People want to know how to start their own. People want to know what it takes to make their spanking new meme as big as #followfriday. Usually, I answer the same way: “I dont know.”

After all, lets a moment to reflect on the beginnings of #followfriday. I sent a tweet, I asked a couple of friends to send a similar tweet. I went to work. Tens of thousands of people began to send tweets with #followfriday in them.

Between the going to work and tens of thousands of people sending #followfriday tweets, I did NOTHING. I didnt register the @followfriday username, didnt really care about the FollowFriday.com domain. I just went to Lijit and sat in a few meetings and sent an email or two (and perhaps, given it was Friday, wrote a blog post).

Thats it.

So a better question becomes, why do I THINK #followfriday became so big, and such a vital part of the Twitter landscape?

There are three pieces to the pie:

1) it was easy.

2) it allowed people to show off the cool people they follow.

3) it made people feel good about themselves.

Thats it.

Oh, and by the way, the name “followfriday”? It wasnt mine. It was a suggestion. A great suggestion.

Why was it followFRIDAY? Because it happened to be Friday when I sent the first tweet.

Now since January, when #followfriday started, there have been dozens and dozens of attempts to start day-based twitter memes. None have really taken off in the same way. Is it because #followfriday is so amazing? While I wish I could claim that, in truth, #followfriday made any other day-based meme appear to be a copy. Which took some of the steam out of the sails of that attempted meme.

Would it be possible to have another day-based meme? Probably. #musicmonday seems to be taking off. (although I dont know why this hasnt migrated to Blip.fm so I can actually listen to the recommended music)

Which is interesting. It seems that recommendation is really the key to a sustained Twitter meme.

Lets add that as a fourth component. Now, its:

1) it was easy.

2) it allowed people to show off the cool people they follow.

3) it made people feel good about themselves.

4) RECOMMENDATION

Twitter, as a short form of communication, and as a thought dump, doesnt allow for recommendation. I cant on my twitter page highlight users that I would recommend to others. We all know that the Twitter suggest list is a bullshit potential monetized list of people, who individually add little or no overall value.

So why hasnt twitter come up with a recommendation system for users? Well, its really hard. I could recommend the same person to a dozen people, and eleven of those people might not like my recommendation.

Recommendation is a highly personalized activity. My influence and track record affect how my recommendations are accepted for a short time, but if I continually make bad recommendations, that cache is lost.

Its why there is a movement to make #followfriday what it was: one or two recommendations with reasons.

Of course, recommendation only fits into a sustained twitter meme. The event driven twitter memes (#MJdied) are driven by the events themselves. The humor memes (#3wordsaftersex) are driven by the humor, which tends to fizzle in the short attention-span world of twitter.

Why is recommendation so important for sustained Twitter memes? Is it because there are no other vehicles for recommendation within twitter? Is it because we as an internet generation just love the ability to recommend? Or is it our desire to show/share what we know/like? (There is a great opportunity to go on a Facebook/FriendFeed “like” discussion here…but I wont.)

I dont know.

But I do know, that I take intense pleasure in sharing/recommending/liking my friends and the great things they do.

Which makes me glad there is a #followfriday.

And, makes me want to start a #sundayshout where I share blog posts/pictures/videos/etc that my friends have made, or I have found online, every sunday morning. It reminds me of reading the Sunday paper with my parents and sharing things we are reading from the various sections of the paper.

Will it work?

I have no idea.

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Lemme know what you think:

The following is a chat session I had with some friends where I explained basically what happened. There is a lot of cursing, so if you are offended, you might want to close your eyes or have someone read you the following.

Imagine this was a company or store. I had a horrible experience. With social media, I am directly touching more than 12,500 people through Twitter, this blog and facebook. Imagine if that group of 12,500 shares this with their followers and friends. How many people are going to hear about how awful the experience I had with the city of Denver was? 100,000? 1,000,000? Seems cities, like companies, should do their best to listen to their customers (residents and visitors) and act accordingly.

In my discussions of influence I always say influence is just a one to one activity where I can affect the actions of another. What if this is just the beginning of an “influence chain”?

Must of the following is humorous, but scary for businesses. It no longer matters if you are a store, a city, a state or a country. Your customers and residents not only have a voice, they have INFLUENCE.

I challenge businesses and governments to be better. If you are unsure how to, call me. 720-231-7120. or email me. micah [at] currentwisdom [dot] com. or tweet me @micah. But dont allow your lack of understanding or belief to stop you.

I might be one person, but there are 30,000,000 people just like me on twitter, 75,000,000 of us blogging and 200,000,000 vocal users on Facebook. The power is truly with the people.

Here is the chat discussion uncut. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Except mine.

Me: ok

Me: so here is the story

Me: Im at a coffee shop with friends

Me: ok one friend

Me: I dont really have friends

Me: I walk out of the shop at 5:30, car is booted

Me: I call them

Me: $600 later, I pay for tickets I already paid for

Me: they say you have a default boot

Me: I say you are a fucking retard, because there is a keypad, so give me the code so I can take it off

Me: they say there is no keypad

ST: lol

ST: “ok one friend”

Me: I say, I am not blind you stupid motherfuckers, there is a keypad

Me: we argue about the existence of the keypad for like 5 min

Me: finally, I give up.

ST:this is funny

Me: They say by 7pm, some one will come to take the boot off.

MP: I’m writing the screenplay now.

Me: its 5:30, so I say fine.

Me: I will wait

Me: at 6:45pm, I call back

Me: I say, hey, so no one has come to take off the boot

Me: they say, oh, we meant 7pm EST. You are in central time, so you will have to wait until tomorrow.

Me: I say, stupid motherfucker, I am in mountain time. go get someone to take off the boot.

