Joining the Conversation

It's a rainy Saturday in Austin... and given our drought the sound of drops outside the open window is music to my ears. A perfect day to tweek my blog, and make good on my commitment to join the conversation. Although I micro-blog on Twitter, read scores, and find writing a joy; I haven't joined the maelstrom who've found their voice and outlet in a blog. Until now.

So Why Now? Think Darwin. My jump into the stream is prompted by the shifts I see and feel around us. In the not too distant future, those favored by evolution will be the "always connected" who've adapted to a world where massive amounts of information and knowledge are being created and disseminated every day. Those moving through life with their antenna up (and wifi on), efficiently sourcing and assimilating bytes from the stream, quickly cataloging what's relevant, then adapting their lives and work from learnings. These people will thrive. Those overwhelmed by the cacachony will move to the side as the world streams by at lightspeed. 

Much of this vast interconnected knowledge web will be found in blogs. The Semantic Web, or Web 3.0, is moving closer to reality - and if you've been watching the OpenCalais movement, you know meta-tagging is fast creating "the pipes" for the interconnected machine learning age that will move us to the next phase of our digital evolution.

Professionally I can't think of a more exciting time because thought leaders - no matter your field - have moved from the annointed few to legions, and vast stores of knowledge are accessable in a few keystrokes. This is why I love Twitter. When I first logged on in late '06, I watched it for over a year - sensing the potential but uninspired by reading what was for lunch. But the moment I connected with people who I could learn from - I was hooked. Now, not a day goes by where I don't learn something new on Twiiter, which is why it's often streaming along one side of my screen.

Defining My Voice... writing about what I know. Professionally it's marketing and growing businesses. I've focused for two decades on direct, interactive, digital, social media, and my passion is the intersect of traditional media and digital channels. Building customer engagement and relationships underscored by intelligence - and driven by the data and technology which increasingly fuel marketing and demand generation cycles.

Note I didn't use the term 'sales' above, because sales funnels... the era of linear lead-gen, of pounding the pavement, and dialing for dollars is over. As I watch organizations hang-on to outdated tactics, pumping dollars into methods with declining impact, I determined one of my goals here would be helping SMBs learn to drive profitable growth in a world where they no longer control the conversation - and where clinging to old school tactics can be a recipe for failure. 

I'll ask for your indulgence, because first posts are a rite of passage. Welcome the opportunity to connect on topics of shared interest. Thanks!

What's Twitter - Om Malik's Salon.com Post

Is Twitter the 'killer app' that gets us to a Semantic Web?

At its core, this seemingly innocuous app is our collective consciousness made digital; a powerful, interconnected stream of thought, observation and exchange - from the mundane to profound - unfolding real time on our screens.

A plethora of tools now increasingly enables us to find, edit and direct our I/O from this vast, laced cacophony and individually tailor which elements of the stream we wish to draw from, or engage. And this is just the beginning.

Last week, Pete Cashmore, of Mashable retweeted: Is Twitter the most important site since Google? (from Chris Bennett’s 97th Floor blog: http://www.97thfloor.com/blog) Perhaps ‘most important’ status has not yet been attained. But the seeds are there.

As Twitter’s base reaches critical mass (has this already happened?) and the platform matures, this fledging app may mark the coming of age of the Semantic Web – or 3.0. Last year, Alex Iskold of ReadWriteWeb theorized it will take a ‘killer app’ to get us there – one ‘layering an understanding of semantics on top of a consumer application so cool and so viral people will be open to making the shift to semantic technologies’. I posit we’ve found that app in Twitter. While the Twitter of today doesn’t meet semantic web criteria, it has access to vast shared knowledge, and is fueled by mass connectivity - key elements for taking 3.0 from niche to mass-market reality.

Twitter provides a near-perfect opportunity to add a layer of intelligence to our digital collective consciousness. Surely some bright minds and attuned VCs have already connected the dots.