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Belonging to Seth Godin’s ‘Tribe’

October 29, 2008 By Dan Thornton 4 Comments

I’ve been a bit remiss in not blogging about Seth Godin‘s latest book, promotion, and social experiment until now. Mainly due to the hundred and one things I’m thinking about – but I have no excuse as my pre-release copy came yesterday as a special gift given to everyone who pre-ordered and signed up for his Triiibes social community.

So far, I’ve got about halfway through in an evening and found it pretty inspiring and hard to put down. In addition, I’ve met some new people, learned some new things, and somehow volunteered myself for a couple of small projects via Triiibes – talk about building engagement right in! And what’s interesting is that although Seth is the nominal root of the community, he’s not putting himself up as the leader, but watching what evolves and responding where needed. I would link, but I’m afraid it’s still invite only.

On the bright side, you can get a free audible version of Tribes, read by Seth Godin himself, for a limited time. You can also get Tribes on iTunes for 95p. There’s also his Tribes presentation on slideshare, and the Powerpoint file to download with accompanying notes.

There really is nothing to stop you becoming inspired to lead your Tribe. And if you still would like the dead tree version: Tribes is available on Amazon for pre-order.

That is probably enough of the Seth worship for one week, but then I saw this great post: ‘Failure as an event‘ which describes the potentially career-ending mistakes and failures which have occurred during his career, and how he’s used them to learn from, and not succumbed to fear. And he’s published it in the middle of a book launch!

Genius!

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Filed Under: social media marketing Tagged With: amazon, audible, failure, free, itunes, presentation, seth godin, slide deck, slideshare, social media marketing, tribes

I’m all over the place…quite literally…

August 20, 2008 By Dan Thornton 3 Comments

How so?

I’ve just published a new post over at www.140char.com on How to back-up your Twitter account and contacts.
Although I’m still using Feedeachother as an online RSS reader (Find me, here), I’ve bowed to public opinion and also signed up for Google Reader. It’s no slur towards Feedeachother, and the hard work by it’s creator,Udi, but I’m increasingly aware that it’s handy not only to export lists of bookmarks, feeds and contacts on a regular basis, but also to have them readily accessible somewhere. It’s also giving me the chance to compare the two services and see which one offers what I need. You can see my Google Reader shared items, here.
I don’t think I’ve ever published the location of my profile on Stumbleupon. If you’re not spammy, you can find me here, as badgergravling. It tends to be a mixture of tech, cars, motorcycles, and some photography and bizarre stuff. Some of the stumbles are for sites I work on, but only if it’s things I think are good enough to share – and I find an equal amount from the aggregate of all the other sites I visit during a day!
I’m also on Del.icio.us, here (I’m not signed up to the delicious.com namechange!), and also on Digg - and quite a few other networks. I’ve got most of them listed on Friendfeed and MyBlogLog, but there aren’t any other badgergravlings I’ve encountered yet – mainly because it’s an intentional mispelling.
I’m also signed up and become part of Seth Godin’s Triiibes group, which was invite-only for those pre-ordering his next book. I’m still not entirely convinced it’s not just an experimental social ant farm, but there’s definitely some interesting things that could come out of it.
And finally, I had to slip in a mention of Dave Cushman‘s latest post on /Message. Mainly because he namechecks me, and by the look of it, it either never gets picked up, or it’s a nofollow blog – which seems a little odd for someone like Stowe Boyd, unless he’s done it to combat spam comments…

Right, that’s cleared some of the decks…

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Filed Under: Blogging, Digital Culture Tagged With: /message, 140char, account, back-up, Blogging, contacts, dave cushman, delicious, digg, Digital Culture, feedeachother, friendfeed, google reader, mybloglot, rss, seth godin, stowe boyd, stumbleupon, triiibes, twitter

Are web companies as bad as Hollywood with releases?

August 15, 2008 By Dan Thornton 3 Comments

It’s easy within the Web 2.0 technology bubble to poke fun at other industries that don’t get it – for instance, Hollywood complaining about piracy, and yet still releasing films in different countries at different times.

And yet there is still a huge U.S. bias in software online. I know a lot of the big online brands are U.S based, and we still talk about Silicon Valley and San Francisco in reverential terms (But at least the UK has London, Brighton…and maybe one day, Peterborough!). But surely global online brands should understand it’s a global marketplace better than anyone, and either launch a new product in a Beta for people to test, or go global straight away?

For instance, I like the idea of Amazon’s new universal wish list, and really want to see how it compares with sites like Stylehive and ThisNext. All three use bookmarklet tools to let you save items from wherever you see them on the internet, and then either list them for people to buy for you (Amazon), or share them with other people to establish yourself as a trendsetter (Stylehive,ThisNext).

But obviously I can’t try it yet, because I’m not in America (Unless I go to the time and effort of spoofing my address and going through a proxy server of course!)

Instead, an enquiry to Amazon got a polite response:

‘This feature is currently only available on Amazon.com and unfortunately we are unable to highlight a date when this feature will be used on Amazon.co.uk.’

As a bonus, some publisher/Amazon confusion also saw UK pre-orders for Seth Godin‘s new book (pre-ordering was also a condition of joining his invite-only Triiibers group) all cancelled.

This isn’t just Amazon, of course. They just stick in my mind because both these things happened in the space of a week. Twitter hasn’t managed a mobile phone deal for SMS tweets in Europe, Pandora stops outside the U.S., etc, etc.

Is there some kind of trade embargo I wasn’t aware of? Or is medieval Europe just not keeping up with the Americans?

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Filed Under: Digital Culture Tagged With: amazon, america, Digital Culture, embargo, global market, pandora, seth godin, trade, twitter, universal wish list

Post man flu quick catch-up…

October 5, 2007 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

I can finally sit and type long enough without sneezing to start catching up….so…

Something worth plugging is the ‘One Child, One Laptop‘ initiative, which has had fun poked at it, but is now here. $200 gives one laptop, and from November $400 gives a laptop, and gets you one for your own kids…or yourself… The great thing, as Seth Godin points out, is that a child in the 3rd World with access to knowledge can start contributing in millions of different ways and changing things, whether it’s using a website to diagnose a family illness, or new agricultural techniques. Or realising how loans have crippled their country…

Less worthy, but also getting attention, is the post by Jason Calacanis defining Web 3.0 in his opinion. Which appears to also be a definition of Mahalo. Could this be a lovely wind-up? See the follow-up…Or Techmeme

Finally, does anyone else have problems with the Java image upload on Facebook, if you use Firefox? IE runs perfectly…

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