However, the value of the system has declined in the past couple of years to the point that I have decided to leave.

There are two reasons for this:

1. I get consistent “add me to your contacts” requests which arrive with no message, no introduction or no reason for why that person decided to want to connect with me. This is just a numbers game and I don’t subscribe to this method of networking - I even make it clear on my Ecademy profile page but still they come in their droves (maybe it’s because I am “famous” :)). The main issue I have with the numbers game on Ecademy is that once you are connected with somebody else they are able to send mailshots to their entire contact list and some contacts tend to do this a lot and the etiquette of Ecademy does not lend itself to follow/unfollow as easily as Twitter.
2. My email address has been spammed as a direct result of the negligence of one of the founders who decided it was OK to send me and 100+ other contacts a direct email from their Google account with an attachment related to an event they invited me to via Ecademy 5 minutes previously, yet I had not confirmed attendance or requested the 2Mb PDF email. The result of exposing my email address lead to receiving another email about an hour later from a company I have had no dealings with or prior contact inviting me to watch a 10 minute video on YouTube to sell me a “work from home and make lots of money” type of business.

A social network relies on its credibility and this is achieved by how it protects its members. Sadly, Ecademy’s credibility as a social network has been completely undermined by one of its founders as they have allowed my details to enter the public domain and as a direct result has allowed my email account to be spammed. There are other privacy issues that have been discussed on other forums and blogs about Ecademy (just search Google), and while I have not been personally exposed to these issues, the fact that they exist adds weight to my reasons for cancelling my account.

However, this is not specifically a post about the actions of certain individuals within networking organisations, but their actions (and those within those networks) directly affect the value of the networks we use. And the action of lazily sending a scattered broadcast email has significantly devalued the Ecademy network (site) for me.

Twitter Value

Twitter is a social networking tool. It allows anybody with a Twitter account to listen to what you have to say. And you can talk about anything. Some people choose to use it to talk business (as part of their personal/corporate brand), while others talk about what they had for lunch or post what they are listening to. Twitter works brilliantly as the “first line” (or outer tier) of online networking - it allows for wide exposure.

In my opinion, Twitter helps “accelerate serendipity” as you can find out useful and relevant information as well as develop relationships between you and your followers. There are some very interesting and influential people on Twitter and it useful to listen what they have to say - Twitter helps you get directly to core information on almost any topic.

Ecademy Value

Notwithstanding my comments earlier, Ecademy does have a value in online networking.  I would suggest you use it as your “second line” (or middle tier). Ecademy is advertised as a “social business network”. As such, it sits in the middle ground as you can benefit from Twitter-like exposure, random friend requests, spam, junk and other rubbish. If you want to use it purely for business you will need to weigh the balance of the social stuff you will be exposed to versus the business stuff you want to engage in.

Because Ecademy offers a different tool set to Twitter, you can more effectively communicate and collaborate with contacts. There is a messaging system as well as a host of online forums covering all types of subject or territory. It is relatively easy to make global connections through Ecademy.

If you are using it as a second line network, you could connect with people from Twitter with whom you want to develop a better business relationship.

LinkedIn Value

LinkedIn has always been billed as a business network. It doesn’t have the “social” side that the previous two systems do, although there are now groups in LinkedIn. But LinkedIn feels much more tightly connected, more focused and more business oriented. I have never received a random “connect with me” request and don’t get spam, junk or endless requests for this, that or the other. It allows me to effectively manage my close connections (business and personal) - my ”third line” - and sits very well as an inner tier network.

Also, the LinkedIn interface is much less cluttered - has less calls to action - than Ecademy. As an example, on my last visit to Ecademy I counted over 50 different text links solely for actions I could perform from that page - there were two tabbed reagions above my profile, as well as an actions panel on the left. I didn’t even get to the links at the bottom of the page! This makes LinkedIn much easier to use and less overwhelming.

Using these three systems in concert allows you to funnel or group different networks more effectively. You could have 8000 Twitter followers (or follow 9000 people), 500 Ecademy connections (people you know better) and 80 LinkedIn connections (people you have a closer working/personal relationship with).

