This morning I found out in Twitter that some guys were going to have a collective listening of Free, a book by Chris Anderson, in Spotify. For this, there was a chain, or a qaiku, made to Qaiku where participants could communicate and keep collective notes.

The idea was that everyone would listen every chapter at the same time and thus the notes from everyone who wanted to write them, would be submitted to the right part of the listening session’s message chain.

It was also an interesting way of enhancement to the learning experience when participants provided links and messages to extra information about matters in the book – although some information seemed a bit hard to take in use: for example paper magazine articles are not that easy to link.

People acting this way without someone whipping us to do so, clearly indicates how we can collaborate and share our knowledge with each others and thus expand the amount of information we may gain, even from a single one book.

It would be interesting to see would it change the learning experience to more effective if a book was listened to like this, chapter by chapter, but after each chapter the participants would stop to discuss about the subjects they just heard about. Then after a while when the conversation was diminishing, would carry on.

It was a shame that I couldn’t participate to this as intensely as I would’ve wanted to. Despite of it this experiment left an interesting aftertaste and visions of new ways of eLearning and collaboration in learning and how they could develop to be a standard way of doing things. Hope to see more things like this in the future!

Here’s a link to Juhana Kokkonen’s [juhana2 in Qaiku] post about this at Juhana.org: http://juhana.org/2009/08/avoin-ad-hoc-opiskelukokeilukutsu/. He originally invented the idea.

Tero Heiskanen’s post [in Finnish], written almost in real time during the listening, can be found here: http://teroheiskanen.net/2009/08/26/free-ilmainen/

Haven’t people learned anything from the past? They wondered this same thing with Google, and look at it now! They are now wondering it with services like Twitter, Spotify and still some people do it even with Facebook.

I believe everyone should finally understand that this is the new way of creating concepts and making business; not starting with a polished and totally finished product which you can immediately sell as such, but starting with creating a large community and after having it [if you are worth it], creating and releasing extra in the service – hopefully with meaningful stuffing – for those who want to pay and use it to the max.

The trick of course is to have an innovative approach and ask “Well, now we have all these people here – what are we going to do with them? How can we do profitable business with all this and still keep people liking us?”

I believe it’s really OK in the start to have a half-ready concept which you can put out for public. That way you can more easily tweak it according to what people are saying about it and what they really need.

Here’s the CNET News’ article about Twitter putting out pro accounts

I’m not subscribing to all the figures and facts of this video [see the comments in his blog to learn more], but the video makes you think over things, and I believe that’s the most important thing.

I wanted to share my thoughts on how to manage your time and presence with what the web x.0 can offer in this era of huge information flood; we are at the same time trying to read the news of the world [hopefully people still care about these], our professional news, news of our hobbies [there can be many different branches here], updates from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, new videos from services like YouTube, the list is as endless as one’s imagination and need to feed. So how to manage all this and get the best out of it in a way that you can have a life too?

If you are like me; always searching new interesting things and also sometimes finding them even without searching, you most likely are facing this same problem, the feel of spilling a glass too full.

For the start, I can say this: there’s no way to get them all. You will miss information and sometimes you will miss your friends ‘My dog is sick’ status updates but hey, who cares? The circle of web is continuous and tomorrow you have new things again. This is the first thing you have to comprehend.

Another thing is what really makes the difference to you. What’s really important and what you enjoy? You can subscribe to a hundred blogs, but is it really necessary to fill your RSS Reader too much if the things these people write aren’t that useful to you. So learn to separate what is useful information and what is just echoing. Today there was listed 208,559 bloggers only in the WordPress’ frontpage. It’s not odd if you can loose yourself in this.

But what are the tools to manage the rest of it, e.g. the social services so that you can access them more rapidly? It’s all about management. iGoogle and Netvibes are good examples for this. I used to use iGoogle but two weeks ago just happened to try out Netvibes and am now hooked – and that’s why I’m using it here as an example.

In Netvibes you can group things for example like Gmail, Twitter feed and your most interesting feeds under different tabs which you can name, let’s say as ‘News’ or ‘My Social Sites’. This already saves you some time when you don’t necessarily have to browse and access to each of your accounts one by one.

Same applies to news – this I find as one of the most relaxing things. I want to keep myself updated about things that happen in the world and in the web. I have to and need to do this if I want to be better at my work, have more perspective on things that happen in the world and have overall something to say to other people. But I don’t have the time to read every printed newspaper or even visit their sites. So what to do?

