So, this is the unofficial start of summer in the United States of America.
Unless you work in retail you probably have a three day weekend instead of two days due to Memorial Day on Monday.
A lot of relaxing is going on, as the cartoon from my archives mentions, but please also take time to discover why we get the extra day off.
It’s been a week since Facebook had their IPO.
Billions of bucks.
Millions of people talking about what went wrong.
Thousands of people wondering if Facebook will go belly-up.
If you want the latest news, just Google it.
I see the big lesson is none of the “brilliant minds” have figured out the true value of Social Media and how to capitalize on these giant networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pinterest and yes, Facebook.
YouTube, (owned by Google) has figured some of it out.
The value is not really measured in Billions, Millions or even Thousands.
Maybe hundreds.
The value is in the relationships and most people have less than 1000 connections on their social media networks. Those of us that have more than 1000 are not having meaningful two-way relationships with all of those 1000+.
The reason people are using Social Media is not to be sold stuff. It is to converse, share, learn, and explore.
We do buy and sell stuff do to social media, but 90% of the time, it’s not the advertisements, it’s the relationships.
I bought my lunch from a hot dog vendor Wednesday due to the recommendations of friends on Twitter. This is word of mouth communication utilizing social media as a conversation agent.
I’ve seen countless similar activities that resulted in buying and selling using real dollars due to social media.
The “brilliant minds” haven’t pick up on this yet. They want to put a price tag on a share of stock in Facebook in the same manner they put a price tag on a share of stock in any other business. The problem is this whole social media stuff isn’t just any other business.
I don’t know the answer.
But I do recognize that those who are trying to place a value on Social Media are not using the right measuring sticks yet.
Time for a few words from deep inside my heart.
We live in a temporary world.
One where we say yes and pledge to something yet we keep an eye out for something better.
I’ve seen it happen in peoples marriages and I’ve seen it happen in peoples careers.
It’s the grass is greener syndrome that tells us what we have is not what will make us happy, so we need to be on the look out for something or someone better.
Problem is that the person that is with you where ever you go in life is still yourself.
Sometimes we call it restlessness.
And sometimes it is okay to look for something else, especially in the employment world where things seem to be very fickle.
I have done this for years. For decades.
When I started on the air as a radio disc-jockey in my teens, I was always looking to move up to a bigger station, a better gig. That was the way it worked in show business.
It worked. I went from overnights in a city of 25,000 to evenings in a neighboring town of 50,000 in a year. My next move was back to overnights, but I was on the Big Dog at the time, back in Fort Wayne where I grew up but on the most popular radio station.
I later ended up on the air in Indianapolis and Detroit.
Fast forward to 2012.
A few years ago Monster.com set up a free service that would send you daily emails with job postings that matched the criteria you asked for. I have been getting these emails for 3 or more years.
I finally unsubscribed and deleted my information from their site.
I really like my job. I don’t want to look. Let those that are looking keep looking, but not me.
This is my commitment. Do you need do solidify any commitments in your life?
I know I am not the first person to consider this, but I wonder how many people have purposely gone on an All Ramen, All the Time diet to drop a few pounds?
This infograph is what planted the idea in my mind:
Created by: HackCollege.com
More here: http://www.hackcollege.com/blog/2012/2/27/infographic-we-love-ramen.html
What a weekend.
Saturday was the 2nd TEDxFortWayne event. I was privileged to be a volunteer on the team that Craig Crook put together to create this years TED. The theme was ReThink Fort Wayne.
Saturday morning I shared a preview, but I was blown away by some of the unexpected.
For example this video, which I had heard of but never saw the full seven minutes was part of one of the presentations.
(A good friend of the family is one of the artists in this video too).
In order to keep the momentum going, the #ReThinkFW Hashtag is being used on Twitter and elsewhere.
Apple Podcasts
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Spotify
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Deezer
CastBox