DISQUS

As the writer of SUN's most read/commented blog post who was left in the dark about this deal, I will leverage your new fame to step on your heads as I pass you on the ladder of fame. That Oprah couch looks comfy!

Publishers wishing to buy the rights to my upcoming behind-the-scenes-no-pulled-punches book about the real SUN please contact me at april1@willpate.org. It's time the world knows the real story about the Jevon that stalks the night writing the wrong addresses on people's garbage cans, and the Jonas that feeds on other, smaller robots. I've said too much!

As the writer of SUN's most read/commented blog post who was left in the dark about this deal, I will leverage your new fame to step on your heads as I pass you on the ladder of fame. That Oprah couch looks comfy!

Publishers wishing to buy the rights to my upcoming behind-the-scenes-no-pulled-punches book about the real SUN please contact me at april1@willpate.org. It's time the world knows the real story about the Jevon that stalks the night writing the wrong addresses on people's garbage cans, and the Jonas that feeds on other, smaller robots. I've said too much!

The real question here: why has this not become the hottest campus prank sweeping the nation?

Oh Montreal, you so crazy. But we love you anyway, like that troubled art school girl we made out with at a party once.

Oh Montreal, you so crazy. But we love you anyway, like that troubled art school girl we made out with at a party once.

Congrats to the StanoutJobs fellas.

Congrats to the StanoutJobs fellas.

Wow, some amazing discussion has happened so far!

@Casey: Yep, I agree. Industries like entertainment can't afford to dilly dally either.

@Phillip: Great quote from MLK, very apt.

@Alex: Interesting. Were those companies focused on a local market, or a global one?

@Steven: I don't buy that you need to be in the US to build a great tech company. RIM, EA and others prove you can build really successful companies here. Heck, Skype was mostly from Estonia!

@Mark: I need to review all articles with you before I publish them, for proper policy wonk compliance like "competitive intensity". Also, "provincial" is my new favorite word to criticize small world thinking.

@Danny: Now I know the story of the mysterious dude working with Boris! :) I'm glad to hear that Vancouver is pushing ahead. I think some of our other cities need a kick in the backside.

@Stephen: Yes, it sounds like Canadian VCs aren't giving entrepreneurs enough runway to get their planes off the ground.

@Rebecca: You have to consistently break new ground. You can't just dig one hole and say "no oil here". Imagine if Texas or the Gulf oil countries took a Canadian attitude!

@Too scared: Thanks for sharing that info, very interesting to see the numbers on VC investment in Canada. Looks like we need our VCs to make bigger investments to give startups the capital they need to attract the best talent and give them enough runway.

@Thomas: Great post by Michele. I think the CBC is a totally other broken system, and one I'm not sure I want to help fix. From what I've been told by people on the inside, it's an organization full of people with the same kind of negativity and provincial thinking that's holding back our tech industry. I haven't found a silver bullet for old boys clubs yet, if anyone has one I'd love to hear about it.

Wow, some amazing discussion has happened so far!

@Casey: Yep, I agree. Industries like entertainment can't afford to dilly dally either.

@Phillip: Great quote from MLK, very apt.

@Alex: Interesting. Were those companies focused on a local market, or a global one?

@Steven: I don't buy that you need to be in the US to build a great tech company. RIM, EA and others prove you can build really successful companies here. Heck, Skype was mostly from Estonia!

@Mark: I need to review all articles with you before I publish them, for proper policy wonk compliance like "competitive intensity". Also, "provincial" is my new favorite word to criticize small world thinking.

@Danny: Now I know the story of the mysterious dude working with Boris! :) I'm glad to hear that Vancouver is pushing ahead. I think some of our other cities need a kick in the backside.

@Stephen: Yes, it sounds like Canadian VCs aren't giving entrepreneurs enough runway to get their planes off the ground.

@Rebecca: You have to consistently break new ground. You can't just dig one hole and say "no oil here". Imagine if Texas or the Gulf oil countries took a Canadian attitude!

@Too scared: Thanks for sharing that info, very interesting to see the numbers on VC investment in Canada. Looks like we need our VCs to make bigger investments to give startups the capital they need to attract the best talent and give them enough runway.

@Thomas: Great post by Michele. I think the CBC is a totally other broken system, and one I'm not sure I want to help fix. From what I've been told by people on the inside, it's an organization full of people with the same kind of negativity and provincial thinking that's holding back our tech industry. I haven't found a silver bullet for old boys clubs yet, if anyone has one I'd love to hear about it.

