Cluetrain Manifesto – 95 theses

A couple of weeks ago I was given a copy of the Cluetrain Manifesto for being one of the first 50 persons to retweet a message by Team Ruber. I had first come across the Cluetrain manfesto in 2003, but it had already been written in 2000, which means it is now in its 10th year (and I will soon be writing a bit more about that – stay tuned).

If you hadn’t heard of the Cluetrain Manifesto before, it was written by a couple of guys (including Doc Searls) who had been, in one way or another, involved in Silicon Valley before the Dot.com bust in 2000/2001 and who had observed, what was essentially the start of Web 2.0 – or at least the end of Web 1.0.

In other words, they had

Filed under: Marketing, twitter, Web 2.0, cluetrain manifesto, doc searls, Marketing, seth godin

The confidence of markets

Back in London, I have been talking to a very good friend of mine who works for one of the big UK banks. As we were talking about which bank just posted what kind of loss (or profit) and who was paying out bonuses I got thinking about the nature of the UK market place in comparison to Dubai and others.

Having just returned from a two-year stint in Dubai, my memory is fresh with the dire situation the market place is in, especially in terms of confidence, (marketing) budgets and the availability of qualified and experienced employees.

Already during my last visit back to London it had struck me that,

Filed under: Economy, Middle East, Recession, barclays, bonus, confidence, dubai, Economy, globalisation, growth, hsbc, islamic finance, marketing budgets, rashid bin saeed al maktoum, Recession, UAE, UK

Making sense of… the Semantic Web (or Web 3.0)

I remember people using the term Web 3.0 when the ink of penning the term Web 2.0 was barely dry. At the time I dismissed it as people trying to be clever and simply not understanding the significance in the shift between the original web and web 2.0.

Maybe I was right, or maybe people were already then talking about the Semantic Web. I don’t know and unfortunately won’t be able to trace it back – either way, the shift between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 is significantly more of a big deal than the initial shift from 1.0 to 2.0. Here is why:

Filed under: Making Sense of..., Semantic Web (Web 3.0), kevin kelly, Microsoft, Search, semantic web, The Cloud, Tim Berners-Lee, Wired

Making sense of… Twitter.

Over the next couple of months I intend to do a series of blog posts that will make the world a better place (no pressure then…). I was inspired by a radio programme I heard on Dubai Eye 103.8. The show’s guest was from the medical profession and he was working on a series of booklets, called… hold on… here it comes… you guessed it, “Making sense of…” and each booklet is meant to make sense of a specific topic. In his case it was “… adult acne” and “… a visit to your General Practitioner” etc.

I thought that was a great idea and promptly nicked it to do my own series for marketing and social media. This first one is for Twitter, because – lets face it – none of us got it immediately. Nobody on Twitter today can tell me hand-on-heart that they knew exactly what was going on when they first joined. Why do you think there are so many references to “Ok, so I’ve signed up to Twitter, now what?” in the first 3 tweets

Filed under: Making Sense of..., Social Media, twitter, alex griffiths, dubai eye, evan williams, mashable, seesmic, Social Media, social networks, tweetdeck, twitter

Social media jobs – by Mashable

A tweet today alerted me to a great post / section on Mashable. They have compiled a list of vacancies in Social Media companies, although mostly in the US (would be great to see a non-US list). It is part of a recently launched job section on Mashable http://jobs.mashable.com and I think that is a great idea (for candidates, employers … and mashable’s traffic).

Amongst others, they listed the following jobs:

New Business Director
Search Marketing Position
Marketing Program Manager, Social Media
Copywriter
Proof of Concept Engineer
Digital Media Strategist
Tech Evangelist

Good luck!

Filed under: Social Media, twitter, jobs, mashable

Social media is dangerous!

I posted a tweet a couple of days ago and felt it was too important to remain in a 140-character message with three shortened links.

The tweet was about the use of social media, the reasons for it, the ways to use it and the caveats. I had linked to three posts that dealt with one of each of these topics (more on those below).

Blogging has been around for a while now and yet more and more companies and individuals are only just discovering it for their own purposes. Twitter, despite its young age, has probably done as much for social media as blogging and Facebook have – after all it provides a much easier and quicker point of entry.

Filed under: Marketing, Social Media, twitter, blog, blogging, do's and don'ts, facebook, fail, Marketing, marketing profs, meatball sundae, pcworld.com, seth godin, Social Media, twitter, unsocial media, youtube

More digital small-talk.

I just came across an interesting blog post by Mark Ivey who contributes to MarketingProfs Daily Fix and is a consultant and partner with the ION Group, a marketing communications company specializing in social media. It ties in with my previous blog post on good Twitterers being ‘masters of the weak tie, or in other words – being good at small talk.

Mark bases his article on two other articles, one in the Wall Street Journal written by Julia Angwin, and the other by John Dvorak from MarketWatch.com (who looks remarkably like British Comedian Harry Enfield – sorry John, I couldn’t resist). His article goes on to say that digital small talk via social networks is very important for companies. Unfortunately, companies either try and use social media networks to try and sell directly to their prospective cutomers and, in doing so, risk having it blow up in their face – or – they ignore it all together due to a lack of tangible returns.

As I pointed out in my previous article, being a connector and master of the weak tie is a hugely powerful position to be in – so powerful in fact that companies to whom social media is relevant (ie B2C companies) should seriously consider taking on a professional to manage and foster their social media presence as a full time position.

Great article Mark, the articles are well spotted and fused.

Filed under: Marketing, Social Media, twitter, digital small talk, harry enfield, ion group, john dvorak, julia angwin, mark ivey, marketingprofs, marketwatch, Social Media, social networks, wall street journal, weak tie

Good Twitterers are masters of the weak tie

Leading on from, or delving deeper into, Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” theory about Connectors I had a few thoughts about what he calls the “weak tie” – and no, it’s not something your dad would wear around his neck.

The weak tie is a connection you may have with an acquaintance – as opposed to a strong tie, which you have with your close friends. Gladwell looks at sociologist Mark Granovetter’s research from 1974 where Granovetter coins the phrase “the strength of the weak tie”. Gladwell argues that your weak ties are often more powerful and useful than your strong ties.

Filed under: Marketing, Social Media, twitter, connector, Granovetter, malcolm gladwell, networking, tipping point, twitter, weak tie

Are you a Connector?

I am currently reading “Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, and while I am nowhere near the end yet, I am finding myself hugely fascinated by what he writes. In case you are not familiar with the book at all, it describes how and at what point any given topic or trend reaches the tipping point – the point where it goes mainstream.

He explores how trends get started and compares it to the spreading of a virus. He identifies three types of people that are involved with the process of getting a trend to its tipping point:

Filed under: Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized, connector, malcolm gladwell, maven, meeting, sales person, tipping point

Is Microsoft’s ‘Bing’ cool?

On the 28th of November, 2008 Marius Olaga, Technology News Editor for Softpedia.com asked the question, which company was the coolest – Microsoft, Google, or Apple. He looked at it from Steve Ballmer’s perspective, so by default looking at whether Microsoft could be as cool as the other two.

Comparing Microsoft to Google’s key product – Google Search – Ballmer is quoted as saying “they haven’t changed Google search in about seven years. The UI of search never changes. I think that Microsoft can get cool by changing it. Because, at the end of the day, if you think that you’re going to look at ten blue links for the rest of your life, over my dead body, will that be the case. I think there are some better ways to do search than we’re doing it today.”…

Filed under: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Semantic Web (Web 3.0), Apple, Bing.com, Cool, Google, Microsoft, Search, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Wired