| Demographic |
| Economic | | Political | | Cultural |
| Natural | | Technological |
| persistence of cultural
values | | shifts in cultural values |
virtual communities
| how they started
| | issues and problems | | examples
|
| the state-of-the-art for marketers | | the
online community myth |
| TALK Topic | | Last Update |
Persistence
of Cultural Values
Core beliefs and values
are relatively enduring and must be considered by marketers positioning products. For
example, product innovations that conflict with core values are unlikely to be adopted. 
Secondary values, however, change over time and may provide positioning
opportunities. For example, if the Bills ever left Buffalo, the Sabres would find
themselves with a terrific marketing opportunity.
People express cultural values in many ways:
| View of Themselves |
People vary
in their emphasis on how important serving themselves is compared to serving others.
Personal ambition and materialism have increased significantly over time in the US. |
| View of Others |
Recently,
there has been a trend toward more altruistic behavior, at least among some segments of
the population. |
| View of Organizations |
Most people
are willing to work for large companies but also believe that the companies are out for
themselves. |
| View of Society |
Trends like "Buy
American" reflect this view. |
| View of Nature |
Changed over time from
dominate and control to coexist and preserve. |
| View of the Universe |
Linked to religious
observance, this trend has seen an overall decline among most and a simultaneous
passionate activism among a small, but powerful group, usually called the "religious
right" (US perspective). |
 On TV ads, I hear words of
revolution. "This changes everything." The biggest thing since Gutenberg.
Without Gutenberg, they say, we would have no Protestant Church, no Enlightenment, no
American Revolution. We wouldn't even have Dilbert. The Web is causing as profound a shift
in cultural values. Hmmm. I hear words of warning and caution and alarm.
Words of addiction and Ann Landers on the dangers of cyber romance. Kids lost in Doom's
dungeons. Chatrooms full of nattering neurotics pretending to be studs and babes.
Then I look at the Internet's exponential
growth curves. They have to start leveling off -- there are only so many people. I wonder
what our explorer friend leaning over his globe would want to tell us? |
| Everyone seems most concerned
about the "virtual" aspect. Computer- mediated communication isn't
"real". You can't look real people in the eye, even with a streaming video
connection. Well, you can't do that over the phone, either. From sales to customer
service, tens of thousands of people spend most of their forty work hours on the phone.
Truck drivers spend their forty hours alone. Are we as worried about them? The Internet in infancy was driven by people's desire to
communicate. The only medium was text. The only art was images made from keyboard
characters, such as smilies. The only sounds were the tap-tap of
keyboards. |
A Plea for Visual
Literacy
If the Internet is to become a democratizing force, it will require students to
create as well as consume information on the Web. And to become information creators
requires an understanding of how to think, create, and communicate
visually.
The Web requires the teaching of writing as
a process that involves imparting skills of visual as well as written communication to our
students. It involves an invigoration of visual literacy in our students.
by Kevin Hunt
CMC
magazine |
|
| Most people's first tool was email.
However, more and more people surf the Web first. People satisfy other desires -- to
express themselves, to display, to entertain -- but the desire to communicate is still
what drives the growth not only of people involved but in the amount of time they spend. The
number of people who spend some time online has long since reached critical mass. It is
now appropriate to talk of on-line communities or virtual communities in ways we can't
when we refer to telephones or television. Sure, we have unions of telephone operators.
Sure, at work you have the Friday-morning Seinfeld crowd retelling the jokes. Sure, the Church of the NFL
fills autumn Sunday afternoons. But
something different is going on in cyberspace. |
Virtual
Communities
How They Started
| The most basic built-in rules of virtual places control when
you can act, what kinds of actions you can take, and who or what you can affect by your
actions. Old computer graphics hackers, for example, fondly remember Spacewar, the first
computer game; it provided a diagrammatically depicted, deep-space battlefield in which
players could take turns moving simulated spaceships, launching missiles, and amiably
attempting to blow each other to bits. On time- sharing systems, players did not have to
share a single console but could operate individually from their own. And when networks
began to develop, so did remote Spacewar between players who might be hundreds of miles
apart. But the game stayed the same. The relationships that mattered were not those of the
players' bodies in physical space (as, for example, in a pistol duel) but those of their
surrogates in cyberspace, and the rules that counted were the coded-in ones of the virtual
place in which the surrogates met. |
| On the early bulletin boards and commercial networks,
"forums" or "rooms" that allowed participants to "chat"
quickly became a main attraction. Here the rules structured not a shoot-'em-up arena but a
space for (mostly) risk-free, multi-participant conversation. The place that you entered
was presented as a scrolling text window. It had a descriptive or evocative name (like a
bar, coffee shop, or other such hangout), and you could survey the scene by looking at a
list of current participants. At any point, you could type in a short text comment; this
appeared in the window, preceded by your chosen online handle, so that a stream of
comments scrolled by on each participant's screen-a geographically distributed, highly
stylized, cocktail party with electronically masked participants and a mouse in your hand
instead of a drink. |
So these virtual places performed, in a vivid
new way, the traditional urban function of creating opportunities for chance encounters
between strangers.
