Global Neighbourhoods

Iran Ponders Death Sentence to some Bloggers

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb posts a troubling story about Iran, a country who already imprisons bloggers and execute citizens at an ambitious rate. The religiously conservative government is considering execution as punishment for bloggers who establish " sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy. Apostasy means the abandonment of a religion. The official Iranian news agency reports that the bill is intended to toughen punishment for harming mental security in society."

When Scoble and I were writing our book we had a good deal of trouble finding the right title. The book began as "The Red Couch," and became "Naked Conversations." For a lng time in-between, we wanted to name it "Blog or Die," until Steven Streight sent us a crisp comment, "In too many countries, the choice is really 'blog AND die.' Your title is in extremely poort taste."

We could not argue with his viewpoint and changed the name of the book in response. It seems to me the petty battles of some if us bloggers in the West are dwarfed by the harsh realities of everyday people who risk imprisonment and execution exercizing rights that we in the West consider "self evident."

Happy Independence Day all you US citizens out there. Let us be happy for what we have.

Court Orders Google to report what You Watch on YouTube

In what seems to me to be a disturbing and inexplicable decision, the Southern Court of New York has ruled for Viacom and against Google in a suit that will require Google to make available information on the videos you watch at YouTube. The court essentially decided that to ensure Viacom can examine source code of user-posted clips, it will allow Viacom to get personal infoprmation on what videos you and I watch in what we thought was the privacy f our own screen.The EFF explains the details and repercussions.

I had heard about this case but did not bother to follow it because I never thought such a blatant disregard for personal privacy rights would ever pass approval in a Federal Court. I hope the highest court has a clearer view of the Constitution when it inevitably reviews this one. The repercussions are far reaching and downright scary in my opinion.

Doc Searls is going Home!

Through Scripting News, I've learned that Doc Searls is sucking ice, rather than getting his water through an IV and that better still, the incredible pain he has been enduring has subsided and--best of all--Doc is scheduled to get out of the hospital on Sunday.

Be well, Doc. The world is a better place with you in it.

Charlene Li Leaving Forrester

Charlene Li, one of the brightest lights in social media , has announced that after nine years she is leaving Forrester Research where she is the most senior member of the West Coast team. She recently co-authored Groundswell, a superb book that demonstrates how social media can be used to achieve business objectives.

I often deceive myself into thinking I know Charlene better and for longer than I do. It is in part, because I have been reading her blog since before I started blogging and because her frequent public talks have greatly influenced my thinking. He perception in 2006 that "geography has become irrelevant" was a seed that grew into my concept of Global Neighbourhoods.

Charlene also had the wisdom to hire Jeremiah, who has done a good job of filling a Forrester void that will become large when Charlene departs on July 18.

Charlene writes that she is leaving because of the difficulties of balancing family and professional issues, a proclamation often used by departing executives. In her case, I absolutely believe it to be true. An analyst's life is grueling, filled with more travel than most people want, facing a public expectation of being always right which is of course not possible. Every time I've had the pleasure to chat with Charlene, over the past couple of years, she has talked about the challenges of balancing family and career.

Since she's a neighbor of mine in the world where geography is indeed relevant, I'm hopeful that this will give me the opportunity to actually spend more time with her, perhaps at a more leisurely pace.

Social Media & the Cost of Fuel

Paula & I just changed plans to visit our daughter in Dallas because of the high price of airfare and the lack of direct connections. A friend who's a retailer at Tahoe tells me he expects a terrible July 4th weekend because of the high price of gasoline. Another friend--in a Fortune 100 company tells me that travel budgets are being zeroed out as a cost cutter.

There simply is no dispute about it. Habits are changing because of fuel costs. Those habits, I think will also impact the economy, not for the short time but for a long time to come.

Even as a social media evangelist, I have often and repeatedly noted that nothing replaces face-to-face meetings. In almost every major city of the Western world there will be at least one meet-up tonight between people who have already talked to each other and built relationships online. The number of conferences related to social media continues to rise.This is because we still need to see and talk to other people.

Most everyone prefers to buy goods that they can see and touch and a brick and mortar store is clearly a  better venue for it than a virtual space. There are exceptions we all know, plane tickets, books, music have all become easier, cheaper and faster to buy online. And stores that used to sell them are slowly disappearing from the landscape.

