Mobile Revolution

This article convinced me that tex messaging (SMS) is  a great idea for SMBs.

US Government Head Up Cyber Ass
Johnny LAW came down hard on the virtual currency Bitcoin on Friday. The laughable idea is they think stopping a single bitcoin transfer agent stops the idea. 

Ideas, especially whose time has come, are more powerful than governments. Governments are temporal and biased seeking to protect the status quo.  

Yeah GOOD LUCK WITH THAT when my and millions of others "status quo" exists here in our laptops, phones and pads. He government, if we want to create something called Bitcoin and assign value to it YOU CAN"T STOP SUCH A REVOLUTION. 

We don't need the physical thing anymore. I have months when I don't use cash thanks to my debit card. I have a single dollar on me as I write this and so what. There is an ATM in arm's distance everywhere and my debit card makes what I spend money on DIGITAL. 

So the government drop kicked a Bitcoin exchange, the idea @DavidAmerland so eloquently stated in What If We Had A Different Value System For Goods and Services is going to happen whether you participate or not. 

In fact, please DON'T participate since every system you touch becomes a knot. Leave the idea of "VALUE" and "WORTH" to us. We are all adults, sentient beings willing to test and try new things. Can you say the same? 

Right, not so much as it turns out.  

David's Value System Post:

http://helpmyseo.com/seo-blog/692-what-if-we-had-a-new-value-system-for-goods-and-services.html 

More about this post on G+:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102639884404823294558/posts/PVBp7Px6oS9  

WOW, great comment on G+ thread thanks to +Leland LeCuyer who alerted Jorn Bettin.  

Jorn Bettin's Comment
Your comment is spot-on. Bitcoin is used for all the functions you list, just as fiat money.

Bitcoin may be seen by some as the currency of the digital revolution, but no single currency or no single monetary system of exchangeable currencies will ever eliminate the problems you point to, namely the multitude of purposes that are mixed into these currencies. 

The assumed generic exchangeability of money is the seed of the value destroyingproperty of "money", making it unfit as a store for value. And to be clear, there are many things that should not be exchangeable for anything else, and attaching a quantitative metric to them implicitly indicates a desire for exchange, which negates the unique relationship between people and the non-exchangeable item.

However, there are many natural resources that are limited or dangerous substances, the consumption or production of which should be limited. Additionally economic communities have a need for fair exchange of commoditieswithin the community, and for economic exchanges within the community local metrics of exchange that are bound to a specific purpose are useful.

I have four major problems with traditional economics:
1. Simplistic assumptions on the topic ofhuman behaviour, in particular the assumption that humans always act to maximise personal financial self-interest. Luckily some behavioural economists are now discarding this assumption. Economists still have a lot to learn about biology.
2. Simplistic assumptions in the definition ofeconomic activity.
3. Unrealistic assumptions on thesubstitutability of economic goods and services.
4. The concept of growth as a dogma / religion, which is simply incompatible with a finite planet.

Coming back to the topic of currencies and economic indicators, here a few hints for things that should register positively on any new economic indicator that aims to be useful:

1. Going sailing with a friend rather than renting a yacht 
2. Inviting you to stay in my holiday home
3. Not owning and driving a car and instead using a bicycle
4. Going windsurfing around the corner rather than booking an expensive holiday
5. Keeping fit rather than relying on big pharma to fix me up
6. Spending weeks developing open source software for an economic transaction platform/utility
7. Growing an open source community around working software and telling investors that they can keep their money
8. Keeping chickens in the backyard and growing vegetables instead of buying them from the supermarket

As a bonus, most of these decisions lead to a reduction in the amount of energy consumption, and a corresponding reduction in negative economic "externalities". The more decisions are made this way, the less the old economic indicators matter.  

Wow thought this debate about benefits of responsive design had long since been settled. Not so much as it turns out in banking. Here is an excellent article on why major bankers aren't sold on responsive design (mind you I am not sure I trust anything from a business vertical that hardly sets design award standards LOL).

Cool, creative examples here and great scoop from Nick. 

Brands know to go where the people are and mobile is where people are now. Good insight into HOW brands are going mobile with some #Stealthis tips here. 

Brands are often leading indicators. What they do YOUR marketing should be doing. In this case brands aren't on the bleed edge of mobile, but they are there now in a big way. 

Live In Interesting Times
Who would have thought it would be possible to take down a company with a billion customers with a slingshot no bigger than a smart phone, but such is the nature of our fickle loyalty.  

More to the point, such is the nature of the Mobile First Movement. Think of Mobile First like a wrecking ball capable of razing every seemingly indestructible institution built on the wings of eagles and eliminated almost as quickly (can you say MySpace?). 

Our phones curate, schedule and organize our lives. We listen to our favorite songs on Spotify, take and share pictures and, unlike any other device, our phones are within ten feet of us at all time or STRESS as we scurry about looking for them (lol). 

This article is insightful and conservative. Mobile first could unhinge more than the most dominant social network. Search feels different on phones too. Do this mental experiment with me. What if your 5 most important "searches" were encapsulated as apps on your phone? 

 You search dramatically less. Your app may parse and grab feeds, but Google's P&L can't look half as profitable if feeds and robots dominate their index. People searching to convert are where the cash is, but we are destined to look back and think how inefficient such a multi-step process was (is). 

Once the math knows all and is encapsulated into powerful apps catering to our needs as if they were made for us and us alone. The mobile first movement may unravel Google and search. 

The mobile first movement has everything to do with DATA and how we use it to arrive at conversion and very little to almost nothing to do with the phone as phone. 

Scooped an interested related story this morning on how social and video games are colliding into one another:

Social Media And Video Games Are Merging Insiders Explain
http://sco.lt/6Sgw89     

Beware SEO Implications of Responsive
Agree with the need to design responsive websites in this day and age, but beware that SEO can be an issue when designing responsive websites (sites that look good no matter what receiving device).

Responsive is a HUGE opportunity to think about your content differently to "snipitize" it, tag it and spin it in many different directions and combinations. Do that and your responsive design also gets you read for Web 3.0's much more dynamic framework.

Everything is going MOBILE so why wouldn't curation too especially since some of the best curation tools are on mobile (Zite and Flipboard are my favs what are yours?).

iPad Content Creation Tips
Great tips here for how to optimize your content for mobile and iPads in particular:

Create Customized Content

Create Visual Content

Create Accessible Collateral

Share Your Story

These tips are highly relevant for B2B since their content has to create a relationship and possibly make a sale. New studies are showing just how many customers make up their mind before they ever get on the phone. How do they do that? Your content marketing (or lack of same).

Good tips here for creating customer mobile content. Nothing says you GET IT quite as much as a responsive website, well tagged content rolling out in a highly visual format with a little gamification thrown in to promote engagement.