#2 Out of the Blue by Julian Casablancas: Strokes front man with a super catchy track

#3 Casablanca – Malajube: French Canadian rockers who were up for the coveted Polaris Prize in 2009.

#4 Only If You Run by Julian Plenti: Another solo project, this time from Interpol’s lead singer.

#5 Lisztomania by Phoenix: You’ve heard it a million times.

$6 The Outsiders by Doves: My favourite track from my favourite album of the year (Kingdom of Rust).

#7 Nothing to Worry About by Peter, Bjorn and John: Remember Young Folks? The track with all the whistling. Yeah, those guys.

#8 Gunman by Them Crooked Vultures: Not a particularly surprising collaboration given the people in this band, but this stomper delivers some face melting riffage.

#9I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman by K-os: The album wasn’t quite as solid from start to finish as his last two, but this song was so great, you’d never notice.

#10 Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear: Hipsters? Yes. But it was fun to listen to and my son’s face lights up every time the piano in the intro starts up.

Honourable Mentions - I'll Fight by Wilco and You're What She Came for by Franz Ferdinand.

Up until this point, this blog has served as my social media opinion and best practice stomping ground. I’ve kept the focus sharply on that subject for about a year now, but I’m realizing that I have more to say on a broader range of topics.

So starting this year I’m going to experiment with some new topics and methods of delivering those topics. Part of this stems from a new job that'll be spent living and breathing digital media and marketing even more than I already do - but mostly this is just me looking for a new challenge.

I’ll still have a heavy bent on digital media, marketing, social media and technology, but look for other elements of me to start peaking through.

Maybe it’ll be music or a band I’m currently enamoured with.

Maybe some thoughts on the iPad (because you clearly haven’t heard enough of that yet).

Or maybe I’ll just keep posting random pictures of my son (I’m kidding…come back).

Either way, it’ll be a slightly different reading experience that I hope people enjoy and stick with me for.

You can see the original posting here at Mitch's site Twist Image

I was reading an article by Robert J. Holland in which he questions how anyone can follow hundreds of people on Twitter and possibly get any work down. Holland goes on to mention (as if boasting) that he limits the amount of people he follows to 30 (now 44) because any more would be far too distracting.

Then while reading this blog posting from Chris Brogan, he cautions about spreading yourself too thin in the online world.

As I said, I’m seeing this all over the place. We are constantly setting limitations on our informational input/output levels or building dams on how much we can process. That’s fine and I understand the urge to set your own limits. Not everyone can watch television with a laptop in front of them and divide their concentration between both efforts. And not everyone has the time to write blogs, post to Twitter and keep their Facebook page up to date.

But what if future generations are simply expected to pull this off? Our hunger for information at break-neck speeds isn’t diminishing – it’s only becoming more ravenous. So isn’t it safe to assume that the next crop of communicators will be forced to have their fingers in multiple pies (so to speak)?

Alarmists predicted 10+ years ago (incorrectly) that email would be the death of face-to-face conversation. These same people screamed that Blackberries would have them working all hours of the day and would be a constant distraction (also incorrect, to a degree). Companies still don’t trust their employees to have full access to the internet as the temptation to slack-off is too great.

The reality is that these tools took time to adjust to. We needed to adapt our thinking and the way we approached our work but now businesses couldn’t survive without email, mobile offices and of course the internet.

Now here we are celebrating social media, but doing it all over again, with post after post instructing people to limit how much information they take in, instead of saying – take in as much as you can, find a comfortable place and work from their. Adjust your habits, try something new and push your limits.

I don't mean to point fingers at the "old guard" but are you really helping yourself by closing doors? By trying to force new styles of communication and technology into your old style of work habits aren’t you just putting a date-stamp on your knowledge and capabilities? 

How can you definitively say “I can only keep track of a few followers on Twitter,” when you’ve never tried to follow more? How can you say you have trouble monitoring more than one or two social networks when you’ve never attempted to start a third?

Social media is still in its nascent stages so you can decide now to fit it into your existing schedule or you can choose to adapt, try a new schedule and really test your limits.

Which one will you choose?


I’m not going to lie – I was taken a little off guard. The last thing I expected was Rogers to seek me out and ask what my concerns were (on Christmas Day no less!). But after some back and forth I emailed Mary with some thoughts. The real question is what they do with that information now.

As my problems with Rogers weren’t tangible issues like incorrect billing or bad customer service, and had more to do with a lack of competition between the major providers, I’m curious how they’ll respond. Will they earnestly look at resolving the negative attitude nearly everyone has for their cell phone providers or is this just an exercise in good PR optics?

I have a feeling Roger’s Twitter presence is more to deal with high level issues like where to pay bills, service outages, etc. and doesn’t really exist to monitor their brand’s reputation. And that’s unfortunate because a lot of valuable information could be gleaned from channels where people are offering unsolicited and honest opinions.

This is a new age of exposure for companies and as it’s been said countless times in countless books and blogs, people are talking about big brands in both good ways and bad. Some companies like Zappos and Jetblue are diligent with brand management and seem to really care about their reputation while others seem apathetic at best.

But will 2010 be the year that massive companies with cushy monopolies (like Rogers) take this seriously or are they just playing in the space because everyone says they should?

What do you think?

• Comment on someone’s blog today. Share an opinion on their post, tell them it’s insightful, tell them it’s mislead or tell them it’s a half-formed idea – but tell them something (constructively). Let them know you’re out there, because comments create discussion and that’s never a bad thing.


• Respond to Tweets, comments, questions, emails – don’t leave people hanging. For anyone that follows @unmarketing you’ll definitely have seen this tweet many times and it’s a very insightful and important piece of advice.


• It’s a community and you only get out of it what you put in. When I first started using Twitter I’d sign to my account and stare blankly at the screen, wondering why no one was sending me messages. I quickly learned that unless you give people something to comment on or engage them, you’re not going to get much out it.

• More often than not the most social aspects of life happen off line. Sometimes you need to turn it all off and interact with people face-to-face. If you’re looking to find like-minded people who share the same interests, industry, etc., try Meetup.com. It's a fabulous way to find out where people are organizing, build connections or start an event yourself.

  

I hope you’ve all had a great 2009 and are looking forward to the new year with as much anticipation as I am. And I hope that you've learned some new insights from reading this blog.

Thanks for reading and have a happy holiday season.