I’ve decided to stop writing for this blog but you can keep in touch with me at rikinontheweb at gmail.com and at rikin.tumblr.com.

I’ve kept this blog up with sporadic updates over the past year but have decided that the time and energy it takes to write, research, and build a community could be better focused elsewhere right now.

Best of luck with all your efforts!

Steve Rubel recently wrote that the early adopters are out of shiny new objects to play with. Twitter has grown immensely over the past year, Facebook has become commonplace by every member of the household, and we’re increasingly salivating at the thought of Apple’s purported iSlate. Although I agree whole-heartedly with Steve, whom I also work with, my thoughts recently haven’t been on the early adopters or the next big thing in the social web. My thoughts have been with my friends, the one’s who aren’t obsessed with all this dork 2.0 stuff, they’re the majority and they’re about to become more involved in the social web than ever before.

In the past few weeks a number of my friends who are budding journalists, comedians, industrial designers, gossipers, chefs, etc.have mentioned starting up a blog or joining Twitter. Many of these friends used to mention blogging in similar vein to keeping a journal in a pink heart shaped diary but it now seems that they too have caught the bug. They mention their hobbies and true passions and curiously question how the web can help them ignite some displaced desire to escape the corporate 9-5. I can’t help but think that there are millions of friends just like mine that share the same feeling.

It’s easy to become so immersed in the shiny-new-object crowd that we forget about the majority of people who’ve never posted a status update, tweeted, or written a review on Yelp. These social behaviors only emerged in the past decade and undoubtedly it will take time to become ingrained in the psych of the late majority. It will seem unnatural (and possibly nonsensical) to many at first but overtime become part of our daily routine. One day social behavior online will be innate, it will be akin to how a new parent today describes their child’s amazing inborn ability to push the buttons of a laptop or tap the screen of an iPhone (or Nexus One). Children will be more immersed in the web than we ever were and able to retrieve and process information more efficiently as well.

In the meantime, I’m extremely excited about my friends and the millions like them who are about tackle the internet. As adoption of social platforms grows and gains momentum local markets will see a similar level of online engagement and interaction as I enjoy in New York City with apps like Foursquare, who are now global, and Yelp. They’ll push the boundaries and have lots of questions; some of their needs have already been answered by today’s applications and tools, but some of their problems may only be solved with one of those shiny new objects Steve and the rest of us are hoping for.

With the end of one year and the onset of another comes the inevitable attempt to take all our learnings and define new guidelines for whatever lies next. I wanted to document and share two of the lessons I learned during 2009 that will set the tone for 2010 and many years to come for me.

10,000 hours

Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule, described in Outliers, has been in the back of my mind ever since reading it. The takeaway is that across any activity or occupation, the best of the best have put in 10,000 hours of practice. The Beatles, were well into their 10,000 hours of practice even before they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

This 10,000 hour number had two effects on me. The first was that it quantified expertise, if I wanted to be one of the best I knew the requisite amount of time. In many ways, the number was liberating because expertise was no longer illusive. With that said, I’m not fooled into believing that being great at something precludes success; however, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared incase the opportunity for success came my way.

The second important effect of the 10,000 hour number is that it restricted diversification of interests. That amount of time is a lot of dedication and since I’m limited on time, even at the age of 24, it meant I had to make choices. Do I want to be mediocre at a number of things, or killer at one or two things? My answer was that I wanted to be great at two things. Having sorted that out, I now had to decide which two.

For months I’ve been questioning what could possibly be worth 10,000 hours of my time. It’s been such a difficult question to answer because it seemed so definitive and would require years of dedication before I was satisfied. As 2009 comes to an end I think I finally have the answers.

Writing would be one of the two skills that I’d hone over the years. It wasn’t until college, where I learned the fundamentals of storytelling and conveying one’s opinion, that I became fascinated by writing. Combined with my passion for the internet, I’ve decided to take writing much more seriously than I have in the past and know that it’s worthy of at least 10,000 hours.

The second skill is guitar. I’ve been playing the guitar and writing songs for many years now and probably have a few thousand hours under my belt already. However, music is my passion in life and I think it’s finally time to give it my all.

It wasn’t easy narrowing my interests down to two activities, but now that I have, I feel more determined than ever before.

Labor

Once I decided that writing was worth 10,000 hours, I started paying attention to those who had already put in their share of hours. It was in Steven Pressfield’s Writing Wednesdays series that I found a quote taken from the Bhagavad-Gita where Krishna tells Arjuna, “We have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor.”

This was a very empowering quote. It slaps you in the face and forces you to forgo pettiness and to take action. I knew what I wanted to do, write and play guitar, but there was still a pressure to become a “success”. This self-inflicted pressure results in self-inflicted doubt; moreover, it distracts me from the only thing I can control – the amount of effort and labor I put into my passions. Wealth is only tangible when you obtain it, until then it is simply a myth and the only control I truly have is over my actions.

