a rolling stone

Vinnie played this song in yoga yesterday - the 40th anniversary of Let it Bleed. It's one of my favorites.

Sage

I saw this on Fred's blog yesterday:

Things take longer in the short run but they happen faster in the long run

I've been talking with a lot of folks recently about how long things really take to accomplish. Human's are evolutionarily ingrained with an optimism bias. As a result we normally under estimate how long it will take to accomplish something (even when we are trying to over estimate).

As I come up on my first full year in business I am both impressed with how much has happened and a bit frustrated with how little has been accomplished. A year ago Jaspar and I sat down to dream out the next 5 years of our business. We started with where we wanted to be in 5 years and drew up detailed visions for our personal and professional lives. Then we worked back wards, where would we need to be in 3 years, 1 year, 6 months, 3 months... Looking back at this now I am bit embarrassed by my naivety:

With this we reach 100,000 page views monthly and with a 10% conversion rate we are signing up 10,000 new customers per month.

But as factors changed - my vision had us opening a call center in Buenos Aires, not Manila - I am impressed by how we have been able to adjust and persist. We found an incredible managing partner for our center in Manila, we have identified our target customer in detail and found time to consult on enough social media work to get by financially.

Although hardly the romantic vision I had dreamed up, I am proud of what I have accomplished over the past year. I am eager to continue with a new sense of humility and sustained ambition in 2010.

Best App Ever

I was hanging with Tyler last night and discussing real time, mobile and geo-targeting. These three elements have been dominating my thoughts of late for a few reasons. To start there is no doubt that they will combine to create some of the greatest marketing opportunities of the next decade. Imagine being able to market to someone's cellphone based on where they are and what they are interested in at that moment! This will do for brick and mortar stores what search advertising did for e-commerce.

The other reason I can't get this trifecta off of my mind is Tim - a developer we recently hired who is amazing at just about everything - has a specialty in mobile gaming. I've been picking his brain routinely and there are some major opportunities in this space.

I mentioned a few ideas to Tyler and he told me that a whole bunch of them had already been combined into the greatest iPhone app of all time - ShopSavvy. Using this app you can scan ANY barcode and get back a price comparison from online retailers and bricks and mortar retailers in your geographic area. Tyler asked the man sitting next to us at Coffee Bean if he could borrow the book he was reading and scan the barcode. What we got back was a list of prices from sites like Amazon and eCampus and stores like the Barnes and Noble down the street!

If you don't have the app - get it!

Social Media for Small Business

Yesterday I did a post on the 7 Myths of Small Business Social Media. Small business is such a catch all phrase that I think it warrants some explanation. My post is advice for solopreneurs and brick and mortar business people with a few employees. These people are stretched thin and the Great Recession has only exacerbated this situation. Many of them are looking to social media as THE answer. Those who are jumping in are often finding the process time consuming and overwhelming. Twitter handles are routinely abandoned or turned into shameless direct marketing platforms and Facebook pages are left fan-less and neglected. My post aims to debunk 7 myths that small business owners commonly buy into prior to starting their own social media marketing efforts. I hope you enjoy.

Joe

Just day's after mourning the eighth anniversary of Deanna's murder I read this. An eerily familiar story of an unsupervised high school party that started with a few drinks and ended with a tragic death. Joe Loudon was a stand out student (3.8 GPA), a varsity athlete and a dedicated volunteer. He was an all around good kid, like Deanna. He wasn't murdered, but the mystery surrounding his death has torn the town of Orinda in Northern California apart.

A Twitter account and blog were launched to "solve the crime." The parties host, high school junior Patrick "P.J." Gabrielli, was arrested on charges that he had gotten and distributed alcohol to minors. Joe died of asphyxia, which means he drank beer, threw up and choked on his own vomit.

I won't pretend to understand the details surrounding the case. But having gone through Deanna's murder at age 16 I can say that playing the blame game is futile. In Deanna's case her murderer was at fault, but this did not stop people blaming the party's host for opening his house without supervision, the people in attendance for not stopping the fight, and the parents of the girl who stabbed Deanna through the heart for neglect.

The morning after Deanna was murdered the police showed up at the house of her murder and took her into custody. As the police knocked on her door the girl, just 18 years old, took a lethal dose of Valium and died in custody. In that moment the tragedy doubled. Her parents reacted by suing the LAPD for neglect, continuing the chain of blame.

Tragedy elicits blame and a desire for retribution. We want someone else to suffer. To share our pain. To pay. This is the greatest tragedy of all, for what is most unique about being human is our capacity to forgive. I have forgiven Deanna's murderer. I have forgiven her parents. But most importantly I have forgiven myself.

