As my boss, Pam Edstrom, is famously known for liking to ask in many situations, “What is the business problem we are trying to solve?”  Solving problems is the main driver of innovation, and when it comes to social media the problem today is simply keeping up with all the new social networking sites that are cropping up.  The giants are still MySpace and Facebook, but many of you will have seen the emails that appear daily inviting you to yet another site wanting to usurp that status.  Social networking is community based and odds of survival for any new site depend on attracting a critical mass of users, so they focus their energies on making their site viral and sticky.

Thus, the new problem to solve becomes helping users manage the number of sites that they already subscribe, by allowing them to amalgamate feeds from several sites, or post to several sites simultaneously.  FriendFeed is great for that, and I’ve recently tried Posterous which I also like.  Posterous also makes it easy to post via email, which neatly bypasses the problem that international users like myself have of not being allowed to SMS to US sites. 

We’re all familiar with blogging, and five years ago blogging was usually the only self-publishing you did online.  Now we have Twitter, which I must admit I post to a lot more simply because micro-blogging appeals to my fast-paced style.  Sites like FriendFeed and Posterous also make it easy to cross-pollinate the various blogging channels that we use. I’ve looked at other blogging possibilities, but I must admit I am hitting my limit for how many social media sites and blog platforms I have time for.

For all the sites, including Facebook, FriendFeed, Posterous, etc. the business problem is how to make money.  I know advertising is the obvious answer but a part of me does wonder is that it? Whoever licks that problem will set the tone for innovation on the Internet for the next decade. 

Best explanation of AIG's woes anywhere is here.

Apparently the only white knight that can save AIG is a multi-trillionaire, and

The only multi-trillionaire around, though, is the U.S. government. Which is a strange sort of trillionaire, I know, given that it's $10 trillion in debt (and that doesn't count the present value of future commitments to Social Security and Medicare and yada yada yada). But it could swing the deal financially.

It is hard to find stuff to blog about sometimes, because so much of what happens in a day that is so immensely bloggable is often in reality not.  My colleague Frank Shaw, who is the global lead for the Microsoft account, used to have a blog on our company's intranet that was funny, honest, insightful, and very readable.  Many postings were of a personal nature that would've been too private for a public blog, but that's what made it so interesting to read.  A while back he made the decision to change to a public blog instead, Glasshouse.  What I've found impressive is that he's managed to maintain the same level of readability and "interestingness" (to borrow a term from Flickr).  Frank is also a tireless Twitterer, which is doubly impressive considering he has a day job that pretty much takes up all of his time (and more). And he runs marathons! And he cooks like a chef! And he has green thumbs! Like they say, a better man you couldn't find.

I got to thinking about Frank and Glasshouse after discovering he's in the final 8 out of the original 32 in the PRWeek PR blog competition, and the competition is still ongoing.  Congratulations Frank!

Yes I know the first days after Photosynth comes out of beta will be filled with folks people making boring synths of the room they’re in. 

So here’s another one. 

When I was younger (and quite frankly had more spare time on my hands) one of my favorite things to do was surf the Internet looking for new, innovative software programs to play with.  The early days of shareware were great for that.  That’s why there’s a whiff of nostalgia the past two days, when I’ve been playing with three new toys: Photosynth, PPTplex and Collabio.  (Disclosure: all three are connected to Microsoft, a client of my firm.)  In fact Photosynth has been so successful the site was down yesterday, which was quite frustrating when I had just spent 20 minutes taking photos of my study to upload!

This is why I started my PR career working with Technology.  I’ve never been a programmer (short of six months as an in-house editor for a software house when I wrote a user manual and created a Windows Help file, or even earlier, fooling around with BASIC on my sister’s Apple ][).  But I have enormous, enormous respect for people that create innovative software that solves a problem in a new way, makes life fun, or is just plain Cool.  I love playing with it, writing about it, telling the world about it.  Over the years that passion and respect has extended to hardware, consumer electronics, and virtually Innovation in all its different guises.  But I still experience that frisson of excitement after downloading and installing new software, and clicking on “Finish” in the installation box.  I know I can then start playing with my new toy.

Like most people around the world (live, in most of Asia and Europe's case), I was glued to the screen during the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony.  I'm not ashamed to admit I swelled up with pride and even a little choked up at places, for example when Lin Hao, that little boy who survived the Szechuan earthquake, marched in with Yao Ming. 

Scanning the blogosphere afterwards was interesting, reading cynical comments sprinkled among the many raves about the ceremony's beauty and precision, and celebration of China's cultural heritage. Some examples of the negative notes include:

"They are all unpaid.  China is exploiting these performers!" 15,000 performers rehearsed for eight months, so even the logistics of feeding, clothing and transporting them over eight months would have cost $1000 each, or a total of $15M alone.  Almost all these performers would have been volunteers from the army or the civil forces, and they would all have willingly competed for the honor of representing China on this momentous occasion. So I wouldn't say they were exploited. 

"The stunning Olympics opening ceremony? Faked." Only the 28 fireworks footprint segment, leading up to the opening, was a CGI sequence of actual fireworks launched, and the organizers made no effort to misrepresent it as true footage.