Me: they say, sorry, everyone has gone home.

Me: I hang up the phone

Me: I call back

Me: I tell my story

Me: I mention that there is a serial number for the boot on the citation. I read it to them

Me: they say, oh, that boot is on another car

Me: I say

Me: well, I dont say anything

Me: because clearly they dont believe I have the ability to see that there is a boot on my car

Me: I say, nicely, there is a boot on my car

Me: the serial number is 9743

Me: they say thats impossible

Me: that boot is not on your car

Me: I hang up

Me: I call back

Me: I tell my story

Me: the lady says, Im sorry for the inconvenience

Me: I ask that she apologize for the stupidity as well

Me: she doesnt find it funny

Me: I stop a meter maid

Me: (except its a dude who is clearly a douchebag)

ST: im cracking up

Me: he says, booting is not my department

Me: I say, you put it on there, take the fucker off

Me: he says, I am only trained in putting them on

Me: I said clearly

Me: he calls the dispatch

Me: they say everyone went home, and I will have to wait until the next day to get my car

Me: I said I hate you all and I hope you die. Except I said it like this

Me: “thanks very much”

ST: lol

Me: then I called a friend who picked me up and drove me to boulder

Me: we grabbed dinner

Me: since I had no car and he drove me

Me: he dropped me off at my house

Me: I get a call from new jersey

ST: how far is boulder from denver??

Me: “hello mr. baldwin, this the supervisor of the boot removal department”

Me: 40 miles

BH: apparently Denver is now in NJ

ST: ah

Me: “and we have removed your boot”

ST: hahaha

Me: I say, thats great, since its 9pm, and the meters run until 10pm, I better not have a ticket.

Me: so danny drives me down to denver.

Me: it starts to rain

Me: thunder

Me: lightening

BH: oh shite

Me: I get to my car

Me: the boot is gone

Me: there is no ticket

BH: THERE’S A TICKET

Me: I get in my car

BH: oh

BH: fuck

BH: change the story

Me: and I drive up in a torrential downpour

Me: and now I am finally home

ST: that was quite an ending

Me: after paying $610 in parking fines I HAVE ALREADY PAID

Me: and waiting 7.5 hours for the boot to be removed.

ST: so are you going to fight it?

Me: the end

ST: fight city hall!

ST: that sucks man

Me: I will never enter the city of denver again

Me: so the boot was invented in denver

Me: but its a new boot called the smart boot, of which the operation of it is outsourced to philadelphia

BH: Better than being outsourced to some foreign country

MP: another change in the story… outsourced to NJ

Me: fuck me

Me: http://learntoduck.com/humor/first-denver-smart-boot-recipient

MP: Thank you very much

Me: I wrote that the first time I paid the tickets

Me: is that unbelievable or what?

Me: then I was having fun writing horribly vitriol tweets about denver, so I went with it.

MP: For you Micah, a thousand times more believable.

BH: the best part is where they keep telling you that you’re a lying muthefucker

Me: lol

Me: I KNOW!

Me: my favorite part

Me: the lady says “According to our records you have a default boot”

Me: I say “according to my eyeballs I have a smart boot”

BH: Micah: I’m a Jew

BH: Boot: No you’re not

Me: lol

BH: Micah: No, I’m looking at my circumcised dick right now

BH: Boot: Sir, our records indicate that you are a woman

Right now, I think the blogs in that folder number around 200. Of those, there are about 10 I check out first. My friends Rana, Tyler and Michael always share interesting images, quotes and posts, so I usually check their feeds first. Then I read Meg, Jeffrey, Grace, Darcie and Eric’s blogs each for different reasons, but mostly because I enjoy the writing.

The final two I check are David’s and Brad’s because they are in a space that I want to be part of and know more about: investing and venture capital, and they both write extensively about the subject.

Of those first ten, there are often threads of ideas that I pluck to contemplate posts of my own. Sometimes, there is a concept that just screams for me to think, and perhaps, write about.

Today was such a day. Brad wrote in his post Deep Calm:

While my life is frenetic, the world around us is chaotic, and as I like to say “something in my world somewhere is totally fucked up every single day”, I generally achieve a very deep calm.  On the surface I appear to be extremely busy, but at my essence I hear the birds chirping and think of fields of golden retriever puppies.

I am on vacation. I am staying home for two weeks after spending 50% of the last 45 days traveling. I am trying to learn how to be organized. I am trying to learn how to properly prioritize my activities. I am learning how to use a to-do list.

Here is what I have done (or will be doing) my first three days of vacation:

Monday: Run errands, clean the house, go into the office for a meeting, and meet with a techstars team.

Tuesday: Rearrange my office, clean some more, run some more errands, get blood tests, go in to the office for a meeting, write a blog post for the lijit blog, work on a lijit project, meet with three different techstars teams.

Wednesday: Meet with one of my mentors, clean up my back yard, run some more errands, go to the doctor, meet with two techstars teams. Clean up my basement and my master bedroom. Complete a Lijit project. Figure out my strategy for Learntoduck.tv.

My life is in a constant state of movement. I have ten things I should be doing, twenty things I am doing, and thirty things I wish I could be doing. I take every phone call and meeting that comes my way.

Within all that “stuff” that is going on, there are things that are falling down; things that are breaking; things, as Brad says, “are totally fucked up every single day.”

Yet, while I am intense, loud and passionate, I never am concerned that the outcome will be anything other than good. (Not specifically successful, but educational. Learning is as good as winning most of the time).

Unlike Brad, I dont have thoughts of fields of buttercups and golden retrievers, but I do have the utmost trust in me. I know that if I was given a single oar and dropped in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I will get to the shore.

