1mtweets.com

In the past year, I've had a really close friend whose Mom has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It's one of those things that until it touches you, you can't imagine the horrible impact that something like that has not only on the person who is experiencing it, but on their entire immediate and extended family. From what I've seen, it's just a terrible process of helplessness as they watch someone they've known as a wonderful intelligent and connected person starts to disappear right before their eyes and they can't do anything about it.

Today, Jordan Banks launched 1mtweets in memory of his grandparents. Trying to get 1m tweets and have those that do donate $1 to the cause.

I've always loved the Web particularly as a means of social change and now I"ll add 1m Tweets to my list of great examples. Check it out yourselves and spread the word.

Those Who Can Do And Write Books About It

When I got an earlier copy of Mitch Joel's book, Six Pixels Of Separation . At the time, he told me that it really wasn't a book for 'people like me' but hoped I'd enjoy it anyway. And just to be clear, I think what he meant by 'people like me' was that with my 13 yrs or so of experience in digital marketing, I might find the book too simple perhaps. Or not insightful or filled with new ideas?

Well, Mitch knows I love to debate and challenge him on a good day so I'll do it again here. Rather than not liking the book, I loved it. Why?

It's not that the ideas were earth shattering for me. It they were, I'd be nervous to keep my job. But what i loved about the book and why i think every digital marketer should read it, is Mitch's no nonsense style that puts a lot of very complicated and sometimes hard to understand concepts into really simple terms. Similarly to how I felt after seeing Mitch speak, I find myself often using both his examples and his manner of telling stories when speaking to my clients.

On top of that, I also plan to buy the book for about five entrepreneurs I know who are all small business owners looking to market themselves online.

Net net, I highly recommend you grab a copy whether you be sophisticated digital marketer or a newbie looking to expand your marketing tool set. And it's simply a MUST READ if you have your own business and want to learn how to market yourself online.

Those who can do AND they apparently write books about it too. Congratulations Mitch!

DISCLOSURE: Even though Mitch is one of my bosses I wouldn't have bothered to write this if I didn't mean it. I just woulda not said anything and hoped he didn't notice :)

Real Mobile Web? How About A Regular Old Fake One?

I just came back from the cottage which is its own little island somewhere in the middle of nowhere, six hours by car from Toronto. The weather was awful. Lots of rain. Lots of mosquitoes. But like the troopers that we are, we made the best of it. The 9month year old did great. Happy as a clam singing away in his baby chair watching the rain fall come down as if it was an episode of baby Einstein.

To make us all feel better (the non-self-entertained babies) I thought I would bake a peach pie. We had the perfect peaches. And made a special trip for some butter from the watershed. And with all that effort and expectation, I realized that I couldn't quite remember the measures for the pastry.

No problem right? The mobile web. So i pull out my trusty cell phone to do a little mobile surfing.

Now this is not as easy as it sounds. Cell phone reception is sketchy at best and email only downloads a few times a day. To get the browsing capabilities it's a careful balance of angles and acrobatics as I stand on one leg on a rock that sits just off the front of the main cabin with my hands stretched upwards to get a signal.

As you can imagine, once i get Google up on my screen, I'm pretty happy and want to get my recipe information as quickly as possible as to not lose my reception momentum. I plug what I'm looking for and what do you think I get? Well, to say the least, the worst bunch of impossible to browse on a mobile phone websites you have ever seen. Downloading links after links that seem to go in mobile circles never quite landing at a simple page with my simple pastry for my potentially mood changing pie.

Read a post today about someone wanting a 'real mobile web', but dammit, i'd just be happy with a regular old fake one.

Just in case you're wondering, I winged the pastry. It wasn't half bad and the mood improved greatly.

I'm Just Not That Into You!

Do you ever get the feeling that brands get all hot and heavy setting up their community and engagement strategies only to turn around and say just a few months later, "I"m just not that into you"?

It goes something like this. Like most relationships, it all starts off wonderful and exciting. The honeymoon phase. The press release comes out. Community engagement! Supportive tools to empower our customers! @twitter customer service!

Amazing. Who knew? I sign up. I follow you. I get right into it. I start to expand our relationship and feel like we are going some where together.

But then...after a while it just seems like, you're not calling. You're not writing. No response to my emails. Waiting on hold for what seems like hours. The promises of brilliant new functionality to support my needs never happens.

What was a fabulous start to a great relationship somewhere along the line just seemed to go away. When did i stop being your priority? And after all that personalized information i gave to you? You asked for my commitment and engagement, what about you?

I've heard from a bunch of people lately that they would prefer not to get into the social media game if they aren't going to do it well.

