34 posts tagged “social networks”

I live and breath consumer Internet namely social networks and media but I keep this personal blog independent of that so that I can reflect on some larger intangible characteristics that make us who we are offline and often compare it with our behavior online. Its not about tools and technology, its about people.

So when I got invited to write a guest post on Techcrunch about a basic question on Twitter, MySpace and what really makes us social, I took up the opportunity to muse there

You can read it here - Is Twitter Turning Into MySpace? or here through Techmeme.

And you can follow me on Twitter here.

Imagine Again: Make Friends, Not Add Them

I have spoken about The Cat, The Dog and Web 2.0, blogged about the disconnect of social behavior online and offline and very recently, Jennifer Aniston experienced it first-hand recently.

These 4 minutes explain your social graph

..... you are a Business, Man!

This continues to be a part of 'I Know What I did the Last Time I was Unemployed' Series.

This is one of my favorite quotes that I use often whenever I speak since it seems to say it all. I tactically bumped into it when I was looking for jobs in the last downturn.

Here are the basic parallels that I drew then:

• Product - You

• Brand - your reputation

• Price - Your compensation

Note: Free, like on the Internet, is a good business model as a tactic speaking from experience. It enables you to build relationships and get your customer to 'try before they buy'. I worked for free for the Founder and CEO of EarthClass Mail, Ron Wiener, when I was 'vocationally challenged'. I learnt a lot from him and we are family friends now.
[Update: Another great story in LA Times on how powerful the 'free' model can be - "It's Web 101 for this experienced Intern"]

• Place/Channel/Distribution: Your online identity (For example here are mine on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc.) Your online identity is very important since customers research online significantly before buying offline - for example, 77% consumers research reviews and ratings to confirm their decisions in ecommerce world. I assure you, potential employers do the same - before or after an interview

• Promotion - Enable discovery that a product is available for purchase. Blog, email people you know, use tools LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc. 

[Update: The Op-Ed piece in New York Times has an article on blogging if you are Out of Work with examples like 'Recession Wire - The Upside of The Downturn' or that of the 23 year old who was laid off and blogs here]

Remember - its to 'learn' and if you do it well, the letter 'l' will become silent to lead to 'earn'

The above are also great examples since they got quoted in The New York Times - one should definitely try to get  quoted in media articles on today's economy and unemployment rates. A good free source to find your customer (in this particular case - the reporter writing a piece on career or unemployment trends) is HARO

• Customer: Your future (or current) employer

As in any business, distribution is one of the hardest things to do but thanks to social media, one's reach and potential to be where your customer is much higher.

Reid Hoffman, the Founder and CEO of LinkedIn, interviewed on Charlie Rose recently says the same a wee bit differently:

Since I love observing social behavior offline and then online to make some personal notes here, one big one that keeps standing out for me is how different and similar we are socially - online and offline. 

Whether it is through our need to belong ("yearn for contact") by adding friends, instead of making them or our ability to have 100s of friends online but the inability to love our neighbors (no pun intended for the neighborhood here on Vox) or that 25% of Americans have no confidant and the average number of confidants for an American has dropped to 2. 
 
Here are a couple of studies that appeared recently that talk to the differences and similarity:

The Economist: Primates on Facebook
"What also struck Dr Marlow, however, was that the number of people on an individual’s friend list with whom he (or she) frequently interacts is remarkably small and stable. The more “active” or intimate the interaction, the smaller and more stable the group."

The Wall Street Journal Blog: Exploring Twitter Ties
"Consistent with behavior on social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, Twitter users interact with a small number of friends compared with the total number of friends and followers declared."

The Mercury News: "Finding our own little worlds has never been easier" by Mike Cassidy
"I wanted to find myself in the continuum of experiences," Wood, 41, tells me, "where speaking with people was neither good nor bad, but it was superfluous."

It turns out that that superfluous place is almost anywhere in America, depending on how you choose to experience it. With the help of Silicon Valley, we have grown into a society where it's possible to quite literally live in your own little world. So much of what we do, we do alone, even while surrounded by people."

Think of those superfluous conversations that we have with grocery clerks offline parallel to those friends we add (not make) online and the few with whom we interact (the 7 to 20 in the studies above) as those whom we actually meet offline, help, show commitment or drink a beer or two independent of their title or net worth.

We ignore people online all the time - whether its email, a friend request or an @reply on Twitter. As Mike continues to write
"One of Wood's most creative tricks was to rely on what social scientists call "anticipatory disengagement," — in his case putting his cell phone to his ear to avoid conversation.".. or maybe avoid eye contact?

Imagine: The Few, The Real  

I have quite a few posts on online and offline relationships and just recently also talked about it with parallels to a Cat and a Dog, so when I suddenly saw this ad in the midst of one of my favorite shows, 24, I had to:

• 'go online' (Note the irony) and look for the ad
  
• spend some time on the corporate site
• explore their offerings and actually take some time to learn a little about the company

The company is Dentyne and its message is very simple - spend face time with people you care. Dont add friends, make them. Dont collect friends, sustain them. You can write all the 25 Things that do (not) matter but make sure you share that one really important thing in 5 minutes with those you really care about.

The first thing you are greeted with is a message that contradicts what all websites want - leave within 3 minutes:

Here is one of their ads:

If that does not help, sign up for the Free Hug Campaign - I have!

Imagine: "I give free hugs", "I love you" or 'You mean a lot to me" is less than 140 characters even offline 

I love observing people, social behavior and very importantly applying those observations to my professional life in online social networks and media.So when the Zurb guys invited me over, I took to the opportunity to share some of those observations and exchange best practices.

If you care, here is a pretty detailed documentation of that session. I LOVED the visuals they created (below) which speaks to Zurb's excellence in presentation and making words and a few whiteboard scribbles come to life. More of their visuals are here on their Flickr stream.

