In addition to launching a new homepage, we have decided to put an official end to the VaynerMedia blog. As you may have noticed, we haven’t produced quality content in some time. We are proud of the articles we have published in the past but have found that we are far stronger in executing on social strategies for our clients than we are producing content on a daily basis. Thank you to everyone who has read and/or commented on our blog posts in the past. The blog will still remain as an archive, but as mentioned, updates will no longer be published here.

Matt Sitomer: 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes. Worth checking out for the data visualization technique alone.

Marcus Krzastek: Can a Fake Accent Help You Sell?. CRANKY that’s a good article.

Steve Campbell: Why Groupon Said No To Google’s $6 Billion. The real reason Groupon rejected Google was fear of regulatory scrutiny and Google’s low ball breakup fee.

Sam Taggart: How To Kill a Bad Idea [5 Min Read Time]. Great piece from Jason Fried, someone who’s killed a lot of bad ideas in his day, and executed on some great ones!

Stephanie Bagley: American Idol May Allow Contestant Tweets for First Time. AI might allow the contestants to tweet throughout the process of the show where that has been completely banned before. AI is usually the top or one of the top rated shows. Will be interesting to see how the monster show uses Twitter since there is a lot of apprehension amongst competition shows about info leaking on social media. Good sign that they’re embracing social media.

This is never more evident than when you actually try to contact a company, which is what I endured recently. Allow me to paint a picture for you.

In an attempt to gather information, I reached out to two companies in separate industries. The first, a subsidiary, was part of an international chain of franchised convenience stores, or in other words, a very large business that has been around for quite some time.

The second was a privately owned company that has only been in existence for a few years but has become insanely profitable in that short period of time. Which company do you think had the better customer service?

I sent both of these companies the exact same email, requesting information or contact with someone in the organization that could help me. Both companies, which I’ve stated were very profitable, responded to me in due time, but their responses were entirely different.

The larger, older business personally responded with an answer to my initial question in a matter of only a few hours. It wasn’t quite what I was looking for but I applauded their effort. The smaller business, taking a few days to respond, sent me what appeared to be an automated message that wasn’t even in the ball park with what I had asked.

So the bigger business was better, right? In this instance, yes, but this whole experience got me thinking about the customer service industry as a whole.

If You’re Not First, You’re Last

If I had to create a list of the most important aspects of customer service, speed would be right up there in the top two. When a customer takes the time to call a company, send an email, tweet them, or whatever, turnaround has a lot to do with how they will feel about their experience. In my example, let’s say the smaller company gave me a spectacular answer–just what I was looking for. Would I have been impressed? Sure, but the larger company still beat them, and that’s more impressive. Why?

Effort: It Goes A Long Way

The other important aspect of customer service is effort. As Gary would say, if you out-hustle your competitors and show your customers that you care about them, you will win. I think that’s definitely true. In my scenario, I was happy with the answer I received from the larger company, not because it was what I was looking for, but because they really tried to help me. I can’t say with complete certainty that if I contacted them again I would feel the same way, but after the experience I had I got the feeling that that might be the case, which brings me to my next point…

First Impression Is The ONLY Impression

Does the larger company in my story have the better service? In that one instance they certainly did, but how am I to know for sure? It’s quite possible that I happened to talk to the smaller company’s worst employee, or a trainee on the worst day of their life. It’s quite possible that I happened to get in touch with a manager over at the larger company, who was covering for someone. You never know.

And that is why the first impression is so important. Like most people, I don’t contact customer support departments all the time. In fact, I’ll probably never have another reason to reach out to either of those companies again. But, like most people, I’ll go through the rest of my life knowing (or thinking that I know) that company A has great customer service and company B sucks at it. Whenever either of those companies come up in conversation, my experience will probably become a talking point.

What do you think of the customer service industry? Do you have an experience to share?

Image Credit: Konstantin Chagin, Here’s Kate

Steve Campbell: Google Considers Making A Startup Incubator To Keep Employees From Leaving. When a product manager at Google told his bosses this year that he was quitting to take a job at Facebook, they offered him a large raise. When he said it was not about the money, they told him he could have a promotion, work in a different area or even start his own company inside Google. He turned down all the inducements and joined Google’s newest rival.

Sam Taggart: Yelp Introduces Checkin Offers. Makes sense for Yelp to get involved here. Expect them to do quite well!

Joe Whitmarsh: A Media False Alarm Over the T.S.A. A really interesting read about the response online and what it translated to in the real world.

Sam Taggart: The Seven Principles You Need to Know to Build a Great Social Product. Solid tips from the founder of Ning!

Marcus Krzastek: PepsiCo/Safeway/Foursquare Partner for an Extremely Interesting Loyalty Program. Really takes location to a logical conclusion, delivers real value to brand in the way of info while adding real value to consumers.

Matt Sitomer: Path: The Social App That’s Not Viral (By Design). I guess it takes a former Facebook exec to make a platform that is in many ways the opposite of Facebook.

Anthony Liang: Facebook Passes EBay in Value, Becoming No. 3 U.S. Web Company. Facebook only behind Amazon and Google now, how long before they are #1?

Steve Campbell: Why One VC Believes there’s more to Social Media . Social media investment funds? Sign me up.

Matt Sitomer: Is OpenTable Worth it?. Restauranteur explains the conundrum that independent restaurant owners face with regard to the popular reservation service Open Table–great for the customer, bad for the business?

Sam Taggart: Twitter’s Official Analytics Product Has Arrived. Exciting news for Twitter users and for brands!

AJ Vaynerchuk: New York Times Will Rank E-Book Best Sellers. Most interesting stat: e-book sales in the first nine months of 2010 were $304.6 million, up from $105.6 million from the same period in 2009, a nearly 190 percent increase.

Anthony Liang: One Third of Top-Grossing iPhone Apps Are Free. Interesting statistic, shows how freemium model can work and the willingness of people to pay for in-app goods.

Sam Taggart: Launching a New Website: 18 Steps to Successful Metrics & Marketing. Comprehensive guide to launching a new website. Useful information.

Sam Taggart: Ask.com ditches its search business). See ya later, Ask.com.

Anthony Liang: thingd: The Super Ambitious, Low-Profile But Red Hot Startup You’ve Never Heard Of. Really cool project, interested to see how this grows in the near future.

I’ll highlight two specific applications that I’ve had personal experience with, but that does not necessarily mean these will be the ones that win.

Group.Me is a free group messaging platform that “makes life easy for you and your groups.” To start, you head to the homepage, type in your name and phone number and hit “Start Group.” Group.Me sends you a unique phone number to serve as your group. Each time you text that number, your message appears to everyone that has access. Think AOL chat room but through a mobile interface.

I’ve already used Group.Me in two separate instances. First was with a group of guys that play basketball on Saturday mornings. We used Group.Me for trash talking throughout the week and also for figuring out weekly attendance. We ended up deciding that an email chain was better for what we wanted, simply because it was easier to track and already had the complete group of guys on it. We found that getting people to join the Group.Me group was a challenge, and so it wasn’t as effective as the email chain was.

The second instance was when the Phillies made the postseason this year. Since I live in New York City and know a lot of Phillies fans that live in other places around the country (and the world), I thought it would be fun for us to be able to watch the games “together.” After a big hit or a big out, it would be fun to cheer together. Similarly, we could feel each other’s pain in times of sadness. Unfortunately, the group never came to fruition. Only one brave friend joined, and we ended up just using the group as a normal text conversation. I don’t think the others were ready for it.

So, in both cases, the groups did not succeed because of an inability to adopt the platform. To be fair, in the second instance, I was asking a bunch of friends who were not necessary tech-savvy to join a platform they’d never heard of. So I wasn’t surprised the Phillies group didn’t do well. But in the first instance, my friends were a group of early adopters (mostly in the tech space, we used the hashtag #geekbasketball on Twitter), yet they still did not join at a high rate. In any case, group texting is not here yet, but it soon will be. There are just too many practical applications for it not to work.

Kik is a mobile application that acts very similarly to Blackberry Messenger and has seen tremendous growth despite only going live recently. They reported to have 450,000 registered users within 10 hours of launch, and not too long ago picked up 150,000 new users in 15 hours. Kik is a cross platform (works on iPhone, Blackberry, Android, iTouch) messenger application that allows users to create accounts and start messaging friends in the same fashion as they would in IM. Kik does not use text messages and allows users to see when their messages are sent, received, and read by the recipient. While currently focused on messaging, Kik’s technology will allow it to branch out to sharing media across mobile phones and Internet browsers.

Kik has been really interesting. I joined last week, so I don’t have a ton of experience, but I like it so far. Kik notifies you every time it thinks someone you know joins. In the past week or so, I’ve seen an interesting variety of friends join the platform, from early adopters to friends still in college to a professional basketball player I happen to have in my phone book (yeah, I’m that cool). It seems like Kik is catching on with a wide range of people. I think the BBM concept is a brilliant one. People appreciate real-time interaction. So, I’d think that Kik will do quite well.

Obviously, they need to make improvements in some areas, but what impresses me is that the technology seems to be pretty darn good. I’ve had several conversations on Kik and the messages seemed to be going back and forth in real-time. There have been occasional issues, but it’s a young platform and that is to be expected. Between the crowd I’ve seen join Kik in the past week and my experience with the technology, I think the platform will only continue to grow.

What do you think about group messaging and real-time mobile messaging? Are they just fads or do you see them catching on long-term? Have you personally used either platform? What do you think? As always, would love to continue the conversation and hear your thoughts below in the comments section!

Dave Zhang: Amazon Now Allows You To Send Gift Cards To Friends On Facebook. Amazon announced that users now have the option of purchasing a gift card on Amazon send the personalized gift card to your Facebook friends. The card will be auto-posted on the recipient’s Facebook Wall on the actual delivery date. Great move by Amazon, as I’m sure many will follow suit shortly.

Joe Whitmarsh: Facebook introduces ‘Deals’. Some interesting launch partner deals. Will people take to checking in on Facebook once there are incentives?

Steve Campbell: Blekko, The “Slashtag” Search Engine, Goes Live. The service offers an interesting way to “slash” or create specialty search engines for any topic, along with new features the company hopes will improve relevancy.

Sam Taggart: How to Take Down Facebook — Hint: It Ain’t Twitter. (aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network). Dave McClure gives his take on how to take down Facebook. An incredibly smart guy with some smart thoughts & opinions.

Matt Sitomer: Expedia on how one extra data field can cost $12M. Removing one address field resulted in an extra $12million in revenue!

Immediately after the announcement, the discussion around the VaynerMedia office started. Some people believe Facebook has just taken claim to the geo-location space, others are less convinced. While it’s still early and with more deliberation everyone’s thoughts and opinions will become more refined, we thought it would be interesting to give everyone a glimpse into VaynerMedia’s current opinions on this announcement.

The Power (and Curse) of Scale

Initial knee-jerk reaction from many members of the team was that Facebook had won.  The size of the platform along with deals showcased at launch proved that Facebook was going to get deals from brands bigger and better than anything previously imagined on the smaller geo competitors and in a much larger quantity, creating a far more powerful pull to check-in.  Additionally, because Facebook has reached the level of household name, brands are going to be much more comfortable placing large budgets behind the platform and will have an easier time selling these campaigns internally.  The Gap deal was specifically brought up as an example of a deal that never would have appeared on Foursquare or Gowalla in the near future.

The scale that makes Facebook interesting to businesses could be what damages it for users, however.  Some began expressing reservation at sharing their location with the people in their Facebook social graph and claiming that they cultivated their Foursquare/Gowalla social graphs far differently than they do on Facebook.  While users can create a list to filter their location updates, Facebook’s recent privacy issues were brought up as proof that people hate making lists.  Facebook could of course solve this by making users opt-in to who will receive location updates, but this would clearly damage the business benefits in a major way.  This then led to the discussion of whether Facebook was really interested in people sharing their location.

Location Social Network or Virtual Loyalty/Advertising Application

Most of VaynerMedia is in agreement that Facebook isn’t really as interested in location as they are in creating a virtual loyalty program, allowing businesses to provide incentives for users to act.  A few people wondered if Facebook could make checking-in a normal, mainstream action, but the general consensus was the Facebook doesn’t care enough about the check-in.  All Facebook cares about is that people see the reward to checking in when a deal is available is greater than the effort required.  Some reported seeing more “normal” people checking in while others reported otherwise.  One developer welcomed Facebook’s spartan approach, saying he didn’t check-in currently but he will in Facebook’s environment devoid of badges and virtual nicknacks.  Ultimately, the process of checking-in began to come under fire.

Is “Checking-In” a Viable Process

A major theme is that people believe that as long as the process of checking in follows the same steps it does now, it has no chance at breaking into the mainstream, and as such, a location social network has no chance to exist yet.  The current crop of location services was compared to Friendster in that they have the right idea but the technology hasn’t caught up to the concept yet.  Most agreed that GPS needs to become more accurate, allowing for someone to opt-in to saying they’re at a location without having to find their location and select it, in order to make a more desirable user experience.  While Facebook is set up to dominate the current location landscape, tech improvements could lead to another company dominating location over the long-term.  Ultimately, there were questions as to how important it was that Facebook was going to be dominating a fundamentally flawed space.

Other Thoughts

Some other thoughts that didn’t fit neatly into the previous narrative but are worth mentioning:

-  It’s interesting that brands are so gung-ho about jumping into location given its limitations both in tech and in adoption. After all, only 4% of online Americans use location-based platforms.

-  One of the bigger implications of Facebook Deals is that it supports giving businesses back control over their virtual space.  Our Gowalla/Nets campaign, for instance, wouldn’t work as easily on Facebook because we would have to strike deals with all the individual locations we seeded prizes at.

As always, would love to hear your comments and reactions! What do you think of the announcement?

AJ Vaynerchuk: The Playstation Phone. Always interesting to see a company jump into a new space.

Anthony Liang: Starbucks Stores in New York Now Accepting Mobile Payments. Starbucks making some pretty interesting moves recently, now towards mobile payments with their app + QR codes. Looking forward to trying this!

Sam Taggart: UberCab Cease & Desist Means One Thing: They’re Onto Something. As MG Siegler writes, “this cease & desist is a huge validation of what UberCab is trying to do,” change the taxi/towncar industry. The incumbents feel threatened and they’re trying to squash UC before they have a chance to do serious damage.

Marcus Krzastek: Microsoft is a Dying Consumer Brand. It’s gotten to the point where I feel bad for Microsoft, they’re getting it from all angles lately.

Sam Taggart: MySpace Relaunch Focuses on Successful Niche: Entertainment. Good job by Myspace to accept defeat vs Facebook and restructure their site to focus on a niche they know has brought them and will bring them success.

Anthony Liang: 60% of Apple’s Sales are from Products that Did Not Exist 3 Years Ago. Interesting graph of Apple’s sales of its products, crazy how much affect the iPod has had.

Marcus Krzastek: Are People Underestimating Twitter?. Some really good points here, Twitter’s info may have more value than people think.

Matt Sitomer: Starbucks Remakes its Future with an Eye on Beer and Wine. A major change in response to new competitive pressures from companies like McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts who have been trying to take away premium coffee walk-in business. Ironically, it makes Starbucks more similar to your neighborhood mom and pop coffee shop.

Anthony Liang: Microsoft Launches Office365.com. Sounds really good, microsoft is bringing it’s products to the cloud and to more products.

Sam Taggart: Google Engineer Builds Facebook Disconnect . Created by an engineer to squash his desire to delete his Facebook account, Facebook DIsconnect removes all Facebook Connect functionality from third-party sites.

Communicate & coordinate. In dodgeball, it’s essential to communicate with your teammates, understand the plan of attack, and know where & when to throw the ball. Without proper coordination of throws, you’ll likely lose the game. The same goes for the workplace. Proper communication with coworkers, clients, and/or consumers is essential. Plain & simple.

Understand & embrace your role. Some people can throw the ball really hard. Others can catch the ball really well. Some people are excellent dodgers. Others can do it all. On a dodgeball court, everyone has a role. And the team has a better chance of success when everyone does what they’re supposed to. If Dwiddy, one of our best catchers, gets out on a stupid throw, we’re losing one of our best players because he didn’t stick with his role.

The same concept goes for the workplace. Companies function best when employees understand their roles and do the best they can at what they’re good at. I’m a decent designer, but I’m better at communication and idea generation, that’s why I’m a project manager. I get more done for our company in my project manager role than I would in a designer role. On the dodgeball court, it’s a different story. I like to think I can do it all!

Don’t lose your cool. I’m competitive, to say the least. In my first season of dodgeball, I was known by the refs as a complainer. I’d see someone cheat, or I’d disagree with a call, and I would start yelling and whining. The refs didn’t love on-the-court-Sam, to say the least. This season, I’ve been better. I learned that losing my cool only hurts myself and my team. I played worse when I got upset.

The same goes at work. People make mistakes. The Internet goes out. The heat is too hot or the air conditioner is too cold. Things won’t always be perfect, it’s just the way it is. The important thing to remember is that losing your cool won’t solve anything (most of the time), and staying focused on your goals and the task at hand is simply the best option. Further, your coworkers and superiors won’t react well to complaints and whining.

(Work hard.) Play hard. The dodgeball league is full of young professionals, who work all day and come to the gym at night simply to have fun. The ironic thing? Apart from my coworker and teammate Dave Zhang (thanks for re-introducing me to the game!), I have no idea what anyone I play with does for a living. Why? Because when we get to the gym, it’s all about dodgeball. Work hard during the day. Play hard on Wednesday nights.

Never turn away from the action (or risk being hit in the back of the head with a fast-flying rubber ball). Don’t be afraid of a challenge. Don’t be afraid to try and fail. When the other team’s fastest thrower sizes you up and launches the ball, open your arms and make your best effort to catch it. If you turn away, you have no chance; you’re going to get hit in the back of the head.

I feel the same way about challenges at work. Sure, you won’t always succeed. Sometimes you’re going to drop the ball. But better to try your best and approach scary situations with confidence than to turn away. You’ll gain from your experience. Maybe you’ll learn something you wouldn’t have learned otherwise. There’s nothing to be afraid of, apart from maybe a couple of bruises.

Marcus Krzastek: Sesame Street’s Take on Old Spice. Sesame Street has been getting a lot of blog coverage lately, actually.

David Zhang: Twitter Crushing Facebook’s Click-Through Rate. While Facebook only averages 2.87 clicks per user, Twitter has produced an amazing average of 19.04 clicks!

Anthony Liang: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic. Really cool project by Google, surprised how little press it received until now even though they were running in the open for a while.

Sam Taggart: FanGo Lets You Avoid Long Concession Stand Lines At Sports Events And Concerts . Pretty awesome. Only a matter of time before it’s implemented in every major venue.

AJ Vaynerchuk: When It Drops – Weekly info on Movies, Music, DVD’s etc. Nifty, simple website that lets you know what is coming out this week.

The aforementioned movie that we saw was “The Social Network”, the tale of how Facebook was conceived and developed. It chronicles Mark Zuckerberg during his days at Harvard, portraying him as a socially awkward computer prodigy. Through a recipe of 1 part idea-borrowing and 200 parts genius, he launches Facebook as a service available only to his classmates. As the movie progresses, the site grows, in members and value, and the number of lawsuits increase. It follows Zuckerberg through the whole process and then abruptly ends just after Facebook’s 1 millionth member acquisition. The filmmakers cite real-life facts and settlements just before the credits roll. All in all, it’s fantastic and I think it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.

Some of the moviegoers left the theater remarking about how they didn’t know that Zuckerberg was such a scumbag or that he stole the idea for Facebook. Some were listing ridiculous things they’d buy with Zuckerberg’s $6 billion fortune: “I’d hire the drumline from a marching band to follow me around all day” and “I’d buy the giraffe from that Opulence commercial” were 2 of my favorites. It’s safe to say that I was the only person that left the movie with the dead-serious intention of starting a multi-billion dollar platform before work the next morning. It’s not so much that I’m motivated by the money that Facebook has made for its founder. In all honesty, the thing that excited me most was that an idea sparked in a dorm room and nurtured by someone with no expertise changed the world as we know it.

As soon as I saw the trailer for “The Social Network”, I was pumped to see it. It’s only natural; I work at a company that shows personal and consumer brands how to kick ass on this platform. So yeah, you could say I had an interest. However, I never thought that the movie would actually evoke inspiration. I thought impact like that would come from a Disney film or a touching biography or something. But it didn’t; it came from a movie about a website I use daily, starring a CEO I was intimately familiar with and telling a story that I had already heard before. I’m well aware of the controversy surrounding Facebook’s inception and I’ve always believed that Zuckerberg is the victim of his own success. You can’t build a $25 billion company without attracting a few credit-seekers. I’m sure several people helped shape the idea that Zuckerberg eventually exploded into a visionary concept that became Facebook, but that doesn’t mean that they invented anything. Anyway, the reason that I was so inspired by this movie was because it really shined a spotlight on the world that we live in today. We’re living in a time where our ideas are not hindered by anything, where gatekeepers can’t extinguish an entrepreneurial mission. If you have an idea, whether or not you can reach your target audience is no longer even a question, so the success or failure or your idea rests solely in its functionality and validity.

