IDEA 20090922 Identica Marketing

I want Identica to grow. Here's a plan how to make that happen.

Light Analysis
1.) Twitter has:
 * mass brand recognition
 * many APIs
 * buy-in
 * funding
 * fame
 * rapidly growing community
 * at least one local partner, in japan
 * private partnerships
 * famous people using!
 * focus on mass followers, out of balance social ratio (1 million followers to 1 leader)

2.) Twitter doesn't have:
 * niche communities
 * complete trust (fail whale)
 * built-in scalability
 * international buy-in!!!
 * http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twitter.com
 * openness and transparency
 * Private networks
 * federation

3.) Both Twitter and Identi.ca
 * converted early adopters
 * reached plateau

4.) Identi.ca has
 * FLOSS Buy-in
 * Free Network Service
 * Nerds
 * Niche Communities
 * CC buy-in
 * Federated!
 * Evan!
 * Private network possible
 * Some international buy-in in Germany and India
 * More balanced social ratio (nearing 1 subscriber to 1 leader)!!!

5.) Identi.ca doesn't have!
 * strong graphical and word branding
 * large scale buy-in
 * international buy-in
 * steady newbies
 * new niche communities
 * meme's started in Identi.ca
 * ROI from starting in network
 * Business/private buy-in
 * Global Brand
 * Girls

Strategies

 * Develop Recognizable Brand/Icon/Logo
 * Right now, Identi.ca and Status.Net have good names, but the icon is not hardcore like shell, or nike!!!
 * maybe a mascot or something friendly and fuzzy.
 * Focus on inverse twitter. Rather than grow users by adding more subscribers, grow from obsessions and directing focus.
 * Partner or shame floss communities for not using free network services. Partner with local, private and amateur niche communities
 * International focus with language translation, and even localized interfaces.
 * China rollout!
 * Iran/Syria rollout!
 * Developers Rules!
 * Don't forget the roots
 * The software already speaks for itself, but provide incentives to develop the coolest apps (APIs)
 * Provide bounties, rewards, and incentives for developers
 * Private and Business Networks
 * Girls!
 * Girls are bright nodes in the network, but prefer to reinforce old friends, where guys are seeking and seeking to connect with girls
 * Thus, girls provide stability to a network, while guys provide growth, and dynamic acceleration

Branding Contest
There are two ways to solve the branding issue. Have a 30 day contest to generate better logo through free culture projects like Open Clip Art Library, Aviary, etc, or just outright hire a great designer to do it right, like http://iso50.com.

The strength of twitter is the bird, the tweet, the failwhale, all humanized and easy to remember icons, which can be made into verbs.

Identi.ca has verbiage like identicate, denting, dentevents, but no humanized logo, mascot or interface element. The comment bubble is too basic, cold, and microsoft-like. There needs to be some type of mascot or strong symbol that people can use to associate with Identi.ca and/or quick thing that can be grasped by pop culture. The other option is to make it more business, more about identity, security, privacy, depending upon strategy.

Regardless, the logo for Identi.ca and Status.Net need to be similar, strong, but different, and a contest to generate more users on the site, and through the web is a primary way to do this!

ROLE: Run the contest through Identi.ca and find ways to recirculate it all through Identi.ca

FocusDays
Basically, spend time each day advocating and getting others on board with big foci like follow fridays, but every day! Keep it on IDENTICA! Spread!

ROLE: My role is to develop the plan, and keep on doing this extensively for at least 6 months. Churning usage and development.

Mission Mondays
#MM

Pick one thing to do as your mission, and complete it or get other people to! Report about this all day! Can also be good for groups to do! Start the week off right!

FEATURE REQUEST: Have some way to mod up and down people like #FF++ or something, similar to http://playfoursquare.com but using something specific to openmicroblogging sites to develop some task system, which drives usage, apps, and development! Be ahead of the curve.

Travel Tuesdays
#TT

Travel outside your boundaries online and offline somewhere and/or report about places around the world that are identicating or doing interesting things. Focus on the international and finding something new to enjoy life and events! Ideally, could use a task system to track how people are doing!

What Wednesday
#WW

Ask questions to people in your network and even better, people not in your network! Social credit and reputation for using the service!

