Not that I'm getting obsessed with Facebook but...

Time was that a woman (I say woman merely because they are more likely to bother to investigate not less likely to stray) with suspicions would have to resort to some kind of under cover, eyeholes in the newspaper mission to know whether or not they were no longer the one and only. If the object of your affection is taking three buses, doubling back and changing trains while they are moving on the way to work...it's probably not a good sign. It's the stuff that old movies are made of and that makes any sane woman laugh now - what an awful lot of effort to have to go through.

So, "The Scorned" moved on. Check receipts, check credit card bills, check the phone bill...check every bit of a paper you can find and you'll get to the truth. The paper trail was the key. Not so much the old movies but defintely the odd story line in almost forgotten episodes of EastEnders or Corrie. Either way, if your other half was binning his litter out on the street, you'd be worried.

Then came the mobile phone. Get hold of it, check the sent items and the inbox and the last calls made... They might not think of it all and it would be evidence enough to either put your mind at rest or call the lawyer. I remember once being warned by a particularly faithless man "if your other half ever starts to take his phone into the shower, toilet or bath...you're f*cked". Nice to know.

Then the personal email accounts came under fire. Scary stories of people hacking into email accounts of other halves to see what was going on. Not one of these stories ended well I'll point out. I suspect if you're looking there, it's pretty definite already. This happened to male and female friends of mine and although the one that makes my blood run coldest is the one that seems to happen most often.

And now Facebook has touched this long running story of deception... It's the worst thing in the world for a cheat. Facebook - the devil in technology. You can't keep your profile secret from you other half to hide what you're up to (how suspicious is that?!) and even worse...you have no control over what other people write on your wall. Disaster is sure to ensue. Images of "great night last night, big boy" on the wall of some lothario - funny for us, not so the lothario. So, you have to get out all together if you want to get up to know good. Remove yourself from Facebook under some pretention that you don't want to be on there anymore. Problem is - what pretension? There isn't one I can think of, seriously, i've tried but isn't it just so much easier to stop going to the site than to close it down? It's suspicious and that's that.

So maybe next time a friend of yours tells you their worried, maybe the first thing you should do is check Facebook...

Beginning, middle or the end...?

every story that holds interest follows a simple equation. Never more eloquently put than in Family Guy... (insert funny clip for once...check me)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8491896865632168074

Anyway, my somewhat tenous point is that this is only any good with hindsight. Relating this to the issues (still) facing marketeers today is impossible because i'm not convinced we know who the protagonists are, the antagonists, the twists in the tail. Jesus, we could still be at the foreward for all I know.

The point is that thinking you've finished the journey becuase you've finally stopped the mass media shotgun approach with every communication you do, just won't cut it. Figuring out there's a conversation going on that you need to be a part of is better but i'm still not convinced that's it either. Half of the job of a digital marketer is to be a subplot anyway - until the digital future is fully mapped out...which could be another few years at least yet - we're all in the dark.

Brian's book is further ahead than the one we're trying to get through in reality. So, I suppose the moral of this story is just keep the ego in check and remember there's a long bloody way to go yet. Even if you have been on a course and everything.

Working 9 to...

24/7 working is more rife than ever before. Having completed a survey in the Sunday Times the other day, I scored pretty highly. I wasn't overly suprised but was more shocked at the negative attitude towards that way of living - I just can't see the problem.

OK, so the odd out of hours phone call, the fact I check website figures at a weekend, my personal phone and work phone are one and so on...could be a negative. But is it really? No-one complains when it's the other way round. All the personal worries that used to have to wait until the end of the day can now get sorted at the same time as you make that golden deal. For me, the fact I've got access to my friends at work via Facebook, makes my job easier too - I can use them to get things tested, become advocates or just to bounce ideas off. And lets not forget, half of them I met at work anyway.

SO, do I live to work...well, yes to some extent. But I'd certainly rather that than work to live...the thought of dreading every Monday, every 9am is just not the lifestyle I'd sign up to. The very nature of new technology means that the opportunites that are opend to us are huge so why not live to work if your work is something you love. It's tough for me to look at things without a slant to how that could work in my worklife because for me there's not a definte line between that life and real life.