People who are anxious or worry about their ability to produce at the heart of it dont trust in their own ability to generate a positive outcome.

Perhaps its narcissistic; perhaps its arrogance, but all I know is it keeps me calm like a ninja.

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For the rest of the year, I tend to not dwell on that fact that I have a biological father and an adoptive father, but today, I always take a bit of time to dwell.

When I was about a year-and-a-half old, my parents got divorced, and my mom moved from Fort Collins, CO to East Palo Alto, CA. I never knew much about the circumstances of the divorce itself, but what I do know wasnt pleasant. My mom was 21 when I was born, my father 23. He was in veterinarian school, and the two of them were really hippie poor. He delivered goats milk and cheese for a living, my mom (I think) did odd jobs, secretarial work and the like.

My father was also a heavy drug user. He would disappear days on end, and generally not treat my mother extremely well. I would assume that the same went for me. (Having dealt with drug addiction, regardless of what I do or do not know, I do know that had to true.)

After the divorce, my mom, who had friends in California and Oregon, decided to move west. (well, west-er, I guess) She took our belongings, jumped in a car, and drove out to Oregon, stopping in California on the way. Except, she never made it to Oregon. She stopped in California to visit friends, and just stayed.

She moved into a small apartment in East Palo Alto, and got a job at a local company. My earliest memories are of that apartment, but most of it is dark and hazy. It wasnt a great time for us; my mom tells the story of my sitting on her lap, wiping away her tears, telling her everything would be ok. It seems that the time between the move to California, and her meeting my adoptive father (ok, he is my step-father, but that has such negative connotations. Adoptive–he did legally adopt me–paints such a better picture of him) was kinda dark and a blur. There are few pictures and stories of that time.

When I was two or three, my mom met a guy that lived in the same apartment complex. The story goes that she was dating his roommate, and being the vixen my mom was (I guess), quickly realized she had picked the wrong roommate. Of course, if you ask my grandmother, she introduced my mom and dad. (Given that my grandmother was living in Korea at the time, this is probably not the case. A stretch maybe.)

My mom and dad quickly moved in together, and when I was 5, my dad, Rich, asked if it was ok if he married my mom. While I did say yes, I do regret not negotiating a better deal for myself, such as free ice cream or tv for life.

When I was seven, I told my mom and dad that I didnt like having a different last name, Silver, and I wanted to be a Baldwin. I knew then, as clearly and strongly as I know now, that belonging to a family was the most important thing for a person.

Over the course of two years, Rich and my mom worked through the court system to finalize the adoption. The final step was that my biological father had to approve. He came out to California, and while he and I were sitting on a beach, I explained to him that I wanted to be adopted by Rich, and almost without any delay, I got his permission.

That was the last time I saw my biological father until I was eighteen and a freshman at University of California, Davis.

I often juxtapose the decisions that both men made over the course of my life. Rich was 19 when I was born, he was 24 when he married my mom, and 26 when he adopted me. By 30, my sisters Marissa and Natalia had joined our family.

My biological father on the other hand, continued to struggle with drug addiction until he was 35 (I still think he has his issues), and finally remarried when he was in his late 30s / early 40s. Recently, he and his wife adopted a child from China, and they are a happy family. He is a successful, brilliant vet.

When you look at the two men and their beliefs about the importance of family, its clear that my dad, Rich, puts family first. Here is a great example: Rich was working at Stanford University, and in his early 30s was asked by the founders of Cisco to join them. When they had 4 employees.

I know. It would not be a question. I would have jumped at it. Rich didnt.

When I asked why, Rich, in his easy pragmatic, Michigan way recounted how Cisco was being sued by Stanford for stealing the idea of the router, and having three kids, he just couldnt take the risk.

When I didnt hear any tinge of regret, I was surprised. Just as quietly as he explained the reason for his decision, he explained that for him, there could be no regret in making a decision that was best for the family.

There are many examples of Rich’s decision making process of putting the family first. He turned down a job at UC Berkeley, because the move would have been too traumatic for my sister, Natalia. When Marissa finally found her true calling in musical theatre, Rich was a stage hand for all of her plays, and drove her around the country looking at colleges (until she settled on Western Michigan in Kalamazoo, MI).

What is amazing is that all of this has been his choice. He does it because he loves it, and its the right thing to do.

Often, there is a debate about nurture and nature. Am I who I am because of Rich or my biological father?

I look a lot like my biological father (which caused my mom many times to assume that I was just like him. Especially when I was screwing up, which was quite often. Cant be awesome, unless you break a couple laws, I always say).

And, there are pieces of my personality the stem from him. I know that my bipolar and addictive personality certainly can be traced back. My quick thinking and clear understanding of complex problems are also very similar.

Yet, I act, often, especially when problem solving, like my adoptive father. I think pragmatically, because thats what he taught me.

My absolute believe in doing right comes directly from Rich’s influence.

I suppose, at the end of it all, at the beginning, I was who I was because of my biological father, but I am who I am because of Rich.

The greatest gift my biological father gave me was a start.

And, Rich? Well, he gave me the framework for my future.

Happy Father’s Day.

“Dude, its not that bad,” I said, “the number one result for Micah Baldwin is a kid at Georgia Southern University that wrote a paper about why pot should be legal.”

My friend proceeded to explain to me that he had spoken to several companies about his issue, and at least one had offered to get the offending blog post off the front page of Google.

“They charge $10,000 per spot it needs to be dropped.” He told me.

My jaw dropped.

And, as a test to see if I could do it, I started to blog and tweet.

Since then, the Georgian pot loving Micah Baldwin and I are friends on Facebook, and his paper is nowhere to be seen in the top 10 results on Google, and I have found myself something I love to do, and a member of a community I never knew existed. Bloggers.

Since then I started working with Lijit and traveling the country meeting with really smart people, speaking in front of really smart people and finding that community was something I found really interesting.

Take that with the fact that one of my apparent pluses was that I am “authentic.” Its something that I have never really understood (if I am authentic, and its treated with such positivity, does that mean others are not authentic?).

Today, a friend of mine was at a panel discussion around online reputation management that made me think of the Free Pot Paper, and my place within this larger community. So I tweeted:

and soon followed that up with:

Which, of course, caused a few eyebrows to be raised.

Communities have to have very specific structures and rules to survive. Think about it. A community must have an internal way to police itself and to filter out potential members. Communities that survive and thrive have these two elements in place.

For communities to really grow, they must demand a level of conformity from its members. Similarity is rewarded by increased acceptance within the group. Conformity allows for a certain level of dependability and reliability from each member of the community.

Conformity make communities comfortable and drives growth since it makes for a clear understanding of what type of members succeed within the community. Conformity creates the expectations required of each member.

Authenticity, the act of “being real,” implies that to a certain extent the individual has placed himself ahead of the community. “I am being myself, which may, or may not be beneficial to the community.”

Is authenticity bad? No, for the individual it creates a level of trust that doesnt exist naturally. Authenticity rightly so creates the expectation that the individual will place openness and truth above the needs of the community.

The authentic individual, while potentially being praised by the community is also by definition excluded from assuming a true position of power within that community.

Certainly, the suggestion is not that the lack of authenticity grows a community.  The reality is that the community itself has to be authentic, and the members need to conform to the expectations of the community. When each individual works to conform to the greater community, there is some distinct loss of authenticity.

Conformity breeds consistency, reliability and trust. Authenticity breeds credibility and believability. Conformity is about belonging, and as an individual, to truly be authentic, you must be willing to stand slightly outside of your chosen community, and accept the possibility of not being fully belonging.

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But has the internet gotten too large for any single search engine? Microsoft doesnt think so, they just launched Bing. Google has moved into other areas of content creation (email, mobile, documents, etc.).

There are new search engines launching almost daily. Real time search engines. Social search engines. Semantic search engines.

Each tries to to the same thing. Take a keyword query and return what their technology determines is the single best answer.

At the same time of the internet’s explosion, blogs have also exploded. Every day tens of thousands of blogs are started. Every day thousands of pages of content is created.

Throw on top of all that the explosion of social media. Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and others are platforms where content is created almost minute by minute.

The speed of the expansion of the internet and the content created has accelerated to the point where no search engine can provide the one right answer to a single keyword query. The ability to find relevant content has become almost a losing battle.

Whats the answer? Its influence.

I have spoken on influence in the past (most recently at WordCamp Chicago):

Here is the basic concept: influence is on a one-to-one basis. Thats it. You can influence one person about one thing. Thats it.

So how does that matter in terms of search?

Imagine starting with an influencer. Think about a subject that matters to you. Who do you consider the expert on that topic. Then search through a corpus of content that person creates and curates. Your results will always be the most useful and relevant. They cant be any other way.

Marketers, Brand Managers and Advertisers believe the same thing. Walmart has put a ton of effort into finding online influencers and associating themselves with them. Same with many major brands.

Brands are learning that keyword search marketing is not as effective as it once was. Its too general, people are using more and more keywords in their queries to drive relevance. It has become all about the influencers.

IZEA knew that when they pioneered Pay-Per-Post. Regardless of your feelings around its morality, the practice has been booming, and while IZEA first iteration wasnt the best, they seem to have really figured something out, having attracted many top bloggers, and now provide a score and pricing based on the what the inherent influence of the blogger appears to be (I think they lay on traffic a bit more than true influence, but I really dont know).

The addition of influence into search is our model at Lijit. With a distributed model of search, we have to rely on the blogger to provide clue’s as to what the results should be. Add that the searcher trusts the expertise of the blogger, and you end up with a much better answer for the query. In essence, the influence of the blogger is added to the search to return the best results for the searcher, not a single answer for all searchers, but the right answer for that searcher from that blogger.

In the past, Google relied on the fact that people trusted their results as being better than all others (not being the best), and that with their scale, they could train searchers how to search (think about query + zip code).

Yet with the ability for anyone to create content, the concept of content filtration becomes even more important that simple algorithmic search or searcher education. Which creates the rise of influence online. People have become filtration points.

Which has fundamentally changed how people interact with the web. Less and less people are using iGoogle or MyYahoo or Google or a portal to start their online experience. More and more people are starting their experience online with the blog or site that influences them most.

The web has become about people, and influence is the new hotness.

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It seems that among the many things that are discussed by Web 2.0 companies is this concept of community. Apparently, they all have communities. They all communicate to their communities about community-related things. New feature? Bring it to the community. Made a mistake? Thats ok, the community forgives.

But, do any of us really have a community around our product or service?

We have profiles of our users, and our users can send messages and friend/follow each other. But are they a community?

Well, like all good rants, we must start with a definition. Which means Wikipedia:

In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

In sociology, the concept of community has caused infinite debate, and sociologists are yet to reach agreement on a definition of the term. There were ninety-four discrete definitions of the term by the mid-1950s. Traditionally a “community” has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location. The word is often used to refer to a group that is organized around common values and social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household. The word can also refer to the national community or global community.

How amazing is that? 94 definitions of the term community by the 1950’s. No wonder there is so much confusion about the term and its application to startups. When I asked the same question on Twitter (and therefore Facebook), I got many many responses, with most being centered on the concept of “shared interests.”

