Tac Anderson

The Conflicting Definitions of Social Business

On March 9, 2010, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

As social media has continued to evolve and we start to move into the era of social business we’re running into a linguistic snag; There are now two different definitions for Social Business.

Those of us in the social media world have not yet settled on an industry wide definition but I’ve recently started using this definition for social business:

The Social Business will be fully realized when social technologies are leveraged to build collaborative relationships across all company stakeholders. By leveraging social technologies in an open and transparent way businesses will also regain and build more trust among stakeholders. This increased trust will result in greater knowledge creation, which the same social technologies have the ability to capture, organize and distribute at a yet to be seen level of efficiency. By building collaborative relationships with all company stakeholders using social technologies, businesses will be able to quickly create and capitalize more innovation.

But according to the all mighty wikipedia Professor Dr. Muhammad Yunus, in his book Creating a World without Poverty – Social Business and the Future of Capitalism used this definition:

Social business is a cause-driven business. In a social business, the investors/owners can gradually recoup the money invested, but cannot take any dividend beyond that point. Purpose of the investment is purely to achieve one or more social objectives through the operation of the company, no personal gain is desired by the investors. The company must cover all costs and make revenue, at the same time achieve the social objective, such as, healthcare for the poor, housing for the poor, financial services for the poor, nutrition for malnourished children, providing safe drinking water, introducing renewable energy, etc. in a business way. The impact of the business on people or environment, rather than the amount of profit made in a given period measures the success of social business. Sustainability of the company indicates that it is running as a business. The objective of the company is to achieve social goal/s .

Of course you could have a social business that is also a social business according to both terms. In fact if we simplified the second definition of social business to a business with the objective to do social good (ignoring for a minute the nonprofit like financial status) then I would argue that a social technologies enabled social business would be more likely to do social good because they would be in tune with what their customers and employees want and that the non-profit like social business who uses social technologies would be a more successful social business.

As I pointed out in my post, The Evolution of New Media, Web 2.0, Social Media, Social Business: A Brief History of Everything, we are still in an evolving space and our definitions will continue to evolve. Will social business stick around? I don’t know, right now I can’t think of a better word.

Do you have a better word that fits the first definition?

Popularity: 2% [?]

The Most Important Book You Will Read This Year

On March 8, 2010, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

You may be familiar with author Daniel A Pink (blog & Twitter). As a right brainer, I loved his book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future and I just finished his most recent book: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. (Amazon affiliate links)

I downloaded the audio book for my last drive down to corporate headquarters in Portland, OR. I listened to the first half on the way down and the second half on the way back. Before my road trip was done I found a bookstore and bought two copies of the book. I’ve already given them away and will buy another two today. Maybe I should just buy them in bulk.

This is probably the most important book I can recommend for you to read this year. You will question every aspect of business management, your business model, organizational structure, parenting, schooling, even what you want to do with the rest of your life.

Most of us believe that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is with external rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, Daniel H. Pink says in, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, his provocative and persuasive new book. The secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

We have reached a level where work and knowledge can be and should be intrinsically motivating (doing it is its own reward). Not all jobs of course fit this model but as the economy rebounds there is no reason to do a job you don’t want to. In my last post I talked about the parts of your business you are least likely to give up.

Social media has changed the landscape driven by our collective shift in motivation. In my opinion, we have entered a new economy, an economy where money is no longer the only capital. Money may no longer even be the most important capital.

Fellow New Comm Biz author, Jason has posted about companies sucking their wealth from the new Bourgeoisie. Maybe we have reached a point where, money is a commodity, easily obtained. Maybe not for everyone but for the western world where a college degree doesn’t mean as much as it used to money is no longer enough of a motivator.

I have a lot more to write about this topic but first I suggest reading Drive, then my posts will make a lot more sense. If that’s really possible

Photo credit via Balakov

Popularity: 5% [?]

Tagged with: Business • business books • Daniel Pink • Drive • motivation

Innovation and Disruption, What’s Holding You Back?

On March 7, 2010, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

I have stated before that, while I don’t know the guy and have never met him, Marc Andreessen is probably the entrepreneur of my generation that I most admire.

Today I came across a post on TechCrunch where Marc is quoted as saying that Old Media needs to burn the boats. I love this type of bold strategies. When Cortes came to Mexico he burnt the boats so they had no choice but to conquer, Marc says media companies need to do the same thing. The post is short and well worth your read but here’s my favorite quotes.

