Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

Here's to TRBN aka Terminal Rule by boomer narcissists

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Think of it as the business version of visiting  a psychic. This issue of Fast Company takes a look of what business will look like in 2016. Of course, it won't necessarily look like this, but it's fun to read what the prognosticators think that it will look like .

It's kind of the reading version of the old World Fairs where you would go from pavilion to pavilion and see what kinds of wonderful things technology was going to offer up in the next generation. Think The New York's World Fair circa 1964 where they were predicting we would have television phones.

So  okay it took over 40 years to make that happen. It has happened. That's how I see this issue of the magazine. It's just good, clean business fun.

.As a baby boomer I particularly was fascinated by the article on demographicswhich says we are heading to an "hour glass society" with the baby boomers on top, the echo boomers (that would be my kids) on the bottom and the gen X'ers squeezed in the middle.

The hourglass society will bring an avalanche of new social challenges, cultural norms, and business opportunities. With a huge increase in the number of older consumers, entirely new entertainment, culture, and news markets will open up--film, television, books, and Internet sites pitched more to the Matlock set than to the Eminem crowd. Also, older people tend to vote more frequently, and they will wield significant political clout: We could see a multidecade "boomerocracy" or, as one gen-Xer put it archly over cocktails, "TRBN: terminal rule by boomer narcissists

There are some other wonderful nuggets in the article :

"...the number of women buying high-end consumer electronics like plasma televisions is growing faster than the number of men (a reality yet to sink in at the big-box stores).

the percentage of single female home buyers in the past 20 years has nearly doubled, placing them second only to married couples"

One of their predictions are six professions that will be extinct.

Click here to see it in a slide show.

Or, here is the list by way of  TomorrowToday

TV schedulers, A&R guys, Wall Street researchers, cool hunters. As punishment, now it’s our turn to ram stuff down your throats. Hope you like Bon Jovi!

Bloggers
Pay someone to write snarky comments? Do you think we’re getting paid for this?

Advertising creatives
Talented amateurs making ads for fun and posting them online seem to be better at your job than you are. Bonus: No more “whither the 30-second spot” whining.

Auto mechanics
As cars run on software, the grease monkey will need a makeover.

U.S. high-tech jobs
But software engineers can always get a job down at the garage.

Indian call-center operators
American customer service is rescued from oxymoron status as companies realize that being nice to the people with the money is the only way to win.

Now, I couldn't find  out why Fast Company sees these as D1-2K dinosaurs and I'm not particularly concerned that they think the job of blogging will evaporate because that must mean that they think blogging will become a job that actually pays .

Hey, If I can get a five year run of getting paid for blogging I'd be a very happy boomer.

Tracking Schadenfreude

In my post that I lovely called, "Notes From The Road - Seattle Day 1", I shared my observation that the term Schadenfreude has become  the 2006 vocabulary  media darling --much like the overused gravitas did in 2000 ( first used widely to explain why Dick Cheney was good for the republican ticket --he brought needed gravitas).

I first read the term in an editorial by Kathleen Parker where she basically spanked people who had turned to blogs for their news.

"Schadenfreude - pleasure in others' misfortunes - has become the new barbarity on an island called Blog. When someone trips, whether Dan Rather or Eason Jordan or Judith Miller, bloggers are the bloodthirsty masses slavering for a public flogging. Incivility is their weapon and humanity their victim. "

Intrigued, I decided to keep a watch out for schadenfreude. I've heard it said by the talking heads on cable TV and then today, there it was again. This time  in a column in the National Journal written by William Powers. He too was talking about blogs. This time responding to reports that the blog bubble has busted.

"The Chicago Tribune pounced on the blog bust in an editorial dripping with old-media schadenfreude: "You're forgiven if you cling to the conventional wisdom that blogging, like half-pipe snowboarding, enjoys an unrelievedly rich future. Forgiven, but maybe behind the curve."

So now I want to really start tracking schadenfreude. I'm more convinced then ever that this word is going to rival truthiness in the near future.

And so  I ask your help. If you see it printed in a newspaper, magazine or online,or if you hear media types using it during their talking heads, add it in the comment section.  I will continue to update the list, when I hear someone using schadenfreude to describe the attitude of a particular person, group or political party.

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Help Ms. Jen Complete her Master's Thesis

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Feel like doing  a good deed today? Jen ,who has a blog called Black Phoebe::Ms. JEN, is working on her thesis for her master's degree and wants five minutes of your time. Here's her request:

I am currently working on my thesis for my master's degree on Moleskine to Mobile: How Creative Professionals are using the Mobile Devices.

