If you’re like most people, chances are only .1 percent that you’ve ever clicked on a banner ad. And while that number is pitifully low, it might even misrepresent whatever enthusiasm exists. I know in my case the only time I open an online ad is by accident. Who needs them when there’s Google, YouTube and Twitter search?

Nissan Leaf iAd has video, product demo and a host of interactive features

The reason, of course, is that most online ads suck. They interrupt us, pop up and take over our screens, or delay our getting to the content we actually seek.  Plus in most cases the lack of an engaging concept of any kind sends us looking for that little “x” which we’re practically programmed to discover within a nanosecond at most.

But change may be on its way. Both Apple with its iAds, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau with its effort to develop new standards, are acutely aware that it’s been a mistake to leave OLA in the hands of the quants instead of the creatives.

Recently I sat through an impressive presentation on iAds by Apple’s Scott Witt. If you’ve seen an iAd, you may not be an instant convert to Apple’s belief that it can inspire advertising people actually love, but at least you’re leaning a little toward the side of optimism. The good ones are absorbing, entertaining and informative.

(If you haven’t seen or experienced an iAd, download the app Tiptitude and open it; it usually displays the Nissan Leaf iAd at the bottom. You can tell an iAd from a regular banner because it identifies itself with the iAd label in the lower right hand side of the launch banner.  Then click.  You’ll experience something pretty cool.  If you get the AT&T ad, just keep trying. The latter has some utility but it’s not as compelling as the Leaf iAd.)

The AT&T ad lets you find mobile hotspots, though to use it you have to "find" the ad in an app

Anyway, Apple is hoping that iAds deliver a quantum leap in advertising story telling as they have the potential to combine the cinematic beauty of great TV advertising (visceral imagery, animation, special effects), the interactive nature of the web (games, choices, navigation), the sharing and involvement of social media, and the tactile (digitally speaking) sensation of turning pages.

The Leaf execution for example has some brilliant film, interactive presentations of the car’s features, tools for comparison on mileage and operating costs, and more. In fact, it’s closer to an app than an ad. Same can be said for early Nike and Dove executions.

This is promising stuff. It acknowledges the need for digital advertising to be more creative and it encourages marketers to make utility and content first, sales pitches second.

True,  iAds will call for a new kind of creative thinking (story telling + technology + user experience) but Apple is there to help (or control, depending on your point of view), acting as creative directors and gatekeepers for any initial iAd concepts. The reason, according to Witt, is that if Apple puts its name on something it wants to guarantee users the Apple standards they’ve come to expect. Apple also justifies its control with the argument that since iAds use all the capabilities of the iPhone OS who knows better than the guys who created it. That may or may not be the case, but if you want to get on the platform those are the rules.

In some cases Apple’s God-like role may be a bit too much for advertisers and agencies to take — I know of some brands that have opted out when Apple wouldn’t let them do what they believed was necessary to be effective. On the other hand, if a digital ad is only as good as the number of people who click on it and Apple’s reputation with users can increase engagement, then maybe submitting to the company’s tightly clenched security measures is worth it.

What will it take for iAds to really succeed? A lot. Brands have to sign up and fork over some serious money — $1 million to $10 million before production. App developers have to sell space on their applications, though with 60 percent of the revenue coming their way there’s a decent incentive. Users have to believe that all iAds are worth clicking on. And finally, advertisers have to see results.

So far, reviews are mixed. Some brand are happy with the performance. Others aren’t willing to play if they have to relinquish so much control.

Nevertheless, I’m hoping Apple’s efforts influence the way all advertising is done and that as iAds show us what’s possible with paid digital ads we’ll see online ads become more experiential, offer genuine utility, and even turn into miniature apps themselves.

Up next, part two of this topic: some thoughts on what the Interactive Advertising Bureau is doing in its quest for new standards.

In the meantime, your thoughts? Have you seen iAds in action? Does Apple’s name alone make you want to click?

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I give Kevin Roddy a lot of credit for coming out and declaring that creative directors might actually be clueless when it comes to creating ideas for the post digital age.

