?

SCOTT: Today, I'm calling from my home office in Newton Highlands, MA.

MODERATOR: I'd like to remind everyone of the rules of the Coolhunt. We do at least one site, one blog post, one comment on another blog, and try to make one personal connection via email or phone.

SCOTT: We're going to start at The New York Times today at nytimes.com. Click on the Most Popular tab at the top of the page, then let's look at the Most Blogged column. The third item is "Are Book Reviewers Out of Print?" by Motoko Rich. It explains why you're seeing fewer and fewer book reviews, mainly because of social networking replacing formal book reviews. It says that Dan Wickett is a former quality-control manager for a car-parts maker wrote 95 book reviews on his blog, Emerging Writers Network. Whether or not it will impact book reviews is one question, but it still is yet another outlet for other information via social networking.

WEB: http://www.nytimes.com/

SCOTT: Emerging writers can be bestsellers based on these recommendations rather than on reviews by traditional book reviewers. See the Emerging Writers network at http://emergingwriters.typepad.com/.

WEB: http://emergingwriters.typepad.com/

MODERATOR: I'm going to suggest that this site is largely a labor of love, even though there is some paid advertising.

SCOTT: You can see a lot of nice quotes from authors. So despite that this is an amateur site, it is having an impact, as evidenced by the fact that he's the lead story in The New York Times.

MODERATOR: There are lots and lots of links, which increases the search engine position since engines find importance in the number of links to something. I'm trying to take a unique phrase from one of his reviews and see if it's located elsewhere when I perform a key word/phrase search. I'm copying a phrase into a Google search window with quotations and I find three
sites. I'm now using Google Blogs search engine to do this same. This is proving that, although his material may not be widespread, at least it is being syndicated. I'd be willing to say that our book reviewer here is not really particularly concerned about someone using his material on their site.

SCOTT: Back to the New York Times story, scroll down to the fourth paragraph. These links are to some of the sites that have become very influential. Go to Bookslut, which is an equivalent to an online magazine. See the blog at the top of the page.

WEB: http://www.bookslut.com/blog/

MODERATOR: You can tell that this site is developed by someone who appreciates the aesthetics of website development.

SCOTT: Now we're going to the site ElegantVariation. You can post on this blog, and it has become a darling of publishing companies. There's a Friday giveaway, using a random generator to select a winner.

WEB: http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/

MODERATOR: ARCs, or Advance Review Copies, primes the pump for early reviews. This has really grown with the public being fueled with free copies.

SCOTT: Go to Curledup.com. It shows that, while you may not appear in the Times, you may end up on Curledup.

WEB: http://www.curlup.com/

MODERATOR: Curledup is also supported by advertisers. Another way to gauge the impact of citizen reviews on overall reviews is to google a title to see its popularity. I'm going to type in "Age of Spiritual Machines," a book by Ray Kurzweil, also from MIT.

SCOTT: Put "Age of Spiritual Machines" in quotes, then add "Reviews."

MODERATOR: Amazon is the first review, because of the amount of traffic it experiences. You can scroll down to see Mike's Book Reviews, showing that his review evidently is more influential than the New York Times review, which could be because it's probably not restricted as much by copyright protection. But Mike probably also understands the use of tags to syndicate reviews, making his review more widely spread.

SCOTT: Let's go to Shelfari, which is a fascinating example of social networking. This is a way to social network with other readers all over the world to have discussions, post opinions, write reviews, etc.

WEB: http://www.shelfari.com/

MODERATOR: Let's go to Sample Shelf on the Start Exploring line at the top of the page.

SCOTT: Artemis_98 writes a great example, and you can read his entire posts here. This paradigm is interesting because you can reach out well beyond what you could do face to face.

MODERATOR: No longer do you have to be in the same city but you can also go online, make a phone call, or participate in a videocast to network to experience each other and the author in a more rich environment than ever before.

SCOTT: I learned about shelfari from someone who asked me if I was going to be at an upcoming event in New York. I looked online at the site for BookExpo America 2007 in New York City. Steve, you must know about this. Do you plan on going this year?

WEB: http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/

MODERATOR: I'll not only be there, as I have over the past 20 years, but I'll also be teaching there at the Publishers University.

SCOTT: On the site I noticed on the fifth link down in the center of the page, a story about Lance Fensterman titled "Blogging with BEA Director." Then I looked at the blog "Build Your Own BEA Event!" Here, I learned about Shelfari, which is a cool example of social networking, going from online to face to face. Lance encourages readers to recommend authors, then he creates an event at BEA based on recommendations. What's more cool than having authors on social networking being contacted because of social networking, to present at a function?

