Archive for December, 2010
TheSocialGeeks Episode 32 – still banging away
This episode we talk about top 2010 stories, what hot this week and some quick predictions for 2011. Join Wayne Sutton , Sarah Perez , myself and special guest Liz Money . We broke the one hour mark by a bit for this year ending podcast.
We cover:
- Groupon funding announcement of predicted $950M today
- Quora
- Location services past, present and future
- Android marketplace
- and much more..
You can see our links right here on Diigo with the show linkroll below.
Make sure to visit GoDaddy for discounts on all your domain needs.
Uh Uh We Won’t Vote For You
Guest post by Geoff Livingston
There’s a new bad pitch that’s taken over the interwebs. It’s called “Vote For Me.”
It’s an epidemic. From the Washington Post’s DC Tweeps, to Pepsi’s Vote for My Idea Contest, to get my panel “accepted” for SXSW (sorry Kevin & Richard), we are getting spammed in every direction. We, the marketplace at large, have grown weary of all this screaming for votes that land in our feeds, our emails, our message boxes, and in comment spaces. (Facebook statuses? Forget about it.) And while it’s a part of our social networking craze, it’s nothing but noisy clutter.
For the magazines or products behind it, this is complete self-promotion–and for the request-makers, it feels like desperation! If the Post isn’t bad enough, there was Fast Company), Pepsi Refresh and nonstop pleading for panels on SxSW are committed through the present to this kind of format, it’s time to voice our frustration. This kind of spamming cheapens the person, the charity and the events, our feeds, and worst of all, it cheapens our relationships. Even when it’s a charitable organization you’re working for, it is still made to seem cheap. It’s time for popularity-based vote for me craze to evolve into a more productive form of crowdsourcing.
If people want votes, they need to start focusing on the people that care about them or their beloved causes rather than taking shotgun approaches inside a ton of handy social networks. How will this make this for a better society? What kind of results do you anticipate? Why should I care about you over the next guy? Or at least give me a pitch besides same old sad old “Vote For Me Please.”
Hopeful panelists, tell us some detail about your content? Is there content? What’s in it for us and the rest of the crowd? Is there learning or is it just promotion for your product? Why is this panel going to be any better than the thousands of others that pass before our eyes online every single year? You better let us know in 140 characters or less.
Just because people are social, doesn’t always mean they will support every contest or panel, even if it’s for a good friend. Quid pro quo, dudes. Show some value or no votes for you. Or cheeseburgers…
Twitter @badpitch and @geoffliving
Privacy Talk with Jesse Hirsh and Chris Soghoian
A shared new years resolution for women in advertising?
I haven't watched much TED in a while. I blame it on inspiration overload. Too many exceptional people with exceptional aggravations pounding at pulpits.TEDWomen may bring me back, though – the talks I've seen so far are a lot more practical, filled with insight and action.
My friend Jude actually sent me my first TEDWomen talk. It's Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg exploring why a smaller percentage of women than men reach the top of their professions. You've seen these numbers – Of 190 Heads of State around the world, only 9 are women. In the corporate world only 15% of the top leadership positions are held by women. (Those numbers haven't moved since 2002.) There are more examples – all that either suggest that women drop out or don't have access.
Sandberg didn't want to talk about the problem, though. Instead she focused on the practical ways to change it. What should we focus on as individuals? What messages do we share with the women who work with and for us? What do we tell our daughters?
And, before I get to her advice. I want to talk about her "but": What do we tell our collegues and daughters in a world where there will be sacrifices they have to make for their successes that their brothers will not?
One example of that sacrifice is reputation. The data clearly shows that success and like-ability are positivity correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. Sandbeg pointed to a case created Professor Frank Flynn at Columbia Business School known as The Heidi/Howard Roizen Study.
Flynn had Heidi Roizen, a powerful entreprenuer and venture capitalist, speak to his organizational behavior class in previous semesters. She spoke about networking, her business successes and the challenges of being a woman in Silicon Valley. One semester, he distributed two versions of her bio to the class. Half got Heidi's real background and half got that same bio with one word changed: Heidi became Howard.
Before the lecture, Flynn had students go online and rate their impressions of "Roizen" on several dimensions. The results showed that students were much harsher on Heidi than on Howard across the board. Although they thought she was just as competent and effective as Howard, they didn't like her, they wouldn't hire her, and they wouldn't want to work with her. They disliked Heidi's aggressive personality and rewarded Howard's entreprenuerial one. The more assertive they thought Heidi was, the more harshly they judged her (but the same was not true for those who rated Howard)
(Jump to minute 7:27 if you want to hear Sandberg talk about this story)
That's a powerful caveat. And surely one of the reasons women drop out.
