Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 332
February 10, 2012
Get Lost On YouTube
It's one of my favorite past-times and guilty pleasures.
After all of the work is done and the house is quiet, instead of sitting back and letting the television waft over me, I go and get lost on YouTube. I usually start with some cheesy hair metal bands from the eighties, but it quickly devolves into this amazing world of acoustic music discovery that traipses across genres and generations. It takes me back, it pushes me forward and it moves me into directions I could have never imagined possible back when I was much younger and much more interested in music.
Long live serendipity.
Many people feel that the Internet kills serendipity simply because we're only consuming or connecting to content that we're looking for. I think YouTube has done an amazing job of changing that with their related videos. It inspires more discovery and over the past couple of years, YouTube has been the number one reason that I have been purchasing music... and a lot of it. Better than that, it has helped me discover and support musicians I would have otherwise never been exposed to. People like Mike Masse who plays his acoustic guitar at the Pie Pizzeria in South Jordan, Utah...
I am not alone.
Mike's videos have over five million combined views. He launched a Kickstarter project (Mike Massé will record his first original CD!) and raised over $10,000 for his music project. This isn't a Blog post about YouTube or the viability of a career in music. This is a Blog post about just how much (and how dramatic) our world has changed in a few short years. It affects everything from culture and creativity to business and technology. It's simply amazing to think about how much this interconnectivity and access to content is making our lives that much richer. I could go on and on about how much joy I get from discovering new things each and every day because of the Internet, but I'm a little busy right now getting lost on YouTube.
Do yourself a favor: go get lost on YouTube...
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youtube
February 9, 2012
Endless Aisles
What has your shopping experiences been like lately?
I was recently in New York City giving a presentation at the National Retail Federation's Big Show 2012 event. I was part of the Shop.org First Look series and talked about the massive changes that retail will face as technology, Social Media and mobile collides at the retail level. We have more and more consumers who are connected with highly powerful smartphones at the store level and they're doing a lot more than just price comparison shopping. When you think of the potential and the opportunity to bring those different worlds together, the possibilities become endless (so long as you're not being a creepy brand).
Virtual shopping in a physical store.
During my time in New York City, I had the opportunity to drop into the Uniqlo store on 5th and 53rd. It truly is a sight to see if you're into retail, commerce, fashion and a unique in-store experience. I found two styles of jeans that I really liked, so I bought two pairs. The truth is that I would have bought a couple more, but they were out of my size.
What if?
What if there was a simple touchscreen that allowed me to buy those jeans right then and there? They could be sent to my home or hotel (depending on availability) or it could even let me know when I could come back to the store and pick them up. Seems simple enough in this day and age of e-commerce, doesn't it? Pushing that idea further, I should be able to do that exact same kind of transaction from my smartphone, right?
Hold your horses.
I realize that these types of simple integrations are few and far between when it comes to retailers (and other businesses), but the expectation as a consumer is pretty straight-forward - I can order online, so why can't I order online while I'm in the store? Attribution is one of those hotly debated topics when it comes to the world of retail meets digital and these types of converged interactions (doing e-commerce from the physical store). Think about how that type of transaction may help retailers better understand both consumers and the analytics behind who in the corporate food chain gets awarded the "sale".
It's much bigger than that.
Hadley Malcolm over at USA Today interviewed me about some of the future-trending retail issues for her article, Touch-screens create online shopping experiences at stores. The story, which was picked up by Reveries (titled, Endless Aisles - and yes, I liked Tim Manners' title so much that I stole it for this Blog post), prompted me to think differently about the value of digital signage and touchscreens at the retail level. While all of that has many advantages - from marketing to customization and beyond - the e-commerce integration is going to be a critical component. Not only will retailers have less people like me walking out of the store when I would have spend seventy-five percent more (had the retailer simply had the inventory), but this type of digital commerce will also reshape the entire inventory landscape. Every store is limited by their footprint and historical sales to drive inventory control. No more. If you think about this integration of e-commerce at the retail level (be it on a smartphone or a touchscreen installation), retailers may discover that a store in Peoria sells as much inventory on certain products (or maybe more) than a flagship store in Times Square.
