What writing a blog post there showed me is the real viral nature of the web, especially the social web. The post talks about how companies should be ambitious and try to disrupt like Google, design like Apple and deliver like Zappos. This wasn’t the first time I’d referenced these companies and these principles as people who regularly read my blog would know. But what followed was really interesting. Before I even sent out a tweet about the article, 3 people put the post out to twitter, and someone came up with a great hashtag, #3DValue, I really like this short term to describe my thinking. And I really love the fact that a search for #3DValue on twitter brings up a whole stream of people who are referencing this principle.

This is what’s great about social media, instead of communication being one way, multiple people can adapt and reference the thinking in a way that benefits everyone.

It’s great to have one more personal example of how many people can spread and idea as well as making it more succinct using social media.

Founders can adapt, by committing to find a mentor, realise their weaknesses and bring in senior management who can plug their gaps and give them really good guidance. Think this has worked a fair bit for Mark Zuckerburg, Mark has a great board, including people like Marc Andreesen, he’s brought in some great leadership (eg. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, is a legend). It works for Facebook, Mark might be the face and he might be the subject of films, but I would bet that Sheryl and the other senior managers are able to secure the right partnerships and help the company scale effectively.

On the flip side founders can bring in people and then hand off responsibility when it grows beyond their capabilities. Regardless of how the handovers have happened at Twitter, Ev knows that Dick is a better front man for the company as it scales beyond Ev’s capabilities and putting Costolo in place is a great strategy as the company grows on to the next level.

This all goes back to self-awareness. Are you a Jack Dorsey, an ideas guy who can establish a product? An Ev Williams, who can help scale and grow a company? A Dick Costolo who can take a really big company and really grow it into a potential 9-figure exit or even an IPO? Or are you a Mark (or for that matter a Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and a few other special leaders), who can take the company from idea to real scale at a point where the world is coming into contact with your company everywhere? Knowing if you can and want to adapt as the company grows is really important and ultimately will help dictate the level of success the company will have.

That said both of them are missing key points when it comes to social media.

Seth,In Lynchpin, thinks social media is a giant time suck and people would be better served spending their time making stuff happen. Gladwell thinks social media’s reach is limited and that we won’t we see a revolution through a medium like Twitter. They’re both right but they’re wrong as well.

They’re right in that social media CAN be a time suck and that a giant movement needs a lot more channels than twitter, but what their both missing is that social media connects and makes people far more aware than ever before. Being connected and being aware helps inform and create in a way that was not possible a while ago. Gladwell and Godin are not active on twitter or any other social media channel (I’d link to their twitter feeds but their both useless on twitter).

Personally, I think Steven Johnson’s research and thinking on connectedness is bang on, when Steven says “Chance favours the connected mind” that totally resonates with me and my experiences. Do yourself a favour and watch this four-minute video from Steven Johnson about “good ideas”.

The key with social media is to know what you’re using different mediums and channels for. For me personally, Twitter is for building connections and information (reception and distribution), facebook is for interesting personal and social matters, Linkedin is professional contact building and maintaining and so on and so fourth. I don’t look at any of these channels as a time suck or as a revolutionary device, I look at them as channels within a new marketing mix and I think Gladwell and Godin would do well to try and understand the mediums better before waving them off as irrelevant.

Here’s the thing, all websites either sell something or match up parties. Dating websites sell their audiences but they differ in how wide or deep they want those audiences to be engaged. I think the spectrum goes from a site like plentyoffish.com at the low end, dead easy, low bells and whistles really simple and you get what the tin tells you plenty of fish. On the other end you have a site like okcupid which markets itself as a matchmaker asking deeper questions to help you find your match. I’m not in the market for dating websites (thankfully being married to the greatest wife ever means I don’t have to visit sites like these) but even I was interested in OK Cupid’s blog post on the real stuff white people like. I had come across this post just before my conversation with Josh so it helped me see the common line between dating websites and the rest of the web. The question is; are you a plenty of fish or an Ok Cupid? Or rather are you a for the masses or a for the value site.

Let’s look at social networks, Facebook is a for the masses, everyone’s on it and it’s connections are madness, Linkedin is a value where there’s deeper engagement. Question and answer sites, Yahoo! Answers is a for the masses, Quora is a value rich model. Other social networks like Twitter, and Q&A sites like Mahalo, fall inbetween.

Knowing which end of the spectrum you want to be can help you dictate content and marketing strategy. Questions like should you invest more in SEO or in Buzz and PR can be answered by know what kind of dating site you are.
It’s an interesting concept and I wonder what others think.

