I seem to talk to more and more people across multiple channels about the same topic. They want to know how to break into social media. How to find the perfect job for themselves. What is a hot industry that they should go into.

The answer is always the same and it is really a question.

What do YOU want to do? What are you passionate about? What would you love to get up and do every day?

If you can’t answer that, then what is the point of asking the other questions? At the end of the day even if the industry is the hottest thing since Violet Blue, your still going to hate it once the newness wears off unless you are passionate about it in the first place.

Social Media is and always was a buzz phrase. I don’t know who coined it first and I honestly don’t care, but those of us who are living in this fishbowl know that what once was taken for granted is now becoming the norm. That isn’t to say that everyone understands it and is using it. What I mean is the fact that communities, conversations and connectivity are here and are not going away. Yes, they are going to evolve and change, but they are everywhere now. The barriers for entry are lower then ever and anyone can begin playing and working in this space if they desire.

So, back to that road leading into the unknown.

If you are unhappy in your current job and want to do something in this space then you’ve got to work damn hard to make it happen. Having a Facebook page and a podcast on your resume is not going to get you a job. You’ve got to understand the business, you have to know the marketplace. You’ve got to know your stuff, plain and simple. If you can’t sell yourself to a potential employer or client, then no one can.

Everyone seems to think that there is a magic path ahead where if you understand this space the work will come to you. I can tell you that it doesn’t happen. You’ve got to work hard to find the clients. You’ve got to work even harder to make them happy and hire you back for more work. If you keep doing good work people will get to know you and want to hire you. It can all happen, but it is far from magic.

This post got sparked by several conversations I’ve had with people recently who are making a move, looking to make one or are out of work and looking. The reality of it all is starting to sink in for them and before more people think they can just make a leap I wanted to politely remind everyone of that age old saying of “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” While I’ve had a few in my time, I’m a firm believer that hard work will get you more rewards then anything else.

Don’t be afraid of the road. I’m a huge fan of hitting the gas pedal and seeing where it takes me. Adventure is a powerful motivator and one that I love. But, the best adventures are never the easiest ones either. Always remember that. It also reminds me of one of my favorite quotes.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” - Lao-tzu

I spent some time putting words into it and seeing what it did. I don’t want to spoil the surprise but go ahead and give it a try. When you give it a word that the box likes it reacts positively to it. I’m still haven’t figured out if there are any key words that will make it go really nuts or not and what the end goal of the site is, but it is a fun for a nice break. One warning though is that the site loads with sounds so don’t have your speakers to loud. You can turn it off in the upper right hand corner.

What I have determined is that it is tied to a Facebook application as well where you can win prizes by holding the box. I had the box for a while, but didn’t win anything. As you can see below, you can go in every day and “touch” boxes that other people are holding in the hopes that when the box changes holders you’ll get it next. Sort of like an inverted, twisted game of duck duck goose if you ask me.

Word on the street is that this is tied to a television company, but I’m not getting any real answers from anyone I ask so I’m not sure. I did see a TV in one of the promo shots as a prize so who knows.

If you try it out and find anything cool that makes the box do things let me know. If you win a prize I REALLY want to know because I am curious to see what sorts of things it gives out.

Not sure this is “life changing” but it is certainly fun to play with.

What I mean is someone sets up a podcast or develops a Facebook fan page. Maybe they create a Twitter account or begin to blog. Whatever first step they take, they do it and then just assume an audience will follow. They assume instant success and people flocking to them.

I hate to tell you, but that isn’t how it works. As with every other marketing campaign, public relations initative or successful brand it involved a lot of hard work, a little luck and constant evolution in what you are doing. Plain and simple, it takes time!
I don’t mean to cast any doom and gloom because that is not what I’m doing. I just seem to be seeing more and more people assuming that the first little thing they do is going to be hugely successful and solve all of their problems. If you want to use social media or execute a major marketing initiative or gain popularity for yourself then get in gear and get to work. Be passionate and committed to what you are doing. Be ready to work hard, invest both time and money into your goals and stop thinking short term and look at the big picture.

Sorry for the mini-rant, but this has been on my mind a lot lately. Social media is not the silver bullet to solve all your problems. Yes, it is going to help you if it is appropriate and done right for you, but it is not a cure all.

Ahh….I feel better.

According to a recent study by BlogHer and Compass Partners, more than one-third (35%) of all women in the U.S. aged 18 to 75 participate in the blogosphere at least once a week

I’m very glad that BlogHer did this survey because I think it proves what I’ve said in the past about not ignoring the female population on the web. If you win over the Mother in a household, then you win over the pocket book. Sure, I’m the gadget freak of the house, but my wife and I discuss all purchases before they are made. I know we are not unique in this situation. It is how good relationships work.

It also drives home the fact that brands need to continue (or start) to think beyond only Moms and rather focus on all women on the web. Every day women are finding information, shopping and engaging with each other online rather then the more traditional ways.

Of course, I was also happy to see a rising number in female content creators. The survey focuses specifically in on writing blog content, but I’d argue that I’ve been seeing a rise in all forms of media on the web. More and more are starting small. Maybe just a Facebook account or a Twitter stream to express themselves and connect with friends. While others are branching out beyond that and starting to try out video and audio.

It doesn’t matter what they are doing, but rather that they are doing it. This number is going to continue to grow.

I just had an amazing experience in customer service from Comcast and felt that it would be easier and quicker to share in a podcast rather then in a blog post.

With all the flack they have gotten over the years, I’ve actually been very fortunate to have a mostly good experience with them and the last 24 hours really proves that when a brand pays attention to the conversation happening out on the web about them and actively works to engage in that, good things can happen.

If you are not in the mood to listen, the short version of the story is that last night I made a snide remark about the lackluster quality of my HD picture on Comcast during the Celtics game. Comcast saw that and tweeted me back minutes later. This morning I got a call from their service center. This afternoon someone came out. Now my HDTV rocks! THAT my friends is customer service and how it should work all the time.

Brands need to wake up to the fact that “new media” isn’t going away and in fact, I’d argue that it isn’t new anymore, but is here and at the forefront so you either wake up and pay attention or you lose business to they company that is paying attention.

I’m happy to say that I am one of the almost 300 authors taking part in the second edition of this book and as I just submitted my chapter for it, I figured it was time to quickly mention it here.

I saw a mini meme starting among some of the authors to share a snippet from their chapter. I went in a little bit of a different direction with my chapter that I hope isn’t too off the wall. I wasn’t sure what to share, but I liked this piece so I felt it would work as nice tease for what I wrote about.

