Do multi-taskers make good employees?

I was very interested in a new study on chronic multi-tasking run by Stanford University professor Clifford Nass. Specifically professor Nass looked at the new bread of media multi-taskers. People who are receiving and using multiple, unrelated streams of information at once, like chatting with a number of different people, while working on a paper, while reading, and listening to TV. They studied chronic multi-taskers and found that multi-tasking impaired a person’s cognitive processes at most of the types of thinking we categorize as deep thought. Surprisingly the study found that chronic multi-taskers are really bad at being able to filter relative information, manage their working memory, and are slower at switching tasks. They concluded that chronic multi-tasking harms a person’s ability to think.

Additionally they found that there were different patterns of chronic multi-tasking in different generations. Teens and twenty’s want to do it, while thirty plus have had it forced upon them. Across the board they find that chronic multi-tasking is a growing trend in all age groups. Not surprisingly chronic multi-taksers believe that they are competent when performing these tasks. They give themselves a lot of credit for getting lots of information from multiple sources.

So how does this relate to business and specifically eLearning. I have attended a number of conferences where the speakers tell us we should be modifying our courses to cater to young people who are use to simultaneously receiving lots of media stimulation. This study clearly demonstrates that people might be chronically multi-tasking but that this behavior is not conducive for thinking and learning. I have always contended that an organization should build internal training that works for the corporation’s culture. Modifying material so that it appeals to a new demographic has always been counter-intuitive to me. Good training should be focused on meeting a companies goals and meeting a course objectives. Typically this is assuring the employee can demonstrate an understanding of the material being presented. The goal of a course creator should be to focus on presenting information in an instructionally sound way.

Apps vs. Browsers for mobile devices

I have been asked a number of times about the pros and cons of Apps (applications) vs. browser access when using mobile devices. The use of Apps is not a conversation when discussing web access on a PC's. When using a PC no one is interested in downloading an App so that they can have access to information. We all just assume that once we get onto a web site we will have access to that web site's applications. This is the exact opposite experience we have with mobile devices. With mobile devices we expect that we will need to download an App to have access to any type of information. So I need to ask, why is this?

What
I believe that Apps for mobile devices came about for two reasons, one is Apple's lead in the market, the other is the combination of old browsers and poorly designed web sites. Specifically Apple figured out with the iPod that you can make more money selling $1 songs then you can by selling the player hardware. To make this business proposition possible Apple needed to create a well designed, hip player so that their player is the player of choice. Once their player was chosen they could lock their user base into purchasing songs from only their store. Apple receives a 70% commission on every song purchased. Apple controls the market, forcing everyone else who wants to play in this market, including recording studies and artists, to write for the Apple player. When Apple, who controls the music player market along with the download music market, looked at the next logical hand held device to expand to, they naturally looked at the cell phone market. Since they were so successful making money with downloads they naturally looked at how they could repeat this success with the phone market. Naturally they chose to create a solution that requires software to be downloaded from their store to their player.

Helping Apple make the App play is the current state of mobile browsers and web sites. Most mobile browsers do not have nearly the same capabilities as the browsers we are use to using on our PC. For example Windows CE is equivalent to IE 4 while Windows Mobile is equivalent to IE 6. So a lot of functionality we are use to receiving when on a PC will not be available when we are on our mobile device. Also pushing this paradigm is the technology and graphics used on most web sites. Most web sites have been developed to be accessed by the latest browser. Graphic artists develop web sites with big fancy graphics and rich media so that they look nice on a PC size screen. Applications like web forms are being developed using the latest technology like java server pages, active server pages, PHP, or Python. Current web sites have not been developed with the small screen and limited functionality of mobile browsers. Because of this, mobile users are limited when surfing the web.

Organizations that are looking at being available on mobile devices need to understand the pros and cons of each approach. Unfortunately I see limitations with each approach. Understanding the pros and cons, provides you with some of the information you will need to make a decision on which direction to go.

Why:
There are pro’s and cons of going with an App solution versus a browser based solution. For the end user and the content developer the easiest solution would be a browser solution. The issue is having a web site that is developed with the limited functionality and download speeds necessary to run effectively on a mobile device.


Pro's and Con's of Apps:
Pro –
• For the app creator – functionality and control – App creators can be assured that all their App’s features work. You can develop your app so that it is optimized to run effectively on a specific mobile devices.
• For the end user – Since the app is downloaded to your device you are not limited by weak or slow WiFi access speeds.

Con –
• For the app creator – you need to develop an application that works on each of the players. Each player uses a different operating system and supports different technology. Porting to different players is not trivial.
• For the end user – you need to purchase and install each application. Many times you do not have the access speeds to download and install on the fly so that you need to think up front what applications you will need. Each App cost money.

