A great post I had to share from Leo Babauta at Write to Done. One of the reasons I was able to draw so many readers to Zen Habits within the first year was that I treated the promotion of Zen Habits as you would any other product — I branded it. Of course, there are other reasons as well — I really focused on creating as useful content as possible, for example — but branding is what really helped Zen Habits take off…
Yesterday the Interwebs were all a twitter after a couple A-list-types were laid off and the production schedule pared back at Revision3. We need to get over it. Companies have to adjust to the new reality of our economic misfortune. It would be utterly irresponsible for a company not to act, but that doesn’t make it easier for any of the folks affected. It was all fun and games for Twitter when it was Joe WebDev at Seesmic, or Jane…
Okay, maybe this isn’t the only flaw of Twitter, but it’s a good one, and I suspect, eminently fixable. The problem is that we’re forced to drink from the fire hose when we look at our main tweet stream. If you follow someone, you get everything they tweet, the good, the bad, the ugly. As I posted the other day, I’m utterly sick of the ceaseless tweeting about politics, much of which would make Josef Goebbels blush. Last night I’m…
Jeremiah Owyang has an interesting piece up entitled “Why ‘Friending’ Will Be Obsolete” and it’s struck a nerve with me. I hate the term friends. It’s misleading and it’s a disservice to the the actual social linkage that’s going on. Let’s face facts, just because I may let you see my Facebook page, it doesn’t mean that your my friend (no slight intended there folks). Similarly, I may not want some people who might be friends or more likely family…
I’ve joined Chris Brogan’s group Dad blog at Dadomatic.com and my first post is up. Dadomatic itself is an interesting effort, as Chris has brought together a very intersting group of dads to cover a range of topics. Personally, I’m looking forward to bringing the voice of the regular down to earth dad. Anyone can tell you that while I may try my hardest, I’m no Super Dad. This post actually starts off by attacking the myth of…
We hear a lot of prognostication from the consultants about how business can benefit from social networking, but not as much when it comes to actual businesses that are using it. Jeff Bennett, COO of Namemedia, Inc. blogs on this topic and gives real examples of how we’re (Disclosure: I’m a Senior Software Engineer at NameMedia) using social networking within out company. Businesses need to foster enhanced methods for employees to communicate. Lotus Notes was the standard for early collaboration,…
As the election cycle proceeds, I’ve noticed that the level of monologue in supposed discussions has increased to a fever pitch. Take Twitter for example; it seems the chatter is now 20% political. The problem is, I never signed up to listen to what everyone’s political viewpoint is. I know, I can simply unfollow everyone that’s into political discourse for the moment, but the truth is I like some of the other stuff they have to say. Too bad I…
I’ve had a glimpse into the future of home video and it surprisingly comes from a device I already owned, the Sony Playstation 3 (and it works on the XBox 360 as well, but I haven’t tested). By downloading and installing a small app to my windows machine, I am now able to access online content from Hulu.com, CBS.com, Youtube.com, ESPN.com and soon, CNN.com and Netflix. The software is PlayOn! which is currently available as a 60 day beta trial,…
I missed this one last week and it’s the kind of post that I think most Social Media wonks will gloss over – “Social Media Scalability, the New ROI Question” from Shel Israel at Global Neighborhood. Scalability is an issue for anyone who introduces something new online and wants to grow. It was true for the pioneers who predate social media like ICQ [LINK], for the Stanford start up team for a search engine called Google. It was true for…
I was listening to This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte yesterday (Twit 171 – The Lemondrop Kid) which featured appearances by Jason Calicanis, Andrew Horowitz, and Geoff Smith. At some point Laporte asked Calacanis about his decision to stop blogging (he hasn’t really stopped, but he has drastically cut back) and Jason said he’d realized that being at the top of the blog food chain, the return on value wasn’t there for him. (I am paraphrasing here, and not directly quoting him.)…