Credit: dbking

I’m generally not tracking the “post ads to your social networks” movement, be it sponsored blog posts or tweeting ads to your followers on Twitter. There is one aspect to it that I think is most important: disclosure. Robert Scoble has a post up, More thoughts on in-Tweet advertising, where he notes that he unfollowed people on Twitter who were running ads:

So, I unfollowed and won’t be looking back. Actually I unfollowed Pirillo too. I don’t think he’s disclosed everything clearly or explained where his ads were coming from and until he does I’ll stay away.

His perspective reminded me of an experience I had years ago in the late 90s when I worked as an investment banker for Bank of America. It taught me the right way to disclose unsavory facts.

Selling a Superfund Deal: The Wrong Way

You know what the Superfund is? It’s the federal government’s program to clean up the nation’s uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. Throughout America, there are parcels of land with dangerous materials in them. Superfund is there to help get them cleaned up.

We had a client, a rising star in the software world, that need financing for a new headquarters in Mountain View, CA. A headquarters built on a Superfund site. That designation, from 8 years before, meant the land had been declared a hazardous waste site. By the time of the deal, the site itself was cleaned up, and was in an “operation and maintenance” phase. Its status was sufficient for the company to build on. But anything with “Superfund” on it is a big red flag in banking. And we knew it.

I was in the debt financing unit, and I worked with our real estate group on this one. After deliberating, we decided to bury the Superfund status deep in the materials selling the deal – in the prospectus, in the deal presentation. Act essentially as if it was a non-event.

Which at this point, was true. The property was clean and ready for development.

It was also a mistake.

Other banks got to the Superfund status of the site as they went through their analysis of the deal, and saw that it had an afterthought treatment. They didn’t like that.

And they didn’t participate in the deal at the levels we had expected. We got stuck with a larger percentage of the deal than we wanted. We scrambled, got one other bank to join and accepted holding a larger portion of the deal.

Wasn’t a pleasant experience. Nope, not at all.

Selling a Superfund Deal: The Right Way

It’s not often in life you get a chance to rectify a mistake so readily. But I did. Several months later, the software company approached us to increase the deal size, by nearly double. You might imagine the trepidation that request caused internally.

To raise double the amount, after having a number of banks turn us down, meant we were going to have to go much deeper in the market. It wouldn’t be easy.

We decided to do it, but with a big shift in approach. We led with the Superfund status. Put it out there, and directly address issues. Create a separate write-up that specifically addressed the Superfund status, the remediation efforts, and the reasons Bank of America was comfortable with it.

When I got out there and presented the deal at the prospective lenders meeting, I talked in detail about the Superfund site, upfront. Amazingly, no one got up and left the meeting. They seemed to take it in stride.

And the result? Easily got the larger deal done, and even increased its size a bit.

Lesson: Don’t Be Cute

What did I learn? People aren’t stupid. Treating them that way is a sure recipe to piss them off. Scoble’s comment illuminates that fact.

I’m not saying openly declared ads will be welcome, but for sure trying to slip ‘em in to the tweet stream is the wrong way to go. There is a “right” way to go about this advertising thing, if it’s going to happen. Acknowledge people’s concerns, and address them intelligently. You’d be surprised the effect that has.

Don’t make your Twitter account a hazardous waste site.

Was wird für die Informationen in der Zukunft verlangt? Werden Twitter-Meldungen wertvolle journalistisch aufbereitete Nachrichtenmeldungen, gegen Zahlung auf Wahrheitsgehalt geprüft (verifiziert) und “freigegeben”?

Die modernen “Wahrheitsorakel” sind heute bereits die auftraggeberabhängigen Gutachter für die Justiz und die Statistiker, Wissenschaftler sowie Thinktank-Experten für die Regierungspläne. Vielleicht werden auch soviel Lügen über z. B. Twitter verbreitet, dass man eine neue Geschäftsgrundlage für Journalisten schafft – die Bürger werden freiwillig zahlen (aber das ist Spekulation aufgrund von Erfahrungswerten zu andern perfiden Geschäftsmodellen).

Werden aktuelle Informationen jemals veralten oder anders gefragt, wird man sich “die Zeitung von gestern” nicht mehr kostenlos ansehen können? Das wertvollste sind sicher Informationsarchive und Dossiers mit ganzheitlich thematisch und auch journalistisch aufbereiteten Informationen.

Like a lot of you I follow a bunch of people on Twitter and some of them are constantly tweeting.  Indeed I had to turn one off today because he was filling my Twitter inbox and I couldn’t see any other tweets.  One of the other people I follow, who normally does a pretty good job of tweeting – say 10 a day (about 9 more a day than I average).  Today this person didn’t tweet.  Not once.  Indeed the absence of his tweets mad me wonder if he was OK.  Now I wasn’t exactly about to call 911 but it did make me realize that Twitter has become a measure of someone’s state of mind etc.  I could easily see that you could develop a tool that analyzed people’s tweets to determine what kind of mood they are in and whether this would be a good or a bad time to call them and ask them for that $100 they owe you, or to buy something from you.  Of course this would only work with the people that tweet in enough volume but that guy I turned off earlier today would be a perfect candidate for such a tool.  So, you prolific tweeters – look out, you may be getting that sales call right when you least expect it and you are unwittingly at your weakest.

