It’s been a particularly hard week for me. I won’t bore you with details. But thanks to David Lindberg in the Twitter #ageop chat, here’s a very funny five minutes from Funny or Die:
http://player.ordienetworks.com/flash/fodplayer.swf
If for any reason you can’t see the video here, you can click this link to go to the original on site.
I just read about a university student who was dismissed from the football team because he complained about the coach on his Facebook page.
And there, in this person’s unfortunate plight, we get a good reminder: a lot of what happens in social media feels private, but isn’t. It’s publishing.
It’s that feeling of private that gets people into trouble. Sort of like speaking quietly to the person next to you, you think, and then discovering there was a live microphone right there, turned on, blasting your remark to a room full of people.
Once you’ve published something via social media, you are responsible for what you’ve said. In many cases, you’re responsible forever.
If you insist on thinking of it as conversation, then think of it as conversation next to an open microphone in a room full of people.
So please. Be careful. It isn’t private.
(Image: Dmitry Melnikov/Shutterstock)
Geology is fascinating. If only we could speed up time, we could see mountains rising and being eroded into peaks and valleys, oceans ebbing and flowing, continents breaking up and moving around. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. Glaciers. Landscape in action. Great spectacle. Or it would be, if we could speed up time.
How about continental drift? Speed up time. 
If you click the image here to the right you’ll go through 650 million years in 1 minute 20 seconds. Watch the continents pull apart. It’s a fun animation.
And technology is just like continental drift, but roughly 25, 50, 100, maybe a million times faster. And accelerating.
For example, mobile technologies. And what if the big blob there on the right were labeled “iPhone,” and other blobs labeled “Android,” “Windows Mobile,” and so on? That’s a changing technology landscape. And in that case, the splitting of the continents represents maybe a year or two. Right? Call it two years, and that would make it 325 million times faster than continental drift.
The pace of technology’s changing landscapes is speeding up. The technological continental drift in personal computer operating systems common for business use took maybe 10 or 12 years to go through the cycle from CP/M in 1980-1982 or so, followed by the MS-DOS world (we called it PC Compatible), with Mac and then Windows, lately Linux and friends. Or maybe that was 25 years?
We all have to choose platforms. I’ve seen it from a software developer standpoint since 1984, so 26 years now. Then there’s hardware manufacturing, consulting and expertise, and also just plain using the technology. Do you use Windows or Mac or Linus? iPhone or Android or Treo or Blackberry? You’re making choices.
Make the wrong choice and you end up like my polar bear friend here to the left (with apologies for changing the simile abruptly from continental drift to ice sheets breaking up, but it does sort of show it, doesn’t it?) You’re on a shrinking platform. Of course the polar bear can swim long distances. Users can jump platforms, but it costs time and money. Developers and manufacturers can jump platforms too, but it costs more time, and more money.
I’ve seen a lot of businesses rise and fall to the ebb and flow of these technology platforms.
This is tough, but important, strategy management. Businesses get stranded on shrinking platforms all the time. Businesses went down with the ship of CP/M, Apple II, MS-DOS, SONY Betamax, HD vs Blue-Ray… it’s happening all the time. Yahoo Instant Messenger vs. Microsoft Messenger vs. whatever-they-called-it-on-AOL and so on.
Where are you in social media? Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Buzz, somewhere else?
Ideally you want to jump to the next continent in time to ride with it as it grows. But damn, it’s hard to guess right all the time. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen some businesses try to mitigate the risk by developing into multiple platforms, then lose focus and fall apart. You’ve seen businesses stick to dwindling platforms and eventually fade away.
What are you doing about this?
(Image credit: Jan Martin Will/Shutterstock)
Somewhere in the 1980s we coined the phrase “first mover advantage.” Right or wrong, I associate it in my mind with the birth of Compaq Computer, in the middle 1980s. Compaq’s original 34-pound sewing-machine-sized computer was dubbed the first compact computer. Luggable was more accurate. And it wasn’t the first, either.
This bugs me. “But that’s not new,” people say, meaning, as they say it, “so it can’t be an interesting new business.” It’s an idea fetish. It misunderstands that underlying fact that being first doesn’t mean diddly without getting the traction to stand out, and stay.
Apple wasn’t the first personal computer. And Google wasn’t the first search engine (I read recently it was the 11th). Amazon.com wasn’t the first book site on the Web. And so it goes.
Which brings me to Google Buzz. Not first, at all. Not original. But very powerful. My favorite quote on this is Mobclix evangelist Megan Berry’s Power Trumps Innovation post on Huffington Post yesterday (bias alert: she’s my daughter). She says:
So how is Google Buzz different? It doesn’t have a character limit and conversations are threaded so you can comment below the original post. (OK so there’s actually a few more differences and you can check out Monica O’Brien’s ode to Buzz for the play by play). But, honestly, that’s pretty much it and neither of these ideas are really new. Google Buzz is decidedly unoriginal (for more on this check out TechCrunch’s superbly titled If Google Wave is the Future, Google Buzz is the Present). There’s nothing new here. Threaded comments have been around since online forums, the idea of social sharing is so 2005, and choosing who to follow is, well, have you heard of Twitter?
