It amazes me how often I have to “build a case” for listening. I don’t mean listening in the Social Media sense where “listening” is often a proxy for what Neuro-linguistic Programmers would call mirroring. What I am interested in promoting is the philosophy of paying attention to voices outside of your head and using what they say to drive action.

Our power as people in a society is that we aren’t limited by our own creativity. We can turn to others and use their expertise to bolster our own. When building a business or just bringing an idea to market, creating this kind of feedback loop is critical.

I once had a conversation with Scott Rafer (Lookery, MyBlogLog) that he probably doesn’t remember, but I definitely do. In it, he told me that successful entrepreneurs recognize the fact that they are a “cover band.” We build what other people dream. I’ve always held this close to heart, I’m convinced that good products consist of interesting ideas plus a metric ton of feedback.

I mentioned on Twitter that, “I think a strong case could be made that Listening (in the abstract) is what separates successful ventures from failed ones.” With that in mind, I wanted to take you through some other thoughts on listening.

From, “The Importance Of Effective Communication”

Communications is so difficult because at each step in the process there major potential for error. By the time a message gets from a sender to a receiver there are four basic places where transmission errors can take place and at each place, there are a multitude of potential sources of error. Thus it is no surprise that social psychologists estimate that there is usually a 40-60% loss of meaning in the transmission of messages from sender to receiver.

. . .

Skill in communication involves a number of specific strengths. The first we will discuss involves listening skills. The following lists some suggests for effective listening when confronted with a problem at work:

Listen openly and with empathy to the other person

Judge the content, not the messenger or delivery; comprehend before you judge

Use multiple techniques to fully comprehend (ask, repeat, rephrase, etc.)

Active body state; fight distractions

Ask the other person for as much detail as he/she can provide; paraphrase what the other is saying to make sure you understand it and check for understanding

Respond in an interested way that shows you understand the problem and the employee’s concern

Attend to non-verbal cues, body language, not just words; listen between the lines

Ask the other for his views or suggestions

State your position openly; be specific, not global

Communicate your feelings but don’t act them out (eg. tell a person that his behavior really upsets you; don’t get angry)

Be descriptive, not evaluative-describe objectively, your reactions, consequences

Be validating, not invalidating (”You wouldn’t understand”); acknowledge other;’s uniqueness, importance

Be conjunctive, not disjunctive (not “I want to discuss this regardless of what you want to discuss”);

Don’t totally control conversation; acknowledge what was said

Own up: use “I”, not “They”… not “I’ve heard you are noncooperative”

Don’t react to emotional words, but interpret their purpose

Practice supportive listening, not one way listening

Decide on specific follow-up actions and specific follow up dates

From, “Primal Leadership” by Daniel Goldman

Style 1, Visionary, describes leadership that inspires people by focusing on long-term goals. An effective visionary leader listens to the values held by the individuals within the group, and thus can explain his or her overall goals for the organization in a way that wins their support.

Style 2, Coaching, which is in essence management by delegation, describes leadership that helps people assume responsibility for a stretch of the road that leads to the organization’s success. An effective coaching leader listens one-on-one to employees, establishes personal rapport and trust, and helps employees work out for themselves how their performance matters and where they can find additional information and resources. Delegation of decision-making authority to the employee within his or her area of responsibility–including the power to make and learn from mistakes–is crucial to the effectiveness of this leadership style. Coaching leadership not only frees leaders from doing work for others, but fires-up and accelerates innovation and learning at all levels of the organization.

Style 3, Affiliative, describes leadership that creates a warm, people-focused working atmosphere. An affiliative leader listens to discover employees’ emotional needs, and strives to honor and accommodate those needs in the workplace. The danger of affiliative leadership, the authors caution, is that it focuses on the emotional climate while ignoring the work itself, and thus should be used in combination with other leadership styles such as the Visionary style.

Style 4, Democratic, describes leadership that obtains input and commitments from everyone in the group. When faced with uncertainty about how to proceed, a leader elicits fresh ideas and renewed participation by faithfully listening to everyone’s opinions and information. The listening may be challenging, particularly in a diverse group and when sensitive issues are raised. Dangers include “dithering,” as when meetings drag on for weeks without making progress.

