Let’s start with Twitter. Everybody has heard of Twitter, even people who have no idea what it is talk about it—like my friend’s great-granny. But it’s their smarts in innovation that is most impressive—they outsource it.

Twitter’s smart enough, or lucky enough, to say, ‘Gee, let’s not try to compete with our users in designing this stuff, let’s outsource design to them.’ –Eric von Hippel, head of the innovation and entrepreneurship group at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T.

If you run a business these days you’re probably using Facebook or thinking about it—I know I am. So I found this article in the NY Times of great interest, especially since it’s written for folks, not pros.

You need to be where your customers are and your prospective customers are, and with 300 million people on Facebook, and still growing, that’s increasingly where your audience is for a lot of products and services. –Clara Shih, author of “The Facebook Era” (Pearson Education, 2009).

Do you know the key ingredient that helps police nab the bad guys? Stupidity—theirs. It used to be that they flashed their loot around and bragged to their friends, not they flash their loot and brag on Facebook.

Maxi Sopo thought he had made an excellent decision when he ran away to Cancun to escape a Seattle fraud prosecution. He also thought it would be a great idea to add a former Justice Department official as a friend and gush about his exploits on Facebook.

I love it when stupid gets stupider.

Last is an item that falls in the smart or stupid category—you decide. It asks the question; at what point does a CEO’s Facebook sharing cross the boundary to TMI (too much information)?

Recently Chip Conley, CEO of Joie de Vivre, a $230 million company with more than 3,000 employees, got enmeshed in a bit of a 2009 corporate culture snafu. Conley’s not your average Harvard MBA pinstriped buttoned-down corporate chieftan. He’s an entrepreneur. He writes his own rules. So to him, it wasn’t so strange to post some pictures of himself at the Burning Man whatever-it-is in the dessert on his Facebook fan page. Or to tweet on Twitter about the demise of his 8 year long relationship.

When his employees got upset he wrote about it on BNET. Read both articles and share your thoughts in comments.

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit:  nono farahshila on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

Whether it is a public figure or not, the desire (need?) to know every little detail, what they are doing every minute of their lives, the products they use, their ups and downs to be almost obsessional.

This kind of interest used to be reserved for the intimacy of real friendship or close family relations—and even then there were boundaries—but now anyone is fair game.

Apparently I’m not as out of it as I thought; many people are shutting down their Facebook pages for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are the effects they notice on their own MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

Others are leaving because they don’t like the commercialization, which I find amusing. Any mass human congregating, past, present or future, will attract those who want to sell their product. Why anyone would think it would be different because the location is in the cyber-world is beyond me.

However, if you are going to indulge, I suggest that you focus on what you are doing when you do it, because the repercussions of not doing so will follow you all your life and beyond. That’s serious when you consider that 45% of employers search social media when hiring, 65% didn’t extend an offer because of what they found and that number will continue to grow.

Other than malicious intent, two things happen on social media.

• Not thinking, which causes people to post stuff to venues in which it doesn’t belong and giving access to “friends”—who may not be next week.
• Not focusing, which leads to pilot error though the ease and simplicity of clicking the wrong button.

Consider this post, sent to me by a friend, as a great example of the dangers of multitasking while updating Facebook.

Can you imagine the reaction of hiring managers, potential mates or future kids? Even if it had been posted privately there is nothing to stop a “friend” who is angry from reposting it.

Once it’s out there it’s out there forever—definitely the wrong kind of immortality.

I’ve said many times, both here and at MAPping Company Success that social media never dies and people need to think about that.

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: Facebook

Post from: Leadership Turn

But I do read a lot about it; follow the trends and tragedies, as when Twitter went down. So I thought I’d share some of the more interesting articles I’ve come across recently.

First is a clear, concise description of three tactics to get your company up and using social media. Not strategy (as several commenter pointed out) but solid action items.

The Wall Street Journal offers (more) advice—why and how—on the importance of learning texting lingo—that’s one no one will ever sell me on, but you should if you plan to function in the cyber-world.

From Psychology Today, 5 Smartphone Rules To Live By that teach you how to own your smartphone instead of it owning you.

But not everybody believes that everything you do should be chronicled for public consumption. Protocols NYC, a salon created by five Manhattan news media types and those they invite, has banned texting, cell phones, pictures, etc. They call it off the record and just talk to each other—it’s called conversation for those of you too young to have experienced that kind of focus.

Two final offerings for kids and adults who think it’s cool put their life online. They should serve as a warning to anyone with kids and the second for anyone who holds or plans to hold a job at anytime in their lives. The first tells us that “one in 10 teens admitted posting a nude or seminude shot of themselves or others online.” Combine that with the second, “35percent of the 2,667 managers and human resource workers decided not to offer a job to a candidate based on the content uncovered on a social networking site,” and you have a recipe for disaster. Privacy settings aren’t the whole answer, since inappropriate pictures sent and information shared with friends may appear on their pages (and who knows where else)—and they never go away.

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: nono farahshila on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

Phil Gerbyshak sent me a link to an interesting post by his friend Roy Atkinson. Roy talks about speedership—the need to act quickly in today’s world. Roy sees it as a requirement for a positional leader, which it is, but I see it as an attitude that everybody needs these days.

Click over to the slideshow at Business Week and learn what experts are saying about how leadership has changed.

Next, in case you hadn’t heard, one of the newest social media trends are Facebook suicides, as in killing your profile. Click the link and see why people are choosing to kill their profile.

Finally, something for you to think about. What happens when doctors start treating medicine as a business? What does it mean for the future of medicine, not healthcare, in this country?

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: nono farahshila on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

“Friendship is an undervalued resource. The consistent message of these studies is that friends make your life better.” –Karen A. Roberto, director of the center for gerontology at Virginia Tech (I wonder if all those friends at Facebook and Twitter count?)

“Never let your ego get so close to your positions that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.” –Admiral H. G. Rickover (I call it ego merge and it’s a definite no-no.)

“That’s what keeps life moving forward, focusing on what we can do, rather than getting caught up in what we can’t.” –Trisha Meili, The Central Park Jogger (Words of wisdom from a woman who knows.)

“Small Minds Talk About Others, Mediocre Minds Talk About Themselves, Great Minds Talk About Ideas.” –Eleanor Roosevelt (Which do you have?)

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” –John Milton, Paradise Lost (True when Milton wrote it and just as true now.)

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: Joe Shlabotnik on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn