Michael Myers

I’m enjoying a long holiday weekend. Everyone enjoy your time off and stay safe.

If you have narrow feet and want your own customized shoes, go to Puma’s Mongolian Barbeque. The site launched in 2006 (yes, that was three years ago; I’m just getting around to it. I’ve been busy!) and allows you to customize your shoe just about any way you’d like it; except allow you to order it in a different width.

It is a perfect example of what most remember The Cluetrain Manifesto for, which is mass customization. The interface allows you to select colors and materials from a pallet to create a very customized tool. The options are amazing and one of the best features allows you to look through a gallery of shoes that users have created. Some of my favorites are (you will need to be logged in to view these):

• Papagei
• spice
• AsinineDelusion
• Japanese Passion
• jyj1

This ‘Anonymous’ person has been busy!

I couldn’t think of what to name this shoe and won’t order it unfortunately. Have I mentioned that you need to have narrow feet to wear Pumas?

Found this great video of Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang talking about the 5 Eras of the Social Web.

Why can’t I stream movies from Netflix without being a member?

I understand Netflix not wanting to send a non-member a DVD but I’m not talking about that. I just want to stream a movie and don’t really want to join. This is not because I don’t like the company but because I can’t plan out when I’ll watch a movie due to the constraints of fatherhood. Netflix is one of those great companies that I would like to play a part in the success of but they really need to let me stream a movie for $5 when I want to instead of making me join.

I called them and asked them if I could stream a movie without being a member. (Maybe I missed it on the site.) The incredibly nice (and not in a fake way) customer service rep told me that I could not do that. When I asked her why that was, she told me she did not know. Can’t figure out why with respect to technology or their business model, I can’t do this.

Okay. Done venting. I wonder what’s on Hulu?

For those of you living under a very heavy rock, buried deep underground, there is this service called Twitter which has recently garnered a lot of attention. It uses what is called “micro-blogging” (140 characters or less) to tell others that follow you, what you’re up to. A personal RSS feed. Very simple idea and even though we are just at the beginning of this phenomenon I’m starting to see some coalescence.

I use Twitter as a resource for information about social media, the mobile Internet and the iPhone. These are the social objects, which are the most important partof a niche social network.  The people and groups that I follow are passionate about these things and share valuable information. I contribute when I feel compelled, which I hope everyone else is doing. (I still get an occasional useless tweet from an individual about learning how to gain thousands of Twitter followers in one day!) I also use Twitter’s built in search (sorry Search.Twitter.com) to find people with similar interests and collect information on areas of interest.

Twitter has quickly become a ”user generated data based platform” with hundreds of applications sitting on top. (Good list for businesses in my 11 Twitter case studies post.) Most of those serve Twitter itself and over time they will reach well beyond.

Facebook is filled with people that I know but may not share similar interests. The same is true for LinkedIn and they along with Facebook  embrace the niche with groups. The difference between Twitter and Facebook/LinkedIn is inherent in Twitter’s DNA. Twitter started as a real time, mobile enabled medium. Facebook has recently added these elements and LinkedIn as of yet, has not. There are tools that allow you to create niche groups and users are doing this at a grassroots level by inviting people they follow on Twitter to follow them on Facebook and/or LinkedIn thus extending the niche social network across multiple networks. I listed Facebook and LinkedIn, only because they are the largest. If you register for a service like chi.mp or DandyID you’ll see more niche networks than you can imagine.

Twitter is not only allowing you to create your own niche network ogranically it may end up being the hub of all networks (niche or not) simply becuase of its popularity and it real time updates via services like Digsby or the built in mobile capability.

My site was hacked last night. Why would someone hack my site?!?!? I don’t have a million viewers. I’m not Michael Arrington. I haven’t pissed anyone off . . lately (that I’m aware of). So if you’re accessing this site with IE; you won’t see the difference. If you’re accessing it with Firefox, Chrome or Safari it declares this site as an attack site and you had to click a link to view it. And thank you very much for clicking in.

The hack has been removed and the code has been updated. I’m awaiting a Google update so the afore metnioned browsers show my site without this alert. Could take 6 up to weeks?!?!?!

Who has time for this? Someone needs a Girlfriend.

It has been a while since I posted about the Corporate Social Graph and felt it was time for an update with a focus on transparency. The overarching premise of the CSG is that online businesses are expected to behave more like individuals and that they need to inhabit social outposts on the Internet (abiding to the established behaviors of that venue), in the end building a social graph for that businesses.

When a business sets out to create a social graph they need to select the right venues to participate in, given their brand and resources in-house. Is your business a Facebook business or a Friendster business? (Yes Friendster still exists and is doing quite well with certain international demographics.) Does your business need a Twitter strategy or is it better served by Brightkite’s locational focus? (Kogi should use Brightkite.) Know thy business and be true to your nature.

The other aspect of being true to one’s nature is insuring that the person who is handling these mediums is the right person.

• If Facebook is who we are, then you need to have someone that is excellent at describing the business in a real way. (Sorry marketing and communications folks. Marko-babble is dead due to transparency and search engine optimization.)
• If Twitter is what we are doing, then you need someone(s) that is on the go, talking about their latest endeavour. (The service that enable multiple people update one Twitter account is called CoTweet. Yes; two people could update one account but that wouldn’t be transparent, now would it?)
• If Brightkite is where you are, then you need someone who is in transit most of the time; not in traffic but going to interesting places.

As I’ve said before, in  some cases this does not have to be an employee. It could be a rabid fan and depending on your budget and your level of trust, they may be your best answer. Either way, the proclivity to communicate the who, what and where needs to be inherent in that person’s nature. Don’t make one person try to do all things. It won’t work. Having multiple people work on representing the company will build brand depth and is a better strategy. If you don’t have the people to do this then you should seriously question, whether you should be participating in this part of the social graph.

I also want to be clear that I’m not saying a business can’t use these outposts “inefficiently” or as simple distribution. You can, however you’ll be missing the core of the Corporate Social Graph; interaction.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story of The Scorpion and the Frog, it can be found here.