I would love if you could take 5 mins. to fill out the following survey about your mobile usage. If you have practices and opinions that you would like to share and be on record for, please fill out your name and email and I will interview you

Take the Survey:http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=557101809700

I took the survey. It does just take five minutes and I learned about some software that I need to look into --plus its motivating me to use my mobile for more creative purposes.

Opening the Johari/Nohari Window

Until yesterday I was completely oblivious to a very hot trend that seems to be making the online rounds. It's the Johari/Nohari window . The Johari focuses on positive traits. The Nohari on your weaknesses.

"A Johari window is a metaphorical tool intended to help people better understand their interpersonal communication and relationships. It is used primarily in self-help groups and corporate settings as a heuristic exercise. Terms selected only by the participant, but not by any of their peers, are placed into the Façade quadrant, representing information about the participant of which their peers are unaware. It is then up to the participant whether or not to disclose this information.

Terms that are not selected by the participant but only by their peers are placed into the Blind Spot quadrant. These represent information of which the participant is not aware, but others are, and they can decide whether and how to inform the individual about these "blind spots"."

Like the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator, this is the kind of tool corporate teams adore.  Businesses spend tons of money to hire certified Meyers Briggs consultants to administer and analyze the results.

Forget about tapping into your budget, you just have to go to Interactive Johari and have technology do the work for you.

I found out about this trend at But wait! There's more... a blog by Canadian Leesepea who, like my friend Tyler, is a first year teacher. Coincidentally I just chatted with Tyler and will be sharing that conversation very soon.

If I understand this correctly, instead of using it for work use, the bloggers have discovered this tool and are asking readers to assess their blogging personality. I wrote about this on Blogher and heard from Divabat who shared

"I've done one - it's making the rounds on LJ.

There are a ton of traits that people see in me that I don't really notice about myself. It's been interesting."

Leesepea at But Wait! There's more... invited her readers to participate in her Johari window. When I tried to check it out I got this message.

Server Overload. Sorry, try again at a less busy time.

I guess a lot of people want to know what people really think of them. The  question I have is once you get your results ,do you take them seriously, or do you ignore what you don't like and blame it on spammers.

Tulip O'My Tulip

NOTE: The spellchecker is not working again..jeez.

It was the first post I saw when I clicked onto Blogher this morning --Liza Sabeter's provocative post Is this blog history in the making? I am 1 of 24 bloggers invited by Holland.com to visit Amsterdam

Here's the deal : the bloggers are being invited to a five day all expense-paid trip to Holland. No blogging about the trip will be required.

"In exchange for the trip each blogger will [a] be interviewed about the trip (the Dutch Tourism Board may be using this for online/offline promotions), [b] give Holland.com one month of premium adspace, and [c] put the "Bloggers in Amsterdam" logo in their nav bar for one year, linking it to this blog post to disclose the nature of the trip. The mantra here is transparency. "

Here is my response that posted on Blogher.

Is it transparency, unconscionable, or the changing of the guard?

This junket is both fascinating and a bit horrifying to me because it is forcing me to debate with myself the very core of my blogging ethics.

I think it is absolutely brilliant on the part of the tourism bureau of Holland and their marketing strategists. Money well spent.
Even before people are leaving there is attention on the program...Holland is getting exactly what it wants...media time. Bravo to them. From a marketing perspective , it is fabulous.

On a personal level I would love for someone to invite me to an all expense-paid vacation to Holland. My ego would love it that someone thought my blog was adworthy enough to be included. I would love just going and being on a junket and hanging out with a bunch of bloggers who may or may not be blogging in the spirit of "transparency' about the junket. In many ways, I would finally feel like I was getting paid for my work.

On first read,my inclination was to think I would have to decline the offer. This in no way an indictment against the bloggers invited and who accepted the junket.

It just highlights the spectrum of personal ethics and backgrounds that bloggers have.

For many ,the "transparency" of the entire vacation provides the ethical window to go, imbibe and take in the sites. Maybe you'll blog and maybe you won't. Actually you already have. And that is making some marketing person very happy. They probably have promised that the entire program would deliver X amount of coverage and this post is helping them achieve that goal.

Then there are they recovering journalists like myself --the ones who went to journalism school in an era where we were taught that it was "unethical" to accept anything in exchange for coverage. The goal was to try to be as objective as possible and the ethics said, when you are given a gift you are more likely to write favorable stuff.

But here's where my struggle erupts. Am I so steeped in old-fashioned values that I am not being realistic of the new business model?

Is accepting this junket really so different than a newspaper,TV or radio station that accepts advertising? As bloggers we are both the reporter and the advertising department-- that is if we are trying to make a living at blogging.

