Todd Lyden

So I decided I would stop writing posts on a particular someone's blog postings. In hind sight, I think one of the subliminal reasons I wanted to stop was because I was overly reliant on the idea that I could just do it. Over and over, nitpick it or find something I just disagreed with. More to the point, it became an easy crutch for me. Need a post? See what Godin was writing about. I couldn't always, but there it was- something reliable, something supportive, but at the same time- debilitating. It was holding me back from something better.  I don't think my posts on my problems with Godin were bad, just the reliance. I could still come up with something similar for someone else and probably will on occasion. My point here is take a look at something you are doing that props you up. They aren't all bad. We often times need it to get by, but most people do not strive to live on  crutches .  But where you are overly-dependent on something to ge...

Without much knowledge, the Business Insider is putting  Gmail  up against the NEW  Facebook   messaging : http://www.businessinsider.com/gmail-versus- facebook -email-2010-11 Here are the categories and their winner. STORAGE SPACE-  Advantage:  Google .    Dead on. I don't see how they can give it to anyone else. PRIORITIZATION:  -  Advantage:  Facebook .    They give it to FB only because it is based on your Facebook  friends. Wow. How wrong could this be? I know TONS of people in different segments. I think that is the beauty of this internet or what is becoming  Web 3.0 - the personalization that you can take with you.  Facebook , MAY or MAY NOT have that advantage for you. If FB is ALL you do, then this is true, but I don't think the majority of Gmail or other email users would agree.  WRONG. SPAM FILTERING-  Ad vantage:  Facebook .    And here is why: But...

Let's look back again this week starting from the earliest: Friend, Foes, or Fans I'm still not sure what to think of being fans and friends of fellow bloggers. It is odd. I don't see myself on the same plane as many of the other bloggers, but that's me.  Do  well written folks see themselves on the same plane as others? I doubt it, thus how  do   you  move beyond being fans? It would be easy if people were close to each other and saw each other on a regular basis yes? Just like any other networker, but that's not quite the case here. Just because  you  read someone else's blog and comment and perhaps even banter back and forth does not make  you  much more than consumer's of each other's verbiage does it? 100 Posts and Keeping it Real My blog is a mishmosh, I know. I've contemplated starting several and spacing out my writing accordingly, but  do  I have the wherewithal to  do  so? The title was fun...

photo:  Burning Image  I've taken part in Black Friday- sue me, I love a bargain for the kids. Really! I've always assumed that story about retailers only hitting the black on the holiday shopping extravaganza was true. I looked it up this year and learned that there are two stories that appear to be true. Either it is an older 19th century story or the one that sounds truer: Philly cops noticed the bad level of traffic and higher number of shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving in the 1960s. Adding to the pain, an Army-Navy football game made traffic insane. I'm not sure which story you believed, but did it matter? The how of the name of the day after Thanksgiving is lost to most people. All that REALLY matters is the fact that retailers kills themselves to offer the best deals on these days leading up to the Christmas holiday. The power of myth is such that we have taken it in and it is just part of the story we tell. What other st...

Photo:  Gruntzooki I'm done. I awoke to one  more  post of junk and I am cutting the cord. I've made much fun of  Seth  Godin's logic and trappings before .   But  this morning  was the topper. I can't do it anymore. I've read his books and gleaned good stuff, but the blog posts are tripe. They are the VERY definition of BLOVIATE. See? blo·vi·ate /ˈblōvēˌāt/ Verb:  Talk at length, esp. in an inflated or empty way.  Dictionary.com  -  Answers.com  -  Merriam-Webster  -  The Free Dictionary So  no   more . I am removing him from the feeds. Many "big names" are worth it, but this is hot air. Who do you read/listen to on a regular basis that you are done with?

An interesting battle in the war of geo-location services or location-based services. Last week, Chipotle Mexican Grill started offering a Facebook Places Deal. The backlash was immediate and not pleasant from  Foursquare . Their CEO publicly admonished Chipotle on Twitter to setup a  Foursquare  promo deal. It's hard not see why Chipotle went with Facebook first. They have over 1 million fans on Facebook alone!The deal was apparently simple: show the local restaurant that you checked in and you got a BOGO deal. Not bad! This was a BAD move for  Foursquare . It makes them look petty. While Chipotle is taking the high ground and simply saying they can offer a 4Square deal in the future. I actually Tweeted to asked and was told "lots" took advantage of the deal. Looking at Chipotle's Facebook page for the event, there were some glitches obviously. In the end, this is unlikely to bring in a BUNCH of new customers, but instead of doing a PAID service or ema...

I haven't loved everything he is written, but I do like how he handles himself. Here are four quick lessons on fighting  writer's   block  from  Damon  Lindelof . Let me talk about them real quick. 1. Find inspiration elsewhere Obviously, what I am doing here. Read things, watch things, talk to people. Ideas and inspiration can come from a myriad of sources. I would suggest just experience life and be ready to notice. That is something that probably needs to be learned. "Go back to the same well." 2. Create Deadlines We all did great work when we were pressed for time in school didn't we? That last minute push. Do it to yourself, not even to schedule, but to enforce the idea that you MUST get the writing done. 3. Collaborate When You Can What a luxury for a TV writer, but the rest of us don't have that, do we? Find them! Use FB or Twitter to link up with someone to act as a sounding board. Let them read something and get ideas or seek...

Image via Wikipedia I was saved from posting a mistake by my computer crashing and losing a post. I had worked up a look at my past  100  blog posts  looking at the different analytics view of my first one hundred  posts . You can imagine how tweaked I was. That was a lot of work, but it was flushed by a recalcitrant computer. Thank god! I hadn't paid much attention to my analytics. Sure, I saw them in passing, but honestly, I was only really doing what I had been told. When it comes to what I write, I really go with my gut. Sure I try to comment on current stuff, but that is not really designed to get traffic, just to be timely. For my purposes as much as anything else. Personal blogs should be fairly free of worry about what SEO and traffic building techniques should be used.  I guess you can't ignore them, but the reality is if you are not writing about what you like, it is going to be fairly lost to readers anyway no matter how many there are. Rela...

I find it interesting to look at bloggers as brands. There are a ton of pieces out there about how to use social media to build your brand, that you yourself are now a brand, and that in order to grow your own business, be it blog or something else, you need to know what your brand is. Kooky, is it not?  I really like Alistair Fairweather's back to back posts over on memeburn discussing this: http://memeburn.com/2010/08/social-currency-the-real-value-of-conversations-about-your-brand/ and http://memeburn.com/2010/08/friend-fan-or-follower-why-not-all-social-media-connections-are-created-equal/ Most of us are realizing the truth about what needs to be done online, but the funny thing I see is that there are a lot of " fans " of fellow bloggers. Hell, I know I am one, but pushing that past "fandom" is pretty much impossible online isn't it? The other word, even for personal bloggers, that we really need to use to describe these folks are customers. The  fans  ...