JG etc.

In 2000 I was interested in getting into powerlifting. I had heard a lot about how training your fast twitch fibers could make you a better surfer(originally inspired by Tom Curren and his model on plyometrics), a higher jumper, and they were your largest muscle fibers meaning if you worked them out, they would make you bigger, quicker. All of this led me to powerlifting and to one my friends who was a great powerlifter. I asked him how I could get into it. And he told me one thing, “Go pick up the heaviest weight in the gym, and see what you can do with it.” Now, he really didn’t mean to do exactly that, but I understood what he meant. Everyone wants to get in shape, they start with exercise books, personal trainers, a new wardrobe, etc. What my friend was telling me was, get out there, see if you like it, if your body reacts to it, you will know what do next. That stuck with me, and continues to whenever I get into something new. Get out there and do it, iterate, and optimize to your strengths that make you better…..

If there is one thing that I am most looking forward to around my work life in 2009; it would be in building projects.

I had a good conversation with someone that I respect before the end of the year. One way or another we got to talking about the frustration we feel with our industry and the “thought leaders” that dominate it. It struck me that these people are in many ways the aspirational leaders of our industry and the frustration lies in the fact that many of them don’t actually build anything. They talk, they network, they come up with principles and keynotes, but when you look at actual product output, it seems scarce. I think this is similar with most industries, but with online marketing the leaders presence and stature is only amplified by the natural tools of social media and the web.

So here is my goal in 2009. To be nothing like them. Instead, I will use the 37 Signals “Getting Real” doctrine as something to strive for and the best translation to my friends Pick up the Weight advice. I point to them and their philosophy for two reasons. 1)They are considered thought leaders and are well known in the overall web industry(kind of contradicting myself here) but also, and more importantly 2) They take their principles and build things and they understand and promote the idea that the future of the web lies with the people that are building it.

Whether you are a social media expert or just have a job in online advertising. You are working on the web; you are building instructions to an experience, you are a software architect. In 2009, I’m looking forward to working with and following people that define these principles.

Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics, wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.

Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that’s not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn’t).

Getting Real is staying small and being agile.

Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.

Getting Real is about iterations and lowering the cost of change. Getting Real is all about launching, tweaking, and constantly improving which makes it a perfect approach for web-based software.

Getting Real delivers just what customers need and eliminates anything they don’t.

So many exciting, rich applications coming online based on new architectures and platforms. There is a gold rush of potential on platforms like The iPhone, Facebook, Android, OpenSocial, etc. Developers have opportunities that could make them millions, while also offering a meritocracy around their work that keeps them independent and not engineer #1B465D at Oracle or some other software legacy company.

The problem? There are big gatekeepers looking to create an exclusive club, take profits, steal IP, and leverage their scale to crush anything that is competitive. Feels very similar to four years ago when, if you were an independent site looking to create a revenue model, you didn’t have a lot of choices. Ad networks paid $0.10 CPMs and affiliate partners were not interested in valuing your audience for anything else than a CPA transaction.

Who is going to create a model that looks out for the interests of developers?

I think the biggest issue they are going to have to overcome is how safe consumers feel in entrusting all their passwords to one company. Which begs the question, is it safe?

The application for the iPhone and even the browser is the best solution I have found for managing so many of the toughest accounts to log into. ConEd, TimeWarner, AT&T, etc. It also gives you a snapshot into your balances.

Some photos of the iPhone UI from Lifehacker

For travel it is a great way to look up your itinerary for a flight or hotel check-in without having to crack open the laptop or remember reservation numbers.

The Remixed World

Via Oren, a drawing from Hugh MacLeod on the importance of APIs.

Barack Obama

I’ve covered this one a bit, but it continues to be great. Now there is news that he is going to take fireside chats to YouTube. Awesome.

Nikon D90

It’s by far the best camera I have ever owned. I’m a novice with DSLRs and my hands tend to shake a lot but I’m impressed with how easy it is to use and how good the photos are.

Google Analytics & Google Trends

Neither of them are new, but I find myself using them more and more each day. Great companies make great products.

Yammer

We are using it internally at FM. It’s cool, the collective nature of a simple messaging tool allows for a clean way for people to share thought streams and ask questions. In a smaller company you have a lot of people that are talented in many areas that are far beyond the scope of what they are hired for. Tools like Yammer allows for this to come out.

An iPhone Case

I don’t have one of these but I’m going on my third iPhone. Maybe I should buy one? Steve Jobs: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” I argued the case conflicts with the design and therefore interrupts how it should naturally work. Well, it doesn’t work at all when the screen is shattered.