It was arrival day for one of the tech industry’s most brain-straining conferences, Defrag 2009, in Denver. Lots of catching up with old friends like Graeme Thickins and meeting new ones like PostRank CTO/founder Ilya Grigorik. Here’s a quick shot from our table at the John Minnihan/Freepository-sponsored pre-conference dinner hanging with Infectious Greed’s Paul Kedrosky, Foundry Group’s Brad Feld, and the man himself, Robert Scoble.

In an interesting follow-up to Dawn’s post earlier this week, “Is Twitter Replacing the RSS Reader?” — which generated some fairly heated discussion in the comments — Robert Scoble has posted “Why I don’t use Google Reader anymore” in which he describes why he no longer uses Google Reader, preferring instead to rely solely on Twitter (and its new Lists feature) to keep up to date. Scoble uses Twitter’s new Lists feature (which Darrell wrote about earlier this month) to organize his Twitter stream and keep it easily digestible.

Helpfully, Scoble has provided links to four of his Twitter Lists as examples:

• Tech News Brands
• Tech News People
• Venture Capitalists
• My favorite Twitterers

Twitter has only just started to roll out the Lists feature (it’s not enabled on my account, for example) so you might not be able to access them yet.

Personally, I still think that RSS readers are useful, but I know that I don’t check mine as religiously as I used to (maybe just once per day in the morning), as I know that I’ll discover anything really important through Twitter. I don’t think I’m ready to drop Google Reader (s goog) just yet, though.

How about you? Will Twitter Lists make you consider dumping your RSS reader?

I enter part two of the review of Putting the Public Back in Public Relations reminding you that I think the book  is  valuable.

Putting the Public neatly summarizes the demise of the traditional media and the rise of the social media and PR 2.0.

It’s  ironic that the authors understand and capture  well the new media and the need to communicate ideas  in a quick, concise, clear way that’s tailored to our particular audience, and it takes them 300 pages to do it.

-A 300-page novel is not outmoded.

-A 300 page book on social media is.  With more thought and a good editor it could have been at least 50 fewer pages.

-As soon as it’s published, any references to Robert Scoble’s posts, or Chris Anderson’s blacklist is not news.  In the PR 2.0 world, this stuff is ancient history.

Granted, the  book is both a guidebook and history. But 300 pages is still too long.

The authors repeat things over and over.  I’m sure they’re doing it to drive home their points.  But I, like others, am reading this book because I already read the leading blogs,  listen to podcasts (which is where I heard an interview with them, leading me to buy the book), engage in Twitter, read AdAge and Wired and and follow Scoble.

In the larger picture, these are niggling complaints.  The authors have done a service to a profession in profound evolution, providing a pioneering work that’s  a textbook for the future of PR.

As the authors point out, we’re in the time of a huge transition.  PR is in an era of telling stories and being a part of a community that we understand and contribute to.

With each chapter I found myself grabbing a pencil to mark passages where Brian and Deirdre offer up insight, truth and a clearer way into PR’s future.

Just as importantly, I’ve subscribed to their blogs and sites to keep up with the conversation that they initiated.

User Rights?

The social web expands by the very minute as innovation continues to develop and new users continue to join. With such a vast and ever expanding platform, should there be underlining guidelines; a so- called Bill of Rights to protect users?  Robert Scoble thinks the “real issue is that people just don’t care about this”, maybe so, but that doesn’t change the fact that people have started and are still actively talking about this topic. They are engaged in dialogue which means that there are a lot of users out there that do care and that are interested.   

 The ‘Bill of Rights’ definitely raises important questions about what user rights are and what users should expect when dealing with the social web. The three key points highlighted are Ownership, Control and Freedom. Ownership of the user’s personal information, control over this personal information and freedom to grant access to this personal information, if desired. These key points seem fundamental; basic guidelines if you will, and as a social web user I would like to have ownership, control and freedom over my personal information. Unfortunately, I know that this is not true. The saying goes that once you put something on the web, it will always be there and is not longer private or yours. You take that risk every time you join a new social network, blog or even make comments. Your private information and thoughts are out there for just about anyone to find or see. That’s why I think having a Bill of Rights would be reassuring and even beneficial, but I just don’t think it would work in regards to the social web. As the social web continues to expand these “user rights” pose challenges to both the users and the various sites that they use.

Who knows what will happen in the future, maybe there will be more regulations and more ‘terms of agreement,” and/or maybe more users will demand their fundamental user rights, establishing and embracing an actual Bill of Rights. What I do know is that you have to be a smart user. It’s very easy to be reckless on the social web and sometimes it’s important to approach with caution.

