It’s been interesting to see the traffic (or lack there of) on the blog.

I hardly blogged for most of December, January, and February. The new “panel project” series started in mid March. The traffic has been mostly flat. Comments have been all but absent.

What I think is happening is that most readers have moved to aggregators and other “points of entry” such as Twitter and Facebook. I also think independent blogs are on the decline. I see a significant uptick in “blogs” which are contained within Facebook. The FB content are “pages” with extended length updates but they have the same experience as a blog even if the technology is different.

I have not decided how these observations will change my blogging. I will keep my “publications” public so going the Facebook route is not for me (even though I could create a public page) but I may change the layout and tools I use for my blog to allow an easier mix of both short and long updates – more like a blend of tweets and photos and posts.

It’s been interesting to see the traffic (or lack there of) on the blog.

I hardly blogged for most of December, January, and February. The new “panel project” series started in mid March. The traffic has been mostly flat. Comments have been all but absent.

What I think is happening is that most readers have moved to aggregators and other “points of entry” such as Twitter and Facebook. I also think independent blogs are on the decline. I see a significant uptick in “blogs” which are contained within Facebook. The FB content are “pages” with extended length updates but they have the same experience as a blog even if the technology is different.

I have not decided how these observations will change my blogging. I will keep my “publications” public so going the Facebook route is not for me (even though I could create a public page) but I may change the layout and tools I use for my blog to allow an easier mix of both short and long updates – more like a blend of tweets and photos and posts.

This morning I saw a post by someone asking if people like a particular mini-van. The short answer is you can bet there is a new car purchase in the near future and the winning brand owes it all to social networking.

If you read anything in the news about social sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Buzz, and more, one thing becomes evident – "people take advice from their network". This is true for the good and the bad. People are very likely to make decisions based on the positive or negative feedback of people in their network. We trust our network much more than advertising, and even more than "reviews".

Of course, people are also looking for more sources – not just their friends (who might be biased) or marketing, or reviews – but all of these and more …

Consumers are a distrustful bunch in general — the credibility of TV dropped 23 points and radio news and newspapers were down 20 points between 2008 and 2010. - Michael Bush, Advertising Age

However, companies are not all up to speed on the significance of social networks.

A majority of today’s consumers rely to some extent on social networks to help guide them in purchase decisions. Despite this fact, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and others, while critical, are currently an underutilized aspect to the marketing process. - Gartner Research vi Sarah Perez, RedWriteWeb

Today’s consumers have multiple [virtual] places to get information. However, since most can be accessed from a single computer, the consumer is quick to build an opinion of a product, service, or brand. If you are in the business of selling a product or service, it’s very important to know what people are saying about you – more so that what you are saying about yourself !

I only recently took the time to experiment with Twitter. "The question has always been, how do I get value from Twitter ?"

The reason it has taken me so long is I WILL NOT TWEET MY EVERY MOVE / THOUGHT / DIATRIBE / etc. Further, I really don’t what to listen to others’ every move / thought / diatribe / etc.  And on the surface, *that* is exactly what Twitter seems to be.

So what is Twitter ? It’s nothing more and nothing less than a short messaging service.

What makes Twitter interesting is *how* people use Twitter. Yes, there are those that tweet (the act of sending a short message through Twitter) verbal diarrhea. There are also those who use Twitter as self promotion (where ‘self’ is either the individual or the company). There are also those who use it an an intelligent pub/sub infrastructure. The unique bit is that Twitter itself has almost none of the intelligence – it is how people use Twitter and how they have developed clients and tools that leverage Twitter that is interesting. One of the most powerful of this is the ‘hashtag" …

Once you’ve started using Twitter, it won’t take long before you come across what’s known as a hash tag. That’s when you see something in a tweet that has a # prefix. (The # is a hash symbol, hence the term hash tag or hashtag.)

For example, if you’ve seen tweets related to the recent U.S. government stimulus bill, you may have noticed some of them had #stimulus in them.

It took me a while to wrap my head around what the purpose of this thing was but, once I “got it,” I realized it’s not as complicated as it seems.

A hash tag is simply a way for people to search for tweets that have a common topic. For example, if you search on #LOST (or #Lost or #lost, because it’s not case-sensitive), you’ll get a list of tweets related to the TV show. What you won’t get are tweets that say “I lost my wallet yesterday” because “lost” isn’t preceded by the hash tag.

