However because of this desire, I or we often put up with an ever changing and confusing user interface that is coupled with privacy settings that are cryptic and confusing. Moreover, when I do try and organize people into groups that task can take hours for existing friends. If fact when I polled some of my friends I found that some had simple created on profile for work and one for the rest of their real friends.

Yet I (and perhaps we) still returned to use the site. I found myself putting up with all shortcomings in order to stay connected. Now it could be that the cell phones may have altered my behavior as I have grown accustomed to hitting redial after a dropped call. Or could it be that PC software got me used to this because every fix involved a reboot of my PC. Or could it go as far back as electricity and the blow fuse. Who knows?

But perhaps it can be best represented in an equation (Alvarez’s Law, Axiom, or just a cool tweet).

Success is achieved for any technology that can create a desire to have, use or participate that is greater than the sum of all problems created whether these problems are known or unknown.

For example, a while ago, I posted an entry as to whether to tweet or blog and my followers told me that some preferred the blog because is was a little “meatier” while others preferred the tweet because of the brevity of the response and a feeling of interaction and then my YouTube followers liked the see and listen format. Because of this, I use tweets, blog posts, and YouTube posts as well as my Facebook, Plaxo, and Linkedin status line to keep my followers up to date on my research and other activities.

These thoughts then lead me to think that social tools are just like tools in a carpenter’s toolbox where one saw is used to cut rough framing material and yet another for fine molding finish work and it is the carpenter that delivers the value to the customer.

Accordingly, is your organization taking a toolbox view of social tools or is it just trying to build a relationship with only one type of saw in it’s toolbox?

An interesting story on a court ruling that enabled students to rate teachers sparked an equally interest discuss discussion around reviewing people performance.

As the e-commerce person here, I have been talking with clients about product rating for years. It has been my belief that with all product review ratings the reader should apply the “grain of salt theory”.

Ratings or reviews are only part of the customer (in the case parents and students) evolution process and are subject to gaming by many parties.

Moreover, one rating alone does not tell the whole story; have you gone to move just because it says “Excellent Movie…” NY Times on the poster – Most likely not.

However as the producer of a product or service once should be aware that people has a public forum to use and that anyone with an opinion can shout it out on the internet. Even if that person never even used the product or service, they may just not like the company for instance. Therefore, I thought I would list some attributes that bring value to ratings.

• Depth – How detailed is the rating? – Only the word “great” or did the writer provide information on their position?
• Number- How many are there only one or thousands?
• Timeliness or the rating – Are the ratings current or three years old?
• The profile of the rater – Do they do many ratings on these types of products or services? Are they an avid user of these types of products or services? Simple things like are the male or female can also help, for example male skiers will rate ski’s differently than female skiers, also rating can vary by age of the reviewer.
• Belief in the rating quality – Ever read a rating the looks like the product manufacturer wrote?

Therefore, product reviews are only a guideline they are not law and with all things – “Caveat emptor”.

When I viewed the results I could not help but smile at this use of the web to gather and monitor what is on the public’s mind only to discover it may not be something you are ready to address or want to address.

This use of ‘crowd scoring” can only show that Governments and enterprises will need to learn a new set of skills on how to manage the gathering information about their products and services via the web.

With this “crowed scoring” come the problems of handling the good opinions with the bad and more importantly the unexpected controversy.

Will the Whitehouse speak on this topic since it placed as the top question in three sections of today’s poll? Only time will tell reveal this answer. But for enterprises that seek to do the same thing with their customers – remember if you ask for input be prepared to deal with the unknown.

How do you feel about this?  Should enterprises ask their customers “How are we doing?” so directly?  Is this the death of the focus group?  What are your views? Should I take my own advise?

This little scout and her dad like any good renegade salesperson didn’t wait for her organization to give her the go ahead to use the web. Instead, she just did it.

Now the fun part is that the local council asked her to take down the online order form like any larger organization would try to shut down a renegade practice (e.g., Don’t expense your cell phone, or SFA tool that you got on your own). However, this in turn put the practice in the national spotlight which from a marketing prospective is a big bang for very little bucks. (It sure made me want the cookies.)

Now where else have we seen this before? Remember when your web site was a back room operation or maybe your company is experimenting with social software like facebook and YouTube. Do you think your organizations is like the Girl Scouts where innovation at a grassroots level is stopped or are you free to try something new?

Although all the answers to these questions may not be clear, we are certainly seeing the beginning of wide spread adoption of the social aspects of web 2.0 for sales.