Zero sum games.
Pundits think that e-commerce kills the retail experience. People still like to go out, wander the malls, touch and see what's new and exciting. It's not a zero sum game. The smarter retailers are going to wake-up and realize that e-commerce will no longer be a vertical within their retail experience... it's going to quickly become horizontal. The digitization and ability for consumers to hit the retail level, but have access to the full inventory (and maybe even more products... some of which can even be virtual goods) is going to be the true shopping experience of the soon-to-be-future for retail.
How do you see the future of retail?
Tags:
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The Death Of The Unconference
Does anyone remember the unconference?
There was hope for collaboration and self-organizing groups, but it seems to have gone the way of the corporate spin machine. I was a massive proponent of the unconference movement (I still am!), but that word has been used so poorly by so many groups that it seems to have all but disappeared. In short: calling your conference an "unconference" just to sound young, hip and with it, actually makes you sound old, out-of-touch and stupid. This past month, I've seen a handful of events that are billing themselves as unconferences when, in reality, they're just very shabby and cheap events.
Your conference is not an unconference if...
There is a pre-set agenda. The whole point of an unconference is that group comes together to create the agenda/slate together.
The organizers decide on the agenda. Organizers can help organize the day in terms of logistics (when there are sessions and breaks), but should not be setting the agenda in terms of the content.
The organizers are doing everything. The organizers aren't there to make the event good for everyone else. The event is actually being "run" by everyone. Everyone participates. Unconferences are not about bystanders or attendees. The organizers are there simply to ensure that a venue is secure and that everyone knows where they are going. I'd even argue that this task can be done by the participants as well.
You're charging for it. This will be a contentious issue, but the best unconferences I have been to, have been the ones where everyone took both individual and group responsibility for the event. If the venue requires a fee, everyone chips in equally to pay for it. If you're hungry and want to eat, either bring food or go out and buy some. The true spirit of the unconference movement is that this is NOT a traditional conference. Bring your own nametag, notebook, snacks and drinks. If this is a self-organizing event why should any one individual have a financial risk attached to it? Think about getting sponsors instead of charging for it (if you really have to).
You're attending but not speaking. If you're showing up to consume and not contribute, stay home. Many people don't like to speak in public, that's fine. No one is asking you to give a keynote address. An unconference is a place where like-minded people come to share and challenge one another. Try sitting in circles and think about the event as a live interactive environment, instead of just sitting there hoping the next speaker can entertain you.
You don't enact the law of two-feet. If you're not learning, get up, use your own two feet and go somewhere you can learn. Hallway conversations are great for this. If your unconference isn't littered with spaces for sudden collisions of conversation, it isn't much of an unconference.
Unconference are an amazing opportunity.
You would think that this Blog post should have been written and published five years ago. You would think that unconference are so passé. You would be wrong. After attending close to seventy events each and every year, the handful that stick out in my mind are the more intimate unconferences that I have taken an active part in. An unconference creates an egalitarian moment in time where people from all walks of life (and all levels within an organization) can simply share, learn, communicate and grow. To run a conference and call it an unconference is a disservice to the unconference movement. Many people don't understand this because an unconference looks and acts nothing like their traditional definition of a conference (hence the name of it ;). It saddens me to see how many people start with the right spirit of an unconference but quickly get stuck in all of the trappings of what they think will create a great event (and this - unfortunately - looks a lot like a traditional conference).
If you've never taken part in an unconference, I would encourage you to look into it... or better yet... start your own.
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February 7, 2012
How To Get Started As A Business Leader
Your life and your success is not obvious. It's not a given. It's not a direct path.