In a guest column in Ad Age, Roddy suggests that traditional CD’s may still know a great idea when they see it, but he questions whether they can inspire or conceive complex digital ideas if their real comfort zone is in the media of TV, print and radio.

BBH New York’s CCO goes on to suggest that advertising creative directors whose experience comes from old media story telling should “admit that they don’t know enough about technology and start asking for help.

“Take down the walls and ask other people for suggestions about how to make the work better,” he smartly suggests.

I’m in total agreement with everything Kevin says. But I might go one step further.  Knowing how most traditional CDs, writers and art directors work, I can confirm that there’s still a tendency among many to generate ad “ad idea” first and then go seek out their digital counterparts who might “make the work better,” to use Kevin’s words.  In fact plenty of creative technologists will tell you that the question they usually get is, “Can you build this?”  When the question they want to be asked is “What should we build?”

Kevin’s right that those of us who grew up on the traditional side of the business need help with the new complexities of technology.  But we should make sure we get that help before we have an idea.

In fact we should be aggressively and proactively learning as much as we can about what’s possible with mobile, geo, APIs, social media and the very latest technology before we or anyone on our team closes the door to go and concept.  Better yet, the people we concept with should be the techies themselves – creative technologists, UX professionals, social media enthusiasts.

I once had a CD tell me that he didn’t really need to know technology because, “No matter what I think up there’ll be someone who’ll know how to build it.”  True, but my question back to him was, “But if you knew what was actually possible, wouldn’t you think up even more interesting ideas?”

Thanks again to Kevin for admitting and reinforcing what we all need to do.  Let’s just make sure we get the help he recommends first. Then we can brief teams, look at ideas, and know we’ve picked the best one.

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Today I am once again flattered to be speaking at Boulder Digital Works with the likes of Gareth Kay, Matt Howell and all the other incredibly smart folks who have welcomed me into the digital fold.

I think of myself as an advertising refugee and a digital immigrant. Not sure if I qualify yet for full citizenship (can’t really code) but I’m working on it. What’s amazing to me is the openness of the digital community. I have been embraced on Twitter, at SxSWi, at SoDa meetings, by IAB (where I’m hoping to make a contribution to the future of online advertising) and here at Boulder Digital Works.

Had the advertising community learned earlier to be as open and collaborative as their digital counterparts it would be in a lot better shape than it is now and all those people still spending their energy defending traditional messages could instead be focused on inventing and creating new experiences and ways to tell stories. “Hello Ladies.”

Anyway, back to Boulder. The session this week is called Making Digital Work. It’s a two-day workshop compromised of  small lectures, group discussions, and projects all designed to give attendees a better understanding of their role in the digital age. Of course the real purpose of any learning isn’t what happens in the classroom, but rather what you do with the experience after the fact.

With that in mind, I offer you my list of lists – books, blogs, creative – something to take with you as you depart Boulder and continue your digital evolution.

Forgive me if it’s content, people and ideas with which you’re already familiar.  Last time I was at Boulder there were people who’d never been on Ted.com and who had never even heard of Slideshare.  Of course, this list of lists will be better still if you share yours, whether it’s decks, docs, or apps.

Five books you should read

Pick and choose from the list below. Some are already a few years old, but they lay out the background and cover a lot of the disruption we’ve been living through. Change by Design and Cognitive Surplus might be my favorites.

Groundswell, Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff

The Shallows, Nicholas Carr

You are not a Gadget, Jaron Lanier

Change by Design, Tim Brown

Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky

Five more books if you’re really determined

If you really want to download some ideas, keep going.  Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead is fast and fun with a few useful tips. Free is controversial but worth the read.  Anything by Jonah Lehrer will make you think. The Checklist Manifesto has nothing to do with digital, but it’s filled with rich ideas you can extend into your own business and behavior.

Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, David Meerman Scott, Brian Halligan

Crowdsourcing, Jeff Howe

Free, Chris Anderson

How we Decide, Jonah Lehrer

The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande

Five big blogs you should have on your RSS

If your RSS is anything like mine it constantly grows until its out of hand and there’s more there than you can ever consume. My colleague Stuart Foster often reminds me to pare things down and focus on the content that matters. I admit to an inconsistent and erratic consumption of content, which is why I sometimes just visit the New York Times. They filter stuff for me.

