The Internets are buzzing today over changes announced to the process of editing articles on Wikipedia, which represent a major step in the evolution of the world’s first crowdsourced encyclopedia. Moving forward, changes to articles will not only require registration, but any changes to the biographies of living people will require approval from an authorized editor. This is another big evolutionary step from what started out as a completely open encyclopedia allowing additions and edits from anyone. Between two articles, one at The New York Times and one at CNET, you can get most of the relevant history and analysis of implications. I’ve got a different angle.

I grew up surrounded by books. One entire shelf in the living room was devoted to the weighty volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, which subtly took root in my mind as the tangible embodiment of objective truth. I didn’t question, until much later, the concept of an ultimate authority for the veracity of basic truths, much less any motive for manipulating dry facts. Later in life, when I followed my parents into journalism, my first internship out of college was working as a Fact Checker for a large magazine. My only job was to read draft articles line by line, and make use of every reference source imaginable to double check the truth of every stated fact. I couldn’t believe the diligence required to get a single article into print, but it taught me that even careful writers make mistakes of omission and commission–and it gave me an added sense of faith in journalism and the pursuit of objective truth.

The Internet seems to have changed all that–or to put it more accurately, the Internet has helped disabuse me of my illusions. I remember in the early days of the mainstream Web, when I could follow major news stories from new angles. I remember reading news about the war in the former Yugoslavia, for example, on a translated version of Russia’s Pravda, and realizing how far truth diverges on different sides of the front line–and how much bias I had missed in the media I grew up accepting as objective truth. That was almost 15 years ago. Today, the fragmentation of media and the rise of blogs and social media has created a world of Truth on Demand–we can all subscribe to sources of information that mirror our values, our expectations, and our cultivated biases. Even the most fundamental facts can be, if not disproved, battered into irrelevance by an avalanche of counter claims and noise.

This, to me, is the greater backdrop of Wikipedia’s evolution. The institutional control of facts is disintegrating in front of our eyes, and although Wikipedia embraced that anarchy, it’s ultimately proving unworkable for a proposed universal reference of objective facts. Someone, ultimately, has to arbitrate what is published as true. The question is, how large can a community of people that accept that arbitration grow, before it divides into competing interests of what is determined to be true? And who, in the end, owns the power of arbitration? One fact The New York Times conspicuously missed in its reporting on Wikipedia is that the foundation started by Ebay’s founder, Pierre Omidyar, just gained a seat on Wikimedia’s board in return for a $2M donation.

Welcome to the natural and economic selection of truth.

Photo credit: apesara

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You know that feeling you have when you come back from vacation? I mean a real vacation, not a couple of days off still tethered, where you slip back into your routine as if you were never gone. A real vacation means disconnection, unplugging from the routines and modalities that form the cast iron mold of daily life. When you return from disconnection, if you’ve really achieved it, reconnection is uneasy. All of the routines are familiar but they don’t quite fit. Everything that used to run on autopilot now occupies a thread of attention. For a while at least–maybe just a day, or a week–you’re an observer of the episodes of your own life. What do you see?

The conventional wisdom about vacation is that it provides perspective. By stepping outside daily routines, you can see things differently. And there’s a simple scientific reason for this. Routines are a mechanism that allow living organisms to conserve energy and prioritize attention. The more behaviors we can relegate to autopilot, the more energy and attention we can conserve. Our environment solidifies those routines, providing constant cues to keep the autopilot on track. When you get to the corner, turn right. When you open the front door, keys go on the hook. Have you ever had the experience of driving miles to work and suddenly realizing as you step out of the car that you have no recollection of the trip? That’s autopilot–a critical evolutionary mechanism for living organisms, but also a barrier to change.

Unplugging from routine by taking a vacation breaks the patterns and cues that help your life run on autopilot, providing the familiar and valuable opportunity for perspective. The challenge is, when you come back to ordinary life, the environmental cues and routines are a powerful draw to put you back on autopilot. Which is why so often the epiphany gained on the mountaintop fades away on reentry–and also why I think that fleeting sense of uneasy recalibration when you return to routine is more important than the epiphany of perspective. The most earthshaking insight on vacation is meaningless if it dissolves in the return to an old routine.

