With The Band

Daft Punk - Alive 2007

Wish I was there.

Nick O’Neill of AllFacebook just pointed out that you can now separate all your Facebook friends out into groups. It can be used to send out mass messages and event invitations.

But….

I think they are missing the main point of segmenting your friends: privacy. In my mind, the whole reason for being able to put people into groups is so you can control what each group of people see. I want my real life friends to be able to see certain things, my co-workers to see another set of things, and professional contacts yet another. The only way Facebook will survive is if they realize that people’s lives are segmented… as much as we may not want to admit it, we all wear different hats dependent on those around us. And I don’t want my co-workers and family seeing the pictures from Saturday night.

I’m assuming the people at Facebook are planning on doing this eventually, but really, this should have been done before they launched this feature.

As I mentioned in a previous post, new avenues of communication complement, not replace, older methods of communication. There are a ton of ways to get in touch with me. How do you choose which one to contact for each person?

My idea? Create a system where you can sign up for a special e-mail address that connects to all your different social media accounts. Any e-mail to that address will get forwarded on to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, GTalk, AIM, etc.

You could set rules for what e-mails get sent to what address when.

And it could handle replies.

Open it up so anyone can build their own connector via your API. yay platforms!

So who’s going to make it?

“The trouble with the first time entrepreneur is that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. After a failure he does know what he doesn’t know and can beat the hell out of people who still have to learn.”

Via VC Confidential

I’m not a networker. I’ll give you a second to get over the shock.

I’ve always operated under the impression that in the technical world, doing great work far outweighs who you know and who knows you, and that “networking” is left to the business types. In the corporate world, this holds true. You do good work, you get promoted (most of the time). Any time the word “networking” or “mixer” is attached to an event description, whether professional or social, I shy away.

But outside of the closed corporate environment, how is anyone supposed to know you? What distinguishes you from the next developer/designer/writer? How do they know you are who you say you are?

There are a million bloggers out there, with varying authenticity. Everyone can send an e-mail. Cook a resume. LinkedIn is hard to get in on, and is only useful once your own network grows to a decent size. Facebook is far away from having any kind of business utility.

In the past few months, I’ve started networking. Not only networking, attending events solely for the purpose of networking. Meeting totally random people who happen to be in a similar industry. The connections I’ve gained and things I’ve learned. It may be hard for me, but it’s an investment in the future.

I know it’s hard. So that’s why I do it.

From weakness comes advantage.

And for anyone in the DC area, you should certainly check out the Capital Cabal. I’m writing this after attending my first one last night.

By seeing this happen first hand, I also realize the importance of
one’s network. Not just the network you intentionally build, the
network you already have. That’ll come in a later post.

I heard some rumors over the weekend, and now TechCrunch is reporting that CompUSA is shutting down. Good.

They shut down the store nearest me in Maryland a while back. It was replaced by a Micro Center, a chain I had never heard of.

To put it simply, they nailed it. A haven for both geeks and non-geeks. The place is clean, and well stocked with anything you would ever need. The staff is helpful and friendly (they have a novel system for ensuring that). A far cry from CompUSA.

What is more interesting for me is the promotional tactics used to get people in the store. They mailed almost everyone in the area a coupon for a free branded thumb drive or memory card. Just for walking in the door. I had no interest previously in checking out the store, but it got me in there. And I’ve since spent a ridiculous amount of money there, so it worked for them! I’ve seen tactics like that before, but on top of the coupon they sent to you, they attached a similar companion coupon to give to a friend. That’s awesome. What a great viral way to have people advertise for you.

They have done a great job of keeping people visiting brick and mortar stores, and their approach will hopefully be echoed by other chains.

And, especially important for me, their return policy is awesome :-).

Embedded Video

The LeeVees performing “Gelt Melts” - they are performing in DC this coming Saturday night at The Eight.

Tags: Jewish

I’ve been using Twitter for a week now. Here’s my account.

• I held off on joining it for so long because I thought it was the same as IM. It has the same interface (short text messages), but is completely different.
• The API opens up a lot of possibilities. Plus it’s a free SMS gateway. I have a lot of ideas.
• Facebook’s status feature is similar, but the messaging feature is separated. Would be cool if Facebook had a “quick bar” that could do everything via one text box like twitter.
• Unlike Facebook, following someone is different than befriending someone. There is no relationship assumed.
• Heard Jim Long (aka newmediajim) talk in VA last night. He raised some interesting points, especially for a newbie. One of the more interesting points he brought up is that Twitter builds authenticity.
• Windows clients are lacking. I was using Snitter for a while but it pulled a Firefox in terms of memory usage.
• As I wrote before, it adds on a new way of communicating with the same people, which provides additional complexity.
• The more people who follow you, the more response you get to questions you ask, thoughts you post. The more people you follow, the less attention can be paid to individuals.
• There are many different “styles” of twittering. Similar to blogging. What’s mine?
• It’s another time sinkhole
• Some wizard needs to figure out a way to prevent people from using it while driving

If you’re on the fence like I was about joining up, play with it.

Wave by wave, technology has brought us amazing advancements.

Problem is, they don’t replace each other, they are cumulative. People still have records, 8-tracks, tapes, CDs, minidiscs*, 8mm reels, VHS tapes, DVDs… All are recently or long obsolete, but still technically operational, and therefore used.

The same happens with communication, particularly recently. Not only do previous methods stick around, they are still used. The ease of each new communication method bring with it additional complication. Which one do I choose? Which one is more appropriate for what?

In the recent era… (skipping over ancient tech, smoke signals, etc )

• Nothing (in person communication) - Can I talk to them?
• … then came telephone -  When is it worth calling them as opposed to seeing them in person? is it formal enough to deserve an in-person meeting?
• … then came e-mail -  Do I have to hear from them now? Do they prefer e-mail? What’s their address?
• … then came text/instant messaging-  can I condense the content into a small enough message?
  
• … then came social media -  Am I “friends” with them? Do I want others to be involved?
  

I’ve been thinking about this recently, with recent discussions of “Inbox 2.0” (e-mail derived social networking), and finally giving in and playing with Twitter. I still use e-mail. I still use IM. I still use text messaging. I still send messages on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc… Each one still has it’s own utility, but with enough overlap that I have to make a conscious decision of which one to use to communicate with an individual.

There is no solution, currently. Just like I still have grandparents who I’m sure still only use VHS tapes with their VCR, there will still be people who “stick” with a particular communication method, and shouldn’t be left behind.

Unless someone were to develop some Communication Aggregator, a marvelous technology that will someway, somehow, link everything. But who knows what that will look like.

*had to throw that one in there, given that I got fooled into buying one, along with everyone in Japan.

Since Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, everything you are viewing is merely reflects a moment in time. You can come back a day later and it’ll be different. While I was doing some searching for the previous blog post, I came across this little gem for the wikipedia entry on Intrapreneurship.

Click here to see it, kinda NSFW.

Looks like Google needs to re-index that page.

If you’re not laughing, it’s late. Leave me alone :-).