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Over the past five years, an entire industry of consultants has arisen to help companies navigate the world of social networks, blogs, and wikis. The self-proclaimed experts range from legions of wannabes, many of them refugees from the real estate bust, to industry superstars such as Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk. They produce best-selling books and dole out advice or lead workshops at companies for thousands of dollars a day. The consultants evangelize the transformative power of social media and often cast themselves as triumphant case studies of successful networking and self-branding.

The problem, according to a growing chorus of critics, is that many would-be guides are leading clients astray. Consultants often use buzz as their dominant currency, and success is defined more often by numbers of Twitter followers, blog mentions, or YouTube (GOOG) hits than by traditional measures, such as return on investment. This approach could sour companies on social media and the rich opportunities it represents. "It's a bit of a Wild West scenario," blogs David Armano, a consultant with the Dachis Group of Austin, Tex. Without naming names, he compares some consultants to "snake oil salesmen."

Interesting comment piece on the dangers of throwing money at social media. I like the comparison between social media and high-risk investments, that may pay off but also may backfire.

I've never been entirely happy with being billed as a "social media expert" and prefer to describe myself as someone who understands and uses social media to network for the magazines and for my own gain. Jonathan Worth's piece about how social networking is just the 21st century version of standing awkwardly in a room filled with people reassured me that it's definitely worthwhile using these tools, but over the past couple of months, I feel like I've lost focus online somewhat and have had the creeping conclusion that spending time on Twitter and Facebook could easily be just another form of procrastination.

As a result, I've started setting myself goals for each time I log in to one of the sites – four more followers for Photo Pro, contact a certain photographer, get retweeted by ten people, etc. As this excellent article in Business Week winds up summarising, having a fixed idea of what you're trying to achieve through your online efforts (whether they're actual results, as in new clients, commissions etc - or just non-profiting results, like meeting photographers or people who you admire greatly) will definitely help keep you on the straight and narrow path towards your own vision of success.

How is it possible that Facebook gamesmaker Zynga will turn in 2009 revenues approaching a reported $250 million -- making 90% of its money selling gamers nothing but virtual goods?

The answer we've given before is that, like arcade games from the 1980s, Zynga's social games charge people small amounts of money to reduce friction in games they are addicted to.

But instead of paying another quarter for another life the way arcade gamers do, social gamers buy sub-machine guns in "Mafia Wars," and new farmland in "FarmVille" in order to level-up.

But while this answer is technically correct, it leaves us cold. Worse, this answer doesn't make much sense if you've never actually seen a Facebook game. It leaves us asking: Really?

So, in order to figure out how these social games actually work -- and make money -- we decided to suck it up and get addicted to one.

We picked FishVille, the latest hit from Zynga. It came out only in November, but already its monthly active users are up to 20 million people. It grew 4.68 million in the last week alone, according to Inside Social Games's AppData.

The object of FishVille is to build a magnificent virtual aquarium, full of spectacular fish and designer decorations. The way you do it is spending fake money to buy small fish for one price, and then, after tending to them for a few hours or days, selling them for more fake money then you paid. Then you use that money to buy more fish. If you want to speed your progress, you buy fake money with real money.

We'd explain more, but it's really just easier to show you how it works.

Click To See How A Stupid Facebook Game Makes Zynga Millions →

Technology

Twitter creator wants to give away Square, his credit card payment gadget

December 2, 2009 |  6:00 am

Twitter was just the beginning. After dreaming up the innovative communication medium, Jack Dorsey is looking to revolutionize another core aspect of society -- money.

On Tuesday, Dorsey announced his new start-up, Square, which will let anyone with a cellphone or iPod become a merchant and accept credit card payments.

Square is a small plastic device that plugs into a gadget's headphone jack. Buyers swipe their credit cards through the machine, which then transmits the payment data to an application running on a connected iPhone or iPod Touch. (Android and Blackberry apps are in development, and computer software will be available later.)

You don't have to have the Square gadget or app to pay. You just need a credit card and an e-mail address to receive a receipt.

A select few cafes and small vendors are among Square's first beta testers. Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea in Venice will be one of the first in Southern California, starting as early as next week.

Beginning sometime early next year, Dorsey wants everyone to use Square.

"I think we're going to give the Squares away for free," Dorsey said on the phone from San Francisco on Tuesday, "because they're pretty cheap for us to make."

Once the company begins ramping up hardware production, you'll be able to sign up for an account, enter a shipping address onto the site and receive a device in the mail. Like PayPal, profiles are tied to a bank account.

