DISQUS

I'm not really sure who you are, but I do like what you have said. In one sense, I'm glad that you have "saved yourself" from the clinches of the social media beast.

For about 3 years I listened - they kept saying not to give up, to pursue my passion and that one day it would all pay off. I believed them. I kept going, racking up one credit card balance after another (yes, I'm admitting to being stupid).

Hey, it was going to pay off, they'd be there when I was through, to help me get the word out about my "latest creation".

Well, I'm not seeing it, at all. There have been too many shiny objects show up between then and now, and it appears that I have just become yesterday's news.

So, my advice, if you take advice from strangers, is to just do what you want to do, know that nothing will probably come from it (at all) but if helps you to pass the time, and perhaps a few people stop by and read it, then why not.

Welcome back.

Mobatalk has higher quality audio recording, it's free, you don't need to sign up, and it tweets a link to your post.

What am I missing here?

Isn't the second ad really an oxymoron? Think about it...

;^)

1915? Yea, I can relate, and it's a great feeling.

You'll never find it.

No amount of technology can replace the human interaction. Sure, Carolyn used technology when she ordered the book(s) for you, but nothing can replace or duplicate her presence.

Oh, and I love how she doesn't even have a website, yet she is already doing what social media promises to deliver.

Heading back to watch the dog chase his tail now.

Thanks for the great post, Chris.

LOL, awesome, thanks for sharing this with us.

Well, if you flip it 180 degrees and have another look at it, you will only see one question.

That question is simple, "Why?"

Why would I even want these marketing folks entering into my social media space?

A few of them have managed to act human, but not very many. Mostly, they all see it as another place to perform their shotgun marketing.

I don't "need" a whole bunch, and I certainly don't "need" more people trying to sell me something.

Using the image that you posted here, do you think that they would invite a 3rd person to join them, if that person were only there to bide his/her time until the opportunity to pitch their product/service came around?

Certainly I love to meet-n-greet new people all of the time, but I really only like it when they are able to NOT talk about what they do or what they sell.

I recently tried having a Twitter conversation with the chief marketing officer of Best Buy @BestBuyCMO

Here's what I said, "Your Blue Shirts don't know anything. I always tell them "NO!" when they ask if they can help me. They are clueless about tech.

The Blue Shirts are really good at coming up with answers, but they are the wrong answers.

Check your store return records for "Wrong part" or "Not compatible" - your Blue Shirts cause that to be way too high.

Of course, as a "marketing guy" you probably have no real interest in fixing the system, just keeping the sales up. Sure, ok."

His Response was, "Guess I don't understand why you feel like I warrant being personally slammed. First time I've been insulted here.Congratulations"

So I said, "Hey Barry, it comes with your position. Perhaps nobody ever tells you what they really think. No congratulations required.
Obvious to everyone else your answer should have been "'Yes, BB has many problems, I'll see what I can do'.
And lastly, as you blogged in Oct, "it starts with being open and transparent." I was, and you got insulted. Go Figure."

So, before he Blocked me he said, "Your 4 tweet criticism of our company was fine. And we will be better for it. The personal attack is unjustified. My POV. I'm Done"

There you have it - an attempt to be transparent and when faced with anything other that "ra-ra fanboys" he tucks tail and plays the "personal attack" card.

So, whatever, the marketing people should just stay out and play their little spin games. The people in social media for real, are for the most part too smart for them anyhow.

They both work equally well. I mean, look at who the consumer is. "Yea, I'm going to the store to get me some steak. Steak in a can is the best."

On the other hand, I sometimes like eating "Potted Meat" with pseudo-ritz (off-brand) crackers, go figure.

SocialMOO.com was available - perhaps there is an opportunity to create a Bovine Social Network - surely that is the kind of idea where one could obtain venture capital from an idea scribbled on a cocktail napkin.

;^)

As I said on Twitter - they should have put a man in the ad and then everyone would be saying "Ahhhh that's sooo cute!" om nom nom

Seems like a typical morning in any number of households.

Yup, damn right.

Motrin has been doing what it has been doing for many years. You think if J&J went to this "mommy blogger" group and asked them to endorse their product that they would have talked about it even .001% as much as they are now doing for free?

