Obsessed with customers

The business of iGaming (= online money gaming and/or gambling) has changed forever. Internet is normalizing gaming for money and bringing new customers in. At the same time customers are more digital-savvy, expecting more and faster but also willing to take part in building the total experience in return for perceived value. The role of the consumer is being transformed from passive buyer to active co-creator.

The recognition of consumers as active players extends the locus of core competencies from companies inner knowhow to the enhanced network. According to IDC Global’s recent study, 75% of Retailers and 58% of consumer products manufacturers rank consumer centricity among top 3 keys to success. At the Indian Gaming 2009 conference one of the leading slot machine manufacturers, Bally highlighted that: “now more than ever innovations must be built on customer needs and on a solid foundation of dependable, scalable, and efficient technology backed up by strong professional, technical, and customer-support services”. Along the progression of social media business money gaming providers too have to realize that consumers expect more dynamic changes and possibilities to interact and participate than ever before. The huge rise of microblogging service Twitter or social networking service Facebook are good manifestations of this. People want to share, stand out from the crowd and have their opinion heard. In iGaming that is very crucial lesson to be learned. By the general development of the Internet the potential customer is now potentially anyone who finds (money) games interesting.

Competence is a function of the collective knowledge. Ways to make online money games’ interesting is to facilitate dialogue and consumer engagement among dynamic consumer communities and heterogeneous individuals--all eager, and some able, to co-create their own experiences. Consumers are moving toward instant gratification and getting used to the idea of an active dialogue with providers of products and services. Money gaming operators have to utilize that dialogue in design, marketing, consumer support and testing. Additional challenge is speed which is becoming even more central source of competitive advantage. Thing have to happen now, instantly and interactively with the customers.

To adapt and succeed in the current economic environment companies need to build a new set of capabilities: cross-platform innovation, real-time interactive communication channels with consumers, open collaboration and supporting digital processes.

Chatting with myself after work

At the moment I am pondering how to create value in a casual game community service and how to reach a certain niché. Content is the usual suspect when talking about certain gender or age group but it seems to be more and more important how communities involve, enchant and involve the users. The “right” ways vary from community to community.

I met a group of deco (Decorative Friendship Book) swappers some years ago. Putting deco books together was really charming and girly hobby for me. The idea of “decoing” is to start a book (with empty pages), decorate first page and send it to a friend. A friend will then add her decoration and send it forward and so on. When the book is done it will return to the one who started that book. Deco is more art and design heavy but still somewhat related to other types of hobby crafts. Etsy must be the mainstream of the trend focusing on handmade items in general where as Smilebox is an interesting niché site focusing on scrapbooks. All of the mentioned hobbies are rather girly ones. Correct me if I am wrong but I would suppose most likely the majority of deco, Etsy or Smilebox user are women. It is interesting to see that in online games and/or communities guys are often the most active ones putting up fan web sites, hacking and altering the world if possible and doing different caricatures of the characters or other fan art.

Despite the different target groups it is also interesting how similar the motivational factors are. Social is usually at the core of the experience – doing things together, sharing, collaborating or communicating but also issues related to appearance, relaxation, entertainment (of course) and competence are often mentioned. Even if there are similar motivational factors, girls and boys seem to value different type of involvement and creativity in games or in relation to games. Perhaps LBP type of creativity is too design heavy even though creating levels is sort of tinkering – the same way as Smilebox and deco activities -- and rather easy as well. But maybe it is not the creation but more about the value what one gets from creating things? Maybe the expectations and/or needs are different?

Brand embassadors in virtual worlds

Yesterday Finnish online entertainment company Sulake arranged an event focusing on "harnessing youth to act as brand ambassadors". The evening was kicked off by Mr. Jonathan Epstein from in-game advertising firm Double Fusion. Mr. Epstein highlighted five issues that are important when targeting to youth in this entertainment rich, networked society:
1. Include, don’t intrude
2. Keep it personal
3. We are what we shop
4. Fuel the aspiration
5. Focus on ROO (return on objective)

A couple of successful cases were also presented where Sulake products IRC-Galleria and Habbo Hotel were used to reach the right target groups. My absolute favorite was Stabilo case (Lindell). Heli Vainio, brand manager from Lindell gave really inspiring and heartened talk about their experiences at the IRC-Galleria. They looked for new ways to market Stabilo highlighting pens for youngsters. They had their message, the product, manga-drawing competition and some ideas about utilizing the web. They brainstormed with IRC-Galleria guys and came up with an idea of focusing on their Manga drawing competition (banner) and offering "ihq-sälä" (virtual swag) to youth.

They got huge number of drawings to the competition and 30 000 individuals joined the Stabilo community to get virtual Stabilo-branded swag. Lindell increased Stabilo sales to a big bookstore chain by 50%.