I love to create. Although the canvas might change, I constantly keep the creative juices flowing and sharing my creations with everyone. What are you doing to add to the gallery? Don’t be afraid to try a new medium.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what all these other authors come up with. So many names I know and so many that I don’t know yet, but hope to. If you are curious check all of them out below by clicking and visiting their sites.

“Age of Conversation 2 - Why Don’t People Get It?” Authors:

Adam Crowe, Adrian Ho, Aki Spicer, Alex Henault, Amy Jussel, Andrew Odom, Andy Nulman, Andy Sernovitz, Andy Whitlock, Angela Maiers, Ann Handley, Anna Farmery, Armando Alves, Arun Rajagopal, Asi Sharabi, Becky Carroll, Becky McCray, Bernie Scheffler, Bill Gammell, Bob Carlton, Bob LeDrew, Brad Shorr, Bradley Spitzer, Brandon Murphy, Branislav Peric, Brent Dixon, Brett Macfarlane, Brian Reich, C.C. Chapman, Cam Beck, Casper Willer, Cathleen Rittereiser, Cathryn Hrudicka, Cedric Giorgi, Charles Sipe, Chris Kieff, Chris Cree, Chris Wilson, Christina Kerley (CK), C.B. Whittemore, Clay Parker Jones, Chris Brown, Colin McKay, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, Cord Silverstein, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson, Daniel Honigman, Dan Goldstein, Dan Schawbel, Dana VanDen Heuvel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Darryl Patterson, Dave Davison, Dave Origano, David Armano, David Bausola, David Berkowitz, David Brazeal, David Koopmans, David Meerman Scott, David Petherick, David Reich, David Weinfeld, David Zinger, Deanna Gernert, Deborah Brown, Dennis Price, Derrick Kwa, Dino Demopoulos, Doug Haslam, Doug Meacham, Doug Mitchell, Douglas Hanna, Douglas Karr, Drew McLellan, Duane Brown, Dustin Jacobsen, Dylan Viner, Ed Brenegar, Ed Cotton, Efrain Mendicuti, Ellen Weber, Emily Reed, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller, Faris Yakob, Fernanda Romano, Francis Anderson, G. Kofi Annan, Gareth Kay, Gary Cohen, Gaurav Mishra, Gavin Heaton, Geert Desager, George Jenkins, G.L. Hoffman, Gianandrea Facchini, Gordon Whitehead, Graham Hill, Greg Verdino, Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming, Hillel Cooperman, Hugh Weber, J. Erik Potter, J.C. Hutchins, James Gordon-Macintosh, Jamey Shiels, Jasmin Tragas, Jason Oke, Jay Ehret, Jeanne Dininni, Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Gwynne, Jeff Noble, Jeff Wallace, Jennifer Warwick, Jenny Meade, Jeremy Fuksa, Jeremy Heilpern, Jeremy Middleton, Jeroen Verkroost, Jessica Hagy, Joanna Young, Joe Pulizzi, Joe Talbott, John Herrington, John Jantsch, John Moore, John Rosen, John Todor, Jon Burg, Jon Swanson, Jonathan Trenn, Jordan Behan, Julie Fleischer, Justin Flowers, Justin Foster, Karl Turley, Kate Trgovac, Katie Chatfield, Katie Konrath, Kenny Lauer, Keri Willenborg, Kevin Jessop, Kris Hoet, Krishna De, Kristin Gorski, Laura Fitton, Laurence Helene Borei, Lewis Green, Lois Kelly, Lori Magno, Louise Barnes-Johnston, Louise Mangan, Louise Manning, Luc Debaisieux, Marcus Brown, Mario Vellandi, Mark Blair, Mark Earls, Mark Goren, Mark Hancock, Mark Lewis, Mark McGuinness, Mark McSpadden, Matt Dickman, Matt J. McDonald, Matt Moore, Michael Hawkins, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Michelle Lamar, Mike Arauz, Mike McAllen, Mike Sansone, Mitch Joel, Monica Wright, Nathan Gilliatt, Nathan Snell, Neil Perkin, Nettie Hartsock, Nick Rice, Oleksandr Skorokhod, Ozgur Alaz, Paul Chaney, Paul Hebert, Paul Isakson, Paul Marobella, Paul McEnany, Paul Tedesco, Paul Williams, Pet Campbell, Pete Deutschman, Peter Corbett, Phil Gerbyshak, Phil Lewis, Phil Soden, Piet Wulleman, Rachel Steiner, Sreeraj Menon, Reginald Adkins, Richard Huntington, Rishi Desai, Beeker Northam, Rob Mortimer, Robert Hruzek, Roberta Rosenberg, Robyn McMaster, Roger von Oech, Rohit Bhargava, Ron Shevlin, Ryan Barrett, Ryan Karpeles, Ryan Rasmussen, Sam Huleatt, Sandy Renshaw, Scott Goodson, Scott Monty, Scott Townsend, Scott White, Sean Howard, Sean Scott, Seni Thomas, Seth Gaffney, Shama Hyder, Sheila Scarborough, Sheryl Steadman, Simon Payn, Sonia Simone, Spike Jones, Stanley Johnson, Stephen Collins, Stephen Cribbett, Stephen Landau, Stephen Smith, Steve Bannister, Steve Hardy, Steve Portigal, Steve Roesler, Steven Verbruggen, Steve Woodruff, Sue Edworthy, Susan Bird, Susan Gunelius, Susan Heywood, Tammy Lenski, Terrell Meek, Thomas Clifford, Thomas Knoll, Tiffany Kenyon, Tim Brunelle, Tim Buesing, Tim Connor, Tim Jackson, Tim Longhurst, Tim Mannveille, Tim Tyler, Timothy Johnson, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Toby Bloomberg, Todd Andrlik, Troy Rutter, Troy Worman, Uwe Hook, Valeria Maltoni, Vandana Ahuja, Vanessa DiMauro, Veronique Rabuteau, Wayne Buckhanan, William Azaroff, Yves Van Landeghem

Yesterday I upgraded my main desktop computer from a PC that has served me well (bought off the shelf from a Best Buy), but that has been acting flaky lately. Just like a car it is not uncommon that after three years of heavy use a computer can start to bog down, act funny and just not get you where you want to go as nicely as it could. Sure, it still runs, but not like a shiny new one.

