Disqus - Friends of alltoute

Re: Real-life disclosures on the myth of work/life balance

drm10506 — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:59:57 -0000

I'm struck by your well-written post and the comments that follow. In determining the work/life balance, I've found one image to be very helpful: a farm. Work & life intertwine when you're on a farm, and you don't determine the cadence of the organic nature you're a slave to and a beneficiary of. When you live a life that is filled with some sort of creative passion, an enthusiasm that makes you give up a sense of time, then you're experiencing something like those farm rhythms in a post-industrial reality. I watch my wife, who balances work, family, children & me, and think of a woman who's letting the thread of her being connect all those things together.

Re: Facebook+Photos+Pulls+Away+From+The%26nbsp%3BPack

drm10506 — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 21:18:07 -0000

The big thing is the intent: photos are just one of different elements that people are putting up on FB to connect with their community. Since the photo sharing sites started, the technology of storage and compression has improved dramatically. You don't need a remote site for storage; you want it primarily for sharing. Facebook takes all the effort out of sharing: tag a face and away you go.

Re: A Stimulus Plan For Venture Capital? No Thanks.

drm10506 — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:20:49 -0000

Consumption has declined so rapidly that all businesses -- start-up, established, big and small -- find themselves with cost structures and supply chains that have been designed for levels of consumption that we valid 6 to 9 months ago. The job elimination we're currently experiencing is a by-product of trying to size expenses to current consumption. It's a logical and necessary activity. More capital will help spur some job growth, faster deployment of capital will spur other job growth: tax credits that reflect the decline in consumption and stimulate companies to maintain employment levels without compromising near-term earnings are very effective tools. Tax relief across the board, accompanied by a decline in government spending (Ha!), would be a significant stimulus.

Re: Rule #1 in Using Social Media to Market Apartments

drm10506 — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:04:14 -0000

Great, clear explanation. You've got to be respectful and act like you are a guest in someone's home. Your product/service/work is part of who you are, but it's not the only reason why someone has invited you in, has given you permission to be part of their network. You've got to bring more.

Re: Digital search vs. human search: Exploring a premise and citing an example

drm10506 — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:39:24 -0000

in regards to the noise, I'm putting a lot of weight in the consistency of the individual associated with the content.

That's where this model breaks down: the breadth of content associated with individuals would take a long time to build.

So, imagine three levels: Human-filtered content, determined by the individuals associated with specific content objects, ranked according to the interactions of the group; filtered social network content -- the real-time search people talk about, enhanced with the techniques of semantic search we've discussed; and finally, the current paradigm of digital search. That creates a tiered search result that gives the user a broad choice of options.

Re: Social media marketing takes time, resources, commitment

drm10506 — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:02:25 -0000

Thanks Steve. See you in Denver.

Re: Digital search vs. human search: Exploring a premise and citing an example

drm10506 — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:08:57 -0000

The UGC crawler you describe does exactly what we're talking about. I wonder if you could accomplish it without going into the social networks. You could easily identify content that was accessed from the networks by crawling referrers. And, each of the referrers has a unique id associated with a user. That would get you the type of content organization around user identities that we're talking about, and you'd still be trolling the Google web, not the Social web.

The mash-up feels like the easy part, although I know I'm over-simplifying.

Re: Digital search vs. human search: Exploring a premise and citing an example

drm10506 — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:27:27 -0000

This is pretty elegant.

In terms of the ability to include fresh content in the search results in a relevant way, I think that the credibility of the users who distributes the content and the interaction of his connections with the content will create more information about a new piece of information than the current search paradigm does.

Everyone has talked about the noise factor. I wonder whether a paradigm that associates quality content distributors with quality content actually filters out a lot of the noise.

Here I'm thinking about "distribution" and "content" in a narrower way than is typically considered in search. First, distribution is probably better thought of re-distribution. The social web has created an method of sharing discrete pieces of content -- web pages/pics/etc. Links shared around twitter are a good example. So, people who re-distribute content that is frequently acted on, and which, when indexed, is deemed to have context consistency, etc., are given higher weight in their content associations. And with content, I'm actually dismissing the content that is flowing through twitter or along Facebook in a stream. That content is typically creating some reference to a content object or a topic and feels pretty perishable.