Pros and Cons of Browser
Pro-
• For the app creator – one development cycle works on all the different devices.
• For the end user – access when you want it where you want it, typically for free
Con –
• For the app creator – need to test out and make sure the technology you are using to create your mobile web site is supported by the different mobile browsers. Some features that you may want to add my not be available across the board. Need to make sure that when you are developing your mobile accessible web site that it is slim so that it download and runs fast on a mobile device.
• For the end user - Does the web site/web App work on their mobile device? Does the web site have the functionality and bandwidth so that it works well.

Back to the future with mobile devices

The mobile device application market is a lot like the software industry of 20 years ago. Twenty years ago we had a lot of operating systems running on a bunch of different hardware platforms. If you wanted to develop an application you needed to develop it for each operating system and port it to each platform. The only way an end user had access to an application is if they installed it on their computer. We then moved into the modern, web era of computing. Life become so much easier for everyone. Software companies can now develop new applications once, put them on the web, and everyone has access. They no longer are porting to different operating systems and hardware environment. End users love the easy accessibility of using applications when they needed them without having to bother with downloading and installing software. This all worked well until we started moving to the newest computing frontier, mobile devices. Now we are back to the future, operating specific applications that need to be developed and ported to each device, and downloaded and installed by the end user? For mobile devices, why have we moved away from the beauty, elegance, and simplicity of web sites and web applications?

Questions on web marketing

I have been thinking a lot about Social Media Marketing. My thoughts and questions are more long term strategic as in measurement and long term use as a marketing channel, rather then tactical.

I am wondering how social media marketing is going to effect earlier waves of marketing like traditional media and traditional Internet marketing (web optimization, ad words, and e-mail blasts). We hear a lot about how new media is killing revenue for old media - "Craig's List" takes money from news papers without making "Craig's List" rich (issues covered in Anderson's book "Free"). What I am interesting in exploring is the effect of new marketing from the marketers point of view. Is it really effective? How do we know? Will social media companies figure out how to make money? That is from the marketeers point of view will they charge for access? If they charge then they will need to provide marketeers with effective measurements (cost per lead, cost per sale). If we all try using Social Media for marketing how quickly will this media become saturated and no longer have any effectiveness. What's next? Will the lack of effectiveness cause us to go back to more traditional forms of marketing? Will social marketing effect web site, web list, and web ad revenue? What's next?

As a data point:

A friend recently ran a B2C marketing campaign on Face book. They created a YouTube video to go along with their campaign. I thought it was quite clever. They got a lot of visits, a great viral spread, a lot of positive comments, which resulted in access to a lot of people they never would have accessed in a more traditional form (using both traditional media and Internet media). After their initial exhilaration they found that all of this attention did not increase sales - lots of tire kickers, no buyers.

I have started to research if this is normal or an anomaly. I am interested in others experience. If you say it works, how do you measure success? Why do you think your social media campaign was effective? Does it work for some markets like B2C, but works less effectively in a B2B market? Please get back to me with your comments and thoughts. You can post them here are e-mail me at anita@readygo.com.

Marketing in 2009

I talked with Jim Blassingame on his radio show today about marketing this century. We just touched the tip of the iceberg. I have run a few different marking organizations and have been running a software company for the last 10 years. Marketing is a big and important part of my company's budget. When making a marketing decision I am continually figuring out the fully burdened cost of a lead and the cost to close business per lead. To stay in business you really need to understand your customers and product, then look at all avenues for marketing and figure out what really works. It's easy to stay with what is working. With limited time it's hard but necessary to try whats new.

Over the length of my career I have seen three waves of marketing:

Wave 1: Traditional mass marketing or also called "before the internet" marketing. This includes mass mailings, trade shows, cold calling, and media buying (news paper, magazine, ...)

Wave 2: Internet marketing includes web sites, search engine, add words, and e-mail blasts.

We have now moved into:
Wave 3: Social Networking Marketing - an easier and harder form of marketing. It's easy since new technologies have higher access rates (e.g. e-mail blasts in the 90's were much more effective before spam and spam filters cut access.) Social Networking Marketing is harder since success stories seem to be urban legends rather then acceptable practices. I know people who have done "successful" Facebook campaigns that don't bring in a penny of revenue. Still the "free" cost of social networking makes it a worthwhile cost per lead.

As with any marketing campaign, the issue is understanding the media and being able to apply this knowledge to your product and customer base. I don't see that newer waves of marketing have done away with previous waves, even though later waves take money away from previous waves. Traditional media is in a free fall as marketeers like me try out newer (and cheaper) avenues of marketing. It will be really interesting to see how this all shakes out.

If you want to hear more about my thoughts on this you can listen to my discussion with Jim: