Being Interesting is Not Enough: Be Useful

How to Be Useful (Photo by Robert Banh, cc-by license)

I used to be fond of saying that the best advice for content-centric businesses on the web was a simple commandment:

Above all, be interesting – everything else will follow from that

Being interesting is still necessary, of course – if you’re trying to create a content-centric business and your content isn’t interesting, you’re in big trouble.

But is being interesting sufficient? In an attention economy, where interesting content is ubiquitous, and what’s truly rare is the users’ attention? In an era where every company is a media company?

In the era of the Assembled Web, where consumers expect to find content, community, and commerce pervasively and persistently throughout their online experience, is it enough to just be interesting?

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Assembled Web and Social Media

Thought I’d share a quick embedded presentation here for folks who aren’t yet following me on SlideShare. (Although after performing tag-team PowerPoint Karaoke at PodCamp Boston, perhaps I should think twice?).

The goal of the presentation- a sanitized (client references removed) version of one given to a client this week – was to talk about:

• Social Media (and specifically how to get started with it)
• Facebook (and other social network applications)
• The iPhone (and other mobile platforms)

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You Can Take it With You – WordPress App for the iPhone

I can’t wait for the next version of the WordPress iPhone application, which will include:

• comment moderation – including batch edit
• page editing – creation of new pages as well as changes to existing pages
• Landscape mode – the wider keyboard is much easier for fat-thumbed typists like me
• Easier link creation – separate entry of link and title so you don’t have to do the whole <a href="url" > title </a> nonsense while writing

The app already does basic post creation with photos (from library or upload from phone), local draft mode, and scheduled publish.

Here’s a video preview of 1.2:

Best of all, the app itself is open source – and they’re looking for help testing. So go get the SDK, which lets you run the simulator, and check it out.