Now, obviously I’m not saying that a good business idea is going to flourish 100% of the time. What I am saying is that there’s a great lesson that we can all take from Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, and that lesson is that the world is becoming more and more entrepreneur-friendly every day. I guess what I’m saying is that if you have a great idea but aren’t launching because you don’t think you can make it really take off, think again. In this day and age, smart ideas backed by passionate people can make it on their own merit. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it just doesn’t work; but sometimes, a $25 billion company springs from a crappy college dorm room.

I’d love to hear your opinion on this. What did you think of the movie? Do you agree that smart ideas can grow easier nowadays?

While I missed out on the actual deal, I was intrigued enough to explore what else the site had to offer.  Like the other DOTD platforms, they offer similar “$25 Gift Certificate for $10″ deals. Unlike those other services, however, Restaurant.com operates under several different rules:

1) 15,000 Restaurants – You can purchase coupons and gift certificates at any of the restaurants indexed on the website, at any time.  This is a significant advantage over current group-buying sites who usually offer discounts from just one business.  Why settle for just 1 deal today when you can browse thousands?

2) No Activation Number – Users do not have to worry about a coupon reaching a target number of sales before it becomes valid as every gift certificate sold becomes active upon purchase.

3) Multiple Denominations - While the “$25 Certificate for $10″ coupon is the most common, Restaurant.com often offers multiple gift certificate denominations, including $10, $50, $75 and $100 certificates for $4, $20, $30 and $40, respectively.  This gives the user a lot more freedom and flexibility than what’s currently available on other DOTD sites.

Jon Troutman from Cork’d brought up the fact that Restaurant.com should try to incentivize users to purchase larger denomination with great savings.  As it stands, there’s really no value difference between any of the offerings (all %60 off), and while the savings are already significant, shouldn’t the deal get better as the upfront cost rises?

4) No expiration dates – ’nuff said.

While Restaurant.com isn’t a true group-buying or DOTD platform, they’re a great alternative and will probably draw it’s revenue from the same group of users.  To me, it’s an improvement over Groupon et al, as they offer equally steep discounts under several denominations, for many more restaurants and with unlimited availability.  What do you think?

Marcus Krzastek: Marketing Lessons from Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers was better at social media in 1975 than most people are now.

David Zhang: Experiment with Broccoli Ads Boost Sales. The Television Bureau of Canada ran Broccoli ads to prove that TV commercials are still a valuable marketing tool, and it worked: because of the spots, broccoli sales in Canada went up by 8%.

Neil Sarkar: Google to Start Incorporating Page Load Times in their Algorithm. They hint that the bar is set at 1.4 seconds.

Sam Taggart: AOL Will Launch A Groupon Clone. AOL enters an incredibly crowded space with this move, but will be interesting to see the kind of success they can generate given their size and popularity.

Marcus Krzastek: On-Jersey Advertising in American Sports Leagues?. Don’t think this will happen in the near future, but I wonder if it will ever happen.

Why It’s Great!

One of the big challenges brands face when joining Twitter is growing a solid base of followers. The high follower count along with the positive and engaged community is usually the dream scenario. With Promoted Accounts and the right suggestion algorithm, brands will have an easier time gaining quality followers. It should be targeting followers who are fans of the brand or might be fans of the brand. This would make it easier for brands to connect with an audience who will listen and pay attention to what they have to say without using promotional giveaways and retweet contests, which usually brings in a crowd of people only there for moment.

Early Results

Since Twitter announced Promoted Accounts on their blog (10/4), Microsoft’s @Xbox account has jumped from around 23,000 followers to just over 31,000 followers in four days. The “Promoted Effect” is better illustrated here at TwitterCounter, where we can see @Xbox’s growth rate steadily climb for the past 30 days or so and then make some really impressive gains in the last few days (I just refreshed the page after an hour and there are 400+ new followers). It would be very interesting to see how many of these new users came from Promoted Accounts, but judging from their previous growth rate I’m assuming quite a large portion.

Looking Ahead

As long as Twitter’s user base grows and their suggestion algorithm continues to improve and target the right people, Promoted Accounts will be an excellent launching pad for brands getting into the social scene. Twitter is a great place for brands and consumers to connect, and this can help streamline the process. Promoted Accounts can provide a substantial boost for brands looking to gain quality followers and also provide value for new and current users to continue discovering interesting accounts.

What do you think about Promoted Accounts?

So, without further adieu, I give you the five ways I stay productive:

Embrace your internal clock. I am an early bird. I’ve always been an early-to-bed, earl-to-rise type of guy. Through my high school and college years, I tried to fight it. But it’s no use, it’s just who I am. I like to wake up early. In fact, I feel stressed when I wake up late. I feel like I missed out on too much of the day. As a result, I tend to come in to work between 7AM & 8AM every morning and crank out as much as I can during the early and middle parts of the day. I do most of the important / brain cell-consuming work before 3PM or 4PM, because once it hits late afternoon, my productivity takes a dive. It’s important to know yourself, understand your peaks and valleys throughout the day, and plan your work accordingly. You’ll do better work on the things that really matter if you do it that way.

Stay organized.

One of my biggest challenges is organization, which is unfortunate, because one of the most crucial aspects of being productive is staying organized. Slip for even a day, and you’ll find yourself fighting to catch up, spending exponentially more time down the line on getting back to where you should have been had you just taken the time to stay organized in the first place. Staying organized can help alleviate a lot of unnecessary stress and open up time you never thought you had.

Keep well-fed & hydrated.

Hungry? Thirsty? Have a headache or low energy? You probably need some food! I know, I know. You don’t have the time. Or maybe you get in such a groove that you forget. Food and water are essential to keeping your energy and motivation up throughout the day. For example, it’s 8PM as I write this post. I’ve been in the office for over 12 hours. I hit a point about an hour ago where I thought I needed to call it quits for the day, but after a nice meal and glass of water, I feel like a new man. Can’t stress this one enough. There is always time for food and water. And don’t forget!

“Step away from the vehicle!”

I’ve always heard that after every hour or so of work, you should take a ten minute break. I’m not sure of the exact formula, but I do know that short breaks in between focused work sessions is something I would highly recommend. And I don’t mean simply clicking over to your favorite leisure website (e.g. ESPN or Perez Hilton), I mean getting up out of your seat, taking a walk, or grabbing some fresh air. In my opinion, a change of scenery goes a long way. It’s nice to clear your mind; think of it as a quick reboot of the system, much like your computer gets (or deserves) when it’s been working for a while.

Understand your optimum working conditions.

Do you prefer complete silence or some background noise? Are you more comfortable when the temperature is a bit cool or do you like it warmer? Are you more focused when you’re working alone or when you’re side by side with coworkers? Think about the environmental conditions around you at your workplace. Is the mess on your desk forcing you to lose focus? Take ten minutes to clean it up, you might feel a lot better. The point is that everyone works best under different outside factors. Do as much as you can to help your surroundings help you.

There are clearly more than five ways to stay productive. These are just the ones that have most helped me. What else helps you stay effective while at work? Would love to hear your thoughts on the topic, so please share them in the comments below!

Joe Whitmarsh: To Fix Bad Breath, A Gadget Seen on YouTube. After ten years of trying to get a product to market, including spending $50,000 on an informercial with no results, a funny YouTube video leads to 24 million views and one million dollars in sales of a five dollar product.

Anthony Liang: SCVNGR Teams Up with Universities to Introduce Students to Campus This Fall. Great way for SCVNGR to be introduced and for kids to learn about campus, but do enough kids have iPhones/Android devices?

Sam Taggart: View Twitter Through Other People’s Eyes With TwtRoulette. Interesting platform collaborated on by the 15-year-old creator of iTunes Instant. Would you use it?

Anthony Liang: Online Retailers to Offer Facebook Credits as Shopping Incentives. Interesting development for Facebook Credits, many possibilities for Facebook to develop this in the future!

Marcus Krzastek: Should Facebook Buy Skype?. The possibilities if this were to come to pass would be pretty monumental.

Marcus Krzastek: Twitter to Start Targetting its Promoted Tweets. With its redesign and now this, Twitter’s revenue over the next couple of years will be interesting to watch.

Marcus Krzastek: Replacing Captchas With Ads. Interesting solution by Solve Media for the Captchas that everyone hates, could end up helping everyone.

Matt Sitomer: Facebook CEO Zuckerberg to Donate $100M to Newark Schools on Oprah Winfrey Show. Newark mayor Cory Booker has been a major proponent of social media and clearly played a huge role in making this happen.

Matt Sitomer: Gillette’s Strange History with the Razor and Blade Strategy. Gillette is often credited with the so-called “razors and blades” product strategy. This article explores whether they actually used that strategy effectively.

Steph Bagley: Facebook Hopes Credits Make Dollars. Facebook is hoping to make Facebook Credits the “next great” Internet revenue generator (in the vein of Google ads) and projections show Credits could become a multi-billion dollar business.

That’s all well & good, but what about those of us who want branded pages? What do we do now? What does VaynerMedia tell our clients to do? No longer can we fit the amount of branded information we previously could – there just is not enough space. Take a look:

My Twitter profile when viewed through old Twitter:

My Twitter profile when viewed through new Twitter:

It’s quite clear that the branded backgrounds we created for our Twitter profiles last year are no longer effective or attractive with the new layout. And the backgrounds we’ve created for clients won’t work either. So what do we do? It’s not quite as simple as when Facebook resized their pages from 760px to 520px.

We’re not sure what we’ll do in light of Twitter’s layout changes and we’re not sure what we’ll recommend for our clients. But either way, it does not make sense to make background changes until the new layout has been rolled out to everyone. So, there’s still some time left on the clock. Keep an eye out in the coming weeks to see what we do (possible follow-up post to come)!

What are your thoughts? Are you planning on changing your background? What would you recommend brands do with the limited space they still have left?

Note: Overall, the new Twitter is a good move for brands, both consumer and personal. The changes will keep more users on Twitter.com rather than on third party applications. Search is easier. Trending topics are easier to see. But, I haven’t had a chance to mess around with it too much yet, so “New Twitter’s Implications for Brands” will have to wait till another day.

If you’re already familiar with this situation, feel free to skip the next 2 paragraphs.

The article tells the story of Posie’s Cafe in Portland, OR and their experience with the daily deal site Groupon. Apparently, the proprietor of Posie’s, Jessie Burke, was intrigued by the number of potential new customers and exposure that her business could receive by offering an enticing deal to the site’s users. And understandably so; Groupon and it’s user base have grown at a staggering rate since its inception in November of 2008. After mulling it over for a while,  Jessie decided to take the plunge and spoke with a sales-rep to discuss the particulars. Together, they decided on a “$6 for $13″ deal; the customer pays $6 for $13 worth of product. Jessie said that she “assumed Groupon would take a percentage, but that it wouldn’t be that huge… maybe 5-10%” and that the rest would belong to the cafe. As she found out, when the site does a deal for less than $10, they usually keep 100% of the profits (their compensation for the exposure they provide); the sales rep explained that with a deal this small, most of the people would likely order additional items upon redemption. This situation was unacceptable to Jessie and she told the rep that she would need some time to think it over. Eventually, she called back and agreed to a 50/50 split with the company and the Groupon was released several weeks later.

Over 1,000 users took part and Posie’s experienced a huge influx of patrons, many of them first-timers. Initially, it seemed like the partnership was paying off. However, after a few months, the cafe began to slip deeper and deeper into debt due to their Groupon deal. This was due to several problems, according to Jessie. Firstly, people were using several coupons at a time to pay for their meals, which was against the terms of use. Secondly, customers were tipping for what they paid, not for the value of their meal and as Jessie pointed out “10% of $0 is zero dollars, so tossing in a dime was them being generous”. Thirdly, Jessie did not set a cap on how many people could take part in the deal. By the end of the ordeal, Jessie says that she lost nearly $8,000 and had to dip into her own savings to cover payroll and rent. She claims she is completely jaded by the experience, regrets it fully and will not even “buy Groupons because I know how it could hurt a business”.

This is an immensely interesting topic to us, especially given our familiarity with the platform and passion for branding. Everyone had an opinion on this and two very heated company-wide debates ensued; one via email and one in the office the next day. The proverbial “line in the sand” was drawn and we split up into two sides.

The following summarizes the main points of both sides as VaynerMedia debated internally:

In Support of Jessie Burke and Posie’s Cafe

-Yes, this was probably a poor business decision as the proprietor of a business, but in some way, it may be Groupon’s fault for taking advantage of naive small business owners with the promise of a huge influx of business. This is supported by Jessie’s claim that the Groupon sales-rep told her that they “would never have to advertise again after taking advantage of their network”.

-If Groupon truly created a good overall deal for their business users, they would take a percentage of the revenue they help generate instead of keeping a percentage of the coupon price.

-As the service provider, Groupon understands the intricacies of their business plan better than anyone. Therefore, it is their ethical responsibility to inform the small businesses who use them of the risks they may incur.

-Groupon itself is a corporation, and as a corporation, it’s number one priority is to maximize profits for it’s investors, which it has been doing incredibly well. However, the execution team, those who run the corporation, have a moral obligation to take responsibility for their actions, especially when working with small businesses that may not be able to take a financial hit and stay afloat. If Groupon sees a link between types or sizes of their clients and certain negative results, then it is imperative and morally responsible for them to warn those who may be at risk, especially if the negative consequences are difficult for the businesses to predict without the massive amount of information Groupon has on its own practices.

Bottom Line: while Jessie may have made a poor decision, Groupon should have taken the responsibility to advise her on all risks involved with this sort of endeavor; at the very least, don’t be misleading about the value of the deal’s exposure.

In Support of Groupon

-If $3 did not correlate to a smart decision against the cost of $13, then she should not have embarked on a Groupon feature. If you do think that this may be a financial risk, but you feel the exposure may be worth it, it is best to err on the side of caution and set a cap on the amount of deals available for purchase.

-As a business owner you are in a position where people and companies are going to pitch you ideas. It is completely your responsibility to be discerning when making these decisions and look out for your business’ bottom-line first. Jessie actually proves the point that she did not diligently research the risk/reward of Groupon when she says “I don’t know why I thought even 50% would be a good deal for us. Maybe because I thought since we were covering our food costs. What I didn’t think clearly enough about was that that margin we mark up is what covers all of our other costs… like staff, rent, utilities, etc. Our overhead is roughly $25,000/month, and this decision was about to make it so that we didn’t cover any of those other costs.” Just like Groupon is intimately familiar with the risks of their service, Jessie should be equally as aware of her overhead cost and factor them into every decision she makes pertaining to the business.

-Groupon agreeing to a 50/50 split with a small business is absurd; if they are giving exposure to a client, they should be compensated accordingly. The site should get a vast majority of the initial revenue, if not 100% of it, due to the immense publicity that they are providing.

-As a corporation, Groupon’s responsibility is to make money for their investors and expand. However, that doesn’t mean that they are excused from business ethics. It also doesn’t mean that they are required to make sure that every client has done their homework on various potentially risky scenarios. Groupon is a business and should function as such.

Bottom Line: while the situation with Posie’s Cafe is regrettable, it is not Groupon’s fault. They did not force Jessie into any sort of agreement and it was solely her responsibility to understand the ramifications of every possible scenario.

Personally, I can understand both sides of the argument. On one hand, I believe very strongly that this was not Groupon’s fault in any way. I think that the company has a great product that has continuously proven to yield “win-win” scenarios for their users, their clients and themselves. Their main focus should be on the success and expansion of their own business. Any possible negative effects that their service can cause to a potential client should be researched and identified by said client.

On the other hand, it’s really regrettable that in an effort to be ambitious and grow her business, Jessie’s cafe took a financial hit; she is guilty of taking a risk without knowing all the facts, but she did it with the best of intentions. As Groupon continues to expand and garner notoriety, more clients of varying size will emerge. As such, they should think about customizing their service by offering different packages that will allow the client to adjust their risk factor, an option that fragile small businesses require to feel more comfortable with something like this.

It should be noted that this is a rare scenario; CEO Andrew Mason (who has done a phenomenal job answering critics and showing his overall attentiveness to this issue) stated in a response post on Groupon’s blog that “97% of the businesses we feature ask to be featured again” and included several ways his service can best be utilized. Be that as it may, if they want to be trusted in the future by other small businesses in similar financial situations, they need to evolve, to a certain degree, to try to ensure that something like this won’t happen again.

As a company, we would love to hear your thoughts on this. Was Groupon at fault here? Should they keep their service the same or make it more customizable?

AJ Vaynerchuk: “A Former Twitter Employees Perspective on the Direction of Twitter (6-8 min)”. Alex Payne was a top tier developer at Twitter for 3 1/2 years, this is a super interesting read.

Anthony Liang: Testing, testing…YouTube begins trial of new live streaming platform. Services like uStream / Blog.tv seem to be in danger. This looks really close to when Facebook announced Places, where the smaller services will have to strike deals with certain businesses / celebrities.

Caleb Brown: An iPad App that Stays in Sync with Your TV. This iPad app listens to 10 seconds of what you’re watching on TV and displays interactive details about the show. Very cool.

AJ Vaynerchuk: Why Twitter’s t.co is a game changer. Really interesting perspective in what will be possible down the line.

Marcus Krzastek: Meet YouTube’s Most In-Demand Stars. Valuable reading for anyone trying to understand the YouTube star landscape, also gives some nice numbers to reference.

The most interesting aspect of this thought is that Twitter essentially used the API and the outside developers as research. These developers created great products, and now Twitter is simply picking and choosing the best implementations of the API for their own product with #newtwitter. Twitter was able to see what worked and what didn’t work without wasting any resources… interesting.

Incidents like this seem to be a dime-a-dozen these days, even with local and state police doling out hefty fines for cell phone related offenses; a friend of mine recently got a $100 fine because he was holding his cell phone and it looked like he was texting. The bottom line is that we are living in a world where people are accustomed to being constantly connected and are totally fine with sacrificing some degree of focus while driving to stay “up to speed”.

So when the brains over at GM sat down to develop the next round of features to be applied to their vehicles, they apparently focused heavily on two statistics: 1- the number of car accidents caused by texting or mobile social media. 2- the staggering number of people who join social platforms, specifically Facebook, on a daily basis. Understanding that people are not likely to stop using their smartphones while driving, GM set out to find a solution that would allow people to consume their content while keeping their hands and eyes focused on the road. The solution came in the form of the newest feature for OnStar.

Since 1997, OnStar has been available to drivers who used the service for anything from directions to phone calls to road-side assistance all at the touch of a button. My Chevy Tahoe has OnStar in it; when I first got the car in 2002, my friends and I were fascinated by the fact that we could hit a button on my dashboard and a pleasant customer-service representative’s voice would materialize through my speakers and give us directions to the closest diner at 3 am. But with the onslaught of smartphones that can do everything OnStar can do and more, GM was constantly struggling with ways to justify the $200-$300 yearly fee. Recently, they arguably came up with their best idea yet.

OnStar announced that they will upgrade both the hardware that goes into new cars and the telematics that connects that hardware to the Internet. The service in general will be beefed up and modernized, but the biggest development comes in a addition called “ATOMS”. ATOMS, short for Advanced Telematics Operations Management System, will allow OnStar to greatly enhance a driver’s ability to stay focused on the road while still staying connected. It does this by integrating two revolutionary features: the first will allow a driver to listen as a new text message is read to them by the car and select from a list of preset responses (creating a new message may violate some texting-while-driving laws). Once a response is selected, ATOMS will send the message. The second feature connects OnStar to a user’s Facebook account. Once connected, ATOMS will read the Facebook News Feed to the driver in real time.

Timothy Nixon, GM’s Executive Director for Infotainment and OnStar Engineering, said last night in San Fransisco that the services won’t be readily available for some time, but he made it clear that this is not merely a concept; the technology currently exists and they are actively fine-tuning it. I have no doubt that within 2011, we will see this technology and various spinoffs debut in select car models. Personally, I think this is a revolutionary idea that will greatly reduce the number of tech-related car accidents. It goes without saying that this is certainly something that I would love to have integrated into my car. Until then, for the safety of all the police cruisers in the Holland Tunnel, I promise to keep my iPhone in the glovebox.

What do you think? Is this going to make our roadways safer or is this still too much of a distraction? Do you want the OnStar/ATOMS software in your car?

Joe Whitmarsh: Israeli Teens Swipe Wristbands To Update Facebook Status. Interesting use of tech. Could see this at resorts and casinos or any large event.