So why am I navel-gazing about vacation and breaking routines? Because I’m just coming back from my own vacation from social networking. At some point this spring, in the middle of all the growing hype over all things Twitter, I realized I needed to step back, unplug, and find some perspective. I turned off Twitter, stepped back from Facebook and Friendfeed, and put blogging on the shelf. Since I have social media clients and customers, I was still hearing the noise from the echo chamber, but I dropped all my own routines until I lost the imperative to connect online myself. Instead of dutifully blogging and tweeting, which, as a social marketing professional I’m supposed to do, I spent weeks offline, focusing only on my business and customers. Then I returned only as a consumer, finding new places to connect that really interest me, like Gizmodo and my new favorite site ThereIFixedit, and going on Facebook and Twitter just to connect with friends.

The insights I had on that vacation were useful–I’ll write more about why I think Twitter is going to fade, why SocialCRM is a 4-lane highway to a one-lane dirt road, and why automation will be the catalyst for the next Google–but for the moment, I’m focusing on the return, the uneasy recalibration to old routines. The critical insight for me is to really inhabit that discomfort. Magnify it. Watch routines as a detached observer as long as I can so I can make choices about what routines to drop because, as comforting as they are in easing the expense of energy and attention, they don’t work for me anymore.

One change has already come out of that resistance. I realized this blog wasn’t working for me. I was writing about what I felt I should write, rather than what really motivates me. Actually, Jeremiah Owyang pointed this out to me earlier this year in response to a post I wrote that wasn’t about marketing, but was an observation about life. He said that wasn’t what he read my blog for as a social media professional. He was right, but I realized that made me feel cornered. So I’ve made some structural changes that will take effect this week. From now on my professional social media posts will all originate at MotiveLab, and will appear on this blog as a syndicated excerpt. If all you want is marketing insights, they’ll still be embedded in this feed. On this blog, I’ll be writing about other things that interest me–still from the perspective of a marketer and technologist–but also giving me space to include navel-gazing insights about life, the universe, and everything. If you want to tune that out, just subscribe to the MotiveLab feed.

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Photo Credit: Chris Kenton

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With the events unfolding in Iran over the past few days, there is no shortage of breathless commentary on the role of social media in what some will certainly dub Revolution 2.0. While following these events very closely as a social media advocate, I have to say that I resonate far more with the social story that is emerging than the media story. That’s not to say that the ways we’re seeing sites like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook being used to galvanize Iranian protesters and inform the world is not compelling. But this stunning showcase of social technology would not exist without the profound depth of bravery, determination and community shown by so many ordinary Iranians.

Although it’s impossible at this point to know the full impact technology is having on events on the ground in Iran, it’s obvious social media is bringing a far more compelling picture of what’s happening to anyone who wants to witness it, and that alone is revolutionary. While our major news networks perform the ponderous work of compiling and verifying a thin stream of facts according to the traditional time line of the 6am/6pm/10pm news cycle, bloggers and protesters are creating a real-time stream of first hand accounts of events as they happen. The beauty and the danger of this phenomenon is the heightened sense of involvement—that this is not only a domestic political event, but a profound and universal drama in which we all have a stake. By retweeting proxy IPs that Iranians reporting from the street can hop to evade network clampdowns, or joining a Denial of Service attack against the Web sites of the Iranian state, people all over the world are, in a way made possible only by technology, global participants in local events.

