Bo Jacobson's Posterous

You go to an office every day. it's a 9-5 gig. (read as 7:30 - whenever for some of us) You're somewhere between competent and excellent at your job, and the people you work with seem to like you and the value that comes with working with you. Let's even call you a model employee. But you're hiding something. I know it, and you know it, and the people around you know it too. 

They say "Wow! You'd be a fantastic...", "You sure seem to know a lot about..." or my favorite "Have you ever thought of being a..."

It hurts at first. You might ask yourself: "Aren't I good enough at my job that these people will just accept me for who I am? What is it about me that makes them think I need to be anything else?" But they keep bugging you. It's deflating and demoralizing. You just don't have it in you to deflect one more excited utterance.  

As people point out the characteristics in you that might make a good chef/baker/writer/teacher, you're reaction could be to tuck that part of you away, so it won't be called out, and you won't feel so exposed. 

Please don't do that. 

That uncomfortable scrutiny you're feeling is the side-effect of a rare and powerful gift: leadership. Chances are you just taught or inspired somebody. You surprised them by displaying a part of yourself that they admire, maybe even something they aspire toward. 

'Changing the game' by coming up with the genius idea that makes you rich, famous and influential is hard. But, we can all examine the things that make us a little different from the folks around us, and embrace our individuality as the path to our own unique version of success. 

To promote their new phones, The Kin One and Kin Two, Microsoft is sending one young lady across our fair country for a series of face-to-face meetings with her digital Friends and Followers. Her name is Rosa, and she’s already off and running with her Sharp/Windows/Verizon device. She's having coffee and touring the respective domiciles of various people with which she’s previously only had these casual digital connections. (FYI - Their YouTube channel provides the best viewing experience)

I admit to the potential dissidence of this campaign supporting devices that are supposed to appeal to tweens/teens, and they aren’t really considered media mavens that connect far and wide with lots of people they don’t actually know. However, it is very ‘now’ to send precocious young people on journeys of positive self/community discovery (Coke did something similar recently), and the question that this campaign asks might appeal strongly to the parents of the kids who end up using the device.

Device notes from a guy who has not had a hands on with the devices: though the Kin One and Two are getting some positive reviews, I put this family squarely (get it?) in the Palm Pre knock-off camp for form factor. It’s software is supposed to be pretty lightweight, and it doesn’t provide an App store experience to load up your phone with games and stuff. Ultimately that might be a good thing though. If the device has a good browser that (eventually) supports flash, this could develop into a cheap little anti-iPhone. It wouldn't require a bunch of additional purchases to play games, use social networks, etc. Even if it doesn’t succeed, there’s something good about the ideas at work.  

UPDATE: Looks like microsoft wasn't sure about the device either. In the midst of what looks like a rather expensive content integration campaign, the Kin line had it's fate sealed in favor of the upcoming windows phone 7. So it goes.

When a client comes in requesting a social strategy I start by asking them what they hope to accomplish via Facebook, Twitter, etc. What is it they want to do, say or offer that makes the social component necessary? I use the word necessary because social executions are burdensome. There are plenty of simpler platforms to develop your programs on that are 100% controllable, more reliable, and more branded. So, as a social media enthusiast, I ask why they're going to all the trouble. 

If it's because social media is very 'now', or because their audience is already using social media and they want to connect with them, I'm all for it. If it's because there are 500 million people on Facebook and they really want a couple hundred thousand targets for some automated marketing messages, I die a little inside. It's not because I'm a purist, it's because I like people, and I don't want to subject people to that kind of unconscious bombardment. 

When I think of building social hooks into an idea, it isn't because I want the 'viral' effect, or because the idea needs you to spam your friends to succeed. Instead, it's that we might be doing something I think people might actually want to share with other people. And this isn't specific to social media at all. It happens in email marketing, direct marketing - anywhere that you have a direct contact with a user who has opted in. 

These channels, what I'm calling "personal media", carry with them the weight of one-to-one communications. As an unfortunate by-product of the scalable marketing solutions offered by modern media, we too often forget that an actual person is going to receive the communications we send. Messages get crafted around what we have to say sell, rather than what they would want to read and engage with. 

In short, please use these exciting new channels to communicate with your audience exactly as if they were living breathing human beings. Take care of them, serve their needs and desires, and they will take care of you and your business. 

Everybody knows that Facebook's new hyper-connected "social by default" operating principle has generated some pretty negative feedback. (Read the comments. Not a ton of happy campers) There are even tools that let you see what data applications can see about you without your permission. 

But this is a fresh new mess for Facebook to clean up. 

TechCrunch is reporting on a simple Facebook exploit that lets you view your friends' live chats and recent friend requests.

Here's video of the exploit from YouTube user Attwood66

So somewhere in the aggregate of the last 12 months of site layout flip-flopping, not-fantastic ad targeting, continued lack of interest in user privacy, and less-than-remarkable platform security, I'm getting less enthusiastic about Facebook every day. (And I'm wondering who else feels the same)

UPDATE: Facebook is currently working on the issue, and has disabled chat while they do. 

UPDATE2: This issue has been resolved, and chat is back.