Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: internet, new-age, social system, utopia
Or rather … the country. The continent. The world of the Internet.
A rather interesting idea crossed my mind last night. I was thinking about the global challenges that humanity is facing today. The ones we all know about: global warming, crash of the economy as we knew it, globalization, unequal distribution of wealth (read some about it here) and many others.
I thought about the ants. As individuals they are insignificant. As a group they are amazing. They construct structures we are not able to (maintaining the proportions). They are organized and act as a whole organism.
So do humans, but with one big issue - the communication. We worked pretty well in tribes, cities but now we have to communicate globally. Our social structures are expanding. The rules we use to organize do not apply any longer. What rules should we establish now?
The mind of the many
The internet is a chaotic and at the same time a self organizing thing. A brain if you like. Its neurons are the people that use it. The connections - its synapses. We started thinking globally and not just as a metaphor.
We might now use this concept and develop it. We could create a new country, a new continent, with new rules that apply to new times.
This structure would not be one led by governments but by the best performing citizens, just as our brain controls our body. There won’t be any taxes that we don’t already pay. The economics would be self balancing and self adjusting.
Social status would not matter. What would matter would be the outcome of one’s efforts. The best intellectuals, the best concepts would rise to the top, no matter the race, sex or ethnicity.
The system would be called Internetism, the social system that gathers the best of previous ones.
Is it an utopia or a reality we are yet to accept?
Written by Mihai Dragan on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 ( 8 responses )
Tags: agency, mb dragan, three years
I started MB Dragan, the agency I run today, with a dream in mind - creating a new, better, interactive agency. The best in the world.
Three years have passed but they seem like ten to me. It was harder than I would have ever imagined. The last one was the hardest. It was full of sleepless nights, stressful deadlines and issues I never thought I would have stumble upon.
I wish I could say everything went by like a breeze but it didn’t. Some people let me down and I’ve let others down. Promises got broken. Some dreams too.
I had tough choices to make. Choices that keep me awake at night. I’ve made mistakes of which I am sorry. Mostly in my private life.
But through the darkest times I’ve realized how bright some stars can really shine. I am thankful to have met people like mr. Alex Buga, Gabi Nistoran and Andrei Gheorghe, which became my associates. I am honored by their presence and trust.
It’s not just about them. I thank all those I can still call colleagues and which I treasure more than I can say, although it’s getting harder to say it, being a larger group now.
We are the fastest growing agency in Romania. The people that joined this group are the best of breed in this domain. With a background like this, things aren’t always easy but the goal and path that lie ahead seem clearer by the day. We will be the best digital agency in the world. The agency for tomorrow.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Monday, January 18th, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: infrastructures, Interactive Advertising, new media, social media
I have been studying the whole concept behind Zynga’s recent success (Farmville, Mafia Wars etc.) and I just can’t stop thinking about how interesting it is.
Basically all of the other online games used to draw users to a social infrastructure (user accounts, social networks etc.) build on their own. The great thing about Zynga is that it targets already built social infrastructures (like Facebook, the iPhone AppStore). It lowers costs and it increases exposure and potential revenue.
What if brands would use the social networks to market products just like Zynga markets their games?
Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 ( One response )
Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, future, Interactive Advertising
Artificial Intelligence, in the sense we hope for and expect does not exist at the moment. At least not available to the general public (there are rumors of Google, the military and others building such a thing).
It has been the dream of advertisers worldwide to communicate one-to-one to potential consumers and I assume that we are not that far from reaching it. We have the tools to build it. The general public wants it.
I expect this to be the main feature of communication worldwide (not just advertising) in the century to come.
However - limiting such a thing to just advertising, or advertising as we know it, sounds ridiculous to say the least.
For more info have a look at:
Written by Mihai Dragan on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 ( 3 responses )
Tags: advertising, brands, interactive, interactive vs conventional, media, startups, website
The website as we know it, at least as a concept, is dying. It has been for the last 5-8 years and now its death is even closer. Let me explain.
