In what may well have been one of my most popular posts ever, I discussed how Twitter needs less talkers and more listeners. This hasn’t changed, and it’s truly the key to being successful with social media from a business perspective (on a personal level, the same rules don’t always apply, although they don’t hurt, either).

I caught this Ad Age article yesterday and simply couldn’t resist sharing it. The article discusses a new job function at many Web-savvy companies today: “Chief Listener.” It sums up the point of this new role in only two sentences:

The big task? Data mining — and figuring out who needs the information.

As I’ve said over and over, the trick over the next decade is going to managing the sheer amount of data thrown our way each and every day. Nowhere is this more important than with social media. Some have called it the Social Data Revolution, pointing out that in 2009, there was more data produced than in every single year preceding it–combined. The key to managing this incredible amount of information? Listening.

And it’s not just listening, period; It’s all about listening well. Listening efficiently. Listening to the right people, at the right time, in the right medium.

Anyway, read the article, shout out your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter (@alexpriest), and expect plenty more on this topic from me in the future.

Thanks for reading! If you're new here, you might want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Also, be sure to give me a shout on Twitter, I'd love to chat.

This is a quick piece I wrote for one of my marketing courses, but thought you might enjoy reading it here as well.

Chapter 5, “Kenna’s Dilemma,” in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, is a fantastic bit of insight into market research and the challenges there are in really figuring out what people think—because often they don’t really know what they’re thinking either.

The chapter takes on a number of different case studies where market research has failed to beat the experts and where consumers have simply been wrong about their very own preferences. This is all framed around the story of Kenna, a young musician with a unique sound that the critics loved, but listeners couldn’t quite wrap their heads around. While everyone from Fred Durst to U2’s manager loved his sound, he didn’t test well and suffered because of it. Gladwell puts this in context, comparing his situation to the “Pepsi Challenge,” the development of the Aeron desk chair, and even a couple classic TV shows. These were products that never tested well and no one expected to succeed, but beat the odds because research failed to capture the market’s feelings accurately, or because companies failed to interpret that research correctly.

There is one line in the chapter that I think really sums up the lesson to be learned most succinctly: “The problem with market research is that often it is simply too blunt an instrument to pick up this distinction between the bad and the merely different.”

Without a doubt, this is the most important and interesting insight to take away from this chapter for marketers, and for anyone who wants to understand how revolutionary products often succeed. Whether it’s the disaster that was New Coke, jam tasting, or Kenna getting screwed over by the record companies, market research is by no means an exact science, despite its appearances.

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This week I crossed 1500 miles on my bicycle. I’ve had the odometer since early last summer, so it’s been just over a year–with four months of that year spend abroad in Copenhagen (where I put God-knows-how-many-miles on my bike).

It’s a great feeling. And it’s a great milestone to recognize how important my bike has become to me and maintaining my sanity over the past few months.

Throughout the spring and this past summer, I’ve gotten busier and busier. My life has been turned upside-down thanks to social media, networking, and entering my final year of undergraduate study at American University, and this upcoming year isn’t getting any calmer. With three jobs, six classes, a new organization on campus and two executive board positions–not to mention maintaining posts on more than five blogs and numerous social media accounts–things are understandably a little crazy. I like it that way (I wouldn’t have it any other way, in fact) but having a little down time every day is kind of nice.

And that’s where my bike comes in. With the 15-20 miles I ride every day, it gives me just enough time to relax. No news. No social media. No talking. No distractions at all. No stress.

On my bike, it’s just me and the wind and the city I love around me. It’s navigating the winding, bumpy streets of Georgetown, or riding through the quiet little neighborhoods between Logan Circle and Dupont, or riding along the Crescent or Mt. Vernon trails, enjoying the nature around me. It’s the small amount of time every day that I can push everything else out of my mind and just focus on the wind, the smell of the world, and the beautiful, refreshing pain in my legs as I pump those pedals up Wisconsin Avenue.

In Copenhagen my bicycle became my life. It was a form of transportation, and a conversation piece. It was a form of protest for climate change during the COP15 climate change conference. It was a souvenir in my photos, videos, and my memory. It was a crap bike, but to be honest, I kind of miss it.

In DC I brought that back with me, and it changed the way I look at my city and the world around me. I learned this city like I’d never seen it before. In my first two years of college I viewed DC as a series of metro stations, small, separate communities connected by tunnels and nothing more. But the city is so much more than that–not to mention more than the politics and the nonsense headlines (“Is Washington BROKEN?” ::GASP::). My bicycle let me explore the city in new and unexpected ways.

Anyway, here’s to 1500 miles, and here’s to 1500 more.

So evidently I’m a cheap date. Well, maybe not that cheap. At tonight’s CitizenGulf DC fundraiser for recovering the gulf from the BP oil spill, I and several others auctioned off one date with ourselves to the highest bidder.

I sold for $45, to the always amazing @jillfoster. We’re planning a “morning date” for next week–despite the fact that she’s married! Of course it’s not a real date, but I offered to hang out and help her with her blog and any other personal technological projects that have been put on the back burner lately–I’m looking forward to it!

The event was a blast. When @andinarvaez contacted me earlier in the week to ask me to auction myself off, I wasn’t entirely sure what to think, but it couldn’t have been more fun. While obviously I wasn’t looking for a real date–this crowd isn’t exactly my target market, ya know–I’m thrilled to be able to hang out with such a brilliant professional like Jill!

In other news, I’m exhausted! The beginning of classes have hit hard. The classes themselves aren’t that difficult, but it’s just a lot to balance, and I’m sure I’ll adjust as the summer goes on. But more on that later… for now, I’m grabbing some shut-eye.

I originally published this post on Technorati, but felt the urge to share it with you here as well. Thanks for reading.

Today I will reach my 30,000th tweet.

Or I might have already, depending on when this is published. It's been a long and winding journey and my 30,000 some tweets so far tell a number of stories, but primarily that of myself, a young professional making my way through college, traveling the world, and working towards career success (with a little luck).

I started it all on July 20, 2007, sitting in a cramped little apartment outside of Tokyo, Japan, where I was staying for six weeks as part of a cultural exchange scholarship program. I signed up not knowing what this little micro-blogging service called Twitter was, and with no possible idea where it would take me over the course of the past three or so years.

As I tweeted out my excitement about hitting 30,000 tweets this morning, a follower asked me, "How many were of value?" That got me thinking. How many of these little 140 character messages really provided value to anyone? What have I accomplished in my 30,000 tweets, my approximate 4,200,000 characters, those 50,000-some-odd words?

To me, all of them provided value, and I've accomplished more than I ever dreamed I would with a social network.

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