Naturally there are other systems which could be used instead of any of these (e.g. MySpace, Facebook, Ryze, Spoke, etc) but the value of these networks lies in the strength of the connections within them. 10,000 followers may be low value if you only have connections with 3 of them, but your more closely-coupled networks are where the true value lies.

So, which networks do you use, and how do you use them?

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• Social Networking Is Not Just a Numbers Game (debbieweil.com)
• The Future of the Social Web (thesocialorganization.com)
• SXSW: Privacy (and publicness) (buzzmachine.com)

Although there is a huge buzz about social media currently, social media has been around for a long time.

Email was the earliest form of Internet social media - although in modern parlance mailing lists (such as Mailman) may be a more accurate representation of what a social media environment could be as they allow two-way communication between a defined group of members for a defined purpose. Weblogs (blogs) like this one and the thousands of others out there are also social media environments because readers can post comments which stimulates dialogue within that community.

Examples of social media applications are Google Groups (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Youmeo (social network aggregation), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Avatars United (social networking), Second Life (virtual reality), Flickr (photo sharing), Twitter (social networking and microblogging), and other microblogs such as Jaiku and Pownce. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.

Further reading: 15 Free Social Media White Papers and Ebooks

In future posts I will be discussing how to apply social media to your company’s marketing strategy (or decide if you should) and how to understand the impact on your brand from social media environments.

• Search engine optimization (or SEO),
• Paid placement,
• Contextual advertising, and
• Paid inclusion.

In this article we will look at link building and how it fits within the overall marketing strategy for your site. 

In the above methodologies, link building sits mainly as contextual advertising but can also fit into paid placement and paid inclusion (if you have to pay for the link, obviously).

Why it’s done

In the physical world, there is an old adage: “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” This means that it is more important to know the right people than know the actual information - after all, if you know the right people you can find out what you need quite easily.

In the virtual world, link building is the virtual equivalent of that.

By building a linked network of relevant websites, both to and from your own, you help search engines make an informed decision about how to rank your site. The more places you appear, the wider your network, and so the more potentially important your content is compared to other sites with a smaller network, or “reach” in SEO terms. If done well, link building increases your chances of being found by the visitors you want to find your site - ie greater finds and greater conversions as a result.

Furthermore, by appearing in other relevant places on the web, people who may be looking for your services can find you in those other places - ie you don’t have to rely on them actually visiting your site directly from a search engine - and so you further strengthen your relevancy within your reach.

The bottom line is that the link is there to direct the relevant people to your site. Period.

This means you can also target the hidden parts of the web - for example private member areas for consortiums or associations - or engage in social media exchanges. Not everything will have a direct impact on your SEO but it will meet the goal of directing the relevant people to your site.

How it’s done

The best results are achieved the old fashioned way - manually.

This requires often-lengthy periods of research looking at different sites, contacting the owners and getting links placed on the relevant page(s) in the target site. Each target site needs to be investigated for potential “spamminess” (not a real word but heard a lot in SEO circles). This means that we need to make sure we are not placing a link on a website that is poorly thought of by search engines, for example link farms.

Some websites require a fee for inclusion and can often be private, members-only directories. Although these do not have any relevancy for search engines, they are important because you have identified that your target audience is part of the membership of the target site.

Some websites will request a reciprocal link before placing your link on their site. While this two-way linking is beneficial - it helps inform search engines that you are not just a destination site, but also a good source of referrals for other sites - you will also need to think carefully about arbitrarily adding outbound links to your site because you will not want to dilute your brand. A “links” page looks out of place on many business sites, but could work well on a blog.

To reap a benefit for SEO, you will need to ensure that your actual link contains the relevant keywords you are targetting and link directly to the content that is related to these keywords. This is equivalent to creating ad copy for the Google pay-per-click ads and is an art in itself: the link needs to be meaningful and create a call to action (ie the viewer to click) yet be brief. The landing page - the content they arrive at - needs to be directly related to the link or you will lose the visitor. This may require generating additional content for your site.

Monitor your links

After you have taken time to put in place your links, monitor them. The web changes and sometimes a domain you have linked to may be sold on to a new owner and their content differ greatly from the content you originally linked to. You could find yourself directing your visitors to unsuitable content and your brand will suffer by association.

