Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Loyal listeners of The Hopkinson Report know a few things about me:

- I never miss a week (once in the last 118 episodes)
- I love technology, being online and all things social media
- I love mountain biking (I compared the ‘flow’ of biking to a business in Episode 113)

So when I was away for the first part of my vacation while mountain biking some epic trails in Seattle, the capable Brandon Werner filled in. But then the unexpected struck when I came back to the east coast to go biking in the rocky trails of the Pocono mountains.

Photo: Happier, 2-armed times near Seattle just days before my crash

Do you believe in social media karma? No less than SEVENTY-FOUR different people wished me happy birthday on Thursday August 19th. It was great. Everyone was so happy, and people wished me the greatest day of the year!

Well, as fate would have it, my upper arm (distal humerus) would face a 3-foot high karma boulder head-on. And lose. Badly.

The next week turned into a whirlwind of hospitals, travel, surgery, second opinions, friends, family, pain, insurance red tape, and frustration before finally making it back to NYC.

My friends said that I would somehow find a way to link my broken arm to social media.

In truth? I went the opposite way.

What did NOT matter in that week, was twitter, foursquare, facebook, marketing, viral videos, podcasts, and blog posts.

What DID matter, was family, friends, coworkers, communication and old school doctors screwing a piece of metal into me to put me back together.

I will say this:
- Text updates were great for quick communication
- Facebook is a great way to post gross photos
- E-mail is a good way to tell a story once to many people (helpful with one arm)
- The iPad is a great way to kill 3 painful hours on a train

However, all this is nothing without a real world network.

So I ask you… How is YOUR real life network?

Is it healthy?

Or is it fractured?

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Stop trying to make the perfect viral video, just jump on someone else’s bandwagon

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“We want this to go viral!”

It’s a sentence that anyone that has spent time in internet marketing has heard 1,000 times. Mostly, it’s from an advertiser that doesn’t realize the cold, hard truth. It’s damn near impossible to purposely create something and make it go viral.

Sure, you can add all the elements that the internet lusts for, such as:
- Cats
- Kids
- Boobs
- Celebrities
- Getting hit in the groin

You can “seed it on Twitter.”
You can “post it on Facebook.”
You can “distribute it on YouTube.”
You can “submit it to Digg and reddit.”

But in the end, it seems the harder you try to make something go viral, the less likely that is to happen. Go ahead, throw MORE money at your viral project. That will even doom it MORE.

Which means the flip side, is that you never know when something is going to capture the imagination of the world wide web. You’re at their mercy.

What’s a smart marketer to do?

Here is a summary of what I talk about in the podcast:

It’s a lot like surfing. Forget about creating a wave, just put yourself in the position so that you’re ready when the perfect wave does come along, and then ride as far as you can until the next one shows up.

Here are the four steps to ride the viral video wave:
Recognize, Hypothesize, Capitalize, Monetize

1) Recognize
In order to ride that wave, you need to be in the right water. Sitting in a pond in Aiken County, South Carolina isn’t going to cut it. You have to head to California or Hawaii to be where the waves are.

In internet speak, some of the places where I find viral content is:
- Reddit
- Digg
- Youtube
- Twitter
- Wired
- Mashable
- Facebook
- Email

Although lets face it, if you wait until someone sends YOU something via email, it’s probably too late.

Next, you’ve got to know it when you see it.
A small list of recent internet meme examples are:
- I’m on a boat
- Epic beard man
- Kanye interrupts Taylor Swift
- Balloon boy
- Rick Roll
- Double Rainbow
- Keanu Reeves sitting on a bench
- Old Spice guy

2) Hypothesize
You can do
1. Parody video
Musicians build audience
Hitler redub

2. Photoshop
Keanu with Forrest Gump

Bonus: Combine 2 memes
Example: Balloon boy with Kanye

3) Capitalize
Check out this amazing rendition of someone that combined “I’m on a boat” meme with the “I’m in a box” balloon boy.

- Another angle is to focus on a single word or sentence from the meme and exploit that as much as possible. For example, “Amber Lamps” / Black betty from the Epic Bear Man meme:

4) Monetize

Doesn’t have to be money; can be branding
- Build your twitter or facebook list

What do you do? How do you normally make money?
- If designer, let people know how to hire you
- If musician, have your band’s website and mailing list
- If writer, it drives people to your blog
- If major website, get traffic

- YouTube – allow people to buy the song
- Create a quick tshirt store

Example 1: JK Wedding video

- 3.5 million views in first 48 hours
- Chris Brown capitalizes… his 2008 song “Forever” reached number 4 on iTunes and number 3 on Amazon.com a year later as a result of the post.
- The couple capitalizes… Today show appearance, 15 minutes of fame, $16,000 fund to end domestic violence

Example 2: Old Spice guy

Mike Relm remix
- Worked until 7AM – all nighter – to get done
- 300,000 views
- Good social media: ask fans what to remix next
- Subscribe to his channel
- You need a DJ or someone to remix something? He’s your man

BYU spoof
- 10 film students and 2 full time employees spent a month on a 54 second remix
- About the BYU library?
- Film project

Example 3: Bed Intruder

Starts off with a scary topic. News report that an intruder came in through a window and broke into a woman’s apartment in the projects and tried to rape her. She managed to fight him off, then her brother came in and defended her.

This was the top story on reddit, and for the first 30 seconds, I couldn’t figure out why. Then Antoine Dodson started to talk. It would be easy to say, oh, this is just a poor African-American from the projects in Alabama, he’s going talk in ebonics and say something stupid we can all laugh at. But it was more than that. He was animated, passionate, and dare I say, funny?

Original video:

The comments on the reddit post were great, and then someone said the immortal words, “Someone should AutoTune this.”

Acting fast, the kings of Auto-Tune, The Gregory Brothers, produced not just one of the best parody videos of all time, but I honestly can say one of the best produced and catchiest songs I’ve heard since Justin Timberlake’s “Blank in a box.”

Go ahead and make fun of me, but I have that song on my iPod (if you replaced the lyrics with anything else, it still be a great song), and jumping right to the monetize portion, I also bought the “Bed Intruder” Auto-Tune song from iTunes for $1.29.

The Gregory Brothers hit a grand slam
- They acted fast, turning around the video in hours
- They produced something that was incredibly high quality
- They persistently, but no obnoxiously, inserted links to the original video, their YouTube page, and links to buy, updating it frequently as things changed
- They monetized through iTunes
- 2.5 million views and accounting

But I shouldn’t be surprised. I interviewed The Gregory Brothers on The Hopkinson Report Episode 80, and they were funny, talented, and super smart.

