Morgan McLintic on PR

Theory of Hierarchies of Technology Adoption

I’ve been thinking about technology adoption lately and trying to make a better connection between adoption theory and actual buying behavior. Classic marketing theory suggests that all new technologies go through a bell curve of adoption. While it's a useful idea, marketers hunting for early adopters may struggle to find them. I think that's because early adopters are not a defined, permanent group, and that buyers don't view themselves as early adopters. Instead they have a self-perception of where they feel they should fit in a hierarchy of adoption. And it's the purchasing decisions of those in that hierarchy which drives adoption. Overall, sales volumes may follow a bell curve, but individual buyer behavior doesn't fit into such neat divisions.

Terminology varies slightly but in essence the typical adoption cycle starts with innovators who like the technology for its own sake; then early adopters who see how it can directly help and pay a premium price; the early majority, who follow the lead of the early adopters but are less willing to take the risk and pay such a high price; then the late majority who are more skeptical; and lastly the laggards, who are the most price sensitive and cautious.

Marketing techniques often focus on selling to the first two groups and then building enough critical mass to ‘cross the chasm’ to the early majority. The idea being that many technologies fail to reach that broader appeal and so only sell to a small segment of the market.

But who are these innovators and early adopters? For a long while I considered them to be a distinct group who realized they were innovators and regarded themselves as such: “I am an innovator, and as such happy to buy a Sony PSP,”  - or whatever the latest technology might be.

And I had thought that innovators where consistent in their behavior such that they would buy the latest home entertainment system, use the latest social networking software, buy the latest hardware at work etc. Being an innovator was a trait like intellect, sense of humor or hair color. I felt being an innovator was a universal behavior for that select group, certainly when it came to technology.

But the picture is much more complex. Being an innovator is dependent on attitude to risk and ability to pay. Of course, if you can’t afford the latest technologies (whether personally or corporately) you can’t fulfill demand and are therefore pushed back in the adoption cycle to a later stage.

Attitude to risk though is more fickle. It varies over time as a result of a huge variety of factors, such as personal circumstance, socio-economic environment, political and legal framework. I may be an early adopter now but if the government changes or if the country goes to war, I may feel more cautious. And that means markets may evaporate when targeting these early buyers.

Not only does my attitude to risk change over time, but also by product category. As a personal testimony, I am on paper a classic early adopter – male, technically-oriented, reasonable disposable income, connected, informed, right age-group. In my innovator guise, I helped implement Instant Messaging in my firm when it came out, we adopted Salesforce.com as one of the first European customers, I blog – all innovator proof points.

But in other aspects of my purchasing I’m an early or even late majority customer. It was only this year that I bought a TiVO, I’m still using my first digital camera which I’ve only had for 12 months, I waited for the Click-Wheel iPod to come out before buying one. In short I’m inconsistent in my purchasing. But that’s entirely consistent with consumer behavior.

For marketers this presents a problem – innovators are only innovators for certain product categories and at certain times. It’s a moving target, and in fact, I wonder whether it’s a specific target at all now – are there really innovators out there?

Instead of specific stages of adoption, I think there is a Hierarchy of Adoption. I have friends and acquaintances who I consider personally to be early adopters. Call them what you will (maven etc), but this group influences my purchasing decisions. If they have a technology then so should I.

Equally, I have a group of friends who I consider to be late adopters, these people are beneath me in the hierarchy of adoption from my perspective. If I see they have a product which I’m yet to purchase, then it’s a sign that I’m becoming a Luddite and must catch up. This is commonly called ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ but I think it’s more solid as a buying behavior, not simple jealousy. My innovators and my late adopters are real to me and influence my purchasing decisions.

My hierarchy of adopters though is not the same as yours. You may consider my early adopters as laggards. You may be higher up the overall hierarchy than me. Or below. So our personal hierarchies are nested in a continuum of overlapping perceptions. Your innovators’ purchase drive your own, and that in turn drives mine, and those that see me as an innovator will follow suit.

In a sense then we are all innovators and laggards in our own social hierarchies, which explains the conflicting behavior I describe above. I bought a TiVO recently because an innovator friend of mine testified to how good it was. Until then, none of my network had one. I had no innovator to follow or laggard to push me to purchase. Was he one of the first to buy a TiVO? No, probably about customer 2 million – but to me he innovated. Or in another example, I started blogging and now several people I know are following suit. As a group, we might all be early into the game compared to the general population, but to them I’m the innovator.

So if you can’t find the innovators in your market, it’s because they are not a distinct group. Everyone is an innovator sometimes.

