Can Tweeting be a meditation?

What is Zen About Tweeting? The Zen of Tweeting is very simple, yet so few understand. All tweeple (people who twitter) are searching for answers or things that make them feel complete. Is it companionship, knowledge; and for what purpose, for material gain, to make ourselves more informed, happier? Do we tweet because we believe all these things can be attained from within Twitter? Tweeple say, I tweet because I want this, or I am that. The problem is that nobody really knows this “I,” they think that by Tweeting they will discover what “I” am. You must ask yourself, who is this I, did I exist before I was born, will I exist after I’m dead and gone. If I tweet, does that define who I am? If you ponder these questions long enough you will come to the realization that you simply don’t know this “I”, and 10,000 followers will not tell you either. The don’t know mind set is what keeps us going, always churning, looking for the answer to that indelible question, who am I? Zen is about keeping that “don’t know” mind, present and aware. When walking, standing, sitting, lying down, speaking, being silent, moving, being still, tweeting. At all times, in all places, without interruption — what is this? One mind is infinite time. The Zen practitioner uses meditation to focus on this don’t know mindset. And when doing something other than meditation, we just do it. When walking, just walk; when eating, just eat, when working, just work, when tweeting, just tweet. After a while, you learn to focus on being present, things will start becoming clearer, your purpose in your life becomes in focus. The I disappears. You’ll know that when a person is hungry, you can give them food; when thirsty, something to drink; when sad, you give them comfort. You will tweet with clarity and compassion as well, because you will see people in those tweets, not just words. And you will be interested only in what there needs are, before your own. This is the true nature of Zen Tweeting, and the path to enlightenment.

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Social media – The Basics

The Basics ( Social media)

Social media “stuff” is hot right now. It’s almost a bubble. And yet, several companies are seeking to learn more about how to use these tools and strategies to build business relationships, deliver new customers, solve customer service education issues, and more. This post is intended for the aspiring social media types.

Part of my energy around this post comes from a great speech by mister Gary Vaynerchuk I attended yesterday. Gary is nothing if not passionate, clear about his plan, and focused on his next steps.

You MUST do the basics.

If You Are A Business

1. Be as professional as you can be. If you’re looking to help these businesses, realize that they need you to be reliable (something I wish I could do better). They need you to be there.

2. Educate people from their side of the fence. If you’re providing advice and training, don’t talk about your tool knowledge. Talk about their business challenges.

3. Study the market. Don’t just do your own thing. Learn how other people are selling. Learn how other people are marketing. Learn how other people are educating.

4. Know your price. Know how much you need to make to do business. This is so important. It also relates to how people value you. Be sure you value you.

5. Be clean and clear about selling. If you’re selling something, like consulting, like a service, like design work, whatever, be really open and clear about what you sell.

6. Ask. Ask for referrals. Ask for the sale. Ask for advice from lots of people. Make sure that asking is part of your DNA.

7. Be personal. Be real. Be who you are. It won’t last long if you try to be other people, or try to be something you’re not. This includes admitting when you’re wrong.

8. Know what’s next. Always have a plan. Always have a sense of where you’re going in your business, and what you need.

Why are these the basics? Because this is the baseline price for entry to doing this work. It’s what people are expecting from you, especially when you get the opportunity to work with them.

What have I missed? What do you know about?

Person Gary Vaynerchuk

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Microsoft Keen to Learn with U Rank Search Engine Experiment

Always keen to learn how users search, Microsoft has started testing a new search engine called U Rank.

U Rank, which requires users to sign in with a Windows Live ID before searching, allows users to edit, organize, and annotate search results, then share them with others, giving Microsoft valuable data on what people are looking for when they perform searches.

Microsoft explains that U Rank is a “research prototype, to help us learn more about how people use such technologies so we can continue to innovate.”

“We believe that finding something on the web is only the first step for many tasks. To better support people as they are exploring a topic, comparing information, keeping track of what they’re learning, and collaborating with others, U Rank has general support for organizing, annotating, remembering, and sharing search results.” says Emre Kiciman from the Microsoft Research Team.

Here are the benefits of U Rank for users as outlined by Microsoft:

• Organize and annotate results: write notes to summarize important information under each URL

• Lists: keep lists while you’re researching (“hotels for my next trip”, “DSLRs for me”)

• Collaboration: Share URLs with friends (“related projects”, “our reading list”)

• Recommendations: Tell your friends what you like (“best books,” “favorite restaurants”)

• Multimedia results: Mix video and images with web results for added context

• Ego-boosting: Make sure your home page is #1 (at least for you and your friends)

• Easy to explore what your friends are sharing

• Short-cuts: Move your favorite sites up; then put an ! in front of the query and go straight to the top result

I see most of these benefits as actually being more beneficial for Microsoft rather than the users themselves. What do you think?

Its great to see that Microsoft is being proactive in trying to improve their users search experience, although they will have to do a lot more experimenting and learning to even come close to catching up to Google.