Top 10 Posts of 2010

Part of me hates these posts. Part of me feels like it's important to be introspective and acknowledge what resonated with those whom I am fortunate enough to read me (even if just occasionally). What I have tried to do here is provide a little behind the scenes commentary -- maybe my version of a "director's cut -- on each of my top 10 most popular posts for 2010.

1. How Important is your Twitter Bio - Blown away by how many retweets and reads this got. It was a fairly basic post but it seemed to resonate. Not that I'm complaining...
2. Are foursquare and Gowalla Just Shiny Objects - My favorite thing about this post was the conversation in the comments. I think no fewer than 15 new blog posts got written in the process and I learned a ton from people that are much smarter than me.
3. What Marketers Want - This was the announcement post from our acquisition of crayon, Drill Team and StepChange earlier in the year. In some ways, this is like one of those great movies that you release too late in the season to be considered for the Academy so it ends up being a lame duck in the subsequent year's voting. Glad to see this land in the #3 slot.
4. Initial Thoughts on Facebook Places - Not my best post but obviously a hot topic. I'm still VERY interested in finding out how disruptive Facebook will be in the world of location based services.
5. Brand Haiku - One of the most fun (and easiest) posts I've ever written. I was blown away by the fact that many of my blogger friends were willing to participate in this fun little game. Let's just call this my 45 in 45 of 2010.
6. Movember Time, Austin Style - Anyone that knows me, even a little - knows that I participated in Movember this year. I know, it gets old quick for those following me on Twitter and Facebook. But it was for a good cause. And we raised nearly $32,000 toward fighting cancer in men.
7. Tale of Two CMOs: A Study in Contrasts - This goes down as the post with the most potential and the worst execution. I liked where it was heading but I immediately realized how hard it was going to be to write as a series the minute I started putting pen to paper.
8. I See You - Maybe one of my favorite posts of all times. Riffing off the key phrase in the movie, Avatar, I loved what this post stood for. I was equally glad to see others embrace this.
9. Pluralitas Non est Ponenda sine Necessitate - Flexing my Latin muscles a little. This was inspired by the principle of Occam's Razor. Surprised to see this make its way into the top 10.
10. The Power of One - the result of a little experiment I did on Twitter. I'm sure there was little to no statistical significance of my study but it was a cool concept. And I liked the comments.

So who else wrote a post that you liked a lot this year? Make sure you post it in the comments. If I get enough of them, I'll either write a new post or at least include it in the body of this one as a post script.

Thanks again for taking the time to read and retweet me. Hope you have an awesome 2010 and if I'm lucky, I'll see you at SXSW this year.

Resuscitated iPhones and Blogger Ethics

I'm not vain enough to think that any of you give a crap that I have an iPhone or better yet that it was spared "brick" status thanks to it's semi-waterproof SaFPWR case/charger when it went for a swim last weekend. Instead, I want to make this into a bigger story about what I choose to blog about and what I don't and how I try and keep my morals and integrity in tact while doing so.

So let me start with the story of my revived iPhone to help set the stage. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine, Mike Merrill, sent me a direct message on Twitter asking me if I'd like a free SaFPWR iPhone battery case/charger. Given the fact that I am a heavy iPhone user and am constantly seeking outlets to charge my insufficient battery, I said sure. Now to give this story a little more context, I had actually purchased a smaller auxiliary batter charger before SXSW for the reason I just mentioned. What I've found about this charger -- the Kensington Mini Battery Extender -- is that it's adequate but has several shortcomings including the way it awkwardly hangs off the end of your phone when it's charging.

Photo Credit: Kenard Consulting

Following my reception of my new SaFPWR charger/case, I received a nice note from Mike saying that "if I chose to blog about it, I could offer my readers a 15% discount" (more on that in a minute). I told him that I would likely blog about the charger but that I wanted to try it out for a few days first before I decided on anything. Little did I know that five days later, that very case would save me $199 for a replacement iPhone and the hassle of rebuilding my phone. The short version of the story is that because the case is also a charger (and made out of hard rubber), it plugs up the charging slot at the bottom of the phone. This combined with the fact that:

1. I didn't try and turn my phone on
2. Immediately brought it to the Apple store so they could inspect/dry it out
3. Inserted it into a bag of rice for four whole days

essentially saved my phone. You have no idea how delighted I was when I returned from my business trip to see the battery charging light come on when I plugged it in.

So now that I've told you this story, I'll tell you how I'm relating it to the bigger picture of "blogger ethics." To begin with, this is somewhat new territory for me. Even though I've been blogging for four plus years, it's only been over the last 6-9 months where I've started to get pitched by companies and PR shops to cover their products and services. I suspect this may equal parts to do with my weekly Quick'n'Dirty podcast show (my co-host blogs at ZDNet and we've had some pretty kick ass guests) and the company I work for, Powered, moving squarely into the limelight post purchase of three other social media boutiques.

As someone that's been critical of bloggers that take stuff for free, I've had to do a lot of soul searching now that I now have the opportunity to get the same schwag. However, where I draw the line is this... For starters, the product or service CANNOT cause any conflict with my job i.e. I wouldn't accept free tickets or gifts from a potential vendor that I wasn't already doing business with under any circumstance. This doesn't mean I can't have dinner with them or attend a ballgame to talk business but I don't want my judgement clouded or pressure exerted because of an unspoken quid pro quo. I also never promise to write a blog post about anything I receive and if I do agree to do a post, there is a 100% chance that I may write something negative if your product or service sucks. If I am underwhelmed or net neutral on your offering, chances are I won't write anything at all. For some examples of a few companies that have directly or indirectly invoked some blog coverage, you can check out my I See You post for details.

Getting back to my man, Mike Merrill and the free SaFPWR iPhone case/charger, I've gotta give them major props because not only does their product work (I've used it for a few weeks now and it's not only a great solution but it also adds about 4-6 hours of life to my iPhone. What Mike and SaFPWR didn't know is that by saving my iPhone from drowning, they've made me the best spokesperson they could ever imagine. And to avoid any impropriety on my front, I'm going to go out and purchase one of these cases for my wife who has a related "swimming iPhone" story of her own. Oh, and if you'd like to buy one of these phones, go to their site and use the discount code "blogger" to get 15% off. In the spirite of full transparency, I get ZERO for pimping their product or giving you a code.

Do you have a great story of a game changing product? Or maybe some thoughts on blogger ethics (feel free to call me out if you think I'm being hypocritical).