On the flip side, a site that has linked to you may become a link farm or be reduced in importance by search engines. If you are keeping an eye on how your inbound links are working you can detect changes and act accordingly.

There are three  important things to remember about link building: 

1. It will take time - it’s a slow process
2. Don’t add too many links at any one time - search engines distrust this as possible spamming
3. Monitor your links - the web changes so you don’t want any surprises

I was quite impressed with the simplicity of the interface - it was very informative about what was being uploaded to the cloud, what was being downloaded and what it was going to do next. It was also very easy adding existing folders to the sync set (much more so than Live Mesh: see Live Mesh Syncing Folders).

Everything was going well until Syncplicity told me that I had exceeded my storage quota and would need to pay to upgrade my account in order to continue to sync the files. This was strange because I only had 1.6Gb of files to sync, and allowing for possible differences in quota allocated to the files in the cloud versus the Windows PC, this should not have been an issue.

I investigated further and found that it was due to Syncplicity’s conflict resolution management system.

When Syncplicity finds a conflict it keeps the original copy of the file from that machine, plus creates additional copies of the file - 1 from each machine in the sync group (if there were 3 or more computers there would be 3 or more extra files) - but doesn’t tell you it has done this. This is a sure way to eat up the available storage. So, for example, I get:

• foo.php
• foo (edited by Edward Terry on Machine A @ 1-12-08 17:56).php
• foo (edited by Edward Terry on Machine B @ 1-12-08 12:36).php

Syncplicity then proceeds to synchronise these additional files across the connected computers and chews up the remaining space leading to the “you have exceeded your quota” message. Unfortunately, Syncplicity (at least as far as I could see from the user interface) offers no way of finding or managing these conflicts and you have to track them down in their respective directories manually.

The trouble with this is that my 1.6Gb is made up of thousands of small files in hundreds of directories, and so the task of tracking down and resolving these conflicts is impractical. In my case I had over 2000 such conflicts which resulted in over 4000 “edited by” files scattered around my directories and resorted to the DOS command “delete /s/f/q ‘*edited by Edward*’” which removed them all in one go. Not very elegant.

Syncplicity is still a beta at this stage, so - hopefully - they will sort out the synchronisation management issue. But for now I have stopped using it because of this issue as it creates more of a problem than it solves by using it (sorry Peter).

Back to Live Mesh.

Live Mesh doesn’t appear to keep shadow copies of files in the file system, and so doesn’t appear to use additional storage when conflicts occur. Instead it informs you there are conflicts in the news window alongside the synchronised folder when you open it. Since I have a handful of root folders which I synchronise it is quick and easy to check all conflicts across the 3Gb I currently sync with Live Mesh.

The down side with Live Mesh is that conflict management is tedious because you have to confirm what you want to do with each and every file conflict one by one, and Mesh keeps you waiting while it processes your decision before you can address the next conflict. It also only lets you process batches of 50 conflicts, so you can be there for a long time. OK, Mesh is still beta also, and the conflict management is more helpful than Syncplicity but it’s still tedious. (I current have over 11,000 files in my Holding Area directory of Live Mesh which suggests a very large problem).

According to the Mesh blog, Microsoft have a tool at their data centre which can be executed to help you clean up large-scale conflicts, especially those caused by tombstones. However, it’s not clear if this is an actual service you can request, or if it was a one-off when they did a specific upgrade to the Mesh software.

Ideally, what I would like to see out of a conflict management tool is something like this:

System Tray Notification:
There are 1863 file conflicts that need your attention. Click the bubble to view them.

When you click the notification a dialogue box pops up with a table of all conflicts. You then scroll through the list and select what you want to do with each conflict and then hit the “resolve” button and let the application process the results in the background.

The list should be a simple, interactive interface.

At the end of the background task, you would get another system tray notification telling you the task was complete and offering a report. This would show any failures or unresolvable conflicts for you to follow-up manually, but should result in the bulk (if not all) of the conflicts being resolved and allowing the user to get on with working and not lose hours to resolving conflicts one by one (as I have so far and will continue to do until I clear the backlog).