MarketingExperiments blog has related post about virtual swag.

Microsoft has also learned to be brave and utilize virtual worlds when launching their new applications. Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 will be launched at the Second Life on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 9:00 A.M. PDT. Microsoft promises to show the applications in action but they also understand the possibility to bring together product experts and techsavvy peers and to enable open discussion.

Any good living lab models out there?

In Finland many research projects got public funding (by Tekes, EU etc.). Funding is linked with personal experience (=longer courier and better business network) and/or enthusiasm; "sisu" (guts) to come up with a good R&D consortium. Too often the result is just another report or a prototype which will never be utilized commercially. That is because researchers get more steady income and more opportunities for experimenting at a research institution and companies have not really put that much effort to the project because it is publicly funded. Also some companies lack strategic solutions and operational model on how to turn a prototype into a product. Anyhow this has a lot to do with individuals and their will to take the project further. This IMHO is the key.

For example Google has promoted innovative solution to allow anyone to put 20% of their time to a personal project. This is very interesting because it motivates people but also gives responsibility. That would mean people have the will and the way plus good network of like-minded people around them. Another interesting example is Wikipedia. It is an online living lab where crowdsourcing and self-regulation is the key. This time the will is not as clear as the way.

Key words such as living labs, open or systemic innovations and community generated content have often been mentioned in touch with more experimental product development. In Finland Forum Virium Helsinki has put up Helsinki Living Lab project which tries to find ways to active citizens to contribute and improve communal services. Sound dull, right? The trick is to make a dull thing interesting and motivate people to take more active role in decision making and/or influence decision makers.

What would be the best model to come up with new solutions? Would it be open innovation, traditional public research project model, operator model, event/campaign model or sponsor model? How to make it more fun, interesting and personal? How to motivate people to participate in testing and innovating better services? Currently people seem to give feedback only if they are unsatisfied (=angry). They are able to point out the problem but who would link that to perhaps bigger strategical solution or a challenge especially if the problem concern e.g. two different operational units or bureau in Helsinki?

What I am asking here is: What would be the best living lab/citizen innovation model? Do other cities, countries… have any excellent models they would like to share? Would living lab type of solution increase citizens wellbeing in general? Would it even be possible to activate them or are people just too lazy? What do you think? All comments highly appreciated!

Who will win: Zuma or Facebook?

Park Associates has put out somewhat doubtful information regarding the popularity of casual games. As much as I tend to think positive and like casual online games, I find it somewhat difficult to digest the news.

Park Associates is right about casual games being current and cool topic at the moment. Anyhow it surely is quite a challenge to compare registered users (e.g. Second Life), actual users (e.g. LinkedIn) and non-registered users (casual game sites) against each other. Most of casual game sites run solely on advertising revenue and do not ask for registration. It is true that you can buy the games in a "try-before-buy" matter but I would say it is exaggerated to say casual game sites have more mature revenue models. Additionally I wonder how Park Associates actually compare SNSs with casual game sites? What type of sites actually belong into this category (btw)? Fun games, money games, puzzle games, short games, simple games...?

Whatever the case, this is surely an interesting topic to discuss. According to Park Associates: "While developers and publishers look to sites such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace as inspiration for community features in upcoming games, research shows that 34 % of US internet users play games online on a weekly basis (and according to one study more than half are females), compared to 29 % who visit online video sites and 19 per cent interested in social networking."

That's something!

[Partial source GamesIndustry.biz]

Puzzle for the clever

Would you like to win 2 million $? All you have to do is to solve a puzzle. "Eternity II" will be lanched on 28th July. It is a puzzle with the $2million prize (online demo available).

¨Unlike most puzzles, which only have one correct way of completing the final solution, there are thousands of ways that Eternity II can be solved to win the $2 million prize. The puzzle consists of 256 square pieces that are bordered by coloured patterns which must be aligned across the whole puzzle.¨

You can check the demo version from Eternity II website. It is really compelling game. My best time is 1.49.

Sulake acquired Dynamoid - hot or not?

Does it matter who owns the online community you are engaged with?

Majority of Finnish teenagers belong in either Habbo or IRC-Galleria. Habbo is an online world where you can create your own stuff (home page, decorate your room, plays, stories, soap opera...) . IRC-galleria is a photo gallery and an arena to make one's presence felt. It is a great place to boost up one's spirit by gaining rating and (positive) feedback of one's appearance. The consensus of opinion is that kids go to Habbo and teens are more into IRC-galleria.

Now when Sulake (Habbo) acquired Dynamoid (IRC-galleria) it is interesting to see how the teens will react. Does it really matter which company is behind YOUR nr. 1 community? How relevant is the brand (or the company brand behind the service)? Reputation seem to be a focal keyword when talking about online communities. Reputation is one of the "3 R's" for the consumers but what about with the service providers?

