How to Change the World

The Art of Sucking Up

There is an art to sucking up. Done too blatantly it will backfire. Done too weakly, you won't get what you want. The perfect suck up contains the following elements:

• Credibility. No matter how good you suck up, if you don't meet the requirements for placement, a job, an interview, whatever, it won't matter, so you need to show why you deserve what you're asking for.

• Empathy. Who can resist a little play on emotion? "Please help me...we're just a little company trying to make a go of it." Actually, I'll tell you who can resist this: buttheads that aren't worth sucking up to.

• Utility. The best suck-ups are mutually beneficial. You are not only getting something, you are also providing something of value. Or, if you're in no position to do it right away, that you will provide something of value in the future. Great suck-ups are always a win-win situation.

• Gratitude. If you're trying to get something, express gratitude for what you already have. This works much better than acting pissed off and wronged. Confrontion is not part of the art of sucking up because you can seldom bludgeon someone into helping you.

• Obligation. According to The Man, Robert Cialdini, if someone does something for you, you're pretty much compelled to do something in return. For example, if you've already done something useful for me, how can I resist doing something for you?

• Fluidity. If you're going to ask someone to do something, make it a friction-free effort. You've probably got one shot, so assume the answer will be a "yes" and provide the action items. For example, if you want us to list your site in Alltop, provide the feed--don't force us to go look for it.

• Flattery. You might think that this is the most important element in a suck up, but it isn't. This is because most of the people you'll be sucking up to are frequently flattered (deserved or not), so don't make this a central part of your pitch. One sentence at the beginning is enough, then focus on credible reasons why the person should help you.

Here is an example of a great suck-up. It was in response to this question in the About Alltop FAQ:

Q. How, as a site owner, do I get my site (or blog) moved up the page?
A. Send us a persuasive email . FYI, telling your readers about Alltop and blogrolling is particularly persuasive.

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Here it goes. My name is Brad Ward, a co-founder with Matt Herzberger of www.bloghighed.org, which is featured in your Education section on Alltop.com. Right now, we’re all alone, hanging out on the bottom row. We are very appreciative and excited to be included, but with a FAQ question like that, we couldn’t resist attempting to move ourselves up the totem pole.

We’re pretty cool though, trust us. Here’s what we do at bloghighed.org: we are aggregating 20 of the best higher education Bloggers out there, from webmasters to marketers to admission counselors to vendors to consultants and more. Sound familiar? We’re like Alltop’s little brother or something. So how about a little love? We’ve already given you some: here and here.

Truth be told, we’re not The Chronicle. We’re not Inside Higher Ed or the Washington Post. And we never will be. But you know who we are? We are the ones who are taking the leaps and advances that make these, these, these and these happen. We’re the ones brainstorming and figuring out how we are going to implement this stuff months before it hits the press. We’re presenting a combined 100+ times a year at conferences. We write for University Business. We run eduStyle.net. We run TargetX. We are accomplished campus photographers. We are keynote speakers (both of them, in this instance). We combine for thousands of RSS subscribers.

Above all, we are a community, deeply committed to each other and the greater good of higher education, and even more to the success of BlogHighEd.org. Have no doubt that we’ll stick around and continue to grow. We don’t make money from blogging. No ads, no fluff. We’re doing it after the 8-5, on the weekends, and over lunch (like right now). And if that isn’t awesome enough to move us to the top of the Education section, I’m not sure what is.

Thanks for your time

Brad

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Or,

If these elements are too subtle for you, you could always erect (no pun intended) a statue to the person in your front lawn and go from there. As you can see above, Laura Mayes, one of the co-founders of Sk*rt, did this after my post about Sk*rt in gratitude, but it would have been a highly effective suck-up in advance.

Winner of the Stanford E-Week Challenge

This is a video of the winner of Stanford's Entrepreneurship Week innovation tournament. The challenge for the tournament was to use an everyday object to create as much value as possible. The "RubberBandTogether" team's goal is to sell the ball and donate the proceeds to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Cost? $1/band or $3,056. To give these students a "liquidity event" by buying the ball, send an email.

Kirtsy: "Digg for Chicks"

I love Kirtsy. You can think of it as "Digg for chicks" (in the words of QueenofSpain), and it features the user-selected stories in topic such as Arts & Entertainment, Design & Crafts, Family & Parenting, and Food & Home.

Today, for example, it pointed to a story about Chloe Marshall, a size sixteen girl who reached the finals of the Miss England contest. (Men: Let me translate: in other words, she's not your typical skinny blonde beauty contestant.) By contrast, over in Digg (what chicks call "Kirsty for men"), the hot story is "30 Error Messages You Never Want to See."

These are three women behind the Kirtsy: Laura Mayes, Gabrielle Blair, and Laurie Smithwick. They have a Truemoresque tale: never met face-to-face until after the site launched, spent a very small sum of money to get it going, and lead very busy lives. (The three of them have a total of eight kids, and all have full-time jobs.)