As a marketer this tells me some basic lessons:

•    Always educate – you need to reach out to each innovator in each hierarchy
•    Focus – find the segments where the adoption wildfires might start and light them
•    Evangelize – once adoption starts look for ways to increase the transmission of that adoption
•    Be versatile – different hierarchies might buy for different reasons so adapt your message
•    Move quickly – your market may vaporize or appear suddenly elsewhere, so be ready to act
•    Convince and cajole – use the push from laggards as well as the pull from innovators

Charles to media: "Bloody people"

BBC: "These bloody people. I can't bear that man. I mean, he's so awful, he really is." Prince Charles of BBC Royal Correspondent, Nicholas Witchell.

Yahoo! 360

Mike Manuel (Media Guerrilla) was kind enough to invite me to try out Yahoo! 360 (thanks Mike). There are already lots of detailed reviews available (here and here via Dave Winer) and I've only had a brief spin round. Here's my humble attempt.

First impressions are that it's a collision of Typepad, LinkedIn, AIM and Flickr. So it's a social networking, photo sharing, instant messaging, blogorama. None of the functions are as sophisticated as the more dedicated sites. For instance, the blogging is basic (no control over image uploads, comments limited to 360 members, no RSS yet etc), the IM offers no voice or video, the photo sharing has no tags, and the networking allows no endorsements from others. But that's also its strength - all of those dedicated sites require separate log in, unique interfaces to master, repetition of basic personal information etc. If you want an introduction to these technologies, this is a great place to start, and I'd imagine for many it will fulfill most of their needs. It can only accelerate adoption of social networking and blogging in particular.

It also has some fun features like a Blog blast, which looks like a way to spark conversations with site visitors by providing an interactive panel at the top of the blog. If that encourages participation, then it's a great idea. And let's not forget it's beta. If you want an invite, let me know.

Yahoo! on a roll

Lots of chatter about Yahoo!'s new momentum with Yahoo! 360, the Flickr acquisition and Mobile RSS. Om Malik weighs in with some analysis and explanation. At the same time, Google seems to have lost the initiative and goodwill with the Autolink backlash.

On a personal level, I've just had my first test of Google Local, which looks useful and has nice eye candy with its interactive map. The search industry is one of the most exciting spaces at the moment as the big boys slug it out and emerging players like Technorati, PubSub, Topix.net create their niches.

NowPublic and OurMedia

...slurps coffee on an overcast Easter Sunday, catching up on week's flagged news while contemplating going for a run to offset impending chocolate overload...time to check out two interesting grassroots media projects which launched this week: OurMedia and NowPublic.

OurMedia provides free storage and bandwidth for citizen content creators to post and store text, audio, images and even video. It's still in alpha but after seven months of development seems remarkably solid. There's already some great content up there waiting to be discovered and shared. It's a hugely altruistic project and wonderful to see.

One of the disadvantages of the democratization of stored media is that often that the content can fall to the lowest common denominator. My brief search uncovered some content which really must only be of interest to its creator, having little broad appeal such as an old blog banner graphic with the creator's name on it. OurMedia's appeal (at least to me) relies on it being a resource of interesting content, so I hope the cream floats to the top. That said, if content only has a valid audience of one, then perhaps still it's worth keeping for posterity, as long as it's not at the cost of content with broader appeal. I wonder if the economics or funding will allow such casual use and hope that meantime content creators exercise suitable discretion.

NowPublic is a project which aims to put control of the news in the hands of the consumer. The idea is that you can post assignments to citizen journalists who then research and post that news back. Equally citizen journalists who have a story can use NowPublic to find their audience. Like a clearing house for news demand and generation. It's an ambitious project and still in early days. It has echos of WikiNews to me in its approach.

Sadly, already some of the assignments are dated or have since been covered in other news outlets eg the launch of Yahoo 360. I wonder though whether fundamentally it will work. The concept of demanding a news item seems peculiar to me. I'm interested in news about an organization, person, country or topic and want to follow any events surrounding those subjects, so my assignments will be permanent and generic ie tell me anything about Google or France. I can't request a specific story until I'm already aware of it, and that reduces NowPublic to analysis or researching fringe elements of the story.

The financials also seem awkward. None of the assignments I reviewed had budgets allocated to them, though clearly that's the intention of the site. Even if I did allocate a budget, how much would I spend given the huge number of free sources of information at my disposal? Even if I and 100 other news demanders pledged $5 for a story, that hardly provides a staple income for budding reporters to investigate a story, cover expenses and make a living.

I like the concept and I hope it works, but my sense is that news is more about the broadcasting of unknown information, than the demand of known stories.

