It's not about the leader
This is a great inspiring video not only about leadership but about the followers. Notice that the first and second follower are key to make it a group.
This is a great inspiring video not only about leadership but about the followers. Notice that the first and second follower are key to make it a group.
Once in a while I find great mini-movies on Youtube. Some of them are really professional. "Validation" for example. This one really gets me going. The music is superb and story gets me in an all positive state with a big smile on my face.
I am writing this post after playing with Gowalla for about three weeks. Gowalla in short is a social media game you may say in which you collect stamps, pins and items by checking into real world places with a gps and internet enabled phone. Currently only the iPhone and Android phones are supported. Stamps are spots you visited, pins are earned rewards and items are virtual things on spots with real nice logos that you can collect by swapping them out. Every time you check in on a spot your friends get a message and optionally a tweet.
The thing I am missing with Gowalla is the interaction with your friends. But if the only interaction is knowing where they are, I don't care. I have used Gowalla during a train trip and checked in at every station to collect a stamp and to look for cool collector items. My friends got bored by the message every 5 minutes and tweeted me questions about it. I got bored with a friend going from shop to shop. Seeing the check-in message was the only interaction.
The other problem in my opinion is the amount of users. There are a lot of spots in my part of the Netherlands where I am the only one checking in. Either I am not in the right places or there are not a lot of users. The activity I see from users at train stations or even a cool place like Seats2Meet is very low, like one check-in every other day and sometimes nothing for weeks.
My conclusion is that for a social media tool like Gowalla you need two things: users and (inter)activity. Gowalla is lacking both at the moment. The amount of users might grow but the lack of interactivity is really a miss.
Jaren terug, toen ik nog studeerde en veel met de trein reisde, kon ik genieten van een kop koffie in de trein met een heerlijke Luikse wafel erbij. Op Intercitys in ieder geval was er namelijk een railtender. Een man of vrouw met een wagentje met koffie, thee en andere versnaperingen. Toen ik na die tijd wat minder met de trein ben gaan reizen ben ik deze geweldige service nooit meer tegengekomen. Bij mij was zelfs de indruk ontstaan dat deze service wegbezuizingd was, of om veiligheidredenen opgheven, of niet meer kon vanwege de introductie van dubbeldekkers. Met al die trappen zijn wagentjes natuurlijk ook een beetje lastig.
Tot ik vandaag, ruim 20 jaar nadien, ineens de man op de foto tegenkwam. Hij had koffie en thee op zijn rug en versnaperingen op zijn buik. Daar kwam mijn railtender binnenlopen! Na mijn bestelling van koffie en natuurlijk een Luikse wafel heb ik hem gevraagd of ik deze foto mocht nemen. Enigszins verbaasd vertelt hij mij dat deze service van Kiosk alweer 5 jaar bestaat. Heerlijk, de koffie in de trein is weer terug!
A couple of weeks ago we got introduced to a new feature at LinkedIn: the Profile Organizer. This is a real great feature. It gives you the possibility to keep profiles you are interested in for whatever reason in private folders so that you can handle with them later. This can be an interesting person for recruitment, a prospect, someone you like to connect with or anything else. LinkedIn is only giving this feature to paid subscribers.
Guess what? I am a paid subscriber. Not the billion dollar a year Business account but a Personal Plus account. This account gives you a bit more than the Free Personal account. Besides the Profile Organizer you get the possibility to send InMails, be part of the OpenLink Network, see more in Who Viewed My Profile, Search for References and a little bit more. This will set you back $60 a year. Is it worth it? I think yes, you get the possibility to use all of the LinkedIn features for not a lot of money.
The strange thing is that LinkedIn does not advertise with or mentions the Personal Plus account at all. So this makes me wonder. Is Personal Plus obsolete? Is it new? I own my account for almost a year now, because my brother in law has the same account. He was pointed at it by a friend. But LinkedIn? They don't talk about it at all. On the other hand. The account is updated once in a while, hence the addition of the Profile Organizer. You can subscribe to it, so I presume they do support it.
When the Profile Organizer got introduced I sent out two tweets saying:
This gave no reaction at all, not even from LinkedIn. But this week I saw a blogpost from my LinkedIn friend Neal Schaffer where he asks "The new LinkedIn Profile Organizer: Worth the upgrade?". My reply was "At $60/yr for www.linkedin.com/personalplus I think it is worth the upgrade. I like the feature." This lead to a conversation in where Neal subscribed to Personal Plus and wrote a blogpost about his findings.
Does anyone know why LinkedIn is not advertising with Personal Plus? Do you use Personal Plus? Please share your experience.
Volkswagen is getting better and better in commercials where there is actually no car involved. That is what I call great marketing. Take for example these two commercials:
That is really a Fun Theory !
This is the Tamiflu the Dutch government gives to people with symptoms of H1N1 or as the government calls it "new influenza A". In the Netherlands it looks like we are getting milder with countermeasures because the very mild course of the pandemic. We don't test for the virus, you only have to call your doctor if you are heavily sick, or if you are in a risk-group. Risk-groups are people with respiratory deceases, elderly people, pregnant women and a couple more. With symptoms of H1N1 and my mild asthma I am in a risk-group and thus entitled to getting the government subsidized Tamiflu. The "normal" influenza only affects the upper respiratory tract whereas this H1N1 also affects the lower respiratory tract. The latter gives the risk of respiratory infection if not properly treated. And of course this risk is a bit higher in people with respiratory deceases. The good thing of having H1N1 is that I don't need the experimental upcoming vaccination. I have made my own antidote. The bad thing is that although I have all the symptoms I am not sure that I have it because we don't test it.
