Thoughts on GSM

My thoughts on the first Got Social Media Conference:

Erica O’Grady and Kelsey Rutger put on an excellent conference yesterday at the Houston Technology Center. Got Social Media was an advanced introduction to social media today. Many thoughtful presentations. Here’s a few insightful remarks I took away from the conference:

  • “Markets As Conversation” – yes, something I’ve always advocated, and is a sub-text of the “Austrian School” approach to economics. Sorely lacking, though, in mainstream economics.
  • “Customers like having a voice”. Echos of above
  • non-profits online (in social media space) are spending a lot of time saying “thank you”. This is a nice lesson that I think the non-profits I work with will love to emphasize.
  • “Women are motivated by respect, being listened to” – Laura Mayes. Yes, there are gender differences in markets, and marketing. I’ve often stated that shopping is the ultimate expression of capitalism, and women are, stereotypically, the ultimate shoppers … so, by extension, women are the ultimate capitalists! Recognizing this, I think we will see, in the long run, a “softening” of markets and businesses – there will be more listening, more give-and-take … and hopefully less exploitation, fraud, and con games in the marketplace. But, that takes me to: Continue reading Thoughts on GSM

Measuring Web Illiteracy

Here’s a little game to play: google a common word. Make a note of the count on the upper right side of the search results page. Call that y. Now, google for a misspelling of that same word. Call it’s result count x.

The ratio

x/y

can be called the World Wide “Web Misspelling Ratio”. We can express it as a percentage, and call it wemiss for short, pronounced like maybe how Marlon Brandon might say, “You are wemiss in not using a spelling checker on your web pages.”

What words have the highest wemiss measure? Searching for a few of my pet peeves, I’ve found:

Continue reading Measuring Web Illiteracy

Taubman Sucks – The Movie

This just arrived in my mailbox, Hank Mishkoff has posted the movie about his free speech case on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4ITE7ITSR6M

The movie is short.  If you want to get a feel for the real saga, you have to read his website, where he documents, in fine detail, the whole suit against him and the back in forth between himself and the lawyers.  Until very near the end, he represented himself, and did an excellent job at that.  The lawyers, on the other hand, did a good job at demonstrating their bullying skills.

This is a landmark free speech case, so everyone should learn about it.  It’s a great story about how an underdog won.