In The Loop

Reality, Redefined

Some friends and I went to a local festival in the park this week for a picnic dinner and entertainment provided by a local dance troupe. Though I found the performance lacking and we ended up (like many others) leaving early, the next morning I felt compelled to look around on the internet to see if anyone had posted a review that concurred with my opinion. It didn’t take long. Which put me in mind of a video blog this week in which social savant Brian Solis posited that it’s more important to look at our “relations” with thousands of people (based on expressing a common interest in something online) than “relationships” with hundreds of people (presumably experienced through face-to-face interactions). I wonder if constant exposure to electronic social networks is altering how we do our “reality check” of the world we live in. More importantly, does this kind of sharing with anonymous internet sources raise our consciousness, or does it merely turn us inward?

TMI

Even as we read less (and watch TV and listen to radio less), we continue to be inundated with input from our phones, our laptops, our GPS devices, music players and the like. But TMI (too much information) can, ironically, keep us from knowing or understanding the very things which we care about most. For example, socially-conscious entrepreneur Kevin Jones describes the market for social capital “as an archipelago that’s risen above the swirl of the traditional capital market, a cluster of islands grouped at the intersection of money and meaning and only partially and occasionally linked.” Along those lines, my favorite real estate agent/social relationship guru Cece posted online this week about the valuable data that she uncovers about the condo market in San Francisco, based on conversations that she has with other people in the know — information, in other words, that you can’t find through a simple google search. So whether you want to save the world, or just want to save a bundle, it pays to know people.

 Off the Hook

Sometime after the digitization of the phone network and before the triumph of cell phones over landlines, the “busy signal” seems to have disappeared. If you’re under 40, a “busy signal” was a tone that you received indicating that whoever you were calling was already engaged on another call. There was no clicking through, no voice mail, no alternate number offered…just a beeping sound. One that didn’t stop until you hung up. Just as that might seem quaint and archaic, it now seems that another feature of the telephone world is also about to die — the telephone number! Given that we have moved to a culture of 24/7 availability, technology is evolving to oblige our desire to be always and everywhere found. A blogger on TechCrunch points out that there’s a plethora of applications that exist which can surround that voice conversations with video, text, graphics and more. So there’s no reason that people should have to find each other based on “by punching digits into a device to start a conversation.” There are many other ways that we can be indexed, linked, connected and followed. Have fun!

Hide and Seek

blogger Hunter Walk, who conducted a survey of Fourquare users to figure out why they used a feature called OTG (”off the grid”) which actually HIDES a person’s location while still allowing them to “check in.” It turns out that some people (like my iPhone using colleague) just like to have a record of where they’ve been. Many people reported that they didn’t necessarily want to be “found,” but they liked using the geolocation service to help with loyalty programs, take advantage of certain services, and play games. Oh, and sometimes they just don’t want the boss to know where they are. Duly noted.

It’s All About Popular

The Broadway hit “Wicked” features one of the leads singing a catchy but biting tune: “To think of celebrated heads of state or ’specially great communicators — Did they have brains or knowledge? Don’t make me laugh! They were popular! Please - It’s all about popular!” Which begs the question of whether social media is just another way to promote popularity as a goal in itself. Social maestro Brian Solis thinks “influence” is a better measure of impact. But can you truly be influential without being popular?

Where Do You Stand (on Privacy)?

This week there’s been a lot of talk about Facebook’s launch of a geolocation feature that may pose a threat to current players in the market like Foursquare and Gowalla. Much of the press talk has been about privacy concerns, which loom large for those of us who care about protecting some of our personal information (like the car we drive and our home address). But to me it was just one more reminder that marketplace success isn’t always about innovation. While old school economics teaches that companies with the best ideas, products and services should prosper in a competitive market, the fact is that more often it’s about momentum. Having a lot of marketshare, in particular, allows you to take your customers in new directions. Meanwhile, I agree with Gizmodo “The First Thing You Should Do With Facebook Places: Don’t Let Other People Tag You.” For now, I disabled geolocation on my account.

