Bako bits: From social networking as a marketing tool to rumblings at CSUB to upside down mortgages

Wrapping up the week and cleaning off my desk as we head into another weekend. School starts next week and fall is coming. Let's get to it:

* ... RUMBLINGS OVER AT CSUB: I seem to have hit a nerve with my mention that longtime Cal State community liaison Laura Wolfe had been ousted. (read previous post here) Got a couple calls from CSUB insiders who were lamenting the loss of Laura, who spent 14 years with the university building better relations between the school and the community. Laura worked for Mike Chertok, who retired and was replaced by Beverly Byl, brought in by President Horace Mitchell. Give Horace credit: he has single handedly raised the stature of the university in the community through sheer good will, focus and great personal charm. Which is why insiders are puzzled over the choice of Beverly, who one person described as one who moves through a room with sharp elbows. No doubt the dismissal of Laura Wolfe was a move that addressed two concerns: one budgetary and the other the desire to build your own team. President Mitchell called me and said there was no "personal agenda" in the firing of Wolfe but rather it was a consequence of the budget crisis. He noted, for example, that the state budget contribution to CSUB was less this year than it was five years ago when he came on board. Still, there's lots of chatter about Byl, including her desire to bring all the fund raising under one umbrella as opposed to athletics raising money for one thing and an academic endeavor for another. Folks are talking and the university really can't afford to squander the good will Horace has earned. No doubt there will be more on this later.



* ... MARKETING ON FACEBOOK? Read with interest a piece that said 63 percent of all companies planned to increase their spending on social media this year. That's not too surprising since a recent study by the Association of National Advertisers said 66 percent of marketers have now used social media in some form. The top platforms being utilized: Facebook (74 percent), YouTube (65 percent), Twitter (63 percent) and LinkedIn (60 percent). Locally, a good example would be Mary Christenson, the longtime high end Watson-Touchstone Realtor who has embraced Facebook and made it one of her marketing devices. If she lists a new home in Seven Oaks, she'll post a message on it. Trouble with appraisals? She's all over it. Mary is savvy enough to recognize there's a terrific audience and all it takes is her time. At The Californian, marketing director Rob Meszaros has used Facebook and Twitter extensively in marketing the new Monday-Friday tabloid that debuts next week.

* ... UPSIDE DOWN MORTGAGE? Amazed to read in The Californian yesterday that fully half of all mortgages in Bakersfield are now upside down. That means the homeowners basically owe more than the home is worth, thanks to months of falling housing prices. That can't bode well for future foreclosures. The depth of recession cannot be underestimated. Last week it was reported that one in every 10 mortgages in the entire state of California is in foreclosure.

* ... LATIN SHOW AT METRO GALLERIES: Don Martin over at the Metro Galleries downtown is busy preparing for Latination, a project sponsored by his gallery and MAS magazine. The deadline for entries for the show is next week, so drop them off between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Wednesday over at Metro, 1604 19th Street. Selected pieces in the juried exhibit will be displayed at the gallery during September. Contact Don with any questions at 634-9598.

Bako Bits: slinking back to Cal after a week in Georgia and staying abreast via Twitter

Bits and pieces from around town and some random thoughts heading into the weekend ....

* ALL ABOUT TWITTER ... Am constantly amazed at how technology can change our lives by influencing our habits. My wife can't work out or run without her iPod, my girls select their music and build their play lists never setting foot in a "music store," and I now keep up with news from home via Twitter and a handful of blogs. Spent the last week or so south of Savannah on the sweltering Georgia coast where - by the way - the economy is no better than home. Realtors are struggling, consumers have sharply curtailed their spending and everyone is wondering where the bottom is. Keeping up with Bako is now as simple as "following" a few key folks on Twitter, including a feed called "NewsBakersfield" which does an admirable job aggregating news from The Californian, all the local TV stations and just about everywhere else. Another prolific and interesting person to follow on Twitter is KGET's Kiyoshi Tomono, who does a good job interspersing local news with national events. I can do without Kiyoshi's personal barbs or exchanges with colleagues, but he's worth checking out. Another up and coming "tweeter" is Rachel Legan over at KGFM radio. She's on top of the news and laces it with a dose of wit to keep things interesting.

* DREAM SCHOOL ESSAYS ... Shameless plug for an interesting new website (run by my wife) devoted to helping kids with their college essays. It's called Dream School Essays (check it out here) and the business is aimed at high achieving high schoolers looking for help with those important college essays. Some schools require two to three separate essays as part of the admission requirements, all of different subjects. Given the dismally low percentage of Kern County kids who qualify to attend the UC system, this is a real niche market, but an important one to serve.



* RECOMMENDED SUMMER READING ... Highly recommend the new Malcolm Gladwell book "Outliers," a fascinating examination of why some people succeed and others don't. It explores cultural influences, of course parents, but more interesting things like birthdates that can heavily influence the lives of our children. This is the same guy who wrote "Blink" and "The Tipping Point," two other quality reads.

* PICKING AND GRINNING ... Also recommend a fun website to occasionally visit if you are in the least interested in guitars, called "Playalittleguitar." The author has a quick wit and the site was recently cited by Blogger as one of its most promising and interesting websites. (check it out here)

Twitter's break out day: when it took a revolution to prove a technology

I've written about Twitter before, stressing its importance while advising everyone to get comfortable with the technology. It's fashionable in some circles to dismiss Twitter, or to use it simply to share with the world what you had for breakfast. But sometimes it takes a world-shaking event to disprove all the doubters, and that's exactly what I believe has happened to Twitter with the events transpiring in Iran. Tehran is awash in protests and violence after the election was allegedly stolen, and it's being played out not on the networks or the pages of the newspapers, but on Twitter of all things. Want the latest from witnesses, the Iranians themselves, in their own words, or their own pictures? Go to Twitter. Want analysis? Go to Twitter. If you simply go to the most popular Twitter topics and click on #iranelection, you'll find links to incredibly graphic and timely sites like the one here, or another one here. I'd be happy to give photo credit but the photographers - in obvious fear for their own safety - are simply snapping photos, posting them on Twitter and hope the world is watching. It's time for you to watch from the best seat possible, Twitter. Amazing, isn't it?

Laid off or earning a six-figure salary: it's time to crack a book and get curious about the world

Have a friend who hit me with this the other day: "What's the big deal about Twitter? I don't get it." In fairness to him, a lot of folks don't "get" Twitter and in truth it's not for everybody. But the fact that it's the fastest growing social networking site in the world right now indicates that somebody sees the value in it. So maybe it isn't for you, but does that mean you shouldn't understand it? Or are you so comfortable in your routine that it's easier to simply write it off as another flash in the pan? Thought of this today when I read marketer Seth Godin's blog on lifelong learning. Seth is a master marketer (and yes, some folks don't "get" Seth either) who writes books and sends out a daily musing to those who sign up on his blog. (read the full blog here)
His piece today was aimed at recently graduated college kids who are looking for work, but I think it applies to all of us, no matter our age, our employment status or our interests. The world is full of folks who stopped thinking, and learning, years ago. They're satisfied with having others think for them, stopped reading long ago and are so set in their views of the world that nothing can move them. It's time to crack a book, challenge our assumptions and open up a bit. Seth's recommendations to the college grads:

* Spend twenty hours a week running a project for a non-profit.
* Teach yourself Java, HTML, Flash, PHP and SQL. Not a little, but mastery. [Clarification: I know you can't become a master programmer of all these in a year. I used the word mastery to distinguish it from 'familiarity' which is what you get from one of those Dummies type books. I would hope you could write code that solves problems, works and is reasonably clear, not that you can program well enough to work for Joel Spolsky. Sorry if I ruffled feathers.]
* Volunteer to coach or assistant coach a kids sports team.
* Start, run and grow an online community.
* Give a speech a week to local organizations.
* Write a regular newsletter or blog about an industry you care about.
* Learn a foreign language fluently.
* Write three detailed business plans for projects in the industry you care about.
* Self-publish a book.
* Run a marathon.

Tomorrow's news this second: my relationship with Lance

In what seems like a nanosecond Twitter has gone from a funky nerd tool to a powerful application for businesses and marketers. If you don't yet understand or use Twitter, you need to get with it, because it is changing the rules. At its core, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates, commonly known as tweets. These tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 bytes in length that are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Consider my experience, for example. I "follow" Lance Armstrong's tweets, which allowed me to keep up with Lance during both the Tour of Australia and Tour of California. He talked about his race day, who won and he would often post pictures. I learned of his crash and injury when he sent a tweet himself, within an hour after the crash, and he followed it up with this picture. So by the time I saw this on the TV news, and read about it in the newspapers, not only was I fully informed, but I had heard it from the actual "source" himself, Lance. It renders all media - radio, TV, blogs, websites, newspapers - irrelevant. I also now follow certain tweets of financial experts, who direct me to deep pockets of market and financial analysis. This too has rendered my normal sources of this content - financial websites, the Wall Street Journal etc - less important. Technology changes and defines, and Twitter is doing it in a nanosecond.

A congressman, Twitter and a field of dreams

Spotted this moving picture on Rep. Kevin McCarthy's (R-Bakersfield) Twitter feed and asked him to give me a paragraph or two about the event. The picture speaks for itself - a wonderful day in our community for special needs kids - and it is yet another example of the power of social networking tools like Twitter, which Kevin used to distribute the picture. Kevin has also used Twitter to get feedback on more esoteric concerns like mark to market reform, but it's clear that Twitter has become an important tool to reach out for feedback. Said Kevin, who was in town for a district tour:

"I was honored to participate in the League of Dreams Baseball Day at Fruitvale/Norris Park by throwing out the first pitch. For a lot of parents like myself, we certainly want to see our children learn the values of competition and teamwork. Today was a chance for us to cheer on and encourage those local children who may not always have the chance to put on a jersey. Children with disabilities were able to play baseball and experience the joys of achievement, like crossing home plate. To see the smiles on the kids’ faces as they cross home plate is something every parent should enjoy, and we should recognize Tim Terrio, his staff at Terrio Fitness, and the volunteers for the work they put in to making today possible. The drive and dedication shown by each child today is an inspiration to our community."

Kevin McCarthy (BFF!) and me: at least on Twitter

I was mildly surprised this evening when I went online and found that Congressman Kevin McCarthy, our Bakersfield Republican from the 22nd District, was "following" me on Twitter.com. Now for the uninitiated, understand that Twitter is a type of social networking technology with important implications for businesses and individuals. You establish an account and people "follow" your thoughts (or tweets) online. That's it in its simplest form but if you are not on it, you need to understand it. To this point my Twitter network consisted of a daughter in New York who tweets about bad dates and late, late nights in Soho, a friend in LA who is into really bad haiku, a fellow gym rat and a dear friend in Maryland who is absolutely obsessive about guitars. So it was nice to welcome the chief deputy whip into my world - an upgrade!- but more interesting to see how our congressman is using the power of social networking to spread the GOP gospel and keep his constituents up to date on legislation. Of course Kevin has a website (check it out here) but it seems downright old school compared to the tweet.