Entrinsik Informer - Most Powerful Unknown BI Tool On Earth

Why Martin Is In Love With A Tool
I'm at work. It's 6:00. The Clash is LOUD (Radio Clash) in my headphones, and I just discovered an injustice someone must correct (so am electing myself LOL). Normally I don't tug on Superman's cape, spit into the wind or mess with JIM, but I have a bone to pick with Gartner. Gartner being the research Superman in my analogy. Gartner released their revised Magic Quadrant BI analysis today and, as comprehensive as this TOME is Gartner forgot the most powerful Business Intelligence tool on planet earth - Entrinsik's Informer.

Fair disclosure - I did consulting work for Entrinsik six months ago, but am just a fan now. Well let me modify that. I am a fan WITH INTENTION. I'm working with my boss, Jon Jordan massively brilliant founder of Raleigh web developers Atlantic BT, on the project of my life. Ever had a sense that you are finally, in my case after 54 years, right where you are supposed to be? If you think my comment about Jon is an attempt to bury my nose you know where then you are new here at ScentTrail Marketing. There are a few nice things about having the BIG C and not going to live to a ripe old age - the need to kiss any one's anything drops to as close to zero as it can get. Even if you think I am a kisser of a certain posterior region, read on and see if you don't agree about Jon.

Like all "journey" stories you, dear reader, need background. As a fluke I created one of the first B2C and B2B fully enabled ecommerce websites in 1999. Maybe "fluke" is too strong a word. My spidey sense was tingling pretty LOUD since about 1995. Running a startup fueled by sales of Magnetic Poetry Kit and my 401k I fell in love. Unfortunately my love was for Internet marketing not my soon to be ex Mrs. Smith. I still think the best thing I ever did was the first design for FoundObjects.com (launched November, 1999 and now RIP except in the Way Back Machine). Those Mondrian lines are 3 months of my life I will NEVER get back.

Learning to write HTML, learninb enough Photoshop and Illustrator to be dangerous, write copy and create FoundObjects' email marketing (had some help there but that is another post) was about as much fun as I've ever had (save riding a bicycle across America). When the money ran out and I was asked to leave the company I started (can you say PAIN), FoundObjects.com created enough trust that a tall blonde gave me a huge break. Peggy handed me the keys to her little  just over a million in gross revenue ecommerce site and said, "Drive as fast as you want."

I will never forget when I asked Peggy about my marketing budget. My background is Consumer Products Goods. I'd run a P&L before as Director Dairy Sales for Nutrasweet, but NEVER have I had a boss answer that question with, "There is no budget, as long as there is positive ROI spend what you need." Imagine a person you hardly know handing you the keys to their mothballed Ferrari and saying, "See if you can open her up a little."

My team and I did open that site up a little. After some adjusting to one another (six months) and credit gets spread over about 3 teams since skilled ecommerce designers, email marketers and merchandisers are hard to keep, we rocked the house moving gross sales up 3x without crushing net return (I think the average net cash returned was 18% over seven years). I became a stock holder and life was good.

The Big C
Then I heard "cancer" and my name in the same sentence and life changed. Good news is I 'm doing great thanks to miracle of modern medicine, but I got into "No dream left behind," mode and cashed in my stock to ride a bicycle across America (so I went a little crazy LOL). This background is important so you know I have ecommerce chops. Chops that made my last employers over $25M (gross) and somewhere north of $4M (net net).

All of that by way of explaining my ecom-IQ may not be the highest, but it is not the lowest either. Somewhere in my Director of Ecommerce journey there were tiny glimpses of something, something very cool but hard to understand. We were using Responsys for email marketing (btw, Responsys was just name a visionary in Gartner's Magic Quadrant study the same one I am taking to task). Responsys started talking "life cycle management" using dynamic zones, segmentation and business rules to create highly relevant email marketing (cool).

"Wow," I remember thinking, "if we could understand user behavior in real time and fire those dynamic zones with segmentation and personas we could make some coin." We are always more intelligent in memory than reality, better looking too, but I was intrigued enough by the promise of such an idea to start having discussions with Baynote. Baynote is (or was I can't tell if they've made it through the recession or not), a cool SaaS (software as a service). Baynote took the Responsys dynamic zone idea and put it on ecommerce platforms, on websites. Read the cookie, watch the behavior and fire relevant content into the dynamic zone on a webpage. Cool right?

Central Junior High / Choate

One more quick side story. In my secret geeky youth (and if my Central or Choate friends are reading this you know why I was so secretive about this), I loved reading Isaac Asimov. Asimov's Foundation Series with its 3 Laws of Robotics and a cool future world keep me busy for many a summer night. One of my favorite "future" ideas in Asimov's Foundation Series was the ability to predict the future. Asimov figured in such an advanced civilization advances in math would mean the future, at least at the macro level, would be knowable and could be predicted.

Predicting Tiny Futures In Clean Well Lighted Places
In Foundation your future and my future remained unknown, but OUR futures could be known. You can argue about whether such knowledge is a good idea only IF you don't have the Big C. If you are a fellow traveler in the only tribe I hope you NEVER join, then you know how precious it would be to know a few things :). Extend Baynote and Responsys' Life Cycle Management to their logical end and you know some stuff.

The natural mathematical extension of those tools is an ability to predict the future. Granted we Internet marketers would be predicting tiny futures in highly structured environments we created, but how cool would it be to KNOW, after three touches, where a website visitor is going and the Quant certainty of their "conversion"? Ultra cool right?

That is precisely the idea Jon Jordan drew on piece of paper about three months ago. "HOLY SH*T," I remember thinking, "its the Asimov thing." Still think I am kissing Jon's you know what? The cool part is Jon is quiet and somber (mostly). He hands me this piece of paper casually like it was nothing. He outlines the idea I've had floating around in my head for, let's see, about ten years. I grabbed some tape and put that piece of paper on my wall like art (before he took it back and now we don't know where it is which sucks because I want that piece of paper bronzed or something).

There are a bunch of little pain in the ass things between NOW and being able to predict a website's future like creating some killer algorithms (have a great Quant source now), figuring out how to instantly massage petabytes of data in less time than it takes to blink an eye and a few other little things, but there is one BIG thing - INPUTS.

Sitting here with the CLASH still LOUD I can think of these inputs easily and off the top of my head:

• About 10 heuristic measures (time on, abandonment, best and worst pages, average pages in what track by which persona, etc..)
• About 10 behavioral measures (read the cookie for geo-location, keyword, referring link and fire the dynamic zones based on modeled business rules)
• Social Inputs (are related keys being searched, blogged, shared, who are major influencers, where are the tribes)
• Semantic Analysis (what are people FEELING about whatever brand we are marketing, how are those feelings becoming actions, who is creating what kind of waves and knowing the differences between snarky and compliments is TOUGH)
• Merchandise Data (what is who buying how often based on what triggers and how do they feel about it after, are they becoming advocates, on B2B sites merchandise is content so what content is leading to the biggest result)
• Mobile Data (mobile doesn't function in anyway I understand yet except to know it is going to be HUGE so I damned well better understand it soon and it has to be an input into this system)
• Game Triggers (gamification, I realize after writing my Gamification White Paper is all around us all the time so social signals and social capital have to be system inputs)
• Legacy Data (we have this weird, ancient CRM and data from there has to be an input)
• Archived CMS (every piece of content we've ever created has to be tagged and ready to fire)
• Feeds (we need high update frequencies, what I call Ping Rates, so we need feeds as part of this system)

Cool is feeling like IMPOSSIBLE right about now right? Add in the need to model, filter, process and serve result sets in real time and you get ready to jump off the roof. At least that is where I was. I could, thanks to Jon's drawing, see the future but coupling so many disparate data sets together seemed impossible. Many reading this post won't know what that last sentence means, and your life is better for it (trust me).