My rule when buying a new computer is simple. Buy the highest level of everything that your budget can afford. Spending that extra bit of money now to have more RAM installed will save you time and aggravation down the road. Also, you need to accept that no matter when you buy a computer (or other gadget) that the price and capabilities will be old and outdated faster then you want it to be. Just accept it and move on. It is not worth dwelling on.

If you are thinking of buying a Mac of any sort then I highly recommend checking out the Mac Buyer’s Guide that based on previous release schedules tells you the optimal time to purchase. I listened to them on my iMac and waiting a couple of weeks was the right move. Bookmark that site now!

Last week there was all this commotion around some photos that were taken for an issue of Vanity Fair magazine. I love Annie Lebowitz and thought the photos were fine. I actually didn’t think that the one that really got the most attention was that good if I’m being honest. Parents were mad that a young girl would take suggestive photos. Even when in my opinion they was only minimal suggestion in them. But, that is a whole other discussion.

The point in all of this is that it is obvious that we are watching a transition from Hannah Montana (a fake character created by Disney) to Miley Cyrus, pop superstar. This is a planned, calculated first move in a campaign to change her image. People won’t like it all, but it is just like when a product or company renames itself. You’ve got to get people talking about you and guess what? Here we all are talking about it.

My daughter loves both. Isn’t it obvious by this picture? For the longest time she thought of them as separate people. When she bought the CD there were separate ones for each of them. The music was similar but different. I’ve watched as slowly she talks more about Miley and Hannah is forgotten. It has been happening for weeks and she is unaware of all this craziness going on right now.

There is no quicker way to kill off a young innocent girl then to have her grow up. It happens to the best of them and that is what we are seeing.

Soon Miley will be 16. Her fans are growing up as well. Sure, she has the choice of if she stays a “good girl” or she ends up becoming the new poster child for abuse and stupidity (i.e. Britney).

I’m just sick of reading and hearing about people “taking advantage of her” or Miley “not know what is going on” because nothing could be further from the truth. This is all just part of the big brand game and there is sure to be more soon. Sometimes you’ve got to take the good and the bad or as Hannah would sing “the best of both worlds.”

I seem to have picked up several new listeners from my show on the Manic Mommies which is great. If this is your first show then welcome!

I’m excited to say that I have a new call in number for the show. It is 1-866-384-4522 and if you are a listener of more then one of my shows, that number is going to work for all of them so write it down or throw it into your phone.

Mentioned on the show

• PodCamp NYC 2
  
• mDialog’s PodCamp NYC Video Channel
• PodCamp Boston 3
• MITX
• The Ultra Creatives Podcast

I also mention the scholarships I’m going to be giving away for PodCamp Boston 3, but you’ll have to listen to get the details.

Kristin and Erin from Manic Mommies swung by on a Sunday morning for conversation and coffee. We talk about a lot of topics including the General Motors sponsorship of their Mommy Escape (the picture here is my wife AT the Escape), their recent trip to the BlogHer Business Conference and the growing of their brand. Not only are they friends of mine, but I’ve really loved watching them grow over the three years since they first started podcasting.

The best part about having them over is that it reminds me how much fun it is to have conversations on podcasts. I don’t do that as often as I should. I think it is a new goal for me

If your curious about a whole other side of mine, we recorded an episode of their show where we only talked about parenting. When it is up I’ll put a link here.

Update: The episode of Manic Mommies is now available here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg2MukcqbdE

AMEN Gary! Amen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTPrLka-HWA

Of course, the first thing I did this morning was send “him” an e-mail to see what would happen.

As I guessed, I got an auto responder with some nice thank you text and link to their campaign website where I could learn more about their phones if I wanted to.

I’ll give whoever came up with this campaign credit for grabbing my attention and being smart enough to set up the auto response. But, what I’m hoping I get to do is give them praise if he actually ever answers the e-mail. I put in an invitation for him to come on Managing the Gray for an interview about this new approach to get a conversation started with consumers. Hopefully it goes better then the invitation I put over a year ago to politicians and none took me up on.

This picture is of my daughter Emily. She grabbed a box of chalk and attacked our driveway. She was drawing everything from scribbles to a map of the house. She drew these crazy shapes that made me think of an armada of blimps on the attack and when I said that she laughed at me because in her mind it was nothing of the kind.

When I talk with the kids they often say “wouldn’t it be cool if….” I’ve caught myself a couple of times explaining why an idea wouldn’t ever work and then I stop and have promised myself that I would never do that again. Why should I put up barriers in their minds already when I know eventually some will come anyways and I’d rather see them continue to think the fantastical. We need more people like this in the world don’t we?

So how do you keep your creative edge? Some believe that creativity can come from anywhere. I do believe that it is in all of us, but many are scared to ever let it out to play for fear of “stupid ideas” or “people laughing at me.” Those have got to be the two worse reasons NOT to be creative. I always wondered how the girl or guy who first through out the idea of a pink bunny rabbit banging on a base drum felt in that meeting. Talk about a silly idea that people would laugh at. Who is laughing now though right?

Ever since I got back from SXSW I’ve been thinking a lot about my personal creativity. About how to stretch it. Take it out to play more often then I have been.

When I was little if you were to ask me what I was going to be when I grew up I always said an artist. I was constantly drawing and creating stuff. In one sense I guess I still do that. But, I haven’t painted or doodled much lately and I need to do that. I love to create with my camera and my audio, but I want to do more.

What do you do to stimulate creativity? Do you do anything?

Personally music and being outside stimulate mine. Combine the two with an iPod and a walk in the woods or around the urban jungle and the juices get flowing for me. I also find it in the most unlikely of places. A book, television show or even the once in a million commercial might get things going. Playing a video game with Dylan a few weeks ago sent me off on a tangent of creativity when he went to bed. I got an annual report in the mail last night that while wasn’t at all what I thought it was going to be it got me thinking.

I also have items I can always go to. Some would include:

• Colma by Buckethead
• Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez
• Any Tarantino movie
• Behind the scenes videos with David Fincher
• Rules of the Red Rubber Ball (thanks again Whit)
• Dr. Seuss books
• My Cathedral of the Pines

Do you have the equivalent of creativity comfort foods that you can go to when you need them? I can’t be the only one.

I feel better getting this blog post out. It has been rattling around in my head since I took this picture of Emily. I thought about making it into a podcast or even just an entry in my paper journal, but wanted to brain dump here to get other people’s thoughts.

