Global Neighbourhoods

Shel Israel & the Detroit Wheels

         
                          [Detroit River looking at Canada. Photo by Shel]

The guy next to me on the flight to Detroit wanted to know why I was headed to his hometown. I told him I was with FastCompany TV and I was visiting GM & Ford. He scowled. "Another trash Detroit story," he muttered, picking up a Grisham novel and ignoring me for the remainder of the flight. From the airport, I hopped into a taxi where the driver told me he had worked on the line at Ford for 18 years before getting laid off last year. He asked me why I was in Detroit and I told him. "Another trash Detroit story," he muttered and we drove the remainder of the way in silence.

People from Detroit have become accustomed to journalists writing about the burned out buildings you see along the freeway from the Airport into the city. They're tired of comments about their main industry in atrophy.

There was no use telling these redundant skeptics that I had come in search of good news. The Detroit-in-trouble story has been done and done again and is old news. I was here to see what was going on in social media at Ford & GM. My best story was to be able to report on a great turnaround taking place. Being the first to report that--if true--would make me a bit of prophet.

 

In fact, after one day at GM and another at Ford, I found numerous glimmers of hope. I saw uses of virtual reality (VR) and machine-human integration that persuaded me on a personal and inexpert level that happier days and better cars were in Detroit's near-term future. Perhaps, or perhaps, as a non-expert in automotive these were just diamonds in coal mines.

At both companies, I also found small bands of social media champions. People who have at least sipped from the same Kool Aid bowl where I have immersed my head. I perceived these two small teams to be pushing huge boulders up mountains laced with the barbed wire barriers of process and culture.

One of these team members confided in me that he often gets frustrated, but every day when he goes home, he realizes that he has inched just a little further up that mountain and that makes it worth it. I admire his tenacity and his patience.

I saw some amazing and impressive things, some social, that go beyond your everyday blogs, podcasts and Tweets. I saw people talking and collaborating with each other through technology. I was impressed with GM's design center, where I saw how ideas become realities through a process that includes machine CAD, robotics and artists working in clay. I learned how a car, designed exclusively on machines may create a vehicle that is sterile to people, whose interior colors are just a bit off for human comfort. "We use computers, of course, but we need clay to give our models life," I saw models of some very hot Cadillacs of tomorrow that are mere concepts today. I was impressed not just by the model, but by the passion of the Design Center guy who escorted me.

                         [Cheryl Bruins Rozier. Photo by Shel]

Over at Ford, I got to tour  the Virtual Build Center, which is equally impressive. I interviewed Cheryl Bruins Rozier, it's manager in sort of a war room at the Center's nexus.There, the companies ecosystem, sits and reviews screen after screen after screen of ever weld point on a new design. They use VR to determine whether a weld or screw twist is better done by robot or human. There are cameras that allow engineers in remote locations to see what is being viewed projected in the room,  and join the conversation.

I would love to have included video footage of both these experiences. After all, I was there as a video reporter. But in both cases, I was not allowed to record what I saw and was being told. Both companies have promised to send me B-Roll, but my guess is that it will be too polished for the handheld style that I will be using at FastCompany.tv. Rozier, did all a CAD drawing a Ford wheel, but it hardly had the complexity and visually and collaboratively striking qualities of what I was allowed to view, but not record.

At GM, I was permitted this "stolen" click of GM Social Media operative

             [GM's Natalie Johnson in VR Center. Photo by Shel]

Natalie Johnson in the GM 'CAVE' immersive environment studio. The company uses CAVE to simulate what an actual ride in design concept would look like. CAVE reduces prototyping by automating virtual environments. An old Chevy Tahoe, I was told, required GM to build 279 physical models costing between $15 K and $1 million each. CAVE reduces a new concept's model 50 or fewer models educing scrap, costs and time-to-market significantly.

The blank wall you are seeing above looks a lot different when it is not grayed out. Natalie is sitting in a driver's seat. In front of her, there's a steering wheel, a dashboard and windshield, precisely replicating one's they will build once the VR refines the design. As was true at Ford's virtual manufacturing facility ecosystem team members in remote locations can see precisely what the virtual driver is seeing and experiencing.

(BTW Natalie is one of the GM social media team, one of the ones who 'gets it' and spends time pushing boulders up mountains.)

What I did manage to capture on video that I will be using in a couple of weeks at FastCompany.tv is footage of me looking absolutely goofy under a VR helmet at Ford, where I got in and out of a virtual car prototype, while what I was seeing got projected onto a screen. It felt very much the way I remember 1968, except that others could see what I saw and this is helping them design cars better.

The trip's highlight was my 30-minute interview with Bob Lutz, GM's controversial vice chairman. In 2005, I had interviewed him for Naked Conversations and had been impressed with his candor. I still am. Shortly before my arrival there, Lutz had set foot into a PR bucket by having been quoted as saying that he thought global warming may be "a crock." What some coverage omitted was that he emphasized that what he thought personally would not change GM's commitment to "removing cars" from the environmental conversation by removing dependence on fossil fuels. What was also omitted in some coverage was the fact that Lutz had inspired and spearheaded the soon-to-be-real Volt, touted as Detroit's greenest car.

Most of my talk was about social media and why he had started blogging to begin with as well as his impressive vision for social media's role in GM's future. The man drips charisma and FastCompany will probably post almost all of my 30-minute interview with him.

What's my takeaway from Detroit? I'm not certain. GM has some great blogs going. When I made entries over on Twitter about my trip to Detroit, three of their four-member social media team were quick to join the conversation. Ford, to date, has no blogs. It has embraced what is called a social media press release which makes it easier for traditional and online media journalist to get precisely the information they're after. But they have yet to blog and no one in the company joined my little Twitversation.

Both companies reinforced the thoughts I expressed in my recent "two camps" post. At Ford and GM there are small groups of social media champions. They ave a passion for it. They understand the value of conversations with customers, partners and ecosystems. At GM, in the form of Lutz, they have the highest ranking member of any enterprise occasionally blogging in the form of Lutz.

But they are minorities in entrenched cultures who are still embracing the way it has always been done, who do not yet understand that transparency is the best way to restore customer trust; who see social media as yet another way to push message out, rather than to listen to what people have to tell them.

As Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point subtitle declares: "Little things make a big difference." There are lots of little things going on in social media. At both companies, these things are integrated with two sincere dedications to making better cars than they have made in recent years and whether or not big differences occur remains to be seen.

Jeremiah's 3 'Impossible' Enterprise Conversations

         

                 [Jeremiah Owyang,ponders impossible conversations. Photo by Shel]

Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang has added to the conversation I started yesterday on 2 social media camps forming in most enterprises. He's right. The issues he points to--asking for public feedback, admitting when you are wrong and "good-mouthing" competitors are the three issues of intransigence for one of the two camps. When I address them, I sometimes hear the grinding of heels as they dig into the floor.

Funny, I recently interviewed the top guys at two of the world's largest companies. Michael Dell had no problem with being transparent on touchy issues and, as you will see on March 3, neither did Intel CEO Paul Otellini. From his recent posts, I think I'll have the same experience next week when I interview GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz. Most C-level executives seem to understand why conversations with customers are preferable to pushing messages at them.

Ironically, neither do the entry level knowledge workers coming into the enterprise, many of them born just after the Worldwide Web was introduced.

It's closer to the middle of the organization where the two camps form, and where one considers it

Two Social Media Camps in the Enterprise

I amazes me how much of my time is spent these days talking with people who represent some of the world's largest companies. This is really different for me, but it is where this social media journey has taken me.

I am convinced that for most large companies in many huge categories, the issue is no longer whether or not social media should be used. That genie is out of the bottle. If they want to engage a next generation that is coming into the marketplace and filling corporate seats, they must use it. What little analytics there indicate stupendous growth rates and this means that social media can no longer be disdained or dismissed.