It is the "search" aspect of hashtags that is so powerful. You do not need to "follow" every user and you do not need to read every tweet. You find (or create) a hashtag that relates to a topic of interest and you "subscribe" to it. Most Twitter clients let you create persistent searches. In this way, you do not need to know all of the user who are discussing a topic, you just need to know the hashtag for that topic.

… hash tags are NOT any kind of official Twitter function. The company has not created a list of topics that we can browse through to see if there’s one that interests us … any user can create one simply by adding it to their own tweet.

For example, when the plane went down in the Hudson River some Twitter user wrote a post and added #flight1549 to it … somebody else read it and when he posted something about the incident, added #flight1549 to *HIS* tweet. it didn’t take long for this hash tag to go viral … it’s a very organic process.

[Before creating a new hashtag] The first thing I would do is a basic Twitter search on the term itself so I can see if someone’s already created a related hash tag. Before you create your own tag, you might want to search on a few variations to make sure they don’t already exist.

Source: The Twitter Hash Tag: What Is It and How Do You Use It?

I only follow a small number of people but I have hashtag searches on a number of topics and it is the tweets on those specific topics that provide the value. Not only can I learn about the topic, I can also ask questions to "the community" (regardless of who that may be). In my first few examples of asking questions I had multiple good answers in a matter of seconds! The power of a huge network of people, connected by a simple messaging service.

Nine hundred and forty-eight dollars. That’s the annual dollar value of each person in your email address book at work, according to a novel IBM study published in the Winter Information Systems Conference in February 2009.

IBM researchers, together with researchers in MIT, were looking to scientifically determine how valuable electronic social networks are, such as those in a group that primarily communicates electronically … they found that people with strong email ties with a manager, or had a more diverse circle of correspondents, enjoyed greater financial success than those who were more aloof. Teams with an even mix of genders also performed well financially. Individuals have more diverse networks and thus have more people who are reachable within 2 social steps (i.e., your friends’ friends’ friends.) is valuable.

Source: SmallBlue Research Projects

Of course, that’s the "attention getter" that news media report and not much else. A little more digging explains the demographic and thus the empirical tie o dollars and cents …

The big caveats to this study involve the profession they’re in—IT consulting. That means that their financial imperative is to draw more billable hours out of the time and communication they put into IBM’s infrastructure. So being a social presence with the higher-ups isn’t just a team exercise for them, because for a consultant:

… It is crucial to avoid bench time as much as possible and increase utilizations by lining up projects ahead of
time. At the same time, searching for high-value projects that command higher wages is also important, as these
projects can generate higher revenue for each hour worked. Accessing a wider array of information about new
project opportunities gives consultants the first mover advantage. Being the first to apply for high-value projects
increases the likelihood of a consultant to be selected.

You can avoid the news media’s digestive system and get the raw nutrients by reading the report (PDF).

Oh, and anyone looking for a check for $948 from me, don’t bother – since we’re in the same network, it means we both deserve the money and it cancels out. Sorry.

I had the dumb luck and good sense to call a friend of mine “out of the blue”. The call may have been inspired by our mutual appreciation of a particular beverage but more so than not, it was driven by a real appreciation of life.

For anyone who remembers the lyrics to “Wear Sunscreen“, there is one bit of sage advice,

“Understand that friends come and go, but what a precious few should hold on.? Work hard to bridge the gaps and geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.”

If asked which friends I’d call for the greatest or worst news of my life, there are a few that come to mind – Oregon, Maine, Maryland, and Washington (both the district and the state) would be on the list as would New Hampshire and Massachusetts. It may not seem like a lot, but the depth and breadth of these few is astounding. Obviously there are lots more and I try (not too well I must admit) to stay in touch with each of them. FYI, feel free to harass me if you feel left out!

For me, what sets apart *real* friends from usual friends and a quaintnesses is the ability to chat for hours about nearly nothing and yet feel happy to have spent the time or to call “down” and close “happy and uplifted”. The time is just open. There is no “catching up”; rather, the ramblings bounce from topic to topic, as if an idle conversation over coffee or a cocktail.

So, If you are feeling up for a challenge, pick up the phone (don’t even think about using email). Find a long lost number in your Rolodex. And dial, dial, dial. (then smile, smile, smile). Consider this a new “top” on your to-do list if you dare <grin>