I often say that the best careers in marketing (specifically the ones that have a digital/new media slant) are very squiggly. They involve everything from stumbling through university and very crappy jobs to bad choices and decisions that were driven by financial debt instead of personal opportunity. Every year, I do my best to attend the TED conference. A couple of years ago, the name Chris Sacca was bandied around as someone who everyone wanted to not only meet, but hang out with. He was (and still is) a venture capitalist with a background at Google (in the early days) and an early investor in companies like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Kickstarter and others (you can see what he's about right here: Lowercase Capital). On one of the nights at TED, we both happened to be on the same shuttle bus (I was shy and didn't say anything). Later that evening we both sat next to one another at a late night jam-session that was being hosted by one of the hotels (I still didn't say anything). I didn't want to look like a fanboy (I was just impressed with everything that he had done at such a young age). People were constantly swarming him. It felt like there was an air desperation in hopes that some of his magic pixie dust might sprinkle over them. It turns out that - shock of all shocks - Chris is a lot like you and I. He's a normal guy that is just following his dream by trying to help others. He was actually two million dollars in debt not that along ago, but was able to turn his life around. He's endured crappy jobs growing up, and as a venture capitalist is first to admit that he's wrong much more frequently than right. His life philosophy and how he thinks about opportunity should be turned into a book. You'll just want to be a friend's of Chris. If you don't want to be his friend, you will be refreshed by his perspective on business.
It's about your foundation.
Kevin Rose (Digg, Milk, Revision3, etc...) hosts an incredible video podcast called, Foundation, where he has in-depth conversations with, "influential founders, entrepreneurs, and business leaders in the tech community," according to the website. With all of my heavy consumption and infovore mentality, I had not heard about this show until today and somehow stumbled upon this incredible hour-long conversation that Rose did with Chris Sacca from July 2011. I could not stop watching it. Not only is it a fascinating look at Silicon Valley and how relationships are built, it's an amazing education for everyone in marketing to learn from. They talk about the value of networking and relationships, what success looks like, how business models are created and much, much more (including how Sacca thinks Twitter will not only make money and become a big business, but what this means to marketing today... and moving forward).
Stop what you're doing and immerse yourself in this world...
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Digital Tumbleweeds And Virtual Crickets
If you publish online get ready for a lesson in humility.
Brands quit publishing content for the exact same reason that many individuals stop publishing content: the brutal reality that nobody cares. As someone who creates and publishes a lot of content online (roughly six Blog posts and one audio Podcast every week), there is both a certain humility and instant humiliation that comes along with the process.
The cream rises to the top.
Even in a world where two hundred billion videos get viewed every month, the cream still does rise to the top (as the saying goes). It's just that we seem to have a lot more cream and it's fallen into many different niches. With that cream comes a lot of stuff that falls to the bottom. And, that bottom-feeding content, is the vast majority - especially when it comes to content that is related to business - of what populates corporately operated content marketing platforms . Not everyone gets the video viral success of Will It Blend? and few will get the same impact from their corporate Blogs as Dell has had. The other challenge is in maintaining this attention and consistently delivering content that rises to the top.
Content creation can be a humiliating process.
I've spent many evenings tapping away at the keyboard, as the ideas flowed in a fast and furious pace. I've hit the "publish" button thinking to myself, "this could well be my best Blog post to date," only to find out a short while later that nobody cared. The post wasn't picked up, tweeted about on Twitter, shared, liked on Facebook and only generated a few (if any) comments.
What did I get? Digital tumbleweeds or virtual crickets.
I don't care what Simon & Garfunkel tell you, the sound of silence is not pretty a pretty sound at all. In the pre-Social Media world, we used to publish our thoughts, but before that stage we had a semblance of validation. The publishers, editors and fellow content creators gave that validation to us, by agreeing to publish our work in the first place. Even when the work may have been sub-par, sometimes the brand that published the content helped carry it. I'd even argue that the public's reaction to that content mattered significantly less than the fact that it was published. The validation of content came from it being published more than it's widely accepted appeal to the masses. Now - in a world where the half-life of a Blog post can be less than twelve hours - you can tell if your work resonates... or if it's digital tumbleweeds.
How to win friends and influence people.