The stress point has now moved to how the enterprise will use social media and I hear a lot about this these days. In nearly every company I talk with, I hear about those who understand that social media is something new and different from traditional marketing. It is not about putting messages into foreheads. It is about the enormous wisdom and efficiency to be gained simply by having conversations with customers, prospects, employees and partners. Clearly I am a champion of this camp.

But in my conversations with people who will be remembered as early pioneers of the new path, there is muttering and trepidation of another camp, one that is often being pushed by the traditional marketing people who see social media simply as another channel to push out brand awareness and product-related messages. It is another way to have the corporation talk about the corporation rather than listen to customer concerns, complaints or even compliments. This camp believes that early days of wide-eyed dreamers like me have passed and now that social media is swimming in the mainstream. It should be treated as mainstream marketing treats everything, a mechanism for the one-way pushing of message.

My Camp #1 friends are very concerned that those efforts by members of their enterprise will ruin it; will take social media and bend and distort it and thus ruin it for the rest of us. If Company XX marketing department produces smarmy social media programs, it will damage the credibility of Company XYZ's social media champions.

I have to admit, there is that danger. But I don't think it will come out that way. I don't think that someone who uses the new tools the way I happen to think they should be used will have their reputation suffer,  Let me tell you why.

So far, nearly every deceptive social media attempt has failed. Real people come to blogs and social media in search of real people they connect to. They are looking for content which is useful or interesting. Regular social media followers understand that Microsoft, for example,  does not, think with one mind, but with nearly 60,000 of them that GM does not speak with one voice or language, but with over 275,000. The 85,000 or so Intel employees do not march in step with each other and their taste in the drummers marking cadence is quite diverse.

So if you blog with transparency and candor about your corporate job and the guy down the hall is devising a character blog by a talking moose to extend brand, he or she may hurt the brand or simply waste company resources, but that effort will not hurt yours, and that is why, in the long run, the simple, interactive credible path will prove to be the wise course for most companies whose employees take pride in their products and services.

My views have very little to do with "soft values," that non-tangible feel good stuff that many executive officers frown up. It has more to do with the smartest business course. Technology has made conversations scalable. You can talk with customers in seconds all over the world. The cost of it is quite low. If you give your audience something valuable. If you show you are listening, you will gain significantly in customer retention, loyalty and their carrying your virtues forward with tools that put word of mouth on steroids.

Quite simply, social media is more efficient than traditional marketing. It lets you build better products and services. It shortens the time-to-customer. It is less costly than advertising and more effective. It gets the people most passionate about your company to talk to others where they have more influence than celebrity endorsement. It is more credible by far than traditional PR. It gives  your company greater prominence in search engines by orders of magnitude over traditional web sites.

Quite simply social media makes pragmatic business sense as both a customer relations engine and as a marketing, support and development cost-cutter.

There may be two camps in the enterprise today. But I have very little doubt that one will get larger as the other withers in atrophy.

Forrester's New Online Communities Report

I was interviewed for the new Forrester Report on Online Communities that was released yesterday. Actually, as I recall, Jeremiah asked folks on Twitter for a definition of online communities and he liked mine. He was the report's primary author. Because I contributed, I got to download the 17-page client report for free.

Of everything I have read to date on the subject of online communities, this is the most comprehensive and the most useful. It describes the multitude of options that a company faces in developing a commnity. It looks at each phase along the path to development. It even discusses the types of adversaries you might encounter in your community and how to deal with each. It is written in tight, clear, unambiguous language.

I would recommend the report to anyone interested in online communities, but you have to be a Forrester client to see it. If you happen to be one, then the report is well worth the $379 fee. If you don't like it, there's even a money back guarantee. If this report motivates you to subscribe to Forrester, you can sign up here.

, Josh Bernoff, Christine Spivey Overby, Scott Wright 

Dan Farber takes editorial helm at CNET

         

Dan Farber, the dean of tech journalists, has announced he will become editor in chief of CNET. He said there will be no more posts for him at his popular Between the Lines, ZDnet blog column.

It would embarrass Dan if I stated how highly I regard him. He's fierce as a reporter but kind as a human. He keeps secrets when asked, yet he's transparent about himself.

CNET was once the disruptor in terms of online reporting. But that was an earlier phase. I follow many members of the ZDNET team, but other than that I've pretty much forgotten about CNET itself. Dan knows news. He knows reporting and he understands social media as well as anyone. He also understands the information that the enterprise hungers for.

I expect to see no abrupt changes at CNET. But I expect to see a steady string of improvements. I also hope Dan finds time to come back to his blog column.

Mazel Tov, Dan.

Inching toward better measurement

         

Josh Hallett has an interesting post  on how Voce Communications is using Radian6 as a social media measurement tool for clients. I have no idea how great Radian is or is not, but measurement is one of the frontiers for social media. We need simpler and more accurate tools in this area.

I have not a clue how good or bad Radian is, but an endorsement from Josh goes some distance with me. Each new measurement tool seems to give some new useful or interesting insight.

Still, I have not yet heard of one that addresses my fundamental question: What should you measure?

Some people think I'm playing, but I am not. In traditional PR, you measure newspaper circulation, then make some goofy assumption that all readers of that newspaper, along with other family members read your clip. It's goofy but everyone knows it and you have a measurement stick in generally wide acceptance.

But blogs are different, or at least I still perceive of them as different. They are not about head counts, but about conversations. How do you measure a conversation? How do you measure it's quality? How do you measure the relevance of the people who are talking about you or your company or products?

Some day, someone will answer that question for me.

Clarification on the Roll-Your-Own SAP Survey

I've received a few answers to my request for a Roll-Your-Own survey and I greatly appreciate them, but I need to clarify something that I overlooked. If I am going to publish your Survey responses on my blog, what you have to say needs to be interesting or valuable to my readers. It needs to add a spoonful of insight to the general body of knowledge.

If you have a blog and you answer the questions I posted, send me the link and I will post a link back to your site. I realize that I voiced what I was looking for poorly a few days ago and I'm sorry if I raised some false hopes. But my customer is my reader and if I post something I need to believe some of my readers will find it valuable.

Rambling with a Librarian

Ivan Chew's inspiring classroom lecture           

                  

                  [Ivan Chew, Singapore's Rambling Librarian. Photo by Shel]

Ivan noticed the symmetry to the thing before I did. Three-and-a-half years ago, I met him while visiting Singapore on assignment for Network World. It was during a tour of the Jurong Public Library where he worked at the time. I told him that I has recently started blogging and he said some dismissive words about what blogging was about. As is my style I told him, somewhat nakedly, that I completely disagreed.

Now, three-and-a-half years later, here he was, giving a lecture to honor students at the University of San Francisco on the subject of blogging and I was video recording him for my soon-to-start FastCompany.tv video blog.

To my surprise, his talk tracked his 42-month journey, starting with our Singapore conversation. Perhaps, also to my surprise was how much blogging and social media had transformed the borders of Ivan's world from a small Island in the Asian Pacific to a global neighbourhood.

Ivan's talk was downright inspirational. You can see a synopsis of his slides and read his account of his trip so far on his blog, the Rambling Librarian. True to its name, it's in eight parts (so far).

Ivan talked about his nine blogs which cover almost every aspect of his Renaissance interests. He talked about blogs for the elderly. He has a 72-year-old cousin who blogs. He discussed a 10-year-old blogger he knows. Answering a question from a University librarian about the possibility of books disappearing, he asked "What difference does it make?" Reading is what matters. His philosophy as a librarian is to encourage everyone to read, to read about any subject they wish to cover.

