HTML5 has been around for a while. Yes, it is still in draft form and the formal specification hasn't been published yet, but that didn't stop all major modern browsers from implementing a decent set of HTML5 features. By now, the web is chock full of HTML5 examples showing off everything from latest JavaScript to HTML5 markup tags. But people still seem to be on the edge when implementing them in real-world production environments. This should not be the case. The reality is that HTML5 features already implemented in modern browsers are mostly stable, and the published spec will ultimately not have major changes.

If there is still some doubt that HTML5 is still the "future" and is not needed in the current web, let me throw in some rough figures. Note, these numbers are taken from Wikipedia. So interpret them how you wish. Roughly 54% people still use Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), of that ~ 36% is IE8. Making that 23% globally. About 31% use Firefox, about 80% of which is 3.5 or 3.6, making that 25% of the global market. Safari and Google Chrome take up another 13%, although I do not know what percentage of those browser version are HTML5 capable and in use. It can be assumed that at least half of the browsers out there support the commonly touted HTML5 features. So should we let half the people miss out on great features due to other people still using IE7 and Firefox 2?

Rolling out HTML5 may be easier than you think. Anyone who runs a commonly visited site probably already has different style sheets and/or JavaScript for IE/IE6 users. So pull in HTML5 JavaScript conditionally by checking if functions exists. It is ill-advised to rely on checking the user agent, as some browsers misreport it (i.e., IE8 in "IE7 mode" still has the window.postMessage JavaScript function).

Putting in HTML5 tags on the other hand is tricky. Putting in new tags such as <article> and <aside> won't render properly in older browsers. The best way so far is to insert tags dynamically into the DOM using JavaScript. This isn't practical for simple tags such as <article> but can be used for flashier tags like canvas. Existing libraries are already implemented this way. Cufon uses Canvas to render fonts in most browsers and VML in IE.

Security has long been an issue for IE6 that Microsoft has continually patched up over the years. The "Operation Aurora" attack on Google and other companies back in January used yet another unknown security hole in IE6, and seemed to lead much of the internet community to say "enough is enough" and expedite efforts to stop supporting the use of the old browser.

It has been long known that Microsoft will stop supporting IE6 in 2014. Not surprisingly, Google and Apple are among the leaders in making people upgrade as soon as possible. Apple's MobileMe has not supported it for a few years. Google Docs will no longer work in IE6 next week on March 1. YouTube will follow on March 13 and Gmail later in the year.

Security issues aside, the main problem is that IE6 is the product of the 90's and Web 1.0 methodologies. This was before there were many established standards for the web and when having features that only worked on your browser was a good idea. Check out the great "Life, Times (and Death?) of Internet Explorer 6" comic strip by Brad Colbow to brush up on your history.

So when new standards were introduced and Web2.0 came around, "hacks" had to be used to get these new great parts of the Web to work on IE6. Creating these hacks is quite costly in terms of developer time and often make the site slower. Web2.0 makes heavy use of javascript to make everything speedy and interactive, but even IE7 (the successor to IE6) is much slower at running javascript than other web browsers. So even though you spent tons of money to create the greatest web site, it's not going to seem so great to all the people that are still using IE6.

[via Facebook with language set to Pirate]

So rather than continue to create these hacks and make people think they don't need to upgrade, the best tactic is to serve up a simple alternate version of your site with a message informing users how to upgrade to something better for free. Spend your money implementing better new features than wasting your time making everything work in IE6.

Last week, we had our first official ok from a client to not support IE6. It made our day. IE6 is finally going away, you can feel it in the air, and I'm happy to join with thousands of web programmers and designers around the world in a collective "Huzzah!"

[IE6 Cartoon image taken from RobotJohnny.com]

[EDIT 2/28/2008: we found a site with code you can simply plop just inside the body tag of your html to encourage users to upgrade: ie6nomore.com]

One of the more commonly used functions is getInfo(), which returns almost any piece of information from a user's profile page; gender being one of them. The value returned for gender is either “Male” or “Female,” which is fine - but they are localized in the user’s language. So does this mean you have to check for “Female” if the user is using Facebook in English and “Weiblich” if the user chose German? Yes. It also means you have to check for imaginary languages. “Lass” is what you get if the user has his language preferences set to Pirate (English). You can see the headache this causes a developer if they are asked to report on the demographic of users of your app.

