Mario Sundar’s Top of Mind

Do you remember the time?

When he debuted the moonwalk on the Motown Special. It's hard to imagine in today's YouTube world, but it was a sensation. I remember going to work the next day and everyone was talking about it. My coworker had a new invention called a VCR and actually had it on tape. We watched it over and over again. It seemed superhuman. It defined entertainment. — Helene Rubinstein

Quote Source: Esquire and Video Source: my friend, Rob Getzschman 

I couldn't have explained it better. It pretty much explains how I got hooked onto Twitter, but in my case, it was the use of Twitter at events (SXSW) that drew me in at first, then real-time search and finally the fact that many of my friends and colleagues were using it.

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch explains the phenomenon:

The adoption cycle for Twitter is a bit strange. It goes something like this: Ever-increasing waves of hype, links, and attention bring in the newbies to Twitter.com where they get their first taste of Twitterdom. Some portion of those set up an account out of curiosity or a fear of being left behind. They try sending out a few Tweets, look around, get bored by the initial banality of the service and abandon it for other pursuits.

But that is not the end of it. A lot of them come back, either because they keep getting links from friends or keep hearing about it on TV or whatever, and then they slowly start to see the usefulness—a funny Tweet from a friend, a link to breaking news, a way to keep an eye on the general zeitgeist. Twitter is the kind of thing that is easier to experience than it is to explain. But it is an acquired taste and often requires repeated exposure before people get hooked. Once they do get hooked, there is no going back.

TGIF. 8 more hours to the weekend. Enjoy!

RIP.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about company values and culture. Our new CEO (Jeff) and founder (Reid), shared LinkedIn's mission and values at a recent all-hands.

Defining corporate culture is an extremely arduous task: part art, part science, part mystery. And redefining corporate culture may well be the Holy Grail in organizational management science.

Can it be done?

HBS' Peter Bergman thinks it can be done - with stories. Yes, stories! As community evangelist, my role encompasses external evangelism. For e.g. letting our users communicate how LinkedIn has impacted their professional success, which we then chronicle on the LinkedIn blog.

And, Peter suggests that internal company culture can be changed with such stories.

To start a culture change all we need to do is two simple things:

1. Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it.

2. Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them.

Incomparable. Astaire once said of him:

My Lord, he is a wonderful mover. He makes these moves up himself and it is just great to watch. I think he just feels that way when he is singing those songs. I don't know how much more dancing he will take up, because singing and dancing at the same time is very difficult. But Michael is a dedicated artist. He dreams, thinks of it all the time. You can see what the result is.

Now, that I've decided to use Posterous for my multimedia blogging needs, expect more reviews and photos from dinner tables. No! jus keeding...

But, if you're the kind who annoys the heck out of the others at a restaurant by letting the flash in your camera run riot during a meal; well, this is for you:

First, don't take multiple shots from multiple angles, kneel on the banquette, or rearrange the table. Jeffrey Porter, cowriter of the blog Drink Eat Love, says he limits himself to "four or five shots." Besides creating an unnecessary disturbance, your dinner might get cold ...

Everyone must have heard the news by now, but I thought these pics are an eery metaphor for Jackson's life, meteoric rise and fall. As TIME says:

The tragedy of Michael Jackson's death at age 50, reportedly from cardiac arrest, pales in comparison to the tragedy of his life.

Why we need Fake Steve Jobs (FSJ). Well, to write pieces like this (I love the part where he compares Jobs / Cook with Kirk / Spock. Priceless!)

BTW, Dan is back with his FSJ blog & I couldn't be happier. Must-read! http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/