The Curse of the Shiny Object

The past year has been an incredible one but over the past few months I've begun to lose sight of my vision and things have become increasingly unclear. What once started as an inspired attempt to build a successful blog, turned in to a never-ending daily grind, the exact thing I was trying to avoid when this all began. I increased my daily blogging volume from one post a day initially (back when I was writing TheWebpreneur.com), to eventually 10 to 12 posts a day at my max. It's clear why I was doing so. When I started blogging two and a half years ago I started after reading people like Mike Arrington, Pete Cashmore, Om Malik, Richard MacManus, Robert Scoble, and the numerous other thought leaders in the technology blogging space and said to myself "I can do that!" Ultimately I think I've proven to myself that anything is possible and I've also learned some important lessons from following this industry obsessively. The Shiny Object Phenomenon When Frank Gruber talks at conferences now, he regularly does a talk on "shiny objects". Frank was actually the person that helped me get AllFacebook off the ground by giving me one influential hyperlink which drove hundreds of people to my site in its first day of operations. I've also had the opportunity to see Frank speak at conferences and he has significantly revamped his talk over the past 12 months (seems like a lifetime in internet years). The point of this is not how much Frank has improved his speaking capabilities (which you can see for yourself when I speak with him at SXSW later this year), but about his "shiny object" idea that he has talked about over the past 12 months. In this space everything can be boiled down to a shiny object. Every single day there are numerous shiny objects that we read about. Being the ADD people that all social media enthusiasts are, we try it out and frequently give lots of praise about the product before forgetting it weeks later. There is no possible way that any individual can possibly take advantage of all the technologies being written about in Techcrunch, Mashable, Venturebeat, Read/Write/Web, etc in their daily lives though. It's simply not possible. The shiny object also represents hope for many of us. Some of us hope that some technology will come about that will solve all of our problems. We constantly seek closure through many of these objects but unfortunately none of them ever provide closure. Something else is bound to eventually come along and "change our lives for the better." I tend to take only a slightly different approach and obsess over the shiniest objects for a longer period of time. The first thing was blogs and the most recent one was Facebook. I decided to eventually expand that to "social media" in general but regardless, the point is that I have my own shiny objects as well ... we all do. It's not that we are all only focused on the shiny object as many of us are focused on real innovation. Unfortunately though, it is all to easy to get sidetracked thanks to the curse of the shiny object. A New Beginning As I said, the shiny object for me was initially blogging. My entire life has become dedicated to it for the most part and day after day I try to churn out more articles so that my traffic numbers go up. It's an endless grind that inevitably can result in little payoff (comparatively speaking). I also believe that many times I've sacrificed the quality of my writing simply to get out another article, or get a few more visitors to the site. This habit has mostly driven me astray and now rather than striving to truly provide value, I've built something that is based on volume (see AllFacebook.com if you don't understand what I'm talking about). It isn't all bad content fortunately and that's why this isn't the worst scenario but as of tonight, I've decided to make a change. The change may not be immediately apparent but the decision to change has been made and the transition will take a short amount of time. When I started blogging on TheWebpreneur.com I was trying to find out how to become "successful" in the world of social media. Whether it's building a web startup, creating a popular blog, or building a successful business that harnesses social technologies, the aim was to explore success. I'd like to return to that vision in part. Rather than just exploring the shiny objects tirelessly, day after day, simply to obtain a little more search engine juice, I'll be exploring how to leverage social media for success. That can be success in life, success in your business, or even success within social media. It can be on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, or anywhere else, the main point is that it's about success, not just the technology behind it. What Does This Mean for You? Thankfully this is not a goodbye letter. This is simply a heads up that things may not be the same on this site or AllFacebook as they have been for the past year. Yes, you may still see an occasional article that doesn't seem to fit my vision of "success through social media" but hopefully that will decrease over time. I would like to explore further what success through social media means and provide more value to the readers as a result of my research. Hopefully this will build more lasting value for the readers and myself. I'm working out what exactly the right balance is and how to keep people informed about what's going on while providing valuable insight. Unfortunately there is a trade off between those two things: insight and news. I have some ideas and welcome any feedback as the transition takes place. Blogging and running my business has been a great experience so far but it's time to build lasting value. Thank you for taking the time to read this site and here's to an amazing 2009! Diamond image from Squidoo

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The Curse of the Shiny Object

Nick O'Neill

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Nick O'Neill