// LATEST BLOG ARTICLES

Getting a little help from your friends was easy enough for Lennon and McCartney, but in an age of Google Circles, Facebook lists and Twitter followers - it is far from clear what friendship actually means. Worse still, marketers are muddying the waters. Brands used to want to brainwash us - now they want to be our friends. But consider this for a moment. What if social marketing was not about getting your customers to like you on Facebook but rather fixing a much bigger problem? Namely, trust.

I don't like boats. I get sea sick easily and my worst nightmare is being caught out in the middle of the ocean in a storm. When that happens my original plans - however grand - go straight out the porthole. Business leaders face a similar dilemma. You can spend a weekend retreat discussing the far future, but on Monday the only scenario that counts is the immediate future of cash flow, customers and competitors. So how do you reconcile two distinct timelines which require radically different strategies for attainment? I call this paradox the 'Dual Horizon Problem'.

I once asked a well connected friend from the Valley what the stock rich digerati spent their billions on once they exhausted their penchant for Ferraris, Gulfstreams and obscene boats. ‘Secret labs’, he replied cryptically. ‘Now that they are richer than God, most of them are scared of actually meeting him. So many are busy funding scientists and private institutes to keep themselves alive for as long as possible.’ Eccentric, wealthy centenarians are one thing - but to me the real question is what happens when life extension moves from the realms of the super-rich to the masses. In other words, what impact will the economics of immortality have on the rest of us?

You can have too much of a good thing, especially if it wasn’t yours to start with. Here’s the perfect example - brands that shamelessly imitate the strategies of their major competitors. I was scouting the Westfield complex in Century City, LA last week and noticed a new Sony concept store a few feet from a classic Apple retail shrine. It was striking how similar both stores appeared, except for one crucial distinction - Sony was devoid of customers.

I love apps, I hate apps. Their ingenuity and variety has brought fun and delight into my life, but I also long for a world without them. That is to say, a world without a handful of companies circling their wagons around my content and how I interact with my community. Fortunately something happened this week that should fuel a glimmer of hope for an alternate mobile future.

Segment featuring futurist and keynote speaker Mike Walsh, appearing on the Business Today program for Australia Network and ABC. Key themes explored include the power of anthropology in business, and the imperative for enterprise to take a pro-active stance on social media to drive engagement with their customers.

Now that it is fashionable to be sociable, those wretched share buttons are turning up everywhere. Read an article, book a flight, buy some shoes, finish a book - you are endlessly encouraged to let other people know. Surely it won’t be long, before they even ask us to tweet about paying our traffic fines. But here’s the problem. Making it easy for people to share is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for social success. People are happy to share things when they feel like it. The real question then, is what motivates them?

Selling out your friends might not seem the best way to nurture your relationships, but if the transaction involves hooking them up with their dream job - they just might forgive you. Top Prospect is an innovative new startup that connects with your existing contact networks on platforms such as LinkedIn, and then allows you to suggest friends for job roles. If they get the job - you get paid a bonus - anywhere between US$5,000 and US$20,000 depending on the role.

Before you get too excited at turning your colleagues into cash, at this stage most of the job roles are in the US, and there is also a heavy tech sector skew. Nevertheless, Top Prospect is an intriguing concept and one of many new services that I predict we will see in the future that enable hyper-connectors to better commercialise their networks.