The difference engine in the synchronisation tool should be intelligent enough to check file contents and determine if there are any byte differences or if the files are exact copies. Conflicts that are only a difference in the date stamp on the file could be auto-selected to “keep latest” in the initial table of conflicts, while others that have differences would be left to the user to decide.

The synchronisation tool could be configurable to allow the user to select their own visual difference tool - I use the excellent open source WinMerge - so that they could view differences between files to make a decision and manage how to proceed. The sync tool could also have its own in-built basic visual difference tool for users who don’t use their own. This is OK for ASCII files, but more complex for binary files (although not insurmountable).

I still favour Live Mesh - despite the conflict issue - if only because it is more transparent than Syncplicity, and also has not yet deleted live files (as far as I can see so far) as SugarSync once did, and allows me to use my existing directories which DropBox does not.

I would like to see a simple and effective conflict management system in any and all of the cloud storage synchronisation systems because, as we commit more data to the cloud we will need effective ways in managing the little hiccups that occur along the way. Who will be first? (Or are any of the main players already claiming they can offer this?)

Image via Wikipedia

A few years ago I listened to analysts talking about the “virtual business.” They envisaged a world of mobile workers who could tap in to their corporate networks from anywhere. There wasn’t much substance on this future vision, and certainly not to the extent that mobile workers now enjoy with technologies enabled by Cloud Computing.

Back in 2001 when I set up my first web company, it was always my ideal that the company should be truly virtual and not be tied specifically to any physical office space. While it is important for people to come together to build ideas, this can be done in any space that provides the correct tools - which for us means whiteboards and notebooks.

I still value physical interaction with people for certain meetings as you get a visual feedback which you cannot get on the Web. You can see all of the participants’ body language, and it is much easier to be completely inclusive in such arrangements. Virtual meetings - using Skype and whiteboarding technologies - are OK in some situations, but not all.

However, these meetings do not make up the bulk of the day to day work - this is spent with the computer either writing, desigining or programming. And, as long as the computer is present with the right tools, this can be done anywhere. As long as the files are there also.

This is where the Cloud comes in (see also previous post: Cloud Computing vs Dedicated Servers).

My original intention was to embrace Cloud Computing and adopt an application to manage the replication and synchronisation of my business files across multiple computers - namely the office PC and the laptop - without actually needing to physically connect the two.

Initial reviews of available systems revealed two main contenders - SugarSync and DropBox. The former appeared a more mature product and with a wider functional base, so I decided this would be my synchronisation tool of choice - subject to testing it out of course. Ever the skeptic!

SugarSync

So, about a moth ago I installed SugarSync to provide a cloud-based store for all my work files. The set-up is simple - create an account online and then install the SugarSync client on all computers that need to be kept synchronised. SugarSync then ensures that all selected folders are replicated across all computers linked to that account so all your files are everywhere, as well as stored online in the Cloud. You can also configure SugarSync as a straight backup tool so that copies of the files are stored only in the Cloud but not replicated to each computer. Personally I opted for full synchronisation to make sure there is always a backup and I don’t need to be online when I need to access my files.

So how was this to change my life?

The main benefit would be that all my files would be accessible to me at any time - even from a mobile phone or any Internet connected computer. I no longer would have to depend on USB memory sticks to carry around a sub-set of my files and find myself caught out when somebody calls and I need something I don’t have.

This would make working much easier - I just open my computer and get on with work. A few minutes after I have saved the file (usually), SugarSync would back the file up in the Cloud and is then ready to send it to all the other computers I have connected to the account when they are switched on and the SugarSync client is running.

Was it easy making the transition? Essentially yes.

SugarSync set-up is easy - just create an online account and install the software.

I started with a sub-set of my files - about 5Gb of data - large enough to be a good test, but not committing everything. This took a few days to push up into the Cloud because upstream data rates are quite slow in the UK. Once the files were there, I installed SugarSync on the second computer (laptop) and started the download. This was much quicker and only took a few hours. I tidied up a few duplicates and manually merged in the contents of my memory sticks and let SugarSync sort out the synchronisation which it appeared to do without a hitch.

