It's one thing to grow a language, adding foreign words in common usage. It can also happen by modifying existing ones like Chris Borgan's recent use of shareability - perfectly logic and understandable. Funny by the way, Chris was challenged about the existence of the word, but he didn't inventshareability, I just saw a reference to it from a 1986 article and hundreds more recent.

Inventing a whole new language of web nomenclature and navigation is something we're occasionally asked to do by customers. Simply stated, here's why this is not a good idea. The way you visit web sites is a kind of language. Everyone expects to find information like contact, visit, menus, wine lists, technical product data, company background, opening hours, etc. They expect this to be in a language they know, the one they've seen on a million other sites.

 

The temptation to be too creative is strong, and I have erred more than once in that direction. One day I thought it would be cool, instead of calling the search "Search" we'd call it "Find". It works on a level where you read it in a text like this, but not on the level of the scan you do when you first reach a site. Most ergonics folks will tell you the first 20 seconds are when the critical decision to invest in actually reading a web site takes place.

A commercial web site can, in effect, be a visual answering machine. Realizing what the visitor is most anxious to find there is your number one priority.  Here's a funny thing that happened to me in California, when I wanted to reserve a table in a restaurant. I went to the web site, which was one page. It had all of the information I wanted right then: address, directions to get there, phone number, open hours, and descriptive stuff I skipped, since I already knew all about it and wanted to book a table there. Now here's where it gets funny: I called the "Reservations" number, which was shared by the same owner's other restaurant. Here's what I heard:

Thank you for calling *****. We are open from **** to *** Monday thru Friday and from *** to *** Saturday. Sunday hours are *** to ***.

We are located at ********, across the street from **** and just around the corner from ****. We are proud to announce the opening of our new restaurant ***** this summer. (Long description follows....)

"For Restaurant A, press one. For restaurant B, press 2"

How long would it take you to figure out that the last line of this message should have been the first?

I first heard about Chris Brogan from the Talkshoe guys during the brainstorming around the 2007 Kivathon interactive podcast three years ago. Ever since then, he has been getting on my nerves daily! I finally decided to clear the air.

1. About once in every 1,000 Tweets, Chris promotes his own projects. The average is more like ten to one, so he's way behind
2. Chris isn't always right. Occasionally he screws up and worse, he admits it. Clay feet?
3. He will talk to anyone, even Internet nobodys like me. Wasn't it Groucho Marx who said "Any club who..."
4. He crippled our conference bridge twice by attracting hundreds of callers, then had the nerve to say a bunch of interesting stuff
5. Every time I get his newsletter, I feel like a slacker because he comes up with the most amazing, useful real-life suggestions. Dude, you should be making them pay for this stuff!
6. When I read his blog, I feel like the nobody I am, because I want to comment and "help him" but there's never anything worth adding
7. He has a huge staff helping, at least one person I know for a fact. How the heck does he put out all this info and have a life?
8. His writing is way too understandable, he makes it look easy. "Obscurity is the refuge of the competent", Chris!
9. Brogan is probably responsible for a large number of social media success stories, the Kivathon was just one tiny example
10. He got tricked into Tweeting about the Voipathon and you may be too, if you follow his example, which I encourage you to do

So it's out in the open now, the truth about Chris. Although he publishes numerous links to interesting people, I've still yet to find anyone else who continually produces a steady stream of useful, easy to assimilate, practical information and deep reflection on so many channels.Are you embarrassed yet, CB?

I discovered and joined Talkshoe in late 2006 along with Twitter and many other new web sites. While I was on a web site spree, I discovered http://Kiva.org, which is more important to me than most. Kiva is a subject I can go on and on about so I happened on the idea to do what I believe was the first 24-hour live podcast, called the 'Kivathon'.

 One of the great things about many companies on today's web is how easy it is to contact them. (The notable exception is Ebay, who has the absolute worst contact system ever devised.) I emailed Talkshoe's CEO, Dave Nelson on a Saturday morning and he answered saying I should call him right then on his cell. Dave was on board immediately with the idea of a 24-hour live Talkshoe for Kiva and we set the date as March 18th, 2007. I believe the name 'KivaThon' was his idea. We then recruited enough hosts so each would take about one hour around the clock. Chris Brogan gave us a push from his corner: http://tr.im/kivacb and I was able to get some high Google visibility in press releases, etc. Most of the hosts blogged about it.

  
One small incident marred things for a few minutes when some MLM jerk went into a long infomercial about his show. A quick mention would have been fine, but this went on to the extent that we had to cut him off and take control away from him. If you're doing a podcast for a cause, the cause is the main subject, not self-promo.

 The whole effort went very well and a lot of people, including myself, learned about how Kiva was started. We interviewed some people from Kiva, notably founder Matt Flannery (his Kiva blog: http://tr.im/30b3). Awareness was raised and a lot of us put more money in. Talkshoe also invested in the fund. At that time, Talkshoe was revenue sharing, and all funds from all of my Talkshoe activities went into my Kiva account. As of May 2008, that was suspended, but I've continued to add funds when I can, and spread the word.

 Awareness of Kiva.org got two big bumps later that year: a mention in Bill Clinton's book and the biggie, Oprah. Oprah's reach is like about 10 Twitter memberships so when that happened we started seeing the situation as it is today. There are currently times when loan requests are not available at all. Follow 'microactions' on Twitter to get alerts on available loans, mostly Kiva but apparently they do other things as well.

 I know that all of us who participated in the event are proud to have been a part of it. Nothing is more gratifying than paying forward some of the benefits of the new connectivity.