But to elevate this fascination with the growing power of social technology misses the most important point. Technology does not provide the passion for tens of thousands of people in Tehran to take to their rooftops and shout down a corrupt government. Technology does not draw hundreds of thousands of housewives, students and shopkeepers into the streets to face down frightening attacks by baton-wielding storm-troopers on motorbikes. Technology does not supply the courage for an unprotected crowd to stand in the face of sniping fire and hold their ground, and it does not provide the compassion of a crowd that protects a captured thug from violent reprisals. A country awash in social media technology is no guarantee of such monumental spirit shown by ordinary men and women in Iran today, resonating with one voice against a government that has failed them. Praising the technology is like celebrating the bullhorn rather than the message it carries.

I suspect when all is said and done we’ll find that as crucial as technology has been as a tactical aid for the early protests in Iran, the greater impact is the way the raw story from the streets became a universal story that vastly enlarged the community of protest, providing validation, and perhaps galvanizing the courage of those standing in the street, while reminding the rest of the world what it looks like to stand up against tyranny. As the Iranian government cracks down more aggressively on the vulnerable tools of social networking, it will be only that fabric of community and purpose that remains to bind them. There is no technology that can replace that.

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Continuing the thread of what my partners and customers are doing that’s worth noting…

For the past year or so, I’ve participated in Bill Johnston’s Online Community Roundtables here in the Bay Area. The roundtables are some of the most engaging and informative meetings around. The participants are a blend of corporate marketing practitioners and Web 2.0 experts, anchored by a number of local luminaries and veteran community managers. And I do mean veteran. At least one of the regulars goes back to the early days of The Well.

The style is driven by an ad-hoc agenda: before the roundtable starts, everyone has an opportunity to add a topic to the agenda on a first-come first-heard basis, with no product pitches or proselytizing. Nine out of ten topics are issues with serious depth and discussion, from community management and marketing to platform and technology challenges, and the mix of experience and point-of-view in the room always ensures insightful discussion. I’ve gained far more insight from discussions among practicing community managers than from the experts and luminaries that proliferate and pontificate online.

Next week I’m heading down to Mountain View to participate in the Online Community Unconference–an annual conference version of Bill’s local Roundtables, hosted by Forum One Communications. Just like the roundtables the mix and the open format are conducive to learning from peers who are dealing with the real day-to-day challenges of community development, management and marketing. I’m sure, just like the roundtables, there will be a great mix of marketing managers, veterans and luminaries, and I’m certain the dialog will be the most insightful fare around. Take a look at the session highlights from previous unconferences on Bill’s blog.

I very rarely pitch anything on my blog, but if you’re in the Bay Area and you’re involved in social media marketing, this is an event you shouldn’t miss. Registration is available online. The event is at the Computer History Museum in Mt. View.

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I‘m participating in a Webinar this afternoon hosted by my long-time friends and partners at Clickability. The Webinar is all about storytelling in the age of social media, or to be more pithy, how content is still king. This is hallowed ground for me. I got my degree in Creative Writing as an aspiring starving poet, but then became a journalist when I didn’t enjoy starving. My first startup was in Web-based publishing, and as a marketer I’ve leveraged my passion for writing to better understand the power of positioning and messaging. Today, SocialRep is all about gathering and making sense of consumer stories.

My perspective on content today is shaped by what’s happening to the structure of media. I’ve been hammering this concept of the media bubble and how it’s bursting, and content is one of the main issues at play. Think about the media structure we’ve grown up with: a monolithic media edifice in which a cohesive story–whether news, PR or advertising–is researched, baked and transmitted like a surging tide over the accepting audience. All of our business infrastructure is built around this edifice, rather than the customers who buy our products. Advertising isn’t about relationships with customers, it’s about relationships with media buyers and media channels. PR is about relationships with analysts and reporters. To the extent that we incorporate customers into the story, it’s either petri-dish research into demographics and psychographics, or convenient case studies that exemplify our storyline.

All of that is changing, for reasons I won’t rehash, but you can read about in the media bubble post. The point for businesses today is twofold: 1) barriers to business are reduced by technology and increasing global competition, which means more competition for customer attention, 2) big media is faltering, which means the channels for telling the story the way we’re all used to are narrowing.