However …

There were some teething problems with the install on the Vista machine which I did not discover until a few days later. This required a re-install and created a swathe of files in limbo. SugarSync support is very slow and generally takes a few days to provide responses to support tickets. Also, there is no user manual explaining the basics - such as the “reclaim storage” option - and what to do in these situations. Nor could I find anything online. There is also no community support or forums. Consequently, in the intervening days there was a lot of faith held in the accuracy of the data held in the Cloud and what had actually been synchronised on my computers.

After three days I received a response which “explained” what the “reclaim storage” option was about. Unfortunately, the response didn’t really clarify the situation and after a couple of weeks trying to resolve it I resorted to gambling with SugarSync and trying out something that could have been easily addressed.

Here is a summary for anybody experiencing a similar dilema with reclaim storage:

SugarSync explanation:

The files shown under “Reclaim Storage” are the files you have deleted from your computer. Files don’t get corrupted or deleted on the storage server. Some files stay in your account [on the SugarSync server] even after deletion. You can delete them safely. Your data will not be affected in any way. [That's a direct quote]

My interpretation:

I can only guess at how these orphans appear, since deleted files actually appear in the “deleted files” folder.

Idea 1: SugarSync maintains up to 4 previous versions of the file you synchronise so that you can roll back to a previous version. When you delete files they are moved to the “deleted items” folder, but previous versions could be orphaned and appear in the “reclaim storage”.

Idea 2: Because I had to reinstall the software, create a new link between the laptop and the Clound, and delete the old link via the online control panel, the resulting rescan picks up some of the old associations but also creates new ones. These new ones cause the old data to become orphaned.

Reality:

SugarSync doesn’t work properly. I had to re-install SugarSync on my Vista machine a few times (this is the Sharpcast support team’s answer to most of your problems), and when you do this you have to link your computer to the SugarSync account again and delete the previous computer relationship online. This then causes SugarSync to re-scan the machine and it often uploads/downloads some files again. It also fills up your desktop recycle bin with old copies of hundreds of updated files if you have a large data set.

It would be nice to be able to trust that SugarSync is doing its job properly (as Sharpcast asks you to do), but after two weeks of not getting a straight answer to the problem and being told to (yet again) re-install the software, I took fate into my own hands and discovered that you can selectively delete or archive files from the “reclaim storage” list of files. I chose to delete 2 files I knew I could find easily in my 5Gb of data and deleted them permanently. I waited a few hours and checked to see that the original files were still safe - as SugarSync claimed they would be.

Unfortunately, one of the files - a client proposal - had been deleted. Since only 1 file was affected I could easily recover it from the recycle bin on my desktop. However, the “reclaim files” dialogue lists thousands of files and folders in my case, and given that SugarSync has just been proven to delete files that it shouldn’t, I have now stopped SugarSync synchronising any data between my computers for fear of loss of any further data.

This problem may not be a direct consequence of SugarSync, and may be due to my Vista Home installation on the laptop potentially conflicting with the XP Pro installation on my base computer. Of course I am looking at all angles here - but the bottom line is that SugarSync doesn’t work in my operating environment.

Other Solutions

These all work in much the same way as SugarSync - in the sense of you create an online account and install the desktop client software, so I won’t cover this part of the process again here.

DropBox

My initial reaction was that the team at DropBox are much more open with their product. Sharpcast are clearly in the “old school” in that the product is a black box and you just have to take it on trust that it works. Their blog is essentially release notes rather than communication, the latter approach being better aligned with a product embracing cloud-based computing IMHO.

I was pleased by the DropBox documentation and the explanation of what it’s actually doing in order to synchronise your data, unlike SugarSync which doesn’t even appear to have a user manual. DropBox also has active user forums where you can get fast responses to issues from other users.

DropBox also has a nice feature where you can share sub-folders with other people and so collaborate on files over the web in true virtual teams. SugarSync is a closed system for you alone, although you can “send” files to people but once you do they are outside of the synchronisation control loop (this is basically an email tool).