Back to 2010 and the Internet

Having made these decisions has helped me realize what is beneficial to me and what is simply a detractor. There’s so much going on online that it becomes almost too easy to dabble in things that are a waste of your time. There are plenty of people who can spark a mix of jealousy and inspiration as they detail their own stories of success. After cementing my passions it became much easier to ignore any half-hearted opportunity for a different path to success.

So for 2010 I’ll be making a concerted effort to keep writing and playing guitar with a diligence and fervor that haven’t been there in the past. I’ll be working towards clocking in 10,000 hours for both over the next few years and hope to remain focused on the practice, rather than the results, of my labor.

During a recent doctor visit I had my blood pressure taken. Nothing too exciting to talk about. During my follow up visit a technician came in and took my blood pressure again. She then remarked, “Oh that’s great, your blood pressure went down.” To which I replied, “I never knew it was high in the first place, what are the numbers?”

…

A coworker just returned from a business trip complaining that his flight from Richmond, VA to JFK was delayed over 10 hours. His main gripe was that the airline employee offered little insight into the cause other than mechanical difficulties After a few hours of sitting in the gate he went up to her and asking why it was taking so long. She said, “do you really want to know why?”, and went on to describe a paperwork inefficiencies, crew changes, and needing a new plane as the underlying causes.

…

Both of these events struck me as instances in which consumers (insert customers, patients, end users, and other like terms here) were demanding a higher level of information and transparency than what was usually offered. It was not out of laziness that the doctor and the airline employee withheld information, it was out of protection. They were the gatekeepers who decided what was pertinent and what wasn’t.

Today we have Wikipedia and WebMD with which we explore, research, and self diagnose ourselves. We can check our alternatives, inform our friends, and write scathing reviews when met with poor customer service. There are no gatekeepers of information online and that frustrates us when we are met with circumstances like these in real life.

The internet is forcing our need for information and our expectations of receiving it in a transparent manner to increase. Eventually, this need will push us to become more open and comfortable sharing information in our offline interactions. For example, medical records will one day be stored digitally and made available to us on demand – transferring the current ownership model from doctor to patient. Or, Continental will partner with Acela trains and Enterprise rentals to assist passengers in case of delays or emergencies.

Ten years ago, the internet was only a reflection of our culture playing the role of facilitator; however, now it is also influencing our thoughts and our expectations of how things should and shouldn’t be.

Earlier this month Google announced Vevo, a music video partnership with some of the biggest labels in the music industry. Earlier this month I also happened to walk by the Vevo launch party only to be left with a huge sense of uneasiness.

Vevo lacks passion.
Vevo was not a Google engineer’s midnight stroke of genius developed during his or her 20 percent time. Instead, it was the product of business development deals signed during board room pitches to the music “industry” elite. Bizdev deals are a great way to help you get to your final destination, but they rarely inspire one to leave in the first place.

Vevo has no purpose.
We are a society of movements; the renaissance, urbanization, the SUV, and hairbands were all examples of this. When a movement becomes too large it creates a scarcity of variety and becomes susceptible to counterculture.

Unfortunately for Vevo, there is no scarcity of official music videos or of industry marketing efforts. New singles are announced on billboards, easily found online, integrated into advertisements, played in taxicabs and played out on TV. Vevo is simply another drop in a large enough movement leaving the role of “the next big thing” up for grabs.

Vevo provides music in isolation.
The greatest quality of the internet is that it allows you to follow the breadcrumbs both to and from a popular destination. Ironically, YouTube is the perfect embodiment of this as it lets you follow commodities like this to gems like this:

The internet hates isolation and the comments, covers, remixes, and spoofs all come together to create a dynamic experience that most users are silently begging for.

Vevo is a parasite.
Vevo is no different than YouTube, meaning that its success will be largely dependent on YouTube’s demise.

Google could do more.
Google could benefit the music industry more if they were to simply remove the main method of finding torrents through their search engine. (Mashable wrote something similar earlier this year) According to Google’s own AdWord Keyword Tool, the word torrent is searched for over 100 MILLION TIMES PER MONTH. I’m going to guess that greeting these users with an error page and missing out on a 100 million opportunities to serve adwords would be very bad for business.

Furthermore, it is against Google’s Terms of Service to link to any site that contains infringed copyright material; however, Google must be made aware of such sites by its users through a 9 step form. For all the amazing technology that Google has delivered I’m amazed that they have not developed an automated filter for sites that infringe upon copyright law.