MODERATOR: There was quite a bit of grumbling from authors about them being signed up to blog early in the blogging phase, but now blogging on books has become quite popular. However, that doesn't necessarily affect book sales since the audience is different between those who read blogs from those who actually walk into bookstores.

SCOTT: It's often more interesting to me to read online about online issues, than to read about it elsewhere.

MODERATOR: On the other hand, publishers may be wise to figure out how to make available information from blogs to people who buy books and don't read blogs. The content could find a whole new market this way.

SCOTT: If you go back to the BEA site and see the My BEA section in the middle of the page, the "more" link takes you to another page titled "My BEA & Book Industry Characters." See PublishingTrends.com. There is an online social network of BEA attendees, so in advance of the event, people are given a chance to get to know each other. There was the MIT graduate
student who developed "end tags" that allows you to recognize when another member approaches. As they walked around at the conference, their tags alerted them to the fact they're near someone who has similar interests. The organizers at the conference added another function that allowed them to identify who the most important social networkers were, identifying trendsetters, to anticipate how the next conference would work.

WEB: http://www.publishingtrends.com/

MODERATOR: Next week will be our last week of the coolhunt, and we'll be exploring how many profiles a person can sustain since there are so many social networking sites. So I'd like to talk next week about how many profiles we have and how much time it takes. Go to Bookcrossing.com. It's like leaving books sitting on a park bench, hoping a finder will register it on the site. Today the number of books registered is approaching 4 million. You can gauge the international reach of the Internet from this site by the active participation. On the left hand navigation column go to Books, then Search Books and type in Wild Animus, which is supposed to be one of the worst books ever written. There are over 2,500 negative reviews on this site. It's fair to say that the swarm didn't care for it.

WEB: http://bookcrossing.com/

SCOTT: It's like movies that are so bad that you just have to see it because of the novelty.

MODERATOR: Now, click on the Forum tab, then Community and you'll see from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of posts.

MODERATOR: We are out of time. Thank you, Scott. We've been talking today with the co-author of Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing. Listeners, please post your comments to the blog -- whether they're about any connection problems you're experiencing or commentary on the subject of today's coolhunt. The transcript of today's coolhunt will be posted with previous ones at The Swarm Creativity Blog: http://swarmcreativity.blogspot.com/.
Join us on Monday for the next installment of our live, online coolhunt with Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper.

Thank you.

Copyright Notice: Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this log as long as the contents are not altered and this notice is intact.

Coolhunt Log #14 - Thursday, May 3, 2007

May 3, 2007 9:42 PM
Coolhunt Log #14
Thursday, May 3, 2007

On Stage:
Scott Cooper, MIT researcher with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Steve O'Keefe, moderator

MODERATOR: Could you tell us where you're calling from?

SCOTT: Today, I'm calling from my home office in Newton Highlands, MA.

MODERATOR: I'd like to remind everyone of the rules of the Coolhunt. We do at least one site, one blog post, one comment on another blog, and try to make one personal connection via email or phone.

MODERATOR: I'd like to mention that next week on the Coolhunt we're going to have a guest speaker with Syndicom's SpineConnect.

SCOTT: I'd like to report that I posted to dailytech and mediavidea, praising them for their reporting on the big story on Digg reversing its position on posting some antipiracy code. YouTube also spread the code via a video where one guy wrote a song
that included the code, and it has played more than 45,000 times. It appears that the code is being enshrined.

MODERATOR: Today we're starting our search on The Wall Street Journal online. We're looking at this because we looked at The New York Times yesterday and discussed how the news items often lead our coolhunts.

WEB: http://online.wsj.com/public/us

SCOTT: News organizations are scrambling to discover ways to stay viable. Last week the Boston Globe was so desperate that they were allowing advertisers to slap stickers onto their newspapers. Local news agencies now are asking viewers to send in cell phone videos for news stories. Newspapers have to refocus what they see as their mission. National news organizations are focusing more and more on local news, and The Wall Street Journal seems to be lagging behind in nonpaying content.

MODERATOR: In today's news Rupert Murdoch has offered a $60 stock price on The Wall Street Journal stock. Scroll down the page in the What's News column to the article beginning "Dow Jones's board took." This is one of the free articles about the $5 billion offer from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. You'd think that Murdoch would want the journal to change to make people pay for some articles while selling ads to offer other articles for free.

SCOTT: The Wall Street Journal does well financially with it's business model because it is the newspaper of record on business journalism.