Countless Blog posts and seminars have been produced on how to get your content to rise up and be heard. While there are certain "tricks" that can be pulled off (a catchy headline, a cute picture of a puppy, a how-to-list, something that will make people laugh, cry, think... or all of the above), there is still a "secret sauce" that makes some content work. Having conducted over three hundred interviews with industry leaders, one common thread of thought is pervasive: the majority of content creators are just as surprised as anyone else is when one piece of content works while another is met with digital tumbleweeds. They often feel like their best work is not met with the attention they anticipated and that the content they felt was filler is the stuff that their community ran with.
The real-time analytics is us.
The true humility and humiliation of Social Media is not what the web analytics tell us... it's what the audience does (or doesn't do) with the content. You can buy audience, links and clicks, but you can't buy people who care and want to share whatever it is that you are doing. Ultimately, the humiliation should not stop us... it should drive us. Everyday is a new opportunity to connect and engage, so the brands that give up, don't try or tinker with their content are completely missing the point. Some stuff will rise to the top while other stuff will be met with digital tumbleweeds. It's the nature of the beast. The trick is in being able to identify that - over the long-haul (and yes, it takes a significant amount of time to garner any semblance of traction) - you need to look at the entire body of work as a benchmark for if your content resonates. It's also wise to use those daily moments of humiliation from digital tumbleweeds as a compass for what resonates... and what doesn't.
How do you deal with the digital tumbleweeds and virtual crickets?
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 - Social Media and the Humiliation Effect .
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February 5, 2012
CTRL AT DEL - The Business Book
CTRL ALT DEL is the title of my second business book. It will be published in Spring 2013.
Following is the official press release and some media mention of the pending project...
BUSINESS PLUS To Publish CTRL ALT DEL by Mitch Joel
Author of the best-selling business book, Six Pixels of Separation, and President of award-winning Digital Marketing agency, Twist Image, signs with Business Plus for the release of his sophomore book.
NEW YORK, February 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - Business Plus, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing (Hachette Book Group USA), has announced it will publish CTRL ALT DEL: Reboot Your Business (and Yourself) in a Connected World by Mitch Joel. Business Plus also published Joel's first book, Six Pixels of Separation, in 2009. 800-CEO-Read ranked Six Pixels of Separation at #13 on their 2010 list of best-selling books, and the book has been translated into French, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese and many more languages around the world.
In making the announcement, Rick Wolff, Vice President, Executive Editor, Grand Central Publishing and Publisher, Editor-in-Chief, Business Plus said, "Six Pixels of Separation was, without question, the best book on how digital media is changing marketing and communications forever. With CTRL ALT DEL, Mitch has truly upped his game. Now it's less about if a business needs Social Media or a mobile application because technology has fundamentally changed the DNA of business. As a leading thinker and doer, Mitch's vision for how this is going to play out is fascinating and in CTRL ALT DEL, he demonstrates how businesses can thrive moving forward. Mitch's book is going to be one of our lead business titles for spring 2013, and we're thrilled to be working together with him again."
Marketing Magazine dubbed him the "Rock Star of Digital Marketing" and called him, "one of North America's leading digital visionaries." In 2006 he was named one of the most influential authorities on Blog Marketing in the world. In 2008, Mitch was named Canada's Most Influential Male in Social Media, one of the top 100 online marketers in the world, and was awarded the highly prestigious Canada's Top 40 Under 40. Most recently, Mitch was named one of iMedia's 25 Internet Marketing Leaders and Innovators in the world. His newspaper business column, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation, runs bi-monthly in both The Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun and he also has a regular column, Media Hacker, on The Huffington Post. His first book, Six Pixels of Separation was named after his successful Blog and Podcast.
"This is a time of great upheaval in business," says Joel when describing CTRL ALT DEL. "The challenge is that most businesses don't know how to adapt and most of the people who are working for these companies don't know how to change. Technology hasn't just transformed how we buy or how we sell our wares to consumers or how we connect socially. Technology has sent business through a rapid state of genetic mutation and we're still in the middle of this evolution. I call this moment in time: purgatory. We're not in hell... but this certainly isn't heaven either. CTRL ALT DEL will both clear the brush and act as a roadmap through this purgatory. The real question this book will answer is: do you want to be employable in the next five years?"
