day 853: The Interest Graph

"I love all who love me. Those who search will surely find me."

It's been at least two years ago now when Bill Gurley, a venture capitalist from Benchmark Capital, and Max Levchkin, one of the founders of Pay Pal, sat on a panel together and defined the "next big thing" as the "Interest Graph". What we have known to date has been the "Social Graph". This was MySpace and now is Facebook, LinkedIn, Tagged, Google+, etc.; the connection of our "friends" and the ability to share, publish and converse across a network. Certainly this is compelling enough to have created all of the companies above. But what happens when we have connected with everyone who matters and there aren't any more old high school, college and lost work acquaintances that would be meaningfully additive to our lives if we were to reconnedt? Then what? That's where we have gotten to and thus the rise of the "interest graph". Pinterest has successfully blown up because it doesn't run on the social graph, but cuts across interests. And Pinterest is not alone as we are seeing new interest graph services arriving weekly. We'd be well served to understand and follow this next trend as each of our businesses and services fit into someone's interest graph and finding the intersection between what we provide and what our consumers are passionate and interested in, opens up an all new way to connect with them.

This is simple, but complex; Jesus rolled together for us in Himself the ultimate search engine, social network and interest graph. Stay with me. He said to us, "Seek first the Kingdom of God". He said to us, "Go into the world and share the Good News". He said, "No man comes to the Father but through me". See! Search/Seek, Share/Social Network, I am the Way/your interest! As believers we have found Him. He then expects us to share His Word and message to all, especially those closest to us as our neighbors. And, he asks us to make Him our first and foremost interest and then to fellowship with those who share the same interest in Him. I am constantly amazed at how we can find all that we work, live and do, right back in the messages and the life of Jesus. Let us finish this week strong knowing that our interest graph is alive, well and aligned!

Reference: Proverbs 8:17 (New Living Testament)

day 805: Sign Up. Follow. Share.

"Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations..."

If we tried, it would be hard to find a successful consumer focused company that does not have a social media strategy. At the end of the day and all the talk about search engine marketing (SEM)and search engine optimization (SEO), both of which are important to understand and have an expertise about, nothing will work unless you have people who will sign up with you (in whatever form you choose them to do so), then follow you, and finally share with others what they have learned or like about your company. It comes down to those three simple concepts. And, of course, for that to even remotely work we must have a product or service that is worthy of consumers spending their time, energy and social capital to sign up, follow and share. We would all be wise to stop and consider what it is that we are asking others to sign up for, how easy we can make it for them to follow and what are we making exciting and compelling enough for them to want to share.

This past weekend at my church in San Francisco, http://www.cornerstone-sf.org, (you may need to copy this into your browser as Blogger link insert is not working correctly), our Pastor asked me to share a few minutes about how we could use social media to get the word out about a new service and location in the city. We had created a small insert card for the weekly service handout and it was detailed about how to Sign up, Follow, and Share. As I was preparing for the short talk I was going to do it was not lost on me that what we want to have happen in Social Media, is the same message that Jesus gave us about how we are to live and express our faith. He asked us to sign up with Him. He then asked us to follow Him, each and every day of our lives, and He asked us to share the good news of His message and gospel. Thousands of years since Jesus walked the earth, we are still being called to do the same things with technology that could never then been imagined. God is calling each of us to Sign Up, Follow and Share. How are we doing in that calling?

Reference: Matthew 28:19 (New Living Testament)