Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 321

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #102

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Day 319: Self-Help Advice From A 2 Year Old - Jason Good 365 . "My daughter is getting to that age. She wants to play 'sleeping,' but won't sleep. Crying babies make her sad, but she can't explain why she cries. Apparently, this is what we have to look forward to. 'Tired of looking at yourself in the mirror? So was I until I met my friend permanent marker. FACE TATTOOS ARE RAD.' Jason Good 's stuff (by way of my wife) is pretty funny; why do I get the feeling he's being perfectly serious here?" (Alistair for Hugh).

Which cities shape our musical tastes? Atlanta, Montreal and ... Oslo - The Washington Post . "Montreal music celeb photographer extraordinaire, Eva Blue , pointed me at this article, which discusses research based on last.fm data. The researchers tracked the spread of new groups to see where they started. Atlanta for hip hop, and of course, Montreal for Indy music. Even the math says Montreal is cool." (Alistair for Mitch).

The Unabomber's Pen Pal - The Chronicle of Higher Education . "The Unabomber is known almost exclusively from that police sketch of a mustachioed guy in shades and a hoodie. A dangerous crackpot. Which of course he was - his mail bomb campaign injured 23 people and killed three. Behind Ted Kaczynski's terrorism is a deeply-held - and carefully argued - belief that our modern technological society is sick. David Skrbina , a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Michigan , has been corresponding with Kaczynski for years, and has collated Kaczynski's writings in a book, Technological Slavery ." (Hugh for Alistair).

You Should Probably Send More Email Than You Do - Kalzumeus . "Maybe email isn't so bad afterall." (Hugh for Mitch).

Piracy, Google and Facebook Crowdfunding: Ari Emanuel Lets Loose at D10 (Video) - All Things D . "I've had the pleasure of meeting and seeing Ari Emanuel (co-CEO of William Morris Endeavor) speak in person. He does not mince his words. He's spent years representing some of Hollywood's biggest talent and he, himself, has been immortalized by the show Entourage (the character Ari Gold is based on him). In this conversation from the recent D10 event, Emanuel presents his very pointed view of entertainment and commerce. Make sure to stick around for the Q&A portion if you want to see the Ari Gold character come to life." (Mitch for Alistair).

Six Tough Truths About Self-Publishing (That The Advocates Never Seem To Talk About) - Lit Reactor . "All authors are leaving major publishers because the big bucks are in self-publishing! Umm... not so fast. Editing, marketing, distributing, working on a great book cover... all of these things are not so easy. Book publishers still have power. Book authors just have more options. The thing is, just because you can write a great book, it doesn't mean that you're going to be great selling it. Are big publishers great at all of these things? No, not necessarily, but they have experience doing it. I liked this article. Not because I believed everything it said, but because it offers another perspective on the shifts in publishing. It turns out that the answer isn't as black and white as you may think. In fact, there are fifty shades of grade (insert rim shot here)." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alistair croll

all things d

ari emanuel

ari gold

bitcurrent

complete web monitoring

d10

david skrbina

entourage

eva blue

gigaom

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

jason good

kalzumeus

last fm

librivox

link exchange

linkbait

lit reactor

managing bandwidth

media hacks

pressbooks

story

technological slavery

the book oven

the chronicles of higher education

the washington post

university of michigan

william morris endevour

year one labs

The End Of The Laptop

Let's start with the story from a market of one ...

I bought the first iPad from Apple and loved it immediately. I wound up lugging it around with me all over the world along with my MacBook Pro. As soon as the latest version of the MacBook Air was released, I got one. It quickly became my most favorite computer of all time. I loved it so much that I didn't understand why I would need to carry around the MacBook Air and the iPad at the same time. I loaned my iPad to a family member and quickly forgot about it. Once it was returned to me, I started fidgeting with it again and realized how much I enjoyed the experience. I went out and got the new iPad (3? HD? whatever!). Now, I'm busy carrying both the iPad and MacBook Air all over the world. The truth is that I use the MacBook Air for nothing but writing (blog posts, articles and books) and for publishing the audio podcast. That's about it.

Tablets have come of age.

