success

Reading Gladwell’s Outliers and Cushman’s Networks

February 9, 2009 By Dan Thornton

I’ve been working my way through a backlog of books, and finally moved onto Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, which is a look at those people who stand out for their achievements, whether online or in the sporting world, for example.

He explores the possible reasons that contribute to such success – for example, the age cut-off for selection into sporting programmes – and shows that being born in a certain month gives you an advantage which is then amplified by being selected into more intensive training. Or the fact that in addition to the talents of Bill Gates, the fact that he was probably the only 13-year-old with access to an advanced computer (at the time), meant that his success was one of timing and opportunity in addition to his own skill.

I can understand why Gladwell comes in for criticism – his anecdotal style can hide the fact that Outliers certainly uses a reasonable amount of data to back up his observations. And as a parent, the insight into what can contribute to scholarly success certainly caught my attention.

Funnily enough, I actually observed something similar (I suspect it’s still languishing on my Blogger account amongst some posts which didn’t automatically transfer here) about the sudden appearance of Web 2.0 business successes under 30.

The reason they were all around a similar age (aside from possible fraudulence), was the situation they were in – old enough to be ambitious and educated at a time when Web 2.0 technology came available, in places where they were able to find equally interested developers, not tied down to mortgages and commitments etc, and generally in a University setting where they either had the free time to experiment, or could find it by missing classes!

The one thing that’s possibly missing is a message to absorb and use what you can learn from Outliers whilst still remembering that exceptions occur and not using it as an excuse.

The other book I’ve finally found time to sit down and digest is David Cushman’s The Power of the Network.

I’m probably not in a position to critically review his work (Dave is a former boss, colleague and friend of mine), but I can certainly see why Chris Thorpe wrote about the power of print after reading it.

It’s a collection of material and white papers Dave has already published on his blog, FasterFuture, and as such it’s material I’m fairly familiar with – but the fact that he frames it with discussion of Moore, Metcalfe and Reed’s Laws means that it benefits from a little bit of time and attention – which is too easy to avoid doing when skimming through RSS feeds during a busy day. Plus, as Chris points out, having the extracts collected means that certain themes become more apparent through the material Dave has picked out.

Plus at 98 pages it’s the right length to communicate the ideas without dragging on, and being self-published via Lulu, it’s also ‘cost-effective’ at £4.98 for print and £0.49 for a digital download.

Just to finish off, one of the books I’m currently keen to get hold of is What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis – which is available in print, but also as a video book if you’re in the U.S. You can watch a non-region specific excerpt below:

What wouldn’t Google do?

October 22, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I’m looking forward to seeing the new book by Jeff Jarvis, ‘What Would Google Do‘, where he reverse-engineers Google and applies the learnings to a variety of different industries.

It’ll definitely be interesting, and I certainly mean no disrespect to his work, but as a purely external observer of the big G, it seems like my own version would be the shortest book in history.

What would Google do? Pretty much everything they could – and then see what works, what gets popular, and what they can monetise – The End!

There’s a great case in point emerging as Google experiments in wringing more from Adsense – for example Adsense in Flash games, Adsense in Google Maps, Click-to-buy on Youtube, Adsense in RSS etc, and now an Adsense search box and adverts for pages of Adsense adverts.

Meanwhile they’ve got enough projects on the go to shake a web pointer at in Google Labs. And that doesn’t even list other properties like Orkut. Which, according to a great global map of social networks by Oxyweb (hat tip to Nick O’Neil) is still ruling the roost in India and Brazil.

And then there’s acquisitions. I don’t even know how many they’ve made over recent years, but certainly they include the likes of Blogger, which I still use for some projects and ideas despite preferring WordPress now, and Feedburner.

And if you want to see what happens when a Google acquisition doesn’t result in transformational change to a service (and possibly even a downturn in terms of reliability and usability), just keep an eye on a Twitter Search for Feedburner!

And then there’s Google Analytics, Web Optimizer, Google Reader, Gmail, iGoogle, and I can’t even keep up linking to each product!

‘To me, Google appears to differ from most large companies by being almost liquid or gaseous in slipping itself into whatever shape or gap is necessary to permeate into every part of our digital lives (including mobile). And it does it by doing every possible permutation and leaving what works in place’

I think that probably sums up my approach to answering What Would Google Do? But I’m looking to see what Jeff Jarvis has used for his take in the actual book!

How CNN and Citizen Journalism can move forwards…

October 5, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I’ve already covered why the fake Steve Jobs heart attack story published on CNN’s iReport shouldn’t be seen as a fault of Citizen Journalism as a whole, and why we should all be encouraged to verify and fact check articles before we take them as gospel, or reprint them.

The Silicon Valley Insider has published a defence of their repeition of the story, but for me, it does little to convince me that they did anything other than repeated the story quickly to grab page views.Especially when they appear to justify reprinting any rumour that is possibly credible enough to be worth publishing.

‘Sometimes this information is fact. Sometimes it is rumor or scuttlebutt. Sometimes it is speculation. Always it is information that we believe is credible or interesting enough to bring to our readers’ attention.’

In their defence, the original story did contain a disclaimer: ‘We’re making calls, but as yet we have no idea whether it’s true. Confirmation/denial the moment we get it.’