The big meme at the moment is the real-time web. I have a couple of points to make here, that might help understand the current state of internet. If like me you are fed up of hearing CNN reporters say "and over here on Twitter mightymouse says ….. " then read on, and hopefully this helps define your own perspective.

The broad notion of real time is that the internet is series of information snippets that can be pulled together from disparate sources across the web. By immersing yourself in this pool of information through tools such as twitter, Facebook, Posterous, Tumblr etc, you will elevate yourself to new levels of awareness and no doubt approach a zen like status! For more read the experts; Chris Messina, ReadWriteWeb | the definitive primer

This is all wrong. One thing the ‘leaders’ from silicon valley miss is that the next big thing does not replace all things that went before. How often did we read that social networks will replace blogging. To suggest that the real-time web will replace all else that went before is to suggest that conversations in coffee shops will replace universities. Perhaps my metaphor is not ideal, but you get the idea. Society requires all kinds of people and many types of approaches and interactions to move ahead.. And all those approiaches do not impact each person – each has their own approach. The proponents of real time suggest that 140 characters will replace document search online. The web will somehow gravitate from a web of documents and pages to a web of snippets.

This conversation cannot move forward without referring to the Semantic Web where the internet is a series of data that can searched, aggregated, disseminated as each person sees fit. When we think about the Semantic Web then the real time concept makes more sense as part of the larger whole.

So thats my take on real time – yes it is coming, but its not an end in and of itself, and it does not replace what went before. Actually it might replace what went before for those with attention deficit but I won’t go there

A related point is how the masses are smarter than the individual. The fallacy of the Wisdom of Crowds is pointed out here in new research addressed by Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb. Where is the Wisdom of crowds

This is something we all know intuitively. She refers to Wikipedia, Amazon, IMdb, Digg and BookCrossing. The conclusion is simple and frankly intuitive. The majority of people are lurkers and browsers. The contributors are a very small group, 1% in the case of Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales refers to them as the Wikipedia community. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The notion of authors and readers is as old as books. This is what makes the world work.

Back to real time web. The reason it is a misnomer, is that the real time web has two components. One is simple immediacy. Information is transmitted to all users immediately, versus the 20 minute +/- index delay with Google search or few minutes delay with RSS. The second component of real time is the simultaneous sharing. Everyone can see the same update at the same time because everyone is in twitter all the time :-/

Scoble himself creates a list of reasons that Twitter is now part of eveyones life, and he actually argues against his own point here:

8. If you don’t read tweets for eight hours, don’t worry, all the big stuff you missed will be on TechMeme. When I was the first to talk about Yelp’s augmented reality feature on Twitter and on FriendFeed it was quickly blogged by EVERYONE and was on TechMeme within a few minutes and stayed there for about a day. The same is true of ALL news. I have not found an example yet where something important is discussed on Twitter about a tech company or tech news and doesn’t show up on TechMeme within a few hours. What doesn’t show up? Small stuff like birthdays or launches of obscure technology that only a very small audience will use.

Something to think about at a personal level – do you feel smarter because of your twitter feed? Do you every wonder what you are missing? Can we be just as smart by following a simple aggregation tool, and save ourselves a bunch of time in the meantime?

Then from a bank strategy and marketing strategy perspective, if we think through the above, the inputs to Twitter that are read by the lurkers will be represented by two components.

1. the 1%
2. marketers

Relevance to Bankwatch:
Banks should definitely not ignore the trends, and should participate in these platforms – the above does not mean anything here will disappear, merely that further evolution is inevitable, and it is essential to be part of that evolution. We are a long way from end of job in terms of defining how markets and marketing will play out here. The 1% thing is worrisome though, and is something that brings into question the validity of the social platforms for marketing purposes; the lack of widespread input will lead to consumer disaffection and lack of trust very quickly if people can see platforms being gamed by marketers.

Is “Advertising Dead“? Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki seem to think so. Michael Arrington thinks that RSS is dead and one of his guest authors thinks that comments are dead. ‘Traditional media’ is also dead (it seems to have died twice in fact) and in case you haven’t heard, Facebook is also dead.

What is it about entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts that just makes them drool at the thought of somebody else, ideally someone successful, failing miserably and dying. It could be the “Male Killer Gene” that Guy Kawasaki often rants about (but then ignores). More likely, it is simply link bait, which is a sad thing for the A-list tech bloggers to have to do because it’s just the first step to becoming Rupert Murdoch lookalikes.

Of course, they’ll be rich by then so perhaps that’s the plan. Anyway, blogging, wordpress and technology are not dead… I just wanted to see how many people click.

Update: See the results!

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If you liked this post follow me on Twitter, I’m @richardmuscat, or subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed.