We got to talking about how media companies are handling the digital disruption of the Internet when he brought up the Cortes analogy. “You gotta burn the boats,” he told me, “you gotta commit.” His point is that if traditional media companies don’t burn their own boats, somebody else will.

Everyone knows this true (even if they don’t admit it). At some point physical media will be too cost prohibitive to create at the mass market level. Print will be the new vinyl.

Andreessen asked me if TechCrunch is working on an iPad app or planning on putting up a paywall. I gave him a blank stare. He laughed and noted that none of the newer Web publications (he’s an investor in the Business Insider) are either. “”All the new companies are not spending a nanosecond on the iPad or thinking of ways to charge for content. The older companies, that is all they are thinking about.”

And finally the part that will end any business discussion with any old media CEO:

Print newspapers and magazines will never get there, he argues, until they burn the boats and shut down their print operations. Yes, there are still a lot of people and money in those boats—billions of dollars in revenue in some cases. “At risk is 80% of revenues and headcount,” Andreessen acknowledges, “but shift happens.” You’d have to be crazy to burn the boats. Crazy like Cortes.

Radical strategies like this either get you excited or terrify you (or both). Could you imagine the NYT or WSJ stopping all print publications and going digital only? Wow, that would be amazing. Lay off everyone connected to print and forge ahead. It won’t happen for years, maybe decades. Maybe they’ll always keep some niche print production, but eventually most printed papers will go away.

But it’s easy for us to criticize the media for not being willing to let go, but what about your business? Every business has boats they’re holding on to. And it’s usually the part of their business that’s stopping them from being truly innovative. That’s the part of the business the startups love to attack.

In my world, agencies continue to submit to hourly billing even though it’s a pain, unproductive and not conducive to providing the best work. Marketers refuse to give up on the CPM advertising metric (cost per thousand rate advertisers charge). It’s broken and doesn’t prove any type of business ROI. These are two boats I would volunteer to ignite myself.

What are your business boats? What would be the hardest thing to give up?

Photo credit via very little dave

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tagged with: Andreessen • Business model • Disruption • Innovation • newspapers

Social CRM is the First Step Towards Social Business and World Domination

On March 5, 2010, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

What is Social CRM? Is it a sales tool? Is it a support tool? The answer depends on your company and your business objectives. I can tell you this, Social CRM is not a Twitter key word search juxtaposed next to CRM data. (Sorry, personal rant.) And if you’re wondering about the title, everything with me is about World Domination (more at the end of the post).

This morning Jeremiah Owyang and R “Ray” Wang of the Altimeter Group, released a report (which I’ve embedded at the bottom of this post) on the state and future of Social CRM. It’s a great report you should all take the time to read. I also want to give Altimeter props for the use of Creative Commons and a bold new approach to analyst reports and their business model.

I particularly liked these 3 points from Jeremiah’s blog:

For companies, real time is not fast enough. Companies need to be able to anticipate what customers are doing to say and do, in order to keep up. Although Motrin responded to angry mom’s within 24 hours –it was too slow.
Companies are unable to scale to meet the needs of social. No matter how many community managers Dell and ComcastCares hires to support, they’ll never be able to match the number of customers happening. They need tools, and they need them now.
Customers don’t care what department you’re in they just want their problem fixed. Dooce’s support problem with Maytag quickly became a PR nightmare –had the support group known she was an influencer (and what it means), they could have serviced her better.

Altimeter sees 18 use cases for Social CRM. I think we’ll eventually see more than this but for now this is more than any company can handle.

This is a topic that has been close to my heart for several years now. When I was at HP I started doing some very early Social CRM initiatives with our enterprise sales teams. The below image is the slide that Rob Brooks proclaimed was the most confusing (yet interesting) slide ever shown at Social Media Breakfast Seattle. This is the slide that shows a use case for Social CRM geared towards sales.

By pulling in CRM data, matching that with direct marketing and Web analytics data I could identify the enterprises that were most responsive to our marketing and potentially interested. I would then use LinkedIn to identify the key IT decision makers and the people in the org and from there try and find them on Twitter and blogs to see what they were saying about HP, our competitors or the industry.All of this was very manual and labor intensive but the size of the contracts were worth the expense. The tools didn’t exist then and still don’t, to do what I was trying to do.

