Steffan Antonas » Fringe Thoughts

New Behaviors To Maintain Old Habits

Steffan Antonas — Thu, 27 May 2010 18:13:28 +0000

Lately I’ve noticed more and more people putting a “.” before they type a reply to someone in Twitter’s public time line. It’s a small but smart work around for the problem created by Twitter decision to decrease the noise in the system by hiding any message someone sends via the “@[name]” from any of their followers who are not following that specific person. A lot of people were ticked off when Twitter decided to go that route because of the residual value and increased serendipity allowed by everyone seeing who you were talking to. Many people actually like that type of noise because it surfaces the social graph (i.e. the fact that you can see who someone talks to, regardless of the conversational content, is often valuable.) So people are starting to sacrifice just 1 character of their 140 limit to effectively make their conversations public. Simple, smart fix. Right on.

It just goes to show you, when one person finds a smart work-around for a common problem and uses it in public, that idea will propagate across the network as it is adopted by more and more people…until it becomes part of the culture.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

New Behaviors To Maintain Old Habits

It’s Not Who You Know…

Steffan Antonas — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:15:31 +0000

When it comes to getting things done, the old adage “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is deceptively over-simplified. OK, sure, it’s pithy and it captures why being connected to others is important, but there are a lot of assumptions built in to the expression that we have to implicitly accept to make the rule work broadly.

The thing is, it’s not really just who you know that makes the difference, is it? If you’re going to seek the help of others repeatedly to get things done, they’ve got to know you too, and like you and trust you and actually want to help you when you need them. Not so simple.

Building relationships with others that you can count on to go out of their way to help you when you need it most is hard work. It takes doing the right thing and treating people fairly and going out of your way for others and delivering what was expected of you over and over again that builds trust and gets you what you need in the long run. It’s almost never the single favor that makes the difference. Rather, it’s consistency where the people that matter most differentiate themselves.

Maybe we should change the adage to “It’s not who you know, it’s who wants to help you”

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

It’s Not Who You Know…

Riddles For Linchpins

Steffan Antonas — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:38:20 +0000

I found this video this morning. It’s a 5 minute stream of offbeat, interesting and disturbing questions to help exercise your noodle. It’s a fun way to wake your brain up.

Riddles for linchpins from Seth Godin on Vimeo.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Riddles For Linchpins

Consumer Expectations Are Shifting

Steffan Antonas — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:36:48 +0000

Here’s a smart post from Gary Vaynerchuck. He’s right about this. The way we are connected to people, products, brands, celebrities etc is beginning to change what customers/fans are expecting from them. Because consumer behavior is changing, brands need to adjust and fast.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Consumer Expectations Are Shifting

Encouraging Randomness and Accelerating Serendipity

Steffan Antonas — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:23:54 +0000

If you’re a heavy Twitter user like me, you may be familiar with the awkward, tense feeling that can grip you when a non-Twittering friend or co-worker decides that enough is enough and it’s time to confront you about your “habit” (Twintervention?). Regardless of the events that lead up to said awkward moment, the blank, confused-slash-condescending look that says “Whyyyyy do you do this?!” is often the same. It’s happened to all of us at least once, hasn’t it? This situation doesn’t get my knickers in a twist anymore. I’ve armed myself with a canned answer. “I’m accelerating serendipity!” I’ll say with a boyish grin, and then wait for a response. On a few occasions, I’ve been able to turn this traditionally “ack” moment into a productive discussion. Let me explain…

I’m a big believer in the power of engineering randomness into my life – it’s one of the main reasons I blog and use social media. I firmly believe that getting yourself out there, engaging the world with an open mind and exploring the unknown is the best way to live because it leads invariably to positive experiences, new connections and new opportunity and possibility. In particular, I’ve found that Twitter is an awesome tool for accelerating the process of injecting random online experiences into my life and turning them into a source of offline fun, opportunity and possibility.

There’s just something about Twitter culture…converts will all tell you the same thing – whether they can put a name to the phenomenon or not – For many people on Twitter, knowing a stranger is a fellow Twitter user significantly reduces (and in most cases eliminates) that moment of off-line awkwardness that usually prevents us from introducing ourselves to strangers. For this very reason, the difference between showing up to a traditional networking event or to a Tweetup (meeting arranged through Twitter) is palpable. I don’t know why this is so…maybe it’s that Twitter draws a certain type of person, maybe it’s that the emerging Twitter culture is making people feel differently about making social connections…who knows exactly. Whatever it is…the result is an acceleration of the number, variety and speed of offline connections you end up making – the small talk seems to disappear, guards drop and real connections are made exponentially faster. While I don’t advise anyone to over-do social media (we still need to work on being present in our lives), I think that opting in to services like Twitter with a “bring it on” attitude is a good thing.

I say all this knowing now that accelerating serendipity is real. In the last 4 months I’ve met a ton of people online that I now know offline and good things have already come from it. I’ve had great conversations and meals with fascinating new people, attended parties and meetups I never would have known about, had hundreds of people find and subscribe to my blog, I’ve even been a guest on TwitterTalkradio, won online contests and had an author send me a free copy of his book…. In each and every case I just mentioned, the initial point of contact was through Twitter. And I would have never had the pleasure of getting to know these people or had these experiences otherwise. It’s serendipity in action.

Not convinced? Why not try it. Get out there. Encourace randomness in your life. You may be surprised at what happens.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Encouraging Randomness and Accelerating Serendipity