From, “Understanding The Importance Of Active Listening”

Active Listening –

As an active listener, you listen not only to the content but to the intent of the message as well. You listen with interest and also listen for any emotion that may attached to the speakers words. Most importantly, you are non judgmental and you are empathetic.

Reflective Listening – This is also active listening but you add the task of clarifying what the speaker is saying to ensure a mutual understanding.

Active and Reflective listening establishes positive lines of communication and is your passport to uncovering the true meaning in your client or candidates words. Active listening requires you to think as well as listen more laterally, however, it should not be used to hide or avoid revealing your own position.

Remain aware of the speakers tone, body language, choice of words and listen for emotion that may also be attached to the words. Don’t take the message at surface value.

You need to break the message down in order to understand it and more importantly, you need to bring your reflective listening skills into play by asking appropriate questions that clarify the message in your mind and check for mutual understanding.

From, Eric Go’s Speech “The Importance Of Listening”

A couple of years back when I was in high school, I usually spend my free time helping at the family business. There, I experienced how my father dealt with salesmen from our principals negotiating what products to buy. During those times, I noticed how a salesman works; they do a lot of talking without bothering to listen to their client’s concern. And in the present, I had just learned that the particular salesman is already jobless.

On my own analysis, I feel that it happened because he failed to update his knowledge. The knowledge that talking so much is no longer applicable these days. Why? Because people, day after day are getting more knowledgeable and are not easily persuaded by sales talk.

So how exactly do you sell? In the present the best way to sell is through the consultative approach and the pre requisite – it’s “listening.” In this approach you are required to listen to your client’s concerns such as what are the current problems the company is facing right now. And by carefully analyzing, you offer to him a solution as such you would be able to sell. Thus, allowing you to sell through listening.

From, Hugh MacLeod

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We all think we lead the most exciting lives ever to grace this fair planet of ours, at least I do.

In fact, when I think of the passion and intrigue of my average day — well, let’s just say that the movie of the week is going to blow your socks off but I digress.

Today I challenge you to put aside your autobiography and take some time to really listen to your network.

We spend all our time trying to be interesting and we neglect the fact that opportunities only open to those who are interested. If you have been building your network effectively, you have a lot of creative, intelligent people in it who think you are creative and intelligent as well. Take this opportunity to see what they are sharing, what they are talking about and where your projects and ideas can help them improve their lives.

I’m a strong believer that the difference between success and failure on the web is in your ability to build a story around your ideas, ask any Freshman English Major and they will tell you — a story with only one character is rarely interesting.

Goals -

• Spend between 20 minutes and an hour watching one network operate.


• Use the networks search function to find a topic of interest and read the conversation around it.


• Take note of who your friends are talking to and add a few to your network.

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Earlier today I mentioned on Twitter that out of the nearly 100 feeds I subscribe to and the 1000s of posts that are pushed to me every day, I was having a hard time finding five daily that I really wanted to read. This is a 180 degree shift from last year around this time.

The content hasn’t changed — in fact, I’d say the writing has gotten better over the last year.

I have changed.

More importantly, the reason I consume information has changed.

I don’t care about “tech news” as such. I get enough briefings and have enough primary access through Twitter, Friendfeed and my mailbox to not really need to ride every hype wave to take over the minds and hearts of the techosphere. Headline content is good for just that, making headlines, which I gratefully read in places that are more conducive to that sort of thing than my feed reader.

What I care about now is reading content that makes me think. I want to read about applications of ideas. I want to read about applied thoughts from people who have a voice and know how to use that voice to change the way that I think (see my little homily on Twitter).

It’s why I am changing the way the blog is run, and why I pulled my hat out of the news of the day arena. I’m tired of trying to break the news when the fact is I want to make the news.

With all that under our belts, I wanted to let you take a peek at my sources of inspiration. It took a lot longer to put this list together than I thought because I had to truly reflect on who I read and not just who I occasionally skim.