"This is where all the money we owe them is going." Obviously from a US blog comment. 

One major sour note though, came from the Chinese blogosphere itself.  I was initially puzzled by the muted response of our China compatriots online, especially in the first few hours after the broadcast.  I subsequently found out why:

While foreigners around the world rave about this years Olympics opening ceremony being one of the best ever, local Chinese were telling a different story. It has been the most popular topic in the largest forums/BBS (such as Mop, Tianya) since the Opening.

Frustrated Chinese complain that CCTV version failed to capture many of the exciting (and in some cases crucial) camera angles and Chinese announcers only managed to provide vacuous commentary. Meanwhile, the American commentators were able to go into great detail about the numerous traditional Chinese elements and symbols used throughout the intricately planned ceremony, displaying a much more complete knowledge of what was happening than in the Chinese version (granted, the delayed broadcasting of the ceremony by NBC gave the commentators time to do their homework). Some even go as far as to assert that Chinese will have to retract their accusations against foreign media for biased reporting since this time they presented China with such creativity and expertise that “even Americans are unable to find fault.”

Turns out CCTV created its own broadcast for within China, while most TV stations around the world used the BOB feed.

In spite of it all, this was an Opening Ceremony for the history books, and a great coming out party for China. 

Everybody’s talking about the new “Google Killer” so i had to take a look. Initial impressions? Fast response (even from Asia), but the new magazine format of displaying search results eats up valuable screen real estate, and it can take time to scroll to what you want, even with the subject tabs.  This is especially if the algorithms haven’t had the time to be refined to the point where the most accurate results are always displayed first.

Cuil is also not location-sensitive, so it’s not aware of the user’s geographic location when returning results.  The high incidence of broken image links is jarring too, but that’s not necessarily Cuil’s fault.  Overall Cuil seems incredibly well-formed for a search engine just launching. 

Last Monday I returned from a 10-day self-drive trip in Ireland, starting in Dublin and driving around the west coast in a rental car.  Like many people, every summer we take a longish holiday, and for me the joy has always been about the preparation: the months of anticipation while you read books and research your destination online, deciding which towns to stop at and which B&B’s to stay at, reading about the culture and history, the unique foods, and what makes the Irish the warm, unpretentious people that they are.  Another part of my preparation is selling last year’s Garmin GPS map SD and buying the new Ireland one on eBay.  And watching “Michael Collins” on cable (and discovering that Julia Roberts can’t do an accent to save her life).

Of course the entire week after returning, I was away on a pretty busy business trip to Singapore and Korea, so I didn’t really have a chance to review and appreciate the holiday, and today was really the first time to sit and reflect.  We are now trying new ways to consume the black pudding we bought (as a substitute for tuna in salad niçoise, fried up like sausages with eggs for breakfast, etc.), and drinking Guinness whenever we can (although I discovered I like Murphy’s more but you can’t find that here).

I’m just satisfied with the thought that, like they say in that book “1000 Places to See Before You Die”, I can now cross Ireland off my list.  It won’t see the last of me though.

How’s this for a definition of “geek” from this excellent article:

There can be many kinds, Art Geeks, Music Geeks, Computer Geeks, Math Geeks, you name it.  Geeks are the people you want to talk to when you need to know something but perhaps don't always want to invite to your parties.  They are the people that collect information almost compulsively and nurture deep understandings of very obscure branches of knowledge.  Geeks are people that live by their wits and believe in meritocracies and recognition not privilege or nepotism. They value our knowledge and appreciate those who can appreciate that and more importantly, add to it.  They find great joy in learning a new thing, to extending our knowledge and sharing knowledge with another that can appreciate it.

The article discusses why geeks are often atheist, and offers up this as one explanation:

It might make sense to think that many such geeks simply find something as simple as a creator an overly simplistic explanation for something so elegant.

Yep I second that.

Reading this part made me angry:

Longtime global warming skeptic Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., citing a recent poll, said in a statement, "Hansen, (former Vice President) Gore and the media have been trumpeting man-made climate doom since the 1980s. But Americans are not buying it."

NASA warming scientist: 'This is the last chance' - Yahoo! News

Instant messaging is a great communication tool.  I use it a lot, and it really makes those numerous small but essential conversations in the workplace very efficient, especially with colleagues that are in another country.  And in my company we've taken it to a fine art, cutting out a lot of the preamble while preserving professional courtesy, and ending conversations (or convos in WE parlance) with a thumbs up emoticon that says "I'm done with this exchange and need to get on to other work, let's talk later."

If you need to have a confidential conversation with someone, sometimes IM is the best.  I've walked away from people's cubicle with the sign-off "I'll IM you" so we can continue a convo that has veered into confidential territory, so the guy in the next cubicle can't hear.  This especially works well for those small personal exchanges that are not important enough to warrant finding a meeting room.

And of course IM is the only tool that lets you have several simultaneous, completely separate, conversations. That appeals to the efficiency freak in me.

But IM has a dark side. 