PSFK

Mashable

Read Write Web

Digital Buzz Blog

NY Times Technology

Five small blogs you may want to include

There are many more I could have added here, but it strikes me that these may be more relevant to the audience attending the BDW digital workshop. Faris and BBHLabs will keep you up on digital and marketing trends and innovation. David Armano is a good source for social media. Joshua Porter offers insights on UX and design.  And Rob Schwartz is great filter for cool creative, some of it digital, some not.

Talent Imitates, Genius Steals, Faris Yakob, Chief Innovation Officer, MDC

BBH Labs, Ben Malbon and Mel Exon, co-founders BBHLabs

Logic + Emotion, David Armano, SVP/Digital, Edelman

Bokardo, Joshua Porter, experience designer

Metal Potential, Rob Schwartz, TBWA/Chiat Day CCO

Five platforms worth knowing about

There are now 70,000-plus Twitter apps and new platforms being introduced daily. Some will burn out before they ever catch fire and the next big thing is hard to predict, but these all seem to have potential, or at least make you think about what’s possible.

Kickstarter:  crowdfunding

Philo: Foursquare for TV

Placecast: opt in to receive mobile marketing

Plancast: announce and share your plans

Springpad: save the plethora stuff you find online via photo, geo, notes, url

Five creative ideas you should dissect

I suggest everyone master the skill of dissecting creative ideas. What makes them great? Technology? Story? Juxtapositions? Consumer participation? Viral technique? You don’t want to copy, but tear them apart and use some of the components.

The Colony: transmedia story telling

Art of the Trench: simple crowdsourced content creation

Chrome: interactive video

Olympus Augmented Reality: useful camera demo

Wheat Thins: social, TV, viral

Five small ideas that might inspire

What individuals and small teams are doing is way more interesting than what most big brands are doing. These are a few of my favorites at the moment. And yes, one of them is mine.

@BPglobalPR: reminder that consumers want to create, control, take over

The Uniform Project: new business model blending cause and fashion

The 3six5 blog: simple crowdsourcing project to generate year’s worth of content

Brandbowl: turn an analog event to a digital event

Bud Caddell on Kickstarter: new way to fund creative projects

Five Ted videos that will inspire you

Find your own, but these are five that I’ve watched more than once and find both motivating and thought-provoking.

Malcolm Gladwell on Spaghetti Sauce

Sir Ken Robinson on Finding Your Passion

Tim Brown on Creativity and Play

Benjamin Zander on Music and Passion

Steve Jobs on How to Live Before You Die

Five people to follow on Twitter

Everyone starts out following the people on the Twitter lists who have the most followers. But that’s an easy system to game.  These are people who get it, who live it, who are digital natives. Most are young, interesting, opinionated and share some pretty good stuff. Hoping you don’t already know all of them.

@StuartFoster: social strategist, digital cool hunter

@thaz7: connected planner often the first to know

@lenkendall: smart, forward thinking digital guy

@mikearauz: he’s from the Internet

@conradlisco: mobile and emerging platforms

Five things you should do yourself

Be on Twitter

Have a Posterous or Tumblr

Make movies on an iPhone

Crowdsource something

Connect with five influential people you’ve never met in person

Hope these are useful.  What about you?  Got a list you want to share?

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For years the doomsayers have predicted – and in some cases even rooted for – the demise of the New York Times.  Print advertising revenues plummeted.  Ownership of and overpayment for papers like the Boston Globe drained resources. Endless digital real estate diminished the value of every online property’s available ad space.

But the Times isn’t doing all that badly at the moment. For the first time in a long time total ad revenues stayed flat rather than falling. In fact in its most recent quarter, digital ad revenue jumped 21 percent. Operating profit doubled and an improved cash situation gives the paper more time to plot a strategy for real growth. Given that the recent good news comes in a miserable economy, I’m betting the venerable paper pulls it off.

If you look at the Times from another perspective – that of partnerships, social media behavior, and content – the company’s actually a shining example of how to hold onto core values and evolve at the same time.

Here are four things it’s done that serve as examples for any traditional company, including advertising agencies.

