But I Want “It” Now

Let me start by saying this isn’t an article about the iPad. I’ll leave that to the countless tech and/or Apple blogs out there. This is an article about embracing technology and utilizing it for the betterment of your business (and maybe freeing up some time on your social calendar too!)

We live in a world of instant gratification. The days of waiting for anything can often seem obsolete. So today, when computing giant Apple unveiled it’s new iPad, the buzz wasn’t instantaneous across the world. I was able to watch real consumer feedback regarding this new product, as Apple was discussing it for the first time. How? I simply used a twitter application, TweetDeck and searched for the topic #apple and #iPad. Everyone in Twitter using those hashtags was then visible to me. There are some solid, opinionated tweets in that Twitter feed (and some that are just asinine).

Imagine what real time consumer feedback about your service offering could mean for your business. It’s not difficult to do, but how many people are paying attention? You’d be foolish not to.

Many people I speak with today are still skeptical of Twitter, and, believe it or not, of the internet! Listen, I could maybe understand being a little wary of the internet in 1999 during the dot com crash. But the internet is NOT going anywhere. And the billions of dollars being dumped into R&D (research and development) for faster, lighter more compact internet capable devices is proof of that. There is an entire generation who has grown up online, who, when asked, say they “couldn’t live without it.”

There’s a book, The Age of Speed, by Vince Poscente, which is neither prophetic nor profound, but which makes a few entertaining points about the modern age and the speed with which we process and consume massive amounts of information. In the book he makes a good point about confusing this new technology with “more work”. “In the Age of Speed, we have the tools to accomplish more in less time than our counterparts twenty years ago. Consequently we have more time, but not necessarily more time to spend doing more work,” Poscente asserts.

I would agree.

There is initially a learning curve, which generally requires plugging in and poking around. There there is the decision to use certain applications to make life easier. For this, which can seem a daunting task, I’d recommend asking people further ahead on the learning curve–or whom you trust in general. If you are one of the many people who just can’t seem to bring yourself to do any of that, I suggest finding someone for your business who is willing to do it for you, and put them to work. Your presence on the internet, while still only part of the puzzle, is increasingly a more important part of the puzzle.

“We change, whether we like it or not”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson