My takeaway from this is that it’s a great reflection of how connecting online has become a basic daily activity.  Beyond that,  the ways in which we can better connect to larger numbers of people in various ways continues to grow at an astronomical rate.  What’s your takeaway from watching this?

Click here to view the embedded video.

It is an interesting time for social media.  Fifteen years ago bulletin boards and  forums were the only platforms available.  Three to five years ago blogs, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook were carving out a niche.  This week Google announced Buzz which was added to the internet social landscape along with Twitter, Side Wiki, Wave, SlideShare, Vidler, Vimeo, UStream, Ning, MyBlogLog, FriendFeed, etc.

The entire web is getting more social by the second and user generated content is king.

Social media is still looked at as a fad by some, a necessary business tool with unproven value by others and a deeper way to discover great people to have great relationships with by millions.  Marketers and PR folks are racing to figure out how to use the tools, but are mostly using old school tactics and ignoring the strategy needed for long term gains.

A handful of companies are actually using social media to authentically deliver better customer service, listen to people and make their businesses and bottom lines better.  A mountain of critics who don’t use or understand social media are still ignorantly claiming that it’s stupid because it’s just people announcing when they go to the bathroom.  (Note to self  – don’t criticize what I don’t understand.  And definitely don’t do it as if I have a clue about what I’m talking about or I’ll look like an idiot.)

The revolution in communication is being ignored while the focus is on the revolutionary technology.  After the mainstream called social media stupid for five years, the pendulum swung to claiming that it’s the new great hope for advertising, marketing and PR.  Now we are now making our way to the middle.  This is where we start to realize that daily use of social media is like daily use of a cell phone or a car.  It’s just part of how we live today.

Websites have become media properties (which most have not realized yet), publishing is  now dominated by individual passionate influencers, and social media is lubricating a massive transition from top dogs having power to passionate participants creating what matters to the public.

In five years the term social media may fade away because we’ll wake up to realize that: 1.People are inherently social (well over 75% of your day is spent communicating with other people), and 2.  All media has become social (even CNN and newspapers use blogs, Twitter, etc. to connect with viewers and readers).

Calling media ’social media’ is like calling water ‘wet water’.  The more you use it, the more you’ll live it and the more connected, tuned in and turned on you’ll be.

Obama was elected after President Bush & Congress bankrupted the country with an unnecessary war, corporate welfare (which Clinton did too, by the way), and laws favoring the 1% of wealthiest Americans so “Americans were demanding change.“  In a word, No.

Brushing with broad strokes to manufacture correlation for ones views is a common malpractice, despite ones particular political views. Since the majority of people in the US don’t vote, it’s a misnomer to ever say that the outcome of an election is “Americans sending a message” as if all Americans (or any group) are fully aligned.

Outcomes of elections are the result of who spent the most money on the best marketing to manipulate voter emotions enough to create the reaction they wanted. I’ve been in marketing and psychology for 20 years so I see through the machinations.  Don’t be fooled by the blind influence of corporate media stories.

Have you ever heard a politician say “The American people want…” and not heard it followed with a lie to help them get what they want for personal gain?  Why do you think there are 237 millionaires in congress making a salary of $174,000 a year?  To help their constituents or to increase their personal power and wealth?

As an example, President Clinton earned $40 million in speaking fees alone his first 6 years out of office.  Sarah Palin left a $125,000 a year Governor job for a $1.25 million book advance and a commentator position at Fox News though she couldn’t construct a sensible sentence without reading a teleprompter as a candidate. No matter how much expected change President Obama does not deliver on, he’ll be doing fine when he leaves office and so will your nationally elected representatives.

Politicians are not saviors or agents of Satan, they’re people who act on self preservation and self interest as a first defense. Enemies will be manufactured and no matter how scary situations seem or how many demons politicians, religious leaders and mainstream media puppets cook up for us, we will survive.  Believe their actions and ignore their words.

So please stop saying that “Americans are sending a message” as if 1) It’s true and 2) It matters.  Most of us can’t even agree on where to find the best burger in town much less agree on a message to send to politicians who usually vote for their personal and corporate interests anyway.  …but never underestimate the power of groups of committed individuals to generate needed change.  We are a nation of unceasing innovators.

P.S. Another reality check – today the Supreme Court solidified corporate influence to dominate U.S. politics even further by eliminating limitations on funding elections.  We appear to  live in a corporatocracy by, for, and of multinational corporations profits, not a democracy interested in it’s people or their messages. …until the people decide to stop following their influence.