Here is the video.  Wait until you hear the piano solo at the end.

But then something even greater happened. Everyone ELSE got on the wave.

Aspiring musicians around the world gave their rendition of the song. I collected the best ones for you. I present you:

The Best Antoine Dodson / Bed Intruder / Gregory Brothers Parody Videos

1 acoustic blues

2 backup vocal remix

3 funky acoustic

4 young girl a capella

5 rocker dude acoustic

6 beatbox

7 accordion

8 rocker dude lipsync

What did I do with them? I posted the list on reddit.

You know, in hopes that my link would go viral… (no such luck so far)

—-
Follow me on twitter

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While I think that I bring lots of energy and passion to my podcast, and am usually pretty articulate, I’ve never pretended that I have a great “radio voice.” Well, that distinction is made even clearer when you listen to my guest Matt Walters, a professional voiceover actor.

This podcast is truly a “must listen.”

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Everyone likes to quote the opening movie line with the gravel-voiced actor belting out “In a world…” but in reality, the people behind the success of movie trailers, commercial reads, and cartoon voices don’t get the recognition that they deserve.

This week I speak with Matt Walters, and he gives some great tips for getting into the business, how he got his start, and some hysterical examples of how my tagline could be read.

Topics we discuss:
- The interesting (and somewhat deceptive) way Matt got his start by defying stereotypes and pulling a “Karate Kid” move
- The process of getting an agent and breaking into the business
- Techniques for getting ready and warming up
- What happens when you get a nasal cold
- The different way a voiceover actor watches TV

Check out Matt’s voiceover reel:

We then talk about the godfather of voiceover, Don LaFontaine. Reading his wikipedia page, and watching a video tribute to him, you realize how amazing this guy was. Can you believe he’s done more than 5,000 movie trailers and hundreds of thousands of TV ads and promotions?

We also talk about whether it’s better to have a big part in a small movie, or in his case, a small part in a big movie. Matt played Owen Wilson’s work friend in Marley and Me (also starring Jennifer Aniston).

Additionally, he achieved the rite of passage for every New York-based actor, landing a role on Law and Order.

Lastly, he played a mop-topped Paul McCartney for a Comedy Central promotion for Beatles Rock Band.

See Matt’s appearances:

But we weren’t done there. Matt was kind enough to indulge me and say “You’re listening to the Hopkinson Report podcast” in the following accents:
- British
- Irish
- Boston
- New York

It was quite entertaining. So if you’re looking for advice about getting into the business, looking to improve your podcasting skills and pick up a few tricks, check out the podcast.

Learn more about Matt Walters on his website.

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A new movie about Facebook is coming out this fall called The Social Network. I give you 7 reasons why I think it will be a huge success.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Today in the podcast I talk about the 7 reasons people with “LIKE” the Facebook movie. Get it? Like??? Luckily, the rest of the podcast is not that cheesy. Here is the outline of topics I cover:

1) A built-in audience of 500 million fans
With just the sheer number of people ON Facebook, how can this thing NOT make money? It was announced July 21 that Facebook had officially passed Five Hundred Million worldwide users.

- Let’s see… how could they market this… um, how about with Facebook ads?
- College kids are going to see this… they came of age during the Facebook era and lived it.
- Social media geeks are going to see this… it’s like Sex and the City for nerds
- Other non-geeks that don’t know the full story will see it
- Millions will see it just out of curiosity

2) Social media/word of mouth/bloggers
What’s the best way to get lots of people to see your movie?
Word of mouth marketing.
And no site on the web is better equipped to spread the word than Facebook.

We are consumed with it.
- 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
- 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook
- The average user has 130 friends

If even a small fraction of the first people to see it shares it with their 130 friends, the word of mouth viral marketing will be like the Old Spice guy on crack.

BUT

Word of mouth only works if it’s a GOOD movie. Bad word of mouth spreads too. So, do we have any indicators to see if it will actually be a GOOD movie? Well, we can start by looking at the pedigrees of the creators:

3) Aaron Sorkin, writer
- He did the West Wing, a show that I’ve heard was amazing, but I never really watched. But 7 years on the air and dozens of awards can’t be bad.
- He also did A Few Good Men, a film that grossed $141,000,000 in the US alone. Did the film do well because Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and Jack Nicholson were in it? Or did those stars take the role because it was a strong script?
- He also did Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. This was a show that not a lot of people saw (it was canceled after one season due to ratings), but I actually watched every episode and loved it. The dialog was excellent.

4) David Fincher, director
- He did the movie Se7en, not a bad flick
- He also did Fight Club, which the “reddit.com movie critic” subreddit section thinks is one of the best all time
- He was a Best Director nominee for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. While I thought this movie was very good (but not great… and WAY too freaking long), it grossed $127MM domestic.

5) Ben Mezrich, author of the book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal
- Mezrich’s pedigree? He wrote book Bringing Down the House, which was made into the movie “21.” That movie made $158MM worldwide, $81 million in the US on a budget of $35MM.

6) Justin Timberlake with a permJust seeing him with that hair is comedy enough. But consider his fan base as well:
- 55 million albums sold with N’Sync
- 9 million albums sold as a solo artist
- Hugely popular guest on Saturday Night Live (I can definitely see him hosting to plug the movie)
- A crossover star in fashion… now doing commercials
- Hugely wide appeal (Notice everyone blames Janet Jackson and never him for the Super Bowl incident)

[Honorable mention for Trent Reznor, who I forgot to mention in the podcast. He is doing the musical score for the entire movie, and has a huge base both as a solo artist and from Nine Inch Nails]

7) Haters
This movie will have a ton of buzz just because it will become cool to NOT like the movie. People will want to hate it, because we’re already starting to see evidence of Facebook overload.

- It’s going to be similar to Apple. Do some people hate Apple? Yes. Do they call the supporters Fanboys? Yes. Does it stop millions of people from lining up days in advance to buying every product? No.

- Mark Zuckerberg is not entirely happy with the movie (he “expressed distaste“)

- Dustin Moskovitz, Co-Founder of Facebook had the following to say about The Social Network (I paraphrased a bit)

“It is interesting to see my past rewritten in a way that emphasizes things that didn’t matter and leaves out things that really did. Other than that, it’s just cool to see a dramatization of history. A lot of exciting things happened in 2004, but mostly we just worked a lot and stressed out about things, so I’m just going to choose to remember that we drank ourselves silly and had a lot of sex with coeds.”

