Category Archives: Social Media

I am the Twitter!

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
See how they run like fish from a whale, see the bird fly.
I’m crying.

Sitting on a hashtag, waiting for the tweet to come.
Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody tuesday.
Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your tweet grow long.
I am the poster, they are the posters.
I am the twitter, goo goo g’joob.

Mister celebrity ranting,
Pretty little celebrities in a row.
See the tweets fly like texts from a teen, see how they stream.
I’m crying, I’m crying.
I’m crying, I’m crying.

Random insane drivel, dripping from a newbie’s feed.
A desperate housewife, pornographic priestess,
Now you been a naughty girl you let your secrets out.
I am the poster, they are the posters.
I am the twitter, goo goo g’joob.

Standing in an airport Starbucks … waiting for the brew.
If the brew runs out, you get your fix
From candybars at the news stand.
I am the poster, they are the posters.
I am the twitter, goo goo g’joob.

Expert textpert channel blasters,
Don’t you think the joker laughs at you?
See how they smile like whales in the sky,
See how they snied.
I’m crying.

Internet Spinal Tap, cranking up the dial to eleven.
Gary William Brolsma syncing Numa Numa.
Man, you have to see them kicking that Mark Zuckerberg.
I am the poster, they are the posters.
I am the twitter, goo goo g’joob.
goo goo g’joob goo goo g’joob.
Goo goo g’joob goo

If you’re not following the doctor on Twitter, what aren’t you missing?

I Am The Infotainer

I am the infotainer
and I know just where I ebb
Another social blogger
on another social web
Today I am your favourite
I may have earned your likes
But I know the rag, you’ll forget my tag
And I won’t be here in another year
If I don’t maintain the spikes

I am the infotainer
and I’ve had to pay my price
The sites I did not join at first
Now make me post it twice
Ah, but still they come to taunt me
Still they want their say
So I’ve learned to blog with an eye on the log
I let ’em scrawl my wall and I follow ’em all
Then they go their merry way

I am the infotainer
Read all around the world
I’ve graced all kinds of forums
And blogged about the squirrels
I can’t remember topics
I don’t remember tags
Ah, but what the hell
You know it’s just as well
‘Cause after a week and a thousand tweets
It all becomes the same

I am the infotainer
I bring along my pen
I’d like to write a page or two
But you can’t wait ’til then
And I’ve got to meet expenses
I got to stay in line
Gotta place those ads for new brake-pads
and online gaming and picture hanging
So I just don’t have the time

I am the infotainer
I’ve come to speak my mind
You’ve read my latest blog post
It’s part of my timeline
It took me days to write it
They were the best days of my life
It was a beautiful piece
But you found it obese
If you’re gonna get a tweet
You have to make it neat
So you cut it down to one-three-five

I am the infotainer
The idol of my age
I don’t make any money
When I become the sage
and post with the Technoratti
and the LinkedIn messiahs
If I miss a day, I’ll fade away
I’ll drop off of the page like I had the phage
Like another pariah

I am the infotainer
and I know just where I ebb
Another social blogger
on another social web
Today I am your favourite
I may have earned your likes
But I know the rag, you’ll forget my tag
And I won’t be here in another year
If I don’t maintain the spikes

I’ve Lost My Marbles!

Last time I saw them, three days ago, I was playing a rousing game of Ringo (not to be confused with Rango, who is one heck of a lizard may I add) with my developer colleagues (who are very easily amused, and even more easily distracted by giant rubber bands — but that’s a story for another day). I know this because I distinctly remember sticking seven marbles in a row and trouncing my competition in the final game. But that’s not important. What’s important is that they’re gone! Gone! GONE!

Like your average genius, I’m a few cards short of a full deck, and they were probably the only things keeping my eccentricities and insanity in check. (All geniuses are insane. We don’t all reach the depths that von Neumann or Tesla reached, but other than my marbles, and the tires on my car, I think all things should be square. Because it’s Hip to Be Square.) I’m already losing it. Since that time, I’ve joined every social network known to me. I’m fully aware that Tweets are NOT conversations, that Twitter will likely make me stoopid, and that, with the Facebook double-whammy (where one can spend his days poking, prodding, and writing grafitti on infinite walls), I’ll have no time to be social. I know I should remain faceless, spaceless, and twitter free but there’s a big disconnect between logic and action. I know it would be more productive to try and resolve P vs. NP, capture a Higgs Boson, or to try to answer why Hulk Hogan is still in show business … but all I can say is Game On!.

