Kevin Kelly: Better Than Free

Kevin Kelly brilliantly sums up the entire internet economy in an article entitled Better Than Free. His thesis is that the internet is basically a giant copy machine, but that as copies of content become more abundant, they lose their value. For a business to become successful in the age of the internet, they have to offer things that cannot be copied. He lists eight:

  • Immediacy
  • Personalization
  • Interpretation
  • Authenticity
  • Accessibility
  • Embodiment
  • Patronage
  • Findability

In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them “generatives.” A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.

Another overriding factor he mentions is trust. I suggest that if you or your business have any connection with the internet (and that’s all of us, especially if you’re reading this!), then you read Kevin’s article immediately. I think there are the seeds of a million business plans in there.

Job Description 2.0

David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, has an interesting blog entry about what a job description for a marketing or public relations practitioner should sound like in this new age of social media. I think the main quality required is curiosity:

You’re curious about new things and always try stuff like Skype, Second Life, Twitter, Ryze, XING, digg, and reddit early.

People who are willing to try new things and are not afraid of a little dabbling should be getting work. Perhaps this is what Joe Thornley was getting at in his assertion that he won’t hire people who don’t blog. I reacted strongly to that statement, but I can definitely see where he and others like him are coming from. They want people who are using the tools already, who don’t have to be taught to use them. But that’s where the educators can seem just a little off base. You can’t teach curiosity, or passion. Joe feels he can figure out who someone is from reading their blog and following their online trail, and he’s right. But should educators be counseling people to create these things in the first place? I mean, if a 50 year old professor has to tell a 20 year old student about new technologies on the web, then something feels amiss.

Super Bah!

I’m a little disappointed that I missed what sounds like the most exciting Super Bowl game in ages. I was delighted to hear about the Giants upset of the Patriots, but I’m sorry to say I missed every single minute of the game. We’d arranged to pick up Brooke’s mum at the airport around 4:30 yesterday. She was coming back from a two-week cruise in Hawaii, and we’d heard she’d been a bit sick with a cold for the past week. But when she got off the plane, it was clear this was more serious than a cold. She told us she hadn’t slept or eaten much in two days and that she’d been coughing up stuff earlier in the week. So we took her directly to Emergency and by the time we got home at 10:30, the game was over.

The doctor told us she’s got pneumonia, but she’s doing better already. A good night’s sleep was the first thing she needed. But instead of her staying with us for just one night and then driving home to Collingwood, it looks like we’re hosting a sick houseguest for the next few days.

There’ll be another Super Bowl next year, I hear, but it still would have been great to see such a competitive game. How was the halftime show? Did I miss any wardrobe malfunctions?

Is Blogging Now A Career Move?

It started with a well-meaning post from Joe Thornley, of Thornley-Fallis Public Relations, one of the savviest PR companies around. Their embrace of social media cheers me up immensely, and Joe writes interestingly and often about how blogging and other social media tools can be used as part of an overall public relations strategy. But when he called blogging an essential for new PR practitioners, a red flag went up for me. He advises students:

I do not hire entry level people without looking at their blog, following their twitter stream and checking their Facebook presence. I want a sense of who they are over time, not just when they are in my office. I want to know what they think on the issues they care about and how they express themselves. I want to see whether and how they connect with others. And I can find out all those things from their social media presence.

It’s not really Joe’s post specifically that bothered me. It’s how it will be interpreted by students eager to line up that first job. I’ve already seen what I call “the rise of the pundit” drain all the personality out of a huge part of the blogosphere. Eager to show how much we know, many of us now use our blogs as soapboxes, hoping to be noticed and hired. Maybe I’m just a crotchety old blogger, but I miss the days when blogs were an extension of a person’s whole life, not just of their job.

In fact, the advice Thornley gives to these students makes me afraid that their “blogs” will be nothing more than collections of sycophantic links to the people they want to notice them, or empty boosterism of a career they’ve yet to fully try on. When the doubts come, and the disappointment, and they finally have something interesting to say, will they be afraid to say it on their blogs?

I’m rehashing a lot of what I said in my comment over on Joe’s site, but one thing I want to repeat is that it would be a real shame if the blog became just an extension of the resumé.

I’ve had a few wobbles lately about crossing the boundary here and talking about work, but ultimately, I want this space to be a true representation of what I am thinking about and struggling with over time. If I was beginning my blog in 2008 instead of way back in 2000, I don’t know if I’d be able to hold that conviction with any confidence. And I find that sad.

Rebecca Blood, pioneer weblog historian, wrote way back in 2000 in Weblogs: A History and Perspective:

As corporate interests exert tighter and tighter control over information and even art, critical evaluation is more essential than ever. As advertisements creep onto banana peels, attach themselves to paper cup sleeves, and interrupt our ATM transactions, we urgently need to cultivate forms of self-expression in order to counteract our self-defensive numbness and remember what it is to be human. We are being pummeled by a deluge of data and unless we create time and spaces in which to reflect, we will be left with only our reactions. I strongly believe in the power of weblogs to transform both writers and readers from “audience” to “public” and from “consumer” to “creator.” Weblogs are no panacea for the crippling effects of a media-saturated culture, but I believe they are one antidote.

It’s getting harder to fly that idealistic flag, but I’m not ready to give up yet. The question is, how do we teach students to be fearless when they are being taught to blog in college to make them better employees?

Word of Mouth is Real

Just browsing around this morning, I came across a great example of word of mouth marketing. Michael McDerment is a successful Toronto entrepreneur behind the innovative FreshBooks.com online invoicing service. In a 2005 entry on his own blog, he recommends a company called Landmark Merchant Solutions as a “great business partner” for small companies looking for payment gateway services. In the comments to that entry, there is a link to a bulletin board where an amazing conversation has unfolded. Apparently, Landmark isn’t such a great business partner after all.

Shady business practices, drug abuse, sexual harassment, lawsuits. And I’m only about a quarter way down the page. The thread starter has been participating in this conversation for more than three years now. Word of mouth is real.