Data Integration Can Kill You
Data integration can kill you. Data exist in all kinds of ways, file structures, data warehouses and actually physical places  (drives since the cloud hasn't taken over yet). Extracting data from one system, say your ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system or your legacy database that controls customer information, order history and other critical sales flow data that your team wrote in some crazy language no one supports anymore or Google Analytics can be a pain. Extracting data from 10 systems is landing on the moon.

And then there was the Leupen family. Doug Leupen, Entrinsik's CEO and Founder, started creating enterprise software not long after Gordon Moore created his famous LAW, the law driving all this digital revolution stuff, and well before there was a Google, Facebook or Twitter. His Harvard educated son Doug is no slouch either. The Leupen family has created the most revolutionary tool on earth, and no one knows about it (shows you good a consultant I am :).

Well not "no one". Educational institutions love Entrinsik's Informer. They couldn't live without its agnostic data coupling. Why hasn't Entrinsik made billions and billions for sites like Amazon, Walmart and Target? Doug started Entrinsik to sell a "Pick System". One day he shared the sad story of how Dick Pick lost the database war to relational databases. Fascinating story I will try to remember to blog another time. Entrinsik SEMtek is a Pick System with heavy penetration in educational institutions.

I attended Entrinsik's Informer User Conference (ICON 2012) this year and talked to a lot of customers. Before that meeting Doug told me how much his customers love his company. "Sure," I remember thinking. Doug didn't, and doesn't, exaggerate. Sitting with IT Directors, CIOs and CTOs from California to Florida I heard stories of LOVE for Entrinsik Informer. Informer is the glue holding disparate systems together.

These educational IT departments have to make do with less. They can't spend millions to upgrade their ERP, course management, conference and HR systems. They keep applying bailing wire and chewing gum (in the form of Excel and other random "throw away" tools that never seem to get thrown away) hoping their systems make it through the night. These hard working educators can't live without Entrinsik's Informer.

Hearing The Future, Again
My friend and Entrinsik VP Marketing Sharon Shelton pulled me out of a room at ICON 2012 to hear a man describe the future. In the front of about 20 educators a short, kinetic man with a ponytail was describing how, using Informer, it was possible to fire decision making data in real time. Better, he described how it was possible to loop data on itself creating ever tighter stimulus-response arcs.

That man was Charles Barouch and he just completed my boss's diagram. It was clear every educator at ICON 2012 would just as soon their secret weapon stay in old brick buildings with ivy. Why hasn't Entrinsik's Informer changed everything we know about Internet marketing? Why does Gartner not even KNOW about Entrinsik's Informer? Why is Responsys voted "Visionary" when I've met true visionaries and they live here in Raleigh? I can answer these very important questions in three words: Geeks, Quants and Dreamers.

Geeks
Geeks (IT departments and I mean use the G word with love :) are having a tough go lately. Information Technology departments are under tremendous pressure to open their kingdoms and they don't want to. Access has been power for a long time for enterprise IT. Let the rabble play with some minor league ad-hoc tools as long as the rabble only hit some subset of the data in very controlled ways and mostly at night. Dreamers (Marketers and sales guys) are demanding real time data now. If you listen carefully you can hear the, "Let My Data Go" chants growing in insistence and attitude.

Dreamers
Marketing and sales guys are reading geeky stuff now too. They don't want to hear about all the issues and problems when it is possible to Google an infinite number of things with a return set sure to come back at the speed of light. "Get with the program," these "power users" are demanding of the already hard pressed Geeks. Standing over both of them, like Switzerland in more ways than they control the MONEY, are the CFO's. There is a reason CFOs usually end up running companies - they know where and how the money is made (or stashed as the case may be :).

Quants
CFOs want sales increases but they don't want to pay for them. I've been on the opposite end of this kind of magical thinking more times than is comfortable, but every CFO I've ever worked with was willing to DEPRECIATE AN EXISTING ASSET. In fact, they LOVE it when you come in and say, "Tom I don't need any NEW money because I've figured a way to put our OLD money to better use." Say that to your CFO and see if he or she doesn't do a little dance.

You see it now right? Entrinsik's Informer upgrades every existing system for the cost of lunch (in relative terms and believe me your CFO only thinks in relative terms). A CFO is a subset of another group who must shoulder some blame for Entrinsik's status as the most powerful unknown #BI tool on earth. Quants could change their company's lives if they did the analysis I just suggested, but most Quants work for a champion, a Napoleon on a white horse and our data democracy revolution has no such leader. Until a brilliant, somber main drew a diagram and a man with a pony tail described a python of a website.

We've come to the third act of our play where Geeks are tied up in their own funk because Dreamers are raiding their pantry and previously protecting Quant/Angel (CFOs) aren't stopping the raids nearly as aggressively as they used too. We need a hero to climb atop the white horse and say, "This Direction, let's go in this direction." Maybe that hero is Jon, Charles, Doug or me, but, having seen the future, I am not letting go. And I can be quite obstinate (ask my ex :).

I will see a modeled website tuned with real time data fire relevant content into dynamic zones in my lifetime if I have to spend every last dime and day working with geniuses, Quants, Geeks and Dreamers to get it done. I suspect, much to Gartner's eternal shame, Entrinsik's Informer is going to be the "secret sauce" making this dreamer's dream a reality.

On the eve of Entrinsik introducing their new dashboards I say, "ROCK ON Entrinsik, leave the lights on we will catch up and Gartner be damned."

To Tweet A Little Or A Lot, Aye There's The Rub

Over Memorial Day Weekend I set out to test a proposition. My "test tree" had two branches:

• What impact would "aggressive" tweeting have on list growth or decay (Twitter followers) and traffic to the other two properties I was using as part of the test (ScentTrail Marketing blog and my Scoop.it "Revolutionary" feeds).
• How would constantly tweaking and trimming to near real time impact my social goals impact my goals?

Social Media Marketing Test Goals
I had three social goals:

1. Increase Twitter Followers (get to 1800 followers or more by Monday a 4% increase on the 1,747 starting point).
2. Increase visits to ScentTrail Marketing by at least 10% over daily average of 200 visits.
3. See what impact being highly attentive to what was happening NOW made on other metrics.

Guy Kawasaki Inspiration
I like Guy. He shares easily and well, follows me back and included ScentTrail Marketing in his AllTop group. More than being someone you feel you can have a beer with and not mind paying, Guy is smart, passionate and real (all aspirations when I grow up :).