The downside is that DropBox currently only works from within a single root folder called “My DropBox” which is created under your “My Documents” folder. All files which you require to be synchronised must be located in this folder. I have about 30Gb of data that I would like to keep synchronised and don’t really want to move the files. DropBox do plan to extend this in the future to allow you to use your pre-existing folders but it’s not available at the time of writing.

MobileMe

I had a quick look at MobileMe from Apple. However, file synchronisation doesn’t appear to be built in at present (according to the website) and the system only provides an iDisk feature where you can drop/upload files to create an online copy. However, I am told by a customer who uses it that it does support full synchronisation and that they use it regularly (see * in table below). Also, the account is limited to 20Gb which is not sufficient space for my files :(.

The email, calendar and PIM-related synchronisation are excellent, but since I already have these features through Emissary Mail this would be duplication of effort and potentially lead to confusion!

Live Mesh

I then looked at Live Mesh from Microsoft. This is currently a tech preview (alpha) release and only offers a 5Gb free version at present. However, the interface is much easier to understand and the development blog is much more open that Sharpcast’s. There is even a post on tombstone files - which sounds very much like the problem I could have been experiencing with SugarSync.

Live Mesh is Windows-only at the moment, but Mac and mobile versions are on their way. It’s early days, but as a Windows user I hope the operating system integration is going to make the software more reliable in synchronising my files. Live Mesh also allows collaboration via public folders which will help working with my PA and other team members. Plus it has a built in remote desktop feature not present in other replication tools which gives you full access to other computers fully connected to the mesh.

From a perspective of vision, Live Mesh appears the most capable product long-term. It embodies both the synchronisation and replication features with cloud storage plus principles of mesh computing by allowing you to connect to the peer computers in the mesh itself, so extending the reach beyond the cloud. The current level of issue management (i.e. what to do with file synchronisation conflicts) is much more transparent and it works!

When a file conflict occurs - for example when you edit a file on multiple machines - Live Mesh shows a dialogue that allows you to choose which file to keep, or you can view the files and decide what to do.

The only issue I have with Live Mesh at the moment is that it summarises what it has done - e.g. “Edward Terry added 16 files in the folder Mesh Quickshare” - but there is no way to find out which 16 files. When you are dealing with large amounts of data, it would be good to be able to access the details to verify manually that everything is as it should be. Live Mesh has also (on two occasions) appeared to have performed a large update of files and folders even though nothing was actually changed in the folders it identified. I am not sure if this is just the desktop catching up with the Cloud, or something to do with the local computer time changing, but it was a bit confusing. All the files appear to be present and accounted for, so I am hoping this is just the “news” feature of Silverlight catching up with reality.

Function Comparison

In conclusion

It’s still early days for Cloud-based systems and the file deletion by SugarSync is a serious blow to the credibility/stability of an application you are basically trusting your business to.

I can’t speak for the reliability of DropBox or MobileMe as I haven’t tried them.

Live Mesh is still only a “tech preview”, but appears more reliable even at this early stage. The online reporting explains what is happening more clearly and Microsoft’s recent fix for tombstones is very timely. It would benefit from a little more detail in the audit trail as “20 folders added” is a little brief - a link to show you which ones would be a nice addition.

My initial experience with cloud storage is positive overall and I will continue to pursue this route. Once the products mature and the minor issues I have experienced are resolved through better support and refined interfaces, these technologies will help more people be truly mobile and the idea of the ubiquitous Internet will help transform how we do business together.

Go Further

• What will Happen to the Web if Cloud Computing Really Succeeds?
• SugarSync
• MobileMe
• DropBox
• LiveMesh
• A five-part Backup Strategy

OK, these are extreme cases, but being aware of the (natural) cycle of emotions that being an entrepreneur embodies helps in understanding and managing their effects instead of letting them manage you.

Here’s a precis:

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, once wrote:

“First and foremost, a start-up puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced. You flip rapidly from day-to-day – one where you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again. Over and over and over. And I’m talking about what happens to stable entrepreneurs. There is so much uncertainty and so much risk around practically everything you are doing. The level of stress that you’re under generally will magnify things incredible highs and unbelievable lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude. Sound like fun?”