Let’s say you’re interested in economics and business. In my Netvibes I have a tab called ‘Business’ where I have a couple of feeds from business-related blogs that I have found useful. In this same tab I also have a couple of Netvibes widgets and feeds for news sites like Kauppalehti, Financial Times and Newsweek.

I used to have, okay, still have, my Google Reader filled with RSS feeds from too many sites that I can’t possibly read because it would take too much time. This kind of management helps me to glance today’s interesting topics [e.g. news] more easily and maybe catch up some cool and interesting thoughts from bloggers, all this in the same page. And grouping things like this help you concentrate on the same topics more efficiently.

This same way-of-effectiveness applies to microblogging. Although I have to say that most of the time I use Twitter through Tweetdeck, but at the same time I have a tab in Netvibes where I have my Twitter feed, a couple of Twitter search widgets with different search terms and a Tweetmeme widget. This way I believe I maximize the power of using Twitter.

There is of course a lot more that you can do with services like these, and I don’t want to list here everything that I have in my Netvibes. The message of this post was more like ‘There is hope to tame the flood to your advantage AND have a life too’.

Hopefully this post is going to be helpful to people and if you have your own way of interesting web management that you want to share, please do. I’m always eager to hear other experiences.

In the days when there’s still people rather new to tools and services like Twitter, the meta services are rapidly evolving behind the scenes. It is funny to notice how many analytic tools there is already for Twitter.

Someone somewhere has once said that Twitter Search [or something alike] could be the future search engine, and even more powerful than Google. One reason for this comment is most likely drawn from the fact that Twitter Search finds almost instantly the posts people have send about a subject and thus search results are more real time that way.

Who knows what may be the case, but you never know about the real future business models until they come knocking at your door – although when talking about Twitter there has been lately some rumors about them [I had to put that link up, just for the sake of the irony]. One has always to remember the time when Google was considered as ‘just another search engine’. Well, how did that went?

I’m not saying that Twitter is going to rule the world [probably], but merely expressing the fascinating possibility of it evolving steadily to be more than just another microblogging tool.

But the raison d’être of this post was going to be the Twitter tools, Yung-Hui Lim has written a post  “8 Excellent Tools to Extract Insights from Twitter Streams” at Social Media Today.

The vast number of meta services like these makes you wonder, if it is them that make one service conquer the field from others, and slowly nibble the power from analytic tools like Google Analytics in the long run? Of course the GA works slightly different way, but the basic premise behind Twitter’s and Google’s analytic tools is the same: “show me good solid information how I am doing”.

But there’s more here than just the results. Some Twitter tools won’t only show how many people have watched your profile or how many is following your updates, but also even make suggestions how you can develop your current visibility through Twitter, giving you clear instructions. Well this is something more and even for a layman in the Twitterverse to understand.

Overall some of the tools are really specific and give you lots of information. Of course the trick is again in what you make of these stats and how you use them, if you use them.

I would really like to know what ideas and thoughts people are having about this subject.

And if this Twitter matter interests you more, read my pseudo philosophical reasoning: ‘Tweet this’

Our guy Mike is working as a car repair parts salesman and he is a total car enthusiast in his free time, building up beautiful hot rods. He also likes to share his love for this hobby to the rest of the world in the web by writing a blog.

Various people who are customers where he works, the ‘Jeff’s Car and Parts’ [yeah I know, what an inventive name], find his personal blog and become its readers.

I tried to think a couple of effects this could have on both of the parties, the company and Mike. Here’s some I came up with:

• People feel that ‘Jeff’s Car and Parts’ has a guy working in the company who knows his business and really loves the thing he’s doing.
  
• People love to do business with familiar people. This feeling of Mike being a real human being and an ordinary guy we all know, could make the company a bit more personal and sympathetic, and could even lower the threshold to come to the store and ask information about cars and parts. –This is an important point in which I believe the web 2.0 or the social web can be totally priceless: it has a potential to show a company in its true form – a community run by people like you and me.
  

• People begin to feel this is a stunt and the company feels phony to them. They try to find some hidden agenda buried in the blog’s writings, and because people have a tendency to find what they are looking for, they eventually most likely do. Even when there wasn’t one. –Personally I hope these kinds of corporate hoaxes are history, because eventually you will get caught.
  
