TheWayoftheWeb

I’m looking for the wisdom of MY crowd.

A thought that occurred to me commenting on a Robert Scoble post.

• I use Google Reader because I’ve selected the inputs.
• I get news from the people I’ve selected on Twitter and Friendfeed
• I get personal news from the people I’ve selected on Facebook.
• I don’t use Digg etc as much as I might because it’s the wisdom of a random crowd I haven’t selected.

I’ve been spending a lot of time hypothesizing about various things, so I’ll redress the balance with two practical tools I’m using which have really helped me recently.

Signing up for so many services for both work and pleasure put a real strain on my email inbox. So much so, that i was starting to dread the next time I had to enter my email address into a signup box to figure out whether a service was any good or not. Thankfully, something in my memory suddenly kicked into gear and I remembered a friend (Thanks, Tim) had invited me to OtherInbox.

I’ve started using it today, and it’s a simple and brilliant solution. When you sign up for a new service, simply used servicename@username.otherinbox.com. Then, all registration emails, updates and any spam is sent to Other Inbox, and automatically filed into folders for each service.

So I can easily find my login details, or check which services might have led to spam emails, without having to set up 101 fake email addresses!

The other huge productivity boon comes from my final acceptance that Googlemail really is awesome - particularly with Google labs opening up to Gadgets. I already inserted Google Docs into my email account, which is useful, but then I found out Task Management service Remember the Milk now has a Google Gadget! That means I now have my email, documents I’m working on, and my task list in one place to keep track.

Combine that with using OtherInbox for better filtering, and suddenly Googlemail is becoming a personal hub for my online life and reinvigorating my waning interest in ever using email.

I can already see myself with 3 hubs for my entire life.

1. One for my external publishing on blogs etc,
2. One for managing my personal profiles,
3. One for my personal communication and productivity.

Google is already taking care of 3. And various Twitter and blog uploading applications are competing for my attention. Meanwhile OpenSocial and Facebook Connect are working towards solving 2.

UK newspapers by franckdethier on Flickr (CC Licence)

It’s only when you try and break a long held habit that you realise how much we’re all influenced by the way we’ve always done things. Since starting my efforts to cut down and stop smoking, I’ve managed to get to the point where I only have the occasional cigarette once the family has gone to bed - but it’s the hardest one to drop. And when I get writers block, my intake rapdily goes up because I’ve spent so long finding inspiration by getting outside and getting the hit of nicotine while my brain kicks into gear.

And I’ve also started to try and challenge the broadcast media habit of trying to get the biggest audience with the least work. For years we’ve focused on audience figures to suggest that by doing the bare minimum, you’ll reach the biggest audience.

Whereas in the modern world, we need to work harder than ever at making as much of what we do remarkable, and to pursue as many opportunities to the maximum as we can. Otherwise we’ll keep finding someone else that does!

It reminds me of a post I read earlier today, which sadly I seem to have misplaced, commenting on the problem facing the A-List of blogging. Namely, the fact that people like Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk are finding it hard to scale to respond on an individual level to every email, post and tweet they receive, and in effect, become mini-broadcasters.

The simple answer is that they still remain increasingly popular because they put in a huge amount of effort to stay more accessible than mainstream media. They don’t have to make time for everyone, but by attempting it as far as possible, it gives hope to those who don’t grab their attention at a particular time. It’s why I count myself fortunate to have had messages from the likes of Chris Anderson and Hugh McLeod, but I don’t bombard them with emails, or suddenly thinkg they’re my best friend and will respond to everything I do - they’ll do it if what I say is interesting and they have the time available.

The other option is to scale it, and for them to find someone as similar as possible, or someone they can trust, to work alongside them.

That’s where broadcast media should be. We still have far more resources than the top bloggers, so why not scale back on the coverage that everyone else is parroting, use link journalism, and focus on becoming closer to the spirit of individual response that blogging has fostered.

After all, it’s what we laud Zappos, Dell and Comcast for doing.

But there is a habit of resisting the idea of putting in that much effort for what will be less profit in total. Despite the fact that everything so far has shown that it’s harder to get similar levels of profit from online audiences as you would in print, radio or TV, and that the only way to really be successful is to aggregate lots and lots of individuals monetisation.

Annoyingly, the great David Armano summed this up far more succinctly.

The Corporate Social Media Curve by David Armano (http://darmano.typepad.com/)

At the point before the curve starts to dip, we need to put in the extra effort to keep that line climbing. Now if only I hadn’t needed a cigarette to think of all this!

I’ve just got back from a business event, and meeting some really cool people and hearing about some really cool things. Everyone agreed not to report or blog about any of the topics discussed to allow openess at the event, but I will say that there are loads of great things going on in the near future.

What I can talk about are two of the things that really struck me on my trip home.

1. I really need to kit myself out more effectively for the ‘digital nomad‘ role on trips. I’ve held off getting a smartphone for various reasons, but I’m more and more convinced about how much easier it will make my life. The other tool I’m really interested in is a netbook of some description. Notetaking etc is far more efficient when I can type away on something small and unobtrusive, whether it’s an Asus or one of the netbooks being launched by other manufacturers.

2. Amongst all the cool things happening in the wide world of the web, it’s sometimes easy for me to forget to mention some of the great work I’m involved with. I’ve tended to avoid blogging too much about my day job in detail, because I don’t want things I write to be coloured by whether I’ve had a good or bad day at work, or to refer to things I can’t discuss in full because of business reasons. But at the same time, I definitely want to mention things like Tim on Car Magazine not only encouraging the start of live review blogging from the road test of the new Ferrari California,  but also using Twitter to update with the latest news from the test.

I was out of the office on Friday when the liveblogging began, so I can’t reel off the facts and figures to show whether it drove a huge amount of inbound links or visitors to the site - but what i do know is that it’s a great example of using the most approrpiate tools to convey the excitement and thrill of being a journalist lucky enough to test a Ferrari.