This Blog Has Moved! Lots of Changes: New House, New Site, New Thinking

Note: As of July 28, 2008 this blog has moved. Please go to www.debbieweil.com/blog for the latest updates.

My new integrated blog / site went live today at www.debbieweil.com. The first thing you'll notice over on the new site is the lack of clutter. The talented folks at Viget convinced me that less is more.

So... no endless stack of widgets in the right-hand column. No "Digg this" or "Technorati" icons under each blog entry. We thought about this long and hard and I'm glad we did it this way. Note that there are icons for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and del.icio.us  in the footer of each page.

It's been a busy year. We moved to a much smaller house, decluttering and downsizing after 20 years. We love it! No regrets. Finally, I'm thinking about a new direction for my business. I'll continue to consult and speak in the meantime. Stay in touch!

If you see anything amiss on the new site, do let me know. We're still working out a few kinks. If you're curious, the new site is built on Expression Engine.

I'd love hear from you

Please leave your blog comments here.

Contact me here.

Tim Russert We Will Miss You

Life - and death - move so quickly in the Internet age. Consummate American political journalist Tim Russert , best known as host of Meet the Press, died suddenly several hours ago of a heart attack in the Washington DC offices of NBC News.

The news was instantly all over Twitter, the social networking / micro blogging platform.

If you had any doubt that "new media" possesses as much gravitas as established MSM, take a look at his Wikipedia page, already updated in the past tense. He will be sorely missed here in D.C. as well as around the world.

Useful Link

More on the magic of Twitter (as it relates to Tim Russert) by Steve Gillmor

When Amazon.com Goes Down... Shouldn't This Be "Top News"?

Update: Amazon is back up as of 3:40 PM Eastern.

Just saw via Twitter that the Amazon.com site is down (click on Web page message at left).

Strangely, this seems like very big news. Yet when I click on my Google home page (see below), there is no mention of it under all the news tabs.

Wow. Kind of like the Internet shutting down.

Update: Here's what Amazon just put up. OK this feels better. They haven't disappeared.

Have You Tried Searchme.com? Very Cool

A digital marketing strategist at a Global 100 company just put me onto a new search engine called Searchme.com (yes, these corporate types can be surprisingly plugged in!).

It' s still in beta, so go to http://beta.searchme.com/ and type in your name, company name, brand name, etc. You can choose "all" or ask for results based on advertising & marketing, radio, non-fiction and blogs. I assume they'll be adding more categories.

Up comes a visual "stack" of pages you can click through and mouse over. The results remind me of Apple's Time Machine. Cool, huh?!

And appropriately, the Searchme folks have created a demo video and put it up on YouTube. For those interested in the power of viral video, note that the video has been watched 63,588 times since it was posted to YouTube on March 9, 2008. Here it is:

Bill Gates Called This Morning and Woke Me Up... Now He Wants to Twitter

Update: this was lame as an April Fool's. But hey it worked the first time.- DW

What is it with this guy? Bill Gates called me exactly two years ago about starting a CEO blog. This morning, at the ungodly hour of 4:47 AM PST, he called again. He doesn't sleep?

Anyway, this time it's about Twitter. He wants to learn how to Twitter, he said.

Bill, it's simple really. Just go to Twitter and set up your free account. Name it www.twitter.com/billgates (oops, I don't think this is you, Bill). So maybe use twitter.com/bgates. If you need help, of course I'm willing (not that I am *the* expert on Twittering). Just send the plane and I'll hop right on.

As for why you want to Tweet? Well, here's my take on it...

 

Epiphany: Twitter Puts the "There" There Back Into Social Networking

I've been Twittering for a couple of weeks now after resisting for months. It finally came to me... why Twitter (some call it micro-blogging as you're limited to 140 characters) has taken off and what need it fills.

Twittering puts the "here" back in the "there"

Cf Gertrude Stein's "there is no there there."

It fills a need we have not only for connecting with other like-minded folks, but for locating them - and ourselves - in an actual, earthly place and space.

Reading the Tweets of those you "follow" gives you tiny jolts of temporal/spatial awareness: exactly what are your colleagues or friends doing, and where are they? Now you can find out.

Not every Tweet, of course. Some of the updates are pointers to blog posts or other timely references.

Ultimately, the vague sense of "we're all online" and "in the cloud" together" is disconnecting and can make us feel more lonely. (Studies have shown this.) In contrast, the more tangible "It has finally stopped raining" (Kristen Munson aka Social Media Mom ) or "tea break" (Sun Zhifeng twittering from Shanghai) is comforting. Hey, we're all real people.

Above is an example of a Tweet this morning from newmediajim (aka Jim Long) who updates us all day on his doings as a freelance TV photojournalist. He's often at the White House or on Capitol Hill. 

