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To All My Friends Getting Married
You think your problem is bad, but mine is even worse… at the rate you’re all going the number of wedding presents I am going to need is growing exponentially!!!
Thanks xkcd for the laugh.
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Brian M. Westbrook – In Flight Safety
My friend Brian is probably one of the funniest people I know, both on camera and off. In this video, he does an excellent job of showing us how to practice in flight safety on Alaska Airlines. Make sure to watch through the 2 minute mark, and see his excellent improvisation of the Alaska Airlines Visa sign-up. Love the wonderfully funemployed at Seattle SM Profiles for providing this video!!!
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From the Vault: “Inflatable Bling” Pitch at SocialMediaCamp 2009
I was doing some “research” – actually I was surfing YouTube and got the genius idea of seeing if any of the half-baked games (this thing where you come up with crazy product pitch ideas and try to get people to vote on yours) were on video. Imagine my surprise, when I found myself in the second result. Mostly posting this here for myself (it’s got hardly any views).
The idea was that you could blow up your engagement ring to as many carats as you needed. We abused pretty much every “don’t do this in a pitch” rule we could, including having a skit AND having a child in it. Yeah, fun.
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Who Needs Zeroes (on the keyboard) Anyway?
Enjoyed this clever tweet this morning, in response to my comments on getting to know my new Mac PowerBook G4 – which is one of two Mac laptops I tweet-sourced before heading down to SF this week:
Note: The zero key is missing but I can still type zeroes AND this computer was a free gift from a friend and I am very grateful, in fact I am considering naming it. I can’t figure out if it is a guy or a girl yet, but for a girl I like the name Elsa.
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Fail Faster
This is a great Michael Jordan commercial, anyone in business should watch this remarkable ad.
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Airport Security FAIL – Liquids in Manufacturer Bottles are Legit
In this edition of stupid laws you can’t believe someone actually wrote, we investigate a new one. Apparently, there is a law about how liquids must be stored that goes down on the list as one any criminal without a front labotomy (or drug use with similar effects) could get around.
Coming through security at JFK today, I had my little clear plastic baggy with my clear plastic bottles I fill with shampoo, conditioning, body wash, and lotion. The TSA official pulled me aside and asked if she could search my bag. I don’t know why they ask, since they’re going to do it anyway and I’d be a fool to say anything other than “Yes, of course” unless I actually WANT to miss my flight. So she takes a look at these little bottles with their cute little “shampoo”, “conditioner”, etc. labels and askes me…
“Did anyone tell you, you have to have the manufacturer’s label on the bottle – otherwise I won’t know what’s in them?”
WTF?!!
So you’re telling me if I empty out a little pert plus bottle, and fill it up with something dangerous, you’ll let it go. But if I travel with legitimate liquids in a clear container I am out of luck? Wow. That’s some damn scientific protection our state in investing millions and millions of dollars in. Makes me kind of wonder why there haven’t been more yucky chemical attacks on airplanes.
So I threw out the stuff, I mean it wasn’t worth missing a flight over. She offered to have someone come over and talk to me, so that I might be able to take them through, and now I’m kind of wishing I had taken her up on it – just to see what on Earth they’d do. Would they somehow test the liquids to prove they’re not harmful?
Airport security is one big act we all play along with, and this is just the latest.
UPDATE:
UPDATE #2 (and Scott Phelps you rock my friend!):
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We Are Now Approaching the Futurama
I love commercials, especially ones about the future. Some are inspiring, others are trite, and maybe plain stupid. But the fact that we can dream like this, and then see this stuff come true, is cool.
1939 World’s Fair – a Vision of 1960
“The freedom to think and the will to do have given birth to a generation of men who always want new fields for greater accomplishment, and will always find new things for all others to enjoy. Come, let’s travel into the future. What will we see?”
Also see Part 2Telepresence (British Telecom)
E-Commerce, Webcams, Email, Home Printing and Online Banking
Tomorrowland – Walt Disney’s Vision of the Future
Microsoft’s Vision for 2019
and this parody of the Microsoft vision…
“kind of like an iPhone, but with this extra piece you can loose sometimes… and on the airlines you can now pay an extra forty-five dollars, to access your child on Twitter… at Microsoft we’d like to remind you, this future is coming and it’s only 498 years away. See you there…”
And of course, what collection would be complete without…
Apple’s 1984 Commercial
Other Great Videos
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Celebrities Who Treat Twitter Like Broadcasting Medium Miss the Point
I form first impressions very fast, and since I make a lot of friends through Twitter I’ve figured out some different ways of evaluating their profile to make some generalizations about who they talk to, how engaged they are with people, and what they’re interested in. It’s much faster to read someone’s last 100 tweets than to read their last 10 blog posts. One thing I look at is the ratio of followers to following. The reason is that I’ve discovered there is a balance between the two – if someone is following too many people (far more than are following them) then they are likely a spammer. Twitter controls for this by making it so that you can’t follow more than 2000 people until you have at least 1800 people following you. On the other end of the spectrum are those who are followed by many many people but make themselves seem inaccessible by following back only a tiny percentage.
