“Twenty years from now we’ll look back and say, ‘Gee, telephone numbers were a goofy thing,’” predicts Internetologist Len Hause

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Part 2 - download
In this Talking Portraits interview, Hause predicts that phone numbers will no longer be needed. After giving a summary of the evolution of telephone numbers—from simple 4-digit numbers accessed through a local exchange to today’s numbers that designate locality, region, state, and nation of origin—Hause describes how content and context (the mode of transmission) are becoming more and more orthogonal (independent of one another).

Given the number of choices we have now, including Internet voice applications that use only name-based addressing, Hause describes how and why the telephone number as we know it will give way to a futuristic persona-based system that allows us to contact one another using a names.

Bio

Len Hause is an Internetologist and founder of MashBrain where he consults on Internet marketing and technology strategies. He was a Fellow of the Technical Staff, Associate of the Science Advisory Board, and Marketing Director at Motorola where he spent more than 30 years in management roles and as an individual contributor. He has been recognized as a pioneer in the adoption of Internet protocols and culture within the Enterprise for collaboration and organizational learning. While working in the semiconductor business, he learned firsthand about the importance of the convergence of the Internet and cell phone technology.

Hause frequently participates on executive, educational, corporate, and government advisory boards and consortia. He is also an active member of Austin’s musical community. He holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University. (more…)

One of my challenges in communicating with clients is explaining how different the workforce is today and how different the web traffic is now versus a few short years ago. The expectation or mindset that a person brings with them when they visit your website depends on their age, to a large degree.

Have you ever asked a teenager or, for that matter, someone in their 20s or early 30s the following question: What do you think about the Internet? Or, how important is the Internet to you? Something like that. When I do that with my teenager, her friends and my grown kids they give me blank stares. That’s because they grew up on the internet. They live on it, and asking that question is akin to asking a fish, What do you think of the water? It’s just part of how they live. In fact, they couldn’t easily live without it. It’s their tool for conversation moreso than the phone or email. We have an answering machine at the house and I cannot get the kids to actually listen to the messages. For the younger generation, Internet-connected mobile phones with texting are their form of connectivity.

I’m generalizing here, of course, but if you ask those same questions of folks in their 40s and 50s on up, you often find grimaces and scoffing about how much trouble it is or how much time it takes to mess with the Internet. It’s just not central to them. It’s more like getting wet and having to dry off every time they use the Internet, whereas the kids just take to it like, well, fish to water.

This is important because the younger generation has a different expectation when coming to your website. They want instant results. They respond well to Live Chat on a website. If they happen to send an email for help or a question about a product, they expect an answer in a few hours, not a day or two. I recently met with a client where we talked about how traffic to their site will be increasing as they add blogging and more forums and so forth. I said that this increase will come with an expectation from clients that if you’re that involved/engaged on the Internet, then they will assume someone will answer questions quickly. So I said, “Tell me how long it takes for someone to answer emails now.” (Note: This was a B2B company.) Everyone at the table looked at me blankly. Nobody knew.

Do you know the average amount of time it takes to respond to email in your business? What are you learning from your clients via those emails?

This is all part of the elements and channels for conversation. Let’s make 2009 the year we think about this as an opportunity, instead of ‘one more darn thing to do.’ It could impact your sales.

Tom

About two months ago a dear friend who is a senior trainer for a group that does personal transformational work started her own blog. It’s called Life As It Is, written by Ann McMaster, and it’s at www.AnnMcMaster.com. 

After the first month, I sent her a note that in about four weeks’ time she had gotten more than 4,000 visits. I was curious what she thought of this because I was excited for her. This is quite an achievement, though not too surprising given that she’s known around the world for the depth of her work over the last 25 years.

Her response was priceless. She said, “It’s easier for me to think about when I hold it that I’m just speaking to my friends … otherwise, I’d be more embarrassed.”

My reply was, “And that is the best way to thinking about blogging - as having a conversation with your friends. You’ve hit upon the magic that makes blogging so unique and popular.”

Kudos to Ann. Do check out her blog when you have a moment. You’ll find your life enriched with the experience of sharing her insights.

Tom

Credit where credit is due. As I get this new blog going I want to make sure that I pay my respects — I borrowed my original idea for the title of this blog from chapter 4 of this book.

When you think of the Internet, don’t think of Mack
trucks full of widgets destined for distributorships,
whizzing by countless billboards.

Think of a table for two.

~ @man

If you have not heard of ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto‘ by now, then by all means make it over to their site and spend some time familiarizing yourself with their concepts. The authors are Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and they were many years ahead of their time when they wrote the book. Now, many of these ideas are slowly becoming part of every business’s new marketing strategy (or at least it’s being heatedly discussed now versus being ignored). I realize this is old news to those of us who’ve been working in this area, but for the vast majority of my new clients all these ideas are brand spanking new.

The more I thought about the authors’ original insights and looked at the various social media and social networking systems I’ve installed in the last 5 years, I find more and more value in their wisdom. I make it a point of having every intern who works for Tom Parish Inc. carefully read the entire book. However, I’m starting to see that the younger interns coming out of college are already ‘in the groove’ with the concepts, given their ‘digital native’ origins - meaning they grew up on MySpace, Facebook, blogging, Flickr and so forth, and they already experience in their life and know the value of input from others on the Internet to improve the quality of their life. My generation built the Internet; my kid’s generation are those who will truly live in an ‘always on’ Internet.

So with much respect, I’m officially launching www.MarketsofConversation.com, a result of repeatedly reading Chapter 4 of The Cluetrain Manifesto.  I hope to bring forward the best of my ideas and hard-earned experiences from working with process control systems for Honeywell, an MIT spin-off in artificial intelligence in the ’80s, in IT for 12 years at Motorola Semiconductor, and a SEO consultant for 3 years. And now, having worked 4 years as a social media/social networking consultant, I intend to bring the best of my experiences with the insights of The Cluetrain Manifesto to help others be successful on the Internet. It’s exiting for me to think of markets as opportunities for ‘conversation’ because it puts your business more in sync with your prospects and customers, and doing that right brings you more opportunity for growing your business.

Tom