I'm not the only who feels this way. Looking out - not too far - into the horizon, I could see myself completely ditching the laptop/computer in lieu of the iPad. Yes, a couple of things need to happen (me getting more used to typing with it, multitasking, better content creation), but it doesn't feel like any of those things are all that major. While some may say that I lie closer to the bleeding edge than most, it turns out that the bleeding edge is moving ever-closer to the center of mass adoption.

Are iPads killing laptops?

Earlier this week, Research Brief ran the news item, Is The Laptop Threatened By The Tablet?, which stated: "12% of iPad users already say the device has completely replaced their traditional laptop, while another 54% said it had partially replaced their laptop. In addition, 44% of marketers believe tablets will have a high or very high impact on laptop use in 2012." It's not the first time that we're experiencing dramatic transitions to new and emerging technologies, but we have to remember that the iPad didn't even exist three years ago. So (once again) things are moving at an exponential rate. When Apple CEO, Tim Cook, took the stage to announce the latest iPad back in March, the most telling piece of data he revealed was that iPad 2 had outsold almost every PC in the previous year.

Fad or trend?

At first blush, many thought the tablet could be a fad. That the average consumer could never let go of the physical keyboard or the mouse. As usual, those people were wrong. The majority of people are not major content creators and are getting by - just fine, thank you very much - with a tablet. They can take and shoot pictures, write quick emails, create a Facebook status update and more. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the tablet is a true contender (not companion device) for what we had called the "home computer" or the "laptop."

It seems obvious.

While that may seem obvious to you and I, it's a pretty startling revelation when you look at how quickly it came to market and how quickly the technology is evolving as well. For under eight hundred dollars any one of us can have significant computational power that is not only highly mobile, but with more-than-impressive connectivity speed (streaming videos stream just fine). From a marketing perspective, it's even more fascinating: brands are still grappling with websites, e-commerce platforms and social media in a web-based browser world as they slowly trickle into mobile (on the smartphone side). So few are thinking about the utility, content and opportunity that tablets and the iPad bring. It's a big deal. Rumors are abound today that Facebook will be built into the next Apple iOS (looks like iPhone first, then iPad) - more on that here: TechCrunch - After Years Of Flirting, Facebook And Apple Set To Achieve Relationship Status In iOS 6. Suddenly, everyone is trying to figure out what their brand looks like when everyone can touch it in ways that they could never do before.

What does that tell you? Welcome to a faster pace of change.

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techcrunch

tim cook

website

The New Marketing Hacker

There is a massive and missed opportunity happening in the marketing industry.

It seems like Judy Shapiro (Chief Brand Strategist at CloudLinux and blogger at Trench Wars) was busy asking herself some very similar questions at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York this past week. In her Advertising Age op-ed piece, When Hacker Culture Collides With Business Reality, she sees some major opportunities for marketing companies that we're not only not pursuing, but allowing (and enabling) small startups to take on: "...while the tech boys are breaking their toys - it is often the professional marketers (a.k.a. adults) who are left cleaning up the operational mess brought on by a lack of metrics and operational scalability. This culture collision starts to explain why marketers are facing tech fatigue and why Facebook's IPO languished. Just maybe, investors were unconvinced that Facebook could deliver the marketing goods since marketers themselves are getting weary of cleaning up the messes."

It's not about adults versus startups.

The truth hurts. Here's the truth: the majority of marketing professionals are scared of technology. They don't understand it. The don't play with it. They would much rather leave the technical work to programmers and those with IT degrees, than spend the time to deep-dive not into just what a new platform or channel can do to tell their brand's story in a new and interesting way, but how it works. If marketers don't start pulling up our socks and embracing technology, innovation and the startup culture, we're going to set our industry on a course for extinction. The main reason why marketers shun the majority of these innovative startups (and why many of them suddenly become amazing successes - look no further than Radian6) is because marketers fall into two classifications:

Clients. The brands. These people have to get the four p's of their product down to a science. They don't have time to figure out how to reinvent marketing nor do they have the resources (people, time and budget) to figure out how the overall industry is going to evolve. Can you imagine a brand developing an advertising platform like Google AdWords? I can't. On top of that, if you were the CEO of a brand would you allow your Chief Marketing Officer and their team to go out and spend time and money trying to figure out new forms of media in our hyper-connected world?