Fair enough. Lets take that to the online world. What most people (I think) forget, is that Web 2.0 is really the Internet serving as a platform for software. Digg, Facebook, etc are all software packages that we are accessing through the browser. Which makes most internet companies software companies and most “shared interests” a product and/or service. Meaning that most of the communities that we talk about, are really some version of a user group.

If we look at commonalities in the definitions, the words interaction and shared identity stick out. A true community allows people to do two things: communicate and be part of something viewed larger than any one individual.

When community is viewed in this manner all of a sudden the word “community” as its used today is just wrong.

Community is not users. Community is not revenue. Community is not content.

Community is communication and inclusion.

Where does real community lie? It shifts. For a long time slashdot was a great example of a community that allowed for communication and inclusion. 4chan, for as scary a place as it can be, is a real community. Wordpress (on the developer side) is a growing community.

Inclusion isnt automatic.

Inclusion comes from displaying the ability to improve the communication and the community. If you dont add value you dont get in. Its that simple. To grow a community, the members must add value to the community.

Create a lasting community.

You cannot expect a community to grow on its own. Twitter does not a community make. Tracking blog mentions does not improve your community. 95% of current online community managers suck. They are not building community; they are protecting the product. They are not building community; they are promoting products.

Of the two components: communication and inclusion, the latter stands in complete opposition to your sales team. Getting users doesnt build a community. In fact, in many ways, it destroys your community. If anyone can be a member of your community, your community is full of people that add no value.

Thats right. Not every user brings the same level of value to your community. Decide what value you want your users to bring to the table, and then facilitate paths and roadblocks to ensure that your users are providing that value.

Create the ability for community members to communicate as they want to. Brand managers and most companies want to control the conversation. If your users are truly part of the community, they will do nothing to hurt and/or destroy the community in which they live. [UPDATE: great example of the community protecting the community.]

Trust them to make your product better. Trust them to make your community better.

The lie of community is that by having users or by creating content, a community just exists. That by being on the Internet somehow we are all part of some global community. There is no global community.

But, there can be community that grows organically around a “shared interest.” As community manager your job is to foster that organic growth by ensuring a focus on community-driven communication and inclusion. While this might sound cliche, the only way to truly succeed at that is by not using the word, but by living IN IT.

In it was an email from my friend David Cohen entitled “Wow.” Normally, I just delete David’s emails because they are boring nonsense about Techstars, or yet another expression of adulation, but the single word subject made me curious.

David, not the most eloquent person in the world, wrote:

Micah, yet again today you have given me hope in this country’s future. Single-handedly, you provide me inspiration to one day achieve the level of brilliance you have. It is probably no surprise, but I was absolutely floored by your BigOmaha video.

Ok, maybe I paraphrased a bit. (Well, except for the subject. It really did say “Wow,” and in the email, near the bottom, there was a small reference to “some video” he had heard I did.)

David, as he often does, simplified what I was trying to say in my 40 minute long presentation about Failure being a process rather than a destination in a great post which I read this morning. “Micro failures,” great term.

Then as I perused my Twitter stream, parsing out all the wonderful tweets about my awesomeness (like this one, from my friend Rick Turoczy, who writes the SiliconForist blog in Portland, Oregon: “@micah, you moron, I cant believe Twitter hasnt banned you yet for your stupidity.”), I came across a link to a post that Bijan wrote, The Upside of Rejection.

In the post, Bijan recounts his attempts to land a job at a big firm in Boston, and how failing to do so lead him to a life-changing occupation and, eventually, his wife.

Which gets me to what I am writing about. 270 words later. Yeah, I am succinct like that.

When I was a senior in high school, (Independence High School in San Jose, what what!) IBM offered an internship to one person in our district (which was no small district at the time, probably covering 20-30,000 kids I would guess). It was an impressive summer internship. $300 a week, a guaranteed job every summer in between college, ability to work at multiple departments within IBM, and so on.

I applied, certain that I wouldnt get it. I was, by no means, the best student around, never really did a bunch of extracurriculars, nor did I have stellar references. Instead, I resigned myself to being a lifeguard at the local pool, a job I had held throughout high school. Which of course, also meant smoking a ton of weed. (I was in high school, what activity didnt justify smoking a ton of weed? Shoot, at the time, breathing justified smoking a ton of weed.)

Well, I suppose you can see where this is going, and I wasnt selected for the internship.

Initially.

Then I was. Turns out the first person got dropped for some reason, and they were offering it to me. Except there was one caveat. As a requirement of employment, I would have to take a drug test.

This was not good (If, I have lost you, please refer back to the section about smoking a ton of weed, or perhaps you should think about putting the joint down).

I passed on the position, and returned to lifeguarding and smoking a ton of weed.

Often, I think about how my life would be different if I had done the responsible thing and taken the internship (and stopped smoking a ton of weed). Would I have ended up at a hot startup in the Silicon Valley? Would I be a drone at IBM?

Thats the thing about failure (and trust me, deciding to smoke weed over working at IBM is a colossal failure), its ephemeral and there is no promise as to what happens next. Am I proud of my decision? Of course not. But, I also dont look back at that time as the seminal moment in my life. It was a choice I made. It was a path I took. It was really not that big of a deal (except to my mother who is now reading why I never took the job at IBM. I may no longer be welcome in her home).

Which is what both David and Bijan’s posts are about, and even Jason’s BigOmaha talk and post.

It is ok to fail. It is ok to fail often. Its just not ok to focus on failure or accept failure.

Focus on success; let failure come along for the ride. (but give him a seat in the back by the screaming kid.)

Its 1:30am as I sit in my hotel room. I should have been asleep hours ago, as I have three meetings tomorrow (well four). At 8am I have a phone call,  I need drive down from San Francisco to San Mateo to meet with Apture (I mention them only because they are now installed on my blog, and I think they are pretty interesting) by 10am, and then back to San Francisco for 1pm meeting. Not to mention the the dinner I am pretty excited about with Foodzie.