|
|
| Forum habitués would often bar
crawl from room to room until they found one that seemed to have the right buzz. If they
struck up an interesting conversation, they could agree to go off into private rooms to
continue, and eventually might even contemplate the big step of choosing times and
physical locations to go face-to-face with new-found friends. So these virtual places
performed, in a vivid new way, the traditional urban function of creating opportunities
for chance encounters between strangers. And the associated conventions allowed those
encounters to evolve, step by step, toward friendship and intimacy. Not surprisingly, some
of these convivial spots became hot hangouts in cyberspace. |
| In the early days of computer
networks it seemed a slightly far-fetched metaphor to describe these sorts of interaction
sites as "places," since bandwidth was narrow and communication was mostly
restricted to typing and receiving text. But SIMNET changed that. ... SIMNET first came
online in 1986 as a network of M-1 tank simulators, and it has since been elaborated to
include other types of vehicles. The viewports of the "tanks" are video screens
displaying simulated three-dimensional terrain over which a mock tank battle takes place.
Since the computer- generated display is updated in real time as controls are manipulated,
dozens of widely scattered tank crews have the vivid impression of maneuvering around the
same patch of countryside. Perhaps fittingly, this prototypical electronic landscape --
this Garden of Eden of cyberspace -- is a realistically simulated battlefield. |
The technology of distributed interactive simulation (DIS) systems
grew out of SIMNET, and by the early 1990s it was being hyped as the latest thing for the
theme park industry. Pretty soon you could line up to play BattleTech, Virtuality, or
Fightertown -- interactive games unfolding in networked simulator pods that immerse you in
tacky but fairly convincing virtual worlds. |
We will not just look at them; we will feel present in
them.
|
|
As bandwidth burgeons and computing muscle continues to grow,
cyberspace places will present themselves in increasingly multi-sensory and engaging ways.
They will look, sound, and feel more realistic, they will enable richer
self-representations of their users, they will respond to user actions in real time and in
complex ways, and they will be increasingly elaborate and artfully designed. We will not
just look at them; we will feel present in them. We can expect them to evolve into the
elements of cyberspace construction -- constituents of a new architecture without
tectonics and a new urbanism freed from the constraints of physical space.
Face to Face / Interface
excerpted from City of
Bits |
Virtual Communities
Issues and Problems
 Samuel Morse said
it best when he first successfully transmitted bits. He called it the telegraph and asked,
"What hath God wrought?" Could he foresee the day in cyberspace when my avatar
would haggle with your avatar over the price of a car? When you could easily find sites
called net.addiction?
A recent book by Howard Rheingold subtitled "Homesteading on
the Electronic Frontier" explores the issues and problems in depth. The hypertext version has links you won't find in
the printed version.
A chapter from MIT's Judith Donath's Communities in Cyberspace
called "Identity and
Deception in the Virtual Community" will open your eyes to some of what's
happening in the chat rooms. Better yet is first-hand experience.
Another influential thinker is Sherry Turkle. Her most recent book,
Life on the Screen:
Identity in the Age of the Internet, is available only in a printed version. But you
can find many of the ideas on the webs for her courses at MIT. I recommend her article Whom Am We? in Wired. Note
especially the next to last paragraph.
Real vs. Virtual
There are many who fret about our increased
alienation from the physical reality around us as we retreat into virtual worlds. Many
critics of online life feel we are becoming alienated from each other, from our community
and from the natural world. Others feel the very notion of "real" is beginning
to wither as we increasingly create worlds around us that cater to our fantasies and
prejudices. ...
Rene Magritte was
a Belgian surrealist
painter. One of his most famous works is called "The Treason of Images".
