I’d love to know your thoughts and opinions on how you think Facebook “Entering the Building” and “Checking-In” to Location Based Social Networking will help or hurt the rest of the players and their user base.

I’ve recently had the privilege and opportunity to share some knowledge internally with new employees at my place of business and externally at jewelry trade shows. One thing I’ve learned from these experiences is that I learn more from them than I share. When I share what I’ve learned I get much more in return. Here are a few things I have been reminded of, and taught, from sharing my thoughts with others:

I learn how much I don’t know. That allows me the craving and desire to learn more from those whom have different experiences, opinion and ideas.

While on a discussion panel, or training the new hire, I choose to listen and hear feedback of information which I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

I learn to go back to the basics. When someone new in our company needs a foundation in which to go by, I remind myself where I started and how important that is.

As I share what I did when I very first started in our company in 1996, I realize the important stuff. For one example: Getting to know the inventory by straightening and cleaning it. That is powerful stuff. When I walk into a retail store as a customer, and they know exactly where their inventory is, what they do or do not have, and can recommend suggestions as well, I am overly impressed.

I learn how much I get when I give it away. There is no simpler way to put it. If I try to do this all by myself, I have no chance of growing, evolving and advancing even further.

I call this “getting out of oneself”. I find it extremely gratifying to help others. Whether it benefits myself, our company or not at all makes no difference to me. Knowing that something you say or do can create a positive reaction in someone else’s world is the most rewarding feeling I think I ever experience in life.

I learn that I have my own voice, with a new twist on information I have gathered over the years and modified it to success (and failures) which have taught me so much. I can pass that on my own way, and hope someone someday does the same for someone else.

I suppose this would be called “coming into one’s own”. I had mentors come before me that taught me, gave me information, and wisdom in their own way and style. As I have had the experiences and consumption of it, and learning some along the way on my own…I get the privilege of putting my own spin on it for some else. Hopefully they pass part of me on, along with others they have listened and learned from, as well.

I learn that the learning process never ceases to stop. I can do so much and not take the time to share what I’ve absorbed.  I can cheat myself by not taking the time to pay it forward, and therefore not get the gift of starting the learning process over and over again.

Doing without sharing is not evolving and growing. Everything I share with others’ has the possibility of helping, teaching and even giving me differences of opinion I really need to hear. If I keep an open mind, I get the opportunity to take what I’ve learned and process what others input back, allowing growth leaps and bounds more that I could ever accomplish on my own.

I learn to listen. I can sure talk a lot. But, given the opportunity to consume more than I talk is something I cannot learn by myself. It is a social collaborative task and therefore must be practiced frequently. The hidden gems of information come from others, not myself.

I want to share with someone who talks more than I. Most of the time I get to be the student while teaching. I try to thought provoke, and therefore we have a discussion instead of a one way form of communication. Me spewing out data, facts and experiences is not the way for “us” to learn. I definitely think it’s a 2-way form of communication. Some I add value, some others do ten fold when the conversation gets ideas going.

So, as you can plainly see, I have learned several things by sharing my own school of hard knocks. Some are common sense and some are reminders, but in the end I have realized the more I have the ability to share, the more I get to be taught more back.

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments section down below about being the student as the result of sharing your knowledge. It is something I am starting to do much more of, something I am enjoying,  and it seems as though it is educating me more than I am it.

Thanks for your time. Looking forward to hearing your experiences and thoughts.

Appreciate you taking the time to stop by.
Respectfully,
DG

This is a followup post I wrote Saturday, called Social Privacy: Does It Exist? That piece was written to share my thoughts on our perception of privacy on the users’ end. This post is about the service/server side end. As you can probably tell at this point, I find it very interesting. I’d like to share my thoughts on the subject as it pertains to the “other side” responsibility to not share our data without our permission. This article by Mark Zuckerburg on The Washington Post broke today. Please give it a read when you’ve finished this. It just may validate my theory.

So we are all using Facebook, Twitter or something of that nature. But what for exactly? We use their service to connect with whom we would like to share our information with, it’s a warm & fuzzy happy go lucky, fun loving, sharing world and Facebook has made this possible because they care about helping people get connected. They want what we all want. Making the world a better place by providing a service which allows people to find each other and add value to each others lives’. I think there was much more truth to that in the very beginning before it grew to such a large amount of data, but now I don’t see how a bigger truth isn’t lingering in the background. Literally.

This place where we share our data with, Facebook, is nothing more or less than a recording industry.  They are a business and they’ve all been playing our song for quite some time. To them, anything we share is a recording. Think of all the content you’ve provided over the years. All the hit records and the singles that have hit the virtual shelves. They are recording it and have the largest human behavioural habit pattern catalog known to mankind.