But this isnt a complaint post.

Earlier tonight I was watching Glee on the new Hulu desktop app. There was a point in the show where one teacher shows the Glee Club teacher a video of him performing in 1993.

“That was the greatest time of my life.”

Which got me thinking. What was my greatest time?

No answer found itself to the front of my brain, and it dawned on me.

I havent had a greatest time in my life…yet.

At first, this realization was followed by disappointment. Has it really been 37 years without a greatest moment? Does it mean my life has been boring and without merit?

But, quickly it hit me. I derive my drive from an intense desire to HAVE a greatest moment. I am comforted by knowing that my greatest moment is still out there.

Then I started to apply the concept to the friends around me. People that I am humbled to know:

Brad Feld: A very successful venture capitalist, what excites Brad about being an investor is helping people build the next big thing. Does he think every investment he (or Foundry Group) makes is in the next big thing? No, but watch where (and in whom) Brad invests his time…its a great indicator of what (and whom) he is excited about.

Frankly by definition being an investor is the belief that the greatest moment is still to be…

Gary Vaynerchuk: Gary wants to buy the New York Jets. Gary is going to be a dad soon. Gary, our generation’s Tony Robbins, is driven by passion and the desire to win. Ask Gary if he has had the greatest moment in his life, and he is liable to punch you in the mouth and yell “I want to own the NY Jets, dummy.”

Jason Fried: I met Jason at the BigOmaha conference after several failed attempted by Jeffrey Kalmikoff to connect us, and was literally awed by Jason’s mix of focus and adjustment when we talked about business ideas. He has a clear vision as to what works and how it works, but he is also quick to absorb data and guidance and apply it to his vision. I would almost be willing to bet dinner in Chicago that if you asked Jason what his greatest moment in life was, he wouldnt name it quickly. Im sure he is proud of 37signals and the work they have done, but I am also sure that he believes that 37signals will be a footnote to whatever he accomplishes in his life.

Jeffrey Kalmikoff: While I refuse to take free tshirts from Threadless, Jeffrey is still my friend. Did you know that Jeffrey used to be a pretty decent DJ? Or that he and Jake Nickell have spoken to MIT and Stanford and were on the cover of INC magazine? Probably not. Because those are things on the path to whatever it is that Jeffrey will one day achieve.

The list goes on and on.

What is it then? People that are focused on the future are more likely to be successful? That people who have had a “greatest moment” are doomed to look at the past?

Not sure thats it.

People who have had a greatest moment spend most of their lives trying to recreate that moment.

Their very motivation centers on the concept of re-experiencing that wonderful moment in time.  Therefore, failure hurts, because you have known true success.

On the other hand, people that have not had their greatest moment yet, are waiting for that moment.

Their motivation is focused on creating that moment. Knowing that the moment will come (and fear that it may never). Therefore failure is part of the process, because we have never known real success.

Maybe I am rambling because its now 2:30am and I can barely keep my eyes open, but chew on this:

If I have had my greatest moment, then I know the parameters that that moment exists in. Therefore, my drive is limited by that scope. I am comfortable working a job, or limiting what I think I can achieve, because I know that my success must occur in a similar way to how it did in the past.

But what if I add a bit of hope to my beliefs?

In hoping that the greatest moment in my life is yet to come, the scope of where my greatest moment lives becomes infinite. I become ok with change and error. I stop questioning my ability to achieve and I focus on what the success should be, because I have no idea where, when or how my success will manifest in the future; I just know it will.

My greatest moment in my life is coming and it will be amazing.

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Every Friday, I get several hundred followers.

Ok, done whining.

Every Friday, I get several hundred new Twitter followers. When it first started, I would try and follow everyone back. “How nice these folks are,” I thought to myself, “they are following me because of the whole #followfriday thing.”

Then starting Saturday, I start to lose followers. By Thursday, about 80% of the original batch of new followers is gone. Then Friday rolls around, and the same thing happens again. It doesnt matter if I follow folks or not, about 80% of the people who follow me on Friday disappear by the next Friday.

Which got me thinking. Why do people follow someone else on Twitter?

I wrote about the six reasons why I unfollow people. Perhaps it would be interesting to list the 6 reasons why I follow people. (Sort of a ying to the yang.)

1) I know you

That is actually not true. There are a lot of people that I know that I dont follow. I dont follow folks that tweet too much, or tweet links constantly, or tweet things that I just dont find interesting.

2) I like you

Ok, this is really not completely true either. I do follow people I dont really like. Mostly because they are interesting, but also because its as important to hear things from people you dont like as from people you do like.

3) I want to know you

When Twitter started there was this concept of ambient intimacy, which basically meant that I could get to know you just by reading your tweets, and, of course, in return, you could know about me. That look into the banal existence we all lead creates an intimacy. This ambient intimacy also occurs through interaction. If we interact, I am much more likely to follow you.

4) I want you to know me

Im a cool dude. I know this. Sometimes, there are folks I wish also knew this. Im vain. What do you want?

5) I want to try you on

Im not sure if I really do like you. Im not sure if you would like me. So I try people on. Follow them for a bit, and then either keep following them, or unfollow them. No harm done. No ill intent meant.

6) you teach me without trying

Pretty sure you dont mean to, but you say things that are educational to me. Not sure if they are educational to anyone else. Sometimes I learn humor. Sometimes I learn heartache. Sometimes I learn that you had 51 cans in your first cooler and 39 can in your second cooler. Even if I dont know whats in the cans (but can guess).

Here is the bottom line: I make my rules.