But now, fuel costs are starting to change more--a lot more than would have been the case if the price of a barrel of oil had not double each year for the last two years. By not flying to Dallas, a hotel and car rental place loses a sale. Several restaurants lose sales and so on.

I think we are seeing the beginning of some longterm trends, many f which will increase the use of the Internet in general and social media specifically:

• Conferences designed to attract national and international speakers and attendees will wane next year. There will be fewer of them and they will be smaller. This reverses the trend of the last three years. Instead, there will be more online conversations using a variety of tools. A big winner will be the virtual conferences that use a variety of tools to get attendees and presenters to see, hear and interact online.

• Businesses will increasingly use social media to get closer with customers. This, of course, is already happening and happening at a pretty fast rate.  But I think the trend is about to accelerate. Because it is getting too expensive and inconvenient to meet face-to-face in the real world, there will be more efforts to bring the conversation to the next best place, in the form of virtual communities.

• An increase in video. Online video is already on the steep end of the well-graphed hockey stick. But it's use for online conversations, such as Skype, Mogulus, Kyte.tv and Qik are offering are about to explode I think simply because seeing each other as you converse is better than just texting and a lot more convenient than flying.

There are probably a lot more examples. As much as I advocate social media and online commerce, I am not so happy to be looking at this one. It will be a long time before the Western world loses it's addictive dependence on fossil fuels. Until that happens our lifestyles are going to be more restricted.

I'm thankful for the Internet and broadband because without them we all might be heading  loser to lives in the little house on the prairie and that would not be a good thing.

• Online communities.

HR Block beats analyst estimates. Did Social Media play a role?

In a time when most market news is bad, H&R Blocks has reported a stellar quarter. I wonder if social media may have played a role in it. As my interview a while ago with Paula Drum revealed the company has been using Twitter, Second Life, FaceBook and other social media to rejuvenate its market position and attract younger customers.

Liz Strauss on how to keep on course in social networks

There is so much signal and noise online about how there is too much signal and noise. We kvetch about too many emails, panic about not being able to read Twitter replies for a few days and use five social networks to promote the content we post on a 6th. Several people have posted over the past week on the need to go cold turkey and not be connected all the time.

Liz Strauss has done so this morning with an almost poetic elegance. She talks about having more connections online today than she had relationships as a kid.

"My life is replete with relationships and complex connections. Now I
have more social network passwords than the number of friends I had
when I was kid." Her solution, like so many of us is to turn it off now and then.

I do the same. On a recent Tahoe vacation I limited myself to one hour a day online. It was a tremendous help in letting me recharge my battery and make a series of important decisions.

Best Buy Visits WorkFast

Breaking New Social Media Ground Behind the Firewall

[Best Buy exec Michele Azar chats with Robert Scoble at WorkFast. Photo by Shel]

Robert and I hosted our 4th episode of WorkFast Friday as we live hosted Best Buy's Michele Azar, VP Emerging Customer Channels & Gary Koelling, founder of BlueShirt Nation (BSN). Steve Bendt, the other BSN founder looked on and would have joined except for the silly reason that our table was too small.  I had dinner the night before with the three of them and by the time for our live broadcast it felt like we were old friends. After the live broadcast and live chat, Robert joined us for a two-hour sushi lunch.

I am very impressed with what Best Buy has done in the space of little more than a year in a category that has generally ignored using social media in either credible or constructive ways. Most of Best Buy's efforts have been behind the firewall. BlueShirt Nation is a social network for floor help, the people who breathe the same air as customers. In slightly over a year, this project, started somewhat ad hoc by Gary and Steve has 22,000 members of the 150,000-person organization. Michele, who is pretty high up in the corporate structure says the strategy is to  empower employees and fight bureaucracy across the 1300 store network.

BSN nations has chalked up quite a few victories. It lets rank-and-file employees help each other and it lets senior management understand the perceptions of the people who actually talk to customers all day long. It has been used to educate employees about 401K benefits to double enrollment and increase employee retention. It has been used to organize political action to block some proposed boneheaded legislation. It has been used to help employees during disruption of natural disaster.

[BlueShirt Nation co-founders Steve Bendt (l) and Gary Koelling. Photo by Shel]

There are other social media programs behind-the-firewall including a Geek Squad social network that started with an online-based game. We'll cover that somewhere down the line.