This report gave me a very robust report I could give to our sales teams. Before they ever walked in the door they knew what we had sold them in the past, what offers or products they had showed the most interest in and what their sentiment was towards and or our competitors. Early tests showed a decrease in sales time an increase in renewal rates (for existing customers) and increased upsell of additional products and services. And this is only one use case of Social CRM, #6 of 18 identified by the Altimeter Group.

Social CRM has been widely discussed for years now, Social Business is starting to gain more attention. To me Social CRM is the first example of a Social Business application. One of the things I found most interesting about the Altimeter report came in the executive summary. The definition of Social CRM is surprisingly close to the definition I gave for Social Business last month.

As the “Godfather of CRM,” Paul Greenberg notes, “We’ve moved from the transaction to the interaction with customers, though we haven’t eliminated the transaction – or the data associated with it… Social CRM focuses on engaging the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment.

Now look at my definitions for Social Business:

The Social Business will be fully realized when social technologies are leveraged to build collaborative relationships across all company stakeholders. By leveraging social technologies in an open and transparent way businesses will also regain and build more trust among stakeholders. This increased trust will will result in greater knowledge creation, which the same social technologies have the ability to capture, organize and distribute at a yet to be seen level of efficiency. By building collaborative relationships with all company stakeholders using social technologies, businesses will be able to quickly create and capitalize more innovation.

I went even further and qualified Collaborative Relationships further:

Collaborative Relationships: Open transparent and mutually beneficial relationships between companies and its stakeholders.

Social CRM is being driven because it has real measurable impact on ROI. It also provides the first real opportunity to demonstrate the power of a fully functional Social Business. Social CRM is just the tip of the iceberg.

Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management

View more documents from Jeremiah Owyang.

Finally I wanted to offer a word of warning and talk a little about the use of World Domination in the title and the use of the LEGO picture (which I’ve been using a lot lately). If you know me, I talk about World Domination a lot and if you know me I think LEGO’s and Star Wars are together better than peanut butter and jelly, but Social CRM and Social Business do have a potential dark side. Just because you can track more than you ever thought possible about your customers doesn’t mean you should. With this rush of data will come a customer backlash. Proceed, but proceed with caution.

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Photo credit via Balakov

Popularity: 5% [?]

Tagged with: Social Business • Social CRM

Don’t Overreact to Your Social Media Mistakes

On March 4, 2010, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

I recently wrote about Alex Payne, a developer for Twitter, who posted a tweet that caused a lot of contention among the Twitter developer community. Think Before You Tweet: The Do Not Tweet List.

Alex is not the first person to put his foot in his mouth on Twitter and he certainly won’t be the last. Because Twitter is so public and 140 characters is not enough to provide proper context, this will become the new normal.

Remember, we’re all human here. (unless you’re not for some reason)

Yesterday I read on GigaOm that Alex has decided to quit blogging, partly due to this most recent incident and partly because he had already been thinking about taking a break. I find his reasoning very poignant. (Emphasis is mine)

Lately, I’ve found the cathartic returns from blog-format writing to be diminishing. The ideas I’m trying to express never really get put to rest in my head when I write, now. Instead, they spark whole conversations that I never intended to start in the first place, conversations that leech precious time and energy while contributing precious little back. Negative responses I can slough off, but the sense that I’m not really crystallizing my unset thoughts by writing here is what bothers me.

This is an unfortunate response to a small blow up. It’s easy to overreact when something like this happens. For so many years social media has been a niche activity. No one but a bunch of geeks talking online. But sometime over the last few years social media quit being a back channel. If you’re a decent writer with interesting things to say, like Alex, then more and more people start paying attention. Pretty soon the random thoughts you’ve been writing down take on a life of their own and those thoughts beget conversations all on their own. This can be very intimidating.

Over the years we read about (seemingly) huge blowups that happen to other people and companies and it’s easy to talk about what they should have done differently. And then it happens to you. These fire drills are emotionally consuming and extremely stressful. No one wants to be “that guy.” I know because I’ve been that guy and was even written up for it.

But in the grand scheme of things these blow ups aren’t that big of a deal. They blow over and everyone moves on with things. Why? Because at the heart of things none of us is perfect and we all recognize that it could have been us. If we have learned anything from politicians, it’s that people are willing to forgive.