A site on the web
If you think about the term it is composed of two words that explain what the concept represents pretty good. A place on the web. It was the perfect way to introduce the concept to the general public. People were already accustomed with the concept of “site”: be it a store, library, house - each of these were built upon a “site”. People would access this site using a address or, in the internet world, a URL.
As with physical address users would visit a certain (or more) sites, based upon their previous experience, friends recommendations and more. In the economic world brands got used to “kindly invite” (or not so kindly as some interactive advertising techniques show us) to the homepage and the user would browse around, consume content and hopefully come back.
The shift in user behavior
That was the case back in the day when the websites count reached numbers of, let’s say, tens or even hundreds of millions of pages. A lot you say. “A more recent study, which used Web searches in 75 different languages to sample the Web, determined that there were over 11.5 billion Web pages in the publicly indexable Web as of the end of January 2005″ states Wikipedia. And that, my friends, was 2005.
What is a user to do in such an environment. Browse? To hard. Visit the same websites? Extremely limiting.
The first big online brand to address this issue was Yahoo that started as a recommendation website founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo. For a short period they had a boom and people would relate to what Yahoo! as a helpful resource in the online jungle.
Things got bigger and bigger. The internet expanded and users needed even more. They needed answers, they needed something to guide them to what they were looking for. Thus Google started a long and successful journey that led to a multi-billion enterprise. Google helped by pinpointing exactly the website on was interested in. And people were thrilled.
Has the internet stopped there? Hell, no.
More and more information hit the interwebs. What was once a resource for mainly text and image documents had turned into the worlds biggest collection of data. Be it photos, documents, books, videos - the world started storing its information in the big reservoir that we call Internet.
So many options, so little time. What to choose?
Going back to basics
People relate to their closest human peers in times of doubt. Not even the mighty Google could replace a kind word or the warm advice a friend is able to offer.
But our friends were already there. People gathered in online social networks and interacted. They would recommend the things they liked asked for advice when needed.
It started with forums, continued with blogs, hit new heights in human interaction with social networks such as social networks and now we have Twitter, the global phenomenon that let people tell one another what are they doing (be it watching TV or fighting a dictatorial regime). Under 140 chars.
Follow the users
The fact is no one ever needed websites. They needed “stuff”. They were on the look for data, a nice gift to buy grandma on her 76th anniversary, a fun video to watch, the coolest hit to download. Never for a simple website.
Being focused on the industry of interactive advertising I will focus on brands and maybe offer good advice. Brands need to realize that their users and potential consumers don’t actually need another website. They need what they want. They want fast answers, they want brands to “follow” or “befriend” them, not the other way around. They have the options and they have the power to select.
Brands are not what they used to be. At this moment the vast majority of Brands are still the big Advertisers that still expect to spend money on big media advertisements and have consumers lining up to their store or website (notice I use the terms pretty close to one another. They are.).
This is not the way. Huge opportunities await those that will follow their users, build presence around their users and still maintain brand awareness and a coherent communication plan.
A short example and some advices
I reached Zynga Poker on Facebook. Played around a little bit on the Facebook app they’ve built. Downloaded the application on my iPhone and bought virtual upgrades with real money. Until today, I have never visited their website. Zynga is a startup that has revenues in the orders of tens of millions of dollars (and growing).
I will leave you with some advices I consider helpful:
- Think outside the website.
- Be present in the social media.
- Stop thinking advertising. Think relationships.
- Build mobile applications.
- Study your market. Close. Closer.
- Develop intelligent applications.
- Let people play with your brand.
- Cut the TV ad budget. Cut the radio and print ad budget. Move online.
- Let people find you on the search engines.
- Follow your consumers and let them follow you.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: google, Mobile, mobile advertising
Mobile is expected to be the fastest growing medium in the following years. This won’t be shocking for anyone. What is really interesting is that Google seems to be moving very fast in that direction with the Android, Google OS and recently acquiring mobile advertising company AdMob in a $450 million deal. Connect the dots.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Friday, November 20th, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: future of television, predictions, television
While reading “Five predictions on the future of TV” I thought to myself - I have to disagree with this.