Agencies. The majority of agencies are nothing more than a professional services firm. Their business model is no different than other professional services firms: they charge more money for a human unit of time than what they paid for it. They act as the marketing team for a brand that should not incur those kinds of costs, and they act as a client's partner in helping them to solve their most challenging marketing issues. Many agencies have evolved. Some create and sell their own products, others have allocated time, money and resources to labs and skunkwork like faculties. Some have even become financial partners with clients - working together to grow the business - and move away from time-based billing. There has been some level of motion at these varying new business models, but nothing has truly broken through (yet).

Stuck in the mud?

Some might argue that us marketers are missing the bigger opportunity, but it's hard for me to agree with those sentiments. Marketing agencies are set-up to do a certain thing (as are brands). Suddenly telling them that they have to become technology companies or venture capital endeavors to survive is actually telling them that they have to either completely change their business model or add in an entirely new skill-set that runs anathema to what has made them successful to date.

So, what works?

It would be wonderful to say, "no problem, let's just embrace this whole 'technology' thing and move on!" As we all know change is hard (especially as your business begins to flourish). There are some keen lessons coming out of Silicon Valley that can't be ignored. In the same breath, there are some keen lessons coming out of Madison Avenue that can't be ignored, either. In as much as marketers need to be spending time at TechCrunch Disrupt, marketers also need to spend equal amounts of time studying psychology, sociology, art and storytelling. Ultimately, as technology connects more people and as more people become content creators and curators, the true job of the marketer is going to be a hybrid that moves beyond putting messaging in front of people to a better understanding of what motivates people to buy things in a world that has changed so dramatically. I'm not sure that there are many startups in the Valley tackling this challenge.

It will be interesting to see if marketers are up for this massive challenge... and if they'll lead it or be dragged through it. 

Tags:

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technology

trench wars

You Can Learn A Lot From Someone Who Makes Comic Books

Why didn't they have commencement speeches like this when I was growing up?

In the past couple of years, it seems like more and more amazingly powerful commencement speeches have been making their way online. The Steve Jobs one still gets its fair share of million of views each and every year (watch it here: Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005). This week, Julien Smith (author of The Flinch and co-author of Trust Agents with Chris Brogan), directed me over to this beautiful twenty minute speech by famed comic book artist, author and renaissance man, Neil Gaiman.

Listen to Neil Gaiman.

The University of the Arts made the right choice in having Gaiman speak to their graduates. I'm usually the first one to cringe at anybody standing at a lectern and reading a speech, but Gaiman is one of the very few who can pull it off in a human way. Beyond his personable performance, the gold lies in his content. I hope you extrapolate the same two key messages from his presentation that I did:

Be happy. The best advice he ever received came from horror author, Stephen King, at the peak of Gaiman's popularity (when his comic book series, Sandman, was taking off). King told Gaiman to "enjoy this moment." Gaiman's reasons for not following the best piece of advice that he ever received is classic: he was too busy worrying and trying to push things forward. We often don't "stop and smell the roses." It's a massively powerful moment of the speech and one that I hope you will self-reflect on it as much as I did.

Make mistakes. Like you, I hate making mistakes. We all know that making mistakes is how we grow, yet we dread making mistakes more than anything. We all know that making mistakes (many, many, many mistakes) is what gets us to that one, unique result that creates a true breakthrough and/or innovation. I'm hopeful I can follow Gaiman's advice to make mistakes, but it could well be the best piece of advice that I ever received and ignored as well... sadly.

You must have twenty minutes?

I know you're busy. I'm busy too. I found twenty minutes to watch this masterful commencement speech from Neil Gaiman and it's in your best interest to find the time too.

Watch this...

Tags:

apple

chris brogan

comic book

comic book artist

commencement speech

julien smith

neil gaiman

online video

presentation

public speaking

sandman

speech

stephen king

steve jobs

the flinch

the university of the arts

trust agents

Facebook Should Not Be Treated like Other Media

What is Facebook ?