MODERATOR: The Financial Times of London (http://www.ft.com/home/us) also charges for its online content, as do some other organizations. From the home page in the At a Glance box to the right and midway down, in the Most Popular column on the right there's an advice article on buying a laptop where Walter Mossberg gives some tips, both in the online article and in a video. However, there's no way to respond to the article. Allowing readers to comment allows a more robust community. Now, we'll see how The Wall Street Journal handles blogging. At the bottom of a post there are no comments. But The Wall Street Journal also offers many articles where blogging on them is not available.

SCOTT: There are 93 comments for the second one, but the visual presentation does not connote a vibrant community. It doesn't look dynamic visually.

MODERATOR: Also, you can't comment on a comment, or review and rate comments. But they do allow you to comment anonymously. Some even look as though they've been edited or truncated. It's not very Web 2.0 friendly. Now type in "All Things Digital" back in Google. This is a very sharp, colorful site and features Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher on the opening page. On this site you can add comments to the articles.

WEB: http://allthingsd.com/

SCOTT: This is fascinating. It makes you wonder if All Things Digital exists because journal reporters rebel against strictures of The Wall Street Journal, or maybe because The Wall Street Journal is sitting on the fence regarding print versus online content.

SCOTT: Scroll down to All Things Digital on the bottom panel and click on "Read more." This takes you to the About Us page. Down at the bottom left is a block beginning "Because the site is wholly owned. . . ."

MODERATOR: So it's very interesting that they mention that this is an autonomous start-up owned wholly by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

SCOTT: Do we know what would happen if we reposted something from here to another site.

MODERATOR: I think reposting might be bad, but linking to it would be educational.

SCOTT: I noticed some snootiness regarding their comment policy, insinuating that comment quality on blogs other than Dow Jones are of a lower quality. It seems a bit elitist.

MODERATOR: Now I'd like us to go to nola.com. We call it the website for the Times-Picayune, the paper of record for New Orleans.

WEB: http://www.nola.com/

SCOTT: It's like The Boston Globe at http://www.bostonglobe.com/, which can also be reached through http://www.boston.com/.

MODERATOR: Last year at the conference in New Jersey of the National Association of Online Journalists, online publications became a valuable means of news dissimination. After Hurricane Katrina, nola.com crashed many times because of heavy use. John Donnelly said at the conference that 80% of the readers for the print version don't use the online version, and that 80% of online readers don't use the print version. He summed it up that there are two kinds of people who want differing forms of news access.

SCOTT: That makes perfect sense. News organizations are making attempts to direct people to the online world. Note that evening network news broadcasts show that more can be read about news stories on their website. They're looking to get people from every direction.

SCOTT: I notice that here in Boston, channel 5 has been the award-winning serious network that directs you to online news stories. More and more, the reporters on TV are blogging on the websites.

MODERATOR: Notice on nola.com the blog by Walter Williams of Mr. Bill Saturday Night Live fame on the left near the bottom of the page. While he may not be popular enough to have a column in the print version of the Picayune, he has a blog here with the occasional comment. Back to the previous page leading to Mr. Bill, BLOGS & FORUMS, we'll view the full list of forums. You've seen the blogs, now see what the citizens are saying in the forums. You may have to enter profile information, which you wonder how accurate the data going in is, because personally I never enter the correct information on myself for age, gender, zip code, etc.

MODERATOR: Many of the social networking measurement devices, such as We Feel Fine, don't ask for information but rather cull it in an automated manner. Note that there are a number of comments nesting under comments on the Marigny/Bywater neighborhood, which is where my office is located. You'll see about 40 comments on our page here today. Post 11948 starts "Does anyone know who" from May 2, asking for removal of a dead cat under a house. You'll see here how many different pieces of advice this person gets from political philosopy to humor to Metro Disposal System website policy information. The point is that the feel and content of this forum, albeit localized, is citizen journalism, which is not even on the blog anymore. People are posting neighborhood surveillance information such as who's working on power lines, who looks suspicious, etc. It's a very interesting subculture.

SCOTT: Boston.com also has some good neighborhood blogs at boston-online.com, which is a directory showing numerous neighborhoods.

WEB: http://www.boston-online.com/Blogs/

MODERATOR: I'm going to take the link to forums to see if it's similar to the threaded ones on nola.com. There are discussion boards here, and you can get a sense of the traffic showing 2,805 topics and 50,740 posts from 1,038 registered users. Analysis of the numbers starts to reveal meaningful results.

SCOTT: We see in nola.com that this is real life going on.