First of all I think always is a very long term 
. So long that we should take into account the possibility of television disappearing. Even video as a concept. Secondly I believe watching TV passively is not the peak of human civilization. We would at least socialize television viewing.
Therefore I have to disagree with points 1,2 and 3.
I have to agree to points 4 and five and would add:
- TV channels, in the way we see them now, will start disappearing in the next 15-20 years, which would be the moment the “dotcom boomers” (those born after 1990, well accustomed with internet media consumption) will reach consumer maturity and will dictate a new marketing and media approach.
- We will see the rise of small and medium media producers (teams of 1-5 people), flexible, niched and adding up to a Long Tail of media that will rise up to challenge media conglomerates. News Corp. - watch out!
- Mobile television will be more and more popular. Internet connected mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous. So will streamed mobile television.
- We will see the rise of television syndication. Passive viewing will not be that passive. We will be able to mix many televisions, ignore shows we hate, watch shows our friends recommend, mix and mash up as we want.
- User Generated Television. This is not a new thing but the Internet adds traction to it. Think Candid Camera Home videos meets YouTube.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: conventional, interactive, online
…Is that there is no conventional advertising. There is only “now advertising”. If thirty years ago “now advertising” meant TV, “now advertising” is now Internet.
No matter how much Advertising Gurus would try to understand online and try to explain the phenomenon with buzzwords they kept telling clients for years, they can’t. Because they are not open to new. They’re stuck in brand awareness, Cannes festivals, expensive budget video shoots, GRP’s, TRP’s and others.
People - get over it. Admit you know nothing and start learning. Online, interactive, digital - call it whatever - is still an infant. You can still get a chance to learn its language.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Friday, August 21st, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: art, interaction, longest poem in the world, social media, twitter, ugc
My colleague, Andrei Gheorghe (@idevelop), got featured on CNN and The Telegraph with his latest social media experiment, The Longest Poem in the World.
The experiment gathers status updates from Twitter users, mixing them in a 347430 verses (so far) piece of art.
“I soon found that people were very excited to be part of this and consider it some form of artistic expression of the collective consciousness of Twitter.” declared Andrei for the Telegraph.
This is not the first time Andrei experimented with social media interaction. His Quizoo game was a hit when launched.
If you find the idea interesting, don’t forget to digg it.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: black swan, book, book review, improbable, prediction, theory
Without hesitation I would categorize this book as one of those mind-boggling, enlightining concepts. At least for me. The impact of the highly improbable.
We humans are used to see the world through patterns and information filters that enable us to comprehend a little bit of the reality arround us. Enough to survive. Self sufficient beings as we are, we like to minimize the importance of the unknown and the impact it has on us.
We, the self-sufficient simians
We are taught to think the circle is one of those perfect geometrical figure and disconsider nature for its inability to reproduce it. We overstate our intelligence and forget we might be unable to understand the perfect compostition of nature’s complicated geometrical figures.
We are taught we can predict and, my God, do we fail. The 1973 Oil Crisis was not only unpredicted but experts stated, in 1972, that 1973 was going to be a steady year in the cost of oil. They even thought it may decrease. It grew ten times. The world was in shock.
This was improbable. It had a huge impact. In hindsight, it was rationalized as expected and even predicted. Just like any other Black Swan event.
So…what’s with the birds?
The term comes from the fact that in the 17th century people assumed that all swans are white. The opposite was impossible or, at most, improbable. The 18th century brought the discovery of the Black Swan species in Australia. The impossible became possible and retrospectively, probable.
Who wrote this?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, as improbable as it might seem, deals with prediction. He held a job applying financial mathematics that were used to predict stock market evolution in a couple of Wall Street companies.
The book itself describes some of his experiences in the field, some of the interesting people he used to know and autobiographical stories about his path to the Black Swan theory.
