Finals: Heat over Thunder in 6.

MVP: LeBron James

Scoring Champ: Carmelo Anthony

ROY: Kyrie Irving

Others:

I don’t buy the Clippers hype. They’ll be the 6th-7th best team in the West.

Russell Westbrook is a stud. We all know he’s good, but he’ll break out even more this year.

Dwight Howard won’t be traded. He’ll leave in the off-season.

Knicks will continue their climb. This is good for the NBA.

Memphis is for real. They’ll compete and I could see them making a run for a spot in the Conference Finals.

Spurs and Celtics are done. Rondo is a stud, but neither team has a shot. Time to rebuild for both of them.

The T’Wolves! I believe. They likely won’t make the playoffs, but I could see them surprising people like Memphis did last year.

Google’s attempt to compete with the massively popular app Flipboard is just that…an attempt. Flipboard by far my favorite iPad app. I use it religiously throughout the day and it’s my primary source for news. However, being a Google fan, I downloaded Currents and gave it a shot. The end result: it does some things nicely, others not so much.

The problem with new products that come out and attempt to compete with other products that are already very successful is there really needs to be an incentive to change. Outside of experiencing a major issue with a product or service, the act of changing one’s behavior requires something more than “comparable.” The new product needs to offer something the current product doesn’t — and that’s where I believe, at least for me, Currents fails.

Currents is a nice app. It has a beautiful design, it has a lot of publication feeds and it’s fairly easy to set-up and use. To be honest, the one thing that Currents does better than Flipboard is the set-up function. It’s a lot easier to find and add a publication to your feed in Currents than it is through Flipboard.  But that’s where it ends. Currents doesn’t offer me anything Flipboard doesn’t. I’ve invested a lot of time and I’ve become comfortable with Flipboard. If Currents doesn’t offer me anything Flipboard doesn’t, why would I change?

Outside of not differeniating itself from Flipboard, at its core, Currents isn’t social. Right now, that’s what I love about Flipboard. Flipboard makes it easy to share what I’m reading. Currents does allow you to +1 (recommend) an article and does allow you to share via Facebook, Twitter, etc., but it’s not as easy as it is on Flipboard.

Overall, Currents is a fine newsreader app. It mirrors Flipboard…just not as nicely. While Currents is a good option for those looking for a news aggreator app, Flipboard does it better and is more social. I’m sure Google will make some improvements to Currents, but right now, I’m sticking with Flipboard.

P.S. How the heck does one get to the original article through Currents? Flipboard gives you the article’s link, but I have no idea how to access the original article through Currents. Someone help me out.

• Social business will die – Here’s a term I hate. It’s also a term I don’t understand. You know what a “social business” is — it’s a business that understands what it’s doing. You know why Sears won’t be around in 5 years (yeah, I said it. It’s another topic for another day)? It’s not because they aren’t “social.” It’s not because they don’t understand change management. It’s because the consumer no longer has a need for their goods and services. Here’s the key to successful business: make great products and listen to your customers. It’s been that way from the beginning and it’ll be that way until the end. Quit throwing the term “social” in front of other words and trying to coin buzzwords.
• Influence still not understood – Brands and business professionals still won’t have a grasp on true influence. Unfortunately, digital folks still live in a bubble. We still have a false sense of worth and entitlement. Folks, the general population still doesn’t know who you are and they still don’t care. No one cares that your blog was named an AdAge Power150 blog. Quit confusing reach with influence and quit using automated tools.
• Another major social media crisis – This is a bold statement, huh? Have you seen some of the other “predictions” on the web, though. Let’s get a little bold here folks. I’ll take it one step further. There will be another major social media crisis in 2012. It will come from a major brand in a major industry. It won’t be a financial company and it won’t be an airline. I have my feeling on what brand it’ll be, but I’ll elect to keep it to myself. DM me, or get me going on a rant, and I’ll probably tell you who I think it’ll be. It’s going to happen, folks, and I can’t wait!
• Pinterest is the new foursquare – We’re already seeing the buzz around Pinterest pick up — and rightfully so. It’s an incredible time suck and I love it. I think 2012 will prove to be the year Pinterest gets major buzz and really picks up even more steam. It’s an amazing tool that has so many untapped possibilities. You’ll be hearing and seeing a lot more of Pinterest in the new year.
• Social jumps the shark  in entertainment – We’re already seeing it now with more and more television shows trying to integrate social into their programs. I think next year we’ll get it thrown in our face a bit with networks going a bit overboard and trying too hard with social. And I don’t think television is where it’ll live — I also see the music industry going a bit overboard as well. On one side, it’s good that they’re trying to figure it out. On the other, it’ll be slightly annoying and a bit obvious.
• Communities for social change – It’s a natural evolution for social media. We saw it with Egypt, we saw it with Occupy Wall St — social can make a difference. You have people like Jeff Pulver who are using social to make a difference and bring the human fundamental of what social truly stands for, and  I think 2012 will see some pretty impressive accomplishments in this space.