I’m just back from my time in Austin, TX attending SXSW and wanted to share my thoughts with you about it. Were you there? If so I’d love to hear your thoughts. Give me a call at 206-309-4729 and leave a comment. I’ll play it on the next show.

I talked a lot about what was so great for me about the conference. It was a mix of the people, the events and the overall vibe of it all. The food was great as well! *grin*

Links to some things I talked about:

• My photos from SXSW
• The Fray Cafe
• Jane McGonigal’s Keynote
• SXSW For Newbies video series (client)

And one thing that I think most of us took for granted was that Twitter stayed up the whole time. Last year is when it really broke out and the servers got crushed. They mentioned upgrading the servers just before the conference started and it seemed to work great. Way to go to the team behind the scenes on that one.

I only had a couple of minutes to play around with it, but it let me build a little house from a template and populate it with a couple of things that I bought from the store. It looks like you can also create your own, sell items and move things around. With the border around my house I’m not sure if I’ll get neighbors someday or how that happens. It all seems to be tied into a bigger site and functionality. I wonder how it all connects?

I’m sure this is just the first of many invites I’m going to get on MySpace. I’m curious how different it is from developing applications in Facebook and if it is more powerful or limiting. Only time will tell. If you know, let me know would you? Thanks in advance

Tags: myspace, myspace apps, myminilife

Yesterday while cruising around Facebook I saw an ad for a cabin rental in the Adirondacks. I clicked onto something else before I realized that the ad was of interest to me and then couldn’t find it again. I clicked on the little “more ads” under the space, but it wasn’t there.

I’ve set up these ads before and know that they allow you to target people based on a variety of demographic and key word data. So I obviously fit someone’s profile for who they wanted to target and they got it right because I wanted to find out more. But, now I can’t!

The only thing I can guess is that this particular ad hit a spending limit and that is why it is not visible any more. But, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to look for ads if you wanted to? Sure, the frequency of this happening would be low, but who is going to turn away someone that WANTS to see their ad?

Ok, my mini rant is done. Guess I’ll have to just use good old Google to look for a cabin to rent.

My friend Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins called me out in a recent blog post.

She wanted to know one tangible way to break out of the fishbowl and get more people into new media. Rather then thinking about it long and hard I hit record and gave the first thing to come to mind. I’d love to hear how else you are are getting new people to try out things in this space. I’m sure we all have stories and sharing them can only help others so please do share.

Call in with your ideas to 206-309-4729 or leave them as a comment on this post. I can’t wait to hear what is on your mind.

The first happened when I logged into the Apple iTunes Store this morning and this is what I saw.

A complete buy out of the three big advertising spaces at the top of the store. For those of you who don’t use the store, each of those squares traditionally advertises one piece of content and they rotate slowly through usually three different options. Most of the time it is highlighting the newest album, movie or service.

This the first time I’ve seen a complete buy out of all three for one brand and there is no rotation. I’m sure this has to do with all the American Idol content that the store has this year. Performances, audition videos, links to songs that are sung, the works. Kudos to all involved.

The second came as I was checking the news on Boston.com and saw a banner ad from McDonald’s that caught my eye. That in itself takes a lot since like most people I get banner blindness and usually ignore them. Where it took me was The Chilled Out Lounge.

McDonald’s has said it wants to move beyond just fast food and wants to go directly after Starbucks in the coffee market. This is obviously a play in that direction. Not sure I’ll personally ever be able to think of McDonald’s as anything other then a place I can’t eat ever since watching Super Size Me.

The point of this post is to showcase some big brands trying new things. Nothing earth shattering or mind blowing here. Certainly nothing that has not been done before, but it was unique enough that I wanted to share it here.

What makes Overlay.TV different is that anyone can tag any video. It does not touch the original uploaded file. It can pull a video from most of the major video services (Brightcove is one I asked about which is coming) or from an uploaded movie file on your own server and then people can place overlays on the video highlighting products and services.

In the demo we pulled in a video of a trumpet player from YouTube and tagged his t-shirt to go to Amazon to buy a similar one. Anyone can take any video and place overlays on it. The process is quick, easy and powerful. The options on if the overlay is just a simple hot sport or actually a mini pop up is up to the user. Adding product information is done via a bookmarklet that allows for one click copy and past of descriptions, prices and other needed information from any web site.

I can see some big potential for this from lots of different angles. Brands (especially retail ones) will be adding overlays to their viral videos. Bands can link out to their CDs and equipment sponsors. Fans can take anything they are in love with and create their own overlays and then embed it all on their blogs and Facebook profiles.

Some people might freak since this could be viewed as changing a video, but it is not. It is just putting a screen over the video and allowing for people to link items in it. I’m interested to see the community nature of this and also how companies can leverage it on their own sites. I’m also interested to see if this gets popular if performance will degrade and if items won’t seamlessly sync up.

Take a moment and check it out when you have a moment. To get a feel for what I’m talking about they’ve made this throw back infomercial as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qATtnwdXzEQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyHu9-IUB4k

That is exactly what my good friend Mitch Joel did in his video showing why he loves his Sony Vaio.

On February 11th if you’d like I’ll be online for two hours to chat with anyone about anything. It would be great to connect and you can sign up here.

I’ve played with ooVoo for a while now. It is good to see that they are finally out with a Mac friendly client because I think the ability to do live video chat with five other people is a very powerful thing and something that a lot of people can benefit from.

What makes me most happy about this day is that I was told that I’d have $1500 to donate towards charity. I am a HUGE supporter of giving back in any way possible so this made my day. I’m splitting my donation between the Frozen Pea Fund for breast cancer and the Ma Chen- Autism School in China that my good friend Whitney is championing.

The screen shot is from the sign up page and includes a few of the other great participants. I’m personally looking forward to signing up and chatting with others such as Mitch Joel and Scott Sigler as well.

Hope to see you there.

I woke up this morning and the first thing I saw on the web was this blog post from Mitch Joel talking about virtual worlds and it got my mind rolling as I brought the kids to school. When I got home rather then sharing my thoughts in a blog post I thought it would make a better podcast so I could just rattle off my thoughts about how the usability of virtual worlds must get better, how kids are growing up on them and how more people need to start thinking about virtual worlds as social networks.

Some links mentioned on the show in case you want to find out more:

• Webkinz
• Second Life
• Littlest Pet Shop VIPs
• Six Pixels of Separation Podcast

I also briefly mentioned at the end of the show two client projects we are working with on Facebook. One was the online trivia game from Trivya and the other was the aerie kissing booth.