- The anti-movie spoofs have begun:

So to sum up, not everyone is going to be “a fan” of the movie, but I think enough people will “like” it for it to crack $125MM with ease.

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Today I’m going to talk about a concept that stems from a single word called “flow.” I’m not going to get too deep or spiritual with you, but I think it’s a very important state of mind to recognize and strive for, both in your life and in your work.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

It’s approaching August here in New York City, which means it’s hot as hades, things are starting to slow down a bit, and in the next few weeks, both the city itself and the offices around town empty out as people end the summer with much-needed vacations before cranking things back up post Labor Day.

Quick flashback on my life … I lived in Seattle for 3 years and just about every Thursday after work when the weather was good, friends and I would head to a trail called Tiger Mountain just outside downtown to go mountain biking. It was the perfect release after 4 rough days of work, with a brutal 40 minute uphill climb the second you left the parking lot, followed by a 45 minute descent through rocks, roots, and flowing singletrack trails. On the weekends we’d venture further from the city and find other amazing trails. It was some of the best times of my life.

Needless to say, life changes pretty quickly in the concrete jungle of Manhattan. Gone were the days of throwing the bike on the roof rack of the car on a whim and being on a trail in under an hour.  Now my mountain bike adventures are few and far between.

It wasn’t until last holiday season that I rented a mountain bike for a day while in Santa Monica, CA and hit a half decent trail that I truly remembered how much I loved biking. I immediately pledged to do a more formal trip this summer, and that’s what is in the works now, piggybacking a visit back to Seattle to bike again and then on to Durango, CO for hopefully some of the best biking in the U.S.

The day after the details came together, I was listening to the Adam Carolla Podcast and Adam was talking about a dream he had. He told how he flashed back to when he was younger and playing baseball as a centerfielder. He meticulously described a scene where a ball is hit and immediately at the crack of the bat, you’re turning and sprinting toward the wall because you know it’s over your head. You’re completely in the zone, looking back over your shoulder to spot the ball, adjusting on the fly, tracking it down, and everything immediately comes together and you make the catch.

During this time, there’s no way you’re thinking about your mortgage, or the fight you had with your wife, or the rude person at the airport. Your body takes over on instinct and you’re in the zone.

While I’ve certainly heard of being in the zone for sports, his sidekick Teresa Strasser jumped in and gave one of the best supporting information I think she’s ever done, talking about the psychological state of “flow.”

Like being in the zone, it’s a state that your mind blocks out all the foreign disruptors, from problems at home to the fans screaming at the top of their lungs. But she also mentioned that it’s more than that — there needs to be several factors present.

Let me note that many of the definitions below are taken from Wikipedia so I’ll let them take it from here…

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (MEE-hye CHICK-sent-me-high-ee | photo via his Facebook fan page), he identifies the following ten factors as accompanying an experience of flow:

1. Clear goals
2. A high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback.
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. A lack of awareness of bodily needs (to the extent that one can reach a point of great hunger or fatigue without realizing it)
10. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

By complete coincidence, while on his wiki page, turns out Csíkszentmihályi did an interview with Wired back in 1996, talking about flow in terms of website design.

I immediately understood that this was why I loved mountain biking (and for that matter skiing and driving the perfect car on the perfect twisty road) so much. It’s a very different activity versus lying on the beach or watching a movie or doing a very difficult crossword puzzle.

The reason is because it’s not necessarily an easy activity. You get a feeling of accomplishment because you are exerting effort and skill to achieve something. Yet, once you get decent at it, it’s not an activity that is so difficult that it causes you to have anxiety.

What’s more, as you speed down the mountain on a challenging trail, you are constantly – constantly! – racing your mind at a mile a minute calculating your next move. It’s bang bang bang:

- Look ahead
- See the obstacle
- Pick a line
- Make the adjustment
- Repeat.

Let’s look at what other activities are associated with achieving flow:

Sports – From the greatest players in basketball to the best golfers in the world, many describe being in the zone when the basket or the cup seems so large that you just can’t miss. Baseball players see the baseball coming at them as a floating beachball and not a 98mph fastball. Marathoners talk of a ”runners’s high” when the pavement melts away and you feel like you can run for miles.

Arts – Wikipedia says that Historical sources hint that Michelangelo may have painted the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel while in a flow state. It is reported that he painted for days at a time, and he was so absorbed in his work that he did not stop for food or sleep until he reached the point of passing out. He would wake up refreshed and, upon starting to paint again, re-entered a state of complete absorption.

Music – Every band will tell you that the goal is to get everyone “in the pocket,” when every member is acting as one, anticipating each other’s direction, nailing every note and transition, syncing up bass and drums, and moving from one song to the next. Also from Wikipedia, lyricists (particularly hip-hop Emcees) who freestyle experience flow when formulating rhymes off the top of his or her head. This is commonly known in hip-hop culture as “flowing”.

Alas, my writing flow has been broken a bit and I need to steer this some sort of marketing angle. But that’s ok, I’m on a roll.

Business

Is there such a thing as your business and marketing plans entering a state of flow? I believe there is. Wrangling all the elements of social media is certainly a challenge for any marketing manager. On Wired alone I can think of 11 elements:

Magazine, website, iPad, podcasts, video, newsletters, emails, mobile, Facebook, Twitter, and live events.

How can you hope to sync them all? That is your goal. It’s important to remember that all of the things I’ve listed perform different functions. The voice you bring on Facebook is different than that on your newsletters and on Twitter. It is a mistake to try and bring absolute uniformity. That would be like trying to keep your elbows and knees at a 45 degree angle at all times while biking.

No, what you need to do is look at the ultimate goal. In biking, it’s getting down the mountain in one piece while having the maximum amount of fun. In marketing, it’s representing your product according to the goals you want to achieve.

That means your logo and color scheme should be similar across all platforms. That means the voice of all your writers and editors should be aligned. And that means whether a customer experiences your product on the web or on twitter, they feel at home with the brand.

Life

Lastly, I’ll leave you with the hope that you can find your flow in life. That comes when the elements of your career, relationships, health, wealth, work, play, and the environment in which you live all come together.

Have a great summer.

I hope you enjoy the 10-30 minutes when I get into my podcast flow each week, and if you do, please tell your friends to visit TheHopkinsonReport.com.