When someone told me I should be tweeting twice a day I shared a link to Guy's explanation for how he tweets. Here is my favorite piece of Guy's Tweeting Advice:

Twitter is a marketing tool for me. It's not a "social" activity or a game. This process is what it takes to make Alltop successful.
Question: How long do you spend on Twitter every day?
Answer: Asking me this is like asking Tiger Woods how much he plays golf. "It's what I do." If I'm on the computer, I'm on Twitter, and I'm on a computer eight hours per day.

Quote from: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/how-i-tweet-guy-kawasaki

Thank you Guy. This is what my tribe of Internet marketers and I do for a living. Perhaps it is strange to Tweet for a living, but I've done stranger things (trust me). This is not to say that tweeting 2x a day is goofystupid. If you are Oprah or a famous basketball player you will have and maintain millions of followers with little effort. If you are a hard working, ditch digging Internet marketer whose only claims to fame is going to school with Jamie Lee Curtis, working with Seth Godin and knowing Red Maxwell then tweeting 2x a day will build a list 10% greater than your closest friends and family.

I love my friends and family, but I get paid to make markets, to sell things (ideas, products, memes) online. Being an Internet marketer is a job I love, am good at and want to continue to do. Imagine I'm interviewing to be the CMO at a medium sized company here in the Triangle. "Martin," the interviewer says patiently but in a way it is clear our interview is over before it started, "help me understand how your Klout score is below 60, you have 200 Twitter followers and what is up with that embarrassing picture on Facebook?" I can't get that job (or any in my chosen profession) unless I understand what is going on behind the curtain, unless I visit and talk to the wizard. There is a Twitter wizard and his name is Guy Kawasaki.

Work Flow
Over the Memorial Day Weekend I wrote three blog posts on ScentTrail Marketing:


Death of Excel RIP
Story Is Your Marketing Strategy
The New SEO - What is Google Up To 

Up against three posts from the previous weekend:
Facebook IPO - Life Lessons For Zuckerberg's Clan
Bronto A Magical Email Marketing Dinosaur
SEO - Google's Float, Keyword Research and Long Tails

Each article was a test of different content silos I'm interested in and see as "hot" including: Business Intelligence (BI), Importance of Storytelling Post Google's Panda and Penguin updates and SEO after Panda and Penguin.

What I Compared Against
I've changed some significant things on ScentTrail about 3 weeks ago, so I was limited to comparing Memorial Day to the previous weekend (Friday through Monday). Figuring the extra days were a wash against the "poor" social nature of Memorial Day Weekend I pressed on.

Tools Used
Here are accounts I used in descending order:

@ScentTrail, Martin Marty Smith on Linkedin, Topsy
Curation Revolution, Business Intelligence Revolution, Startup Revolution and Thank You Revolution on my other Scoop.its
@StoryofCancer, @MobRiff along with a few posts @Atlanticbt (our company Twitter)
My Martin Smith Google Plus Page

My Martin Marty Smith Facebook Page

How Used
I used Scoop.it to test story concepts. This is how stories hitting three distinct areas of Internet marketing: BI, Stories and Panda and Penguin Google were chosen.

I used Twitter in real time to gauge RT's and pick up (something that can only be accurately understood using Topsy or some other ORM (Online Reputation Management) tool such as Google Alerts or Radian6.

I watched my Twitter timeline the most for evidence aggressive tweeting was fatiguing the list, and there was some, but I pressed on since losses were usually gained right back and then some.

I also watched Scoop.it's timeline for related stories and continued to comment on things my Scoop.it tribe knows I care about (cool tools usually from uber-curator Robin Good, cool infographics usually from uber-curator maxOz and cool Internet marketing trends from a host of uber-curators (Gregg, Mike, Internet Billborards, Level343, Gerit, Guiseppe, and etc...).

Finally, and this is a very important tip, I looked for ways to pull in the NOW. When a power Tweeter RTed me I followed suite. I found ways to call attention to the Memorial Weekend and other cool things friends or gurus were tweeting or talking about. I didn't JUST discuss my articles, but I followed the Argyle Social research that showed a 50%/50% mix of promotion to curation is best.


Marty's Memorial Day Twitter And Social Media Test Results
Here is what way too much time on a computer produced over the long weekend in order of what I found most interesting:

• Twitter Followers ended the weekend exactly at 1,800, up 96% over previous weekend gain.

•  Retweets Views up 211% reaching 31,323 vs. 15,901 thanks to power Tweeters such as @SEO_Exp, @1918 and @Gerrit_Bes (not easy to be previous weekend's almost 16K from power Tweeters @businessreporte and @cybereconomics)
•  Retweets were up 266% (from 15 to 40)
• Tweeted 33% more (83x vs. 64 over previous weekend)
• Gained 96% more Twitter followers than the previous weekend (53 vs. 27)
• ScentTrail Marketing had a record weekend on Monday with 342 unique visitors, 15% greater than the previous weekend

• Visits up 17%
• Repeat visitors up 2% (hard to dramatically move this metric, so 2% isn't bad)
• Other important metrics are tied to these seesaw style trended flat, positive or within reason: bounce (down 1%), pages viewed (flat) and time on was off 17% (would be concerning if the other metrics weren't positive)

Martin's Twitter Test Conclusion
The conclusion is simple and regular ScentTrail readers have heard it many times:

More and More, Faster and Faster, Better and Better

You can Tweet as much or as little as you like. As long as your tweets hit home with some tribe somewhere your list will grow. The closer you are to NOW or "near real time" the better, when power Tweeters pick up your stuff say THANKS, watch your metrics like a hawk on a wire looking for dinner and ROCK ON Kawasaki Style!


Resources:
To Tweet A Little Or A Lot on Prezi

Guy K Quote Ref:

Quote from: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/how-i-tweet-guy-kawasaki

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/12/how-to-use-twit.html#axzz1wJ68Ntzq
Guy's 2008 post describing how he uses Twitter

The New SEO - What Is Google Up To?

Think Like Google To Discover The New SEO

It isn’t as hard to think like Google as you might imagine. Putting all the romantic “do no evil” stuff aside Google is a corporation driven by the profit motive. It helps if you think of profits less “occupy Wall Street” and more “profits = freedom and sustainability”.

Google’s “products” are the infinity of its search database. Managing a business in infinite networked space brings some unique challenges and problems including:

• The Nothing Problem
• Fickle Brand Loyalty
• The Control Problem
• Content Explosion
• The Competition Problem

The Nothing Problem

Companies have strange corporate memories. Companies grab on certain “truths” and make those beliefs sacrosanct, immutable. Google has some of the smartest people on the planet. Here are some of Google's Canons and beliefs:

• More is better, more wins so index as much of the web as makes economic sense fast
• The three most important words in our vocabulary to create great customer experience are speed, speed and speed
• Our brand, such as it is, is intimately connected to our performance
• Our performance is dependent on others (the sites we shift traffic to who may or may not understand how the Internet works and the advertisers who buy our “ads”) 
• Moore’s Law means other networks are bound to create scale as the cost of creating such scale declines, so we must distinguish ourselves from them based on technical performance and customer experience 
• Ultimately Google is an idea not a thing, not a product in the usual sense, so our future depends on our performance, only great performance keeps Google's brand idea alive 
• If a competitor makes significant inroads the entire idea of Google is threatened

Google is a lesson in the creation of “new digital brands”, brands that are formed to be more idea than physical thing. The good news for “new brands” is their ability to adapt, change and evolve quickly. The bad news for “new brands” is their competitor’s ability to adapt, change and evolve quickly. Lose a step and you lose a mile. Lose a mile and you lose the business.

