Google you are so sad, you drive me mad

Google has tried a new trick to lure in people to their destined-to-die Social Network, aka Google+

Update August 3 7:32 GMT+2:
This works on Internet Explorer 8. I haven't been able to reproduce this on other browsers and versions

Why the harsh words? Because I'm appalled by the method they choose. If you're not getting enough attention for your product or service, you should try to make it more attractive (financially, operationally, which ever way) - not invent cunning ways to whip people towards or into it

What has Google tried now? They limit your Google Search results to 20, unless you sign up for Google+.
Let me repeat that: Google limits your Google Search results (to 20), unless you sign up for Google+

Need a mindset for adaptation? Team up

My latest post told my story of a week of hiking.
In essence, it was a classical story of engaging a new venture, preparing for it as best as you can, being confronted with (utter) failure and adapt to the changed circumstances by listening to yourself, your peers, experts in the field - and then growing into the situation you got yourself into by adopting new and better tools and ways of behaving.
The outcome? Relatively ridiculously great success from my point of view, good effort and result from the point of view of my friends.
What lies ahead? More growth by change, and determination to continue into the direction I went. I'll lose 15 kilograms to start with (15% of current bodyweight) and take up walking - I love it, and by Jove I need the exercise

Is that how it always goes? That depends. Olivier Blanchard made the great point I'll work out here:

@MartijnLinssen @britopian you had the mindset first. That's what I'm saying. Without the mindset, the tools are wasted.
— Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) June 20, 2012

Will adopting social tools leverage adaptation?

After a week of hiking in Ireland (hence the picture), it's hard to pick up blogging again. Thankfully, Michael Brito got me going and an interesting conversation, with an old theme, unfolded:

RT @martijnlinssen: @Britopian I think the need to adapt rather than adopt is what stalls #socbiz. Takes a few times longer than usual
— Michael Brito (@Britopian) June 19, 2012

Michael, Olivier and I took it a bit further and ended up with indeed the ancient argument:

@adamsinger @thebrandbuilder @MartijnLinssen that brings up the ancient argument .. can you teach certain characteristics like leadership
— Michael Brito (@Britopian) June 19, 2012

My answer? Yes and no - let me explain please

Why management rocks, and leadership sucks

[Image by _MG_5503]

The past 24 hours I had a fierce conversation on leadership and management, and I love how just everyone joined in on Twitter; especially those that disagree with me because they teach me most in the shortest amount of time

I started it with

Every one wants to be a leader, but no one wants to be led #leadership
- Martijn Linssen (@MartijnLinssen) April 22, 2012

By the way, that picture of the Redskins cheerleaders is just there to spice up my blog and the post. Might lead your eyes astray for a moment, but no pun intended. I had a very hard time to select photographs that weren't shot at some battlefield or military institution, seems like the US army keeps their men happy that way. Now that is what I call management par example...

How Dachis failed the Social Business test

[Image by Pablo X]

My post the other day on Dachis deleting blog posts of employees who left has led to quite a bit of Twitter conversations - not all of them equally pleasant nor a true example of Social (Business). I feel that this extra post is needed to bring some closure, and achieve some lessons learned. I'll show how the story has unfolded, and also

I wrote Is Dachis rewriting its own history because at that point I had found that certain blog posts were no longer present, and Dachis (Dave Gray, informed by Peter Kim) ensured me that no blog posts had been removed.
In the light of those contradicting facts, writing the post was inevitable

Is Dachis rewriting its own history?

David Terrar and I were discussing his post on Social Business in which he takes a trip down memory lane back to even before the coming of E2.0 as we knew it, and I was pointing him to my Redefining the meaning and goal of Social .
I clicked the link to David Armano's post Tweeting at the speed of scale on Dachis' Collaboraty, to find out it was a dead link. Odd

The benefits and concerns of Social

This post is the last in a series of six that deals with Social Business and Social Enterprise. The goal of the series: to explore the pros and cons of Social Business and Social Enterprise, given the current odds, and fast-forwarding to business opportunities now and in the near future

Well, this is it.

1. A small recap

The concerns of Social Enterprise

This post is the fifth in a series of six that deals with Social Business and Social Enterprise. The goal of the series: to explore the pros and cons of Social Business and Social Enterprise, given the current odds, and fast-forwarding to business opportunities now and in the near future

This post is about the concerns of Social Enterprise. While yesterday's was all about the concerns of Social Business, this one will take those concerns and apply them to Social Enterprise. An enterprise is a company with 10,000 employees or more, regardless of geographical dispersal (my definition)

The concerns of Social Business

[Image by Diego Cupolo]

This post is the fourth in a series of six that deals with Social Business and Social Enterprise. The goal of the series: to explore the pros and cons of Social Business and Social Enterprise, given the current odds, and fast-forwarding to business opportunities now and in the near future

This post is about the concerns of Social Business. While yesterday's was all about the benefits of Social Enterprise, this one will take concerns and apply them to Social Business

The benefits of Social Enterprise

This post is the third in a series of six that deals with Social Business and Social Enterprise. The goal of the series: to explore the pros and cons of Social Business and Social Enterprise, given the current odds, and fast-forwarding to business opportunities now and in the near future

This post is about the benefits of Social Enterprise. While yesterday's was all about the benefits of Social Business, this one will take those benefits and apply them to the Enterprise. An enterprise is a company with 10,000 employees or more, regardless of geographical dispersal (my definition)

