Big Corporations are AFRAID!

Yes that's right, the dinosaurs are afraid. Many are running scared. Why? Simple, they want to "manage or control" the conversation and their corporate structure is less than transparent. Not to suggest that they're hiding something illegal, but most internal corporate environments are filled with political turf wars, that many corporate cultures are less than open, empowering and engaging.

Culture is extremely important in the context of developing a winning social media strategy, especially for a large corporation. If the culture itself enters the social media world with doubt, fear and barriers, it's my opinion that the overall strategy will most likely reflect these same elements.

Do you think "corporate culture" plays a key role in the development of a social media strategy?

Follow me on Twitter to keep in touch and let's talk more about the issue above. Also, the first of my (4) articles on social media came out today, if you'd like a copy don 't hesitate to ask.

fusedlogic is on the Twitter Brand Index

Johnathan over at Fluent Simplicity was kind enough to add fusedlogic to his Twitter Brand Index. We thank him kindly for that and I think you'll find it interesting to see all the various brands currently on Twitter, I mean beyond us of course. No doubt you'll recognize many of them.

Also, stay tuned, I'm currently writing a series of (3) articles on social media for Troy Media's technology beat news. Troy Media has well over a hundred thousand subscribers with the overwhelming majority being media and journalists of all shapes and sizes throughout North America...

To that end, as recently as this morning, I finished a phone interview with a world renowned author and entrepreneur...this is going to be a great story.

My next interview is with yet another world renowned author and entrepreneur on Monday...so this becomes an even bigger story, if that's possible. (Tooot, there goes my horn!!!) Toss in a top business executive from a large enterprise in my home province of Alberta possibly and a couple of bloggers and we've got ourselves a ball game.

I feel especially blessed today to say the least...

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Brand Index, fusedlogic, Troy Media, bloggers

Twitter, LA earthquake and my family...

A few days ago I commented here on a blog post related to the fact that people on a plane in Bangalore were using Twitter to communicate about what was happening to their plane. I was a taken aback by the near real time reporting of something like that.

Well, I'm working today and I see someone mention an earthquake in LA on Twitter. My wife and daughter and other family members are in LA today. They were in fact at Disneyland at the time of the quake. My wife and sister-in-law were in line at Space Mountain when the quake hit. My daughter was with her grandmother in line to see Goofy. She, thankfully doesn't know what happened being only 3 yrs old, she moved on to the next ride she wanted to go on pretty quickly as I understand it...the evacuation shut that down of course.

I was attempting to get in touch with my wife while watching the various "tweets" on Twitter about the quake.

I've officially lived through a world event on Twitter today where my family was directly involved...quite an experience. Social media has all sorts of benefits to it and there are drawbacks too but in this case I was happy to be able to ascertain the severity of what happened in near real time and without a CNN producer deciding what was being told. Further, I was able to combine both CNN coverage with Twitter to get a more complete picture.

The great news is basically everyone in LA is ok, including in this case, MY FAMILY and that's the main thing. A pretty nerve racking hour to say the least...

Jeremiah Owyang and a proper thank-you...

Yesterday, I complimented Jeremiah Owyang on his blog post by providing my own post here and also publicly on Twitter, he responded with a "Thank-you."

We're all busy and still, I believe that's no excuse for poor manners. Jeremiah demonstrated that even though he has thousands of followers collectively in "his" community on Twitter and elsewhere online, he is still able to take the time to thank someone specifically for something they've said or done.

Like my wife and I say to our daughter, "manners never go on a holiday."

Of course, we all get to choose who, how and if we want to respond to someone online or offline. That said, I believe that just like a general lack of ability to effectively and properly follow-up in a business context when opportunity knocks, there also seems to be a general lack of "manners," on the Internet today as well.

Call me "old-fashioned" if you like but I believe it proper to "thank" people when they take the time to respond to anything I've done, regardless of the intent or comment being good or bad. This is especially tough when someone is saying something less than positive about you, your company or the work you're doing. This is the true test of the Internet today. We continue to see large companies running and hiding because they don't want to stand up to the scrutiny.

Welcome to a general test of our morals, philosophy and character, how we respond or don't respond says something about us as human beings. To me this is at the core of who I am, it guides me and my business dealings every single day and I don't ever waver from it.

So to everyone who cares to make contact with me or my company, know that I will always "thank-you" for your time and comment regardless of its content, as long as, you're being respectable. I respect your opinion, I may not always agree with it and I understand that you are entitled to it. The fact that you took some of your valuable time on this planet to communicate with me in general says something positive about me and/or my company.

Thank-you for reading this post and I hope you have a profitable day.

Business on a silver platter...(shakes head)

One thing that really annoys me is when I attempt to land quality business right on the doorstep of others and they don't even acknowledge the email, tweet, plurk, or phone message I may leave or a combination thereof in some cases...

Yes it's true, I may smell...

That said however, it may be likely that "they" are the ones smelling up the joint. Smelling of arrogance, rudeness and possibly incompetence. There's no doubt I'm better off, I certainly wouldn't want to put my clients within a country mile of someone so ignorant. In this day and age of multiple ways of communication and notification...there's simply no excuse.

I was just chatting with a client about how brutal some business people have become at actually following up.

So, the status of which firm will be getting the video/portal/seo work on one of my projects is, simple. That nice piece of business will now be directed to a competitor.

Want more business? Learn to be nice and to follow-up effectively...

What's the point of using micro-blogging, if when someone reaches out to do business, you ignore them to talk about BS instead? It makes little sense to me...

Acknowledging me would have taken 3 seconds on Twitter...this girl is well-known on Twitter and Plurk and else where...even Guy Kawasaki and the gazillion emails he gets has returned my emails...class act.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, plurk, Web 2.0, social networking, micro-blogging

Is Guy Kawasaki/Alltop about "meaning" or "money?"

Back in February, Jeremiah Owyang updated (he called it an analysis, and as you'll read in his post, even Forrester Research analysts make mistakes like the rest of us) he had previously written about Guy Kawasaki's new (in his words - "gimmick" site) Alltop.com. The overall reviews from Owyang's twitter followers (follow me here) of Guy's site were mixed at best. Alltop.com was criticized for being a non-innovative "clone" of existing sites like popurls, originalsignal.com. Many did compliment Guy (including Owyang) on his ability to market the site (the Influence model). Citing for example his leveraging of existing "A-listers" in his ego topic section for example to garner attention for Alltop. Further, that "Techcrunch took the bait." Many concluded the attention was really more for Guy, than Alltop.

However, some time has passed now and we all recognize Guy's motivation here is to like most other sites make money. I know that many of you have seen Guy talk ( in person or on video) about his preference for sites or businesses that are about "making meaning "as their core purpose as being the ones that win over those who just want to grow and be acquired from the outset.

So my question to the readers of this post is. If you could only pick one answer: Do you think Alltop.com is about "making meaning" or "making money?"

A second question may be: Has Guy won you over with Alltop yet? It seems that if you search those who have made one of his various lists, that seems to be a proud moment for most... How about you "B-listers" out there...does making an Alltop topic list make a difference? Enquiring minds at fusedlogic want to know...

Distributed Social Networking

Here's a great article explaining something I personally believe cannot happen fast enough "distributed social networking"...being able to take your profile, contacts and information with you from one social network to another, something that really works for me...

Friendfeed is an aggregator, so is Ping.fm...more of these types of consolidation technologies will become more prevalent...there are people watching these sites and services closely and designing better ways to get the job done. Specifically, listening to the audiences and learning about the good and the bad of each service, there's a lot of these statements being made today on twitter, plurk, identi, friendfeed and elsewhere...usually that means that you and I win because competition breeds innovation.

The next three years will see this trend towards aggregation, mobility and being able to see entire personal social network connections at a glance continue to advance...I suspect that today's leaders in this space will be the hot acquisition targets with strong communities in the near future having finally worked out all the kinks...

Human nature at work on Twitter and Plurk

So as you can see to the right of this post I've added something called the "Plurk Timeline," this is in addition to my twitter account and Identi.ca account, I'm fusedlogic there too.

Anyway, this is part of my research on micro-blogging and how people use it. For example, Guy Kawasaki, provides regular updates regarding his site Alltop.com, the new topics he's added and requests for feeds to add from the twitter community. Such as his most recent question.

"I want to build the equivalent of twitterati.alltop.com for Friend
Feed. Does anyone have a good starting list?"

Others such as lead strategist Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Research uses Twitter to keep people thinking about the social web in general. He directs people to new "lists" on his blog, new trends he sees happening, events he's attending and articles where he's quoted, typically in the San Francisco Gate...

Many others use twitter as a way to engage in conversations related to their business interests, some still just let us all know about their favorite foods and the activities they're doing at that very moment in time...

Out of all of these various content entries, I most enjoy those that drive the conversation to innovate. Guy Kawasaki is looking for a list for his new topic on twitterati.alltop.com because of a suggestion made on twitter by Christine Lu, someone who has collaborated with Guy on China.alltop.com

Frankly, the twitter community in many ways is building Alltop.com, as Guy listens engages and asks questions...the "twitter crowd" is responding through ideas, traffic and objections from time to time...now Guy doesn't take every piece of advice or suggestion, that's not feasible and he's stated in an interview with Christine Lu that all he's looking to do is make $750K a year from Alltop.com and keep things simple...

That's obviously a great plan and there's no doubt that he'll easily achieve that.

In future posts I'll talk about how the "twitterati," or in other words (in many cases, not all but many...) the "unapproachable snobby elite," think very highly of themselves.

You can always tell who they are because when on twitter if you direct a comment or question to them they selectively decide whether you as a little twitter nobody deserve a direct response... This is an interesting experiment in watching human nature...sure we're all busy but some of us respect human beings and others....not so much.

As my Canadian social media strategy company fusedlogic continues its modest growth globally...I will always continue to approach business like "The Great One, Wayne Gretzky" treats others, fans, players etc... No matter how successful you are...one always needs to respect other human beings regardless of their status in life.

Guy Kawasaki isn't really against "Web 2.0 wannabes"...

So Guy stopped by the blog to hold me accountable for my last post and to clear a couple things up regarding the "tweet," in question. (It's all explained below.) Apparently, despite the way it reads, it seems as though Guy really wasn't trying to suggest the overwhelming majority of us suck or further that we should be honored to be in his online midst, like I first thought, interpreted or should we say "ass-u-med?"

In fact, he pointed out that he's placed himself on the "ego" list at Alltop, which I agree is appropriate. I have to admit I've been busy doing other things and haven't really dissected every list on the site, although I did take a brief cruise by the VIP one in question.

Anyway, if Guy really is a "good guy" then I may just consider following him on Twitter again at some point in the future.

Now, if only I can get him to address the endless transparent promotion of the site on Twitter...Well, maybe Guy will engage in a conversation to explain that on his next breeze by the blog...thanks again Guy for stopping by and providing your comments.

One final thought...Guy, maybe you could create a new hybrid list on alltop that I can be on...maybe "egotistical, aggressive lover of hockey and yes Web 2.0 wannabe." No just kidding, everyone knows that about me and so I'm fine as is...

Guy Kawasaki against "Web 2.0 wannabes..."

As I participate in various social media activities (and literaly build my business on and around them) Twitter being one of these, I've come to recognize things about people within "the social media community." This is the brilliant part and the allure of the social web for me. The richness of human personalities shining through the technology. You're able for instance to determine whether someone is simply out there to push a product or service or if they have something more significant and valuable to offer the world.

Like many, I've been watching, following and observing Guy Kawasaki since his early pre-dot-com crash days. Actually, Guy is much more well known today then he ever was prior to the crash. I admired his witty, calm and confident approach to educating all of us on how to properly "pitch" VC's using PowerPoint. As well as, watching online videos of his canned presentation and the part about why he's a "bozo." I think we're all "bozos," from time to time, certainly, I have my "bozo moments."

Well, over the last several weeks, years if you include blogging, I've been watching Guy's "tweets" on Twitter.com - a micro-blogging site. Guy's comments or "tweets" can be summed up simply as go to my new site, ALLTOP.COM! GO TO ALLTOP.COM, have you heard of ALLTOP.COM? Hey new stuff happening on ALLTOP.COM! ( There you go Guy, the sentence you'll most appreciate in this entire post.)

To be fair, he's been this transparent from the very beginning regarding this site. Pretty obvious and straight forward. Sure, at times it's been under the guise of offering some obscure news flash about something completely useless, (my opinion) and it works from him I suppose. Ignoring what merits there might be to his site itself and if he wants to push it in the manner he does that's certainly his prerogative, but Guy has lost my respect today for comments made that go way beyond the "push" marketing, salesy act. Specifically, it's the one below that I think shows a side of him that I don't hold in high regard or appreciate.

We've discussed that Guy is doing little more than flogging another web property as if it was 1999, with the exception that the technology used to do the flogging wasn't around then. However, more importantly beyond that used car sales approach is an "elitist" attitude. This definitely exists among certain elements of today's Internet crowd.

Often people talk about "brand erosion," well when one takes the length of observation of Guy's routine and couples it with a comment like below, it's safe to say with me at least "erosion" has happened in this case.

Whether you're a small outfit like ours who really has little, if any real influence in the world or you're a world renowned somebody of something, the bottom-line is...one doesn't have to act and treat others with such disdain and lack of respect like that of an arrogant elitist. Treating people with respect and being humble is something I expect of myself and of those who I respect in the world. Guy...you may think you're on the "inside" and part of the elite crowd, but with comments like the one below, it's obvious to me you're really more on the "outside." I'm referring here of course to what's truly important beyond money, business and yes Web 2.0 and I find that really unfortunate.

Here it is. There have been other posts like "if you have to ask, then you shouldn't be on it," referring to some other Web 2.0 elitist alltop list...

Read the Twitter Status blog for updates about the service.

guykawasaki http://vips.alltop.com/ Using Filtrbox, an intelligent news monitoring service, to deliver news re: VIPs--real VIPs, not Web 2.0 wannabes about 16 hours ago from twhirl

Now you can interpret the above statement as benign except, once you get beyond understanding the technology itself, what you're left with are more ways to observe and learn about human nature. You get to witness people showing their true colors, attitudes, philosophies; the things that really matter. In fact, this effect has never been stronger than in today's Internet. Understanding that we are typically associated with a brand is also key. Learning to harness that power of understanding can help you make decisions, such as, who you may want to do business with in the future, who really resonates with your value set AND who doesn't.

So Guy, this is one lowly "Web 2.0 wannabe" you won't have to worry about following you from here on in. By the way Guy, without "Web 2.0 wannabes," you, me, any number of people who sit all day on Twitter wouldn't have an audience, without "Web 2.0 wannabes," there wouldn't be an industry for any of your sites to exist and live off of...it wouldn't survive solely on the elitist minority you deem so superior to the rest of us average Internet using ilk...

There's a saying I know you're aware of, "treat others as you yourself would want to be treated."

For example, being a hockey enthusiast Guy, you'll no doubt recognize that what makes Wayne Gretzky the greatest player to ever play hockey is not only the fact that he rewrote the entire record book through his "elite" play, he was always amazingly gracious (and remains so to this day) regarding his talents, accomplishments, fame and recognition. He understands that the weekend warrior hockey player although vastly inferior to his own skill is still worthy of respect as a human being and fan.

Such a shame Guy, you truly disappoint me, you've seemingly forgotten what's actually important in life and it seems the above "tweet" is representative of how you'd like to be thought of by at least one small segment of the world...you can now count me out of that segment.

The next time I speak at some lowly conference filled with "Web 2.0 wannabes." I'll be sure to use you as a case study on what NOT to do and how NOT to treat human beings...

It's one thing to design an aggregation site because it's servicing a need we all have to save time, it's another to design an aggregation site because you believe the lists on it are about people who are better than the rest of the pee-ons in the world...

Targeted traffic is the key...

I get lots of emails asking me how to improve website or blog traffic. You see most translate increased general traffic with increased sales. Unfortunately, it often doesn't exactly work out that way. To be truly effective, your company or organization should ask the question "Why do we want increased traffic?"

The precise answer to this question will help you better define your traffic generating activities. Once that is determined you'll want to identify the key influencers within that target group or demographic. These are typically the blogs, social networking groups, websites who others look to gather information from.

Another great way to identify influencers is on Twitter. This is just one example of being able to observe conversations with folks who may be talking about things related to your market space. They will also most likely provide you with insights that can be helpful to improving your knowledge base on emerging trends keeping you ahead of your competition. Use twitter as a tool to build your level of understanding regarding targeted traffic, it's what I suggest to all our clients.

Twitter Raises $15 Million in VC Cash

The timing couldn't be better to raise this round of VC financing as Twitter needs tweaking. You can find out more about the cash specifics here at Gigaom.

There is currently a cascading effect happening on this site. The uptime isn't of late, so...."up" as it is "down". This means that people who require the need to update the world on the bagel type they're having at this very moment (I use twitter but not for bagel updates), are quickly looking for other solutions to their need for micro-blogging.

So what is that solution, well Jeremiah Owyang (and a few others) has been mentioning the fact that there is a bit of an exodus to a new social media aggregation service called Friendfeed.com. This is a site where you can keep up to date on almost all of your social networking habits (er channels) and that of your friends and colleagues. What this means for twitter, a company that despite the new cash is scrambling to save itself from the lack of apparent scalability capability is that they are in serious damage control mode...this may all be the fact that they're a victim of their own success and the technology is breaking down. This also means that the "pre-money" valuation of $80 million for twitter may not stay there for long if they continue to lose twitter enthusiasts in the droves they currently are...Everytime someone like Jeremiah says Friendfeed another group takes off. This is an "early-adopter" technology to say the least and the early-adopter crowd is fickle (like everyone else online I guess), keep em happy and perform or they're "outta here" and in many cases gone for good...

Oh the pressures of a near $100 million dollar tech company eh???

Twitter, Guy Kawasaki, recommendation

So I've been really engaging in twitter these last couple of days and have taken the opportunity to follow Guy Kawasaki and his comments. He recommended a new site just a bit ago called alltop.com, a company he has an affiliation with. I referred us to another blog and after a quick review it seems to be kind of cool, both the blog and alltop. I'll let you make your own judgments.