The book deal includes world rights and on exclusive submission to Rick Wolff at Grand Central Publishing by James Levine of Levine Greenberg Literary Agency.
About Business Plus - Grand Central Publishing - Hachette Book Group USA
About Business Pluss/Hachette Book Group:
Business Plus is one of the leading business book publishers in the world today, with such notable authors as Hank Paulson, Jack Welch, Ted Turner, Dr. Robert Sutton, Adam Lashinsky, and many more.
Business Plus is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, which is owned by Hachette Book Group (HBG), a leading trade publisher based in New York and a division of Hachette Livre, the second-largest publisher in the world. HBG publishes under the divisions of Little, Brown and Company, Little Brown Books for Young Readers, Grand Central Publishing, FaithWords, Center Street, Orbit, and Hachette Digital.
CTRL ALT DEL Media:
CTRL Alt Del : un nouveau projet signé Mitch Joel - InfoPresse (in French).
CTRL ALT DEL - Twitter mentions.
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Madison Avenue And Mountain View Collide For The Future Of Marketing
Episode #291 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.
This is also episode #20.20 of Across The Sound. Joseph Jaffe is widely regarded as one of the top Marketing Bloggers (Jaffe Juice) and Podcasters (both Jaffe Juice in audio and Jaffe Juice TV in video). He is the author of three excellent books (Life After The 30-Second Spot, Join The Conversation and Flip The Funnel). A long-time friend (and one of the main inspirations behind the Six Pixels of Separation Blog and Podcast), we've decided to hold monthly conversations, debates and back-and-forths that will dive a little deeper into the Digital Marketing and Social Media landscape. This is our 20th conversation (or, as I like to affectionately call it, Across The Sound 20.20). This week, we talk about Joe's latest venture, Evol8tion, and what can happen when Madison Avenue meets Mountain View. Are technology startups the future of marketing? Jaffe is banking on it. 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 #291.
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February 3, 2012
Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #85
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:
The Antikythera Mechanism . "I'm kind of obsessed with this thing. It's a piece of machinery built in around 100 BC by the Greeks. It's a computer that can calculate astronomical positions - a thousand years too early. It's so awesome, there's even a song about it . The Greeks knew all sorts of things about disease, math and science. But Emperor Justinian , and church leaders after him, made such ' pagan teachings' heresy and human progress was delayed for centuries. In the middle of the Republican primaries, every time I see well-proven, well-understood things like evolution or global warming or vaccination called into question, I think of this mechanism. Where would we be today if we'd had mechanical computers two thousand years ago, and if reason weren't such a dirty word?" (Alistair for Hugh).
25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore - Open Salon . "The only thing rougher than being a publisher these days is being a bookstore owner. I found this list by owner J L Sathre to be broadly applicable to all manner of small businesses. It's full of obvious -- but seldom implemented -- wisdom." (Alistair for Mitch).
A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors . "I, for one, welcome our robot overloards." (Hugh for Alistair).
The Caging Of America - The New Yorker . "The US is prison-mad. Why? This is a wonderful bit of writing." (Hugh for Mitch).
Jonathan Franzen Continues to Hate Technology - The Atlantic . "This reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit where the old curmudgeonly man would say, 'back in my day, we didn't have games! We'd just stare at the sun... and we liked it that way!' I was never one to love sayings like, 'back in the good old days.' In this feature the technophobic author says things like: 'The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology,' and 'I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn't change.' Do people who think and say these things even know what they fear? You can spill water on a paperback and still read it? Huh? The last time I spilled a coffee on a book, it went straight to the recycling bin. A sense of permanence? If someone takes my book, it's gone. If my house burns down, my books are gone. I can buy another Kindle and just re-download everything I own. Also, publishers can make available multiple editions and let consumers chose which edition they want. Digital feels more permanent and accident proof to me." (Mitch for Alistair).
