Dec 17, 2007 | blog
Late last week, there seemed to be a problem developing between Twitter and T-Mobile for both their customers. It was reported over at Get Satisfaction that T-Mobile Shuts Down Twitter Service for Good? – with a *TON* of Twitter/T-Mobile users jumping on and adding to the confusion.
This morning, Twitter posted on their blog that the T-Mobile Mix-Up was Technical, indicating that it was their SMS Gateway providers.
Over the weekend we were able to determine that this was purely a technical issue between T-Mobile and Ericsson, the folks who serve our SMS traffic.
Thankfully, if you’re sending Tweets via SMS on your T-Mobile cell phone, they’ll now go through as before.
Dec 7, 2007 | blog
I talked about this a little over a year ago. I was pretty gung-ho about URGE, the music service offered by MTV and Microsoft. It seamlessly integrated into Windows Media Player 11, could be used on up to 3 computers, and sync tunes to both my Windows Mobile smartphone, and my wife’s Nokia 5300 XpressMusic as well as other "Plays for Sure" WMA media devices.
At the time, things transpired that I didn’t "pull the trigger" on the service. Now I’m glad I didn’t. Real’s Rhapsody has absorbed URGE and all the reasons I was looking at the service have evaporated. The devices I would like to use are "possibly" supported, I have to install *another* media player, and I have to manually copy the music to the devices.
Too much bullshit.
I’ll stick with buying the actual, physical CD-ROM of the artist in question and ripping the audio tracks to lossless WMA. Disk space is cheap – 1TB for $100 – and I have been using Orb for some time to spread my digital media where I want it. I’ll continue to do so.
This is the kind of crap that online services are going to do to their customer base. I can’t use the service based on their offerings, I need a service that caters to my wants and needs. I’ll keep my cash and spend it directly on the artist in question.
Maybe you’ve already figured this out, maybe you’re content with the offerings and wonder why I can’t see the value in it. I can see the potential value in online music services, but it has to be on my terms – not theirs.
Oct 29, 2007 | blog
I’ve always found it a tad weird when I have these flashes of intuition. I’d be the first to admit that it comes from being influenced by what I read and such, but lately I’ve been shying away from a lot of my traditional tech sources. Not sure why, but I really have been getting a feeling like there is a change looming. Not big, not significant, but a subtle one.
I’d spent the better part of this year exploring social media networks, techniques, blogs, people and more. It’s been a great experience and a learning one for sure. However, I’ve been getting a feeling since early September that there is something happening. While I can’t quite put a finger on it, I smell change coming.
Blame it on my bloggers block last month, and subsequent lack of regular posting for the past month and a half. Blame it on reading some of the talk about a new tech bubble. I think Steve Rubel has identified the problem with “Web 2.0” – on the tech side. There is a little too much self-pollination going on out on the left coast in regards to the current web hype.
But there is more to it. There is a definite lack of advancement in taking some social and web technologies into the enterprise. All these “great” Facebook apps have little no usefulness in a business that is trying to keep up with the changing face of their customers. In an environment that is trying to simply sell product and make money, technology barely steps up and answers the hard questions of meeting financial & oversight compliance, privacy requirements, EPA compliance, overseas competition & compliance, marketing costs, rising employee & health costs, increasing tax burdens, and shipping challenges.
How is the current crop of social network toys stepping up to answer the call? It isn’t and it can’t. Yes, these tools need to be part of the next generation of enterprise IT, but the talents that built these cool technologies and tools need to take note of the real challenges that face businesses today.
I’ll give all of you a hint. It has little to do with communication. We already communicate everything to death. That was one of the problems I watched at the old job. As the company grew, the communication increased. The need for everyone to be involved and communicated to so they could give their $.02 on a project/idea slowed the processes to a crawl. It hasn’t changed, and it won’t soon.
I guess what I’m getting at is that there is an over-emphasis on what I’m really starting to think of as “kiddie tech”. Yes I still use Facebook, and am very interested in social media, but the reality is that a lot of these “fun” technologies simply do not solve a business need. That is one problem with technology. As soon as the fun starts to evaporate and you start serious talk about monitization, the trouble starts.
By the way, I’m predicting about a 5-year boom to bubble for technology as an ongoing natural cycle. I think it’s the industry’s way to innovate and then clean out the technologies that didn’t pan out.
What’s your take? Am I out of touch with it all, or close to the target?
Photo credit: Andrea in Amsterdam
UPDATE: Steven Hodson did a *great* writeup over at WinExtra on this topic. I highly recommend stopping by and reading The Great Web 2.0 Con Job.
Technorati Tags: Technology, Business Solutions, Tech Bubble, Web 2.0, Communication
Sep 20, 2007 | blog
There are many good social networks to be a part of, but as I delve deeper into social media and personal branding I’m coming to the conclusion that your blog is becoming more important.
On your blog, you have a direct feed to your readers. Those readers can be friends as much as it can be potential employers or business contacts. Your blog can take on more of your characteristics, from the way you write to the theme that presents the information to your readers.
A blog can interact with other social networks, augmented with whatever tools you choose to bring into your branding strategy. Adding additional communications, video, audio and so on adds more value to your ability to network and share with your community.
The one big thing about viewing your blog as a social network is to remember the social aspect, which infers the interaction in a community. A blog’s comment system is there to enable the conversation, you are there to help drive the conversation. If you’re disabling comments because you don’t like some criticism, you may want to take another look. That feedback could help you grow in ways that aren’t readily apparent.
Also, your blog is your online hub. Use it to send information to other social networks that you frequent. It’s also the one place on the Internet that you can make sure people find out about YOU. You can make sure to let them know how to find you, to find your profiles and networks that you have left profiles, feedback, and articles on throughout the Internet. From your blog people can download a copy of your resume, talk about your latest work, and so on. Don’t forget that you can have an easier to remember URL to get to your blog than your profile on any service or social network.
Overall, the advantages of having a blog that you can interact with others is a statement about you. You took the initiative, you are reaching out, you are placing your ideas in a public forum, you are inviting feedback. Don’t get me wrong; in phrasing it that way it sounds like The Great You Show – but it doesn’t have to be. It’s up to you to be able to show it’s really about conversations.
On your blog, and through your interests and reading habits, you will find other bloggers in the same genre and begin to share links and comments with. This is one of the best ways to grow your network. No, it’s not like getting 250 ‘friends’ on Facebook in a weekend, but that’s because it’s more valuable. Having two or three blogging friends is more valuable and powerful than large numbers elsewhere. Your interaction in the blogosphere with others is what builds that value. It’s more than any number can represent because it’s real exchange of ideas, real interaction. And that my friend is social networking.
So what else am I missing? What else helps make your blog your entry point to social networking?
Aug 11, 2007 | blog
Did anyone ever notice what a rich source Twitter is for gathering quotes? It’s almost a quote engine all by itself. It’s tailored to the task in many ways. Take into consideration the following:
- Limit of 140 characters is about the perfect length for just about anything.
- The large number of users generating original content.
- Many of the intelligent conversations generate, interesting and meaningful tweets.
- Each Tweet (Quote) has it’s own unique URL.
Hmm, Dave Winer can I run an idea past you…
Technorati tags: Quote Sourcing, Twitter, Twitter Quotes