AJ Vaynerchuk: “Realistically, Tumblr Can Easy Surpass Twitter In Overall Value”. Interesting perspective into the growth of Tumblr.

AJ Vaynerchuk: Facebook Places Propels Scvngr To 100,000 Downloads In 48 Hours. Is SCVNGR starting to become a serious contender?

Sam Taggart: From Viral Video To Billboard 100. The insane story of ‘The Bed Intruder’ song (#89 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart for the week of Aug. 20).

Joe Whitmarsh: Kentucky University Uses Facebook Places For Marketing. Clever way to reach potential undergrads. Have their friends show them all there is to do on campus.

Kanye has been creating buzz ever since he joined Twitter. He’s just that kind of a person. He speaks his mind, but not in a ranting, nonsensical kind of way. Kanye uses Twitter as an outlet, as a bit of a venting mechanism. The result? We get a glimpse into the mind and thought process of one of the most gifted and creative musicians of our time. That’s not to say his tweets are always newsworthy, but from, “Yo I ain’t gone lie… the diamond teeth be looking crazy dope with tux jackets. The juxtaposition is what I live for,” to “Just wrapped for the day… been shooting 16 hour days … I’m so excited … it’s like a child’s delusions become reality!,” Twitter has given Kanye a place to just say what he wants. And on this particular Saturday morning, Kanye wanted to say a lot.

Kanye West was apologizing to Taylor Swift, and to all the world, for stepping on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards and interrupting her acceptance speech for ‘Best Female Video.’ More than that, he was giving us specific insights into how the incident impacted his life, and how that moment had affected him as a person. He was truly remorseful, it seemed. Around 10:30AM EST on Saturday morning, he said it:

Throughout Kanye’s Saturday morning discussion, he talked about larger issues: racism, the entertainment industry, ego (at one point, he called himself a 32 year-old child), the media. It was all quite thoughtful, intellectual, open and honest. I tweeted, “Love what @KanyeWest is doing on Twitter right now. Honest. Raw. Emotional. Public. Follow along.” And the majority agreed. Everyone was talking about Kanye on Saturday morning. He could not have picked a better platform to deliver his apology, and he knew it. Kanye chose a platform over which he had complete control. There would be no interruptions, no secondary agenda. Twitter was the place where he could say what he wanted, when he wanted, and without the bells and whistles of say, a TV special. It was perfect.

I’m not saying that just anybody can deliver a short novel and get away with it, but the lessons are there for all to see. Honesty and transparency win. Those characteristics are attractive, more today than ever before, in an age where everyone has, or is capable of having, a public voice.

Anthony Liang: Foursquare Takes Over Times Square. Really cool move by American Eagle.

AJ Vaynerchuk: The Truth About Real Estate Jason Fried. Interesting perspective of how to turn a cost into a profit.

Stephanie Bagley: Arcade Fire’s Experimental New Video Shows What’s Possible With Html5. Music video gamechanger. Also worth reading for how the band used social media to get their album to No.1.

Joe Whitmarsh: ESPN Teaming With YouTube For ‘Sports Center’ Stunt. ESPN to encourage viewers to upload their sports highlights to YouTube to be featured on Sportscenter.

Sam Taggart: Target To Sell Facebook Credits Gift Cards. The first time Facebook has had any presence in a retail store. Interesting stuff.

While the experience has definitely been entertaining, I’d like to also suggest that there are real business benefits to submitting to the improv method. Below I’ve listed four of the biggest ones I’ve noticed, but I’m sure as we get deeper I’ll begin to unearth more.

Becoming Quicker

One of the most valuable traits one develops while doing improv is the ability to think quickly on your feet. At the very core of the word, improvisation is about reacting to stimulus around oneself. Business is a human-driven enterprise and unless you’re a hypnotist, you’re not going to be able to control the people you deal with. Most everyone has conversed with someone who clearly has a planned agenda for a discussion and insists on shoving their talking points into a discussion, regardless of their relevance. It’s frustrating and unconvincing, usually engendering resentment instead of a willingness to work together.

It doesn’t matter what you think if your potential partner in business is unconvinced of the value you can deliver. Being able to think quickly on your feet gives you the ability to react to whatever curveballs they may throw and relate your unique capabilities to the goals they hope to achieve. To be clear, I don’t mean being able to come up with bullshit on the spot to placate a concern, although that’s certainly a less honorable off-shoot of this skill. I’m referring to the ability to explain a valuable concept accurately and in a concise manner in a way that’s relevant to the exact situation you’re in. If you’re able to do that, you’re in an extremely good position to achieve business success.

Greater Self-Awareness

If you’ve followed Gary at all over the past year or so, you may have noticed a topic he’s been very high on is self-awareness. His point boils down to this: when you truly understand yourself, you’re able to put yourself into the best possible position to succeed, however you’d define that. There are two major functions within this theory. The first is that optimizing your talents makes you more valuable to others, giving you greater opportunities, whether it’s monetary or something else you find valuable. Second is that, with some exceptions, people tend to enjoy doing things that they’re good at more than things they’re horrible at. We’re genetically predisposed to being productive and doing things you’re good at allows you to greater satisfy that desire.

Improv trains you to dig deep into yourself and unearth your true feelings and thoughts. Some people are naturally very self-aware, but if the massive demand for psychiatric help is any indication, most people have an extremely difficult time untangling their brain and understanding themselves. The speed of improv makes it an incredible adrenaline rush and that adrenaline helps overcome our natural inclination to stop ourselves from exploring too deep into the depths of our psyche.

Teamwork

If you go and see live improv, most of the shows will be performed by teams, usually in groups of around four or five (or more) people. That’s not to say that improv can’t be done in smaller groups, the best group I’ve ever seen, the Mantzoukas Brothers, was a two person group and you can even find one person shows, but generally it’s a group undertaking. The result of this is that one of they key components of a successful improv performer is the ability to work well with others. If the people on stage are contradicting themselves and not taking advantage of the queues and hints put forth by their teammates, the end result is going to be sloppy and fail to evolve in the way necessary to create something truly interesting and funny. Only by putting your ego to the side and submitting to the common goal of moving the improv “game” along as effectively as possible can a group be truly successful.

The Power of Yes

It’s easy to respond to potential with negatives. Doing so usually results in maintaining the status quo, which is comfortable and safe. Unfortunately, the status quo can many times stand in the way of achieving something truly exceptional. There’s a similar conflict in improv. Denying something a teammate says or contradicting them can often lead to a cheap, easy laugh. For example, if one person says a table is red and you respond, “Are you crazy, the table’s green,” you’ll probably get a nice reaction from the crowd. Unfortunately, by doing so you’ve damaged the trust between yourself and your teammate in the best case scenario and in the worst case scenario destroyed the scene the group has been building for the audience, detaching them and preventing the immersion necessary for a truly successful show.

Because of this, one of the first lessons taught in improv classes is the “Yes, and…” technique. It’s extremely simple but shockingly difficult to grasp at first. The exercise we practiced consisted of two people, discussing a topic they came up with on the spot. The catch was that before you could say your piece, you had to lead with “Yes”, reiterate what they just said, then follow with “and” and finally say your piece. Even if your partner said something outlandish or conflicted with how you internally wanted the scene to go, you had to agree with them and build off of it. Through the process you learn that oftentimes the organic place the discussion went after feeding off each other was far better than anything you could have planned out yourself.

At the end of the day, improv isn’t going to take a bad company and make it great. It can help, however, and you’ll have a great time while doing it. I’d highly recommend checking out a show or two if you can find something in your area and seeing if it’s for you or your company.

I discovered another activity that really helps me sort through some issues just last night — running. I didn’t realize just how effective my thought process was during a run until I looked back on previous runs and some of the clarity that resulted from them. If I get myself on the right track (no pun intended, but looking back I really wish I had intentionally come up with this), I increase my distance and thought productivity which is pretty much win-win.

I was able to get through an exceptional amount of mind work on last night’s run. I didn’t go terribly far, but I replaced my marathon pace with a sprint pace… whoops! It took me a bit to get back since I was pretty drained after my first mile. (Don’t forget that We’re All Marathon Runners)

I’m trying to make sure I’m more conscious of happenings such as these. I want to make a note of when the freshest ideas come to me or when and where the most email gets answered so that I’m able to recreate these scenarios and reap the benefits of increased productivity/efficiency. I’m always trying to improve these two qualities and making note of this data will do just that.

Cliff Notes (that I purposely included at the END and didn’t bold in order to draw less attention to them): Try and become more aware of where you execute certain tasks the best and all you do is WIN WIN WIN!

Marcus Krzastek: Scvngr’s List Of Game Mechanics. Great for its summary of what induces people to play games.

Stephanie Bagley: Foursquare Sees Record Signups In Wake Of Facebook Places Announcement. The date that Places was announced was also Foursquare’s biggest signup day ever. However, it remains to be seen if Places will “crush” Foursquare over time.

Anthony Liang: Organic Blueberries To Snoop Dogg: Branded Virtual Goods Are Booming [Report]. Sales of Snoop Dogg’s items are consistently 2.5 times higher than comparative non-branded goods + he’s generated about $200,000 in sales on the BVGs he sells across social platforms.

Kari Elam: How Kanye West’s Twitter Killed Music Magazines. Great analysis of how social media has cancelled the need for music journalist/middlemen to create artist profiles and features in an age where artists can profile themselves.

AJ Vaynerchuk: Sneak Peak At Yelp Deals. Another major brand jumps into the deals space.

If you’ve used some of the popular geolocation apps that have been picking up steam over the past year or so, then you’re going to find that the user experience of Places is very similar. Just like with other services, users can check-in to different locations through the app and tack on an update detailing what’s on their mind. Where Facebook’s service differs slightly is that it allows you to tag friends who are with you at your check-in just like you would tag a photo or video. Once tagged and posted, it’s published in the News Feed for everyone to see.

Normally, when new platforms come onto the horizon, it takes me a while to really jump on board and start using them at full steam. Case in point: VaynerMedia is invested in Venmo, a service that allows you to pay debts to those around you via text message. It’s an absolutely genius platform that is going to revolutionize the way money is exchanged and it is used by literally everyone in our office on the regular. However, when someone owes me money and says “cool if I Venmo you?”, I have to say I don’t really use Venmo and then deal with a look of shock, generally followed by the impending judgment. I’m sure I’ll be Venmo-ing my face off sooner or later, and judging my landlord for not using it, but as of right now, I’m still getting my feet wet. And that’s how it goes for me; I use new platforms enough to understand it so that I don’t fall behind, but I don’t really use it voraciously right away.

Why do I bring up my irrational fear of change? Because it doesn’t apply to Places at all and that is why it has the ability to take over the geolocation game. While other people do not share my specific apprehension, they most certainly enjoy staying within their comfort zones to some degree. So when it comes to a super-young space like geolocation, Facebook has positioned itself to become the industry leader seemingly overnight. Did they put in the work to determine the public’s wants, dislikes, etc like Gowalla and Foursquare? No. Did they produce a service that is revolutionary and different? No. What they did do is they allowed the space to develop to the point where the public’s familiarity with geolocation services was substantial  but not yet mature enough that the majority has “brand loyalty” with any one service. For instance, most of VaynerMedia uses Gowalla. My interest started when Gary invested in the service; they retained that interest through the platform’s phenomenal features and user experience. However, many people can’t say that yet; they can’t explain what their favorite geolocation service is because most of them simply don’t have one. And at this pivotal point in the growth of this space, in comes Facebook, the 800lb gorilla with half a billion users, and they throw their hat in the geolocation ring.

Honestly, after playing around with Places for a while, I wasn’t blown away by any of its features or graphics; the layout is fairly similar to everything else out there that I’ve used. However, the one enormous, gigantic, ridiculous (bust out the thesaurus) advantage that Facebook has is that for any service or feature they launch, their infrastructure is already in place. As a user, you never have the feeling that no one is paying attention to your activity or that you’re building relevancy because your network is already built and waiting for you. A buddy of mine from Boston College had a good analogy: “getting people to use Places versus any other similar service is the difference between laying a cornerstone on a piece of land and building an addition onto your house.” Well put. It’s simply easier to build the addition, and most people will do what’s easier. Personally, I think there is a lot to be said for starting from the ground-up on a new platform; I remember at one point I thought that I could challenge Gary on DailyBooth because we both started on it around the same time. I quickly abandoned that hope, but you get what I’m saying. The truth is, a vast majority of social media users don’t agree with me and they stick to what they know, and EVERYONE knows Facebook.

What do you think? Is Facebook going to take over the geolocation game or can these other companies move quicker and evolve faster? Is Facebook “adopting” popular social media trends the beginning of a pattern?

Anthony Liang: Best Buy Rolls Out Shopkick’s Geo Coupon System To 257 Stores. Interesting to see if this will take off along with their custom hardware + app system to avoid cheating.

Marcus Krzastek: Ad Spending On Social Networks To Reach 3.3 Billion In 2010. As more and more ad dollars move to social, it will be interesting to see what techniques draw the greatest ROI.

Matt Sitomer: Norman Tugwater. Topical video campaign by Vitamin Water.

Sam Taggart: If I Could Do It All Over Again…. Great Q&A with one of the world’s most successful and well-known entrepreneurs, Richard Branson.

Sam Taggart: 35 Lessons In 35 Years. A fun & well-done list of insights about happiness, money, work, friendship, life skills, and more. Worth the read!

I feel like there is a tendency in our space (and maybe in life) to prove how busy we all are. We’re afraid to admit when we’re not working, or even worse, when we’re off the grid. Gasp! However, we’re quite likely to tweet when we’re working overtime. We pride ourselves on our lack of sleep and our lack of vacations. Some of us stay up until 4AM every night. Others wake up at that time every morning. It’s all about the constant hustle, the never-ending grind…

Trust me, I am a firm believer in working hard and working long hours. I work for a company that expects much more than the typical 9-5 out of its employees, and we are beyond happy to put in the time. From the VaynerMedia.com About Us page, “We do not believe in the ‘work smarter, not harder’ ethos. Rather, everyone is expected to work smart and work hard.” Most VM employees are night owls, but I’m an early bird. I’m generally awake by 6:30AM and in the office by 7AM. One way or the other, we all put our hours in. And we all work smart and efficiently (60 hours per week of procrastination won’t get you too far).

When it comes down to it, we know how to play hard, too! Did I mention the time we went to Vermont and competed in activities like manhunt, volleyball, and homemade golf, from the moment we got there until the moment we left? Or how about the fact that once a week after work, a decent chunk of the office plays organized basketball in the New York Urban Professionals League? You may not believe it, but we do take weekends. Most of the time.

I’m not talking about the corporate concept that working hard from 10-5 means a job well done and it’s time for happy hour. I’m not talking about companies providing performance targets so that their employees will work harder. I’m just saying that life is about balance. Work hard. Play hard.

I’m going on vacation next week with my family, to Martha’s Vineyard. The Vineyard is maybe my favorite place on planet Earth. It is the definition of relaxation. I’ll bring my phone with me and I’ll check email as I can (and maybe tweet a couple times throughout the week). But vacation is no time to focus intensely on work. Vacation is time to play.

Playing hard means different things to different people at different moments in their lives. For me, right now, it means I’ll read some books (have Delivering Happiness, Outliers, and The Book of Basketball all lined up), take naps on the beach, hang out with family and family friends, and enjoy every single moment. Why? Because when I get back, it’s time to work hard again!

It’s all relative. Some people truly do not enjoy vacation. They get stressed out and feel unproductive. And that’s fine! The key is to not burn out. Find your 30 minutes or hour per day, or a whole day on the weekend, to do something you truly love to do. If you really work hard, and work smart (efficiently), you deserve that time.

What are your thoughts? Do you abide by this philosophy? Do you make sure to keep a balance in your life? And please, feel free to share any tips you might have about this discussion (e.g. working hard, working smart, playing hard, relaxing)!

Our own Gary Vaynerchuk will be joined on stage by a host of entrepreneurs eager to share their experiences and vision for the technology sphere today and in years to come. The smash lineup of speakers will feature Digg founder Kevin Rose, former Facebook Senior Platform Manager Dave Morin, Quirky founder Ben Kaufman, serial entrepreneur and angel investor Travis Kalanick (Formspring, Blippy), Lowercase Capital’s Chris Sacca, and Founding Partner of the incubator 500 Startups, Dave McClure. Most importantly, after each speaker has briefly addressed the crowd, everyone will return to the stage for a roundtable discussion and Q&A. Rather than speak to the audience, our panelists will be having an in-depth discussion with the audience.

Best of all? The admission price of just $399 includes a one-night stay at the beautiful Harrah’s Lake Tahoe Resort and Casino on Thursday, September 30th. After hours of engaging conversation by day, we’ll relax and hit the gaming tables by night!

Click here for more details and to purchase your ticket today. Space is limited so act fast, this event WILL sell out!

Planning, to come? We want to know! RSVP via Facebook or PlanCast!

Neil Sarkar: Sharpie Re-Invents Pen With Liquid Pencil. Writes like a pen, erases like a pencil, permanent after three days

AJ Vaynerchuk: Twitter Launching Official Share Buttons. Game changer, will be interesting to see if there is added functionality, also a real dent to Tweetmeme.

Joe Whitmarsh: Monkey See, Monkey Do, Monkey Remember. An interesting read on the logic (or lack thereof) behind organizational behavior.

AJ Vaynerchuk: Steve Nash Dives Into Venture Capital. Interesting to see the integration of star athlete and VC funding.

Anthony Liang: Groupon + Foursquare = Group Tabs, Group Deals For Check Ins. Combining 2 awesome tools, wonder if this will give both sites a burst of new users.

The Website

Carrot Creative put together a great site for the game, socialmediabasketball.com. They included both teams’ starting rosters, complete with names, nicknames, and the ability to follow all of us on Twitter. Even cooler? Visitors have the ability to “Like” which team they are rooting for / think will win (VaynerMedia currently leads 100-63). Finally, a live feed features anyone who tweets about the game with the hashtag #CCvsVM. So, props to Carrot Creative for a job well done.

The Game

Tip-off is tomorrow, August 12th, 2010, just after 3PM EST. If you are would like to attend to watch or to cover the event, please email info@vaynermedia.com.

The good news is that we’re live-streaming the game for all to watch, and having our good friend Owen JJ Stone (aka OhDoctah) announce/commentate/emcee. You can watch live at bit.ly/ccvsvmlive. Also, you’ll be able to follow along with anyone live tweeting from the game by keeping track of hashtag #ccvsvm.

So, what do you think? What’s your prediction? Who will you be rooting for?

Your Phone is the Future

Plain & simple. I don’t know when (soon, though!), but that’s where things are going. Last week, Bloomberg released an article titled AT&T, Verizon to Target Visa, MasterCard With Smartphones. The article talked about plans to test a system which would allow for consumers to pay with “the contactless wave of a smartphone.” Imagine walking into a 7-Eleven to buy a late-night Slurpee® and chili cheese dog. You head up to the register, take out your smartphone, open your Visa app, swipe the phone in front of a scanner, and you’re off. Done. That simple.

Sound crazy? Why? The service is essentially being offered in Japan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom already. And in June, Citigroup released MasterCard PayPass stickers, which can be attached to the back of a mobile phone, to allow for swipe payments. Contactless payments already exist with credit & debit cards, so why not on a phone? Mobile payment is clearly the next logical step.

Said Gary Townsend, CEO of Hill-Townsend Capital LLC, “What is a cell phone, except for a mechanism for consumers to address their lives in whatever way they choose? There’s certainly no reason if an AT&T account can effectively be carried on a phone that a JPMorgan or a Wells Fargo card can’t be there, too. In fact, the antitrust issues would demand that be allowed.” According to Gary, it might be illegal not to have mobile payment not exist in this capacity.

Note: If you are interested in the further implications of this concept, take a look at the article I reference above. You can find much more on market dominance, transactional/interchange fees, and security.

The Future is Here if You’re Ready for it!

Applications and platforms such as Venmo (in interest of full disclosure, VM is an investor), PayPal, & Square already allow for mobile transactions. Not sure what these are? OK. Quick summaries:

Venmo is “an easy way to pay for things using your cellphone.” Venmo works with any cellphone that can send and receive text messages. (example use: I paid a coworker for lunch the other day by sending a text message, “Pay MarcusKRZ 12 for Indian Food.”)

PayPal allows users to send money through SMS or through a mobile application. Every payment is confirmed by a PIN or password, so there’s no need to worry if you lose your phone.

Square is a personal credit card reader that attaches to your mobile device. Square focuses on providing the best payment experience in the world.

These are just three of many, many platforms that focus on the mobile payment experience. The fact is that they exist already and are being adopted.