The Economy Goes à la Carte

An extremely popular viewpoint on the new economic landscape is that consumers are now in charge of driving content, services and products. A relatively easy-to-understand example of this was reported in the NY Times –a restaurant that purports to “make a game” out of customers’ designing the food on the menu. At the same time, I would imagine that the kind of fine dining being popularized through reality TV shows like Top Chef are heightening people’s culinary expectations. All of which puts me in mind of the old Henry Ford dictum “If I’d have asked customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”

Rusty Wheels of Progress 

 They say the squeaky wheels get oiled, but it seems to me that companies spend a lot more time learning how to muffle squeaks than how to buy the right kind of oil. Over the years firms large and small have, with increased efficiency, ignored complaints made in writing or by phone, wearing consumers down with lengthy processes, forms and procedures. Social media networks promised to take control away from corporate do-nothings and give ordinary citizens the means by which to get their complaints heard. The problem with that, of course, is that you generally have to be highly entertaining, or have a particularly vocal and large network, before social media can help you spread the word about your own problem. And the more consumers make videos, songs and blog rants about their pet peeves, the harder it is for any one individual person to be heard.  While a few companies are starting to make name for their twitter-based customer care, I predict the rest of us can just cool our heels and listen to the hold music. Plus ça change.

Schadenfreude

I’ll try not to gloat. But it’s nice to see at least one of my predictions come true: Google Wave was a bust, and they have more or less pulled the plug on it. My satisfaction comes not from the failure of the service. Rather, it relieves me to know that the frustration I experienced with it (namely, it’s incomprehensibility) was shared by many, many others. I have a nagging fear that as I get older my ability to stay relevant will leave me like someone driving 45 mph in the left lane. Fortunately, I have a lot of younger friends and I’m paying close attention to the online and mobile technologies they use, the ones they ignore, and what the practical implications are. Stick with me, and you’ll be in the loop!

Talking TED

In a Ted talk by Ethan Zuckerman from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, called “Does Facebook Unite Us or Divide Us” he posits the idea that social networks are supposed to broaden our horizons and make the world a “better connected place.” Zuckerman expresses pessimism in noting that what Facebook really does is dig us deeper into our own networks of families, friends, schoolmates, co-workers and neighbors. Seriously? Isn’t that kind of obvious? Most people go to a party to talk to people they already know. If Zuckerman wants to really research how people use the internet to find strangers, all he needs to do is study any of the dozens of instant, online, mobile applications for hooking up, like Grindr*. Talk about “the ways new media shapes people’s perceptions of the world.”  

*Note: this link is not for the faint of heart.

Too Much Privacy? Too Little? A Catch-22.

Maybe it’s because as a teenager I read too much Ray Bradbury, George Orwell and Kurt Vonnegut, but I’m obsessed with the dystopian possibilities that might arise from technology. Marcia Stepanek from Stanford Social Innovation review made a good point this week that a big problem with the internet is how it actually paints an incomplete picture of who we are. By giving small, non-verifiable glimpses into our lives, the web can actually distort people’s perceptions of us. And if you don’t think that’s a bad thing, the Wall Street Journal almost simultaneously reported on a firm that promises to provide companies with “predictive” information about us, based on a single click we might make on a website.  So what do we do? Share more? Less?

Money Talks

Much of my week is spent reading and analyzing grandiose announcements on the state of social-electronic networking and engagement strategies (hey, I do it so you don’t HAVE to!). As a marketing professional, I need to know what works and how people are affected by what they see, read, hear, and discover. While I agree with Dion Hinchcliffe from the Dachis Group that nature of our “profoundly connected society” will either make or break businesses in the future, a couple of predictions he made about that stopped me in my tracks. According to his theory, “value creation” will be something done by consumers, not by employees. Customers will drive day-to-day business decisions, and “social analytics” will be the yardstick. This might be true for massive companies with millions of dollars to invest but it seems to me that coffee shops and car dealers, doctors offices and hair salons, credit unions and supermarkets, just can’t play in that league. Rather, I think that hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses around the country are more likely to adopt social technology practices as they observe how and why their consumers spend their dollars. Not necessarily how they spend their time online.

