Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Social Media (Page 1 of 10)

Who Made the List of ‘The 120 Top People in Minnesota Tech on Twitter’?

Well, for one, me! A Google Alert showed up the other day on my name. It was for a post published on Webbiquity, the blog of a fellow named Tom Pick here in the Twin Cities. Gee, thanks, Tom! My profile pic was even featured in his graphic… the only one shot on a beach, I might add — haha! (By the way, the list is alphabetical, so I’m way down toward the end of the list.)

some of the people of the 'Top 120' list

I’ve known Tom for some years, being in the same general business (marketing). He’s an accomplished B2B marketing consultant and strategist. And he’s been blogging about as long as I have — maybe longer. I officially started writing a blog (meaning on an actual blogging platform) in 2005.  I’m now up to 690 posts! But Tom seems much more serious about his blog. He even has ads! So, maybe he’s making some money from it.

Tom was also early to jump on Twitter, probably about the time I did — in 2007. I resisted starting to tweet in 2006, after the much-hyped launch of Twitter at SXSW in March of 2006. But, several months later, I couldn’t resist “micro-blogging” any longer, so I gave in to the temptation in early 2007. Fast forward, I’m now well beyond 35,000 tweets — and I just can’t stop, haha!  (By the way, have you noticed that Twitter recently dropped that stat on all its user profiles? Why?? That’s too bad.)

Anyway, Tom did an admirable job — I’m sure that compiling the list was a lot of work. (And I thanked him.) I thought it was kinda strange that several people on the list had only 2 or 3 tweets in the last 90+ days… are you kidding? But not to judge here — hey, maybe those tweets were really, REALLY good ones? But I think about 10 or more of us were  listed as having 100+ tweets in the past 90 days. And I know for me it would have been more like 200. Just sayin’! Of course, sharing content of value is what I think Twitter his all about, and that’s really all I try to do.

Tom explains his methodology in his blog post (linked above). He had to walk a fine line and not make anyone mad — including some people he felt a need to mention, even though they aren’t very active on Twitter(??).  Maybe they like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn  better? Or even Pinterest? Or they’re dancing on TikTok. Each to his own, I guess.

I will say that a lot of us active Twitter users on Tom’s list are very active on LinkedIn as well. In my case, I joined in August 2003 when there were only 18,000 of us there. Now, there are more than 700 million!

Another good thing Tom did in compiling his Twitter list: he left out those who are tweeting a lot about politics. Good call, Tom!

Ten New Year’s Resolutions… and I Intend to Break Them All

champagne toast

Have you been doing a lot of thinking about making changes in 2020? Yeah, me too. Well, I did for a little while, anyway. And I actually came up with a few things I could resolve to do. But I quickly came to my senses. Nah! — why would I do these things? Here my list of discarded resolutions:

1) I will not tweet so much about $AAPL.

Okay, I admit it. What I do on Twitter, week in and week out, is over the top — all my cheering for the best company, and stock, in the world. But no chance I will stop. Sorry — I’ve been an investor in $AAPL since 1990. And it’s just too much fun trolling the Apple haters. (It’s hell to be right.)

2) I will go to SXSW again in March.

Don’t think so. Got the t-shirt. Don’t even wear that. No CES either — and no Times Square New Year’s Eve (like I ever did or would). You get the idea.

3) I will have coffee with every single person who wants to “pick my brain.”

Are you kidding me? Just seeing if you were paying attention. (And, yes, that awful phrase is actually still being used by some people.)

4) I will stop telling startup founders their pitch decks are… lacking.

I can’t — that would be impossible. Because 90% of them are pretty bad in my long experience. (And the other 10% can use a boost.) Haven’t seen one yet that can’t be improved. And don’t get me started about Executive Summaries. But I try my damndest to help folks with both.

5) I will quit Facebook.

No, I do still post to it once a month or so. Yeah, that’s about it. So, it’s still worth a teeny bit to me. Still ticked that they stopped allowing all my tweets to go automatically to my Facebook feed. That made my Facebook friends think I was amazing — posting multiples times per day. Little did they know I rarely ever went there… muahahaha!

6) I will sign up for a paid account on LinkedIn.

Thought about that for a microsecond. Are you kidding? What a rip! Who’s in charge of pricing at that place? Don’t they know that a large percentage of the population doesn’t care about the traditional, corporate work world anymore? They don’t care about a site for job hunting and job hopping and touting all one’s multiple advanced degrees. Soon, 40% of the workforce will be freelance or contract workers. And a recent survey found 51% of those folks would never take a traditional job, no matter how much it paid. Sure, LinkedIn’s an okay networking site. So I’ll keep using it for free. Thanks, Microsoft!

7) I will stop ignoring LinkedIn connection requests from people I don’t know or from countries I never intend to visit.

Haha! Just checking again to see if you were paying attention. And is LinkedIn (and Microsoft) really proud of having created a channel where so many jerks are trying to sell crap all day long?

8) I will spend more time at WeWork.

I didn’t spend much time when I got a free account for a year (which will end soon), so why the hell would I pay for it?

9) I will be more discerning about what clients I take on.

No, I will be extremely more discerning.

10) I will work really hard to get more followers on Instagram, and will open an account on TikTok.

Yeah, when Hell freezes over.

That’s it. Ten things to start my 2020 right! Now, off to work out and lose a few pounds… 🙂

SaaS is so yesterday. The new hotness? Software WITH a Service: #SwaS

So, we know you’ve been sitting around wondering… what’s the next big wave in B2B software? Well, so have a bunch of Silicon Valley VCs, according to the author of a recent TechCrunch guest post, “Why ‘Do It For Me’ Is The Next Big Thing.”

Service-keyboard-450wThe author is Anthony P. Lee, a general partner at Altos Ventures, and he makes an excellent argument about how SaaS is no longer enough — specifically, for companies in the ginormous space we call Small Business.

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Quantifying the Hype: A Data Analysis of #CES2015

cesThink of it as the morning after. Actually, it was the Monday following the week when 2015 International CES ended, on a Friday. I was scrolling through my email, trying to decompress — feeling some pride in surviving multiple weeks of being blasted with hundreds (thousands?) of PR pitches from an absolutely cuh-razy variety of exhibiting companies, from all over the globe. The blisters on my feet weren’t hurting so bad anymore. Whew! Things were finally starting to… slow… down.

Part of this decompression process is always trying to form in my head my overall opinion of the show — this after writing a couple of posts (and shooting a ton of photos), but no one person can ever really write enough posts to describe their entire experience at this thing. Which begs the question, how the hell do I summarize yet another year of this massive tech-product sensory overload? It is not easy netting it out!

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API Adoption And The Open Cloud: What Is An API? [Infographic]

I really like this infographic from the Rackspace blog. Very helpful for people to understand APIs. It also cites some great data from my frends at ProgrammableWeb.

Quoting from the post:

You probably use application programming interfaces (APIs) multiple times a day and aren’t even aware of it. They make it easier to share photos with friends, access massive data stores and drive new app development. With the rise of APIs, including our own Open Cloud API, we’ve compiled an overview to help you understand how APIs work, how you’re already using them, and how businesses are finding big successes with APIs.

 

Rackspace® — API Adoption And The Open Cloud: What Is An API? [Infographic] Rackspace® — API Adoption And The Open Cloud: What Is An API? [Infographic]

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