More importantly, I’m constantly adjusting the news sources that I subscribe to on Twitter, Netvibes, and via email to keep things manageable (I support information environmentalism). For example, I used to subscribe to TechCrunch by email and follow Mashable on Twitter. I unsubscribed to both because it was simply too much to keep up with and found I usually stumbled on the most of the important articles from there anyway.

Here is what my bookmarking habit currently looks like:

Safari

My Safari bookmarks are probably the least updated. The Bookmarks Bar organizes the sites I most frequently visit (forums, personal accounts, social networks, etc.) and the many subfolders I have such as Social Web, Blog, Cars, Apple, Web Dev, Work, and Misc organize all the sites I want to keep handy.

Twitter

I follow a lot of people who share interesting things. That little star next to every tweet may not get a lot of use from most people but for me it’s used to bookmark tweets I want to check out later. My favorites usually include blog posts, articles, video’s, and the occasional good quote.

Instapaper

Love Instapaper. I now use it daily when it comes to long blog posts or articles that I can read during down time. I save these to Instapaper using the site or the incredibly easy Safari/iPhone bookmarklet. Because of the ease of use, Instapaper has quickly become one of my most used iPhone apps while commuting. Syncing is usually flawless and cool app features like auto-tilting and several sharing options make it miles ahead of most of the other popular News related apps.

Delicious

I use Delicious (lie a lot of people) for articles that I’ve read once then want to save and possibly refer to later. I think it’s too time consuming to try and include descriptions so I stick to relevant tags which help me easily filter my 900+ bookmarks. Sometimes I bookmark 5-10 articles a day, and sometimes my account is dry for days. What you find here will typically double-up with my Twitter and Instapaper bookmarks.

Other Thoughts

Of course, there is no right or wrong technique when it comes to bookmarking but I find this system works well for me. So how does all of this relate to marketing a new site or content online?

Marketers :: most social media strategies right now focus on trying to get more Diggs, Facebook fans, and Twitter followers. Some Twitter apps like Tweetie are now including an easy way to see other people’s favorites, so I think it will slowly become a more popular way for users to discover new content. I usually keep a close eye on who’s bookmarking my blog posts on Delicious and I don’t see why any brand or blog wouldn’t do the same. Just like Quantcast and Compete, Delicious can also be used to gauge popularity of any site (Ex. TechCrunch vs. Mashable or Apple vs. Microsoft).

Publishers :: although an app like Instapaper still has a small user base, it should be on your radar. In the same way the DVR has disrupted TV, apps like Instapaper that get rid of ads and place all the content on one page instead of 6 will continue to gain in popularity. The most frequently bookmarked articles on Instapaper and Delicious are also great places to get a sense of what people are reading and sharing online. Any publisher on Twitter can also see who’s favoring their tweets using Favstar.fm.

It started with this message on Friendfeed:

Although this amount of money isn’t enough to significantly change someone life, the post still led to a response of over 1,400 comments. When I saw he was giving it away on Friendfeed, I was interested to get Scoble’s thinking behind this approach so I asked him a few questions:

After you decided to give the money away, was doing it through Friendfeed your first reaction? Why didn’t you just give it to a charity?

I wanted to do something online instead of just giving money to a charity. I think it worked out wonderfully.

Do you think it would have worked if given away through Twitter?

Twitter wouldn’t be usable because I wouldn’t have been able to group replies like this. Also, I like Friendfeed a lot more and it’s more reliable and nicer for conversations.

One of the winners, Margaret, is using the money to help bring an Egyptian girl who suffers from a condition called arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (like her own son) to Philadelphia for the surgeries. The condition affects 1 in 3000 and results in multiple fixed limbs and joint contractures. The $1,750 that she will be getting from Robert Scoble is only a small chunk of the $25,000 needed to cover all the trip’s expenses, but it has certainly gotten her a lot closer. You can find out more and donate money at the Big Life, Big Spirit website or follow @bigspirit on Twitter. I asked her:

Would you have ever thought being a Friendfeed user would have helped you get closer to your fundraising goal?