Are teens satisfied with this "one stop shop" approach or are they after alternatives? "I don't want to be a part of Habbo-thing but IRC-galleria is cool" -- or vice versa? Or does anyone care who actually is behind the online service? MNEs (Nestlé, McDonalds) or dominance (Microsoft) is no-no IRL but I quess we still do not know what's the case in online space. Of course in this Sulake-Dynamoid case we are not talking about the same thing par excellence. But still... the connection of two of the hottest online community services in Finland is interesting from the viewpoint of user experience.

Circle Trip on Multitasking Media

At the beginning of this year I decided just to give a few presentations, five at the maximum. For the last two week I have been lecturing in Helsinki, Espoo, Hämeenlinna and Joensuu. Yes, that's four already not to mention those few others I have given in Helsinki and Keuruu. It is just so easy to say 'yes' but a lot of work to come up with a good presentation. Thanks to Mikko Honkakorpi I have adopted Mr. Kawasaki's guidelines. He is talking about pitching but his points are also useful when preparing a general or academic presentation on e.g. gaming or trends of digital media.

I though of sharing some of the things I found interesting on the way.

Online entertainment is without a doubt the right place to look for new ideas when searching for digital innovations and signals of the future of digital media. Kaisa Coogan & I coined a term Communication Acrobatics in 1999 when we studied how Finnish youth utilized their mobile phones and the Internet. With communication acrobatics we described the supreme and agile skills the youngsters had on using digital media and channels at need. Multitasking describes a way of handling several communication, information and entertainment channels at once. Many teens have different circle of friends on mobile, Messenger, Habbo, online games, MySpace, e-mail (for those few who still use spam-mail), IRC etc. etc.

Three issues defining the utilization of social media are 1) radical trust, 2) 3 R's: Reputation, Ranking and Rating and 3) collective intelligence (compare with Eric von Hippel's users as innovators -theories). We also had a good discussion on multimodality (thanks to Charalampia Sidiropoulou!) and visions / ideas media theorists and futurists such as Raymond Williams, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Benjamin and Alvin Toffler have coined already in 1930's - 1970's. For example the basic precept of McLuhan is that the rapidity of communication through electric media echoes the speed of the senses. McLuhan also argued that it is the speed of electronic media that allow us to act and react to global issues at the same speed as normal face to face verbal communication. That might not sound that extraordinary but remember that McLuhan was visioning these things at the end of 1960s when radio and television were the state of the art of consumer electronics and window of the world "networking".

In Joensuu we were invited to visit NetWork Oasis. It is a novel type of collaboration and working environment. Innovation is currently one of the most frequently used bullshit bingo words. Thus it was really inspiring to see some fresh ideas in real life. One interesting factor related to Oasis is that it is located in Joensuu. Joensuu is at the fringe -- 440 kilometers (273 miles) from the capital (Helsinki) and the industry has been more focused on electronics or metal industry. NetWork Oasis is still under development but things seem to go smoothly. They will also have their own software products on the market. One nice solution was an integrated "who's in" and "skills-wills" solutions. With a glance you can see who is currently working in which part of the Oasis (because there are no office rooms, one can work anywhere - anytime). Also the solution helps you to find just the skills you are looking for. NetWork Oasis is a brave, interesting and admirable attempt to create something new - thumbs up! Those looking for new ways to spur people to innovate in the office -- check out NetWork Oasis's ideology and solutions.

Management consultant goes Blarp

...Blarp! Is someone clearing one's throat? Nope, Blarp is an acronym for 'Business Live Action Role Play' -- a solution developed by Satama for Trainer's House. Trainer's House is a Finnish company offering coaching and marketing aid for companies to put things short.

Trainers' House seem to have understood and adopted the weighty message delivered by Xerox and Forrester. Millenials have already take in operations model from online (game) communities. They want to have fun, do things proactively, fast and/or with the aid of their peers. Blarp seems to be a gamelike solution to fortify people's motivation and ability to digest new information.

Blarp very much links with the ideas related to serious games. Exergame developers talk about 'stealth exercise'. That way Blarp would be conceived as stealth learning.

Let's see what Urban Dictionary says about Blarp:

"The blarp is the act of deficating in a bathtub. Before returning the key to his ex-girlfriend's house, Mike got revenge with a blarp in every bathroom."

"A word some old friends use to use during odd silence. From the movie "Lost in Space" a little creature later in the movie makes the noise. *odd silence* "Blarrrrp!"

"The difference between soy sauce, and the sauce that has yet to be soyed. Does this sauce contain blarp?"

What will be the Next Big Thing at the digital world?

Teens and youth turned social networking into an international phenomenon. Messenger, YouTube, MySpace and picture galleries (Hi5, IRC-galleria, Kuvake.net) were the last wonders of the Internet. But what will the next Big Thing? How youngsters keep amazing us with new innovations and ways of (mis-)using technologies for their own purposes?

Let's start with randomly picked trends. 1) Urbanisation, 2) Premiumisation, 3) Happiness, 4) Personalisation, 5) Ageing, 6) Anxiety, 7) Globalisation and 8) Ethics. At first the list of megatrends seems rather lame. Wasn't personalisation, globalisation and all that in the headlines already five years ago? But aging is definitely an interesting trend. 'For every 100 persons aged 20-64 in 2050, we can expect 57 persons aged 65 and over.' Conclusion: should we focus on seniors instead of youngsters? Seniors have all the money and time not to mention their health and vividness! Actually VTT has already started "Idea movement for the elderly people" to involve seniors in the innovation processes.

Another trendsniffer Communication Experts Need to Know believes in video, online advertising, online music listening, content aggregation, independent publishing, web conferences, web-based presentation tools, mobile group messaging, P2P casting, visual search engines and web metrics. This is another great list of things -- which already exist! Perhaps Google could reform the online advertising? But I would quess that mobile group messaging is not there yet. There might be some interesting cross media (online+mobile) entertainment (read: games) solutions on their way though. In able to get the general picture of let's say "web2.0" I could use visual search in able to see and understand the relations between social software and RFID tags for example. In general I prefer 'the-faster-the-better' solution plain and simple instead of complex trend-'mindmaps' of anything and everything.

The conclusion? Trend lists are often too general. I quess 'born global' (when talking about the youth), alternative forums, cross-multi-media, 2D bar codes for marking and urban zones will be issues we will see in the near future. Already now youth facilities in Finland have expanded to the online worlds. Maybe the next step is to make another link back to the real world -- to urban zones and areas where youth hang around? Global (online) fingermark seems to be another 'trend'. Youth want to be visible in a broad range of real and virtual forums. They want to build up recognizable online identity and existence. When it comes to actual services or products... hm.. that is a tricky one. I quess voyerism, micromovies, videoblogs and 'espionage' will become more common. Mobile phone (camera) and online video portals will be the technical enablers of that. Also I believe virtual worlds (SecondLife, Habbo, etc.) will be applied more for utility purposes (education, remote work, youth work, cultural activities...). In Finland there already is one signals towards this direction. "Virtual youth facility called Netari" already exists in Habbo Finland. Would it [finally] be the right time for elearning? We'll see! At least various quidance and support services seem to be on the rise.

1990s strikes back!

1996 was the peak of (the first) girl games' movement. Brenda Laurel, Theresa Duncan, Laura Groppe and others founded companies such as Purple Moon, Her Interactive, Girl Games Inc. and Rhinestone Publishing. First Girl Games came out in 1993, Barbie Fashion Designer became a first best seller girl game in 1996 and surprised the market. Some legends claim that Barbie beated Quake (the hottest game on earth at that time) in sales figures but that was not the case. Barbie Fashion Designer did well though. The game was the sixth best-selling CD-ROM game in 1996 and 1997. Mattel sold more than 200,000 units within the first month of its release. In the last two months of 1996, retailers sold $11.5 million worth. After the success of Barbie game entrepreneurs got aggressively into girl games business and nearly 200 titles for girls were published in 1997 according to market analysts. Companies such as GirlGames and GirlTech flourished and web pages were pinky and fluffy.

In 1997 Girl Games Inc. published Let's Talk about Me which had four major sections entitled "My Personality," "My Body," "My Life," and "My Future." With the exception of the latter, they all offer a mixture of information and fun. Now Exchange4media has launched an online community for girls in the 14-19 age group to share their joys and anxieties and get solutions to their growing up concerns. BeingGirl.co.in is a guide to knowing what a girl always wants to know, but perhaps never asked. There are various interactive sections – viz. Your Body, Your Mind, Beauty, and Love and Relationships. For serious advice on family, friends, school and health, one can click on ‘Advice for Life’. Personal advice can be sought by posing the problem to ‘Ask Nisha’, a girl’s virtual friend. Beinggirl looks much better and has better content than girlspace ( but certainly miss the gaming part).

For me Beinggirl sounds like a re-run of Let's Talk about Me?! The 1997 version failed but perhaps better interaction possibilities and community aspect would do the trick? It is somewhat funny to follow the current trends (second wave of girl games) -- Pink PSPs and NDSs are currently available and titles / services published are leaning to the same images as girlgames SMEs in the 1990s. What were the lessons to be learned -- or is it just a question of timing? What I know is that Mimi Smartypants (Rhinestone Publishing) was one of my favourites. Especially the PANCAKE songs were excellent! There were five-to-six songs... well... about pancakes -- and they were really funny ones :)