But if you don't – here is Sandberg's advice: practical steps for women to get ahead in the workplace (serious highlights of things I'm not doing well in my own career, by the way). It's followed by my own ideas about what we can do together to get rid of a little bit of that "but" (which is really what all new years resolutions are about anyway, right?)
- Sit at the table. Don't sit on the sidelines
That means doing things that are really hard for women – like owning our successes (instead of sharing them with everyone who helped us along the way); negotiating for our salaries and promotions (50% of men negotiate for their first salary; 7% of women do – that's a cause of the salary gap right there); and driving our careers forward - Make your partner a real partner
Women with a significant other and children do 2x the housework and 3x the childcare as their partners. In households where partners evenly split the workload, divorce rates are lower and, um, sexual satisfaction is higher - Don't leave before you leave
If you're planning to take time off of your career to have a child, don't leave before you leave. Keep going full speed ahead until you get there. Too many women take their foot off the gas years in advance (while the men keep moving ahead)
That all sounds great. Except the more of it women do, apparently the worse they're seen. So, here's my idea for our shared resolution (because if women support each other more, the rest will come):
- Check your gut reactions: When you think something negative or dismissive about a female colleague, take a minute to consider why. If the same statement were made or action taken by a male collegue, would you feel the same way? These gender issues are deep and cultural and tough to change – but we can be more aware of how they effect us as individuals. (Is she really being a bitch when he would just be assertive? Is she a snob where he would be considered a professional? Maybe. But, maybe not.)
- Recognize success from your female colleagues out loud: Men naturally claim their accomplishments. The data shows that men tend to overestimate their performance while women underestimate theirs. Let's dial it up a little bit. Congratulate each other in open court. Mean it. And, don't shrug it off when the compliment is coming to you.
- Make soft skills part of your career and network development: Dig up articles about negotiating for salary or running a presentation or sharing constructive criticism. Practice what you learn. And, pass it on to your colleagues and friends.
- Ask for something you want (and have been waiting for someone to offer): Just doing good work often isn't enough. We need to get good at career planning and setting a path and asking for that next promotion. People aren't waiting anxiously to help you up the next step – they're looking to see if you'll take it.
We're likely among the last generations to live in a world run so decisively by men. Wouldn't it be great if we enjoyed some of that equity and opportunity instead of simply being on the slightly wrong side of history. Wouldn't it be great if there was no "but" in wanting to succeed?
JJTV #128 – Customer Consolidation
Just in time for the holidays (and the huge Storm in the North East), American Airlines announced they were pulling their fares and schedules from Orbitz.
This isn't the first time we've seen this kind of tension with respect to consolidated or aggregated offerings across industries like Music, Entertainment and the like.
Perhaps it's time for us to stop thinking about this from a seller's perspective, but instead from a buyer's viewpoint i.e. a customer centric approach
What do you think? Let me know.
- Share JJTV with your gate agent, colleagues, clients and followers
- Tweet or RT: New JJTV – How the airlines and other service industries can learn from customer consolidation - http://bit.ly/customerconsolidation
- Subscribe to the show via iTunes or YouTube
- Leave a video comment
Yahoo! closing (?) Delicious. How to save your bookmarks. Do it now!
By B.L. Ochman
A leaked internal memo from Yahoo! said the popular social bookmarking site Delicious was about to be “sunsetted” (gotta love that word!) Then an update said they were selling it, etc. etc. Bottom line: you need to copy and move your Delicious bookmarks before they disappear. I had many hundreds of annotated bookmarks that I stored on Delicious over the past six years. Here’s how I rescued them:
I’ve migrated my Delicious files to the cloud on Diigo, thanks to great recommendations from Twitter buds Jason Hill and Tracy Sheridan. It’s pronounced as Dee’go – an abbreviation for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff.” There is a free and a paid version.
While it works a lot like Delicious – letting you put your bookmarks online, tag them, share them with followers, and follow the bookmarks saved by others – Diigo is a cloud-based personal and collaborative research tool on the one hand, and a knowledge-sharing community and social content site on the other. It’s got browser add-ons, mobile apps, and – unlike other bookmarking services – it keeps and shows your your highlighted and annotated content whenever you return to the bookmarked content.
All content copyright B.L. Ochman, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution:
By B.L. Ochman,
What’s Next Blog,
and a link to the post
The Authenticity of Doing Good: How Sticky Campaigns are Born and Propagate
Sitting in a hospital room at Christus St. Elizabeth in Beaumont, Texas, with my grandfather two days before Christmas, I am reminded that when it comes to doing good, authenticity counts.
As marketers and public relations professionals, it is easy to be cynical. While we search for the holy grail of tangible returns on our communication programs, events and strategies, it is easy to lose sight of the human element that really drives response. Maybe that is why the retweet campaigns on Twitter and the “Share” campaigns on Facebook seem to be so popular with companies. It is much easier to get people to pass along information that to take action, though “slactivism” can leveraged over time.