Stayin’ Alive

What, exactly, is the role of social media networking in an age where electronic communication is said to be outpacing face-to-face human interaction? Are we learning to text and tweet at the expense of our ability to make conversation? While it’s true that people are spending more and more time staring at the screen, it’s all good as long as there’s another human being on the other end. Right? Well, maybe not. Scientific American claims that more people are reporting a sense of isolation than before, and trading electronic messages “is likely not as beneficial as a phone call or face-to-face conversation.” But I’m not so sure. In my own case, when I moved halfway across the country, it was electronic media’s ability to help me stay connected to old friends in my former home and establish friendships in my new home that helped me get settled. See you at the Madison tweetup?

Personhood

I know that U.S. law recognizes corporations as “legal persons” but really, how social can a brand be? Social media phenom Simon Mainwaring says “a brand needs to have the capacity to be human so that real people can relate to it.” But doesn’t that beg the question “What is a real person?” Are companies in the future just going to be relating to each other and to avatars on the web? I can almost picture it, some spambot spewing out messages about Nigerian princes being courted by a virtual app producer that creats “online reality” products. Maybe the rest of us should take up farming. No, not “Farmville” but the kind that involves dirt, water and seeds.

Weight, Weight. Don’t Tell Me.

There are few areas where I can legitimately claim expertise, but when it comes to healthy, lasting weight loss, I’m definitely your man. As an award-winning Weight Watcher leader with nearly a decade of experience accompanying thousands of people on their healthy journeys, I can tell you this. It’s about calories and it’s about group support. First you need knowledge about eating, and then you need community. That simple. So you’ll have to pardon my skepticism when I ran across someone who’s plan is to lose weight by treating the internet at large as his community. Not people who he will meet and share with, laugh with, cry with and struggle with. But the internet, where he will have his “web-enabled scale” reporting his weight to all who care to know. Then again, who would really care? Weight Watchers is working hard to incorporate social media into it’s overall approach, but in the meantime, there’s nothing like hanging out with like-minded folks when you’re making one of the most important decisions of your life. Check us out at http://www.weightwatchers.com(or e-mail me for my schedule).

Persona Non Grata

Hard to imagine, but it wasn’t all that long ago that would-be callers would sometimes get either no answer or a busy signal. I remember dating in the age prior to the answering machine and it wasn’t pretty. Did they call while I was out? While I was on the phone? Should I wait at home all day just to find out if they’ll call back? But in this era of always on/always available/always immediate messaging, there are worse drawbacks. Sometimes you just want to leave a quick message — tell your boss you’re sick, arrange to meet a friend, or answer a complex question that you don’t want to type out. Unfortunately, the person you DON’T want to talk to, will inevitably interrupt whatever they’re doing and take your call. That’s why I got really excited about this new service called Slydial that lets you automatically reach voicemail (but only when you’re dialing a mobile phone, not a landline). I, for one, am totally prepared to put up with a brief commercial for the privilege of reaching voicemail when I don’t feel like talking. And while I’m happily married, I can instantly see the appeal of this in the dating world.

Brand New

You never get a second chance to make a first impression – at least that’s what I was taught. How that translates to the 21^st Century, I’m not so sure. Because with the proliferation of information on the internet about ourselves and everyone we know, we have replaced our “reputations” with our “brands.” While that may sound a little too Madison-Avenue for some, the good news about our personal brand is that we have the ability to shape and influence it over time. And –just like with our reputation—what makes this process work is being mindful of our behavior. That means exercising restraint, expressing empathy, imparting wisdom, acting with integrity and never lying. On the other hand, it probably does entail leaving modesty behind and tooting our own horn. Because after all, it’s hard to stand out in a crowd without being a jerk.