He rambled a bit, of course, but each segment of his talk, made a point that contributed to his outlook that online conversations are valuable to all of society's members. But he talked with passion and authority. He inspired the students who asked a very high quality and quantity of thoughtful questions. I video recorded him following his talk, but I don't think I recaptured the magic of his classroom chat.

There's a second stroke of irony here. Of all the talks I've given in the last two years, I felt the one that failed to inspire, that failed to get audience engagement was before a group of Librarians in Long Beach. I left that event, with doubts that American librarians would join the social media revolution in any great numbers and in ways that will help their physical communities to understand the value to them of global conversations.

Maybe next year, the librarians should have Ivan as their guest speaker. He'd hit it out of the park. I have no doubt.

SAP Global Survey: hi5's Ramu Yalamanchi

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Perhaps the Greatest Untold Story in Social Networking

                   [Ramu Yalamanchi, Speaking in Mexico. Photo by IAB Mexico.]

(NOTE: This is my 65th interview for the SAP Global Survey on social media's impact on culture and business. You can find previous interviews from people in 30 countries by clicking on the SAP Category of this site, or just by Googling 'SAP Global Survey.')

Quick, a pop Quiz. Name the world's most popular social networks. Okay, narrow it down to US-based. Okay narrow it down to the online social networks located just in the Bay Area. Who comes to mind?

I'm betting very few of you named hi5 Networks. Yet, this is a network that has been around since 2003, has 80 million users in over 200 countries, is growing by 150,000 new users daily and has been profitable for over two years.

We asked Ramu Yalamanchi, who stepped out of eGroups after it was acquired by Yahoo to become hi5 co-founder and CEO how he accomplished this without spending much on marketing or PR and his answer seems simple. Offer something universally simple and highly localized and get people to want their friends and family to have conversations with them.

Here's my Q&A with Ramu:

1. Can we start by you giving me some idea of the hi5 size and scope? How many countries are you in? How many members do you have? How fast are you growing?

Alexa ranks us as a Top 10 site globally, and as the #1 or #2 most-trafficked in nearly a dozen Latin America, European and Asian countries. We are the #1 social network in Peru, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Portugal, Thailand, Romania, Macedonia, Cyprus, Greece, Mauritus and several other nations around the world.

As of February 2008, we had 80 million registered users in more than 200 nations. On the average, about 50% of these users are active on the site every month. Each day, we grow by at least 150,000 new users.

2. hi5 seems to be one of social media's great untold stories. Let's back up for a second. Can you tell me how and when hi5 got started? What was your vision then and how has that vision evolved?

We launched hi5 in late 2003 to provide a service that connected people to one another in a useful and meaningful way. The service was actually an evolution of a prior website Akash Garg and I had launched, a matchmaking service for South Asians. My brother actually met his wife through that initial service, making my mother very happy.

As we evolved into hi5, we expanded our service, but kept our focus abroad. While other social networks at the time were focusing primarily on the U.S. market, we were interested in the growing number of people coming online all over the world. We saw that as a tremendous opportunity to build a valuable service where people could interact with their friends and express themselves.

From early on, we focused on creating a service that would be easy-to-use and meaningful for people in many different countries and cultures around the world. We started with a simple design, made sure that we had high quality translations, and built relationships with media companies in regions where we saw a lot of usage. We’re now available in 14 languages -- with more coming online every month – and also offer customer support in Spanish as well. We’ll continue to explore culturally-relevant services and features that will enhance the online experience of our diverse international user communities. 

3. You are among the world's largest social networks, and yet we hear very little about you. A Google search produces very few news stories. Was this prolonged stealth intentional? How do users learn about you and join?

That will soon change. The U.S. media is realizing what a world class service we are building – as the online users in numerous countries around the world already do.

In fact, our user base has grown entirely through word of mouth. We haven’t done marketing – the users have promoted the service for us by bringing their friends into it. It helps make their experience meaningful when they have friends on the site. We’ll continue to listen to our users as they tell us what they want to see on hi5, and how we can make it better for them. In turn, we hope they will continue to tell more friends and the site will continue to grow in popularity globally. 

4. What are the primary reasons people join hi5? Can you give me some demographic information? Who is a typical user? Does this vary or stay the same from country to country or language group to language group?

Generally speaking, the bulk of our users are between the ages of 18-35, and we have a balanced mix of men and women. We are also particularly popular among the global Spanish-language community. 

However, given that we have millions of users in so many different locations around the world, there are a great number of ways that people use the service. As our members bring their friends onto the service, they build a shared history of their lives, learn what’s happening around them, and discover new people through the service.

The same cultural nuances that you find offline, you will also find online. A service feature that is popular in one country might be less so in another country. We look for ways to tailor the service to our users’ diverse preferences, involving them in the process through discussion forums and direct dialogue, and by working with developers to create a breadth of culturally-relevant applications.   


5. Do people tend to stay inside their own geographic boundaries or search elsewhere?

It depends on where their friends, family and acquaintances are located. If most are within their own geographic boundaries, then you will see them connected within that location. Very often, though, we see connections across geographic boundaries. For instance, we have Turk members living in Germany, Vietnamese living in Norway and Hispanics in the U.S. – all of whom are connected with friends in their current location, as well as with friends and family in their home country. 

I’ll give you another example: one user in Greece recently wrote to thank us for our service because he said he had made friendships “not only in Greece…but everywhere!” On a trip to Serbia, he said, he met friends he had made on hi5. He said, “They showed me their capital, we went out, etc. If I weren’t a hi5 member, I wouldn’t have had this opportunity to meet these people and see their country.” It is stories like these that let us know we are succeeding in bringing people together around the world.

6. You use Lionbridge translation technologies. How extensively is it used and how successfully?  Does slang hold up in translations? How long does it take for a translation between hi5 users, and are the users okay with the delays?

Lionbridge is one of many resources we use to make hi5 available in other languages. They have helped us translate hi5-generated content, not user-generated content. To date, we’ve worked with them on eleven languages, all of which were turned around rapidly – in a matter of weeks.

For slang, hi5 provides a glossary of terms that call out words requiring more attention by our translators. These are often terms that are branded by hi5 or might have specific meaning in the context of a social networking service. Since we usually have these words translated before we launch a new language, it doesn’t really hold up our translations. We also use a translation memory, which remembers phrases that were previously translated. This ensures that all phrases, especially the unusual ones, are translated consistently. Additionally, we have proof readers of the translations and engage the user base for quality review. With each new language we roll out, we launch an identical language discussion forum, and continually update the service and translations as new features are launched, or as users make suggestions for translation improvement.

7. Where is hi5 heading? Will you remain focused on a young and international user base? What new services do you think you will need to maintain your user base as it ages?

We believe Hi5's momentum will continue across the globe, and we’ll continue to draw new customers from all age ranges. Social networks are changing the way that people use the Web, and much of the way that people consume content and information will be on social networks.

Hillary Clinton's Open Mouth Policy

Okay, this is kind of mean, and I don't want it to impact who you Americans out there vote for president. It's a question that came to me during Super Tuesday and I have not deeply researched it, but do any of you recall seeing a picture of Hillary Clinton with her mouth closed?

I've been taking note over the past 10 days, and every shot I see has her jaw wide open. What's that all about? Oversized dentures? Nasal congestion? Advice from a bad campaign manager?

Maybe our friend Hugh MacLeod should sell her the GapingVoid handle. Come to think of it, she may be a bit short on cash, what with that bad $5 million investment she recently talked about. Maybe she could just use GapingVoidette.

Anyway, if you have a shot f her with mouth shut, please post or send it to me. Also Hugh, now that the link got your attention, how about a nice cartoon showing us why Hillary's mouth is always open?

