Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tightly Argued in a Short Space.
I didn't see the valuation numbers and cash on hand figures in this post that would have been really persuasive, but this is a great little thought experiment on the future of search, Google and Twitter.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Live Twitter -- Not for Me.
Three times in the past two weeks I've tried to tap into the larger online conversation via live Twitter blogging. I am not a fan.
The first time I gave it a whirl was during a professional conference at the CU Law School. A handful of folks in the audience were on Twitter and after a speaker on the very first panel made a point about a telecom crowd that doesn't know Twitter. As you might guess, he wasn't impressed. Nonetheless, we few, we merry few soldiered on at #sfdbm. I had heard about conference participants who Twittered during presentations or to find each other during breaks at large, multi-day events. I have to say, the Twitter stream didn't do much for me. Perhaps, there were not enough people engaged -- probably less than five percent of conference attendees. The main problem was that I was more interested in what the speakers had to say than the 140 character commentaries of the audience.
About ten days later I had the Amgen Tour of California on television in my office while I slogged away at some administrative work. I jumped into the Twitter stream with a couple dozen posts and watched #atoc climb to number three in the Twitter trends. It was exciting to see live posts from the team director of Astana home to Levi Leipheimer and Lance Armstrong's. I watched as the collective reporting of the Twitterati beat the announcers on television with key information such as who had fallen, which rider was joining a break and winners of various climbing or sprint points available on the racecourse. Yet, it basically served as a distraction. Any given post was too short to convey rich information. Perhaps doing three things at once is too much for me. I was content to focus on my accounting while the television murmured from across the room.
Finally, during last week's episode of Lost I fired up the computer and watched in astonishment as scores of Twitter posts came in every couple minutes. #lost was an immediate information overload.
Sadly, my conclusion is that multitasking is fine but multitasking with multiple streams of incoming information is too much for my slow mental processor.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Read this so you can skip 1000+ blog posts about the meaning of Facebook
Simply the best, most complete article I've read on the phenomenon we call Facebook.
It hits on culture, technology, economics, venture capital and personality. And, it is chock full of facts that I'd not seen yet. e.g. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women who are 55+ -- the demo is up 175 % since last fall.
It hits on culture, technology, economics, venture capital and personality. And, it is chock full of facts that I'd not seen yet. e.g. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women who are 55+ -- the demo is up 175 % since last fall.
The Obvious Question or a Straw Man?
Cece Salomon-Lee asks if you would trust your social media plans to a public relations firm that doesn't have a social media presence for itself. Clever, but too clever by half. In short, yes I would.
I trust a Ph.D.-MD to develop a course of treatment for a sick child, even if that academically oriented doctor does not work in a pediatrician's practice. I trust movie and music critics who are not themselves film makers and musicians. Likewise with car mechanics. Do all the guys at the local Toyota dealership have to drive a minivan in order to keep my machine safe and on the road? Nope; they don't even have to drive Toyotas.
Does experience matter? Absolutely. Should a firm practice what it preaches? Without any doubt. Can excellent counsel and service be offered by professionals who don't offer the same service to their own firm? Certainly.
Her work is at the intersection of PR and marketing. And, I have to say, I am extremely interested in the data she presents on various firms. It is good food for thought. It is not however the last word.
I trust a Ph.D.-MD to develop a course of treatment for a sick child, even if that academically oriented doctor does not work in a pediatrician's practice. I trust movie and music critics who are not themselves film makers and musicians. Likewise with car mechanics. Do all the guys at the local Toyota dealership have to drive a minivan in order to keep my machine safe and on the road? Nope; they don't even have to drive Toyotas.
Does experience matter? Absolutely. Should a firm practice what it preaches? Without any doubt. Can excellent counsel and service be offered by professionals who don't offer the same service to their own firm? Certainly.
Her work is at the intersection of PR and marketing. And, I have to say, I am extremely interested in the data she presents on various firms. It is good food for thought. It is not however the last word.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Does Blogging Make You Happier?
Researchers in Taiwan believe that blogging may make people happier.