There is no obligation on my part to follow you (or you to follow me). I dont care if you included me in a #followfriday tweet, or even tweeted that I should follow you, because I make my rules. I choose to follow or not follow.

And, here is the most important takeaway: You make your rules.

Dont follow me because someone suggested it.That should just give me the honor of you checking me out.

Please allow me to earn your follow. Please require me to adhere to all your rules. Please force me to live up to your expectations.

And if I dont?

Please dont follow me.

It could have been because I was excited to be working at Lijit, and seeing the power of content discovery. Perhaps it was the explosion of FriendFeed and the buzz that SocialThing! was creating.

More likely, it was that I was re-joining an online community (and a real community in Boulder) and I wanted to meet new interesting people. (Its funny that nearly a year to the day, I sent that first #followfriday tweet, leveraging Twitter to accomplish just that task…)

Discovery has always been an important topic for me. I have always been in a testing mode, which my parents fostered as a kid. There was always one constant in my family, that being educated (be it through school or through interaction) was a requirement. And as I got older, my parents continually fostered the love of learning in my sisters and me.

Its no surprise that as the information on the web has increased, so have the discovery tools. Biggest one to date? Google. The search engine exists only because there are too many sites to bookmark anymore. As internet access continues to proliferate, more and more people come on line, and now rudimentary friend connect tools, like Facebook, have begun to take center stage.

Clearly, there is a need for the discovery of people and information online.

Yet, the internet has continued to evolve. Its is not just a facilitator of communication and information anymore. It now has added interactivity and activity to its bag of tricks. People not only want to find other people, or discovery interesting topics, but both interact and discover activity. Hence the growth of Twitter, a basic activity stream that has a search function. The hashtag adds a bit of categorization, but there is little intelligence or sophistication to Twitter.

Now we are here:

For information: use Google.

For friends: use Facebook.

For activity: use Twitter.

(This might be why I like Lijit. While it doesnt have the realtime aspect of Twitter or Facebook’s activity stream, it does allow you to find and discover information and activity from your friends. Sort of a way to simplify the combination of these services.)

It seems that what I was thinking about in January of 2008 has (sort of) come about. People are using tools like Facebook and Twitter much more as discovery tools for finding information and people.

Whats next?

Promotion.

Its easy to say that promotion already exists (shoot, I have been accused of self-promotion more than once). Sure, promotion in its most basic form exists, but all these tools allow us to see a new form of promotion begin to rise.

The #1 Fan Promoter.

Imagine tools that allow the best person to promote a specific piece of content or person (think indie bands, conferences, new authors, indie movies, etc.) to be discovered by the creator of that content.

In short order, imagine if a band, conference, film maker, author could find the one person in the world that was the best person to promote them?

The characteristics of this #1 fan would be similar across all genres: He would be passionate. He would be trusted. She would be influential. She would feel some ownership of and empowerment by the content.

Lately, this concept of attaching discovery to promotion has gotten me thinking.

There are two companies that I am informally advising that are tackling this issue. EventVue, a 2007 Techstars company, lives in the world of conferences. They focus on helping conference organizers grow their conferences in interesting ways.

Think about it: Whats the #1 reason you usually attend a conference? Because someone you trust and consider influential told you that it would be worth the time and expense.

The other company is The Next Big Sound, a 2009 Techstars company. Personally, they are currently my favorite music site. Rather than just being a site where artists can upload their music and then people thumb up / thumb down the music, The Next Big Sound gives users (what they call moguls) the ability to “discover” and “promote” music.

Think about it: Whats the #1 way you find new music? You ask someone you trust and has influence over you. What if that same person was someone who gained the reputation of breaking new music? Wouldnt you go to them again and again?

Traditional media calls this Word of Mouth.

We have seen what the internet has done in redefining Searching, Friend Discovery and Activity Monitoring. We have seen what the internet has done in revolutionizing Interaction and Communication.

What’s it going to do to traditional word of mouth?

I am a #1 fan of learning that.

But thats not whats this post is about.

By now, most people that #followfriday has become the largest meme ever on twitter with, well…more #followfriday tweets sent than Ashton has followers (@aplusk followers < #followfriday tweets sent.)

But thats not whats this post is about.

For many people new to twitter, #followfriday has become a great way to discover new people to follow based on the recommendations of people that they trust.

Still not what this post is about.

Yet, with all the positives that surround #followfriday (searches for the words love and #followfriday reveal 10 times the number of results that searches for the words hate and #followfriday produce), for many people, #followfriday has morphed into something that can be a nuisance.

And thats what this post is about.

Since #followfriday began, I have gotten emails of suggestions on how to make #followfriday better. My response has been pretty consistent: “the cat is out of the bag”; “its like herding cats”; and “give the cat his stupid cheezburger!”

How can one person (me) effect change on something that so many (thousands and thousands of people) do every friday? There are plenty of blog posts out there that have made the suggestion that #followfriday tweets should be a couple of recommendations and reasons (which is how it began) rather than a list of usernames followed by the hashtag.

I even was asked on CNN about #followfriday, and I outlined how a basic #followfriday should look (one or two recommendations with reasons):

Yet, the ideas seem to keep heating up. My good friend Julia Roy wrote a great post on her thoughts on how to perfect the #followfriday tweet, which echoes many of the ideas that people have put out there across the web.

My favorite suggest to date was an example Steve Hall (an Old Timer in the industry *snicker*) who pointed me to this tweet by Don Knox:

Which seems to be the best of both worlds.

I love the fact that so many people feel so strongly about keeping #followfriday useful for everyone, and that so many people feel such ownership over the meme, that they are all so vocal.

I believe as strongly today, Sunday, May 24, 2009, a full 129 days since #followfriday started, as I did on January 16. #followfriday has immense value to our community, and like anything that the community values, they are working hard at coming up with ideas on how to make it even better.

