They have stuff to sell, and they want me to buy.  We all need to make a living.

I’m not focused on making money from Social Media – I am focused on saving money WITH Social media.

Every customer we help in near real time is a customer that that is exposed to Fanatical Support® – often for the first time.

And that support is important.  It is timely.  It is genuine – it is driven by an engineer with a desire to help a customer win.

Near real time support adds a lot of value because it both maintains your brand reputation and reinforces your core commitment to customers – that you are a partner, not just a vendor.  That you win and lose together.  That they are not just a number.

So we focus a lot on how Social Media can help us help customers win. That is our strategy.  Please steal it – emulate it – make all my experiences with brands better by making them more engaged with me.

But put real people behind those accounts and hashtags – people that are empowered to make a difference, and people that really give a damn.

That isn’t Marketing.

That is Social Media as a Service.

Ever since I can remember I have kept an email folder called “good news”.  I stick my wins in this folder – be it a new customer I brought in, kudos from a boss, or a thank you from a customer.  I rarely look at this folder, because I am lucky, and have created my own position, as illustrated by Hugh MacLeod:

But every now and then, I need to be re-energized.  This folder helps me remember why I fight hard for a customer, or why I push hard against big corporate BS.  Or why I am up at three in the morning trying to make someone smile.

I think we all need a “good news” folder at times.

That was before I came to work for Rackspace.  Recently Hugh was in San Antonio, and he toured our corporate headquarters in a once abondoned 1.2+ million square foot shopping mall.  He saw the worlds largest (certified by Guinness!) Word Search puzzle.  He saw the only known functioning escalators in a hosting company’s offices.  We had a good time, and later went out for some BBQ with a few Rackers, and guests from the community.  It was a great day.

While he was here, Hugh and I started discussing him doing something involving Rackspace.  Working with a number of other Rackers (Rackspace employees), we decided that we wanted Hugh to focus on what we are most proud of – what makes our company unique, and why the number of employees has doubled since I joined 26 months or so ago, and why our customer count has risen just as quickly – even in a down economy.

So here is his first cartoon – and I really enjoy it.  I thank Hugh for making this one special as my very own personal “cube grenade”

Our motto is “Fanatical Support” – which is based on our unique culture.

This is the first in a series of cartoons, blog posts, etc that explore why culture is important to us, and why a culture of service – to each other, to customers, and to our community is so important to our success.

I am hoping this series starts a conversation about culture, and service.  So feel free to comment!

Hugh’s original post is here.

Rob

More than I wanted a J.O.B. – I wanted to change the world.

And here I find myself, at 4am, not being able to sleep – even though I need to be on a flight to Boulder in 4 hours.  I’m too excited to sleep – oh, I tried!  But every few minutes I would find myself peeking once more at the OpenStack Twitter Account (@OpenStack) – wondering if the hits were still coming in (they are) – and assuring myself this is real (it is!).

We’ve been hard at work for the last several years – working towards that end. Today, I think we have helped change the world.

By open-sourcing the second most popular Cloud Computing platform on the planet, I think we’ve just changed the world. Hell, by partnering with NASA, we may actually be changing more than this world. (I can imagine OpenStack running on the Moon, and on Mars!)

The list of partners is impressive – go look at http://openstack.org. There are a lot of forward thinkers on that list – and they are company I am proud to be in.

Mostly though, I am proud of the company I work for. This is a bold move by a Leadership team that has demonstrated exceptional thought leadership in our space. In the two short years I have been with the company we have more than doubled our customer count, drastically increased the number of servers and data-centers we have, and made bold moves in many other areas.

I’m sure there will be a lot of discussions and a lot of questions about our decision (there were plenty of internal ones!) – but I am confident that at the end of the day, a truly open cloud that is already in production will better serve the world – a cloud that has proven its ability to scale and serve real customers.

It is a great day to be a Racker. I’m very proud of what we have done, and what we will continue to do to change the world – one (open) code drop at a time!

Come join us at OpenStack – change the world with us.  Change your world!

Over the last two years I have accidentally discovered a way to both listen to a customer, and remember who they are, and what they need – days later, when I have traveled back home.

When I receive a business card I hold it in my hand as my conversation continues. I hold it face up, right-side up. If I am talking to a current customer, I bend over the upper right corner. If I am talking to a potential customer, I bend over the upper left corner. A current customer that wants to buy more gets both upper corners bent.

I have a lot of variations of how I bend business cards. A card folded in half means someone wants to talk to me ASAP. A card folded diagonally belongs to a competitor that I feel I can talk to.

