Say What #1

An occasional post where I review my twitterfeed over the last x hours and post some juicy ones.

Popularity Contest
(being where I was retweeted)

Remind me ... why exactly did people elect Kevin Rudd? What was it he was going to do? /via @GreenJ not be Little Johnny nose hair

Is Jon Stewart the TV equivalent of a Cyberbully? 24 mentions of Fox News so far this year!http://nyti.ms/cOpFB2

libs should cut the crap on a lot of things really. Especially electing anachronisms as leaders #alot

 I hope little Kev enjoys his discount purchase of a second term. #smallbrainssmallideas

Raiding Gizmodo

Today I had an interesting back and forth with one or two others over the all too often used 'fanboi' term or "Applevangelists" in this case when it was alleged we would be 'defending Apple' because the Police in San Mateo county, California raided a Journalist house as part of a felony investigation.

I wrote;

Gizmodo should have checked the California law on receipt of stolen goods. Journalism, FTW!

For me, experience tells me - in any country, Police tend to raid first and ask questions later. So we shouldn't be surprised. The suggestion that Apple were prompting the raid was just ridiculous. So I wrote;

AFAIK, if the Police are asked to investigate a crime, the complainant doesn't really dictate the terms of the investigation

The rest of the conversation was mainly asking questions. I don't know enough about California law to judge. In any case, plenty of others have a more informed opinion on this one;

reading @hblodget on the Gizmodo, iPhone thing. It appears the Police have overstepped the mark.

Leaving Facebook

I'm still toying with the idea of committing Facebook suicide due to their ridiculous tell everyone everything non-privacy;

deleting Facebook Applications in prep for possible FB-suicide due to this FB everywhere crap

Twitter love

I need a tiler for a small job for my house. The Joy of twitter includes getting numbers!



Appreciating Politicians

The ruling party in Australia is outdoing itself this week

I hope little Kev enjoys his discount purchase of a second term. #smallbrainssmallideas

Mind you the other crew are trailing in their wake

Libs should cut the crap on a lot of things really. Especially electing anachronisms as leaders #alot

and finally...

It's 2010, there should be Hoverboards!

allegedly this ipad thingymajig is a cleverly disguised hoverboard #2010 

Patents; killing innovation for 100 years

*Updated
Apparently a company called Techradium is suing Twitter (read about it at the Inquistr and ARN) I read it with a mixture of concern and contempt.
Concern because, even though Twitter often gives me the shits, I use it on a daily basis. It has become the ONLY way I communicate with some people and it has allowed me to meet a huge number of great people along the way.
Contempt because, as I wrote as a comment on the ARN site;

Someone has done something better in an open way, which beats what someone else
has done. That's called capitalism...if you haven't monetised your system
already and made it essential, shut up shop and move on

So with respect to Techradium, and without deepdiving into the specific Patent, I almost wish they would 'go away'. This is because I believe any company which relies on Patents to make money in their business really shouldn't exist anyway. Patents appear to me to have become something which have changed from being a protector of innovation to a killer of innovation.

From reading the technology 'press', it has become my understanding the majority of the Patents which are being granted these days, especially in the USA, appear to be for something so minor as to prevent any form of innovation from possible competitors - real, imagined or even unknown.

Specifically, with so many patents being granted or having been granted in the past, what is any company supposed to do with their start-up or R&D cash? There must be some concern among VC people that much of their investment will be spent on legal fees to search out any or all tenuous or actual patent conflicts there may be. I prefer an environment where if you create something, patent it and bring it to market, you should only be protected for the patent in the case where someone deliberately breaks your patent in a way that directly impacts your business.

In the case we are referring to today, and of course I'm not a patent lawyer, neither of the above seem to be the case. Indeed the Techradium rent a sue writes;

"It appears that Twitter's core functionality is squarely within
the technology described by TechRadium's patents."

Nothing about deliberately seeking out and reusing Techradium technology there or even Twitter directly going after Techradium's business.

It seems to me Techradium were once the popular kid in one corner of the school yard. Now some other kid has appeared in the other corner and has attracted all his fans cos he's a bit 'same but different'. And they are pissed because they've lost all their cred and want to get the other kids back. But they've moved on and its too late.

Bottom line, Techradium, enhance your service, make it more desirable to your existing and potential customers. Either that, and just like in every business - Local Coffee shop to Nortel, move on and find something your customers want to pay for.

Marketing, what is it?

Dear Marketers, please don't take this as an insult, I appreciate everyone has a job to do. However, as an avid, and perhaps noisy user of various 'social media' tools - notably twitter, I really take exception to the view which seems prevalent by 'Marketers' and Agency types that those tools are in fact there to serve Marketing, Advertising and other Brand awareness strategies.

I think it is time for these people to focus on the first word in the descriptive term:

• 'Social'

And here are a series of definitions for the term: http://bit.ly/zUOnM

So here is how I see it, Social Media tools have a place in all facets of industry, enterprise & other social environments. Including Advertising and Marketing. But just like other tools, they will have their benefits for a time and perhaps will change their angle over time. So when I read articles like this one I get quite irate as it seems to indicate that Twitter only exists to serve Marketing. It even starts off with the concept that everything has its time (it does), but then, just like far too many books, it veers off path and narrows in on Twitter as a Marketing tool which will die because its time has come.

Perhaps he is right, perhaps he is wrong, but I - and sure hundreds of thousands of others - use Facebook, twitter, tumblr, friendfeed etc. etc. for many other objectives than marketing. And gain so much out of these services from information which is not just specifically marketing and Advertising.

I also attended Social Media Club Sydney at the Supper Club last night, and it was a wonderfully social occasion, despite some niggles from one of them marketers ;) But the same line as the article I refer to above was spewed out one too many times during the interesting question and answer session and I had some opinions on that. Rather than rehashing those tweets, here are the key salient points I got

• Social Media is a conversation
• Social Media CAN include Branding and Marketing
• Social Media is about what is happening now
• Social Media as a Marketing Tool still requires real Business Modelling
• Social Media is about building relationships - personal and business

And therefore I revisit a tweet I made many, many months ago (and therefore probably no longer still searchable), where I felt that Twitter is like going down the pub, but staying in your lounge room or your phone or wherever!

But each to their own, just don't hard sell me online!

Oh and @leighsales should definitely do the hard questioning at the next Social Media Gathering. Are you listening Tip?

The Rules of Customer Experience I learned this week

Preface: This isn't my egotistical set of truths, there are many better qualified people out there who can tell you some real rules about Customer Experience. However, this is what I learned this week.

Rule 1. A Customer is anyone who gains value out of using your service, free or otherwise
Rule 2. Never do anything to reduce or impact the value the Customer gains from your service without first engaging or advising of the change and why it needs to happen
Rule 3. If you are going to break Rule 2, attempt to come up with an Alternative method of delivering the value to the Customer.

Perhaps I will add more as I see them, but for now these have been inspired by this weeks #twitterfail episode known as #fixreplies

Twitter Broke Rule 2 without providing Rule 3. Various people thought that wasn't a problem, but there were enough people who it affected to think otherwise. We are a creative bunch, so we would have worked around the lack of a Rule 3 (It didn't take long), but the breaking of Rule 2 was unforgiveable, despite the whining of paid bloggers on large sites, who JUST DON'T GET THE DEFINITION OF A CUSTOMER

I'll add more once I dissect my notes from #cebit