Another problem plaguing developers is the lack of organization for the documentation. The bulk of documentation exists on their developer wiki. This works well enough if you know exactly what you’re looking for, but if you don’t know the name of a function you’re better off using Google. A wiki format is more conducive to separate pages. So for a new developer stumbling on to the wiki, aside from a few copy-paste tutorials, there is no clear path of where to go. Only recently, with the release of their Javascript SDK, have they created a concise page containing documentation. Facebook officially supports 5 client libraries. For some of the libraries, documentation exists on the wiki and is shared amongst one another. All of the functions are typically the same for every language, so only one wiki page exists. PHP as well as Connect for the iPhone use the wiki pages, while the ActionScript library documentation is housed on Google code. This is because a lot of these libraries were contributed by the community and not officially created by Facebook, but this can be a large annoyance if you automatically assume that the function you’re using in a particular language is described by the wiki. Forcing people to scour multiple sites and forums for documentation is never a good idea if you are trying to build a good developer community around your platform.

The Facebook Platform status usually states “Facebook Platform is Healthy”. Occasionally it displays messages about performance issues, but that doesn’t help you much. Chances are, if you’re looking at Facebook platform status, you noticed the performance issues on your application. Looking at the “Average API Response Time” and “Error Count” doesn’t reveal much because there are no units on the y-axis. However looking at Developer Updates and Top Life Platform Bugs mights shed a light on the current status of Facebook. So what is the state of Facebook? Developer Update states they are changing profile picture sizes. So everyone who ever uses a profile picture in their application should go and double check that the new sizes will work. Existing Facebook applications constantly need to be updated to simply work. The bug list is as expected; there are a few major bugs, e.g. suggest to friends does not work (opened 29 December). And less critical but still annoying ones, e.g. request-form action opens a new window (opened 07 April 2009). The platform is in a state of constant flux with backwards incompatible updates being released and bugs for old features being introduced. If you create a Facebook app, you can't just “set it and forget it.” You must monitor for changes to the platform and update your app as needed. You must also expect that there will be periods where your app won't operate due to internal problems with Facebook's system.

So where does this developer hell leave us? It actually promises a brighter future. The reason the API is broken is due to Facebook constantly working on it and bringing more enhancements to users and developers. They are rolling out new features such as allowing applications to gather a user’s email if given permission and giving more control to users over their privacy settings. Yes the platform is immature, but it’s certainly not stagnant. So what can a developer do to make things smoother? There are certainly enough complaints out there, so that path won’t lead anywhere. Trying to write more on the wiki and help the community won’t be very fruitful, because the API changes quickly enough that your notes may be soon outdated. In fact, the abundance of notes like this on the wiki makes it confusing as to who is right. Here are some suggestions for developers to cope with the situation:

1. Manage your client's expectations. Make them aware that Facebook encounters issues periodically and this is out of your control. Give them the link to the Platform Live Status page so they can check that before coming screaming at you.
2. Subscribe to the Platform Live Status Feed, Developers News Feed, and Facebook Pages Notes. This way you should always be aware of a problem or an upcoming change before your client. The feeds are available via RSS or email except for the Pages Notes which seems to only be RSS.
3. Stay up to date with the Developer Roadmap in the wiki. You can create an account in the wiki and “watch” this page to get notified of changes.
4. If the client library you're using has a svn repository, you can check the log to read about changes. For example, this command works for the PHP library - svn log -v http://svn.facebook.com/svnroot/platform/clients/php/trunk/. The ActionScript library on Google code page has a web interface for browsing changes - http://code.google.com/p/facebook-actionscript-api/source/list. There are some tools for automatically getting notified of an update to the code: SVN-Monitor, CommitMonitor, and SVN Notifier. Unfortunately, these are all Windows programs. Leave a comment if you know of one for Mac or Linux (yes, we know you can easily write a cron script to do it

In summary, at this stage if someone says “We want to do this and that with Facebook,” the best thing to do is say “I can try but I make no guarantees” instead of “Sure, it’s totally possible” because with Facebook you never know if what is available today will be still available by the time your application is ready to launch.

In our experience, many of the Twitter trackers currently on the market do not have the capacity to accurately monitor the exact number, nature and content of Twitter user name mentions on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.  Luckily, we marketers now have a few options for Twitter back-up to help us track and archive our tweets.