Fickle Brand Loyalty

Google isn’t GM. My grandfather used to say, “As goes GM so goes the country (and yes I realize how ironic that is now). Google has created a different kind of functional loyalty, the kind of loyalty that easily evaporates should Google not be able to fulfill its brand promise.

At 54 I still drink to much Coke, but that is testimony to how deep the brand hook (and a growing addition to sugar and caffeine) was set running around Texas in my youth. Google is different. No one will continue to “drink” Google if performance lags or there is a better alternative. Google’s future depends on leadership and leadership depends on performing creative destruction at regular intervals thus Panda and Penguin.

Control Problem

Google only controls half of its customer experience. The most important half comes from what happens AFTER Google fires a search set. If visitors click on links and don’t get what they want the Google idea is threatened. In a world gone mad with content Google as filter, Google as arbiter of “best” or “most relevant” becomes increasingly important. I would argue Google’s brand turns now more on WHAT we receive than HOW a search is executed (ah the good old days when getting anything was minor miracle, the days before Google raised our expectations for what comes our way).

In the not too distant past something slightly relevant and fast was sufficient. Google’s outstanding performance against this simple goal (something sort of relevant fast), a goal sufficient for pre-social networked times, raised their bar in our eyes.

And then there was Facebook. Once Facebook started to scale with its founder speaking of being “infrastructure” Google understood an important and mature marketing realization – the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The practical application of this rule is to co-opt those you can’t swallow whole. Google started using LIKES and SHARES as SEO signals because they had no choice.

Google’s response to Facebook’s significant threat is still forming. Make no mistake if Facebook didn’t exist Moore’s Law means some other invading horde would have arrived. If we think like Google we can see outlines of Google’s response to social networks and river of flooding UGC it brings including:

• Fix Google’s “vision” with a faster machine learning algorithm (created by Naveneet Panda) so the rose colored glasses come off and we (Google) can see the junk
• Use the traffic hammer to get partners to clean up their rooms
• Float the index gaining several advantages 
• Google seems more social and relevant creating a “one-to-some” feel much like social nets 
• Ad revenues increase because Google controls when and if an ad is displayed against what keywords and to whom (helps with targeting and makes it easy to identify spam) 
• Easier to create new products such as selling back SSL encrypted data to advertisers for a princely sum
• Move toward continuous integration where algorithm changes go up every minute of every day insuring Google's search engine math always wins AND it is almost impossible to game
•  Create a social network (Google+) and don’t hesitate to break the firewall between search results and ads (especially post float since no absolute references exists now)

These are brilliant moves, genius really. I’ve been an Internet marketer almost since inception (1995 or so several years before Google's founding), and a brand marketer for the likes of P&G and M&M/Mars before that and I can’t see a clear and present counter. Facebook has been so hostile to advertising for so long its reputation is set and business model questionable as its failed IPO demonstrates.

Here is the thing everyone is missing in Facebook’s failed IPO – Google’s Resurgence. Google is recreating search and search engine optimization as I write this. Uber-agency WPP’s CEO said his company, they run billions in online advertising, spent 17% more with Google in the first quarter 2012. WPP's Facebook ad spend for Q1 was flat. WPP is the smartest, Darwinian middleman you will ever meet.

If Google is an idea then WPP (and every other such uber-agency) is an idea of an idea. They spend money where there is proven ROI or they get swept off the table. Agencies sing for their supper daily. I began writing “The New SEO” after hearing WPP's CEO explain his spending on Squawkbox. Google’s Resurgence a critical piece of the Facebook failed IPO is the secret connection no one sees yet (at least not fully).

Content Explosion

"We create as much content every 2 days now as from the dawn of man until 2003."
former Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Moore’s Law says the amount of content we create or the tools we can create it with is not going to slow down anytime soon. When former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the most amazing factoid I’ve ever heard at the Techonomy conference in 2010 he correctly identified the culprit
as UGC (user generated content) coming from social networks (i.e. Facebook and Twitter).

See the threat to Google now?

Social networks don’t have to go head-to-head with Google. Social nets can swamp Google’s value proposition with crap content. Social networks can drown Google with its own water. That is sheer chess brilliance except for one thing – the opponent across the table is scaled, powerful and not stupid. Google understands Moore’s Law is driving their ship and so Gordon Moore's law can drive others too. The key to longevity lies in Google's response to the inevitable threats.

This game of chess masters is still playing out. It is Facebook’s move and we are deep in the game. Pawns are gone. The board is clear and Facebook’s next move will determine if they win, lose or draw. Investors are rightfully sitting this one out. If I were Facebook what would I do? No idea, but I would stop using the “infrastructure” word and start figuring out how to help brand advertisers love me more than they love Google (not an easy task, but not impossible either). Most important idea for the young Facebook team is to remember mutual benefits endure. That is M&M/Mars speak for we make money you make money. Outlaw Josey Wales speak for, “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it is raining.”

Competition Problem

Moore’s Law, that the cost of integrated circuits plummets even as power increases, creates an interesting market. Moore’s Law means NOW is more expensive than LATER, so what you do today must lock out competitors in a cheaper tomorrow. Good luck with that (lol).

Once there are scaled networks with open APIs then the next generation will mashup those networks. Mashups are COOL with Facebook and Google because; as long as the next generation of cool tools are mashing THEIR API they gain at least as much as the mashers. The stuff entrepreneurs build on their platforms makes them richer.

Facebook’s continued unwillingness to let Google at their data frustrates Google and is understandable. Facebook CAN’T let Google inside the fence since to do so means they move from potential MASTER to permanent SERF. Facebook is smart enough to see the obvious, but a master manipulator (think Steve Jobs deal with Bill Gates) would do just enough to co-opt Google. There is a deal in there that looks too good for Google to refuse, a deal that would create the perception of continued dominance allowing the breathing room necessary (for Facebook) to actually create an incursion that could threaten Google’s dominance.

Such a masterful deal is beyond Zuckerberg’s skills at present and that is why many of his Sand Hill Road investors fled into the night at the IPO. Better $50M today than nothing tomorrow. VC are all about risk and, short of some kind of an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” deal with Google Facebook’s days could very well be numbered (remember jury is awaiting Facebook’s counter to Google’s last move read my Life Lessons For Zuckerberg's Clan).

What should keep both of these giants up at night is SoLoMo. Social, Local and Mobile with VIDEO tossed in for good measure on an iPad is moments after the Mobile Big Bang.  No one has any real grip on what is happening in SoLoMo or how to monetize, create brand loyalty and rule what is clearly NEXT.

Will we still search in a mobile world? Absolutely since “search” is more common on Smart Phones and iPads than talking or texting, but who will we search with and why? That is the question and the rub. Neither Google of Facebook is distinguished by their mobile plays (yet) thus creating a vacuum. Business doesn’t like a vacuum anymore than nature so stay tuned to see if, while Google and Facebook are jousting, some other disruptive company arrives and shuffles the deck on both of them.