Finally, Vevo will not help new musicians.
I met a singer-songwriter today who started asking me questions about creating awareness and using the web as a means of distribution and marketing for his work. He knew the internet held the answer but didn’t know how to find it. Although I’m also not sure where that answer is, I know that it is not Vevo.

As my friend discussed his struggles, my thoughts went back to the feelings I had when walking by the Vevo launch party. In attendance were some of today’s richest artists and execs surrounded by photographers, expensive food, and strong cocktails as they discussed the devastating state of their industry. I now realize that the uneasiness in my stomach came from disappointment in knowing that there are people and companies out there that have the brains and the resources to answer every singer songwriter’s worries but instead they created Vevo.

Photo via Stewf, Flickr

In order to convince a company, or even an individual, to embrace social media you have to prove ROI. You and I both know this already.

However, in order to prove ROI you really need to start talking numbers. We’re talking about referral visits, search engine visits, time spent on site, click through rates, acquisition rates, and so on and so forth.

When it comes to online advertising and web analytics, there are plenty of concrete metrics. Most of these have been tested for over a decade and are now ubiquitous. More importantly, there are many tools and resources that can meet our needs and provide these metrics.

Unfortunately, I have yet to see any social media company truly embrace metrics and provide their own reporting service. Yes, Facebook did supply us with Facebook insights. Insights; however, is pretty awful even when it is working (which as of recently isn’t very often). Twitter too has failed to provide us with a reporting platform and although many third party providers, including bit.ly, are trying to fill the void, it’s just not good enough yet.

Every platform should place metrics and reporting functionality at the top of their priority list, even if for no other reason than to appease the brands and organizations that can help monetize these platforms.

Questions that we need more insight into:

Where are referrals coming from?

What are my form abandonment rates?

Damn it this could go on forever but yet progress seems to be non-existent. Social media companies, we all want more metrics in a quick and easily accessible way.

As a marketer, what other metrics are important to you? Are Social Media meeting your needs? Do you have everything you need to prove ROI?

I’ve been blogging so to speak since the beginning of this year but haven’t perfected it quite yet. I know of some methods to become popular that aren’t immoral but seem somewhat fleeting and childish.

Blogging seems very strange to me to be honest. You have to be niche, I never am. Text and video seem to be the most embraced forms, my emotions materialize in music or sketches as well. You have to build a community by joining someone else’s, well that’s just paradoxical all by itself.

So instead, I’ll be experimenting a little bit more with this space. Seeing what works and what doesn’t. I’m still tumblring away as well and that might be something that I decide to take over my digital home.

In the mean time you’ll probably see many brain fragments here at rikin on the web. Small doses of incomplete and unrefined thoughts. I hope you can help me connect the dots and we can come to some interesting conclusions over time.

I’m always amazed by Apple’s PR efforts. I know they’re a smart group, having worked down the hall from them during my internship, but I think what’s the most amazing about them is their restraint.

Apple is fully aware of their unparalleled exposure and coverage online. More importantly, they know that because of this attention there’s no need for a strong social presence. It’s akin to saying, “Hey internet, we’ll do our thing, you shout for us.”

This is also why every action of Apple’s PR group must be extremely calculated. Their latest effort, Apple and the Environment, aims to demonstrate their dedication to going green but more importantly being transparent.

I’ll also demonstrate transparency and say that I don’t really have much else to say other than I find this promising.

Seth Godin recently wrote about the role of business development and what it means to do it effectively within an organization. Seth’s post couldn’t have come at a better time for me having just left a role in Business Development with the New York Post. I thought I’d take a few moments to add to the conversation and talk about my experience in that role.

The job was my first after completing school and built a wonderful foundation for a career in digital. Before starting the role I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing and though I quickly learned the ropes it was always difficult to explain to others, even to those within my organization, what exactly someone in bizdev does. But I’ll do my best to put it as simply as possible.

Business Development forges partnerships that are beneficial to an organizational objective yet often ancillary to its core mission.

Seth provides a few examples of this, such as Starbucks licensing its brand and flavors to an ice cream maker or Best Buy partnering with an insurance company to provide extended warranty programs. Ferrari too has mastered business development by practically supporting their entire operation not through the sales of their cars but with licensing deals with companies like Puma and video game creators. The examples could go on forever.

Business Development in the digital world I imagine is much like adventuring into the Wild Wild West. There are no rules, no business models, and no guarantees. Furthermore, you’ll have to align yourself with others in a relationship that is mutually beneficial to ensure survival.

Business Development is all about finding the right partners and striking the right deals but it’s not easy. So many companies do not have the confidence or the know-how to successfully execute bizdev deals. However, those that do have some common traits and characteristics.