It seems like an easy enough question to answer, doesn't it? If you ask the co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, he's likely to tell you that it's a platform which hopes to connect the world in a much more open way. If you ask the average person on the street, they'll probably tell you that it's an online place to connect with friends. If you ask a nerd like me, you'll probably hear the words "online social network" or "social media channel" bandied around. None of those are wrong answers, but none of those are tied to any semblance of a business objective.

We're looking for the business of Facebook.

Apple sells computers, iPhones and iPads. Ford sells cars, vans and trucks. Lululemon sells yoga clothing and gear. What does Facebook sell? You could say advertising. They sell advertising to the tune of several billions of dollars each and every year. If we lay that business model against other companies that sell advertising (think newspapers, magazines, TV shows, radio stations, online channels - like The Huffington Post, etc...), we wind up in one place: Facebook is a media company. Is that how the c-level suite of Facebook would define themselves? If Facebook is a media company, we then have to ask ourselves: what kind of media channel does Facebook provide and how does it compare to those other media channels?

This is where we start getting into trouble.

The current woes of Facebook's IPO is being driven by business people who are lumping Facebook into every other media channel and comparing it - in terms of advertising revenue performance - to them. Why are we trying to make Facebook be like every other media business? Well, with over nine hundred million people connected on it, we have a mass audience of eyeballs that are primed for marketing and media messages because they spend so much time on Facebook staring at pictures of people they swore they would never want to see again after high school. The problem with this business model diagnosis is that the average Facebook user probably doesn't believe that they're on a media page, do they? The average Facebook user has about 120 connections. They're not on Facebook to read the news, watch a funny music video or edit a piece of content. They're on Facebook to share personal information with either people that they know or people that they want to know. A brand's ability to get a message through to an individual with such a small amount of connections is challenging... to say the least. Facebook is a very personal experience for most users.

The business of Facebook is still - for the most part - undefined.

Two weeks ago, at the Canadian Marketing Association's Annual Summit 2012, Jordan Banks (head of Facebook in Canada) started off his presentation by saying that Facebook has accomplished only one percent of what it has set out to do, and that because of its massive user base, it will do some things right and some things wrong moving forward. The context of that quote wasn't so much skewed towards product and future developments but to the business of Facebook. What this means is that it's hard to say what the value of a Facebook stock should truly be worth, because Facebook has not clearly put a stake in the ground to define its own business model yet. So, if the only measurement we're using to define the value and business of Facebook is the advertising revenue that it's currently pulling in, we will probably be very far off of the mark when it comes to a true valuation. The problem is we have no way of knowing if that true valuation is way more than what the stock is currently trading at or if the net result of Facebook pushing beyond that one percent of where they're at resolves to a place that doesn't show any real semblance of a business model.

Is that even possible?

It is. This doesn't mean that Facebook is bad. It just means that one billion people sharing their interests between friends may not be the most exciting IPO in the history of business, nor does it mean that there is hundreds of billions of dollars at play. It may, ultimately, just mean that Facebook is a place that connects the world in a much more open way. Nothing more. Nothing less. Until Facebook figures out how that becomes a serious business, brands may be best suited to figure out how to be relevant enough in a way to speak to a social graph with one hundred and twenty connections, instead of figuring out how to make Facebook so generic that it can be advertised on as if it were the website for The New York Times.

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post called, Media Hacker . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

The Huffington Post - Facebook Should Not Be Treated like Other Media .

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canadian marketing association

cma

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magazine

mark zuckerberg

marketing

media

media channel

media column

media company

media hacker

newspaper

online channel

online social network

radio station

social graph

social media

the huffington post

the new york times

tv show

Amazon's Ever-Growing Long Tail

This is less about the tail making more money than the head.

Chris Anderson's debut business book, The Long Tail - Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, came out in 2004 with one simple concept: companies could make significant profits from selling small volumes of hard-to-find products to many customers instead of only selling large numbers of a handful of popular items. The theory of The Long Tail is that the total sales of these non-hit products could outsell those of the few popular items. Whether or not this has crystallized is not the point. Because of the Internet, companies can now carry an endless amount of inventory as they're no longer relegated to the limitations of a physical store's square footage.

Amazon is a great example of the long tail at work.

