Got a few angry emails regarding my last post, mostly asking if I was selling out:

“So you’re taking all the stuff you do and making it commercial?”

Not sure how that came through the message but no, actually, quite the opposite. Instead of letting traditional marketing dictate how we run our company and dealing with its money drain and eventual failure, we are going to use the practices that made this blog (and conversely the SBS Show, Vladfire, Vladcast) so popular and worthwhile to so many people.

I am trying to take some aspects of the work I already do on the individual basis, pack it up and offer it up at ownwebnow.com for anyone that cares to learn from it, good or bad. As these discussions are business in nature and so closely tied to the business of Own Web Now, I would think that it would be selling out Vladville to post them here.

On the other hand, I consider this to be a model for how things should be done in this space. I have always had an open IM invitation for all my partners, I have always had a direct dial in number and an extension that is published, I have been blogging for a while. The only difference now is that we’re actually going to showcase some of that activity beyond me <-> partner and hopefully invite more people into the conversation, pick up the feedback which always improves the product which improves sales and improves Timmy’s college fund Consider the opposite, which is the traditional community development in this space: 1) Turn off all the extensions except for sales 2) Put up a forum and hope users will support one another out of desperation 3) When the users get critical do some damage control and close up the forum thread and move on. Doesn’t sound like fun. So instead of opening up the doors and saying “Why don’t y’all just build a community for us” we’re actually going onto the court with the ball and asking for others to play along.

Ok, things are starting to get interesting in the online Office suite game, we’re moving past the AJAXified web pages straight into fully interactive stuff. Check it out, available now: www.acrobat.com; Tagline “Work. Together. Anywhere”

Sarah has a great writeup of it here.

What’s in it? Word processor, files, data sharing and desktop sharing for online meetings / collaboration. Not quite a play on Zoho or Google Apps or even Microsoft Office Live - but definitely a level above it. Leading with the premium product (desktop sharing for web meetings) is definitely gutsy.

Still a beta, but well worth the look.

One of the nicest things about the MVP Summit, and one of the reasons I pay so much and urge so many of you to go to the big industry events, is that you can surround yourself with people who are far (far, far) wiser and more experienced than you. In a surrounding where you are not being weighted down by the idiots you have to deal with for a paycheck you can’t help but elevate your game and start seeing things in a whole new light.

One of the things I have been thinking about over the past few days has been the balancing of the equation that contains trust, influence, reputation, authority and credibility. Number of techmeme headlines had been swirling around my head for weeks as bloggers start to realize that they are not the center of the world.

But this is not about bloggers, it is an important lesson for everyone that brings themselves online, whether willingly through social networks or unwillingly through the better search engine indexing of public records.

You can’t hide. But you can try to understand how the information is consumed online.

The fundamental lie to the Web 2.0 world is that it is not based on knowledge and credentials, it is based on the size of your personal network. It’s not what you know, it’s how many people it appears know you. It’s all about the size, baby. Those with the size and apparent large roster of buddies use it to talk about those connections and project the appearance of equality with their subjects. And the pile grows. They refer back to how so-and-so did-something-something because of them. It infers influence. Jump on the bandwagon as often as possible, love everything everyone else loves. It will grow your network of people interested in the seemingly everything you are interested in. Talk about yourself and how you’ve previously talked about it. To the casual observer, it seems like you have some authority over the subject. Traffic begets traffic, pretty pictures illustrate credibility, authority, makes you feel like you can trust them because the herd does too.

Then you meet them and realize… my god, this person is complete and total charlatan that is obviously out of place.

The bottom line is, knowledge and credentials still matter. Not in the makebelief world of Web 2.0, but in the real world where you make your money, feed your family, grow as a human being and hopefully cause change that improves you and things around you.

My whole point is that you should not get discouraged from what you do just because you’re an apparent peon and you don’t have a billion contacts on Facebook. You should not abandon hope just because your events are packed with hundreds of people lined up to take your picture. The big picture is far larger than that.

Trust is something earned, not something percieved.
Everyone fact-checks, nobody will take things on blind faith. (Web 2.0 religion opportunity?
You have no influence over anyone. Don’t lie to yourself.

What makes you reputable, notable, perhaps even influential is NOT an internal quality that you posses. It is an external, subjective opinion of people who choose to follow you, who believe that you make sense and can be honest and human.