1. Flexibility
As I mentioned before, there are no rules in business development, which means that companies have to trust their BizDev managers. Many of these deals will feel uncomfortable and make even the most daring of companies uneasy which is why it’s important to stay flexible and nimble – good opportunities often come unexpected and won’t last forever.

2. This Isn’t Selling
It’s true, a good pitch and many qualities of a good salesperson are required for business development. However, business development is more than selling.

The deals brokered by bizdev managers didn’t exist yesterday and won’t be duplicated tomorrow. You sell a product – a rigid product whose benefit and configurations are all predetermined. You enter a partnership – a fluid partnership that requires understanding, creativity, and compromise from both parties.

More importantly, in traditional sales the relationship is most engaged before both parties agree to the terms of the sale. Once the sale is complete, the relationship is dwindled down to pure maintenance and ensuring customer satisfaction. In business development, the sale is only the beginning and both parties should be more engaged after the relationship is solidified. Involvement should be on optimizing results and achieving the maximum benefit for everyone.

3. All Hands On Deck
One of the biggest pitfalls of business development is that the nature of our deals could effect any number of other departments within the company. That’s why it is important to take the time to educate everyone from product development to legal and achieve buy-in on your goals. (Sidenote: This was very difficult in the newspaper industry where editors, journalists, designers, and sales all have a different understanding of what’s ultimately most beneficial)

4. Be Decisive
There’s a lot of noise out there, especially in the digital industry where everyone thinks they’ve come up with the next best idea, so its important to be decisive so as to not waste time and resources. The role is plagued with chicken and egg syndrome, where every vendor promises a golden egg if they could only find a chicken who will mate with them.

Once you’ve made your decision it is also important to be direct with the other party. There is no point in wasting someone else’s time and if you don’t make it clear that you’re not interested they’ll only continue to waste more of yours. What is even worse is going into a deal because you simply could not get rid of someone – it sounds stupid but it can happen.

5. Low Hanging Fruit
There’s nothing wrong with deals that produce marginal revenue streams as long as they are easy to execute. Unfortunately, back-and-forth along with a long legal process can often make the simplest of deals take months. Hopefully companies will dedicate more resources towards business development programs so that there are enough people to manage each type of deal.

6. Meet Your New Best Friend, Data
Collect as much data as possible and use it to make calculated decisions.

That doesn’t mean that your gut instinct isn’t important, it’s just that it is not infallible.

6. Learn the Ecosystem
The most important lesson I learned while being involved in bizdev was to learn as much as possible. It’s an obvious approach but try to learn everything you can about how your business and industry works. Sit down with members of each department and understand their strengths and weaknesses. Subscribe to newsletters and meet up with others in your field to stay on top of your industry and are able to recognize the trends.

Also, audit your vendors and make sure that they are the perfect fit. They should be people that you feel comfortable working with for years to come and they should also be able to deliver on their promises.

Business development isn’t just for the veterans of our industry. It was a great way for me to start my career in digital and provided unlimited exposure to a number of companies and introduced me to some very smart and innovative individuals. I’m certain that bizdev professionals will be at the front of the digital future as long as they stay sharp, take calculated risks, and continue to be students of our industry.

Book, Pages, Heart, Love

A few weeks ago Fred Wilson wrote a list of recommended books for entrepreneurs and surprisingly enough none of them were about business. In fact, most of his short list included classical fiction by Ayn Rand and Shakespeare.

I’ve always felt that studying sociology taught me more about business than any of my lectures in business school and I’m glad to see that someone like Fred shares my reasoning. Fred puts it perfectly when he says;

The point of this list is that there is way more insight to be gained from stories than from business books. And these are some amazing stories.

In fact, I’d like to think that the same principle applies for websites and blogs too. Specifically, there is more applicable insight and lessons to be learned from sites that have little if nothing to do with business than business sites themselves.

Although my RSS reader is full of sites that are about blogging practices, media news, industry trends, and career advice I find that some of the most interesting and “mind-expanding” reads come from elsewhere. Blogs about art, society, science, and general observations on life. Reading about topics that I’m more intimately familiar with, although useful, simply isn’t as stimulating. This is also why, although I enjoy the community and conversation of many of my Gen-Y peers, I simply cannot get too thrilled about blogs and posts that are only directed to my generation — limiting myself to the views and opinions of my age group would limit my understanding of the big picture.

I believe that the utility of reading isn’t to reinforce our existing knowledge or beliefs but to expand our knowledge and conception of all that is going on around us.

Some of my favorite online reads that do this well include:

Kevin Kelly’s Life Stream

Noah Brier

Gaping Void by Hugh Macleod

Self Vs. Self by Hazel Dooney

Seed Magazine

Good Magazine

So what do you read? I’d love to expand my list and share more with anyone else who visits