We all have our own reasons for blogging. Like Alex, I writing is part of my thinking process. The feedback I get from all of you help to formalize my ideas. Blogging is taxing and that may be the larger reason for Alex’s hiatus but it’s connection with this most recent mistake is unfortunate.

Last post I gave you 10 things to avoid tweeting, today I’m going to give you 3 things to do after it happens.

Apologize for the mistake (or at the very least the misunderstanding).
Clarify the statement (or action). Most mistakes are more miscommunication that an actual mistake.
Move on. Don’t dwell on the mistake, instead reengage with the community and get back to having fun.

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Photo credit via Balakov

Popularity: 9% [?]

Tagged with: Mistakes • Social media • Twitter

Study Finds Facebook Pages Can Increase Customer Loyalty by 36%

On March 3, 2010, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

First off I have to say that I haven’t been a big fan of Alltop. I like the idea and have a ton of respect for Guy Kawasaki but I’ve just personally never found anything useful there. That is until today. Alltop released Alltop.Futurity.

How to stay on top of research from universities

Duke University, Stanford University, and the University of Rochester created a consortium of universities called Futurity. All the partners are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU) or of the Russell Group. Futurity then publishes the very best research news from these universities. We then aggregate this news into a easy-to-scan site called Futurity.Alltop.

I love university research. Probably because part of me thinks it would be cool to be a college professor that got to do research all the time. But then the rational part of my brain knows that it’s probably not all that cool and I suck at statistics.

After checking out Alltop’s Futurity site I saw this little gem. While it’s only a study of one business and it’s Facebook page I thought it was still pretty cool.

Futurity.org – Turning Facebook fans into loyal customers

The study found that compared with typical Dessert Gallery customers, the company’s Facebook fans:

* Made 36 percent more visits to DG’s stores each month.
* Spent 45 percent more of their eating-out dollars at DG.
* Spent 33 percent more at DG’s stores.
* Had 14 percent higher emotional attachment to the DG brand.
* Had 41 percent greater psychological loyalty toward DG.

While the results indicate that Facebook fan pages offer an effective and low-cost way of social-media marketing, Dholakia says, the results should be interpret the results cautiously.

“The fact that only about 5 percent of the firm’s 13,000 customers became Facebook fans within three months indicates that Facebook fan pages may work best as niche marketing programs targeted to customers who regularly use Facebook.

I didn’t read the whole research report so I have to wonder if this is really a cause and effect. Were the people who ate at DG’s more likely to join a Facebook page or were people who joined a Facebook page more likely to increase the amount of times they ate at DG’s? My experience tells me that it’s both. Your pre Facebook page fans are most likely to become Facebook fans and if you’re effectively marketing on Facebook by engaging with your fans and offering deals then you’re probably going to see an increase in return visits.

BTW did I mention the New Comm Biz Facebook Page?

I disagree with the conclusion that Facebook should only be used for niche marketing. Instead, if Facebook fans are really more likely to spend more then DG’s should look at ways to convert customers to Facebook fans. I’ve also seen Facebook pages used effectively in all verticals with big and small companies. Facebook is not niche anymore.

What do you think? Has anyone else seen customer loyalty increase with Facebook fan pages?

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Photo credit via Balakov

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tagged with: Alltop • Facebook • Marketing • Research

Think Before You Tweet: The Do Not Tweet List

On March 2, 2010, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

Alternately named “Loose Tweets Sink Fleets.”

To quote my good friend and colleague Jeremy Meyers:

“Twitter is very conducive to posting without thinking.”

There are many instances of company and employee tweets gone wrong. A tweet can be a 140 character time bomb. Time and time again people have said things on Twitter that have blown up in their face.

Most recently Twitter developer Alex Payne posted “If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)”

While on one level this may seem benign enough. Alex is excited about the product that his company is making. The problem is that Twitter has grown to the size that it is because of third party developers. Twitter has obviously made a decision to compete more and more with the very developers that helped make them popular. That single tweet tipped their hand and surely caused Twitter a flurry of phone calls, emails and headaches right before their first developer conference.

This is a huge challenge for companies. You want to be open and social but you don’t want to leak information or send mixed messages in the market. What fascinated me the most was the way Twitter responded. They responded like a large company not the social media darling that they are.