The End of Paper Money? Not Yet.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me state that I don’t think that paper money is dead… at least, not yet. The rate at which current mobile payment apps and platforms are being accepted is very low. Of course, once major, trusted financial entities get involved, expect the adoption rate to explode. But then, still, the smartphone user base is relatively small compared to the general population.

Paper money will be around for decades longer, but the end may be in sight.

A Final Thought

From industry consultant, Richard Crone, “A mobile device is online, real-time interactivity that changes the customer relationship. A card is dumb.” We live in a world that is more and more social, and more and more about customer service. Think about the ability of a phone to create long-lasting, interactive customer relationships as opposed to a simply piece of plastic. The phone is the next logical step in terms of transactional payment.

What do you think about the future of money, in this aspect? How soon do you think we’ll see mobile become a serious player in terms of merchant transactions? Do you currently use any of applications or platforms? What are your early thoughts?

I feel like many businesses are making the same mistake as Dan’s nurses when it comes to implementing a social presence for their brands. A brief overview of the Twitter and Facebook accounts of many businesses, not to mention their Youtube and Tumblr, reveals a communication strategy that’s either non-existent or crammed with self-serving press releases. Despite this, these brands continue to promote their presence and develop extremely sophisticated custom tabs and apps. In my opinion, these CEOs and CMOs are acting just like Mr. Ariely’s nurses, seeing a challenging and potentially painful transition and opting to dive in head first.

The issue with this philosophy is that much of what makes for a great social media presence is predicated on time and effort. Truly leveraging the platform requires a culture and mindset that was easy to neglect just five years ago. It requires a certain level of openness and willingness to communicate with users on an individual, personal level that would have been nearly impossible to scale before social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Unlike flipping the switch on traditional advertising, these platforms are built on relationships and communication in a way that some businesses may not be initially capable of. That’s not a comfortable thought, however, and I understand that. It’s tough to accept change, especially when it strikes at something that you’ve known and understood at your core.

In the end, the important person in this equation isn’t yourself, it’s your company and your employees. Taking the easy way out may work right now, but it’s going to put your company in a much more difficult position in five years. It’s a great thought, declaring a company is now “social”, but in practice it’s more beneficial to focus on small victories and build the foundation. It may be a more difficult process as a whole, but it’s ultimately what will be effective and thus, the right decision for the company.

As a company that helps businesses establish effective and sustainable social media communications strategies, we face the same struggle every day. It would be great for us if we were able to advise clients to dive in, knowing that with us looking over their shoulder they’ll be able to handle any situations that come up. The sooner we get into an aggressive communication strategy, the sooner the client will start seeing big results and the better we look. What happens after we leave though? As a principle, we believe that every company should be able to handle their own social media communication – not building the correct basic skills and mindsets makes that impossible. So in the end, we have to fight the same temptations as the businesses we help, which is healthy. If Dan Ariely’s nurses had been burn victims in the past, they would have chosen a more effective method.

Anthony Liang: At&T, Verizon To Target Visa, Master Card With Smartphones. Replacing credit cards with your phone would be quite a big game changer

AJ Vaynerchuk: Twitter Rolls Out A Personalized Suggested User List. The next iteration in the suggested user list.

Stephanie Bagley: Social Networking Dominates Our Time Spent Online. We now spend and average of 22.7 % of web time on social media- big number to help sell clients on ROI of social media.

AJ Vaynerchuk: Media Companies Try Getting Social With Tumblr. Tumblr is growing at a rapid rate and could become an actual 3rd behind Twitter and Facebook.

Joe Whitmarsh: The New Clutter. An interesting take on the state of web content.

If you’re like many of us at VaynerMedia, you thought this had a chance to be a big win and that it could possibly take off in a big way. I remember listening to folks at the office talk about how this might be a total game-changer and agreeing with them 100%. Wave had the potential to make extended conversation and interaction exponentially easier. A wave (or ongoing conversation) had the ability to show what people were saying in real time. More specifically, users could weigh in on different parts of the conversation chain and extend it in a different direction. Each contributor’s actions were distinctly marked and recorded so that every Wave participant could see exactly who was contributing what. It really seemed as if this was a tool that was going to be widely used once everyone became comfortable with it. Unfortunately, the platform never caught on and the anticipated popularity never materialized.

I got my invitation to try Google Wave on November 29th. I played around with the features and, honestly, I really liked it. I think that the UI was great and that the platform did exactly what it set out to do: visualize conversation in an easily digestible way. In my opinion, and I think that a lot of people will agree with me, the main problem is that the features of Wave, are just that, features. It’s just not enough to support an entire platform. I think that as time goes on, Google will chop up the different pieces of Wave and distribute them to already-thriving platforms. Example: I don’t think that the “visualization of conversations” feature is enough to warrant a dedicated platform. However, I do think it can compliment the hell out of GMail.

I should note that Google has already said that they plan on using some of these aspects on current and future projects. Furthermore, they are going to release most of the source code of Wave so that users (both commercial and private) can customize it to their own specifications.

I’m really curious to hear your thoughts on this. What about Wave was useful? What about it wasn’t? What aspects of Wave would you like see integrated into your everyday Google experience? Was it a failed product or was it just ahead of its time?

And in conclusion, I want to point out that, in my opinion, this is not a loss for Google. Yes, Lars and Jens Rasmussen’s, co-founders of Wave and Google Maps (thanks for the latter, by the way) project didn’t pan out the way they intended, but it will end up vastly improving the future user experience of Google as a whole. So, you could say that Wave didn’t rock the boat like it was supposed to, but its ripples will be felt for a long time to come (finished strong).

Ten months ago, we launched the VaynerMedia Blog with the main intent of providing a creative outlet for the VaynerMedia team while also serving as a source of insight for our friends and colleagues who follow us. After a few months of figuring things out, we settled into a system where VaynerMedia would produce one blog post per weekday (Mon-Fri). That system worked fine at first, but as time passed, a blog post went from being a creative exercise to just another task on the to-do list. While I strongly believe in consistency, I don’t believe quality should be sacrificed just to maintain consistency.

How we addressed the situation

We have had a few internal meetings discussing the best way to move forward with the VaynerMedia blog. The main takeaway from these meetings was the fact that there are many different ways to approach writing a blog post, and that the best action moving forward is to provide individuals with the opportunity of executing blog posts the way he/she believes will allow him/her to produce the best content. This change means that we will no longer be following the strict daily content calendar. This change also means that blog posts can be 20 words, or they can be 2000 words – doesn’t matter. Finally, this change should mean an increase in the quality of blog posts you see from the VaynerMedia team.

Last thoughts

Even though the blog can be (and will be) improved in the future, I think our team has produced some great stuff over the past 10 months. Here is a small sample of some of my favorite VaynerMedia Blog posts:

(in no particular order)

Redesigning Your Facebook Tabs from 760px to 520px

Build an Application Even if it Already Exists

Extending the Story

Casual Business Relationships

Groupon: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Deal

Early Proof that Geolocation Marketing Will Succeed

What Are You Working For?

Anthony Liang: Yelp Testing “daily Deals” Feature. Yelp has so many options they can test, first check-ins now daily deals, interesting to see where they’ll go from here.

Sam Taggart: How I Became A Member Of The Ny Tech Community. Awesome post about a question we get asked a lot. Plus, Vin is a cool dude!

AJ Vaynerchuk: Hey Old Spice Haters, Sales Are Up 107%. Showing the link between social media creativity and sales.

Matt SItomer: Amazon + Facebook = A Perfect Storm Of Recommendations. Remember when Facebook changed your profile a few months ago? This is why.

Marcus Krzastek: Groupon Adds Personalized Deals. This may allow Groupon to deal some devastating blows to some of their less established competitors.

We were on the offensive from the minute we got there, spurred on by Gary’s constant urgings of “let’s do something competitive!” and a surplus of alcohol generously supplied by Wine Library.

Over the course of the two day weekend, the following competitive activities took place:

• Volleyball
• Football
• Mountain Biking
• Relay race
• One-on-one beer shotgunning competition
• “Over the Top” style arm wrestling competition
• Spontaneous “how many consecutive sweet tarts can @akopec throw from the balcony into varying distance mouths below” competition
• 4 hour argument about whether Paul Pierce is overrated
• A game invented on-the-fly involving deception, stealth, and wild-eyed chases in the dark that saw @garyvee, @shaunchapman, and @keithholjencin crawling on their stomachs through the dewy weeds and mud at the cabin’s perimeter in the pitch darkness as if they were in enemy territory in ‘Nam.

There were a few people there not used to the intensity, and seeing their raised eyebrows at all this got me thinking about the purpose of all of it.

It’s not immediately apparent what the purpose is for members of an internet startup to bat around a ball at each other when they’ll never surpass weekend warrior status.

To find meaning in these casual competitions, you have to look at the place sports have in our culture, and why it’s important for professional athletes at the peak of their game to compete against one another.

“After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned down”
-Fight Club

To the casual observer, any sport is a meaningless game around an arbitrary goal. Athletes’ salaries are more worthy of debate than their accomplishments on the field.

To the participants though, the games take on a meaning that is more powerful than the meanings found in everyday life.

Why? because sports tap into our competitive, animal nature. Every animal is wired for competition because of the scarcity of resources needed for survival.

The need to acquire food, air, water, mates, and sunlight at the expense of others is the primary driver of growth: stronger, better, faster, smarter, significantly more able to fly…whatever can give you an advantage.

Competition as inspired by scarcity also forms the foundation of one of the two most basic instincts: killing. The driving force that compels people to compete against one another in sports is a modified version of the instinct to survive by growing stronger and killing competition.

Sports are one of the most fascinating human inventions. They showcase our ability to re-route natural urges and re-assign reward systems. To transcend survival instincts and use them to organize a group of selfish individuals for a common goal.

“UNITY!!!”
-Dave Chapelle as Rick James

Look at how humans competed with other organisms way back in the day. We were smaller, weaker, and slower than most predators around us.

Yes, yes, we were smarter. But not as individuals. Try to outwit a grizzly bear and you’ll see what I mean. All we had going for us was collaboration.

Still to this day, nothing unites people so much as a common goal, and nothing inspires a common goal better than a common enemy.

Think about the world cup. Michigan fans and Ohio State fans, Auburn and Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma, were all rooting alongside each other as local sports allegiances gave way to a larger sentiment of our country as a whole against the other countries of the world.

World peace is an impossibility today, but imagine if tomorrow hostile aliens came down like in Independence Day. Any inter-human conflicts would immediately give way to collaboration in a larger struggle.

At our retreat this weekend, teams were formed and re-formed at random. Now think about it in the context practicing allegiances and collaboration.

Does this internal competition not make us that much stronger when play conflicts in the world of sport amongst ourselves give way to real conflicts between our entire company and another in the world of business?

It seems absurd to many that playing volleyball against each other gives us more of an ability to succeed at the game of business. I disagree. It’s all about the spirit of the game.

“You play to win the game. You don’t play to just play it. That’s the great thing about sports”
- Herm Edwards

We live in a world of scarcity, there is no question about it. Given that you’re reading this blog, I’m guessing you are lucky enough to not be experiencing scarcity of food, water, or shelter.

You’re faced with a different type of scarcity, a decidedly human scarcity: scarcity of attention. People have a limited amount of attention to give.

Let’s go back to the salaries of athletes for a second. The reason they get paid that much is simple: demand. The reason they compete is not, in the cases of the most successful, for money or any other tangible reward. They want to be considered to be the best by whomever is important to them, whether it’s the general public or a high school coach who slighted them.

The financial success of your brand depends on capturing peoples attention, and if you think you don’t measure individual success in terms of attention (and admiration), whether it’s from hundreds of thousands of like-minded strangers or just one of your parents, I call bullshit.

Whatever scarcity or competition you are facing, there are three approaches you can take to improve your position.

1. Embrace constructive competition (the Michael Jordan strategy)
You focus on winning through strength. You courageously admit that you are not complete; you learn from each contest. You seek stronger competition at all times, committing yourself 100% in every arena because you believe you have a chance to win.

2. Embrace destructive competition (the Tonya Harding strategy)
You focus on winning through injuring or otherwise discrediting others. Given a choice, you’ll gladly take a perceived victory over strengthening loss every time. For those who compete destructively, insecurity transforms hunger into greed and admiration into envy.

3. Refusal to compete (the Goth Kids strategy)
This happens far, far more often to all of us than any of us would care to admit. Right now, you’re implicitly denying competitions because it’s easy to convince yourself you’re doing alright when you decline to compare yourself to others.

I’m happy to report that if this weekend was any indication, it seems that everybody here wants to be Like Mike.

John Oates: Social Media Drives New Business. 6 powerful case studies about how social media is driving tangible results for businesses big and small.

Anthony Liang: Foursquare ‘In Talks With Google, Microsoft And Yahoo!’ About Search Partnerships. To me this would pretty much solidify 4sq’s spot as #1.

AJ Vaynerchuk: A List Of The Hottest Startups In Nyc Via Quora. Always good to know what companies are local, great, extensive list.

Brolley Genster: When Opportunity Knocks, Think Twice. What entrepreneurs can learn from NYC ‘everything delis’.

Marcus Krzastek: Unofficial Numbers On The Times Controversial Move To A Paywall. Numbers aren’t great, but they’re not horrible either. I’m excited for the official numbers, this is a big case study for the pay-wall strategy.

The tech space has its fair share of entrepreneurs who never went to college, spent several years working their butts off to build amazing products, and sold them for millions. And as the mainstream becomes more and more informed about the space, more and more people think they can achieve the same result in a few short years (or less). It’s easy to highlight those success stories, but remember, for every entrepreneur who sold their product for millions, there are thousands who worked just as hard but failed to see results (at least of that nature).

Believe me, I know, it’s sometimes difficult to be in an industry where one great idea plus stellar execution equals $$$$$ (at a very basic level). You get anxious, you want the same for yourself. Just think, the next Facebook is just sitting out there, waiting to be had by anyone who wants it. Not as easy as it seems.

—

Gary V. says a lot of things. One of the ones that has stuck with me most is when he talks about branding with social media. In an interview last year, he said:

The quicker people realize that this is a marathon and not a sprint, the quicker they’re gonna win. Way too many internet marketers want everything to happen in one minute. You don’t build million dollar businesses in a minute. That’s something I wish a lot more people understood.

No matter your profession or your spot in life, it’s important to remember that we are all running our own marathons (so stop trying to get to the finish line in two hours).

As with anything, success takes hard work, a good team, a little bit of luck, and time. It takes most of us eighteen years to even be in a position to leave the comfort and security of our parents’ homes. Life is not one big get rich quick scheme; it’s a process, and it’s important to remember that from time to time.

Set small goals and knock them out of the park. With every action you take, as yourself if it’s going to be beneficial for your long-term success. Surround yourself with people that will encourage you and make you better, and then work together to make it to the finish line. And when other runners seem to be passing you by, don’t get frustrated or anxious or worried. We are all running our own marathons.

Edit: My friend, Kade Dworkin, wrote a really interesting post highlighting a crucial point I failed to address. Make sure your daily actions coincide with your long-term goals. A marathon is quite an ambitious task, but it becomes more manageable when you break it down into smaller steps. Think to yourself, “How will I get to the one mile marker? The five mile marker?” And so on… The actions you make day after day after day are what will determine your long-term success, in the end. Thanks, Kade, for pointing that out!

What do you think? Where are you on your marathon (don’t worry if you’re still just training)? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

But as the tournament progressed, it seemed that interest in the World Cup was waning. Focus shifted more and more to the wrong things: “why do they flop when you barely touch them?”, “the vuvuzella is so annoying”, etc. It all came to a head when the United States lost to Ghana. As quickly as the enthusiasm had started, it dissipated, and the majority went back to being disinterested in soccer completely; “The New York Post” led the way with the following headline:

Shortly after that, Nike came out with a sequel to their wildly popular “Write the Future” ad. The sequel depicted young players thanking the US soccer team for various actions during their games. The video is full of comments like “thank you for playing with style, with class, for having confidence.” 24 seconds into the ad, one of the players channels most of our nations thoughts when he says “thank you for not diving.” This aspect of the game seemed to outrage and disgust many first-time viewers. While I partially agree with this, I can also see the other side of the story. Diving is part of soccer. A player has the chance to outsmart his opponent by accentuating a mistake; it’s simply part of the game.

It occurred to me that during this month-long soccer spotlight, two very important points were identified:

1) The World Cup showed that Americans are more than willing to embrace the game if their own players are on the field.

2) As a whole, our country isn’t ready to accept a “rest-of-the-world style” of play. Nike showed that conclusively.

The organization that should have been paying VERY close attention to the American response to the World Cup (and I mean taking copious notes 24/7) is the MLS. They have been struggling for years to get professional soccer to same level as the MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL. To date, they’ve had very little success. However, since it’s inception in 1993, they have been modeling their league after foreign soccer clubs (a very logical decision), going so far as to bring international sensations like David Beckham, Cuauhtémoc Blanco and Juan Pablo Ángel into the league in an effort to create some credibility. While this helped, the league’s popularity never truly took off like anticipated. I think one glaring reason is because Americans won’t respond to an imitation of a foreign club. If the 2010 World Cup and Nike have shown us anything, it’s this: Americans want their own style of play with their own players on the field. It’s the epitome of “easier said than done”, but it seems to be the current reality.

So with the sport still fresh in everyone’s minds, Major League Soccer is at a crossroads. Should they embark on a new American style of the game, one devoid of primadonnas, diving and vuvuzellas? Or should they continue to follow the proven model and wait for the rest of us to come around? It’s an interesting question that I personally can’t answer with 100% certainty. Obviously, there are very valid points on both sides. But if you were in charge of branding for Major League Soccer, in what direction would you take the league?

David Zhang: App Inventor For Android. Ever wanted to build your own app but lacked the necessary time or skills? You’re in luck as Google Labs has released the App Inventor, making it easy for anyone — programmers and non-programmers, professionals and students — to create Adroid apps.

Sam Taggart: How The Old Spice Videos Are Being Made. Great insights into one of the most innovative online campaigns we’ve seen in a while!

Marcus Krzastek: Facts Can Often Lead People To Commit More Strongly To Wrong Beliefs. A pretty scary thought, shows how better information can actually have a negative effect on people by causing them to cling more strongly to their previous beliefs.

Sam Taggart: How 16 Great Companies Picked Their Unique Names. Great look into how 16 well-known companies chose their names.

Neil Sarkar: Facebook Credits In Chinese Seven Elevens. More Facebook credits news. Bigger than the MyTown announcement.

I prided myself in how well-insured I was in the event of a hard drive failure or the occasional “oops! I dropped my phone in the toilet”.  (True story: I put my mom’s cell phone through the wash back in high school.  Sorry, Mom.) I also pride myself on never needing to create a Facebook group since I lost people’s phone numbers.  OK, I’m done patting myself on the back.

Where am I going with this? (Damn it, I’m asking a lot of semi-rhetorical questions) I’ll bold the most important statement in the world right about now:  when you think you’re completely covered and you have full confidence in how well your data is backed up, find a way to back up all of your backups.

I learned this the hard way for the first time in… well, my life.  Monday I experienced some brutal Google Calendar issues.  I use live in Google Calendar.  It wasn’t down at all.  I could deal with that – hell, I’d almost prefer it.  Random calendar entries were deleting themselves. This was something I couldn’t deal with… but I didn’t have much of a choice.  I thought I was safe.  I had my calendars sitting pretty on Google’s servers and I also had them syncing up to my phone.  My phone doesn’t sync up terribly often so I figured that in the event of an error, I’d at least have my phone to refer back to.

Fast forward to Monday.  How did I first notice the errors in my calendar? By syncing my phone’s calendar with Google, of course.  Peace out, “back up”! Thank goodness that my memory can be referred to as a “steel trap” in some countries.  I was able to re-enter all of the missing calendar data (I hope) and move on from there.

I was clearly not backed up enough.  I have a new system in place that involves me manually updating iCal every time I make a change in a calendar.  This way, I have a hard copy and a crisis like Monday can be avoided (I hope).  The extra keystroke (Apple key + R – I consider that one keystroke) really isn’t too debilitating and I honestly should have been doing this from the get go.  Live and learn, right? Looping back to the original thought:  when you think you’re completely covered and you have full confidence in how well your data is backed up, find a way to back up all of your backups.

This stream-of-consciousness-late-in-the-day blog post was brought to you by Phil Toronto.  When in Rome.

What’s the significance of that tweet? It was from my first day here. July 14th was a year ago. Put ‘em together, I’ve been working here for a year today. Seems like an appropriate time to take a look back.

2009

I’ll never forget the day I got this job.

The moment Gary reached across the table to shake my hand, I knew my life had changed. The rush I felt that summer evening was unparalleled, but I’ll tell you about that when you’re older.