Warning:  You are about to lay your eyes on some of the best and most valuable data you will ever come across. I spent hours upon hours compiling secretive data that will likely blow your mind. I am not responsible for the sudden life changes my findings will surely cause.

Now that we have the obligatory warning out of the way, let me preface this post by saying I spent about 15 minutes, at most, over a span of 3 days looking at numbers that are readily available to anyone who spends any time on Facebook. The most grueling part was copying and pasting the numbers into Excel.

Facebook recently made a few changes/additions to data available on a brand’s page. One of the new changes they made was adding a “Talking About This” feature on every brand page. According to Facebook:

“People Talking about this” counts ‘stories” – structured content that people choose to share through Facebook that is eligible to appear in a user’s news feed:

• liking your Page
• posting to your Page’s Wall
• liking, commenting or sharing one of your Page posts (or other content on your page – like photos, videos, albums)
• answering a Question you posted, RSVP-ing to one of your events
• mentioning your Page, phototagging your Page
• liking or sharing a check-in deal, or checking in at your Place.

While relatively new, this feature is quite interesting and valuable for anyone who manages a Facebook page for a brand. While browsing around a few brand’s pages that I “like” and scan each day, I noticed a common theme — most of the pages I visited had a relatively low number of “people talking about this.” So I did what any brilliant mind would do and I started to plug some numbers (aka enter into Excel). Scholarly, huh?

I took a look at 10 of the most “liked” brand pages, and even threw in a few celebrities (they’re brands, too). I then took a look at a few of the top Minnesota brands, just for the heck of it. Here are my amazing findings, that again, will likely blow your mind:

Obviously I’ve been kidding around about my “research” being scientific or scholarly. However, even with this brief glimpse, it does present some interesting data. Outside of Justin Bieber — the kids sure like them some Biebs — most of the brands I looked at had between .05% – 1.5% of their “likes” talking about them. A few brands were a bit higher, a few a bit lower, but it was pretty consistent across the board.

This got me thinking, and I came up with a few possible conclusions from the unscientific and rushed research project that I spent less than 15 minutes on:

• People “like” brands and rarely, if ever, return.
• It shows the importance of the News Feed.
• Your content isn’t as compelling as you think.

I think it can be a combination of all three; however, it’s most likely the first point. Early on, we got trigger happy with the “like” button, liked a bunch of brands, and then we simply never return to their page.

This little research project wasn’t meant to uncover the secret to Facebook success. Instead, it was simply meant to show that while we’re out there spreading the gospel of Facebook as the key to our organization’s success, we simply need to take a step back into reality a bit. I don’t want to take away the importance of Facebook — Coca Cola’s 250,000+ people “talking about this” is a pretty significant amount of eyeballs. It does indicate that while we’re claiming a lot of success on behalf of brands, the reality is there’s still a huge amount of opportunity and a lot of room for improvement.