Web 2.0 is not so unlike the Real World 1.0, though it is easier to lie in, reality is all that actually matters/counts. Don’t get lost in the clouds. (sorry, sorry, I know, bad pun)

I’m going to try to explain Twitter to Susan, in a public way, because I feel she needs to be on it moreso than anyone else I know. But you know the fable of CPAs and technology so here is my attempt:

Twitter is Instant Messaging that is neither instant nor interruption driven.

I am not saying that it’s not a giant waste of time, I am not saying that less than 1e^-500 of what you will see on there is worth while. I am saying that it is a useful communications medium with people who have embraced it. Right now I am shaming Tim Barrett for just learning what it means to be rickrolled, I am trying to setup a vegetarian dinner with Vijay, I am trying to see if Josh will bump up BlogOrlando towards the weekend and I am wondering how long till Dave buys a telescoping camera lens for his iPhone.

So why does this matter? It matters because among billions of worthless conversations, Twitter allows you to use a medium that isolates a few of them that are worth having with people that have chosen to conduct them in such a way. If I send Dave an email, I’m likely at the bottom of his list of mails to review. Vijay will probably hide from his business email for weeks. Josh’s blog had 12 comments on it within minutes of the post.

Really, it’s just a matter of cutting through.

And I for one would like to see Susan on it. Susan, twittering, will make most newsgroups and Yahoo groups obsolete. Will Susan be able to overcome her inner-CPA’s take on technology. Tune in at 11 for details.

For everyone else.. look at it as the secret twin language. The cool people (if there are any in whoever you follow) are in, so if you want to be in you have to conform. Or be a rebel. I am not a guidance counselor, I’m just trying to offer up a perspective.

I am not exactly “beloved” for my opinion of my IT brotherin, the antisocial and borderline sociopath behavior that comes as a result of spending fourty hours a week staring at the monitor and conducting more than half of the “conversations” over the wire instead of face to face or even voice. I don’t mean to sound like I am judging here, I am very much in this crowd as I have previously texted and even IMed people that were just a few feet away from me. This type of communication, and lack of need for a social experience, explains why most communication written by IT staffers sounds like the fire & brimstone from some relatively mellow individuals. It explains why people tend to hang out by themselves at IT conferences, why they never grow significantly when they go into a consulting (people service) business, why IT culture in general tends to be skeptical and introverted.

It also explains why services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Friendfeed, and thousand other services happen to be so successful: Introductions are easy, you can enter a conversation at any point and end it whenever you get distracted by the next thing.

Now Sarah started this whole fire, but Larry Dignan flared it up by trying to figure out the value in the conversation. That is very, very, easy to figure out: there is no value to the extended conversations happening outside of the source (blog post, conference). Here is the basis of my argument: translate the conversation into an actual human interaction - people talk all the time. Can you be in every person-to-person exchange, at all times, in all the subjects that interest you? No. Sure, the Web 2.0 makes it easy, but the expense of being involved in all the conversations is usually far higher than the benefit, which can be reduced to simply the personal satisfaction of having a discussion. There is a value in having something thoughtful to say (blogging, to external audience) and direct exchange of ideas by people who are interested in what you have to say (comments, from the external audience to you). You’re providing something valuable, and in return you are getting something valuable back, that you may not have considered.

That is the value of conversations: the exchange of ideas.

As for trying to interact with angry villagers with pitchforks out in the streets (Twitter), or time investment equivalent of NSA’s wiretap program (FriendFeed)… if thats the extent you need to go to in order to get attention its probably a good indication that your life/work are not fulfilling enough so it might be a better idea to invest in those, instead of the poor online substitutes for them.

Ok, so I said that the day I meet a decent twitter client I will actually blog about it. This day has come. For the past week or so, I have been using TwitterFox extension for Firefox and I must admit I like it quite a bit. I use FireFox as my main browsing and development platform (Greasemonkey, nuff said) and now I can use it to keep up with twitter.com friends as well. 

Twitter: The Worlds Biggest Waste

There is absolutely no way to rationalize twitter. It is a spectacular waste of time, it is unreliable, it is annoying and impressively useless. But I have started to use it more as I’ve gotten progressively more busy and trying to fit 20 hours of work into 6 comes with certain sacrifices - no IM on the work PC, no b/s newsgroups, no forums, basically getting work done means having to give up all the social stuff that makes working in IT so much fun. I know, woe is me, but soon enough you’ll all get your monkey and we’ll hire enough staff to deal with the rest and allow me to spend more time on freeones. Umm, freeones.