Now we know who's spamming

Reuters reports that Hormel Foods corporate profits are up by 5%. They company attributes its success to improved margins on its bellwether product, Spam. Now we know who's behind all this spam and we should do something about it. Each of us should send them 100 emails asking them to stop.

Jeremiah posts his 1st Forrester Report

Jeremiah Owyang has published his first report as the new Forrester senior muckymuck on social media and he has posted brief excerpts on his blog.

This is the one covering communities, and regular readers of this blog may recall, I had some trepidation on what he would say, based n some of the questions he was asking. From the excerpt it appears that I should have feared not:

"First of all, many companies have a hard time being successful with their community if they want to control it too tight. The most successful companies let go of the control and acted more like a host, rather than a policeman.   Secondly, many companies had a hard time kick-starting a community, just because you build it, doesn't mean they'll come."

Heh. It seems to me his diligent research that included interviewing 17 companies came to similar findings that some of us who just sit here and wing it, have been telling you all along.

Good to see, Jeremiah. Good to see.

Happy Valentine's Day Wiley Guys

What a difference three years make.

I was at DEMO in 2005 as was Robert Scoble. We had this proposal for a book to be called Naked Conversations, that we had been dangling in front of publishers. Several showed interest, but in the end it came down to just two Thomas Nelson and John Wiley. Both had become aggressive in offers to us, and--now it can be told--both going well past the amount of money it would take for Robert & I to say yes.

Robert was impressed because Nelson's CEO had a blog, but no one at Wiley did and Robert was fearful of a publisher who just didn't "get it." Meanwhile, I was growing pretty desperate to  get hands on an advance. Robert had a job. I did not. It had been three years since I'd sold my PR agency to employees and my resources were zeroing out.

The Wiley guys, Jim Minatel and Joe Wikert, asked if they could fly down to Scottsdale, AZ take us out to dinner and maybe persuade us to go with them. It was short notice on Valentine's Day and the only place they could reserve a table was at the very center of a very large room at Mason's Steak House. It was an extremely noisy table, impossible to say more than "pass the salt" and be understood.

As food started being served and the wine started soothing high-pitched voices nearby, our table became slowly audible. The Wiley guys presented a financially generous package. I was ready to sign and dance and celebrate, but Robert was remained somewhat aloof. Even I wasn't sure which way he was going to go on the offer.

Then Joe Wikert, said to Robert. "I want to start a blog. I want to do it as soon as possible. If we publish your book, will you help me get my blog going?"

Robert brightened. He grinned from ear to ear. He became engaged in the conversation. We had a deal.

The Wiley guys left, and Robert and I stayed behind and drank Couvoisier XO cognac at $50 a glass. As I recall, Robert stuck me with the tab. We walked outside into the desert night only to discover one of the rainiest deluges I had ever seen. I called my wife and she was overjoyed. I would later find out she had been notified that day that she would be laid off from her job of seven years.

That was not my most romantic Valentine's event, but it was my most fortuitous. Joe and Jim are still blogging and others at Wiley have started. I have a hunch those blogs have helped the publisher in deal flow, but I'm only guessing. The book has been very good for Robert and me, and it has probably forwarded the cause of business blogging forward a few inches.

So happy Valentines Day Joe & Jim. I send you big hearts in a platonic sort of way.

The Revised SAP Roll-Your-Own Survey

I have to admit I continue to love my work on the SAP Global Survey. I have now posted over 60,000 words based on interviews with people in 32 countries on how social media impacts their cultures and business.

This is a lot, but in fact it is a small dent of the 100s of millions of people who are now involved in social media in more than 150 countries. I could use your help and participation.

When the survey first started, people began posting their own questions on their own blogs and answering them. Eventually, I served up a generic set of questions, which a good number of people filled out. But over time the momentum for roll-your-own survey takers has withered and atrophied.

So, here is a new set of questions. Feel free to fill them out and send them back to me, unformatted and in email to shelisrael1@gmail.com. Or post them in your own blogs, and send me the link. If you can think of better questions to ask and answers, just replace the ones I've listed below. All I'm really interested in is that you increase the body of knowledge on the subject, rather than promote you company product or agenda.

Here are my questions:

1. Describe the culture of your business or where you live. What role does social media play in it?

2. How has social media changed your business or your life (pick one or both)?

3. How has social media impacted your views of businesses, government, politics or education (pick one or more)?

4. Has social media impacted what you do in your spare time? How about other family members?

5. If you have children, or are close to young people, how does social media impact their time or opinions?

6. Is there a discussion of social media where you work? If so, what are the sharpest arguments?

7. an you tell my studio audience an interesting story about how social media impacted business or culture.

8. Additional comments

You can answer some or all of these questions. Do whatever you like with them. If you like to original set of questions, use those instead. Pass them on to a friend. If you know someone I should interview, please point me to her or him. I look forward to your answers and to the surprises that they so often contain.

SAP Global Survey: Michael Dell

The founder-CEO talks social media & its impact on his company and customers.

         

                                            [Michael Dell. Photo from file]

Back in December, I interviewed Lionel Menchaca for this SAP Survey of Social Media's impact on culture and business and was impressed with his passion, transparency and commitment to conversations with customers. I was left with the impression that "Dell gets it." The company understands the fundamental changes brought about by social media and in so doing has transfomed a recently hostile audience into one that is on Dell's side, rooting for it in the marketplace.

But how high up does that commitment go? Are Dell's increasing stockpile of blogs just the work of middle management or are the people steering the company committed to social media as well. Is blogging a smart play or a strategic initiative, I wondered. So,I badgered Dell's affable PR guy, Richard Binhammer for an interview with the guy who's name is on the company logo.

Michael Dell has answered 10, occasionally tough, questions below with candor and clarity. I believe it is the longest and deepest interview on social media ever conducted with a CEO of a Fortune 100 company. I am admittedly impressed with what he has to say, but I'll let you decide for yourself.

1.    I imagine 2005 and 2006 were not your favorite years. Customer disaffection began to appear in blogs in late spring of 2005. They, of course, reached a crescendo with Jeff Jarvis famous "Dell Hell" post in August '05. At what point did you become aware of anti-Dell blog posts? What was your first response to blog criticism?

Just to put this in perspective, we've been listening closely to what our customers have been telling us since 1984. We listen in person, by phone and, in 1995, we started Dell.com,  realizing the long-term importance of the Internet for our  direct business model. About 1.6 million customers visit us every day online and our teams do their best to understand what's on our customer's minds at all times.

With respect to 2005 and 2006, I don't think there was any single event but rather a series of events that came together. The marketplace changed, global markets expanded and there was tremendous growth in the blogosphere. What's most important, in the long run, is how we learn from any situation and improve the customer experience. The reality is that my response to finding out about a customer's problem with our equipment  is the same today as it was then – let's resolve our customer's issues as quickly as possible and let's learn from each opportunity and get better every time. I care about our customers and our team knows that it's not unusual for me to send an email at any time of the day or night where I ask them to figure out an issue ASAP. Every customer is important to me.


2. At what point did you start considering blogs as a strategic issue?

Well, when you look at the world and see that the number of people online will double from 1 to 2 billion in a few years, it makes a compelling case for understanding where this growth is occurring and what it means. Our goal is to join the conversation and speak directly and candidly with our customers. The more we engage, the more we learn and the better we can do for our customers.

Our teams have been exchanging information with customers online since the late 1980s with listservs, for example. By early 2006, we had established the Online Community Outreach team, a group of tech support experts that reaches out to bloggers around the world who have questions or may require assistance.  Direct2Dell   was launched in July, 2006. Later that summer, we expanded blog outreach to include any conversations about Dell.  We then launched StudioDell in September and then early in 2007, the IdeaStorm site was launched.