Signs of the Times

I miss California, but one of the things I love about the Midwest is that it’s a great place to get the pulse on what it means to be a middle American. When my peers, colleagues, neighbors and friends here adopt new technologies, I’m more certain of their long-term viability than when an echo-chamber of Silicon Valley denizens flogs a new ‘hyper-local virtual mobile social business e-tool.’ So while I have no use for things like foursquare myself, I’m paying a lot of attention to all of my friends who are smitten by it.  On the flip side, one of my favorite aspects of life in Wisconsin are the human sign-swingers. These are people that stand on street corners, sometimes dressed in costumes, carrying banners and waving at passers-by. Nothing says ‘hyper-local’ more to me than a sign board saying “carwash.”  It’s not a glamorous career-choice, for sure, but it just might be the next coolest thing to being a barrista.

How Special

Adam Smith begins his great tome, Wealth of Nations, by describing how an individual who attempted on his own, could “scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day.” Using machinery and division of labor, however, ten men could produce nearly 50,000 in a day.”  I think of this often when I see economists, marketers, pundits, and other experts advising people that –in the modern economy– the best course of action is to create your own business and liberate yourself  from the workplace.  If “content is king” in the age of new media, isn’t it just possible that for some people, the creative use of words, ideas and business strategies might be as tough as making a pin? When Simon Mainwaring talks about the importance of meaning, I can’t help thinking that we are forgetting Mr. Smith’s valuable lesson. The division of labor makes everyone a little better off.

Wishful Thinking

It’s long been known that the exception proves the rule. Thus, when the Chicago Tribune prints an article about users “Quietly Quitting Facebook,” it’s pretty clear they’re missing the point. The Trib admits that people leaving the site represent a “negligible percentage” of users but expresses a profound cynicism about the future of the networking site. While I’m not sure that Facebook is the juggernaut it sometimes seems to be, I’m guessing for a print newspaper it must be tempting to want to see an exodus of users from the online experience. Interestingly, the three drop-outs they highlighted were all in their early 20s. I wonder how many of them read newspapers?

E-philosophy, E-logic, E-gads

If a tree falls in the forest and no-one blogs about it, does it matter? Or perhaps the question should be, if some creates an online service that no-one ever utilizes, did it ever really exist at all? Being a fairly avid user of different online networks, I was surprised to learn of a Facebook feature that’s being eliminated, which I had never even heard of in the first place. Apparently they had a method by which users could “give” one another “gifts” based on earning and spending credits. I suppose it wasn’t the stupidest idea in the world, as people playing different games online constantly engage in this type of exchange. Still, it seems somewhat pointless on the face of it.  At least those rubber-band bracelets that kids are swapping in school yards these days are silly, but real.

E-xasperate

We all know that free advice is worth what we’ve paid for it. The problem is that social networking has ratcheted up the volume of such yammerings to a nearly unstoppable level.  While I try not to let people’s unfounded opinions get on my nerves, I can’t help but groan when some of the most celebrated twitterati say stupid things. This week I had to laugh when Seth Grodin authored a short little piece claiming that the biggest problem in the workplace these days is that people are too reluctant to try and stop new ideas.  That’s right, his big beef is that too often projects fail because “no one had the guts along the way to say STOP.”  Seriously. In my two decades of working life, most of the places I’ve worked were virtually gridlocked.  The last thing we need is to kill all the green lights.

E-conomy

Without a doubt my favorite technology of the moment is the internet-based streaming music system offered on my Palm Pre mobile phone, called Net2Streams.  As a runner with very specific musical tastes, I’m able to bring tunes along anywhere I go within Sprint’s service area, at no extra cost. The weird thing is that it’s free, and only a couple of the stations I listen to have commercials. After all, these sounds being piped over the internet could reach an audience in Wisconsin or Alaska or Zanzibar, so how do you sell that to potential advertisers? Similarly, I’m wondering about Twitter’s new “@earlybird” proposal, which aims to offer “daily deals” on products and services to people who subscribe to that account.  Although Twitter offers users the possibility of identifying their geographic location, it’s unclear to me what percentage of folks have chosen to do so.  Or as e-marketer.com notes, “It should be interesting to see how Twitter manages the feed for these different product segments and targets offers by location so followers do not get irrelevant promotions.”

