Just got this email:

From: Juliet pretty < juliet_tipoteh1@yahoo.com >
Date: Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 8:18 AM
Subject: Am interested in you
mailed-by yahoo.com
signed-by yahoo.com

Am juliet,a tall good looking young girl,so lovely
and caring with good understanding.fair in complexion,care with good
sharing, honesty. I saw your ad at [obtuse url] which interested me much and i decided to contact you.I really want to have a good friendship with you
even if you have married we can be friend ok ,i have a reason of
selecting you as my friend,pls if you wish to know more.Pls contact me
through this my email We need to talk and
know ourself more and equally share pictures to each other.hope to hear
from you.

Bye with a warmly
huggs.
Juliet

It’s hard for me not to like this Juliet character. Unlike many of the email pitches I’ve seen lately, Juliet’s has a lot going for it:

Read the rest of this entry »

100’s of emails and thousands of DM’s?!? I have no interest in “Crushing It!” if it requires me to be stretched out like the skin lady from Dr. Who. I wouldn’t be able to afford attendants to

Read the rest of this entry »

Are you conscious of the way you behave around new people?

Since moving to Mississippi, I have developed a fascination with the way people react to each other within the first few moments of meeting.

In New England, the typical first interaction between strangers involves contact of some sort and the trading of names. Shaking hands and giving at least a first name is par for the course.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a safe bet that people will say some really nice things about you at your funeral. Even if they feel compelled to honesty and are forced to really dig for something nice, people will typically find a way to butter up your corpse.

But then what? What will they say when you’ve been gone for five years?

What will you have said or done that will cause people five years away from your living influence to speak of you and what will they say?

I don’t have a top 10 list of tricks you can implement to build community, create timeless content, and other outcomes promised by social media hucksters to lube up your wallet. I do have a few thoughts though.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s an entire set of photos lovingly posted to Flickr by employees at the 87th & Sunset Starbucks location in Miami Florida. Here’s a sample:

The reason for the photos of customers? (view them here) To quote the poster:

We get a lot of skanky hoe types around these parts; it is Miami.

The rest of the photo set isn’t much better. Beneath a photo of a badly-parked SUV:

I took this photo for all the people who think the stereotype of SUV-driving soccermoms who have no regard for their fellow human is a stereotype at all. Believe me, I work at Starbucks. I see them every day.

Classy move, Starbucks.

Starbucks has a bunch of Twitter followers but very little in the way of an aggressively vibrant social media presence. Searching major social media platforms and solving issues that tarnish your brand is one of the most important parts of a corporate social media effort.

Starbucks fails at this.

Read the rest of this entry »

How much information do you require before you willingly invest your trust in somebody?

Probably not very much.

As it turns out, our choices seldom have much to do with the actual quantity of facts involved. Most of our daily decisions are made “on a hunch” that we later flesh out with judgements on authenticity, transparency, and a perception of humility.

The social media space is filled with conversations on the need for “authenticity” and “transparency” from corporations and individuals alike. In spite of all the words published about “how to be authentic” or “how to be transparent,” little in the way of concrete guidlines or actionable sequences has emerged.

That’s especially unfortunate because blogs enable intelligent people from all over the globe to gather at no cost to discuss a topic. Why then, when we have the tools to push a conversation forward in real time, do we walk away from so many discussions with our ideas unchallenged and thought structures unchanged? Because we’ve forgotten about humility.

It’s difficult to discuss humility because to do so is often considered arrogant. It’s just not socially acceptable to discuss humility as it relates to people and businesses. Blessedly, we’re allowed to bend the social rules a bit online. I’d like to. Just for a bit. Shall we?

Read the rest of this entry »

I took a quick survey on the train ride home this past Wednesday. Of the 53 people in my car, 39 had at least one college degree, 1 had an iPhone, and 0 knew who Robert Scoble was.

A few thoughts:

In spite of the hype thrown at us by social media pundits,

• You can still buy a hard copy edition of many newspapers.
• People still listen to the radio.
• The average American still watches TV like it pays the rent.

It’s easy to build an intellectual echo chamber of like-minded individuals online. But what’s the value? Happily singing around a campfire doesn’t change the fact that there are hungry bears in the forest.

How many times do you need to be patted on the back before you realize how creepy it is to be in a room full of people patting each other on the back?

Have we allowed ourselves to become so caught up in The Conversation that having our voice heard now matters more than having something to say?

Are we so excited about how much dirt we can move by spinning the tires on this newfangled social media loader that we forget to use the bucket?

We’ve got something powerful here. Why must we so freely waste it?

I’m disgusted that we (I include myself in this) are so easily drawn into pointless genital-measuring and leap after red herrings like there are no more fish in the sea.

I’m not sure of a solution, but I think we’d do well to spend less time talking about passion and more time talking about action steps that the passionate can use to make a difference.

Your thoughts?

photo: martin

Are you wasting your connections?