Recording our lives’ is something we have only done on a piece of paper in a journal or scrapbook in the past before the internet was around. We owned that piece of paper or laminated photo book. It was ours’ and unless we lost it or didn’t put it in a safe place, it never reached the eyes or got into the wrong hands of whom we didn’t want it to be seen by. It was usually locked up in a drawer or hidden in that special secret hiding place that we know no one would be able to find.

So now many of us have become very comfortable recording our lives’. Obviously Facebook has gained the largest volume of record to date. They have everything we share. Sure, we can view it, change it, and share more of it. But, have you ever thought about the fact we cannot get it back completely. It’s out there now and they have it. So what does this all mean for us all? Is there any reason we should be alarmed or outraged, even feeling a bit violated? I mean we did sign up, we did take the action to push it out there. But, what did we originally think would happen to our recordings then versus now, is what I’m seeing as the frustration of many in regards to this matter. Now that many have reached this boiling point, what would actually happen to the data if we really took a leap off the landscape and deleted our account completely? I would assume it would be pretty useless to them at that point, so I would hope to think it’s really gone. But think about this…

Let’s take a look at the reinvention and evolution of the advertising industry. It’s still a very important business even though it has gone through a profound evolution. Businesses will always need to find their customers. The most common ways used to be to advertise in newspapers, magazines, radio commercials and television. Now we have technology that has disrupted the model very effectively. We can fast forward, play over, block and consume the content (in most cases) that we only want to see.

So where does that leave businesses that need to find consumers? The old way isn’t working as it once did, and now we are the eyes and the ears, in a sense, of the Ad Industry. Our data, our recordings, Tweets and Facebook posts, what we click on and whom we interact with is what they need.

See, we have done two things here. We have been given the ability to not listen to traditional ads, and now we are the voice because we’ve recorded our lives’ and tuned out the recordings they used to serve us. In a sense, we’ve won that war. No longer will an ad have the same effect as you telling me, as a friend, where I should go to buy a new car, toaster oven or engagement ring. I think it’s worked out pretty well up until now. The new era has unleashed a new set of challenges we now “face”.

These businesses need our data to make decisions on how and where to do the advertising they still do, and more importantly to find out our habits, patterns and therefore what makes us decide what to buy and from whom. They need bigger ears and eyes. They must find us on these channels now. The old channels are rapidly dissolving more and more everyday. Even influence is a factor now. What users are influences others. It’s become a very tangled social web in which we live and now there is, and has been for quite some time, huge financial gain and opportunity to collect the records and sell it to whom needs it so that it can be used to for these businesses to grow.

The BIG Problem with that?…they’re not telling US that. They are confusing the process with things like Facebook Privacy controls that are not concise and clear. Opt-in or Opt out button would be really nice. Instead it’s a very confusing process which you have to spend quite a bit of time and even tutorial in order to get it set right. Even then some say it’s still shared. Who knows..

I do know we now live in a very short attention span world. I sure don’t have a problem taking a survey to help better a company to understand it’s consumer habits, but not when it’s running in the background. That’s where I believe we have the problem. That’s it, it’s greed and it’s wrong to do for anyone. As if this post wasn’t too long as it is, please take a look at Jason Calacanis deletion video of his Facebook account. It’s quite lengthly, but quite enlightening as well.

I would love your thoughts and take on this “other side” of Social Privacy I am calling Social Piracy, the recording of our lives’ sold to 3rd party companies or organizations without our knowledge in order to gain financial rewards. Have an experience or different take on the subject? Please let me know what you think. It’s a topic I never thought I would write about since everyone else has, but now this makes two posts Thanks for your time.

Respectfully, _DG

Privacy (or the lack thereof) is the hottest topic on the web right now thanks to Facebook. Many are outraged and upset, therefore an enormous amount of content has been created for us to read, watch and listen to the rants and criticism of those posting their opinions. I find it really fascinating. I originally went with the status quo on this one. After the “like button” made it out to thousands, and counting, sites on the web everything has seemed to change. But after some realization, I really don’t think it has. I actually think it’s gotten more realistic.

The Like Button has Everyone confused. We are now alarmed and concerned. Where, When and How will the content we choose to share be seen or heard, and by Whom? Even if all our settings are pointed to private, we are told someone could see something to do with us somehow or someway at some point in time. But, is that truly a bad thing? Or is it realistic to think that’s out of line?