Let me know how YOU find your flow. Write me marketing guy @ wired.com

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This podcast was recorded on Tuesday July 6, 2010, and it was a historic day for Cleveland Cavaliers NBA Superstar LeBron James. No, it was not the day that he announced which team he was going to via free agency. It was the day that LeBron joined Twitter.

Let’s look at the lessons learned from LeBron James’ first day on Twitter.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

1) Major brands need to engage in social media

Let’s face it, LeBron James is a brand. He is worth millions, is recognized worldwide, and generates revenue and profits on everything from ticket sales to merchandise. Until now, he has poked fun at Twitter, but he has finally broken down and signed up. Any major brand looking to engage with fans that does not have a social media presence does so at their own peril.

2) Your social circle strongly influences your decisions

What is the goal of nearly every company’s marketing department? To build a product with strong word-of-mouth marketing. Did you start using Google or Facebook because you saw a TV commercial about them? No. You found out about them because someone you know said “Hey, you need to check this out.”

A person that does this consistently, finding the newest products and spreading the word to multiple people is called an early adopter and a hyper-influencer. If you don’t follow basketball, you might not know who Chris Paul is. Well, he’s another NBA superstar and good friend of LeBron, and it was he that finally convinced LeBron to create an account. It’s this kind of marketing – trusted, and free – that helps spread the word.

3) If you build it, they will come

If you build a strong user base and have a brand that people love, true fans will want to associate with you. Once word of LeBron’s Twitter account surfaced, the followers came rolling in. He became a trending topic, and went from 0 to roughly 200,000 followers in less than 24 hours.

4) If the content is there, design can wait

The reason I believe this was a spur-of-the-moment decision by James, and not something entirely crafted by his PR team – despite the fact that the NBA is advertising on Twitter – is that he didn’t immediately add a “corporate friendly” Twitter background. Personally, I feel this would have been quite easy to do, as I’m sure he has hundreds of graphics and backgrounds to select from various marketing campaigns. It also would have added a better first impression to the tens of thousands of people signing up today. But there it was, his brand new account with the vanilla, generic, baby-blue, default background. Just like anyone else’s first day.

5) Have something to say

The timing couldn’t be better for LeBron, as this is the most anticipated NBA announcement of the last few years. Even the most casual fan of the league probably clicked the follow button today. Additionally, the link on his twitter page goes to his LeBronJames.com website, which is also in the early stages and appears to be yet another way for users to get LeBron information.

On the other hand, this doesn’t mean that if you’re a company you should wait until you have a product to announce to create a social media presence. In fact, if you create a Twitter account and then immediately jump on and start talking about how people can buy your products, without providing value first, your new media efforts will most likely fail.

6) Be authentic

While reading articles when the story first broke but before the account was verified (great job by Twitter for acting quickly and verifying the account), I came across a sentence that made me grimace. It said something to the effect of “It is unclear whether LeBron will be tweeting for himself or if he will have a team tweeting for him.”

Perhaps it’s that it has been drilled into our heads as a best practice in my 3+ years enveloped in all things social media, but it’s amazing that this is even a question anymore. I think Shaquille O’Neal said it best when talking about rapper 50 Cent being outed for not writing his own tweets, “It’s 140 characters. If you need a ghostwriter for that, I feel sorry for you.”

So it was refreshing to see LeBron’s first tweet, which was clearly written by him.  As a stickler for grammar and punctuation, I would point out inconsistent capitalization, incorrect use of quotations, and both a misplaced and missing period.  But at least he did a lot better than Oprah’s first tweet, in which she basically made up the word “Twitters” and effectively YELLED AT ALL HER FOLLOWERS by using ALL CAPS, a gross violation of internet etiquette (and also misplaced 2 periods, what’s up with that?).

However, I’m willing to forgive the typos because a) he only has a high school education, and b) because it’s his voice. For example, although I understood the context of the term “gas’d,” I jumped over to the Urban Dictionary to try and get some more insight (not very helpful).

Also impressive was his @ reference to his friend Chris Paul. Maybe he had someone looking over his shoulder and helping, but including Paul’s twitter handle (@oneandonlycp3) in the message equates to a public “thank you” for helping him trying something new, and I’m sure garnered Paul several thousand new fans as well.

7) Control your message

LeBron has been surrounded by a constant media frenzy from his high school years until today. Every move has been documented and every TV and radio station, newspaper, and website has taken his words and actions and interpreted them to the world. Creating his own Twitter account allows LeBron to speak directly 1:1 with his fans.

However, like Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility.
- A tweet sent near gametime will get him in trouble with the NBA [policy]
- A message sent in anger criticizing the refs will get him fined [Dallas owner Mark Cuban was fined $25,000 in 2009]
- A piece of information released too early could cause trust issues [Player Kevin Love tweeted that coach Kevin McHale was out as coach before the team announced it publicly]
- Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of internet public opinion

Day 2 and beyond

I have no doubt that LeBron will try out this new social media toy for the next few days, including announcing which team he will be going to. I’m sure the league will remind him of the rules, his PR team will snazzy up the page like his buddy Chris Paul (below), his Nike reps will make sure the brand is represented jusssst right, and he’ll learn a little etiquette from Shaq and his other pals. That’s the easy part.

But the true test will be the weeks and months to come. Will he embrace this new communication platform and provide the consistency and content that his fans crave once the shine has worn off?

Just like his NBA plans, we’ll have to wait and see.

Game on.

[I've had a Twitter account for quite awhile now, with more than 2,200 followers and 1,500 tweets sent. I talk about marketing trends, tweet when there’s a new podcast that goes live each week, but also provides value by sharing links I think you’ll like and insights into my personal life. Check it out at twitter.com/hopkinsonreport.]

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Jim interviews top podcaster Adam Carolla, talking about his new format, podcast revenue models, and portable dishwashers.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

For years we’ve praised the concept of “time-shifting” as a unique advantage of today’s digital media. No longer are we forced into a do-or-die option of being present at a live event or face the consequences of missing it completely.

We can use a DVR to record a World Cup game in the morning for viewing later that day, stream Saturday Night Live on our laptop via Hulu on Sunday morning, and forgo commercial-filled drive-time morning radio in lieu of an iPod’s worth of our favorite podcasts.

Since his live morning radio show was canceled in February 2009, that’s exactly what entertainer Adam Carolla (Loveline, The Man Show, Crank Yankers, Dancing with the Stars) has done. He’s amassed an army of loyal listeners that have downloaded The Adam Carolla Podcast millions of times, making his show a mainstay at the top of the iTunes charts.

