Talking about Others

I was shocked but pleasantly surprised when Jason Calacanis’ post, Note to self: stop promoting, start thinking again (or “Scoble’s Law”) came across my SMS feed.

It’s really hard when you’re excited about what you’re working on to not talk about it. Especially on your personal channels like your blog, Twitter account, and Facebook page. Over the past month I’ve tried to stop talking about my day job and latest project and focus 100% of my talking at conferences and most of the talk on my blog/Twitter account on general topics related to technology and business.

Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis, Chris Pirillo, Dave Winer, and so many others have been my virtual guides through the blogosphere. While I have been involved with internet and web social networking since I purchased my first 2400 baud modem in elementary school, the blogosphere challenged me because I didn’t have virtual barriers protecting what I say from the Google search machine. Humbled by historic instances where I used my words as inauspicious instruments against my peers and competition, I viewed the blogosphere as a springboard to start over. Unfortunately, the behaviours that Jason is denouncing in his above post were prevalent, and my approach of only talking about others was misconstrued as being corporate and fake. But I continued on, blogging about the products I tried out and enjoyed.

Several video services are available on the web, but Viddler and Justin TV are two communities offering content produced by individuals. The former allows its community members to provide self-made content and tag it similar to a DVD. The community is also involved tagging video with subjects, comments, and video responses. Also, Viddler relies on its members to help remove copyrighted material, which mitigates the risk of a copyright lawsuit similar to what YouTube faces. The latter follows two people, Justin Kan and Justine Ezarik — also known as iJustine, who continuously broadcast video over the internet regardless of location. This service has a similar feel to The Truman Show and EDtv, offering a voyeuristic view into their lives.

The Future of Mobile Video and Television

When I started this blog, it was because I had a lot of ideas and I wanted to organize them. For a few months I had been keeping my thoughts offline in a journal and realized that if I published them, I would have an opportunity to help others and not just myself. The secondary benefits of this website have been to search engine optimize (SEO) myself as well as create a living, interactive resume. This is especially important to me because I was switching positions and have to ensure my online “brand” is professional. Appreciation goes out to Alex Hillman; a friend of mine from college, who helped me find hosting and setup my blog.

With the necessary infrastructure in place, it was time to fill the site with content. I chose to focus primarily on real estate because that is where my experience is concentrated. I started with basic ideas and have begun moving towards ideas that go into further depth. While updates have slowed slightly, it is due to a position change and updates will resume shortly. My new position will allow me to continue talking about real estate, and enhance my knowledge of commercial and industrial (C&I) lending.

Immediately I noticed the importance of Technorati and it’s tagging system, which is used to continuously index blogs. Within a days of posts, a search for my name in Google came up with this blog and my “about me” or resume page. I have also noticed that once my blog was filled with content, it was being accessed by a number of customers across the country. With my primary and secondary goals on track, I started to look into the numerous web applications available to help make my life more efficient.

Emurse is an online resume tool that allows you to create and store your resume online. A great feature of the site is that your resume is easily viewed with an option to download in a number of formats including rich text, pdf, and Microsoft Word format. Emurse also has a great profile section, which can be viewed from your resume page.

Twitter is a a mini blogging tool that asks one question: What are you doing? The service allows you to follow users or be followed. Posts are short; 140 characters to be exact, and can be sent or received through the web, standalone programs like Twitterific, text message, or the AIM instant messaging client. The service has been used in a number of manners including posting articles, documenting trips / events, and letting your friends in the area know where you are.

Netvibes was introduced to me this weekend by my friend Brad Levinson, and offers its users the ability to cater the web to their needs through RSS feeds. Content pages are organized by tabs and the pages are customizable from one to four columns.

Blogging and the Web: How it’s Helped Me and can Help You.

I came across trulia while completing market research for a potential customer. The site puts together a myriad of data in an easy to use format, that was previously difficult to find. Although the focus is for retail customers, there are a number of tools to aid your search of a potential investment property. My personal favorite is the “heat map” feature which compiles popularity trends on a state level to the neighborhood level for select cities. Data; whichincludes both actual prices and year-over-year percentage changes, can be sorted by average listing price, average sales price, median sales prince, price per square foot, and search popularity.

Buying a property? Need to do market research?

But I digress. Reflecting on Jason’s conversation, these are my four quick-hit tips on how I participate in conversations online and off.

Understand the concepts:

I have learned that details constantly change depending on the audience, and think of conversations as a pyramid. The top or “point” is a broad topic and the base expands exponentially with ideas, people, and continued conversation. This emphasizes a mindset that discards pre-conceived notions and focuses on progressive change.

Listen:

Listening is a simple form of feedback that provides an opportunity to learn from every conversation that you participate in. I listen by engaging my audience with consistent eye contact and ask questions about what they discuss. What I have found most difficult is reserving my personal opinion until I am asked, but find it refreshing to have productive conversations while saying as few words as possible.

Know your audience:

How you receive and provide feedback requires an understanding of the audience you are speaking with. Adaptability to a situation provides an open forum where both parties can build a continued two-way discussion of words and ideas. This open-mindedness allows for better management, products, and relationships between two parties; however, all feedback should be constructive.

Know where you add value:

Understanding your industry, art, product, and etc allows you to have the right conversations. Collaborate with those that have different strengths than you, ask the right questions, and the results will be positive. In addition, you create new contacts when questions arise in the future.

When utilized together, the preceding will help you participate and lead future conversations.

Technorati Tags: conversation, organic, coworking

Posted on March 13th, 2008 | By: David Litsky | Filed under General Business, Web Technologies

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