The Social Web has grown. In the beginning it was new and fun. A lot of discovery was happening on how this new communication tool was something we could actually create relationships with, reconnect with old friends, conduct ourselves almost as in real life by sharing any text, audio or visual we wanted. Now we come to a point where it’s big, matured quite a bit, grown to about 500 Million people on Facebook alone. We’ve established ourselves on one or more of these sites whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or anywhere else. We communicate with people as we do in real life. It’s no longer something we try to figure out. It’s something we just use, like the telephone.

We also can choose who we want to communicate with Directly.

But, Not Indirectly… Huge Difference.

That’s when it hit me like a ton of Direct Messages. I really had to take a step back and realize I was really missing this major point. The point that Social and Private only co-exist on a direct one to one basis. Indirect Communication is never private in real life and cannot be censored unless severe measures are taken, which last time I checked aren’t happening in the community I live in.

For example, If I am having a 2-way private conversation in person with a friend, it’s private for that moment in time. But, that person has the ability to do and say anything they choose to. Therefore, it’s only private while it’s happening. After that, anything could be shared that I’ve said. I’d like to trust my friend, if I had told them something I would rather not have shared beyond that exchange, but it’s impossible to censor or control what happens from there. I think where I went wrong blaming Facebook for privacy issues is that I did not fully think about social interaction, whether it’s online or in real life. The same rules apply.

Especially if you think about the fact we are putting our own selves out there. The more visible we all are, the more people will overhear or oversee. Such as life. Some want that visibility more than others. We can only control so much of what we share, or in other words, what is relayed onto others. If we want complete and total privacy, the only solution I can see is never communicate with anyone. We all know that’s impossible. We must work, we have hobbies, we want to see our family. Everyone we come in contact with has a voice and can communicate in some way shape or form. It’s no different, to me at least, whether it’s communicating at a coffee shop with a friend sitting across the table or behind a computer screen to everyone in your network on Facebook. We are sharing with people. People are sharing with others. Sometimes our interactions go onto people we will never even know about.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on Social Privacy. I believe the two do not co-exist. I would love to hear your thoughts on what you think is happening right now on the web in regards to Privacy. Whether you agree or have a different take,  I’d just love to hear your perspective so that I can continue to learn and grow.

I really appreciate the time you took to read the post and very much so looking forward to any thoughts and feedback you might have on the topic.
Respectfully,
DG

It’s a pretty well known fact that I’m not a big metrics guy. I’ve spoken about it openly online whenever the discussion presents itself. Sure, I use Google Analytics and I do pay attention to what’s going on as it pertains to eyeballs coming into my websites. I would have to be pretty ignorant and complacent to not look at information that could possibly help me plan for the future in the form of what content is more valuable and sought after. But, as more and more services and people that use them try to analyze the value of results with metrics in today’s more social web world, I often wonder how much we can truly “tell” from this data that we are presented with? I know that it works in a multitude of ways for various niches, products and services that are using it for specific reasons. I respect the fact it does work in many circumstances and is a proven method for successful results. But, let’s take a look at the human side of metrics. The results we cannot humanly measure. When a person sees somethings and tells someone and therefore you make a sale or connection that equals a result you had hoped for. As we all find these hidden gems we are searching, communicating and mining on the internet, I tend to wonder how much of “it” is never relayed back to the content provider, the person on the other end hoping you find them? How much is actually outside the realm of measuring results through web traffic data, but  just good old fashioned word of mouth due to one person telling another. In other words, we can’t get metrics inside the human brain, so how do we really know completely what is driving the successful results as more and more social, unpredictable behavior drives decisions on or off the web. I’ve heard stories where someone has found our company over dinner chat from one heavy web user to another person who doesn’t use any of the social sites on the web, just email mainly. So there’s a great example of it traveling beyond the metrics. I would love to know your thoughts and experiences with metrics. What do you use? Do you feel it has changed with the times, and the reasons for your thinking on the subject. It is a truly fascinating topic for me and I hope to learn a thing or two from your comments, thoughts, and ideas. Thanks for taking the time. Oh and BTW, I will be seeing how well this post does using Google Analytics
Respectfully, DG

Spring has sprung, well sorta kinda. Nothing would be more suitable to celebrate the day with the oh so not predictable Oklahoma weather than to have a snowstorm to ring in the season. I went ahead and decided to close our place of business this morning. Not sure if it was the correct decision, but due to the recent severe Christmas Eve storm and its’ impact, I decided to go ahead and not take any risks. Just so not worth it. So I had some time today, some time to do what I want. I jumped online, then went to Twitter for a little bit, answered some replies and then tweeted this out, somewhat jokingly at the time. I realized I had to get out because I “needed” some things I could not live without. and it was “serious”