What this says to me is, “I’m not listening to you – I’m listening to tweets that come up with my name in them”. Bleagh.
Yesterday, I gave a talk with An Bui to a group of business women about how they can use Twitter to benefit themselves and their businesses. At one point, a hand was raised and the person said “a lightbulb just went off for me – this is a way for me to broadcast what my company is doing”. Damn! This is the danger with Twitter, if you look at it as an outside observer its easy to see why people think this – but broadcasting is truly a small percentage of what you need to do to realize the real benefits of Twitter.
What real benefits, let me list the ones I’ve seen:
- rapid information sharing where friends are the filter through which you hear about the world
- ability to discover people with similar niche interests and find places to expand those interests
- random meetings of people you read, admire, compete with, etc. in cities while travelling
- chance to come up with cool content creation partnerships (blog posts, talks, video, etc.) on the fly with other creatives
- sense of being more intimately connected to friends, even when you’re a workaholic (and proud of it!) like me
- way to discover products/services friends LOVE that are improving their quality of life (yeah – I do listen to my friends for this stuff)
- hear a random thing and search it on Twitter to find out what it is related to… long tail searches of conversation work
- find out what people are saying about you, your content, brand, customers, competitors, ANYTHING!
- feel like you’re much closer to the people you admire (internet personalities, celebrities) and be the first to hear about their work
There’s probably more, but I’m dashing this off fast and found I couldn’t type fast enough to write these benefits down.
Someone Tell Them: It’s the Conversation that Counts
Why? Because even for big time celebrities they are still real people, who can endear themselves to new fans, find new opportunities, share in the richness of the world, provide a useful filter to their followers, and be more deeply connected. Also, celebri-twits are battling against a deeply entrenched early-adopter culture that is both excited and horrified by the way these newest converts are using Twitter. On one hand, I can admire that they are even better at shameless self-promotion than what I’ve seen so far — but I’m disappointed because I expected this new media to peel back another layer of the onion and make these people more accessible. Wasn’t that what all the hype was fundamentally about?
Would I be excited if one of these celebrities followed me? Yes, I admit I would be briefly. Would I be converted? No, not unless they took the time to read something I said and respond with something relevant. To join the small conversation that is my life. That’s how I can be reached, touched, and impressed.
Hell, even internet-famous Julia Allison (or one of her assistants) emailed me when I commented that I continued to read Valleywag due to “my love/hate relationship with Julia Allison” and asked me why the hate. I was impressed, she was listening – and even went to the effort to get my email address from my blog. Yeah I realize she’s not famous on the same level as these celebrities – I just thought it was thoughtful and a good example.
Celebri-Twit Yer Doin it Wron
Look, for example at some celebrit-twits who are making a splash on Twitter like Ashton Kutcher, Oprah,
Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk)
Oprah Winfrey (@oprah)
Larry King (@kingsthings)
Breaking (bwhaha!) update: sounds like Spencer (of Spencer and Hill on that MTV show “The Hills”) wants to compete with Ashton on Twitter. Even the radio commentators on KISS 106.1 FM were like… “oh god, have’t we heard enough of this yet?” Yeah, bleagh. I bet I’ll blog it, for some reason I just can’t stay away from this topic, disgruntled semi-early adopter that I am.
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Crowdspring has a sense of humor!
I just signed up for Crowdspring and look what they gave me:
What is Crowdspring
A place where creatives can sell their work for spec and buyers can submit a creative brief and quickly get a whole bunch of submissions to choose from.
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Social Media Begins with Listening, Not Branding
Warning: bit of a rant.
I just opened my weekly email from Biznik, letting me know about business events in my neck of the woods, and was confronted with this:
What’s the problem with this? Well, for one the use of “Any social media expert” kind of baffles me — since they are few and far between. By I digress. The problem with this approach is that it puts branding and SEO at the fore and in focus, completely confusing how people need to come into social media if they want to be engaging, successful, learn, and teach. I hate to use the dreaded buzzword, but “authenticity” comes from doing a whole lot of listening and conversing first – and THEN figuring out how your brand, SEO strategy, etc. fit with social media.
I’m not saying this because I’m some social media bleeding heart who thinks it’s more about the conversation than the bottom line – yes using social media is a business activity and fundamentally about making money. However, you are never going to sell me something if you turn me off like the myriad “social media experts” who follow me on Twitter each day masked as PR professionals, real estate agents, mortgage brokers or (worst!) motivational speakers and coaches. The insincerity of it all makes me sick.
I don’t know Steve MacDonald, and I imagine for those who are new to social media they will come out of this session with some things to do and will learn quickly from the community (if they are open) if their approach is too much talking and not enough listening. This makes me think even more about how to make sure we have the right focus at my talk next weekend, alongside An Bui, where we will address women in business and teach them about Twitter.
I’ve got a flight back to Seattle, so we’ll leave this to be continued… check back later this week as I work on developing the talk and look for your input.  Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll see you there!