Each fold can include the components of the other folds. Happy customer, wants to buy more, and do it ASAP. Upper left and right corners folded over, card folded in half.

If I am talking with someone that is not happy, I fold the bottom right or left corner – depending on if they are a customer or not.

How you fold business cards, or if you do – is up to you. What each fold means to you, is up to you. And if you can somehow manage all these contacts without having to resort to “memory games” – then good for you. I can’t. So I use something that is easy for me to figure out even a week later. And each fold helps me remember more of the conversation I had with that person – which makes me better suited to respond correctly to them after the conference.

It doesn’t matter how you remember people, but you DO need to remember them – and the context in which you met them. If folding business cards turns out to be useful for you, please let me know. I know it has made me much more effective in my follow up conversations.

It is an easy “trick”, and I like easy.

But you have to start with loving to be “helpful”.  That is a powerful word that your customers will respect.

Anyway, here are some of my pointers:

• You are hyper-connected, and loving it that way.  You are “always” online, even when it isn’t really appropriate.
• You know your customers.  Better yet, you used to BE one of your companies customers!
• You know the customer community.
• You love fixing things.
• You don’t mind “being the bad guy/girl” if that’s what it takes to satisfy a customer.
• You are technical in the field you are supporting.  If it’s a writing site/company, you should be a writer.  Know your audience and you will have a respectable voice.
• Develop an online persona for yourself/company .  It can be your own, if that is appropriate.  It can be a merging of yours and your companies core values.  But it must be genuine, and it must be constant.
• Make friends with your customers.  Work for them more than you work for anyone else.
• Remember that you are also changing the way your company thinks/feels about customer outreach.  Don’t forget to reach within early and often.  Get advocates on your side.  Find those others that are already doing your role in an ad-hoc way, and embrace them.  Educate them.  Encourage them.  USE them

If you aren’t having fun – you are definitely not in the right position – get out of it quickly!

I’ve even got a post on the new site.  But it isn’t my site.  It belongs to the community that builds it.  You can join that community.  Learn how here.

It’s been a blast working on the site.  This is something completely fresh – from the graphics to the design.  The content and the idea behind the site – all new.

My employer, Rackspace, is backing the site.  It is an interesting challenge.  It has been from the day we decided to hire Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica.  Interesting because the idea is so unique that it is hard to describe.  A site that has no revenue model.  No marketing message.  It exists to help people use the new Internet to improve their own websites.  Particularly businesses.  If we help a business increase sales 10-15%, perhaps they will hire another employee.  Perhaps the increase in their sales means on of their vendors needs to hire more help.

Perhaps we can help the struggling economy one helpful post at a time.  Who knows?  Since it’s not been done in this way before – nobody knows.  But we have sure busted ass trying to find out!

I encourage you to go look at building43.  I am very proud of what the team has built.  I am proud to have my name associated with it.  And I am very, very happy that Robert and Rocky are with us on this project.  On paper, they work for me – but in actuality, we all work for the same purpose.  We all have a burning desire to build something truly meaningful – something truly helpful.

Let me know what you think!

Rob

It has been an amazing four years for me – I have been able to spend time with my kids as required – but mostly I have been able to spend an inordinate amount of time learning.  Ten years ago I learned by reading books – today I learn more by surfing the Internet – it is still reading, but it is so much faster, and so much more available (and “find-able!”.

One of the things my time in consulting has taught me is that I miss people.  I miss the challenge of building teams – not just hiring people, but building functional groups that work well together to build more than any single persons could have done.

So, taking stock of my life, as I am often wanton to do, I asked myself, “What is next”?  In a year I will have two kids in college, and perhaps neither of them left at home.

It was time for me to answer the question, “What does Rob want?”.

So I looked back in my life experiences and tried to zero in on what made me the most happy – what did I love to do so much that I could do it for the rest of my life?  Raising children certainly tops my list – but I can’t raise them forever – in fact, I am already being outsourced in that position – by my children themselves.

Raising children is like building good teams – the end goal is that eventually they won’t need depend on you anymore.

I decided I needed to go back to work with people – preferably young, energetic people, and certainly people smarter than I am.  I have always been lucky in surrounding myself with people smarter than I am (and please – PAUL! – no comments that this should be easy – it isn’t).

This realization came over a several month period – I didn’t wake up one day having come to this “epiphany”.

I missed building teams.  I need to work with smart people.  I MUST work for a company that understands that I am a unique person – I am opinionated, passionate, determined, outspoken, opinionated, and outspoken.  And I am sorry if I repeated myself.  And I am sorry if I repeated myself.

