The most unconvincing [statements] are those in which you patently… try to enhance your status without contribution.
The measure of your contribution will be evaluated by it’s real time value (currency) to your audience – not your own self-deceiving imagination of value.
Here’s five rules that I used in the past when developing and planning a social strategy:
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1. Value is proven only by exponentiallyincreasing factors (not one out of three and not geometric rates of growth): attention, interactions, and head count of a target audience. …
2. If you have no audience, you provide no value.
3. Buy your initial audience; buy a target audience that will and can immediately benefit from your proposed “value” – not bots or just anyone. You can buy a list of leads, data, etc. …
3. It is always cheaper, better and faster to have others raise your status in the eyes of your target audience. Admiration requires the recognition of unexpected and rare superlatives. …
4. The organic growth and success model typically results in loss, failure and despair; none of which represents a reasonable expense (cost of doing business) or investment. …
5. Organic growth and success is faked, frequently and successfully. Everybody loves a good story tacked to evident success. This is a warning – not a prescription. …
If you learned something of value from this blog post, tell no one about me. …
Google says point blank, dogmatically, and in bold…
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You can make money without doing evil.
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Does Google’s shutting down Google Reader bear reflection upon the ten things that Google knows to be true?
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Shutting down Google Reader disconnects people, prevents them from sharing, and changes the game on several levels for many stakeholders. But is that evil?
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What is evil?
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Wikipedia doesn’t give an illuminating definition of evil.
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Myself, I have always considered evil as the deprivation of the dignity of a thing – especially a deprivation of the dignity of the human person. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, for example, are universally considered basic to the design and identity of a human being. That which threatens deprivation (or actually deprives us) of our good exercise of this existential property by intention, therefore, is unmistakably evil.
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Murder, theft, lies, supernormal taxes, unjust laws, unbounded ambition, and adultery are conspicuous and patent examples of evil – recognized alike by the ancient shepherd and modern cosmopolitan. Most of us (myself included) participate in evil to some degree – more often than we may want to admit to ourselves. It is unfortunate…
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But as much as is at stake in Google’s shut down of Google Reader – the deprivation of a free service (once provided at Google’s expense) does not appear to be evil. Even if the deprivation causes harm.
Untimely cancellation of a free service or feature is, in fact, the territory and culture of the proverbial free lunch.
The shut down may encourage us, however, to reflect on Google’s motives and brand.
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Googles’ decision, for example, seems to contradict other Google truths. Are these paradoxes a symptom of incompetent management (Kitchen Nightmare) or a conspiracy of brand?
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Focus on the user and all else will follow.
There’s always more information out there.
Great just isn’t good enough.
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Ultimately, if the moral arc of Google’s character is profoundly problematic, perhaps we should consider the alternatives and disempower the capricious, authoritarian throne that Google seems to pursue.
The more important lessons, nonetheless, are clear:
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Users of freeware, beware.
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Don’t build your dream, business, mission-critical process, product or service on freeware.
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If you’re not paying for it, it’s not a tangible asset. At best, it’s a hack (cheat).
“The way to gain traction on Google+ is to search for the keywords that describe your passions and then interact with those folks.”
That’s what Guy Kawasaki is saying. Why is he saying that?! What does Guy know that we don’t?
Note: This #DadChat RECAP appeared last week on Bruce Sallan’s blog.
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Is G+ misunderstood?
Is G+ enchanting?
If not now, how can it be?
Enquiring minds want to know!
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The Beatles, The Yellow Submarine
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Who is Guy Kawasaki?
Haters say Guy is the Grand Inquisitor of the new Googledom. Nevermind the haters!
Guy is the greatest of all the old school Apple fanboys. He’s the prime evangelist, a venture capitalist, an author, and the genius that conceived of AllTop before social media knew they had a need for information and news aggregation.
Google didn’t pay him to write the book, Guy explained on #dadchat – the Thursday night tweetchat hosted by Bruce Sallan.
Guy says he’s slaying the dragons (G+ hate and disinterest) for the love of it. Because it’s the best tool right now says Guy. He even wrote a book about Google +: What the Plus!
What the Plus! is also Guy’s first ebook.
You can download the free PDF of Guy Kawasaki’s first version of What the Plus! here:
Unfortunately, social games have thus far failed on G+.
Addendum
People aren’t connected on G+ like they are on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter would do better with a social game integration than Google Plus. Maybe that’s one of the challenges that G+ has to overcome: make the quality and relevance of the connection between G+ users.
I’d like to see more creative license in the profile space. It’s like what Facebook does.
Oh – what Facebook does has nothing to do with good design.
Addendum
Ultimately, Google + didn’t up the quality of the social media experience – it didn’t revolutionize the social platform standard. They have the brain power and resources to do that. Why aren’t they doing it?
An American living in Bucharest, Romania, Stan Faryna searches for better questions about who we are, what we’re doing, and how we shall better know ourselves and love others. He hopes for answers that fill the heart, lift it up, and substantiate the dignity of the human person.
