Real Valley Stories: Leveraging Assets to Get One's Way

Editor's Note: Part 7 in an irregular series of stories from my 13 years in Silicon Valley. Part 6 talked about the a trade show booth nightmare. This time, an example of how you can leverage opportunity to achieve a goal.

Practically every employee has had a point in their career when they have run into friction with management on ideas or strategy. How you deal with this conflict, explain your ideas, and try to convince those who aren't yet sold can have a big impact on what gets implemented and how you are perceived by your colleagues. Hold to your guns too strongly, as I almost did back in 2000 over URL structure, and you could be out of a job. Become too passive, and it's unlikely you'll do much besides become a wallflower.

In the 2006-07 timeframe, about when I started posting on this blog regularly, I was sure of the impact social media and blogging would have on the way customers interacted with each other and brands. But while I was blogging in the evening hours on strategy and playing the part myself, during the daytime hours at the office, I was struggling to get my management team to go along, no matter the examples I brought up, the guidance from our current PR team, or the links I found on the web.

As sure as I had been in 2003-04 that leveraging Google Adwords ahead of the competition would give us increased visibility to customers, buying keywords for our industry, I was sure that we once again had the opportunity to be leaders in what was a fairly slow moving market. But my boss, the VP of Marketing, said my time would be better used doing a demand gen campaign than writing a blog. When the PR team and I appealed to the CEO, and asked him what blogs he read, he drew a blank, looked up, and said "those Louis sends me." Aside from being frustrated at what I perceived to be a lack of intellectual curiosity, I felt like a fraud - unable to  get my company to do what I was telling others they should. My Clark Kent and Superman cape was showing holes.

But opportunity struck, surprisingly, when I was asked to solicit additional public relations firms, as we ramped up for what would be our first approach at entering the public markets and filing an IPO. The main reasoning for taking on an elite firm was that we wanted one to assist with not just the standard marketing and PR, but also analyst relations and investor relations.

While that in itself was a lot to do, I tagged on more. In creating my requests for proposal (RFPs), I made it mandatory that any firm bidding also had to propose a thorough social media and blogging strategy. In phone calls with each of the firms I reached out to, I made it clear that this was mandatory - and I would not consider anyone who did not lead with a comprehensive strategy that explicitly suggested I lead the company's blogging effort. Everyone, no doubt wanting to win the contract, agreed.

In the next few weeks, firm after firm came through our doors, telling us about their PR, AR and IR acumen, their industry expertise, and one after one said that our company should initiate a deep social media strategy, including blogging, and each one told our VP and CEO that I should lead it. After hearing this three or four times, my boss turned to me, and smiling, said, "What the hell? Did you tell them all to say this?" I played dumb, but eventually they wore down, and social media and blogging, including activity on Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader shared links and FriendFeed was part of our standard activity - at a time when larger competitors were still figuring things out.

I'd like to say the story ended up with roses. We ended up filing the IPO and later withdrawing it, and the quiet period disrupted some of our ability to be more active. Later, after I left the company in 2009, they filed again, before being acquired last year. But for me, it was good to see I could leverage the assets I had to achieve what I wanted, even when seeing executive debate. You don't always get a chance to get an external team to preach your ideas to your management, but if you do find the opportunity for leverage, it can't hurt to give it your best shot.

Pictures, Or It Didn't Happen on Mobile

Foursquare made waves two weeks ago with the launch of their newest application, which more broadly emphasized recommendations, discovery and tips from friends than the original use of the app - a simple checkin, alongside the race for badges and mayorship as you traveled from place to place. Some sites called it the death of the checkin altogether, not wanting to miss an opportunity to be sensational.

But the application's refresh did more than take the focus of all my minor comings and goings. It made photos an even greater part of the experience, putting pressure on me, more than ever before, to include something visibly pleasing as part of the checkin. With the upgrade, Foursquare joins many other leading social apps that have rallied around photos as a major part of their approach to mobile.

Images from my Path and those from a friend.

Instagram's recent sale to Facebook for a gaudy $1 billion thrust them into the spotlight, as the photo sharing app had users preferring its emotion-grabbing images and filters to the standard fare seen on the largest social networks. Given Instagram's iOS-only approach during its early period, I'd never gravitated toward using it, but many embraced its simplicity - the presentation of photos, and encouragement of light social signals for friends to react.