MODERATOR: It's almost minute by minute. There are many questions regarding information that any city that's undergone disaster would see. It's a good referral networking system.

MODERATOR: Let's look at The Wall Street Journal opinion page called OpinionJournal, which is not accessible from The Wall Street Journal home page. This is a list of editorials, political diaries, etc. Just the Political Diary blog costs $3.95/month to find out what people are saying.

WEB: http://www.opinionjournal.com/

SCOTT: Note the sample editions of Political Diaries are over a year old.

MODERATOR: We have just enough time to go to TheWashingtonPost.com. You can access it without a subscription and there is some premium content available. Take the link to Capital Briefings, scrolling about midway down and in the center of the page under NEWS COLUMNS AND BLOGS. Paul Kane has a log dated today, only a couple hours old. You'll also see that there are two comments on the FCC fines piece. This shows broad-based comment participation.

WEB: http://www.thewashingtonpost.com/

SCOTT: One thing that the Washington Post does is a "politics blog" encouraging their bloggers into being talking heads on TV such as on MSNBC's Countdown to feed traffic both ways, on TV and online.

MODERATOR: We are out of time. Thank you, Scott. We've been talking today with the co-author of Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing. Listeners, please post your comments to the blog -- whether they're about any connection problems you're experiencing or commentary on the subject of today's coolhunt. The transcript of today's coolhunt will be posted with previous ones at The Swarm Creativity Blog: http://swarmcreativity.blogspot.com.

Join us on Friday for the next installment of our live, online coolhunt with Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper.

Thank you.

Copyright Notice: Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this log as long as the contents are not altered and this notice is intact.

Coolhunt Log #13 - Wednesday, May 2, 2007

May 2, 2007 8:45 PM
Coolhunt Log #13
Wednesday, May 2, 2007

On Stage:

Scott Cooper, MIT research affiliate with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of "Coolhunting"
Steve O'Keefe, moderator

MODERATOR: Could you tell us where you're calling from?

SCOTT: Today, I'm calling from my home office in Newton Highlands, MA.

MODERATOR: I'd like to remind everyone of the rules of the Coolhunt. We do at least one site review, one blog post, one comment on another blog, and try to make one personal connection via email or phone.

SCOTT: Something's happened in the last 24 hours in the blogosphere that will be a day people will remember in history. Go to Dailytech and go to the Top Stories section.

WEB: http://www.dailytech.com/AACS+Key+Censorship+Leads+to+First+Internet+Riot/article7129.htm

Click on "AACS Key Censorship Leads to First Internet Riot." I also praise the writer for coining the term "Internet Riot." Here's the scoop: There's a string of letters and numbers allowing people to hack into HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs, breaking the encryption that keeps them from being copied. This script has been available on the web for a while, but about two weeks ago, a licensing administrator said Google must remove links to sites that post the code. Google complied.

Then Digg -- the social networking site that allows people to praise content online by "digging it" and leads people to content based on the number of "Diggs" an item gets -- got a "cease-and-desist" order instructing them to take down Digg's stories that had contained the forbidden code. When Internet users got wind of this censorship, they started spamming the code all over the net, then digging the stories by the tens of thousands, and people began posting everywhere the string of numbers that makes up the code.

Finally, so many posts had been "digged" so many times that Digg couldn't keep the story down. So Digg co-founder Kevin Rose reversed the company's position on compliance to the cease and disest order. Digg isn't the only place this happened. One Digg user calculated that there were close to 51,000 Diggs, or votes, for stories trying to keep the code available.

MODERATOR: I read on Fox News today that it was like playing whack-a-mole trying to keep the code off the Internet, or to keep people from linking to the code.

SCOTT: This is directly related to what we've been talking about during our coolhunting. Jay Adelson, president of Digg, states that Digg must abide by the law and decided to comply to avoid being shut down. Digg co-founder Kevin Rose later posted a notice of noncompliance, vowing to "go down fighting" and deal with the consequences. The subject line of Kevin Rose's announcement contains the actual code.

This is an amazing development on two levels. First is what is says about democracy, transparency, and swarm behavior. Digg is a site that generates income for those who founded it. Legislation is being considered to limit access to create taxation, etc. regarding what you're able to see and share on the Internet. Second is what it means for the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), which has pursued a policy of suing college and high school kids for sharing files over the Internet. The RIAA decided that instead of figuring out how to change with the world, they'll just penalize the kids. One day, within minutes of a new musical release by a popular artist, the music will be available on tens of thousands of sites for free.