First, I’m tired of the talk around measurement. Chuck Hemann said it best, with a comment that “everyone seems to be a measurement expert now.” He’s spot on. Measurement is the all the rage (and it should be), which means everyone is suddenly an expert on the subject. I’m a numbers geek, so the gathering and analysis of data completely fascinates me. But I’m by no means an expert in measurement. Neither are you, so stop trying.

Fellow Minnesotan, Kary Delaria wrote an article on how, for her,  Twitter is becoming less useful. I agree with her broad, overall statement, as Twitter is becoming less useful for me as well. What was once my favorite platform, Twitter is slowly becoming less valuable for me.  I’m simply seeing a lot of repeat content and complaining. It’s sort of like dating and waking up one day and realizing the honeymoon phase is over, and that you’re now bored to death. That’s how I am feeling lately about Twitter. I made a comment on Kary’s post that I believe Twitter is dying. And I stand by the comment. In five years, Twitter will be dead. Yes, I realize that Twitter is evolving and you can make the argument that “Twitter as we know it today will be vastly different in five years.” But honestly, it goes beyond that. Having spent the majority of my career in the financial space, I got to witness the housing crisis first-hand. We (myself and the company I was working for) saw it coming — not nearly to the extent that we’re in now (otherwise I’d be on a private beach drinking vodka right now), but we saw it coming. I see a number of similarities with Twitter…not social media, just Twitter. I honestly think Twitter is about to burst. In the end, a new tool — completely separate from Twitter — will come along and achieve what Twitter is attempting to. The end result will be much more tolerable and profitable for consumers and brands. Twitter is a sinking ship.

This past weekend I had the chance to attend Unsummit for a few hours. Overall, I think last year’s content was a bit better, but there was some decent stuff this year. One of the sessions I attended was around the term social media “expert,” however, it quickly turned into a conversation about social media as a whole. I left extremely frustrated, as the group tried to define what social media is, should it even be called social media, and lastly what companies should be doing with social. The last topic was the most irritating. People, why are we trying to broadly define social? What works for one company may not work for another. That doesn’t mean one is doing it wrong. Social is unique to every business and every consumer. Please, stop trying to silo it into a broad, often incorrect, bucket. And to the person who said Facebook is useless for brands and will likely be gone in a few years…you’re an idiot. Also, only I can make statements about social platforms dying.

I wrote a while back about my fascination with augmented reality. I was a little bullish on AR at the time, but I still think augmented reality is the most powerful and potentially the biggest game changer that we will see…once it hits mainstream. And mainstream is still the problem. While there are a few folks out there doing some amazing things with AR, I think I was probably 12-18 months ahead of where I should have been with my assumptions. Hey, even I make mistakes. Nonetheless, I still remain highly optimistic about the impact AR will have in the near future.

So there you have it. My ramblings and thoughts. I’d ask you to stay tuned for more brilliant insight, but it’ll likely be another month before I post again.

What is our fascination on killing things? What does the success of one product have to result in the death of another? Henry Ford wasn’t focused on killing the horse and buggy. Charles Lindbergh wasn’t trying to kill other forms of transportation. Mobile phones weren’t created to kill the landline phone.

Focus on disruption, focus on improvement, focus on innovation. But, please, quit trying to create a product or service that kills something. You won’t succeed.

I hate automatic soap dispensers in public restrooms.

Allow me to let that sink in for a moment. Automatic soap dispensers. In a restroom. Hate.

You see, at work — and this is where most of the hate stems from, we have automatic soap dispensers in our restrooms. While this is nothing out of the ordinary, and one may argue it makes complete sense — efficiency, save the environment, cost-reduction…whatever. But quite frankly, I don’t care about any of those reasons. I hate automatic soap dispensers in public restrooms. Especially the ones at my work.

Let me share a little bit about where this hatred comes from and why it has ultimately resulted in me hating the damn things. For those of you who are unfamiliar with automatic soap dispenses…get out in public. It’s 2011 already. Seriously, if you haven’t used/seen an automatic soap dispenser, you really do need to get out a bit. Anyhow, I hate germs. I like clean hands. I judge people who don’t wash their hands after using the restroom. I judge those who simply run water over their hands and don’t use any soap even more. Honestly, what’s the point of that?