Feedback always welcome at 206-309-4729 or drop me an e-mail.

I love creative commercials as much as the next guy and the idea of having a site where I can go and view them if I wish is an interesting one, but long term I don’t get how a site like this can survive. It is fun for a few minutes and advertisers might pay to have their ads featured, but after that what? What brings back an audience on an ongoing basis?

Then last week I read about their campaign around the Super Bowl which we all know is as much about the pimping as it is the pigskin. The Road to Firebrand Monday is a campaign across multiple channels featuring some of the best characters and commercials from over the years. Here you can see one of their advertisements for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEXhigptdM8

They are also doing a series of special episodes gearing up for this and on the day after the game will feature a special episode hosted by Carmen Electra and Reebok’s “Office Linebacker” Terry Tate. I’m actually looking forward to watching this one episode because it should make for good TV and I always like seeing what other have to say about the commercials I loved and hated. The shows run on ION TV which I didn’t even know I had until I was flipping through the channels one night and discovered it.

I watch the Super Bowl for the game first and the ads second. Especially this year when the Patriots are rolling into town to crush the Giants.

I’m still not sold on Firebrand, but I am sold on this specific campaign. It is a natural and perfect fit for their brand. It is going to be interesting to see what they do with all this buzz they are getting and if it can take them anywhere in the months ahead.

This week aerie by american eagle launched a Facebook application that would be playful, flirty and fun for their brand. We worked with them to brainstorm and then develop the aerie kissing booth. They already had a successful and growing Facebook group so this was a natural extension to that.

I firmly believe that Facebook or any other social tool is not a silver bullet solution that works for every company. This is why at The Advance Guard we prefer to never focus on the technology but rather on the goals a client is looking to achieve. Perhaps it is just to build buzz or to raise awareness for a new product or service. Other times it’ll be about getting new users to sign up for something or to expand the reach of a brand. Whatever the goal I like that we also make sure to stop and really think about what is appropriate for that particular situation and brand.

This is the first Facebook application that we’ve been directly involved in the development of and we’ve learned so much. It has been fun to wake up this week to a profile full of kisses.

-Cross posting at CC-Chapman.com and ManagingTheGray.com -

I’ve been getting asked by lots of people lately, “How do I break into new media?”

I’m a firm believer that all the tools are out there and the great thing is that anyone can start today if they want to. There is no velvet rope, no casting couch, everyone is invited to the party. But, I do think that if you really want to do this as a career (which is what most people are asking me about) then there are some other things you need to think about.

I didn’t state the obvious which is to get in on the ground floor with a company working in the space. I completely forgot to say this during the show, but it is a great way to do it. While The Advance Guard isn’t hiring at the moment we are always open to the idea of interns who are willing to work hard and get some great experience at the same time.

It is more about hard work, passion, curiosity and determination then about any tool, trick or tantrum. Get out there and make it happen. You’ve got the tools, but do you have the drive to make it happen?

On the show I mentioned that I’d love to hear what your goals for the year are. Call them into 206-309-4729 or drop me an e-mail.

He talks a lot about his grandfather and how close they were. I can relate to this as my Grandfather Chapman and I were extremely close. When he died it was not a good time in my life and I felt like I had lost a best friend. My Dad and I often discuss how much he would have loved everything that I’m doing and the tools that we get to play with these days. If your curious I know I get my photography genes from him. I have fond memories of being in his home made dark room as a kid watching photos come to life.

But, what Abrams was also talking about is the concept of mystery boxes and how they can be found everywhere. Seems he has had a box that he bought years ago at a magic shop and has never opened because he loves the mystery of not knowing what is inside.

This got me thinking that to a lot of people and companies new media must seem like a mystery box full of wonder. They read the articles, hear the ranting and raving, but they still don’t fully understand what is inside. What happens when someone opens that box without a guide or a firmer understanding? Should you open up the box or preserve some of the mystery.

I’m not sure of the answer, but as I ride along on the train this is where my mind goes. Pondering the fact that if I asked every person in this cabin of the train about various technologies we take for granted if they would have heard of them or not. I think too often we assume everyone knows what podcasting, micro-blogging and search engine optimization. But, the truth is to most all of the fun things we find on the new media playground are still nothing more then a mystery box.

Part of my goals for 2008 is to speak to more people who don’t know this space. I guess I’m hoping to open the box for more people. I like the sound of that.

What topic of interest to you do you wish there was a blog, podcast or community out there for you to consume and interact with?

I was thinking about this the other day as I had breakfast with my family at a diner and it is one of those places that still puts down the paper place mat with all the ads for local companies on it. Got me thinking that I wish there was a site on the web where I could easily pull up hyper local details about companies around me. Lots of people trying to do this, but no one has got it as simple as that place mat.

What are you looking for? What do you wish you able to learn from new media that you are not getting?

I’m just curious?

A new year full of opportunities for you and your business. What resolutions are your setting? Can you measure your success? Will you know when you achieve them? I hope so and talk about that on today’s show.

I also rave about how much I enjoyed Seth Godin’s new book Meatball Sundae. It was the perfect thing to read on the first day of the new year and I encourage you to buy yourself a copy and then give another one to your boss so that they can figure out that new media isn’t a magic silver bullet to solve all the problems that the company is currently in. The company must change as well. Of course, I’m still laughing at my kids reaction to the title as well. “That’s gross” is what I heard and I couldn’t agree with them more.

On the show I mentioned that I’d love to hear what your goals for the year are. Call them into 206-309-4729 or drop me an e-mail.

Tags: marketing podcast, cc chapman, podshow, seth godin, meatball sundae, resolutions, podcast, podcasting, new media, business podcast

I knew the last show would get some conversations going and I’m glad that people reacted in a positive fashion to the ramble cast that happened. I hoped people wouldn’t mind it being a little rougher then usual so thank you for all the fun comments.

Today we have lots of feedback from various people on the topic and we put the idea to rest. Although, lets be honest that the conversation is always moving forward and never really dies in today’s world which is a great thing.

Comments can be called into 206-309-4729 as always.

C.C. Chapman: Well, good morning everybody. Welcome to Managing the Gray #46. How’s it going? I am C.C. Chapman, partner of The Advance Guard, new media guy, just all around passionate individual about this space that we’re playing in. New media playground is an awful cool place. We get new tools, new toys every single day it seems like. We haven’t any really big new ones in a while. We got some new ones coming out now, which is exciting. Today, we’re going to be talking about lots of different things. We’ve got Facebook, Seesmic, lots of different things.