I’m now linked-in, plaxo’d (which I guess, these days, is for the old and plastered), Google-plussed (but given that, as a degreed mathematician, I actually know what a googol is, I’m not sure how that is physically possible), slide-shared (even though playgrounds don’t exist outside of schoolyards anymore), pinned (but not pinned down, thanks to wireless and the power of the Macbook pro), living in twitter-space (and hoping I don’t get flattened by the fail whale — although it might be cool to get eaten by it if it’s anything like Möbius Dick), and facebook’d (even though I haven’t been arrested — what’s up with that)? And now I’m zanier than the Sourcing Maniacs after a month in the boardroom! (And fondly remembering the days of the APE Circus.)

All I can say is that I hope I find my marbles soon! I don’t think I’ll last as long as Tootles if I don’t. (But if it takes them that long to be returned to me, I hope they are returned covered in pixel dust. I’m gonna need it to fly through the ever expanding social media space.) In the interim, feel free to link to, contact, circle, share, pin, follow, and friend me as appropriate — and be sure to join the Sourcing Innovation groups on LinkedIn and Facebook.

And join me in a rousing verse of the zany socialites! (Sung to the tune of the maniac’s theme song.)

It’s time for social-maniacs
And we’re zany to the max
So just sit back and relax
You’ll tweet ’til you collapse
We’re social-maniacs!

Come join us on the Facebook
And the Twitter Channel too
Just for fun we poke around … and see who’s keeping tabs
You’ll find us in the Starbucks on our laptops and our pads
Reading mail and timeline trails
And tweeting off the rails

‘Cuz we’re social-maniacs
Who take pride in Twitter-yak
We’ll pack away the bits
While the servers store our twits
We’re social-maniacs!


Now someone raise me a picture of Wil Wheaton collating paper!

Want To Keep the Edge in Negotiations? Be Wary of Social Media

Earlier this year SI published a post on Common Negotiation Ploys that will be utilized by your sales counterparts every chance they get to try and gain the upper hand. We warned you that you had to be knowledgeable about each and every single one of these ploys because your sales counterparts, who get weeks of training before they’re even let out into the field in a supporting sales work, will do whatever they can to get the upper hand — and that’s the last thing you want.

In particular, you have to be wary of the

  • Getting to Know You,
  • Making an Impression, and
  • Mirroring

ploys because if you let the sales person become your friend, it will be a lot harder to stay impartial and bring your A-game, as you won’t want to beat him down and, more importantly, you’ll be a lot more likely to fall for the other ploys as you won’t want to believe that he’s trying to play you for the fool.

It used to be that a sales person had to show up, wine you and dine you to get to know you. But now, thanks to social media, he can learn more about you in a few hours of background research than a few months of relationship building, all thanks to online reputation monitoring tools that allow him to gather and review every single piece of data you share on social network sites. If you’re not careful on sites like Facebook and Twitter, the salesperson will know your favourite sport, your favorite team, your favorite wine, and your favorite restaurant and invite you out for an evening discussion of their upcoming product release which will just happen to be at your favorite restaurant, where your favorite wine will be waiting at the table when you arrive, followed by a trip to the ballpark to see your favorite team, at home, square off against their arch rivals. And that discussion will just happen to address how they are going to solve four of the five biggest problems you have, which the sales person will already know.

And while you might think this sounds great, the reality is that your barriers will be weakened because of the comfort level you feel at your favorite restaurant and favorite ball park and then shattered by a discussion of what your problems are. You’ll then believe that the salesperson represents a vendor who actually cares about you and who actually wants to solve your problems when, in fact, the vendor has no intention of changing its roadmap and the “solutions” being spun are not solutions at all but temporary band-aids with weak glue that fall off as soon as they get a little wet. But the story will be so nicely spun, and a discussion of release dates so carefully avoided, that you’ll think the vendor is spinning gold when, in fact, the vendor is melting lead.

And the vendor will know all this because he will have read every tweet you ever made that relates to an interest or like, consumed your Facebook profile and all common threads, monitored every LinkedIn group you were involved in, and reviewed any and every presentation or paper you shared online in the past two years. That’s why, as HP VP Scott McClellan found out earlier this year when he demonstrated the hazard of sharing LinkedIn profiles, you have to be careful what you post on-line. It’s not just your friends who will be following you, but your enemies. And they will be paying MUCH closer attention.