Dance With Strangers

We talk a lot about “shiny object syndrome” or the trap of getting too excited about the next great tool, gadget, website, social network, etc.

It struck me this morning however that shiny object syndrome is talked about because it is so easy to fall into…and to be honest, I love being in this phase. I do love new tools, gadgets, websites, social networks and more. There is something about unwrapping a new toy that harkens us back to that birthday so many years ago. I love discovering people on a new social network, particularly seeing folks I already recognize from other networks; reminds me of running into an old friend on the street purely on accident.

This week I have been hit by the syndrome twice! First was starting to use Gowalla, a geo-location social network similar to FourSquare. It is a fun network that allows me to find different “hot spots” near me such as a restaurant, movie, etc. The long term usage of this type of network may be minimal, but right now I’m having a blast collecting tacos (you have to play to understand that one).

But this morning my shiny object syndrome hit a fever pitch when I started to unwrap my new Kodak Zi8. I’ll be back with a longer review of how I use it from a B2B prespective…but today I’m just going to enjoy the side effects of the syndrome!

Last month, when you told me how many Twitter followers you had by simply inserting it into the conversation, much like you would tell someone about the weather during your vacation, I ignored the cry for validation.

A few weeks ago during another awkward social media “tweetup”, when you casually dropped your Hubspot Twitter Grade when talking up the waitress, I swallowed my retort since it actually looked like you would get her number.

Last Monday, on a chain of emails that was supposed to be about a possible fantasy football league trade, you actually typed the words “The way Frank Gore is running the ball this season reminds me of how I created that series of Posterous posts on graffitti and linked it to my Flickr group on urban art.” I didn’t even reply.

And last night, over a beer, you mapped out in avid detail your penultimate plan for aligning your 20,000th Tweet with your 10,000th follower, your 1,000th Facebook Friend, your 500th FriendFeed subscriber and 50th FourSquare badge. I drank.

You have been my friend for a long time so let me just tell you this as straight forward as I can. Nobody cares about your personal social media numbers. Nobody wants to know how many follower/friends/subscriber/badges you have “collected” or what you plan to do during an artificial social media milestone. Most people won’t tell you this, but I know that deep down, below your glazed over eyes from staring at your TweetDeck columns, my old friend is still in there.

Remember the numbers you used to care about? No? Let me remind you.

The night before my wedding you told me about how you came up with that killer marketing campaign that increased recognized revenue by 285% in one quarter.

While I was on a business trip in Europe you sent me an email, excitedly detailing for me a new blog post you were writing that would kick off an online resource center for your community of 500 app engineers.

The day I introduced you to my second son we spent a lunch where you used approximately 15 napkins to illustrate for me how you were going to use SalesForce.com, WebEx and some homebuilt application to launch a fully integrated online demo system, with the goal being to reduce your company’s current sales cycle by three months.

I miss my old friend. The one who knew which numbers mattered.