I am not saying that these are the best information sources on the Internet, or have any special significance to anyone except me. What I am saying is that these blogs represent content that makes me want to read, and more importantly content that gives me reason to act.

Neil Gaiman - All writers should wish to have an online presence as well crafted as this master storyteller. If you have every called yourself a writer, you owe it to yourself to read this.

MIT Technology Review - If you are interested in technology that does not necessarily have a server attached to it, this is the place to find it. I read this several times a week.

Fluent Self - Havi Brooks and her duck (trust me on this one) have been fantastic additions to my reading list. She manages to teach extraordinary lessons on blogging, habits and generally leading a better life while not putting me into a coma. While you’re busy catching up, follow her on Twitter.

Chris Brogan - Mr. Brogan gets my nod for two reasons, the first is that his blog is a great resource for anyone interested in building communities. Honestly, though, that’s not why I read it — I read it because I like the guy and I watch him do good work every, single day. If this list is about inspiration, he embodies it.

43 Folders - Merlin Mann has been my blogging hero for sometime now. He’s honest, clever and makes really, really cool stuff. I am not huge on productivity blogs, so I was thrilled when he switched gears a few months ago. Now, I look forward to just about everything that he writes.

Dosh Dosh - Maki has consistently raised the bar for Internet Marketing blogs. The best endorsement I can give him is that if you read this blog, you’ll be guaranteed not to see “generic guide to exploding your blog traffic.” He explores the idea of web marketing with grace and intelligence.

IEEE Spectrum - I am an Engineer, I love hard Engineering topics and this is a fantastic way for me to keep abreast of the industry since my head is usually so deeply buried in Social Media world.

Voxant Newsroom (Technology) - This is way, way easier than trying to filter the 24 hour news stations for interesting technology tidbits.

Matt Ingram - Matt is how I keep up on the mainstream web tech and new media issues that rattle around the echo chamber without making myself want to commit Seppuku.

Metafilter - I would trade every other news aggregator for Metafilter without blinking an eye. If you are looking for high quality, interesting links that stay high quality no matter when you visit the site then go to Metafilter. In fact, plunk down the $5 and support what they are doing — it’s well worth it.

How Stuff Works - Let’s just say that when I heard they were making this into a television series on the Discovery Channel I almost split a seam.

The Buzz Bin - Geoff Livingstone and his team tell it how it is, and is a refreshing voice in the PR space. I also like the work he is doing to promote awareness of Darfur and other causes.

O’Reilly Radar - It’s really hard to beat O’Reilly when it comes to crafting poignant pieces of content about the web. Whatever else you can say about him, Tim has vision and he has a path — two things that quickly get you added to my list.

Seth Godin - Everyone says everything about Seth Godin, what I will add to the noise is that I like his work because he takes a holistic view of marketing. He’s less concerned with tricks and more concerned with philosophy. While I might not follow his every word, I am interested to read his stuff to get a better look at how he thinks.

Reddit - No big, philosophical reason for this one. I think that Reddit has a strong community that does a good job at picking good content. It’s one of the few, consistent ways that I keep up on events.

There it is, my sources of inspiration. I am sure I left off a few, but I think that’s alright. The list wasn’t supposed to be a, “top blah in blah” or “most important X in Y” what it is, what it really is supposed to be is a set of content filters that do their jobs well.

So tell me, who is on your list and why?

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I want all of you to subscribe to Twitter, as a platform to discover, track and disseminate information it’s unparalleled and if properly used it can be a boon to anyone searching for a way to spread an idea.

Before you head into the field, however, I want to arm you with some essential tools that will help you make the most of your Twitter experience.

Jeremiah Owyang

From, “What Web Strategist’s Should Know About Twitter”

Best Practices

The savvy Twitter user realizes that the effective communications aren’t just ‘pushing’ content to readers, but they will also dialogue and converse with others by replying to them. I use this tool as a global chat room, responding to others, building relationships, and listening in. Like blogging, the rule of anti-marketing marketing is required for success, engage your community. Unlike traditional forms of advertising and marketing, Twitter is “opt-in” meaning that users will ‘follow’ a twitter account, abuse will result in a user unsubscribing. For rules of engagement read Brian Oberkirch’s Advanced Twitter: Don’t Tweet Like A n00b.