Intuitively, I was right. A year later, working at VaynerMedia has changed my life to the extent I thought it would. But I was wrong about how.

Sure, we almost doubled in size and are making exponentially more revenue. But from an external standpoint, we haven’t come very far.

To anybody who’s not one of us, one of our clients, or a fan of Gary’s, we’re still just another nameless Internet startup in Tribeca that a bunch of kids bike to from their Brooklyn apartments.

We’re still a forgotten byline on the 12th page of an online magazine. We haven’t hit primetime, we haven’t entered the mainstream conversation.

Frankly, if you told me a year ago after that we would be where we are now, I would have been surprised and disappointed. “Surely we’d be a household name, at least in New York!”. “Surely we’d all be making six figures, on a clear path to getting Gary his billion to buy the jets”.

I was wrong. I wasn’t handed extravagant success, and neither was VaynerMedia. It’s OK though. The two things I’ve been instilled with the most over the last year have been patience and faith.

I see now that I was given something far better than automatic, trickle-down success: an opportunity to learn the blueprint for creating success out of nothing. Enrollment in my own personal business school with one of the most fascinating families in business.

2010

Teams win championships.

Gary and AJ have excellent DNA for creating a team, and they’re putting on a clinic on how to inject global perspective and purpose into a group of individuals, how to unite disparate personalities into a cohesive whole, and how to create an environment of mutual support and trust that allows everyone to work beyond their individual capability.

Everyone here is trying to drink their own ocean. Every single person here is underqualified on paper for the responsibilities and tasks they assign themselves every day. If there wasn’t an atmosphere of trust, support, and friendly competition, people would quit.

At the last place I worked, the whole was less than any one of its individual parts. Sounds extreme but it’s true. This is already an organization where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and it has been that way from the beginning.

Seems simple. Should be simple. It’s not. The default approach of humans to one another is a distrustful “guilty until proven innocent” mentality. It takes honest dedication to establish a culture of trust, familiarity, respect and love in a group of unrelated individuals.

How few companies can say that they’re truly operating as a team?
How many organizations have degenerated into a cesspool of unchallenged and unutilized minds and hearts, festering and decaying in their cubicles right now?
How many startups are powered by aggrandized ego and selfish greed?? It’s tragic.

Creating a culture is done through direct and transparent communication. That’s certainly been a theme here.

The manifestation of that culture, though, is in what’s not said. Actually that makes it sound like censorship…it’s about what’s not even *thought*.

When you can trust that everyone you’re working with has their self-interest tied to yours and is here to help you rather than harm you, that frees up a lot…a LOT…of mental power.

2011

So where are we headed? Honestly, I have no idea. We’re still young as hell. Bonds are still being forged. People are still gaining competency and skill in their individual disciplines. For example, a year ago I was working with wordpress…now I’m working with redis, node.js, and edge rails.

There’s more to it than individual development though. We’re a wolfpack in training. There’s a collective, palpable, group-wide focusing. Every individual is leaning a little further forward every day.

There have been peaks and valleys, I don’t want to paint a picture that everything is unicorns and flowers here. There have certainly been points over the past year that I’ve had doubts.

But at the end of the day, I always come to the same conclusion. I’ve escaped the lonely, selfish corporate world. Each trough is higher than the previous one. Most importantly, I’m finally part of a team that I genuinely believe in and care about.

All in all I can say that globally, I’ve wrapped my head around the fact that the team I’m a part of is headed in the right direction, and it’s going to be fun to see what the future will bring.

Unfortunately, relationships between brands and consumers don’t abide by some revolutionary new rules, it’s the same process as your first year in high school when you were getting to know all the new people in your class.  If you misrepresent yourself and aren’t authentic to the people around you, they’re going to quickly realize it and you’ll be stuck eating lunch by yourself.  What Lebron James did, in a vacuum, isn’t horrible.  As a 25 year old, he chose to go to Miami to play basketball with two of his best friends, who also happen to be two of the best players in the world.  When you start bringing context into the equation, however, the backlash makes complete sense.

This is someone who brands himself as “King James”, someone who redefined spectator to “witness”, whose last game in a Cleveland uniform ended just about as poorly as possible.  People aren’t angry that Lebron James went to Miami, they’re angry that he misrepresented himself.  There’s a feeling of betrayal, not just from Cleveland fans but from fans of the NBA in general.  Throughout his career, and especially for the past couple of weeks up until about 9:30 pm EST on Thursday, Lebron James had presented a version of himself to people that turned out to be untrue.  Creating a Twitter account is great, allowing fans to submit questions through it to be answered on an on-air special is fantastic, but if the basic foundation of your relationship is flawed then it’s all for naught.

Despite all of this, if Lebron had utilized all the avenues of communication he had established to explain his thought process in a genuine way, he’d have salvaged much of the goodwill he had accumulated over the past seven years.  Instead, his cable special came off extremely cold and he’s since done little to make amends to the people he’s offended.  His Twitter account merely links to a clip from the special on his personal website and states, “If u live your Life on other people watch, u will always miss the moment that’s put right in front of u!”  People are incredibly willing to forgive, but if you don’t give them the chance they’re certainly willing to hold a grudge as well.

Once the shine wears off of social media and it takes its place as an established piece of every business’ strategy, brands are going to have to come to terms with the fact that with unprecedented transparency comes an incredible responsibility to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk.  People expect the businesses they frequent to operate with the same responsibility and authenticity as their friends, otherwise there’s no incentive to invest the time to build a relationship.  The culture of brands is shifting and unfortunately for Lebron, the team advising him was stuck in 1995.

Matt Sitomer: Chase Customers Can Now Deposit Checks Via I Phone. Mobile functionality is creeping into more and more unexpected places.

Anthony Liang: Facebook Pushes Credits Off Site Via My Town. Very interesting to see what Facebook can do with their currency.

Joe Whitmarsh: What Is @Earlybird. Late last week Twitter announced @earlybird and recently went into detail on it’s upcoming project with advertisers. Time sensitive and limited supply deals for “early bird” followers to “catch the worm”. Will be interesting to see how it performs compared to sites like Groupon.

Kari Elam: Teens Experiencing Facebook Fatigue. A great reference point to gauge demo targeting by social network, and behavioral trends among GenYers. Teens spend 80% of internet time on social networks but 1/5 of teens on FB no longer use their account.

David Zhang: Foursquare Launches Location Layers. Very big news regarding a feature that all Geo-App users have been anticipating for a while!

Reports are indicating that Lebron plans on announcing his decision via a 1-hour special on ESPN tomorrow night. That’s all well and good (and will surely generate massive ratings), but I think it would be far more interesting if Lebron would make the subtle move of boosting his “following” count for 0 to 1, with the 1 being the team he plans on playing for in the coming years.

I understand that this concept is far less mainstream than a 1-hour special, but wouldn’t it be amazing if Lebron took over the news by simply clicking a single “follow” button?

Let us know what you think! Have you ever seen an ad highlight social media / geolocation like this one does? Let us know in the comment section below!

The Wall (34th & 8th)

VaynerMedia’s Influence: Extending the Story

Follow the Nets on Twitter!

Like the Nets on Facebook!

Follow the Nets on Gowalla!

And if you’re in the NYC area, definitely check in!

Marcus Krzastek: Woot.Com’s Letter To Employees Regarding Amazon Purchase. Not only hilarious, but Woot’s purchase by Amazon is kind of big news too.

AJ Vaynerchuk: R.I.P Chatroulette. Interesting look at the rise and “fall” of a webtrend.

Neil Sarkar: Youtube’s Opinion On HTML5 Video. Straight from the Youtube Blog…informed viewpoint on the state of HTML5 vs. Flash.

Matt Sitomer: Whole Foods To Feature Foursquare Window Clings. Foursquare creating smart calls-to-action in real world locations.

Marcus Krzastek: Google You Tube Game Showing Off Flash Integration Into Chrome. The game is actually really fun and done well.

Be sure to stay tuned for the next blog post highlighting some of the basics of the Text Tool. While your waiting, be sure to go back and mess around with all the things that you have learned.

7. Delete and Duplicate Selections

There are two major flaws when you cut, copy, and paste selections:

1. Once you cut a selection from a layer, the area you had selected goes away. This can be annoying when you want to cut the same selection from multiple layers.
2. When you cut or copy and then paste a selection, any blending option or layer styles you had on the layer do not carry over.

• When cutting a portion from multiple layers, you should use delete rather then the cut method. This will preserve the area you want to delete.
• When you want to copy a layer selection and retain layer styles, you can simply select the area you want to recreate and simple duplicate the layer (Cmd or Ctrl + J) and it will retain the styling you had on the source layer.

Recently, I went searching for a Twitter application that would allow me to see how many of my followers were also following any given account.  Luckily for me, my search was short as the ever-resourceful Shaun Chapman pointed me toward Overlapr.com.  After using Overlapr to meet my needs, I realized that an application which gives me exact user names would be even more valuable, but that’s besides the point of this post.

Listening to the interests of your followers is beneficial for many reasons.  I’ve included a few of these reasons below, as well as a quick real life example for each.

Monitoring Current Campaigns:

Are you promoting a new website, a favorite artist, or just telling everyone you know that your cousin is new to Twitter?  Why not check to see how many of your followers actually decided to follow that website, artist, or Twitter newbie?  If you look at the numbers, you may find out that your current promotions are failing and decide to re-work your tweet strategy.

Make A Product Your Consumer Enjoys:

If a musician is trying to narrow down a list of possible collaborations, he or she can quickly see which artists on the list have the biggest support from his or her existing Twitter following.  While this may not necessarily produce the best song, it should help the musician find a collaboration with great Retweet value!

Catering Tweets To Your Audience:

Have you ever wondered why people don’t click your funny links?  Maybe they don’t find your sense of humor amusing!  By figuring out which comedians your followers are engaging with on Twitter, you can learn to better tune your jokes.

Choose The Right Endorsements:

If the delicious Rita’s Italian Ice finds out that a majority of their Twitter followers are also avid fans of Taylor Swift, they can engage more with Taylor on Twitter to pique fan interest.  Rita’s may even want to explore an online marketing campaign involving the country music star.

In the end, knowing who your Twitter audience is and making a conscious effort to communicate specifically with those followers will lead to better engagement.

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” – Bill Cosby

While excitement may seem less important to the usefulness of a platform than say, functionality, it’s actually an extremely valuable asset in the field of emerging technologies.  For an example, lets look at running a campaign on Myspace versus running one on Foursquare.  Myspace still has a great deal of traffic (just under 70 million unique visitors last month, according to Compete) and as such a well-run campaign on the platform has the potential to reach a great deal of consumers.  Foursquare, while growing quickly, only has 1.7 million total users and as such has far less reach.  So why are brands falling over themselves to work with Foursquare and its competitors while Myspace languishes as a punchline?

The reality of our industry is that a lot of benefits can come from campaigns after they’re over with.  Being able to reach consumers and drive action is valuable, but if you stop there you’re not getting enough bang for your buck.  It’s the benefits after the fact that drive people to Foursquare instead of Myspace.  The first is earned media, which is essentially free coverage received because something a brand engaged in was particularly interesting or innovative.  Earned media is something we’re very high on at VaynerMedia and when you think about how much money is spent on PR annually the benefits are obvious.  The Wall Street Journal or even an industry-specific blog like Mashable covering your initiative can increase its scope greatly, not to mention the benefits of having your brand in front of all their readers.

A second benefit is having your brand associated with innovative technologies.  Most established brands are in a constant struggle to remain relevant to each new generation.  Associating your brand with emerging technologies can go a long way in creating a fashionable, cool perception.  Finally, there’s value in first adopter status and being “right” about a technology.  Whether its creating a valuable relationship with a company while it’s seeking acceptance or leveraging a reputation to gain access to new technologies in the future, a reputation for intelligent tech adoption can pay major dividends.

That’s why it’s important to understand where Twitter stands, both in perception and actual usage.  As it transitions from industry success story to established player, Twitter employees aren’t the only people monitoring the platforms mindshare and brand perception.  As it becomes more popular and more widely utilized, the ability to capture the benefits mentioned above become more and more difficult, which ultimately affects our recommendations to clients as to what platforms they need to become involved in and where they should house their next campaign.  Has Twitter become too widely adopted or is it still new new enough that the first-mover benefits still apply?

Marcus Krzastek: Risk It While You’re Young. If you keep putting off taking a risk, it never happens. Sometimes you just have to stop thinking and take the plunge.

Sam Taggart: How To Become A Millionaire In Three Years. No guarantee these lessons will bring you millions, but the post provides extremely valuable advice for entrepreneurs, and is definitely worth the read!

Marcus Krzastek: The Ultimate Guide To A/B Testing. Lots of valuable stuff in here, even if just to reference.

John Oates: FarmVille Arrives On I Phone And I Pod Touch. Farmville Goes Mobile and Productivity Goes Out the Window

Marcus Krzastek: The Elevator Button Problem. What elevator buttons can teach us about UI and ourselves.

This Fall, there was a lot of hype around the fact that Twitter was selling the big search engines access to its firehose of data. The implication was that real-time data would massively improve the relevance of search results. There’s obviously a lot of potential here but it seems to me that neither Google or Bing has really nailed it yet. And perhaps another player will emerge.

Take for example something something that happened yesterday in sports. No, nothing to do with soccer or tennis! Jason Giambi of the Colorado Rockies hit a dramatic walk-off homerun off his former nemesis Jonathan Papelbon to win a (baseball) game against the Boston Red Sox. Suppose I want to see a video of that homerun today–where should I look? I went to search.twitter and found a link to it in about 6 seconds on mlb.com.

How about traditional search? A Bing search provided some interesting content, including Giambi’s box score line from last night’s game, but nothing that screams of influence from real-time feedback:

Yes, at the bottom there is a “News” feed which contains the link to an article describing yesterday’s game. You can also click on recent tweets, which showed me 3 relevant Tweets. 2 were identical tweets by different users sharing an article from MSNBC. No trace of the video.

Next I tried Bing’s video search. There’s a lot of video content on the web related to Jason Giambi. But I didn’t find last night’s video in their pages of results. They certainly aren’t customizing the user experience based on a recent event.

My experience on Google was slightly better. I did find the video footage of the homerun as posted on espn.com by navigating to Google News and sorting by latest. And that’s not unreasonable, but I think they are only scratching the surface of capitalizing on breaking news and delivering the most relevant search results. I do think there is huge potential in integration of crowd-sourced information into traditional online search. Here’s a well written article by Jolie O’Dell last Fall that considered some of the possibilities and implications.

Obviously, it’s a monumental task to tailor the user search experience based upon real-time information. For my money, to date nothing trumps good old Twitter search.

Why had I chosen those two products over all other options? When I thought about it, I reasoned that both were pretty “standard” and widely-liked. They weren’t too strange. They were a safe bet, in my mind. But why did I have those specific connotations with both products?

The fact is that we are faced with many, many of these types of decisions every single day. From the toothpaste you use in the morning, to the socks you put on before heading out, to the food choices you make all day long, we are all constantly deciding between brands. But what goes in to these decisions? Why choose Crest over Colgate, or Hanes over Fruit of the Loom? In the end, the products aren’t all that different, yet most people have clear preferences.

Consumers make these decisions for a variety of reasons. Maybe their parents brought them up using a specific brand. Maybe they got a free sample when they turned 18 (e.g. Gillette). Or maybe the consumer was caught by a great advertisement or commercial. These are just a few examples.

–

Today, brands have an opportunity like never before to influence consumer decisions and behavior. For example, here’s a tweet from a couple of hours ago, “Someone bring me some #Snapple, #MangoMadness if possible! Pleeeaaaaase?!?!” Here’s an opportunity for Arizona Iced Tea to tweet back to the user and say, “Have you tried our Mucho Mango? Here’s a coupon code for 50% off, in case you want to give it a try: link.” Sure, maybe the user wouldn’t take advantage and that would be the end of it. On the other hand, the user might take the coupon, buy the product, and become a lifelong fan and consumer.

This was just an example, but the point is that consumer decisions don’t just have to be left up to the consumers anymore, and they shouldn’t. Brands have an opportunity like never before. Simply interacting with potential consumers via social media is incredibly powerful stuff, and is changing the way that we make decisions.

–

Question 1: If AJ had asked you to buy him a bag of chips and a non-carbonated drink, what would you have chosen and why?

Question 2: What goes into your decision-making process when choosing between brands? Has a brand’s presence on/actions via social media ever influenced a decision?

Please leave your answer in the comment section below, would love to see if there are any trends or similarities.

1.  Google Voice

If you don’t know about Google Voice, that’s OK.  It is Google’s phone service where the end user gets to choose his or her phone number and incoming calls to this number are forwarded to any cell phone or home phone that he or she chooses.  A user may also place outgoing calls with the Google Voice number as well.  Oh… and it’s free.

That’s great, right? Cool. What’s even greater is the fact that Google has a Google Voice Android app that completely integrates the service into your phone.  You are able to easily make calls and send texts from within the Google Voice app as well as check your call logs.  It’s just like having two cell phone numbers for one phone.  It is phenomenal and I love the service.

2.  Missed Call

The Missed Call app offers you some additional customization for your Android phone.  Missed Call allows for customizable LED, sound, vibrate notifications for missed calls, incoming calls, SMS, Bluetooth and Calendar events.  You aren’t restricted to the standard green blinking LED notifications, you can branch out with Missed Call!

3.  mp3tagger

I’m a geek.  There’s no way around this fact (nor do I want there to be).  I get very picky about how my MP3 files are tagged (artist, song, album title, etc.).  mp3tagger allows you to edit the tags of the MP3′s that you store on your Android phone.  It really comes in handy and keeps my OCD in check.

4.  Runstar

This app choice is a personal preference because the functionality of this app is a bit lacking when compared to other similar apps in the Android Market.  Why do I love this app so much? The UI is gorgeous! It’s very iPhone-esque and I’m a big fan of that.  Runstar will map out your runs with GPS and store this data on your phone.  You’re also able to input monthly goals for mileage.  More functionality will eventually be released (although it hasn’t been updated in quite some time).  It works for me, you might want something a bit more functional such as RunKeeper.

5.  Bebbled

I hate this game.  I hate it because once I start playing it, I can’t stop.  I won’t even bother going through a long-winded explanation for Bebbled.  If you’re looking for a game that requires superior problem-solving skills, download Bebbled.  It’s free.

This is my second Android apps list… what apps did I miss?

Considering how little they’ve invested in marketing, their success is a bit surprising. A visit to their website will give you a little history about the company and products, a few text testimonials and a handful of recipes. But aside from making you feel like you’re on a Geocities blog from 1997, the bare-bones site offers very little. They do list prices for their products, but you cannot purchase anything, directly. Would-be customers need to call Huy Fong or manually mail/fax the provided order form to actually make an order. While these old-school methods are charming in a way, I’m sure Huy Fong has lost a significant amount of sales with that kind of barrier, and there’s really no reason for the absence of online ordering.

I wouldn’t expect a company with such a lackluster website to have any kind of presence on social platforms, but the Sriracha Facebook Page has well over 200,000 Likes. Originally created and run by a fervent fan, it has apparently been operated by Huy Fong since last July. Unfortunately, the once frequently-updated page hasn’t had a new post since the transfer of administrative rights, and there’s no reason to believe things will change anytime soon.

It’s peculiar how a brand built entirely through word of mouth (they say as much on their website FAQ) could be so averse to the same kind of marketing online. Huy Fong was already aware (and apparently very appreciative) of the Sriracha Page before they were even given access to it, so I do believe they understand the reach and effectiveness of social media. But their lack of effort on the Facebook platform and their own website, as well as a total lack of presence on Twitter, leads me to believe that they just don’t care.

More power to them as, regardless of marketing strategy, they’ve been largely successful. However, as a huge Sriracha fan myself, I can’t help but imagine how much more popular they’d be if they would just wake up even a little bit.

Matt Sitomer: The Starbucks Mistake: Five Ways Foursquare Advertising is Getting Less Interesting. The fact that you’re using the trendy platform doesn’t make your campaign a smart one

Neil Sarkar: 4Food Burger Chain Embraces Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. New burger joint. Order on an iPad. Name your creation and post it to Facebook/Twitter. Get 25 cents every time someone orders it.

Sam Taggart: Facebook “Like” Increases Referral Traffic to Blogs by 50% [REPORT]. With more proof, these numbers could be a big win for Facebook!

AJ Vaynerchuk: Twitter’s Next Business Model: “Promoted Trends”. Another chapter in the interesting adventure of Twitter’s business model.

Anthony Liang: Internet Is Set to Overtake Newspapers in Ad Revenue. Internet about to become second largest advertising medium, only took how long?

