We came. We saw. We Spoke.

Editor’s Note: Halloween. All Saints Day. El Día de los Muertos. The last three days of macabre celebrations have us contemplating not just our own lives after death, but the fate of our digital lives as well. What happens to our electronically connected self when our physical one, well…disconnects? Spoke friend and Vice Mayor of Cloud City Digital, Stephen Jenkins shares some practical advice to help ensure your data is handled with care, post-mortem.

It is a precious few of us who ponder life’s only truly inevitable milestone — its end. And of those there must be even fewer who think beyond the immediate needs of our families upon our untimely demise (is there such a thing as a timely demise?).

The scene is typical of television dramas: A grieving eldest son distributes the prized possessions of a beloved father recently deceased. The collection of fine paintings, bequeathed to William Jr., the rare books handed down to sister Elizabeth. But what of the iTunes collection? Will the blog be shut down? What about the Twitter followers? The Facebook friends? The LinkedIn connections? Can you bequeath these kinds of things?

Made for TV movies aside, informal observation reveals that most of our personal effects are less likely to be kept in a safe or a security deposit box, and instead take the form of digital assets like emails, chat transcripts, research documents, multimedia files, and financial records.

The importance of these various digital sundries varies of course, from the mundane yet practical (car insurance renewal confirmation), to the amusing (self portraits with an iPhone), to highly personal items replete with sentimental value (personal emails). Regardless of their practical value, these items were part of someone’s life, and should be treated with the same care and respect that their physical belongings would be given.

The recent rise in a viable marketplace for digital assets also raises some interesting questions. An MP3 collection may potentially possess some sentimental value, but it may also possess a sizable monetary value. Assuming the purchase of one album or movie per week from Apple’s iTunes Store, a person who had been purchasing music for 5 years would have amassed a collection worth nearly $3,000. Upon their death, what happens to these files? Can ownership be transferred to a family member, or does the collection remain intact but locked away in perpetual silence under a thin layer of DRM?

Similarly, in a world where we belong not only to the community that we live and work in, we increasingly belong to online communities that mirror in many ways the personal interactions and affiliations of the physical world. In the event of a community member’s death, what happens to their persona? One day they are posting their list of ten best foreign films or photos of their vintage typewriter collection, and the next day they are gone. Presumably their friends and family in the physical world (I’m avoiding the word “real”, which implies a lesser experience online) will have knowledge of their passing, and begin the grieving process, but in their online worlds has the person simply disappeared? In case of high profile members, the online community at large may know their real name and begin a search for them via traditional channels, but many community members remain essentially anonymous and their sudden disappearance leaves many questions unanswered. Would the deceased want the community notified? Is there a final message for them? Should email accounts be closed down, or left active, set to bounce the email back to the sender with a startling yet informative message?

Are there any practical answers, or are our digital existences destined to a life in limbo when our bodies have been laid to rest? I would suggest the following steps to ensure that your preferences are respected:

• Take an accounting of all your digital assets and online accounts, note any applicable logins and passwords.
• Decide who you’d like to have access to these things.
• Decide what you’d like done with them after you have died. Deleted, updated, shared, etc.

Once you have decided these things, you can proceed in a few ways. First, you can draft a physical document, which could be appended to your will. This document could specify the particulars of the three steps above, but more importantly, it could name a digital executor who would be responsible for carrying out your final wishes. This individual should be both technically competent and trustworthy, as you will be granting them access to your digital world in absentia. Your instructions to them could be as simple as shutting down all accounts and erasing your hard drive, or it could detail which email folders were shared with whom, and which photos be made available on Flickr as a final goodbye.

Another route would be to leverage technology to achieve the same result without the need for a lawyer’s involvement. Deathswitch.com is a web site that offers a service they describe as “Information Insurance”. It works as follows: One enters their list of desired contacts along with their email addresses, then they create a message containing the kind of account information discussed above. Next, a time interval is set. It could be once a day, it could be once a year. If the user does not log into the site during the specified interval, indicating that they are alive, the system will automatically send out their message to the people on their list. I cannot vouch for the security or functionality of this service (now that I think of it, can anyone?) which costs $20 a year to maintain, but in theory it is a practical approach to the dilemma of sharing information in the case of an unexpected (or perhaps expected) death with friends, family, and co-workers, all of which can receive custom messages. Just don’t forget to log in, or you, very much alive, may find yourself having to explain why half of your work email consists of fantasy baseball updates and why the password to your Facebook account is “ihearttwilight”.