Okay, first the issues with the sample. It was a self-reported survey of 596 students. The subjects were overwhelmingly between 16-22 and female (71 percent). Not the worst social science methodology, but not anything to write home about. Members of the group had previous experience blogging. There was no control group. The instrument was self reported. The sample does not align with basic demographic patterns for age and gender. And, etc.
Key finding: The researchers found support for deeper self-disclosure from bloggers resulting in a range of better social connections. These included things such as a sense of greater social integration, which is how connected we feel to society and our own community of friends and others; an increase in social bonding (our tightly knit, intimate relationships); and social bridging -- increasing our connectedness with people who might be from outside our typical social network.
I'm not persuaded the authors, Ko and Kuo, are wrong only that there are a few holes here worth further examination. Perhaps writing in an online, open and public forum is an aid to self-disclosure. Perhaps it deepens social connections. We all know that digital media lowers the costs -- particularly in time, energy and expense -- of maintaining relationships. But does it make us happier? Or perhaps bloggers are happier people in general -- correlation and causation come to mind. Perhaps few people like to admit -- even on an anonymous survey -- that he or she is unhappy.
Strictly speaking, a rationalist might argue that people are happiness maximizers, many people blog, no one would maintain a blog if he or she were happier to devote time to other pursuits, ipso facto blogging makes (many) people happier than not blogging. Somehow, I don't think this is where the new report is headed. Nor do I think that reason is the only controlling authority on our behavior.
As they say in the academy when it is time for new grant applications, this is promising research in need of further study.
HT Guy Kawasaki.
Ketchum Responds to Twitter Dust Up.
Many of you recall the recent dust up about a public affairs professional who had unkind words about the hometown of a client. The good people of Memphis were not flattered.
Well, now Ketchum replies. Here is the story from PR Week. The advice is quite good, if late for its own employees.
New White Paper from Rubel.
I haven't had a chance to digest it, but here is the link to the latest white paper from Edelman impresario Steve Rubel.
Most intriguing are the sections on a) "Less is More" and selective ignorance, b) "Corporate All-Stars," and c) the "The Power of Pull" which ties social networks together with search for public affairs.
Facebook for Fogies.
Sadly, this Time magazine article about why Facebook is for fogies speaks to me.
Of the 10 reasons given for why the fastest growing demographic of Facebook users is a bunch of oldsters, seven of them are a spot on description of me.
Comments are open if you want to postulate which three don't apply.
Stray Thought Experiment.
Will President Obama appoint a new chairman of the Federal Trade Commission or the Federal Communications Commission first?
At the former, Bill Kovacic has been in the chair for almost a year and expects to be replaced. At the latter, the chairmanship is open. My money is on the FCC.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Pseudonym?
Sandy Banks writes about joining Facebook as a middle age mom. My first thought was, "What an awesome pseudonym. She could use that online." It is probably her real name, but regardless, her column deals with the challenges of how much information to divulge online.
I've recently had the same conversation with a 20-something mom, and professional colleague who is about to go on Facebook for the first time.
For as many of these "woe is me, I'm a Baby Boomer trying to keep up with the kids on TwitterBookSpaceStumbleDigg" stories that I've read, I've had experiences with much younger colleagues in the same vein. The questions about personal information, privacy, and how much to share are questions for the digital era, not questions for a certain age. Hat Tip Newmark's Door where he is often up on the times in L.A.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Scoble Gets GTD.
If you read this post by Robert Scoble it appears that he uses a GTD Outlook plug in. I installed it about 9 months ago and love it.
Taking Radical Immersion to LinkedIn -- Too Much of a Good Thing?
Today I added the BlogLink application to my LinkedIn profile. It should pull a feed from this blog. The deed is done, although I'm wary.
There is a fine line between spamming and keeping up a relationship. If my Twitter feed goes into FaceBook status and now can be directly pulled into LinkedIn, and these posts are pulled into LinkedIn, at what point is there oversaturation?
One has to assume that there are significant overlaps among Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter populations of friends/connections/followers. My hunch is that the periodic emails that received from LinkedIn featuring changes in a person's network will start featuring the title of these blog posts for my contacts. At best, it is a low-noise, easy to delete signal that I'm a person engaged in the digital space. At worst, it will become an aggravating burr under the collective saddle of my professional network.
Like so much, it is a testable hypothesis. We'll see.
There is a fine line between spamming and keeping up a relationship. If my Twitter feed goes into FaceBook status and now can be directly pulled into LinkedIn, and these posts are pulled into LinkedIn, at what point is there oversaturation?
One has to assume that there are significant overlaps among Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter populations of friends/connections/followers. My hunch is that the periodic emails that received from LinkedIn featuring changes in a person's network will start featuring the title of these blog posts for my contacts. At best, it is a low-noise, easy to delete signal that I'm a person engaged in the digital space. At worst, it will become an aggravating burr under the collective saddle of my professional network.
Like so much, it is a testable hypothesis. We'll see.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
My new favorite site for technology news.
Go here. http://www.techmeme.com/. It is like DrudgeReport for geeks.
grown up digital
Don Tapscott has done it again. His new book, grown up digital, is engaging, based on extensive research and well documented. It also slips into a bit of rhetorical overdrive every so often and his fondness for empirical data is inconsistent. Strong on the usage patterns for technology, weak on the political and social arguments.
The NYT review is here.
The book is a follow up to his 1997 effort, Growing Up Digital: Rise of the Net Generation. The thesis is straightforward. The latest generation to enter the workforce and higher education institutions is the first generation in history to be nurtured entirely in an environment of digital media. My generation, the Gen Xers, have had to adapt to these technologies as major institutions have adapted. Granted, it has been easier for the typical Gen Xer than our older counterparts, but adapt we must. The Net Generation by contrast has not been forced to adapt, they simply are digital.
In all, I commend the book. It is a little too positive on the Net Generation and their potential to improve everything, everywhere they go, in all ways. I've seen that movie and it didn't end well. Tapscott highlights the positive effects of their generational traits like more natural collaboration but he fails to mention the trade offs that are necessarily associated. There are always trade offs. He draws extensively from ideas developed by his sometime collaborators Neill Howe and the late Bill Strauss -- men who more often feature these downsides in their analysis.
The most practical chapters are 5 & 6 on education and the workplace.
The NYT review is here.
The book is a follow up to his 1997 effort, Growing Up Digital: Rise of the Net Generation. The thesis is straightforward. The latest generation to enter the workforce and higher education institutions is the first generation in history to be nurtured entirely in an environment of digital media. My generation, the Gen Xers, have had to adapt to these technologies as major institutions have adapted. Granted, it has been easier for the typical Gen Xer than our older counterparts, but adapt we must. The Net Generation by contrast has not been forced to adapt, they simply are digital.
In all, I commend the book. It is a little too positive on the Net Generation and their potential to improve everything, everywhere they go, in all ways. I've seen that movie and it didn't end well. Tapscott highlights the positive effects of their generational traits like more natural collaboration but he fails to mention the trade offs that are necessarily associated. There are always trade offs. He draws extensively from ideas developed by his sometime collaborators Neill Howe and the late Bill Strauss -- men who more often feature these downsides in their analysis.
The most practical chapters are 5 & 6 on education and the workplace.
Lance v. Kent. You Be the Judge.
If you follow @lancearmstrong on Twitter, you would know that he rode 120 miles today in 6 hours.
By contrast, I rode for 40 minutes on rollers in the garage. And, just to make sure that he knew I am serious about this training, I followed up with a 4.5 mile run in 40:34. While not earth shattering, this was the best workout I've had all year that didn't involve a pool. I bet Lance is checking my race schedule right now and adjusting his plans for 2009. Or not.
What we do have in common, beyond Twitter, is that we both ride a Trek. His is custom made and tricked out with all the latest technology. My is a 2600 from circa 1996. Regardless, they both have two wheels and a carbon fiber frame.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Create an Innovation Environment at Your Workplace.
Idea Champions provides a thought provoking list of steps to help create more innovation in the workplace.
In particular, I was captured by numbers 3, 5, 13, 40, 41 and 48. Number 17 is full of insight.
Unfortunately, innovation is not something can be opened up and simply installed in your organization. On the other hand, there is a management literature on the topic and concrete steps available to improve your situation. This list is a handy compendium to get you going.
In particular, I was captured by numbers 3, 5, 13, 40, 41 and 48. Number 17 is full of insight.
Unfortunately, innovation is not something can be opened up and simply installed in your organization. On the other hand, there is a management literature on the topic and concrete steps available to improve your situation. This list is a handy compendium to get you going.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Gov. Granholm on Twitter for State of State.
Hat tip to @katieharbath. Check out this story about the use of hashtags on Twitter to improve the level of discussion and understanding for a news story.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Cowen on Public Choice and Stimulus.
Tyler Cowen observes that voters have theories of responsibility not theories of causality.
Once again, he teaches through subtle analysis of the commonplace.
Once again, he teaches through subtle analysis of the commonplace.
Live Twittering.
The past day and a half I've been at a conference in Boulder, Colorado. I've also posted a couple dozen times on Twitter about the discussion -- primarily this morning.
However, I didn't start using the relevant hash tag until just now. And then, the first time I used it I mis-spelled it. Go to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=SFDBM to follow the conversation.
However, I didn't start using the relevant hash tag until just now. And then, the first time I used it I mis-spelled it. Go to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=SFDBM to follow the conversation.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
The Big Fix in NYT.
Scariest pair of sentences from my day:
"So for the first time in more than 70 years, the epicenter of the American economy can be placed outside of California or New York or the industrial Midwest. It can be placed in Washington. Washington won’t merely be given the task of pulling the economy out of the immediate crisis."
You can find them here: The Big Fix.
"So for the first time in more than 70 years, the epicenter of the American economy can be placed outside of California or New York or the industrial Midwest. It can be placed in Washington. Washington won’t merely be given the task of pulling the economy out of the immediate crisis."
You can find them here: The Big Fix.
Friday, February 6, 2009
25 Things...Old Media.
First it was in USA Today. This morning in the Washington Post.
It is now clear that the old, printed on dead trees, mainstream media has noticed the latest Facebook craze. Write 25 facts, goals, or idiosyncrasies about yourself, post it where everyone can see, and then send a note to 25 friends asking them to do the same.
A Radical Immersion reader writes, "I’ve noticed that people, myself included, that almost always ignore requests like that have been participating." She must be right otherwise the arithmetic growth in the use of the "Notes" feature on Facebook -- as observed in the USA Today story -- would not be evident. I succumbed. I made a list too.
How long before a major ad campaign is crafted around "25 things"? Will the Budweiser Clydsdales suddenly have their own Facebook list of 25 things? The Michilen Man?
It is now clear that the old, printed on dead trees, mainstream media has noticed the latest Facebook craze. Write 25 facts, goals, or idiosyncrasies about yourself, post it where everyone can see, and then send a note to 25 friends asking them to do the same.
A Radical Immersion reader writes, "I’ve noticed that people, myself included, that almost always ignore requests like that have been participating." She must be right otherwise the arithmetic growth in the use of the "Notes" feature on Facebook -- as observed in the USA Today story -- would not be evident. I succumbed. I made a list too.
How long before a major ad campaign is crafted around "25 things"? Will the Budweiser Clydsdales suddenly have their own Facebook list of 25 things? The Michilen Man?
Sunday, February 1, 2009
First Race of the Year is Three Months Out.
My first race of the year is on May 9 at Lake Anna State Park. Though I have done it twice before, the half Ironman distance is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, after about six hours of forward motion propelled only by one's own energy and stubbornness, one can be forgiven for thinking that he can do anything. However, it is just as likely that I'll end up in the fetal position questioning whether that stubborn streak is actually going to be my end.
After a month of training, I could be doing much better. Only once did I touch a bike outside of my regular commute. In all of January, I ran barely more miles that I will during the race. On a more positive note, I did log nearly 11,000 yards in the pool. This is about 6.2 miles.
This is a good start to the year, especially considering that in all of 2008 I only did about 39,000 yards. However, a reality check is in order. Come May 9, less than 10 percent of the race will be done in the water. To reach my goals, I have to hit the road. Perhaps as many as 40-50 miles on the pavement and at least four trips out to the garage to ride on the rollers.
Later this month I'll be out West for a few days and will run at 5,400 feet. It will certainly sear the lungs, but it will be better than lying prostrate on a hot Virginia morning in May.
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