So, we've done lots but we're just getting started.

We also see a tremendous opportunity to partner with our customers to improve the world we all share.  This has led to our global recycling program where any consumer anywhere in the world can recycle equipment for free with us.  It led to the formation of Plant a Tree for Me, which allows our customers to offset the carbon equivalent of their computer for a small contribution to buy a tree.  And, most recently, we launched Regeneration.org as part of our commitment to become the greenest technology company in the world.  This site just completed a really cool graffiti contest that was on Facebook and had more than 1 million people vote on the best digital paintings of the environment.  We believe that when we join forces with our customers, we can really make a difference.

3. Can you tell me how the decision evolved for Dell to start blogging? Who actually made the call?  What was your role in it?

I asked why we didn't reach out to customers on the Web if they had issues and then, once we had that in place, I asked why we didn't have a company blog to further connect proactively with customers.  But all credit goes to our team who really took the initiative to make it happen.   And once we get going at Dell, we are absolutely committed to being best in class worldwide.

4.  What outcomes did you expect from starting social media programs? Has they gone the way you expected it to go?

You know, people talk about social media programs but I just think about conversations with customers.  We have hundreds of millions of them every year.  We listen on the phone and in the offices of our customers.  Why not improve our online listening skills and the number of ways we can do it?

We want our customers to walk the hallways of Dell. From our engineering labs to manufacturing plants to service and solutions teams. This means that when we're making decisions, we're always thinking about our customers.

We're appreciative of our customers on IdeaStorm who encouraged us to broaden the availability of Linux systems to include consumers. We actually made more than 35 business improvements related to IdeaStorm last year and we expect to do a lot more in the future.

We are sharing our thoughts and ideas now in forums or blogs in Chinese, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese and Norwegian and we'll continue to increase our outreach in the near future.

There's more work to do and there always will be.  But the most important point is that we are very committed to joining the conversation with our customers wherever they may be in the world.

5. What has Dell learned from blogging? How has it changed product and policy?

Well, we were one of the first companies to have an online policy that insists on complete transparency by Dell employees. Our team members must always identify that they are from Dell when they speak online.

I believe our teams like the opportunity to speak directly to our customers with video clips on Direct2Dell, when we introduce new products. You can see this is now the standard way we introduce new products. Our engineers didn't always get a chance to speak in the past, but now it's easy.

When we have an issue, we act quickly and we use Direct2Dell as a central point for clarity.  If you look at the battery recall, we shared continual updates on our progress.

In the future, you'll see us continue to innovate in how we share our product stories.

6. How do you think blogging has changed Dell's corporate reputation?

You'd have to ask our customers. We don't own our reputation we just own our actions. That's something our customers give to us in return for us exceeding their expectations.

For me, the question is has it improved our business performance? And the answer is yes. But as I said, we have plenty more to do.

7.  While Direct2Dell gets a good deal of attention, Dell has a couple of other significant blogs, IdeaStorm lets users tell Dell what they'd like and DellShares is a space for investor conversations. What value have these two other blogs had for Dell so far?

Ideastorm is incredibly powerful. The Linux community showed how this tool can not only get attention, but lead to change.  We brought back XP as an option for customers who wanted it. We reduced trialware and we get to listen to our customers discuss ideas in real time.

I can't think of a better way for us to know what's important. We can't act on every idea nor should we, but the dialogue and debates are well worth it. With DellShares, we want to make it easier to receive financial information.  We will do our best to discuss what is on the minds of our investors.

8.  Have you ever considered starting your own blog or posting on any of  Dell's blogs? Why or why not?

Yes.  We talk about it often.  Watch this space :) Our team also does a good job of capturing some of my speaking events online.

9.  How has blogging changed Dell's culture?

It reinforces how important it is to listen to our customers. And, when we see an issue in real time, we have only one choice and that is to solve our customer's issue and quickly too. I believe it's improved our reaction time, reduced our time to learn new critical information and made us a better company.

The blogosphere helps accelerate many of the great traits of folks at Dell. We have always cared deeply about our customers. With the blogosphere, it gets constantly reinforced to us how important it is to act quickly and accurately to share thoughts, solve problems and provide innovative solutions.

10. What advice do you have for other public sector companies considering social media strategies?

Just do it.  And we have great technology to make it happen. :)

Actually, we do.  And we often share our learning with our commercial customers.

I think a strong company is one that constantly learns.  One of the best ways to constantly learn is to really listen to customers. The rapidly changing tech landscape makes it efficient and easier than ever before to listen, learn and connect with customers.  The emergence of social media is a tremendous opportunity to bring the "outside" in to your company.

It's Them.

This is not a post about social media, but it is about social networks and the dangers of closed networks that have lurked in diverse culturs ever since there were diverse cultures. it is the outgrowth of an incident that took place a few years back in Austin, Texas. I was sitting at a bar discussing politics with an old friend. I was telling him that one of the few places I respected George Bush was on his humane approach to the immigration problem, that was, at the time, just emerging into a national and hotly debated issue.

There was a guy a couple of stools down who heard something I said. probably it expressed the sympathy to Mexican who risk lives and suffer humiliation to cross borders so that they can feed their families. That's when he jumped in. The following is a paraphrase of what he had to say. I chose more polite words than he used to describe ethnic groups, and I use the rhythms of my writing. His terms and rhythms are much harder than my own. The remainder is less exagerated than you may think.

"It's them. It's the crawly, grimy dirty bastards that are coming into Texas in the dark of night. They are spreading their filth and their seed from here into all states. We ought to build machine gun turrets, you know, like the ones they have at prisons, and when we see those suckers coming, we ought stop 'em in their tracks. Right there and let the flies and the buzzards get 'em. That'll stop the rest from coming. They don't speakex de English so good, but they will understand bullets. We don't need expensive walls, that they'll figure ways around. We need bullets.

You guys, you bleeding heart pansies, you just don't see it. They are the biggest problem we have. Health care. These people don't even belong here, but they are filling up our hosiptals. Soe them jump in fron of cars just so the can get a nice clean hospital bed. Overcrowded schools, who the fuck do you think is over crowding them. These people breed like rats. Before we send these people back, we should have them fixed, just like I did my bitch dog.

Its not just the Mexies either. It may be them today. But it's always someone, those blacks, those Jews, those Chinese. There's always someone who wants to sneak in here and enjoy all the benefits of the USA. They want to milk the freedom we have. But it's our freedom, not theirs. And we need to defend it against them."

I'm writing about this today because I may have had a Middle-Age moment. I thought I had already written thi. I thought I had posted it years ago and was proud of it. I referred a friend to it, and was surprised when his search did not turn it up. Did it get lost in cyberspace? Perhaps I just thought I had written it and four years ago, decided not to post it because it would be too controversial, too off-subject.

That's not my view today. Closed communities, who trust only people like themselves exist everywhere. They hate our culture enough to raise children to explode themselves if it will hurt us. They pray to their god to consume the rest of us in fire and brimstone because we are them, those nonbelievers, those infidels, those devil worshippers, those goyum or Hebes. They want to make a democracy into a Christian democract where those of us who may not be Christian will some how be reduced to lesser citizens, perhaps relegated not to sit at lunch counters in respectable neighborhoods. People cluster in secrurity near people like themselves and fear those others, those people who speak in different tongues or even accents, who dress differently, whose food does not smell like our food, whose children's games are played differently, whose prayers are chanted at different time, whose music has a different rhythm.

Much if my life is centered on social media's impact on culture. I look at how technology breaks down barriers such as language and I hope so very much that people will see that the Dalai Lama's observation is true:

"We are all alike."