Dorsey envisions the service replacing virtually every cash transaction. Let's say a friend owes you $30 for dinner last week, but there's no ATM in sight. Grab the Square device from your keychain, plug it into your phone and tell him to pay up.

Then there's the untapped market on Craigslist. The free and ubiquitous classified ad site "is doing more transactions than eBay today and has no inherent payment mechanism," Dorsey said. "It's a huge market for us."

The payment system is secure, Dorsey said. Transactional data is safely encrypted, and the credit card info is never stored on the device, only passed along, he said. Signatures are drawn with a finger on the touch screen.

Buyers with a Square profile can set their photos to display on the vendor's screen to thwart identity thieves or daughters with a penchant for "borrowing" plastic. (It won't stop your twin sibling from charging things to your card, though.)

Even the e-mail address and phone number a customer is asked to put in during the sale is invisible to the seller. It's only used to transmit the digital receipt, which can include a logo and links to the retailer's website or Twitter page.

A cool, high-tech toy for free. What's the catch? Well, Dorsey has a hidden agenda, albeit one shared by many -- he's sick of cash.

"I, for one, hate getting change," Dorsey said. "I just can't stand it."

The current credit card system isn't without its faults, either. "I get so annoyed when people give me a paper receipt for something that was like $5," he said. "There's nothing that I would do with that receipt."

His solution is Silicon Valley's hippest new start-up: Square. Its e-mail receipts save trees; its charitable donations save the poor; and, gasp, it even has a business model. "We may charge $1 for the app," Dorsey said in an e-mail.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

Community Roundup: Top 10 Personal Rituals for Stress-Free Relationship Building

Posted on December 1st, 2009 by Keith Ferrazz

Did you know that 66.3% of people who are happy in their job are confident in their stress management skills?

In a recent post on time management, I asked for your favorite rituals for stress-free relationship building. They were all great! Here are my ten favorites:

10. Dog walking. That's prime pinging time for me, working from a home office. The dog doesn't mind. - John Kerr

9. Network at the gym. - Elizabeth Rhody

8. Every 3-4 months, organize informal drinks as a way to connect with people - but in a very time efficient manner. You buy appetizers, everyone buys their own drinks. - Sital

7. Split your lunch hour in two: Eat with one person and go for a walk with another. It gets in a little extra exercise and many people are happy to move around in the middle of the day. - Alizabeth Van Wieren

6. Make time to pray, worship, and listen to music often to help keep yourself energized. - Evie Denis

5. Create a blog to use as a reference library. In that blog I collect links and articles that I want to save for future reference. I also share the blog content with other artists. Not having to dig for links saves a lot of time. - Marie Kazalia

4. Give up TV! - Maria

3. Identify one "most important task" each day, and then devote the first hour of the day to that task -- before checking email or doing anything else. - Matt Perman

2. Sports junkies: use TV game time to follow up on e-mails, and schedule calls/mtgs with people. - SCOR

1. Get to appointments at least 15 minutes early and use those minutes for pinging, returning emails and social media. You can get a lot done with focus! - Juli Monroe

Thanks for all your great comments! They add so much value to this blog. By the way, I put in people's websites whenever they've linked their own name in the comments, so make sure to do that if you have one.

It was so close I could taste it. Two weeks ago we were ready to publicly launch the CrunchPad. The device was stable enough for a demo. It went hours without crashing. We could even let people play with the device themselves – the user interface was intuitive enough that people “got it” without any instructions. And the look of pure joy on the handful of outsiders who had used it made the nearly 1.5 year effort completely worth it.

Our plan was to debut the CrunchPad on stage at the Real-Time Crunchup event on November 20, a little over a week ago. We even hoped to have devices hacked together with Google Chrome OS and Windows 7 to show people that you could hack this thing to run just about anything you want. We’d put 1,000 of the devices on pre-sale and take orders immediately. Larger scale production would begin early in 2010.

And then the entire project self destructed over nothing more than greed, jealousy and miscommunication.

On November 17, our deadline date for greenlighting the debut three days later, the CEO of our partner on the project, Chandra Rathakrishnan, sent me an email with the subject “no good news.” Yuck, I thought. Another delay, probably with the screen that had been giving us so much trouble – capacitive touch at 12 inches isn’t trivial. And sure enough, the email started off with “no good news to update. updated hardware is still on its way , so that’s a timing issue. friday will be a challenge now.”

But the email went on. Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project. Chandra said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement.

