There is so much noise, is anyone listening? Welcome to the 2.0 generation.

Posted on March 9th, 2010 by John Sostak

It's crowded and noisy out here.

It is really noise in here.  In my little box, that is connected to 2 billion other people.

Communication has never had so many different forms.  Web 2.0 is social media and social networking.  Everyone has a voice, and an audience.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and hundreds of other social networks have taken the Internet, and mobile web to another level, and it has happened quickly.

I am constantly responding to emails, text messages, blog comments, an occasional phone call.  Forget about mail, I will not answer it, email me the wedding invitation.  With all this communication, why do I feel like I’m disconnected from my friends, family and clients?

The 2.0 Generation.

Time has always been a non renewable commodity, and therefore, of the highest value.  Now when we get someone’s time, we do not necessarily get there attention.  I believe the 2.0 Generation is only going to become harder to reach, because we have to many ways to communicate.  As an Internet marketer, I need to get a hold this.  Now.

I won’t pretend to have an answer to an obvious question.  How can we communicate effectively?  To me, effectively means we get our message across, and we receive feedback or something that we can act on or think about.  How are you communicating?

Is your communication and channels effective?  Put some thought into that.  Effective today may have a lower bar then 20 years ago.  20 years ago we were using fax machines, beepers, we always had change in our pocket for the payphone at the airport or gas station.  We did talk more, and I feel like we had a longer attention span.  I’m not pining for the old days before the world wide web, just trying to get my arms around what is next.

There is so much noise, it is getting harder to actually reach the person.  That is the true marketers challenge.  Aggregating a million page views a day is only impressive if the viewer actually responds to the page.  So, favorite way to communicate leads to the second, and maybe more important question.  What have you found to be the most effective way to communicate?

How do you slice through the noise, like a samurai, and reach Generation 2.0?  I see people on Facebook, and I can tell they are on it for hours, that respond to a Farmville coin, but do not answer their phone.  The smart Internet marketing companies and businesses are creating an incentive in exchange for the members time.

Engagement and incentives may get them in, and make your site and product sticky.  This leads to many more questions.  It isn’t uncommon to go into production on a movie without knowing how it ends.  If you write, you also realize that every answer isn’t needed before the 1st chapter is completed, so we can save the questions related to how we use the people we collect.

The question that matters is what channels can we use to effectively reach Generation 2.0?

Tags: Facebook, Generation 2.0, Internet Marketing, LinkedIn, social media, Twitter, web 2.0

What is your Favorite PHP Framework, and Why?

Posted on December 22nd, 2009 by John Sostak

Open Source is good for me and I will fully embrace it

Open Source developers are creating great frameworks.  Web development and software engineering has come a long way, and we love some of the exciting frameworks that have been developed and are constantly being improved.

Twitter is Ruby on Rails, and now is being improved with Scala.

Here is a really great discussion in a LinkedIn group that I belong to.  What is your favorite PHP framework of Choice?

Some very interesting ones we have been evaluating, with RoR and Scala are:

Drupal

NOLOH

Symfony

CodeIgniter

Zend

Let’s not forget,  WP 2.9

Do you have a favorite PHP Framework?  I would love a tweet to our company ARCADEDIG Twitter account, with your favorite, or even better a response on my blog with your favorite, and why.

Tags: LinkedIn, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Twitter

Twitter DNS Compromised, Hacked By Iranian Cyber Terrorists

Posted on December 18th, 2009 by John Sostak

Screenshot of Twitter after the site was taken offline by cyber terrorists (hackers).

Last night Twitter was taken down by hackers who identify themselves as the “Iranian Cyber Army.”  Pretty dramatic, and scary.  Hackers are everywhere, and none of us are safe, so seeing hackers identify themselves with Middle East extremist groups was inevitable.

I think the first and most important thing that needs to be done by us, as Twitter users, is make sure that if you have a Twitter account, you use a unique password that is not associated with other sites, like your bank or website.

Twitter is a young company with an exploding membership.  Young tech companies are less secure.  On this page we have what feels like 50 Twitter links.  They have thousands of developers building API’s, and millions of Tweet’s happening every minute.  They are vulnerable.

The Iranian Cyber Army also attacked Facebook and YouTube.  It sucks to be a member of the Twitter development team this weekend.  For the rest of us, this serves as a gentle reminder.  We rely on the web, and there are thousands of nasty people in the world that want to interrupt our lives, or worse.

Screenshot of Google result for Twitter, December 17, 2009.

Twitter was replaced by a landing page with an image of an Iranian flag.  There is an image above of a Twitter screenshot.  A Google search screenshot can be seen here too.

I’m getting ready for the Blaze football fundraiser, and I wanted to touch on this story, and the lack of attention it is receiving on television.  I am watching CNBC, and rarely does a broadcast block go by on CNBC without hearing something related to Twitter or tweeting.  Twitter is a diaper dandy in the business community.

I realize this is not an enormous story, but there is some drama here.  Is the attack being overlooked because of a long holiday week and weekend?  Maybe it having taken place only 13 hours ago has not allowed the reporters to collect enough information to report. This is a long weekend for a lot of people.

Be careful with your passwords.  Try and use different ones on the sites that you log into, and be even more careful with the ones that access finance and web.

Tags: Cyber Terrorist, Hackers, Twitter