I just read a very thought-provoking post over at Seth Godin’s Blog. He posted a video, which I’ve posted below, that shows one crazy guy dancing at a music festival, which quickly turns into a dance mob.

This is profound, to be sure… Anyone can join the mob and the rush to do what everyone else is doing, but it takes guts to get out there and be the first, second and third person doing something… To quote Seth ” Guy #49 is irrelevant. No bravery points for being part of the mob. We need more guy #3s.” Very profound. Thanks Seth!

When faced with a difficult problem, whether in developing a strategy or life, I spend a lot of time contemplating the issues, the variables, the landscape, workarounds, etc… I try to establish an equation. The equation allows me to weigh things, and come to conclusions, thus resolving the problem. Sometimes though, the most difficult problems are hard to wrap up into an equation. For those, I’ve realized that answers don’t come through thinking; rather the deep consideration of the problem eventually yields a solution. However, the solution comes in its own time, which is a schedule that rarely syncs up with our temporal schedule.

With all of the hype that’s going around right now about Bing potentially knocking Google of the search mountain, I felt that this article was very timely; and yet another story that talks about open and transparent is better than closed and opaque. This is the story of Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer. The article, by Michael Calore taken from the This Day in Tech pages at Wired.com: June 5, 2002: Browser, Philosophy Born of Turmoil, Defeat.

There’s an interesting post here, called The Web Will Be the Death of Google. This is a good article that ties into all the press that Bing and it’s attempt at knocking Google off the top of the search mountain is getting. The thing that’s easy to forget is Google did next to no marketing for their search (interesting Salon article from 1999 that touches on this a bit, as well as a 1998 Cnet article here). I know for me, back in 1999 or 2000, numerous people recommended that I use Google, as I had been a big user of Yahoo! for everything. Eventually, Google became the search tool of choice, not just for me, but for a lot of folks. Was it because it worked well? Was it because it was lean and uncluttered? Was it because it was quick? Honestly, it’s probably some combination, but I know that value that Google offered came to me through word-of-mouth, and when I tried the tool, it delivered as promised. It was no frills, just a simple tool that worked well.

Again, Google did very little marketing; they put something out there that worked, and people came to it. Clearly, they knew what people wanted, and how to add value. This is a piece that Microsoft has never figured out. I’m not sure if it’s just been a case of willful ignorance, or just customer indifference because their OS monopoly made them a required player. However, either way I would say to serve is a privilege, and if your tool is chosen, then it’s bonus and bonus! Create the tool of choice, and cherish the privilege of service.

So as many folks sound the Google death knell, I say Google will die only once they’ve decided that they don’t want to serve the customer with imaginative and innovative ideas. Anyone, who saw the preview of Google Wave, last week, knows that they’re clearly not there yet. Yahoo! might be there, MySpace might be there, and there are others, but then there are folks like Twitter, and Facebook who keep trying to develop innovative tools to serve the customer.

The fact is any company that stops thinking about, or doesn’t consider their, customer is going to go out of business; whether they’re selling Web services or hot dogs… I only have to look at my home of Detroit to know this is true.

Read an interesting survey today that kind of confirmed some of my suspicions, at least preliminarily. You can read it here. The gist of the survey is that people are using social networking to chat with and build networks of friends and colleagues, but not buy stuff. That makes sense to me. I’ve always thought that the social media piece, as it pertained to growing business or selling products, seemed kind of questionable, at least and unproven at best.

I come to this opinion first and foremost as a user. I like to get my hands on stuff that I hear my friends talking about, and that has influenced a lot of purchases over the years, but there’s a higher likelihood that I’ll read about something, hear a review on NPR, or just generally pick up something that I heard about through word-of-mouth. I’d love to get other folks opinions on this, as the monetization of these services and the possibility of growing business through social media is getting a lot of press these days.

I hate to pile on Microsoft, who seems to be struggling with finding their place on the Web; but one would think that Microsoft, who’s been at technology marketing longer than most, would get how to do a product launch. I’m talking about the launch of their new Bing search service.

