My friend Ann Handley has started a new personal blog. She writes very eloquently and has kids so you know it comes from the heart.

The best part of the blog is the name – A N N A R C H Y – very apt.

Marc points to this really funny YouTube video from Gabe and Max.

Social Media and Communities as a field is relatively new. If you do get an expert, its very clear that they have been doing it for little time, but not a lot. If you see a resume with “over 10+ years” experience with social media, or communities you ought to think twice. Why?

1. Some of their experience with social behavior will be irrelevant. Most individuals would not discuss openly what blogs have allowed them to do. Remember it was considered taboo to even talk about your personal finances until recently.

2. The tools and technologies of social media are relatively new (most are less than 3 years old). Any best practice is what’s been experienced in 2-3 projects at best.

3. The metrics to measure effectiveness of social media are not available for you to determine if you are making any progress towards a goal. In fact if your goal is fairly deterministic, then you might have a problem in itself.

What do you think? How many social media experts do you really know of?

Robert meets Mark Z of Facebook. When you physically allow people to meet, talk, discuss there’s a better bond developed. Which helps your online community all the more. In fact most online communities I know got started from a physical, offline event like a conference or symposium.

From Portio Research as a follow up to missing iPhones and lower iPod growth (only 5%) in Q4 2007.

After six years of steady
decline the global music market is set to grow again spurred on by
increased consumption of digital music through multiple channels with
annual revenues predicted to reach USD$38.8 billion by 2011.

In
2007 over half of the 1 billion mobile handsets shipped will have music
playing capabilities, so while worldwide sales of stand alone MP3 music
devices will continue to grow, sales will level out by 2012, by which
time MP3-enabled mobile handsets will outnumber stand alone MP3 players
by approximately 5 to 1.

Over-the-air (OTA) music downloads have the potential to be one of the most successful non-voice services
after SMS, providing prices remain attractive to consumers.

This battle will take place in the wealthiest and
biggest world markets, Japan and South Korea, Western Europe, North
America, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia,
New Zealand, Russia and more with some of the biggest youth-sector
brands such as McDonalds,
Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nike, Reebok and Adidas possibly involved in
sponsoring and advertising deals.

I could not say this any better. Read Max’s post. Read it again twice if you are looking to start a developer community.

Forbes Least (pre tax) profitable businesses to start:
1. Community Care Facility
2. Other support services
3. Beverage Manufacturing
4. Real Estate Related Services
5. Bakery and Tortilla manufacturing
6. Amusement and recreational services
7. Motor Vehicle parts manufacturing
8. Specialty retailer
9. Beer and wine retailer
10. Travel – hotel, etc.

Also look at most profitable businesses to start.

Obviously this is for the low tech business side. Pharmaceutical and Software by far (Internet or otherwise) are still among the most profitable.

Fastest growing industries are in Internet for the last 5 years.

Given that the economy is either in a recession or headed towards one, here are some key areas / spots of growth that are still great places to look:

1. Geography: Europe (especially UK), Asia ( India and China) are still rocking and rolling at 8% and 10.5%. Granted any slow down in the US is going to affect them, but consumption in India and China is taking off.

2. Industries: Financial and Retail are feeling the pain in US, but Organized retail is doing great in India, there’s a huge financial revolution also with more people investing in the markets. China’s doubling down on technology, in its attempt to bridge the gap with India and has more Internet users than US now.

3. Companies that are still growing:
a) Information Technology: IBM, HP, VMware and Salesforce.com are doing well.
b) Mobile and Wireless are still growing especially in developing countries
c) Consumer staples and Healthcare always do well during a recession

4. Roles that are still being hired for:
a) Community
b) Search engine optimization and search engine marketing
c) Developers (Mobile, PHP, Ruby on Rails)

5. Its always a good time to start your own or join a startup which got funded in 2007. Venture funding is at its highest.

I was invited me to participate in the “8 things you didn’t know about me” party by Shiv. Thank
you! The rules are fairly straightforward – 1. Link to your tagger and
post these rules. 2. List EIGHT random facts about yourself. 3. Tag
EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names. 4. Let them
know they’ve been tagged. 

So here goes – first the eight random facts about me.

1. I am absolutely scared of Lasik. I have made 3 appointments and gotten cold feet EACH time. I only have slight problem in my left eye, so its not a big deal, but Lasik scares the hell out of me.

2. I dropped out of the MBA program at Berkeley in 1997. Not one of my proudest moments, so I rarely bring it up. I was working for Cisco then and the trek up to Berkeley from San Jose was horrible. Added to the fact that I felt invincible with Cisco’s stock splitting twice each year. One of the dumbest moves that I ever did.

3. I have an outline for a book for 6+ years that I have always wanted to write, but never got around to it. Its fiction, about the politics in the Indian subcontinent.

4. I learned and played violin for 6+ years. Indian classical. Enjoyed it a lot and am picking it up back again after 15 years.

5. During my undergraduate days in India, I actually sported very long hair (Trust me, you look at me now I am sure you wont believe it).

6. I hate myself for this, but I prefer my Blackberry to the iPhone. (No flames please). I find the iPhone cool, but its useless for me without the keyboard since I live on text messaging and IM.

7. I am a huge fan of John Stewart. The ONLY reason we have cable is his show. The last 2 months, I have turned off cable since I dont watch anything else on TV.

8. You can drag me into anything if you make it competitive. I hate taking photos, but since my sister made it a competitive thing, I am taking more photos, if only to beat her at it.

Tagging Nate, Chris Carfi, Izzy, Chris Heuer, Mario, Marc, Lee & Noah.

My friend Jeremiah pointed me to Forrester’s Top Social Computing predictions for 2008. Worth a look, so I followed his link to the Forrester research piece. Here’s the MOST AMAZING part of Forrester’s piece:

A money back guarantee. See the highlighted section. It reads: “If you are not completely satisfied,…. full refund within three weeks of your purchase“.

This is the FIRST time I have seen this but then again, I may be late to the game. What do you think? Are you more likely to purchase a research piece because of this guarantee?