You’ve seen it before. For years you’ve nurtured your private company, watched it struggle and, if you’re talented enough and hardworking enough (and a little lucky), succeed. Then you see these overnight upstarts that seem to just take over the world. Think about Google. Or, more recently, Facebook or Twitter.

Robert Scoble’s blog speculates that Twitter “actually worth five to 10 billion dollars.”

No doubt you know of examples from within your industry.

It’s enough to give a small-business owner Twitter Envy.

But for every dot-com boom there are hundreds of busts – remember the spectacular dot-com collapse of 10 years ago?  Of course the lingering effects of this Great Recession are still fresh in our minds.

This speculation of mind-numbing “market value” numbers brings a point for you, the small-business owner. By all means, you want to put a dollar value on your business, but there’s a right way to do that and you want to be careful not to get too caught up in speculation. After all, nobody knows if Twitter is actually making any money at this point (it almost certainly is not – yet).

I’m inclined to agree with this comment on The Industry Standard by Fred Wilson: “On one hand, I think the transparency into the world of private investments is good. Entrepreneurs benefit from having their companies discussed and valued in ‘the market.’

“But I think all the focus on what a company is worth can be bad. These companies are private for a reason. Most of them aren’t mature enough to be public companies. They often don’t have full management teams and some don’t even have revenues. The focus inside these companies needs to be on building the company, the product, and the business. And endless discussions about what their company is worth can be terribly distracting.

“I saw this in action back in the late ’90s when a bunch of our portfolio companies went public before they were ready. The employees spent too much time focused on the stock price and too little time focused on the business. Many employees starting counting their net worth in stock that was not liquid and eventually was worth pennies on the dollar of what they thought it was worth.”

Chances are your company will never go public. So dreams of exploding like Twitter or any Wall Street IPO will remain just dreams. But as you contemplate plans for the future such as selling your company, you need to have an idea of what your company is actually worth. Which brings us to my book, How to Sell Your Privately Owned Company, Baby Boomer’s Edition.

Chapter 3 – Putting a Price Tag on Your Business – offers a comprehensive guide to setting the right price for your business, a price that will be fair to you and attractive to potential buyers.

Eric R. Voth has been a successful business owner and seller since the 1970s. Among other enterprises, he is currently owner of ERV Productions Inc., and author of How to Sell Your Privately Owned Company.

Twitter icon for a fluid app
Originally uploaded by mfilej

I blogged a few days ago on how you can follow thousands on Twitter or rather on how I manage to do it. It sure isn’t easy and I now follow about 1500 people (which I need to drastically cut down at some point).

Imagine following over 100.000 which was exactly Robert Scoble’s problem. In a few words Robert – a blogger and technical evangelist extraordinaire – used to auto-follow everyone. He now unfollowed 106.000 people in one go and started building up his network again. Others have done a much better job covering what happened – including Scoble himself (as always see links below).

It’s not difficult for people who are a little bit new media crazy to remember that Scoble’s auto-follow tactic was debated far and wide – especially when Loic Le Meur decided sometime around February to clear out his twitter and build again. The discussion took a legendary life of its own (oh, you know all about the drama of the blogosphere I’m sure) and slowly became THE example when it came to discussing quality over quantity – even though I am not saying that Scoble or Le Meur were for one or the other.

There are two lessons I am taking for myself from this whole story

1. Learn every day
I’ve never met anyone worth their credentials who was under the impression that they knew it all. Especially in novel territories like new media it’s important to approach things with an open mind. Sure, strong opinions are great. Debate, stand by what you think, try it out. But – and this is the crucial bit – when it clearly stifles your creativity and goals, when the tool hampers you instead of helping you just change. Auto-follow works for some people, it doesn’t work for others. Try, learn the lesson, change the course, move on.

2. Don’t be afraid to back down (publicly)
I’ve sadly seen it too many times – especially in areas where our ego’s get in the way (don’t worry, I’ve done it as well). It’s difficult to back down when you have publicly and passionately advocated a position and now you find that you have to change that position. I love the fact that I’ve read so much from people who decided to mass unfollow – even though most of them were proponents of the auto-follow way. Most gave kudos to the other side, explained the lessons learned and moved on.

That’s what I like to see. Use the network, learn from experience, grow.

————————————
Read on:
You are SO unfollowed! by Robert Scoble on Scobleizer
TWITTER PURGE: Top Twitter User Unfollows 106,000 People from Pete Cashmore on Mashable!
To Jump on the Massive Unfollowing Trend Would Be a Mistake on louisgray.com
Robert Scoble is Fake Following by Loic Le Meur on the Loic Le Meur Blog
Auto follow is like playing Russian roulette by Dan Morrill on TechWag
The network effect in web 2.0 is also its biggest tragedy on vanelsas
Twitter Robots Killed Me (And Why I Apologize I May Not Be Following You Anymore) by Loic Le Meur on the Loic Le Meur Blog

On friendfeed:
New Twitter movement: unfollow everyone. Discuss why or why not this is a good thing: on Robert Scoble’s friendfeed (the discussion)

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Following a database meltdown (long live the server move processes) this post and any comments were uploaded again manually.