If you wondered why Facebook would pay a billion for Instagram? You have your answer - swallow whole and acquire new weapons before same is done unto you. I’m waiting for the startup entrepreneur who, like Zuckerberg, turns down a billion bucks. That is the guy (or girl) who must keep the Facebookers and Googlers up at night. That is the person who will know they are about to kick some status quo butt right into the DogPile of history.

Marty

Somewhat related: The Best SEO Is No SEO (on ScentTrail and Prezi)

Your Story Is Your Marketing Strategy

There is a dangerous human tendency. Dangerous to creating great marketing. We believe in silver bullets, the quick fix, the happy ending and other Hollywood myths. Life is simultaneously much more simple and complex.

Simple because our answers are almost always right in front of us. More complex because our answers are almost always right in front of us. Working on Curation Revolution this morning I stumbled on a great Inc. article.

Your Story Is Your Marketing Strategy

Companies are always trying to create the perfect marketing tools--tools that will make brand history, generate buzz for products, and earn those products an unshakable spot in customer's lives. Large companies have the luxury of throwing thousands of advertising dollars into marketing budgets, but small companies rarely can.  I have found that the most powerful marketing device a small company can develop is its story.

I've worked for big companies and small. They share, to more or less degrees, a common human tendency to believe in things "out there" while walking by meaning and value "in here". Attending Content Marketing World last year I heard a common refrain. "No one cares about HVAC," one frustrated attendee shared, "it's boring."

Hemingway famously bet a drink on his ability to spontaneously tell a story in six words. His fellow writers built a pot of money sure they finally had Papa. Surely he was too drunk and too arrogant to actually win the bet. Here is the story Hemingway wrote on a soiled napkin,

Baby Shoes, Hardly Used, For Sale

 If Hemingway can create a universe in six words, there is a story in HVAC. There is a story in plumbing. There is a story in any and every thing.  Here are Martin's Story Creation Tips to find those "in here" moments to define and distinguish your business:

• Ask Your Customers Their Story About You
  Bet someone without HVAC in North Carolina in August doesn't think of it as boring or nonessential (lol). When in doubt get your customers to share that and their stories. Customers may have a passion for your business you don't know about, a passion that can help you see the magic in something you do each day.
  
  
• Write Something Daily
  Writers know writing is like riding a bicycle. You always will know how to do it, but the more you write the easier it is. Internet marketing is also about more and more, faster and faster, better and better. The amount of content you create determines the size of the net you cast and so the number of fish you catch. I write something every single day. Is everything I write GREAT or life altering? Not be a long shot, but I come from the "great" as a function of hard work school. Perspiration is often the best form of inspiration.
  
  
• Get Over The Who Am I Factor
  I had a coworker say to me once, "Who am I to comment, who am I to say?" I understand this lack of confidence on one level. We all doubt ourselves most and always. As much as I was shocked and amazed at such a statement I had to remember something. I practice, practice and practice some more so my confidence comes from sweat equity. If you don't ride a bicycle everyday you can be intimidated by the idea of getting back in traffic. Don't be intimidated since the only sin in Internet marketing is to do nothing. Doing nothing is the only time things can only get worse since Internet marketing has a natural decay (much like life LOL). Engagement and practice, practice and more practice is what keeps Internet marketing alive, what keeps your story flowing downstream to your customers' friends and friends of friends.

• Ask Employees To Share Their Stories
  Always amazes me how companies overlook the people in their house. When I worked at M&M/Mars we would bring in very expensive consultants to do one thing - tell employee stories to management. Goofystupid, expensive and hopefully not still happening. Instead of paying anyone from outside your company's house challenge your employees to tell their stories. No matter what you get from this exercise it will be more authentic, more real and honest than anything "out there". BTW, we live in a time of open honesty, in a time of stories. Challenge your employees to share theirs and you will be astonished at the depth, focus, talent and art sitting next to you every single day.
  
  
• Create a Contest or a Game and use Gamification
  If you missed my White Paper on Gamification you can trade me a tweet for it:
  
  Martin's Gamification White Paper on Atlantic BT
  
  Gamification cover the mechanics of keeping people engaged and excited, but you can create a contest without a leader board or constant feedback loops. Some might be afraid to create a story contest thinking bad things may come up. This logic always makes me laugh. I'm an Internet marketer who used to manage and market big brands. Brands and perception isn't yours. Brands and perceptions are theirs, the mob, the crowd the living organism that is the web. Your job is to understand, summarize and quote back as much of what is "out there" as you can push, stuff and capture "in here". The more aligned your company is to the stories your customers tell, good and bad, the more chances you have to survive and thrive. We live in a time of stories, good and bad, and, as an Internet marketer, I always want any story about me on properties I own (or those I rent such as Facebook). Yes you should have a strategy about what kind of story and interaction you want where, but you want it all. You want the good, bad and ugly of your brand, company and products. REWARD and don't disparage those who bring any story to you at any time since they are part of the magic 1:10:89 rule.

Do you have great "story" tips? I didn't do a Top 10 Story Tips because I want to fill in at least 5 more tips from my 1:10:89 tribe. If you love stories and know great story creating tips please share in comments and I will add into the post. Here are a few other favorite storytelling resources:

Tell To Win by Guber (great book from the Hollywood producer with tips up front and great stories throughout.

Story by McKee - read this book and you never watch a movie again the same and you understand the structure of great stories.

Hero With  Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell - heroes, myths and villains are key to great stories and Campbell knows them all personally and throughout time.

Made To Stick by Heath Brothers - online stories are different, they must crate "memes" and move around. This is the best book to read to understand how to make an idea become a story that moves around, that gets Tweeted, LIKED and shared. 

Martin's SEO Writing Tips - don't know what a "stop" word is? Read my tips to convert great offline stories to winning Internet copy.

**** Don't forget to share your great story creating tips and I will ad them in. Also, if you have great books, blogs or resources share those always (lol).

Marty

Death Of Excel RIP

Visicalc was the first spreadsheet I used and yes I realize many reading this post will not remember such a blast from the very distant past. Lotus 1-2-3 was next. I made it personal mission to become a Lotus Guru. That knowledge + $4.00 gets coffee at Starbucks today. Finally and irrevocably there was Excel.

Today I come not to praise Excel but to bury it. After reading Sean Jackson's excellent (and yes I am punning here) post: The Death of Excel I realized how important it is to terminate our dependence on Excel, to terminate with EXTREME prejudice. Here is Sean's take:

Today, Excel continues to reign over enterprise class business intelligence tools. According to Gartner, 70 to 80 percent of business intelligence projects fail². Excel should have been superseded long ago, if one considers its pure features and functionality, especially if assessed in today’s data rich enterprise environment. We have all been there, in a fog of pivot tables, pie charts and the dreaded ‘hourglass of doom’ as formulas are calculated and data is churned. Why are we all so reliant on Excel as our everyday data repository, analysis tool and engine?
blogs.actian.com and Sean's Death of Excel post

"Fog" is the perfect word. We can't get where we are going, dynamic sites tied to cool marketing automation such as Marketo firing predictive analytics in near real time tightening sites around us like huggies, with Excel. 