Regardless of the approach you take to safeguarding the future of your digital life, it is important that you give some thought to it. Get organized, make a plan, and then live your life to the fullest, knowing that your digital afterlife is safe and sound.

Recently, a client of ours sent us a logo they themselves had designed for an internal side project. It was a clean logotype treatment with a couple requisite mnemonic devices to give it some flavor. A worthy effort, but we knew we could make it sing.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked an incredulous marketing head. “There’s nothing wrong with,” we soothed. “But it’s a ‘6’ or ‘7’ on a scale of ‘10,’ and we’d like to make it a true ‘10’ for you.”

“Well, I like the font I picked, so can we stick with that?” she asked.

We recognized the font almost immediately. “Where did you get this?” we fished. “What’s it called?”

“It’s called “Swatch It.” I downloaded it for free.”

Uh oh.

What our well-intentioned benefactress had found was a free font based on the internationally recognized, and beloved-by-many Swatch AG (Swiss Watches) logo. This explained why it was free. The designer himself knew he was entering muddy legal waters. The poorly rendered characters and lack of kerning pairs, hinting, balancing and other niceties that are hallmarks of a professionally produced font further ensconced it amongst the poorer quality, unlicensed, gray market types so often (not always) distributed for nothin’. You get what you pay for.

Now, to be fair to the designer of Swatch It — he’s not making so much as a Swiss franc from this font. It’s clearly a free download, and the albeit limited licensing terms state that it is “Free for personal use.” This should be an obvious red flag to anyone who intends to use this and similar fonts, especially for commercial purposes. But, like software (and a computerized font is a piece of software), the end user licensing agreements (EULA) go largely ignored by most users.

We explained the inherent problems to our client:

• The font is based on an existing, copyrighted logomark. Although some courts might classify the font as a ‘derivative work,’ the buttoned-up (and always punctual) legal counsel at Swatch could easily tie up the font designer and our client on Swiss home turf. We hear Bern is chilly this time of year — brrrrr.
• Using a typeface that is so closely tied to a well-known and recognized company is never a good idea. Unless you’re creating a visual parody, it’s best to steer clear. Be unique.

It took little effort to convince her that we needed to start with a clean slate and develop the logo using a “proper” font. But, the situation did raise some nagging questions for us. Specifically, how does a designer, marketing VP or alpenhorn player learn how to legally purchase, download and use a font? Any font. Are we breaking the law by redesigning our client’s mark using any typeface we choose, even if it was purchased?

Combing through the arcane legalities that surround font design and licensing helped us cobble together some simple rules:

• Always purchase for-sale fonts before using them. Don’t “borrow” fonts and don’t use font preview services to patch together your logo for final use.
• Contact the type foundry and/or designer you purchased and/or (if it’s a free font) downloaded the typeface of your choice from and ask to have them clarify their licensing agreement for you. Explain what it is you want to do with the font, and listen closely to their response. In fact, write their response on a printed copy of their EULA, date it and record who you spoke with. Keep it on file. Stay clear of free fonts for commercial use unless the licensing terms explicitly state they may be used for your intended purpose.
• Don't share or borrow fonts unless the EULA indicates if and how you may do so.
• When crafting a logo or logotype, alter the typeface slightly. Many designers already do this in order to create a unique mark, but this practice has the added benefit of carrying your design through some legal loopholes. Most font licenses allow you to use converted outlines for things like logos. If you don’t wish to alter the characters, set them as you want, kern them, take a screen shot of the final arrangement, then trace the type using your own points and bezier curves. Cumbersome? Yes.

Final word: If someone asks, “Can we get sued for this?” the answer is ALWAYS “maybe.”

