I’ve been reading

This week I had a short stay in hospital for a minor operation and have been resting up to make sure that I don’t pop any stitches. For a couple of days I was popping pain relief which had as much influence on my head as my body, then I decided I wanted clarity back and started reading.

I mean really reading. I finished a book I had started weeks ago and started another straight away. I really enjoyed myself. I also got into reading some more articles and read a quote by Nicholas Carr, from an article in The Atlantic, which really resonated with me, entitled Is Google Making Us Stupid?

The core of the article is that we have access to so many snippets of information and the ability to easily research any topic, that we don’t have to do any serious reading any more. In fact most of us don’t bother any more. I have been an avid reader most of my life, but these days I spend more and more time on the computer.

My business and personal life involves amongst other activities, reading, responding to and writing emails and spending a lot of time communicating via Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, plus many sites such as MySpace and Music Forte, where I hope an A&R person or singer will pick up some of my songs. It seems to be a race from one micro-communication and application to the next.

In his article, Carr wrote: “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” That sounded so much like what I do, what I revelled in.

But here’s the thing for me. I have read thousands of books over the years, from literature to politics, science, philosophy and psychology and much more. I have enjoyed the American and English classics, with some Kafka and Solzhenitsyn, lots of Science Fiction, and many university texts. They have given me a background from which to interpret all the bytes of information I now sample, to understand them and make sense of them.

Because you can think faster than you read, I was able to analyse, interpret question and process everything I set my eyes on, storing it for future reference. But here’s the thing, many people today are not building those backgrounds of data and knowledge.

Many teenagers don’t read books any more. Many tell me they can count the total number of books they have read in their lives, on the fingers of one hand. When they communicate, they abbreviate words to send text messages on their mobiles or send emails. Spelling has become poor and many people who have come to me looking for jobs, could not write a quality CV to introduce themselves. When I complained about my children’s spelling in their school assignments, teachers told me that it was concept and intent that mattered, not delivery. I’m going on a tangent, but things are changing and they may not be for the better.

When it comes to news, only a couple of people in my office read a newspaper, although most of them are graduates. If we didn’t have one in the office, most people would know nothing more than what they see on the TV news, when they bother to watch it.

I’ve counted myself lucky that I live in New Zealand where people have had a DIY attitude, based around the history of being a young country where people had to solve their own problems and find ways of doing things despite many obstacles, including being about as far away from the rest of the world as you can get.

Kiwis have been known as inventors and problem solvers and have been well accepted in business all over the world, where specialisation is becoming more common. Even here though, talent shortages are becoming obvious, especially as people find they can earn more overseas. Another reason imho, is that without an intellectual background, and moving away from the land and domestic skills that come with necessity, we are losing those skills.

Companies who made their older staff redundant and replaced them with young managers are finding that they may be lacking in maturity that comes from experience and learning intellectually, not just info bytes. This is costing them dearly. In many cases older workers are going back into the workforce for economic reasons and companies are reaping the benefit of their experience, but this comes hard as younger people often think they know everything and don’t need ‘wise counsel’.

The world economy may help us, bringing people home from their extended overseas experiences, looking for a better place to raise their kids and our isolation could be a good thing.

Specialisation is going nuts. A story in The Futurist earlier this year by Bruce Tow and David Gilliam gave an example of a surgeon who was only qualifed to repair knees injured during the playing of football. There is a new specialisation now starting to becom sought after, which is that of a ‘connector’. A connector is someone who can understand enough about a lot of disciplines and can act as an intermediary to help solve problems outside of the specialist spheres.

Without realising it, I have become one of those. Many people come to me for advice in how to solve business problems. They have people within their organisations with amazing specialist skills, but without  the ability to harness these people to and networks to get results. Often it seems really simple to me, with my background and of course an objectivity that comes from not being involved in the path that got them to their current position.

