Sarah Doody is a leading information architect and digital strategist who specializes in both product and brand development. She is known for an intimate understanding of culture, communication, and technology, and their collective influencing power on society.

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Target Me Please

5 March, 05:11 PM

With an uprising of recent concerns about privacy and ownership of digital content and data, is it possible that perhaps the current generation really doesn’t care at all?

In a recent presentation at the OMMA Behavioral Summit, Forrester analyst Emily Riley presented the idea that Generation Y expects us to know everything about them – and argued that we should develop more innovative ways for customers to manage their relationships with brands.

For a generation that’s never known life without the Internet, they understand that inherently what they’re doing online is being used to gather information about what they respond to. As a result, this generation has every reason to expect that their experience with a brand is highly personalized.

The question remains – are we delivering the quality of experience, conversation, and product to our customers based on all the resources we have available? Now, more than ever, we need effective tools to allow engage and measure these conversations between brands and users in the digital space.

To learn more, check out the three minute video of Emily’s talk.

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Searching Twitter

4 March, 08:23 PM

With a growth rate of over 900 percent last year (and now 6 million users) Twitter is rapidly becoming a part of our every day life – and brands want to be a part of it. So much so that there are dedicated people at companies such as Comcast, Time Warner, Livestrong, Southwest, and Lululemon that use Twitter as a means to be a part of the conversation about their brands.

In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Marc Andreessen, described Twitter as being “a real time electronic worldwide nervous system”. The challenge now lies in creating a way to read this nervous system, measure what’s happening, and make this information accessible and useful to a brand’s ability to continue conversations with consumers.

The question everyone wants answered is – how will Twitter make money? Having just closed on a $35 million investment from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital – Twitter is eying search as a means to increase their value. However, the company says that the priority right now is to continue the user growth.

For more on the influence of search in Twitter’s future, check out the article Twitter Eyes Search as a Means to Monetize from adage.com

Can America Stay Online?

25 January, 06:06 PM

President Obama’s campaign embraced every element of social media available. Through a social network-esque approch my.barackobama.com people could find local events and groups, contact undecided voters in their neighborhoods, and share stories through blogs. The result of the campaign’s online efforts were unprecedented. In comparison to McCain’s campaign, the Obama campaign had 4 times the number of Facebook supporters, 24 times the number of Twitter supporters, and 3 times the the visitors to his site in the final week. On YouTube, Obama supporters watched over 15 million hours of campaign video and, in the end, the Obama campaign garnered 13 million email addresses. The success of the Obama campaign was dependant on using technology in a way that provided tools for people to participate and be active and take action.

For the full article, America Online, check out the February 2009 issue of Wired Magazine.

Stay up to date by visiting www.whitehouse.gov to see how the President is keeping the conversation going through weekly video addresses, blogs, and other media.

Re-creating a mindset

30 November, 06:36 PM

What if the same amount of creativity and innovation that is applied to creating new products and campaigns was applied to shifting our approach and mindsets and vision of the future. Valerie Casey is trying to inspire and educate the creative community to take a pledge to reduce their organization’s carbon footprints, raise social and environment impact with every client, and start conversations to encourage collaboration in creating sustainable products, services, and businesses.

As an adopter of the accord, all organizations and individuals commit to a code of conduct: Do no harm; Communicate and collaborate; Keep learning, keep teaching; Instigate meaningful change; Make theory action.

Though the movement is still in its infancy, companies such as Adobe, Autodesk, and New Leaf Paper have already signed on. And with the support of these organizations, the movement has spread to countries including Australia, Mexico, and Finland. To learn more about the program, check out the Designer’s Accord as well as their online community where creative organizations and professionals can connect and catalyze innovation around sustainable practices that will change our future.

Are we really friends?

25 October, 11:59 AM

While cruising Facebook, I’m often amazed at how many friends people have and wonder what the quality of these relationships is. Do we really know these people? Do we really care about them? What was the criteria for them becoming our friend – or is there any criteria anymore?? Are we just auto-programmed to click “approve” anytime we receive a friend request? What does it really mean to know someone these days? Has the digital age of social networking created an obsessive need to amass as large a following as possible just to maintain some status?

There is a great article in the New York Times that hits this idea right on – Facebook in a Crowd is by Toronto based author Hal Heidzviecki’s commentary on a little experiment he did to see who is real Facebook friends are.

This really leads me to a greater discussion about the quality of the relationships that we develop online and whether our online relationships are creating a false sense of community.

Are there any online communities that really foster true meaningful communication and experience? Can the current model of online communities adequately support interactions that add value to our lives and relationships?

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Sarah Doody is a leading information architect and digital strategist who specializes in product and brand development. She is known for her intimate understanding of culture, communication, and technology and their collective influencing power on society.

Sarah created Personal Metrics, an exploration of how we can change our lifestyles through measuring our behavior.

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