Your Linkedin profile is not like a CV or resume – I’m going to use CV as its fewer letters and I’m lazy. A CV should be more specific, when I looked for a job I would have different CVs for different industries, if I was looking at banking roles I had finance things highlighted and with more detail, if I was looking for consulting gigs I had consulting type roles and accomplishments highlighted. My internet company CV was specifically peppered with my technical and product capabilities.

A Linkedin profile should be updated constantly, should have your recent wins and metrics. The focus should be on getting people who’ve worked with you to recommend you – thanks to everyone who’s recommended me on my profile btw! The reason is that you never know who or why someone’s looking at your profile. It could be a recruiter but it could also be a potential partner, customer, or some other relationship that will grow out of Linkedin. You should have some recommendations from colleagues, managers, suppliers and customers if possible. This covers you regardless of who’s looking at your Linkedin profile. Before I had the landing page for AdAvengers.com ready I had “stealth mode” as the company I worked for, when it was ready I changed it. I’ve already got a recommendation on the latest role and it’s for my contracting work not for the work that I’m hoping Ad Avengers will end up doing. Doesn’t matter, what matters is that people see your doing something – anything – of value for someone – anyone!

If you’re lucky you’ll spend most of your time employed rather than looking for a new gig. Your Linkedin profile is like a Google search for you or like your twitter account, i.e. organic and alive. It should reflect the person you are and not focus on a specific role. Think of it as a funnel, your profile is a tool to get people to find out more about you, to ask someone they know about you, or to ask you if you’re interested in a role or opportunity and that’s when you focus on the specifics about the role and your fit for it (in your CV), not when you’re doing your Linkedin profile.

So here are some of my basic’s for a successful Linkedin profile:

• reflect your character, think of three words you want someone to think of when they read your profile and then write your copy
• ask for specific recommendations from people you’ve done work for, and who worked with you on work you’re proud of
• recommend people, people you really like and would want to work with / for/ or have working for you again
• use metrics when you can – from budgets to impact
• Highlight brands that you worked for – if you worked for a big brand, lucky you, if you worked for brands that aren’t so big outline what they did and if they had big brands as clients
• join groups and participate wherever you can – you never know when a connection might be made
• If you’re on twitter then connect your Linkedin profile – at least highlight it in your profile and send the occasional post to both Linkedin and twitter (Tweetdeck is great for this)
• Be careful of highlighting your credentials in your profile title, I get pretty annoyed with people who have Firstname, Lastname, MBA in their profile,  imagine how someone who thinks MBA’s are useless would feel about that (and believe it or not there are people who feel this way)
• Make a significant amount of content available to all, so anyone looking at your profile can get a decent understanding of you without clicking the “View full profile” link
• update frequently – don’t wait till you’re actually looking for a job, you might miss a customer / supplier / partner

Funny enough, Seth Godin has a great blog post today about what kind of story you tell about yourself, your Linkedin page should tell a story about you.

The issue is having control over technology. I have the TV on waaaaay too much. I accept that, it’s a hard habit to break, the Bee absolutely hates it and sometimes we get roped into watching a silly TV show rather than having a conversation. At the same time we both have iPod’s, blackberries and laptops – our house has two of everything and 4 laptops right now – so we spend a lot of time on devices. And this is likely to grow rather than stop.

We need to take back control. Just because we have Blackberry messenger, or skype, or email, or facebook, or twitter, or whatever doesn’t mean we need to be on it all the time. I’m a bit torn because I love watching TV with facebook or twitter on in the background, and I don’t think I want to give up the occasional sporting event or series that I’m really interested in. But it’s about balance; it’s about spending time wisely rather than wasting time.

Returning a piece of kit, or killing an account on a social network is not the answer, the answer is being conscious of how much time we’re spending with technology and what the opportunity costs are of that time.

Now this is Jim Joyce, an umpire who made a mistake on a baseball play that costed Armando Galarraga a perfect game, he’s contrite, he says things like “I missed it… I kicked the sh*t out of it, nobody feels worse than I do, I took a perfect game away from this kid”…:

When you mess up, take responsibility and apologise. Be honest and upfront and say you’re sorry. Joyce did this, he found Galarraga and apologized after wards and everybody was big and understanding.

Zuckerberg and Facebook continually do things with privacy and instead of being honest and quick with an apology they act defensive and put the blame on users rather than accepting the issues on their site. This is one of the reasons why my pictures will be on flickr, my blog posts will be here and not on Facebook and my status messages will be on twitter and linkedin as well as facebook. I’m not naïve, I’m not going to quit Facebook, it’s too big a part of my communication with people, but it won’t be the only place I store information and a lot of this decision has to do with the way the company handles themselves and their apologies.