#hashtag/meme movements

I’m excited about services like Twitter and their ability to capture the spirit of the moment in a very lightweight, extensible way. Hopefully more to come here.

cooliris

Formerly, Piclens, cooliris is just cool. If you have a PC hooked up to your TV it’s even better(larger screen). A fun piece of software to weave your way through a more liquid and media-rich web experience.

I’ve been beating the Facebook Connect drum since it was announced. I even had the opportunity to speak my thoughts on it a bit at the Social Ad Summit on the Alternative Social Advertising Models panel and last week at our CM Summit around Social Media Optimization. Facebook or any social network only gets really interesting when it is open, searchable, and extensible.

Giving that intro, it was awesome for me when I saw Nick O’Neil writing about Scott Rafer’s presentation in Berlin around the Facebook Platform.

In the presentation Scott talks about the death of the Facebook Platform and the “intial” opportunity of Facebook Connect as the place where developers should be focusing their time. I say “intial” because I think Scott is concerned about Facebook having and using the same sort of power over Connect, as they have over their developer platform. A fair assesment, but this time the rules are different given the tradeoff for Facebook with Connect. Now, Facebook has the opportunity to “spread” its code base outside of their network and they also have competition, Google’s OpenSocial/FriendConnect. In my opinion, both of these companies are competing for the Social answer in advertising to what was Google AdSense for Publishers. The winner of this battle should reap the rewards of billions of dollars spent against Social Advertising in the coming years.

The general lesson to think about with the recent platform bust on Facebook is for all developers to not forget about the real opportunity, distribution platform, code base, and community. That is the overall openness of the web. Swallowing the Facebook Juice doesn’t prepare you for the larger offering of all the services of the web. Facebook Connect and Google OpenSocial/FriendConnect offer a way to “connect” the ecosystem of their social graphs while also maintaining your presence in your own ecosystem and code base. Both of these brands get the fundamental long term importance of being open and it Scott’s important message to developers to follow the lead of the big boys.

Should be good for all web companies. I believe this is true, but I don’t think all web companies believe in it. Via Noah, I was pointed to this piece by Umar Haque, entitled, How to Chrome Your Industry. His article puts Method, to what most people think of as Madness, in Google’s overall strategy. In all of Google’s strategy you can see the concept that, “What is good for the web, is good for Google” and Chrome is the latest such project. To Umair’s point, he asks, why are more companies not taking up the same philosophy?

Chrome is a shared resource that ensures the sustainable growth of a larger ecosystem. There are two key words in that sentence. The first is shared. Google is investing in a shared resource because it has the potential to expand the pie dramatically for all, and so Google stands to benefit more than by hoarding it. The second is sustainable growth: through Chrome, Google ensures the ecosystem stays a level playing field, amplifying incentives for innovation, quality, and productivity.

The question from above and this quote exemplify the feeling I walked away with after reading Clay Shirky’s latest book. A few excerpts from that book really struck me, especially in the current climate of our economy and the changing face of many industries. A fundamental flaw we live with in most of our institutions can be seen in this exerpt from page 248 of the book.

The cost of trying things is where Coasean Theory about transaction costs and power law distributions of participation intersect. Institutions exist because they lower transaction costs, relative to what a market could support. However, because every institution requires some formal structure to remain coherent, and because this formal structure itself requires resources, there are a considerable number of potentially valuable actions that no institution can afford to undertake. For these cations the resources invested in trying them will often costs more than the outcome. This in turn means that there are many actions that might pay off but won’t be tried, even for innovative firms, because their eventual success is not predictable enough.

Might pay off but won’t be tried, is a tough one to swallow, and speaks to Umair’s point that:

Rethinking and rebuilding business in a radically better mold is the fundamental challenge today’s boardrooms face. It is what the 21st century demands. Because as a confluence of crises tells us, tired, rusting, obsolete industrial era business as usual cannot go on.

Umair asks: Where is the Chrome in your Strategy?

At FM, one of the original reasons I joined, outside of seeing a major market shift as media and technology continued to collide; was that I funadamentally believed the time had to come to support independent publishing brands online. I wanted to help the dying industries like newspapers and to that effect, journalism. Can it be done? From Clay’s book, the “lump of labor fallacy” speaks to how, in our case, the web, can help break the traditional models while also, and this is important, creating more value than originally existed.

I still see the day when FM “officially” builds it’s own Media Lab, and we help fund innovation that will get us to a place where, “what is good for the web, is good for FM.” Our soon to be released “Toolbox” is a good example of this, in many respects it is a,shared resource that ensures the sustainable growth of a larger ecosystem, as we help define value for web projects that are built with publishing brands and marketers.

I’m rambling a bit here and creating run-on sentences to boot. What do you think, does your company have a Chrome Strategy? Is there a need for one?

Image Credit