Social media; stories about it are everywhere, but I find the most interesting are about what companies are doing and how its being used.
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 …read more

Take a look at decades of innovation
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I don’t understand the current obsession with other people’s lives, in fact, I find it very weird.
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 …read more

You, my readers, my friends and whatever enemies I have all use social media (well, almost all), I don’t. No Twitter, no texting (no cell phone:), no Facebook, no MySpace—OK, I do business blog,
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 …read more

I read a great description of politics in You Run, a short story by Sarah Shankman, “politics is one long power plan; an exercise in ego”. That seems to be a good description of what leadership is to many people.
It certainly describes the MAP so prevalent in the business scandals of the last two decades, as well as that of the titans of Wall Street who contributed so heavily to the current economic mess.
It’s also a major characteristic of the more mundane populace in general, as witnessed on social media platforms.

The foremost cyber-goal is to …read more

Monday Steve Roesler wrote a terrific post briefly recapping a Peter Drucker article in the Harvard Business Review called “Managing Oneself” (Steve included a link to the full article).
A part of that article is The Act of Noticing and it really resonated with me.
“While everyone is blogging, Twittering or tweeting, linking in, booking their faces, and coming up with other digital ways to “connect”, it would be good to ask: “Am I too busy to notice?”
I bookmarked an article last week that included solid research about the bulk of the population preferring to buy goods and services through face-to-face contact. …read more

It seems to me that more people spend less time thinking then at any previous time in history.
They’re more interested in Michael Jackson’s estate than their state’s budget problems; they choose for whom to vote based on attractiveness and clothes; social media fills all their time with thousands of friends to whom they tweet, but don’t talk…
“Language is a wonderful thing. It can be used to express thoughts, to conceal thoughts, but more often, to replace thinking.” –Anon
Then there are those who treat thought and action like marriage and kids—they no longer know which comes first or that they should …read more

Now click to see what happens when you don’t do f2f.
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