How I got the coolest book ever and the future of Personal Proactive Public Relations

Something cool has been happening the last couple of months, actually ever since I put Daemon on my wishlist in February 2008. You should have noticed I have written some about it recently, but besides being an extraordinary story, as many other will tell you, the story of how it came to be is also a special one, in my view obviously indicitative of the future.

You may or may not be aware that Daemon reached me roughly through these people:

• Joi Ito


• Jyri Engström


• Henrik Ahlen

Obviously this may work worse if you suck, but Suarez and his publisher obviously had the strategy from the start to treat well and be generous to the (prominent) people likely to spread good things about the book. Not pay them (as I was upsettingly solicited for by an indonesian furniture company the other day), just be generous with free copies and attention.

I don't think I'm the only one easily flattered by even a little attention from someone I look up to, and I was very happy to receive this email the other day (republished without permission):

Hi Carl,
As we reach the January 8th hard cover release date for the Dutton edition of Daemon, I wanted to pass along a quick note expressing my thanks. It was grassroots support from early adopters like you that proved to New York publishing houses that there was an audience for Daemon. Without that critical support, my little self-published book might have quietly disappeared.

Instead, it will be front-of-store in every Barnes & Nobel and Borders in the U.S. and is being translated into ten languages. I’ve also signed a deal with DreamWorks for the film rights.

As my sincere thanks, I’d like to send you a copy of the new hard cover edition of Daemon. I hope that setting this alongside the self-published edition will always serve as a reminder that, with a little help, anything is possible on the Web.

Just shoot me an email with your preferred mailing address, and I’ll send the book along (and I won’t put you on a mailing list, either).

Carl, I cannot thank you enough for lending your support for my book when it was needed most. Have a great 2009, and I wish you every happiness life can bring.

Warm Regards,


Daniel Suarez (aka Leinad Zeraus)

That's so nice, isn't it? Actually, I didn't have the time to reply to it, before I received an even more personal comment on a tag and a link in a picture of my bookshelf! By then I was very impressed, asked to be called CJ instead (which Daniel since has adhered to), said that I'd be even more honored to have my personal copy signed, and pleaded for copies to three more people I described colourfully. I got a reply that I will get the books.

That's so cool! But how did he find my picture, does he follow my flickr photostream? Probably not, most likely he used the power of Google, more precisely Google Alerts. Below I have set it up to capture, among other things, anyone mentioning my full name or linking to either of my blogs anywhere on the public Web:


Sure, this is nothing new, Meltwaternews (previously Magenta) have done it for years, but I imagine it is becoming common like Suarez and his publisher must have done - to pipe these data straight into huge customer relationship management or issue tracking systems! Tag some nicknames or domains per customer, automatically determine who a post is from and keep contact info and correspondence, and you have the opportunity to make the customers think you really care about them.

It doesn't even have to be that large or comprehensive, several times it has happened to me that I mentioned (actually, I whined about) something on twitter, be it Firefox crashing or animoto creating too short clips, within five minutes someone supporting it had picked it up and directed me towards a solution (the clips are still too short though), thus hopefully preventing a grumpy customer complaining to all his or her friends about the crappy product, and instead possibly created a raving fan who will do more than his share to promote the product.

Actually, why wait until someone has a complaint, determine what someone could say who needs your product, monitor those search terms and be ready to step in with a friendly suggestion of your product when someone most needs it. Unless you suck, your conversion ratios should be nothing short of amazing! Actually, anyone can do these things, and possibly definitely should, both through Google Alerts for the web and TweetDeck for twitter. Don't be too distracted by monitoring other cool phrases though, such as listening in to everyone in the world twittering "I want a hard XXX" (did you click that link?).

Do note that this is not big brother, and it's barely distinguishable as spam even, this is just managing the flow of information the senders have already decided to make public. And it's really cool. Of course, only a fraction of all communication is today happening through twitter and only somewhat more in blogs, but it is growing and it is a fascinating opportunity for proactive customer relations or even marketing. Anders Edholm of Electrolux made a fascinating presentation (in Swedish) at Disruptive Media Conference a while back about much of this topic, check it out:

Free TV : Ustream

As may be obvious, my insight into this stuff is still limited, so I'd love some suggestion to for example improve my Google Alerts terms. See my other blog posts about viral marketing or Daemon.

Daemon by Zeraus - complimentary books and friendly marketing

 

I got a package today! The stamp collection on the envelope was truly impressive, death and misery to Posten, and many thanks and lunch or a couple of beers to my friend Henrik of Internet Video Advisory Group who sent me the book!

The deal was that Henrik had received some complimentary copies of Leinad Zeraus' "Daemon" (do read his story, it's an interesting one about friendly marketing). Since I had already several months ago put the book on my wishlist after reading a very positive review by my idol Joi Ito, I pretty much begged Henrik to send one of his copies to me.

Frankly, I don't know too much about the book yet, but if Joi considers it inspiring, it's usually something cool, considering his extraordinary understanding of social media.

In other news, my girlfriend recently returned from her too long trip to the US (yes, I was lonely), and in her handluggage was a bunch of books for me, and a Canon Speedlite 430EX flash, I'm so excited about that one, finally flash pictures which don't look like crap! The books she got me are:

• "The light of other days" by Arthur C. Clarke
  
• "Light - Science & Magic" as suggested by Erik Starck
  
• "Made to stick" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath as suggested also by Erik and Jonas Hombert

Now I would buy an iPhone! If only it had buttons...

Yesterday the lesser of two annual events in the Apple world took place - the Apple WWDC - World Wide Developers Conference keynote (the more significant one being the January Macworld Expo).

Apple are really amazing about being able to create a buzz about every little thing they are doing. They used to broadcast the conference keynote live, but nowadays (apparently not for technical reasons) they keep them for a while but bloggers provide both live text and commentary. The day afterward, the event is available over QuickTime.

Of course, yesterday's event was focused on the iPhone (and is of course in both DN.se and NyTeknik). Some have complained that the keynote provided little juicy news for developers in terms of hardware or development tools, but the biggest thing for me is the new 3G iPhone, with GPS capability and roughly half the price of the old iPhone. The deal is: 8GB 3G iPhone with GPS at $199 ^* ≈ 1990 EEK ≈ 1190 SEK ≈ 127 € ≈ "Twice as fast, half the price" (with significant coolness added). I am very very tempted at getting one now.

Still, the major hurdle I've learnt of the iPhone remains - it has no buttons... It was the most revolutionary thing with the iPhone, to use as much as possible of the device surface for adaptable buttons and display, great. Though, it also requires way too much attention to input, it gives no feedback to touch so it may be the worst example but - how can you SMS while drivingwalking for example?! I have inherited a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone, and it may be subtle, but it has a lot of features you require of your phone! Finding contacts, forwarding SMSs or texting, it is really fast when you don't have to pay attention to what you're doing and can just let your fingers type away. So Apple, it's great that you have been trying to cater to enterprise users, now please figure out a way to work with the iPhone even with minimal attention, and it will really start selling.

The second most interesting bang from the WWDC is the wealth and variety of applications which seem to be coming for the iPhone. Sure, games are fun, but I am really keeping a keen eye on location aware and social mobile applications like Loopt or for that matter, my friend Peter's social picture messaging application MoYuMe (I recently found him in a video by some Latvian blogger). If you think the GSM phone, IM and SMS have changed the way people live and what they do, the scale of the mobile social revolution is breathtaking. Reactionaries object that who cares about all that social and mobile silliness, but remember they said the same about mobile phones and SMS. You heard it here first (well, unless you heard it somewhere else before), and for a head start of understanding the revolution, head over to our friends CommonCraft explaining Twitter in plain English:

(Update: In Sweden Telia and in Estonia EMT will be selling the iPhone 3G, and at least in Estonia you can pre-sign up already. I think EMT's ad is much cooler than Telia's press release at least)

(Update 2: Teliasonera has released it's price plans for the iPhone 3G:

price plan	traffic included	monthly fee	iPhone 3G 8 GB, tied 24 months	iPhone 3G 16 GB, tied 18 months
iMini	100 minutes, 100 SMS, 100 MB	299 SEK	1695+24·299 = 8871 SEK	3295+18·299 = 8677 SEK
iMidi	250 minutes, 250 SMS, 250 MB	489 SEK	995+24·489 = 12731 SEK	2695+18·489 = 11497 SEK
iMaxi	1000 minutes, 1000 SMS, 1000 MB	859 SEK	1+24·859 = 20617 SEK	2195+18·859 = 17657 SEK

No surprise really, after the initial pretty useless buzz Apple released, $199^* has the asterisk so to say - the subscriptions you this time probably will be tied to in the store are pretty horrendous. I think a "3G-soap" as they are called in Stockholm, a 3G USB modem for the laptop costs roughly 500 SEK per month, and that's still less limited and a lot more versatile than what you can do with an iPhone and 250 MB.

Swedish wireless access prices are generally ridiculous compared to Estonian and I hope to see that EMT will be less scotch. Also, count on me writing a piece on how to forever get rid of the despited "high speed extreme use"-clauses in broadband contracts, also discussed in Swedish here)

(Update 3: Estonian EMT has released the iPhone 3G too now. If I understand the newsletter correctly the contracts are all 24 months, so it's not comparable to the 18 months column above. I was saying that I think traffic should be cheaper in Estonia, but instead it seems they simply do not provide any "maxi" plan, and charge a bit more than Telia does in Sweden.)

price plan	traffic included	monthly fee	iPhone 3G 8 GB, tied 24 months	iPhone 3G 16 GB, tied 24 months
i550	100 minutes, 100 SMS, 100 MB	550 EEK (= 329 SEK)	2670+24·550 = 15870 EEK (= 9486 SEK)	3960+24·550 = 17160 EEK (= 10257 SEK)
i890	250 minutes, 250 SMS, 250 MB	890 EEK (= 532 SEK)	1490+24·890 = 22850 EEK (= 13658 SEK)	2780+24·890 = 24140 (= 14429 SEK)

Vad är ett roligt spel egentligen?

Ny Teknik skriver om ett av mina favorit-spel, Lego Star Wars. Jag testade det bara för att mina syskonbarn är så tokiga i det, och sen var jag fullständigt hooked! Nästan i.a.f. ... jag berövade min brorsson att få låna mitt PS2 en vecka extra för att få spela det några timmar till. Det är rätt mycket som Ratchet & Clank, med söt grafik, Star Wars-sagan, och tuuusen saker man kan samla på sig genom spelet. Mycket beroendeframkallande.

Annars var jag på Café Delirium (stans bästa pub) ikväll med Philip, vilket förde tankarna till urfåniga arkadspel baserade på pissoarer (har ni tänkt på att man måste handla i baren för att få "ammunition" att spela med?)... men bland annat så pratade vi om att hellre än spel som suger in en i en alternativ verklighet, så är det ännu intressantare med saker som förbättrar, förenklar och gör den befintliga verkligheten trevligare och roligare! Effektivare roligt! Vi är rörande eniga om hur grymt Last.fm events är, och nu har jag nog fått Philip hooked på MoYuMe ("More of You and Me") också, ett trevligt sätt att komma närmare sina nära och kära även på distans, och en kul tillämpning av MMS (Jag kan bjuda in folk... hahaha... ).

(Update: CD kommenterade just för mig att det ju finns en mängd "alternate reality games" som t.ex. "killer - the assasination game", och sen såg jag en artikel och video om en så sjukt lyckad Japansk marknadsföringskampanj för chips)