MG Siegler has a great post on a reporter/blogger perspective of the leaked Twitter tweet.

So why do Twitter employees (and others) get mad? Because we’re amplifying the statement Payne made which they think he shouldn’t have. This is nothing new, it happens all the time in all forms of media. And companies hate it because they want to be in control of the message. But the fact of the matter is that he made an interesting statement, and people are clearly interested in reading about it, reading thoughts about it, and leaving their own comments about it.

Employees Don’t Be Stupid

This problem isn’t going away. Just like sending an email to the wrong person or replying in the wrong IM window hasn’t gone away, Twitter is just one more channel for miscommunications. The problem is that, unlike IM or email, it’s a very public forum.

Think before you tweet. Anytime you’re going to say something publicly, take just a split second to think about what you’re posting. The below list is meant for your personal account when posting about work related items. This is my first stab at the list so I’d love some feedback.

The Do Not Tweet List

Don’t complain about your customers on Twitter. They are listening.
DM is not IM. It’s not a secure communication channel.
Disclose conflicts of interest: Clients, Competitors, Partners.
Don’t get defensive about negative criticism of your company or products.
Don’t publicize private issues or jeopardize the company’s working relationships.
Unless soliciting community feedback is part of your product development, don’t tweet about products under development.
Don’t post about company financials before an earnings call. This can get you and your company in trouble with the SEC.
If you have a gripe about a coworker or your boss talk to them about it. Tweeting about it is passive aggressive and makes you and the company look bad.
Don’t spam your personal account with irrelevant work promotions. Promoting work is fine if it’s relevant to your followers.
Don’t think having an anonymous account makes any of this okay.

Companies Focus on Education not Control

Your employees are smart but not perfect. Instead of trying to control employees we need to educate them. Remind them regularly that there are just some things they shouldn’t talk about in any public communications. You can just throw open the doors and expect there to not be any mistakes. Learning has to happen and it happens through training or trial and error.

We have media training for executives before they make public statements why not employees?

What kind of training do you have for your employees around social media?

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Photo Credit by Brian Lane Winfield Moore

Popularity: 51% [?]

Tagged with: Communication • eductaion • Employee • Twitter

Your Personal Brand is Not About You

On March 1, 2010, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

Personal branding is not about you. It requires a lot of hard work, persistence in the face of repeated failure and the confidence to take a stand for something but despite the blood sweat and tear you put in it’s not about you.

Building your platform

Building a recognizable brand, even within your community or industry, is hard but it’s not as hard as it used to be. To build a personal brand you need a platform. Platforms were usually built around some sort of fame; a successful book, TV or radio show, something. In order to get there in the first place you needed publicists, agents and teams of PR people working their magic to get you booked on talk shows, news appearances and speaking gigs. All of these things still work but they have always come with a large price tag.

Today, the Internet is the only platform you need. You need a blog, a strong social media presence, you can self publish a book, start an Internet radio show, podcast or online video series. It’s still hard work but anyone willing to put in the work can do it. In short you don’t have to be special to be special.

Personal Spam

Because so many barriers have been removed there is a gold rush of people looking to establish their personal brand. In the attempt to create a personal brand what usually results is personal spam. It’s gotten so bad I normally don’t even like talking about personal branding. There are too many egomaniacs, snake oil salesmen (and women) and get rich quick schemers.

The truth is personal brand building is not about you. Your personal brand lives in the minds of the people who support you. Your Facebook friends and fans, your Twitter followers, your blog and book readers and in general everyone who believes in you that isn’t your mom.

Who are your friends?

If you want to really build a personal brand quit focusing on yourself. It’s not about you; it’s about your supporters, target audience, stakeholders, consumers, network and all those other terms companies use to describe people. For the sake of my personal sense of humanity we’ll be referring to them as friends from here on out.

My friends are the reason I do what I do. I have a few unique talents, we all do, and I use my unique talents to help my friends. I share my talents and my friends tell their friends. My friends built my platform for me.

Don’t be someone you’re not

The foundation of your platform should be you. All those things that make up who you are. Don’t be someone your not or act a certain way. That’s disingenuous and people can tell.

Be the megaphone for your friends

Highlight your friends. Highlight the people that helped you build your platform. Don’t just thank them, showcase them.