Sometime, listen to the cry of a baby from another culture. Watch school kids playing a game. Listen to fans cheering. Watch people from another place as they leave work. Look at face different from your own, stuck in traffic or waiting to check out in a supermarket lane.

I believe social media helps us see a very fundamental point. "Them" very much is "us."

The new FastCompany.com: most social of media company sites

The first time I met Ed Sussman, the president of Mansueto Digital, which runs FastCompany and Inc. magazines, he was quick to whip open a laptop and show me a closed beta version of it's new site that went into public beta this morning. He was quick to point out bugs that needed to be fixed and he dwelled upon the social networking aspects of the site like any startup team member.

Ed's Demo revealed to me a good deal about who he is and what they are trying to build at FastCompany and it immediately convinced me that I would be crazy to pass up a chance to join the team that Scoble had joined a day or two before.

The new site seems to me to be a clean and easy to navigate even though there's a whole lot there. What I think is most significant is that it is the most interactive of sites from a major media company. I can't wait for the online video component to go live on March 3, so that I can be a part of this.

Mranwhile, go over and take a look. Tell me or tell them what you think. Tell them how they can make it better. The more advice we get from your kind of crowd, the better FastCompany will become.

SomewhatFrank Goes Video

Last week, I ran into Frank Gruber at DEMO. He was wearingh a hat with a camcorder affixed, just like the Justin TV guy does. I thought Frank looked a bit cuter in the hat--at least from a guy perspective.

Frank and I video interviewed each other. You'll see my Frank Gruber segment once my GlobalNeighborhoods TV goes live at FastCompany TV on March 3. Frank is going live much sooner as he has announced today.

Like Jimmy Durante used to say, "Everyone's getting into the act." There's a reason for it. All indicators are that online video's trajectory will climb higher and go further than did blogging. If you are involved in business strategy, you should consider that as you examine tools of social media for your market relationships.

The right to be anonymous

Techdirt reports that the California Appeals Court has upheld the right to be anonymous online. I think that this is a wise ruling that is in the interest of free speech. For me it has a Voltairian twist. While I don't much like anonymous comments, character bloggers and contrivances the diminish transparency, I respect people's rights to post anonymously as much as I believe in my own right to remive such Comments on my own blog.

There are times when anonymity makes a good deal of sense. Years ago EA Spouse anonymously posted about awful working conditions at Electronic Arts. She did so out of fear of employer reprisals against her husband. More recently and seriously Egypt's Wael Abbas posts anonymously video recorded footage of government and police abuse in his country.

There are lighter sides to anonymity. While I am no great fan of Dan Lyons, his Fake Steve Jobs hit many nerves in the time-honored tradition of satire. Now that we all knw it was him, the thing seems much less interesting and seems to be diminished in conversations.

All this being said, I think it is generally lame to post anonymously, particuarly if your post is critical of a person or company. I personally respect people who have the courage and conviction to put their own names behind what they have to say, to stake their own reputations on the accusations that they make. I also support my LivingRoom Policy which allows me the right to take down anonymous comments whenevr I feel like it.

I think Ehrich Weiss summarized it best in a comment he left on the TechDirt post: "The thing we often forget is that the right to offend is much more important than the right not to be offended."

 

More thoughts on Blogger/Citizen Journalism

A couple of weeks back I wrote a piece on something I called "blogger journalism." It was a response to people asking me to submit interview questions in advance, something I maintained companies would never do if I worked for the NY Times. Last week at DEMO, I was chatting with Dan Farber as we filed into a room. I said, "Journalism is really changing these days," and he responded immediately, "No it isn't. It hasn't changed a bit."

We both got funneled into the room and did not sit together so we never continued the chat.  I have a hunch that we are both right. To Dan, the rules of journalism have not much changed. His delivery and distribution may now be online rather than on paper. His frequency may niow be several times daily, rather than weekly. But he still listens to people, asks questions and writes balanced copy. Dan is mild mannered and friendly and helpful to other journalists. But when he goes after a story he's like a dog with a bone. It's his story and he wants to get it first and right.

That would have been true of Dan 20 years ago as well. I think bloggers, aspiring to be journalists can be well served to emulate Dan's standards.

But still I would argue, journalism is changing. It is changing in a great many ways. Here are a few:

• We are amateurs. We don't get paid. No bloggers were airlifted by corporations to cover Iraq or Katrina as far as I know.  Most blogger don't get into the room where the big stories are introduced by large organizations. But those stories are still pretty well covered by traditional media.

So we bloggers  write about the stories we do get to see in our neighborhoods; at our meetups; in our classrooms. We interview the people we see. We serve as our own camera/sound crews.

The result is that a great many more events of the world are being covered today than has ever been the case in newspapers who determined news quantity as the page space between ads. Social media people are delivering news faster than ever before and more people have the chance to be heard than ever before.

Is it journalism? Of course it is.  The quality is uneven, but the same is probably true of your local traditional news sources. Whether the content is served up by a traditional organization or a blogger does not define whether or not it is journalism. There are newspaper reporters who get paid to cover alien abductions complete with doctored photos. There are bloggers who are not journalists for similar reasons. But there are a surprising number of bloggers who are respected citizen journalists.

• The guise of objectivity has changed. When I was a paid journalist in the late 1960s, I interviewed George C. Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor who would go on to take 43% of Massachusetts Democratic votes in a primary election.

After, he sent me a thank you note, telling me he felt my article had helped him and his cause--a cause which I absolutely detested. But I had done my job. I had accurately reported what he said. I asked the sort of open-ended questions I still ask in interviews, ones that lets the speaker go where he/she wants to go. But helping George Wallace do well in a liberal Yankess state was something that did not please me in any way.

Since I returned to journalism, I've developed a style that Scoble and I used in the book. I tell you why I'm speaking to someone, then I left someone have his say. Then I tell you what i think of it., making very clear that you are getting a personal opinion. I wish I had the freedom to have done that 40 years ago as a reporter with Wallace.

Other bloggers seem to have picked up this approach and it pleases me immensely. It gets rid of a charade of objectivity that was never really there. It lets the reader know who the speaker is, and the reader will also have some sense of where the reporter is coming from. It is different from the old rules of engagement.

• My fact checkers are you. You change my story. Last week I covered DEMO 08 presentations on Twitter. One company, NotchUp claimed, in their presentation, that word-of-mouth among enthusiastic alpha users had taken it's new service viral; that there were 50,000 grassroots users gathered in a few weeks. Within minutes, i received a significant handful of Twitter responses, from readers on three continents, saying these guys were spammers and their claim was highly misleading.

In days of old, my editor would have challenged the NotchUp claim, asking me to get a second source. If I could not, the paper would probably have run the claim, emphasizing that it was the company's assertion. Some readers would have known the assertion was misleading, but probably would not have told us, because it was much haerder than just hitting a Twitter "Upload button."  In fact, a great journalist wiud have gone back to NotchUp to respond to the accusations, I did not because my readers got me to lose interest in them as a company.

I do not have the considerable benefit of an editor anymore, as those who ping me my frequent typos will attest--but I have a whole bevy of fact-checkers out there, as do other blogger journalists. They heloed Robert and I write a better book and they help me write more accurate reports now. Blog readers vet the facts, and the blog writer adjusts accordingly and quickly.

These are just three thoughts on the subject. There are many more. With all due respect to Dan, social media is changing most institutions and that includes journalism. Personally, it is a good thing. Most of America's "free press, " is in the hands of interests more concerned with corporate profits than journalism and for better or worse, social media is the only force emerging to offset that concentration of information control.

Utterz offers space for Election Day Citizen Journalists

Utterz, is inviting people to report on what is happening in their local voting districts on this election day. This is a good idea and the diversity of comments going up there already makes for an interesting read.

