AHA Takes More Than A Moment

Twitter List Evolution of #FollowFriday

When it first started, I use to pay close attention to the recommendations that came out of Follow Friday on Twitter.  In it’s current form however, it’s just become noise.  When I see a tweet that has the hashtag and just a bunch of names, I completely ignore it. If this is all that someone wants to do, they should just create a weekly Twitter List.  It’s cleaner and gives people who actually want to follow new people this way a single-click option to do so.

The real value in Follow Friday is selecting a small group of people you want to recommend to your followers and share a little something about why they should.  Do they share interesting links on certain topics?  Are they funny? Do they have specialized knowledge they share with the community?  Something other than just a name. I make no claim to having this down pat, but I try to practice what I preach.

At some point I hope that more people start doing this (a Mashable rewrite on Follow Friday would help <g>) so that I can once again look forward to Follow Friday and not dread the name blasts in my twitter stream.

Abbas Haider Ali.

Quick Take from Gartner Social Software Magic Quadrant Unveiling

James Lundy shared the 2009 edition of Gartner’s Social Software Magic Quadrant on the ITxpo floor at Symposium in Orlando.  Considering that he had just 20mins to present the topic, he did a great job fitting in high value content.  The public version is to be posted tomorrow (yes, I have a pic but he asked everyone not to post it).

Here’s some highlights from the brief presentation:

The social software space is being broken up into three areas (descriptions fairly self-evident):

1. Enterprise
2. Public
3. External / Customer Communities

Those who are visionaries in the MQ tend to be ones who bring a social platform story to the table vs. a point solution

Lot’s of pricing variation in the market. Read: Negotiate pricing and get yourself a deal!

Lots of opportunity for companies who can analyze social graphs and associated meta data (Any BI vendors in the house?)

Prepare for the battle to own the social profile! Will it be HR? Finance? Every dept for themselves?

Abbas Haider Ali

Fring is back on iPhone home screen!

Over the weekend Fring released an update for their multi-IM client + VoIP app which added push notifications that are supported by iPhone OS 3.0.  With this latest update, which I’ve been waiting for, the app has once again been promoted to my iPhone’s home screen.

It’s come in handy a couple of times already (like when I was grabbing lunch) and as with always it’s great to be connected to AIM, MSN, and Skype all at the same time.  I believe that once you launch Fring, the push notificaitons will continue to work for a few hours after you close it.

Nice job Fring team!

Abbas Haider Ali.

SEO For Tumblr

simpletiger:

(This is reposted by Eric Dafforn of SEO Speedwagon)

Here’s a quick case study in how social media sites (more important, the conversations going on at social media sites) are enabling companies to interact with and respond to their users.

Here’s the rough chronology. I may have missed some letters in the middle, but points A and Z are pretty accurate.

1. Melissa Chang runs a blog on her own domain, using the Tumblr platform. (For the uninitiated, Tumblr is roughly similar to Blogger or Wordpress, although many people seem to use “Tumblogs” as a middle ground between article-length posts and Twitter-like microblog posts.) She is unhappy with her search traffic and writes a post saying so.
2. Steve Rubel reads the post and bookmarks it at Del.icio.us.
3. Steve’s bookmark shows up at FriendFeed, where he aggregates his various social media endeavors.
4. A conversation begins at FriendFeed about whether, and to what extent, the Tumblr platform is or is not search-friendly. A somewhat lively and mostly constructive discussion takes place.
5. Others lend various perspectives at their own blogs.
6. Tumblr reps follow — and join — the FriendFeed conversation(s).
7. Tumblr responds on its official blog, saying it has already made many of the changes that came from the discussion on FriendFeed and elsewhere.
8. Many are happy with the changes; some are not. My personal opinion is that Tumblr may have entered the egg-breaking stage of omelet-making. The site will be better off in the long run.

So a logical question is, how is a “conversation” like the one at FriendFeed different from Tumblr users merely writing to the Tumblr staff and making the same recommendations — which some users claim they’ve been doing for a while? I don’t know the answer to that. But I think the interest in and productivity resulting from the FriendFeed conversation had a lot to do with it.

Back in the day, big brands used to respond to customer letters. I mean respond. Like type up a reply and send it. This is because they realized that for each person who took the time to write or type a letter, stamp it, and walk it down to the mailbox (later known as the “barrier to entry”), there must be about 10,000 people who feel exactly the same way.

Today, you can send an email as easily as you can cook a Hot Pocket. Anyone can do it. So the 10,000:1 ratio or yore is more like 1:1 today. The FriendFeed conversation shows that not only is more than one person affected, but that actual recommendations can be spat out the back end. I think that’s why the response was more rapid.

Very soon, this will be the norm in customer relations, at least for progressive, consumer-focused companies.

The Suite @ Foster Harris House on April 25th

I’d booked this room for the wife and I, but she’s out of town because of a family emergency so I can’t make it. It’s non-refundable, and I don’t want the room to go to waste.

The room is The Suite at the Foster Harris House book for $339 for the one night.  It’s supposed to really nice out there, and this B&B is rated as 5/5 on TripAdvisor.

I’m open to any offer for the room, free, some amount of money, something creative, or pretty much anything.  Contact me on Twitter or comment on this post with an offer!

UPDATE: Foster Harris House got a request for the room at full price, so I’m safe on the whole $339!

Abbas Haider Ali.

Best of Inc. Magazine - March 2009

Inc. is one of few publications that I read end to end.  I always find little tidbits that I want to remember. It used to be dog-eared pages amidst stacks of old issues.  I know I can do better than that so here we are at the inaugural post of “Notes from Inc. Magazine” to capture key elements.

1. Testing sales recruits (i.e. relying on more than your gut)

This was IMO the best article of this issue. I wasn’t aware of the majority of the tests that were suggested and plan on introducing at least one into practice the next time sales recruitment time rolls around.  The list included Target Team’s DISC, Opus Productivity Solutions PDP ProScan, Caliper Profile, and Hogan Personality Inventory.  Complete article on Inc.com is a highly recommended read.

2.  Name your price for coding help and other projects

I have random ideas all the time where I think to myself “Man, I wish I could just some quick bids on this project and hand it off.”  TopCoder allows me to do just that. Is this is the first time I’ve heard of them? No. Is it the first time that I’m making the effort to try? Yes.  Blerb about TopCoder on Inc.com.

3. Pen that does math, records audio, transcribes text + more

I’m dilligent with notes. Well, maybe not, but I try to be and if I had this Livescribe Pulse Smartpen I think I just might pull it off.  It does lots of stuf, but audio recording and trascribing notes into editable text are the killer apps for me.  Need to give it a whirl somewhere and then request it as a present or pick it up for myself.  More on Inc.com.

Abbas Haider Ali.

Reviews of what I'm reading

It turns out that I stil spend a decent amount of time reading magazines and books.  Inc, Fortune, Wired, Fast Company are among a set of subscriptions that I’ve kept going over the years. Sure, I’ve considered cancelling them a number of times but the reality is that they come in handy at the gym when I want to keep myself distracted. Keeping entire issues around is certainly not feasible.  I’m the antithesis of a packrat and throw things away continually. Tumbl’ing about key parts of the content seems like a great way to bookmark physical material while allowing me to share it with interested parties.

I also read a fair number of books.  On planes, I try to use the time to review work materials or compiles notes if I have to, but for the most part it’s private time which I can dedicate to reading. I figure my thoughts on some of these books (fiction + non fiction) would be good to record for myself and anyone else of similar bent.

So moving forward, expect there to be some of this type of content posted here.  Comments and suggestions for other things to read are always welcome!

Abbas Haider Ali.