[ continuing roughly 20 minutes later ] Oh, right, twitter.com. Ok, so here is what I like about it. It is like a permanently-offline instant messenger client. My Mac at work is used primarily for social business, and I hit it up once a day, between 1-2 PM, and clear through all the mail, instant messages, etc. It is what I use to let people know I am indeed alive. Now, Audium generally has anywhere from 50-80 tabs of IMs that got collected overnight, and three out of four people are not online. This is where twitter serves a purpose. I can see what everyone is up to without looking at their status on MSN messenger. People tend to be just as open on twitter.com as they are on IM, except there is no expectation of instant response (or a response at all) so its a very good way to see what everyone is up to. It also has a lot of content that you would otherwise not see anywhere else, since all the cool kids are using it. For example, keeping up with Wordpress development, Seth Godin’s thoughts… clear, concise. I can continue redneck jokes with Tim Barrett for hanging out at Fox & Hound (Tim runs the Vladville PR department). And then there is Robert Scoble and 18,000 worthless updates a day on the flavor of his farts.

So you take the good with the bad, and TwitterFox lets me stay tuned without the hassle. (I dumped the Vista sidebar widget because it crashed and fell apart so often).

If you’d like to follow me, I’m http://www.twitter.com/vladmazek but I also syndicate the updates on www.vladville.com (look at the right hand side, under Newsletter)

Integrity matters. Humble pie is tasty.

For close to a decade, Internet used to be an awesome place for deceitful sociopaths. That kind of environment, full of anonymity and unaccountability, is a great breeding ground for some spectacular outright shameful lies marketing strategies. But as Ashley Dupree found out this week, there is no hiding on the Internet from who you are. Especially if you are being judged on the daily basis by your customers, business partners, employers or politicians.

Over the past two years I saw two of my friends outright destroy their online identities because they did not want their personal, private, life to interfere with their work. They also get the double handicap for being girls (likely inbox full of “I’d tap that”) and dealing with the juvenile male Internet. The first girl worked in the public sector in charge of bringing businesses into the local economy to build up the job market. Unfortunately for her, she is an Irish catholic republican and makes Peter from the Family Guy look like a saint. She had to blow up her entire blog because her personality virtually guaranteed she would never be able to make it in the public eye. The other friend is an extroverted party girl that works in the software industry. She blew up her Facebook profile because even though the minxy chick at a social event gets you all sorts of contacts, it does not translate well into corporate promotions based on black and white out of context notes backed by the spite of office politics.

The sad thing is, what guarantees corporate climb makes you a total bitch that nobody wants to hang out with. What makes you a macho man party animal translates into a stack of sexual harassment lawsuits.

This is nothing new. People in the spotlight were always judged, always quoted out of context, always had their private lives violated and everything ever done used against them at the most inopportune times.

What is new is that the social Internet is putting everyone and everything into the spotlight. Everyone you ever encountered becomes a viable, relevant, reference. I had the privilege of growing up in South Florida and going to the high school in the hood (I know, hard to believe) so by the time I got to the University of Florida I got calls from Miami Herald about my former classmates doing everything from homicide to serial jewelry robberies (Go Dragons, Class of ‘07, release date of ‘22). Everyone, everywhere, and at any time in the past becomes a quotable reflection of your character and how you life your life.

So if you want to live and work in this century you have to come to terms with who you are and how you represent yourself. You can’t hang on to your secret personality and change clothes in the telephone booth. You have to let go of your inner sociopath, put away that second personality you’ve got going on, stop changing your clothes in the telephone booth and just be who you are. If you are going to be judged, be judged for who you really are.

It doesn’t matter if you’re fucking the governor or if the global network of computers is fucking you, the age of deceit and dishonesty is coming to an end. Embrace fame, and yourself. Remember, you’re selling yourself all the time to everyone.

The latest issue of Time (March 17) questions whether we’ll soon see the end of commercial software installed on the PC in favor of web-based apps that do pretty much the same thing. Except for free and without the associated complexity.

I have discussed the web vs. LOB app issues in business use extensively and I believe that the trend to the web will continue. Simply because it cuts costs. Not just in the purchase price of the software but also the maintenance, patching, upgrading and migrating from one version to the next. Not to mention a full time person (or a support contract from an IT solution provider) to keep it all together.

