I love this program. Some very smart people at Microsoft created a yearly one day camp to inform and inspire high school girls about careers in technology. It's called Digigirlz.  Yesterday they hosted one at the Mountian View, CA campus. These are the type of activities that I would encourage all companies to get involved it at whatever level is appropriate. Maybe a smaller company doesn't run day camps around the globe because they don't have the size and resources to do that. But ask yourself what can you do in your community to make a difference in a young person's life bringing goodness back to yourself or your brand. It's a boomerang, give it away and it will come back to you usually in two fold. If you are a local restaurant what are you doing to give opportunities to budding chef's in training? My uncle is a expert craftsman and he donates his time once a year to teach children with sick family members at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center  here in Seattle how to make bird houses. He even got a local lumber distributor to donate the wood. How did he do that? He simply asked....

My friend and co-worker Chris did a really interested interview yesterday on Martha Stewart's radio show giving tips on how to start blogging. Take a listen! Great job Chris.

I am a big fan and shareholder of Starbucks. Plus I live in Seattle, the birthplace of SBUX, so I feel a certain connection to their success. They announced at the shareholder meeting this week a number of changes to the stores. It's a move to 'bring back the magic.' I applaud Howard Schultz for looking internally as to how they got where they are today. In the NY Times today he said, "... it’s not about the economy. We don’t want to use that as an excuse. And it’s not about the competition. Don’t believe the media hype. There’s no coffee war going on. This is about us." That's a sign of a great leader.

As part of their re-birth they launched a new community site this week called MyStarbucksIdea.com. In the same vein as Dell's IdeaStorm they are asking customers to share ideas on how to make the Starbucks experience better. At first blush it's a pretty good  experience. Once you create an account you can add ideas and vote on the ones you want to raise up to the top. What I like;

1. It's very easy to view comments by category. I like the clear drop down menu. IdeaStory isn't as good at this.
2. The layout is clean and simple, easy to understand where the user is supposed to go.
3. Assuming that as ideas pour in the 'Ideas in action' section will show the progress these ideas are having. Right now it's a letter from Howard. Expect that to change soon.

I created an account and posted an idea. A few observations;

1. In my 'inbox' it doesn't keep a list of my ideas. I went back to find the link to my idea and there is no place for me to get back to my idea other than scan the idea list, which is quickly getting very long. This seems odd to me. I should be able to view all my ideas in one place.
2. The site is very slow to load. This is quickly frustrating.

The good news is it looks like all us regular SBUX customers will soon be able to get 'frequent buyer' cards, by far the most popular idea right now and I completely agree. We've all been in the neighborhood coffee houses who have frequent punch cards. Time for SBUX to show their love for the customer as well. One more point to note, this customer strategy is a good but risky one. It's a main reason why you don't see most brands (including my own MSFT) doing this. If a company asks for feedback and customers speak loud and clear the brand needs to be prepared to act. Hence why I say we'll be seeing frequent buyer cards soon. If SBUX ignores this advice they are in serious risk of damaging the relationship with it's most engaged users, the type of customer they would visit and post to this site.

Robert Kozinets says over time if brands do pay they will build resentment with their most loyal advocates. What was once fun and enjoyable is now considered work because someone is being paid. Paid advocates begin to mistrust their own motivation for participating, thereby canceling out the X Factor that made them influencers in the first place when they were doing it just for fun. I think to a degree Robert's argument has merit. In full disclosure I am myself currently working on an advocate program for Windows Live so I have a vested interest in whether his theory is in fact valid. So where is the merit in his argument? Let's play this out.

Say I am an avid skier. I going skiing every weekend at Steven Pass (local slopes) and Stevens Pass knows I'm an avid skier because I've bought an annual pass three years in a row. Now Stevens Pass is going to give me a free pass for next season if I join their advocate group. Sounds great. Their currency is  valuable to me - free skiing. But what do I have to do to get the free pass? This detail is where Robert's argument is lacking. It all depends on how the advocate group is rewarded. The advocate group could go two ways;

1. To be a part of the advocate group and get the free pass I am required to bring 10 paying skiers with me each season.  Under this notion I agree with Robert. This would feel like a job and will quickly sour on it's appeal because I now have to do some not so fun recruiting to get the reward.