MODERATOR: So Digg isn't actually spreading the code but rather spreading links to posts that have the code. While some of this might be splitting hairs, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act appears to allow Google to post information as long as they take it down when notified by copyright holders -- again, the wack-a-mole process. It's one thing to have copyrighted content on your site; it's another to be punished for linking to a site that has infringed on intellectual property rights. This is the "common carrier" argument that Napster tried unsuccessfully to use against the RIAA.

SCOTT: Go to Blogsearch.google.com for another site. Input search "DVD" and "code." See the fourth link to the article "A day on the Planet of Digg: Living and dying by UGC." It's from MediaVidea -- a good blog. The story here conveys the historical nature of this decision, and the reversal of it. So, here there's speculation about what will happen next. Did Digg do the right thing? It's said that suing Digg will accomplish nothing. People want this type of news and content, and want Digg to stick to their guns.

WEB: http://mediavidea.blogspot.com/2007/05/day-on-planet-of-digg.html

MODERATOR: Once you have an open market where you're allowing user-generated content to determine what's important, it's difficult to shut it down. People come to rely on the wisdom of the crowd for what is popular or important. When you can't tap that wisdom, you make more mistakes.

MODERATOR: At this point, the Coolhunt entered a discussion of legal skirmishes regarding the "common carrier" argument: The phone company doesn't police what you say on the phone. Google and other sites are censored in China. eBay prohibits the sale of certain merchandise. Even Digg has a clear policy against linking to posts that trade in pornography. This led to a discussion of whether efforts to suppress Internet access to certain information can possibly succeed.

SCOTT: Since the late 90s, the Internet has become a great vehicle for organizing protest. Loose collectives of young people, defining themselves as anarchists, used the Internet to organize, transparently with consensus, during the Seattle trade protests. Imagine if a protest similar to Tiananmen Square were organized over the Internet.

MODERATOR: If you can't even link, must less host, critical stories on the Internet, the environment seems almost totalitarian.

SCOTT: Searching Google for "china google censorship" leads to a great article in The New York Times about this:

WEB: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/magazine/23google.html?ex=1303444800&en=9721027e105631bf&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

SCOTT: I remember when this article came out, about a year ago. It's a great piece of reporting.

MODERATOR: Once again, The New York Times is a primary source for news. Join us tomorrow when we'll look at The Wall Street Journal online and other primary news sources.

SCOTT: The government of China was concerned also about chat rooms.

MODERATOR: Do you think we're now near the end of copyright?

SCOTT: I don't know, but there's no denying that it's under assault, coming from all sorts of directions. CreativeCommons helps people say, "just give me credit and you can use my content any way you like." Then there's the open source content movement. On the other hand, some companies are trying to lock down every patent and copyright they can.

MODERATOR: Like biotech companies copyrighting the DNA of plants.

SCOTT: In some respects, the Digg story might be a sign of the end of protectionism. I do know that the copyright holders themselves are scrambling.

SCOTT: Now, let's go to 38 Pitches to end our hunt on a lighter note.

WEB: http://38pitches.com/

This is a blog for Curt Schilling. He's an ace pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and potentially could go into the Hall of Fame. He's controversial in that he's so opinionated and speaks out about issues regarding baseball. When congress had steroid hearings, Curt was the only player to testify who was not himself suspected of juicing. Part of what prompted Curt to start this blog is a journalist who constantly needles Curt, which prompts him to write after every game to tell his own story, preventing him from being misquoted by "the red-haired curly one." This is a real blog written by the star, not by a publicist. It's just an interesting use of the web to counter media misrepresentation.

MODERATOR: In the online PR class I teach at Tulane, we talk about how democratic technologies are everywhere, enabling more free sharing of information without having to rely solely on the media. Companies are increasingly sharing their side of every story with the public through direct-to-consumer news releases and blogs.

MODERATOR: We are out of time. Thank you, Scott. We've been talking today with the co-author of Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing. Listeners, please post your comments to the blog -- whether they're about commentary on the subject of today's coolhunt or any connection problems you experienced. The transcript of today's coolhunt will be posted with previous ones at The Swarm Creativity Blog:

WEB: http://swarmcreativity.blogspot.com/.

Join us tomorrow for the next installment of our live, online coolhunt with Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper.

Thank you.

Copyright Notice: Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this log as long as the contents are not altered and this notice is intact.

Coolhunt Log #12 - Tuesday, May 1, 2007

May 1, 2007 9:01 PM
Coolhunt Log #12
Tuesday, May 1, 2007

On Stage:
Scott Cooper, MIT researcher with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of "Coolhunting"
Peter Gloor, MIT researcher with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of "Coolhunting"
Steve O'Keefe, moderator

MODERATOR: Could you tell us where you're calling from?