Err, what? This is the equivalent of Foxconn, who build the iPhone, notifying Apple a couple of days before launch that they’d be moving ahead and selling the iPhone directly without any involvement from Apple.

Chandra also forwarded an internal email from one of his shareholders. My favorite part of the email: “We still acknowledge that Arrington and TechCrunch bring some value to your business endeavor…If he agrees to our terms, we would have Arrington assume the role of visionary/evangelist/marketing head and Fusion Garage would acquire the rights to use the Crunchpad brand and name. Personally, I don’t think the name is all that important but you seem to be somewhat attached to the name.”

And with that, the entire project self destructed.

Neither we nor Fusion Garage own the intellectual property of the CrunchPad outright. Fusion Garage has a team of 13 or so employees, currently working here in Silicon Valley out of a home they rented and in our office. Their team has mixed with our CrunchPad team, which is led by Brian Kindle, the former Vice President Hardware Engineering and Manufacturing at Vudu and an early hardware engineer at TiVo. Development expenses have been shared, and our team has spent time in Singapore and Taiwan, and their team has spent time here. We chose to work with Fusion Garage on Prototype C and the launch prototype after we finished Prototype B internally.

We jointly own the CrunchPad product intellectual property, and we solely own the CrunchPad trademark.

So it’s legally impossible for them to simply build and sell the device without our agreement.

We’re still completely perplexed as to what happened. We think they were attempting to renegotiate the equity split on the company behind CrunchPad, which was to acquire Fusion Garage. Renegotiations are always fine. But holding a gun to our head two days before launching and insulting us isn’t the way to do that. We’ve spent the last week and a half trying unsuccessfully to communicate with them. Our calls and emails go unanswered, so we can’t even figure out exactly what’s happened.

Yesterday Chandra sent an email saying “Following our phone discussion, I had another round of discussions with my shareholders. The shareholders are not willing to move from their position as they believe their stand is justified. On the other hand, there isn’t an alternative offer on the table from Crunchpad.”

My response: “We have not come back to you with any counter offer to the email you forwarded because you and your shareholders have communicated to us that moving forward without us is something that you consider to be a legitimate and legal option. In other words, your “counter” offer is theft of intellectual property.”

Ultimately there are two sides to every story, and they’ll certainly have their side. We will almost certainly be filing multiple lawsuits against Fusion Garage, and possibly Chandra and his shareholders as individuals, shortly. The legal system will work it all out over time.

Mostly though I’m just sad. I never envisioned the CrunchPad as a huge business. I just wanted a tablet computer that I could use to consume the Internet while sitting on a couch. I’ve always pushed to open source all or parts of the project. So this isn’t really about money. It was about the thrill of building something with a team that had the same vision. Now that’s going to be impossible. And I’ve also lost a friend – Chandra spent months in our office this year and, until a week and a half ago, was the kind of young, determined entrepreneur that I admire. I thought we’d be friends for the rest of our lives.

And what’s really sad about all this is the incredible support we were getting from companies and people around the world to launch this device. A major multi-billion dollar retail partner has been patiently working with us for months, giving advice on manufacturing partners and offering to sell the CrunchPad at a zero margin to help us succeed in the early days. They were also willing to pay for the devices on order instead of 30 days after delivery, a crucial cash flow benefit that would allow us to ramp up volume without putting ourselves our of business. They were even willing to fly the devices from China on their own planes to eliminate our shipping costs. Intel, which would supply the Atom CPUs to power the device, has assisted us repeatedly with engineering and partner advice, and gave us pricing that was ridiculously generous given our projected first year sales volumes. Other partners were eager to promote and sell the device for little or no benefit on their end other than “supporting the project.” We even had sponsors lined up to help us sell the device near our $300ish cost.

And money wasn’t a problem, either. We had blue chip angel and venture capitalist investors in Silicon Valley waiting to invest in the company since late Spring. We were simply holding them off until we launched, to eliminate some of the risk.

It’s a sad day at TechCrunch HQ. Hitting the publish button on this post, which makes all of this so…final…is a very hard thing to do. I’m enraged, embarrassed, and just…sad. The CrunchPad is now in the DeadPool.

Thanks to @LuckyChica for making aware of this article

Acclaimed Norwegian '90s melodic heavy rock band JACK IN THE BOX will play its first reunion show on March 19, 2010 at Gamla in Oslo, Norway.

Artig med alle kommentarene vedr. bandnavn. Er jo helt enig, det suger. ;)