Deanna

I will never forget her smile, her laugh. It has 8 years since we lost her. I love you forever Deanna.

Power Shift

My love affair with Rupert Murdoch has just grown much hotter. Murdoch announced last week that he would deindex all of NewsCorp's websites from Google. This means that Google will no longer be able to produce results from Wall Street Journal, Fox, Dow Jones, MySpace and more.

Initially I thought this was another examples of the dying newspaper industry acting against its own self interest, driven by an underlying hatred of Google and it's web 2.0 compatriots. Then I read this piece by Arrington and watched this video with Jason Calcanis.




Imagine if all of the major content producers formed an alliance to sell the right to search their content to the highest bidding search engine. That really would shift the balance of power in the industry. Now the question is are the owners of other old media firms like the NY Times, AP, Reuters, CNN, etc gangster enough to banned together. As I see it, they have only one other choice - a slow, painful ride toward extinction.

Great Video

Jaspar and I were throwing around ideas for an intro video on the (yet to be redesigned) Smarter Social Media site. We thought a montage of the history of communication would be perfect. Eventually we decided to go with something a bit different, and I'm glad we did. Because the video we wanted to produce was already made by the guys at Vokle. Check this out.

Welcome to Vokle from Erick Oh on Vimeo.

Beauty.

Our Team

Our team in the Philippines threw a Halloween party a couple weeks back. They just sent me the photos and I'm totally amazed by the creative costumes and artistic photography. I'm very lucky to work with such a great group of people. With this level of effort, I hope I can make it to Manila for the Thanksgiving party!

The Problem with Real Time

I'm sitting at Urth Cafe, sharing coffee and conversation with a beautiful girl. We're laughing and getting to know one another - going deeper. It's a great moment until she pulls out her cellphone and starts texting. From here forward every few minutes she's checking her cellphone, texting, Tweeting and logging into Facebook. It becomes part of the rhythm of the conversation, which by now has devolved into superficial banter about friends we have in common.

Working in social media I am the first to praise the power of communication technology. While traveling in Seattle this past week I used TwitPic to share photos of my trip with family and friends, Yelp to get updates about the best restaurants in the city and TaxiMagic to order cabs in a click from my iPhone. These tools make life easier, more enjoyable and bring me closer to people, even those thousands of miles away. But it seems that in the past two or three years technology has become so powerful and consuming, that it demands our attention now, even when we are trying to enjoy a real moment.

The problem with real time is that it takes us away from what's real. When something makes us angry or sad, when something makes us laugh or cry, we whip out our smart phones to text, Tweet, or TwitPic the experience to share with an undefined audience. Real time demands that this be done in the moment, and this simple action removes us from the reality of the moment we are in.

Commitments to real time social media are based on a dissatisfaction with reality. We are bored, anxious or uncomfortable in the now and real time offers an escape. We can imagine that undefined audience reacting in a way that pleases us. How many times have you stood nervously waiting for a date to arrive, attempting to look busy by shuffling through the apps on your iPhone, perhaps texting or Tweeting a mindless comment?

Being present is powerful, whether the present moment is pleasurable or painful. So I resolve to stay present, to never let a face-to-face exchange be interrupted social media. I'm not abandoning the real time tools I've come to love. I am just no longer going to sacrifice real moments for real time.

Attention

Last week I wrote about brands listening to what is being said about them online, rather than rudely expecting their customers to answer intrusive surveys. Today I present twenty solutions to do just that. Check out this list of 20 social media monitoring platforms me and Jed put together for Smarter Social Media.

Magic

"What's your favorite app?" I asked. "I don't really use apps." Jaspar replied. And like that I realized that neither do I. For all my excitement about apps - I've downloaded 40 of them - I really just use my iPhone to make calls, text and email. The one notable exception being Google Maps. The fact that I can leave my house without printing directions from MapQuest is a real advance over my previous phone. But beyond that apps have added little value to my life.

That changed last week in Seattle. A few weeks back I wrote about an idea my mom gave me when I was explaining Twitter to her - TaxiTweets. Why not use real time social media and the geo-location power of smart phones to develop a system to order cabs in a click. The next morning I read about an app that purported to do just that. TaxiMagic claimed to allow one click booking via iPhone and Blackberry application, and a text message based taxi ordering system for other mobile devices.

But how often is an app really as good as it sounds?

