Kreblog

It is funny that some business still don’t get the Internet. I’m not talking about anything advanced like what is the best strategy on how to tap in to social networking or mobile advertising, I’m talking about bare bones basic stuff.

The past few times driving thru town I’ve noticed that Dos Amigos Burritos has a sign in their window advertising some new deal. But the thing is I can’t read the sign. The text sort of blends into the background, plus your are driving through an area where you need to keep alert so the entire message is easy to miss.

That’s OK, I’ll check their web site for the deal.

Nope, nothing, no mention of anything.

So now, if I want to know the deal, I need to drive past it a few more times… like that is going to happen anytime soon.

I’m sure this is just what they intended when they decided to come up with a deal to bring in more business.

Another Sunday, another reporter doesn’t get Twitter. This time it was CBS’s Nancy Giles on today’s “Sunday Morning.”

What’s not to get? It’s a text box with a button… you enter text, click the button, people can see now see what you wrote.

With Twitter as with blogging, it’s simple:

“Why do I want to know what you are doing/thinking?”

Counter Question: “What do YOU want to know about ME and how do you want ME to tell YOU?”

“Why would you want to know what I’m doing/thinking?”

Counter Question: “What do you want ME to know about YOU and how do YOU want to tell ME?”

If you don’t care to know what anyone is doing/thinking, or care that people know what you are doing/thinking, don’t sign up on Twitter.

If you don’t care to know what I’m specifically doing/thinking, don’t follow me on Twitter.

If you want to know what certain people are doing/thinking but think Twitter is too impersonal, Then how do you want those people to tell you? Do you want people to actively tell you or passively, and what will be manageable?

Does all this mean face to face communication suffers? Well what we discovered from blogging is a big NO. In fact it enhances face to face communication because we now have topics to discuss right off the bat instead of taking time to flesh them out when we meet.

Another thing, if someone says “Hey, you should think about blogging/Twitter/Facebook” most of the time it usually means that person finds you interesting and wants to hear more from you. You can sort of take it as a compliment (haha… I’m not going to go into what it means if no one asks you).

Lastly, to be against blogging/Twitter/Facebook just to be “different” is really a protest on deaf ears to those who are doing it. With so much new content coming in everyday, there really is no time to actively remember why someone protesting isn’t part of that stream.

I end with this: If you really don’t care for anyone to know what you are doing/thinking online, there is nothing wrong with that. Don’t do something you don’t want to do. Just quietly say “I’m good.” Don’t go on national television to rail against something people obviously find a use for.

In my previous blog post, I rambled on about how people’s correspondence have been shrinking, how we now all talk to each other in basically 140 characters or less.

That’s why the other week I found it funny some people are now adding “Sent from iPhone” to their normal email signatures in order to sort of say: “Hey, can’t really talk, here is my short response to your email.”

Can’t say it 140 characters, it isn’t worth saying.

I couple things this week caught my attention with week:

• Bill Maher had a rant on his show about people using Twitter.
• Chris Mathews was also poking fun of people using Twitter.
• Rocky Mountain News shut down this week (while other newspapers are doing just about as well).
• Everyday there seems to be a new blog written by another economist popping up.

My two cents:

It seems just like yesterday the old media was poking fun at blogs, how they were all pointless, all written by teenagers blabbing about their boring lives, but most importantly blogs were just a fad. They just saw the content, not the technology, the technology of publishing to the web “on demand”, not on some deadline.

Now the old media is in trouble, either trying to re-invent themselves or shutting down. Funny how all the star reporters now have blogs, posting multiple times a day rather than just one daily report.

Maybe it is just the fact that I get my news from the web and not the 24 hour cable news channels. I don’t care if MSNBC is too liberal, I even don’t care if FOX is too conservative. I don’t watch it because the smart people aren’t on there, but more importantly, the “discussion” isn’t happening there, it is on the blogs.

It has been amazing how many smart people, people that actual teach or implement economic policies for a living, have appeared recently with blogs, writing intelligent posts on the financial crisis.

While the nightly news gives us two minutes on bank nationalization, there is a whole wealth of blog posts going on discussing it in detail: pro and con, linking and cross-linking, build on each other, furthering the “discussion.”

Which gets me back to Twitter. Sure the media can post fun at Twitter, find people talking about their grilled cheese. But just like they laughed at blogs, Twitter is just a technology where people can post “on demand”, just this time anywhere their mobile phone has bars.

Like it or not media, the “discussion” is already happening on Twitter and it’s only a matter of time before we see Chris Mathews on there trying to stay relevant.