If you publish online get ready for a lesson in humility.

Brands quit publishing content for the exact same reason that many individuals stop publishing content: the brutal reality that nobody cares. As someone who creates and publishes a lot of content online (roughly six Blog posts and one audio Podcast every week), there is both a certain humility and instant humiliation that comes along with the process.

The cream rises to the top.

Even in a world where two hundred billion videos get viewed every month, the cream still does rise to the top (as the saying goes). It's just that we seem to have a lot more cream and it's fallen into many different niches. With that cream comes a lot of stuff that falls to the bottom. And, that bottom-feeding content, is the vast majority - especially when it comes to content that is related to business - of what populates corporately operated content marketing platforms . Not everyone gets the video viral success of Will It Blend? and few will get the same impact from their corporate Blogs as Dell has had. The other challenge is in maintaining this attention and consistently delivering content that rises to the top.

Content creation can be a humiliating process.

I've spent many evenings tapping away at the keyboard, as the ideas flowed in a fast and furious pace. I've hit the "publish" button thinking to myself, "this could well be my best Blog post to date," only to find out a short while later that nobody cared. The post wasn't picked up, tweeted about on Twitter, shared, liked on Facebook and only generated a few (if any) comments.

What did I get? Digital tumbleweeds or virtual crickets.

I don't care what Simon & Garfunkel tell you, the sound of silence is not pretty a pretty sound at all. In the pre-Social Media world, we used to publish our thoughts, but before that stage we had a semblance of validation. The publishers, editors and fellow content creators gave that validation to us, by agreeing to publish our work in the first place. Even when the work may have been sub-par, sometimes the brand that published the content helped carry it. I'd even argue that the public's reaction to that content mattered significantly less than the fact that it was published. The validation of content came from it being published more than it's widely accepted appeal to the masses. Now - in a world where the half-life of a Blog post can be less than twelve hours - you can tell if your work resonates... or if it's digital tumbleweeds.

How to win friends and influence people.

Countless Blog posts and seminars have been produced on how to get your content to rise up and be heard. While there are certain "tricks" that can be pulled off (a catchy headline, a cute picture of a puppy, a how-to-list, something that will make people laugh, cry, think... or all of the above), there is still a "secret sauce" that makes some content work. Having conducted over three hundred interviews with industry leaders, one common thread of thought is pervasive: the majority of content creators are just as surprised as anyone else is when one piece of content works while another is met with digital tumbleweeds. They often feel like their best work is not met with the attention they anticipated and that the content they felt was filler is the stuff that their community ran with.

The real-time analytics is us.

The true humility and humiliation of Social Media is not what the web analytics tell us... it's what the audience does (or doesn't do) with the content. You can buy audience, links and clicks, but you can't buy people who care and want to share whatever it is that you are doing. Ultimately, the humiliation should not stop us... it should drive us. Everyday is a new opportunity to connect and engage, so the brands that give up, don't try or tinker with their content are completely missing the point. Some stuff will rise to the top while other stuff will be met with digital tumbleweeds. It's the nature of the beast. The trick is in being able to identify that - over the long-haul (and yes, it takes a significant amount of time to garner any semblance of traction) - you need to look at the entire body of work as a benchmark for if your content resonates. It's also wise to use those daily moments of humiliation from digital tumbleweeds as a compass for what resonates... and what doesn't.

How do you deal with the digital tumbleweeds and virtual crickets?

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post called, Media Hacker. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

• The Huffington Post - Social Media and the Humiliation Effect.

By Mitch Joel

Episode #291 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

This is also episode #20.20 of Across The Sound. Joseph Jaffe is widely regarded as one of the top Marketing Bloggers (Jaffe Juice) and Podcasters (both Jaffe Juice in audio and Jaffe Juice TV in video). He is the author of three excellent books (Life After The 30-Second Spot, Join The Conversation and Flip The Funnel). A long-time friend (and one of the main inspirations behind the Six Pixels of Separation Blog and Podcast), we've decided to hold monthly conversations, debates and back-and-forths that will dive a little deeper into the Digital Marketing and Social Media landscape. This is our 20th conversation (or, as I like to affectionately call it, Across The Sound 20.20). This week, we talk about Joe's latest venture, Evol8tion, and what can happen when Madison Avenue meets Mountain View. Are technology startups the future of marketing? Jaffe is banking on it. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #291.