The importance of authenticity was driven home when my 90-year-old grandfather, who nearly died last week, was softly talking to me today. During his weeklong stay in the Intensive Care Unit, he had become a force for good. Many of the nurses said his room was the “place to be” and that he was a Christmas miracle. As he spoke to me, he started to sing in a weak and quiet voice:
“If I can help someone as I move along the road, then my living shall not be in vain.” (listen to it here)
I searched for the lyrics and found that the song was used in a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, and it has been sung by Mahalia Joackson, Patti LaBelle and a score of others. The reason it is so popular is that it speaks to an elemental human need:
People need to know that they have made a difference.
My grandfather, in the twilight of his life, was expressing this to me in a powerful and authentic way. I had another occasion to think about this earlier this week when Jenny Lawson (aka The Bloggess) wrote:
“I’m about to ruin your image of me but it’s for a good cause…”
Jenny offered $30 Amazon gift certificates to the first 20 people who left a comment to let her know they were struggling this year. She was donating back some of her profits. Heartbreaking comments started to roll in, and with them an avalanche of people offering to help, too. Jenny’s $600 gift was amplified into $42,000 in gift cards, toys and other needs helping over 900 people. The media are now starting to pick it up, on a Washington Post blog, and this segment on CBC in Canada.
It is an amazing story, and the reason it happened was because Jenny did something authentic and her readers responded. Moreover, they could see (in real time) who they were helping and how. You can’t manufacture this kind of engagement and response.
But how do you, as a company or organization set out to make this kind of difference or rally others around your cause? It seems to me that there are three ingredients that need to be present for it to work:
- Be Authentic to your company, organization or cause. When the nonprofit angle of a campaign seems “tacked on” it will always ring a little hollow. At the heart of Jenny’s $30 giveaway was a desire to give back out of gratefulness for her own success.
- Connect the Dots. Donors need to see and feel that they are making an impact in order to give at a maximum level ad to recruit their friends to do likewise. Not just thanked and appreciated, though that is important, but also to get a clear sense of how their contribution is impacting.
- Allow Outside Ownership of the ideas and responses. The best causes always seem to inspire others to action out of their own motivation. Jenny’s generosity touched the hearts of many people and made them want to do likewise.
- Amplify Others and their ideas. Jenny quickly (and often) talked about how the community had responded and she was willing to give up her original idea of $30 Amazon giftcards and allow the community to meet the needs as they arose.
One organization that is doing this pretty well is the Yahoo! Foundation with its Ripple of Kindness program. As a part of this program Yahoo! handed out $100 in seed money to a group of influencers to do good deeds. They then looked for some of the inspiring examples and were amplifying them. For instance, last year they paid the luggage fees at the local airport after one they saw one of their of their seedling influencers did similarly.
Full disclosure, I got one of these $100 checks. I went and bought two huge fruit arrangements, took them with me to the hospital and passed out fruit stems to the ICU and regular floor nurses. My family and I sang Christmas carols and generally sought to spread good cheer with the hospital staff. It doesn’t seem like much, but the truth is that even small acts of kindness can turn into bigger ones. It has been so much fun that I think I will keep going, perhaps next week we will have a free hot chocolate stand in our neighborhood and build a canned food Christmas tree to take to our local pantry.
If you can learn how to inspire people, you can change the world, one small act of kindness at a time.
Photo Credit: By Tatiana Gerus who writes – In art, craquelure is the fine pattern of cracks formed on old paintings. It is sometimes used to detect forged art, as craquelure is a hard-to-forge signature of authenticity
Happy Holidays!
In Jaffe Juice fashion, here's my wishes to you in the form of a JJTV message. For me personally, I turn the big 4-0 on Friday and so there's a lot to reflect on before I become truly angry, crabby (patty), bitter, vengeful and twisted (that's what happens at 40, right?)
Happy Holidays to you and yours from Jaffe Juice TV.
May 2011 be filled with only health, happiness, joy, prosperity, success and not too many bloopers.
Thanks for all your support and please continue to spread the Jaffe Juice TV love.
Joseph
A Delicious Demise: A Look at Social Bookmarking Tools for Sharing and Keeping Your Data
Social bookmarking isn’t the most sexy of topics, it is just one of those things that, for those who do it, underlies their online experience. Slowly but surely, these bookmarks become a crutch, or as I like to kid, your online brain:
- Need to find a way to measure the effectiveness of Facebook? There is a collection of bookmarks for that.
- What about the best Twitter tools. There is one for that, too!