If you've been playing along at home, you already know how much love I have (and have always had) for Amazon. I'm also a massive fan of obscure content, so the Internet provides a constant flow of unique and niche content coupled with unique and niche products. From rare books to hard-to-find electronics, it's hard to beat Amazon's impressive play of the long tail. This was pushed even further this past week when Amazon launched the "Never Before on DVD" store, which offers more than two thousand titles from companies like Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures and more. Where else do you think you're going to score a DVD copy of Man From Atlantis: Complete TV Movies Collection (Remastered!)?

Long live the long tail.

This is just another shift in the ever-changing and constantly evolving retail channel. It's not a question as to whether or not there is a mass market for anything anymore. We're quickly moving to a very unique moment in time when customized products are becoming a cost-effective reality for mass merchant. Will Amazon's "Never Before on DVD" store be the next evolution of online video or movies? Probably not, because it's not about big hits and blockbusters so much as it is about helping people find those rare gems or creating a whole new level of movie discovery.

Regardless, it's moments like these that give me a whole new appreciation for the power of technology, the Internet, connectivity and delivering what consumers want.

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amazon

blockbuster

business

chris anderson

content

internet

man from atlantis

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movies

never before on dvd

online video

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sony pictures

television

the long tail

walt disney studios

warner bros

Digging Deeper Into Social Business

Episode #307 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Welcome to episode #307 of Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast. Matt Ridings has been deeply involved in the Digital Marketing sphere for a very long time. Most recently, he partnered up with Amber Naslund (Brass Tack Thinking and co-author of The Now Revolution) to launch SideraWorks, a social business consultancy. Matt is a business strategist, speaker and writer who has played both sides of the fence (both client-side and agency-side) working with such illustrious brands as Levi's, Cisco, JetBlue, British Airways and many more. We actually recorded this conversation back in January, but due to show schedules, etc... I could not get it posted until today (sorry, Matt!). Regardless, now more than ever, the marketing industry has been taken by storm with all things "social business." In this episode, we dissect what, exactly, a social business is and how it can help companies to better connect to their consumers and fellow team members. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #307.

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advertising

advertising podcast

amber naslund

blog

blogging

branding

branding strategist

brass tack thinking

british airways

cisco

david usher

digital marketing

facebook

grand central publishing

hachette book group

itunes

jetblue

jonathan salem baskin

levis

marketer

marketing

marketing book

marketing podcast

matt ridings

online social network

podcast

podcasting

sideraworks

social media

techguerilla

twitter

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #101

93Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Born This Way - New York Magazine . "I'm absolutely loving Jonathan Haidt 's The Righteous Mind , and in an election year, its implications for who wins votes cannot be overstated. So it was great to see this article on how we're largely pre-wired to vote Red or Blue, Right or Left, Conservative or Liberal. It posits an evolutionary agenda behind our political leanings, with curious consequences: 'Citizens with ­really strong immune systems are going to be all right with immigration,' ­McDermott ventures, because they'll be less concerned with the pathogen threat that outsiders pose." (Alistair for Hugh).

Getting Plowed - Maisonneuve . "Montreal's snowplow industry is a dirty, dirty business. In this Maisonneuve investigative study, find out how rival plow companies set out to sabotage one another in a crooked battle for the huge snow cleaning contracts Montreal awards. With $700M at stake, and a small cabal of contractors using codewords to rig bids, this is an eye-opening look at corruption in what seems like a mundane matter." (Alistair for Mitch).

The Canadian Oil Sand Mines Refused Us Access, So We Rented This Plane To See What They Were Up To - Business Insider . "In Canada, we keep hearing about the Alberta oil sands, and the environmental impact of this very messy - and vast - oil extraction process.  Business Insider wanted to investigate on the ground, but the oil companies refused to let them poke around. So, the journalists rented a plane and took aerial photos of the region north of Edmonton where the oil sands development is happening." (Hugh for Alistair).

