Remember the days of searching places like Yahoo to find the best results that fit?  I can remember painfully clicking link after link to find the relevant search results on my search topic.  Me and the back button?  We considered getting engaged.

I came across a Search Engine Land experiment on how the new Google Search plus Your World works. Google has done some pretty unremarkable things in the past (Hello turning off sharing in Google Reader!). The one thing they’ve always excelled at are their efforts to try and improve search results.  For example, Panda was a huge move and it removed some of the most irrelevant sites from the top search results pool (spam, splogs).

Google’s Violation of their Philosophy

With the introduction of Google Search+, it’s clear that they are moving away from their core values.   Not to mention they are drawing the attention of the FTC and complaints of anti-trust violations.  It isn’t simply that they aren’t indexing other social networks, but it’s how they are changing search results in a way that does not benefit their users.

“The perfect search engine,…would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” – Larry Page

Going by their own standards, Google is no longer the perfect search engine and are taking steps away from that goal. If I’m looking for something or someone online, Google+ doesn’t strike me as the best place to find them.  I’d rather have the place most relevant based on a variety of factors.

When I want Google+ results specifically, I’ll search for them, yes?

Google’s core philosophy also mentions “Focus on the user and all else will follow.”  I don’t believe that Google is focused on the user right now.  Danny Sullivan seems to agree if I’m reading his experiment with Google Search+ (linked above)correctly. It’s about goals, yes, namely their goal to make Google+ a success.  Not their user’s goals in searching for relevant results.

Danny notes:

Google’s job as a search engine is to direct searchers to the most relevant information on the web, not just to information that Google may have an interest in.

All of this has had the compelling effect of making me change my search habits and engine.  I want a search engine that will help me find what I’m looking for, not one that will show me what it thinks is relevant to what I am looking for.

Can Google Marry Search and Social Successfully?

Maybe they can, but they certainly aren’t winning any battles by damaging one of the tools that users love them for.

“It’s best to do one thing really, really well.”

Yes, yes it is; now perhaps you can get back to doing that?  This change takes them beyond search and into social.  For those of you keeping score at home, that’s two things, not one.

Don’t get me wrong there are some great things about Google+ and I love interacting there. It’s not about hating their social network. I very much hope that Google can take a step back from this and understand the mistake that they’ve made with forcing this change.  If nothing else, Buzz should have taught them not to shove things down people’s throats.

For me, I will be experimenting with different search engines for a while.  Until search shows me what I’m looking for minus the favoritism of Google+ search results, I think it’s best we took a break from each other.

If you aren’t a fan of this change, the best thing you can do to send a sign to the executives at Google is to turn off the new search or use a different search engine.

How about you?  If you have the new search plus, do you love it?  Hate it?  Why?

Where Google Search Plus Your World Goes Wrong

At the first of the year, for a few years now, Chris Brogan has inspired me to think of and post three words that I want to strive to define the new year by.  I had to think about it a bit more than usual this year as so many things have threaded through my life in the last few months making me question really where I want to go next.  It’s been a bit of a challenge, but I like challenges and am ready to meet 2012 with the feistiness it deserves.

Flow, Insight, Commitment.

Flow

There is a common thread running through each of the things that I do professionally.  There are many strands that bubble to the top when I try to give voice to answer the question, “What do you do?”  This past year I’ve been feeling very stuck in the seemingly chaotic whirlpool of non-direction. I would like to harness that energy and transform it into something that hits all my sweet spots in terms of skill.

As I did some contract work for WhatCounts, I had to utilize many skills from different skill sets to fill a marketing manager position.  This ranged from extremely technical (involving WP, CSS, analytics, etc) to communications (email, newsletters, blog posts, etc).

It pointed out the need to me to gain a sense of direction that comes from using those skills to help *a* company reach their goals.  While I can do that on a bigger scale now, my brain is calling for a single endeavor to put my heart behind.  I haven’t yet decided WHAT that is exactly.  My goal is by the end of 2012 (hopefully mid-year at the latest) have that settled and becoming firmly integrated into whatever it may be.

Insight

If I look at the chaos, one thing stands out to me, each of the things I want to learn about and understand will give me better insight into the way things work.  My curious nature is what pushes me to learn new things and use that knowledge to help others.  It’s a wonderful thing as I approach new things and ideas not only with an open mind, but a sense of excitement.  The puzzles teach me something new that I can use to help others succeed using my skills.

