The CRM Universe - Such as it Is

News & Opinions on Multiple Things

• A few days ago, InsideCRM named my two blogs - this one and CRM 2.0: The Conversation the #1 blog in the CRM world. They named the blogs of two of my closest compadres, Brent Leary and Denis Pombriant, #2 and #3 respectively. There were 20 blogs in all named - one or two of which I didn't know, so they are now a welcome addition to my feed reader. Before I get into the meat of this entry, I want to shout out to Chris Bucholz, who is the mastermind behind InsideCRM and one of ones who doesn't get enough credit for the better than good work he does day in and out. Chris is an accomplished dude, He is the author of several books - on military history (particular airborne) and has a wide ranging interest in many things. Plus, he has a wicked sense of humor. Thing is, the blog he writes at InsideCRM isn't included in this configuration of blogging champs but it should be way up there. It just can't, for obvious reasons. That would be like the employee participating in the contest for the trip to Bermuda, Bahamas, come on pretty mamas (Beach Boys linger, don't they?). But I can put it in my top whatever blogs to read in CRM because it is insightful, knowledgeable and written well - funny at times, always smart and with a clear "that's really Chris Bucholz" voice. Plus he quotes me a lot. Chris has some important insights and is also a wise aggregator - meaning he doesn't provide links because they say CRM and are underlined and blue. He provides links of value that he pre-screens - and his determinations are as the British say, "spot on."

• On this post originally, I had this really peevish little rant about Twitter that I published - meaning it actually went on PGreenblog. But I've since thought about and decided I was in a bad mood when I wrote it so I took out all the petulant parts. But the links are pretty damned cool especially around the uses of Twitter so those I'm leaving in, even though they make this bullet point incoherent. But don't worry about the incoherence and just click on the links.

"Though I think that Twitter is becoming an invaluable business and personal communications tool - especially as we're finding out for customer service activities, for emergency response to some extent, citizen journalism and even citizen "opinion-making" with journalists like Rick Sanchez of CNN, for the interactions of politicos with "the people", for knowledge-sharing and even quick IM-like communications. It also has a remarkable number of good software clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl (for those of you wedded to Outlook, there's Outwit) and a few useful analytical tools like Mr. Tweet, that does some simple social network analysis of your Twitter followers and followings so that it can suggest who else you follow....... See Hubspot's State of the Twitterverse, 2008. Thanks to Ryan Zuk of Sage for this one and while you're at it, check out Ryan's smart blog Critic(al) Mass)....... Remember the Edelman Trust Barometer's most trusted source is "someone like me.") - as an additional tool on my belt for communication that allows me to accomplish things I need to in the world outside of Twitter....."

The rest was just kind of mean. So since I'm not a mean person, just uset the links in good health and forget what I originally wrote which isn't worth the lines through it to show......

• Now that this round of holidays is past and 2009 begins (thank goodness - even with a recession, I'm glad for a new year), I'm excited about the prospects for CRM. I won't discuss what I think is going to happen. If you want to check that out, go to my ZDNET blog and look at six of my last seven posts which totally covers all that. Here are the links: Trends #1. Trends #2. Trends #2.1. Companies to Watch #1. Companies to Watch #2. Companies to Watch #3. But that's just my stuff. There are a number of noteworthy 2009 forecasters struttin' their stuff. First, check out Denis Pombriant's forecast on CRM 2009. Okay, when you're done with that, go to Bill Band's, Forrester's CRM guru, thinking as posted on SearchCRM. Finished? Okay, take a short break - drink a cuppa java and now on to Bill Band on InternetNews about 2009. Next up, InsideCRM who taps Maximizer's CTO, Will Anderson with some interesting and cogent and only mildly self-interested (Maximizer is going big in the mobile world - rightfully so though - because that is a trend) and then Chris Bucholz asks the same of Birst CEO Brad Peters & their VP of Operations Paul Staelin, which, while somewhat more self-interested in their forecast than Maximizer's CTO, are still worth a read (Birst, for those of you who don't know, is a smart player in the world of business intelligence for small and medium businesses). Now, time for a cocktail if you're so inclined or perhaps tea and scones, or maybe even a quick workout if you'd rather lose holiday weight. Okay, now take a deep breath and go take a look at Peter Kim's 2009 Social Media Predictions which actually are a document full of social media luminaries making their interesting and cogent predictions on where social media is going to go this year. A really good effort. Finally, not exactly a prediction or forecast but areally good combination of David Sims of TMCNet, arguably the most literate and best writer in CRM, inteviewing Dave Van Toor, seer and visionary for Sage's CRM practice where Dave looks at social media and CRM in a really smart way.

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Comments

[Troy Bingham Dialer]

I'm a little bummed. I was glad you were hard on Twitter. Keep up the good work.

[PaulSweeney]

I think the beauty of this twitter-thing, is that twitter itself has just made itself an open-closed infrastructure (an entirely new breed of infrastructure as well). Paul Greenberg will find an approach and desktop client to suit his needs (Tell me when these 20 people update, and these 100 private enterprise vendor tweets, but close it off to everyone else). I have to agree with the mirror-kissing but I think this may be just some early hippy-hugging of early day internet stuff in 2.0 (not that I don't think that's nice also). But hey, remember the day when people were complaining that companies were making a strip mall of the internet?

[Paul Greenberg]

I'm not arguing that 5 million isn't a lot of people or an insignificant number. What tires me is that there is enough self-congratulatory behavior to make me slow up on my participation. I love Twitter as I mention above. I just don't love kissing a mirror. AND I see more of that than I care to. Do you, Axel, care about somebody having 2000 followers or the content that Twitter provides to you or the individual relationships that become or are meaningful? In my case, the latter two mean a lot, the former ZERO.

[Axel Schultze]

I'm not arguing pro or con Twitter but about the values it is measured by. ONLY 5 Million people. Hmm. The US population is about 5% of the world population a tine minority, an insignificant number. Should we just ignore that group? I twitter not because of the size of it's mass but because of the outstanding qualities of its people. One may argue about the qualities of the twitterverse. Well - it's up to all of us to select and converse with whom we won't and don't. The price of freedom YOU have to DECIDE!