“Doveryai, no Proveryai.*”

Does all this reading about fonts make you want to read more about fonts? Us too. Feed your font goat his fill.

*We couldn't find a Swiss proverb with the same sentiment. Cut us some slack, would ya?

Editor’s Note: Spoke friend and multimedia virtuoso (think modern Renaissance man, truly) Steve Mockensturm sidesteps the usual “shop talk” in lieu of existentialist thoughts on the machines that use us, er… we use. These ideas resonate and compel us to ask deeper questions about the often perverse marriage between our real and virtual worlds. The answers are hard to come by, let alone (at times) uncomfortable to consider.

When not tending his garden, Steve cultivates wisdom as @boonhogganbeck on Twitter, and digs in the dirt daily at Madhouse.

“When you come to a fork in the road... take it!” — Yogi Berra

At a most fundamental level, our computers are simple and not smart at all. They can only do one, solid thing; make a determination as to whether something is true or false. That’s all a computer has ever been able to do. It’s a binary, boolean world where everything is, at its core, a decision between a one and a zero, on or off, thing or not-thing.

Furthermore, this sophisticated Difference Engine can only make these logical decisions one-at-a-time. Though the speed of decisions is impressive and things may appear to happen at the same time, the basic event stream of any given protocol cannot proceed until a decision — the only decision — is made: Does this request evaluate this way or that way?

The beat, the drummer, the traffic cop that keeps all these decisions organized is a simple clock running at a ridiculous speed. Choices are made between the ticks. For example, this piece is being written on a device that can make roughly 5.6 billion logical decisions per second. That’s how it works.

We can think of life this way sometimes. Though we are not Vulcans and we often hear, “It’s not a black and white world,” it sort of is. You are not here, you are there. Light is not dark, hot is not cold, good is not evil and Marvel is not DC. Our entire planet is quite literally bipolar and as technology marches apace, it is no small coincidence the human condition seems more and more polarized. We don’t appear to get along with each other as we used to. Our differences dictate behavior more than our similarities. Us and them. Binary logic.

Luddites and other critics of technology might argue the economics of dominion that technology facilitates, but the bigger fear may as well be: Are humans losing the capacity to determine shades of gray? Nuance seems dead as we begin to emulate — though at a comparatively sloth-like pace - the devices we cannot seem to live without. You must either be for something or against something, but you cannot be both.

Apparently — even with crazy-fast computing — concepts of kindness, fear, belief, wisdom and love are impossible to discern with simple true or false decisions. But this may not always be so. Though the brain is mysterious and complex, it is — logic would dictate — of limited capacity. There is only so much stuff up there making decisions, and — just like the difference engine — we can really only think of one thing at-a-time.

Enter the world of quantum computing, true asynchronous processing and circuits that communicate with light rather than crude, charged electrons running through a piece of silicon. Someday — sooner than later — logical decisions will be evaluated persistently and at the speed of thought.

It appears the gap is closing from both sides. As computing power increases and creeps toward analogous thought through quantum physics and light speed transactions, human power seems ever nudged toward simple binary transactions. Science Fiction has posited more than once that existence is merely an extremely advanced digital experience.

Maybe that’s why we have a tendency to anthropomorphize everything. We are shocked when hearing that robots have learned to lie. Delighted when a houseplant posts a comment to a blog saying it needs water. We tend to make comments like, “My computer thinks...” when, in fact, all these things are just devices doing what they were programmed to do.

Perhaps binary logic is an ancient part of human nature just now being thrown into the light and we are more like the difference machines — and they like us — than we’d care to admit. Doing what we’re programmed to do. We might do well to re-examine choice and free will and what makes something right or wrong. Life is nothing, if not perpetual observation and processing of data and no decision we can ever make is more fundamental than a yes or a no.

True?

© 2009 Stephen Mockensturm, some rights reserved.

