It's not the medium, it's the message

I have a new friend on Facebook, Kneale Mann.

When he sent me his Friend Request, I Googled him and found a very interesting article he wrote, here are two quotes that I liked:

"Microsoft Word does not make you Hemmingway. Whether it’s an ink dipped feather or a blackberry, if the message is of no interest to its recipient, the instrument is irrelevant."

and

Content, context and community are powerful forces we cannot ignore.[...] Are you creating an atmosphere that will satisfy people's inherent need to belong? [emphasis mine]

With all the hype about Facebook, Twitter, the Social Web, whether it's better to write or podcast or put videos on YouTube, to succeed you need to go back to the basics: is my message one that someone wants to hear?

I'm getting a bit tired of the Social Web stuff, especially with Twitter, because it is becoming one big echo chamber, where people are RT'ing each other (repeating tweets or messages) in a bid to climb higher on some popularity algorithm. And that's when I'm not being bombarded with tweetspam.

What I crave is to exchange smart ideas with smart people: that's the community I want to belong to.

Although Kneale doesn't speak specifically about Twitter [UPDATE: Now he does through his blog http://onemann.blogspot.com !], his message applies directly to what you and I are doing as passion-driven entrepreneurs: instead of getting lost in how things look, let's focus on what we are communicating through what we do.

Read the rest of Kneale's article here (via Humble Howard's blog http://www.humblehoward.com)
(ContentContextCommunity part 1) http://is.gd/fmUe
(ContentContextCommunity part 2) http://is.gd/fmUu