The question for me is, can I find a place that have puzzles to solve and can use my skills to help?

Commitment

I see the need and desire to shape the next steps in the new year with flow and insight.  Something that will help me do is to practice commitment.  Not in the sense of being married to the outcome, but in the sense of committing to a punch. I need to be all in, understanding my skills, understanding the chaos and finding the insights to move forward.  Committing entirely so that I lose myself in the processes and stop over thinking the outcomes.

Goodbye, 2011.

All in all, 2011 wasn’t that bad.  I learned some interesting things about myself.  I challenged my strength.  I started running (and love it).  I worked part time while maintaining my consulting business.  I became an editor of book.  I learned that I have limits in what I can achieve in one day and in one week.  I traveled a bit more (and love it).

And finally, as you go through your own three words for the year, try to remember that the course may change and that’s okay.  You may discover an entirely different path…and that’s okay too.  The key is to end 2012 looking back at how much you’ve grown and being proud of how you get there.

3 Words and Goals for 2012 – Flow Insight and Commitment

Go ahead, think of something that you want to do but you’ve put off because of every reason excuse imaginable.

Now go read The Flinch.  

You have no reason NOT to read it, it’s one of the best damn life lessons you’re going to get and it’s free.

“why you won’t make the hard decisions” and how The Flinch will help you change that

Inbox Zero.  We’ve dabbled in it, read about it, tried to make it work for us, sometimes we succeeded.  The system is like any system.  It works if you are loyal to it. If you practice it consistently.

If you aren’t familiar with Inbox Zero, it’s a system designed to help you tame your inbox.  The goal is to have a inbox with zero messages in it. Everything filed, saved to a list for later or otherwise archived.  The actions of Inbox Zero are Do/Defer/Delete/Delegate/Archive.

We’re always looking for a ways to be more productive.  We want more time to focus on the projects and people that matter.

Managing Information from the Firehose

If you participate in social media for your company or as a brand ambassador, then you know that sometimes there is a lot of information to manage or respond to in some fashion.  It’s not cluttering your inbox but there are replies, search mentions, direct messages, Facebook wall posts, LinkedIN groups, Quora questions, blog post comments, comments on other’s blog posts, friending, following, and more.

If you’re really good at what you do, you spend time analyzing data to find actionable intel.  Some sense of where your target audience is, what they are doing, saying, how they feel and what they want and/or need.

That said, you control the social media firehose of information pointed in the direction of your head.  After you’ve put a system in place to tame that firehose, the chances are that you have items left over that require action.

Converting the Inbox Zero actions over to Social Inbox Zero

Remember the set of actions that Inbox Zero boils down to?

Actions of Social Inbox Zero are Act/Save/Unfollow/Send/Share.

Act

If you’ve gotten several replies or direct messages, complaints on your Facebook page or questions over on the company LinkedIN group, you’ll want to respond quickly.  Take action on those messages before you say hello.  This is a signal that they feel they have a relationship with your company enough to interact, who knows where that relationship may lead.

Save

As with sharing, there are a number of ways you can save something to read later.  You can mail it to yourself, star it in Google Reader, or use a service like Instapaper or Read It Later.

Unfollow

You may wonder why I’ve included unfollow here, but for me, unfollowing spammers on various networks is a daily must.  Some days you won’t have to do this.  This does *not* apply to people who leave negative comments on various networking tools.  I strongly advise NOT to do that but to limit this to spammers.

Send

Did you find a piece of interesting information that could affect your  marketing later?  Find a complaint overnight about your product?  Receive a compliment on the support a client received?  Does the CEO need to respond?  The sales team?  Tech support?  If so, find a quick and easy way to assign those items.  Email the conversation or complaint to the appropriate person, so they know the details and can choose how to handle and/or answer.

Share

Share the items you’re reading with someone else that will find it valuable.  Since the tools are build into most devices, blogs and websites, this should be instant and easy to do.  If you’re sharing from Google Reader, I find it handy to tag all the possible shares with stars then go back to do the sharing when finished.

Moving forward

Social Inbox Zero is a system to help you to think about getting through actions quickly just as Inbox Zero does. If you practice it, it will become a daily routine giving you back your time and attention so you can focus on moving the needle.

What processes do you use for navigating the social waters?

Social Inbox Zero

Now that I have your attention, go read this post by the awesomest lady, Tamsen:

“I’d prefer my gender be an additional piece of information you know about me, rather than the primary one.”