Get over the not invented here syndrome

For more than a couple of years now the Times has offered up content from a number of new sources that in earlier days would never have justified an appearance under the masthead. But there they are: ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm and other blogs’ content front and center on the Technology page. Stop there once a day and you practically have a centralized source of content. Granted it’s filtered by the Times, but there’s only so much filtering you want to do on your own anyway.

Lesson:  There are plenty of great sources of content outside your walls and beyond that generated by your staff. Why not take advantage of it, whether it’s for your company blog, the blogs you maintain for clients, a YouTube channel, or any of the other places you need content?

Embrace change and new technology as fast as you can

OK, perhaps the Times hasn’t always been lightning speedy at this, but in the last couple of years they’ve done a pretty decent job. Case in point is their iPad app. Not only were they among the very first publications to have one, it was well thought out with a clean, simple interface and just the right amount of content for a pad. All the sharing you need is built in. And while its elegant lacquer-black type on the iPad’s white linen background presents the ideal screen experience, their standby iPhone app’s not bad either. I’ve read 5000 word magazine articles on the thing.

Lesson: Create utility. Make your brand available everywhere.  Consider the context in which the user is engaging.

Be social in every way possible

I like how the Times does this, too. Times People is what every brand with customers or subscribers should do: introduce them to each other. It’s a benefit to users. It helps to spread content around. And it gives readers an added reason to come back and share what they find. The Times also does a pretty good job on Twitter. They’ve created their own lists of writers by category, and even gathered recommended lists of other writers and bloggers by categories that include technology, the arts, opinion and more. They don’t always engage as much as they should, but it’s still a valuable feed to keep you informed. Need someone interesting to follow? Go grab a new list.

Lesson: Take advantage of all the social tools and tactics. Market your employees and their content. Gather your company’s social presence and make it easily accessible to customers and prospects.

Great content wins out in the end

Want to know the reason that properties like the Times along with other content creators of note (including great creative advertising agencies) will always prevail? Quality content. Not only does the Times continue to deliver stuff you want to read, they’ve done a damn good job covering the very topic we’re talking about right here: digital technology and social media. Consider two great examples from the last week alone. One on whether Twitter encourages a distortion of who we really are. A second on whether the digital age diminishes originality and encourages plagiarism. Great stuff that will keep you thinking.

Lesson:  Don’t abandon the core values that got you where you are.  Just bring them to life in new places and apply them to relevant subjects.

What do you think? Is the Times doing it right? Can you replicate any of their practices? Will the “paper” survive?

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For years, digital agencies have strived to distinguish themselves from traditional advertising agencies that practice digital with the claim that they build platforms – applications and utility that delivery functionality and integrate into people’s lives – while ad agencies come up with digital gimmicks. In fact it was in the news today. As the argument goes, the latter may generate awareness and buzz, but like all offline advertising campaign, they quickly lose their impact when the media buy comes to an end, calling for yet another campaign and then another.

This is true. It was true of Subservient Chicken, true of the Cadbury Gorilla, and true, inevitably, of Old Spice’s recent social media frenzy. In fact, once these campaigns end the only people who tend to remember them are agency types scrambling to replicate their temporary success while making it look as if they didn’t copy the idea.

Meanwhile platforms like Garmin Connect (bet you never even heard of it unless you’re a road cyclist and a Garmin user) and iPhone apps like Stylebook, Zipcar and Timberland Expeditions (one of ours) continue to attract users, generate downloads, and provide the kind of functionality that earns both loyalty and repeat business.

The fact is brands and marketers need both. Without awareness and buzz, the kind of utility that makes a brand indispensable (if that’s possible) never gets embraced. Nike Plus would be invisible if it weren’t for the brand equity built up with years of advertising.

However, the challenge now is more complicated than what’s implied by the debate between idea and platform. The new frontier is the ecosystem. (Yes I know that term gets used to mean a lot of things; but for this purpose it means the interdependency of a brand’s multiple digital properties.) Think about it.  Most brands have an advertising campaign. They probably have a website that offers more than brochure-ware and delivers something of genuine use — either applications, commerce, customized user-experiences, community or how-to videos.