I need a company that doesn’t exist outside of startups – I needed security, because I will have two kids in college.  It must be nimble.  It must be willing to listen, and learn – even as it teaches.  But I also needed the excitement that keeps me engaged.  I need to constantly invent.  I need to work with smart people that will make me smarter.  I needed to be someplace that allows me to make a difference every day.  I needed to build something that affects a lot of people, because after helping build WiFi – it takes a big project to be a “big deal”.

And most of all – I need to be able to help.  My work must have value – to me, and to the people I work with.  And to the customers – who I never shy away from or refuse a conversation with.

In the next day or two I hope to share with you the company that is all of that, and more.  How much more is something I expect to find out soon – and something I hope to grow over time.

But don’t worry – I won’t change my blogging style/habits.  I wouldn’t work for a company that thought they could control my freedom of expression outside the office.

The list of companies I wouldn’t work for is rather large.  So I’ll save you that and instead share with you in the next couple days who I would work for – and I will tell you exactly why I made that choice.

Like a High School friend that chooses a different college than you – when Twitter is gone you wish it wasn’t – but you forgive them.  Because they are, after all, friends. 

Twitter has done a great job building a sense of community.  Ev and Biz talk back to people.  When Twitter is up.  Not so much when it isn’t.  I can fix that!

Hell, I am a Twitterholic (12 step post to follow, I am sure!).

I even suggested yesterday that we send Twitter some Pizza. Shannon Whitley ran with it (and I donated) and he made it happen.

I Tweeted the first real-time blind date in Twitter. As far as I know.

I created the first Startup Company developed completely on Twitter.  Staffing, ideas, finances, etc.  As far as I know.

I started Tweeting about the need to relieve the Twitter servers of their workload before most people started Tweeting about a "distributed" Twitter.  I think we need smart clients that have an open source API they can all use to add features such as Peer To Peer, filtering, groups, etc.  But I think Twitter needs to be "the network".

I’ve blogged about all of these things over the last few months.  Right here, on this blog.

I deserve to be the Twitter Evangelist that they don’t know they need. Look at my Social Networking footprint (Google Search kr8tr – or just click it on the menu bar).

Oh – and I understand the API, and I have blogged a tutorial about using Track with GTalk.

So vote for me.  Tell @ev and @biz that I should carry the Twitter Torch!

Uber means "super", "hyper" or "overkill".  Twit is what you do when you use Twitter.  Some people prefer Tweet, but I see no reason why you would "Tweet" on Twitter and not "Twit" on Twitter.) So I want to build a Super, hyper, overkill Twitter app.  But make it "uber-easy" to use.

Actually, I don’t want to build a Twitter App at all.  I want to build a common framework that allows Twitter Apps to share a common set of extensions that increase the power/flexibility/usability of Twitter.

ubertwit is a Twitter Client that is (mostly) in the design stage right now.  There are a LOT of Twitter clients, so why build a new one?

I’ll let the proposed feature set explain why:

• Peer 2 Peer via "Super Nodes".  My Twitter friends and followers will all share their data between their clients instead of each of them hitting the Twitter servers for updates.  Each client will poll the Twitter service, but at much less frequent intervals.  This is good for a number of reasons – the Twitter servers don’t get hit by as much traffic, and more important, by using the Jabber protocol me and my friends can still communicate even if the Twitter service is completely dead.  Even if it disappears. Even if it disappears forever.
• Groups.  Some people don’t like the idea of Groups on Twitter.  Honestly I don’t think Twitter managed groups are a good idea either.  I want user-defined groups.  I want to be able to sort my conversations in certain ways – pretty much allowing me to focus on a group at certain times – yet not affecting my overall "stream".  Ideally I could open "group windows" that follow certain people, or topics, or locations – based on my immediate interest.  When the conversations in these windows "blend" the windows would do something, like blend in a similar frame color, to let me know that my conversations are merging.  And I could either move or copy any of these people or topics (tracks) from one window to another with a simple drag and drop – just like I was moving a file, or a folder.  I envision groups working by people forming groups.  And although groups CAN be marked Private they still follow the current Twitter model.  If I create a a private group and send a message to it, the messages go out as Twitter Direct Messages (if Twitter is alive).  Otherwise they go our as point to point messages on Jabber.
• The ability to rename (or at least set tags on) my contacts.  I would follow a lot more people if I knew what the context of my relationships meant to me (let me use my own "social graph").  I’m sorry – I can’t always tell who "alph732a" – just like I don’t expect ALL of my Twitter friends to remember who kr8tr is.  A mouse-over that contained some other info would be very helpful.
• A threaded conversation view that works.
• The ability to "mute" someone for 30 minutes.  Basically it causes them to not appear in any of your groups/timelines.  As someone said, it is a "Time out".  Steve Gillmor thinks nobody will use this.  I think a lot of people will
• A smart algorithm that suggests new friends based on things I talk about (gestures I make) and who I interact with most (more gestures), and who their friends are that may be talking about what I talk about.
• Along with the above, give my friends/followers the ability to @F2F (friend to friend) me to someone – as an introduction.
• Geo-Location service built in.
• "Favorite Friends" list.
• Ability to push a Tweet to a group of Twitter people in a given Geo-location (within 5 mile radius, etc).
• An open API for the Twitter client.
• A "skin-able" client.
• An open source project that invites any and all to come and play – with platforms that communicate equally with each other.