 

Once upon a time there was a boy who used to sit at Starbucks and read his newspaper - in rain or shine.

Whenever he read the newspaper, there was usually always another guest at the coffee shop who came with his 2 dogs, annoying if I may say so) who would never stop barking - so rain or shine.... or bark.... the boy kept ooooonnn reading.

The boy had 2 cats in his house.

Then one day, he met another boy, who had his own firm called Zurb that allowed living and non-living things to have a desired effect on one another - nope they are NOT a web design company, NOT a graphic design agency. The boy and his team have accumulated a blue-chip roster of clients like Miss Spears herself and Photobucket amongst others. 

Over time, their low-caffeinieted drowsy good mornings led to more excited and passionate discussions. One thing led to another and they decided to talk a little more about The Cat, The Dog and Web2.0 so if you want to get in and share your experience and meet the awesome team at Zurb, here are the details. No experts - only students please.

Imagine: Make Friends, Not Add 'Em

The core theme of this blog is social behavior offline, online. I have written a few posts in the past comparing the online and offline social behavior with The Cat, The Dog and Web2.0, The Online and Offline Social Disconnect, Gordon Gekko's Social Graph.

So when I saw an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times by Peter Lovenheim titled "Will you Be My Neighbor" in the New York Times here,  I was glad that it was not just me who saw what I saw. It underlines some of my observations as an immigrant coming from a culture where all the neighbors (apart from family) knew each other and shared a lot of their lives - offline, synchronous and involved.

You can read the details but here are a few lines from his article that are captivating and at the same time, concerning for our society:

"According to social scientists, from 1974 to 1998, the frequency with which Americans spent a social evening with neighbors fell by about one-third. Robert Putnam, the author of “Bowling Alone,” a groundbreaking study of the disintegration of the American social fabric, suggests that the decline actually began 20 years earlier, so that neighborhood ties today are less than half as strong as they were in the 1950s.

Why is it that in an age of cheap long-distance rates, discount airlines and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, we often don’t know the people who live next door?"

My response to his Why based on observations and great conversations from my 8 years in America:

• America emphasizes the individual
• America emphasizes independence
• America teaches that destiny is in one's control
• American emphasizes Doing versus Being
• America, generally, measures success financially
• We, globally, still discriminate - color, religion, politics, sex, sexuality, race, country, attire, appearance, net worth, profession
  

I know a few of my neighbors but I know can do better.

Your responses, thoughts?

Imagine: [At least] love thy neighbor

[Update]: Some cool media coverage of this funding today by Becky Buckman in The Wall Street Journal and Brad Stone at The New York Times 

I could not be more excited for the team at LinkedIn. If there is any social network that delivers a no-brainer value, its LinkedIn. I have benefited from meeting some of the coolest people from the day I started using it in 2003.

Some personal milestones with LinkedIn:

• An early user since 2003 when they had 40k users. Today they have over 22M
• I met Vice Presidents then (I was "Vocationally Challenged") through LinkedIn at Siebel, eBay and more who are now VERY good friends
• Became an early employee in 2004 when they had 1.5M users and about 25 employees
• Left in 2006 when LinkedIn had about 7M users and ~60 employees. Today, I believe, they have more than 250!
• Now, 5 years since I started using LinkedIn, I have over 1000 connections on LinkedIn and I have met and really know almost all of them

Watch the perspective of the returning and (one) new LinkedIn investors on this new milestone. Dan's post is here

Imagine: Its ALL about Relationships

I have had a few posts on charactertics around facing adversity, challenges and playing David like 300, I Like It Rough and then my last post recently on (Pride), Determination and Resilience.

You can imagine how excited I was to read an article by Melinda Beck, from The Wall Street Journal, here on how some very successful household names had to face failure before they became what they are today. The article to me was a "Celebration of Failure"!

• J.K. Rowling's first book about a boy wizard named Harry Potter was rejected by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury, a small London publishing house, picked it up.
• Twenty-seven publishers rejected Theodor Seuss (Dr. Seuss) Geisel's first book, "To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street."
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school varsity basketball team sophomore year.
• Decca Records turned down a contract with the Beatles, saying "Groups of guitars are on their way out."
• Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor who said "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas."

Here are some snippets that I want to make a note to self:

What makes some people rebound from defeats and go on to greatness while others throw in the towel? Psychologists call it "self-efficacy," the unshakable belief some people have that they have what it takes to succeed.

I only think that a few people rebound and most throw in the towel.

Where does such determination come from? In some cases it's inborn optimism -- akin to the kind of resilience that enables some children to emerge unscathed from extreme poverty, tragedy or abuse. Self-efficacy can also be acquired by mastering a task; by modeling the behavior of others who have succeeded; and from what Prof. Bandura calls "verbal persuasion" -- getting effective encouragement that is tied to achievement, rather than empty praise.

Some quotes:

"I've failed over and over and over again in my life. That's why I succeed," - Michael Jordan
"I didn't fail 1,000 times," he told a reporter. "The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps." - Thomas Edison
"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." - Winston Churchill

Two big failures I have faced personally are:

1. My application for a student visa to study for my MS during my first attempt (1995) to follow my dream to the US, was rejected twice in 2 days. I could not apply for another two years as it was mandatory after 2 consecutive rejections. [I finally applied again in 1999 and made it]
   
2. My 3 years of being "vocationally challenged" during the downturn after the dot-com days. That enabled me to discover social networking online (starting with LinkedIn where I eventually went to work) since I was living it off-line. My LinkedIn profile only details those days since I value my achievements then as one of the best
   

Finally, as Henry Ford said: "Whether you think that you can or you can't, you're right."

Imagine: The Pursuit IS Happyness