E-fabulous!

Although I don’t watch television, I’m as easily seduced as the next person when it comes to a good soap opera. This week I found one in the most unlikely of places – a blog about *yawn * Microsoft.  Apparently the software behemoth released a new mobile phone recently called “Kin” (yeah, I never heard of it either) that was a huge flop in the marketplace, and was withdrawn almost immediately.  Once that happened, the sniping began as people engaged in ruthless fingerpointing about who was to blame.  The impression I got from the blog was a sort of Dynasty meets the Apprentice meets the Office mashup.  It was like the gulf oil disaster – I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I couldn’t stop feeling disgusted.

Independent Thinking

Predicting the future is a risky business, predicting behavior …not so much. While technology and the economy lurch forward in ways that are sometimes impossible to imagine, is the same thing true about human behavior? Diving into that question this week was Pew Research, which asked “185 internet experts” how they thought social networking would affect interpersonal relationships in the next ten years. Unsurprisingly, the response was all sunshine and roses. Technology will help us create “low-friction” relationships unbound by geographical constraints.  We will “rediscover social ties” that change our lives.  Riiiiiiight.  Mashable writers Dan Klamm and Alana Edmunds, discussing their “5 Rules” for social networking would probably like to point out that it’s vital to “Take it Offline Whenever Possible”. Because there’s nothing like a face-to-face chat for establishing common ground and friendship.  Frankly, there’s a reason I’m no longer friends with my bong-smoking, Neil Young-obsessed freshman roommate.

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Getting more philosophical still was New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas who used the World Cup as a lens through which to view the world. Apparently the ruling body of futbol, FIFA, relies entirely upon human referees, which occasionally results in the entire world witnessing an irreversible bad call.  Discussing the impact of our increased use of technology, simply because it is made available to us, Giridharadas questions where this is leading us.  What’s the implication when we see broadly but not deeply, when we spend more time disseminating thoughts than thinking, when we lose our “balance”. He suggests it might be “bringing back the afflictions of the village: the dearth of privacy, intolerance, rumor-mongering.”  Too bad Pew Research didn’t get a chance to probe these questions.

What’s a “Friend” Worth?

One of my smartest friends asked me this week, “How is Facebook worth $20 billion –twice Google’s IPO?” Are we witnessing 2000 all over again? Taking note of the aforementioned unreliability of predicting the future, I can only say this – Facebook is only worth as much as people think it is, and what they think it’s worth could change radically at any given moment.  Look at Google: despite its international prominence (or dominance, depending how you see it), YouTube is nipping at its heels as a search engine and Facebook recently surpassed Google in the US to become the most frequently visited website.  But perhaps Google’s strength is it’s very understated look and feel. While visiting NYC this week, my husband and I discovered that one of the best ways to figure out the subway was to use the simple and elegant Google map interface, rather than the clunky, purpose-built (but slow and awkward) subway “app” that came with our smart phones.  While Facebook is fun and entertaining and enthralling to millions, it’s still hard to see where the money is. Bubble, anyone?

The Printing Press Strikes Back

 Print media is either dying on the vine or undergoing its most important renaissance since the invention of the printing press, depending on who’s talking. In the small town where I live, however, a local newspaper proved that there’s still a lot to be said for the printed word. Back in the winter, Madison, Wisconsin-based “Isthmus” weekly featured an expose of the men’s homeless shelter downtown.  This week, local software giant Epic Systems announced they’d be donating $140K to the shelter to spruce it up, based largely on the impact of the article. Of course, I read both of those articles online.  The real issue is whether writers and editors (and sales departments) can figure out a way to keep this kind of publication profitable.