To quote the warrior-philosopher Popeye, “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more.”

For several years I’ve been skeptical of the thrall social media has had over the marketing and PR world, suspicious that while Facebook, Twitter, etc. are useful, powerful and entertaining , they are not the Philosopher’s Stone, capable of transmuting chatter into gold. 

Incomprehensibly (to me at least), instead of finding it’s own level in the marketing communications mix,  the social media movement to an alarming extent has morphed into a self-perpetuating hybrid of delusion and scam, propelled by the very pioneers who got in early and are now busy entrenching and building job security for themselves through pyramid tactics like authority rankings (the proposition that the longer you’ve been been a blogger and on Twitter, the smarter, hipper and more important you are) and logrolling for each other (Armano @-messages or retweets Solis, who does the same for RichardatDell, who does the same for Scoble, and so on, and so on…).

So this post kicks off my quixotic attempt to seed and modestly evangelize for an antidote to the pernicious self-dealing that is stunting the healthy development of social media.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sick to death of hearing people refer to themselves as “Social Media Guru” and “Social Media Expert”. Enough already. The fact is, that I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to actually claim those titles and have them be accurate. Our culture, this technology, and the amazing things people all over the world are doing with it – moves too fast.  One cannot be an expert if your field of expertise changes on a minute-by-minute basis. No can do, lovelies.

I really don’t care for the ‘evangelist’ title either, but at least I get that one and I feel it’s more accurate than others, even if it does conjure up images for me of religious fanatics that travel around in circus tents promising to cure people. Wait, maybe that’s exactly the point. Hm. Look at it this way though – if we’re reading and commenting on blogs, updating our status on Facebook, posting photos to Flickr, uploading videos to YouTube, and twittering like our lives depend on it – aren’t we ALL social media evangelists? I think so, even if it’s in a small way. If we’re doing these things, we obviously believe in these things and feel they’re worth our time to do. We may not be preaching the benefits of these things to conference rooms full of people, but we’re walking the walk and that’s the important part.

We’re not ‘experts’ – not any of us. We do the best we can and try to keep up as much as we’re able, but stuff changes fast these days and even if you know pretty much everything there is to know – someone else is doing something new that you’ve never heard about.

Do we call ourselves experts and gurus and evangelists to look cool? To try to stand out among the ever-growing crowd of people using social media? How much do you stand out when everyone and their uncle starts referring to themselves as an expert? Yeah, not much.

Maybe we should focus a little bit more on just doing our best at the things we really love doing. Not because it gets us a crowd of people following us, or worshipping us, but just because it makes *us* happy. Let’s not try to keep up with the Joneses, or the Brogan’s or the Scoble’s – let’s just do our thing and be all about it. It’s not a competition, peeps. Let’s just all do our best at being good people who love what we do.

This post inspired by the quote I’m about to get tattooed on my arm next month -
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” – Rumi

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Scoble just posited the idea that real time systems hurt long term knowledge. And I’ll start with that I agree with his basic premise that currently it is very hard to find past real time communications. IM disappears as soon as you close the window, and tweets roll off the page into obscurity. Even RSS will often be trimmed, losing past timelines. Scoble is entirely correct in his basic premise. But I don’t think it will have the long term effects he believes.

Historically, the resiliency of knowledge has always been proportional to the difficulty in recording and transmitting it. Verbal comunication is gone as soon as it it transmited. Newpapers and magazines wear out very quickly. Paperbacks are discarded after only a handful of reads. But, what you pay in resiliency you gain is transmisability.

Paperbacks can be traded amongst friends, magazines can be mailed to subscribers, newspapers can even be left sitting on the sidewalk for anyone to take. And verbal communication will instanly reach possibly hundreds of people. And some of those reached may go on to invest the time to transcribe the information I have just so easily transmitted. So my increasing my transmital rate I will in turn increase the chance of my transmissions conversion into long term storage.

http://scobleizer.com/2009/04/23/learn-from-zappos… 

This blog entry describes a visit by Robert Scoble to a company called Zappos. Although what they do is less important – it is how they do it that is of interest. The approach taken is not one of the traditional workplace with stringent hierarchy, with managers, line managers and directors  – but it is an in formal structure more resembling a family rather than a business. Zappos have learned to relax and by doing that they have learned to win. Another classic and often quoted example of changing the workplace can be found at Google.  

By relaxing their organisational structure the company has empowered staff making them feel part of the family and as such has increased the productivity. Staff want to go to work and want to work. Even the simplest steps can make an organisation more employee friendly and each step is a step away from the traditional Victorian factory structure that can be perceived by employees.

