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Almost a year ago I did a gig for Worldwide Partners. According to the comments from the partners who attended (including those posted at weconverse), they kind of appreciated my thoughts. From my side I felt that the session went pretty well. Recently, during my summer vacation (June 11th), I got an e-mail with "Worldwide Partner news" (sorry, they offer no web version). To begin with the message was headed by a large image, wich made it difficult to read on my mobile phone. Right below the image was the header "WPI Launches New Public Website" (without any link) and below it another image. In the image I could read (but not my desktop search engine) "It’s a Wiki world. It’s a flat world." I thought that was cool and went on today to check out their new web site.
To begin with the home page is based on a slowly loading Flash implementation. As you can see there is no way to search the site. Therefore it was hard for me to quickly figure out if they had a Wiki, offered RSS feeds or utilized any other tools for social media. On the other hand, when I surf to the site on my phone it displays the basic content pretty well.
I do not have time to evaluate their new site, but it seems to me that none of the ideas, trends, or possibilities that I presented has guided their efforts so far. After all, they describe themselfes as:
"the world’s largest owner-operated agency network made up of 96 agencies employing 4,700 people in 143 offices located in 53 countries across Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North America"
Wordwide partners could at least have implemented Google maps to allow visitors to browse their network. Or started a blog to supplement their Media room. As far as I can judge the whole thing is very Web 1.0. What did I do wrong???
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augusti 5th, 2008 at 8:04
Hi,
I begin more and more to think that Clay Shirky’s reference to the point regards the Wiki Crime Map in Brazil is valid - in a speech he did at Web 2.0 in SF - “Gin, Television and Social Surplus” - (video http://blip.tv/file/855937 - edited transcript http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html);
“A couple of weeks one of my students at ITP forwarded me a a project started by a professor in Brazil, in Fortaleza, named Vasco Furtado. It’s a Wiki Map for crime in Brazil. If there’s an assault, if there’s a burglary, if there’s a mugging, a robbery, a rape, a murder, you can go and put a push-pin on a Google Map, and you can characterize the assault, and you start to see a map of where these crimes are occurring.
Now, this already exists as tacit information. Anybody who knows a town has some sense of, ‘Don’t go there. That street corner is dangerous. Don’t go in this neighborhood. Be careful there after dark.’ But it’s something society knows without society really knowing it, which is to say there’s no public source where you can take advantage of it. And the cops, if they have that information, they’re certainly not sharing. In fact, one of the things Furtado says in starting the Wiki crime map was, ‘This information may or may not exist some place in society, but it’s actually easier for me to try to rebuild it from scratch than to try and get it from the authorities who might have it now.’”
And this last point is valid for so much other stuff - whatever the objective that needs a disruptive change in innovation and behaviour patterns. Institutional theory aside, just look at the practicalities. It is easier to add energy to something already established and maintain a status quo, than to drag up something with their roots - hence ‘radix’, lat. ‘radical’ - and replant it in a truly new environment.
Yes, we’re still Homo Sapiens, but the key word in ’social media’ is ’social’. And to induce something that transform in the deepest sense a whole industry - like a global network of advertising agencies - you need to establish a totally new global network of ad agencies that to the least understands how to create a viral media campaign.
Forget about Worldwide Partners.
Even if it is wise to blame yourself when your pupil does not get it, as in lack of pedagogics, I think not even the strength of your message was capable to move the Mount Everest of fixed mind-frames you were trying to adjust.
The ad agency moving us towards the Web 3.0 (adding total embodiment of the one machine called the Internet, restructured with the semantic web and that will be a co-dependency for everyone on the planet in the end in between the machine and us - ref: Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the net - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html),
will certainly be built outside of existing institutions.
And it will not even be having a central office taking care of external communications like a common website. It will rather be a loosely coupled network of freelancers who only share somewhat a tag cloud in their blogs if generating them, and thus are much more fuzzy and chaordic.
Future will show that hierarchies were an exception in social organizing, where those resembling scale-free networks in moving ahead are more in harmony with natural flows - self-organized - and is the mode to get things done together ahead.
This revolution will be You-Tubed. It already is!
Peace,
Anders
augusti 5th, 2008 at 18:26
Hi Richard,
My name is Paul Davidson, COO of WOrldwide Partners, and I managed the development of our site strategy and execution. Thanks for checking out the site and apologies that it left you wanting more.
To be honest, as we developed our digital strategy, our goal was to be content-centric in order demonstrate our expertise, not to create an online conversation. Although it was part of our initial discussions, we realized we could not fulfill the promise of a social media site or blog, so rather than create a bad one, we decided to scale back and create a site, that while based on Web 1.0, would be built on a great content management application (Drupal), provide strong content, and allow us to evolve over time.
There are a few things we can easily add (RSS, Search, Comments on the Business Insights, DIGG links) as the site evolves, but we needed a place to start. Right now we are working on making the site more mobile friendly and adding the google mapping that you mentioned in your post.
Again, thanks for the comments!
PS – It does introduce the quandary of “if you build it will they come?” How many times have we left an empty wiki, or thought “how lame” when we crossed a blog with 0 comments. We felt that a full on Web 2.0 was neither needed, or appropriate for the site.
augusti 5th, 2008 at 18:46
Paul, thank you indeed for your transparent (and seemingly honest) reply! Drupal is a very nice platform, and I am sure that you (and we :-) will draw the most of it as time passes by.
Generally my (and many other’s advice) is not to start with a full blown Web 2.0 approach. Rather listen, invite, support and then (co)create social media. From my personal perspective I would very much appreciate RSS feeds, so that we can follow the developments within your network. Furthermore, I am convinced that quite a few of your partners have blogs. Why not create a separat page (e.g. worldwidepartners.com/blogs) that list them. Another easy fix is to publish some of the videos you have created for customers at a vide sharing service (YouTube is dominant, but my gut feeling is that Vimeo is a strong runner up). Well, I guess you have lot of ideas as well…
All this said could have been avoided if you declared your approach when the new site was launched. On the other hand, if so we would not have had this conversation…
/r
p.s. Anders, I understand your POV - but I care for my customers. If nothing else, the partners in question presents a lot of talent that must not be spilled. d.s.
augusti 5th, 2008 at 19:20
Thanks Richard. And the conversation is very much appreciated! We stepped back a little bit further than most with our “Business Insights” section which is our version of a blog.
Until we incorporate it, this should provide a news feed.
http://www.worldwidepartners.com/news.xml
Great idea on the blogs page.
Cheers!
Paul
augusti 5th, 2008 at 19:28
Wonderful, I am already a subscriber :-)
augusti 6th, 2008 at 10:21
Hi, Richard,
Re: your PS;
Of course, I understand your POV as well :) - my little posting was quite a radical provocation, signifying something that is already happening - Worldwide Partners competitors already is keeping them ‘on their toes’ in this arena. Talent, though, never gets spilled - they just move around to develop and deploy it, no matter what happens :).
And Paul, I also endorse your openness, that quite strongly points to the core challenge to incorporate social media flows in an existing (infra)structure of the frame I was illustrating. I understand your incremental approach. Blog directory is a good start! Aggregated blogging also has been used, where all blogs merge into one and the same RSS feed, but if it is too many, it might get too noisy.
Fast response with adding your first feed! I will preview it in my Flock.com feed reader, since I never visit static sites maybe just once…RSS is king!
Peace,
Anders
augusti 6th, 2008 at 15:57
Thanks Anders!
augusti 6th, 2008 at 16:13
You’re welcome, Paul.
Social media at its best :) - direct interaction with key stakeholders - through blog :).
We are a part of the conversation! Or: in short, weconverse ;).