With the dotcom bust firmly behind us, and new economic woes constraining marketing budgets, attention has turned back to the web as one of the hottest vehicles to reach customers on the cheap. With computing now so pervasive that there is actually an internet cafe at the Mt. Everest base camp, hackneyed ideas like the law of really big numbers are given a Web 2.0 polish and repackaged as something new and improved. "With over 100 million unique visitors to Web 2.0 Site du Jour, just imagine the brand awareness and viral marketing opportunities!" Suddenly we have toothbrushes with their own MySpace page and sneakers with a cadre of "friends" on Facebook (one can only wonder who is a better friend: a flashy running shoe or a plaque-dominating toothbrush?)
 
For the uninitiated, "Web 2.0" and social networking are the monikers applied to a new breed of websites and technologies that allow users to create their own web pages with relative ease, and form communities around them with discussions, photos and link sharing. While it sounds a bit ethereal the first time you hear it, creating a profile on Linkedin or Facebook takes about 10 minutes and is worth the effort for no other reason than to see what Web 2.0 looks and feels like.
 
Like seemingly every technological innovation, Web 2.0 has been subjected to a hype cycle that is only now coming back to earth, and when used effectively can be one arrow in your marketing arsenal. It is not a magic bullet, and at the end of the day, the most effective Web 2.0 efforts may help you connect with a core group of highly enthusiastic customers, but likely will not contribute directly to the sales process. Think brand building versus ringing cash registers. The people most likely to be attracted to a social network built around your company or its products are obviously passionate (who else would befriend a toothbrush?), and that passion may manifest itself as unbridled love or as an axe to grind for a perceived slight. On the positive side of the ledger, this group can provide extremely detailed and rapid feedback for couching new product ideas, but requires diligent care and feeding and can be easily alienated. Think of your "President's Hotline" or similar top-tier customer service group and multiply its trials and tribulations by a factor of four and you might get an idea of the effort required to build and maintain a social network. Like a demanding lover, this group of customers can turn on a dime and demands true human interaction. Few customer segments are better at sniffing out banal or half-hearted attempts at communications that smack of sanitization by corporate council.
 
Like any technology investment or change in marketing strategy, Web 2.0 is much more than the underlying technologies, and takes ongoing hard work in order to be effective. With the appropriate tactical plan in place and the right expectations for ongoing care and feeding, Web 2.0 can indeed lead to a deeper connection to your most passionate customers that will eventually improve your brand's image and lead to increased sales. Treated as yet another technical magic bullet, you risk wasted effort and worse yet, alienated customers.
 
For some additional thoughts on Web 2.0, see my article Going Back to Basics: Web 0.0 on CIO Update or feel free to send me an email.

There is little in our new digital lives more frustrating than the ever growing email inbox. With such little effort required to fire off a digital missive and the scourge of the Forward, Reply to All and CC: features, the sanctity of a clean inbox seems almost impossible. Even more interesting is the way people cope with the communication onslaught. Some proudly boast about the thousands of unopened emails in their inbox, while others immediately delete all but the most important messages in a brutal crackdown on inbox overcrowding, while others create a multi-level folder regime that requires hours of patient maintenance each week. While I have never been able to maintain a completely empty inbox for more than approximately 1.9 seconds, here are three tips I have found to be effective in fighting email overload that do not regularly appear elsewhere:
 
1)      Turn off notifications, beeps, flashing lights, vibrating devices, smoke signals and any other annoyances that occur when an email arrives. Work your inbox on your time and when you can focus all your energy on handling its contents. It is surprising how much more you get done and how effectively you manage email when you bring all your mental firepower to bear on it, rather than letting email distract your focus for random 30 second intervals throughout the day.

2)      Create an "@Waiting" folder where you deposit all emails related to a task someone else needs to complete, or where you need to track the result of some activity. When a subordinate acknowledges a task and says he will "get right on it," deposit the email in @Waiting. Review @Waiting a couple of times each week and follow up on any outstanding items, then delete or archive relevant emails when tasks are completed. This is far more effective than having a sea of emails in the inbox, some requiring follow up, some informational and some in another status.