Academhack

From, “Twitter For Academia”

Track a Word: Through Twitter you can “track” a word. This will subscribe you to any post which contains said word. So, for example a student could be interested in how a particular word is used. They can track the word, and see the varied phrases in which people use it. Or, you can track an event, a proper name (I track Derrida for example), a movie title, a store name see how many people a day tweet that they are at or on their way to a Starbucks. (To do this send the message “track Starbucks” to Twitter, rather than posting the update “track Starbucks” you will now receive all messages with the word “Starbucks.”)

Rule Based Writing: Related to the above is the idea that when you change the rules (context) around any written communication you necessarily change the content of such an utterance. Rules rather than hindering communication can actually be really productive (for the long version of this argument read about Oulipo). Because Twitter is based on SMS technology it limits communication to 140 characters, it is surprising what develops out of this limit, and how quickly one starts to think in messages of 140 characters.

Geekpreneur

From, “10 Cool Uses Of Twitter”

6. Desperately Seeking Answers?

Poor guy from Houston, Texas, is stuck in Toronto for a business trip and feels like eating a big juicy steak. No panic, this is where Twitter Answers kicks in. Ask a question and receive answers from other users like you. The service works even from your cell so you can get answers virtually anywhere. Once you’re back home, switch sides and reply to desperately seeking answer users.

Copyblogger

From, “Twitter Marketing”

3. Engage in Fascinating Conversation

Following along the last point, Twitter is best when you’re engaging your followers rather than updating them with the mundane details of your life. Think about this as a digital networking event, party or cocktail hour. Talk to people on Twitter the way you would if you were in a group. Save private conversations for Direct Messages.

Dosh Dosh

From, “Ways You Can Use Twitter

”

Personal Branding. Twitter is a social media platform you can use to build your personal brand. It has the primary benefit of developing a casual persona and establishes you as a social personality that is connected and approachable. As Twitter adoption increases, new users will be drawn towards well established Twitter personas.

Time Management and Analysis. Twitter can simply be used to keep a detailed record of what you are doing every daily. This might be boring for others but this type of usage is useful when you want to analyze how you spend and manage your time.

ReadWriteWeb

From, “Twitter For Journalists”

Quality Assurance

I’m not ashamed to admit that I do QA via Twitter. We often get feedback on misspellings, missed links and other publishing faux pas very quickly via Twitter. It’s an easy way for readers to offer quick feedback.

Twitter can work really well for tech support or for finding quick answers to small tech questions. That makes it great for filling in details you can’t quite remember. “What is that technology that does the toast-like popups on Mac desktop?” I asked when writing an article last week. Within minutes several people reminded me it’s GROWL. Thanks!

There’s a general sentiment of giving on Twitter, but a journalist’s opportunity to perhaps provide later coverage can’t help but further incentivize people to provide help.

Problogger

From, “How To Use Twitter: Tips For Bloggers”

Don’t be a self centered Twitterer

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been twittering from my feed reader and Tweeting the best links and posts that I find on other people’s blogs.

The tool I use for this is this Firefox add-on (and alternative is this one). In a sense what I’m doing is ’speedlinking’ to posts about blogging.

What I’ve found in doing this is that I get a lot of replies and direct messages from followers thanking me for these links and asking me questions about them. It seems to be helping my own profile and perceived expertise to be seen to be across what’s going on in my niche.

I think it also helps to balance the Tweets that I’m doing that are more self serving (pointing links to my own posts). My Twittering becomes more about the niche of blogging about blogging and less about me - I think that this is more useful to my followers.

I guess what I’m saying is that if you’re using Twitter to promote yourself or your blog (and this is fine) then it might be worth considering how you can add some variety to your Twittering by also promoting the quality work of others (note: don’t just link to others for the sake of it - keep the quality high and links relevant).