So let's take all the Social we can imagine, and throw that to the current enterprise, and see where the benefits are. By the way, the drawing above is my favourite from Hugh MacLeod, and I got one in my office

The benefits of Social Business 2/2

This post is the second in a series of six that deals with Social Business and Social Enterprise. The goal of the series: to explore the pros and cons of Social Business and Social Enterprise, given the current odds, and fast-forwarding to business opportunities now and in the near future

This post is about the benefits of Social Business, part two of two. While yesterday's was all about the history of Business, this one will fill in the gaps left by it - it will deal with the present and the future

The benefits of Social Business 1/2

This post is the first in a series of six that deals with Social Business and Social Enterprise. The goal of the series: to explore the pros and cons of Social Business and Social Enterprise, given the current odds, and fast-forwarding to business opportunities now and in the near future

This post is about the benefits of Social Business, part one of two. It will relate the history of Business, and I'm sorry but that does take up an entire blog post - ask Socrates.
The definition of Social Business is this:

Social Business deals with business exceptions rather than rules, requiring flexible answers to complex questions in dynamic environments. As such, it isn't about giving predefined answers to predictable questions, it is about giving unpredictable answers to undefined questions.
Social Business serves best where an increased distance between people on all sides is negatively affecting business as a whole.
Social Business is best for establishing ties between unknown people.
As such, it will gradually replace distance by proximity, thus swapping anonymity for intimacy

Big Data? No. Big Information as a Service

I've been going through the Gartner hypecycle these last few weeks, regarding Big Data. I've been through the Trough of Disillusionment and back, and rocked back and forth a bit even, and I now figured out what's been bugging me so much about it.
It reminds me a bit of #E20...

Where will the social developers code? And what?

Dion Hinchcliffe wrote a very interesting piece, and I missed it. But thanks to John Rymer I picked it up.
John shared an interesting question indeed:

Client gives up on enterprise PaaS deal with #Salesforce.com, asks me for options. Focus is "systems of engagement." Interesting question.
— John Rymer (@johnrrymer) February 16, 2012

We had a small conversation on that and I read Dion's post.
While I disagree with some statements like

Wanted dead or alive: any Facebook user, $ 125 reward

With the upcoming IPO of Facebook this week, I got a little worried. I told a few people "Mark my words, this IPO is going to blow the Social Media bubble once and for all" and even "Wouldn't be surprised if FB's IPO is going to start the final leg of this crisis and finish everything off".
A bit gloomy, I admit. But I really need to get something off my chest here: you could put a value on people, but not in this context, and certainly not at a price like this

Amounts have been predicted as low (yes, "low") as $ 10 billion, and as high as $ 100 billion for Facebook's IPO. At their claimed amount of 800 million users, who miraculously seem to be logging on every second day at the least, that would mean at least $ 12.5 per user, at maximum $ 125.
A maximum amount of one hundred and twenty five dollars per Facebook user, dead or alive - would you offer such a ridiculous amount of money if it were your own? Of course not

How Klout could make Twitter a better place

I've written my fair share of posts on Klout. 1.5 years ago I started off with a mild post called "Why I have doubt about @Klout"

At the beginning of that I stated

First of all, I highly appreciate the service

- and I ended with

11 extra Klout points in 12 days on the one hand comforts me, and on the other makes me think about the stability and value of it all...

Since then, I've become increasingly weary of the product, especially because of the consistently incosnsistent quality of the product, its lack of service, and its continuous drumming on the marketing machine nonetheless - no wonder 2.5 million people instantly killed their Klout profile as soon as they finally got the chance to do so

Today, I present a way for Klout to actually create some goodwill on Twitter

The evangalyst: preaching to the converted

There are definite signs of evolution in social media. Where I saw some issues around mainstream adoption over a year ago, I can now rest assured.
Dozens of "priests and monks" have arisen all over the world to further aid the conversion towards social; Social Business now is the way to go and according to most InfoGraphics over 3/4 of all businesses all over the globe have either implemented social media or are very happy with it, or both

Asphalt that controls traffic type and flow?

This weekend I attended the SAP Inside track NL event, held at Ciber HQ in Eindhoven. The event was great, and I really enjoyed it but would have loved to stay longer and gotten more involved.
What has followed are great conversations and discussions, new people to follow on Twitter and elsewhere, and lots of topics to talk about

One of the inputs for that is the presentation I gave at #sitNL

The socmed files: I wanna believe

This week I had a chat with Steve Denning and Michael Ricard, and also some comments on IBM presenting their social profile.
Both are related in the sense that lots of (social) promises are made, but little social or not outcomes presented.
That worries me. Social works for me, for sure, and for many others I know. But why? Is it the What -just get yourself on the social bandwagon and you'll be saved- or the How -adapt to the social media ways of living and you'll enter the Promised Land- or the With What -connect via as many social networks as you can and you'll be Socialised

For me, this is how it works:

Twitter spam - a problem? No. Curation is here

A few times a day, I get a tweet directed at me from someone I don't know, who neither offers something related to what I have recently tweeted.
The first few times that happened, a few months ago, I clicked the URL and ended up at some site after being redirected via more than a few others (hello pageview counter), and saw nothing I was interested in

Since, I recognise the pattern: tweet is short and unrelatable, picture is attractive in either which way, and tweet always contains a URL. When I visit that tweeps' tweets, out of the last 20 a few are repeated

Pattern established - why now can't Twitter do that automatically and block these spammers before they harass me?