By Mitch Joel

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

• The Antikythera Mechanism. "I'm kind of obsessed with this thing. It's a piece of machinery built in around 100 BC by the Greeks. It's a computer that can calculate astronomical positions - a thousand years too early. It's so awesome, there's even a song about it. The Greeks knew all sorts of things about disease, math and science. But Emperor Justinian, and church leaders after him, made such 'pagan teachings' heresy and human progress was delayed for centuries. In the middle of the Republican primaries, every time I see well-proven, well-understood things like evolution or global warming or vaccination called into question, I think of this mechanism. Where would we be today if we'd had mechanical computers two thousand years ago, and if reason weren't such a dirty word?" (Alistair for Hugh).
• 25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore - Open Salon. "The only thing rougher than being a publisher these days is being a bookstore owner. I found this list by owner J L Sathre to be broadly applicable to all manner of small businesses. It's full of obvious -- but seldom implemented -- wisdom." (Alistair for Mitch).
• A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors. "I, for one, welcome our robot overloards." (Hugh for Alistair).
• The Caging Of America - The New Yorker. "The US is prison-mad. Why? This is a wonderful bit of writing." (Hugh for Mitch).
• Jonathan Franzen Continues to Hate Technology - The Atlantic. "This reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit where the old curmudgeonly man would say, 'back in my day, we didn't have games! We'd just stare at the sun... and we liked it that way!' I was never one to love sayings like, 'back in the good old days.' In this feature the technophobic author says things like: 'The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology,' and 'I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn't change.' Do people who think and say these things even know what they fear? You can spill water on a paperback and still read it? Huh? The last time I spilled a coffee on a book, it went straight to the recycling bin. A sense of permanence? If someone takes my book, it's gone. If my house burns down, my books are gone. I can buy another Kindle and just re-download everything I own. Also, publishers can make available multiple editions and let consumers chose which edition they want. Digital feels more permanent and accident proof to me." (Mitch for Alistair).
• No Joke: Alain de Botton Wants To Build Temples To Atheism - Fast Company Design. "Whether Alain de Botton is doing this as a publicity stunt to promote his latest book, Religion For Atheists, or if is he's dead serious, it is this kind of thinking that we - as a society - should think about embracing. Everyone should have the right to believe in God (or not). That being said, none of us can deny the amazing things that humankind has accomplished in such a relatively short matter of time... whether it was with the help of God or not." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

By Mitch Joel

Most companies change dramatically after their initial public offering.

There is a reason that Facebook is going public. And while many are speculating as to the reasons by digging through the company's SEC filing, I think Facebook is going public because it needs to now compensate those who have built it to become the impressive empire that it truly is. It may be a simplistic view, but that's my view. The bigger question that is on everybody's mind is: will Facebook change once they are a public company? The answer is, without a doubt, "yes!"

Is that a bad thing?

No. Not at all. Let's face it: Facebook has been changing since it first started. Does Google look anything like Google before its IPO? What about Apple? The best companies, the most innovative companies are the ones who flow in a constant state of iterative change and evolution. Facebook's challenge comes from its size. The sheer volume of users and the sheer value of the valuation will make it have to perform unlike any company that has come before it. When you have over 800 million users (and closely approaching one billion users), any move (big or small) will ruffle feathers and create backlash within the user community. It's a part of the Facebook ecosystem and you can expect that to increase as the public takes stock in the business.

Applaud Mark Zuckerberg.

In preparation for the IPO, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, embedded a "letter to the shareholders" within the SEC filing (to read the full letter, please go here: Fast Company - Mark Zuckerberg Hacks S-1 Filing With Letter To Shareholders On Eve Of Facebook IPO) that stated: "Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected. We think it's important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us, how we make decisions and why we do the things we do... We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services." While Facebook may not have been created to be a company. It is now a company. A big company. And it's soon to be a company that will answer to Wall Street. I thoroughly enjoyed Zuckerberg's letter and said a silent prayer that Wall Street will listen to what he and the company would like to do. Yes, I'm still that naive (I'd like to think that I'm hopeful for change).

So, what can we expect from Facebook? (here comes the armchair quarterback...)

• A change in people. Once the company becomes public a lot of people will become millionaires. The money will change a vast majority of these people. Some will retire, others will take the money to start their own ventures, many of them will lose their motivation and the majority of them will just go bonkers because they're rich (plastic surgery, fancy cars, big houses, etc...). This has nothing to do with Facebook and is much more an indictment of humanity. It happens in every other business, it will happen at Facebook. They are going to have to replace or augment many of the people who have been there for a long while. This will change the culture and possible product development.
• Mobile. To stay competitive, Facebook is going to have to up their game when it comes to both mobile devices and smartphones. This is where Twitter was making the most advances and now Facebook is going to have to ensure that the mobile and smartphone Facebook experience is as good (if not better) than the Web-based one.
• Touch. While many people simply access Facebook via the web browsers on their iPad and tablets, having a native app that works with a touch navigation (and all of the powerful and different usability that comes along with it) is going to become a much more important component of how Facebook evolves. We are quickly moving to a touchscreen world and Facebook will need to become a leader in this charge.
• Beyond the wall. It started when Facebook started allowing people to embed the "like" button anywhere and everywhere, but Facebook is going to have to open up the platform beyond its walled garden. This may not get as extreme as having true data portability, but with the pending slew of connected TVs, Apple television, Google TV and more, people are going to want to access Facebook within many of these new environments and Facebook should welcome the opportunity to be anywhere and everywhere.
• Currency.  I Blogged about this extensively in March of last year (F-Commerce - Rise Of The Facebook Consumer). With close to one billion connected people, Facebook is not only more populated than the majority of countries, but they have the ability to develop and use their own currency system. It may sound crazy, but one look at Facebook Credits and we could be seeing the very nascent stages of an entirely new monetary system. The idea of people spending money in Facebook and having Facebook provide both the security and transaction to do so is not so far-fetched of an idea anymore.
• Marketing. The dollars mentioned in the SEC filing says it all. Facebook has been profitable for the past three years, and a good chunk of the coin has been from advertising revenue. Facebook is much more than a media channel that can fill slots with advertising. The marketing opportunities behind this engine have yet to truly be developed. It is a rich land full of powerful data that knows a lot about people - from where they are and what they like to who they are connected to and what those people are doing. If you think - for a second - that it's only about advertising, you would be sorely mistaken. Facebook and the marketing that comes along with it will be one of the biggest opportunities for the brand... while at the same time it will create the most discussion from the users.

In the end, I'm hopeful that Facebook will change dramatically... but for the better. What do you think?

By Mitch Joel