Just one thought for you undecided out there. Vote for the candidate you believe will make the best president, not the one you think is going to win for some reason or other. That's how we'll get the two most deserving finalists.

But whatever you do, if this is your primary day, do not forget to vote. Events in the world should tell you what a sacred & powerful freedom it is.

Best political ad I've seen

OK, in the interest of transparency, I am voting for Barak Obama tomorrow. It will be with the greatest passion and least ambivalence I have felt in voting for a presidential candidate in my lifetime.

But even if that were not the case, this ad is the best political ad I can recall seeing. If it were not my candidate, I would still love the message and style and positive attitude.  It is not actually an ad, but a 5 minute video clip, from something called DipDive. I got it from a Twitter friend. If anyone knows the story behind it, please leave it as a comment.

SAP Global Survey: Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions

 

Using a personal blog to calm angry customers.

       [Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions. Photo by schmoozing.]

I first met Shashi Bellamkonda through Twitter. In the virtual neighborhood where I hang out, everyone knows him as ShashiB and he is highly regarded. Shashi is a prolific Tweeter, generous with useful information. He also maintains three personal blogs and is on Linked in as well as Flickr.

The fact that I knew him for several weeks, or perhaps months, before I discovered that he worked for Network Solutions and would be setting up that company's first official blog. It's relevant because people who know Shashi trust him and when a firestorm hit Network Solutions, he used his personal blog to let his employer join a conversation and by so doing seems to have changed that conversation at least to some degree.

The issue was something called "front running." It has nothing to do with presidential politics. In domain registration, opportunists try to see what domains people are looking up, and then buy them quickly so that they can charge people and businesses who actually intend to use them, a highly inflated price. Global Neighbourhoods, for example, used to be a dot com site. It became a dot net site when I let it expire for a period of six hours. The Front Runner wh grabbed it anted $5K.

Just as Shashi started a new position as the first-ever Network Solutions social media person, Network Solutions took action in the area of front running. They said they were holding domain names for three days to protect users from front runners. Users said they had become front runners themselves, forcing users to buy a name from them rather than a less pricey competitor.

Shashi's first days as the Network Solutions blogger were filled with turmoil, shouting and accusations. They are not yet resolved. But the shouting has subsided. I'll let the Q&A pick up the story from there.


1. Can you give me a general picture of Network Solutions and social media? How many bloggers are there identified as Network Solutions? Are employees encouraged to participate in social media? Is there any corporate policy or strategy related to social media?

The very fact that Network Solutions realized that they need a social media person is a positive step toward joining the conversation. We got over the first milestone--getting people inside the company to understand the challenges and the power of social media presence. I have been part of discussions to open new ways for customer communication (blogs, forums).

We may be going slowly but we are trying and do it right.

Network Solutions (NetSol) employee advocates have long advocated we set up a social media “listening post.” By creating my position as the NetSol social media person we have taken a huge step. It did take a lot of pushing and convincing for everyone to be on the same page and may still require more pushing. But I don’t think that is uncommon in established companies.

Folks at Network Solutions have been reading blogs since the beginning and are aware of the best practices advocated by blogs and books on social media. I say this because being a technology company many employees engage in social media at personal level.  A lot of people I know read new media sites like Digg, TechCrunch, Techmeme, Slashdot, etc. avidly. We had to get everyone on the same page at all levels. I have read “Naked Conversations” and particularly liked the small business success examples you have in the book and quoted them to people.

We have been using Communispace as a social media tool for a few years and now we're taking steps in mainstream social media.  In a very small way, I experimented using social media to spread the word about a product that I managed called BuildMyMobi. I wanted to let people know that it was an easy to use tool to create a website for mobile phones. I joined conversations in blogs and forums where the people might be looking for such tools. We asked people to try the product. This helped us understand that with the right approach social media can add a new dimension to our efforts to reach customers.

I am thrilled that I moved to this new social media position and I think Network Solutions has gained as well. They needed a person already connected in social media and I was a perfect fit. 

To have some fun, I started a contest inside Network Solutions to pick a title for my new post and got about 34 entries. My favorite so far is “Social Media Swami”!

In a nutshell, the company has a blogging policy which is more of a common sense approach. The policy is for people to be conscious of confidentiality of information and to ensure there is no conflict with their work. Basically, it says be smart when you blog. There are some avid bloggers and most bloggers I know at work have personal blogs.

 

2. How long have you been at Network Solutions? What was your job before you became the company's primary blogger? What percentage of your time is involved in social media for your employer?


In 2001, I came in on the ground level, taking tech support calls. I have fond memories of talking with customers. Some conversations are etched in memory - people setting up websites to propose to their Fiancée or to commemorate the experience of having a baby. O once talked with a Bruce Lee fan who took me way beyond my shift .The customer was so concerned that the website had to look right. I stayed on the phone with him until we got it right.

My opportunity really came when Network Solutions introduced hosting. I could leverage the experience I had gained  at home in my basement, dallying with hosting and programming. I worked hard and learned quickly. This gave me  a chance to move up and change workgroups.

I am proud that my dream is coming true not just at Network Solutions. I believe in the American dream--that hard work and perseverance get rewarded.

I progressed from customer service management to marketing and then on to product management.  Before I moved to my new social media position I managed a product that I love – an easy to use website builder that I supported when I first joined Network Solutions.

I am now devoted exclusively to social media, not just for Network Solutions but because it has become my passion to be involved  in the DC social media community. I love blogging and maintain three personal Blogs along with enjoying Twitter. I am currently brain-storming new ideas and hope to create a good social media strategy for Network Solutions to reach the small business. We will learn as we go and I am confident that I will get a lot of help from blogosphere friends. We want to do it right.


3.  Last month, you got to experience the thrill of trial by fire over the issue of "front running," or grabbing the registration of an available website name for the purpose of reselling it . Network Solutions said it was reserving site names for customers. What was/is NetSol's thinking on this?

“Trial by Fire” is certainly right! In a way, I am happy that I started with a challenge. Having bulldozed myself into the position, this was the first opportunity to prove that there was a conversation about us in which we were not participating.

I've always advised people to buy the domain name immediately after finding it. So have other bloggers. Network Solutions decided to reserve domains in an effort to prevent front runners from scamming our customers. We were concerned with customer complaints that they search for a domain and find it has been registered by someone else especially when the chances of a coincidence are remote. We have taken it up with ICANN in the past.

In retrospect, we might have avoided such a furor if we had added more notification on the website and provided a better explanation to our users on this measure at the very beginning.


4. There were at least 200 negative blog posts. Your blog received scores of negative comments, some of them pretty ribald. What was your personal response to getting called so many insulting names? How did upper management respond?
    
I have been mentored well by the Blogging community. I ignored the insults and concentrated on the constructive feedback. I made sure the user's main complaints were discussed internally at a senior level.

Network Solutions listened and made changes quickly.

I posted these changes to the forums and blogs where the suggestions were posted. This is good for the community since the constructive criticism reached the highest levels of the company. Companies should be open additional channels like this for feedback.

Some of the principles of the Social media that I learned from the community helped me.

• Listen and participate.
• Help give your company a human face.
• When companies listen then the conversation changes dramatically. In this case, it changed from criticism to suggestions on how to make it better.
• Blogging will expose you. You must expect to deal with criticism.
• I will make mistakes but I have the conviction to pick myself up, dust off the mud and carry on with a smile. Everyone says my Twitter picture makes me look very optimistic and I am that way.

5.  Did anyone advocate taking the strongest comments down? Who decided to keep them up and why?

Nobody ever suggested taking down the comments. I don't moderate my personal blog posts, except in once where I stated that clearly.  I think the general feeling was that we were getting some good suggestions from the comments on the different blogs including mine. Many people supported my new role. I have been in the company for a long time and have a lot of friends and I had people stopping me in the corridors and asking me to hang in there.