Back to the story…

So, me being a guy who hates germs, and being a guy who prefers to be clean, I wash my hands after using the restroom. I then use soap, rinse, rinse some more and then use three paper towels. Or I hit the lever thing three times. I’m OCD like that. I’m not talking rocket science. Someone who’s three could handle my routine. But then you throw in automatic soap dispensers and it screws everything up. Either I’m waving my hand under the damn sensor trying to get the thing to dispense soap, or worse, simply wetting my hands, and the automatic soap dispenser spits soap at me. And where does this soap land? On my shirt sleeve. And I really don’t like soap getting dispensed on my shirt sleeve.

Look, as I mentioned above, washing your hands is something you teach children at a young age. It baffles my mind how automatic soap dispensers — especially those in my work’s restroom, can mess my process up. When the stupid thing does work correctly, does it dispense the right amount of soap? Nope. So there I go again, waving my hand like an idiot trying to get additional soap. It frustrates the hell out of me. This is why I hate automatic soap dispensers. Is it fair to lump all automatic soap dispensers into one category? Probably not. But this is my blog, and my story, so I am going to lump all automatic soap dispensers into the category of hate.

So what does this have to do with business?

You may think your product offers convenience and value to your customers, but even the simplest, no-brainer product/service will have someone who doesn’t like it. Regardless of what you are offering, you can not please everyone. And business is not about pleasing everyone. It’s not about providing value and convenience to everyone. That’s alright. You’ll go broke, and insane, trying to please everyone. Instead, focus on the core group that you are providing value to, try and build on those who haven’t completely ruled you out and acknowledge and be aware of those who completely hate your product and write blog posts about it.

Note: Next time we chat, ask me about my position on troughs in public restrooms. It’s brilliant logic.

As you’re well aware, I have a pretty vocal personality. Granted, I probably could have gone without dropping the f-bomb in the last paragraph — typically I don’t use that word simply for the shock factor, but are we seriously this wrapped up in censoring ourselves? Do we all really need to act like we’re living in a 1960s family sitcom? While a lot of Justin’s tips may seem like common sense, the sad thing is, most people don’t use common sense. If people used their brain, we wouldn’t be talking about this issue. Or at least not in the way we are right now. But here’s my question: has the Internet killed our personality?

Look, I swear. I swear to my friends, I swear in public. I swear online. I don’t do it in a rude and obnoxious way. I don’t do it in an attempt to sound cool or, as mentioned above, for the shock factor. I’m not a dirty sailor, but I use vulgarity in my conversations. It’s who I am. But I also know when to use it and when not to. I’m not walking up to my boss cursing. I have common sense. But I also don’t hide it online. I understand that my online profile is public. I understand that customers, friends, family, co-workers and colleagues can read it. I’m OK with it. If someone is turned off by a tweet where I used harsh language or vulgarity, so be it. If that’s the deciding factor in whether to follow me or hire me, then it’s probably better that you don’t follow me. And I’m fine not working for you. I’m the same person offline and online. And you better believe I’m not changing who I am offline.

But let’s get back to the topic at hand -  has the Internet killed personality? Are people so worried about their online image that they are sacrificing who they really are? I’m not asking everyone to start cursing up a storm or act like an idiot online. This goes beyond a specific action and addresses the issue at large. Are we afraid to voice our opinion; are we stifling creativity in an attempt not to offend someone? And does this turn into the bigger question of how transparent and authentic is the web?

Unfortunately, we’ve already seen a lot of the web turn into a glorified circle jerk where we all sit around patting each other on the back. We’re afraid of the word “no” and we’re scared to question each other or constructively speak out. We’ve turned to a society that accepts mediocrity and classifies average as a success.

I’m not asking people to be rude and obnoxious. There are consequences to everything we do — including me writing this post. But I don’t welcome a bland world where we can’t be ourselves. We’ve always been self-conscious and worried about what others think. But I think it’s time to truly be open and authentic. It’s time we let our personalities shine.