The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why The Economy Won't Get Better Any Time Soon - Blog Maverick . "The streets of our hometown, Montreal, have been full of dissent for a few months now with students here protesting the provincial government's plans to raise post-secondary tuition rates (which are set by the province). Quebec's tuition is already the lowest in Canada, and significantly lower than in the United States - so what's the big deal? Well, Mark Cuban has an answer from across the border, looking at post-secondary education fees in the US, and the huge balloon of debt among students there. In fact, Cuban compares the student debt bubble to the housing bubble that helped crash the economy in 2007/2008. The numbers are comparable: American students are saddled with one trillion dollars in debt. This is a weight on the future, which Cuban argues will hamper any economic growth in the US. Something which Quebec student protesters rightly worry about, and we should all consider when we do the math on increasing student fees." (Hugh for Mitch).

Scamworld: 'Get rich quick' schemes mutate into an online monster - The Verge . "Here's some long-form online journalism about a corner of the Internet that I have always despised: the get rich quick on informational marketing products websites. You know the ones: they're usually one long page of copy and testimonials promising you riches from the comforts of your own home for only a few hours each week. What looks like nothing more than an affiliate marketing pyramid scheme is actually a fascinating look into what technology can do when used by those who have nothing but their own financial gain at hand. Yes, the world can be a cold, dark and dirty place but it doesn't have to be. Scammers, spammers and others are pretty savvy and sophisticated (after you read this, you'll see just how savvy they truly are). Pack a lunch before you click on this one, but it will leave you at the edge of your seat." (Mitch for Alistair).

Hack The Cover - @craigmod . "I'm just finishing up my first draft for my second business book, CTRL ALT DEL . I'm also currently working on the book cover design with my publisher, Business Plus . It's interesting how we used to design book covers that could be spotted from across the floor of your favorite bookseller, but now we have to design book covers that look good when they're the size of a stamp on a digital screen. That's not totally true, now we have to design a book cover that looks good on a bookstore bookshelf, one that looks good on a stack in Walmart , one that looks good in Amazon 's Kindle store, one that looks good on a website, one that looks good in black and white for e-readers, for iPad, for iPhone and on and on and on. Is this a challenge or a new opportunity to be infinitely creative? Read on to find out as more and more people to continue to judge a book by its cover." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alistair croll

amazon

bitcurrent

blog maverick

business insider

business plus

complete web monitoring

craigmod

ctrl alt del

gigaom

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

ipad

iphone

jonathan haidt

kindle

librivox

link exchange

linkbait

maisonneuve

managing bandwidth

mark cuban

media hacks

new york magazine

pressbooks

story

the book oven

the righteous mind

the verge

walmart

year one labs

Why Facebook Camera Matters

Facebook launched a mobile camera app.

You may be wondering why Facebook launched a mobile camera app (quaintly called, Camera) just a short while after purchasing Instagram in a heart-stopping billion dollar acquisition. Everywhere you turn online, there is discourse about this app. Most of the discourse is a quizzical wonder as to why Facebook would even bother (especially because many people think that it is inferior to Instagram's capabilities).

Facebook Camera is not for you.

If you have Instagram, odds are that Facebook Camera is not for you. If you read this blog, odds are that Facebook Camera is not for. Facebook wants more and more people taking and sharing pictures (one of the biggest and most important functionalities of the online social network), and they're smart enough to know that trying to get more and more people to join Instagram (another online social network) is probably a lot harder than launching a camera app that automatically syncs up to your Facebook profile. Facebook's new camera app is for everybody else. It's not for us.

It's a mobile world.

You know it. I know it. Facebook knows it. Putting the IPO issues to the side and the many challenges that the company will now face as a public one, Facebook Camera demonstrates that the company is both serious about mobile and that it's going to do everything it can to move forward fast. This speed is crucial because we are quickly leaving the browser-based/web-based Internet as we have known it to date, into a world of hyper-connected individuals who are highly untethered (no more fixed stations).

Facebook Camera is for everyone.

Will it be a raging success? It's way too early to call. Should Facebook have simply integrated Instagram? Who knows? Regardless, this camera app has allowed them to take another step into the mobile world with something that everyone - who is already connected on Facebook - can use (in a very fast and simple way). It's hard to see a downside in this move. My only critical comments are for those online who are quick to judge as if everything and anything that is released should be aimed at the early adopters or more sophisticated users. Remember: the majority of people use the cameras that came with their mobile devices. The majority are not early adopters. The majority are not all that sophisticated with their technology. If Facebook Camera makes it dead easy to take, play with and share photos, this could become a runaway success...