In some ways, this is similar to the Path app, which initially made waves for going mobile only, and focusing on a 50-friend limit, when other networks let you friend freely into the thousands and tens of thousands. Their push for an intimate network, making every share a selective one, where you can see who has liked a moment, or even just seen it, puts more focus on the user to share something meaningful and personal, instead of the mundane.

Now that Path's on Android, and with people I respect, like Shak Khan (formerly of Spotify) and Dylan Casey (formerly a colleague at Google) on board, I've been using the app a lot more, even if it's just as a simple way to send high quality photos to Foursquare. It's been fun to tap into the casual photos and moments from those friends on Path and see things from their view, in color.

Now I Feel Guilty If I Check In Without a Photo, Even At Home

Of course, like Path, selective sharing has been a hallmark of Google+ since the network's launch a year ago. The idea of getting the opportunity to share the right content to the right people at the right time, parallel to that of how you share offline, has struck a chord for privacy-seeking individuals, families and groups. But it's also been a good showcase for photographers who want to bring the images to the world. Prominent camera slingers like Thomas Hawk and Trey Ratcliff had gained followings in the millions, and there was even a  conference in San Francisco for the Google+ Photographers community at the end of May.

On mobile, as many noted, the refresh of the Google+ app, first on iOS and quickly following on Android, made photos take center stage. Like Instagram, Path and Foursquare, the mobile app displays photos to the full width of one's screen, letting the images do the talking. While Google+ also is home for lengthy comment threads, and longer text-centric posts, if there is an image available to display in the post, it gets the headline, and everything else is below the fold.

Google+'s Mobile App Delivers Full Bleed Photos and Full Color

The move toward photo-centric experiences in social mobile apps is one that reflects a few things - that smartphones are increasingly capable of taking high quality images, but also having improved displays to bring pictures to life, that wireless download speeds can handle the increased demands of a photo-centric experience, unlike the days of WAP and text-only mobile sites, and that users love it when updates from friends come to life.

Facebook Also Pushes Large Images In Its Mobile App

Google's Chrome browser was famously named as a reverse expression of its qualities. Chrome referred to all the borders and features that surrounded the app's content. Chrome took them away, for the most part, going to the edges and trying to put the emphasis on the pixels inside the browser window. These apps, including Facebook, on the news feed and individual timelines, are doing the same - putting photos in the center of the experience, and encouraging lightweight social actions.

As many people are turning to social interactions with micro-updates and away from lengthy text-centric blogs, something beyond incredible prose has to catch one's attention, and it's becoming photos - from memes to LOLCats, Instagram, Path, Foursquare or others, you can see how the photos on mobile really have become as powerful as a thousand words.

Disclosures: I am a Google employee, and have worked closely with the team focused on Google+ Mobile. One can assume that in some way Facebook, Path, Foursquare, Instagram and others could compete with various aspects of Google's different products.

Fifteen Signs You're a Fitbit Fanatic

Two years ago (to the day, surprisingly), I highlighted four squared (16) ways to tell if you've become a Foursquare addict. In the ensuing two years, I've continued to enjoy my regular checkins from place to place, but I've got another obsession that also tracks my comings and goings - not in where I go, but what I do, with the Fitbit. Fitbit, as I described in March, has the potential to take your every day activity and match you up against friends, rewarding you with virtual badges and making you exercise more than you might otherwise.

I'm having a blast telling everyone I know who doesn't already have a Fitbit tracker to go get one, and those who do, I'm recommending we connect so we can trade stats and urge each other on. I even picked up a Fitbit Aria scale to wirelessly track my daily weigh-ins and see if that number is trending the wrong way. With that in mind, I thought it was time to trot out fifteen ways you can check if you're a Fitbit fanatic.

1. You take the long way everywhere - and find yourself scheduling meetings or lunches at a place far more convenient for those you're meeting than yourself. You walk, of course.

I'll take the stairs, thank you.

2. You look incredulously at people who take the elevator, even if you're going to the top floor.

3. You've figured out what optimizes you for the most steps across a distance - walking, biking, skipping or jogging.

Time to fall asleep: 5 minutes! I can beat that!

4. You'd pretend to be asleep when your partner wants attention at night because you don't want to mess up your "Time to sleep" statistics, and you think you can set a new record.