The simple fact is that companies can no longer rely on getting their story out to consumers effectively through the old media channels. Getting your story out through social media is rapidly growing alternative, but it doesn’t function the way businesses are organized to operate. You can’t just bake a story and hit “send” and expect that consumers will digest it. They’re more likely to challenge it, and call BS on every little point of convenient spin you’ve so carefully crafted. Instead, companies need to live their stories, and they need to take ownership of their own storytelling.

I won’t take the wind out of the Webinar. We’ll be talking about content in the context of social media, including marketing and selling processes and of course, technology. Robert Carroll, VP of Marketing  from Clickability is hosting, and I’ll be joined by Sandy Carter, VP from IBM, and Eloqua’s CTO, Steven Woods. You can find a link to the Webinar, including on-demand viewing after today, at Clickability’s site.

Photo Credit:goldsardine

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Over the past couple of months, I’ve been heads down and out of sight–even off Twitter, gasp!–working on SocialRep and working for our customers. I’ve finally got a few moments to come up for air, and I want to write a few posts about some of the cool projects our customers are developing. You can take this as a disclaimer: I’m honored by the customers we’re working with and I’m excited about what they’re doing. I’m not wearing the hat of a reporter, but of a marketing exec, so take any comments I make about products and services in that light.

For today’s post, I want to highlight Creative Labs, one of the most prolifically innovative consumer electronic companies out there. In the early days of the desktop revolution, Creative developed the SoundBlaster, bringing high fidelity sound to what otherwise would be just computing machines with video. What’s multimedia without sound? Years later, before anyone heard of the iPod, Creative began developing MP3 players, like the Nomad and the Nomad Jukebox, which later evolved into the Zen that Creative still produces today. They have an incredibly broad product line of computer sound cards, headphones, MP3 players, pro audio equipment, video conferencing equipment, home audio devices to wirelessly join your computer and stereo, and the Vado line of pocket video cameras, the smallest HD cameras on the market. I’ve joked they should market themselves as the Willy Wonka of consumer electronics.

Creative is working incredibly hard to redefine the way they develop and market products, and I’ve had the great fortune of working them on some projects. One of the benefits, of course, is scoring some sample products, and I took home an armload of Creative products to play with. One product, which I’ve become addicted to is a high-end gaming headset with a noise canceling microphone. I can do Skype calls from the coffee roasters and no one can tell I’m not in my office. But the product I wanted to shamelessly shill today is their Vado HD, a tiny hi-def video camera that’s smaller than your wallet, but shoots an hour of high quality video. The uses for a blogger like me are obvious, promising the ability to shoot interviews and customer case studies with a device I can fit in a jacket pocket. (Now if only I could fit my production and editing partners in a pocket too…)

So I shot my first ready-for-YouTube video this weekend. Peter Byck, the CEO of Winery Exchange invited me up to his family’s ranch and winery at Paradise Ridge for his annual holiday campout. Up near the winery, they’ve partnered with local artists to provide a place to install large sculptures. There are some truly amazing pieces of art, many of which incorporate sound and interaction. One of those pieces I captured on hi-def video using the Vado HD.

I still have a lot to learn about using such a small camera correctly. Ideally, you want to capture a short piece in one take with no need to edit. When you do, you can literally just plug the camera into a USB port, use the popup video browser to find your clip, press the YouTube button and fill out your video data, and the next step is watching your uploaded video on the Web. Check out the clip in HD if you have a good connection.

As I mentioned, Creative is doing a lot of work on redefiining their marketing approach. Keep an eye out for some of their new programs and campaigns. I’ll post more about what Ican, when I can.

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I‘m doing a Webinar today on Surviving and Thriving in the Economic Downturn, along with Thor Muller from Get Satisfaction and Scott Wilder from Intuit, moderated by Bill Johnston from Forum One, who also manages the fantastic Online Community Unconference. Working on my thoughts around this topic has been a great opportunity to reflect on why SocialRep is still plugging along quite well, in the midst of all the economic doom and gloom.

There are a lot of factors at play. But when I stand back and think about the meta frame for why SocialRep is still tooling along instead of flaming out or getting pummeled, there’s a pattern that interests me. In Startup World, especially in the valley, the dominant imperative is speed. Organize quickly. Raise money. Get to market fast. Grow fast. Run, baby, run. But for us, the focus palpably shifted last August when we stopped chasing money to focus instead on customers and product quality. Sure, we’ve grown much slower, but today we have a much more solid product and a base of revenue, which is perfect for a slow economic environment.

In short, we’ve embraced the Tortoise. We’ve taken a long view of the market, and marshaled our resources to move deliberately and steadily, holding ourselves in check when hares seem to pop up and speed away in front of us. It’s nerve racking sometimes to see a new competitor jump up and sprint away, but by now we’ve seen a couple of those hares further down the road, flattened like roadkill.

What does it mean to Embrace the Tortoise? It means to find and focus on your vision, and find your own pace in the market by being true to your customers and your product. A long term vision is not just stringing short-term results together–if you’re always sprinting, you eventually run out of steam. You need a solid sense of direction you believe in enough to plod toward, without being driven to waste your energy every time a competitor makes a move. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

It also means to take a long-term view in understanding your market–and this is especially important in marketing and social media. If you want to make it further than the next turn in the road, you need some strategy to anticipate what’s beyond it. The best way to do that is to be a student of history, which is something in short supply in the marketing profession. I talk frequently about the historical context of the social media phenomenon and the bursting media bubble. If you want a synopsis, I wrote about here.

It’s been a busy few weeks, but I’m happy to say I’m finally circling back with Jonathan Knowles to continue the discussion on Social Media and Marketing ROI, and we’re launching a survey together to measure marketer’s experiences with social media metrics. If you’re a marketing professional, please join us and take the survey. We’ll provide the results to everyone who participates.

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A few weeks ago, my wife and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. We were lucky enough to get away for a few days prior to our anniversary, but I wanted to do something special on our actual wedding date, which was mid-week this year. All I had in mind was a nice dinner in San Francisco, until I met Michael Hraba at the first SF Social Media Breakfast. Michael is a marketing consultant to hotels, and he encouraged me to think about doing a marketing event at Cavallo Point, a brand new resort right next to the Golden Gate on the historic grounds of Fort Baker. That sparked the idea of taking my wife away just a few miles from home, and launched what I’m certain will be our new anniversary tradition.

Since we would only be gone overnight, I didn’t need to tell my wife anything until the last moment. I set up a sleepover for my son at a schoolmate’s, booked a room and dinner reservation, and casually told my wife to pack for an overnight on the morning of our anniversary. After work, I picked up my wife and we drove 10 minutes to Cavallo, checked in to a breathtaking suite under the Golden Gate, and opened a bottle of champagne before the 101 commute was even underway.

I love to travel, but I have to say, local tourism has a big attraction for me now. We had none of the stress of dealing with major packing, or airports, or house- and pet-sitting. Everything–including our son–was only minutes away in case of an emergency. Instead of spending the better part of a day making flights and connections, we checked in and checked out to the rest of the world. And for a fraction of the cost of leaving town, we enjoyed a spectacular resort and an amazing dinner. The next day, although it was bittersweet to stay only one night, we shared a nice breakfast and slipped right back into our lives without the huge re-entry price you typically have to pay for being away. The unexpected result was the sense of relaxation you usually only get on the third or fourth day of vacation.

I suspect we’ll hear a lot more about local tourism as the recession grinds along. You’d be amazed how easy it is to get away for just a night during the week, and mid-week specials make it a steal, even for the best rooms. Not only is it a nice way to see home in a new light, the memory refreshes every time you drive past the places you visit as a “tourist”.

If you’re in the Bay Area, Cavallo is phenomenal–the food, the hospitality, the view–they’ve really made a magical place. It’s well worth such an easy trip.

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