Can you imagine the PR staff in charge of BP’s public image? I think it’s safe to say that these people have been in a room since April 20th trying in vain to think up ways to make ruining an ecosystem, putting thousands of people out of work and killing cute marine animal after cute marine animal seem “not that bad”. To date, they have been unsuccessful (shocker, I know). The truth is there is no PR strategy in existence that a company in BP’s position could unleash to effectively fix an issue of this magnitude.

However, before this ever happened, BP should have (among many, many other things) stepped back and taken stock of how the public views them and grabbed the proverbial reigns of their own image. I don’t know about you, but when I think of a giant oil juggernaut like BP, I get a picture of corporate greed, usually followed by a clip from the movie “Wall Street”. Now, it’s fair to assume that before this disaster happened, the people in charge of BP’s branding understood that:

A) the majority of the public thinks of them as greedy oil pimps.

B) there is a chance that some catastrophy might unfold and BP will have to explain themselves to the public.

Knowing that, it’s also fair to assume that BP would have gone to work crafting their image as an environmentally conscious and lovable oil giant long before anything bad happened. Among other benefits, this would ensure that most of the public would perceive an accident as just that, an accident. Instead, everyone perceives this as a company being careless in the interest of boosting their profits. This positive public persona that BP currently wishes they possessed could have been achieved through a consistent and transparent social media campaign. What makes this even more frustrating, especially for an employee of a brand consulting firm that specializes in social media, is that they could have done this for, to quote Gary Vaynerchuk, “sweat equity”. No billboards, no commercials, just social media; Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

BP has an online presence, but they waited until the disaster was in full swing to become truly active. Furthermore, now that they’ve been forced into action, the space is so new to them that they are making some very rookie mistakes. A couple things that I noticed:

Twitter

-While their Twitter account @BP_America is super-active now, it wasn’t even close before the spill; they averaged a tweet every 10 days or so. Their lack of engagement showed in their follower numbers; on April 20, the day of the spill, BP had 2,299 followers. 17 days after that, they had 2,846 followers. Today they have 14,897 followers, all of them with a hugely negative image of the brand and undoubtedly following purely out of desire for answers. Wouldn’t now be a nice time to have a loyal follower base that interacted with you before you were a pariah?

-They have neglected to take swift action against the Twitter account @BPGlobalPR. This account is fake and has systematically made a mockery of BP. The account was created 28 days ago, and they’ve spent all their time putting out tweets like “If we have to pay $20 billion, we’re paying each claim with sweaty wads of ones and/or penny hills”. While it is funny, it is detrimental to a brand that is currently at its weakest. And the worst part: they have just under 170,000 followers.

-They never @reply anyone. I understand that there are millions of people griping about the oil spill on Twitter, but as little as 10-20 replies per day would show that BP cares about what people are saying and that they are listening.

Facebook

-Lot of the same on this platform. BP’s interaction with their Facebook fan base was embarrassingly low before the spill. For example, they had a post on November 10th, December 10th and February 18th and then nothing until May 2nd. Again, another platform that could have been populated with genuine fans of the brand.

Youtube

-As far as I can tell, BP didn’t even have a presence here until the spill. In my opinion, this is the most crucial platform for them as a company, because it allows them to show the public what they’re doing and why it’s relevant. This interaction can range from videos displaying charitable efforts to environmental conservation to safety measures and beyond. Instead, BP is hastily attempting to populate their new channel after the fact. With all of the talk surrounding BP’s lack of safety measures and disregard for the environment, it’d be quite beneficial to be able to reference a video addressing those topics published before April 20th to show that it truly was a priority for them. Furthermore, they are encouraging people to “friend BP on YouTube”, a function that doesn’t exist on the site (they meant to say “subscribe”).

Please understand that I am not suggesting that if BP had properly developed their social media presence before this happened, the public outcry would have been suppressed. There is literally no way that BP can heal their image for years to come. However, their charge into social media after a crisis has happened is akin to putting your seat-belt on after you’ve been in a car accident. Effective use of social media enables you to build relationships with people in a way that no other medium can. It’s an important lesson for all brands, both personal and consumer, to learn. Don’t wait until you need the loyalty to earn it; do it during the good times, because no one knows what tomorrow will bring.

Total read time: 8 minutes

Cyclical Iteration. It’s a philosophy that underlies everything we do here at VaynerMedia, from development cycles to client strategies to administrative processes to sushi/sake team dinners.

What is iteration?

-It’s the systemic acceptance of short term failures to ensure long term success.

-It’s the embracing of the cyclical and chaotic nature of growth and the absence of formal long term planning.

-It’s the investment in human capital and relative disregard for protection of existing assets.

This systemic embracing of the inevitability and strengthening nature of human failure that pervades our company culture is, in my estimation, the surest indicator of our eventual success.

Fail harder, fail better.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett

Iteration is not the process of stepping consistently forward. In fact, quite the opposite, it is predicated on the acceptance of stepping backwards.

Each cycle (or iteration) follows a classic trial-and-error pattern. The first few steps are usually incorrect, but they help expose the complexity of the problem and eventually lead to a more robust and often more innovative solution.

Iteration not only accepts short-term failure, it embraces it. Failure now leads to strength later on.

Seek failure and you will find real strength. Seek perfection and you’ll find weakness veiled as strength.

Disclaimer: I feel obliged to mention that this does not mean that as a company we are releasing substandard or half-cocked strategies or products to our clients. Quite the opposite — the iterative cycles take place internally and help us ensure we can deliver consistently great results.

Safe is risky.

“Safe is risky.” – Seth Godin

If your goal is to never fail (or admit failure), you’ll find that the more you acquire, the more frantically you’ll have to struggle to maintain your “winnings”.

You can’t monitor or control everything. No matter how much you try to keep everything moving consistently upward, something you’re not monitoring is going down.

You know, it takes so much damn energy and cognitive dissonance to convince yourself that you are unfailingly headed on the right path. Why not just admit that there are going to be peaks and valleys??

Sometimes you’re going to forget important things. Sometimes you’re going to do embarrassing shit. Sometimes you’re going to offend and disappoint people you care about or look up to or need approval from.

If you would just RELAX and be ok with losing a few battles, you’d find it’s much easier to win the war.

One of our greatest weaknesses as human beings is our inability to go beyond linear projection. You decide not to lose three battles in a row, because that translates to 9 and 18 in your head.

All important fundamental dynamics are so clearly cyclical, yet we can only take into account a singular slope in our projections, and that chains so many people to overly conservative or risk-averse approaches.

A risk-averse approach is safe in the short term and self-destructive in the long term. And not the fun kind of self-destructive. The slow, crippling, succumbing to death at 24 without realizing it until 42 version of self-destructive. No thanks.

Trust the actors, not the script.

In order to operate on a daily basis, human beings need to ignore a huge number of variables and attribute the continued functioning of those variables to an abstraction that some would call “faith”.

Corporate strategies and sitcoms like Two and a Half Men ascribe that faith to a rigid “plan”, and operate with an implicit wary distrust in the human actors involved.

Iterative strategies and genuine comedies like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Eastbound and Down have rudimentary guidelines for each scene but the director is happy to throw the script out the window on any given scene because her faith lies with the characters and the actors that breathe life into them.

Get attached to the people, not the product or the processes. The only asset that can flourish without attention and demonstrate true exponential ROI is a human asset.

Make more chairs.

When you get attached to your accomplishments, as a company or an individual, you’re putting your money on a commodity with diminishing returns.

Because anything you build is bound to wither eventually no matter how closely you protect or hoard it, you’re putting yourself or your company into a game of musical chairs; a game that degenerates into a dystopia ruled by scarcity and marked by fearful, animalistic competition between otherwise decent human beings.

The solution? Cut that cord, my friend. Put your faith in your future, not your past.

With each iteration you should focus on increasing your ability to do it faster and better next time rather than clinging to your creation, no matter how valuable it appears.

Anything man can build will inevitably crumble. The tires lose their traction and the hinges rust and the sheen fades. One of the saddest things to see is an organization or a person frantically patching together or attempting to bail out a decaying symbol of their past glory.

The second that glue starts unsticking, you want to confidently assess your dying creation like the million dollar man — “we can rebuild him”.

Don’t fear the reaper.

“Don’t fear the reaper (we’ll be able to fly)” – Blue Oyster Cult

What iteration really comes down to is letting the weak or old parts die the deaths they want to die.

If you don’t keep a healthy population of wolves inside, if you don’t have a certain modicum of ruthless killing in your organization or yourself, you’ll eventually find your business or your life unmanageable due to the unchecked, brimming caribou herd that will overwhelm the system.

So many things would be so much better if people could accept minor losses and deaths in the interest of “strengthening the herd”.

Imagine if you could actually “take a break” in a relationship before the relationship was over on one or both sides, how much more stable and secure would that relationship be?

Imagine if laws were repealed as often as they were passed, how much more accurate and fair would laws be?

I hate to get all Eastern philosophy and Yin/Yang on you here, but failure and death are a necessary counterbalance to (and enabler of) success and life.

If you do it right and embrace the failures in your personal actions, even the final, faltering act will be pleasurable.

Hell, I fully intend to have an open bar and a live band at my funeral.

Life’s a joke, if you let yourself exhale and you celebrate the little deaths instead of dreading them, you might be able to laugh at it again.

Marcus Krzastek: Why Tony Hsieh Sold Zappos. Sad to see that Tony was basically denied the opportunity to push the Zappos model out to other industries.

Neil Sarkar: Where People Start Their Online Day. 50%+ of people check email first thing in the morning. 11% go to Facebook.

Marcus Krzastek: A Radical A/B Test. Not just shifting a button or text but removing an entire well-used product from the site, interested to see how this turns out.

Matt Sitomer: Fox Sells 80% of Super Bowl. In a huge change from last year, Super Bowl ad sales are way ahead of schedule.

Marcus Krzastek: Never Read a Resume. Jason Fried doling out wisdom on how to find the right candidate for the job.

I used to train new customer service reps in the order department at Wine Library. In that case, the job primarily consisted of procedures. Various people served the same role, and essentially needed to be interchangeable. If John Q. Customer called and spoke to Customer Service Rep A on Monday, then called again and got Customer Service Rep B on Tuesday, B needs to be able to pick right up where A left off and understand the status of an order, what the customer wanted, and so forth. The job required little in the way of specific product knowledge (trained wine consultants handle that part of the business), and had everything to do with understanding how the various back-end systems interfaced with each other, what company policy was in each situation, and standard procedures that everyone had to follow in the same way.

Training Phil for the assistant role is a very different kind of training. I have procedures that I use, but they are my own. There are certain things we’ve worked out over the years that will remain the same (for instance, how Gary expects things to appear in his calendar), but other than that, it’s the results that matter: making sure Gary is in the right place at the right time, making sure he takes the meetings and calls he wants at appropriate times, and etc. Some of that takes specialized knowledge, which I am teaching as best I can as things come up. Unlike for the Wine Library job training though, most of the procedural stuff is personal, just the way I keep myself organized. I am sure other people use different systems, and my system might not necessarily be the right one for Phil.

I basically showed him how I do it, but I don’t want him to treat that as gospel. He has to make it his own. At this point he’s spent a few weeks being cc’ed and bcc’ed on correspondence, with me explaining why I made this or that choice or who so-and-so is, but at a certain point he just has to get in the trenches and lean on me when he has questions. And that point has come! I’m creating a glossary document of various people in Gary’s world for his reference, and he’s off to the races. Now he’ll cc me and I can lurk and make suggestions and improvements, and Gary will provide feedback as well.

Wish him luck!

The Smoking Section

Music is my passion. I can’t play any instruments, however, unless you count learning Dookie and Redemption Song on the guitar in seventh grade. While I try to listen to music from as wide of a variety of genres as possible, hip-hop is my first love.

Smoking Section is my hip-hop blog of choice. Their focus on long-form posts and willingness to expand their scope to other genres when inspired makes them my go-to source for quality music and writing.

Rotoworld

The best site on the internet for sports news, hands down. As not only an avid sports fan, but someone who’s addicted to fantasy sports, Rotoworld has been a godsend over the past four or five years. Their news feed keeps me up to date with breaking news while their daily articles make sure I don’t miss anything important.

The Awl

I just discovered this blog a couple of months ago and it’s quickly become one of my favorites. It doesn’t really have a focus outside of quality writing on interesting topics, which is unfortunately pretty rare.

Tech Crunch

My preferred place to keep up to date on the latest happenings in the tech world. Mashable is valuable as well, but I find Tech Crunch to be a little more selective and more willing to flesh out topics that it finds important. I tend to use Mashable to skim and Tech Crunch to read.

Hip Hop At Lunch

This is the hip hop blog written by Vaynermedia’s own Mike Boyd. Even if I had never met him, however, this would still find its way on this list. One of the things I’ve had to sacrifice since leaving college, where I had endless amounts of time on my hands, is actively searching out new artists and songs.

Hip Hop at Lunch is focused on artists who are poised to enter the public consciousness in the near future, allowing me to maintain an understanding of what’s coming up without putting in the time and effort required. Also, I get to guest post every once in a while, which is a definite bonus.

Kissing Suzy Kolber

I’m going to cheat here a little bit an include Drew Magary’s posts on Deadspin in this, since they’re just about the only thing I read Deadspin anymore for.
KSK is in my humble opinion the funniest sports website on the internet. However, my sense of humor didn’t progress past third grade so you might want to take that with a grain of salt

Hacker News

When I’m looking for something interesting to read, Hacker News never fails. I can’t even begin to describe how many incredible articles and posts I’ve found from this site that I never would have even known existed otherwise. The only downside is that I need to be careful, since on a good day I can lose an hour to it without even realizing it.

Advertising Age

I need to stay up to date with what’s going on in the marketing world, and AdAge is the best resource I’ve found to do so.

Something Awful Forums

This is a site that was the topic of a past blog post and one that I wish I could spend more time on. Because of its vast scope and moderation policies, I can find quality commentary on pretty much any topic I need from these forums. I haven’t read its parent site in probably three or four years, but the forums are one of the best communities I’ve found.

My team blogs (Daily Thunder, Niners Nation, The Diatribe)

This changes by what leagues are currently active, but all of these are the best blogs I’ve found for keeping up to date on my favorite teams. Daily Thunder is the newest addition to this trio, but it may be my favorite.

John Wooden was the men’s basketball coach at the University of California Los Angeles, from 1948 until 1975. During his tenure there, Wooden led the team to ten national championships in twelve years, an unbelievable feat which will never be matched. He coached some of basketball’s greatest all-time players, including Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Wooden was unquestionably one of the best coaches the world has ever seen, in any sport.

Wooden was born in 1910. He died last Friday, at the age of 99. Known for his wisdom and kindness, Wooden left his mark not only on the game of basketball, but on millions of people around the world. Wooden will forever be known for his brief maxims, a byproduct of his midwestern upbringing. Among them, “Never mistake activity for achievement,” “It isn’t what you do, but how you do it,” and “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” Part of his coaching philosophy was to teach his kids valuable life lessons. In an interview after Wooden’s death, both Walton and Abul-Jabbar said that Coach’s teachings transformed their careers and their lives.

I had the chance to meet John Wooden nearly three years ago when he came to speak to my Sports Business class at the University of Southern California (crosstown rival of Wooden’s UCLA). Rivalry was the last thing on anyone’s mind that night. At 96, he was physically frail, but his mind was as sharp as could be. The room was absolutely packed (this particular night was one of the few where family members of students were allowed to attend class), and for two hours, we sat and watched him speak. Just to be in his presence was surreal. After class, I shook his hand and let him know what an honor it was to meet him. It was a moment that lasted less than a minute, but one I will remember forever. The man was a legend. It’s not often you get to meet someone like John Wooden.

While he is no longer with us, through his maxims and other lessons, we can all still learn something from John Wooden. His maxims are simple, but quite powerful. Here are some of my favorites.

On Success

Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.

On Failure

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

Inspiration & Motivation

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

On Work Ethic

If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

For more on John Wooden, here is his Wikipedia entry. I highly recommend reading more about Wooden and reading through a list of his quotes.

Did you know about John Wooden before reading this post? If so, what did he mean to you? Would love to hear your thoughts and continue the conversation below.

We’re done, or are we?

A great example of this concept is a project VaynerMedia recently executed, utilizing a Facebook Page tab. The night before the project launch, I made a “final” review to make sure everything looked and worked correctly. It was 11:30PM on Friday night and the project was set to launch at 7:30AM the next morning. Everything seemed perfect, but to be safe, I set an alarm up for 7:15AM to ensure a smooth launch. I woke up the next morning and, of course, the tab wasn’t working*. I immediately notified the client and started calling members of the VaynerMedia team. We were able to quickly diagnose the issue and applied a temporary fix, followed by a complete fix later that day (shout out to Sameer for picking up his phone at 7:30AM on a Saturday).

The lesson learned

Be prepared for the worst. As I was setting my alarm that night I thought to myself, “there is no way anything can go wrong, everything is done, I should just sleep in.” If I had followed through with that initial line of thinking, our client would have had an unsuccessful launch, and would most certainly be upset with our work. Thankfully, I decided to set the alarm anyway and I recommend for you to do the same.

* The issue? Facebook and the client’s website decided to stop working together some time between the 8 hour window of 11:30PM and 7:15AM.

Sam Taggart: Hotels Test Smartphones as Room Keys. Our phones are already lot more than just phones. Imagine what they’ll be in five years.

Matt Sitomer: In Perspective: Visualizing the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Overlays the oil spill onto other geographic regions, such as New York Bay, for perspective on this environmental disaster.

Sam Taggart: Jetstar to put iPad on In-Flight Menu. Great to see an airline give curious passengers the chance to experiment with the iPad!

Neil Sarkar: Google lists top 1000 sites, Lets You Advertise on Them. Ever wonder why Google wouldn’t try to compete with Alexa? Looks like they did too.

Phil Toronto: BP (Logo Redesign Contest). This is a mock contest for the redesign of BP’s logo similar in nature to the fake BP Twitter account that has been so popular.

Anyway, my main point that I’m going to put in boldfaced text is: don’t be afraid to switch things up and try different routines to manage your life.

It is unbelievably easy to succumb to a routine that is familiar to you, but familiar does not translate into effective.  It took starting at VaynerMedia to help me realize this fact.  Within the first two weeks of being at VM, I was falling behind relatively frequently and absolutely couldn’t figure out why.  I was handling my workload the same as I had been for as long as I could remember…  it just wasn’t working like it had been for as long as I could remember. Was I going to accept the fact that I would be perpetually behind from there on out because I was sticking to my system and, damn it, my system has always worked? Nope, can’t do it.  It was time for some life A/B testing.

One of the biggest shake-ups that came from my life testing was my schedule.  I discovered that I was much more effective completing certain tasks within certain blocks of time.  I needed to rework how I did things and when I did them as well.  The biggest addition to my schedule involves me coming in early at least once a week so I can sit in a park about 2 blocks from the VM office and brainstorm new ideas while overlooking the Hudson River.  This works really well for me.  The amount of ideas that I’m able to come up with per week has increased significantly… and you can never have too many ideas.

Again, what I’m trying to drive home is that you need to find what works for you.  Maybe you hate the Hudson River and would never want to be within 2 blocks of it.  What works for me may or may not work for you and vice versa.  You’ll never know what works for you without A/B testing your life.  It’s a little nerve-racking to change up a tried and true routine, but you just might find a more efficient way of doing things.  Don’t be afraid of changing things up! Once you do find a better way of doing things, it’ll be pure victory.

If you got to the position of your bosses boss, would you be happy?

If you got to choose your job, would you choose the path of highest average gain with medium risk or highest possible gain with maximum risk?

Just as anybody who dedicates their life to music has at one point imagined themself as an international rockstar, anybody who willfully dedicates their life to the Internet has at one point imagined themselves being beyond a boss; being part of something magical.

Which websites represent the rockstars we aspire to be? You already know what they are, because they all reached a level where they registered resoundingly in the national consciousness, and there’s one every 18 months or so in accordance with Moore’s law.

Chronologically they are Yahoo, Google, Amazon, eBay, Myspace, Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter.

So you’re saying there’s a chance.

There are a few patterns uniting this batch of sites.

1. None of them solved an existing problem. Instead, they all created entirely novel experiences.

If your focus is on fixing a problem, you’ve given yourself a ceiling that’s too low.

2. None of them were carried by a brilliant or unique idea. Instead, they were all solid ideas that hundreds or thousands of people may have had concurrently — but only one team executed and executed well enough to be a leader.

If you’re focused on concept over execution, you’ll be sitting on a barstool lamenting the fact that someone else took “your” idea.

3. None of them were started by a lone individual.

If you’re not actively surrounding yourself with people who inspire and challenge you, it’s going to take you decades to catch up.

4. None of them were a first venture.

Overnight successes were underground for decades. The great ones have always had a sort of urgent patience, like stubborn turtles.

5. None of them were started with financial profit as the primary motivation (despite some having fantastic business models).

If the money’s anything more than a bonus of your endeavor, you’ve already lost.

What was all that one in a million talk??

If you’re going to pursue the Grail, you can’t be reliant on praise or encouragement from others. You’re going to have to discount 90% of what anyone not pursuing the same Grail says to you.

Most people, including your parents, will laugh in your face if you tell them that you’re going to make the next Facebook. “A few get lucky; for every one that succeeds theres a million that fail.”

Here’s the thing about other people’s advice though: no-one believes in you. When you yourself can’t even articulate what it is you know you’re capable of, no-one is going to make that assumption on your behalf.

Do you think Steven Tyler’s mom or dad looked at him when he was 15 and said “Son put down those books, you were born to be a rock star. Here’s a guitar and a bottle of whiskey, now get in your room and make some f*cking rock and roll”. No.

If you have a special gift, you also have a special burden of needing that gift to emerge and manifest itself and a special constraint of not being able to follow any of the paths cleared for you by friends and family.

Shoot for the moon and land on the damn moon.

The benefits of owning, creating, or otherwise being associated with a Grail site are obvious to any casual observer. Rich and famous, right? Wrong. Those are the symptoms, but not the disease.

There is a higher good than money or fame: glory.

As Gary and AJ put it, “Legacy > Currency”. As Lil Wayne put it, “I don’t want the glow, I want the glo-ry”. As Drake put it “It’s funny when you coming in first, but you hope, that you last/you just hope, that it lasts”.

Chris Rock originated a wildly accurate phrase that says you always lose money chasing women but never lose women chasing money. It goes up another level. You always lose glory chasing money, but you never lose money chasing glory.

75% of the time, you’re screwed anyway.

An abstraction of any challenge that can always embolden you is that you only control at most half of the variables. All you can control is your preparation and belief. It looks like this:

To some this chart is daunting — to me it’s freeing. You’re probably screwed anyway. Might as well try.

I gotta get back to work but…thoughts?

This scenario, when viewed through a purely rational economic lens, is a boon for you. Not only have your activities for the night been confirmed, you’re $40 richer. As we all know, however, that’s not the reaction most people would have. Instead, most people would be insulted by the introduction of money to the scenario.

Money is possibly the most powerful incentive that a business can offer. Much of the world we see around us has been built and operated through financial incentives. Unfortunately even a tool as universally powerful as the dollar has a weakness.

Money has the ability to corrupt transactions and reduce their value. As we discussed previously, people do respond to incentives outside of financial gain. Introducing money to these transactions can often replace the reward or added-value instead of supplementing it.

In the example above, the introduction of money into the courtship ritual devalued the emotional benefits associated with the situation, which was certainly worth more than $40. By offering you money, your friend corrupted your motivations, negatively associating your actions with prostitution rather than love.

For an another example, imagine paying volunteers at a soup kitchen $5 an hour. Would as many come”? Financial incentives are a positive influence 99% of the time, but one must be cognizant of introducing them into a situation where they devalue already existing incentives.

Saeed Jabbar: My Business Card. One of the most creative business cards I’ve seen!

Sam Taggart: Bizarre Websites On Which You Can Kill Time With Style. A collection of beautiful, fun, & creative sites that will leave you amazed!

Matt Sitomer: iPad + Velcro = LOVE. The iPad, combined with a little velcro, makes various devices obsolete.

AJ Vaynerchuk: 4 Ways to Find Out if Your Customers Use Social Media. Life, balance, money, happiness

Marcus Krzastek: Republican’s Crowdsource Website Having Some Content Issues. Just a friendly reminder that when you open the floodgates to user content, especially if you’re a controversial brand, you need to be prepared.

The episode featuring VaynerMedia debuts tomorrow, Friday, May 28, at 6:30 PM EST. This was an extremely positive experience for us, and we hope you’ll tune in to find out what we look for in a prospective employee.

Check out the trailer below, and follow MTV Hired on Twitter and Facebook!

Last Thursday, a friend of mine (and basketball nut/blogger) Peter R. Casey retweeted fellow basketball nut/blogger Lang Whitaker about a video that I was not prepared for (in a good way). “Yup, that’s going viral,” Peter commented, then retweeting Whitaker, “Here’s the YouTube link to that Nike World Cup spot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLG6jh23yE.”

I like sports. I like viral videos (Put them together, that’s what I want! <<< Inside Joke), so I clicked on the link. 450ish views? Viral, you say? What made this video so good that Peter was determined it would go viral? It only took me 7.3 seconds to get sucked in and 30 total to realize Peter was right. This video is epic, and quite possibly the best commercial (hard to call it a commercial) I’ve ever seen. Just watch:

As of 5PM Monday, May 24th, the video had 6.85 million Youtube views. As of 8AM Tuesday, May 25th, the video has 7.65 million Youtube views. So, as predicted by Peter, the video has gone viral. Why? First, the concept is brilliant, and universal. Whether you’re a football fan or not, everyone can understand and get lost in the idea of changing the world and writing the future. Second, Nike is a massive brand. Anything they do is seen by a good amount of people. Third, the event around which the video was centered, The World Cup, is a beyond-massive brand. The World Cup is unquestionably the world’s biggest sporting event, even though we Americans would like to think it’s the SuperBowl. No other sporting event affects the world’s population as much as the World Cup. Fourth, Nike Football hired famous Hollywood director and producer Alejandro G. Iñarritu (21 Grams, Babel) to direct the commercial, and he crushed it. The cinematography & art direction is brilliant (loved the Ronaldinho Youtube touch). Finally, the cast is insanely star-studded, including appearances by world-class footballers, Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, Wayne Rooney, Fabio Cannavaro, Ronaldinho, Landon Donovan (to name a few), as well as special guest cameos by tennis great, Roger Federer, NBA superstar, Kobe Bryant, and fictional cartoon character, Homer Simpson.

After watching the commercial (four of five times), I headed over to Nike Football’s Facebook Page to see what they were doing there. Since I hadn’t yet liked the page, I landed on a custom tab titled, “Write the Future,” and was directed to “Hit the Like Button. Watch the Future.” I did so, and proceeded to watch a ten minute video about the making of the commercial (which included the actual full-length commercial not once, but twice). Nike Football also integrated one of Facebook’s new plug-ins, the Activity Feed, into the tab. Pretty cool!

I don’t even like football, but this commercial got me amped. So much so that I tweeted about it, posted the video on my blog, shared it with the entire VaynerMedia team, and now have written a VaynerMedia blog post about it. While I still probably won’t watch that much of the World Cup, I guarantee I will watch more than I would have prior to seeing the commercial. I also know that my co-worker, John Oates (who on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of how much he likes football, is a self-professed ~5.25), just said, “I want to cry” and “I just want to keep watching it over and over again” after watching the commercial. Another coworker, Keith Holjencin, who (designed the image for this blog post and) “knows nothing about soccer,” said he was “blown away.”

The point is, the world is talking about this commercial, and this campaign is an absolute home run… or game-winning goal? It’s a fantastic concept (“Write the Future”), it was incredibly well thought-out and well-executed, and its target audience was pretty darn widespread, which couldn’t have hurt. And if I, a non football fan, feel this way about the commercial and the campaign, imagine how passionate football fans must feel (kinda like how Philadelphia hockey fans must feel about the Flyers right now). The commercial just sucks you in until the very last second.

I have so many questions. How much money did Nike spend on this campaign? How much time did it take to conceptualize, plan, and film? Who was the decision maker that said “go ahead?” I would love for Nike to release an article with all of this information, and I have a feeling I’m not alone.

What do you think about the commercial? Had you seen it before this post? Does it change your views on football? Who was the biggest winner because of the campaign? Nike? The World Cup? The game of football? What other campaigns have you seen centered around the World Cup? Would love to hear your thoughts and continue the conversation below!

Snapping to Pixels

While anti-aliasing is wonderful and can help make things pretty, it can also have an adverse effect. There is a right and a wrong way to deal with it:

Photoshop offers a feature that can help you circumvent this problem – snap to pixels. When creating a new shape layer, Photoshop will automatically start you off on a whole pixel, allowing you to create perfect lines. To turn this on:

Although snapping to pixels won’t solve every anti-aliasing problem you run into, it will at least give you a strong starting point when designing with shape layers. If you continue to run into this problem, pick your Direct Selection Tool (A), grab the shape layers points and manually drag them into place. Being mindful of this will help you become more observant as a designer.

This post was more or less a reverberation of one of my previous articles, Web Design Subtleties, where the attention to detail is major play in making a design really sing.

If you like to learn more about anti-aliasing, click here.

Marcus Krzastek: Panera Opening “Pay What You Want” Restaurants. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect a major retail chain to use this payment model, very interested to see how this goes.

Marcus Krzastek: Facebook Status Update Search. Search through people’s public updates outside of Facebook. It’s weirdly fascinating/creepy.

Sam Taggart: Beginners Guide to Using the Power of Color in Web Design. Imagine your favorite website in a different color scheme. Would it work? Interesting to think about the massive importance of color in web design.

Shaun Chapman: Harvest is hiring a UX Designer with ZERO experience. Most UX designers are computer savvy but most of their users aren’t. Harvest is hiring someone who sees their app like their users do.

David Zhang: 4 Ways to Find Out if Your Customers Use Social Media. For many companies, the conversation has shifted from “why” or “should” we do social media, to “where” and “how” social media should be done. Companies should follow, not lead, their customers across the social web!

This got me thinking about the old adage of buying low and selling high, and how it applies to hot startups and entrepreneurs. Take a company like FourSquare, which is the talk of the town. They’ve built a lot of momentum, seem to have everything pointed in the right direction, and so on. Then you see rumors that a big company like Yahoo! wants to acquire them for some huge sum of money. Should they have sold? In many ways as an entrepreneur I bet it is pretty tempting to let it ride. You’ve got a homerun concept, everyone wants a piece of it, everyone wants you to speak at their conference. But just like opposing pitchers will be getting a more detailed scouting report for how to get out Casey McGehee over the coming months, there are potential sharks in the water for FourSquare. Direct competitors like Gowalla, the big boys like Facebook and Google gradually dipping their toes into the geolocation ocean, etc. And just like the fantasy baseball owner, it’s natural for an entrepreneur to take pride in their discovery and good fortune, and want to see it through. But maybe they should just sell high and ride that cresting wave ashore (ok, took that metaphor too far).

I don’t mean to suggest that FourSquare should definitely sell–it’s just a convenient example to which we can easily relate. The larger point is, it’s easy to develop an emotional attachment to your company or software solution or product, and it would be a mistake to let those emotions cloud your judgment and miss an opportunity to sell high.

A few weeks beforehand, they got us involved to help them craft a release that innovatively leveraged social media.

This was probably the most fun project I’ve done so far, and I wanted to share a little about what made the process so enjoyable, exciting, and unique.

1. Discovery

Travis Porter’s manager, CEO Charlie, had an existing dialogue with our own hardworking hip-hop blogger @mikeboydjr who writes Hip Hop at Lunch. Boyd introduced him to Gary and AJ and subsequently to me.

When we spoke on the phone, the opportunity was obvious. Their last independently released mixtape had propelled them to a national and overseas tour, a couple videos on MTV, and a song on the billboard rap charts. They were releasing a follow-up, 17 song mixtape and a short film (1/2 hour) on May 18th.

Their last social media campaign had been in February, a “tweet to watch” campaign for their music video for “Get Naked” and they wanted to innovate on that. From 6-8pm, they were going to take over the livemixtapes.com site, redirecting all visitors to a custom social landing page.

Travis Porter had an avid and rapidly growing fan base, which gave us a captive audience. They were unsigned, which gave us creative license. They were innovators in a space (Hip Hop music) that was seeing huge social effectiveness with rudimentary implementations, which gave us an exciting and potentially rewarding challenge.

Charlie and I hung up after about two hours and my mind was buzzing with the opportunities that this unlikely collaboration could yield.

2. Concept

CEO Charlie called me on a Friday, and the next day Boyd and I came in to the office to brainstorm. The tight timeframe of the release helped simplify and focus our vision, and we came up with the concept over a Saluggi’s pizza and a couple leftover Newcastle Brown Ales in under an hour.

The concept was:
1. Allow people to unlock through twitter (tweet link + follow travis porter) or facebook (post link + give email address)
2. Have a video section that will play either the movie or Travis Porter live ustreaming
3. Allow the audience to interact with Travis Porter directly through twitter and facebook on the page. Each interaction propagates through their network and extends the viral loop.

Simple, right? I put up a living prototype that day (you can still see it here: http://graphpaper.vaynermedia.com/travisporter) and it was game time.

3. Execution

From concept to execution was only about 20 hours between two people. I handled all the back-end work and social media integration, and our newest team member @shaunchapman (of 0 to 255 pseudo-fame) handled the front-end UI.

More impressively, we could do it in half the time if we did it again and a quarter of the time if we had control of the servers for testing production code.

Take a look at the final result:

Travis Porter: “Proud to be a Problem” social landing page

The best part is that 3/4 of the elements on the page are plug-and-play components offered by ustream, twitter, and facebook. From a user experience standpoint, 75% of the page was done in under an hour.

The development time was all spent on writing a custom OAuth implementation for Twitter, integrating Facebook’s new open graph api, collaborating with livemixtapes.com to ensure the correct user flow from authentication to unlocking the mixtape, and skinning the page according to the specifications of Travis Porter’s graphic designer, Colourful Money.

Of course that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg; if you’re interested in technical details feel free to ask how we did anything in the comments and I’ll respond with an explanation and code sample.

4. Results

- 42,000+ unique visitors in 2 hours. 239 combined days spent on the landing page by all visitors.
- #3 trending topic on all of Twitter.
- #11 most searched term on Google.
- 7,000+ tweets and follows.
- 15,000+ clicks on the official bit.ly link from the generated tweet (stats: http://bit.ly/proudtobeaproblem+)
- 4,500+ likes on the Open Graph enabled album (and de facto Fan Page) for the album Proud to be a Problem.

5. Conclusions

The launch was a success. It was fresh and exciting for everybody involved — us, Travis Porter, Live Mixtapes, and the fans.

This Travis Porter/VaynerMedia collaboration is my absolute favorite type of working relationship, and the effectiveness of a good working relationship can be seen in the results.

They are on top of their game, and we are on top of ours. They don’t need more than what we can provide because they already have the talent. They’re not going to restrict us to less than what we can provide, because they don’t have a legal department.

Travis Porter just told us their story and goals, and we listened. Then they stepped aside and gave us the freedom to select the right tools from our vast social media toolbox to accomplish those goals.

But enough about us. The most important takeaway is that it is downright scary what Travis Porter and other up-and-coming artists can do with minimal effort by leveraging social media.

The power is truly shifting from labels and other corporately tainted entities to the artists themselves, and touching that yesterday was exhilarating.

Tonight is the NBA’s Draft Lottery, where the league’s bottom fourteen teams (every team that did not make the Playoffs) find out their picks in the NBA Draft. The Nets finished the year with the league’s worst record, and thus, have the best chance (25%) at the enviable #1 pick.

It is customary for each team in the Lottery to bring a good luck charm to the event. Each team’s representative typically gets a chance to display the good luck charm on television. In the past, teams have brought everything from a horseshoe to a crystal ball.

While the Nets’ representative, new owner Mikhail Prokhorov, will bring a good luck charm to the event as expected, the team has a second (digital) good luck charm this year as well. This morning, we helped the Nets launch www.NetsGoodLuckCharm.com, a site that will only exist until shortly after the end of the NBA Lottery later this evening. The site is a place for Nets fans to come wish the team good luck in obtaining the first pick in next month’s NBA Draft.

NetsGoodLuckCharm.com takes advantage of several of Facebook’s new social plugins (Activity feed & Like button) as well as Twitter OAuth, to give Nets’ “like”-ers and followers the chance to wish their team good luck without leaving the page.

Overall, the site is really a tribute to the fans who withstood a difficult season and have shown continued support through social media (and elsewhere). And we’re all hoping they can bring the team some good luck!

What do you think about this initiative? How have you seen other sports organizations incorporate their fans into significant moments? Let’s discuss in the comment section!

One of the greatest mistakes a business can make is to assume that its consumers are inherently driven only by selfishness and personal gain. For the sake of this post’s focus and brevity, let’s ignore the potential selfish logic for performing selfless deeds. Instead, let’s focus on the fact that people perform unselfish acts, unprovoked, all the time. Whether it’s donating a kidney or holding the door open for the stranger behind you, evidence of this is all around us.

Why does this matter? Too often when considering the best way to incentivize potential or current customers, we only think of ways to satisfy their selfish desires. While those incentives do work, in many instances it’s more effective from a cost and conversion standpoint to consider unselfish desires.

The cost benefits are two-fold; instead of giving someone twenty dollars and reaching just that one person, providing someone the opportunity to give someone else twenty dollars reaches two people for the exact same price. Your business has successfully delivered value to twice the amount of people for the exact same price. Where this gets really interesting, however, is with the person who gave away the twenty dollars. For smaller dollar amounts, like twenty bucks, it’s possible that this person derives more value from the opportunity to give the money away than they would from receiving it. In this case, not only have you increased the reach of your promotion, you’ve increased the effectiveness of its initial interaction.

Depending on your brand, giving people the opportunity to be unselfish may deliver a more powerful brand association than satisfying their selfish desires. One industry that comes to mind with this is the financial sector. The overwhelming public consensus views most of these businesses as selfish, but associating their brand with satisfying unselfish desires could soften their images.

I’d like to spend more time on this, and this may be the start of a series of blog posts, but for now the important takeaway is that selfish isn’t the only answer. Appealing to unselfish preferences, in some instances, can be a more effective marketing strategy.

Neil Sarkar: Diesel brings Facebook to the Fitting Room. Blows the pants off the online privacy debate.

Matt Sitomer: The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook. Graphic depiction of how Facebook has changed since 2005.

AJ Vaynerchuk: CHART OF THE DAY: Here’s How Much Tech Companies Spend On Advertising (YHOO, GOOG, AAPL, MSFT). Curious as to who spends the most?

Caleb Brown: Travelocity Says Chatroulette Marketing Works. Pretty awesome to see Chatroulette marketing actually working.

Marcus Krzastek: Android 2.2 Adds Tethering, WiFi Hotspots. Android just upped their game in a big way.

Last night, I took part in Samsung’s attempt at setting the Guiness World Record for the World’s Largest Game of Dodgeball.  It was a really great time to say the least.  In order to promote their latest phone, the Reality, Samsung aimed to get 1,500 people packed into the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City assaulting each other with 600 dodgeballs.  This was a great idea on Samsung’s part, however the record was not even close to being set.  My team (the Yellow team) had 359 members while the opposing Blue team had 356 members.  This number of participants is less than half of what was needed to set the record.

I couldn’t help but think about what could have been done differently that would have resulted in a better turn out.  The main issue was publicity.  Not enough people knew about the event! Yes, it was on Facebook.  Yes, there was a designated hashtag (see below).  Yes, people showed up… but there could have been SO many more.

I was speaking with one of my good friends that also attended the game. He attends Baruch College and Baruch’s campus is literally across the street from the 69th Regiment Armory. He had told me that no one from Samsung had been on campus promoting the event in the past two weeks. Granted, he isn’t on campus every hour of every day, but if there isn’t even a flyer posted around the college campus that is across the street from your dodgeball event, you’re missing out of plenty of potential participants.

Anyway, I definitely feel as though Samsung did an excellent job running the event.  I simply believe that with a bit more attention paid to the promotion of the world record attempt, they could have shattered their goal of 1,500 players.  For the next attempt, there needs to be a greater push via social media.  There needs to be a greater effort to break into the trending topics on Twitter, there needs to be a full scale Facebook assault, and there needs to be geolocation integration.  There needs to be much more that isn’t mentioned, too, but overall, there simply needs to be more people talking about this event through social media.

Here is some footage from the craziness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po9ChCs76uA
(This is a pan of the two teams prior to the refs announcing “Game on!”.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjBbDcaBaP8
(Keeping an eye out for 600 balls in a sea of 700 people is harder than it sounds…)

While in a meeting yesterday, designer Adam Kopec pointed out that Dominos “Pizza Turnaround” campaign is continuing to pick up steam. This was not a total news flash to me, as I was aware that they were still incorporating the home-grown tactics that had worked well thus far. However, when he showed me their Facebook campaign, something I was not familiar with, it became very evident that Dominos was taking things to another level.