You Say Soccer, I Say Futbol

To me, futbol is just another boring sport, involving two dozen men racing madly around a field after a ball for several hours, culminating in a stunning score like “one-nil.” Yet clearly the world is smitten by the World Cup, causing the Twitter networking service to crash regularly all week long as people pointlessly texted things like”GOOOOAAAAAAL!!!! #USA #worldcup” to each other. I mean c’mon people, tweets about soccer are about as mellifluous as a chorus of vuvuzelas. And about as useful. Besides, I’d recommend you not take your eyes off the TV for even a second, as you could easily miss the only score of the entire match.

You Say Competition, I Say Monopoly

My economics career in college notwithstanding, I have only a fuzzy understanding of how certain aspects of the marketplace work. For example, I seem to recall that any kind of monopoly is “bad” and any kind of competition is “good.” But when it comes to social networking, it seems that monopolies (or near-monopolies) are the norm. For example, there may be many professional sites out there, but nothing seems to have reached the breadth and depth of LinkedIn. Same goes for social sites, where aside from Facebook (and perhaps MySpace) there’s just a lot of one-handed clapping. Back in school we were taught that monopolies happen when one player gets to the marketplace first and other competitors are discouraged by the high cost of entry. Yet to me it seems like it pays to be the coolest player in the market, like Apple, where you can have a buggy product running on a crappy network, and still be the only game in town.

You Say Now, I Say Later

Two things I can’t live without now, but initially viewed as the end of civilization, are a portable music source and a mobile phone. In both cases before I adopted it, I assumed (correctly) that the technology would change how I experienced the world outside of my home, and in both cases I assumed (incorrectly) that these changes would be detrimental. Having learned my lesson, I’m loathe to make dark predictions about other technological advances. Like, say, location-based services. While my friends happily check in on Foursquare and Gowalla and my husband is a huge fan of live map searching while on the road, I find it all to be a bit creepy. I’m just not sure I want organizations of any stripe (or even individuals) to know where I am, what I’m doing, the things I like to buy and using that information to predict my behavior. Or as the International Business Times put it, “privacy is hard to figure out.”

They Say Old, I Say New

During the early 90s, while working for the Federal government in Washington, DC I was introduced to both e-mail and some crazy thing called the world wide web. Given government’s propensity to foot drag in all things productivity-related, I could hardly believe my eyes. Having now witnessed the unparalleled explosion in communications technologies since that time, I still find it hard to imagine we are settling into the mature phase of the Information Age. Yet some believe that we are now in an era where, as Simon Mainwairing tweeted to me “we’re into the broader adoption phase of social media. We’re less enamored just with the technology for itself.” Maybe we should ask all those people lining up to buy the iPhone4.

The Office: Cancelled?

What happens when millions of middle class white collar workers lose their jobs? Suddenly the world looks different.  Speaking from personal experience, striving to make sense of unemployment is painful and upsetting. And of course right in the midst of the Great Recession we’ve had this incredible explosion in communications – texting, blogs, twitter, Facebook, foursquare, yahoo, etc. etc. So I’m not at all surprised that a huge theme woven throughout the communications media of today is the “changing workplace.” In fact, I could have predicted some would say it’s the end of office work as we know it. But here’s why I think they’re wrong: to qualify for a mortgage, you have to have demonstrate a steady income stream, and self-employment doesn’t count.  As long as there are mortgages, there will be workplaces!

E-mail: Cancelled?

It’s been a tough week for e-mail. First off, the COO of Facebook claims that e-mail is “probably going away.” Then social media god Brian Solis says it’s not e-mail that’s to blame, it’s the inbox. With all due respect to two people who make a hell of a lot more money than I do, I’m gonna have to disagree on this one. Since Sheryl and Brian are speaking from their experience, I’ll speak from mine. At the small business where I work, e-mail is the key medium for sharing documents, setting up meetings, coordinating projects, and organizing our workflow. My coworkers note that phone calls almost always result in voice mail, which can be messy and confusing. E-mail is clearer, simpler and ubiquitous.

