QUICK SHOT: Guardian on Twitter- April Fool’s or Great Freakin’ Idea?

[Note: There was some confusion. My bad. What I MEANT here was that a newspapers could go forgo print and only have a web presence and "tweet" the headlines.  Folks, even my 5 year old twins know that you can synthesize an entire story into 140 characters. But with brick and mortar costs virtually minimized (no printing and going virtual) this maybe a viable way to save a newspapers as a brand.]

Ok I was totally had.

I saw a tweet (on Twitter, natch) about The Guardian going exclusively on Twitter after 180 years in print. I was totally gonzo excited. All of a sudden it just made sense!

Papers are going by the wayside, but information isn’t. Branding that information as quality, well-written & sourced is key.

“This is HUGE” I tweeted. Only to be “@” back that it was an April Fool’s joke. Ok, that deserved a “Good Show,” as it was a seriously good prank — I’m tipping my cloche to my overseas cousins.

But after a good laugh, I had one of my epiphanies.

A newspaper going exculsively to Twitter was totally a joke. Or was it?

Some of the most amazing things happen by happenstance, blunder or folly: maple syrup (’cause no one goes “Hey, let’s just boil some tree sap” unless it’s by mistake,) Chocolate chip cookies, Coca-Cola, Rubber, implantable cardiac pacemaker and penicillin to name a few.) 

Currently, with the slow death of printable media, newspapers are folding left and right. What would happen if one just decided to stop printing and go only digital: online, Twitter and Facebook?  Could they survive?  Could they negotiate a great deal to “deliver” exclusive only to Twitter? Would this help Twitter monetize themselves as a content deliverer? Perhaps a subscription model (w/ ads?) and revenue-share with partners?

Could this work?  

And if it did, now THAT would be hysterical!

The Rebuilding of Babel

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563)

The Tower of Babel is one of those famous biblical stories– too lofty we reach, position ourselves (literally and figuratively) too close to God, we’re torn down.

A little historical background: speaking one language, the city of Babel was an epicenter of commerce & culture. Only after displeasing the Almighty with the erection of the immense tower dedicated to Man’s achievement, God dispersed them across the lands, each speaking a different language. Hence the origin of our world’s differing dialects (end history lesson.)

This is a world economy. On most levels. Money speaks all languages. Achievement, for all intensive purposes, is really limited by the self. Presently language is one of the last significant gate keepers for true world commerce.

I mean, which is more desirable: Two MBA’s, same school, same ability. One speaks fluent Chinese in addition to English? Yeah, you get my drift.

Technology has gone a long to helping us blend the economies of the world– especially with the Internet. The latest communication newcomer, a phenomenon known as Twitter, impacting business, marketing, product development, PR, you name it. Twitter’s growing, and at an exponential rate–  it’s being touted as an alternative to search giant Google. I’ve personally used it for marketing, test-marketing, sourcing new businesses, and information just to name a few, and to great success.  

So you will have to believe me when I say it was like Christmas came early when the latest version of Tweetdeck was released. For those not in the know, Twitter to Tweetdeck is like Alex Rodriguez on steriods (oh, wait that’s redundant… oh, well you know what I mean.) If you “tweet” any more than just casually, you need to upgrade yourself to Tweetdeck. Trust me. One feature stands out (though there are A LOT of really great ones– a more intuitive UI for one,) is the added language translater. I’m seeing that as a real paradigm-shifter.  Users have the ability to translate johnny-on-the-spot 30+ languages- both sending and receiving.

What does this mean?  Why a paradigm-shifter?

It means we are one step closer to actually being a truly diffused world-market — especially when the average business person can easily haggle their wares in German, French, Spanish, Chinese (both traditional & simplified), Serbian, Hindi, Japanese, Vietnamese, just to name a few. 

Imagine the effect of a seamless language translator would have on a wine distributor, an import & exporter, manufactures, or creatives (PR/SM/Marketing/Design) when they can do business across the world, without necessarily hiring a translator for initial marketing purposes?

Huge. That’s what.

I know a few marketing plans that would change if they could make efficient inroads into foreign markets.  Thanks to twitter and tweetdeck, that just got a heck of a lot easier.  Of course we’re not at full Star Trek Communicator level but you can wisps of the future coming.  Next step: having a preferential language setting– so no matter what language is tweeted it would be received in YOUR preferred language. Some current issues that still need to be addressed are colloquialisms, syntax and certain words and concepts that just don’t translate readily.

Granted there are limitations: legal, medical and higher business negotiations shouldn’t be left to a simple auto-translator. But for preliminary marketing and sales, to basically get the conversation started- what a heck of a tool!

And once you get to where negotiation and legal is necessary, you can source that pretty easily. (Hello Twitter?)

So back to Babel. As the communication barriers break down, and we move toward building a truly world economy, one that even the smallest business can participate in- what does this mean? Should we be wary of building temples to our vast achievements over nature and circumstance?

Honestly don’t know.

But it sure is going to be exciting to watch it unfold.

ReCaptcha- Most Annoying Thing You Will Happily Tolerate.

Annoying things exist.  You can’t escape errands, laundry, traffic, pesky bills, airline security, doing your taxes, remembering different passwords to different websites, long lines and surly government employees.  Annoying and, very often, necessary.

Then came the Captcha.

“What?”

You heard me.

Captcha. Otherwise known as the annoyingly weird exercise of retyping hard to read words when you try to “friend” someone on Facebook. Gmail and Yahoo use captcha to stop spammers from obtaining millions of accounts that they’d use to send spam email. It’s put there to make sure automated programs, or “Bots,” don’t gain access to websites. They, like you, can’t read the wavy, out of focus random words. A computer program, they get over it. You just seethe.

Modern Captcha Image from Wikipedia

With 200 million captchas “solved” everyday by suckers like you and me, at 10 seconds every time, that roughly adds up to around 150,000 hours each day. EACH DAY.  

I bet that got your attention. It should, because it’s an impressive statistic.

Enter reCaptcha. This little company might just get you to actually tolerate this annoying exercise.  Seriously. And more companies should adopt this version of the captcha.

Besides being FREE, ReCaptcha, is helping digitize newspapers, books and old-time radio shows, by putting this wasted time to actual good use. Every reCaptcha solved adds to the world’s library of digital books.

Humans assist in the digitizing of books, by "reading" what optical scanners can't. (reCaptcha website)

Books written prior to computer are currently being “read” by optical computers that scan pages. Except with real type-setting, which is often imperfect, they can’t read the text. Like 20% of the time. So reCaptcha takes the text the computers can’t read and uses it as the security image that you and I have to retype to “friend” Bob Smith on Facebook (except Facebook doesn’t use reCaptcha and yes, that sucks.) You can read more about reCaptcha in their paper cited in Sept. 2008 Science Magazine. 

This appeals to me on a lot of fronts. Captchas by themselves are a necessary evil. I get it. ReCaptcha just makes it an efficient use of my time, and one that benefits the world in a real meaningful, tangible way.

What would happen if more companies used ReCaptcha? The world’s digital knowledge base deepens, and I’d be more than happy to help.