But now he is “getting the band back together” and attempting to combine the best of both worlds. He’s brought back nearly the entire staff from his former radio program, including news co-host Teresa Strasser, producers, announcers, and even sound effects wizard “Bald Bryan,” who is able to insert his comical sound bites into the podcast on the fly.

However, in an interesting turn away from time-shifted content, Carolla’s goal is to get people to tune in daily to keep up with current events, essentially creating a drive-time morning show via podcast.

The format allows him to avoid long commercial breaks, escape the watchful eye of both program directors and the FCC, and do what he does best – rant at will on any given topic – packing the show into 90 minutes vs. the four hours of live drive time. The plan is to record the topical shows late in the afternoon or evening, so that they are ready for download each morning.

Will the new format be a hit with fans? And just as important, can he generate enough revenue to keep everyone happy? It’s hard to bet against him given his success thus far.

I sat down with Carolla in New York City while he was in town promoting another of his myriad of projects — with more and more of them venturing into the realm of social media — a user-generated video contest called the Klondike Everyman Challenge.

As a fellow podcaster that also enjoys weaving heavy doses of pop culture into the conversation, I brought up a unique similarity that we both shared: our families both owned ugly, hulking portable dishwashers in the 70s. This set off a classic Carolla rant that users have become accustomed to, reflecting back on his cheap parents and meager upbringing in North Hollywood.

On the topic of generating revenue, Carolla has been fearless in trying new ventures. While the daily show is entirely free to download, he urges listeners to support the program in one of several ways.

Revenue streams for the Adam Carolla Podcast:
- An archive 2-disc DVD box set of the entire first year of digitally mastered downloads (“We sold a few thousand”)
- A store with t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and stickers
- Pay-to-download for a select few podcast episodes
- Short pre-recorded and “live read” ads before and during the show, covering products as diverse as flowers for Mothers Day, souped up computers, BBQ grill accessories, and adult movies.
- Live, in-person performances in LA and other cities

So when I ask him what source has been most successful, he responds that any individual tactic isn’t a lot of money, but you start to get a cumulative effect with multiple sources of income.

Without missing a beat, he says, “You know, you add them all together and in the end you’re still broke, but eventually you have enough to afford one of those portable washing machines.”

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Also see: Episode 47: Thoughts on Adam Carolla, Bill Simmons, and more

Interesting photo credits:
Yellow dishwasher: “Jeremy” successfully selling it for $40 on “Nova Scotia Classifieds” in 2007.
Connector hose: “FantasyGoat” on gigposters.com, using it as part of his still when creating homemade moonshine.

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Apple’s iPad is flying off the shelves. Jim gives his real-world results after 30 days with it, reviews the Wired Magazine app, analyzes market share trends and asks, can it be beat?

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

iPad iPad iPad.
Everyone is talking about the iPad, and so am I. Lets take a look at three things today:

1) My experience with the iPad 3G after one month with the iPad
2) My thoughts on the Wired Magazine iPad app
3) Analyze Apple’s historic marketshare and drill down to see the future of tablet computing and if the iPad can be beat

Note: All thoughts are my own opinion and not that of Wired or Apple. I have no affiliation with Apple and was not compensated.

Summary of the podcast below. Listen to the entire show for the full experience.

OK, so I’ve had the iPad for 30 days of real world testing.

I’ve installed various apps: the Entertainment Weekly Must List and Weather Channel (good, but could use some work), ones with solid functionality (Kayak, Pandora, MLB at Bat), ones that I normally wouldn’t use (Marvel’s comic book reader and games such as Asphalt 5 and Labyrinth), and Conde Nast’s own (Epicurious, GQ, and Wired).

The best part about these apps, is the ease that you can simply install them, check them out, and delete them if you don’t like it. While it does add to this constant ADD, “try it and forget it” world, it really puts the pressure on developers to create visually-appealing, easy to use apps right out of the box. You might only have 5 minutes to hook someone, or it’s delete and move on to the next program. That’s why I think the “Lite for free, pay for upgrade” model works so well here.

People are going to continue to find new and inventive ways to use the iPad. For example, check out uber-designer Brandon Werner’s “iPadfolio” (best viewed on an iPad). He used it in an interview and blew them away.

Things that I’m looking to do more of in the coming months are:
- Download and read more iBooks
- See a Facebook app for the iPad (they have to be working on one, right?)
- Get Apple’s SD card attachment so I can transfer photos from my DSLR right to the iPad

Real life use
As many others have probably noted, the iPad is the king of the couch surfer. It is fantastic around the house, especially for the short time each day that I finally relax (when I’m not out or working on 3 blogs) and turn on the TV. As I predicted, it’s such a better device to do the following:
- Check and respond to quick emails
- Surf the web
- Check Twitter
- View photos

Yes, you can do all this on a bigger, heavier, hotter laptop, but it’s a faster, quicker, more focused experience.

Road test: Family trip
I went to visit my brother’s family in Austin, TX, traveling there with my parents. Results were:
- First and foremost, I did not have to take out the iPad when going through security
- It was great on the plane… it’s instant-on, I didn’t worry about battery life, I watched video, read the GQ magazine app, and easily tucked it into the seatback during meals
- I let a 5-year old play with it at one point, and she instantly bonded (apologies to her parents, who will probably need to spend $500 to get her to stop talking about it at some point). We downloaded Tic Tac Toe and iSpy and had a few spirited matches, and it was amazing how kick-ass she was at the driving video game. Although it was tough for me to tell a white lie and console her when the game yells “YOU LOSE!” if you don’t finish in the top 3.
- I also let my parents (both over 65) use it. They approached it like a cat sneaking up on something new in the yard, and pretty much got the hang of it using maps and music. I did run into one issue, as my mom was trying to check her email in Safari (my email is set up as the default in the app). She was using the updated, flash-based version of Yahoo mail, and it wasn’t rendering correctly. It was just weird enough looking that she NEVER would have figured it out (most people wouldn’t), it was only because I noticed it and changed here to “Yahoo Classic” email that we were able to move on.

Camping trip
First, let me lay out my street cred. I’ve done my fair share of camping and consider myself a pretty good outdoorsman. Yes, I’m an actual Eagle Scout, something that 95% of scouts never attain.