Using my personal blog was my decision to be able to reach out quickly to people asking me questions on Twitter and other forums. In the end it achieved the objective for Network Solutions and the community. Bloggers, on the other hand, found out that someone was there in Network Solutions to take their voice to the highest levels.


6. Nasty language aside, there seem to be a lot of people who don't trust the Network Solutions front running policy. They suggested more user-friendly remedies to your locking the URL for several days. Are you considering changing your policy? Why or why not?

In my experience, Network Solutions has always worked on making the customer experience better. I know we are looking at making changes like the ability to reserve the name for the original searcher. This could form part of a future enhancement.
On a side note, I learned from blogs and comments that even some of our most vehement critics agreed that our "Who is" search and interface was more intuitive than others.

Our public position stated by Champ Mitchell is “A $0.25 non-refundable domain name registration fee would probably be enough to make domain tasting or front running unprofitable”. The good news is that ICANN just proposed a resolution to charge a 20 cent fee on domains held during the grace period.  Network Solutions will support this resolution and will stop our current practices as soon as that is implemented. ( There is a story in the Washington Post that has more info .


7. What has Network Solutions learned from this experience specific to url-locking and front running?
   
We definitely learned that as domain name pioneers, Network Solutions is held to higher standards. That’s a challenge the company accepts. The key here is that we listened to the community and customers and made the changes even if the majority of the detractors publicly stated that they just used our "WhoIs" search without any intention of registering the domain with us.

This reminds me of a Wharton classroom discussion about branding a few years back. We compared food & grocery stores like Giant and Safeway vs. food specialties like Trader Joe's. The customer’s perception is that the older and more established brands should always have milk and God forbid them if they run out. But if Trader Joe's were to run out of milk, customers are likely to just shrug and say they came at the wrong time. Network Solutions is in the same position in Domaines as Safeway is in groceries.


8. How do you think social media has impacted your corporate reputation?  Do you think social media impacts corporate accountability? How so or not so?

Prior to my position being created the conversation on Network Solutions was being held in social media channels and we were not part of it. A lot of employees used to read blogs and forums and pass around the information internally. Network Solutions may have responded on an ad hoc basis, but there wasn’t a formal process to respond. Now, we try to respond to the discussion in the social media, even if it is among domain holders who are typically not our customers.

Network Solutions has reinvented itself to focus in on providing tools to help small businesses succeed online- ImageCafé – the product that I managed was one of them (Publish a website easily with absolutely no tech knowledge.). Change within a large company takes time and is an evolving process.

As I said, we are already a changed company yet at every meet up I go to I am asked questions about Network Solutions and domain names. I use the opportunity to say that that’s only part of our business. Some people in the community seem to remember us for old times when we were a registrar and the registry. We have to keep engaging in the conversation with our customers and the community to nurture a relationship that helps Network Solutions and our customers work together better.

Network Solutions has good customer service and customers come for complete online small business solutions. The perception of Network Solutions as a domain name company in my opinion is yesterday.

I have a lot of aspirations on how my position will help our customers and the company and I am confident the dream will come true of making Network Solutions a social media success.


9. Looking forward, how do you think social media will change Network Solutions internally and in the marketplace?

The day when a company could communicate hiding behind walls and lobbing stuff over the wall to customers is over. My new position at Network Solutions will work toward empowering our customers to carry on conversations using social media. Companies always want to listen to their customers and are accountable to their customers.

I think about 40% of Network Solutions' business is from word of mouth referrals so we are very conscious of its power. As small businesses embrace social media, word of mouth will take a different incarnation. Social media now opens yet another channel for this communication.

Social Media is also the new citizen journalism. Some companies are starting to realize it and embrace it. We are among them.  As a Social Media person, I have to be the voice of the customer and the community within Network Solutions--sort of like a Ombudsman.

Seth Godin wrote t hatcustomers are now unionizing themselves through the social media. This is a good thing. Social media cuts down the hierarchy that existed in traditional forms of communication between companies and customers.

There are proven cases of companies where engaging in social media has proven successful in changing brand perception. We may be early. Small business is only now starting to engage.

I have a lot of work cut out for me. I have to do my duty to both Network Solutions and to the community. I will be fair and ensure a conversation where both sides are heard. If I am considered a mere mouthpiece of the corporation I will have lost my credibility. A  DC blogger, Andrew Wright says it well on his blog in reference to my position.

Microsoft-Yahoo. Why I think it's bad for both.

1. History. There has never been a truly successful merger between giant tech companies. Compaq went from healthy to danger list after acquiring DEC.  The tech cemeteries are filled with companies who tried to merge with equals and failed. The closest to success, I can think of is HP-Comaq. H-P is doing okay now, but the operation almost killed them. And now that the dust has settled, just what did they gain buy the acquisition that cost them billions and took years to sort out.

2. Culture. Mergers and marriages bring together often disparate cultures. This often causes ongoing family feuding, children going out on their own and so on.  For those of us who know smart and capable people at both companies, their cultures are decidedly different. Financial analysts and M&A experts very often overlook  the issue of culture. But the employees don't and cultures that don't merge can cripple a company.

3. Microsoft doesn't solve Yahoo's problem. Best I can tell, Yahoo maintains a 1999 business model. It wants sticky eyeballs to come to Yahoo sites and never leave. While people are there they will flash as many ads in front of those eyeballs as the visitors will tolerate. People are tolerating less and less of that. Yahoo has not really adjusted to a mobile strategy, where the ads follow people wherever people wish to go, which is Google's very sharp strategy. What does Microsoft do to either enhance or change that core strategy? I don't know. You may mention Windows CE, but I do not see why tht will get people on-the-go to follow Yahoo any closer.

4. Yahoo does not solve Microsoft's problem. Redmond has so many strategic problems, but I think at the core of it, is that Microsoft is becoming as big and unimportant as did IBM 15 years earlier. It is the undisputed leader in the enterprise and in the world's desktop productivity software. That gives it a long life, but a steadily shrinking one. Microsoft will see some significant ad revenue increases by buying Yahoo, but how long will it take for Microsoft to realize $45 billion in, not just revenue--but actual rofit from this transaction?

5. Neither company scores high in GRAC. This is a term I coined in the 1980s: 'Generally regarded as Cool." GRAC is much more important than merger & acquisition folk realize. Companies whose perspective customers regard what they produce to be cool are the ones that revail, particularly among early adopters. IT folk says this doesn't matter, because their purchases of tens of thousands of something is where the real money is. True, but moving forward those numbers are less relevant, I think, than what and who early adopters generally regard as cool.

OK, I'm no expert. And nobody has ever envied my personal stock performances over the past 6-7 years. But we shall see how this proposed marriage of behemoths works out. We shall see.

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What does Twitter make you do?

Laura Fitton, known on Twitter as Pistachio, asked her Twitterville friends a simple question: "What does Twitter make you do?" She got dozens of answers and posted them on her blog.

The results are fascinating. For those of you who are scratching your heads about what the big ddeal is over at Twitter, the answers may be helpful to you.

Jeff Pulver Announces 24/7 TV

As Jimmy Durante, a star from an early era of TV pioneering used to say, "Everyone's getting in to the act."

Jeff Pulver has announced that his current Pulver TV will transform into a new, indie tv producer called 24/7 and will have eight hours of content at the outset. Jeff and I have actually never met,m something I continue to regret.

But considering this new announcement and my recent one, maybe we could sit there and video each other while we conduct acts of simultaneous interview.

Mazel Tov, Jeff. An indie network is a great idea and I'm betting you will do extremely well.