2. The advocate group has ski days once a month where I can hang out and meet other skiers in the advocate group. At these socials I talk about what I like about skiing at Stevens and what I would like to see improved. If I want to I post pictures I took from the social gathering on my Flickr or Spaces page. I can also share tips and tricks for skiing on a web site Steven Pass hosts for beginner to expert skiers. The experience is rewarding and fun and I tell my friends about it because it's a positive experience and I'm exciting about Stevens Pass, I'm not telling them because I'm getting paid. Those are two very different notions.

Remember; advocacy groups will only work if your advocates love your product! Build a great product and enable people to come together that share that love for the product.

I spent some time on FastCompany.com this afternoon. It was recommended on Jeremiah Owyang's blog. Fast Company is a business publication that has evolved it's traditional media website into an online community.  I didn't read Jeremiah's analysis of the site before I took a  look myself and made my own impressions. My main takeaway was 'why would I do that?' Jeremiah saw the site as innovative and it may very well be for a traditional media website. But I don't find it innovative within the current web space. In order to participate I need to create a blog space on their site. But I already have a blog. Am I now blogging in two places? Why can't I blog on my own site and link to the FastCompany conversations? I'm not going to want to send people to a blog within a media site, so I wouldn't use it as my primary blog site. I think innovation now means how does a company connect a customer to an aggregated view of who they are. I have pictures on Flickr (I don't really but I'm making an example), connections on LinkedIn and Facebook, videos on YouTube and Soapbox - why in the hell would I need another site to put content on. Not gonna do it. I'll read your content if it's interesting, and might consider posting a comment if you make it easy and low commitment (don't ask for my SSN) but I'm NOT going to create anther place to put more content.

I have had several experiences as of late that led me to ask myself, how long do I have as a marketer to make an impression on my customer? Make no mistake, it's seconds.

Case in point, this weekend I set up an event on Windows Live Events. I went through the whole process of setting up the event, adding emails, etc. It was my son's bday party so I let him help me (which made the experience twice as long). When I get all the way through the process, I've invested 15 minutes at this point, I hit send and get an error message that looks like maybe my event didn't work. So I hit the back button to see if I can capture all the info I'd spent time creating but it was gone. SOL. Forced to start over.... Not happy.

Second case in point. I was commenting on a blog this morning, put in my name and URL but didn't include my email because it didn't say it was required. I wrote the post, edited it, checked it again and hit post. Time spent 10 minutes. I then get an error message that says the post didn't go through because there was no email address given. So I hit the back button to get back to the post page where I can enter an email but find everything is gone. Wiped out. Forget it. No way am I writing that comment again.... Not happy.

Time is a form of currency. Yes, these services are free to the customer but my time is not. I've got more and more demands on what I read and what services I use online. If you neglect to see the value of my time as investment (cost) our relationship will quickly be over.

I'm a big fan of PopURLs and if you haven't checked it out, you should. It does all the heavy lifting for you pulling content from the latest web buzz sites. I really like the hover that allows people to read a snap shot of the story before committing to it - everyone should be doing this. The good e-commerce sites are picking up on this feature.

A couple things I would love to see;

1. The ability for me to chose what sites are on the top of the page. I have to scroll down quite a ways to get to some of the sites I find most interesting. On the Live.com page I can drag and drop content modules according to which are most interesting to me. Personalization would be nice here.
2. It's unclear to me how the top featured sites are chosen. It would be nice for transparency sake to know why the top sites are on top. For example, Soapbox is a video aggregator site but that doesn't show up.

A new site called AllTop was just released in beta. It does the same aggregation but plays around with topics and web layout. The first thing you will notice is no navigation bar at the top. It took me awhile to get used to it and I can't say I love it but the navigation is along the bottom. The topics are pretty hip and kitchy; Egos, Cute, Moms.  A fun cast of characters on the Ego page including; Rosie O'Donnell, Ann Coulter, and Fake Steve Jobs. There are icons next to some names but I can't figure out what they stand for - it's a beta product so I will forgive. Some more suggestions;

1. Give an opportunity for the community to chose the top positions in each topic. Same as above, it's unclear how they have decided who and what gets top billing.
2. Make it more clear how you get back to the original page. Right now I click on the AllTop logo, is there any other way to get back?
3. What if I want to suggest a favorite site that they have missed? How does the community get to impact?

One other interesting thing to note, no ads on either site. I would assume that will change when they build up traffic, unless there is a fee the top sites are paying to have featured content. Not sure here.