If you know someone who doesn’t understand the power of how communication and businesses can be transformed by social media, this is the video to share with them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

That information has been online for at least a couple of years.  Has it hurt you? I doubt it.  You’d be better served to set up a Google profile so that people will read information about you that you would like them to see.

Currently 74.2% of the American population is online.  That leaves about 80 million people who are still not using the interwebs, but their information is most likely on the interwebs even though they’re late adopters.

The opportunities of being ubiquitous online are so far beyond the risks that it’s hard not to laugh when people express fear of baddies on the internets.  Do they exist? Yes.  Just like you’ll find a sex offender in your neighborhood if you search for them.  Have they shown up at your door lately? Probably not.

Yes they’re a threat, but the perceived threat is huge compared to the actual chance of a real threat.  Trying to be invisible online is about as effective as moving to a remote cave to be protected from a sex offender since they’re in every metropolitan neighborhood.  Studies since 2005 have repeatedly shown that identity theft, the largest privacy concern for most people, happens less often, is less harmful and is less costly online rather than offline.

Evidence continually points to the fact that being online, being able to be found and building your personal brand are incredibly beneficial and those who are ignoring this are doing so at their own peril.  The web is evolving into being the social web and those who embrace connecting to Influencers and becoming Influencers will be the ones to enjoy the most personal and professional benefits from this shift.

As Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, recently said at the Crunchies conference, “Public is the new social norm.”

The latest 2010 breakthrough prediction is that next year is the year that social media ROI will finally be measurable.  This will be a great leap forward for advertisers if it comes true.  It will also solidify the shift from traditional media domination of ad buys over to a large increase in those funds moving to work with individual online influencers.

My company predicts that, based on our extensive research, 2011 will be the Year of The Influencer.  Therefore, it’s not a surprise that I agree that 2010 will be the year that social media ROI can finally be measured.  One reason why I expect that to happen is that we’re one of the companies working hard to build the structures to make it happen.

Aside from that, the biggest question about social media in 2009, especially from people new to the field, was “what’s the ROI on a social media marketing campaign?”  The analytical tools like Klout, Radian6, Twitter Grader and Filtrbox are getting sharper by the day in measuring online influence in ways that actually matter to answer that question.

Brands are just starting to seek out channel partnerships and influencers who can be brand advocates.  In the last six months this space has become white hot and is currently in it’s infancy.

Remember that ‘Twitter’ was declared the most used word in 2009 and ‘influencer’ may be on it’s heels for that title in 2010 or 2011.  When those two words create the return on investment everyone’s looking for, then the evolution of media power from traditional media to social media will begin it’s second phase fueled by multiple models of profitability.

Today I made a knucklehead move.  It’s not a horrible life threatening condition, but it’s annoying when the symptoms flair up.

This morning I was  sitting at Denver International Airport, home to the demonically evil blue horse.

Why was I sitting there?  Because I was attempting to fly on the second busiest air traffic day of the year in America and my flight was delayed.

This was only a knucklehead move because I have the freedom to work from anywhere and could have booked the flight a day earlier before the herds of holiday travelers descended upon the terminal.

The funnier part is that I have this blog titled “Blind Influence” (maybe you’ve heard of it) that shares insights and ideas based on how to not do exactly what I did.

Somehow my kluge of a brain chose the same day the majority of people chose to fly even though my window to fly was wide open.  I could have flown last week if I had chosen to.

It’s just a reminder that even though I swim in information about how our DNA makes us do some dumb things and believe in ‘truths’ that we make up, I’m as susceptible as everyone else to the power of human faulty brain wiring.

Between the holiday crowds and flight delay due to weather I had the opportunity to work from the airport with slow clunky wifi for 3 hours.  Again, it wasn’t the end of the world and complaining about flight delays is SO 20th century; it’s unusual these days to not be delayed.  But next time I’ll be choosing to fly on an off day with a higher chance for a smooth airport adventure.

Since  I can’t upgrade to a better brain model or trade it in for a newer and more improved edition, at least I can learn from my mistakes and make a public declaration on a blog to help me stick to it.

I’m fortunate to live in a city full of smart, fun and creative people. This makes it easier to never be the smartest person in the room, but you can do this no matter where you live.