3)      Nip endless forward chains in the bud with that old standby: the telephone. When someone CC's you on a 74-page email chain that has been circulating since the time of Alexander Graham Bell, call the offender and ask for a brief summary, why this is relevant to you, and what specific action they would like you to take based on the email. They should be able to summarize faster than you can piece together the jumbled chain, and will think twice before sending similar emails in the future without providing a summary or indication as to why your participation is relevant.

This month I received an email from the organizers of the Miami Half Marathon stating that I was a "hero" for having run the race. While "hero" ranks near the top in the list of head-swelling adjectives like "handsome" and "svelte" that are rarely tossed my way, in this case it seems largely unjust, and the symptom of a tendency to bandy about a word that should rightfully be reserved for the very best in human endeavors.
 
When I think of a true hero, I conjure mental images of firefighters struggling out of a collapsing building, laboring to drag a young or infirm person through the blazing wreckage, or perhaps a soldier, taking a bullet to save several of his comrades. Perhaps one might imagine a political figure like Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi, suffering though physical and mental barbarism from a brutal political regime, then going on to unite a country and seek forgiveness for their former oppressors rather than retribution.
 
Perhaps in our yearning to escape the ordinary, combined with the very human tendency to make a story more colorful inspires this zeal to apply the "hero" moniker to rather mundane human accomplishments. Barraged by news stories of corruption and economic doom, perhaps we are looking for inspiration wherever we can find it, to the point of lowering the bar on heroic acts and hoping no one is the wiser. Whatever the case may be, making anyone and everyone a hero seems to cheapen the accomplishments of the true heroes. While I felt a millisecond of gratitude for being placed among the ranks of humanity's greatest men and women, once the feeling passed, all that was left was a gloomy sense that this misapplication of "hero" cheapened their accomplishments.
 
We should resist the urge to cheapen the meaning of the word, lest everyone suddenly becomes a hero for the mere act of rising from bed each morning. While I have certainly been called far worse things, few terms dilute our impression of great human accomplishment like the over application of the word hero. In terms of my recent 13.1 mile endeavor, sweaty, plodding, ungainly, tired and just a mite proud will work perfectly fine.

I had the good fortune to visit China last month for a client, spending a week in the city of Shenzhen, which is just north of Hong Kong. While this trip was particularly short, I will be returning for a longer visit just about when you are reading this article.
 
While I am far from a master of languages, with nine years of study of French leaving me barely capable of checking into a hotel and keeping myself fed, I do try to pick up a few key phrases wherever I travel. I can generally handle my "big four" in several languages: "Hello," "thank you," "I am sorry for destroying your beautiful language," and "can I have another beer?" After a few days I can usually pickup a few contextual clues to most conversations and have at least a vague idea of what is transpiring.
 
In China however, I discovered that I generally haven't a clue as to what is happening when trying to read or communicate with others. I thought the Chinese language would be a bit like a pictograph, a more advanced version of hieroglyphics perhaps. While you might not initially know the meaning of the Egyptian gentleman with a bird and a stick, once you found out that the symbol meant "Chicken dinner" you could readily pick him out on future menus and order accordingly. With languages that use the traditional alphabet and 26 characters, give or take, it is only a matter of time before you figure out that poullet or pollo are chicken, and vino/vin/wine makes for a nice pairing. Not so with Chinese characters. In some cases it seems that a fairly simple word like "Welcome" entails 8 seemingly complex and almost indistinguishable (to my western eyes) characters. In other situations, a complex English word like "Incorporated" is a single, relatively simple character. Spoken Mandarin also seems to be a challenge, and only on the last night of my trip, with the help of a Cantonese speaker travelling with me, did I expand my Mandarin by 100%, adding "yes" and "no" to "hello" and "thank you."
 
Communication takes on a childlike simplicity as you wave hands, point and nod excitedly, hoping that a spark of recognition flashes across the face of the person you are speaking with. I would feel a sense of accomplishment when a waitress nodded happily and smiled at my pantomime, although more often than not I would be surprised when something completely different arrived than what I thought I had so carefully conveyed.