I totally agree. It’s not new, but it’s very important, because Google has power. We can’t ignore it.
A case in point, actually, is how many of us will revive our gmail facility just to get into Buzz. I’m annoyed, I admit it. This means that if I’m going to be absolutely up to date with everything I do in blogging and Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn these days, now I have to add Google Buzz into the mix. I’m really hoping Tweetdeck adds it into the interface, like they did with Facebook and LinkedIn, so I only have to go to one place.
What I mean is: damn! Another social media platform? Really? But this one is Google, so I don’t dare ignore it.
And that’s the point. Like Microsoft before it, Google has the power to jump into a market after it’s become important, and change it, even, in a short time, lead it. So first mover advantage? Well, not so much.
The trouble is that by the time it’s obvious, in terms of ideas and opportunities, it’s usually too late. The winners are already entrenched.
The reef metaphor is a good one, but usually you have to be early on the reef to reserve your spot. Only the big creatures, sharks and all, can cruise in late and get traction.
Coral reefs are ecosystems. Creatures and more creatures develop. Technology is too. We’ve seen technology worlds develop around personal computers, the Web, mobile phones, and lots of others.
One of the smartest people I know, a technology wizard, tipped me off to Robert Scoble’s The Google Reef post last week. That post linked to David Winer’s 2007 Twitter as coral reef post. Way before the rest of us caught on, he saw Twitter coming. Here’s his reef description:
Scattered throughout tropical seas are coral reefs that started when a ship sank and sea creatures made it their home. Then the predators of those creatures started hanging out, and their predators, all the way up the food chain. Eventually, if the ocean climate was right, a coral reef would appear, much larger than the wrecked ship that started it all.
Does it have to be a sinking ship? Reefs develop on their own too, right? I could try to stretch the idea to say personal computers developed over the wrecks of their bigger predecessors, and the Web over the wrecks of the early bulletin boards; but that’s pressing the metaphor too far. What Scoble was talking about was the development of markets around Google.
You have to see it early to win with it. We see here Dave Winer caught on to Twitter earlier than most of us. But then he also caught on to outliners, scripting, and some other things earlier than most of us. Some think of him as the original blogger, and he was there as an early RSS pioneer too. I first met him in the early 1980s, as the man behind the More outliner (and ThinkTank, and others).
Notice the timing: Twitter about three years ago. I think it does us all very little good to be onto some of these trends (Twitter, mobile apps, ebook readers, tablet computers and all) now. Now it’s obvious. If you want to really win, figure out what’s going to be big in 2013 or 2014.
And don’t guess wrong, because that can be expensive. We all assume first in the market is a great advantage, but not when it means you’re there too early. Maybe tablet computers are going to be big when Apple gets there, but they’ve disappointed most of the entrepreneurs who started earlier with them.
And good luck with that.
It was one of those sudden-realization moments for me.
I was talking to one of my favorite lawyers last night at a local startups event (smartups.org). He mentioned a person I’d sent to him a couple weeks ago. That person had asked me to recommend a small business lawyer, and I recommended him.
The realization was that she — the person I’d sent to him — felt like a friend. I feel like I know her, like her, and trust her. But I’ve never met her. I’ve never even talked to her on the telephone. 
I’d met her on Twitter. She popped up with interesting comments in a chat I’d been in, so I followed her. I got to know her with the links she recommended via Twitter, and then her blog posts, and eventually email. I liked her writing and read her book that she recently published. And I’m glad to know her, and consider her a friend, even without ever talking to her.
Over time, at 150 characters per comment, plus reading blog posts, I can get to know a person and his or her work, and end up liking that person. Strange, but true.
And that, in a nutshell, is why I like the new world we’re calling “social media.”
It’s not that surprising, really; and we’ve seen it before with Facebook. When Twitter released a new feature, and it’s users didn’t like it, they had to change it back. 
The Wired Magazine online story is Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter. I found it interesting reading.
For the same kind of thing in Facebook, here’s a link to a Google search for “Facebook user revolt.”
The user revolt is a high-class problem. It’s the trappings of success. It means 1) you have users; 2) they care about what you’re doing with the site they use; and 3) there’s a forum or medium they can use to make their opinions known.
This is a great sign of real success. It’s a problem only if nobody listens.
(Photo credit: Flickr cc, by Daliborlev)
It’s one of those days. Maybe you have technical problems, or a project that isn’t going well, you couldn’t sleep last night, you’ve run into a writer’s block or thinker’s block or city block. Maybe you just lost a client. Or learned about a powerful new competitor. Or maybe it’s simply just a bad day. It happens.
These are things that help break up a bad day.
1. Clean up the clutter.
Put on some music you like. Throw things out. Find the desk space down at the bottom of all the papers, books, cables, envelopes, and so on. You’ll be amazed at how much better you’ll feel in just a few minutes.
Second prize: clean out your digital clutter. Start with email. Sort into categories (folders or tags) for things you should keep, and archive. Empty the inbox.
