I can see a firing in your future!

The state of the U.S. economy is beyond dismal at the moment and with the downturn, job cuts are following suit. With Starbucks closing 600 stores across the country, 12,000 employees are bracing to lose their jobs.

And, with a job loss comes the inevitable goodbye to the company you once poured your blood, sweat and tears into.

The NYTimes.com article, Dear Valued Worker, You’re Fired reminds us of how to handle getting fired:

1. It’s okay to cry (but you may not be permitted to stop by the bathroom and wipe away your smeared makeup on the way out)

2. There’s no need to ask every question on the spot (but do make sure you get someone’s contact information)

3. Don’t get defensive or argumentative (oh, really?!)

The pros agree that if you’re in charge of the firing, it’s best to avoid using the word ‘fire’ altogether. The winning phrases are, “It’s time for us to part company,” “I need to let you go,” or the uplifting “It’s time to help you succeed elsewhere.”

The bottom line: No matter how you sugarcoat it, you’ve still been fired.

Found on the Wired blogs. Google’s Udi Manber spends endless time thinking about how search can be improved. One big reason many searches don’t succeed, he believes, is that despite the 20 billion or so Web pages in Google’s indexes — including the 2 million items in Wikipedia — the information simply isn’t there.

“The process will take 20 seconds with credit cards,” says Knol product manager Cedric Dupont. Phone checks will take a minute or so. This vetting, Manber hopes, will give knols accountability and, in the case of high-status authors, the benefit of a solid reputation.

Update: Here’s Knol from Google.

The folks from Tumblr left a post on Social Media Today about an overhaul to the Tumblr platform.

In their own words - We’re getting ready to push some major updates over the next few weeks, and we wanted to give you a heads-up on changes to our custom theme engine. We’ve tried to make Tumblr themes as open and customizable as possible, and the things you’ve created have blown our minds. But there are still things we’ve wanted to do that haven’t been easy enough.

So next Monday we’ll be scrapping our old code for a completely overhauled template engine. We’re seriously excited about this, and we can’t wait to see what you’re able to do with it.

The most noticeable improvements:

* The new engine is scoped, so you’ll be able to nest and repeat blocks and variables.
* The engine uses a new token parser that will support special syntax for API hooks.

This will let your theme call back for content, like:

{​block:Posts type=”photo” tagged=”spotlight” count=”5″}
” />
{/block:Posts}

We’ve been systematically testing the new engine to make sure it’s backwards compatible. You can test it yourself by adding ?beta=1 to any tumblelog URL [e.g. http://www.davidslog.com/?beta=1]. If it’s working correctly, you shouldn’t see a difference.

Please let us know if you see anything funny.

Incidentally I have tested the clunky old Social Space Station theme and it seems to be identical so that’s good. Still waiting on a banner to take the design to a new universe. The Social Space Station is a tumblelog dedicated to presenting, discussing, and discovering interesting things out there in the social media sphere.

Obviously Viacom is up in arms over what it argues is copyright infringement whenever one of its artists’ songs are used in a user-generated video. Their lawyers are even arguing that in most cases they want to set aside the notion of fair use. That in itself is ridiculous as in a lot of circumstances Viacom has stepped over the edge of copyright boundaries. In 2007 Viacom sent YouTube 100,000 takedown notices! And as this video from the EFF points out, many of those videos that Viacom had asked YouTube to remove, were not infringing anyone’s copyright.

We ourselves received a takedown notice and had a video removed from YouTube. The video was of one of our numerous snowboarding expeditions to Mt Hood and it included a clip of a song by the group White Zombie. We could have argued that under the law if we had used the music for parody, for comment, for criticism, for news reporting or for non-commercial use then we’d be in the clear. In this instance it was the latter - non-commercial use. We couldn’t be bothered, we weren’t that attached to the video and anyway, like millions of other folks, we put up videos at an alarming rate. Here’s our latest.

So here’s the Nemo and Social Cash POV. By removing our video Viacom denied thousands of people the pleasure of hearing a White Zombie song. One of its own artists! And no money was changing hands. One solution - Viacom should provide YouTube with a license from a roster of its artists who agree that their music can be used in a video for non-commercial use. In return YouTube provides its users with a simple license that allows users to add music from these artists to their amateur videos for non-commercial use for a small fee of, perhaps $3.00. Now Viacom and its artists get a share of this revenue, YouTube users won’t receive takedown notices, and Viacom can go a long way to recouping its, no doubt, millions of dollars it is spending on these lawsuits.

You’re welcome. Let me know why it won’t work….

Meanwhile over at MySpace, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has a business that’s built on the backs of thousands of unsigned musicians. Who is looking out for them?

For decades now the dream of media types and ad firms has been to convert the humble remote control from a mere volume and channel changer to a spangly ‘product buying module.’ Tivo and Amazon are announcing a partnership today that introduces a “product purchase” feature via Tivo’s DVR service.