There are offices where for most of the day you can hear a pin drop, where the only sound is keyboards clicking away.  Walk around and I bet you'll see an IM window on every PC.  When people seated next to each other IM each other by default, something is wrong. When you see two people in a meeting, taking turns typing and smirking, you know it's time to put a stop to it.  As a rule I only IM people that are seated far away or in another office, and only if my question is trivial enough that it's overkill to get up and walk over.  However, every once in a while I do wander the corridors chatting to people if just to give myself a break. 

An office where everybody IMs everybody else, and the corridors are silent, can't be that fun a workplace.  I've seen this phenomenon in our offices sometimes and it's a sign that we need to ratchet down our reliance on IM.  It's all about balance and not abusing modern technology.

Todd Defren wrote an excellent posting on "What I wish my new employee knew" and I couldn't have described it any better.

What resonated the most with me were these few:

I wish my new employee knew that some clients are a-holes, and some clients are incredibly appreciative, but they must all be treated equally.  That means that the level of effort can’t flag for the prickly client.  That means that you shouldn’t use your water-cooler time to gossip or kvetch about the tough cases; it’s unhelpful and nothing good comes of it.  (Along with this, it helps to know that the nice clients far outweigh the jerks, over time.  Never let the turkeys get ya down.)

I wish my new employee knew that we absolutely and gladly fire clients who are truly abusive.  We’re vigilant about this, but most new employees assume that the client is always right and stay quiet for too long.

I wish my new employee knew that the beginning part of a career is usually a slog.  It’s not all Social Media fun & games, sorry.  To be effective & accountable strategists, we need databases, research, detailed reports.  That’s how everybody starts out, even the rock stars. 

I wish my new employee knew that “eagerness is everything.”  If you’re eager; if you’re leaning forward; motivated, I’ll lie on the train tracks for you.  If you’ve got a dark cloud over your head, its shadow casts a pall over the entire office.  That includes my office.

We hire energetic, creative, dynamic young people in Waggener Edstrom.  I can't count the number of times I've spoken to my fellow practitioners about the difficulty of managing the current generation of young entrants into the business.  A common complaint I hear is the negative attitude and sense of entitlement that permeates Generation Y.  Yes, there will always be tough, demanding, unreasonable clients, but the big question our people need to ask is: Am I learning anything? If a client is tough because they demand the very best, that ups your game and you should treat it as a challenge and a learning opportunity.  Genuinely abusive clients that just make your life miserable don't stay clients very long. 

This is why, when I meet a new employee who approaches situations with a glass-half-full mentality, who leans forward and learns, who loves to ask questions and relishes challenges, who isn't afraid to work hard and understands at this stage in their careers it will be a slog, I hope I can be forgiven if I give them as many opportunities to advance as possible, and forgive them their mistakes. 

BBC reported that a usability study by Jakob Nielsen found that web users are more "selfish" nowadays and don't dawdle on web sites.  They go in, grab what they want, and then leave, not spending time browsing the ads, promotions and multimedia content loving placed there by the owners:

In 2004, about 40% of people visited a homepage and then drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60% use a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25% of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there.

"Basically search engines rule the web," he said.

I thought this was pretty obvious, to be honest.

There are a few best practices for keeping a blog, such as post regularly and predictably, have a specific subject focus, don't be afraid to be controversial, and so on.  Unfortunately I've been lax recently. I'm a workaholic and devote more time to my "day job" than I should (so my partner says), and that takes away time from posting.  Of course strictly speaking the blog is part of my day job, but every job has priorities and somehow I always find running the business takes precedence.

I've also been distracted by events that bothered me on a personal level: the Tibet protests during the Olympic Torch relay, and the Sichuan earthquake.  I wasn't born in China, but recent events have re-ignited my patriotism, to my surprise. 

Like most Chinese across the diaspora, I don't believe politics and sports should mix.  I don't believe a developing country that is trying to join the world and integrate should be punished for it with public humiliation.  There are legitimate avenues to protest and publicize human rights issues in China, but snatching the Torch from runners, one of them wheelchair-bound, is not the way to do it.  One unintended result is increased xenophobia within China and mistrust of the intentions of foreigners, within a wide spectrum of the mainland China public. 

Earlier this week when watching coverage of the three days of mourning for the Sichuan earthquake victims, I felt uncomfortable when public gatherings of mourners in Cheugdu observing a moment of silence inexplicably morphed into passionate crowds chanting "Go go China!".  Uncomfortable because as a nation we felt so misunderstood and besieged by world opinion, that emotions overflowed on an occasion that should be about honoring the dead, and not nationalism.  Public opinion in China right now is at risk of degenerating into blanket mistrust of the western media, which is sad.

In time emotions will fade.  Successful conclusion of the Beijing Olympics, without incident, will help tremendously, as will continued engagement with the west.

I'm glad I have a front row seat.  Being in my line of business also gives me valuable opportunities to contribute to that engagement, for which I feel extremely fortunate.

It had to happen sooner or later:

Advisory firm BDA China reported that as of February 2008, China had over 220 million people on the internet, with that number soaring to 233 million by March. The US hosts 216 million internet users.

Adding one more to the superlatives and statistics describing China's rising position in the world.