But with the proliferation of social media, chances are good that a brand also has a Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel and at least one if not three iPhone apps. (I recently had a prospect tell me, “We need apps, lots of apps. It’s important for you to know that we’re app happy around here, so whatever you do bring us apps.”) And since the pre iPhone craze was “build me a micro-site,” chances are good it also has half a dozen of those.

Years ago, John Wanamaker said he knew that half his advertising worked, he just wasn’t sure which half.  Today, with all the metrics and analytics baked into everything we do there’s little doubt that we know which stuff works. But do you know whether it all works together?

My suggestion is that if digital agencies and traditional agencies continue fighting over the idea versus the platform they’re wasting words and energy. The new frontier will be the brand’s overall digital ecosystem and figuring out how to get advertising, platforms, social media, conversation strategy and a brand’s existing community of customers to reinforce each other in a way that generates awareness, allows prospects to enter a relationship on their own terms (whether they want to learn, connect, join, transact, share or simply watch) and then holds onto them, ideally turning them into advocates.

Got eco-system?

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Reading this short blog post – or worse, simply skimming it so that you can justify RT-ing it – may cause real damage to your brain.  At least according to Nicholas Carr, whose provocative Atlantic article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” has been expanded into a just released book titled The Shallows.

In his new treatise Carr claims that as we twiddle on Twitter and diddle on Facebook, absorbed in repetitive and addictive activities, our brains are getting rewired. And not for the better.

Because the Internet encourages and reinforces “cursory reading, hurried and disparate thinking and worse, superficial learning,” it significantly diminishes our capacity for sustained concentration, deep thinking, and long-term memory.

To make his point Carr cites his own vanishing attention span, recent neuroscience findings, and an undeniable study of academic research that shows scholars are taking the easy way out when it comes to citing sources. They apparently do what we all do: search Google and use whatever comes up at the top. “We live in a world of abundance but all read the same thing,” concludes Carr.

He offers more of his opinion in a column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

The picture emerging from the research is deeply troubling, at least to anyone who values the depth, rather than just the velocity, of human thought. People who read text studded with links, the studies show, comprehend less than those who read traditional linear text. People who watch busy multimedia presentations remember less than those who take in information in a more sedate and focused manner. People who are continually distracted by emails, alerts and other messages understand less than those who are able to concentrate. And people who juggle many tasks are less creative and less productive than those who do one thing at a time.

He argues for the deeper reflection and exercises that give us greater control over our attention.

Reading a long sequence of pages helps us develop a rare kind of mental discipline. The innate bias of the human brain, after all, is to be distracted. Our predisposition is to be aware of as much of what’s going on around us as possible. Our fast-paced, reflexive shifts in focus were once crucial to our survival. They reduced the odds that a predator would take us by surprise or that we’d overlook a nearby source of food.

However, in his New York Times review today, Jonah Lehrer isn’t totally convinced. The author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist (both of which I highly recommend you read; good ways to up your concentration) reminds us that change in media habits and technology has always brought criticism. Socrates lamented books for creating a “forgetfulness of the soul”; telegrams were initially condemned for their pelting speed; radio and television poisoned our minds.

Lehrer, himself a highly regarded neuroscientist, further enlightens us to the fact that everything changes the brain. Countering Carr’s claims he points to other studies that conclude the Internet makes us smarter. They’ve shown that gaming improves our performance in cognitive tasks and that searching on Google, by forcing our selective attention and deliberate analysis, leads to increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Clay Shirky (how can we have this discussion without Clay weighing in) offered his thoughts in a counter essay to Carr yesterday. Shirky reminds us that returning to the pre-Internet era of the 1980s, isn’t all that desirable.  During that decade “we actually spent a lot more time watching Diff’rent Strokes than reading Proust.”

Shirky also reminds us that the mindless nonsense populating much of the web will give way to more thoughtful and meaningful content:

Of course, not everything people care about is a high-minded project. Whenever media become more abundant, average quality falls quickly, while new institutional models for quality arise slowly. Today we have The World’s Funniest Home Videos running 24/7 on YouTube, while the potentially world-changing uses of cognitive surplus are still early and special cases.