No Joke: Alain de Botton Wants To Build Temples To Atheism - Fast Company Design . "Whether Alain de Botton is doing this as a publicity stunt to promote his latest book, Religion For Atheists, or if is he's dead serious, it is this kind of thinking that we - as a society - should think about embracing. Everyone should have the right to believe in God (or not). That being said, none of us can deny the amazing things that humankind has accomplished in such a relatively short matter of time... whether it was with the help of God or not." (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:
alain de botton
alistair croll
antikythera mechanism
bitcurrent
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jonathan frazen
kindle
librivox
link exchange
linkbait
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nano quadrotors
open salon
pressbooks
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saturday night live
story
the atlantic
the book over
the new yorker
year one labs
youtube
February 2, 2012
Expect Big Changes At Facebook
Most companies change dramatically after their initial public offering.
There is a reason that Facebook is going public. And while many are speculating as to the reasons by digging through the company's SEC filing, I think Facebook is going public because it needs to now compensate those who have built it to become the impressive empire that it truly is. It may be a simplistic view, but that's my view. The bigger question that is on everybody's mind is: will Facebook change once they are a public company? The answer is, without a doubt, "yes!"
Is that a bad thing?
No. Not at all. Let's face it: Facebook has been changing since it first started. Does Google look anything like Google before its IPO? What about Apple? The best companies, the most innovative companies are the ones who flow in a constant state of iterative change and evolution. Facebook's challenge comes from its size. The sheer volume of users and the sheer value of the valuation will make it have to perform unlike any company that has come before it. When you have over 800 million users (and closely approaching one billion users), any move (big or small) will ruffle feathers and create backlash within the user community. It's a part of the Facebook ecosystem and you can expect that to increase as the public takes stock in the business.
Applaud Mark Zuckerberg.
In preparation for the IPO, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, embedded a "letter to the shareholders" within the SEC filing (to read the full letter, please go here: Fast Company - Mark Zuckerberg Hacks S-1 Filing With Letter To Shareholders On Eve Of Facebook IPO) that stated: "Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected. We think it's important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us, how we make decisions and why we do the things we do... We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services." While Facebook may not have been created to be a company. It is now a company. A big company. And it's soon to be a company that will answer to Wall Street. I thoroughly enjoyed Zuckerberg's letter and said a silent prayer that Wall Street will listen to what he and the company would like to do. Yes, I'm still that naive (I'd like to think that I'm hopeful for change).
So, what can we expect from Facebook? (here comes the armchair quarterback...)
A change in people. Once the company becomes public a lot of people will become millionaires. The money will change a vast majority of these people. Some will retire, others will take the money to start their own ventures, many of them will lose their motivation and the majority of them will just go bonkers because they're rich (plastic surgery, fancy cars, big houses, etc...). This has nothing to do with Facebook and is much more an indictment of humanity. It happens in every other business, it will happen at Facebook. They are going to have to replace or augment many of the people who have been there for a long while. This will change the culture and possible product development.
Mobile. To stay competitive, Facebook is going to have to up their game when it comes to both mobile devices and smartphones. This is where Twitter was making the most advances and now Facebook is going to have to ensure that the mobile and smartphone Facebook experience is as good (if not better) than the Web-based one.
Touch. While many people simply access Facebook via the web browsers on their iPad and tablets, having a native app that works with a touch navigation (and all of the powerful and different usability that comes along with it) is going to become a much more important component of how Facebook evolves. We are quickly moving to a touchscreen world and Facebook will need to become a leader in this charge.
Beyond the wall. It started when Facebook started allowing people to embed the "like" button anywhere and everywhere, but Facebook is going to have to open up the platform beyond its walled garden. This may not get as extreme as having true data portability, but with the pending slew of connected TVs, Apple television, Google TV and more, people are going to want to access Facebook within many of these new environments and Facebook should welcome the opportunity to be anywhere and everywhere.
Currency. I Blogged about this extensively in March of last year (F-Commerce - Rise Of The Facebook Consumer). With close to one billion connected people, Facebook is not only more populated than the majority of countries, but they have the ability to develop and use their own currency system. It may sound crazy, but one look at Facebook Credits and we could be seeing the very nascent stages of an entirely new monetary system. The idea of people spending money in Facebook and having Facebook provide both the security and transaction to do so is not so far-fetched of an idea anymore.