On the issue of semantic representation, the simplest image is of the morphology of an organism: all the terms are shared, but the genetic make-up is infinitely variable.

What exactly has hampered the creation of a common organizing principle for content. We've got the dewey decimal system in libraries, and all the content has to declare itself into some root category and further sub-categories?

The Open Directory project was designed to do just that: create a common schematic for declaration and categorization of content. Meta-tags in Google are designed to accomplish the opposite, to allow the pages to intersect with the highest number of searches, even when marginally relevant.

Re: A moment to boast: ApartmentFinder.com & Comscore

drm10506 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:21:26 -0000

Thanks Mike. It's nice to be in the mix and we've been working hard to get there. There will be ebbs and flows, but we feel good about where we sit.

I think we're on the cusp of another period of innovation in the way the multi-family industry thinks about media, marketing platforms and the Internet to get and retain tenants. It's going to be chaotic, exciting and interesting, to be sure.

Re: Minding your P&Q’s in Social Media, from the Top Down

drm10506 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:43:45 -0000

That's great feedback, Mike. And timely. I'll be posting about a company-wide social media initiative that we've started this month. Part of it is going to be detailed, hands-on training for everyone on how to use tools like Twitter and Facebook. This world requires that when you enter into the conversation you be willing to stay. Hold onto your own point, but with respect and intelligence.

Re: Minding your P&Q’s in Social Media, from the Top Down

drm10506 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:33:35 -0000

Not at all. I enjoy the dialogue and the perspective.

Re: $10 billion in magazine revenue lost, @laureltouby wonders where the good news is and old media stands to fight

drm10506 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:20:31 -0000

Nicely put, David.

Re: Gannet Q1 results capture the challenges of local media

drm10506 — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:50:38 -0000

We've all been in the dark and had to trust our instincts and convictions to move through it. He can't really say what I think he wants to say: We have no idea when this will end, we're executing on a plan to try to develop new business sources that work for our advertisers and consumers, and we're going to keep at it as long as we're able.

Re: Digital search vs. human search: Exploring a premise and citing an example

drm10506 — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:51:34 -0000

Oleg,

We're working on a couple of different ways to approach the implementation of social media on our sites. As usual, we want to make sure that we've got it well thought out and that it integrates with our overall approach. (How's that for plausible deniability.) I'm not comfortable talking about the things yet, but we're having fun trying to cook them up.

Dan

Re: Some more thoughts on the economics of special interest content

drm10506 — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:16:22 -0000

I really enjoyed the blog -- for some reason, there seem to be a lot of really high quality real estate blogs in Canada. Don't know why. Maybe a more literate education? How did you use the blog to help with your home search?

I'm going to pass on the CPM experiment as it relates to this blog. It's a non-commercial effort meant to largely give an outlet to my curiosity. Better to stick to that definition, even if I forsake a good scientific inquiry.

Re: Digital search vs. human search: Exploring a premise and citing an example

drm10506 — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:27:22 -0000

I wanted to re-read this comment before replying. Something about your thoughts sparked a rapid and simple series of connections that I haven't been able to really nail down. Meaning is all about context and connotation. Language is a remarkably flexible and elastic tool.

Throughout our discussion about the potential for human-assisted search, I have imagined that tracking the exchange of content between two people would capture something of the context and intent in the communication, and that by capturing that nuance, the meaning of the content could be indexed with an understanding of relevance that transcended the information on the page.

Your comment made me think about the powerful ways that search algorithmns can catalog and categorize the incidence and usage of terms. The ability to generate relevance from that data base grows with or without awareness of the quality and influence of the individual who used the terms.

So, yes, merged technologies is the answer. And finding ways to align identity, semantic objects and traditional machine search would create a very rich search environment.

On last thing: The lawn mowers. That's actually where I see the value of human-assisted search. My premise is that different people are expert about the most unlikely things, and that you won't find out unless you have some occasion to prick that interest. Let's say that I've developed confidence in the quality of information that a certain user distributes: it is good, well-researched and balance content. Then, if I am searching for some information about lawn mowers, and content associated with that user pops up, I'm going to have a fairly high degree of confidence that the content is reliable. A click-thru follows. That's the human assist.

