8 things that happen when you announce a new idea

The few days after we announced APML were very interesting for us. We experienced all sorts of fairly subtle forces occurring in the early-adopter community that I thought I would document for everyone to consider.

They included:

1. Genuine joy and interest in announcing and participating in new ideas and technologies.
   We can't be more grateful to the people who covered APML. They have engaged us with questions, clarified our position with us and have offered to get involved to help things become real. They seem to understand that for sustained innovation to occur, this thing can't become a 'me too' or 'mine' culture.
   
   
2. Massive influxes of traffic
   It goes to show that when you have something to say that is of interest to a lot of people, those people will come. We often get massive spikes in traffic as we announce the pieces to our strategy and the APML announcement was no different. It was due in no small part to the great people who helped us post the news so quickly and effectively.
   
   
3. Great email feedback and offers of help.
   We have had offers for involvement from massive brands and industry leaders who see the value in Attention Profiling as it relates (for now) to describing one's ranked interests. They understand that this is not academic. We have already implemented this stuff and that the proposal is an outcropping of our development work - it is already reality. They understand we are doing something that established players like Google and Amazon or newer players have not even tried to do. We are lifting the lid on our very valuable information and allowing the user to control their Attention Profile in the spirit of AttentionTrust.
   
   
4. We became one of the Memes of the day.
   We ended up on Techmeme and Tailrank - very cool!
   
   
5. A growing level of jaded apathy.
   Some people can't seem to be bothered with a new idea. It has (in their minds) either 'been done' or 'too hard'. They don't understand that an idea (and announcing that you have one) can be the catalyst for a discussion, not the end of a conversation. Some even say the conversation is overcooked. Well I think people are still talking about construction and we have been doing that for a few years too ;)
   
   
6. An active resistance to new ideas.
   Speaking of the 'mine' culture. No one owns ideas. Or even problem domains. They are free. Especially when you declare them free and open. Some people seem to have forgotten that. When you call for involvement and participation, some people will disagree with you and some people will fork what you do. That's what keeps things iterating and improving.
   
   
7. Two wildly different reactions on Digg and an obvious indication that Digg seems to be in the process of being overrun by children and trolls.
   We have been Digged twice now and each time it has had the same result. Little or no action (i.e. new subscribers to the mailing list or active/constructive conversation on the blog/forum).
   
   In particular the APML announcement generated two separate Digg posts by two different people. One in the Software category which generated lots of 'great idea' type comments and the other in the 'Tech Industry News' category which brought out lots of trolls who made rude, off-topic or ill-considered comments. So it seems like a growing number of Digg's audience is interested in the next funny thing rather than getting involved with an idea. It's a shame that so many people can have so little to contribute.
   
   
8. And most disturbing of all is an inability for many bloggers to glean perfectly simple and clear information from 2 pages of content - causing them to have to ask questions that have simple and obvious answers. This has lead me to wonder if people actually read the page and considered all the facts before posting about it.
   I don't expect journalistic instincts and a hunger for the truth (in fact most Journalists can't even pull that off these days), but it seems like some bloggers couldn't get their facts straight even when the facts were staring them right in the face. They would quote a piece of content from the site that stated a fact, and then they would ask a question as if the answer wasn't right there in front of them! Very weird.
   

I wonder what is happening to our little bubble (the one I can't even bring myself to call Web 2.0 anymore), maybe it is time for it to pop so that people who are interested in getting things done can do so without all the noise.

In time though APML (after it has gone through revisions with all the thought leaders) will become an important piece of the puzzle.

So in closing - I would like to thank the people who fit into the first few items on my list and helped with the APML announcement and discussion (please don't feel bad if I left you out - too much going on in my head!) - Alex Barnett, Stowe Boyd, Noah Brier, Steve Gillmor, Seth Goldstein, Frank Gruber, Marjolein Hoekstra, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Randal Leeb-du Toit, Mitch Ratcliffe, Marianne Richmond, John Tropea, Martin Wells, Vincent van Twillert and my friends and colleagues Nik, Steve and Ash.