Michele says the the company is using employee empowerment as a business strategy, on that can improve the bottom line of a company that sold $40 b last year, bring nearly a quarter of it to the bottom line. She says that longterm, the company is likely to use social media for direct engagement with customers.

Personally, I think Best Buy has one of the great untold stories in social media and think that Michel and Gary are two outstanding company representatives who will probably be seen in the coming year on the social media conference circuit. I recommend them both as speakers and/or panelist.

If you missed the live show, it will be posted tomorrow morning at FastCompany.TV. Because of the July 4 holiday, we will be broadcasting live at 10 am, Thursday, July 3. Our guest will be Tim Ferriss, author of the best-selling "The 4-Hour Workweek." He'll be with us for an hour, presumably leaving him only three to do other business next week, I would guess.

10 Questions NOT to ask a Social Media Panel

OnLineSpin hits the state of the Q&A at conferences these days.

I would have just posted this in a tweet except Twitter is spending the weekend in a coma.

Quote for today from Dave Winer

From Dave Winer on FriendFeed: The First Amendment says you have the right to say (almost) whatever you want. But it doesn't say anyone has to listen. ”

Connie Benson Joining ShashiB at Network Solutions

Connie Benson, one of those old friends that I have never met face-to-face has just announced  she will be joining Shashi Bellamkonda as a social media honcho at Network Solutions where she will contribute to the SolutionsArePower.com blog.

From where I sit, these are two bright, decent and hard-working social media champions. I interviewed Shashi back in February, not long after Shashi became the first Network Solutions social media person. Now they have doubled their force.

Both are active and well known on Twitter as well [@conniebenson & @shashib].

Links to GNTV clips

In case you would still like to see any of the 14 GNTV episodes I produced for FastCompany.TV, here are the links with the more recents interviews on top:

Behind the scenes with Eepybird
NBC's NewMediaJim In the crosshairs between old and new
Dell's Binhammer: Measure Whatever. It's customers that matter
KD Paine: The human side of measurement
BuzzLogic: Measuring Influence
Radian6. A Measure of Success
A talk with the Twitter Guys
Making a Splash at SeaWorld
Disney Interactive. Raising Kids on Social Networks
Sun Micro's Peter Reiser Talks of the ROI on Social Networks
GM's Bob Lutz talks Blogging & Global Warming
Intel's Paul Otellini & Processing Social Media
Hugh MacLeod explains the gestures of Social Objects
Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang talks on Community

WorkFast Hosting Best Buy

While WorkFast, the show I co-host with Robert Scoble is focused on workplace productivity, it is nice to have overlap with my hot topic of social media. Tomorrow at 10 am Pacific time, Best's Buy's Michele Azar and  Gary Koelling will be our guests. Michele is VP, Emerging Customer Channels & will discuss how the world leading retailer in consumer electronics is using behind-the-firewall social networks to get employees more engaged. Gary, co-founded the astounding BlueShirt Nation, a social network of 22,000 employees.

After the show, we will have a live chat with both of them. For both events, or t see our prior shows just go to WorkFast.TV.

Radian6 Twebinar today is a good bet

For those of you trying to figure out social media, I think the Radian6 Twebinars that start at 11 am Pacific Today are a pretty good bet to be worth your time. I'm saying this, not because I play a small part in it and not because it is backed by SNCR, where I am a senior fellow, but because Chris Brogan is a thoughtful and talented interviewing host who is an expert on the subjects he covers with a superb selection of interviewees. I have not seen it yet, but my sense is that it will be a great venue for interesting and useful material on social media.

Give it a watch if you have time and inclination.

Hugh MacLeod's Quote for today

[Quick draw artist Hugh MacLeod at work with unidentified fans in San Francisco. Photo by Shel]

Hugh MacLeod, the noted Illustrator 2.0 is explaining yet again his Blue Monster 2.0 concept for Social  objects. That part is good, but he has stated it before. But he closes with my quote for the day:

"Ideas within companies are like people within companies. It doesn't matter how good they are, there has to be a cultural fit or else it's a complete waste if time; you're just fighting a losing battle."

He's right, of course. We can never overestimate the importance of culture.