He goes on:

The response to distraction, then as now, was social structure. Reading is an unnatural act; we are no more evolved to read books than we are to use computers. Literate societies become literate by investing extraordinary resources, every year, training children to read. Now it’s our turn to figure out what response we need to shape our use of digital tools.

I guess I’m with Lehrer and Shirky. True, the more time I spend online, the less time I spend reading lengthy narratives, committing the ideas within them to memory, and thinking critically about their meaning.

But consider that I discovered Nicholas Carr’s new book online.  My search led me to multiple reviews, to Cory Doctorow’s essay on Writing in an Age of Distraction, and to the Clay Shirky/Nicholas Carr debate in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

This two-hour exercise inspired this post, enabled me to synthesize and organize links and sources (sorry if they distract you) and left me with a number of pieces to read, review and think about once I’m done writing this.

I think I’ll go offline now and concentrate on something really important. Your thoughts?  Please share.  And if you got this far, feel good about it.  You actually concentrated on something.

Want to read up and think on your own?  Here are some links.

Boston Globe Review of The Shallows

New York Times Review

In Search of Memory by Erik Kandel

Is Technology Producing A Decline In Critical Thinking And Analysis? by Patricia Greenfield

Shirky in Journal

Paper Cuts: Stray Questions for Nicholas Carr

Bloomberg/Business Week Review

Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders

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I spent yesterday at Boulder Digital Works, speaking and listening at its 36 Hour Executive Digital Workshop. BDW, part of the University of Colorado’s, is one of the few programs in the country designed to educate students in all things digital.

A joint effort between the university’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication and its College of Engineering and Applied Science, the program acknowledges both the shortage of digital talent in the marketplace, as well as the need to encourage inter-disciplinary rather than multidisciplinary ways of working as everything becomes (if it isn’t already) digital.

Lots of sharing and collaboration at BDW

This session, however, wasn’t for college students, but rather for anyone working in marketing (both at clients and agencies) who is struggling with making his or her organization more relevant. We covered consumer behavior, trends in social media, the differences between traditional product and digital production, and the need for new kinds of briefs, teams and processes. And this was just day one.

A few things struck me. One, everyone is dealing with the same challenges:

• –how to keep up with the onslaught of technology
• –how to free themselves from the shortcomings of legacy systems
• –how to effect internal change
• –how to stay relevant and current and employable
• –how to love (rather than be intimidated by) the challenge of it all

Some of the suggestions we shared included:

• –encourage more people in your organization to use the digital tools and platforms
• –don’t start with the technology, start with people’s use of it
• –create experiences that earn attention rather than messages that buy attention
• –look for “T” people, those who understand how all the different roles need to work together
• –generate lots of little ideas (below the radar) rather than striving for the one big idea

I can’t claim to be a digital expert by any stretch of the imagination. But as an observer of culture, consumers and change (I’ve lived through plenty of the latter having been in the business for 30-plus years) I do know something about transforming one’s self and one’s company. So I shared some of that.

You can poke through my deck on Slideshare (there are some cryptic notes attached if you click “more” under the embed button. Or you can watch it archived on UStream, though UStream may force you to sit through an ad. (Note that they’re not passing the revenue on to me.)

Let me know if it helps. In the meantime, I’ll be back there today, and will share more later. Some great stuff from Gareth Kay on strategy and briefs.

What are you doing or trying to do to keep up, stay relevant and transform your company?

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Huffington Post's Twitter Edition offers lists you can follow

Last week Huffington Post rolled out its Twitter edition. Media, Politics, Business and Technology now have their own individual Twitter pages, each featuring a list of “notable tweeters.” Politics offers you national reporters and pundits.  Media serves up personalities and media watchers. Business presents readers with insiders and analysts. The lists, aggregated by Huff Post, make it easy for you discover and follow a person, or grab an entire list.

For me there are a couple things worth noting. One, Twitter is rapidly becoming a serious business tool. It’s the new means of spreading and sharing content not only for individuals, but businesses and media channels.  Two, Huffington Post’s beta experiment is a perfect model for any marketer or brand to emulate.

