Comments

Tom - what happens in Omaha, stays in Omaha.

Bruce (Omaha, NE)

Posted by Bruce at May 13, 2009 10:10 AM

I like the chirps, but I think you should embrace Twitter as the medium for delivering them. It's a good fit, and you can occasionally point readers who aren't on Twitter to the RSS feed for your Twitter account.

They seem overwhelming in the blog format.

Posted by Chuck at May 13, 2009 11:02 AM

Chuck,

I see it differently. I probably have about 60 twitterers on the list that I follow. But I have three or four set up to hit my mobile device. Those are the only ones I actually look at. I might visit my twitter page online once every couple of weeks. I had more set for "device" originally, but I got tired of the onslaught of messages that didn't interest me, so I culled the list a BUNCH.

If I really have time to see and explore a list of all the "chirps" like Tom did today, I'd rather use the RSS feed feature when I have time to explore them. And I think the way Tom handled it today was cool.

To me, Twitter is becoming more and more of a BAD example of interruption marketing. Conversations of late tell me that now that the newness of Twitter is wearing off a bit, a lot of people feel as I do and they're starting to say "Well, that was different." "WAS" being the operative, if you catch my meaning.

Posted by Dan Gunter at May 13, 2009 12:05 PM

Want to see the news networks break into a sweat? Remember the media discussions about President Obama wanting to keep his Crackberry but the Secret Service saw it as a security threat?

Let the President start Twittering from a mobile device. And set up live webcasting for him - compatible with mobile devices.

No more racing to be the first network to cover a breaking story. They would never know what hit 'em. They would probably be next in line for bailouts ;-)

Posted by Dan Gunter at May 13, 2009 1:29 PM

Great idea, TP! Cool Cinnabon website! Nice intro, design and music. What tastey fattening foods! But you gotta love 'em!

Bruce - LOL!

Posted by Judith Ellis at May 13, 2009 5:09 PM

I picture Tom & Judith getting together (virtually) for a Cinnabon fest - a 12 pack each with their favorite wine or whine :>) ... ahhhhhhhh comfort snacks ...

Dan G - I tend to agree on Twitter. The Seattle Times Monday had an article about how MySpace is losing users fast (like stores closing in a mall they said - abandoned sites) while Facebook is gaining more affluent older users.

Am overwhelmed by some serial Tweeters - had to cut off the White House, Lance Armstrong, & others because they Tweet every 2 hours. Lance had 3 Tweets on photos of his new biking helmet!

Posted by C Love at May 13, 2009 6:06 PM

C- LOL! Just bought a new Trek bike and I've been out on it EVERY day for 20 miles a day, except for today as it's been raining. I also hit the gym 3 times a week to bench press a few. I always eat a few more Cinnabons in Winter. :-)

Posted by Judith Ellis at May 13, 2009 6:14 PM

C Love, - The day I started wiping folks off the Twitter device list started with a message that said "Good morning" and nothing else from the local television station weather guy - at about 6:30 in the morning. A couple of hours later, he sent another one saying something about "It's a beautiful day to go judge a math tournament." By 10 a.m. or so that morning, I'd gotten 17 tweets that meant nothing.

I like timely information as much as anyone. But that was "noise," plain and simple. Someone put a comment on a different blog post saying they prefer Twitter because they can ignore the tweets, whereas RSS feeds clog up their feed list. To each his own, I guess, but I really think Tom would be doing himself an injustice (and perhaps end up "guilty by association" in the minds of a lot of people) because I'm hearing a lot of people ditching twitter as an annoyance, at least on mobile devices. That means having to go online anyway to see the feeds, tweets, chirps, whatever (sounds like we're discussing a zoo - it IS a jungle out there.) If I'm going to have to go to a computer to check it out anyway, just give me RSS feeds.

My vote: out with tweets, IN WITH "CHIRPS!"

Posted by Dan Gunter at May 13, 2009 7:30 PM

LOL Dan on the "noise" - I hear that. TP's business model must change fast - the business guru anything leaves people cold I suspect for years to come. Business management never organized/accredited like medicine, law, accounting, insurance, et al - so the credibility now is in especially dire times. Business has no effective lobby in Congress like the others.

