Author: Jason Grigsby

Link Love on My Birthday from PR 2.0

Brian Solis of the incredibly insightful PR 2.0 blog sent some link love to this blog on Wednesday. This recognition was gratifying for a couple of reasons.

First, Wednesday was my birthday which explains why I’ve been too busy to see Brian’s post until now. So Brian, thank you for the birthday present.

Second, Brian has written two blog posts recently that really stand out:

  • Social Media is About Sociology Not Technology
    There are many good points in this, but my favorite quote is:

    The conversations that drive and define Social Media require a genuine and participatory approach. Just because you have the latest tools to reach people, or have played around with them, doesn’t mean you can throw the same old marketing at them.

  • Crisis Communications 2.0 – The Skype is Falling
    This is a great examination of the differences between the way Skype and Zoomer responded to recent outages.

The second article is particularly fascinating to me. While I’ve spent most of my professional career in web site development, my degree was in Journalism with an emphasis on Pubic Relations.

I selected Public Relations because I believed in Public Relations theory in its purest form which is the belief that PR both tells the public the view point of an organization and also helps an organization understand the viewpoint of the public.

A few years ago, I noticed that the geeks and nerds were intuitively grokking, practicing and evangelizing the pure form of public relations. However, most public relations professionals were still trying to control the message and avoided engaging in true conversations.

This is why I follow the work of people like Brian Solis and Steve Rubel. These voices are the ones that can help public relations professionals understand not only the technology that is impacting their lives, but as Brian puts it, the sociological changes that PR practitioners must embrace for PR to continue to be relevant and effective.

If you are interested, here are some more articles on the challenges that public relations faces:

Thank you again Brian for your link love and the kind words. It’s nice to be recognized by a blogger whose ideas I’ve enjoyed reading.

It’s a Mobile Web. We Just Don’t Realize It.

After Apple’s iPod and iPhone announcements, Dave Winer wrote of Steve Jobs, “It’s Steve’s world, we just live in it.”

I think Dave has very interesting take on Apple’s announcement. I encourage you to go read it. When I read Dave’s short summary on Twitter, a variation on his turn of phrase came to mind:

It’s a Mobile Web. We Just Don’t Realize It.

I’m astonished that the press coverage so far has focused almost exclusively on the iPhone price drops and the upset customers. When the coverage extends past the price drop, people seem content to handicap whether or not the iPod Touch will sell enough to meet Apple’s forecast.

No one seems to be talking about the fact that we now have another major platform for the mobile web. Additional news such as the likely Google and Yahoo phones, Microsoft’s recent comments about a Zune phone, and Nokia venturing into mobile web services have me convinced that the tipping point for the mobile web in the U.S. is right around the corner.

2008 is shaping up to be the year of the mobile web. The year when companies finally get serious about their mobile strategy.

With 2.7 billion mobile devices in the world and so many new mobile web devices hitting the market, the mobile web has arrived, but most of us just don’t realize it.

Amazon Redesigns, Removes Trademark Tabs

Amazon unveiled a new design today that removes its trademark tabs in favor of left navigation with flyout submenus. They’ve documented their redesign and the reasons for it.

The amount of content on the site has long outgrown its tab structure, but until now, Amazon has found creative ways to retain the tab structure while growing their store. I know Amazon does extensive usability testing so this new design is a vote of confidence towards the usability of flyout navigation and primary navigation on the left.

You may not see the new design when you visit the site. The FAQs on the new design explain:

Why do I see the new design on my home computer but not at work?
We’re still in our testing phase, and you may not see the new design all the time.

links for 2007-09-05

Women in Technology

OReilly has a new series on Women in Technology starting today. I’ve been reading quite a few articles in this space because I’ve been following my friend Selena who has been doing research on these topics. It’s great to follow her delicious bookmarks because I get to read the best stuff she’s found without having to do all of the legwork to find the articles.

So I’m very pleased that Selena is also going to be writing an article in the Women in Technology series for OReilly. For that reason alone, it is worth reading. As I mentioned previously, Selena is very, very smart.

Another notable local author in the series is open source and community expert Dawn Foster whose blog Fast Wonder is one that I’ve been enjoying over the last few weeks.

I’m really looking forward to the series. Please take a look at it.

Friends vs. Acquaintances

Steve Rubel had an interesting post a couple of weeks ago that I’ve been holding onto to consider. He postulates that the Web Changes How We Define Friendships. Steve makes some compelling points about the drive towards quantity versus quality when you start participating in social networks.

I have a different theory. I believe that social networks are not changing the way we define friends. Our close friends are the ones for whom we never needed social networking tools in the first place. Our friends are the ones who know who we are, have been to our homes, and who have refrigerator privileges*.

What social networks see to be able to do is help us better track our acquaintances. I think there is a stigma attached to the word acquaintance. We think of acquaintances as cool relationships. Distant relationships that mean little. In fact, they mean a lot.

I have acquaintances who I greet warmly whenever I see them or correspond with them. I don’t know them intimately, but I know them well enough to want to know how they are doing and what they are up to.

Perhaps social networks will change our definition of friendship, but if they do, it will because we were never comfortable with the word acquaintance and because word acquaintance is too long to fit nicely into our common language and UI designs.

* Refrigerator privileges is an idea I read about in Never Eat Alone defining the friendships that you have where the person feels free to raid your refrigerator. The idea in the book is that we need more friends with refrigerator privileges. I couldn’t agree more.

links for 2007-09-04

Signed Up for OpenID Today

Despite all of my reservations about OpenID, I finally found a compelling use for the technology today.

I signed up for Highrise by 37Signals today. I’m going to use it for personal contact management which I have a deeper interest in after reading Never Eat Alone.

The challenge is that I already have an account for Basecamp (another 37Signals product) and wasn’t looking forward to managing multiple accounts. OpenID to the rescue.

37Signals allows you to link multiple accounts—personal and business—to the same OpenID login. After a quick registration at MyOpenID.com, I was ready to sign up for Highrise and link my current Basecamp account. It was painless and has been a real boon.

The major benefit is the way that 37Signals has implemented their OpenID support. The OpenBar interface makes it worth the time to sign up with an OpenID provider. This is another example of where 37Signals should be an example for other developers.

At the end of the day, selecting the OpenID vendor turned out to be very simple. MyOpenID.com is a product of JanRain a Portland-based company whose founders were involved in the development of OpenID.

Local? Developed the technology? It was a no brainer.