Guy Kawasaki

From, “How To Use Twitter As A Twool”

Forget the “influentials.” You must buy into the theory that products and services reach critical mass because mere mortals spread the word for you. This defies the common wisdom that a handful of “influentials” shape what the rest of us try and what we adopt. In the online world, these influentials include Mike “I can go a week without Twitter” Arrington, Robert Scoble, Seth Godin, and to some extent me.

Reliance on influentials is flawed because the Internet has flattened and democratized information. Influentials don’t have as much special access, special knowledge, and distribution as you might think because of the growth of websites, blogs, and, of course, Twitter.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care about influentials—if nothing else they can help you get to what some consider “nobodies.” But mark my words: (a) Nobodies are the new somebodies, and (b) it’s better to have army of committed nobodies and than a few drive-by somebodies. The most somebodies can usually do for you is a one day bump in traffic.

One more point: if enough nobodies like what you do, the somebodies will have no choice but to write about you. In this way, the buzz of nobodies begets the attention of somebodies and not vice versa.

Twitter Tools

Tikirobot - Sync your ichat status with Twitter, useful for the Mac users in the audience.

Twitterfon - A clean, simple and effective mobile phone Twitter application.

Tweetdeck - One of the best desktop Twitter clients on the market. Built on Adobe AIR.

Twittercal - Update your Google Calendar straight from Twitter.

OverheardIt - Find out what people are “overhearing” using this filter. You never know what interesting information you might pick up before anyone else.

Remember The Milk - Helps link everyone’s favorite ToDo list with Twitter.

If you need more tips or any other kind of help don’t be afraid to ask me.

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Today’s challenge will earn you your first Social Media merit badge. Sign up for Twitter — right this second if you can help it.

If you are a marketer on the web, it’s a crime against your nature not to. No, it will not get you a million new users and ten thousand new sales (though it can).

Why am I wasting your time then?

A million people will tell you a million reasons why Twitter is the bee’s knees, but I’ll keep it simple — it’s the easiest way to communicate with a group of people who like to communicate.

These are potential friends, customers, business partners and potential employers from across all echelons of society, and they are all sitting around the web’s water cooler talking shop. You should be there, if only to watch, listen and learn.

Not sure what to do now that you’re there? Why don’t you follow me and send me an @. I’d be happy to show you around.

Goal

• Sign up for Twitter.


• Read a Twitter guide or two. Google will help you here, or look at our essential guide.


• Feel free to ask any questions you might have, you can add me here.

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From now on I’m going to give you more than advice.

You might have noticed it has been quiet around here lately, that’s because I have been preparing for some big changes (and working on other great projects) and today is the day we launch one of them.

If you look around this site, you could probably find an article on “how to” do just about anything you can imagine relating to marketing a product on the web. I should know, I wrote them. What I want to start doing from this point on is taking some of that good advice, and transforming it into actions.

Starting tomorrow, everyday (or close to it) you’ll be greeted with a HTSAA challenge. What is a HTSAA challenge? It’s a task, some will be simple, others will be more difficult — taken in aggregate these tasks are all things you can do to help make your ideas better and drive more people to use them.

Within each challenge I will try to provide you with the reason I am asking you to do a particular thing, and some objectives to guide you towards completion. At the end of every Season (think set of challenges under one umbrella), if everything went according to plan, you will have achieved a major milestone in your project and will be ready to learn a few more complex tricks of the trade.

If I had one New Years resolution, it’s the help all of you do more with your projects. Hopefully this, along with a few other changes you’ll see, will help you do just that.

As always, feel free to contact me if you have any thoughts.

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Dawn Douglass is one of my favorite entrepreneurs. She has been working hard on projects based around the idea that the web can be a force for good for creative professionals, looking to make money off of their talents. For me, she has been a lesson in how perseverance and hard one came help to bring projects to their fruition. Today she is talking about her latest project, Swig.

What makes Swig different from Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and all others is that Swig will be a social-economic network. While providing tools for conversation and discovery is fundamental to any social network, I believe it’s just as essential to allow members the means to increase their economic well being and to simultaneously help the products, companies and people we each care about survive the economic collapse and all its reverberations that will likely be felt for years.

