Inbound Marketing: In Rap Format !

Four One to One's with The Travelling Geeks

So following a rather rushed morning Q&A session - in which you'll be please do know I DID ask the Geeks a question (number 7 on my list, below. Arguably the least sarcastic) the dinner was marginaly more luxurious. I managed to speak with four of our vistiors, at least partially.

Howard Rheingold is, in fact, a sparkling gem of a man. Not only did he agree with me wholeheartedly that entrepreneurs are created, not born (against the preposterous beliefs of one of our hosts), but he then revealed to me the the future of everything: interactive paper. Though it took me several attempts to understand it (and I believe I may yet be in denial) I now believe wholeheartedly in interactive surfaces and I plan to preach them continuously.

Tom Foremsky (#28 on the list of the most influential people in Silicon valley) turns out to be the softest spoken genius this side of Michael Jackson (RIP). He's one of those rare people who listens and then explains, in a whisper, what you had been trying to say all along. Therapeutic.

I only met Renee Blodgett, the startup PR impresario, for a few minutes, but she implored me to check out www.weblogtheworld.com - which I'm doing in the other tab as I write this post.

Lastly I saw Robert Scoble and reminded him of our last meeting at Les Blogs in 2005. There was no particular reason for him to remember me (other than I hosted a huge party) - but bless him if he didn't feign recollection. Now that's what I call dedication.

8 Questions To Ask The Travelling Geeks

So I'm off to see the Travelling Geeks in Cambridge tomorrow - with a geeky dinner in the evening. I'm trying to think of questions they won't already have been asked on their travels, apart from the obvious ones (who's got the new iphone? Can I lick it? etc.). So far I've got:

1. Is social media the new Google? Discuss.
2. How long will it take Facebook to become "Twitter with apps"?
3. How long will it take Twitter to become the "open" Facebook?
   
4. Q: List the number of viable business models for Twitter. Divide them by one. Double it. Add one. Halve that number. Then minus one. What do you get? [A: the number of viable business models for Twitter]
   
5. Why did Rackspace loose their fanatacism? (That one's for Robert Scoble)
6. Is Google the new social media. Discuss.
7. When will social media overtake natural search as the primary source of referrals to websites and blogs?
8. Will you invest in my social, mobile, feed-aggregating, location-aware, OpenID-enabled, semantic iphone app? It's called Tweet fluckr?
   

Does anyone have any better questions? I promise I'll ask the best one.

Social Media Overtakes Google in Providing Referrals

In an interesting post, Thomas Baekdal describes how, in just 4 years, the source of the majority of referrals to his site (www.baekdal.com) has shifted from Google to social media sites, like Delicious, Twitter, Facebook and Stumbledupon. In 2005 only 2% of his referrals came from social media sites and 60% came from Google. Now he has 65% coming from social media sites and just 15% from Google.

He goes on to discuss the importance of the 'influence' of visitors, how much they interact (i.e how much value they generate) over the pure quantity of visitors to his site - which is something we're all starting to wake up to.