When I first started seeking out people smarter than myself I felt a slight insecurity, but it was not as persuasive as the positive powerful feeling of stretching myself.  In my case, I went deep into tech geek culture with venture capitalists, angel funders, entrepreneurs, socially conscious business people and coders who practically speak in another language when they talk about technology.

There is a phrase I like that says, “Fear is simply excitement without the breath.”  It’s a little hokey and may not be true, but reminds me to get over anxiety when I’m afraid and just do what I’m afraid of.  One of those big fears for me was meeting new people.

Anyone who has only known me the last few years would never believe that I was an introvert because now I’m almost hyper-social.  But it took conscious effort to leave the shyness at the door.  The rewards from not only meeting people, but specifically meeting interesting smart people, has been invaluable.

Besides learning and laughing daily by knowing these people, we have helped each other find jobs, connect to business partners and share resources that have had mutual benefit to our personal and professional lives.

If you’re mostly hanging around people beneath your level of knowledge, experience and financial wealth, you’ll have a hard time creating great experiences because you’ll have to create a lot of it alone.  I’m not saying it can’t happen, or that it’s what everyone wants, but I find life to be much fuller in direct proportion to the time I spend with inspiring, smart, interesting and helpful people.

My Twitter friends have been an exponential boon in my growth in these areas because I’ve found and been found by so many amazing people around the globe.  Social media has opened access for us to millions of people you could never have had the time and energy to connect with otherwise.  Now we are changing the world for the better together.

As you build your online presence realize that we are moving into the Year of the Influencer in 2010 or 2011.  I’ll write more on this in the coming months, but what matters is that you don’t need a lot of money or power to do great things or to meet great people.

To become an influencer or to enjoy the rewards that come from connecting to influencers who share their knowledge, experience and resources only takes passion and action.  After investing some quality time sharing what’s great about you & what you’re passionate about with other great people the snowball rolls down the hill.

Technology and the psychological shift towards more transparent and integrous modes of doing business are creating a revolution.  One of the main reasons this is happening so quickly is that smart people are freely sharing their time and efforts with other high quality smart and interesting people online.  As these people (including you) meet, converse and collaborate, it’s ushering in a new world that’s benefiting all of us.

The next time you’re at a party, a networking event, on Twitter, or anywhere that other people are present, I invite you to seek out the people who seem more interesting and smarter than you.  Then introduce yourself, mention what you found interesting about them, ask them good questions, listen to what they have to share and notice how good you feel after connecting with them.

The Lucy House is where Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz would stay every weekend.  After a week of shooting the I Love Lucy TV show they would pack up the kids and head to Palm Springs for a little rest and relaxation every Friday afternoon.

Since my momma didn’t raise no fool, I instantly said, “Yes!”  So there began my Weekend at Lucy’s.  It’s not quite as exciting as the Weekend at Bernie’s, but still contains some story-worthy moments.

After working until almost 9pm, David and I began our drive to Palm Springs.  Despite the stimulating conversation and occasional tunage from artists like Rob Zombie (David is deep into metal,) I could hardly keep my eyes open.

The night before I had attended a pre-party for Ignite Boulder, the splendor of smart geeky presentations at Ignite Boulder and then dancing very late at the post-Ignite party including birthday celebrations for Redhead Writing.  (Ironically apropos for a post on staying at Lucille Ball’s house, no?)

It was a very late night or extremely early morning depending on how you look at it and I was up before 5:30am to catch the plane to Los Angeles.  After arriving in Los Angeles, I worked and was in meetings from 11am until 9pm.

So by the time we arrived at The Lucy House I was a dead man walking.  About 5 minutes after we entered the premises an insanely loud alarm went off.  It was wet and cold outside and loud and dark inside.  …and the two knuckleheads (us) staying there forgot to get the alarm code.

While I fumbled in the dark in a half-awake stupor looking for the alarm pad David tried to find some light brighter than an iPhone LED to read the information about the house to find the alarm code.  A few minutes later the phone rang.

I was relieved because I assumed it was the alarm company and I was secretly hoping they would rush to the scene to end the screeching siren call that was about to make my ears bleed. No such luck.

The alarm company couldn’t turn it off.   I continued to search for the keypad.  For some reason the the alarm was directly above the keypad which was around two corners, down a hall and on the other side of the kitchen from the front door.

This was not fun to search for in the pitch black of the house with modern dimmer light switches not located where my brain expected to find them.

Upon discovering the keypad, and with my fingers plugging my ears, I frantically began trying the code for the gate in hopes that it could liberate me from the hell that was alarm central.