So, 24/7 worklife - yes, 24/7 social life - yes, 24/7 home life -yes...fact is everyone lives a 24/7 life and chunking it up into sections of time just doesn't work anymore. And yes, I exist to make sure I get the most out of all of it, at the same time and if you're not doing the same, then just think what it could be like if you did...

The Final Word

Dant pointed out the below link to me...

andrewolmsted.com/

A poignant reminder of why people write, not just blog, but actually find any form of inspiration to make their thoughts and opinions anything more than just a fleeting jumble of neuro-electronic impulses possibly culminating in some kind of noise.

This really is the easiest step to immortality. Blogging gives the author an absolute certain opportunity to get their head out there without having to try too hard. Put out there, see what happens but you don't have to ask anyone, or search people out...it all just sort of happens.

I believe that you either want to write or you don't. I'm still new to blogging but have written reams of poetry since I was very young. From the angst of the first broken heart to the utter despair of the worst, writing it down has always been the therapy that works best but it's so hard to share it. Giving someone the actual book of all that jumbled emotion just seems firstly too personal and secondly somewhat contrite..."look at me, look at me". Blogging is an easy step, you don't have to ASK anyone to read what you say, it's up to them, and there's nothing nicer than having someone say something, anything, about what you say. It's a sense of being part of something and of actually being listened to, maybe helping someone in a similar position...even when you don't think you are.

I have thought, on particularly morbid days, what would someone think of all that guff and gusto of mine post-humously? Stuck between wanting to have the chance to say "this is what I meant to say and do" and between just getting on with it without having to show everyone my poetry has in the most part remained for my eyes only. It's a shame, not because it's particularly brilliant, but because sharing it in the way I want to, could be.

Andrew Olmsted took the next level and had his say at a time when you never should be able to. His last post is touching, thought provoking, comforting but more importantly, it his him: his opinion on himself. It's the part of us that wants to write our own obituary and epitaph and to have a say at our very own funeral. It's the need in all of us to keep going...even when we know we can't. It's sad but it's hopeful and at the end of the day, which of us wouldn't want to have the final say on our favourite subject?

Facebook is making us crazy...

Christmas and New Year and the general festivities therein mean one very special thing to me - it is the time when everyone gets the hell out of our beloved capital and comes back to where they grew up. All the presents in the world could make up for seeing old friends and, let's face it, scores of acquantainces who knew us back when we still strived to be older and not younger.

Anyway, what was creepily strange this year was that everyone knew what everyone else was doing already. Facebook had got rid of the necessary yet dull start of every conversation between old friends, school chums and colleagues. There was no need to ask "how's the career/lovelife/house" of the guy who sat next to me on the school bus becuase each day I get a very handy little alert to tell me.

So, that should be fantastic - no more dull small talk and inane questions to get past in order to get to the really juicy bits of someone elses life. Should be brilliant and enable witty banter from the off. But it doesn't - it actually makes things harder and leaves anyone with particularly British sensibilities in a very difficult place.

For example, being fully aware that the person standing opposite you has just come out of a rather messy engagement fully broadcast on Facebook, complete with public wall postings of humiliation is great for the inner gossip in us all but, when confronted with said unfortunate individual, you clam up. Where do you start? You either avoid at all lengths anything vaguely to do with the matters of the heart and leave a gaping rather dirty white elephant in the conversation, fully aware that both members of the conversation know exactly what you're NOT saying... Or you mention the affair, as tactfully and carefully as you can, and in doing so come across as a rather sinister stalker who is watching this poor persons every move with great entertainment then find yourself promptly, and unsuprisingly, removed from their "friends" list the following day.