For starters their home page, the one linked above, is a cobbled together DNS forward: http://www.bing.com/ComingSoon that points at http://www.decisionengine.com/Default.html, however, when you get to that page there’s nothing but a perpetually loading video (that never quite loads on both Firefox and IE7 with the most recent Flash plugin), and while trying to keep this Web 2.0 is a noble effort with the video piece, the “Find us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter” and “Share this Page” links seem to be a superficial allusion to being Web 2.0-minded, which is what Microsoft folks purport to being at this page here: http://www.decisionengine.com/Letter.html (note that they’re again using the decisionengine.com domain, rather than bing.com, so much for branding the URL and product name)…

From a Web launch point-of-view there are quite a few things that Microsoft should have done differently. Perhaps there was a rush to get to market, but with a cumulative total of six pages, max, I’m not sure why they couldn’t have done a better job than they did. The URL as product branding is huge, how could this have been overlooked?

Unfortunately, the shoddy approach that was taken to launching this new product taints my expectations of it. If the rush to get these pages up and posted was so great that they overlooked significant details like consolidating the URL used, as well as getting the homepage video to work on their own browser, then what else wasn’t worthy of taking the time to do it right with regard to the product? If it’s great, I’ll eat my words, but based on this launch I’m not holding my breath.

On the flipside I can’t help but think that with all of the expertise and R&D, to say nothing of money, with which they could just buy good ideas rather than try to create (or replicate) them, Microsoft has tried to create their own flavor of Google. It’s sad, really, because think of what Microsoft could do if they weren’t playing catch up.

For me the lesson taken away from this and the lesson I would share is:

If rushing sacrifices the integrity of your strategy, don’t do it.

You can’t do much without a plan. It doesn’t have to be a super-detailed plan, because that kind of plan doesn’t allow for the organic expanding and contracting that comes with anything living. Yes, a plan is a living thing. Especially when people or an organization are living and breathing that plan every day. So you have to have a plan.

Without a plan there’s no strategy.
Without a plan there’s no way to calculate ROI.
Without a plan there’s a journey, but no destination.

Sometimes, it’s Ok to be on a journey without a destination, but other times it can lead to a feeling of purposeless meandering into infinity.

Even a very loose plan is better than being without any kind of plan whatsoever…

I found this article, How To Stand Out In A World Of Infinite Choice by Adam Singer on his FutureBuzz blog today when trying out some of the Twitter search functionality.

Adam says a lot of things in his post that I found hit home for me regarding the Web, openness and quality. I, especially, believe that if you’re open, honest, and deliver quality you’re going to be rewarded with interest. There’s no shortcut for this, and Adam’s perspective embraces this.

Here are a couple quotes from his post:

“Getting through the filters of the web (human or automated) successfully is a matter of standing out.

“In a low trust world, real honesty and transparency go a long way to set you apart.  You can’t fake this, eventually everyone’s true colors come out.  Use authenticity as a way to set you apart as a more positive choice.  The filter of the web is smart, and getting smarter each day – being inauthentic is not a sustainable strategy.”

I’ve added FutureBuzz to my reader, and I’m sure that there will be more responses to Adam’s posts.

There’s a great Wall Street Journal article here that talks about how Google is using an algorithm to track and identify which of their employees are most likely to quit. Taken from Scott Morrison’s Wall Street Journal Article:

“The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

“Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested. The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.”

This is a really interesting article that illustrates Google’s ability to be proactive, and really ahead of the curve. Imagine if most companies cared enough to not only see how their employees felt, but to actually take action to do something about it. A lot of folks in HR and management pay lip service to trying to help the employee out, but when the rubber meets the road that rarely comes to pass, either because the organization is too busy reacting, or because the pro-active and dynamic nature of employee engagement and internal communication is something that’s shuffled about into a communication purgatory that many managers believe falls outside the scope of their responsibilities and/or daily business. Leave it to Google to have their pulse on this.

It’s no secret that I am biased towards Google. I’ve experienced first-hand their openness and generosity while attending a Joomla conference that they hosted at the Googleplex in 2007. In fact, Google is a company that absolutely embraces the idea of the gift economy that has made the Web great, and to some extent, I would say made the Web happen at all, and also they are totally indicative of the openness that I’ve talked about here before. Google’s not going anywhere. They get the joke about what it takes to be successful; they understand, holistically, the requirements of that success. We’re sure to hear about more great and innovative ideas from them.

Just because you presented the better solution, doesn’t mean that the client will always take that route. Somehow, this defies good sense, but on the other hand, people are not always using good sense when they make decisions. There’s an emotional piece that equally defies good sense, and there’s nothing related to good sense as far as feelings are concerned, only what is and the hope that one will learn something from the experience of those emotions. Still, though, in the service of the client, you have to research and present the best option for them, and hope that there will be an intersection of what the client wants, what the client needs, and what the best solution is.