I couldn't agree with them more. Community engagement has to be a long term and sustainable proposition. You can't just start a community and then abandon it. Turning around after a year or two and saying, "I'm just not that into you" simply isn't an option.

The Bitter Sweet Sale Of Oponia

It's been a bitter sweet couple weeks for me. As some of you may or may not know, I had a start up called oponia networks. After trying to get funding for over a year, we ended up like many start ups having to shut it down. However, I always knew that what we set out to do (and technologically succeeded at) was something important.

Vanessa (our CTO) posted our original vision for oponia on her blog:

"In a nutshell, it just bugged me that every computer and every device was not actually a node on the Web. Despite the fact that personal computers in particular are more than powerful enough to act as web servers, the physical and logical topology of the Internet as deployed relegates most devices to being web clients only.

The Web 2.0 phenomenon has improved the capabilities of lowly web-clients, allowing them to contribute content as well as consume it. This is a great thing, and I don’t mean any insult by saying that by itself it just isn’t enough.

I wanted a Web that was end-to-end. Where every device could provide as well as consume web services and content. Where every shared resource had a resolvable URL.

Just because your laptop or your phone don’t have the full power and connectivity of the “great server cloud in the sky” there’s still plenty you can do with them if they’re able to join the network in an active capacity.

So that’s what we set out to do."

Today Opera came out with its own version of our oponia techology called Unite that they are calling their reinvention of the Web. Techcrunch thinks "this is a really good idea at its core."

Well, VC's in Canada didn't agree. So sadly, we were unable to ever see our vision come to life in the way we knew it could.

And ironically, it was just last week we finalized the sale of our core technology to another start-up. Hopefully they will succeed in the machine to machine device market where we were unable to in the consumer market...not only because I would like to see our supportive and loyal investors get their investment back but because I've always believed in the kick ass platform that we created.

So thanks to everyone who participated in our journey. And thanks to all the supportive messages I've gotten today about Opera. Don't know what else to say really - times like these the only thing left to do is quote The Grateful Dead.

Man, "what a long strange trip its been"

omg You're Like Such A Loser: Competition & Curating Your Community

I love Tumblr. Maybe it's because I work in a creative field where visual design is so integral, but discovering the tumblr community has been a blast. To some extent, it's my own personal image/txt/video repository. A snap shot of things I have found and loved. I actually think if someone wants to get to know me without meeting me on a more emotional level, my Tumblr site is the place to go.

A few weeks ago, Tumblr introduced something they called Tumblarity. Tumblarity, simlar to popularity, is a rating system that tells you where you are in relationship to other Tumblr logs as far as how many followers you have, how many people have reblogged or liked your Tumblr posts. etc.



Ok. I get it. They want us to use it more. They want us to start getting all competitive and trying to get our Tumblr site higher up on the top 100 list. But here's my problem. Competition has nothing to do with Tumblr. In fact, I would say it's more of a sharing community.

The Yahoo pattern library (h/t to Craphammer) on community says it like this:

"When a new or existing community requires a reputation system, the designer must pay careful consideration to the degree of competitiveness the community ought to exhibit. Haphazardly introducing competitive incentives into non-competitive contexts can create problems and may cause a schism within the community."



When competition is introduced into a sharing community what you are trying to achieve may have the opposite affect. In the case of Tumblr, I've noticed people are reblogging less and I sometimes just feel like a loser when my Tumblarity goes from 100 to 10 over night. This hasn't added to my experience at all and I for my part just try to ignore it.

The lesson? Know the dynamics of the community you are curating. And create features and functionality that will support it vs. distract from it.

The Network Is My Teacher

It's been fascinating watching my daughter's use of the Internet in the context of her eduction. People talk about Un-skool, homeschooling, kids being the new teachers etc.

Cee is 13. She has a really big science test she's studying for. She's being doing the traditional things. Writing flash cardy type things, rereading her notes. etc. But the other day she came downstairs all excited. She decided to look for online study guides on her various test subjects and came across this:



An American teacher who has turned the science curriculum into some catchy tunes and posted them all on Youtube. Of course Cee immediately posted this to her Facebook and next thing you know, a whole bunch of them are singing the photosynthesis song getting ready for their test.

Just one example of the future of education? Small I know. But implications over time could be so much larger. No longer being forced to learn only from your own class, you bring your entire context and the network to the learning process. Students become teachers, teachers become study groups. Mashed up, upside down, backwards and sideways. Just how every great transformation begins.

...oh and as for her test? Haven't heard yet but she's pretty sure she did really well. And yes, she said for sure that the songs helped.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/samxf42/2815897862/