Consider that none of us can buy share of voice anymore (the Internet is infinite); that consumers and communities prefer to connect with real people rather than logos (think Zappos, Martha Stewart or even Gary Vaynerchuk); and that everyone wants to create and participate (that includes many of your employees); and it seems this is an ideal opportunity for any company.

Twenty five percent of all Twitter users follow brands, nearly 23 percent in anticipation of useful content.

Last November this Razorfish study concluded that while most people fan or follow a brand in hopes of receiving an offer, nearly 23 percent do so in anticipation of relevant content and information.  Think about that.  On the web, in social media, your product is not only the content you create,  but the content you share.

Sure you can blog, carefully tag your bookmarks and make them available, but why not do a version of what Huffington Post did?  Curate or aggregate relevant streams of Twitter content – from employees, customers, or suppliers – and make them easily accessible to your community.

You can categorize them.  Organize them by subject.  Even track how many people follow the lists, giving you a sense of whether or not you’re offering useful, RT-able content.

Think about how you use Twitter yourself – as the ideal filtering system to find content and links that make you smarter, save you time, and connect you to new people worth knowing.  Doing the same for your community and customers could be a valuable service worth offering.  As Clay Shirky once said, the problem isn’t that we have too much information, it’s that we need better filtering systems.  Why not create one?

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The Boston Globe’s Scott Kirsner recently asked marketers, techies and product developers what they’ve learned over the years from Apple and Steve Jobs.

These were my answers.

Never underestimate the power of beautiful design

We all buy Apple products as much for how they look as for what they do. Apple has taught us all that aesthetics can actually define a brand and inspire pure, raw desire.

What you leave out is as important as what you put in

Too many products overwhelm customers with feature overload simply because it’s technically feasible.  Apple’s restraint is part of what make its products so user friendly. Lots of products, from cameras, to video cameras, to wrist watches could learn this lesson.

Vision has to come from the top

Apple’s advertising and messages are clear, consistent and reinforce a vision because they start with Steve Jobs. Too many publicly held companies run by finance types have no marketing vision whatsoever. Mid-level management and advertising agencies try to fill the gap and usually fail, depending too much on market research and falling victim to either group think or compromise.

The product is the marketing

With Apple,you don’t have to make up stories that give meaning to the product.  You simply have to tell the story of the product. Think the most recent iPhone ads. More brands should learn that a great story can’t make up for a mediocre product.

The art of anticipation

Is there a company or marketer any better at building buzz, speculation and even demand in advance of a product ever appearing? That is the result of a track record, category-defining products, customers who themselves become evangelists and Apple’s own restraint. And when they leak information to friendly reporters, they don’t use email; phone call only so there’s never a trail.

The science of retailing

There’s not an analyst in the country who thought Apple would succeed at retail. Yet by turning the store into a mecca of design, a celebration of beauty, a gathering spot for the believers and a center of learning and service, Apple has re-written the rules of retail. From an outsider’s perspective it was a risky endeavor.  From Apple’s viewpoint it was anything but.

You need to know your tribe

Apple knows exactly for whom it makes products  — creators, learners, mavericks, free-thinkers, the crazy ones — and it has never strayed from focusing on that audience. They celebrate their community by how they speak to them (intelligently and with respect), portray them (I’m a Mac, you’re a PC), and inspire them (Think Different). As a result they have created the single most value asset you can ever have on your balance sheet: true customer loyalty.

Be a role model

There is not a marketer or ad agency in the world that doesn’t regularly refer to Apple when talking about the value of consistency, creativity, functionality, design, effectiveness, service, and, of course, advertising. They are the role model. Yet so few brands or marketers can actually replicate any of those qualities even once, never mind consistently.  A reminder that a brand is every single aspect of the company:  culture, people, product, design, marketing and even its community of customers.

The wisdom of one

In an age of crowdsourcing and the ease of soliciting opinions from everyone on Twitter and from a brand’s community, Apple reminds us that the wisdom of the crowd is no match for a single genius with a vision. There is no crowd, community or focus group that could design the iPhone. Find yourself a Steve Jobs, or even half of a Steve Jobs and you’re better off.