Now let me destroy that street cred. Mostly as a fun test, a friend and I went camping in upstate New York (I did my first trail running race). Not only did we use Google maps on the iPad to locate a diner 2 exits away for dinner instead of cooking, but that night we hunkered down in the tent and watched a movie. Yes, I brought along a $639 iPad camping. And yes, it was awesome.

Road trip
I’m putting this to the test this week, bringing the iPad on a long road trip. As a combo GPS device, movie player, musical jukebox, e-mail checker, and with the “Gas Log” app, it should come in handy.

Thoughts on Wired Magazine’s iPad app
It was really interesting working on such a cool project, and seeing the initial success of 24,000 downloads in 24 hours.

Let’s get the two big questions out of the way:

- 500 MB in size
Yes, that is a very large size, especially for those with the 16GB model. Wired feels that the technology will evolve and the app will get smaller in future versions. The tradeoff was video. By including the video within the app, that allowed for a more seamless process and users could read the entire magazine without being connected to the web. I’m sure if we did NOT include it, people would be complaining that every time they got to a video they had to wait longer for it to play. Perhaps there’s a middle ground where users are asked to download or stream upon install (not sure if that’s technically feasible).

- $5 per issue cost
It’s really quite simple.
- When viewed against the cost of a year-long print subscription ($10 per year), the cost of the app seems six times higher. People make the analogy that they pay $10 per year for the Wired Magazine paper subscription, so why should they pay $60 per year for the electronic version.
- When viewed against the newsstand price of $5 (which 80,000-100,000 non-subscribing Wired fans pay every single month), it’s exactly the same.

At it’s core, this is a slice of media entertainment.
- Millions of people pay $5 a pop for magazines at newsstands, airports, and in supermarket checkout lines every month
- The Wall Street Journal charges $4 per week for their iPad application
- Netflix customers pay a monthly fee for video entertainment
- The latest blockbuster movie is $12.50 a ticket here in NYC for 2 hours of entertainment last time I checked
- And don’t get me started on what I pay for cable each month

Bottom line, the Wired Magazine iPad app gives you several hours of media entertainment for $5. And yes, Conde Nast is “exploring many ways of making it easier for users to enjoy our content.” IE, they’re looking at the best way to make some kind of subscription program work.

Areas for improvement
Just so you don’t think I’m a total homer, here are things that I think can be improved with the app
- Better navigation indicators. Because this is such a new device, I think it’s ok to treat users a little bit more dumbed down to start. My guess is that it was partially done on purpose, as it makes the user explore the app and find new features. I’m not asking for giant blinking “click here” buttons, but there were a few small areas where it could have guided me better. That being said, I was a pro by the time I finished the entire issue.
- Navigating the fun stuff. The great part about the app is the interactive features… swirling, twirling hearts and planets, and stop motion legos. But I sometimes had trouble when I wanted to swipe to the next page, but the app still thought I wanted to swirl.
- Pinch and zoom. Once you get used to pinching and zooming all over the iPad, you miss it if you come across something and are not allowed to do so. This was the case for most of the app, except for some sections that let you do this.
- As others have pointed out, there is a slight disconnect when say, playing a movie clip and it brings you outside the app, plays it, and then returns, vs. keeping you right where you are. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that it will continue to be more streamlined.

What I loved
- The app, taking advantage of the hardware itself, is crazy bright and easy to read. Vibrant. Glowing.
- I loved the interactive touch buttons to flip multiple views. Swiping from page to page is — let’s say it — fun, but it’s also a great experience to stay on one page, and view multiple views or photos by tapping numbered dots
- The fun stuff. The ultimate goal of the app is to combine the best of print and the web in an engaging environment. This was best seen in the “Most Dangerous Object in the Office” section. This month it was a flaming hacky sack. Reading about it in print? Interesting. Actually SEEING two employees flailing around with a fiery footbag of flames in the bathroom at the Wired office in SF? Amazing.
- The extras. Ironman spining around, lego Lamborghinis, Toy Story clips, exclusive Trent Reznor songs… all of this adds to the experience.

The Ads
Call me crazy, but sometimes I LIKE looking at ads. I like seeing cool companies launch cool products that I might want to get. And stop groaning, this is a marketing podcast and blog, you knew it was coming.

But here’s the thing. You get to experience it under YOUR terms. Watching live TV? Sorry, sit through the ads. On DVR? get that fast forward button ready. In a magazine? It’s an easy page turn. On the web? Better hope that peripheral vision is working to block out things if you don’t want to see it.

But on the iPad? If you don’t like the ad — swipe — it’s gone. Instantly. If you DO choose to learn more, you can take it to the next level. My favorites were as follows.

For simply clean, crisp, uncluttered product messages:
- Dyson Fans
- Intel
- Mercedes (with great commercial embedded)
- GMC

For excellent photos that looking practically 3D on the iPad:
- True Blood
- Jack Daniels
- Volkswagen
- Infiniti

And remember, THIS IS VERSION 1! Developers, writers, editors, programmers, and advertisers are only going to get better at this.

Can it be beat?

Lets look at four categories that Apple is in, and what kind of market share they command.

First, where am I coming from? I am a computer guy. I Love all technology. Love good technology. I’ve been literally using computers for more than 25 years.
First 21 on a PC, last 4 on a Mac.
- Macbook pro at home, Dell laptop at work
- iPhone for personal use, Treo for work email
- iPod touch and Nano
- 1 iPad

Computers
I think that Macs are beautifully designed, easier to use, easier to get tech support, don’t get viruses, are more expensive, and are definitely the computer system that I’ve switched over to, that I see myself using moving forward, and that I would recommend to a friend. However, there is absolutely no denying the market share numbers.

Apple owns just 10% of the personal computer market. That means 9 out of every 10 computers out there are not made by Apple.

But in doing my research I came across this amazing article on Techcrunch from July 2009, that said Apple owns 91% market share on computers above $1000.

So is Apple winning in the computer department? In the big picture, no. There are countless millions of PCs around the world running Windows, the vast majority of businesses and IT departments are locked in with the PC/Windows platform, and will be for some time. It’s a tough process to switch. This is business device in a mature market.

But can Apple win the upper end of the market where profits are greater? Looks like they already are.

MP3 Players
What is the market share of the iPod vs other MP3 players? It tough for me to find the latest and greatest stats, but one blog from Sep 2009 said that iPods had a 74% market share. I’d call that dominant. Lets put it this way, do YOU have any friends that have a non-Apple MP3 player? If you were out to buy a new device, would YOU consider something else? I thought so.