Lots of reactions to the last show. I usually don’t play a ton and ton of listener comments. I’m very selective about them and not selective in the sense of what you’ve got to say, just I don’t have enough time to play them all because I try to keep the show short, but the last show when I reacted to my buddy Scott Monty’s audio comment talking about stats and all this — I didn’t lose it. I’m passionate about that. I just kind said it how it is and you guys reacted, you guys really reacted. I got some comments I want play from people reacting to that. If you didn’t hear the last podcast, what I was talking about was how to me as an individual, stats don’t matter to me that much. I barely ever check them. I check them every so often once in a great while just to make sure if things are working, that people are downloading, there are no problems, but I don’t pay attention to them. I honestly don’t know how many listeners I have at the moment for Managing the Gray. I don’t know. I could check. Go to FeedBurner or something, but every stat is different. I just kind of said for businesses, knowing these types of things is important, but for an individual, I don’t see it as being as important, my blog being the perfect example where cc-chapman.com has always been more of a personal journal than anything else. So, you’ll hear me just posting stuff to update for my family to read more than anybody else and if I let people read it, that’s great, that’s cool for me. You guys reacted. Man, phone line. By the way, if you ever have a comment, 206-309-GRAY. That’s 206-309-4729. I always love hearing from people.

You know what? I’m just going to kick in here. There’s a block of comments. I just want to just bam! Right? There are tons of them from lots of different people, some from different sides of the fence, which I think is great. That’s why the conversation should work. They shouldn’t be all back padding and, you know, “yeah, yeah, yeah.” It should be honest, constructive, good conversations. It’s what drives the world. It makes it a fun place. So, I’m just going to turn it over to the listeners. You guys rock for a second. How long is this? CastBlaster is telling me this is 8 minutes and 45 seconds of listener call-ins in case you need to fast forward. I hope you don’t because there are some good voice and good opinions, all men I just thought of. We don’t have women callers. There’s got to be women listening to Managing the Gray. I know there is. I can hear Heidi Miller and Donna Papacosta going, “Hey, what about us?” I know you’re out there. I just realized that all the comments on today’s show are guys. Something’s up. Anyways. I forget who is up first. I put them all together. I think it’s Tim Coyne.

Tim Coyne: Hey, C.C. It’s Tim Coyne calling from Hollywood. You know what? I’m halfway through your most recent Managing the Gray and I don’t want to pile on the guy who just called, but right now you’re in the middle of just kind of talking about how the reasons why you do Managing the Gray is how you do any of your personal type of blogging or podcasting and I just felt compelled to call in because, God, it just speaks to me. All right, a quick anecdote. Living out here, I’ve been doing The Hollywood Podcast for a couple years and it’s all about what I find interesting. It’s literally my creative outlet. Whatever I want to put out there, I put out there. Whoever responds, responds, and that’s it. You were talking about how comments kind of feed you and I feel similar in that way. I recently had a guy came out here for business in LA, listened to my show and he called me and we went and had lunch. His name is Scott. To me, that is just sort of personally mind blowing and it’s just, I don’t know, anyway. I don’t even know what I’m saying. I’m just saying I’m with you and, yeah, that’s it. That’s it, man. Hope you’re doing great. Love the show. I’ll be here, man. I’m going to keep on doing this, putting out my stuff and whoever responds, responds. That’s the way it goes. All right, later. Bye.

David: Hey, C.C. This is David from Britney Mason’s Popcast. I just got down listening to Managing the Gray, November 15th episode, “Risk and Success,” and you went on about stats don’t matter to you and stats aren’t important. You do it for yourself and I hear that and that is definitely the noble road. You mentioned the fact that you didn’t have sponsors. It would be sad, you’d miss the money, but you do it for yourself. It was a reality bitch slap. I’m going to take the opposite of you because you and I have talked about stats in the past and you know I’m obsessed with statistics. Some of us who are in need don’t have the luxury that you do that have listeners that call in or email. We have no other way to gauge whether or not people are listening to the show or is anybody out there? Who are we talking to? We can’t all be just noble and nice because you are one of the nicest guys I know. You just got me fired up about that a little bit and that’s my 2 cents. It’s a way for some of us to gauge listeners and, yeah, I might become compulsive about it and obsessive about it, but at least I know there is somebody out there downloading the show. That’s it. I will talk to you later. Bye.

Sebastian: Hey, C.C. It’s Sebastian. I just want to leave a comment regarding your comments about your own stats and I got to say if you really [unintelligible] I think I might appreciate your work even more. Sure, you want to attract everything you do for the clients, but I mean for being so not interested in your stats, you have to be really comfortable with your work and really excited. You show this excitement every other week and I think [unintelligible] really profits from that. Then you got also the reason why your nook on Facebook [unintelligible], but maybe that has other reasons too. So, thanks again for sharing and thanks again for being so generous with your thoughts. Take care. Bye.

Dave Jacobs: Hey, C.C., Dave Jacobs, the Rock and Roll Jew Show, The Connected World Show, and davidajacobs.com. It’s a driveway moment, just after work and listening to Managing the Gray and just had to jump on the phone line even if I’m unpacking my bags. Great, great show the last time. I agree with you on stats. I used to check them habitually. I almost never check them now. I don’t really think it’s about how many people are listening, it’s who is listening. It goes back to an old saying our friend David Fleischer used to say and I totally believe that. It’s really not about the raw numbers; it’s about the kind of influence that you’re having over the whole social media space. That’s way more powerful than the kind of numbers that you have. You can have 50,000 listeners, but another guy can have 1000 and have massive influence because of who those 1000 people are. That guy is a lot more powerful than the 50,000 guy.

Also, on careers in new media, I wanted to pimp a new project that I have going. I think I sent you an email on this a while ago, but I have it going now. It’s going as a Ning group and it’s called New Media Professional at www.newmediaprofessional.com, an idea I had where people like myself and you who are trying to break into new media or who are just starting their careers in new media, we need to come together, form a community, help each other out, support each other, give each other advice, but I formed this social network group to do just that, all kinds of advice and forum topics that I put up, everything from marketing to sales, the legal tax advice, everything you need to know to get your new business going or to get a job as a new media professional in an interesting business however you are approaching it. It doesn’t always mean that you have to quit your day job and go on your own. There are new media jobs being created every day I believe in the traditional space and some of us are probably going to go that direction. So, I encourage everyone to come to newmediaprofessional.com and join in the conversation and let’s help each other out as we go on this journey together. Some of us have more experience than others and together we can push everyone together. So, that’s it. Have a good day. I’m going in to start mine right now and I’ll talk to you later. Bye.