Small interactions can mean a significant amount to people. I’ve connected with a couple of people recently who made a little time for me and it meant a lot. I’m not sure if these people will remember me in the next couple of weeks but I sure as hell hope so. At first I was a bit taken back when I received Linkedin invites from a couple of people who’ve accomplished a lot but then I realized that this should work both ways. If there’s anyone I made time for who wants to stay in touch I should be open to them.

I also came across this piece on Mashable about Linkedin, a lot of it is pretty basic, but the one thing that stuck out to me was:

There are some on LinkedIn who believe you should only connect with a small percentage of professionals you know and trust. Others say (including myself) you should connect with everyone, even if you vaguely know them.

When looking for a job, you never know who will be able to recommend you, or who is looking for someone to fill a position where you would be a perfect fit.

That really hit a cord with me. Who knows who might be able to help me find a job or find the right person to fit a role in the coming months/years so I should be open to them I guess.

The one thing I won’t change is my stance on recommendations and introductions. I only recommend people that I truly would want to work with again. My connections are precious so introducing someone when I’m not totally sure about their value won’t really happen. So am I way off on my Linkedin philosophy?

Let me explain. I hear of a new artist, let’s call her Lady Gaga Queen Mo Mo for interest sake. She get’s a couple of plays on MTV but I’m never home to watch her videos so I don’t really get to know Queen Momo ‘s songs. I don’t really listen to the radio, I prefer listening to on my PC and discovery through radio and video doesn’t happen as much as it used to for me personally. I discover music through services like Hype Machine and Spotify. Lucky for me Queen Momo has a lot of music on Hype Machine and on Spotify, I listen to a bunch of tracks and quickly become a fan. I check out her videos for her songs like Mobile Phone and her duet with Kelly Roland called Voice mail and I like her so much so that when she’s in town I buy tickets for me and the Bee for £50 each to see her when she’s in town. Not only that but I share music of her’s that I’m listening to on Twitter and Facebook and lead to three other people discovering her, one buys a CD, one goes to see her in concert and one downloads her album on iTunes.

So Queen Momo didn’t make a lot out of all the different streams or videos that I listened to or watched, but she made 100 quid directly from me when I went to see her in concert and a whole lot more from my sharing my interest in her. Just me, one customer. She also made more out of me as I then went on to buy her next album so the Bee could have it on her iPod. Here’s the thing though, would I have discovered her and become a fan had I not listened to her on Spotify and Hype Machine, maybe but probably not.

Okay so the “hypothetical example” is over and it’s actually pretty close to what the Independent’s written about Spotify and Lady Gaga. But, while it’s easy to track payments from one service and say it doesn’t contribute fairly as the Independent and various unions have done with the Lady Gaga example. What this doesn’t track is how many users discovered Lady Gaga or listened to Lady Gaga on Spotify or worse yet on file sharing sites in the UK and then went and saw her at the O2 or actually bought her CD. Studies have shown that users who use filesharing sites actually buy more music than people who don’t.

The point is that just because we can’t clearly attribute contribution from different channels doesn’t mean they don’t contribute positively to an artists overall income. File sharing and Spotify need to be treated as the new form of brand advertising in that they help artists (brands) build a reputation that then leads to sales. Shutting down or trying poorly scripted laws to protect the industries is as harmful as saying to artists radio or posters promoting your music is illegal.

People forget that social media allows and moves people to share information and content easily. An ad that is actual a social interaction can be shared with a network fare more than a search query.

Let’s look at an example; I do a search for Virgin America, because I’m looking for a flight from NYC to San Francisco and I’m using twitter because I want to see if anyone’s had any experience on Virgin America flights, I see a “Promoted tweet” from Virgin America saying something like – “20% off of flights between Boulder and Las Vegas from us for the next 24 hours” now I’m not flying from Boulder to Vegas, but that’s a tweet I would send on (or ReTweet) to my network. All of a sudden that one promoted tweet impression has turned into nearly 1000 impressions as it goes to my network.

Let’s say I see a starbucks tweet that says that on the 15th you can bring in a mug and get a free coffee, if I bookmark that, or favourite it, that means that Starbucks has a richer bit of information and knows that I’m interested in their brand and their promotion.

Don’t get me wrong, this is assuming that brands are serious about social media and are actively engaging with the community. Brands need to offer real value and give something of benefits to the audience. The brands that pay attention and give people serious value are the ones who will be able to have their messages amplified.

For the brands who do it right, social is going to be huge for traffic acquisition because of the ability to amplify a message. That’s what all the pundits are missing in their analysis of promoted tweets. The ability to interact with the tweet and send it on to my network is huge. In the same way that building an application for facebook for a brand get’s into the news feed and gets users commenting and interacting with the brand in an amplified way.

Social media does acquisition and engagement in a way that search can’t. And that’s why I totally believe that social media will only get bigger and better as a source of costumers for companies that are smart enough to use it well.