Quick hit: Kodak recently posted its own guidelines for navigating the sometimes treacherous waters of social media. Titled “Kodak Social Media Tips — Sharing lessons learned to help your business grow” (PDF, 3.5MB), the 14-pager covers tips submitted by Kodak’s Chief Blogger, Jenny Cisney, as well as helpful information to get you up and running with a solid corporate socmed foundation.

Perhaps most importantly, the piece offers pragmatic advice for establishing a social media policy for employees. This is refreshing compared to the often Machiavellian smack-downs that some other companies have resorted to (we won’t name names).

Looking for examples on which to base your own social media policies? We suggest you start here. And, as always, let us know what you think.

Editor’s Note: Spoke social media wingman and l’enfant terrible, Mark Pannell, returns to the guest blogger perch to report the results of our homegrown Twitter Use Survey. After spending some quality time with our data, skip on over to TechCrunch to parse some enlightening results captured on the ever fickle teen demo. Salut!

Ask and you shall receive. As part of Spoke’s launch, we asked Twitter users to participate in a brief survey about their daily usage habits. The response was solid, with over 100 completed surveys to date. Some of our findings were a little surprising while others were exactly what we expected. See for yourself. Without further delay, the Get Your Twitter On survey results.

The first question we asked was to determine how many hours users spent on Twitter in an average day. Not surprisingly, 67% of our survey-takers said they spent more than an hour per day with the little blue bird. What was surprising was that over half said they post less than five tweets per day. Only 5% reported that they post more than twenty tweets on a daily basis. There’s a Turkish proverb that says, “If speaking is silver, then listening is gold.” It appears that many of those responding subscribe to that same notion.

Next up: using Twitter at work. These numbers speak for themselves:

Wow. We can only assume that a good chunk of these surveys were completed at work too. But we’re not here to judge. No, no. We’re merely sharing the data. You can almost hear the echoes of TGIFF: Thank God it’s #FollowFriday. Speaking of which...

Ringing in the weekend, 62% said that they’ve posted a #FollowFriday list at least once, but only 8% responded that they participate in the meme weekly. But Micah Baldwin’s efforts were not in vain. A substantial 68% claim that they’ve followed another user because of a #FollowFriday recommendation.

So, we’ve established how often you tweet and where you do it, but how do you do it? A hefty 78% use a method other than the Twitter website. The big winners were third-party applications like TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, and HootSuite, accounting for 60% of the responses. Taking the party on the road, 15% rely on a mobile app as their primary means of giving us the bird.

Speaking of third-party apps, picture sharing has clearly made its way into the mainstream. Two-thirds of our tweeps use a service to share photos on Twitter, with 17% of the total users also contributing some video love. This question brought to light an interesting trend: While some users post photos, but not videos, none of those surveyed share videos without also sharing pics. It seems as though picture sharing is a gateway drug to video sharing.

A staggering 89% of those surveyed use a URL-shortening service to share links. That’s a lot of characters banished to the Island of Misfit URL’s. And characters weren’t the only ones banished. Over 90% of our tweeps have unfollowed another user at least once. Auf Wiedersehen! And don’t expect our survey-takers to follow you just because you follow them. Eight out of ten said that they don’t follow back all of their followers.

Next, we moved into the science of followers vs. following. Surprisingly, the results were pretty even across the board. Take a look:

The majority of users either follow more people than they have following them or their ratio is nearly equivalent. With that in mind, it’s understandable that 65% of those surveyed said that the number of followers they have is not at all important to them. Only 6% acknowledged that it was very important. I think this shows how differently people use Twitter. Some like to share content; others like to peruse it. To each their own.

How important are looks? 72% of respondents occasionally change the aesthetics of their profile page. While this could be a holdover from their MySpace days, it’s more likely that folks just like to have a presence on Twitter that’s as unique as they are. But how unique are they? 46% of those responding have used a Twitter grading service on themselves to find out. Ironically, only 33% have used one on another user. I can’t think of a funny word that combines narcissism and Twitter. Insert your own here.

To wrap up the survey, we wanted to discover the other ways that Twitter users utilize the social web. While its popularity is not in question, an incredible 95% of those responding also have a Facebook account. Maybe even more remarkable is the fact that 78% also use LinkedIn. The network (which is more geared toward professional use) outpaced MySpace by more than double. Social sites outside of the “Big Three” also topped the one-time juggernaut, further signaling the sharp decline of MySpace’s popularity.