So I’ve been reading and I guess I’ve been waffling, but I’m allowed because this is my blog. Many people think that Twitter and all the other networking sites are a waste of time. For many people they are, because they don’t have the skills to access the wisdom and knowledge behind many of the shared messages. The people who really maximise the wealth of information on the net are those who have read and absorbed knowledge first. The ones who rise up as genuine consultants share real knowledge. They don’t need to fill their micro bytes with quotes and links from someone else, they can think for themselves, because they did their apprecticeships, they learned intellectually and by doing, failing and doing again.

Maybe it was just the painkillers and reading this will be a waste of time. But then I don’t think reading is ever a waste of time.

Legacy Locker passes all your web accounts on to your beneficiary

I read a story in this morning’s NZ Herald which doesn’t appear to be available online. It was about a new web site which people can use to pass on all their passwords and account details for everything they do on the web from your online banking to all your web sites, social networking pages etc.

This was something I hadn’t considered before from my own perspective, or from those I leave behind. There are of course practical issues, such as having access to my online banking accounts but also my blogs, the sites where I post my music, such as MySpace and Music Forte, and my social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.

The practical things are important because I would want to ensure that my beneficiaries have access to all my assets, but there are also the emotional considerations. Unless someone does something about it, my blogs and my social networking pages will remain forever. Personally I think it would be nice to leave a digital footprint behind, especially for my music, but also where people can remember me, almost like a legacy, where my own perspectives can be seen, rather than other people’s interpretations of them.

The NZ Herald story, which came from Telegraph Group Ltd, (which I also couldn’t find online) raised issues of the pain that it might cause to people left behind, when their loved ones pass away, seeing all their posts, photos and other net based activities, like footprints in the sand that people can see in time to come. It could be very painful.

On the other hand, I would love to be able to access information left by my forefathers. I have travel diaries from my grandparents and a small number of photos, but mostly their information is lost forever, or scattered, not shared, amongst my many cousins, uncles and aunts.

So the Legacy Locker service allows you to ensure that people left behind have access to all your accounts and can follow through on your wishes after you pass on. I don’t know how they find out that you have died, their must be a mechanism for that, but you have the ability to write an email that will be delivered to your beneficiaries after your death, so that they have access to all the information you want them to find.

It looks like they have all the systems you need including bank level security, to ensure that your data is safe.

They make a good point on their site that online assets have value. There may be areas of financial value, but there is also the intrinsic value of having access to photos that you may not have ever printed, music, diaries / blogs and traces of all your relationships, business, family and friends.

The pricing is also very reasonable, $30 a year, a flat fee of $300 and you can also have a free trial. I’m not so sure about the free trial other than being able to evaluate how it all works, but it is something I would probably do if I was going to sign up. Will I sign up, not at the moment, but maybe some time in the future, who knows?

While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course http://luigicappel.wordpress.com.

Thanks so much for your support:)

On Twitter and Business

If you have or know teenagers, you will know that they spend a lot of time on the internet and particularly in the area of social networking. The most popular applications they use are Bebo, Facebook and MySpace. They aren’t just doing it on their PC’s at home, school or work, they are doing it on their mobiles. You might be surprised to know that in most countries in the developed world, including New Zealand, Facebook and Bebo represent close to half of all mobile data traffic. It is big and no one saw it coming.

Now people using social networking are no longer just Generation Y, it goes through all the generations, especially with professional social networking applications such as LinkedIn (go there and look for Luigi Cappel and you’ll find my account) where professional build a network where they can discuss business issues, look for staff or for jobs and generally communicate with like minded people around the world.

In the last few years the term Generation X has once again emerged. Generation X is generally agreed to as being the later group of Baby Boomers who challenged all the beliefs and philosophies of their elders. Instead of ‘we are doing this because it’s the way we always did it, or the way our parents did’ they tried new ways of doing everything.

These people grew up with the advent of the computer and are very comfortable with the Internet and various forms of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Yet when marketers are trying to sell new product, they often focus on the Generation Y who perhaps traditionally were the ones who rushed to the record store to get the new albums and wanted to wear the latest fashions. Now of course fewer of them by CD’s when they can download or copy music, mostly without paying for it. In today’s economy they are also more likely to be tempted by sales and even if they didn’t need something, they might still buy it if the deal sounds good.