I have had more luck leveraging Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed for donations and awareness than my associate has with letter writing. It really was a fluke that I saw the contest. I hadn’t been on FriendFeed in awhile and just logged in. I saw the contest and realized it was ending that day. Any chance I get to promote Dolagy and the AMC community, is worth a shot. I posted the story and honest to god, I was speechless when I saw I won. The kindness of strangers sometimes blows me away. Actually since my son was born, my life has changed so much for the positive. Thanks to FriendFeed, Twitter, etc. I have gotten contacts to help publicize our efforts, look for Luxor-based videographers to capture her living conditions now (no luck yet but still hoping) and dozens of ideas on how to continue our efforts.

I think the social media community is so much tighter and willing to help each other. You would be amazed at the number of emails, tweets and messages I have gotten from people offering to help look over content, call a friend, offer a few dollars. When I started this project back in July I never honestly knew how valuable my online community would become to me. The full story of Jude, Dolagy, Shriners and myself is truly powerful and a strong example how you can be connected to someone you never met.

The other two winners were just as deserving – a student from England who will use the money to help pay for tuition and an art studio that was damaged during a California wildfire.

Her example is solid proof that all charities should now be putting a majority of their fundraising focus on social communities instead of traditional methods. In this example, Friendfeed made it easy to create an open thread that was easy for Scoble to read through and filter later on.

Connect with me on Twitter @jsmakr. Further Reading: Well Wishes $2 You & Neighbors + Neighborhoods.

The image hosting service TwitPic has become one of the most popular 3rd party services for Twitter. Because of its popularity, most of the mobile Twitter apps that are available offer an easy way to upload pictures directly to TwitPic to post along with your text update.

While breaking events and celebrity photos generally get the most views, you can browse through the hundreds of the pictures being uploaded every couple of minutes by typing ‘twitpic’ into Twitter Search. Without any stats, I thought a little about what people are most likely uploading the most to TwitPic and came up with these 5 things (click on them to see the latest Twitter search results or click on image to enlarge).

1. Sunsets

When you get to witness a great sunset, your first reaction is likely to take a picture if you have a camera. For Twitter users, that first reaction is taking a picture, uploading it to TwitPic, then posting it to Twitter. Almost as frequently as sunsets, people are tweeting pictures of rainbows.

2. Dessert

What is it about desserts that makes us want to remember what they looked like before we devour them? Probably because for most of us it’s a rare occasion. Thanks for making everyone else on Twitter jealous but just remember who is going to be feeling better after it’s all gone.

3. Puppies

Puppy pics might be a close tie with cute babies. Either way, Cute Overload should be paying attention.

4. Driving

Probably not the a great idea (especially while holding onto an iced coffee) but people are doing it anyway. Hopefully your next tweet won’t include a TwitPic of your car accident.

5. Drunk Photos

Why only regret drunk dialing or texting one of your friends when now you can reach several people at once through drunk Twittering? I say do whatever you can to share these funny moments with everyone (Twitter can be too serious), just don’t drop your iPhone doing so.

We should also start to see more drunk videos posted through Qik, Seesmic, and 12seconds.tv as more phones come with video recording options. This is only going to continue to get more interesting as Twitter adoption grows and as mobile phones come equipped with higher resolution cameras. I hope TwitPic considers adding a better way to sort and view the best pictures being uploaded.

Any other common or funny trends that you have noticed lately?

Leave a comment below with a link to some other good Twitter search results or TwitPic’s you have come across. Connect with me on Twitter @jsmakr.

In this interview, Tony Hsieh talks about the several ways the company differentiates itself (many of which are widely known but others not). He also goes on to mention that Zappos releases a book every year called The Culture Book that consists of authentic employee responses when they are asked what the Zappos culture means to them. I got a hold of this year’s book by emailing Tony. After browsing the book and reading through some of the responses, you immediately get the feeling that Zappos employees are very proud of working for the company no matter what position they hold (book is organized by departments).

So why put this book together? The answer to that is not clear, but the book says it does get “distributed to employees, prospective employees, business partners, and even some customers.” So that alone should tell you it’s very likely used as an effective way of recruiting new employees and further proving to the business world that Zappos is onto something.

Your employees are happy and they are not afraid to tell their story, why wouldn’t you want everyone to know?

Besides this interview, there is already tons of discussion on what differentiates Zappos as a company and now as a major brand, but I keep finding myself amazed at how seriously they take employee and customer satisfaction and how open they are with sharing their reasons for success. Tony’s presentation from a conference last year on how they got to $1 billion is sales is even available on Slideshare.

When I posted about the Zappos Culture book on Twitter, Julio Fernandez (@SocialJulio) replied with this important question:

Whatever happens, I think the Zappos story is becoming more valuable as time goes on and as they continue growing with very little marketing. Email Tony to get a free copy of The Culture Book (he replied to me within a few hours and I had the book in 2 days) or buy a copy on their site.

Why aren’t all wireless carriers offering a similar online activation option for newly purchased cell phones?

Sure, no other company has iTunes to incorporate into this process, but it should not be very hard to build a website specifically for this purpose and have it mimic what Apple and AT&T have done with the iPhone. This will drastically cut the time needed for a customer to be in a physical store or on the phone once their new cell phone is in their possession. Also, another advantage of giving the customer the power to choose their own calling plan and features is the elimination of common employee errors.

I could understand how this might not be convenient for everyone. Only because some people like to leave a store with a working cell phone. In most cases now, everyone should have a working old phone until the new one is activated. Also, if you are porting a number over from another wireless carrier, it usually takes some time for the number to transfer over. Most people would not want to wait in a store for that period of time to make sure it has transferred successfully. Porting my number from Verizon to AT&T took less than an hour and I was sent email updates of the process which was added security.

I think this new activation process that Apple and AT&T introduced for the iPhone is being overlooked because of all the hype about the phone itself. I hope wireless carriers are quietly taking notice. Customers are more informed now about their cell phone options and do not need the help of sales associates to make decisions on purchasing and activating.

As companies make this type of service available, it is up to them to make sure people are aware of it. Apple did this by releasing one of their video tutorials, which is how I first found out about activating the iPhone at home. If this is adopted by companies and consumers, I can imagine this option could save wireless carriers millions of dollars by decreasing employee labor and possibly decreasing retail space.

This article is meant to help people who are thinking about employment with any of these retailers. I worked many years in retail when I was younger and this article will cover 5 of the retail jobs I held before graduating college.

What I am going to do is give a general summary of my experience working at these stores and whatever additional information comes to mind. This article from Fast Company also got me thinking and I may go into further detail on some of this retail experience at a later time. Some of the things I will briefly cover now are: training, job difficulty, and pay. I worked in these stores from 2000 to late 2006 and have them listed in order of employment, starting with Staples when I was youngest and ending with Cingular – the new AT&T. I have moved on since then to the corporate world.

What everyone should take into consideration while reading this (which should be common sense), is that my experience certainly does not represent the way it will be at every store. I think the two factors that will play the biggest roles in an overall retail work experience are: the employees you work with (management in particular) and the customers you will have to deal with. The hourly pay will also vary between different locations and your prior experience. So let’s begin…

Staples (approx. $7/hr)

Here, I mainly worked the customer service desk which meant being a cashier and answering the phone. Training was mainly one-on-one from what I remember and the POS system was very easy to use. The environment was OK and I was fortunate to work with some nice people. Management focused a lot on the store image. This is basically your local grocery store for office supplies. Most people came in, got what they needed and were on their way.

There were no real benefits since I only worked part-time. One downside was most of the employees were very lazy in my store so you couldn’t really depend on anyone to get something done. Overall, a pretty easy and simple job with decent pay if you are young. I worked at a fast food restaurant for my very first job, and this was certainly a huge step up from mopping greasy floors and changing garbage bags full of soda.

Overall Rating 4/5

Radio Shack (approx. $7/hr + commission)

I spent the longest time here out of all these jobs, for no particular reason. I honestly don’t know how Radio Shack is still in business. Who goes there to buy anything but resistors and fuses anymore? The training was not very good which makes it tough to help the customers who come in looking for small parts. Most of the time after searching for 20 minutes you’d find out the $1 part they needed was out of stock anyway. It’s hard training yourself on the 2,000 small parts and accessories Radio Shack sells. Be ready to try and sell and then up sell customers on the stores products, especially cell phones and satellite installations.

