Image by alshepmcr It’s a strange world we live in online. Delusions of grandeur call, singing like that sweet Siren in the midst of the sea. To win, we must appear like we are Doing Important Things, but in the end we find our lives dashed on the rocks. I’m speaking about the competitive rat race to see who can get the most social media rock star badges; keynotes, books, followings, awards, blog mentions, yeah! I have to admit, I got caught up in this hooplah again during the past year. Then I looked at my real life (the one I physically walk around in), and my toddler clinging to my pants leg crying every time I moved to the …

How often do we see big dramatic ends to blogs, declarations of account deletions, mass unfollowings on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.? I’m not sure what anyone gains out of these posts and statements other than attention. Personally, I find a pie in the face works just as well! All jokes aside, I know some folks enjoy the discussion, but I don’t. It’s a waste of my bandwidth, and in the case of social networks, these declarations seem to cause more drama than anything else. People don’t need to justify pulling the plug on anything online. How anyone chooses to invest their time is a personal choice! Geoff Livingston on Google+

Image by Fawzan Hasan Sometimes work and life demands that we push ourselves to the limit, that we run at such a high speed our human engines cross the red line. Yet if we do it too long, we lose effectiveness and eventually burn out. Redline refers to operating across the line of demarcation on your car’s tachometer. When a tachometer shows engine speed in the red, it means you are running too hard, possibly causing damage to the components themselves or other parts of the engine. I’ve been redlining it for far too long, due to a variety of reasons and choices. For example, for the past two and a half years I’ve been writing, traveling and promoting two …

The following speech was given at Saturday’s New York City Tribeup. We live in an attention economy. The way content gets found today with social validation and search requires that posts, videos and pictures get referred to and talked about by others. As a blogger, I did well during the RSS era with the Buzz Bin. I sold that blog as part of an acquisition. In the process I lost 5000 RSS subscribers. For a little while, my personal blog did well in its stead based on my social network communities and good will. This created a second wave of success. I then did a bunch of stupid things like cut down frequency, blog without editorial direction, engaged in a …