Marketing. The dollars mentioned in the SEC filing says it all. Facebook has been profitable for the past three years, and a good chunk of the coin has been from advertising revenue. Facebook is much more than a media channel that can fill slots with advertising. The marketing opportunities behind this engine have yet to truly be developed. It is a rich land full of powerful data that knows a lot about people - from where they are and what they like to who they are connected to and what those people are doing. If you think - for a second - that it's only about advertising, you would be sorely mistaken. Facebook and the marketing that comes along with it will be one of the biggest opportunities for the brand... while at the same time it will create the most discussion from the users.
In the end, I'm hopeful that Facebook will change dramatically... but for the better. What do you think?
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CTRL ALT DEL Is My Next Book
Warning: self-promotional Blog post to follow...
I am very excited to announce that the name of my next book is: CTRL ALT DEL - Reboot Your Business (and Yourself) in a Connected World. The official press release went out this morning via my publisher, Business Plus (an imprint of Grand Central Publishing - Hachette Book Group USA). This is the same publisher as my first book, Six Pixels of Separation, who had the option to pick-up my sophomore business book effort, and I am really (and sincerely) happy that they did. Six Pixels of Separation did some great things (800-CEO-Read ranked it at #13 on their 2010 list of best-selling books, and the book has been translated into French, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese and many more languages around the world). CTRL ALT DEL will be published in the spring of 2013 (early May) and Business Plus has taken worldwide rights to the book (so, expect to see it all over the world in both hardcover, audio and digital formats). Now comes the hard work of pulling it all together.
What's the crux of CTRL ALT DEL?
Six Pixels of Separation was about how (and why) new media had changed business forever. CTRL ALT DEL answers the question "now what?" Now that everyone is on social networks, sharing and conversing, how do you adapt your business to capitalize on just how much our world has changed, and get the edge on where all of this is taking us? I think we've moved past disruption into unchartered territory. If you follow this Blog, you know that this is a time of great upheaval in business. The challenge is that most businesses don't know how to adapt and most of the people who are working for these companies don't know how to change. Technology hasn't just transformed how we buy or how we sell our wares to consumers or how we connect socially. Technology has sent business through a rapid state of genetic mutation and we're still in the middle of this evolution. I call this moment in time: purgatory. We're not in hell... but this certainly isn't heaven either. CTRL ALT DEL will both clear the brush and act as a roadmap through this purgatory. The book will be broken down into two sections. Section one (titled Reboot: Business) looks at the five modern movements that are changing business forever. Section two (titled: Reboot: You) covers the seven triggers that every employee and entrepreneur must have so that they can shift from just doing their jobs to doing the work that they were meant to do.
The real question this book will answer is: do you want to be employable in the next five years?
The book proposal for my second book was supposed to be done two Christmas' ago. I was tinkering with the idea of a book about new business models and how every company could learn from what some of these newer startups were doing, but the flow of the book just wasn't clicking with me. Fast forward to this past holiday season: I was in the shower one morning when everything just fell into place. The whole concept - chapter by chapter - came to me. I spent two days writing a fifteen-thousand word book proposal. I sent it to my literary agent who sent it on to my publisher, and the deal happened in a matter of weeks. I'm really excited because I am writing the book that I would want to read if I were either leading a brand today or thinking about how to move up in an organization or start my own business. The truth is that many are scared because they don't know what to do, while many others see this as one of best opportunities that they will ever have in their professional lifetime. This isn't about simple semantics and shifting mindsets, it's about understanding that during this state of purgatory many business will die and many jobs will disappear, but in the same breath many business will thrive, many new businesses will be created and many new jobs will be invented. The question is: do you want to be employable in the next five years?
I think it's time for business to CTRL ALT DEL. I'm excited about this book and I'm excited for those who are in desperate need of a reboot.
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Six Pixels of Separation
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