This is a partial list.  I have more items that I haven’t yet figured out how to implement. Everything above I think I know how to build.

But I am still in the "just playing" stage with the code.  I would love to hear suggestions for more features, a different approach to building the "ubertwit", whatever.

Share.

That would give followers the ability to know everything you need to know about the momentum of the vehicle in front of you.

In any case, it is about time we update brake lights.

It’s only taken about a million years, but someone has finally decided that improvements are possible in automobile braking lights. Students from Virginia Tech have developed a new system that can show not just whether you’re stopping, but if you’re slowing down, when you’re about to stop, and how quickly you’re pressing the pedal. The concept uses an array of horizontally arranged LED lights — when you begin to slow, lights in the center glow orange, after a certain threshold side lights turn to red, and if you’re slamming on the brake, they’ll all flash red.

Virginia Tech students create "smart" brake lights for cars | My iStop

That’s why I bought the domain name of deadcasts.com today.  Podcasts delivered from the grave – after you are dead, to the people you specify.  Or to the world.  Could be video, could be audio, could be a favorite YouTube video.

And yes, I know there are things *like* this out there.

But a cool domain name is a cool domain name. 

Even if I don’t ever build the exact idea – I’m not afraid of buying a domain name here and there.  I wish I had done more of it in the late 90′s!

Here’s the thing about domain names – if you buy 500 of them at $10 each you spend $5,000.  Sell just one of them for 10K (I have) and suddenly it isn’t stupid anymore. 

But I don’t buy domains to make money off domains.  I buy domains hoping someone interesting calls me wanting to build something off those domains.  And I hope I can work with them on it.

I love building stuff.

Microsoft Patent Application.

My Patent Application.

I think I win.

The problem lies with device drivers. The device drivers which ship with each operating system release is only what is available at the time, so it cannot support new hardware which has been released after that time. This means when you plug in the device, the system is not going to find a suitable driver or it’s going to end up becoming a generic device. I’m sure you too will be quite pissed when you just installed a $300 gaming keyboard and mouse, and it defaults as a generic USB keyboard and mouse.

Up to and until now, operating systems and hardware vendors have tackled this problem by the use of internet updating mechanisms which seek out new drivers when you plug in a device. This of course relies on vendors actually actively updating the drivers in this drivers pool which so far they’ve failed, but more importantly, it requires an active internet connection. The paradox of installing a new network adapter which requires a network connection to download a new driver is a good example where this fails.

Microsoft has just patented an idea that solves both of these problems with one stone. Patent application 20080071935, Self-Installing Computer Peripherals for those of you playing at home.

Microsoft patent makes Plug-and-Play smarter – istartedsomething

But I had all of these amazing people on Twitter that I could reach out to – even in the wee hours of the morning.

And tomorrow I will reach out to more.

And a company will be born.

On Twitter.

Cool.

Personally, I dislike the phrase “friend request”.  I have *very* few friends.  I know a hell of a lot of people though.  565 in my Instant Messaging client.  That is a lot of people.  VERY few friends.

People I meet on social networking sites are contacts.  Just because they join my network does not make me friends with anyone.  I just made a new contact – and I appreciate it.  But it is still a contact.

Friends are different.  Friends are people that you can call and ask for money and they ask you “how much” before they ask you “why?”

Friends are people that you absolutely trust with really important stuff – like your kids.

Friends are not bits and bytes flowing in through a cable modem.

And if you consider everyone who “follows” you to be a friend, then I think you are doing a disservice to your real friends.  The ones that would raise your kids for you. 

And you would trust them to do it.