Some of our favorites are listed below:

1. TweetDumpr as the name suggest dumps your Twitter time line into a CSV file.  For those users with large public timelines (it cannot dump from private/protected accounts) the site will send you an email once your file is ready for download.  We also like Twitterscribe for this type of functionality as well. The main drawback of these services is that they don’t have a way to archive for anything other than your tweets—sometimes you want to find old direct messages and those elusive mentions.
2. TweetBackUp has a great and easy to use API.  Its basic (free) service doesn’t offer much more than a daily dump of the last 3,200 or so tweets; however, unlike some other services mentioned here, TweetBackUp automates this process.  TweetBackUp also allows you to review your data in a variety of forms including RSS and HTML formats.  Where TweetBackUp really shines is in its premium service offerings which allow for a CSV file dump in addition to the other formats offered with the basic service and it allows you to access more than one Twitter account, search hashtags and archives twitpic photos.  The premium service is a good value at only $12/year.
3. TweetSaver pulls in all your latest tweets (up to the last 3,200) and allows you organize, tag and search the information easily.  TweetSaver also is one of the few services that also pulls your mentions in addition to direct messages and favorites.  The main drawback of this service is that it costs money to join.  However, you can join for as low as $10 a year with their graduated pricing plans.
4. TweetTake is a FREE service that allows you to archive any of the Twitter features you’d have access to on your account such as tweets, followers, friends, direct messages and the like.  You can either aggregate these things in one search or search within a particular category.   You can download the information in an Excel compatible format.
5. Lifestream Backup is a Twitter archiving service but is much more than that.  Lifestream Backup connects to your Twitter account as well as other social accounts like Flickr, and WordPress (and in Beta Facebook, Gmail And YouTube).  This service doesn’t track mentions unfortunately, but it does allow you to access more than one Twitter account and compare it to your activity on other social networks.  The priciest of the offerings mentioned here its $30/year for up to 20GB of storage, and hosted on Amazon’s S3.

What have you found? What’s your favorite service for this functionality?

While I have no evidence to argue against this other than the myriad personal anecdotes from teens in the comments of the media coverage (I tweet therefore we tweet!) and the content in the stream of the popular trending  "Teens Don't Tweet" topic on Twitter, I do have a question about the stats Nielsen provided.

As Nielsen puts it, "...only 16 percent of Twitter.com website users were under the age of 25. Bear in mind persons under 25 make up nearly one quarter of the active US Internet universe, which means that Twitter.com effectively under-indexes on the youth market by 36 percent."

Fine, but check out the age breakdown in the graph.  You've got 55+ (avg US life expectancy is about 75, so we'll go with that), 25-54, and 2-25.  That gives us ranges of 21 years, 29 years, and 23 years, respectively.

However, you have to be 13 to join Twitter, so that cuts the youngest demographic in half, making those ranges 21 years, 29 years, and 13 years.

This seems heavily skewed in favor of the older demographics and of course a demo segment would under index when half the audience are literally not legally allowed to use the service, right?  But I welcome more savvy statistics people to show me the light.

Regardless, it wasn't the teens under indexing bit that caught me off guard the most.  No, what gets me is that 20% of the Twitter audience is 55+.  Tweetup at The Villages, tonight!

Quite an interesting question indeed. With Social Media being a super hyped little pair of buzz words, every agency, self-promoting fameball, or major brand who follows trendy little buzz words has jumped on the tweeting, wall-posting, super-poking bandwagon.

While they are most definitely right to be on the wagon, the deployment of a Social Media initiative is not something one embarks upon without any planning or experience. It is one thing to be a celebrity building your own online brand, but even then you have to be wary. The room for interpretation on the context of your tweets, blog posts, or status updates is a pretty big room and the elephant in it is that whether you are a brand or Demi Moore, the online world of snark just wants to see you stumble.  Just like that photograph of you on Page Six in your unflattering sweats or that consumer complaint about an experience with your brand or one of your employees that now has 50,000 views on Consumerist, dipping your toes into Social Media has to be done clearly and with purpose.

Even without the fear or risk of negative backlash, in order to make a lasting impression that positively supports your brand and that has a trajectory for growth and "viral" legs, one must have a firm foundation based on knowledge and experience, on what works and what doesn't.

Which is why, as with every other marketing tactic or medium, having a strategy is important.  Your Social Media initiatives should be integrated with your overall brand strategy, whether you are trying to peddle a product, fameball, celebrity, or brand.  There should be goals, objectives, benchmarks, and a thought out approach that makes sense for what it is that you want to communicate and how you wish to communicate it.