Some ‘quick wins’ could include relaxing the dress code. Firstly why some organisations insist that employees wear suits and ties is beyond me. If there is no reason for your staff to wear a suit then why do you make them wear a suit. The feeling of being able to work in clothes that you feel comfortable in is important to staff. It is a simple psychology win that will allow workers to feel that they have some say in the company.

Secondly wins could relate to flexible working – sometimes this is not possible, however where possible it will allow workers to feel more in control of their lives. Flexible working could include the ability to come to work between set hours, or taking lunchbreaks when staff want and not by a prescribed =time. Other flexible working could include ‘flexi-time’ or the ability for staff to earn additional time off work by doing additional hours in advance.

Thirdly wins can also be gained from allowing employees to work from home. This is not suitable for all organisations, and in some places it is not suitable for many employees due to their personal circumstances, however the ability to work in an environment of their choosing can increase productivity and loyalty of the employee.

The way that organisations relate  are just as important as the perks that they offer to staff. As described above hierarchy exists in many companies and the way that staff are treated can resemble a feudal system with a Chief Exec at the top, directors below, managers, team managers etc. etc.. unfortunately to accompany this structure similar communication channels exist with any bottom up messages having to be approved by a more senior person before being passed on - or not in some cases.

More flexible organisations are removing this communication barrier and looking at a social network structure rather than a traditional hierarchy. A social network structure is made up of those people required to deliver the goals and many networks may exists depending on the aspirations. A network may exist for a project and may include staff from many different departments from across the business, it may even go wider than the organisations. The social network appreciates the skills of the individuals and does not distinguish rank but, when working for the goal, gives each member of the network equal status. This improves the speed of communication resulting in faster decision making processes. in addition it also removes individuals who do not need to be part of the chain. In some cases it may be possible to utilise technology to assist social networking in the workplace – but that is for another post.

The key blocker to more organisations not empowering their workforce and learning to relax and win can be summed up as ‘line of sight managers’. These are a special breed of managers, usually suit and tie wearing (even at the weekends) who are convinced that staff do no work unless they are smart and can been seen at all times. They can be described as ‘old school’ managers who live in a world that they know best and everyone else is mistaken.

In some cases it may be possible to reeducate these managers so that they can become more flexible and learn to trust their staff to achieve goals – but in some cases it cannot. What will a leader do if one their managers cannot, or will not, change in line with the organisations..? What happens if a manager recruits only people like themselves – how will the organization develop?

Organisations need to ask the are they ready to plan for the future and realise that the organisation as we know it is changing and are they equipped to deal with that change, have they the people, the processes and the technology..?

Till next time,

Paul

zappos

i regularly read two magazines, inc and wired. the most recent issue of inc had a great article on online shoe retailer, zappos.com, and their CEO, tony hsieh. zappos is a remarkable company that focuses heavily on customer service. inc offers 5 ways zappos makes their customers happy: try everything, let people be themselves, get serious about training, open up, and get happy. the last point is what is truly interesting about zappos. hsieh really focuses on happiness, not just the bottom line – and that’s exactly what makes them so successful.

The next step for Zappos? Happiness. Hsieh has decided to focus on the concept as a way to boost productivity and to grow sales, which hit $1 billion last year. He’s been giving employees books on how to be happier and has been tweaking the way his company promotes employees to give them a greater sense of control. For customers, he has focused on the art of surprise. Zappos advertises free ground shipping, but most orders are mailed overnight. The idea is to give customers an unexpected sense of joy–and, of course, to get them to buy another pair of shoes.

i would highly recommend going out and buying this issue (i’ve already handed mine up to homage). at the least, you should definitely check out the feature on inc.com and read scoble’s post that digs even deeper into the great things zappos does.

this is the type of company i want to work for. this is the kind of company i want to build.

Here is the new ranking as of April 20th.

Few observations on the trends:

• The top of the list is very stable with J Owyang still leading the pack.
• Clay Shirky made the most significant gain (+99), mainly thanks to his brilliant post on the future of newspapers (888 comments and counting !). It’s amazing that this article does not comply to best practices in blogging etc:  it’s too long, has no images nor video… but it’s a such a great article with deep content. Clay only posts once a month but it’s always brillant !
• “Search” blogs seem to be on the rise in the social media landscape (see lines 51, 66, 96).

Any feedback on the relevance of this list is warmly welcome as an opportunity to progress:  eCairn team.

And should you need to develop social media marketing services (branding,  intelligence, research, outreach, advertising, social media optimization) where relevance is key, we’re always happy to do an 1/2 hour free  demo !

Don’t miss Robert Scoble’s great piece on how leading tech bloggers and tech gurus often utterly fail to communicate effectively with Main Street businesses.  Here’s his question, which is part lament: 

It’s to the point where I’m wondering if I’m missing something. Is anyone doing a good job of explaining how to bring a business into the modern age?  

AxisPortals suggests taking the time to read the ensuing comments, as well. There, Ken Camp proposes a provocative alternate take:

I’m not convinced every business needs or wants the web. It’s a tool and has value, but if the return on the value is minimal for a business doing well . . . the ROI/ROE may not be worth the investment to embrace social media.