These are smaller stores which means it will not be as busy as the larger retailers. There were many slow days & nights when you did nothing for hours except maybe sell a phone battery to a senior citizen and stock products. Not good for the paycheck, but less stressful. All employees had to attend a monthly training class which usually focused only on selling cell phones and satellite service. The POS system was not very user friendly. Avoid this store if it is not in a busy location and if you are not very good at sales because you will end up working for close to minimum wage with no real benefits for part-time employees.

Overall Rating 3/5

Circuit City (approx. $10/hr)

I worked here for one holiday season, the busiest time for a store like this. Training was mainly computer and reading material based, so very dry and boring. It is a large store with many employees and managers so you will get to know a lot of people. Prior to me working there, the pay structure was much better because of higher paying commissions. It then changed unfavorably for the employees, obviously to save the company money. So while I was there, the only commission that was made was by selling extended warranties.

The employee discount was average at best. It’s nothing spectacular considering better deals can now sometimes be found online at other retailers. Just to warn you, working on a Black Friday meant everyone needed to be there 5am and work the registers for 12 hours straight. Management did focus a lot on overall store sales here and everybody’s sales were tracked to see who wasn’t selling. Most of the employees besides a few really didn’t know much about what they were selling which shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. But the customers that came in generally were not very tech savvy either.

Overall Rating 2/5

Apple (approx. $11/hr + quarterly commission bonus)

I applied here right around the time I started becoming interested in Apple products. A new store was opening very close to home so I applied online. I ended up getting the job even though I was not very knowledgeable with Apple products (I didn’t even own an iPod). The interview was conducted with 6 people in one room and was about 30 minutes long. They asked me about my prior retail sales experience and asked me some general questions about Apple products, which were not difficult since I told them I was new to Apple. Training was 6 full days from 9-6 in a nearby hotel before the store opened. If you are hired for an already established store, I believe you train mainly on the back computer and during regular hours with an assistant manager. There are ongoing training classes held in the store on Apple’s software titles which management encourages you attend.

You will work with a very diverse group of people. They try to hire genuinely nice people, so if that is one of your traits, you should get along with mostly everyone. Weekdays were OK here, but Saturdays were extremely busy. Especially since the store I worked in was not very large and located in a very busy shopping mall. There were days when I worked from the beginning to the end of my shift non-stop (besides breaks). You do get a couple 15 minute breaks and one 30 minute break if you work a full shift.

Partial benefits were available to part-time employees and full benefits with 401k and stock options available to full-time employees. Employee discount was 25% once a year and 15% three times a year on hardware, and a crummy 10% to use anytime in the store. They don’t give any discounts on software but you should be supplied with the latest iWork, iLife, and a free .Mac account for your length of employment. All employees at my store also received an iPod nano before opening which you get to keep after a certain amount of time. I believe they may have stopped giving out the iPod’s for new stores though.

The quarterly bonus depended on how well the store did and on the total hours you worked. As long as you are in a busy store (which most all Apple stores are nowadays), you can expect a pretty good commission check. All your sales are tracked on an individual basis and each month you sit down with a manager to see where you are not performing. All employees now have to use the wireless EZ-Pay systems that email purchase receipts so this means many repetitive conversations with customers explaining to them how the system worked and convincing them that there was no need for a paper receipt. Overall, it was good job. I got to learn a lot about Apple products and also got a MacBook Pro at 25% off.

Overall Rating 4/5

AT&T Wireless (approx. $12/hour + commission)

The interview was held with the store manager. They look for people who are knowledgeable with mobile phones and wireless technology. The training will either be in store or a week long out of store if there is one being held close to your time of hire. Once you are hire, there are online training courses which must be completed regularly. The stores are smaller in size but can get very busy on the weekends and many weekday nights. The store itself does not carry a large inventory which makes it easier to keep organized and stocked.

Another job that is hourly pay plus commission. Your sales will vary depending on the time of year, how aggressive you are, and some luck. It is a pretty competitive environment because of the large commission aspect so be prepared to work for your sales. What made it kind of hard to sell was not having many good phones to sell at low prices. Most people nowadays expect a free phone with a 2 year contract, but it was rare to see that while I worked there. Full-time employees get full benefits with 401k and paid time off. The biggest perk is getting a free cell phone to use with unlimited minutes and data, but on an average network.