That “Other” category likely includes social bookmarking sites like Delicious, StumpleUpon, and reddit. Six out of ten tweeps use those services at least occasionally, with over a quarter indicating that they contribute linkage frequently. Last, but not least: blogs. Three-quarters of those surveyed maintain a personal blog or website. Of those responding, 49% update their blogs frequently. Feedburner has its hands full.

To close things out, we asked, “Is there anything else you’d like to share?” Many of the comments were kudos on the launch of the Spoke website. But beyond the much-appreciated kind words, there was some delightful commentary. One user wanted to learn more about Twitter grading services. Personally, I use Twitter Grader frequently, but their methodology in determining a “score” is a little hazy. For more detailed analytics, Twitter Analyzer and Twitalyzer (two different services) offer more stats than you can shake a stick at. To get a better look at how frequently a user tweets, who they’re tweeting, and when, take a peek at TweetStats.

Another friend of Spoke asked which Blackberry application we would recommend for updating both Twitter and Facebook. As none of us are Blackberry users (the others at Spoke frequently remind me of their iPhones’ superiority to my Windows Mobile device), I redirected the question to the most Blackberry-usin’, tweetin’ Facebooker I know: Mashable’s Events Director, Brett Petersel. Presently, Mr. Petersel is using SocialScope for all of his mobile updating needs, so I’d say it’s worth a look.

While the survey was intended to educate us, it looks like we weren’t the only ones learning from it. One user said, “Yikes – just realized that I’m not at all using Twitter to its max potential. Thanks for quantifying that!” I think that’s true of most of us. If the survey brought that to light, we’re glad we could help!

If there’s one thing we know about the social web, it’s that everyone perceives things differently. One person remarked, “Isn’t this survey skewed by defaulting each question to the first choice?” Another offered, “You really know your Twitter user. I almost didn’t have to change anything.” While I’d love to take credit for having a deep understanding of the average Twitter user, the truth is much less glamorous. The service we use to generate these surveys requires that one radio button be selected by default (in compliance with W3C specifications, although all rules have exceptions). But it is a good example of how differently we view things.

Finally, Spoke would like to thank everyone who participated in the survey. You’ve given us a peek inside the minds of a Twitter user, which is much akin to opening Pandora’s Box. Thank you also for your interest in our findings. If you’re reading this at work, we apologize for interrupting your Twitter time.

Feel free to download all results in graph form: Spoke_TwitterSurvey09.doc (1.3Mb)

Editor’s Note: We invited Spoke social media wingman, Mark Pannell, to write the following comparison of two of the most-used multi-user, web-based Twitter apps. If you recall, Mark brought his expertise to bear for our ongoing Twitter use survey. We at Spoke have spent time with both platforms reviewed below, but have lived with HootSuite (1.0, and now 2.0) the longest. We encourage you to try both services and let us know if your conclusions match ours.

As Twitter becomes a more popular tool for marketing, CRM, and customer support, organizations are flooding to participate in the conversation. While Twitter provides an outstanding platform for facilitating that interaction, its web interface is not exactly ideal for efficiency. Toggling back and forth between @replies, DM’s, and search results could slow an organization’s usage to a crawl. In a medium built around immediacy, a better set of tools is needed to leverage Twitter for business use.

Two key players have emerged in the race to meet the needs of businesses in the Twittersphere and they couldn’t be more different. CoTweet is the app of choice for heavy-hitters like Ford, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola. Their friendly rival, HootSuite, is used by the likes of Revision3 and the Whitehouse (yes, that Whitehouse). HootSuite’s first foray into this arena offered a host of features that were innovative at the time, but have become commonplace since its release. For the sake of a fair comparison, we’ll be putting CoTweet up against the upcoming HootSuite 2.0 (Beta), which features a more robust set of tools compared to their initial offering.