The Twitter Unfollow Bug. And other social media DOHs!
by Stan Faryna
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This week, I found that five people that I follow on Twitter were not being followed by my account. I have no idea when they were unfollowed, but I know for a fact that I did not push the unfollow button. Three of those persons are friends with whom I interact with on Twitter and elsewhere: Billy Delaney, Jack Steiner, and Bill Dorman.
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WTF Twitter!
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Samuel Jackson: Ezekiel 25:17 [Clip from Pulp Fiction]
Of all the things that can own us, shame is the greatest of these. It stands in the way of opportunities, relationships, and self discovery. Shame counsels us to speak softly (or not at all) lest our ignorance become known to others, to enjoy the lawn from the sidewalk when we should be running across it barefoot, and, worst of all, to play our cards (or not play at all) or else.
Or else.
Or else what?
Most of us have seen Brené Brown’s TED talk about vulnerability and whole-heartedness. If you haven’t seen it, you can see it here. Against your and my better instincts, Brown demonstrates that vulnerability is as beautiful and uplifting as it seems terrible.
If connection is what being human is most about as Brené Brown argues, we cannot connect without vulnerability. Brown explains in her TED talk: we have to let people see us, we have to be us, and we have to feel the feelings that we feel.
Betsy Cross is herself struggling with being vulnerable in social media. She also see others struggling with vulnerability. She observes the social media game of falsified connections, superficial engagement, and an underlying desperation for people to connect to other people. The underlying desperation to connect, she notices, is an apparent contradiction to the vast and immediate opportunities provided by the various social networks.
What’s up with that?!
The most obvious problem is the lack of vulnerability, transparency, and authenticity of even veteran social media professionals and influencers. The old guard teach new comers how to do online relationships in a manner that correlate to measurement, analytics, and infographics. But what passes for social media etiquette does not fully address peoples’ need for deeper connections. It doesn’t help people build things that last – neither life-long friendships nor online communities. Betsy is right when she questions standard social media process.
I am reminded of Emily Dickinson who wrote in a letter: Friends are my estate.
At the end of my days, if I shall compare online friendship to a million silvery ships passing at warp speed among the stars (a breathtaking sight to be sure), my estate will be as cold and barren as the terrible distance between the stars.
Although a newcomer to social media herself, Betsy embraces vulnerability and speaks whole-heartedly in this guest post. She’s worried that she doesn’t have all the answers. I am honored that she is doing it here on my blog.
Hers is an act of courage and vulnerability. She wanted very much not to take this step, but she did. And I am proud of her for doing so.
According to the authoritative urban dictionary, “you can use it if there is an awkward silence.”
Bahhh! That’s what happened at Yahoo!s Bucharest Hack Party. Even perky prostitutes couldn’t get the party started. No one can prove anything, mind you – this was a cash transaction.
But if the party ended with a Bahhh! in the old city of the defunct little Paris aka Bucharest, what’s worse is that the culmination of the circle jerk was literally, a bahhh- as in the sound a sheep makes.
Beyond being morbidly GaGa over Facebook, Yahoo’s sub-genius crowd paid unhealthy homage to Zynga’s flagship Facebook game, Farmville, with a scaled-down, robotic simulation of a farm where the number of marching sheep reflect the number of your friends.
Oh – The Grapes of Wrath are spreading across Facebook Games like Kudzu
Social Games
Wildly embraced initially, Facebook games have become a huge disappointment to players. Hundreds of millions of farms have been abandoned, crops have withered, propeller capped sheep are on the verge of extinction, and farmers aren’t talking to their friends. The good news is that the flood of game-related wall spam has passed. But it didn’t just happen to Farmville. It happened across the board; Facebook games are failing to retain and entertain a restless market of 500+ Million Facebook gamers.
Game industry experts like Playdom Creative Director David Rohrl somehow got it wrong about what casual game play should be in a social game. As Rohrl himself noted, the social gaming space is not straightforward. One of the obvious fails was that social game companies fell into trap of thinking that graphics can substitute for game play. If only that were true, the economics would be unreal! On the other hand, players wanted more cuteness. They demanded it in the forums. Clicks confirmed it.
Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, however, cautioned against falling into the rut of crowd sourcing. “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse,’” observed the American industrialist. According to Jay Elliot, Ford’s caution is often quoted by Steve Jobs, founder of Apple. Read the rest of this entry »
I have a vision of the next milestone for the web. It may or may not be original, insightful, feasible, useful or amazing. I call it Social Web 3.0. It’s emerging in attitudes, ambitions and technologies. My new friend, Ben Barden, a blogger, thinks I’m mistaken. But also old friends like Mihai Fanache, Yahoo!’s ad man in Romania, believe I’m mistaken.
Triberr, a blog promotion Twitter app, may (or may not) become an app that helps us move forward to a more social web. Unlike those quick to ignore it’s potential, I’m willing to give Triberr the benefit of the doubt – until it’s shortcomings overcome it’s potential. But it doesn’t have to go down like that. JackB and I seem to agree that it’s worthwhile to see where Triberr goes. But that’s another blog post.
Before we can get into what signals Social Web 3.0 as the next milestone in the evolution of the web, let’s review Web 2.0.
Web 2.0
Try to imagine this with me: the sound of an angry (blue) bird being launched.
Posted by Stan Faryna 
Follow me on Twitter: @Faryna