The idea is simple - turn the Tivo remote into a tool for buying the products being advertised and promoted on commercials and talk shows. If a talk show host talks up a book, Blu-Ray disc or CD, Tivo viewers will see onscreen menus with links to buy those products.

The NYT reports that - In the months ahead, TiVo plans to begin offering this feature to advertisers and programmers, so that the chance to buy products and have them delivered will be presented to viewers during commercials and even alongside product placements during live shows.

“Just a few years ago, we were viewed with great paranoia as the disruptor,” said Thomas S. Rogers, chief executive of TiVo. “Our goal now is to work with the media industry to come up with ways to resist the downward pressure of less advertising viewing and create a way for advertising on TV to become more effective, more engaging and closer to the sale.”

Tivo is now positioning itself away from media industry disruptor - offering its customers ways to skip ads, to media industry saviour, but not without Mr Rogers sowing the seeds of paranoia - “As DVRs get more popular, “the majority of commercials in home will be fast-forwarded through,” he said. “It is critical that there be a form of advertising and a transactional solution that underpins the DVR, or the economics of television are going to be substantially undermined.”

The people in the video who see this glass elevator dunk an Oreo cookie into a glass of milk are paying attention. I wonder how many of them grab a bag of Oreo’s on the way home. A cool, alternative way to push advertising.

This is serious news when it comes to business networking and social media, I see a serious win-win here for both parties. There has been some debate recently about Facebook and how seriously it can be taken when it comes to businesses using the Facebook network to extend their social media ambitions as well as advertise across it. I would argue that the LinkedIn/NYT partnership steps up the ante for both Facebook and MySpace; the NYT, one of the world’s great media institutions that has seriously embraced the internet to further its business, may be on a path to shaking off its “Grey Lady” image and LinkedIn, which, although having only 25 million registered users making it small by social network standards, is by far the doyen of social sites for serious business users. We’ll see how this one unfolds.

Kudos, once again to Marshall Kirkpatrick for breaking the story.

Studio Nemo is always hopping and it always gets the good stuff! This shoot was for Nike 6 with photographer Josh Letchworth behind the lens. The Nike 6.0 athletes were in town for Migration, a week of fun-filled activity and work all rolled into one. It’s like a giant meet and greet for all these kids from different areas of action sports.

The social media folks and their blogs have been buzzing lately over a story that seems to have come from Deloitte but perhaps was more widely circulated by the WSJ. Josh Catone at Sitepoint drilled down further into the story from where it got picked up by Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb.

Both Josh and Marshall have great points and their posts are a good read. Marshall’s post had the most provocative headline - Corporate Social Networks Are A Waste of Money, Study Finds. I thought I’d pick up the story there - A Waste of Money. Companies have a bad habit of throwing money at everything that moves, especially if it looks like “something we should be doing.”

Here are my thoughts distilled from my own writings on the subject and insights borrowed from Josh and Marshall’s posts:

Here’s an extract from my essay ‘On Social Media, Blogs and Advertising.’ - To understand and embrace social networking is to place the idea that says “technology makes this possible” to one side and embrace the idea of the basic human need to stay in touch with other like-minded people at all times. As Clay Shirky says “The desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct.” Read the rest of this post here.

With that thought what follows is:

Businesses can not “build a community” however much money they throw at the idea. They merely need to look outside of their own walls, find the influencers who are already championing their products and join the communities that already exist.

Businesses can not attract “visitors” as measured in traffic to their sites. People who enjoy their products will be talking about them elsewhere in other communities. See above.

Businesses have to realize that having a Facebook page for their products makes them look ridiculous and could actually harm the brand. See my post about Spraychel and “her” Facebook page brought to us by the folks behind I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter®

It is the way of businesses to make predictions about their market. They should not invest in software that makes predictions, or even social-networking technology, unless they have discovered a clear market need.

Positive word of mouth marketing by online communities that enjoy a businesses’ product is a far better metric than the ratio of visits to the corporate web site or its community.

Online communities led by influencers that champion a businesses’ products are doing just that, championing the products not the corporation that brought them to market.

So what should businesses do? Here’s a list that I have reworked to address businesses as it was originally written with rock bands in mind.

They should:
01. Run a blog to which actual company members post regular updates.
02. Ensure that the blogosphere is alerted to any new and breaking news or important posts.
03. Offer early access to special offers and discounts for their customers loyalty.
04. Give away free samples of their product.
05. Be active in their customers online communities.
06. Never push unwanted messages to their customers.
07. Ask their customers to interact directly with their product, for example through competitions and giveaways.
08. Allow the sharing of their products amongst a community.
09. Work closely with influencers.
10. Embrace radical transparency. Openly discuss their problems with their customers and allow negative comments to remain on their blogs.

That’s the top ten; number 11 in my list would include - have dedicated staff working on your company’s online communication 24/7.

Read more of our thoughts on Social Media here.