As different as the user experiences are between these two services, they share some core features. At the very least, one should expect support for multiple Twitter accounts, multiple users, scheduled tweets, and integrated URL-shortening. Check, check, check, and check. Both platforms also allow users to automatically insert their initials at the end of tweets to uniquely identify themselves to readers. CoTweet calls them CoTags. HootSuite calls them Auto-Initials or HooTags. I call them initials.

But that’s where the similarities end. For a pair of web-based services heavily-focused on delivering similar results, they go about it in completely different ways. Let’s take a look at them as standalone entities rather than competitors for a moment.

CoTweet
The most noticeable attribute of CoTweet is its utilitarian design. Like a Madison Ave. maven yammering on his Bluetooth, CoTweet clearly means business. The layout is obviously intended to mimic an email inbox, a familiar environment for most.

The CoTweet dashboard with default skin

The CoTweet dashboard with optional Guy Kawasaki skin (for power users)

From the top panel, a user’s list of available accounts is represented by the associated Twitter profile picture. Hovering over those avatars reveals a list of each account’s users and displays who is “On Duty” (I told you it was all about business). Within a large organization with multiple users, it’s good to have a visual indicator of who is responsible for follow-up at any given time. The On Duty settings can be altered, as well as new users added right from that dropdown list.

A unique feature of CoTweet is the ability to assign tweets as tasks. When paired with the CoTags option, this becomes a powerful tool for CRM. Let’s say a customer had a bad experience and brought his tale of woe to the Twitter community. One of your assigned users spotted the dissatisfied customer within a keyword search relevant to your organization and reached out to him or her to help resolve the situation. If that customer wanted to continue the conversation after the user was no longer on duty, their tweets can be assigned to that initial user for follow up at a later time.

Aside from the ability to distribute “labor” to each of an organization’s assigned Tweeps, the interface isn’t as significant of an improvement over the default Twitter UI as one would expect from such a popular tool. The Inbox, Outbox, And Follow-Up tabs on the left sidebar still require toggling back and forth to access multiple sets of information. The features that appeal to business users make CoTweet evolutionary for organizational use, but not revolutionary.

HootSuite
If CoTweet screams “business,” HootSuite screams “Web 2.0 App.” It’s a little more vibrant, but no less powerful. At first glance, its components appear to be in disarray, but a huge plus for HootSuite is its customizability. The screenshot below is just one example of an unlimited number of layout possibilities.

The HootSuite dashboard

Users can create a tab for each account to which they contribute. Within those tabs, columns can be created for the home feed, @mentions, DM inbox, DM outbox, sent tweets, pending tweets, and favorited tweets. Column options are also available for keyword tracking, search terms, and user groups. All of these can be added and arranged on the fly with the ability to drag and drop nearly everything on the palette. A simple slider is used to resize the columns in real time.

Once customized to a user’s liking, HootSuite offers all of the information that the user wants in one place. Think of it as a more feature-rich, web-based, multi-user TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop. The customization of the experience is far more than a parlor trick. With the ability to stretch an account over multiple tabs, there’s truly no limit to how much information can be made readily-available.

Another big plus for HootSuite is the ability to add an RSS feed to an account from within the dashboard. This allows an organization to auto-tweet blog updates without the need to utilize a third-party service like TwitterFeed. Once you dig into the HootSuite experience and get past the visually stimulating UI, it becomes obvious that the app was built from the ground up around efficiency.

Let The Feathers Fly
As both CoTweet and HootSuite offer a robust set of features which make them appealing for organizational use, personal preference really does become a factor. Some might be turned off by the busy design of HootSuite while others might dislike the minimalistic UI of CoTweet. But beyond the aesthetics of each app, it’s the underlying mechanics that make the difference.

While CoTweet uses the popular bit.ly URL-shortener, HootSuite utilizes their proprietary ow.ly service. The advantage goes to HootSuite here. Although bit.ly does provide a nice collection of analytics, CoTweet requires the user to access a third-party app to view them. HootSuite’s integrated statistics module allows for quick, one-click access to this information. Individual tweet statistics are new for HootSuite 2.0, providing total clicks and user ratings.