The ad was a smashing success.

Nikhil Narayanan - you are wrong.

Putting in a false password only does this: makes the process fail when twitterank tries to send your rank to Twitter - you don't see this failure, but that's what happens (I'm a developer who is very familiar with the Twitter API).

Because you don't understand (which is ok in itself) you are prone to assume that what you say is true - in fact it is false and you should retract your statement.

Mashable, What you should do now is write an article on "What happens when people get caught checking their ego"

This whole password stealing rumor got started when a few people who did NOT bother to uncheck the box for sending their Twitterank to Twitter.

Then it became a matter of self-preservation expressed in the form of "I did NOT give them permission to send that to Twitter" - well, yes they did because of the default setting, which they didn't bother to read.

So, as most self-preservation of ones ego goes, many people began the rumors that the site must be stealing their passwords, even rumors of DM's being sent from their account.

I checked the twitterank.com site just now and it appears to be down - what a shame that so much false information and ego-preservation could actually bring a site down.

Here are a few suggestions which might make sense.

1) Former Government.
2) The Government formerly known as corrupt.
3) Government. Abolished.

Cool Chris - let us know where the video from the event gets posted.

Congrats!

Does that become self-fulfilling then?

If I'm holding on to my money, and I keep holding on to it - it doesn't help the economy out much.

True though, my 100 mill will be worth less, but I won't be - since I am not a product of my bank account balance, perhaps there is a greater good to be had.

Oh yeah, and then there's the chance that if I hold on to my money too long, a new President just might decide to take it and redistribute it for me anyhow ;^)

Gee Fred, I would think that it would have made more sense to be sensible in the good times - then, whenever a downturn took place, you wouldn't even notice it because you would have already been running things they way they should be ran.

What I see from my end of things is that people are getting laid-off, position cuts, and a tightening of the purse strings. The lay-offs are mostly occurring because those positions should not have been created in the first place. (Funny how they chalk it p to "non-essential" personnel - seems that anyone hired would have first been "essential" to make the company grow).

It would be nice if we all came out of this and learned a few things about how to focus on actually growing a company - things like getting new carpet and furniture every 6 weeks because there's a ton of VC cash to spend might look a little silly - sadly, I think that a lot of people will quickly forget their "lessons learned" when the economy recovers.

If I had my $100 million, I would be seeing this as the perfect time to build a company - land is cheap, salaries are cheap, everything is cheap - build it up now and be ready for the recovery - heck, it might even help to speed along the recovery process.

Chris, Thanks for the post - I love metaphors.

Social Media and....
...product awareness
...branding
...engagement
...context sensitive conversations
...humanizing a company

I guess that the second part of the duo is wrapped up into the ROI as a package deal - measurement depending on varying definitions.

Billboard and magazine advertising is not measurable, yet still widely used - social media doesn't need to be any different.

So, what's the justification to use social media tools as part of the marketing equation? Simple, it's where the people are - just like billboards on the highway, or people sitting around in waiting rooms reading magazines.

CPC, and PPC will (hopefully) fall to the wayside as new ROI measurement metrics are brought online.

btw, Peanut butter and....crackers.

nevermind, I see it

Flash 10 is now a problem - will there be an update to this soon?

Has Seth opened up his site to allow comments yet?

No? Yea, while he might produce a good message, I just cannot consume it anymore since he's unreachable and not engaged with his audience.

arg, Aye be lurkin in ye commetnz

Ok, so getting back to the fundamentals of doing business - there's nothing bad that anyone can really say about that, is there?

Thanks for checking it out. I think that you were the first MacBook Air to try it out - looks good to me.

If you have any questions, you can find me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/mobasoft

Thanks for the nice thorough review of MobaTalk, it's really appreciated.
I'm glad that you like what you've seen so far. I have lots of other good stuff in the pipeline.

You can also catch me on Twitter, http://twitter.com/mobasoft

Regards,

Michael Bailey
Thought Leader, Social Cowboy, and Serial Entrepreneur
"Cultivating the landscape of the online multimedia community"