Anyway, in my opinion, as someone who has worked on websites with User Generated Content, and various levels of moderation, I think there are a few ways that sites containing Citizen Journalism can evolve.

Scott Karp covers one method. Rather than a totally open system that just requires an email address and solving a Captcha code – effectively meaning anyone can publish fairly anonymously, CNN and other site owners could actively search out anyone already publishing content, and select people who demonstrate a verifiable responsibility/ability. Increasingly this will be the role of professional Editors online, and although it goes against the ‘open ideal’, the main downside is that it costs organisations time and effort. Scott goes into more detail, and the restrictions he’s applied to Publish2 in a post well worth reading.
Sam‘s post on my previous article highlights the legal dilemma – moderate everything at a huge cost, or let it be a free for all. I disagree that we shouldn’t blame a company that encounters problems because they’re not willing to pay for the resources to moderate a service – but I think there is a third alternative – crowdsource the moderation. An effective rating and reputation system would indicate reliability and past success rates in the hands of fellow Citizen Journalists. And although it will be tough to make a system than cannot be ‘gamed’ to a large extent, it would have avoided an event like the CNN one – where an account is used to make one fake story then disapear. The better the system and the more effort it takes to game it, the smaller the amount of fraudulent users that will make the effort.
Increase the private identification of users. One easy way is to offer a small payment for articles, which requires bank details/paypal account details etc – or even some proof of identity before being allowed to post. It may add to the need for resources – but it’s less work than moderating every article, and would also weed out many of the fraudulent accounts.

That’s three possibilities with a bit of thought. I’ve actually been thinking about this problem for a while, and I’m working on some ideas which may help to increase the reliability of Citizen Journalism and Blogging, whilst also removing some of the barriers the citizen journalists and bloggers undoubtedly face – if I heard Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack, would I know who to contact for a fast response, and would they be likely to respond? Or would my attempts to verify the facts mean I get scooped by a larger site or mainstream media and miss out on the benefits of getting the news first?

In a 24 hour, second by second online world where every moment counts if you want to break a story first, we shouldn’t blame people for falling for the idea that accuracy can be discounted in the rush to publish before anyone else – especially as the result of it backfiring can be a loss of respect, authority and readers.

But I also don’t think we should excuse it as a necessary byproduct of online journalism which can’t be evolved and solved. That’s just laziness. And many of the comments on the Silicon Alley Insider story pick up on this. In our efforts to evolve online journalism, it’s just stupidity to disregard all that preceded us in ‘dead tree’ publications simply because the digital world offers new opportunities and challenges. In my next post, I’ll outline some of the things that should make the transition from ‘traditional’ to ‘digital’ journalism, if the online world wishes to base itself on solid foundations and be taken seriously in terms of reputation as well as numbers and revenue.

The success of Youtube was only partly about video….

October 3, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Which is obvious if you’re into social media, communication, conversation and social networking, but less apparent if you’re used to broadcasting out messages.

If that’s the case, I highly recommend this post by Mindy McAdams ‘Social Media, Youtube and Mwesch’.

Especially as it gives everyone yet another good reason to check out Michael Wesch’s absolutely brilliant cultural anthroplogy work on new media and human interaction.

Here’s a taster before you click on the link:

Social media marketing has been around forever…

September 23, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I often refer to social media marketing starting when a caveman went running to the next cave to tell his neighbours about this new thing he’d discovered called ‘fire’. It’s something I’ve referred to in internal and external presentations, and it hopefully drives home the fact that recommendations between friends is something that has gone on since humanity started communicating.

The reason it came to mind recently is that I’ve finally got round to reading a book recommended to me by a good colleague a couple of years ago. Ironically enough, having bought 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey, I got about halfway through, got distracted, and didn’t actually finish it!

I’ve finally got round to rectifying that slightly abysmal failure, and part of the book struck a chord with me when Covey talks about researching the ‘success literature’ of several hundred years, and the fact that early examples all centred around a principled ‘Character Ethic’ approach, rather than the 20th century methods of quick fixes.

And when we all talk about The Best Practices in Social Media, we all talk about ethics such as honesty, respect, listening, being human etc.

Perhaps some of the quick fixes we’ve used for our individual success and our marketing and advertising really are just momentary blips in the evolution of human communication? Maybe that’s one of the reasons the current economic system is being questioned as much as it is at the moment? And why people like David Parmet are calling for bigger differences and effects to come from social media and networks. Along with the likes of Tim O’Reilly and Shel Isreal (links in David’s post).

Maybe it’s also why the likes of myself and David Cushman are impatiently trying to solve the problems of showing returns on investment in social media.

And whilst writing this I’m reminded of the prioritisation method of looking at the things which are Important but not Urgent, and concentrating on them to avoid them becoming Important and Urgent as much as possible. Too often it appears we’re looking at the short term, and not preventing problems before it becomes crisis management.

So if you fancy becoming more effective as an individual or a company, try 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Combine being effective with reading books on understanding the new economy, how ideas spread, and how to join in, and it seems to me you’ll have caught up on Web 2.0 and the last couple of hundred years!