Last night, a friend of my emailed me this TED talk saying it was the answer to my question. Jane McGonigal talks about how we can do tha; use the knowledge that these kids get from online gaming to something good. She’s saying that the problmsolving technique that they use online can be used in real life, we just need to make them interact with life again!

Watch the talk and tell me what you think. Can we save the world through online games?

Almost every day, I am struck by how terribly bad we are at communicating among ourself at the agency. We huff and we puff about how people in the office don’t see the greater picture, don’t understand the importance of a specific message or just don’t understand that everyone needs to help out in the kitchen… We complain about colleagues being stupid and not understanding or listening, at the same time as we preach to our customers the importance of understanding the target audience and how they receive a message in the best possible way. Again, I’m one of them!

So why is this? Why is communicating amongst communicators so terribly difficult? Why aren’t we able to give the same attention to our own communication as we do to our customers? I am sure that if we work with our own internal communication, we would understand the customers better, give better advice and in the end, create more business!

My thinking is that we just don’t give ourselves the time. All our focus is on our customer that we often forget to look at ourselves. We are all so busy giving other people advice on how to master the science of communication that we forget to give the same advice to ourselves. Or even acknowledge that it is us, the messenger, that needs to change to b able to get the message across. As I said, if we do work with ourselves the end result will be happier colleagues, happier customer, more work…

So next question: How do we change? How can the adviser be advised? Let me know, because as I said; I’m one of them!

This sounds like a great new addition to the search engine and a natural way forward for Google. Microsoft striking deals with Twitter and Facebook yesterday and Google ads music to its search next week – a lot going on in the world of search!

Wow what a day. Not only is Microsoft releasing its new Windows 7, but they are, accordingly to “All things digital” signing deals with both Twitter and Facebook to integrate their real-time feeds of status updates into the Bing search service. This is the first time that data will be available on Bing that is not available on Google.

What will Google do to top this??

1. Social Passive Media – traditional media where we ar passive but is social in the way that we decide if it should stay or not.
2. Social Influenced Media – traditional media gone social
3. Socially Highlighted Media – We decide what is noticed (digg, delicius…)
4. Socially Created Media – We create the content (Twitter, Facebook, flickr…)

I am not sure if I agree with him that they are all social.To be able to answer that we need to define what a social media is. If we mean that a social media is a media that creates dialog and interact with the user then YES, they are all social. But if we mean that a social media is a media that creates dialog, interact with users AND is open for transparent user generated content then NO they are not all social. And thats where I stand.

So why is this important to make clear? Well it’s all in how we use them, for what purpose and towards which target group.  You need to know how the different channels work and what purpose they are best used for. To create awareness is one thing, creating dialog is another. 

What do you think?

Well, you who work in marketing might say that you already know that and that you are. I say no. We are aware of that the world is change and that we need to do things differently but do we do anything about it? NO. Not yet. I know it’s an evolution that takes time but if we aren’t carefull and actually do something about the way we work with brands and communication someone else will do it for us.

Paul Isakson is a man who understands. Please take time to go through his presentation. It’s worth every second. And if you have any comments about the presentation, he welcomes you to send it over!