you have to be in my headspace to understand what i am saying

I am a big fan of google reader. I promote it to my friends and I use it all the time to send headlines directly into my Reader inbox and I can pick and choose which stories I want to read. You can use this service for news sites such as the NY Times and Seattle Times (who just gave a questionable endorsement to Dino Rossi) but I tend to use it only to monitor blogs. To be honest ... I'm alone among my friends in Web 2.0 advancements outside of myspace and facebook.

One of my favorite blogs to read is Web Strategy by Jeremiah (www.web-strategist.com/). In many ways it is very strange that I enjoy reading it so much because I certainly don't currently hold any positions with any companies that might be able to take advantage of my interest. I just find it very interesting to see how "smart business people" are trying to use and embrace social technologies for their products. It's like this guy Jeremiah is a pre-school teacher directing all these business leaders on one of those leashes that you see little kids attached to in the big city.

Web 2.0 seems pretty simple to me. You have online communities ... certain people flock to them because of a given interest ... and they spend a little chunk of their time hanging out there a couple hours per week. But sometimes business leaders are like blood-sucking vampires and all they see is an opportunity to roll out the red carpet for yesteryear's advertising campaign.

It seems all the business leaders are freaking out about metrics; proving that advertising dollars are well spent on a social networking site ... but perhaps they need to take a step back and try not to use their old business models with this new technology.

How effective are billboards? How effective are commercials, both on television and radio? We've certainly learned to tune them out or change the channel ... so why would you try to do those things on the Internet? Yet they are allllll ovvvver the place!

The awesome power of the Internet enables you to go directly to these online communities where your target market may be congregating. Hell ... it allows you to create your own. It allows you to throw out that washed up 50's era marketing plan and create something real - based on community engagement. But I think when you lose sight of the community vision - THAT is where things go wrong quickly.

I personally feel we just HAVE to get back to community in all aspects of our lives whether it is where we live, how we interact, how we spend our money, or how we embark on marketing campaigns. We need to rebuild/rezone our cities so that everything we need is in walking distance. We need to build products that don't break after a few uses.

We need to understand our role in this mosaic of cultures living on earth in a way that doesn't make us better or richer or smarter than people from other countries. We need to respect our environment.

And if we're going to market a product - whether it's dominoes or milk we need to be honest, not cram it down peoples throats, and show respect for the consumer by creating a product in the first place that betters peoples lives. If you have to rely on 50's era marketing practices maybe your product suuuuucks.

And it makes sense to turn to people who either majored in communication, or have a strong interest in interpersonal communication to further your brands reach within social technologies.

Web 2.0 technologies are like a robotic representation of the flesh and blood of real communication. Communications professionals are the grease for that machine!