If you'd like to read very different kinds of stories from the usual "security problem found in IE," do check out Kirtsy. If you're a man, you'll impress many women if you do. If you're a woman, shame on you for having to learn about Kirsty from a man.

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Today must be "get in touch with your feminine side Friday" because I just saw the world's greatest shoe wheel. Read about it here.

Post-Acquisition Intervew With Marten Mickos of MySQL

Please check out my posting on the Sun Microsystems small and medium business web site. My first (of many) posts there is an interview with Marten Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL who is now a senior vice-president of Sun. I'll be posting articles regularly on the Sun site and will let you know when I do.

When Irish Guys Are Smiling

I went to Dublin to speak for the Irish Software Association on the campus of the University College Dublin. The event drew several hundred of the top software executives in Ireland.

I wasn't prepared for the extensive use of green in the country. Here is an example.

The technology in Irish bathrooms is impressive. Here are urinals with covers in the men's room of the Brown Thomas department store. I think they were urinals, anyway--unless they warm dim sum in the men's room in Ireland.

This is a Dyson hand dryer. You stick your hands in it and then pull them out. It's supposed to dry your hands twice as fast. This proves that the British can suck and blow.

Could this be Jerry Yang's backup plan if Microsoft buys Yahoo!?

This contains the heart of Saint Lawrence O'Toole inside Christ Church

Inside this very holy looking building...

is a tourist center selling souvenirs--which is an interesting juxtaposition.

The Irish really know how to name companies.

I appeared on the Pat Kenny radio show. He was one of the best prepared talk show host that I've ever met. Listen to the interview here.

Learning the ropes at Guinness. I blogged about this previously.

There are big fireplaces in Ireland. This one is inside the Radisson Hotel.

This flyer was on...

this Rolls Royce which was parked in front of the Merrion, the finest hotel in Dublin.

Who can resist a good ghost bus tour? Not I.

The bus tour guide said that this was the entrance to an underground chamber of the worst living conditions--aka, the "gates of hell."

This is a lousy photo, but it was cold, rainy, and extremely windy on the Hill of Tara. This is where the High Kings were crowned. Legend has it that stone would scream if the would-be king met a series of challenges.

This is Newgrange. It is one of the most famous prehistoric sites in the world. It's supposed to be 500 years older that the Great Pyramid in Egypt and 1,000 years older than Stonehenge.

This is a Google Map view from above.

That slot above the door is where the sun shines through to the inner chamber a few days a year during the winter solstice. The chamber holds approximately twenty people. You enter a lottery to be in it during the special days.

A sign in the Newgrange museum. Someday people will say this about the Macintosh Division.

The place that impressed me most was the Long Room above the Book of Kells display at Trinity College. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures of the Long Room,but imagine a room sixty-five meters long containing 200,000 leather-bound books from floor to ceiling.

This is a Guinness keg that is the collection box for a new organ inside St. Patrick's Cathedral. God must have a sense of humor.

Richard Boyle, father of Robert Boyle (one of the founders of modern chemistry--for example, Boyle's Law), created this two-story memorial inside St. Patrick's in honor of his second wife. I wonder what his first wife got because his second wife didn't do so bad.

For car aficionados, this is where Dunlop Tires started.

Two authors in the park.

If you'd like to see more pictures from my trip, watch this Animoto video.

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Special thanks to Rowan Manahan for coming up with the name of this posting: "When Irish Guys Are Smiling."

Announcing (Formally) Alltop

"Alltop is deceptively simple. The site gathers up the best suggestions from the most active social web users and compiles links into a simple, clean discovery space. For many, Alltop will replace their RSS readers." Chris Shipley, the chairman of Guidewire Group and executive producer of DEMO.

Today we are opening Alltop, a news aggregation site that provides “all the top” stories for forty of the most popular topics on the Web. The headlines and first paragraph of the five most recent stories from forty to eighty sources for each topic are displayed. Alltop stories are refreshed approximately every ten minutes.

A good metaphor is that Alltop is an "online magazine rack" that displays the news from the top publications and blogs. Our goal is to satisfy the information needs of the 99% of Internet users who will never use an RSS feed reader or create a custom page. Think of it as "aggregation without the aggravation.” The easiest way to understand the value of Alltop is to try it--a day in the life of Alltop, if you will:

You get up in the morning and need to get a quick overview of the world news. Then you want to check what the biggest industry egos have to say as well as the latest in social media for your job. And yes, you can admit that you’re kind of a sports junkie—heck, even extreme sports, so you check out a few stories there too.