Hey Robin, great post. Thanks for transcribing, that must have been a lot of work. A lot of my presentation was edited out, I think if you saw the full 20 minutes you'd find that I agree with you on several of the points you raised.

I'm also not a fan of "get-popular-fast" schemes. The 1200 friends I have on Facebook came organically from me doing my work for Flock, commandN and others and having people that appreciated my work reach out to me. It's taken me years to build a base of friends online, because they're the right fit for me and often we've become friends quickly offline too.

The people I befriend on Digg because they're popular, is also so that I can study how they make content. How they write headlines and descriptions helps me understand why certain things get popular on Digg while others don't. All that being said, it would be great to actually know those folks and take them out for a beer. I bet many of them are media and news junkies just like me.

As for Dan Ackerman, I sincerely hope his business has had a boost. It sounds like he really changed his tune in his two follow up posts on Techcrunch where he mostly recanted his original message. My problem with the scenario is still that his brand is still associated with some of our colleagues with being "that sleazy viral video guy", deserved or not. I could have used a better example, but I thought for the audience that day it was in their space and thus apt for them.

Interesting observation about being vs. becoming ethical. I'm not sure I've thought about it well enough to give a proper comment, but it's definitely food for thought. I think I've always been an ethical person, so perhaps that extends to my online activity. I think I still believe in the dream that social media and the power of the internet will force companies to become more transparent, ethical and socially conscious.

I'd love to know what the statistical rate of incorrect tags will be. It would be easy to have a mechanism for voting a tag as "incorrect". I bet it would be very low, but that's just an educated guess.

Good luck Rob, looking forward to FastCompany.tv

Congrats to the team :)

Congrats to the team :)

Tris is gold, someone should grab him soon.

Tris is gold, someone should grab him soon.

It's always surprising that no matter how many people get caught astroturfing, some misguided person makes the mistake of lying about who they are to drum up interest about their company. If consumers can't trust the conversation about a company, or the people that work for it, how can they be expected to trust the company at all. Razzle may have killed their brand from day one. Hopefully someone will learn from their mistake.

It's always surprising that no matter how many people get caught astroturfing, some misguided person makes the mistake of lying about who they are to drum up interest about their company. If consumers can't trust the conversation about a company, or the people that work for it, how can they be expected to trust the company at all. Razzle may have killed their brand from day one. Hopefully someone will learn from their mistake.

Forgot to mention: if Virb supported any of the blog APIs, you would be able to blog to Virb with Flock. To my knowledge, they don't currently do that.

To be fair, Facebook was at thefacebook.com before they bought the facebook.com domain. It's probably one of the few cases in which calling it "The Thing" is acceptable.

Kris Krug is in ur wedding shooting ur hottiez

Steve, we're experimenting with Firefox extensions support in the most recent two updates to Beta 1.

Users will be warned that the extension has not been tested with flock but will be allowed to proceed with the instal. As long as the extension doesn't touch search or bookmarks, it should work - but no guarantees.

Hey Steve,

Glad to hear you're digging Flock and Photobucket together. Did you know that when you hover your mouse over someone's PB hosted picture you can click a little icon in the bottom right corner of the image to see their photostream in your photobar? From there you can star them to add them to your photo favorites and Flock will notify you when they upload new pics. Pretty sweet, huh?

We just did an upgrade yesterday too that adds Photobucket sub-album support.

What could we do to make Flock better for you?

Cheers,

Will Pate
Community Ambassador, Flock

Oh noes, I'm the "ice to eskimoes" guy of Web 2.0. Speaking of trendy terms, they prefer to be called Inuit these days.

You're right about the doing something you love, luckily I'm already there. I know that essentially I love connecting with and helping people. As I get to know someone, I quickly get to wondering "what I can do for them". I guess that's why I always get a kick out of connecting people together.

I gues you could say I love talking to people too. In marketing it's a (naked) conversation with many, in sales it's a conversation and transaction with a few. The laws of each interaction are endlessly interesting to learn, but the truly satisfying part is the connection.

As for blogging to sell, that's what I'm doing - blogging to sell myself as a hired gun!

We used blogging to market ourselves and our clients at Raincity Studios, but little of our own clients came from people reading our blogs. The market for organizations that want blogs but don't read them too much is pretty big.

AT - Not a spammer, I ask nicely :)

It's not a conference without Scott.