- Tamsen McMahon (@tamadear)

If you don’t read it, you’re definitely a boob.

I have breasts

I recently finished a project that has required me to skim resources that are related to kids, education and digital media skills.  It’s made me ponder our educational situation here in the U.S. I’m also pondering how the generational lag between teachers and students is, in some cases, contributing to a lack of very necessary skills for students graduating and learning in a digital age.

It’s not a case of teachers being poorly trained but I think teachers aren’t aware of the potential resources at their disposal to help kids learn in ways that work for them as individuals.

Enter Joseph Pine. Pine is a big believer in authentic experiences.  When he spoke at TED, he demonstrated within a “marketing” framework how our culture has shifted since the industial revolution in their buying habits.  The more I consider it, the more I believe that within this framework that there are at least some the answers to educational reform lies.

Pine’s framework can be summarized in the following words: commodities, goods, services, experiences.

In the 1800s, education was a commodity.  Children were taught basic reading, writing and math skills in grammar schools.  They were taught the basic skills in order to start business or manage a family business better.  The emphasis was placed on imparting enough knowledge for them to get by.

Currently, we’re in a goods framework for education. Goods evolved from commodities.  Goods are mass produced and distributed without a lot of effort. A prepackaged learning system (in most public school systems) is being applied to all children in the same age group. This assumes, erroneously, that kids learn in the same way or, come to school with the same background and experiences..

Uniformity in education is laziness. Quality control = standardized tests.  Moreover, kids are not uniform widgets coming down an assembly line, so quality control as a paradigm is absurd.  We’re asking kids to recognize the right answer on a multiple choice test rather than have to understand and apply the knowledge we hope we’re teaching them in the classroom.  Tests check to ensure that laziness is working okay and the kids meet the minimum quality standards. Still, we hope, that we’re giving them enough to somehow be productive citizens, but not much more than that.

We are placing entirely too much value on the standardization of education to show us that we’re succeeding. Much like human resources departments are relying on Klout.  It’s a number that makes things a little easier for a group to analyze massive amounts of information and see that they are heading in the right direction.  In this case, educators analyzing how well their students are retaining the information being drilled into them, not what they need to know, which is how to apply that information in the real world…

” . . compulsory learning never sticks in the mind.” - Plato

C.C. Chapman blogged about his concerns regarding our educational system, the difference in his kids learning styles and reflected on the knowledge that they are being taught the same way even though they solve problems very differently – two kids, out of the same home, the same “manufacturing plant”, but unlike widgets, needing very different things out of their education.

We’re lacking a focus on the children’s individual learning styles.  We’re giving them something to consume but never the experience they need to make learning sticky.  In order for children to excel in the current generational realities, we need to move toward a customized style of education.  We need a system where each child is given the ability to demonstrate their knowledge using the skills they naturally have.

Following Pine’s framework, the ideal in education would be meeting kids individual needs and in effect creating an experience for them.  Why an experience?  Why do so many people want and love the iPad?  Wouldn’t a mini Dell do the same job for less money? Partially, yes.  The key difference is the experience.  When we pick it up and use it we can’t help but be amazed at how well it works, how intuitive it is, how easy it is to use and how many of our technical problems it solves. Other products may do the same thing, like allow you to access email, but does it make the process any easier?  Not really.

So what if we could give kids that experience in their learning environment?  Give them a customized educational experience in which they’re not only learning well but excited and eager to gain more knowledge. As well as refining skills that will serve them well in the future because it plays to their individual way of thinking, to their strengths.

It’s easy to imagine that if C.C.’s kids were left to solve a problem on their own, they would have unique solutions demonstrating their individuality.  Isn’t it hard to imagine being told in a workplace environment that there is only one solution to a problem? (Except as a bomb squad, I think I’d follow the manual on that one.)  Not only would it be boring but when would we have the opportunity to learn something new and to add a totally different outlook to our point of view and maybe even enable our companies to be more profitable.

If we all discovered and refined our strengths that early on can you imagine how far our society, culture,  our very world would change and grow.

The blueprint for the next generation of education needs to be advanced to meet the future, now. The hardest part is making the first change.  Yes, government change is slower than molasses.  Perhaps purposely here in the U.S. but that’s a serious detriment to our growth as a nation.