Overall Rating 3/5

In Conclusion…

I do not regret working any of these jobs. I was able to save a good amount of money and pay for all my expenses through college. I learned a lot from my experience and I think some of the things I learned to deal with have helped me become a better rounded person. Most importantly, you will learn how to interact with people, how to deal with stress, and many other selling and customer service skills which can help you a great deal in business.

Please correct me if I am wrong about anything in this article. Let me know about your own experiences with these stores or any other retail job.

I registered 55 domains (for example, truemors.net, .de, .biz, truemours, etc, etc). I had no idea that one had to buy so many domains to truly “surround” the one you use. Yes, I could have registered fewer and spent less, but who cares about saving a few hundred bucks compared to the cost of legal action to get a domain away from a squatter if Truemors is successful?

I wonder if Guy is already aware of this already and if he plans to try and obtain this domain from the squatter trying to profit from unsuspecting users. (unless you like to get paid to complete offers!) My guess is that Guy simply wrote down all the possible domain name variations he could think of without trying an actual typing test to uncover some of common mistakes people might make when quickly typing Truemors. I could be wrong though and maybe this domain was simply overlooked or he thought it would not be an issue at all.

I want to add that I am a regular reader of Guy’s blog and enjoy it. Besides the development costs of $12,107.09 that most of us have already read about, I can imagine he put a lot of his valuable time into Truemors so far and I hope it pays off for him eventually.

I was interviewing a middle-aged man and asked why he was interested in a job as a complaint-intake person. He said that he really needed insurance because his wife had numerous health issues and he knew our health insurance coverage was great!

- Posted By Jane, Madison, WI

My roommate worked for GE and he brought a resume home to show me – a guy applying for an internship had his email address on his resume listed as ‘gangbang69@hotmail.com’.

- Posted By Anonymous

My medical group was interviewing physicians to join our practice. One candidate asked one of our female partners to introduce him to all the “hot nurses”. (He didn’t get the position.)

- Posted By Elizabeth Wallen, Columbus, OH

People who have FedEx’d there resume to me, using their current employers airbill number (charging them for it).

- Posted By David Clark, Mobile, AL

I group-interviewed an applicant who took a cell phone call and we sat waiting for at least 5 minutes while she went outside and took it. She came back and explained that that was her husband – they were trying to start a real estate business on the side and they always had to be available to take phone calls.

- Posted By Anne, Chapel Hill, NC

Looking for unskilled labor I asked a candidate could he draw a straight line. His reply was that he was not aware the position was that complicated.

- Posted By Joe Clarke, Brisbane, Australia

Had a young man come in for an interview, nice suit, clean, sharp and had two different color shoes on. Hired him on the spot. Oh his nick name soon became 2 shoes.

- Posted By Dave, Boca Raton, Fl

I am an executive recruiter. Following an interview, my applicant called to tell me how well it had gone. The hiring manager did not agree with that assessment, as the interviewee had vomited on the interviewer’s desk.

- Posted By Mick, Yorktown, NY

When I asked an applicant to tell me some of her positive traits she paused and then said, “The only time that I get drunk is on the weekends!”

- Posted By John Galbreath, Collinwood, TN

I once had a candidate tell me he loved the job and the responsibilities it entailed, as well as the salary being offered, however he had to decline it since the title wasn’t important enough and was concerned how it would appear on his business cards (you can’t make this stuff up!).

- Posted By Mario, NJ

I was interviewing a candidate and I asked him what the biggest misconception his boss had about him? He told me, “that I actually work 8 hours a day, I am on the internet surfing the web all the time.” Needless to say, I did not hire him.

- Posted By Carol, Boston, MA

When I joined the Navy, the recruiter asked, “Can you swim?” I replied, “Why, don’t you have ships?

- Posted By W. E. Gutman, Tehachapi, CA

A friend said a company should hire him, because he could work under extreme pressure, unstable weather conditions and under high temperatures such as 100 F…this was to work on computers in an office environment.

