Teachable Moments

Over the past several days we have been reminded that the White House is hoping the hubbub surrounding the Gates/Crowley incident in Cambridge can become a  "teachable moment" for America. While we no doubt need to encourage more open dialog on race issues and racial profiling, perhaps the real "teachable moment" needs to be directed at the Administration -- which let a single off-topic question become the dominant news cycle headline for several days; derailing an otherwise well-crafted and desperately-needed message on the need to work together for healthcare reform. Failure to Teach The Administration -- and the President -- should know better. The media today crowdsources its headline stories, reaching for ratings rather than providing reasoned context and interpretation. And in the last two minutes, the intended message of the press conference was drowned out -- lost in the background noise. Failure to Listen But the message was also missed because we as a population are losing the ability to listen and pay attention -- to sort out the bigger message. Even when the topic is something that affects us all, as healthcare certainly does, we cannot seem to stay focused... instead showing increasing signs that we have all succumbed to ADOS -- Attention Deficit... Oooh, Shiny!

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Social Media Diet Pyramid - Food for thought

via gadgets.boingboing.net

A really interesting take on the standard food pyramid chart was done recently by Steven Leckart & Jason Lee. It depicts our daily social media diet, providing a little "food for thought". Makes one wonder what the minimum daily requirements are to stay socially relevant.

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Walter Cronkite - was special

Walter Cronkite had a very special relationship with the television audience - he not only delivered the news headlines, he also provided context. Though the news timeslot was limited in those days, he had a gift for making us feel that he understood our concerns. It is noteworthy that through some of America's most troubling times, Walter Cronkite was the one person we trusted to keep us informed - more trusted than our elected officials. So influential in fact that when he openly stated his views on the Viet Nam War in a TV special, LBJ supposedly said, "If I've lost Cronkite, we've lost the war." That kind of influence doesn't come easily, and no one has replaced him.

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Celebrate Cultural Diversity

Our country seems to be becoming more of a cultural melting pot as people move to follow job opportunities. But what I thought should be a "good" thing is increasingly being railed against by elements in our society who spout hate against anything that seems to threaten the status quo. How sad that we choose to see cultural diversity only as a threat rather than accept and celebrate the fact that our world is changing. Technology has the power to interconnect people from all across the world. I would hope that it would help us see how alike we all are rather than how different.

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Where is Search Headed?

Alex Iskold talks about the future of search requiring a "Social Relevancy Ranking" as we get further inundated by social data feeds. I wholeheartedly agree!  And the folks who thunk up the PageRank algorithms we all use today are likely focused on it. These suggestions seem right on-the-mark and very timely. It could totally change the way we view streams of information we get from friends.

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Information Overload - the Data Tsunami

Some (apparent) Facts Social Data Revolution by Andreas Weigend "In 2009, more data will be generated by individuals than in the entire history of mankind through 2008. Information overload is more serious than ever. What are the implications for marketing?" Who Consumers Trust by Nielsen "Ninety percent of consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online." And Search Engine results Ads score a comparative 41%. The Tsunami Effect The implications from my perspective are that as we continue to drown in ever-increasing amounts of online data, fewer people are doing their own buying research through search engines and are instead tending to rely on recommendations from their peers and friends. The stats seem to indicate that I will look first at what my social network friends have to say, secondly to other consumer opinions posted online, then lastly to what I can find through the search engines. Clearly this has implications for marketing and the monetization models that the search engines have achieved and that the social networking sites are grabbing for.

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Move from Lotus Notes to Google?

Migrate from Lotus Notes to Google Apps using new tools just announced from Google. While their recently announced Chrome Operating System won't be available until next year, they are definitely rolling out tools to get Enterprise IT folks on board. In a tight economy, these approaches are making more and more sense for business use. Looked at your licensing budget recently? Is Google a solid enterprise strategy for you? Maybe its time to take a harder look. (image from TechCrunch article)

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Twitter Goes Mainstream?

I'm not sure how to gauge when a technology shifts into high gear, but Steve Rubel points out today that Whole Foods has become the first consumer brand to pass one million followers on Twitter. While known for social trivia, tech babel, celebrity gossip and the occasional political rebellion, maybe Twitter is finally coming of age if reasoned promotional campaigns can be successful in this space. The trick would seem to be knowing and watching your target audience well. Of course coming from a company with a Facebook presence, a CEO blog and RSS feeds, Whole Foods Market is focused on using tools of the times. Still, seeing this success will undoubtedly get the attention of others in the digital PR and digital marketing arena. And who knows, maybe there's a business model for Twitter after all!

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Visualizations of Twitter Traffic

As Twitter has grown in the public consciousness, so has interest in getting a handle on just what it is and what folks are doing with it. People may just want to know stats about themselves, or their followers, or more about subjects being discussed, or the volume of traffic on a particular subject, or the number of tweets from a particular person. All of this information is available through a public API from Twitter, and several nice ways to visualize the information is starting to be available. Some of the better ones I have seen are linked here:   http://flowingdata.com/2008/03/12/17-ways-to-visualize-the-twitter-universe/   http://neoformix.com/Projects/portfolio/index.html   http://hashtags.org/ Let me know if you have other Twitter visualizations that you like.

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Google Heats Up the Tech Wars

Ahh, it is nice to see tech innovation and competition heating up again, as Google announces it's entry into the Operating System market. Google Chrome OS - What is it and what it isn't:   www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_google_os_becomes_reality_google_announced_the.php   googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html Google docs and apps competing with well-entrenched desktop suites; Google's Android entry into the cell phone marketplace; Google Voice; the Chrome Browser and now a slim, supposedly speedy web-access-focused OS. Certainly the turf wars will abound, but with this open-source offering, enterprise IT has to be looking at ways to save BIG licensing dollars. Isn't competition wonderful?

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Information Foraging and "streams"

Stream vs Firehose So, "streams" are the new metaphore on the web as discussed recently by Nova Spivak, Steve Rubel, John Borthwick and other tech watchers. I agree with the "fluid" analogy, but I fear that instead of streams we are increasingly living with firehoses of information being aimed at us. With wave after wave of increasingly trivial information inundating our lives.  Quoting from Eric Schonfeld: "...a stream. A real time, flowing, dynamic stream of information — that we as users and participants can dip in and out of and whether we participate in them or simply observe we are a part of this flow." Information Foraging Whether we are in the "page" era or the "stream" era of the web, we still have to find the nuggets of information that directly relate to what we are looking for. When it comes to pages, Google established itself as the premier tool to use, but what tool or tools will best help us cull the most appropriate "streams" of information out of the ever growing ocean of trivial "what are you doing now" nonsense? I increasingly feel like I am panning for gold at the bottom of the Hoover Dam - I spend far more time just getting drenched than actually finding anything of value! Predator/Prey Relationship Like predators looking for prey, we search out information in the fields we have previously found yielded good results. When the field dries up, we move on to adjacent territory - or we make do with less satisfactory prey. This analogy carries over well to the web, except that there is no physical price to pay (miles to travel) for moving to a new "field" - they are all literally "next door" on the web, but you have to know which way to step in order to get there. It will be interesting to watch and see what tools emerge to help us aggregate, filter, and manage these growing streams.

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The stream metaphor is here to stay

Steve Rubel's comments on moving from blogging to lifestream really ring true with me. But whether it is push or pull, page-based or stream-based, 140 characters or 14 pages, I hope that it is more about increasing our communication with each other. Twelve minute newscasts forced us over time to get used to 'soundbite' news. The net lets us communicate so much more broadly and investigate and search out so many more sources -- and have it at our fingertips 24 hours a day if we need it. My hope is that we are becoming more informed individuals who communicate more effectively with a larger community. See Steve's article at: http://www.steverubel.com/immediacy-vs-reflection-0

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