Again, no such luck.  But wait, as I walked away the beauty of silence descended her warmth upon us.

We regained our composure, began to bring our bags in, David began to give me the tour, and …of course, the alarm suddenly cackled back on screaming at us with full force again.

Why did it go off?  Why did it come back on?  How could my auditory nemesis be silenced once and for all?  It seemed as if all hope for warmth and sleep had been lost.

This tragic comedy continued to unfold for almost an hour in an unheated house in the desert in the Fall.  Since blog posts aren’t supposed to be too long, but my writing tends to be, I’ll wrap it up.

After finally reaching the owner, a good friend of Davids, we were given the code.  Apparently a new property management had just taken over management of the house and decided to change the code …though we didn’t have the old one either so we still would have been SOL.

Before I fell asleep I did tour the beautiful property. I was so tired that I couldn’t find the soap in the bathroom of my casita, didn’t think it had central heating (but found it this morning after a cold night,) forgot to move a towel close to the shower before getting out into the self-induced cold, sprayed myself with cold water trying to figure out the hand held shower thing while not realizing a giant shower head was also directly above my head, and decided that the ghost of Lucille Ball clearly did not want guests without a sense of humor staying at her house.

If you can’t handle being exposed to antics similar to what Lucy went through on the assembly line, at the chocolate liqueur factory with Ethel Mertz or delivering a live television infomercial on vitameatavegamin, then you don’t deserve the pleasurable rewards that come from staying at her house, right?  Well, that may be extreme and you will probably get only the pleasure when you visit here.

I actually have a true story involving a bed in breakfast in Kauai with a naked vacuuming house cleaner that is a better sitcom story than this one, but we’ll save it for another day.

The whole experience last night reminded me of what I love about Lucy and actually made the stay here much more complete. It now ranks up there with my visit to Industrial Light and Magic and the Skywalker Ranch in the 90’s.  Go ahead, call me a geek.

If you have a chance to visit Palm Springs I highly recommend staying at The Lucy House for the architecture, nostalgia, relaxing environment (after you turn off the alarm,) and the slight possibility that you too may have some ’splainin’ to do after finding yourself in unexpectedly tragically comic situations.

So is it wrong to get paid to tweet?  This is an interesting question for me right now because my company is developing Trust Engagements that assist influencers, advertisers, publishers and users with new ways to do do commerce online.

Our models are based on the community driving the engagements and are very different than a guy getting paid to broadcast an ad for candy, but his case highlights the ’sell out’ factor that is going on.

What these people aren’t getting is that your reputation is your brand and it’s your future online and in life.  If getting paid $100 to hype a product seems worth tearing down any trust and respect you’ve built with your Twitter followers or blog readers, then maybe you deserve to lose what you’ve built.

Social media is powerful because of how easily and quickly it connects tribes of people with similar passions.  When you exploit that to pimp a product inauthentically you’re pouring sugar into your gas tank.

Blogger or Pimp?

Where I land with the M&M pimp is that if he was going to write about M&Ms anyway and he loves them the way I love Glacier Ice Cream (who didn’t pay me to write that,) then it’s an integrous transaction for him to make a little money.  If his honest passion was the driving force for the content he created then a little affiliate commission makes sense.

But if he’s like some bloggers I’ve heard and read about who are accepting every corporate offer to pimp any product they’re asked to pimp, then they’ve shifted from blogger to pimp. They’ll lose the cache they built up to be able to promote things, and we all know that it’s hard out here for a pimp.

I guess what gets me about this new phenomenon is that I’m continually baffled by the lack of common sense people use in life and with social media.  If you wouldn’t want it done to you, then don’t do it.  If your favorite blogger suddenly started hyping products in most of her posts would you feel thrilled or betrayed?

There are bloggers out there like Jo White and Aimee Giese who mention products they honestly believe in along with transparent disclaimers and insightful information.

But they’re not the norm.  Jo and Aimee are women with very high integrity and strong opinions and excellent writing skills – a lethal combination for doing the right thing.  They are two people to watch to see how to balance integrity with connecting people to great resources which may come with perks for yourself.

There’s nothing wrong with getting a little spiff along with full editorial control over reviewing something.  I’ve done it on this blog for Cirque Du Soliel because I love what they offer the public and I’m inspired by how they do business.

Where do you feel the line can be, or is, crossed in the emerging world of personal social media influence merging with commerce?