Instead we need agnostic coupling tools such as Entrinsik's Informer tied to friendly "plug and play" Quant tools that haven't been developed yet though a couple of Durham startups, Argyle Social, Spring Metrics and the magical email marketing dinosaur Bronto, are giving it the old college try.

Once the fog is behind us we will wonder what were were thinking - all that typing, what ifing and pivot tabling, but, like any cult, it is impossible to know how hypnotized you are when it is happening. If you are a young company hoping to unseat Excel in some meaningful way let's talk. At the very least I will help beat your message across the plains with loud drums and smoke signals. At the most I will do some RNA recombination with the massively cool inside/out predictive modeling tool/site we are working on now.

Friends, Romans and Countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Excel not to praise it, though praise is earned and deserved. We must wake up to our future and leave the comfort of warm fires (and spreadsheets) on cold nights. Leaving we see our friend Excel's service and genius. While appreciative bury it we must since we don't progress to a future of possibilities chained to the albatross of the past. 

Marty

ScentTrail Marketing - First Profit Not Blog

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Saving The World One Blog At A Time
ScentTrail Marketing is the first "Profit Not" blog. No I'm not having a dyslexia flashback, but I've decided to donate anything ScentTrail Marketing makes to cancer research. Granted ScentTrail Marketing's earnings so far could pay for dinner as long as we don't drink and avoid the Ruth Chris Steak House (or its ilk), but that's not the point. 

When none of the answers to a self addressed question of, "Why do I love blogging," came back as "make money" a thought bubble appeared over my head. When the person at the table next to me asked to move my bubble so they could reach the pepper I read my thoughts. "Give it away," they said.

My thoughts said to create a new company. Profit Not Blogs, once I get it all 501(c)3ed, will have a trust mark (trying out the design above and below) or badge other bloggers use to alert visitors to their Profit Not status. Click on the link (once we are live) to read where the Profit Not Blog you are visiting sends their earnings and why.

I write in this (and several other) blogs because I love sharing, writing and, as you've probably noticed, working things with public support, with connection and wisdom of crowds help. Somewhere, probably at Choate, I learned to write almost as fast as I think. I hear the chuckles and yes this means I either write or think slow, but that is another story :). 

As a cancer survivor, instead of getting all bunged up about what might happen or how crazy it is for anyone in the greatest country ever to ever not have health insurance (especially when they need it most), I will, in the words of the Zen master, wash the dishes. One night a Zen master sitting with students after a bountiful, delicious and crowded meal was asked what is Zen. Turning to the student asking the question the master said simply, "Wash the dishes."

I'll keep writing and hope you support these often random and sometimes too personal stream of consciousness by clicking on an ad or two or three when you find something you need secure in the knowledge each click helps cure cancer one penny or nickel at a time.  

If you know of other "Profit Not Blogs" or you write one yourself, let me know and you will be the 2nd or 3rd or 100th Profit Not blog :). This new company will become a community of people who love to blog in order to save the world one blog post at a time :).

Marty

email: Mobriff(at)gmail(dot)com

SEO - Google's Float, Keyword Research And Long Tails

How to explain the impossible? Imagine you’ve just arrived at a busy airport. You’ve arrived at the SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization / Search Engine Marketing) Airport. You leave the plane, walk into the airport and don’t understand anything. 

Signs are in some strange language you can’t process. People around you are speaking rapidly in some tongue so foreign you don’t know how to say hello. Welcome to Internet marketing.


Since there is an entire lexicon of language, experience and history you’ve not heard of we need to prioritize what we teach, what we share so you can retrieve your bag, go to the restroom and get a ride to your hotel. Stretching our analogy here is what today’s post shares to speed you on your way, to accomplish something fast NOW:

Learning The New Language of SEO and SEM
Analogy		SEO/SEM
Retrieving Luggage		Google’s Float
Finding A Restroom		Keyword Research
Getting A Cab To Hotel		Long Tail Attacks

Google’s Sargasso Sea
A Sargasso Sea never reaches a shore. It roils, boils and moves on itself. It is emergent, complete and complex so an apt analogy. In the early days you say the same result set as me and everyone else typing a search. Search was static and landlocked. A three-legged stool motivates Google:

• Keep customers happy with relevant search results 
• Lower costs
• Increase profits.This stool wobbles if any leg isn’t treated with a keen idea on that treatment’s impact and effect on the other legs. 

 If you improve customer experience too much the engine slows and profit is sacrificed. If you sacrifice everything to speed people don’t like what they get.
 

This three-legged seesaw is fundamental to all Internet marketing. Every decision is like playing Star Trek 3D chess. Moving on the upper plate impacts the middle and lower plate.  This concept of staging impact across dimensions and time is often the hardest Internet marketing lesson to learn and not something we will even attempt today. Another complicating factor is the web is emergent. Emergent systems, such as a flock of geese, ants or bees, are self directed and patterned. 

Patterns and behaviors of geese, ants and bees are genetic.

Reading Bursts by Barabasi teaches an important lesson – we are not as far removed from ants and bees as you might think. Emergence is important for our discussion today because our airport is following patterns too. We won’t be the only one looking for luggage, bathroom and a ride. If we stretch our analogy of Google’s float our airport would magically form to fit our experience, expectations and needs. 

We would easily find luggage, restrooms and cabs because the placement of those services would be built based on our past searches for them, based on our friends searches for them and based on the mob’s searches for them.

When you and I simultaneously type the same search into Google we may or may not see the same result set. The result set floats on a sea of variables. If we are logged into our Google account we see one set. If we have many friends who are power Google users we see another search result set. If we are highly social we may see another.


The effective impact of Google’s float is our search results are highly dynamic and increasingly relevant. Google is moving one to many right past one to some and soon will arrive at nirvana – one to one. If the wizards behind the curtain are constructing such a seemingly individual world how do the wizards on the other side of the curtain (us) interpret and understand? There is a complex three-word answer: Analytics, Analytics and Analytics.


Start simply with site heuristic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) including:

• Bounce Rate (you want this to go DOWN but not too sharply since that means you are leaving money on the table)
• Unique Visitors (you want this to go UP but not too sharply since that means you are being attacked by spam)
• Time On Site (you want this to go UP but not too much since that means your site is confusing and hard to navigate) 
• Pages Viewed Per Visit (you want this to go UP since that means your content is engaging but not too much since that means your site is confusing and hard to make do what users want) 
• Repeat Visits (Visits / Uniques) (you want this to go up since that means your customers are returning but not too much since that means they are frustrated and get what they want actually that almost never happens since traffic always finds its point of least resistance – they just leave and buy somewhere else)

See how one metric is tied inextricably to every other metric. The core of Internet marketing is to understand the interdependent relationship of one string of spaghetti to another. Start with those metrics and figure out how to watch your emergent system do its thing and never, never, never do a search and think it means anything. To know absolute positions, and the only value those have is for benchmarking, you must fire a tool such as Mike’s Free Keyword Checker. Now let’s go find a restroom.

Keyword Research

There is an infinite sea of keywords and phrases. Some terms are popular and competitive and you won’t rank for those for a long time (if ever). These terms are called “head” term and we will not be addresses them today since they are well out of reach except for websites already in the game, people who know what they are doing so much their hats are black (meaning they play against not with Google) and attacking fortified castles is beyond today’s discussion.

Instead we will focus on the “long tail of search”. There are two kinds of search terms we are interested in today:

• Golden Needles - Long tail terms with robust searches and little competition
• Haystacks – places we may find golden needles that others have ignored

You find golden needles by using a tool such as SEOmoz or HubSpot. You can also create a spreadsheet and do some hay bailing on your own. The most important idea is to create a formula to weigh actual searches against competitive documents. I’ve created such a formula for Atlantic BT and would be glad to share or even do the math for you should you become a customer. In the meantime feel free to interpret and create. Finding golden needles in any industry takes hours and hours and hours of research no matter what tools you use so strap on a helmet and get ready for a long haul.


Haystacks are more interesting to me. Haystacks are unrefined ideas sitting out in a field. If you form the haystack well it may meet the needs of our airport visitors. You may be the first to see and understand a haystack play. Success is the day your haystack idea has more than a random sampling of searches. When you plant the flag of your content into a new haystack idea if you are on it, have the intuitive pulse of the mob, then your return can be staggering when populace turns to and takes advantage of your new path to luggage, restroom and ride and that brings us too long tail attacks.

Long Tail Attacks

Recoil at the use of “attack”? Internet marketing is chess with money. You must steel your mind, calm your spirit and simultaneously be more mathematical and creative than you thought possible. I define “attack” as when you must take something from some entrenched force, some stronger enemy. Internet marketing is the ultimate attack since every moment of traffic, and make no mistake traffic is a form of time and money, is claimed, moated and zealously guarded.

You plan has to be stealth enough it doesn’t prompt a scorched earth response from larger entrenched competitors capable of gobbling your early intentions whole. Stringing together increasing strength is the core of any long tail attack. I like to create three dimensional attack plans highlighting:

• Space (the naturally bounded limits of the business vertical)
• Time (time is define by the evolution, growth and then decay of the campaign)
• Energy (what resources are going to be required such as design, creative, money, tracking and analysis)
• Success (never start an Internet marketing campaign without defining success first and success should always be based on concrete goals and ROI)

Constantly watch metrics as you win positions on the board. Ever played battleship? Long tail attacks are battleship for keywords. You are fire missiles against a grid looking for their ship hoping to blow them out of the water before they you. As the planner of the attack you have the advantage of surprise, but surprise doesn’t last long online. Once you’ve fired a shot in anger expect a response. Examples of firing a shot in anger include:

• PPC Advertising (highly exposed but also a great pointer for content development)
• Social Campaigns (highly exposed but a great SEO support system)
• Website Tweaks (exposed less than the previous two but exposed enough to be matched and potentially blocked where blocking would be your competitors creating 5 pages to every one of yours on a keyword set)
• Video (the least exposed due to the fact that videos don’t play directly with search engines, they play indirectly and so stay cloaked for longer than either of the other tactics)

See why starting with a long tail term is so important. The further you are from the hot crucible of industry leading keywords the longer you are undercover, the longer you have to build strength before your competitor’s counterattack. Trust me that there is few sure things in life such as death, taxes and your Internet marketing competitors will counterattack. If that counterattack comes before you’ve created a beachhead your efforts will be sweep back into the ocean sacrificed like sand castles to the tide.


Hope these quick notes help you find your luggage, the restroom and hail a cab in the world’s busiest airport.

Marty

Facebook IPO - Life Lessons For Zuckerbergs Clan

**** I am denying rumors Mark Z read this post before getting married today :). I applaud his brave, human and loving ceremony today marrying longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan. Marty

I write knowing the intended audience for this post will never read, hear or act on it, but still important to share. How can I be so sure the Facebookers can’t hear my message? I used to be in the same headspace, chasing the same hollow things, filled with a larger than life sense of self-importance. Hearing the word “cancer” and your name in the same sentence brings life’s most humbling lessons fast.

Mortality is humbling and not something to DWELL on as much as appreciate. Life not being an infinite journey, there being no redo or reboot at the end, is what makes time so special, so meaningful and rewarding. Are my Facebook “life lessons” patronizing and a tad un-humble? Yep, but there are good things about having the Big C. One of those “good cancer” things is ACTING more than THINKING about acting (lol).

Life Lessons For Mark Zuckerberg and Other Facebook Millionaires

• Time Is More Valuable Than Money & Money Is A Form Of Time
  Seeing those paper zeroes can easily trick our minds that money is an end to itself. Not so much as it turns out. Money is a conduit, a tool whose only very shallow purpose is to create more of it. Surviving cancer taught me another important money idea. Money buys time. When you can jump in the G5 and get to Europe in comfort and in about half the time the ratio of spending your most valuable asset, your time, in rewarding ways goes up (not that I've ever jumped in a G5 LOL).

• Beware Money Pirates
  My first company, FoundObjects.com (RIP), helped the inventor of Magnetic Poetry Kit become a multimillionaire and that was way more than it ever did financial for my ex and me (but life is like that). The suckerfish that swam to the party when the money got large was a rogue’s gallery of pirates. Money Pirates are people whose skill is stealing OPM (other people’s money). Don’t trust how pretty girls (or guys) laugh at your jokes and beware the money pirates.

• Take Five Then Rinse and Repeat
  There is nothing more depressing than climbing Mt. Everest. When you achieve a major life goal the let down can kill you. I rode a bicycle across America and almost didn’t know what to do with myself when I got home (right back into chemo made the decision for me :). Riding a bicycle everyday helped develop a set of very specific skills. By the end of Martin’s Ride To Cure Cancer no computer was needed to predict distance or grade.
  
  Look at 3,000 miles of road and you know a 12% grade well before you are on it. The Facebook team has been “in flow” for a long time. They live inside of their heads and on their computers and so have developed deep skills. Don’t lose that connection. Take five minutes, celebrate your work and start pedaling again.

• Black Swans Exist And Visit Every Life At Some Point
  I hate “bummer people”. People who see life as tragedy and not its corresponding magic and beauty are depressing. Bummer people live by transference and recruitment.
  
  Like vampires, their job is to recruit people into their depression. Your only value, to such bloodsuckers, is joining. Once you are bitten they move on. Recruitment not fellowship is their never-ending goal. Large caveat stated it is important to recognize life’s randomness. Tricky thing about random is you never know when it will visit or for how long (lol), once visiting, this sometimes cruel guest will stay and stay and stay.
  
  This moment, this exaltation, this party, is special NO MATTER WHAT. Never devalue the breath you take by assuming you have any right to the next one. Love the one you are with because empathy is best practiced deeply and daily.

• Save The World
  At Choate I learned about Nobelesse Oblige. I failed French (read my funny story of a Texan trying to speak French in high school), but going to school with some serious RICH kids teaches an important lesson or two or three. Money amplifies character or lack of it. Rich kids fell into two groups. One group was nihilistic, unhappy and trying to kill themselves as fast as possible. Let’s call this group the “Values Not” group.
  
  Another group was caring, kind and humble or as close to those things a teenager ever becomes. This “Values” group wasn’t showy or talkative about their good fortune. They didn't act like “I DID THIS” about something, their family's wealth, they lucked into. The Values group viewed money as a tool, were willing to share but expected quid pro quo and were smart enough or raised well enough to know that money doesn’t buy love, trust, respect or allegiance.
  
  Most importantly the VALUES group understood life’s meaning comes FROM something earned not the lottery of birth. Those who receive much inherit the expectations of such a station. Save the world because saving the world is your job now. You may wrongly think creation of Facebook, a powerful save the world tool, is sufficient, that you have saved the world. Sorry, saving the world is one of those “journey” not “destination” jobs. Use those big brilliant brains to help save the world and to save yourself.

• Don’t Be An Ass
  I can be an unfeeling, mean and an ass. I hope those moments are becoming less and less instead of more and more because my life’s mission is empathy, assistance and service. I’m here because strangers I don’t know have consistently put their lives on hold long enough to save mine.
  
  I am not alone. Angels, and I mean that in the secular sense so don’t stop reading, regularly visit every life. Mostly we are unaware; we walk by often unappreciative of their magic, light and golden touch.
  
  Just a few weeks ago a coworker saved my life by insisting I buckle a floatation device (will share that story soon). When I thanked him for saving my life, and Keith if you are reading this thanks again my friend, he didn’t see the magnitude of his gift. Another Big C benefit is you see the gifts; you experience the life giving force around us all the time more immediately and directly (wish it didn't take chemo to keep me on that path :).
  
  This long story has a simple point – don’t be an ass. Don’t show off. Don’t buy million dollar cars and homes because such things are temporary and insignificant and confirmations of being an ass. Focus your mind on what got you here in the first place – passion, love and a desire to help others. Hug your family, smack your friends, walk the dog and laugh at the cat and try not to be an ass. If you fail don’t worry. We all do. Sell the car, rent the house and ride a bicycle or give your money away (I know a cancer survivor who could use some LOL) to recover yourself.

• Don’t Judge
  Appropriate reaction to all things in life is bemused open curiosity. My art professor Alton Pickens taught me to hold opposing ideas, to be neutral about what I felt and saw. Alton’s life lessons were as magical as his arthritic hands were gruesome. I remember how awkward and guilty I felt meeting Alton for the first time in my early twenties not typically an empathetic age.
  
  Alton wouldn’t allow such an emotion. He didn’t judge me for falling into a trap he’d seen before, the reaction to his hands, but he smiled and insisted we focus on the objective – how to express and connect, how to create art. Alton never judged me or the many messy horrible things I shared attempting to become the next Jackson Pollack. He did listen intently, put me first, coach, prod and challenge.
  
  Judgment, Alton taught with his actions and life, is the enemy of art and every life should be about the one (art) and not the other (judgment). One thing about having a bunch of money in the bank is you think such a big account balance grants some superhuman right to pass judgment. It doesn’t.

• Who You Were Is Who You Are
  Money amplifies character it doesn’t create or destroy character. The “you” that is in your head, the you your mother loves and your father respects, hasn’t changed. The hidden lesson here is money should be dead net neutral to your life.
  
  Now you can see why buying things hurts more than helps. Buying things you couldn’t afford before reinforces a falsehood. Expensive toys seem to say, “Wow I am different, special and better than before.” Yeah, not so much as it turns out (lol). No external thing ever can or will create internal change. The YOU inside your head is only changed by experience, love and the magic of connection.

• Connection
  The problem with being an uber-smart geek is you think your ability to close out the world is why you’ve been successful. Facebook had a programming marathon in celebration of their good fortune. Everything we create is about connection. Connection is why Mark Z is part of the B club.
  
  Connection is why average Facebook employees are now millionaires. The Facebook team built the largest connection machine we've ever seen or imagined. Connection, connection and connection are the keys to your and every life’s achievements no matter what they are.
  
  I rode a bicycle across America. Connection was one of Martin’s Ride’s chief lessons. The difference between you and me or you and us is spiritually nothing. I don’t assert connection as prime mover in order to make a claim on anyone. You don’t owe me anything material and I owe you what you owe me – love, respect, trust and understanding how I treat you is how I care for myself. How we act on and in the world is what comes back, is the life we create. Connect and care and people will connect and care back.

http://www.MartinsRide.com

• All Of Life Is In Every Moment
  Time is a physical construct. Your past, present and future all only ever exist NOW. Eckhart Tolle explains the importance of NOW while warning against the dangers of never living in this moment. Worry about the future or remain depressed about the past robs your most valuable thing – THIS MOMENT otherwise known as your life. 
  
  I like to dream about ideas, people, places and things. I like to think about friends from Central Junior High in Greenwich. Friends like the best quarterback I ever played with, Matt Morano, a crazy smart inspirational guy in a clinch (Jeff Hor), beautiful girls (Lori Chapman, Cessy Borchetta (who married my friend Ronnie Harding), Dot Stites, and many others LOL) the best roommate I ever had (Ted Nevins), my best LOST friend now that I’ve found George Mandes (Ray Galvin) and my favorite friends to party with (Mike Israel, Greg Arnold).
  
  These memories and friends make up ME. I don’t want to leave out my new brothers and sisters at Atlantic BT (Mark, Jon, Eileen, Mike, Keith, Daryl, Teresa, Matt, Aaron, Keith, Andrew, Chris, Jamie, John, Colin, Brandon, Patrick, Peter, Jonk, Nancy, Doug, Addie, Sam, Helen, Stephanie (both of them), Tonia, Erik, Bill, Andrew, Corey and well the entire Atlantic BT Team) and not to forget friends from NutraSweet including best boss I ever had (Mary Kay O'Connor) and my Director of Ecommerce days such as Phil, Molly, Susan, John, Eric, Peggy, Heather, Maureen, Cynthia, Erica, James, John, George and Mark and my Choate and Vassar tribe too numerous to mention here.
  
  I still think about my ex frequently (we were married for 22 years after all) and almost NEVER do so with acrimony or pain (now that ego isn’t driving the car of my life). This moment, NOW, is what we have. Inside of this moment is everything we are or will be and every special moment and friend. Try to worry less, feel and love more and appreciate always.

I’ll conclude this long, preachy post (sorry), with an Echart Tolle-ism. Tolle's Power of Now helped me survive the Big C. Tolle teaches what is happening is exactly what is supposed to be happening even when it is the Big C.

My wish for the Facebook fortunate is find the love they (and we all) deserve, to appreciate and live in this very special moment and to continue to help save the world. You guys ROCK and thanks for creating such a magical thing.

Take five and then rinse and repeat.

Peace,

Marty
written on a Saturday the day after Facebook’s IPO sitting at Saladelia in Durham, NC

----
Martin W. Smith
Director Marketing, Atlantic BT
Founder FoundObjects.com, Dada Box, Story Glasses, Alien Questionnaire, Martin’s Ride To Cure Cancer and MobRiff (so I keep failing forward LOL)
Greatest Accomplishment – surviving the Big C thanks to the love and care of family, friends and strangers
2nd Greatest Accomplishment – riding a bicycle across America (Martin's Ride To Cure Cancer)
Next Greatest Accomplishment - unknown :)