Ten years later and i'm back!

It's been more than 10 years since my last blog - I can't believe it!

Since then Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn have all taken its place at times.  Plus of course my hubby (Nik) + 2 kids Hudson (6) and Bela (3)  + relocating to the Bay area.  I always wanted to live in SF (closest city to my hometown of Vancouver) & eventually we found a perfect community which we now love. 

I'm now a happy Googler, an often under-slept mom of two kiddos,  & am so thankful for my family , my job (working on the Google Assistant) & love exploring life with my hubby. 

Our motto since our wedding was to "Never Stop Exploring" (sound familiar? :-) ) and although this gets a lot tougher with kids , we have done our best to make the time for periodic family adventures (even if just down the street).

I hope to use my blog periodically to share what Adventures I/we get up to.

Cheers y Adios 

 

Why is Twitter (microblogging) more enticing than Blogging...

So the obvious answer is because it's only asking for 140 char (i.e. a concise message).

However I think it's also because of

(a) "follower" model in Twitter - that means there are people who I know are going to listen/see my Tweet (assuming they are actively on)

(b) some of the great apps that are easily accessible on my iPhone (TwitterFon)

(c) some of the great apps that are on my desktop (i.e. TweetDeck) that enable me to connect to multiple social networks, and to personalize the searches (i.e. show me the replies to my Tweets)

(d) the fact that I can get SMS to my phone about people's tweets or reponsses to Tweets

(e) the tiny url phenomenom that spawned for Twitter (such as http://bit.ly/) that enables me to shorten urls to letters/ids that say nothing about the actual place it is taking the user and which thereby entices people to click on them (IMHO)

(f) the hashtag (i.e. #Word) is surprisingly something that alot of Twitteres use - in essense this is a searchable tag that is used as a way to make the content easily searchable.

Anyways net net lots of cool (though not necessarily innovative) reasons to want to use #Twitter instead of Blogger.. though not cool enough to get off of Facebook...

Below from www.compete.com looks like sometime in May the crazy onboarding of new visitors to Twitter finally slowed down. Maybe its the sunny weather, or maybe folks have decided facebook has more stickiness (at least that's what the graph shows).

Facinating to see what will happen in the coming months...

Social Networking Adverture

Recently I had an opportunity to do a deep dive in Social Networking and do a S.W.O.T (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis on in particular Twitter and the opportunity Microsoft has with #T.

In doing this deep analysis I had an incredible opportunity to meet and learn from some amazing people at Microsoft and outside (LiliCh, Mhurst, Dhardt, Bubba from Facebook, StGarrity:) , DennisPi, and many others).

Anyways net-net here are some of the interesting findings:
- Social Networking is the #1 thing people are doing on the internet today - it accounts for ~27% of internet usage time (surprisingly Games is #2, and then Search)
- There is a higher % of people in non-North American countries participating in SN
- Twitter has the highest % of new users month over month (even after looking at drop off rate)
- Social Norms for Tweeting (my favorite :)) - don't overtweet (i.e. no more than 5 times a day), never follow more than 300 people
-Twitter Search is the *realest* time search available (time and location wise)
- T has an open API that is enabling 3rd parties to monetize through leveraging of the data


There are some definite opportunities in this space , and it will be interesting to see how this ecosystem evolves.

Lilian

How to send pictures over txt messaging on the iPhone?

So I love my iPhone 90% of the time - the 10% f the time that I don't like it :
1) when I have to use it as an actual phone (no kidding - it drops so many of my calls I've decided to call it the best no-phone call cell phone :))
2) when I want to send pics as a txt message

Regarding the 2nd painpoint there is a nice little MMS alternative called Flutter, available on the App Store. It allows you to send pictures to any cell phone number in your contacts app. And it’s free, which is always a bonus.

For more information and pictures head on over to Flutter’s home page.

One of the best career planning blogs..

Over the past 10 years I've helped or talked to someone about their/my career. Whether it was advice about doing a Masters/MBA or doing some extra work discussions always came up and still do.



Tonight I had an opportunity to read about a blog Dennis recommended to me & I have to say it is one of the best career planning blog(s) I've ever read. Specifically:



Career planning - http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/09/the-pmarca-gu-1.html

Thinking of goig back to school - http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/10/the-pmarca-guid.html



Enjoy...

K.I.S.S. @ ad:Tech

Having completed my first day at ad:Tech San Fran (an interactive advertising and technology conference) I had to write a blog about items which resonated with me throughout the day:

Some interesting quotes from the day about the state of the ad industry today:

• "GoogleClick" - The Google acquisition of Doubleclick changes the Display competitive landscape. It will be interesting to see how the market reacts to this.
• "Content is king"- Online video (YouTube, etc) have captivated the audience and are forcing marketers to look at online campaigns that leverage this medium
• "The Rich are Getting Richer" - 99% of revenue go to the Top 10 sites, 90% of Search revenue to YaGoogle (Yahoo/Google)
• "New Ad Measurements?" - With all of the new creative, and publishers the question is "What is new media measurement? "

Some of the most interesting creative/marketing campaigns presented (even if you're not in the advertising industry I recommend you take a look at these - very clever and funny creatives):

• Christian Haas, Group Creative Director for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners presented by far one of the funniest and intelligent beer campaigns for "rolling rock":
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfPz6XPZ6a0
  http://www.rollingrock.com/ron/default.aspx
• Jim Lesser, Executive Creative Director for BBDO West, presented a very funny "pro flowers" online creative:
  http://www.ifilm.com/video/2834117

Net net from a creative perspective the message I took away from some of the most successful creative agencies is K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) - in other words the best creatives are the ones that keep things as simple as possible - not necessarily the ones that have the most innovation.

All of the countries I've ever visited...

Through a friend of mine on FaceBook I discovered this really cool site that allows you to create a map with all the countries/places you've visited. In addition you can find travel information and even generate the html (as above) that allows me to share what places I've visited with the world :).

create your own visited country map