- Posted By Orsi, Germany

Sure some of these may be fake, but they are still entertaining. What is frightening is that most of these probably are true and how completely oblivious some people are to proper interviewing.

1. Realize the power of fast, free shipping and easy returns.

Sure it is very costly to the company, but this has to be the most important factor that contributed to the success of Zappos. Many company’s offer returns on orders placed online, but not many offer free and easy return shipping. By offering these services, customers are left to ask themselves, “Why shouldn’t I order online”? Buying shoes online without actually trying them on can be very tricky since not all sizing and fit is the same across different brands. Zappos clearly understood this from the beginning and knew that this factor alone could make or break the company so they made sure returning and exchanging the shoes was easy. Some people may still find many reason not to shop online, but the positives should outweigh the negatives in most cases, such as not having to go through the hassle of searching for shoes at brick and mortar stores.

Some other company’s that I love which also offer similar services are Amazon and Netflix. Besides great pricing, free shipping (on orders over $25) is the main reason I buy so much off Amazon. Being able to send out a DVD and get a new one 2 days later without having to leave my house or pay any shipping costs is why I subscribe to Netflix.

2. Post customer feedback for customers to read.

The customer testimonial page at Zappos is located here and it is very easy to find. This is a great way to give prospective customers assurance that they should not worry when placing an order. Sure, they can see on the website that there is free shipping, free return shipping, etc., but all that does not mean anything unless it is believable that the company will honor it. As an added benefit, feedback from past customers can even answer questions that customers may have about the ordering or return process.

3. Handle each customer issue until it’s clearly resolved.

You can’t really train employees to handle every scenario they will encounter. But you can give them the power to do the right thing without having to ask. I could imagine Zappos customer service employees have the power to make price adjustments, give refunds, and all that good stuff without having to consult with a supervisor. Besides that, it seems like they are smart enough to make the right decisions when handling every situation, which is most likely a result of proper training. This makes everyone’s job easier and should also result in higher employee satisfaction on the job.

4. Sacrifice marketing costs for better customer service.

This is something they openly admit to practicing. Zappos would rather spend their revenue on all these things I am pointing out rather than spending big bucks for TV or Internet advertising. It is unclear what is more effective, but no one would doubt that the Zappos way will result in a larger number of very satisfied customers.

5. Go above and beyond.

There are a lot of company’s out there trying very hard to create word-of-mouth campaigns with little success. Some even hire outside companies such as BzzAgent to create these campaigns. Those methods could be successful, but why go through all that work when it can be as simple as just focusing on customer service through some of these obervations. Just like someones horrible customer service experience can spread quickly, a great experience like this one can also spread just as fast. I agree with Seth Godin, examples like this are clearly because the company’s employee genuinely wanted to make the customer happy, and not because they knew it would be good PR.

There are many other companies who’s customers have shared similar “above and beyond” stories such as Apple and Amazon. At some point as the company grows, it will become harder to satisfy every customer. For example, there has been a lot of articles recently about Apple customer service slipping due to their rapid growth. I think this is inevitably because any company will always here more complaints as they grow. Those complaints sometimes have a tendency to surface and spread faster on the internet. But at the same time, great stories of happy customers also spread very fast. Larger numbers of happy customers will also leave reviews that can be read by anyone on popular sites like Judy’s Book and Yahoo.

In Conclusion…

They say they are “a service company that happens to sell shoes”. So essentially, Zappos is providing a great service to help people buy the shoes they want with no hassles while hopefully saving them money at the same time. I think there is no better way to run a company.

“It’s been an absolute blast pretending to do work with you guys over the past two years. I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to work with and I really appreciate getting to know you all.”

He was very honest about the “pretending to work” part. The position he held can be very slow at times and the truth is he spent a lot of time being bored when all his work was already done. Very rarely was he really busy. He hopes that his next job won’t be a culture shock if he gets bombarded with work coming from a job where there barely was any. Either way, everyone must move on at some point if they are not completely satisfied with their current job and hopefully that move will be a step forward in the right direction for their career.

What do you think is better? A slow job which is not very challenging or one that keeps you engaged for a majority of the time you are working, but can be stressful at times? I prefer the latter.