Whether us eager beavers like it or not.

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blog

camera

early adopter

facebook

facebook camera

facebook ipo

instagram

mobile app

mobile camera app

mobile device

online social network

photography

smartphone

technology

The Blog Of Awesome

In a sea of content, how do you make your stuff stand out?

This was one of the questions I was asked during the Burning Questions Panel at this morning's C2 MTL conference. In short, my answer was: Be awesome because mediocrity is very obvious in a world where everybody can publish. On June 28th, 2008 (nearly four years ago), I penned a blog post titled, Mass Media Or Mass Content - What's Worse? In this blog post, I stated: "I don't comment and share as much as I would like to. I skim, graze and peruse everything. Because there is so much Mass Content, I'm beginning to feel like I'm not even able to give the truly great stuff the time it well deserves." Even back then, it was becoming abundantly clear that for all of the amazing things that social media has brought us, there was an increasing amount of content for people to consume and connect with. So, while we were busy lamenting the strict limitations of traditional media (i.e. three major television networks who are telling us what and when to watch), the trade-off to a world where everyone can create and publish content may have brought us to the same, frustrating, conclusion: there's a lot of stuff and we can't capture it all.

The book of awesome.

Neil Pasricha's The Book Of Awesome has become a runaway international best-seller. In the spirit of its simplicity, here is The Blog of Awesome (or, how to start thinking about your content in a way that may enable it to reach a wider and more interested audience)...

The Blog of Awesome.

Awesome isn't easy. If nobody is reading or connecting to your content, you have to either change what you're writing about or dig deeper to find an audience that will connect with it.

Awesome is the long haul. There are no short cuts. Some capture lighting in a bottle, but they are the rare exception. Most people who have become awesome have put in their 10,000 hours worth of Malcolm Gladwell Outliers-esque practice.

Awesome is obvious. There's a famous line from a government official who was asked to define "pornography." His answer was: "I know it when I see it." Awesome is the same. You know it when you see it.

Awesome takes time. If you're just banging out a piece of content, it probably won't fly. The stuff we all qualify as awesome takes time and nurturing to create.

Awesome is a function of creativity. If you think you're not creative and your function is to create content, you're starting off in a bad place. This is your art. You art must be creative.

Awesome is fun. I was stopped during a break at the conference by a peer who asked me about my blogging regiment. They were saying that their team members can't even produce as much content as I do. I asked if their team is having fun doing it? They replied that it's their job. While blogging is a part of my job, it's much more of a joy than work. People who create awesome are having fun (even if they're tortured during the creative process).

Awesome is universal. It speaks to anyone and everyone, everywhere. This doesn't mean each and every human individual, but it does mean that it universally applies to everyone that it is targeted too. I'm hopeful that my content resonates as much with someone in the United States as it does to someone in Romania.

Awesome is not big. In a big world where everyone is connected, awesome can be universal to a very small, specialized and select niche group... and there's nothing wrong with that.

Awesome demonstrates skill. Skill is not originality. Skill is aptitude and ability. There are a handful of individuals who don't create much original content, but they are curators extraordinaire (I'm thinking, in particular, of people like Jason Hirschhorn and his Media ReDEFined feed).

Awesome is now. Slowly, over time an audience builds (hopefully). But in a Twitter-speed world, Janet Jackson sung the gospel with her words, "what have you done for me lately?" Awesome is now. I know many a-listers who were awesome... but they're now just not that interesting. Awesome is also hard to maintain.

Awesome is not tactical. I do not believe that there is a roadmap. I do believe that awesome is as subjective as art and music. My awesome will be your drudgery. Your awesome may be of little interest to me. It's a big, brave world and there's lots of room for everybody to find an audience that thinks that they're awesome.

I am not awesome.

It's nice to be complimented and I love it when a blog post, podcast or client work at Twist Image starts to spread, but I don't think of myself (or this blog) as awesome. I'm humble enough and have the humility to know that what I do connects with a select audience, and that's just fine by me.

Are you awesome?

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