Gary Alexander: Hi, C.C. This is Gary Alexander from The Ultimate Podcast. I want to say that I just listened to Managing the Gray “Risk and Success” and I want to tell you how much I enjoyed that podcast. It was very, very honest and very straightforward and to me, it was one of the most enjoyable episodes that I have on my iPod from Managing the Gray. I think that you came across as a very heartfelt, very sincere, and, you know, just off-the-cuff almost, like you were really speaking from, you know, C.C. Chapman versus — and I’m not, you know, trying to dog out any of the other episodes, but this one just really hit me a little harder than the others. I don’t agree with you with stats. I’m one of those guys that, you know, figuring out stats is very important to me because I am in this for myself, that’s the reason why I started this, but also I do realize that this is a business that I can make some money off of and I look at it like that and I do know that numbers are extremely important. I do consider myself successful already, but would really like to grow those numbers, which is why I listened to your show trying to learn more about ways to grow my audience, ways to just learning more about social media and how that may affect my show and my possible future career, as you say, in new media, maybe that’s the word. I don’t know if there’s a word for what I want to be when I grow up. Irregardless, I started my show as a UFC McMartial Arts type of news and interview program and through that I am now the commentator and ring announcer for a new promotion that’s coming up the XFA, that’s xfalive.com, and I got that gig strictly through podcasting. So, I am really excited and appreciate the effort and input you put into Managing the Gray. Thanks a lot. I will keep listening and of course telling everybody that I can. Thanks bro. Bye.

C.C. Chapman: Congrats! You’re a ring announcer and you got that through podcasting? I purposely saved that one to the end because I was like, “Wow.” See? That’s what people need to realize is that new media as cool and slick and fun and everything it is, part of that breaking the echo chamber is the fact that there’s all these other worlds out there. Don’t forget the rest of the world. Don’t get stuck inside the fish bowl that is new media. Break out. Look at that, through podcasting, he’s a ring announcer. Would you have made that connection an hour ago? I wouldn’t have, but that’s the thing is the fact that people are connecting in weird ways that we haven’t even thought of yet. People haven’t even begun.

I was reading Dave Winer wrote a great blog post yesterday talking about how we haven’t even begun to crack the surface of what podcasting can be for a delivery mechanism. Don’t forget podcasting is really the delivery mechanism, the synching up and subscribing, that’s the podcasting. Why aren’t we doing more with it? He had some great ideas. Check it out at scripting.com. Dave has his days where he pisses people off, but he’s always pushing the needle a little bit further. He’s one of those guys. I got one more comment to play on this. It’s from the guy who started it all. It’s all Scott Monty’s fault. You know how Scott is. No, Scott is a friend, all right? We worked together at Crayon. Before we just kind of go on, I got to play Scott, right? I mean he called in too.

Scott Monty: C.C., my man. Hey, thanks for playing my comment on your show. It’s clear that you’re pretty passionate about it. That’s one of the things we’re talking about. I didn’t expect to inspire such an early morning rant, but at any rate I’m glad I got your blood running. Just to clarify one thing, I’m totally with you on the whole separation of personal and business. I think absolutely, as I said, it’s essential for business to have some kind of measurement in place, some kind of set of goals against which to measure your success.

On the personal side, I don’t think that’s essential. I use it myself and like I said, I’m probably a stats freak, but I don’t think it’s essential for everybody to be measuring how many visitors they have. To me, one of the best measures of engagement if I’m just writing whatever I want is the comments I get back from people and how people basically respond to what I say, how I have conversations and, as you say, yeah, you write your blog for yourself, but at some point it’s nice to just hear from other people and know that you’re not just writing into a black hole. Again, that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to monitor how many people are coming to your site, not at all, but again it’s the passion that drives it whether you’re passionate about a business topic, passionate about a hobby, passionate about music, art, science, whatever. That’s what drives good content and in the end that’s what we’re talking about is delivering good content whether you’re delivering it for yourself, whether you’re delivering it for the one or two or 10,000 people that come to your site. It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re doing good stuff that you feel good about, that’s what’s going to keep driving it forward. All right, man, thanks for letting me go on about this and for entertaining the debate. Again, we’ll see you locally.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah, Scott. It’s all good. It is all about passion and that is true about anything you do. It is about passion. It is about creating compelling content. It is about putting that before all the tools and the gadgets and everything. So, thank you guys for that debate. I appreciate it. It was good to open conversation. I hope it’s gotten you thinking about it. If you’re out there and you’re listening, you’re going, “How do I feel about this?” Just figure out what works for you. It’s exactly what I always tell people when they have kids. I say go read every book and then figure out which pieces of it work for you. No one book has all the answers. No one podcast, no one individual, none of us have all the answers. We all have our opinions, our thoughts and we’re figuring it out and we throw them out there. Take what sticks and run with it, you know? That’s where the magic is. That’s where the magic is for this.

One of the things I want to talk about too is Facebook. Facebook has been a really crazy thing the past couple of weeks and one of the things I haven’t done lately is talk about tools and giving you kind of news of what’s going on. Facebook this past week had a really interesting couple of weeks. Beacon happened, which for those of you who don’t know what happened, I’m going to generalize this. Go listen to like For Immediate Release or, God, what’s the other one. I’ll come up with it. They talked about Beacon in much, much more detail.

So, basically, what happened is all these marketing retail sites on the web use cookies. Everybody use cookies on the web. It’s okay, but what they were doing was there’s this network beacon. All these bigger retailers were using this cookie and then it was tied into Facebook so that all of a sudden — you know how your news feed happens in Facebook? It says “Hey, C.C. friended” so and so or “C.C. joined the group” blah, blah, blah. Well, what happened was with this beacon thing, all of a sudden you’d see “C.C. bought a leather sofa from Overstock.com” and it will put in my feed. Now, the problem here is people didn’t realize this was happening. Where was this crossover? In the past, everything you did in Facebook was shared, but all of a sudden here you had this crossover where people who were doing stuff outside of Facebook, all of a sudden that data was being shared with Facebook and that pissed a lot of people off. Now, what all companies seemed to realize is the fact that — in today’s world, the web, there are two critical things. There’s your reputation, which is it’s everything, it’s everything you do and it’s also your data. Now, we give up lots of data to things. I mean my Gmail account is on a server somewhere and Google serves me up ads based on what I’m writing about. That freaks some people out. It doesn’t freak me out personally. I have given up on that.