Thirsty Thursdays
#TTh

Go get a drink or meal with some friends! Report about it day of and during! Points for having events, getting new friends to identicate and also for buying drinks and meals for others!

Fame Fridays
#FF

Pick one person, and direct focus towards them! Do interviews, blog posts, pictures, songs, remixes, cosplay, and more about one person for the whole network! Reverse concept of growing network by focusing on just one person, hard core!!! Also, inverts concept of follow friday's in following new people every week. Rather, decide to focus on just one person!

http://rejon.org/wiki/IDEA_20090204_One_Day_of_Fame

http://rejon.org/wiki/IDEA_20090228_24_Hour_Person_Social_Network

Sunny Saturdays
#SuS

Get outside! Go somewhere, spend some time with people! Don't forget to take your mobile and identicate about what you are doing! More points for SuSsing out some things with other identicators, and getting new people to join!

Software Sundays
#SoS

Get your hacking tools together! Sundays is the day to talk about and grow the software community! Talk about your favorite project, help support a project, and generally work towards the community. Extra points for contributing to http://status.net

IdentInternationalization
Work with local partners, and servers to get Identica and/or StatusNet installed in locales with full language and cultural localization. The most obvious are countries that could benefit the most from scaling with internet censorship, and other blockades that Status.Net is built to handle.

ROLE: Connect up international partners, develop plan, keep on targets and metrics to oversee growth.

China
Already have a local partner ready to connect and work together on this. Just have to do a full assessment and find out path forward.

http://rejon.org/wiki/IDEA_20090504_Identica_China

MiddleEast
Already have a local partner ready in Syria to work on this, and just have to assess, and plan out properly.

After Syria which speaks Arabic, internationalize for Iranian language, and rollout there, for obvious reasons.

Others
Possibly better to focus on India and Germany first because they have the 2nd and 3rd largest, respectively, sets of users. Far more diverse than Twitter. See: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fidenti.ca compared to: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twitter.com

Advocacy
ROLE: Actively pursue, travel to, and/or arrange speaking engagements and meet-ups at major free and open source conferences, and targeted conferences.

Identi.ca + Status.Net
Hit the major conferences both inside and outside the normal comfort zones with talks, advocacy, but most importantly, partnerships!

GetYourFreeCon.org
Free Network Service and Autonomo.us conference

Hit up the larger issue of Free Network Services and host 1st major conference on this. The better the client for like minded software, then the better Identi.ca and Status.Net will fare.

I already have commitment from large company to host this conference.

http://rejon.org/wiki/IDEA_20090505_Autonomous_Conference

FreedomPact.org
One day event to move things to the left ;) Get more businesses converted to free software, free content, and free network services

http://rejon.org/wiki/IDEA_20090124_Freedom_Pact

Partner with Similar Businesses
To raise the level of water for all boats, there should be a huge push to network with other similar businesses based upon Free Network Service principles, using Creative Commons, and/or using complementary technology.

Immediately, I would push for some type of relationship based upon the three standards:


 * Free: Use our APIs, software, and free service! Promote!
 * Mixed: Use everything in Free, but apply for automatic affiliation to use Identi.ca as co-branding
 * Partnership: Use everything in Free and Mixed, but also develop an agreement for sharing, and/or using specific custom features, and/or cross-promotion


 * Targets
 * http://wikihow.com
 * http://jamendo.com
 * http://wikipedia.org
 * http://creativecommons.org
 * Raid all creativecommons and fsf-based businesses for some type of linkage, or affiliation with Identi.ca
 * http://autonomo.us
 * Raid all autonomo.us affiliated projects for association
 * High level targets
 * large businesses, are so much harder to convince!!!

Girls
I haven't figured this one out yet, but I will.

I think the ideal scenario to get girls more involved is developing private networks of trust between girls, and some incentives for Girls. The easiest target is girls in technology, but would like to see more develop outside of this into other networks.

Private and Business Networks
Another campaign needs to be planned out to get more internal business networks using Status.Net. I'm working on this.

I think the ideal scenario is to partner with some businesses, or conferences for public exposure, then develop business development strategy on meeting with businesses to show them what they need. Hosted status.net will really help this, since no need to direct meetings, which take time and money.