Some good traits for “online media” people

September 20, 2009 by

It’s been about 8 months that my primary role has been something “social media” related.  I make the role work for me, and that includes a lot of business development, social networking, and “social marketing”.  You need to find your own path.  As long as it is focused on customers, I imagine you can make it work.

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!

Filed Under: Community, Customers, Ideas, Management

I’ve Been Busy!

June 13, 2009 by

Lately my time has been consumed by a new project.- building43.com.  I’ve been building it with an amazing team of friends – some I’ve not even actually met yet.  That’s the power of the Internet!

building43logo 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

Filed Under: Community, Customers, education, Events, Ideas, News, Scoble, startups, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

Lightning Does Strike Twice

June 25, 2008 by

It has been about four years since I first decided to step into the consulting lifestyle.  In that time one of my “children” has completed High School, and then his first year of college.  Next year my daughter will finish High School as well.

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.

Filed Under: Community, Customers, education, Ideas, Management, News, Personal, San Antonio, startups, WTF?

I am Running for Twitter Community Evangelist (convince them they need one)!

May 21, 2008 by

Most of the people I know that complain about Twitter when it is down are just frustrated.  Most of them are not even mad.  They just miss Twitter.

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!

Filed Under: Community, Fun, Ideas Tagged With: , ,

ubertwit

April 25, 2008 by

I know the title makes no sense at all, but it is something I’ve been working on for a couple weeks.

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.

Filed Under: Community, Ideas
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