It’s also worth mentioning that throughout testing of both apps, I experienced numerous error messages and failures within CoTweet. One error required me to remove my personal Twitter account from the dashboard entirely after changing my password on Twitter. Over the course of the next 48 hours, I was never able to add the account back into the suite without getting an error message. If the CoTweet team had established themselves as actively engaged in the needs of their users, this might be slightly less concerning. But a quick glance at their Twitter profile (with 14,000+ followers) shows a team more focused on boasting their accomplishments than engaging their user base.

I eventually submitted a support request to resolve the issue. Within fifteen minutes, I received notification that they were looking into and attempting to resolve the problem. But after an hour, there was neither a resolution nor any further follow-up. Dog years have a lot in common with social media time and an hour is too long to wait to get an account back up and running.

HootSuite, on the other hand, didn’t error out once during my testing. But that’s not to say that the app doesn’t experience occasional errors. The difference here is that Ryan Holmes and his team at Invoke Media are absolutely dedicated to the satisfaction of their users. With nearly 78,000 followers on Twitter, their profile page shows a company consistently reaching out to users to discuss even the most minor issues. Some of these issues aren’t even specific to HootSuite, but rather to the general Twitter experience.

If someone had asked me to pick a winner based on first impressions before I had any experience with either of these two apps, I would have given CoTweet the nod without any reservation. As the choice of a multitude of large enterprises, CoTweet’s dominance seemed pretty cut and dried. But hands-on experience with both products presented HootSuite as not only a worthy competitor, but superior in many ways.

The accessibility of information and the customizability of how that information is displayed are clearly checks in HootSuite’s column. If the team added the ability to assign tasks/cases similar to CoTweet’s system, HootSuite would be the hands-down winner. As it stands, both services offer time-saving tools which make them a better option than the Twitter web interface, but not by any means perfect solutions. To keep track of who is doing what within a large organization, CoTweet might be the better option. But for sheer efficiency, accessibility, and customization, HootSuite continues to lead the race.

I had the pleasure of interviewing a talented and very recent BGSU (my alma mater) design grad. She had the usual assemblage of class assignment work, but it was clean, well-presented, inventive, and had more than the usual care applied to it. It was a solid book. Midway through the interview I asked who she followed (no, not in the Twitter sense) – whose work she admired and emulated. I instinctively knew the answer from the contents of her portfolio, but I was unprepared to hear it aloud: “Margo Chase, David Carson, Rick Valicenti...,” she rattled off. The list went on.

I was dumbstruck.

Twenty years ago, when I was a student, the hottest emerging designers du jour were Margo Chase, David Carson, Rick Valicenti, Rudy Vanderlans, Zuzana Liko, Paula Scher and countless others. And here, twenty years on, was a burgeoning designer repeating names I’d once similarly revered and made part of my own design lexicon. It was then I realized how doomed we are as designers to repeat the past. Each generation of creatives bestows the heroes of their own creative nascency upon the next – imbuing it with the fame and foibles of the design rock stars of yore. Back in the day, my professors had impressed us with the Design Immortals of their youth: Chwast, Glaser, Moscoso, Bass, Dunst, Chermayeff & Geismar, etc. They had reclaimed the work of those who had made the earliest and institutionally-sanctioned impressions on them decades prior. Now, once again, a fresh batch of twenty-somethings are being released into the vocation by well-meaning, but reprising, forty-somethings.

Where does it stop? Should it? Is it possible? What do we gain from insistently recycling our rich and storied visual communications history – each designer latching onto Hollis and Meggs as if he or she discovered them?

Originality is arguably impossible to achieve. Everything we do as a culture is derivative. It takes time to weigh the “sui generis” and importance of the works of others, and it is only through the passage of time that we can give these things their rightful place, and elect to (re)apply them to the zeitgeist. Yes, it’s important for a profession to have a continuum, to be able to draw upon tradition. It’s an effective means of evaluating the progress of any industry’s Darwinism. But if we’re ever to evolve; truly make the impact we believe ourselves capable of making; and sincerely fulfill Paul Rand’s declaration/edict/prophesy, “Design is everything,” then we have to be willing to put the past in its place; reinvent ourselves, our profession and portfolios. And kill our idols.