Would you please participate? How do we, collectively, continue the value of #followfriday?

I lived in Mountain View in a little house on Thompson Ave (532 Thompson Avenue to be exact) with rose bushes in the front.

There was a time when I blew up a firecracker in my hand in the small empty lot by my house, because I was curious as to how it felt.

Of course, there was the time my friend Alex Brown came to my house at like 5:30 am and barked like a dog as the signal for me to sneak out so we could see if the bug we buried the day before had made its way out of the dirt and grass pile.

Which brings us to the stove and the scar.

Every day, my mom cooked on that little stove. It was so interesting to see the burners get red hot, and then return to black. Frankly, it was much more interesting than the food that was being prepared on top of the burners.

(There are two things I have requested that my mom never does for me: cook and buy me clothes. Seriously. Just bad.)

Back to the stove. It was spring/summer and I was playing soccer. I was in my third or fourth year of playing, and I think at the time I was either a defender or a goalie, I dont really remember. It had to be defender, because I think that was the year I was pretty highly ranked in our area. I loved playing soccer (still do), and there was nothing I would do to jeopardize playing, but the pull of the stove was just too strong.

Here was what I wanted to know: If I turned the burner to red hot and then waited for it to go completely black, was it still hot?

Simple enough.

After soccer one day, before my mom got home from work (I think), I went into the kitchen, turned the burner on red hot, waited a second, and then turned it off.

I waited and waited until it was completely black. Completely black.

And I put my hand, fingers spread out, on top of the burner. For like five seconds.

When I pulled my hand away, I had this really interesting red circles that matched the burner etched into my skin. It didnt hurt. I didnt cry.

I went to the sink and poured cold water on top of my hand and wrist. Slowly, blisters began to form, and I realized that the burners stay hot even after they are turned off.

It sucked for awhile playing soccer, at least until most of the blisters went down. The mark on my wrist never left, and I am glad it didnt.

Why?

I find wonder in the world. I want to understand everything. I want to know how it feeeeeeeels. I want the experience. If I could, I would kill myself a million different ways, just to know what the experience is like.

Pretty sure, thats why I love startups. Working at a startup is like putting my hand on that stove everyday. Most days, I get a little burned. Occasionally, something scars and sticks with me.

But everyone once in awhile, I touch the burner, and my hand comes back unscathed.

Today was one of those days.

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This is the third year. The first year, I was re-engaging with the Denver/Boulder tech scene after spending the previous four years heads down building Current Wisdom. It was a revolutionary experience for me. For years, I was the only person I knew that loved ideas. Loved testing those ideas. Loved failing at those ideas, and trying the next idea.

Yet, here was 20-30 people who were neck deep in the process of building on an idea and turning into something real. I got involved with Techstars that first year near its end, and I was lucky to see some companies start to figure it out (Eventvue and Filtrbox), others beginning to tap into their potential (SocialThing, Intense Debate and Brightkite), and others sort of either hit a growth plateau or peter out (SearchtoPhone, JSquared and MadKast). I tried to be as helpful as I could be, sometimes with a quiet push and sometimes with something a bit louder.

I knew that in year two, I wanted to be involved. David and I became good friends over the course of the year, I had spent more time at Lijit, and I moved to Boulder. When I looked at the breath of mentors that had been selected in year two, I felt that I just didnt have as much to provide, so I convinced David to allow me to be a “floater” mentor (Yes Adam, just like the East River, but not like the toilet) where I helped several teams with specific projects or activities. I helped Gyminee with search marketing strategy and Ignighter, Foodzie and People Software with their presentations. During the summer I even gave a presentation on the importance of blogging and transparency for the young companies.

The teams in year two seemed to be more “complete.” They had moved beyond the “just ideas” that the first year teams entered the program with, and spent the summer refining their focus and strategies.

If it was possible, I was more impressed by the second year group, because the teams that “got it,” REALLY got it, and those that didnt, REALLY didnt. It was easier to see the separation, and easier to know where to spend time.

It was in year two where I had an “ah-hah” moment with mentoring. In truth, I had never mentored before. I have coached. I have advised. I have taught, but never mentored.

The “ah-ha” moment? My job as mentor is not to advise, coach or teach. My job as mentor is to guide.

The difference?

Let me paint a picture, if you will (I always wanted to write that).

Most companies when they are formed have a clear picture of where they are and where they want to go, but not what the path between the beginning and the end will look like.

Guidance is soft suggestion and support of the path the team has chosen EVEN if the chosen path could potentially be wrong. Advice is strong suggestion and direction on what path to take.

Guidance disallows a team from losing focus. Advice provides the team with the “best” focus as determined by the advisor.

Guidance teaches teams that failure is a possibility and a probability. Advice teaches teams nothing, except you will help them avoid failure.

Make sense?

As the third year of Techstars begins, I am excited to assume the role of a lead mentor for one of this year’s team. I am excited because in many ways, I discovered and advised this team to apply to Techstars. Yes, I advised. Strongly.

I am also excited to work with Jason Mendelson. Jason and I have had colorful interactions in the past and I look forward to the guidance he will provide me to become a better mentor. (Yes Dan, Jason and I will become an Ignighter group* so we can pick up chicks. Thinking of calling it BJ and the Bear).

This year I challenge all the Techstars teams to demand the best guidance from their mentors. I challenge the teams to take the guidance provided by their mentors and become this year’s standout team. I challenge the teams to be fearless in their choices.

But mostly, I challenge the teams to make all of us forget about the past two years of Techstars, and I will provide this guidance: Success comes from intense passion, focus and execution; failure comes from listening to too much advice.

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