Home market is a different story. While at work you create documents, print invoices, email extensively and manage appointments and calendars, your home life might be a little different. Editing pictures. Producing video. Webcam with friends and family. All very bandwidth intense applications, where having 10,000 fonts makes a huge difference. Has anyone sent you a business memo written in Windings? Now have you ever plucked a funky font for a flyer or a party announcement?

Web applications are great for business which needs the bare minimums to get the job done. For home use, I expect something to compensate for my lack of skill, even if I need to throw the processing power of a small server at it to make it look good.

I don’t think that the home / end user market is going to be as driven to the web apps as they will to the sub-$100 commercial software. Go to your local Best Buy, the most successful electronics dealer in America, and compare the square footage they dedicate to boxed software when compared to the flat screen TVs. They wouldn’t dedicate that much space to something that didn’t sell.

For the sake of the argument, here is what Anita Hamilton offered as the paid software vs. free software alternatives:

What do you think?

I spent most of last week and will likely spend the rest of 2007 on the dark side.

Google

If you are looking to chat with me and don’t do business with OwnWebNow, you can find me on Google Talk. My address is vlad@vladville.com, which consequently is also my community-related email address. Please do not send indirect/junk/newsletters to that address, thats what v@vladville.com is for. Likewise, don’t send personal (or email that needs my immediate attention) to v@vladville.com because I am unlikely to see it.

The new company will run on completely open and free technologies. Considering that OWN almost exclusively operates and sells closed/Microsoft technology I feel this gives me a more balanced experience… and to that end:

Mac OS X 10.5

I have been trying to use it for the last few days and I must admit I am hating it. On the other hand, I am not nearly as disappointed with it as I imagined I would be. What I believe I am saying is that if you need a serious business collaboration platform, Vista is the way to go. But if you need something to do the basic computer stuff quickly (check mail, burn a DVD, browse the web and play videos) Mac is your tool.

I am half/switching to the Mac for 2007. I say I am half switching simply because the tools I rely on to do my business do not exist on the Mac and I can’t justify switching to the platform completely just so I could virtualize the production platform on top of it.

The biggest leg up Mac has on Vista is the elegance factor. Case and point, Katie came down to my Office yesterday to help me do some last minute things before skipping town. She sat at my table, I turned on the Mac, she turned on the PC. I remembered that I had completely powered things down so I cycled the router. The Mac immediately got the connection and started. The Windows, not so much. So, dig through four menus to get to the network connection properties. Disable adapter. UAC prompt. Enable adapter. UAC prompt. Nothing. Open properties, set static IP. UAC prompt.

Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out the value in certain things. I’m so inundated with stuff that I almost subscribe to the mantra that everything is crap until it proves otherwise. I remember that, after giving Twitter a brief look I proclaimed it to be:

“Twitter: Your lack of social skills, documented.”

I stand by that remark, it was made in the context of the majority of the subscribers which happen to belong to and/or first adopted by the MySpace generation. Really, I don’t care where you’re having lunch today, where you found a Wii, how long the line at Fantasmic is, or that you just saw someone wipe out on I-4. Really, I don’t.

On the other hand, Twitter has some relatively cool features that have caused me to take a second look, particularly given the nagging. First, it can be updated from anywhere, using anything (well, apparently except T-Mobile) including SMS, Vista Sidebar gadget, web, etc. It is lightweight, realtime, and allows for private updates – that is, my lack of life is not broadcast to the Internet at large, just the people that subscribe to my feed.

So how could this potentially ever be useful you may ask? I work with about 200–300 people on a daily basis, give or take. Quick look at what they are doing is very important (and valuable) to me. For example, is anyone cool coming to Orlando that I can take to dinner? Anyone working on something that I need? What is everyone up to internally, are any fires burning that they are talking about but not letting us know? Did the earthquake knock out our data center?

I generally just skim the Messenger taglines and see what folks are up to, but Messenger just shows the latest update and it is hard to update, it is only updated by people when they are at their desk instead of at the client, at the back of the data center, landing at LAX.. Here is what I am using:

I have a Twadget Vista gadget for the sidebar installed at work and on the laptop. I have my feed integrated into Vladville for my fans (pull up www.vladville.com look on the right hand side right under the SBS Show) using Alex King’s Twitter Tools slightly modified. And of course my Twitter is at http://twitter.com/vladmazek

So, I’m giving Twitter a second shot.. If you’ve got a Twitter account and you’re on my Messenger list drop it to me please…