Special thanks to @endcycle for jogging our memory on the Sonic Youth origins of ‘Kill Your Idols.’

“We have our work cut out for us.”

“Nine women can't make a baby in a month.”

“Rome wasn't built in a day.”

These are humorless expressions (Well, somewhat. Pregnant women always seem to bring a knowing smile.) we use to describe seemingly insurmountable and often humorless tasks. We stare in reticence at the challenge before us then quickly turn our attention to other work of no less importance. Some call this “constructive procrastination.” We call it “fear of the white canvas.”

Will it be good enough?
Will people like it?
How do we balance our business requirements with our personal tastes?
Should someone else design it for us?
How will we get this done in addition to client work?
Are we out of coffee filters again?

These are questions that plagued us in March as we set out to define our online brand. We knew what we didn’t want. We didn’t want to create something that appealed to just anyone. No, we wanted to create something that allowed visitors to quickly assess whether or not we were the right partner, collaborator, supporter, prospect, follower or friend for them. “When you’re all things to everyone, you’re actually nothing to nobody.” This is something we tell our clients and once we admonished ourselves similarly, we set about laying the foundation for our ‘Circus Maximus.’

Work on the site progressed quickly and evolved organically (“What if we..?”). Along the way, we made some friends who took an active role in shaping the site. We felt a little like Dorothy collecting Tin Man, Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion along the Yellow Brick Road. Fortunately for us, our fellow collaborators brought plenty of their own heart, brains and courage along. We’d like to acknowledge and thank them for helping us find our online ‘voice.’

Mary Gilmore
Mary answered a tweet we posted in April. We were looking for a ‘hero’ image for our homepage with very specific subject matter and qualities. She searched and found the image you see today and sent us the link — five weeks after our initial request. How she remembered that tweet is a mystery only Dr. Robert Langdon could solve. We’ve never met Mary, but we hope to someday.

Thank you, Mary.

Koen Smits
Mary’s link lead us to the photographer of said picture. We contacted Koen in Belgium (which isn’t terribly far from Rome, we should mention) and offered fame and fortune for his perfect image. He refused both and graciously offered it in exchange for a photo credit. We consider Koen’s photo to be the jewel in the spokehq.com crown. We’re a tad embarrassed, actually. Holy Toledo, we get to use this for free? On our homepage?!

Thank you, Koen.

Matt Braun
We met Matt during a charity event we did with the Toledo chapter of the AIGA. Matt was on our small but scrappy web team and we were in awe of his charm, his cool demeanor and his prowess with ExpressionEngine (EE). When it came time to develop our site, we chose the EE framework and invited Matt to steer us through a rather steep learning curve. There is no other mention of Matt on the site (yet), but his DNA is most certainly part of it.

Thank you, Matt.

Mark Pannell
We met Mark on Twitter some time ago. We were taken with his humor, his writing and his undying passion for social media. We were also impressed by his ability to grok what Spoke was about and mesh his online brand with our own. Before long, we were making up reasons to work with him. Mark crafted the Twitter survey that appears on our site. He did an amazing job and we hope you take a moment to complete and submit your own answers.

Thank you, Mark. You’re a better ‘Voice of Spoke’ than we are.

Scott Radcliff
Scott was completing his degree at Davis College when we met. He has quickly shown himself to be a gifted developer, strategist and writer, and we’re working with him on projects as we speak. Scott played no active role in the site, but he kept several plates spinning in the air for us while we worked to complete it. This launch would have been delayed considerably if it hadn’t been for him.

Thank you, Scott.

Finally, this extensive “thank you” wouldn’t be complete (and wouldn’t read like an Oscar acceptance speech) if we failed to acknowledge our families, friends, clients, vendors, partners and fans who have helped put the wheel(s) of Spoke in motion.

Without you, we’d still be trying to build Rome in a day.

Thank you.

Gene & Mark