Underneath in French it says "This is not a pipe." Why not? Because it is a
"picture of a pipe"! It's the map, not the territory. Until now we've always had
the brains to distinguish representations from the real thing. ... Today, most of us live
in almost totally mediated urban environments where signs and symbols, representations and
simulations, constantly bombard us. Are our representations becoming too real?
Another way to understand hyperreality is to separate three
concepts: reality, the map of reality, and the map as reality. Maps aren't
just paper representations to geography. We can think of them as the store of theories and
assumptions we use to guide us through everyday life. ... Our assumptions about what the
world is like are the abstract maps which we are constantly adjusting when reality throws
us a new curve. To use the appropriate psychological term, we apply schemata to
real situations which, through a process of trial and error, are adjusted to come into
conformity with reality. Fine and dandy. Now imagine situations where there is no reality
to adjust your maps to, like Disneyland.
from Metropolitan Life, a York University course about the
net
© 1995, 1996, 1997 by Paul J. Kelly |
|
 I also recommend two other articles:
In Is There a There in Cyberspace?
John Perry Barlow looks at the alienation fears mentioned in the box below. The Nerd in the Noosphere,
Michael Heim's article from CMC
Magazine, compares American and European approaches to virtual reality.
For marketers, these two articles apply many
of the above ideas.
"Nine
Principles for Making Virtual Communities Work" by Mike Godwin in Wired
a few years ago.
"Targeting Virtual
Communities in Cyberspace" by Michel Bauwens in Net Business Daily from
December 1996. |
Virtual
Communities
Examples
| In addition to the chat rooms, you can visit some other
virtual communities to get an idea of what's going on. Elsewhere, we'll explore virtual
reality (VRML). Here are some low-bandwidth up-and-running virtual communities that will
run in your browser without plug-ins. |
The
Well
 Here's their basic press release: The Well, a pioneer in virtual
community, has been bringing people together since April 1985. Made up of an eclectic mix
of writers, defenders of counter- culture and computer experts, The WELL became known as a
gathering place for an articulate and expanding group of independent thinkers. Today The
WELL has grown to more than 10,000 members,
and is one of the most venerable and influential online communities in the world. |
Blacksburg
Electronic Village
Originally sponsored by Virginia Tech, whose
main campus is in Blacksburg, the BEV is the most active and comprehensive geography-based
virtual community that I could find. Everyone is welcome, the only online residents of the
area can belong. A couple of years ago, USA Today ran a good overview. |
 "The River is an open, self-governing,
uncensored, economically sustainable, computer conferencing system. The central missions
of the River are to maintain a medium for conversations among a group of diverse people,
and to foster virtual communities which control their own destiny. The River Community is
owned and governed by the people who create the high-quality conversations which are the
source of the River's value. The River is dedicated to experimentation and welcomes
newcomers."
from their Mission Statement |
While these three examples have
a focus, other communities will take all comers. www.fortunecity.com
bills itself as "The City that Never Sleeps". Geocities is huge. It's also one of the best ways to
build and maintain your first web site.
Want to try your own? Prime-Web's Ted O'Neill recently released version
3.75 of his Ultimate BB. As you can read at Internet News, UBB
lets marketers script interactivity to build a sense of community among visitors. UBB has
all the customizable features you need as well as a freeware version.
Virtual
Communities
The State-of-the-Art for
Marketers
Egghead Computer in January closed all its
physical stores and started selling exclusively on the Web. What kind of bet are they
making?
 For starters, if you go to
Egghead's site, you'll need to download software from The Palace to shop. It's a 1.5 MB download that will
take at least five minutes with a 28.8 modem, but I recommend it highly. You can use it to visit not only Egghead but dozens of other stores. It
will show you one direction that marketing with new media is taking.
The Palace lists over 300 sites, mostly non-commercial. They
average around a hundred rooms each. On a recent Sunday afternoon, only a third had anyone
in them. In about half of those, the developers were working alone or in pairs. Of the
other fifty or so, South Park (as in the TV show) was most populated with 144 people in
their 92 rooms. Most people were using the generic avatar. Many, however, were using
personalized avatars -- photos of fetching young women or muscular young men and drawings
of wizards or birds.