PETER: I'm calling in from Switzerland today.

SCOTT: Today, I'm calling from my home office in MA.

MODERATOR: I'd like to remind everyone of the rules of the Coolhunt. We do at least one site, one blog post, one comment on another blog, and try to make one personal connection via email or phone.

PETER: Zebo seems to be mostly for lonely boys and girls wanting someone to talk you, and I'm amazed so much information is right there for everyone to read.

WEB: http://www.zebo.com/

SCOTT: An alum sent me an email about this website, GoLoco, for ride sharing.

MODERATOR: I'm wondering how many people post profiles on how many different websites.

PETER: Another website allows you to use one dashboard to merge all of your social networking profiles into one to mix and mingle. In all my coolhunting I've noticed that this is all like a virtual yard sale.

MODERATOR: Yes, you can attach prices to items. But people also were being facetious. However, some are actually revealing their real feelings, such as with IFeelFine.com

PETER: Let's go to GoLoco.

WEB: http://www.goloco.org/

SCOTT: I think we're in the very beginning of social networking using new technologies. And eventually, it'll become specific instead of just an atomized digital connection. With GoLoco you can see where people are driving and who needs rides. What's really interesting is what was asked of me when I registered: what kind of vehicle I had, what kind of trips I made, what languages I speak, what music I like, and some other general information. One goal is for same-language speakers to be paired.

MODERATOR: GoogleMaps also seems to be used to establish routes.

SCOTT: The reason they ask for the type of vehicle is so others will know what to look for when you arrive to pick people up.

PETER: They probably have to update their calculator to keep in line with gas price changes.

SCOTT: My main point of mentioning GoLoco is that you can compare prices with public transit. This is a good example of a specific use of social networking on the web. It's sort of like "stitch 'n' bitch" where people meet as not only a sewing club but also to converse -- coming together to share as a social community, whether to complain or gossip.

MODERATOR: This is a good way to close the gap on customer service, where complaining may not be done elsewhere.

PETER: It's about making money, networking (finding a plumber), and also explains why you might want to do something.

SCOTT: On my list it shows someone named Holly Parker is looking for a ride. The cost is $4.50 per mile, tolls, how much is paid per passenger, and a transaction fee. Then there's a picture of Holly. It also shows a list of who she trusts, which also involves being assigned a buddy in case you end up on a milk carton as missing.

MODERATOR: There has to be a privacy issue involved here.

PETER: Minggl is our next site.

WEB: http://www.minggl.com/

MODERATOR: This reminds me of a site SubmitIt, which allows you to post something that would be submitted to a number of directories in a one-stop fashion.

PETER: If you need some explanation, just drag the cursor across the bullet points. You can request an invitation or you can use the "video tutorial" link at the bottom of the site to guide you through the site.

MODERATOR: It's interesting that they use YouTube videos as their tutorial. It's a very clever use, and it solves compatibility problems as well. YouTube converts to Flash, which is more universal and better quality than many viewers.

PETER: Kyte TV is our next site. This site could be described as twitter on steroids. You can put together entire stories for those who care as well as those who don't. It's more entertaining than pod casting. It's like being a local reporter.

WEB: http://www.kyte.tv/home/index.html

MODERATOR: What we're watching is an animated short with a sound track, a montage of images. And it looks like there's been quite a bit of viewing and comments.

PETER: When I stumbled on this a few days ago I noticed that there's many holiday vacation videos on the site. And there's probably many visitors because of a recent New York Times article about the site.

MODERATOR: The number of viewers of online videos is truly stunning.

PETER: This should make cell phone companies happy since we'll be able to send video messages, which are much more expensive than regular messages.

SCOTT: There's an emerging tool, a search engine called blinkx, that gives you the ability to search the contents of web videos. It was reported in The New York Times Business section.

PETER: Bertlesman, Sony, etc. make the most use of video search technologies to make money by suing YouTube. They're setting up their spiders to search for infringement.

SCOTT: From a technological point of view we're well on our way to coolhunt within videos, finding phrases, etc. The ability to coolhunt in new kinds of ways is coming.

MODERATOR: It wasn't long ago that we couldn't even use speech recognition.

MODERATOR: We are out of time. Thank you, Scott. We've been talking today with the co-authors of Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing. Listeners, please post your comments to the blog -- whether they're about commentary on the subject of today's coolhunt or any connection problems you experienced. The transcript of today's coolhunt will be posted with previous ones at The Swarm Creativity Blog: http://swarmcreativity.blogspot.com.