Facebook, I share a lot of things, but when all of a sudden things start crossing over and the user doesn’t know about it, that is when you’re going to run into trouble. They should have made a big honking banner, big full screen thing when you first log in and say, “Hey, FYI, this is going on.” People wouldn’t have reacted as badly. Communicate, communicate, communicate. One of the things I always do is it’s not even playing devil’s advocate, it’s how are the users going to react? This goes for anything you are going to do on the web at all, not even on the web. You’re going to be holding a concert. Try to think of what is the worst possible reaction you could get. Not so much what could go wrong because you hope for the best and you play in for the worst, of course. That’s rule one, but what is the worst reaction that could happen and how could that spiral? We always talk about that. Every project we do. Who could get a thorn up their butt and start screaming about this? You need to think about those things because in today’s world, that will spread like wildfire. You saw every blog, every Twitter, everything was talking about Beacon and flipping out. I mean Facebook blew it on this. They completely blew it. They’re fixing it now, but they blew it. The best blog post, Chris Abraham had a post how Facebook ruined Christmas. I mean think about it. You put in the most simplest thing… I mean Laura now is on Facebook. She sees my Facebook. If I have bought her something on one of these sites that uses beacon, it would have said, “C.C. bought a gigantic penguin,” which Laura loves penguins or something like that. That’s a simple thing, but maybe you shopped at a site that used a beacon and you didn’t know about it because of course you’re not going to know. Maybe it was risqué, maybe it was appropriate for Facebook, maybe it’s something you don’t want to share. What if it had been a health store?

Start thinking about these things. It’s not fun when your data is getting shared without your knowledge. One of the things I highly suggest you do if you use Facebook because I hadn’t thought about it until I saw someone twittering about stuff I was doing on Facebook, groups I was joining. It also happened when I left a group just because there was nothing going on. I was cleaning out my groups. I didn’t know what this group was and I got an email from someone saying, “Hey, why did you leave my group?” I’m like, “How the hell they know I did that?” You go into Facebook and on the upper right hand corner, there’s a privacy thing. Go in there and look at the things you can do. You can actually say what you don’t want to share on your news feed. I knew it was there. I just never actually dug through it. They have a lot of privacy options. I suggest you go on any site that you’re doing work, think about the privacy options. Just go check them out, really dig into it. Just look. It took me a little while and I said, “You know what? I really don’t want to share that.” I just don’t, little certain things. So, I highly suggest you do that. That’s what happened on Facebook this week if you weren’t aware of that.

In Facebook, another thing they did was they opened up pages in ads so now you can actually create almost like Google ads. You can create ads on target individuals. Now, what’s gotten people a little freaked out and marketers of course, you went, “Ooh.” I mean even I did. I went, “That’s kind of cool.” You can go into this and say, “I want to create an ad.” Now, even if you don’t want to create that, what you can do is you can get really quick research on Facebook demographics because as you start putting your criteria whether you do it by buzz words, you put in there “blogging” or “knitting,” you can put in words and what it’s going to do is it’s going to search things that people put in their Interests and whatnot in their profile. As you type in those words and it finds it in its database, you’ll see the numbers so like it starts off with 8 million users or how many users and then it starts getting smaller. It tells you how many users that ad is going to target based on that. As you filter, it’s kind of neat.

So, you can literally say, “Show me only women.” I forget if it’s just age now, but I think it does, “Women, 20 to 30, who are into swimming,” and it will slowly tell me how many there is. It’s a great way to quickly get demographics. Now, that kind of freaks some people out because like, “Wait a minute. Should you be sharing that data?” That, I’m okay with honestly because it’s not saying “and here are those 5000 users.” If it took it to that step that would be bad, but that would be stupid on their part. I’m okay with them saying “there’s this many users who do that” because I think that’s great. It kind of goes, “Oh, cool. There is a community here.” I think it’s a great way to target. The ads are kind of annoying, but I’m also already blanking them out unless it’s something really compelling.

The other day, I saw a face, I knew him, “Hey, I know him!” and I clicked on his ad just to see where it took me, but the Pages feature is also something neat. For those of you who haven’t figured out what’s going on with Facebook Pages, what it is, is it’s just like any other account in Facebook. The difference is they finally have allowed businesses to do this. I’ve had people in the past say, “Hey, C.C. What do you think about…?” I know somebody set up a newspaper account in Facebook and it got bounced because that’s against their Terms of Service. Terms of Services says a person and account, real person, but now businesses can create what are called Pages. They have pretty much all the features, but they are okay for businesses to set up. I think there are some nice categories, some local stuff which I love. I haven’t seen much happened with it yet, musicians, all this stuff, and you set up a Facebook account. Big deal, right? There’s a huge difference. There’s one huge thing that people seem to forget. These Pages are public if you make them so and what I mean by that is you can go to this page without being logged into Facebook. It doesn’t show you all the data, but it shows you the majority of it.

Yesterday, I was playing around so I made one for Now is Now, a band. I know Mitch. I have permission from him to do stuff like this, so I made a page and what’s neat is you can actually go to it and never have been in Facebook before. It looks like Facebook, it acts like Facebook, but you don’t have to log in. If you log in, you can become a fan and you can do things like that. The key part is the fact that your profile is outside of the walled garden of Facebook [unintelligible] and I’m seeing people create them for podcasts and I’m seeing them creating for other things. I’m still not sure. I don’t know if I need that. It’s one of those things I’m trying to figure. I mean I’ve got the Hey Home Fries group, which is working for me. If you are on Facebook, go to heyhomefries.com. It will redirect you into a Facebook group, which is kind of my landing ground for everything I’m doing and you become a member. I [unintelligible] once in a while over there. The Pages thing is neat because it’s another step forward and I’m interested to see where it’s going. Searching for them is kind of, not broken, but it’s weird. Facebook’s search algorithm kind of messes up sometimes like I saw yesterday Matthew Ebel had created a page and I went searching for it and I couldn’t find it, but I knew it was there. So, I don’t know how long it takes to re-index and all those things. Maybe it’s not broken, maybe it was a timing issue. I just wanted to give a kind of quic