TP's cash flow seems to be ('08 down $$$) travel travel talk talk - in person in person. A new best selling book perhaps? Takes a lot of energy to do that. The new media takes valuable content to generate interest and cash flow as you know. Business consultants & architects are down 50%/year in revenue with no end in sight?

Posted by C Love at May 13, 2009 8:14 PM

C Love,

I have no idea about the financial picture for TP and company, but if anybody can weather the storm, I'd put him at or near the top of the list. Not from a "cash reserve" perspective, but from a "creative thinking" perspective instead. No doubt he's feeling the global pinch in training investments, but I'd guess that smart companies see this as the key time to invest in innovative, business-growing practices. Simply cutting spending across the board rarely keeps the ship from sinking. It seems so counterintuitive to most people, but when times are hard, it makes sense to invest as much as usual == if not more -- in good marketing and leadership & employee development.

A good captain knows that the odds of survival are often better if you continue to sail directly into the storm rather than to turn and try to outrun it. But you'd better have a strong ship and a damn good crew... a crew that knows how to work together to keep the ship above water.

Posted by Dan Gunter at May 14, 2009 6:57 AM

Mmmmm, Cinnabon, mmmmmm. Oops. Sorry. Distracted.

Posted by Fred H Schlegel at May 14, 2009 9:46 AM

No doubt I'm well behind the times here, but I think Tom Peters' natural medium is on a different scale from a tweet or a chirp or even a squawk. In fact I think it's larger than a blog too. In Search of Excellence, and most of its sequels, arrived like bombshells - big, confrontational, demanding, transforming. They effected (for me at least) a deep, significant shift in perspective to whole new places. Rather like, for anyone who knows his work, John Berger's seminal television series and book called Ways of Seeing in the 70s. They were revolutionary, not evolutionary.

The blog, and even more so the chirps, just lose this drama. They are literally everyday affairs, and while the blog is full of interest I don't get from it that extraordinarily liberating, blood-tingling sense of being taken somewhere entirely new that I used to get from the books, or seeing footage of TP performing. The chirps don't feel like a bucket of ice-cold water in the face, they feel like drizzle. Fewer chirps please, and a new book instead?

viagra in usa Posted by RobCH at May 15, 2009 8:47 AM

Hi Rob - Happy Friday! I agree with much of what you say - although I do love the Blog. Twitter does absolutely nothing for me yet (maybe I’m just missing something) and I’m not totally convinced by the Tom ‘chirps’ – sorry big man. We must accept that with the ever-increasing variety of modes of ‘getting your message over’ many people are being reached. Some people like ‘short burst headline stuff’ which is how I see Twitter and Chirps while other people like ‘deep and well thought through stuff’ – and then there are a helluva lot of people in the middle. Having been fortunate enough to see Tom in action I would finally say no written format comes anywhere near the live show! … Ahhhh ‘variety’... the spice of life indeed :-)

Posted by Trevor Gay at May 15, 2009 11:10 AM

Hi Trevor, weekend here but somehow I find myself in the office anyway! I couldn't agree more about the live show, although I've never attended in person (yet, anyway). I think I'll probably have to continue to make do with the occasional video clip.

The point above about "noise" is the important one I think. It's becoming really hard work to separate out the stuff that matters from the engulfing dense blizzard of inconsequential dross. We have to pan an awful lot of silt to find the grains of gold these days. So I would be sad if TP moved into the silt business, rather than providing ready-cut gems.. (slight metaphor mix there, but it's time for home)

Posted by RobCH at May 15, 2009 11:40 AM

RobCH,

Life IS a mixed metaphor. Life imitates art. Art imitates life. Work/life balance. Time management. What ain't a mixed metaphor is a pure oxymoron... Sort of like "Microsoft Works."

Posted by Dan Gunter at May 15, 2009 4:04 PM

:)

Posted by RobCH at May 16, 2009 1:44 AM