• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic.
• Good design helps us to understand a product.
• Good design is unobtrusive.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is durable.
• Good design is consequent to the last detail.
• Good design is concerned with the environment.
• Good design is as little design as possible.

Credit: Dieter Rams

Yesterday was one of the few events in recent memory that has really shown the power and speed of the bridge between communication online and communication offline. Within a few hours of Michael Jackson’s death, almost everyone knew.

I’m not only saying this because my mother and father knew about his death even before I even found out, but simply an observation, that I believe, indicates just how really plugged in we are. VentureBeat’s post about how this is a true test of the internet’s mass emergency communication capabilities shows just how powerful our networks have really become.

I remember reading about the velocity of communication back in my European economic history course last semester – in the middle ages, messages took days to reach the corners of the globe. I saw the progression through time until days became hours, hours, became minutes, and now, milliseconds. Literally, in an instant. And our ability to utilize networks online to react to these messages have become unprecedented.

So when did you hear about MJ?

What did you do right after hearing about it? How many people did you tell? How many people did they tell?

In the beginning, it was all about getting users. How many can we bring in? It wasn’t about retention. It wasn’t about fostering relationships with “users”. The “user” was and still is a number. There are exceptions.

The future of CRM with web applications is the ability to slow down the abandonment rate of accounts and services. If something is free, the loss of a user doesn’t seem like that much of a loss. But we all know that free users aren’t just leechers. They bring in revenue potential, they provide valuable WOM, and they help polish your service. Combating abandonment isn’t just about ensuring sufficient feedback channels. It means building in feedback mechanisms right into the application that target and detect users that are using certain aspects of your service less and less – monitoring usage behaviour and providing context-based suggestions on how the service can continue to enhance productivity in some way  – can be valuable. Some services enjoy sending “nudges”. But without proving your continuous utility, “nudges” become annoying. The key is to “nudge” without irritating.

So how will you keep your users from jumping ship?

With WWDC just one day away, the blogosphere is a-buzz with iPhone stories. Not to be outdone by the coverage of the launch of the Pre, Apple is still heavily dominating the headlines without doing anything.

Case in point, on Gizmodo, these are the posts purely concerning purported leaked shots of the new iPhone over the past three days. You can count my post on their posts as adding another layer of unnecessary exposure to the new iPhone. Sorry about that.

• http://gizmodo.com/5281732/more-possible-iphone-3g-2009-shots-reveal-video-chat
• http://gizmodo.com/5281731/another-possible-iphone-3g-2009-shot
• http://gizmodo.com/5266037/last-minute-rumor-updates-on-apple-wwdc-09
• http://gizmodo.com/5279357/wouldnt-it-be-nice-if

And this list does not count the various posts of compilations, reminders, and other Apple news.

Gizmodo is a wildly popular gadget blog with a ton of readers. The fact is that without doing a single thing, Apple is still dominating.

No one knows the source of these photos. They are always either blurry, rumored renderings, or simply wishful thinking by Apple crazies. They have to come from someone though. My theory is that these photos come from a good combination of legit and fake sources. By legit, I mean people who have actually seen the device and have posted the information somewhere, only to have an Apple crazy use their photo manipulation skills to make a mockup with the prospect of insane attention. The motivation could be beyond attention, however. It is almost akin to nicotine patches: you need some sort of a fill to complete your nagging curiosity/addiction of what’s going to come next from the company. Everything is usually insanely exciting and absolutely mindblowing. And the prospect of a new iPhone is mindblowing.

Taking this back to the topic of viral marketing on the internet. I doubt that Apple intended for all of this to happen. But it definitely must bring a smile to Jobsies face when he sees his product being marketed even before he announces it. Now to be able to apply the motifs and methods behind this process to another product, and to succeed and in doing so intentionally, is truly the mindblowing part.

I have a challenge: I challenge you, the corporations, to do something for the environment this year in the spirit of Earth Day without telling anyone about it. That’s right, no commercials, no press releases, no newspaper ads, nothing.

Recognition comes when recognition is deserved. Telling people about what your doing is fundamentally less profound than telling people what’s been done.

This sends an underlying message about corporate social responsibility. We, as consumers, are now desensitized to “green” messages. We will not buy your product more just because you’ve told us you’re doing green things.

We will, however, buy your product if doing so makes a meaningful, positive impact onto the environment. Show us the trees you claim to plant. Show us the tons and tons of carbon emissions you have already eliminated, and also tell us how much money you’ve made off of that. That means you Apple: using less packaging has made you save money on packaging. I want to know how much you’ve saved. I also want to know how much of the environment you’ve saved as well. It’s time to take a different stance. Corporations deserve the money they’ve saved by being truly green. The message and the means aren’t all we’re after: it’s the ends as well.

What I mean by this is as active, connected users, we have a group of useful tools that we regularly use. And yes, the companies that provide these tools will and can become massive in size and very successful. I’m talking about the Facebooks, the Twitters (now), and the Googles. There is, however, a limit to the amount of these regular tools that we use: a ceiling.

There is not enough attention and time available in our busy lives to devote to another jesus-tool. The switching costs increase every day we use these things, because we are building our lives around it. Younger people will attest to this. And yes, I will probably never stop using Google as my main tool for e-mail and search, but hey, never say never.

In any case, I believe that the big question now should not be, who is going to be the next Twitter? – we should instead be asking: how can we, as unique individuals, find the next niche tools that we can use for our specific situations? I call it micro-niching; and similar to Seth Godin’s “tribe” concept: this is now related to product development and marketing.

As we micro-niche, we build a concept of how a company can create multiple micro-niches of a similar theme but utilize the technology available today to customize tools to a situation.

For instance, as an entrepreneur, a business owner, a graphic designer, a hockey player, and an addicted traveler: what tool can bring all my services together in a meaningful, semantic way, and what product will not just simply add to my already full roster of “regular” large and bulky tools, but can be nimble and evolving with my needs?

Just a thought.