Grand prize: take an hour or two. Do both.
2. Do one of those nagging-annoying tasks you’ve been avoiding.
Your business life is full of small annoying tasks you put off. Most of us rationalize that we have other more important, or more urgent, things to do, and we let this go. It’s that list you promised, the research you wanted to do, maybe it’s a call or a letter or email task you’ve been avoiding. Get this one done and you’ll feel better about everything else.
3. Exercise. Take a walk. Or a run.
Break out of your routine. Exercise is funny because of what John Jantsch, the marketing guru, called the math of exercise: the time you take gives you more time later. Particularly when you’re in that droopy slump time. Break it up, get out, come back to it later, fresh.
4. Do something Creative. Draw something. Write a haiku. Or a blog post.
What I mean is do something creative. Seriously, a haiku is a great mood changer: just three lines. Try this search for haiku on Twitter, and you’ll see. And if that’s too much, do whatever you do when you want to break the mood. Or, how about this: write an email to somebody you care about, not about business, just catching up with things.
5. Indulge somebody else.
My point 4 above reminded me: if the first thought is to go get yourself a chocolate and a hug somewhere, indulge yourself. But this is even better: indulge somebody else. Don’t get yourself a candy and a hug, give both to somebody else. Or call your mother or your sister or your spouse. Buy a kid you know a book you think they’d like.
There’s research I saw in the New York Times that shows spending money on somebody else is more likely to buy happiness than spending it on yourself. Here’s a quote:
“These experimental results,” the researchers conclude, “provide direct support for our causal argument that spending money on others promotes happiness more than spending money on oneself.”
So, seriously, have a good day.
(Note: I posted this on Huffington Post yesterday. I’m reposting here because this is my main blog.)
You could call this post the taxonomy of trolls. I thought there were fairy-tale creatures, ugly and mean, living under a bridge, interfering with innocent travelers. It turns out, though, they’re real. Just like in the three billy goats gruff fairy tale, they are hiding along the way, jumping out to cause trouble.
I like puns and I like the potential double meaning with trolls. First there’s the beast or character of the troll, like in the fairy tale. And then there’s the verb, trolling, which I think of from 50 years ago when my granddad took me fishing. We’d put the baited hook into the water and move the boat slowly, trolling for fish.
I’ve happened upon several kinds of trolls in business. Maybe you’ll recognize some of these. Better yet, maybe you can avoid them on your travels.
- trolls will always be trolling
- critics rarely create
- they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls
- professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them. It’s part of your job.
(Photo credit: by John Bauer, via Wikipedia)
Do you like my headline here, on this post? Can you write a better one?
Headlines are critical. I’ve noted that, with some frustration (I’m not so good at headlines) on this blog before, here.
Headlines come up today because being in New York last week to judge the Forbes.com business plan contest gave me a chance to visit with my son Paul, who lives in New York, and is CTO of Huffington Post. And he told me what they’re doing on the Huffington Post about headlines.
Why do you care? Maybe because (whether you like its political views or not) in the last 2-3 years Huffington Post has posted huge growth in traffic and advertiser and investor interest and visibility and traffic. So they have to be doing a lot of things right. And, if you’re writing or blogging, you should know about how they do headlines.
It starts with a lot of testing. Paul was quoted in How the Huffington Post uses real-time testing for headlines in Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab:
The Huffington Post applies A/B testing to some of its headlines. Readers are randomly shown one of two headlines for the same story. After five minutes, which is enough time for such a high-traffic site, the version with the most clicks becomes the wood that everyone sees.
And then there’s Twitter. As a Twitter user, I enjoyed reading Huffpost crowd sources headlines in Snoo.ws. Here are highlights:
Using the hashtag #headlinehelp, visitors will be able to click on a link to an article and help write an appropriate headline that fits the story. Through social byproduct, the best headline will filter through to editors.
The Huffington Post made its first attempt at using the hashtag late yesterday asking participants to replace the headline, “No, YOU Lie,” regarding a story about Rep. Joe Wilson’s interjectory fireworks during President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress.
Hashtags are not perfect aggregators by any means, as previous use of them has seen contests hijacked and critical messaging spoiled. With Huffington Post’s reputation, they surely have gained some followers who may wish to use this idea in a negative way for the company.
How cool is that? I’d love to copy that idea. But reality rears up its ugly head: Huffington Post has hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter; I have barely four thousand. Mine are smarter and better looking, but still …
Or no, perhaps, not so cool? Maybe data-driven headlines are a problem (quoting The Noisy Channel on this subject):
I’m sure this approach must rattle some old-school journalists. And there is a real danger of optimizing for the wrong outcome. For example, including the word “sex” in this message might improve its traffic … but to what end?
OK, good point, but the discovery that there are some words (sex, violence, naked, brutal) which get better results is nothing new. It’s older than I am (I posted about words I won’t put into titles despite the temptation on this blog a couple of years ago). What’s new is the ability to test quickly and bring a crowd into it in a practical way.
It’s not about asking people what’s new, or changing the news content. It’s about headlines. And gaining readers.
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