via Kim Mok

Yesterday, my kid didn’t brush her teeth at her usual time. I received a message from her toothbrush and 5 minutes later she was brushing away.

The elderly mother of a friend tends to forget to take her pills. My friend receives an alarm each time her mother misses a dose. My alarm went off earlier today because there was a major accident on my normal route and I needed to leave the house 20 minutes before my usual time to make my first appointment.

You don’t have the connected toothbrush yet?

In what year are you living? 2011?

Until a few years ago, the majority of our socialization and social interactions has been direct. If I wanted to know about the last movie you saw or where you are right now, I had to use email or SMS messages – requiring a direct interaction with a persona via a platform.

With the rise of feed-centric applications like Facebook and Twitter, a new form of communication and awareness has emerged – ambient awareness. It’s a dramatic shift in communication. Ambient awareness is a communication initiated simply by being. While I conduct my daily routine, I generate content constantly, sharing with the world what articles I find interesting, what location I’m in, what new friends I made. Our actions speak now much louder than words.

Here comes the next revolution: The Web of Things

The Internet of things will change our lives dramatically. Objects will make themselves recognizable and they get intelligence because they can communicate information about themselves, and they can access information that has been aggregated by other things. Estimates are that in 5 to 10 years there will be 100 billion devices connected to the Internet.

Digital content will be ever more accessible with the evolution of Internet reader that make it possible to exploit content in all occasions of use for which today we use physical data storage devices. Code will be applied to objects that are all around us so that they can be recognized automatically. When your child comes home, the key will send a message to you. When a book is brought close to a reader, the process of audio reading will start. You will be able to store your wine, chill each bottle individually, get alarms when the wine is at its peak and identify the right bottle because they will be illuminated once you searched for them.

Security and the noise problem

Security concerns have the potential to stifle the growth of the Internet of things. (Not to be too geeky but most sensor networks lack TCP, the common security protocol. There’s still a lot of work to do.)

More importantly, we already have problems filtering signal from noise. How are we going to do this once all my objects at home want to communicate with me? Do I really want to hear from a milk bottle? Do I really want to hear from my carpet that it’s time to clean it? The filtering issue is huge but the benefits for strong signals from some things can’t be overlooked.

The Web of Things has the potential to transform the planet in the same way that the Human Web has done over the last fifteen year. Get ready for it.

Facebook is starting to join the real-time conversational marketing bandwagon. Basically, ads will be delivered based on the declared intention of the user. Ad Age explains:

“Users who update their status with “Mmm, I could go for some pizza tonight,” could get an ad or a coupon from Domino’s, Papa John’s or Pizza Hut. (…) ”

With real-time delivery, the mere mention of having a baby, running a marathon, buying a power drill or wearing high-heeled shoes is transformed into an opportunity to serve immediate ads, expanding the target audience exponentially beyond usual targeting methods such as stated preferences through “likes” or user profiles. Facebook didn’t have to create new ads for this test and no particular advertiser has been tapped to participate — the inventory remains as is.

A user may not have liked any soccer pages or indicated that soccer is an interest, but by sharing his trip to the pub for the World Cup, that user is now part of the Adidas target audience. The moment between a potential customer expressing a desire and deciding on how to fulfill that desire is an advertiser sweet spot, and the real-time ad model puts advertisers in front of a user at that very delicate, decisive moment.”

Could this work? Isn’t that finally the transformation of advertising from attention to intention? VRM has finally arrived? Hallelujah?

Sadly, no. Facebook tries to find a business model that can help them sustain their valuation of $85 billion. Or, is it $4.5 gazillion by now? Fact is, the Facebook ads perform abysmal. Brand pages and apps are doing okay but Facebook needs to make most of their money from  ads. So, they are scrambling. Problem is, the contract between Facebook and each Facebook user is broken. It’s not broken enough for people to leave Facebook. We’re just too lazy to head over to another network. It might happen one day. But not in the foreseeable future. The platform is too user-friendly, too big and too embedded into our daily lives.

Facebook is the new Microsoft

We didn’t like to use PC’s, always envied the Apple users. We didn’t really care for another version of Office. But the rest of the world was using it. Microsoft was omnipresent and we had no alternatives. That’s how people feel about Facebook. John Battelle thinks people will game the system. I don’t really see it as gaming, just another way to look for special offers.

But that’s not real challenge.

Facebook has only one asset: You & me, and the community we create. In order for Facebook to command any decent valuation, all of us have to be comfortable with the deal. And the deal is that Facebook sells our data, our personas to marketers. This requires an open, truthful and transparent relationship between Facebook and us. Have you ever thought of Facebook as an open, truthful and transparent company?

Exactly.

The Intention Economy is built around more than transactions. Conversations do matter. Relationships as well. So, do reputation, respect and trust. To think Facebook can be the mediator in an intention economy is, to say the least, questionable.

You know you need to stop being mediocre. You need to stop being a cog.

It’s always on your mind but you never come around to kicking ass. You have to get through this project first, you can’t afford to kick ass because of the economy, you need to stay mediocre to feed your family. You just didn’t have time for it. Here’s the fact: Today is the day.

It’s time for you to kick ass.

It’s time to stop compromising. It’s time to stop delaying. Do you want to continue to stay mediocre and be forgotten quickly? Yes, I know it’s easier to stay in the comfort zone and remain the cog. But it’s not why you were put on this earth. You are here to make a difference. You are here to change the world. Not incrementally, Revolutionary.

Kick ass already.

Go into that darn meeting today and kick ass. Talk to your clients and kick ass. Kick ass when you hang with your family tonight. Stop floating around, stop being just somebody nobody cares about. Be the change. Be the difference. Do things nobody has ever done before. Change things. Make things happen.

We need you to kick ass.

There’s not one day when we wake up and the world seems worse off than yesterday. It’s your job to change it. Not Obama’s. Not the job of your boss. Not the job of your wife. And your kid needs more of you to change the world. Don’t rely on others. It’s your responsibility. Don’t project or blame others. It’s all about you.

Just kick ass.