Traditional media outlets all exist thanks to advertisers(or grants from foundations which in my mind is advertising)so what's the problem in accepting a junket? A girl has to live and take a vacation once in awhile.

The old mantra was "don't mix advertising and 'the news'." Advertisers supposedly couldn't pressure the newsroom and say cover this story( that of course is debatable)

If, as a blogger, I would accept advertisers to my blog ( and they are very welcome) then what is my ethical problem with the junket? If an adveriser were really paying me, wouldn't I self-censor myself just as I self-censor myself about sharing stories about current business clients?

If I will accept compensation via advertising, isn't the junket just another form of compensation- a lovely one at that.

The journalist blogger in me is fascinated by this story just as I am fascinated by product placement advertising in movies and television, and advertisers trying to figure out how to out TiVo, TiVo.

So while I did not get a dance card on this one, I hope to 'cover' this story on several levels. I want to understand the ethics of it. I want to understand the personal censorship of it ( If you have a horrible hotel room, will you blog about that and face the possibility that when Saint Bart's offers a junket you may be excluded for bad blogging)and,

I want to understand---- if transparency is the new ethical standard, will truth or truthiness prevail?

Being Annoying is now a Federal Offense

It's being coined as the e-annoyance law. As C-Net reported , this law  which was signed in January states that if you are going to send an annoying email or comment on a blog, you better not do it anonymously.

"In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.

This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.

"The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else."

Over at What Pisses You Off which bills itself as the Best Damn Debate Forum, the posters are debating the issue.

Ray says," If the ISPs hadn't been so intransigent when people complained about TOS
violations, and terminated accounts when it was clearly warranted, the new
law would not have been necessary."

Chadwick Stone replied, "Your silly little law wont silence:

1. Non-anonymous poasters
2. Poasters living outside of the U.S.
3. Poasters in the U.S. who realize that it it is unenforceable due to
it contradicting your first amendment

The thought of any prosecutor coming after an individual who posts an annoying comment to a blog is very funny(can you say the delete button) if it weren't so sad. As the C-net article states,

"Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals.

In each of those three cases, someone's probably going to be annoyed. That's enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won't file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.) "

Taking it a step further, does this mean that when journalists quotes a " high ranking member of the justice department" could those anonymous comments fall under this law?  It was bad enough when journalists are hauled in front of a grand jury to disclose sources. Now, under the e-annoyance law, they may not even be able to quote them.

Welcome to the Blogher Network

 

Where the women bloggers are

Monday was launch day for the Blogher Network. Blogher started about a year ago  in response to the lack of recognition main stream media and other organizations hosting blogging conferences were giving women bloggers. It was as if the women were invisible.

A group of women decided to do something about it. Nuf said. First, there was a Blogher Conference with 300 bloggers last July .Now there is the Blogher Network. Check it out.

There are over 20 categories of blogs ---everything from Fashion & Shopping to Technology& Web and Research And Academia. In other words, the network covers everything that women are interested in.

For the foreseeable future, I will be one of four editors covering Business& Careers. In this role I will be featuring posts and blogs of women who are writing about business culture, news, and trends.

From time to time I will cross-pollinate on FunnyBusiness.

Today, I wanted to share a post that I read last night on Blogher from one of the editors of the Blogging& Social Media category. It was posted by Debi Jones aka mobilejones. It touches one of my favorite topics-- the risk of blogging about work.

"Anina whose star has been rising on the mobile technology conference circuit through 2005 receives an ultimatum from her modeling agency. "Choose modeling or technology, because you can't do both."

Anina's story isn't unique. Many employers are concerned about their employees blogging, and as a result, some people blog anonymously.

The concerns of the modeling agency aren't clear, but it does raise what is likely to continue to be a tough choice for employees. When an employer dictates your activities outside of work, what recourse do you have?

Read the comments on Anina's post. Also, she has included a short audio recording of a discussion with 2 friends on handling the situation."

Truthiness, Zero Coke & Blogs

Diet Coke is a girlie drink. The Coca-Cola Company wants to bring  the "man's man" audience to their drinking community. They've put up $18 million dollars to convince twenty-something testosterone- laden humans that this is the drink that will keep hair on their chest,love handles at bay, and rocket launch their coolness aura.

The bloggers are having a field day-- at least that's the word from New Zealand's news website --Stuff

"Although the goal was to tease the market and create some buzz among the web-savvy "neos" in the twenty something age-bracket, the blogging community has issued its own verdict.

Those searching out blogger commentary on the zero movement are likely to find posts along the lines of: "How many ad agencies does it take to patronise a demographic?"

A spoof zero movement site suggests readers take the money they would usually spend on soft drinks, and give it to charity, while spin-off blog The Zero Movement Sucks has begun selling T-shirts that say: "I joined the zero movement and all I got was this lousy brain tumour"."

Even forgetting that this is the company that survived a self-inflicted near fatal wound to its brand with the ill-fated Classic Coke introduction, you would think that a company that can spend $18 dollars to promote a product would understand what Stephen Colbert, bloggers, and the drinking public get.

Even truthiness has its limits.

For Corporate Bloggers the case of the Zero Movement Blog could become a Coke Classic for doing everything you shouldn't do in blogging to try to reach your target audience.

In the case of the "Zero Movement' the bloggers are doing to Zero Coke what Oprah Just did to James Frey.

Tony Kelly a journalist and blogger for B&T, Australia's highest-circlation advertising, marketing and media magazine says the bloggers are hammering Cokes attempt at blogging as,

"a cynical  marketing ploy abusing the high level communication and trust established between bloggers and the communities that gather around them. There are some wonderful aspects to an age where every consumer has a voice if they have access to blogger.com or typepad but if you are big company like Coke trying desperately to be down with the kids, then a site like The Zero Movement Sucks isn’t one of them."

Back in June, brand expert Laura Ries shared her thoughts on the Zero Movement.

"Zero does zero for the Coke brand. It is just a further watering down of the Coke brand in the mind of the consumer. Pretty soon, Coke will be so watered down you might as well just call it Dasani.

The idea behind Coca-Cola Zero is to attract young male consumers who shun beverages with the word Diet on them. I guess we are assuming young men are really stupid. Any one who has finished the fifth grade can figure out Coca-Cola Zero is the same as Diet Coke!:

Meanwhile, over at the Zero Movement Blogone does get the feeling that it's written by a a bunch of thirty-something females trying a little too hard to relate to twenty-something man types. A quick list of the folks that are commenting on the site, gives the feel that its found its audience -- girlie girls. Bethy, Elana ( no not me), Emma and Michelle.

See, in creating this marketing campaign targeted to males, the company overlooked a key aspect of human nature. Girls really believe the lyrics to the old Connie Francis song, " Where the boys are, someone waits for me A smilin' face, a warm embrace, two arms to hold me tenderly Where the boys are, my true love will be He's walkin' down some street in town and I know he's lookin' there for me"

Toby's Mini Carnival of Holiday Cheer

Holiday Greetings! In the spirit of the season, Toby Bloomberg aka Diva Marketing has put together a wonderful assortment of holiday posts.Known in the blogging world as a "carnival", these posts ( including two from FunnyBusiness) are wonderful reading.

Thanks Toby!

Tis The Season to Predict Trends

With 2006 barreling down on us ( by the way we still don't have a name for this decade and I'm still campaigning for D1/2K), futurists, trend observers and big picture folks are sharing what our world will look like during the next 12 months.

I love this stuff. And I really love the outlook this year. If things go the way the experts say, it could be our cutest year ever.

Netimperative is sharing the predictions for the Top 10 Online Marketing trends predicted by the  interactive  marketing firm 24/7 Real Media. My personal favorite is the number one trend

"1.Consumer-generated media will become increasingly attractive to advertisers

Podcasting, blogs and 'wiki' will continue to gain momentum and attract an increasing number of consumers - both content creators and content users. All indicators point to consumer generated media becoming a promising 'ad spend' opportunity, particularly for advertisers looking to reach specific micro-communities. Interactive advertising service providers seeking to capitalise on these opportunities will need to provide scale in both global advertiser acquisition and service delivery, and in data complexity - handling hundreds of thousands of sites with millions of transient visitors. New technologies will make ad delivery easier for publishers and advertisers, including filtering unsuitable content to protect advertisers from unwanted impressions. Better blog and audio/video search tools will increase traffic and dramatically improve relevance metrics. "

Over at Diva Marketing, my friend Toby is sharing how well some of last year's predictions turned out. As she recalled an  evening with some marketing associates

in  Seattle she remembered this:

"Over local brews, Robert made another prediction. His thoughts were that during 2005 blogs would continue to grow in popularity and visibility as a marketing strategy. But it would not be until  2006 that blogs would really take off. With all of the blog books that were released this year and more about to drop next year, Robert just might just be right. Cool!

That's 2 out of 2 saying that blogs are going to take off (marketing wise) in 2006. Eager to track what the other predictors will have to say.

Now, if we could just agree on a name for the decade.