That’s what I’ve learned from Apple.  What about you?

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Or as my new friend Tim Malbon, of Made by Many called it, the Kingdom of Awesomeness. It was, we’re told, the largest and most attended SxSW Interactive conference yet. Thousands of us from all over the world descended upon Austin to spend hours each day staring at our iPhones. Tweeting, casting plans, checking in, updating. And occasionally bumping into other people also looking at their smartphones.

But when we weren’t glued to a screen (or recovering from the previous evening’s festivities) we were blessed with a non-stop flow of content: daily keynotes, thoughtful presentations, numerous panels.

One could spend all his time attending how-to session on everything from crowdsourcing to seeding viral videos to learning social media basics. And while I did attend numerous panels, including Kristina Halvorson’s very good presentation on content strategy, and a Gen Y panel on how to manage – oops, I mean collaborate with — Gen Y, I was far more interested in the big thinkers like Danah Boyd, Douglas Rushkoff, Clay Shirky and Jaron Lanier.

Thought I’d share but a few highlights from their talks while I’m still digesting it all for subsequent posts.

Privacy remains a huge issue

This was best expressed in Danah Boyd’s well-attended keynote where she shared numerous examples, the most poignant being the potential horrors of Facebook’s change in privacy settings last December.  It forced users to opt in to privacy rather than opt out. Boyd used the example of a young girl attempting to escape an abusive father recently released from prison.

Given that 65 percent of Facebook’s 450 million users never read the privacy changes or watched the video explaining them – something Facebook could have determined with a little usability research – Facebook put thousands of users at risk for sharing content they never intended to share.  For Boyd, and perhaps for all of us, privacy is about control:  the ability to determine exactly what we share, to authorize who sees it, even to change our mind and get our information back.  The latter is obviously a real challenge.

Program or be Programmed

Douglas Rushkoff – author, speaker, thinker — believes that we are not the beneficiaries of all the new platforms, but in many ways the victims. We’re subject to Facebook’s definition of a profile, WordPress’s limitations on how we can express ourselves, Twitter’s 140-characters.  We ask what we can do with a platform rather than what a platform can do for us. If we don’t learn to program ourselves, we become subordinate to the biases of those who program for us. It gets worse when you consider the macro consequences.  While China and Korea are actually teaching kids to program, we’re teaching our school aged children to use Powerpoint and Microsoft Office. What are the long-term implications of that policy? Rushkoff shared his 10 Commands, which I posted here.

Sharing can save the world

Clay Shirky answering questions after his keynote

For me, the highlight of SxSWi was Clay Shirky’s keynote. The author of Here Comes Everybody takes a different stance.  Perhaps it’s the difference between a technologist and a social thinker, but Shirky believes that information and sharing can save the world. Engineers can’t solve the urban traffic problem with wider roads or better public transportation, but social media, with a means of connecting people who have room in their vehicle with those who need a ride in the same direction, can.  Shirky, one of the best speakers you’ll ever hear, rattles off story after story to prove his point.  The most important being that  we can share information for social good, whether it’s to present abuse against women in India or inspire civic responsibility closer to home.

Everyone has something to say

Jaron Lanier may not be as clear and focused a speaker as any of the above, but he certainly is both brilliant and charming. Lanier, author of You Are Not a Gadget, questions whether the Internet has lived up to its potential. He laments the fact that Ted Nelson’s Xanadu, a 1960’s pre-cursor to the Internet that promised every user would have one identity across the digital landscape (a potential antidote to the proliferation of platforms, accounts and passwords that promise to overload us in the very near future) never saw the light of day due, to among other things, Ted’s lack of management ability.

Lanier does, however, celebrate Nelson’s early and oft-criticized belief that everyone is a potential creator with something to say, a conviction that flew in the face of both traditional publishers and programmers (see Rushkoff), both of whom believe we are nothing but spectators and users.  Lanier believes we are all first class citizens. All of us creative. All with something to say. You could argue recent social media trends prove them both right.

I have synthesized four hour-long speeches into a few paragraphs. But I hope it’s enough to whet your appetite for more. Use some of the links above and explore on your own. And let me know what you think. More soon. Thanks for reading.

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