As I sit here, back home in Cleveland for the holidays, I reflect on what’s been a very interesting year for me - actually, the most interesting than any in the past. I’ve learned a lot about myself, on personal and professional levels, as I’ve gone through a lot of changes this year with family, friends, and my career - with most recently, my lay off. But even with all the highs and lows, I’ve enjoyed every second of it and wouldn’t change it a bit.
At about 11:41am PST today (an hour ago), a 5.4 earthquake hit east of Los Angeles. Don’t be fooled by the link, I didn’t hear about it from CNN. The ‘news’ mediums that broke the story first were Twitter and Ustream.tv. I initially heard about it on Alejandro Reyes’ live Ustream channel as viewers in the area commented as it was happening.
I went over to Summize…err, Twitter Search, to hear more news and see how everyone was doing out there. Within a half hour of when the news first broke, there were already over 4,000 tweets about the event (and Twitter didn’t go down!). Luckily, no one had reported any injuries or structural damage; just a few things knocked over.
A friend of mine sent me this video last week called The Process and asks ‘What if there were no stop signs…and a major corporation was charged with inventing one?’
Check it out (only 4 1/2 minutes long so you can spare a short break):
The video is damn right hilarious. I’ve watched it several times and have noticed little cues that poke fun at the corporate ‘process’ when developing new concepts or strategies. As humorous as the video is, the truth is that companies often lose sight of who and what their strategy is for and end up putting all their energy towards the wrong ideas (as seen in the video). The team in this video obviously took a very reactive approach when conceptualizing a stop sign, rather than taking the time to understand who will see the sign and then develop concepts for those drivers, not the company.
Realize who your consumers are, people! Don’t focus on being fancy, demographics (the wrong approach to your demo, rather), ads and any other nonsense this corporate team was worried about; put that power towards the people, first and foremost, and you’ll see a much more effective campaign.
There’s been a lot of talk lately from internet ‘A-listers’ who suggest that Twitter users are flocking to FriendFeed, in lieu of their recent issues. They say that FriendFeed is where the conversation is and that by thenumbers and how fast they’ve grown their networks, FriendFeed has something that Twitter should be afraid of - conversation. Do these numbers really show the truth in FriendFeed as a fast growing conversational network? I don’t doubt its increased popularity as a micro-blogging/life-streaming portal, but what’s funny is the fact that these and other prominent folks in the industry talk about numbers, when in reality it’s about the actual conversations and engaging the user.
Nonetheless, my point actually alludes to more numbers and an email I received the other day from Compete. It provided their June 2008 traffic data and a Top 20 list of the fastest growing websites for the month:
Taking a look at the Top 5, three of them relate to Tennis and Golf, which clearly shows the influence that the US Open and Wimbledon had on those sites.
The surprise on this list though is number 4, Plurk, with a 4561% increase in Visits from May ‘08 - June ‘08. This jump is huge for a new site that’s diving into the already chartered waters of micro-blogging.
