Jonothan Stribling

Sometimes something seems really really good but it’s actually really really bad; stupid in fact.

So stupid that when you realise that it is so, you feel like bashing your head against a wall and cursing the gods while shaking your fist at the sky.

Or something like that.

A “personalised internet address”. Wow. Are you excited. And guess what, you can get one from Facebook. Wow again.

So what does this “personalised internet address” look like? Well, it looks like a facebook URL as in facebook.com/yourusername. Mine looks like facebook.com/jonstribling and I am proud as punch.

Hang on I hear you say, isn’t that just a Facebook URL with a username appended?
And hasn’t Twitter had them for years?

And doesn’t MySpace have usernames and “personalised internet addresses” already?

And can’t I register my own “personalised internet address” as a domain name?

The answer is yes, yes, yes and yes.

That didn’t stop 500,000 people registering usernames in the first 15 minutes and 3 million registering in the first 24 hours.

That is impressive!

So why the excitement?

Perhaps it is simply the fear of missing out and the shameful memory of having to choose a hotmail address like garyrocks97@hotmail.com.

Perhaps it is the wisdom of the crowd (mob)?

Perhaps it is the next big thing in Internet marketing? Will this be the transformative event for Facebook pages?

Perhaps it is just hype and we all feel a little shamefaced, much like the feeling after a huge night out on the rails.

There is no doubt that for companies using Facebook to promote to consumers this may be a good thing. The pages may be more easily found using search engines and some might get lucky with direct type-in traffic.

But for most of the 67 million members all it may do is invite more SPAM and put their privacy at risk. Those folks who haven’t done so should get a their own domain name, get a blog through a good web host, add some Facebook widgets, add their CV and start publishing. Really start personalising the Internet.

The only “personalised internet address” is an address I own the license as in jonstribling.info or markzuckerberg.com. A URL provided by a company which then effectively ‘owns’ my content is not personalisation, it is bloody clever marketing.

Oh, get your real personalised internet address here at registerfree.com.

When I was a kid I loved to surf. Now cruising to the beach with my thruster and catching a few waves was not an easy thing to do when I lived in the middle of the country five hours from the beach. It was frustrating that my nascent surfing skills would develop over summer and then slowly wane during the year. Each beach holiday I would need to learn again.

Google obviously had a window into my frustrations about catching waves, recently announcing Google Wave, “a new model for communication and collaboration on the web”.

Cute metaphors aside the wave looks very promising offering a new way of interacting with others on the web. The Wave offers live editing of documents and chats so you can see what others are typing at the same time. Much like my stop-start surfing career this prevents the sometimes haphazard chats where multiple topics can be confusing and difficult.

There has been a big buzz around collaboration for as long as the web has been around. The web itself is a massive collaboration tool, as is email, social media, email, SMS. The difference with The Wave is that it appears to have the potential to transform how we interact and work with colleagues on documents, how we comment and interact on blogs, how we make a smart arsed comment about Darren’s status update.

Google have made interaction synchronous bringing the fantasy offered by a multitude of tech sci-fi films even closer. The problem with many models is that they are asynchronous, all participants must be equally invested in the conversation for communication to be effective. The Wave doesn’t make it as easy to interact as me having a coffee with a colleague but it makes it easier.

Google Wave is a play that may provide Google with a means to aggregate and ‘own’ social media. It changes the game massively.

Details are still scant at this stage but I’ve signed up for a trial and will be watching The Wave very closely.

There is a sense of pervading gloom in the air. We’ve read about it in the papers, we’ve watched it on the teeve and we’ve read about it online.

The consensus appears to be that we’re all doomed. That’s right doomed!

The easy credit of the 2000′s has dried up. Consumers are reigning in their spending on stupid luxury items and selling their boats, jetskiis, motorbikes and SUV’s. The repo man is very very busy.

This miasma of gloom makes it very hard to sell some stuff and persuade people that they need a particular product or service.

Regardless
there is a way to successfully market to panic stricken consumers and close-minded businesses during a recession.

And that is by focusing on the positive.

With so much doom, gloom and negativity about, folks do not respond well to fear, uncertainty and doubt marketing. What they need is some positivity, something that can help them stare bleakly from these dark times into a bright shining future.

That’s why the new Foxtel campaign works so well. It speaks to the heart of the matter. Yes there is a recession but a solution is offered in a light-hearted way – being entertained by Foxtel.

There is also another recession proof way to market your business and that is to offer great value. McDonalds and Coles have been doing this very well.

The truth is that there are still people with money and there are still businesses spending money. There is however considerable friction in the buying process about the future. For a conversion to occur marketers need to extra hard to reduce the friction generated by an uncertain future.

So focus on the positive and value. Paint a picture where a buyer can see herself buying an investment property, taking a European holiday, buying a jet-skii or simply not worrying about money and paying the bills.