Re: Despite the radical change in economic conditions, tracking polls point to the emotional resilience of Americans as the foundation of a recovery

drm10506 — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 19:25:11 -0000

You make good points, Tom. Floyd Norris looked at similar data in today’s New York Times and paints a picture of a dire economic climate with more pain to come. It’s worth looking at. You’re also right that the Gallup data only covers the recent two years and so missed the kind of historical context that a larger sample would give.

My focus — and the reason for choosing the more recent data set — is on the change of current consumer sentiment in the face of daunting economic trends. The A-D-S data is a great way to capture the economic zeitgeist. Increasingly, I’m of the opinion that the way out of this financial mess will be in the resilience of American attitudes. This is a sociological phenomenon that has been documented over time, and which is romantically captured as a uniquely American spirit. I’ve always been skeptical of such a phenomenon, but find myself in my interactions with people around the country being very struck by their intent on working through what’s going on. That’s a different feeling about things than I get from my peers in the media industry, who are looking around and seeing the world end.

So, the juxtaposition that I was looking for was to demonstrate how fast the economic zeitgeist changed, how quickly attitudes declined, and then, how attitudes are beginning to shift. That shift in the face of continued challenges is that shimmer of resilience that I’m struck by.

Thanks for the comment. I agree with your seasonal assessment. And, I’m not wholly comfortable with all the stimulus and the way its distributed. But it’s what we have. I saw an interesting bit of research from BigResearch yesterday that claimed American’s felt good about things, but also feel like too many decisions are being made by government and those decisions are too far away. Contrast that with Obama’s 65% approval rating and you’ve got a disconnect that it difficult to reconcile.

Re: State Farm’s Facebook strategy shows how we need a new model for thinking about marketing content on social media platforms

drm10506 — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:04:02 -0000

Thanks for stopping in Tyler. Looking forward to playing with your apps.

Re: Without tending, content grows wilted, loses its vitality

drm10506 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:48:16 -0000

Thanks Mike. What really stands out for me is the reminder of how when you commit to engagement, you need to have the systems in place to follow through on engagement. The personal predicament of time, intent and resources is the same for a brand as well.

Re: Six Inadvertent Commandments of Social Marketing

drm10506 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:17:11 -0000

Well, I did say it was inadvertent...

Sounds like you are all having a good time out there.

Re: An organizational shift to social media: Project Massive Network

drm10506 — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:35:03 -0000

It may that unique relationship you have with spell check....

Re: Apartment shopping & internet usage: An analysis of May’s Comscore figures

drm10506 — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:28:01 -0000

Good question, Scott. The increase has largely been the by-product of elevated focus on and improved execution of search engine optimization tactics, including a reworking of the AF.com site.

Re: Building Successful Long Term Relationships

drm10506 — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:03:51 -0000

Nice post Tolerance is easier with shared values. A key is reaching the level of honest dialogue where you can assess the true nature of the values. In situations free of stress, words have an elegant, lasting power. Not until you reach those moments of stress that test us do you find out what the words really mean in action. Too often the shared values fall apart at those moments. The shared interests are thrown out of alignment. And then you have to lake a judgment: Can we become re-aligned? Or did we misjudge at the outset, based on words that signalled intent, but that don't work in action.

Re: How Social Media is Changing B2B Journalism

drm10506 — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:37:45 -0000

This is a really good contribution to the discussion about how to leverage social media tools within a traditional media environment. I'm a big fan of what ID has been able to do: they are using simple tools to extend and enhance the way they are driving content into the market. The BIG thing here is that you can leverage a brand -- and the proprietary expertise of the staff -- across different social media platforms without a)getting swamped by Google and b)getting disintermediated by Google.

Thanks for supplying so much detailed information.

Re: A social media marketing platform: DigitalSherpa

drm10506 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:58:15 -0000

Thanks for the comment, Eric. We've put a lot of focus on the process, and hope that with the process covered, the property management company can focus on the brand interaction around their offering. I'm looking forward to refining the process. We've got similar approaches we're going to roll out in other market categories.