It is election season, so politics is also important, but your teenage daughter needs your help to do a report for science class. She said it can be about the environment or health. Stuff like music and cars aren’t appropriate for this report though gadgets and design might be okay. Meanwhile, what she’d really like to do is just read about celebrities, fashion, and teen news.

You’d like to find some cute pictures to entertain your kindergartner while you read what other moms are saying. Sometimes your kids drive you nuts, so thank God there’s always humor and odd stuff available. Not to mention lifehacks to help you get through the day. Still, their education and religion are very important to you.

It’s a good thing that your career is going so well because this enables you to take care of your family and pursue your passions like food, photography, writing, gaming and religion. That sure beats constantly worrying about what’s happening with your company’s website and its SEO issues. However, a successful career still means that personal finance is an important topic until that day that you can become a philanthropist to make the world a better place by stomping out crime or improving people’s health.

You are absolutely lusting for a new Macintosh even though your company uses Windows for desktops and Linux for servers. Working for someone else does drive your crazy sometimes, though, so you fantasize about raising some venture capital and starting your own small business.

At the end of the day, when everyone is asleep and all is peaceful, that’s when you can truly waste some time. What better way than check out the often meaningless, though entertaining, banter of the Twitterati? Truly, at the end of this day, you’re on top of all the top stories.

Please do me a favor and check out Alltop. I hope you like and will spread the word about it for me. Alltop, by the way, was designed and coded by the great team at Electric Pulp.

“Chasm, shmasm—it’s all here at Alltop.” Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm.

Photos from SXSW

Admittedly, these aren't the greatest photos. This is because I knocked my Nikon D40x off the dinner table because I was laughing so hard at something that Penelope Trunk and Laura Fitton were telling me. Thus, it was a late night trip to Walgreen's to buy a cheapo digital camera--that is a whole 'nother story.

This will give you an idea of what's happening at SXSW.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The Myth of A Listers and Influencers

Continuing on the theme of Duncan Watts and the demise of influencers and A listers, CNET Networks conducted a three-part study called "The Influencer Study from CNET Networks: Challenging Perceptions." It explored the structure of social networks, the motivations for giving advice, and methods of acquiring information.

The results challenge three commonly-held perceptions:

1. "The Few Inform the Many. While the size of personal networks varies widely, with some individuals having ten or fewer connections and some having more than 100, each person wields some influence. Viewing the model as a pyramid discounts the much larger number of moderately connected individuals who can help spread the work about your product or service."

2. "They Share Because They Know More. Influencers aren’t driven to share information for the sake of appearing knowledgeable or to demonstrate their expertise. They’re primarily motivated by a basic desire to help others. They develop a stronger sense of self-confidence when it's well-received, further motivating them to help and advise others."

3. "A Single-Minded Focus. Influencers aren't necessarily single-subject experts. Our research shows that influencers have diverse interests crossing a wide range of topics. On average, they are interested in ten to twelve topics and they actively seek information on these topics. This is true whether they have large or small networks. There are two critical attributes for information to be valued by the influencer, no matter what topic they're investigating: it must be both unique and trusted."

According to the study, "The flow of information isn’t coming just from a small group of connected individuals at the top. It flows between networks, regardless of the size of the network. Instead of a pyramid, the model of influence is more accurately shown as a diamond, emphasizing the importance of the large number of moderately connected influencers."

The study provides three key marketing takeaways:

1. "Two unique characteristics of information that influencers value are that the information is unique and trusted. Your company can’t insert itself into an influencer’s social network, but you can place your messages in environments that have both attributes, not just one of them."

2. "Shape your marketing messages for the larger network of moderately connected users, not just the few highly connected individuals at the top. This involves considering this group's emotional and informational needs, not just modifying the messages you used for the top tier."

3. "Make content actionable for users. Whatever format your message is in, make it easy for others to forward and share it. Have an instructional video online? Add a quick "Forward to a Friend" link."

Click here to read the entire study. Then figure out how you can apply its findings to your marketing.

Mano-a-Mano with Steve Ballmer

In one of the more unusual appearances that I've been a part of, here is a "fireside chat" with Steve Ballmer at Mix 2008. (He sidestepped by question about Vista twice, so if you want the latest news about Windows, you'll have to go here.)

Incidentally, he tossed my Air on the (carpeted) ground! It's a good thing I have the SSD version. Do you think I should tell him that he broke it and ask him to buy me another one? (Photo credit: Nathan Mook, Betanews)

A Lot to Learn from Start Cooking

If you'd like to see a site that uses "video" very well, check out Start Cooking. It animates still shots in a highly effective way. I can't think of a site that shows how to do stuff with "multimedia" better than this one.

There's one more thing to really like about this site too: It's so easy to find the iTunes and RSS feeds. There's a lot to learn from how this site is designed. It just gets the job done.

And, honestly, other than beef teriyaki, I don't care much about cooking. However, if you are a foodie, you might want to check out this site too.