...drains last drop of coffee...time for that run.

Commercialization of podcasting

The BBC quotes Dave Winer on the commercialization of podcasting: "No matter how you look at it, commercialising this medium isn't going to make very much money," he says. "Podcasting is going to be a medium of niches, with 'audiences' measured in the single digits, like e-mail or blogs.

"Maybe in a few years, maybe six or seven digits. But it will have to sustain interest beyond the hype balloon."

But speaking of podcasting, I should mention the excellent Hobson and Holtz Report, available at For Immediate Release again. I'm kindly mentioned in passing in yesterday's show (thanks guys), but Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson are really setting the benchmark for PR podcasting. They've had some interesting guest interviews and are producing shows of remarkable consistency, quality and frequency (twice a week - for an hour each time). Anyone who has tried video production or even podcasting, will know how much time it takes and will appreciate the investment that Shel and Neville are putting in - all those behind-the-scenes tampering with sound levels, stitching in other sources, typing the notes, dealing with file corruptions and technical oddities which crop up. The result is great though - and as with all these technologies, you only learn by doing, so I'm sure it's paying dividends.

And more on are bloggers journalists?

Wired: Much of the news and blog coverage surrounding the Apple Computer lawsuit has centered on the rights of bloggers versus those of professional journalists. While this is certainly an issue worth exploring, and something the courts will no doubt face in the coming years, this is not what the Apple suit is about...

What it really comes down to, however, is what exactly defines a trade secret, which is what Apple contends was stolen and leaked to three online Mac-centric zines. And whether you are a reporter, essayist, blogger or pamphleteer, judges have shown that they are more interested in promoting business opportunities than protecting the rights of journalists. In the Apple case, it doesn't matter whether you are a Joe Blogger or a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. The results would have been the same.

More on: are bloggers journalists?

CNET: Bloggers should be classified as journalists and given First Amendment protections based on the function they perform, not the form of their transmissions. Properly understood, the First Amendment applies to all those who report with journalistic integrity--offline or online.

In a prescient 1993 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that an author had standing to invoke a reporter's privilege when the court ruled that "what makes journalism journalism is not its format but its content." The same principle and rights should apply to bloggers--if they are producing similar content and using similar journalistic techniques as the mainstream media. Ironically, many of the "established" media outlets have also migrated online, with some even running their own blogs.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., is the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee.

More on Flickr and fair disclosure

The acquisiton of Flickr by Yahoo! still baffles me. Not the deal itself which was widely rumored and seems to be a good fit. No it's the nature of the announcement. It was made via a post on Flickr's blog on a Sunday afternoon. The content of the post is largely aimed at Flickr subscribers who are a loyal bunch and understandably don't want the service to change (the 207 trackbacks show the depth of feeling). But there has been no press release about the nature of the deal itself for Yahoo! investors or The Street.

Speaking to sources at Yahoo! PR yesterday there was no intention of making a formal announcement. This is for a deal rumored in the region of $30-35m (I heard as much as $50m today too). And I'm not the only one wondering whether this constitutes fair disclosure. Andy Lark, Sun's former PR supremo and now transparency evangelist, has been researching it too. Speaking to lawyers, he believes that a blog post does not represent fair disclosure as yet. Though he speculates it may in future.

I met the charismatic Fergus Burns, CEO of Nooked today and discussed this issue. He wondered whether the acquisition had affected the share price, suggesting if it hadn't perhaps it wasn't meaningful enough for an announcement. That's also the impression I got from my contact at Yahoo! - it's just too small ($35m??). A good point, so here's the share price from Yahoo! Finance. And no - it seems there wasn't much impact (see Monday's trading).
 

But can we conclude then that the strategy was justified? The share price didn't move so we were right not to announce it formally? I think that might also prove the opposite. The share price didn't change since the deal wasn't properly communicated. The only message given out was aimed at customers not investors, so how could they understand the strategy or the impact?

Another interesting point of contrast is with the other major deal this weekend - the IAC/InterActiveCorp bid for AskJeeves. That was announced more formally and covered in the mainstream media broadly (New York Times, Washington Post). And the Flickr deal? Barely a mention in the mainstream media beyond the trades like CNET. Granted they're on different scales (the AskJeeves deal is $2bn), but perhaps the lesson we learn is that while blogs are great for audience interaction and feedback, they're just not the right mechanism for acquisition announcements. Not yet anyway.

Papercasting

Papercasting: File under 'Fantastically pointless but hilarious abuse of technology' - write your blog posts on paper, scan them and post up the images. Call it a 'plog' - job done. Great stuff.

Credits: CNET