Why It WasWeb and Marketing

Growing up you hear a lot of sayings that make very little sense. One saying that did not make sense to me until recently was the one about life is a journey not a destination. This may sound like an obvious one, for me it wasn’t. I am very focussed on goals and getting there. The point I missed is the destination in life is not the achievements in 5, 10 or 50 years away, it is death. As morbid and me as that sounds it is true. That said it is those events which make the journey memorable. This is why interviewers always ask people about how they got to where thy are today.

As 2009 is coming to an end it has made me think back over the year that was. Over this year I have ran a half marathon, full marathon, volunteered, joined Rotary, given several talks, organised an Ignite night and celebrated with friends and family amazing events such as the announcement of Nat’s new niece.

None of these were any of the ultimate goals that I have set for myself and took time away from those goals. Yet to miss out on these events to get the destinations / pit stops along the way would be a big lost.

Knowing the end isn’t all that bad. A weird analogy is the TV show “How I Meet Your Mother”. I know how the series end as I have read the synopsis on Wikipedia. The end (destination) is not that exciting. It is the 5 seasons of the journey which makes the show enjoyable. The journey of how Ted finally meets the mother of his children makes you fall in love with the show, the triumphs, the lows, the times where you cringe, and most more importantly the fact the show celebrates those smaller moments in life which just make up the journey. Life is very much about every moment.

I recently listened to a talk by Steve Jobs who asks himself every morning if he would be happy to die doing what he is doing that day and if the answer is no for several days in a row he knows that there is a problem. I thought that this was an interesting concept. How would taking on this approach change things? Would I be quickly unemployed or rising to be a superstar?

Realising that death is the destination I vowed to make sure that each day was a day in which to enjoy the moments weather good or bad.

So I guess the important thing to remember is that while the final destitution is death, it is the journey, the pit stops, the detours, roadworks and scenic drives which makes getting there all that much more memorable.

In this amazing video from Ted Hans Rosling shows why data is exciting and fun. He is the ultimate geek and makes it look cool. He takes us on a journey of the history and future of poverty and how it is going to be changed over the next 50 years. Some of the amazing concepts covered are how the USA was different from the rest of the world in its development, the dollar street and the sword swallowing.

Yesterday Ziggs.Com was the hottest trend on Google. This surprised me! As it is kind of a very over staturated market. You already have Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, LinkedIn etc. It is a bit confusing to why it was so popular yesterday, but that might have something to do with some press releases.

What is Ziggs.Com?

In my humble opinion it is a site to try to control the search results for your name, which comes at a cost ($4.95 /month). There is a lot more. They provide a free profile for you like Facebook but meant to be more professional, elegant and in your control. It alerts to when, how, and the location of who is looking at your Ziggs profile. Then there is the money making side of things. You can buy people Starbuck’s gift certificates etc. Book travel and make payments on things and buy other stuff. There is an empathise on job advertising, though recruiters and employers probably don’t have the time to hunt for people.

The official line is:

Ziggs is for the Internet user who proactively wants to market themself on the Web – to be found by recruiters, to find a better job, or just to be found when searched for. Ziggs is also for the Internet user who wants to develop or participate in private online communities with colleagues, friends, club members or charity teams.

Why Ziggs?

It is meant to provide the elegant professional profile, but www.linkedin.com already does a good job of that. I would guess it is for people who want to know about who is Googleing them. The problem of course is that for your profile to be on top of the Google listings you have to pay the $US4.95 / month and have it in the yellow Google Ads section of the search results. To get the alerts the person has to click on your Ziggs profile. Of course there is the wonderful services you but like Starbucks Gift Certificates to spend at the local Starbucks that use to be around the corner from you now completely empty.

When would you use Ziggs?

I guess their arguement is, always. They try to say it is all about when you have someone Googleing you, you want to have the most glowing profile possible. Truth is you probably can get away with your LinkedIn profile for the time being.

Summary

Ziggs.com is not worth the effort or money. You want to get your name to the top of a search engine, go on and blog a lot, post repsonse to blogs, and have a good LinkedIn profile. Real-time alerts might also be depressing when you go 6 months without an alert. It really is a affiliates marketing webstie dressed up as social-networking site.