• Other companies see Mike as a real jewel and they try to recruit him.
  

Of course there are other potential risks in making people know about the blog. For example, if the company and Mike were having hard time with each other, Mike could go write that Jeff’s Car and Parts stinks, is a bad employer and keeps the prices too high although the parts are imported from Bangladesh.

Be this true or not, this could have a bad effect on the company’s image. But it might be a problem to Mike too. The company’s brand may suffer, but so can Mike’s. Why? Well, do people want to hire a person who may tarnish your corporate image by throwing dirt?

In this kind of situation Mike has a responsibility and one should think his actions carefully. It is a question of a personal netiquette and what is worthwhile. These things could backfire so that in the future potentially less people are willing to hire you.

I believe when your actions in the Internet may stay there forever, you begin to think what you put in there – if not, you should begin right now.

Should you ever mix your personal and work life like in this example, I’m not sure, but this was just a play of a situation where the company and Mike were both willing to try out something like this.

Examples and comments, anyone?

I believe that your number one responsibility as a marketing professional is to enlarge your, and your client’s perspectives on what is current marketing and advertising, and offer your client the best contemporary ways of brand management.

Sometimes I just can’t understand how it can be possible that the people in the business are afraid of the “strange unknown”. If your client proposes you he would like to advertise in Facebook, be afraid. You have dropped the ball.

This simple request to deliver something new means, you are way behind the development, and most likely, behind the other ad-creative-etc. agencies too. And do I even have to mention it’s bad for your business?

If you are working in an area where you supposed to be innovative, bold and get up with new fascinating ideas, how can you be afraid of the new, fascinating ideas of other people? In this case I mean ideas (i.e. services) like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or what ever the next ZingaZingaZoo web startup may be.

Note: The social web services are here not to take your soul, but are the next level of the web. And they will not just disappear.

Someone pretty much like you has come up with them. And there will be more.

Like the reality that surrounds us, so will the reality we call the web be ever changing. It is up to you to change your behavior accordingly. If you are a professional working in the business, you know you have to always keep your eyes and ears open for the new unknown or perish as the ancient dodo.

I found this site Alltop which is a portal to blogs, through one of my news feeds I like to read from chrisbrogan.com, and now I feel excellent and think that the whole concept of social web is absolutely magnificent and will make the world a better and more informative and open place.

So, why I now think blogs are good?

The biggest reason is, they are mostly of something specific and they have been written by an individual interested on that specific area. OK, that’s not always 100% true, everyone has heard about the casual fake bloggers working in an advertising agency and keeping a blog for the wrong reasons. Luckily people are sometimes smarter in the web and mostly in these cases evil-doers get caught right in the start.

When a person starts to write voluntarily about something, anything, you know he or she must be interested in the subject. Because, let’s face it, although it may be somehow easier to write to the web and the word count is often smaller than in the average high school essay, writing is still a thing people begin to do if they are honestly interested in something and want to express themselves. And writing is, in a way, hard to start, especially if you are not writing in your mother tongue. So most likely if one starts and even continues, there are real reasons behind that.

One other good reason is that blogs benefit fast and directly. I have noticed, that nowadays I’m almost always searching some particular piece of information, and the blogosphere is often a better and more ‘to the core’ type of place to find what you are looking for, opposed to for example commercial search engines. When I find a blog that deals with the things I was looking for, there’s almost always some good links forward to explore more on the subject. And if the blog is well-made, the connected sites (or blogs) are also good and informative.

And about the subject I last time wrote (i.e. nagged), that you don’t have the time to read all the interesting blogs and feeds and stuff you would like to. Well, deconstruct, deconstruct and deconstruct my friend. And stop whining. Try out those feeds you are reading for a week or two. If you see the numbers increase in the ‘unread posts’, delete it. If you are not reading it, it most likely stands for “I don’t need it that much”. There’s plenty of better sources out there. Don’t get stuck to something you don’t need. Find another, better one.

And in the end, where the people should get their subjects and ideas for their blogs? From other people of course. Unless you are a genius of some kind, and not likely in that case either; human beings don’t work in a void. People don’t get ideas from the thin air. You search, you talk and listen, you process. And sometimes, when its too much to bear to keep it just for yourself, you execute.

Like my favorite writer from my childhood, Stephen King said,