Get over yourself

You are not that big a deal. I don’t care who you are you are replaceable and beyond our little corner of the Internet no one knows who you are.

If you’re standing alone on your platform or if the people standing with you aren’t your friends, you don’t have a personal brand you have personal spam.

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Photo credit jurvetson

Dan Schawbel, author of Me 2.0and the Personal Branding Blog asked me to write an article for the Personal Branding Magazine. I ended up writing two and this was the one I saved for you

Popularity: 10% [?]

Tagged with: Branding • Friends • Personal Brand • Social Networks

The Non-Blog and Dr. M von Vogelhausen

On February 26, 2010, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

What do you call blogs that aren’t on a blogging platform? I call them non-blogs? I noticed this trend a few years ago when I would discover very active people in the social media space who didn’t have blogs using tools like StumbleUpon and then later FriendFeed for their blog. Not in addition to a blog like many of us but as their primary content hub.

Using Flickr or YouTube like a blog isn’t anything new but some people like Thomas Hawk take it to a new level. I know PR Newswires Michael Pranikoff uses Delicious as a blog even though it’s a bookmarking service.

What about a collection of short witty reviews on Amazon? (h/t YC) I present Dr. M von Vogelhausen with over 100 wonderfully random and amusing reviews on Amazon (UK)

Here are but a few gems:

A review for the Mastrad Ice Cube Tray

Since I was an infant I have been entranced by ice. I loved to spend hours staring into the stillness of its depths, as my family searched the small ads for hidden messages from Enid Blyton. However, the mystery of the origin of the humble ice cube has always eluded me. After several frustrated visits to the north pole, and an ill-judged expedition to a place that has since been stripped of its name, I found a faded picture of the Mastrad Ice Cube Blue Tray on the window of an abandoned snood store within earshot of the Slough Barrier Reef. Its worn edges shifted slightly in the wind like a tennis player’s pride. I received it on a Thursday; I loaded it; I had cold drinks on the Friday. O tempora, o mores! Water, but not water; hard but slippery. I looked over at Jasper, my dog and my editor, and his eyes seemed to say, “Ice…ice…baby.” He is presumptious.

The Chef’s Choice Elevtric Diamond Hine Sharpener

The door to the old Roberts house was slightly open when I arrived. I entered cautiously, hearing the creaking of the hinges echo in the waiting darkness. The house had seen better days, and there was a faint smell of sherbert lemons in the hallway as I guided myself towards the kitchen. I took a deep breath before entering, and adjusted my panama hat to a more jaunty angle.

The kitchen was just as they had left it: on the worktop, half-chewed Shreddies arranged in a collage depicting a scene from “Diagnosis Murder”; scrawled across the cabinets in jam, a haiku about penguins. A day like any other, then, interrupted by some mysterious event. I turned to leave, and stopped. Beside the microwave, I saw it.

The Chef’s Choice Electric Diamond. Of course, I didn’t know that then. All I could say was that I was in the presence of an object of boundless power and majesty. What happened next has been well documented by the knife-sharpening media. The upshot was that I took it home; and now it sits near my microwave, waiting, always waiting, for the bluntness. Recommended without reservation.

And for those feeling undue pressuer this week, the pressure washer:

Kärcher K2.36M+ Pressure Washer and T50 Patio Cleaner

I purchased this little monkey based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Nonetheless, I have been much gratified by it. Essentially, not wanting to beat around the trees or go around the burning bush, I have a lot of pressure (such is the lot of the Thames Valley Icelandic Chocolatiers Association secretary) And I often wish the cleaning away of this pressure were easier. The Karcher K2.36M+ washes away stains and spillages, yes, and if this impresses you I am both sad and happy, and uncomfortable (my belt is too tight). However it does nothing with pressure itself, which hangs around mockingly, its tongue out, holding a sign saying “you can’t deal with this”. In this respect only, the item failed to make me happy. In other ways – its colour, the way it sat, brooding, on my carpet; its name, when spoken aloud inside a grain silo in Minnesota – in these ways, it finds triumph and beats it until it itself is beaten. Highly recommended.

Do you have any favorite non-blogs? Twitter doesn’t count.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tagged with: Amazon • Blog • Blogging • Delicious • Flickr • non-blog • YouTube

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Study Finds Facebook Pages Can Increase Customer Loyalty by 36%

Think Before You Tweet: The Do Not Tweet List

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