I’ve designed Swig to be a more efficient, more useful and more encompassing social network than anything else available, but it’s also a bottom-up solution to the economic crisis. Swig will generate demand and boost product and service excellence as quality and social goodwill are rewarded.

I’ll give you an example…

Say you’ve lost your job and desperately need to earn money. You’ve always loved dogs and they naturally take to you, so you decide to start a dog walking and dog sitting service. You sign up for Swig to start getting the word out about your service. You create a feed filled with funny pet stories and practical information about dog care. You share the ads of dog-related products and services you use and are willing to endorse. As your friends, family and followers click on these ads, you make money.

Soon you have a number of followers. You decide to start buying a daily cartoon about dogs, created by another Swig member. Even though the cartoon costs you a bit of money each day (taken from the ad money you’re accumulating, so no direct outlay of cash is needed), it’s more than worth it. You’ve optionally chosen for each cartoon installment to have an ad you’ve approved attached, and the click-through rate on these is high, so you’re earning a lot more than you spend on the feature. And if somebody else “swigs” a gag from you to place in their own feed or conversation group, you’ll get some of that income, too. Plus, the daily cartoons spark good conversation, increase your visibility, and allow you to make less frequent posts without worrying about losing readers.

As time goes by, you become a recognized “expert” in the dog care space. One of your essays about what to look for and lookout for when choosing a doggie daycare center has proven to be very popular, so you decide to make it more easily searchable and to charge for it. After all, other Swig members are also earning ad revenue and thereby have money to spend for “copper content” like essays, cartoons, entertaining videos and animations, games and utility apps, music, and so on. It costs only 15 cents to access the essay, but with tens of thousands of hits a year, it adds up and gives you yet another revenue stream.

Between getting new clients from your Swig network, sales of more and more essays, and the ad revenue, you’re making some decent money. So you decide to invest some of it in creating a

new dog toy you’ve designed. You use Swig to find a local seamstress who commits to making ten toys a day, which you easily sell to your followers.

In the meantime, an artist who creates pet portraits from photos has come to you asking to piggyback on your popularity. You negotiate to promote her work in exchange for 15% of her sales.

You’ve accumulated many funny animal photos that you’ve taken on dog walks. You’re surprised when people start buying licenses for some of the best ones to illustrate their own essays, to post within their conversation groups, to use in PowerPoint presentations, and so on. Each photo’s license is just pennies (hence the “copper” in “copper content”) but again, it adds up. And when another creator uses a few of your photos in a video mashup that likewise becomes copper content, you get a fair share of that income, too.

Then Iams Company contacts you. They’re hurting as dog and cat owners switch to cheaper pet food brands because of the recession. They know you are an influencer in the dog space, and they would like to secure your attention and goodwill. They offer to fly you to their corporate office where you’ll participate in focus groups and get behind-the-scenes tours of their manufacturing process. Of course, you let your readers know what’s happening, so they can decide if this corporate schmoozing is affecting your credibility. Mostly, your readers just want to hear what you’re doing and learning on the trip, so you take lots of video, which you can attach to any IAMs ads you decide to distribute later on. This will likely increase their ranking in the Swig Search area, and should increase your ad revenue.

Okay, that’s enough, but I could go on. And on. There will be countless ways to enhance your economic well being using Swig as a platform. All it takes is desire, talent, creativity and passion. Especially passion. Passion is attractive. Whatever you have true passion for – be it a love for dogs or blacksmithing or arranging flowers – rest assured that people with similar or compatible interests will find you, and you can leverage that shared interest into creative ways to have fun, gain skill, and make money.

The most important thing to note here is how success breeds success. Somebody who just loves to walk dogs can ultimately make money for a cartoonist, a portrait artist, a seamstress and even a big corporation like Iams. Passion begets passion. Demand creates demand. That’s why pulling together via a demand-creating social-economic network is such a winnable strategy for these depressed times. The more that the Swig network helps talented companies and individuals make money, the more that demand for all kinds of talents will grow, and the better off all Swig members will become. In fact, the better off the entire economy will be. Economic growth from the bottom up will restore trust, help stabilize markets and assist in keeping top-down disaster from ever happening again.