Thus my expectations were low when I whipped out the app to order a taxi at the corner of Pine and 1st. After placing the initial order the app gives you a status, "Driver not yet dispatched. Reload for updates." I nervously clicked the reload button a couple of times and the status did not change. Then - magically - a cab appeared and the driver rolled down his window, "Bryce?"

I had found my new favorite app!

In using the app the rest of the week I found that when the status does update the application will tell you the taxi number, the drivers name and give you a map of the cab's location. This map doesn't seem to update so don't despair if your cab seems stuck a few miles away.

In my experience the app was totally trustworthy. A driver appeared within 10 minutes every time I placed an order. The next step will be to load my credit card info on the TaxiMagic website so that I no longer have to rely on cash to pay for cabs. This is a truly amazing app that I recommend for anyone that travels extensively or just orders cabs on a regular basis.

Seattle

This was my second trip up to Seattle in as many months, and I love the city. The biggest surprises were:

1) The food - Unbelievable! Seattle may be the nation's second greatest culinary city behind New York.

2) The weather - It rained ALL the time. No surprise there. But somehow rain in Seattle was easier to deal with than in New York or LA. Perhaps it's because the whole city is prepared and relaxed about it.

3) The people - All of the people I dealt with were cheerful and kind, even in the face of the constantly depressing weather.

I've prepared some of my favorite finds in the city:

Restaurants:

1) Dahlia Lounge - We ate here the last night in the city and I would easily rank this among my top 10 meals of all time. Try the seafood platter to start, crab cakes and house baked donuts are a must.

2) Pink Door - The atmosphere was perhaps a little too romantic for two straight men dinning together, but the food was very good. Jaspar and I met a group of senior girls from University of Washington here so that took up most of my focus. Inside Info: if you stay until closing time you can sneak up and sit on one of their burlesque swings.

3) Palace Kitchen - Tom Douglas is the celebrity chef of Seattle. He owns Palace Kitchen and Dahlia amongst other establishments. This place is phenomenal as well. Really excellent north-western fair. Great salmon, halibut, trout etc. For desert you MUST have the coconut creme pie.

Bars:

1) Amber - Cool ambiance. Live music. And a bachelorette party make for a good time.

2) Del Rey - When we went it was dead. But everyone we asked referenced this spot as a lively place to go to on the weekends.

3) The U District - After meeting the group of seniors from UW we felt obligated to go out with them on their home turf. Very common college scene, one long road lined with bars, with undergraduates pouring out of them. It was a good time.

Hotels:

1) The Inn at the Market - The perfect hotel for a vacation in Seattle or for those getting on or coming off of cruise ships. The Inn at the Market is only hotel that is REALLY at Pike Place market. Just a few steps away from the historic location, with incredible views of Puget Sound. We got to stay in 6 different rooms whilst we were their, so I can confidently say the entire hotel is beautiful and cozy and the staff is amazingly friendly.

2) Hyatt at Olive 8 - I stayed here on my last trip. The best hotel to stay at for conventions or business. Rooms are brand new. The fitness center is amazing. And Urbane, the hotels restaurant is another example of Seattle's impeccable cuisine.

Social Media for Hotels

I'm back in Seattle to give a presentation on social media to the Seattle Hotel Association. The presentation was a lot of fun. It's great to speak with people who really understand the value of service. There are some incredible opportunities for hotel owners to leverage social media to this end. Here's the presentation I gave...

Hotels And Social Media

View more presentations from Bryce Maddock.

Listen Up!

What do GoDaddy, Verizon and AT&T customer service all have in common? They all ask or email you "just a quick survey" after a call. "And sir, on a scale of 1 to 10 how would you evaluate my ability to serve your needs?"

It's irritating and at times nauseating to be put in such a position. I understand the need for company's to understand how their customers are feeling. At TaskUs and Smarter Social Media we constantly try and dialogue with our customers to this end. But we do not use phone or email surveys and we never will.

The irony is that small companies like ours might have reason to use surveys. But for big corporations there is no excuse. With social media all companies have to do is clear the wax from their ear and listen. Their customers are complaining and praising, suggesting and criticizing, and at times even coming together to trouble shoot without the presence of anyone from the company! On Twitter, the blogosphere and discussion forms there is so much data to be mined its a wonder that companies would waste time doing anything else.

Simply check out the daily list from TweetedBrands of the most mentioned brands on Twitter to get a sense of just how much can be gleaned:
So corporations of the world please stop asking me questions. Go ahead and follow me on Twitter and pull my blog's RSS feed. I promise to praise and criticize you publically and provide plenty of valuable information. Thank you.