Worse still, is those people you'd rather never see ever again, know things about you that you'd really rather they didn't. Not always big dirty secrets as of course we keep them off our virtual profiles but just the humdrum facts that you can't escape. Half forgotten blasts from the past that you absent mindedly added to your list of friends have the upper hand in the game of "who's doing best". They know that your Porsche is more a Mazda, your mansion more a cottage and that as much as you know he's the one, your Brad is more a Barry. They know it all already and however happy you genuinely are with your life, not being able to tell the one person who made your life a misery then tiny white lie that you're obscenely successful and great is frankly, no fun.

The caveat, of course, is that it is just this very kind of person that also has a perfect profile filled with images of them skiing and partying and meeting famous people so the reverse is not applicable. They are painfully aware that you will of course have had a good look for the flaws on their own profiles and found absolutely none (I swear there are professional Facebook Butlers out there for this).

Polite society does not have rules for this kind of situation because polite society was never intended to let the rather one-way, voyeuristic, social past-time of gossiping to become a two way or even subjectively voluntary relationship...and that is precisely what Facebook has done. However, it's definitely not something that I shall be giving up for New Year because the annual awkward acquaintance brag off is definitely worth losing every once in a while. I'd rather have a Mazda anyway...

Never mind the forums...

Forums are the smokers' staff room of the virtual world where everyone "is an arsehole" and everthing "is frankly shit". Launch a new site and within seconds you will have every man and his dog telling you exactly what is wrong with it and why you should simply give up and go work in your local supermarket. Of course, I recognise that in time forums become a fantastic arena in which to generate advice, but in the first 2 months after experiencing change forums seem to suffer from post-natale depression.

What it leaves you with is a bitter paradox. As truly forward thinking professionals, we need to be entering into the communications as soon as possible and reacting to the feedback. However, your first few weeks are, from what I can gather, bound by some law out of our control, to be a hellish torrent or demoralising negativity...much of which may be based in truth but which does nothing to move the audience nor the business forward.

The trick therefore seems to be to develop a 6th sense of when to start listening, when to pay lip-service and when to simply delete the posts and inform someone they need help...well, I have been tempted! However, the danger is never getting back into the habit of listening and conversing to your consumers. Maybe we simply have to accept that, like in any relationship, there's going to be a big old row but to keep the faith that once they've "let it all out", the storm will blow over.

Stick to what you know...

One of the biggest challenges that I face on a day to day basis is getting clarity and focus on what a website actually is. It's not just about deciding what it should be but about keeping a team on track to do that and only that.

The joy, and issue, with working in the online world is the ability to try so many different things, so quickly and relatively easily. Even specialising in one subject is not enough - the truly successful sites out there do one thing for one consumer group in one basic way and they do it bloody well. Being so single minded is tough and not always very fun, it requires real courage of conviction and belief and a team that all buy into one vision so that no matter how great the next idea is that comes along - you don't touch it unless it's 100% core to what you set out to do.

Getting this across to large teams can be tough - it requires time and patience and isn't always the easiest theory to explain nor what they might want to do. One of the arguments that comes back often is "what harm will it do if we do XXX as well"? I've often been at a loss to argue with that outlook...what harm could it do? My gut feel has always been "lots" but I have struggled to find the logic that supports that.

In the offline world, when you know what you want, let's say a new handbag, and are faced with a long row of shops you have never been into, you judge them on one thing - the shop window. You will walk down the street looking for a window filled with all sorts of handbags - not a clothes shop with one in the window, not a shoe shop that also does handbags, not a brand shop where you know they might do bags - but a handbag shop. Sounds dumb and obvious but it's true - you look for what a shop appears to be on the surface, a specialist in handbags will have lots of handbags in the window and nothing else. You might get it wrong and miss out on the shop that has the best bag at the lowest price in the back of the shop but to be honest, it's raining, you're tired and you're not about to go the hassle of dragging yourself in on the off chance so you pick the obvious shop window full of the one thing you want.

And so let it be with websites. The "harm" that adding extra non-core content and services does is that it takes away from what you are the expert in. The virtual shop window, the homepage, necessarily becomes cluttered with bits of everything you do instead of screaming at every visitor that you are, always have been, always be the true expert in your field. By sticking to what you set out to do and never swaying from that path you cannot help but convince the consumer you're the best.