In this Marketing Sherpa study, they concluded that " Two-thirds of marketers who work for organizations that have not used any form of social media marketing or PR consider themselves “very knowledgeable” or “somewhat knowledgeable” about this emerging strategy. Their overconfidence in unproven ability can doom social media initiatives to failure."

It is a mistake to believe that if you build it, they will come.

To believe that you can set up a YouTube channel, upload a few videos, and boom, there you have viral video is about as logical as believing that people with a video camera can create a Super Bowl commercial. Although in some cases, the former does happen, more often than not  it doesn't and won't.

In the same manner, it is foolish to believe that just because you create a Facebook or iPhone application and put it out in the universe, people will use it. The application directory on Facebook is flooded with applications, most of which (the most recent stat I heard was 99%) are basically inactive. Even the top Facebook applications that were previously deemed "successful" have seen a decrease in usage that averages between 15-24% with the new Facebook redesign.

While I do believe that it is possible for some brands to embark upon a Social Media plan "in house", it is increasingly important to do so with someone taking the reigns who has Social Media experience and expertise. If you want to cut through the clutter, ward off any potential viral embarrassment, and most importantly, have a successful initiative having someone on board who knows the space - not as a user, but as a marketer, is key.

As an employee of an agency that dipped its own toes into Social Media before it was so totally trendy and part of a majority of Fortune 1000 marketing budgets, I can say that the overzealous nature of marketers to believe they fully understand Social Media is partially exciting. It is nice to have these mediums & tactics that we believe (and have for quite some time) to be viable be recognized and appreciated by the more traditional marketers.

I just urge you to remember that just like other traditional and existing non-traditional tactics, strategy is key. While a rogue effort by someone with no experience could prove to be successful, lightning rarely strikes in the same place twice.

It is best to consult with, hire, or bring to the team, someone(s) with a true passion for and expertise and experience in Social Media.

These two buzz words are best buzzed about by someone who knows how to properly buzz them.

Hmmm...What does this mean? I'm interpreting it as they are trying to help coach small business owners to utilize their technology in the best way to provide an optimum consumer experience for their customers yielding maximum profitability and hopefully, if they're lucky, an increase in consumer retention.

While I appreciate Microsoft's entrepreneurial economic resurgence desire, I am not convinced that this 20,000 square foot facility located conveniently (ahem) in Redmond, Washington at Microsoft's HQ was the way to really reach out to the American people.

You would think that during these "challenging economic times" people would be shutting down stores not opening them, and I can't help but be pessimistic about the self-promotional nature of this endeavor.  While many services that are provided to help people are certainly self gratuitous in some shape or form, it seems like Microsoft could have taken the show on the road, setting up a moving exhibit showcasing their services in multiple markets that would have reached a much larger (and much more representative) demographic.

If the show wasn't made for the road and if the objective really is to help their average consumer, creating a "store experience" that would best help people "cut costs, create efficiencies, streamline operations, and drive customer loyalty through connected experiences" shouldn't they have setup shop somewhere on 5th Avenue here in the NYC, in the Mall of America, Union Square in San Francisco, Phipps Plaza in Atlanta, Tyson's Corner in Virgina, or perhaps in the Grove in Los Angeles, all prominent (and highly trafficked) consumer retail markets?

Instead of taking their "showcase of new and emerging technologies" to the average consumer, they are keeping it homeward, which seems to clearly decrease the reach and magnitude of this endeavor.

How much of an impact that this "Retail Experience Center" has on Microsoft's image, sales, and how helpful it is for the average consumer within this target demographic remains to be seen.

One thing that resonates with me from Microsoft's press release is how important consumer loyalty is.

I'm not certain what Microsoft's tactics are for addressing that need, but I hope to make it over to the National Retail Federation 98th Annual Convention and Expo here in NYC where Microsoft says it will be showcasing this center at booth no. 637, so I can find out.

What are the best ways to utilize technology to hang on to your consumers while concurrently generating new ones?

Now this is the million (multi-million?) dollar question, one that I constantly work to address as I build relevant CRM tactics, programs, and initiatives for many of my clients that integrate with their overall CRM strategy.  Obviously there is no clear-cut answer, but there is a resounding theme that echos through: you absolutely have to talk to your consumers.