My point is this… this is a non-business device, in a relatively new market. And Apple dominates it.

Phones
What I am about to say might sound familiar. I think that the iPhone is beautifully designed, easier to use, easier to get tech support, is more expensive, and is definitely the phone that I’ve switched over to, that I see myself using moving forward, and that I would recommend to a friend. Kind of like the Mac.

But in terms of marketshare, it’s also like the Mac. A recent report just found that Android phones outsold the iPhone in the first quarter of 2010. What was Apple’s share of the smartphone market? Just 21%. Again, the stats show that it is hardly dominant.

A cell phone is a mix of business and pleasure, and is definitely a mature market. The iPhone will continue to do well, but won’t necessarily dominate.

But here are the numbers that astound:
- 50 million iPhones sold to date
- App Store carries 200,000 apps
- 3 billion app downloads

Even more telling, Ars Technica reported: Apple responsible for 99.4% of mobile app sales in 2009

Tablet computers
What is Apple’s market share in tablets? Let’s not include the Kindle since that is primarily a dedicated e-reader and not a computer. So who is their competition? The Archos 5 Tablet? The Samsung NP-Q1u? Let me know when you find someone that owns one of those. All I know is that they’ve sold 2 million iPads in under 60 days. I’d say that puts them at 99% market share.

So, where does that leave us? Is the iPad like the iPhone and Mac, where it will face stiff competition from it’s known enemies, Dell, HP, and Google?

I’m going to say no. My gut tells me it’s going to play out a lot like the iPod. This is a new device, and an entertainment device. Yes, there will be competition at the lower levels, but the great equalizer is the App Store.

If someone came up to me and said “Should I get an iPad or should I wait for one by Google or HP? I hear they might have more storage, be cheaper, have USB ports, play flash, and so on.” I totally agree.

But again, it’s the App Store. That’s the killer product that will prevent me from recommending other devices.

So if someone asks me, should I get the iPad? I would say can you afford it and when would you use it? It’s best as a companion device, is great for light travel, and is king of the couch.

If they ask if they should wait to get next year’s iPad, I say no. Of course it will be better, and if you’re very patient, then go ahead and wait an entire year. But remember that there will be software updates before then that will raise the bar a bit.

If they ask if they should wait for another company’s tablet, I say they are coming, they will be cheaper, and have some better features, but ask yourself this:

- How long till there is a similar app store that has all the games you want to play?
- Do you sync your music with your iPod?
- Where are you going to download movies from?
- Do they have a better way to read books?

So do you agree with me?

Apple has sold 2 million devices.
They have a huge lead on the competition.
Almost every developer right now is working on iPad apps, not other apps
And when new tablets appear in six months to a year, remember that Apple will have been working on their new version for a year as well.

So I ask you. Can the iPad be beat?

Email: MarketingGuy [at] wired.com
Twitter: @hopkinsonreport

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Jim talks about what Sting and The Police can teach us about finding your voice when blogging or podcasting.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Passion.
Millions of teachers, authors, parents, friends, clergy, poets, and musicians have tried to help others find their passions. But I’ll tell you where you can find yours.

In your voice.

When you’re speaking about something you’re truly passionate about, there’s a change in your tone. Your heart beats a little faster, your eyes get a little wider, and sometimes the thoughts and ideas cascade from your brain so quickly that they trip over themselves in a rush to exit your mouth.

Lord knows any regular listener to the podcast, or someone that has seen one of my presentations, knows that I get really excited and talk super fast when I’m fired up about a topic.

But I want to go back to that first sentence. Millions of teachers, authors, parents, friends, clergy, poets, and musicians have tried to help others find their passions.

Who are the people in your life that have led you to take up one of your passions?

- Maybe your dad was a huge sports fan, so you became one as well.
- Maybe an author wrote a book so compelling, that you instantly started a hobby based around their words.
- Or maybe your best friend turned you on to wine or yoga or mountain biking.

But what about music?
I had an interesting conversation with my mom this past weekend. She asked me about my little nephew. He is a little young for his age compared to his peers, and my sister is thinking of enrolling him in a cultural school program for a year before he goes to kindergarten.

My mom asked me what I thought. I told her I think it is probably a little better to be a bit older than your friends in class than a bit younger. And I also thought that maybe the teachers there could steer him in a direction that could really bring out his strengths. Maybe they have amazing, experienced teachers that would be able to read him and see if he was introverted, or analytic-minded, or broad-thinking, and this might translate specifically to writing songs or playing a specific instrument.

I’m no pro, but I’m going to guess that a certain type of mindset would lend itself to playing the violin vs the drums.

I’ll also tell you the way NOT to do it.

In one of my earliest memories – man, I hadn’t thought of this in 20 years – I specifically remember “band day.” They asked if anyone wanted to be in a band, and they sent us home with a sheet of paper with all the instruments. They had little outlines, and the words next to them.

You know how I picked mine?

I don’t either! I looked at this list, pointed at one, and said “How about that?” You know what it was?

The clarinet! How freaking useless is the clarinet!!!

Flash forward a year and I was terrible at it, not to mention that one of the most important and time consuming activities to playing it was not learning notes or reading music, but cleaning the spit out of it! There was an entire process and set of tools simply for cleaning spit! I’m serious!

In college I picked up guitar, but was equally as bad. It was only when I randomly sat down at a party at a friends drum kit at age twenty-three –- 23! -– and simply ‘knew’ how to play, that I had finally found my instrument. Don’t get me wrong, I am still pretty bad, but I was good enough to be in bands that played live in Boston and New York City.

I tease my mom because when she and my dad finally came to see me live, she told me, “I always knew you had rhythm. You were always banging on pots and pans as a toddler and always had great rhythm.”

So I’d yell, “Why the heck didn’t you tell me to play the drums when I was 5 then??? By the time I was 23 I’d have been a rock star and we’d have houses in Boston, New York, LA, and Tahiti!”

But I digress. See, I got excited right there. I’m pretty passionate about music.

Which gets me back to that first line, which is very close to a 20th Century British philosopher named Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner. Although you might know him as Sting.

And the timeless words that he uttered were

De do do do, De da da da

No, actually, the words are:

Poets priests and politicians
Have words to thank for their positions

If you phrase that in terms of social media, maybe the three categories are bloggers, podcasters, and marketing/public relations.

These are truly people that rely on their words. They need to be crafted just right, and the proper ones can motivate and inspire to action, but also get you into trouble.