Yes, that would be me, pounding out 20,000+ steps on the last day I'd get credit.

5. You read that Foursquare was about to discontinue their 20k step Fitbit badge on June 1st, so you spent much of May 31st walking around in circles, just so you could get it.

6. If people ask to friend you on Fitbit, you ask them their daily average of steps, and only accept their friendship if you think you will beat them. (I'm looking at you, Matt Cutts)

7. You don't talk about how far things are in the number of miles or kilometers, but instead in steps.

8. You consider getting one of those fancy walking treadmill desks.

9. You find yourself wanting to look at how many flights of stairs you've climbed in the middle of the flight, and you have to restrain yourself until you get to the top, just so you make sure it counts.

Good luck Matt! Hope you reach 10,000 by midnight!

10. You find yourself just a few steps away from your usual goal, consider if you can hit that number before the clock hits midnight, and then go do some laps in the kitchen.

11. While on a walk with a friend who also has the Fitbit, you look at each other's starting step count, and ending step count, compare it to yours and wonder aloud as to whether Fitbit is accurate, if your units are calibrated correctly, or if it's something to do with the other person's height and stride. (My mom and I actually did this on Monday)

12. You memorize your daily weigh-ins and body fat percentages from each morning's weigh-in, and can correctly anticipate both the next day to the tenth of a pound or percentage point.

13. You actively contemplate whether it makes sense to adjust your Fitbit goals to match your real world activity, or adjust your real world activity to match your Fitbit goals.

14. When you type F into your browser's URL bar, it autocompletes Fitbit instead of Facebook.

15. Every time you take a step while not wearing the Fitbit, you're annoyed.

Are you as silly about Fitbit as I am? I am loading up on people to connect with on that service. Find me at louisgray@gmail.com and we'll compare steps.

Fast, Sleek New Chromebooks Bring OS Worthy Hardware

The new Chromebook and a Chromebox to boot.

At the end of 2010, I got my first exposure to a fully cloud-based operating system, when I was an early recipient of Google's CR-48 pilot program. Those of us getting the early gear were guided to be kind to the admittedly clunky hardware, and instead focus on the operating system, which changed the way we thought about local storage. But in addition to the unique OS, which started and ended with the web browser, the machine was intriguing for its long battery life and pervasive wireless capabilities, including 3G connectivity. The second generation hardware, which I obtained from attending Google IO last summer, started where the first gen left off, syncing quickly from my Google account, and bumping up its speed, while maintaining great battery life and wireless.

But in both cases, the devices were my backup devices, secondary to my primary machine, a MacBook Air. Be it specific software, inertia or simple speed and aesthetics, I still found myself using the Apple laptop the majority of the time - except when I was away from home or the office, as the Chromebook has from day one been best for mobile computing. The newest devices, being introduced today, have flipped that argument on its head. I've been using the new Chromebook for the last few days, and the only time I ever got my Macbook out was to sync my Fitbit tracker with its desktop cradle.

  Google introduces the new Chromebooks

The new Chromebooks are incredibly sleek, light and fast to boot. That may be hard to substantiate, especially if you assume my pro-Google filter is in effect, so I tested on the WebGL fishtank demo, getting 60 fps at 1,000 fish, lowering to the high 40s if I made that its separate window and kept working on something else, be it Gmail, playing a YouTube video, accessing my docs on Google Drive, or browsing the web.

I've been thinking about and working toward a cloud-centric lifestyle for years now, and since joining Google last August, I spend practically all my waking connected hours in Chrome. I have Chrome on my Android phone, on my TVs with the Google TV, on my Mac laptops and, obviously, at the heart of the Chromebook.    The benefits of having access to all my bookmarks, user profiles and content from device to device cannot be overstated, and the newest laptop no longer makes me feel like I am compromising anything in exchange. The hardware is thin, the keyboard and trackpad are top quality, and its weight is light enough that if it were held next to the latest model Macbook Air, any difference is scarcely noticeable. This is no longer just a evolutionary OS story, but one that has hardware worthy of it.

Disclosures (Per Usual): Yes, I work for Google. I have been testing this new unit free of charge. I also previously received the CR-48 and second generation Chromebooks free of charge prior to joining Google, so life is pretty good. :)