Basically, The Palace provides a chat space against a series of
backdrops ("rooms") that have hot spots that take you to other spaces. By
clicking on a blank area, you move your avatar across the surface of the backdrop but not
within the space. That would take VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) and more
bandwidth than I have at home. Everyone in the space is seeing the same thing at the same
time. The words that you type appear in one of several balloons near your avatar and can
be accompanied by a long list of sounds. You choose the balloon, the sound, and one of a
dozen expressions for your avatar. The most crowded space I visited had so many avatars,
over ninety, that I could hardly see the backdrop. There were so many balloons and sounds
that I had to leave.
|
Is Egghead expecting too
much? |
|
Will every potential customer
download The Palace's software? |
|
How much business will Egghead lose
because customers won't download from The Palace or don't know how to install and use the
software after they do download it? |
|
How much business will they lose
because people find the environment new and unsettling? |
|
How much traffic are they drawing,
such as mine, of only the curious, not serious buyers? |
It's still easy (easier?) at Egghead to shop
the "old-fashioned" on-line way -- basically, by reading the brochureware and
filling out an order form. If you want personalized, live, interactive one-on-one customer
service, however, you have to download The Palace's viewer to talk to one of the Sales
Eggs.
"PalacePresents
will let us further build our community via regularly scheduled special events, product
launches, and training sessions. The only other place our customers would be able to do
this is offline, in our physical stores."
Steve Gere, Manager of Intranet
Merchandizing, Egghead Computer |
These quotes on The Palace's
site
come from marketers who have literally
bet the store on The Palace
"PalacePresents has
the reach of a stadium with the feel of a coffee house. This is much more than a
broadcast model. It provides the tools for guests to interact like they would if they were
actually at a concert."
Nick Wild, Associate Director of
Technology, House of Blues New Media |
Here's how The folks at The Palace pitch their product.
Create the look
and feel unique to your brand and add live streaming audio and video to enhance the user
experience, while building awareness and loyalty in your target market. Sell merchandise
in your own branded store. Promote and host events, contests and live interviews. Push
html-based slide shows to your audience and provide customers with the richest, most
immersive multi-user environment on the net. The Palace is a key element in any successful
online marketing program. |
As you use their software to
shop, do you see the future of marketing? Or do you see an elaborate wizbang gizmo that
the average shopper won't be able to handle? I wonder whether the developers of the first
strip malls away from the downtown area had a similar decision knowing all the customers
would need a car to get there?
The
Online Community Myth
by Gerry
McGovern, Nua
'Communities' is one of the most abused words today. I know I have
abused it and I have seen it belted all over the place, slapped, punched, kicked and
beaten into sentences where it simply just doesn't belong.
Because last night it struck me that the phrase 'online communities' is something of an
oxymoron. In other words, it doesn't make much sense.
The last 20-30 years have been bad for communities (certainly in the 'Western World').
Look around you and most of you will see communities slowly dissolving or rapidly falling
apart. I know that that is the case in Ireland anyway, and if it's happening in Ireland
then that must surely say something, because Ireland historically has had an incredible
community focus and spirit.
The Internet by itself is not going to stop that dissolution. If anything, it may speed it
up! Because the Internet takes you away from your community.
Oh, we have all these 'online communities.' How many of them are no more than clubs, gangs
or associations? Hand on heart,
|
would you die defending
your online community? |
|
would you pay taxes to support its
growth? |
Because, let's face it, if you're not willing
to put your hand in your pocket for something then that says a lot about your bottom-line
feeling towards it. I'm not saying here that you can't create online communities. What I
am saying is that genuine communities take years to evolve and they require genuine
long-term commitment and hard, hard work from their participants.
Many of what are called online communities are fickle things, that demand little or no
allegiance or commitment from their members. They are paper communities, ready to fall
apart at the first puff from some big bad wolf.
| Brands are
like communities and brands are facing major challenges on the Internet. Companies may be
able to save on distribution and packaging for certain products, but I believe that they
will have major cost centers with regard to developing systems that manage the
relationship between the company and customer. |
It takes more than a
group of web pages, chat forums, and discussion groups to make a community. |
|
Brand
loyalty is a complex equation and brand
loyalty online will have to meet major challenges. Last week I may have
been loyal to my local bookstore and music shop. But with cheaper prices and more
convenience being offered by Amazon and CDNow, how long will that loyalty remain? I've
always banked with my local bank, but if a Dutch or American bank offers me significantly
better service for my online account, won't that stretch my loyalty?
The Internet is really a fickle place where we are on first name terms with everybody and
close to very few. Sure, some new friendships are being made as the old neighborhoods
creak under the pressure of modern living. But it takes more than a group of web pages,
chat forums, and discussion groups to make a community.
It takes time; something very few of us either can, or are prepared to, give much of these
days.
 |
If you were Egghead Computer's marketing director, what would you
do next? |
|