Remember, “Share the Wealth, Increase the Good.” That’s SWIG.

Being An Entrepreneur

There’s a saying in the comic strip world that “good writing can carry poor art, but the best art can’t carry poor writing.” If you’ve read my blog you’ll know I have a similar idea about the social web: good anthropology can carry poor technology, but the best technology can’t carry poor anthropology. What do I mean by that? Take a look at Twitter. When Twitter took off, it was down as much as it was up, but people still loved it because it has good anthropology. During the same years Twitter has existed, how many Web 2.0 companies with more impressive, rock solid technology have joined the Dead Pool?

In a nutshell, technology is machines talking to machines. Anthropology is about humans talking to humans. The “social” in “social web” demands that entrepreneurs understand human beings as well as they understand technology if they want to be successful.

So if you don’t appreciate anthropology, my advice is to find somebody who does, or you’ll likely waste a lot of time and money, or at the very least not realize all the success you otherwise could.

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It’s that time of the year again, the stockings have been torn down, the snow is falling gently over a pile of used wrapping paper, and we are all digging in for the last leg of the journey from the end of one year to the beginning of the next.

As a blogger, I only have one choice at times like these, I’m forced, by my code and credo to give you some “predictions” about the coming year.

I decided to do it differently this time around. Instead of making up new and exciting pontifications, I’m going to take this time to review my list from the end of 2007 and see how it went. Enjoy!

Number Eight

One last hurrah for Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg will ignite a blogstorm when he launches his next “game changing” attempt to monetize Facebook. Objectively speaking, it will have little to no real chance of justifying 1/10th of Facebook’s purported valuation but for about a week we’ll think it does.

It took almost a year and still I would only call this one marginally accurate. Facebook hasn’t launched any code complete monetization ploys, but it does look like they are heading down that path with Friend Connect.

It doesn’t take a leap from Techcrunch’s assertion about Google Friend Connect to see Facebook could try a similar trick. The problem is that no matter how you slice it, it’s still an advertising play in a down economy, the question I ask is if they do bring on a pile of new ad impressions — where do they sell them all?

Number Seven

Blogebrity. The talk of the town will be whether a tech entrepreneur can parlay internet fame into mainstream success. Expect at least one blog network (or else a major player like Kevin Rose) to try to make the jump.

This one was dead on, this year CBS acquired CNET, Guardian Media Group acquired PaidContent after it partnered with the Washington Post, and Conde Nast acquired ArsTechnica. Some of the largest networks in the blogging world seem to be primping for big, media aquesitions. The only question that remains is what will these media brands really do with their shiny, new blog toys.

Number Six

There will be a breakout vlogging sensation that finally manages to hit the right buttons by attracting the three major pillars of the internet: MySpace, Facebook and the Blogosphere. As usual, this success will be followed up by dozens of copy cat attempts that mostly miss the point.

There is no clear evidence that this happened. iJustine is still capitalizing on her growing mainstream relevance, and the guard has changed hands a few times over the last twelve months, but there have been no obvious vlogger to media darling conversions.

Number Five

The writers strike will get us all to question the relevance of broadcast media. A startup will be born that takes this imagined hole in the landscape and tries to plug it. Since it will likely not be put together by people who understand both the web and broadcast media, it will die spectacularly.

Who would have guessed that the economy would have tanked, which left a number of large media endeavors in the lurch. As it stands, nothing has come along to do this unless you count the rebranding of Joost. The second part is a little more on mark, the relevance of old media is being questioned time and time again, and for good reason — this year saw a continuation of newspapers death spiral. Then again, we’ve been doing that for the last four years. Search “Newspapers Are Dead” for some fun reading.

Number Four

A few more mainstream media alumni will jump onto the blogging train. Chances are we still won’t notice how closely “citizen journalists” are beginning to resemble to real thing.