It's Cherry Blossom week in Washington DC and apparently the downtown streets are jammed with tourists. Thanks for the update, Jim.

Useful Links

How I use Twitter, and you?

9,000 Twitter followers: what does that mean?

Alltop's list of Twitterati

Check Out Guy Kawasaki's Alltop for All the Best Stories, News & Blogs on the Web

Well I'm thoroughly tickled to be included on Alltop Social Media. Alltop is Guy Kawasaki's newest venture. Start here and check out the categories on Career, Dads, Moms, Science and Twitterati. Of course there's also News and Politics.

P.S. Full disclosure: I know Guy from some years back (and I'm an unabashed fan). I emailed him and asked if he'd consider adding my blog. He freely admits on the About page that he does *not* "choose what's on Alltop with...

"a patent-pending, semantic computational algorithm derived from the post-doctoral work of Guy at Stanford."

According to the site, the Alltop team "relies on several sources: results of Google searches, review of the sites’ and blogs’ content, researchers, and our “gut” plus the recommendations of the Twitter community, owners of the sites and blogs, and people who care enough to write to us."

What's slightly odd to me is that while Alltop relies completely on RSS to syndicate -- or pull in -- the feeds to all the blogs it displays, you can't subscribe to the Alltop Social Media page or any other category. In other words, the site itself doesn't offer any feeds. Very retro.

Why I'm Changing to Initial-Caps Titles for Blog Entries

I hope the Blogging Grammar & Style Police are not out sniffing around today. They might quibble over this change. After using a lowercase style for my blog titles for the past three and a half years (with an initial cap on the first word), I've decided to switch to what looks to be the more standard initial-caps style for every word.

I'm doing this primarily because I think it looks better - and more authoritative - in RSS readers. Below is a snapshot of some of the feeds I look at in Google Reader on a regular basis. They're all using initial caps, including CopyBlogger which is ranked #31 in Technorati's Top 100.

Except for Seth Godin. But then he's Seth and still uses the TypePad address for his blog http://sethgodin.typepad.com/. As his blog is currently ranked #18 on Technorati (out of 112 million blogs) I think he can pretty much march to his own beat.

Whew... got that news off my chest.

Business Week updates its iconic 2005 blog story with a new title 'Social Media Will Change Your Business'

Full disclosure: I'm way behind in blogging while my offline move to a new house (and office) continues to unfold. Feeling very guilty about it. But it's a temporary hiatus. Or is it? See below for for a few thoughts about Twittering.

In case you missed it, Business Week has updated its by now iconic May 2005 article: Blogs Will Change Your Business. The new version is called Social Media Will Change Your Business.

Writer/editors Stephen Baker and Heather Green spent a month updating the article, re-interviewing some of their sources. In an appropriate crowdsourcing tactic, they also asked readers of their Blogspotting blog to weigh in with suggestions.

Bookmark the updated article and then brew up a pot of coffee and sit down for an online read. Be sure to click on the little blue "info" icons. You'll get pop-ups that give you updates on stats, trends, phenomena, etc.

Here is some of what you will learn:

- There are now 120 million blogs (according to Technorati), instead of 9 million. But only 11% of those have posted in the past two months. Interesting.

- According to once uberblogger Steve Rubel, twittering is a better way to stay in touch and to communicate. He's got over 3,900 "followers" for his 140-character Tweets.

Why Twittering is significant

During his re-interview for the updated article, Rubel tweeted "Sitting with Steve Baker of BW, wants to know why tweet?" Within 10 minutes, 20 responses came in. Baker was so inspired he's now twittering himself.

BTW, I tried to find this tweet (and the responses) on Steve Rubel's Twitter page. But apparently you can't search for past tweets, unless I'm missing something.

Update: Here is Steve Rubel's tweet (mentioned above), written while he was sitting with Steve Baker. I found it through a Google search: "Steve Baker" site:twitter.com

But I don't have time to track down the 20 responses. All by way of pointing out that tweets, technically, are searchable and findable via Google (each has a unique URL). In practice, however, they are ephemeral and synchronous.

It's much harder to reconstruct later the give and take of tweets and responses. At this point, it's easier to "follow" a conversation on a blog, where the comments stay attached to the original post and where they can be posted asynchronously.

Useful Links

Howard Rheingold on Why I'm Hooked on Twitter

Twitter Etiquette

Got a Six-Word Motto for the U.S.?

The authors of Freakonomics announced a Six-Word Motto Contest for the U.S. on their New York Times blog yesterday. As of this writing, they've gotten 607 comments with suggestions.

Here's mine:

"Where Anything Is Possible... Go Giants!"

What's yours? Click here.