The next advancement is likely to be “postponed” until a newer generation of teachers are introduced into the educational system and technologies become commonplace and teach different skills. In the meantime, we’re lagging behind and disabling our children by limiting them only to the goods level of education.

What do we need to do as instructors, educators, parents and government to bring our children past the goods and create a world full of knowledge to experience?

What Education Can Learn from Marketing

Editor’s note: Habilis closed it’s doors.  However you can use http://sendtodropbox.com/ for now!

Huge Dropbox fan here, it makes sharing big files super easy which is great, especially for workshifting.  I wanted to share a tip with everyone on how to email files as attachments that you want to share with others via Dropbox.

First, if you don’t have Dropbox, get an account now. (Referral link!)  If you haven’t heard of Dropbox, it allows you to sync your files online and across computers.  It also allows you to share the folders that you create with others, see their changes and offers mobile support for phones and the iPad.  Check it out, you’ll love the ease of file transfers and collaboration opportunities.

Then go over to http://gethabilis.com.  You’ll need to authorize Habilis to connect with your Dropbox account via API, but it only takes a second.

Refresh the http://gethabilis.com page and you’ll see a handy email for adding to your address book.  I added mine to my Google contacts as Dropbox Files.

That’s it! Now you can enjoy sending files to your Dropbox via email if you can’t access the public folder on any device for some reason or another.

Do you know of any other cool Dropbox hacks?  I use it daily and I know others who do as well so share, please!

How to Email Files to Dropbox

I’m dropping some great links here that I’ve come across this past week.  List is by no means complete but every post on this list is worth your time to check out.  Wait, no, don’t just check out the post…subscribe to these blogs if you aren’t already.  You’ll always be learning something.

Thanks to the great bloggers in this list.

Ron Ploof – C Level Social Media Ignorance

Greg Cangialosi – The Marketers “New Normal”

Justin Kownacki – Why I Need You to be a Better Audience

Mack Collier – The ROI of Giving a Damn

Christopher S. Penn – Three Nearly Guaranteed Moneymaking Twitter Words

DJ Waldow – Silent Bob & Southwest Airlines: 7 Lessons Learned

The Short List : Blog Posts that made my must read list last week

The past couple days the techiverse has been entertained and/or irritated at Google Buzz, Google’s stab at social networking.  This isn’t another post about Google Buzz, but rather the hidden gem of Social Circle and Social Search. Combined with their acquisition of Aardvark, Google is amassing utilities to enable social search to take social media to the next level.

What are social search and social circles anyway?

What makes up our Social Circle for Google’s purposes:

• People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list
• People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers groups in your Google contacts
• People you’re publicly connected to through social services that you’ve listed in your Google profile, such as Twitter and FriendFeed
• People who are contacts of those in your immediate social circle

Click here to see your own social circle as made up by these connections. The social circle page also shows Secondary Connections.  These are people we’re connected to through our direct connections.

Social Search is based on the idea that we find content from our friends, family, co-workers and other connections to be the most relevant and useful vs. content is spread by people that are unknowns.  Google Buzz has forced us to put up gates to make hearing anything worthwhile possible. Buzz has also made our Google Profiles even more important because we’re linking that stuff we want to give juice to, the keywords we use to link those sites are also mapped by Google into search results and may possibly help boost the ranking and reputation of those sites.

How Social Search is drowning out the noise

Google Buzz isn’t going to kill Twitter/Friendfeed/Foursquare/Facebook, the new way of social will.  With Buzz, we’ve been quick to unfollow people, a new way of managing our social circle to get the information we need/want.

Earlier today, Christopher Penn shared his opinion that Google created Buzz as a way to aggregate the best data from content being shared around the web.  A quote from his blog:

Buzz also incentivizes us in a couple of ways. It tells us to prune back our own spewage lest our friends, the ones we care about truly, unfollow us and eliminate us. It tells us that redundancy of information is of no value to anyone using Buzz, since you can get blog posts and status updates already from FriendFaceTwitterFeedBookSquareWallReader service (now with more blatant self-promotion from social media experts!). So we share and discuss only the stuff that’s either super high quality that we just can’t afford to miss, even if it’s redundant, because of the quality, or we share stuff that’s not being shared elsewhere.

We’ve known for a while now that we’re drowning in information.  We’re all responsible for what we choose to let through the filters. Clay Shirky got it right, “It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure.”  Google is gently showing us the error of our friending everyone ways with Google Buzz.