Once again, marginally true. Quite a few big names have jumped on the blogging train — the roster includes Billionaires like Carl Icahn, Khalaf Al Habtoor, and eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar. I can’t point to a mainstream media star who has made a show of turning to blogging.

Number Three

The rich will get richer. For the first time, we will notice that the barriers to entry for a blogger who wants to break into “the club” are getting extremely high. Expect an array of “A-list” debates, culminating with the realization that this argument happens every year.

This was dead on. If you take a look around you, you’ll notice the number of “break out” blogging sensations (Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Chris Brogan) this year have be few to none. This is not necessarily a bad thing, attention is shifting away from the blog as the primary mode of Internet communication and falling on a laundry list of other services — video and microblogging among them. More importantly, greater emphasis is being placed on creating content rather than “blogging,” and I think we’ll all be better for it.

Number Two

Expect a few new buzzwords to take the place of Crowdsource and Social Graph.

New buzzwords ran rampant this year, most of them were political (lipstick on a pig) but we got a few gems — Fail and Rickroll among them. Not too many marketing terms of art added to the roster, I guess that just shows where our attention is turning.

Number One

Ted of Uncov joins Valleywag, or at least becomes a part time contributor.

This one was absolutely off base, but in other news Ted did start blogging at Uncov again, and Valleywag is shutting down so I guess everything worked out.

Everything did work out.

I was “sort of” right on a few things, really wrong on a couple and absolutely, unequivocally correct on nothing. That’s the nature of these sorts of predictions. There was no way to tell how deeply our culture would be effected by the election, the credit crisis, the VC crunch and the general economic malaise. Let’s face it, it’s hard to predict how a moving target will move. The best we can do is hope for is that the best of what we wish for ends up happening. Despite it all, as the year closes out I’d say that 2008 wasn’t so bad.

Here’s to hoping for a better 2009.

Fight or Flight?

Whether you are about to by hit by a car or by a lawsuit the human body’s reaction is just about the same. Our heart races, adrenaline flows free and in a split second we make a decision whether to stand firm or run for the hills, “It’s evolution, baby.”

This reaction is fundamental if you spend a lot of time hanging around wild Buffalo, but a uncontrollable desire to run away is not necessarily ideal if you’re trying to deal with problems with your product.

Many believe that the only way to “deal” with a nasty situation that lacks a clear cut resolution is to sweep it under the rug. Bad PR, bad reviews, bad code accidentally going live, they want to write it all off and hope that no one notices. The result, as often as not, is that pretty quickly the rug starts to look a little lumpy, and soon enough the entire team is tripping over half-resolved situations.

Instead of praying that problems “just go away,” have the wherewithal to stand and fight. To be honest, information moves far too quickly on the web to afford not to.

People hate to feel like someone is hiding something, and given a lack of reasonable information they will do everything in their power to fill in the gaps with anything that they can pull together. Most often this will be some strange combination of lies, damn lies and outright fantasy. Instead of letting the mob find their torches, wouldn’t you rather have some part in shaping the response?

• If there is a known bug in your software and people start to balk about it, acknowledge that you know it exists.


• If your PR has gone sour on a release, and it’s absolutely clear what people are angry about — meet their criticism with a clear, concise and honest response.


• If you “personal brand” is being dragged through the mud, stay calm, collect your thoughts and work to find common ground with the mud slingers.

In short, in a world where information will exist whether you like it or not, the best defense is a good offense.

When crafting a response, keep these things in mind:

Argue from a position of strength. It’s one thing to admit fault, it’s quite another to get on your knees and beg for forgiveness.

Be clear and concise. Marketese is not your friend, explain the problem in language that people can understand. There is no point in standing on the front line if your message is so clouded that no one “gets it.”

Take your shot and then get out of the way. Once you’ve explained the situation, don’t keep explaining yourself. Almost as bad as hiding from a situation is overdoing it. Make your points, make them clear and then go home.

Fortunately, marketing a product is not quite as dangerous as taming a herd of wild Buffalo. As hard as it might sound (the marketing part), learning to hold your ground and fight your battles will save you far more time and effort than being able to dig a better hole to hide in.

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