In their current television ad campaign, Dominos harps heavily on what they call “Holdouts”. These are people that have not tried the new Dominos pizza and they make a show of putting up billboards, ads, commercials, etc. targeting them by name; the ads are actually quite brilliant. Seeing the great response they got from turning the footage of their “Holdout” stalk-fest into prime-time commercials, Dominos went a step further and made PizzaHoldouts.com, a Facebook-driven campaign where people can suggest that their friends try the new pizza. After connecting your Facebook profile to the page, you are prompted to “Place a Bounty” where you supply the “Fugitive’s” (your friend’s) name and email. The company then sends that person a “buy one pizza, get one free” coupon and you get a small side-order for free (for example, I recieved a coupon for free chocolate lava crunch cakes, a coupon I will battle not to use). Once the pizza coupon is redeemed, the company considers the bounty “fulfilled” and you are able to acquire more rewards and climb the ranks of the leaderboard. All of your statistics are viewable within your profile, including “Taste Bud Bounty Rank”, “Unfulfilled Bounties” and “Captured Taste Buds”. The person with most captures by June 27, 2010 will win free pizza for a year.

Even before I was shown this, it was my opinion that Dominos was crushing it; the new television ads served as a great follow-up to an already powerful initial website. In Pizza Holdouts, they capitalized on the competitive aspect of Facebook and they did it in the most effective way possible: they combined the competition of a game and tangible rewards in a contest where someone redeeming a coupon is a prerequisite to your success. It’s a fantastic idea that, along with the rest of their turnaround campaign, is really working for them. Don’t believe me? As I mentioned, when I released the initial article about Dominos on February 3, their stock was at $11.20 per share. In late April, it exceeded $16 per share; that’s a 30% increase in under 3 months.

As I said in my first article, I am ecstatic that a company embraced transparency and honesty and is seeing fantastic results. The money is nice, but I’m sure what is really making Dominos’ Board of Directors do backflips is the fact that they were able to reverse a rock-solid stereotype in just a few months. It’s a great lesson that keeps getting better. I hope Part III is just as good.

There is this article that shows the “eroding” privacy policy of Facebook in direct quotations:
http://w2.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline/

There is this article showing the same progression as an infographic:
http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/.

Wired noted that a Facebook employee, when questioned about how Mark Zuckerberg feels about privacy, responded with laughter, saying “He doesn’t believe in it”: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/report-facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-doesnt-believe-in-privacy/

There are also congressmen that are proposing a sweeping Internet privacy bill: http://gigaom.com/2010/05/04/congress-proposes-sweeping-internet-privacy-bill/ , prompting Facebook to hire an ex-boss of the FTC as their lawyer: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/10/facebook_bush_lawyer/

…and just today, there was a security hole found (and fixed) in Yelp, one of the three sites granted “instant personalization” features (ie automatic access to a lot of your facebook data): http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/11/yelp-security-hole-puts-facebook-user-data-at-risk-underscores-problems-with-instant-personalization/

So, I’m bringing this up because I sincerely want to talk to anyone who shares concerns about these policies.

See, Facebook’s changes fill me with excitement rather than fear or uncertainty. Not just for what they make directly possible now, but for what a societal shift in the direction of open-ness would mean.

Do you pick up calls from unknown numbers? You should, every single time. The benefit of your picking up a single important call from a friend (most people don’t have jail telephones in their address book) far outweighs the cost of having to hang up on wrong numbers or junk calls.

The debate over open-ness of information comes down to this same cost-benefit analysis to me.

People seem to only consider potential (and exponentially more common) misuses of their data by a malicious individual or organization, but never the rare advantages that could be provided to them by an individual or organization bent on helping people and understanding the world better.

It’s downright tragic that the default mode of operation for most when assessing other human beings is “guilty until proven innocent”.

Consider a world where all of your interactions with everybody throughout your life are catalogued, categorized, and entered into computers. To most, this scenario would result in the society George Orwell outlined in 1984, where every individual is controlled on a personal level by an all-seeing government.

Very few people contemplating this scenario would think what I did: “Can you imagine the advances in the field of Psychology after one generation of this???”

I mean really, can you imagine how much more insight we would have into the human condition, and how much happier we could make an individual in the next generation by leveraging data we had from lives in the past that were characterized by similar data points?

Part of it admittedly comes from a naive optimism regarding human nature, but the other part is that my professional challenge every day comes down to parsing data. So I’m dubious as to the effectiveness of attempting to control a vast number of individuals on a personal level, if for no other reason than the sheer logistics of parsing all that data in realtime.

In general, fear of your information being collected and abused by a huge organization (like Facebook) on an individual basis implies a self-centered viewpoint. From the perspective of potential data collectors, whether noble or malicious, your individual personal data is basically irrelevant. Good or bad, they are after *aggregate* data.

The last point I want to make is that people always wonder “well if technology has improved our lives so much why isn’t anyone happier”. Well, shit, it’s hard to build something that’s going to make you happy if that thing has no baseline understanding of who you are, what type of people you’re friends with, and what you prefer to do with your time.

I know these are unconventional viewpoints, but as a developer who understands the technical implementation and real world implications of the Facebook platform, I’m really curious to explore your concerns and inform you from a technical perspective if you are worried about your privacy on Facebook.

If you have questions about what is or is not possible for Facebook and other websites to do with your Facebook data, I can answer them.

If you want to know where to go to make sure your privacy settings reflect your intentions, I can show you.

But must of all, if you have concerns about specific drawbacks of making more of your information publicly available, I’d love to find out why.

You can comment anonymously if you like

Side Note: Some of these might seem rather elementary to you, but you’d be surprised at how easy it is to abandon even the most basic networking skills if you feel a bit alone and overwhelmed at a large event.

1. 1.  Don’t Forget Business Cards.

Seriously. On more than one occasion, I’ve walked out of the house with a stack of business cards sitting on my kitchen counter or, if they made it into my pocket, they didn’t make it out of my car somehow. Whatever you do, make sure you have your card with you. Write a short note on your hand reminding yourself to bring them or put a reminder in your phone – just don’t forget them!

2. 2.  Introduce Yourself To Break The Ice.

Believe it or not, you don’t need to make introducing yourself and an “icebreaker” two separate things. Roll them into one bundle of networking joy! You can save your bad jokes and your crab games. Simply extend your hand to whomever you wish to start a conversation with and say “Hi, Phil Toronto, how are you?”.  You may or may not want to insert your own name instead of “Phil Toronto” depending on the event.  Consider this the “Choose Your Own Adventure” portion of this post, if you will.

3. 3.  Pay Attention!

At large (or even small) events where you don’t really know anyone, it’s easy to find yourself scanning the room even after you’ve found someone you’re interested in connecting with. It’s easy to do, yes, BUT DON’T DO IT.  Make a conscious effort to remain engaged with the person that you’ve started connecting with.  Keep your eyes from wandering to other groups of people while you’re talking with someone.  You may not intend to be rude, but Columbus also didn’t intend to discover America. Make sure you remain attentive and keep your eyes and ears on the person across from you.

4. 4.  Don’t Be Afraid To Walk Away

Well, don’t just walk away because that’s actually not OK. It is more than OK to excuse yourself, thank the other person (or people) for taking the time to chat with you, exchange business cards (since you remembered to bring yours with you, right?), and continue to connect with others at the event. I promise that the other party won’t begin serenading you with “Don’t Turn Around” by Ace of Base.  Not every conversation is a winner or you might just want to maximize the amount of people you interact with so don’t be intimidated to politely be on your merry way.

5. 5.  Do What You Say – FOLLOW UP.

If you tell someone that you’re going to follow up with them, follow up with them! Don’t go back on the first promise you make to a new contact. Even if you didn’t fully see any immediate business connection with a person, it’s still appropriate to send a quick “it was nice meeting you at <insert name of event where you networked like a pro here> ” email.   You never know, you might be able to collaborate at some point in the future.

Like I said, you might roll your eyes at some of these (or all of these) because they’re so “basic”, but in the heat of the moment these are unbelievably easy to forget.  Happy networking!

Good talk, see ya out there.

UPDATE (05/11/10): There have been quite a few invaluable additions to my list made by readers in the comments section. I highly recommend taking the time to read through them.

Neil Sarkar: Embeddable Tweets. “Tweets are the new quotes” — quit pasting screenshots.

Joe Whitmarsh: thx thx thx: a thank you note a day An awesome site where someone writes a ‘thank you’ note every day for all the little things in life. It’s important to be reminded every day we have so much to be thankful for.

Sam Taggart: The Life of a Startup Founder’s Significant Other. Lindsay Wiese (girlfriend of Ryan Amos, DailyBooth co-founder) writes about what it’s like to be the significant other of a Startup’s founder. Great read!

Stephanie Bagley: What Men And Women Are Doing On Facebook. Women are more active on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr while men more active on LinkedIn, Youtube. Women like to connect, men want to advance themselves..kind’ve like, well, real life.

Marcus Krzastek: Google Chrome Speed Tests (VIDEO). Awesome video showing how fast Chrome is with Rube Goldberg machines (the stuff in that OK Go video).

We live in a world where we can now see, and even better, participate in conversations that would only have happened behind closed doors even just a few years ago. How times have changed! In the past few weeks alone, I saw three tweets from professional athletes that really made me thing about how lucky we as sports fans are, to live in today’s world.

Chris Bosh

Last week, Chris Bosh tweeted, “Been wanting to ask. Where Should I go next season and why?” Later, he clarified, “Ok… Let me rephrase the question. Should I stay or should I go?” If you weren’t aware, this is a massive summer for the National Basketball Association. Several of the leagues stars and superstars are on the free agent market (e.g. LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh), and their decisions will have a major impact across the league (Some argue, and I agree, that LeBron’s decision of whether to stay in Cleveland or head elsewhere has implications far beyond basketball. If LeBron leaves, the team folds, fans stop attending the games, the city’s morale takes a hit, and so on, and so on).

What’s so awesome about Bosh is that he has given the fans a chance to have a say in his decision on whether to stay in Toronto or sign with another team. Who knows how much the fans will influence his decision, but I can tell you this, if one team’s fanbase really steps it up and shows love for Chris Bosh, their support could have a very big impact on his decision, so long as the team itself is a good fit in his eyes. What player wouldn’t want to play in front of a team whose fans showed you tremendous support from the beginning? Thousands of  fans have responded to Bosh so far. It will be interesting to see where he goes!

Jeremy Shockey

Fans aren’t the only people who can sway the decision of a free agent. Last week, Jeremy Shockey tweeted, “Dear Sharper pls dont sign with the Jags.. you have a home in New Orleans!!” Darren Sharper, veteran NFL Safety, became a free agent after the 2009-10 and had several suitors during the offseason. Shockey, understanding the importance of Sharper remaining a New Orleans Saint, voiced his opinion and his concern publicly to his 48 thousand Twitter followers.

Several days later, Sharper reportedly re-signed with the Saints. Now, again, who’s to say how much Shockey’s tweet influenced Sharper’s decision? In the end, it probably had very little do with Sharper’s return. However, the point is, that we as fans were able to see this simple but personal message sent out from Jeremy Shockey to one of his teammates, which probably wouldn’t have happened before the Twitter era. Athletes are simply more wiling to speak their minds about previously private matters in today’s world.

Chris Harris

On April 27th, Carolina Panthers Safety, Chris Harris, was traded to the Chicago Bears. The crazy thing is, Harris himself tweeted about the trade, before it even happened! ““Breaking News,” he said, “I will be traded to Chicago Bears. Carolina u have been great and deeply missed. I have a special place in my heart for you.” Just moments later, he tweeted, “Oops!! I jumped the gun! Trade isn’t confirmed yet. I’ll confirm or deny on http://facebook.com/nfl.chris.harris.” And later that afternoon, Harris posted to his Facebook wall, “The deal is done. I’m now a member of the Chicago Bears. I’ll be back here on Facebook a little later to tell you Carolina Panthers fans how much I love ya and you Bears fans how much I look forward to playing for you again.”

I’m not sure exactly what happened, whether Harris did really jump the gun, or if his representation just got nervous about him tweeting the news himself. Whatever the case may be, it happened. Prior to social media, players would never have the chance to personally break news about this kind of thing. Sure, maybe they could feed it to a reporter who would break it himself, but now players have the ability to control the message. You may not have heard about this, because Harris is a relatively low profile player in the league, but imagine if it had been someone the mainstream media cared about. Or maybe, just maybe, the media didn’t pick this story but because of fear that their job just became a little more obsolete.

Conclusion

My point is this: social media has forever changed when and how information is distributed from leagues, teams, and players, to the fans. We are seeing and influencing conversations like never before because there has been a shift in who controls the content. Please don’t take any of it for granted.

While I titled this post, “Sports Fans: Don’t Forget How Lucky We Are!,” I easily could have dropped “Sports Fans” from the title, or even called it, “Brands, What a Massive Opportunity You Have!” The point is that 1. This post can apply to all industries, and 2. Brands need to realize that they have the opportunity to engage customers and fans on a completely different level than they previously could, and in some instances, let them (feel like they) have a part in a real-life decision.

Now that we’ve had two weeks in a world where “Like” buttons are free to roam wherever they please, we have an initial picture of the long-term impact  the open graph and the spread of social plug-ins will have on the web as a whole.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted that there would be 1 billion Like button clicks within 24 hours of the launch. Prior to the launch of the open graph on April 21, Facebook users were sharing over 25 billion things a month, according to FriendFeed founder and current platform lead Bret Taylor. That could equal over 30 billion likes in this first month alone, as TechCrunch pointed out.

While Facebook has not yet released the data on total clicks there have been to date, the number of major sites hosting the plug-ins and the ease with which others can add them has led to the Like button and the other plug-ins continue to spread and what we can observe is an influx of activity on the websites who have integrated the new features.

The AddThis toolbox, a widget that allows websites to easily share content, added the Like button for it’s 1.2 million websites on May 4. Some of the major sites already using tools like the the Like button and Recommend button include NYTimes.com, IMDb, CNN.com, TIME.com, LIFE.com, Fandango, NHL.com, USA Networks, Levis.com, Univision and ABC.com.

With the plug-ins, you no longer need a CNN editor to tell you what news is worth your time. The activity feed plug-in acts as a virtual editor, displaying what your friends are liking, recommending and commenting on. This sounds interesting in concept, but is even more compelling to see in action.

The National Hockey League, (a VaynerMedia client) jumped in the ring and co-launched the new social plug-ins alongside Facebook at the F8 conference. NHL.com now allows you to like any player or team on the site, or to like the NHL Facebook page right from NHL.com.

Anything you like is then shared with your newsfeed and on your friend’s newsfeeds, with an added social element of telling you who else of your friends already liked the player, team or page you are looking at.

Splashing the names and pictures  of your friends through the graph takes the “old model” of anonymous “likes,” Digging etc, to a new level by painting a more detailed picture of where your friends are going on the Web and what they are interested in .

Another of the 8 Facebook social plug-ins, the facepile, displays the pictures of your friends who have already liked a site, and on NHL.com, you can like the NHL Facebook page with a button conveniently located in the same box.

This a valuable tool for marketers to consider. Allowing consumers to like you on Facebook without leaving the website reaches a whole new set of eyes, and can add valuable numbers that you can sell against.

The NHL Facebook page now has over 368,000 likes, and has garnered over 84,000 likes since the social plug-in integration, a 30% growth in 2 weeks.

In reality, my first Twitter-versary was back on April 6th.  I was just a bit preoccupied breaking the next billion-dollar company at the time, and couldn’t properly celebrate.

Yes, Twitter itself is almost 4-years old now, so I did arrive fashionably tardy to the party.  After signing up for Facebook, I got too comfortable, and became a relatively late adopter with most of the social media platforms that followed, including Twitter and LinkedIn.  Sure, I was acutely aware of Twitter’s presence last Spring, but everyone was by that point.  My professors were probably retweeting Shaq before I even created an account (bear in mind, when I first joined VaynerMedia, I got called out for using my cell phone’s most advanced feature, the built-in voice memo app).

Just like everyone else, my early tweets were self-centered and uninspired, but thankfully, my recent exposure to Twitter and social media in general has given me a greater perspective on its environment and functions.  The rest of this post will be comprised of quick observations and things I’ve learned over the past 13 months, regarding everyone’s favorite real-time micro-blogging platform.  In the spirit of the theme, no bullet will be longer than 140 characters.

• Follower counts don’t always tell the whole story. The follower-following ratio is a much better predictor of a quality tweeter… or spam

• My favorite thing about Twitter is that it forces you to be succinct – whether or not this will make kids better writers tomorrow remains to be seen

• Twitpic or it didn’t happen! Photo-included tweets are the best – it’s like I’m there, or something

• Ubertwitter and Tweetphoto links open in my browser instead of in my desktop client – I hate that and will be less inclined to click

• Yes, there’s a character limit, but don’t abbreviate everything – most will be able to decipher, but why make it so much harder to read?

• If it’s a little long, use 2 Tweets =)  Longer than that?  Write a real blog post!

• Having said that, please refrain from tweeting in rapid succession… for your followers’ sanity’s sake

• Twitter’s Trending Topics seem a little too easily gamed – is it a representation of Twitter’s pulse as much as it is a celebrity obituary tracker?

• While it’s a Twitter staple, and great in theory, I’m skeptical of how sticky #FF endorsements really are – personally, I don’t love ‘em

• Hashtags can add value to your tweets, especially for gatherings. Sometimes they’re overused but at the very least, they’re a pleasant #changeofpace

• Protecting your tweets will limit your experience on the platform – fewer people will follow you and your posts won’t show up in search.twitter

• Twitter won’t make you rich automatically, or find you customers, or create brand equity.  You do that.  All it can do is help

It’s been a blazing fast first year, and though it took a few months to get my feet under me, I’ve gradually become comfortable incorporating Twitter into my day-to-day routine.  What are some things that you’ve noticed about the Twitterverse?  I’m sure some of you will disagree with a couple of my points, but seeing as how it’s my birthday, I plan to simply ignore them (whoops that’s Facebook).

http://twitter.com/jeff_green22/status/9591728463
http://twitter.com/KDThunderup/status/9591974924
http://twitter.com/KDThunderup/status/9591798600
http://twitter.com/jHARD13/status/9591859226
http://twitter.com/jeff_green22/status/9591830820
http://twitter.com/KDThunderup/status/9592076447
http://twitter.com/jHARD13/status/9592173845
http://twitter.com/KDThunderup/status/9592244850
http://twitter.com/jHARD13/status/9592395178
http://twitter.com/KDThunderup/status/9592157954
http://twitter.com/jeff_green22/status/9592213766
http://twitter.com/KDThunderup/status/9592264417
http://twitter.com/KDThunderup/status/9592514335
http://twitter.com/jeff_green22/status/9594388406
http://twitter.com/KDThunderup/status/9594103786

As the season progressed, I grew more and more attached to this Thunder team.  At first I attributed it to the how the team was constructed; even fans of other teams seem to have a soft-spot for OKC.  Slowly it started to dawn on me that the real driving force of my affection was the fact that when I watched the Thunder play, I felt a real connection to the players.  As anyone who follows sports knows, athletes are given every incentive in the world to remain as bland and inoffensive as possible.  Rocking the boat can result in lost sponsorships or league fines.  Unfortunately, that means that it’s incredibly difficult for fans to get a real feel for the people they’re rooting for.

With the Thunder it was different.  When I watched them, I felt like I had an understanding of how the team played off one another that went beyond sterile newspaper fluff stories and ESPN profiles.  What really drove it home was when the Broingtons stopped tweeting in order to focus on their first round matchup against the Lakers.  It was only in the absence of their tweets that I realized how large of an effect they’ve had on how I view the team.

There’s a lesson here for all brands.  While its tempting to keep brand messaging traditional and controlled, there are major benefits to be had for opening up and adding humanizing aspects.  The beauty of giving your brand a personal voice on Facebook or Twitter is that as a marketing vehicle it’s unobtrusive but still effective. People naturally want to know behind-the-scenes information, its why people listen to director’s commentaries or read tabloid magazines.  Giving them the opportunity to do so can be an easy way to create a stronger attachment to your brand.

Marcus Krzastek: How Font Affects Decisions. Some A/B testing showing how different fonts can affect perceptions of what is being described.

Sam Taggart: What if I had bought Apple stock instead? Do you own an Apple product? This table tells you how much you would have today if you purchased stock instead of that iPod.

Marcus Krzastek: It’s Trending. Easy, simple site that allows you to follow what’s being shared on Facebook. Definitely worth monitoring to ensure nothing slips by.

Mike Boyd: The Interactive Twitter Music Chart. Here’s a creative way of ranking tweets by the user’s following to followers ratio.

There was a 5-way tie for the 5th spot, so we had an inter-office contest to decide:

Unfortunately, both Neil and Joe were pre-disposed and couldn’t participate.

Without further ado, this week’s 5th most interesting link as decided by Bocce Bottle Cap:

Matt Sitomer: Seth Godin: 8 Things I Wish Everyone Knew About Email. Because there are too many people who still fail to follow these conventions