And the list goes on…
Just last week, I would have told you that there were quite a few bookmarking tools out there, but that I would recommend Delicious. It was simple, organized and powerful – albeit a little homely. But for features and simplicity, it would have been my recommendation.
And I wasn’t alone on this, you can read just a few of the novel ways you can use Delicious in this ReadWriteWeb post. One of its most powerful features was an RSS feed by tag.
However, all of that is in question after a leaked slide from an all-hands meeting at Yahoo!, the current owner of Delicious, shows that the service is on the “Sunset” list.
And while Yahoo! hasn’t quite figured out if it will sell or give away Delicious. It is clear that they won’t support it anymore. In this excellent post by Stephen Hood, who was formerly on the Yahoo! team for Delicious, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome for the service to become open source, or even a useable platform, once the proprietary engines that underlie the service are changed. Also, Yahoo! laid off the majority of its Delicious team. So whatever Yahoo! becomes, it will become it outside of Yahoo! You can sign a petition to have Yahoo! convert the platform to open source, but read Stephen’s post to see why this will be difficult to achieve.
Alternative Bookmarking Services to Delicious
The bottom line is that for those that have a Delicious account, they need to consider transitioning to something else, or at least hedging their bets by using a service that still integrates with Delicious for the time being. To look at this question, I laid out the “must have” features for a Delicious power user.
- Portability: You need a service that allows you to import and export your bookmarks. Delicious allows you to export your bookmarks, so best case scenario is a service that easily allows this. If you are going to outsource your brain, make sure you can get it back out of a service that is being discontinued.
- Tools: It needs to be compatible with your favorite browser. Does the service have a bookmarklet for Firefox, IE, Chrome or Safari? Does it have other tools to make it easy for you to share?
- Tagging. Does it allow you to tag webpages with whatever words you want to use.
- Related (nested) Tags: Can you refine your searches with multiple tags? When you have thousands of tags this becomes essential in order to find relevant saved articles/posts/websites.
- Editing. Does it allow bulk editing of tags. This is also critical when you have lots of bookmarks and have to make changes or add new tags.
- RSS Feeds. Does it have RSS feeds by tag? You can use this feature to curate copy or selectively share info on another webpage.
- Sharable. How does the service allow you to share with others?
- Mobile. Does it have applications and mobile compatibility? So much of life and business is lived on the go.
- Integration. Is it integrated with other important services like Facebook, Twitter and more? The more it works into your daily life, the more likely you are to use it and build a rich reservoir of knowledge.
- Delicious Synch. If you have invested lots of time in Delicious, you might want to pick a service that allows you to continue to synch the new bookmarks with Delicious. Several do, including Diigo and Pinboard.in
I looked at Diigo, Pinboard.In, Evernote, and Google Bookmarks. Of these four, I think I will go with Diigo for now. It has some nice extra features and it also synchs with Delicious. Pinboard.in (paid) also synchs with Delicious and would be my second choice. But I really can’t see any improvement over Delicious unless you hit the $25/year level, where it will archive your saved pages (nice). Speaking of archiving, that is what is cool about Evernote, and also Diigo to a lesser extent. The one I hoped would work was Google Bookmarks, since I live in Google products everyday, but it is seriously lacking in features and doesn’t seem to easily integrate with anything, even Google products like the Android phone.
Add Your Own Recommendations
Other services recommended to me included ShareThis, Pearltrees, X-Marks and Scuttle. I added them to the spreadsheet, but have no info on them there but they sound interesting. Beth Kanter shared this Google Doc last week that is being edited by people with a ton more recommendations. It is in a document format and talks about pros and cons.
I find the spreadsheet format helpful so I created this Delicious Replacements Spreadsheet with the evaluation categories I mentioned above. Feel free to add the ones you like and fill out the form with any missing info or change what I got wrong. But please, in true Wikipedia style, refrain from writing promotional material in the Doc.
You can see a preview of what that doc looks like below:
UPDATE: A really nice summary from Shel Holtz explaining why we lose so much more than our own personal bookmarks if we lose Delicious.
Get (and give) the gift of good ideas courtesy of McGraw-Hill
My friends at McGraw-Hill are giving the gift of good ideas this holiday season — in the form of a free e-book highlighting smart thinking for 2011. They’ve tapped their stable of business authors (including me) to deliver a hearty batch of practical, thought-provoking, useful and insightful notions on leadership, management (not the same thing as leadership, people), innovation, the economy and micromarketing.
It’s free but like lots of great gifts, you’ll have to unwrap it first.
Visit McGraw-Hill’s sign-up page, drop in your name and email, then you can download your free copy of McGraw-Hill Professional’s What’s Next 2011: Leading Minds in Business on the People, Trends, and Challenges Ahead.
Like what you see? Feel free to share with all your colleagues.