Content: Cancelled?

I keep reading that professional content creation is dead, since crowd-sourcing is the answer. Supposedly the future lies in people simply sharing (or “curating”) information that they “find.” Really? Permit me a metaphor. Which concert is more likely to be the most popular, a “Sound of Music Singalong” or a Gustavo Dudamel-conducted professional symphony? (Hint: According to the LA times Dudamel “ has been playing to sold-out houses with enthusiastic audiences.”)  Let’s face the fact that some people are more talented than others, and when they get together and do what they do best, the result are amazing. This is just as true for books, newspapers and TV shows as it is for music. The media might be evolving, but content? Long live the king!

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Much is made these days of people who are famous just for being famous. But whether we’re talking about paparazzi-loving Paris Hilton or social media wunderkind Chris Brogan, you really have to give credit where credit is due. Paris, for example, would have long ago faded into oblivion (or never have even risen from obscurity), if she didn’t have a certain appeal to the masses. Ask any movie star how easy that is to maintain year after year. And Chris Brogan, well, he’s managed to become the go-to guy on social media, with rapturous followers (both real and virtual) incessantly tweeting his prognostications on the future of business, communications, and networks.  Crusty cynic that I am, I find his world to be a rarified and potentially scary place and I don’t often agree with anything he writes. But that’s not stopping me from shelling over $30 for the chance to see him live and in person.  You don’t get to be “a top 5 of the Advertising Age Power150 and in the top 100 on Technorati” for nothing.

Bad Fad or Cool Tool

For something that’s supposedly a “fad,” Twitter sure seems to have a lot of staying power. In fact, it’s reported that users of the service are now sending two billion messages per month. That’s astonishing enough, yet it represents essentially double the number of messages sent just six months ago.  At the same time, the number of users has grown only about 5 percent.  I’ve been a twitter skeptic (and user) since day one, but I may to have eat my words on this one, folks. Of course as Tech Crunch points out, “How many of those 65 million [daily] Tweets are automated spam is not clear.”

This is Your Brain on Twitter

Good news on the future of civilization from a psychology professor at Harvard. Seems that spending all day thinking up 140 character-long updates is not causing us to become a race of attention span-challenged non-thinkers. According to Steven Pinker, our brains have a remarkable inherent capacity for thought and reason. Just because we can train ourselves to think in short bursts, it doesn’t mean we have lost our other faculties. Or as he so eloquently put it, “The existence of neural plasticity does not mean the brain is a blob of clay pounded into shape by experience.” I think I’ll keep my subscription to Atlantic after all.

Controlling the Conversation

One of the biggest shifts in the marketing world is the move away from unidirectional communication. In other words, you can’t just use ads and press releases to put words into the mouths of customers, training them what to say and think. Just ask BP. GM literally got the memo on that this week when it came out that they were (internally) asking sales people to use the word Chevrolet, rather than the colloquial “Chevy.” Bloggers and social media users had a field day with that one. The problem is that there are reasons NOT to let customers dictate everything. Most companies operating in a competitive environment need to maintain a sense of value and meaning regarding their brand. Of course, if your negligence contributes to destruction of the planet, you’re screwed no matter what.

It Takes a Global Village

After I moved halfway across the country from California to Wisconsin I worked hard to re-establish a set of friends and a social network. One tremendous resource I found was dailymile.com, a sort of Facebook for the athletic set. It not only allows users to create maps of their running, biking and swimming routes, it also aggregates statistics and gives people a way to see their own progress and compare to others. This week, one of my dailymile acquaintances, a triathlete from Utah, suffered a devastating blow when Delta airlines literally destroyed his very expensive competition bicycle. While Delta stonewalled at first, fortunately, through his extended social networking community, James was able to rally the troops with a YouTube video that he posted on dailymile. Apparently when 20,000 people see what your company did to a customer, it starts to matter. His compensation is on the way.