The Emotional Transition Curve

• Stage 1: The first stage of the concept is called “Uninformed Optimism”. At this stage on a rollercoaster, just getting to the top of the rollercoaster, you experience feelings of an adrenalin rush, characterized by excitement and nervous energy.
• Stage 2: The second stage is called “Informed Pessimism”. As you ride over the top of the curve you now have a bit more information. Feelings of fear, nervousness, and frustration begin to set in. Perhaps you even want to get off of it.
• Stage 3 – The third stage is called “Crisis of Meaning”. You’re past scared. You feel despair. It’s as if you’re standing on the edge of a cliff ready to jump, and you begin to think “Today the rollercoaster’s going off the bottom of the track for the very first time.” You feel helpless and you’re both terrified and frozen.At this point, you face a critical juncture. You can come off the bottom of the curve and crash and burn, which is when your business goes bankrupt, you lose your marriage, you start drinking, or you end up in a doctor’s office because of stress. Or you can come around the corner because you’re getting support at “Crisis of Meaning” and you can enter an upward swing call “Informed Optimism”.
   
• Stage 4 – Informed Optimism. You’re calm. You’re informed. You might even say you are cautiously optimistic.

The article on the blog (link below) goes on to discuss activity pairing - ie what to do in each of the 4 phases - to help you capitalise on (benefit from) each emotional state. Essential reading for any business owner.

Read the original post on Tim Ferris’s blog

The Web is evolving.

In the beginning we translated our physical brands - literature, logos, typographic style, grammatical style, imagery - directly on to the web. Our online presence was a mirror of our offline one. For larger corporates it was a very controlled environment and anything outside this permitted representation was stamped on.

However, the Web allows people to be people. It allows them to interact in ways and with tools that are not available in the physical world. The Web is a very different place. Blogs, podcasts, tweets and all manner of social, human expression have found their way into our way of life.

Already today, companies are being identified by their personality on the Web - through such posts as personal blogs, tweets, videos, podcasts, etc - which puts a human face on the organisation. And in time, a company will be known by the sum of the facets of its presence on the Web instead of just a corporate site.

If this will be the case, will we need a corporate/company website? And if so, what would it look like?

Putting my scrying hat on, I think the corporate website of the future will effectively be a mashup of the different facets of its personality on the web, with judicious filters and content aggregators applied so that a visitor to the “official” website of the business - suitably branded of course - gets to see the one-page corporate marketing spiel (a summary of what the company actually does) and contact details, plus different streams of information that, in themselves, identify the company (provide the digital fingerprint) to people interested in interacting with it.

The filters exist not to hide information, but to heuristically select the most relevant content from the multiple facets and present them to the site visitor. The filters therefore build a stable version of the fluid facets of the brand which becomes the corporate website. If we look at the number of Twitter conversations, blog posts, video casts, social media site posts, etc, that could be happening at any one time we can very easily become overloaded with information, especially minutiae, and we would not want people visiting our “official” virtual home to be overwhelmed and confused. Therefore, we filter to provide them a virtual tip-of-the-iceberg insight into our company.

Should the visitor wish to dig further, they can follow links to all the relevant streams. The filtering technology we use will also be dynamic, and would self-learn so that it adjusts according to what people are looking for - our websites would in effect be self-aware and shift according to the preferences of our visitors, dynamically adjusting filters in quantum steps as patterns of interest change.

This is Web 3.0. And it’s already happening.

You can integrate your Twitter posts with Facebook so they appear in your profile. You can plug in your Twitter posts to Wordpress (I have), and you can grab the RSS feed from anything and parse it to reproduce the content elsewhere - as an example, see our company home page which has the last 5 blog posts. Twitter also lets you track key words so that you can filter updates and receive relevant information - not just everything.

We’re still in the early days of Web 3.0, but there is a quantum shift on the horizon and we need to be ready for how pervasive this shift will be in our physical lives, and ready for it in our organisations digital ones. There is a lot of research being conducted into the role social media will play in our corporate future and I will be following this to see how close to my vision Web 3.0 comes.

We live in interesting times!

Go further:
Does a digital business really need a corporate website?
6 Emerging Trends CIOs Should Care About