What Social Search means for business

How do we find new things or new products?  What influences our purchases or the things we share on the web?  With Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN; our networks have become our places to tap for questions and information.  Google is moving with that social influence and putting the social into search.  By mapping our social connections and networks on the web, searches now provide us with a) more personalized search results (see below) and b) content that our social circle finds interesting and important to share.

Businesses who get the attention of our connections have a better chance of getting our business based on our connection’s experience.  We’ve learned that social provides a different sphere of influence than traditional advertising. We’re still learning how it works within our connections.  Marketing has shifted to tap into these social connections and to figure out how best to get our attention when we’re quickly closing the ranks to drown out the noise.

Customers are trusting their networks more every day to help them make decisions.  Customers are also quickly finding that there are companies willing to reach out, to listen and to give them what they want in a service.  If someone’s not satisfied with your product or service, chances are they’ll tap into their network to find a solution.

Social Search and SEO

With social circles within Google giving weight to search result rankings (with personalized results), reputation and relationship based SEO are starting to change the game.  We already know that Google is indexing based on connections and Google profiles (again, personalized search results).  One way of defining relationships within links that we share with others is to use XFN.

XFN outlines the relationships between individuals by defining a small set of values that describe personal relationships. In HTML and XHTML documents, these are given as values for the rel attribute on a hyperlink. XFN allows authors to indicate which of the weblogs they read belong to friends, whom they’ve physically met, and other personal relationships. Using XFN values, which can be listed in any order, people can humanize their blogrolls and links pages, both of which have become a common feature of weblogs.

As social begins to affect rankings, companies will have to think more about how we’re all interconnected online in order to reach us.  While humans are predictable and connections will give companies more information about us, they’ll have to use that information in a valuable way rather than relying on being on top of the page of Google.

The era of just good enough is quickly coming to a close and the era of being awesome is ramping up fast.  Question is where is your company on the scale?

How To Market With Google’s Social Search

One of the things we talk about in the social media space is sharing great things that others are up to versus talking about our own stuff all the time.

I strive to share some interesting things that others are doing on Twitter but I felt the need to take the time out and offer some of those things up on my blog tonight.  Very a la Becky McCray’s Brag Basket I wanted to brag on some great stuff I’m reading, listening to, watching, etc. here on my blog.

Josiah Boothby, Evan Flory-Barnes and Acknowledgement of a Celebration

A very dear friend of mine who has dabbled in social media emailed me recently about a musical performance that he had the pleasure of being ensemble in.  I’ve been following Josiah and talking with him online and offline for over 10 years now.  He’s a French Horn player and a very talented musician.  The piece he performed in is one that I’m very excited to share.  Here’s a short description of the performance:

As part of the 2009 Earshot Jazz Festival, Seattle bassist and composer Evan Flory-Barnes presents a world premiere titled “Acknowledgement of a Celebration: Inheritance, Authenticity and Healing,” a large-ensemble fusion of jazz, hip-hop, and classical music, complete with modern dancers and freestyle break-dancers. A standout in Seattle’s jazz scene, Flory-Barnes’ acoustic double bass skills, a combination of improvisation and classical training, have been featured in collaborations ranging from Brazilian pianist Jovino Santos Neto to hip-hop band Maroon Colony. Commissioned as part of a national series of works from Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, Acknowledgement of a Celebration is performed as a nine-movement orchestral cycle with 35 musicians and 10 dancers.

I’d love for the entire ensemble to have the opportunity to tour and visit Boston. Evan has graciously granted me permission to post a live recording for your listening pleasure here.  This piece is titled Dance of the Girl Obscured.

[audio: http://josiahboothby.org/acknowledgment/02-Dance_of_the_Girl_Obscured.mp3]

Matthew Ebel and Candor in Em

Continuing on music a little bit, I want to mention this beautiful classical piece that Matthew has composed for his MatthewEbel.net subscribers.  He’s given me permission to repost it here but don’t stop there.  Please check out what he’s up to with his subscriber awesomeness.  Night Train alone is worth the subscription fee and you’ll get so much more than that.

[audio: http://chelpixie.com/matthewebel/CandorinEm.mp3]

I love independent artists and the effort they put forth to make things happen.  It’s inspiring to watch these guys reach for the stars.

Do you know someone who has accomplished something worthwhile to share?  Make sure you take a moment and tell the world about them in your own way.

Photo by abiteofsanity

Acknowledging Accomplishments