Five minutes on Twitter means encountering scores of tweets pointing to web sites and blog posts about how to increase social media followers or how to transform a blog into a money making venture.    That can get to be a long five minutes.

In many respects, tech blogs and the tweets that relentlessly point to them form an enormous (and growing) echo chamber of tech-to-tech noise. There’s not much opportunity for a Main Street type business owner who is not interested in becoming the latest and greates tech guru to learn anything of specific value to his or her business enterprise.  Worse, the chatter can be confusing.  

It strikes me that to the extent that tech bloggers really aren’t connecting with business owners, this is true because tech bloggers deal in broad trends and issues. Conversely, how (or whether) a blog, a Facebook presence, or other embedded web interactivity can serve a given business is all about particulars.  

Exploring those particulars with a business owner, and guiding a given business toward building an overall IT profile that is effective,  economically feasible, and flexible enough to evolve along with the business requires rolling up the shirt sleeves and digging in.  It’s a matter of nitty gritty details. It’s a matter of practice.  

Often, too, it’s a matter of teaching.  

It can be difficult for tech leaders and trend setters who are wont to focus on a much bigger picture to manage this down and dirty teaching effectively. Imagine your favorite tech guru taking on the following teaching tasks: 

• Defining Social Networking: Never mind that “Web 2.0″ is a term so overused that many of us are loathe to invoke it yet again.  There are still plenty of folks who just don’t get it.  At all.  A person who wants to persuade a business to have a go at the thing will often have to begin with the basics, and then to cope with the inevitable fears and objections:  Won’t interactivity open my product up to criticism?  Won’t this all be terribly time consuming?  Won’t this entail giving away ideas and approaches that I should be selling?  Won’t my competition too easily be able to take my measure?  
• Defining Blogging:  Yes, most folks have at least heard the term, but an incredible number of them still haven’t the faintest clue, really, about what a blog is or what one can be.  Even the bits and pieces that typically make up a blog will likely have to be explained.  Then comes the challenge of explaining and demonstrating that blogs can actually function in many different ways–practically as many as a person can dream up.  
• Explaining Search Engines:  Again, everyone uses Google, but few grasp even the basics of how to get a site to show up in search results.  I’ve seen business owners spend hefty sums on web sites that are not only poorly organized and difficult to navigate, but also unlikely to yield desirable results in any popular search engine. Often, these sites are, at first glance, rather pretty.   Not many folks are really equipped to lift the hood and kick the tires, and that lack of technical knowledge makes them vulnerable to the allure of sweet little flash effects that ultimately can’t hide a paucity of content.  The secret?  A person really doesn’t have to be able to make heads or tails of the “neath layer” to make smart administrative decisions.  It’s enough to grasp what ought to happen when the name of the company or its chief operatives are entered into a search engine.  Still, even acquiring that basic end-user ease and confidence can require instruction.
• Pushing Past Text-Based Understandings:  Not long ago, a business acquaintance who was working on developing a new website proudly informed me that, because he’d selected the basic “look” of his new site, he was essentially finished–well over half way home, he figured, and he couldn’t wait to be done. When I asked about the content and how it would jibe with the look he noted that not a shred of content had yet been developed.  In my experience, this colleague is fairly typical of business owners who are actually attempting to engage with today’s web.  In short, as these things go, his understanding is fairly advanced.  Notice, though, the difficulties.  First off, he’s thinking that a web site is the whole of the task, and that web presence is something that can be finished.  You create the look–just a container, really–and then you stick content inside of it, and then you publish the thing, pass the web address around, and that’s it.  I suggested that there was a good way to go yet, and explained that, unlike a print publication which is developed in toto and then distrubuted, web presence (of any sort) is never really done, and is constantly being distributed even as it’s in the process of being constantly developed.  Sounds simple, but that’s a great big new idea for lots of business owners, who are often deliriously happy just to have a reasonably sharp looking website up and running, and who often pay a pretty penny for sites that will be designed once, published once, and entirely forgotten about for a few years, when the whole process will begin again.
• Halting the “Just Throw Money At It and It Will Be Okay” Phenomenon:  It’s all too easy for folks who are just looking to make money to take advantage of the technologically interested but overwhelmed.  It does seem to me that someone who is really interested in helping businesses discover how to thrive with today’s web tools has to begin by being ethical.  Not everybody really needs every single shiny new toy, and there are plenty of free and inexpensive tools that are well worth exploring.  The deeper cost of becoming a technologically sophisticated business–taking the time to explore these things first hand, to seek the support of more experienced users, and  to develop an approach that suits the business’s goals and culture–is intimidating.  It can seem easier to write a check.  Plenty of folks out there will take that check and leave the harder work undone.
• And so on:  Working with a group of partners or a sole proprietor?  A former C-Suite type gone entreprenuer or a self-starter from the get go?  A family business or start up? Are there any tech savvy folks among the trusted employees, or no?  Has the owner historically managed his or her own web site?  What other kinds of advertising and marketing campaigns are or aren’t already underway?  Is there a dream of rapid growth, here, or a happily boutique mentality? How clearly defined are the product or service lines?  What kinds of networks (digital or otherwise) have already been established?  All of that really matters.   Which basics to teach and which services to champion depend on the answers to such questions, and no matter which direction proves best, sheparding a business into the technological present requires tact, patience, and a deep appreciation for what it means to be a beginner in this sphere.

