Categories: Articles

Be Amazed

Every time you try an application or even get online be amazed that it works at all.

Think back to how the Internet actually started and you might laugh at the fact that you accessed it from the phone line in your home or office. When you order a book from Amazon and it shows up on your doorstep, take a moment to respect the fact that you bought something physical through a pure digital channel. And while technology evolves and gets better, don’t ever kid your self into thinking that it’s not a miracle each and every time something actually works online.

This is why I don’t get mad when Twitter is down or when Technorati does something wonky.

Joe Thornley (from Thornley Fallis and the Pro PR Blog) had a recent Blog post titled, Technorati And Me. As you can guess from the title, he’s giving up on Technorati. Too many glitches, jumps in ratings, funky search results (or none at all), etc… He does a much better job of distilling the challenges we’ve all encountered with Technorati than I ever could. Joe tagged me (amoung others) at the end of his Blog post by asking:

"Are there social media tools and apps for which you once had high hopes that you now find yourself using and visiting less often?"

There are some I’ve been using less of (Second Life comes to mind) and some I don’t use enough of (like FriendFeed). With all of the hooplah over Technorati, the "fail whale" that is Twitter, and the recent Gmail outage, I’ve come to realize two things:

1. I can’t put any serious reliance on any free tool of Web-based application. I’d love to wax poetic about how I "live in the cloud", but right now, it’s just not possible. I always sigh when people get frustrated by free Web-based applications that they are using (and relying on) for business purposes. So, while I use them and enjoy them (or hate them with every fibre of my being when they are not working), I don’t rely on any of them. I love Google Reader more than the next person, but if it crashed and burned right now, I’d be the first to move on and find something else, because my expectations are very, very low.

2. Application are like fashion – they change with the seasons. Nothing is here to stay and you can double the resonance of that statement when it comes to anything coming out of the Internet culture. For all the Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeeds of the world, there were the ICQ, Friendster and Prodigy‘s of the past. I’m not saying that anything and everything that we see online changes, but who would have suspected that Google could overtake Yahoo! they way it did? Someone, somewhere right now is watching all of these conversations and working on a better mousetrap (there’s also somebody watching that person for mousetrap 3.0).

I don’t expect any of these tools to ever be available or work the way they should. This way, when they do, I’m amazed, thrilled and have that "I can’t believe this is free" feeling that I love so much.

Are you someone who gets amazed or disappointed?

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.