Back to Generation X. These people are now in the late 30’s and older. They probably have a home and a mortgage, are settled with a good income and despite the economy still have some spending power. So, here’s a thought from left field. There is a social network , Twitter, which has been quietly growing to a point now where there are an estimated 6 million users and around 55 million messages sent a month. It is said to be growing at a rate of up to 2,000 users a day.

So what is Twitter and why should I care. Twitter is a social network where you make friends, or in the case of Twitter, you ‘Follow’ people. You post messages, called tweets, from your internet connected PC or from your mobile phone’s browser. The messages are restricted to 140 characters including spaces, so you have to be very smart with your choice of words. It started with and its main focus was a social one, and the idea was that you entered what you were doing at the time, for example, ‘Having an ice cream at Milford Beach’. This is still a major use and many people only ‘Tweet’ amongst their real friends. I often see Tweets from friends saying things like “I’m heading down to Ponsonby for a coffee, anyone else in the neighbourhood?’

There are also social gatherings, for example a few weeks ago I attended the ‘Twestival’ in Auckland, raising funds for Charity Water, but that’s another story. Let’s keep it simple. Twitter is free, its easy to use and there are lots of applications you can get for free that allow you organise your Tweets. I use Tweetdeck and Twitbin depending on what I am doing at the time.

Twitter is now being used by lots of different organisations around the world. It is used by companies, manufacturers, news media and even government departments such as the Victoria Police. If you are able to come up with reasons why people would follow you, you have a free medium to make them aware of special deals and offers, events or anything else that you think they would be interested in.

Here are some examples. A bar could promote a Happy Hour Deal by posting a message. A coffee chain could send out electronic coupons as Twitter messages, offering a free muffin with coffee for the next hour. A women’s clothing chain could announce a special deal on end of season fashions, or announce the exciting next season fashions are in store. A bike shop could post special deals around a racing event, or perhaps send brief updates of the Tour de France. The messages are anything that you think your customers or prospects would find of interest and be happy to read.

The thing with Twitter is that it is not intrusive. It’s not like a text message that beeps and wakes you up in the night or embarrasses you in a meeting or at the theatre. You have to open up your browser on your phone, or a website on your PC to receive the ‘Tweets’. You can follow who you like and if you don’t want to see them anymore, you can stop ‘following’ them with ease.

So who is doing this already? Find out for yourself. If you go to www.twitter.com you will find an option called Find People. Click on this and then select the option box at the top called Find On Twitter. I had a go and here are some of the results I got. I entered ‘shoes’. I got back 91 results. There were generic shoe stores, golf shoes, wedding shoes, custom soles. But when I entered ‘Shoes NZ’ or Shoes New Zealand there were none. I can think of some iconic shoe retailers who could jump into this spot.

So who can you find promoting product on Twitter. Here are a few names that you can look up and follow to see what they are doing and remember it’s free! Vodafone and Telecom, Adidas, Starbucks, McDonalds Cincinnati are doing a great job of promoting new products and deals, Borders Books, The Car Shop, Pro Guitar Shop, Sisters Gift Shop, Alpine Ski Shop, just entering shop I found over 200 shops who are already using Twitter around the world. Now to be fair, only some of them are actively using Twitter for marketing, but that is normal and it is still a relatively new concept, but Twitter has gained 6 million users in less than 3 years, so you would have to say they are onto something and if you are smart, you could be one of the first to really make something of it.

If you look around, you will find retailers who have got it together. For example http://twitter.com/fluevog is a shoe shop. They offer electronic coupons, they have links to pages where they tell you in Twitter about a new product and provide a link to a web page where you can see them. They have only been using Twitter for a short time, only sent out 17 messages and they already have almost 500 followers!

Just as a footnote, even if you are a bricks and mortar retailer and don’t do much on the Internet, you might want to think again. For example if you have identified your target market, especially if you are a speciality retailer, then Twitter could open up a whole new area of opportunity for international sales. There must be loads of opportunities to export product, especially Kiwiana to individual customers.