There are plenty of folks out here who are, indeed, working hard to bring businesses  into the modern age. That’s the very service AxisPortals sells.  It’s fun and satisfying work, but in some essential ways, it’s not really a tech blog deliverable.  

(AxisPortals is, though, a huge fan of CommonCraft’s series of “In Plain English“ videos, which promote exactly the sort of learning that’s wanted here, and in delightfully approachable fashion.)

AxisPortals Aphorism:   Bridging the chasm between the Tech Bloggers and the Main Street Merchants requires remembering the very beginnings that Tech Gurus all too easily forget. 

At the risk of sounding like Social Media version of someone’s grandad, do you remember the days when Robert Scoble was top of the Twitter charts? Do you remember? You kids don’t know this but at the time his 25,000 followers were blamed for service outages. 25,000 was a lot in those days and Twitter couldn’t handle the load of all his followers looking at his updates at the same time on Twhirl. You won’t remember Twhirl. It was like those “Tweetdecks” that you kids use now but more green and with smaller text.

Ah May 2008. I remember it like it was only last year. How things have changed since then.

The battle for 1,000,000 followers is on.

Currently, the CNN breaking news twitter feed is Top of the Twops (not ‘arf) with 967,979 followers. Hot on the heels of this broadcasting giant is one man who likes to tweet. So which wit, which philosopher, which inspirational human being is deemed so important by the new Twitter masses that he or she has 959,259 followers and is challenging a global news corperation?

Ashton Kutcher.

(Note to self: try, really try not to be snooty)

So now Ashton, aided by Electronic Arts, is campaiging for followers so that he can overtake CNN and win the race to the big one oh oh oh oh oh oh.

Says Ashton:

“When I saw that I was approaching a million and that CNN was too, I thought this was really significant for social media. For one person to have the ability to broadcast to as many as people as a major media network, I think signifies the turning of the tide from traditional news outlets to social news outlets.

“Because with our video cameras on our cell-phones, on our picture cams, with our blogging, with our twittering and our posting and our Facebook accounts we actually become the sources of the news, and the broadcasters of the news and the consumers of the news. We have the potential on this day to turn the tide.”

Ashton Kutcher’s stance as the ‘everyman’ is a bit galling. As one YouTube commenter rather crudely put it:

He’s not the “everyman” you c**t muffin. He’s a fu**ing celebrity. His dumb face is all over every printed media.

Quite. Thanks to interestingperson121 for that quote. I added the asterisks.

I do like the fact that Ashton Kutcher seems to care about social media as well as the promotion he gets out of it. He obviously does all his updates himself and he also gets involved with video blogging on Qik and YouTube and… well I admit it: I dislike him a lot less then I used to. At least I don’t have to watch him acting when he’s on Twitter.

But I don’t really agree with him that his having 1,000,000 followers is a triumph of social media. It’s still a single source broadcasting to many. So it doesn’t matter if that source is CNN or Ashton Kutcher. In fact, if I had to pick one as the only twitter stream I could follow I’d plump for CNN. They really do have a lot of content. That’s why they are a news network.

The point is I don’t have to choose. I can follow as many people as I like and get content from them all. Whether it’s the BBC or a mate from work doesn’t really matter. I pick my crowd from which to source my wisdom.

And you know what? It goes two ways. I can tell people stuff I find interesting. It might be stuff i’ve found on the web or even thoughts that have formed in my own brain.

That’s many to many broadcasting. Throw in a dollop of conversation and that’s social media.

Update 1: You can read a blow by blowaccount of the battle so far in a great series of posts in techcrunch by MG Seigler.

Update 2: If you’d asked me six months ago who would be the first to a million followers, I’d have said it would be between Stephen Fry and Barack Obama.

Since then two things have happened.

1) Barack is now the president of the USA

Twitter was a great tool for him while he was campaigning but now his campaign tools don’t need quite so much attention. Apparently he’s too busy saving the world to let us know what he’s having for breakfast nowadays.

2) Twitter use by superstar celebrities has exploded.

Our Stephen, so revered among geeks and other early adopters, now languishes in the lower regions of the top thirty in the twitter charts thanks to more highly exposed celebs and the general public that follow them. Celebs, some of whom don’t even do their own updates like Britney Spears and Coldplay are above him. If that sounds snooty, it’s meant to.