Join us tomorrow for the next installment of our live, online coolhunt with Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper.

Thank you.

Copyright Notice: Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this log as long as the contents are not altered and this notice is intact.

Coolhunt: Suggest a Site or Topic!

May 1, 2007 3:35 PM | 1 Comment
Visitors to the Swarm Creativity blog and members of the Coolhunt: we welcome your suggestions for destinations or themes for our upcoming coolhunts.

We are looking for places where outcomes are based on social networks, for ways to encourage such formations, and for interesting uses that people have found for tapping the wisdom of crowds.

Please add any suggestions here or email them to our hosts, Scott Cooper and Peter Gloor. Don't delay! Our first season of Coolhunting ends in just another 10 days.

Thanks,
Steve O'Keefe
Coolhunt Moderator

Coolhunt #11 - Monday, April 30, 2007

May 1, 2007 3:18 PM
Coolhunt Log #11
Monday, April 30, 2007

On Stage:
Scott Cooper, MIT researcher with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Peter Gloor, MIT researcher with the Sloan School of Management, co-author of Coolhunting
Steve O'Keefe, moderator

MODERATOR: Welcome to the Coolhunt. I'm your moderator, Steve O'Keefe, calling in today from our offices at the Bywater Tech Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, over a nice, clean land line. Hosts, where are you calling in from today.

SCOTT: I'm Scott Cooper, and I'm calling in from my home office in Newton, Massachusetts -- right down the street, it turns out, from where TripAdvisor is headquartered. They were included in last Friday's coolhunt.

MODERATOR: Yes, just after our hunt, Scott forwarded a link to another review of TripAdvisor. The review is on a blog Scott reads regularly called Read/WriteWeb:

WEB: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tripadvisor_the.php

MODERATOR: The review was written by Sramana Mitra, an entrepreneur and strategy consultant. The review contains screenshots of TripAdvisor, and then comments and rates the site in six areas -- Context, Content, Community, Commerce, Personalization, and Vertical Search. She gives TripAdvisor an overall rating of A-.

Mitra adds some figures to our Coolhunt of TripAdvisor: 500,000 estimated travelers a day visit the site. She says the "Rant & Rave" function "can make or break the reputation of a hotel or a restaurant in a nanosecond." She doesn't comment on how TripAdvisor adjusts to rating and review spam. Would love to hear from them on that question.

PETER: I am using SkypeOut to access the chat today from my office in Switzerland.

MODERATOR: Peter tried calling twice on Skype, but the sound quality made it impossible to follow his conversation. Reluctantly, he called on a land line.

PETER: I'm testing the SkypeOut for when I am in Greece later this week. It looks like I might have to call in using a cell phone, with very expensive international rates.

MODERATOR: What followed on our phone conference was a lengthy discussion of blogging ethics and the manner in which we are conducting the Coolhunt. We discussed how much we should reveal about email communications we have received during the hunt. For example, we revealed that a New York Times reporter commented on our first Coolhunt, but did not want his comments posted on the blog. We honored that request, but we also posted the names of the New York Times journalists who we contacted about the hunt. We came to an understanding that if people wanted their comments to be public, they would blog them, and if they don't blog them, we should ask for permission before revealing them on the blog.

This discussion included references to several recent blogging breaches of netiquette that are being discussed on many blogs. We referenced O'Reilly Radar's attempt to formulate a blogger's code of ethics. We are trying to bring onto the blog more of the background discussion of how we manage the coolhunt, and we look for your suggestions on these and other coolhunt-guiding issues.

Now onto today's hunt. Peter, where are we going?

PETER: Today, I want to start a discussion of Commmunity Based Shopping. Part of what got me started on this topic today is an article that appeared at The New York Times Online today: "Got Roomfulls of Stuff? Now sites will help keep track of it," by Bob Tedeschi. NYT Online requires free registration to read archived articles. If you're registered, you can find the article at the link.

WEB: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/technology/30ecom.html?th&emc=th

MODERATOR: Those without NYT Online registration can read the article at the Tuscaloosa news, where it was syndicated and available for viewing.

WEB: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/technology/30ecom.html?th&emc=th

PETER: The article pointed me to this very interesting site called Zebo, which is a place for people to shop but has become a community of shoppers.

WEB: http://www.zebo.com/

PETER: Zebo is to shopping what Prosper is to lending. It calls itself "a better way to decide what products or clothes to buy." They try to tap the swarm to find out what clothes and other products are hip by who is using those products. If you have a list of everything someone owns, you can search through those lists to find "People Like Us" -- PLUs -- or "People Like Me" -- PLMs.