Twitter is very viral in its approach and if you find people who like your kind of products, and you offer them information and deals in your Twitter messages, the word will get out and their followers can become yours.

One final, final word. Like anything, Twitter as a social network. Blogging environment requires consistency. People won’t follow you if you only send a couple of messages a week. They also don’t want to receive a hundred a day, you need to find a balance, but the main thing is that you provide something that they are pleased that they read.

So here’s a free service that you can get results from if you are smart, for an investment of 5-10 minutes a day. It can create a loyal following and grow a viral network for your business. One other thing I forgot to mention, there is also Twitpic http://twitpic.com/ , which allows you to post photos with your Tweets, again for free, so now you can even show followers pictures of your store, the friendly faces inside or your new products, oh and I did mention that this is all free didn’t I?

And if you want to follow me, you will find me at http://twitter.com/BluesBro.

While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course http://luigicappel.wordpress.com.

Thanks so much for your support:)

What can they find out about you on Facebook? Part One

What can they find out about you on Facebook? Plenty. I’ve always been of the opinion that in a country like New Zealand, if you have nothing to hide and you are a law abiding citizen, then there is no real threat. Now I am talking largely in terms of people or organisations watching you for purposes detrimental to your own. I still have that opinion from a New Zealand perspective and as I don’t have anything to hide, I’m not overly cautious, but that doesn’t mean I throw caution to the wind either.

For example, a couple of days ago I get a ‘Friend Request’ from someone I had never heard of, in another country. Now if I get a friend request on Linked In (which I use solely for buiness networking) or MySpace (which I use solely for the purpose of marketing my music) I will accept a friend request from a total stranger, because the information I am sharing on those sites  is information I want to share.

Facebook is different however, because almost every connection I have is with people I personally know, typically family, friends and acquaintances. It is a personal social network and my philosophy there is that my ‘friends’ are people I trust. I am much more open on that page and share photos of what I have been up to etc. I am more relaxed about the information I share as are my fellows.

So back to this week, I received a friend request from someone I had never heard of, from a country I have never been to. Rather than accepting it, I sent them a message asking why they sent me a friend request. I got a response back saying ‘Because I think I like you’. Needless to say I declined the invitation. Now it might have been a genuine reply and given that the person had a band page and appears to be a musician, it may well have been sincere and the liking may have been platonic from the perspective of one musician to another, but the key is that in Facebook I am very cautious about who I accept as friends. I don’t want to have to be too guarded and it is great fun keeping up with friends and family all over the world in a situation of many communicating with many.

This week an in Australia a person got approval from the court to ‘serve’ someone via Facebook. In this case it was people who had defaulted on a $100,000 loan and then dissapeared. They were found on Facebook. It may not be as insidious as it sounds, given that people are normally ‘served’ in newspaper advertisements and precedents have already been made when Sonny Bill Williams decided to walk out of his contract with the Bulldogs Rugby League team in Australia, to go and play in France, he was served by a text message to his mobile phone, but that’s another story.

I’m go to write this blog in two parts, with the 2nd focussing on what they can find out about you, but the first thing is that they can find you. If I want to find anyone that I know reasonably well, or know something about and they have a Facebook account, then I can find them and chances are, if I was a devious person, I could get them to accept me as a friend and give me access to all their Facebook information.

First of all I can search for their name.  If there are lots of people with the same name, I can get more specific. If I know more about them I can search using various criteria. For example I can say I only want results from a certain country. If I know their hobbies or passions, I can search for people with that name, by groups, events or even applications. For example if I know they love cricket, then I can search under applications related to Cricket.

I can search by company (which could be a company they worked for years ago, by school, or by email. Then of course you can search by people you think they might know, because if you know who their friends are, you should be able to find them if you can find their friends.

So now we can find them if they have a Facebook account (and I have only mentioned simple methods) we can find out more about them.

If you want to know more, why not subscribe to my blog so you will know when I post part 2 of this blog. If you know of other people who would be interested, send them a link and if you would like to leave a comment here, I would welcome that too.

To be continued……………………………

While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course http://luigicappel.wordpress.com.

Thanks so much for your support:)