But then it goes on.

Words that scream for your submission
And no-one’s jamming their transmission

Well, maybe that should translate to “words that scream for your engagement.” Listen to me. Buy my book. Follow me on Twitter. Listen to what I have to say. Look over here at my Facebook page.

And like I’ve mentioned in the podcast before, no-one’s jamming their transmission. You don’t need to work for a newspaper or radio station anymore. Anyone can start their own blog or podcast and begin transmitting.

I had an idea that I was going to do my entire presentation based on songs from The Police. The problem is, they might have been Driven To Tears. You see, the first rule of presentations is to know your audience, and I found out that the majority of people in the room would be people aged 22-26. Considering that The Police broke up in 1984, the same year the oldest person in the room was born, I probably would have lost my audience pretty quickly.

But hey, I’m pretty sure my podcast audience is a little bit older than that, so let me end the podcast with a few quotes from Sting and The Police. And listen you kids, if you haven’t sat down and really listened to them, give ‘em a try.

The number one way to find your voice is to dig deep about what your passionate about. What do you get excited about? Where do you find the drama in your life? If you’re in a relationship, and it vacillates between I Can’t Stand Losing You and The Bed’s Too Big Without You, then maybe you should talk about the interconnection between men and women, or companies and products.

Or if you’re more about finding Spirits in the Material World that we live in, religion is a massive area that you could write or speak about.

If you start out with a podcast, remember that Every Breath You Take is important. While I do tend to speed up while I talk, I feel that I’m still in control of my speech and never out of breath. Grab yourself one of those pop shields as well so that you’re not spitting into the mic.

One thing to get down right away has to do with Synchronicity. Podcasts generate a lot of files, from original recordings, to word docs, to images, to MP3 files. I have a pretty locked in system for recording on my home laptop, backing up to an external drive, transferring to a thumb drive, copying it again at my work computer.

Lastly, don’t worry if you don’t have much of an audience when you’re starting out. Just get going, find your voice and be consistent. You might feel that you’re So Lonely, that it’s as if you’re sending out a tiny Message in a Bottle. But if you keep it up, the audience will come and soon you’ll be Walking on the Moon.

PS… I refrained from crooning Roxanne during the podcast outtro, but c’mon, you know right now you’re singing it in your head in that really really high voice. Aha. I thought so.

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With privacy concerns escalating and new players entering the space, is it the beginning of the end for Facebook?

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

I’m just sayin
Listen, the mighty behemoth that is Facebook is probably doing just fine. They’ve got us sucked in like lemmings, with upwards of 500 million people on the service checking email, uploading photos, finding old friends, and tending virtual farms.

But it’s been a rough month, and I’m sure young Mark Zuckerberg has aged a little as his company has been tossed about in full public view recently. I’m not saying he’s going to have a few gray hairs, after all, he did just turn 26 on May 14. But maybe he feels like a 29 year old or something.

On Wired alone, the stories have been flowing, showing the progression of events:

- Report: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Believe In Privacy
- Today Facebook, Tomorrow the World
- Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative
- Privacy Flare-Up Prompts Facebook Meetings with Congress, Employees
- Facebook to Launch “Simplistic” Privacy Choices Soon
- NYU Students Aim to Invent Facebook

Could this be the beginning of the end? Consider…

7 reasons why the mighty giant might fail

1) We’re full
I don’t know why those two words came to mind, but I liken it to the best party you’ve ever been at. Whether it be your high school prom, a great fraternity party in college, or seeing a great band. Everyone you know is there. Everyone is having a great time. But no matter how good something is, after awhile, people are going to say, you know, lets get out of here and check out something else.

As an early adopter that has been on Facebook for years, it’s been a great tool for me to connect with others, share and discuss content, and find old friends. But I feel I’m starting to get diminishing returns from my network. No longer is a former close friend finding me on Facebook, it’s distant friends of high school friends that I may not want to speak with.

Is it possible that the early adopters that are the first to jump into a new trend, are also the first ones to jump out of a new trend? Yes it is.

2) It’s a technology product
OK, I know it’s an internet site and not an old cell phone or DVD player. But if you think back at all of the websites that existed, say, during the dotcom era, it’s easy to think of the big boys that are still around — Amazon, ESPN, E*Trade, eBay — but there are many that don’t make it. Did we think that MySpace or Friendster would stand the test of time? We probably did at their height.

3) Privacy
You only have to read some of the stories above to know that privacy is a huge, huge concern. They were able to fly under the radar for awhile, with only minor grumblings from informed users as their intricate policies were continually updated. But now the government got involved, the New York Times did a report, and people are scared. They’re also confused. And for many people, when things get too complicated, they don’t try to figure it out, they just leave.

4) Arrogance
Is it easy to get cocky when you’re #1 and every analytics indicator is going through the roof? For sure. I think the symbolic move was changing the term from “fan” to “like” on branded business pages. I don’t mind it around content or activities, but show me one person that thinks “I’ve chosen to like the Wired Facebook page” is better than “I’m a fan of Wired.”

Every single interaction around that term is flawed. Day in and day out I get asked “How many fans does Wired/GQ/Ars Technica have on Facebook?” How do you easily translate that question now? How many likes does GQ have? How many people like GQ? Arrogance.

5) Revenue for Facebook
If they’re supposedly making millions of dollars in revenue now, why am I still seeing horrible banners ads that have nothing to do with me? I’m pretty sure I’m not going to make 126% return on investment like the little tiny banner told me I would. But I definitely know where to look when I’m ready to start exclusively dating single moms.

6) Revenue for brands
Yes, there are hundreds of stories of brands “engaging” with their users. And a content company like Conde Nast can drive people from Facebook to their websites, where we get paid to serve ads and sell magazine subscriptions. But I’d like to see some more examples of companies bringing in cold hard cash from Facebook.

7) We’re done
The privacy backlash is one thing, but what about a social media backlash? It’s been several years now that the early adopters have been constantly tweeting, blogging, updating, posting, uploading, and checking in. Very slowly, stories are trickling out about people getting off the carousel. Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand.com did a great post that showed that “How do I delete my Facebook account” was a growing trend.

You know how you look up from your computer at work, look at the clock and it’s 6:10, you exhale, push your chair away from the desk, and just say “I’m done.” You shut down the computer, everything goes black, and you simply walk away for the day? I have to wonder, is the time approaching that people are going to do that from social media — permanently.

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