You have to register to access many of the functions. For example, the registration page teases that you can "see what celebrities own" if you join. People list all the things they own on their profile. So you can discover people by the things they own. You can see how some of this works without registering by going to the "Groups" tab on the top navigation bar.

WEB: http://member.zebo.com/Main?event_key=DIAL&execCode=FGRP

PETER: You can input a keyword into the search box and look for groups, or you can scroll through the box on the left side of the page and select or highlight groups that match your interests. You can have multiple search criteria. For example, let's select three groups and add them to our search using the "ADD" button between the two boxes. Let's pick:

Movies/Comedies

Music/Pop

Sports/Soccer

SCOTT: No, trampoline! Let's take Sports/Trampoline!

PETER: Okay, Sports/Trampoline.

Now press the "Find a Group" button and the results of our search appear on the same page in Section 2, below the search box.

MODERATOR: The search returns about 24 results in a grid that is four columuns wide and six rows long.

PETER: These are profiles that match the search criteria. Let's look at one of them, "Get Free Get Wild," which has 31 members and is listed in the categories "Comedy, Rock, Other."

SCOTT: Obviously, these aren't all trampoline people. They're matching on maybe one of the three criteria. It looks like it's designed to always find some group that you match.

PETER: The group Get Free Get Wild has a description that says "music is the best thing to talk about." The page shows recent comments and a list of the members.

WEB: http://groups.zebo.com/getfreegetwild

PETER: Some of the members have real names, some have "handles," and some have pictures. Let's click on one of the members -- Michael -- and take a look at his profile.

WEB: http://www.zebo.com/8272628

PETER: Michael lists the things he owns. He lists 93 things, starting with two houses his Mom owns and three his Dad owns.

SCOTT: Looks like Michael's family is pretty well to do.

PETER: He also lists a Reebok Wallet. So you see how the brand names slip in here. If you think Michael is cool, and he has a Reebok wallet, maybe you should get a Reebok wallet? If you look at the comments Michael is getting from other Zebo members, it is mostly girls telling him how cute he looks. Michael might be using this site, not for shopping, but to meet girls. But the girls and the boys find each other through the products they have in common.

MODERATOR: So how do you know that this information is accurate? It's all user-provided. Can't this be tainted by spam?

PETER: Well it is true that we do not really know who "Michael" is. He say's he is 17 years old and single, but he could be 45, or those might not even be his pictures. And the girls writing to him might not be girls. That is an issue with all user-generated content that is not subject to verification. What attracts people to the site is that it's fun and entertaining. It's all about traffic -- Web 1.0 -- trying to get as many eyeballs to the site as possible. But we like this site for the design. It doesn't put a wall between users the way Amazon does. You can't find out who has bought a certain book on Amazon -- but you can search for a book here and find out who owns it.

MODERATOR: I searched for "Atlas Shrugged," the Ayn Rand novel, and got one matching profile. "Fel C" also says she owns "insomnia" and "anorexia," but she has not listed them for sale. We are running out of time. Is there a blog here or a place where we can leave a message, and let them know they've been coolhunted?

PETER: If you click on "ZE'Buzz" in the top navigational bar, it takes you to a discussion area. We can search the discussion or start a thread of our own. But you must be registered to do that.

MODERATOR: We are out of time. Thank you very much, Peter and Scott. Listeners, please post your comments to the blog -- whether they're about commentary on the subject of today's coolhunt or any connection problems you experienced.

Join us tomorrow for the next installment of our live, online coolhunt with Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper.

Thank you.

Copyright Notice: Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this log as long as the contents are not altered and this notice is intact.
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Topic Cloud

  • The MIT association is very reassuring, their approach was very methodical, confident, patient, helpful and encouraging. Outstanding team, focused, conceptually easy, quick at negotiating time and delays, great class, simple and user friendly despite the complex systems.
    Maggie Palazzolo, Research Coordinator
  • Excellent experience overall. Correspondence was kind, fast and helpful mostly via email; we suggested new features as needed and they were added quickly.
    Daniel Oster, Assistant to the CEO
  • There are many others who say they can do similar things, but I don't think they are actually capable. GalaxyAdvisors is different because many others don't use the social network methodology to learn what people are talking about.
    Daniel Oster, Assistant to the CEO
  • Very Unique. There are no others like them! We trust galaxyadvisors and feel that relationship is critical, as we are not social network analysis experts and need their help and understanding.
    Mirjam Hauser, GDI Analyst