(Photo courtesy of Microsoft)

Affinitive is happy to announce that we have submitted an entry for our work with E.&J. Gallo Winery and their Redwood Creek brand in the "Talking" category.

We're not exactly sure how the judging criteria works, but they are allowing the general public to rate and review each entry. Please check out our submission, and post a review/rating! And if you would like to learn more about how Affinitive is helping E.&J. Gallo "blaze the trail", drop us a line!

The videophone was a revolutionary product that was featured prominently in the 1964 World's Fair. Huge amounts of time and money were spent creating it and just because it was technically possible, it was predicted that there would be an enormous demand for it. But it turned out that no one actually wanted a videophone. In fact, that the parties cannot see what each other looks like is viewed by most people as a major benefit to voice-only communication not a limitation.

When I worked in Interactive Television, every year there would be two or three companies that invested a large amount of effort in developing systems to allow users to click on a person on the screen. The envisioned killer app for this was inevitably buying what the person was wearing, the example being whatever happed to be the hit show of the moment such as Sex and the City. Even ignoring the difficulties of coordinating the business cycles of television and fashion to have products on shelves when a show airs, it was always a cumbersome user experience. TV shows are edited (such as cutting between two people having a conversation) so timing a click to be on the intended person is difficult. It would be much easier to simply select that actor from a menu. The hubris of these technologists is such that one company even blatant stated that TV shows would no longer need to be edited as if it were a flaw that would finally be corrected with their product.

Now with location based services, the holy grail is evidently walking down the street and getting beamed a coupon when passing by a certain vendor, usually Starbucks. Apparently the technologists' vision of the future is being bombarded with offers as we stroll down a city street, even though everyone at the conference admittedly had no desire for this much less the average person. But these efforts perpetuate because it makes a good trade show demo and an even better pitch to a client or venture capitalist. Unfortunately, as we've seen in a previous post, selling the client on the presentation rather than the result usually leads to something that no one actually uses.

Modern humans evolved about 200,000 years ago and we all have the essentially the same brains as our ancient ancestors. It's amazing that something like a film can deeply emotionally engage us, but it somehow taps into the way our minds work. Social interaction whether around a campfire or on Facebook hasn't changed much; people still want essentially the same things whether it's to flirt or boast or establish social hierarchies. Technology and media that address human needs or solve human problems can be very successful. Some companies like Apple are amazingly adept at this. Products that simply demonstrate their technical capabilities are doomed to fail.

With media moving to more non-traditional means, it was only a matter of time before the idea of the product placement hit the web. Last month, Sprint PCS launched a consumer promotion on YouTube where they ask you to make a family or summer video that features their new Sprint Instinct phone, as a product placement. Shill their product in your home vid and you will get $20 for your efforts. Their name of the promotion “Sell Out” would indicate that perhaps this all is just some joke, meant to combat the edge and wittiness of Apple’s marketing, owners of the iPhone, which this phone was made to directly compete with.

The idea of this type of placement has had mixed reactions across the board. To me, there are several key questions that have come up from the consumer and brand perspectives that leave gaping holes in a promotion like this that could ultimately note bode well for Sprint’s credibility within non-traditional online channels. A few of these questions being: Is a measly $20 a strong enough value proposition? Will any viewer of this video see it as a genuine endorsement? Is this just some publicity stunt by agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to try out the social media space and perhaps garner some blogosphere buzz? And perhaps most importantly (and most unanswered) will this really translate to any sales of the Instinct?

With reference to the latter, only time will tell, but as someone who prides themselves on working for a company who builds Word-of-Mouth the genuine way, I feel as though the distinction between a genuine brand reference within a social media channel and one of placement must be made. There is a vast and incomparable difference between Word-of Mouth that is cultivated by simply giving your product to a consumer and allowing them to experience it, engage with it, and then let you know how they feel, the natural, raw, organic way that is based on opening up a dialog versus these paid placement promotions that don’t come from any basis other than people willing to shill if the price is right without any passion or affinity towards the brand.

At Affinitive, we pride ourselves on building programs that result in user generated content as a by product of an engagement strategy, where consumers participate because they are interested in learning about the product or because they already have a passion for or relationship with the brand. We could not have the quality or quantity within our library of content for each program that we have by shelling out a few twenties for some videos.

We love to reward consumers for their willingness to engage and create content, but doing so in a way that is about the consumer and not about the creation of a tool for the brand makes a world of difference.