"You know you've got a good piece of software when people use it for purposes for which the designers never intended or designed for." Clay Shirky

"Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. Ninety percent of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort and stamina." Hugh MacLeod

"Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." George S. Patton, Jr.

Today's image: The Passage of Time by ToniVC. Amazing shot. Thanks for sharing.

Three tenets of new media for broadcasters: Your assets must be digital, discoverable and ready to share.

Today, more on ready to share.

The great broadcast pioneer Gordon McLendon famously said to his managers "Get people to talk about your radio station." Few in media have understood and employed the power of "word of mouth" marketing more effectively than did McLendon. Moreover, he developed and practiced the radio stunt as performance art. I learned a bunch about McLendon thanks to the legendary Texas radio man Dickie Rosenfeld. Dickie once worked for The Old Scotchman as a seller, sales manager and general manager at KILT in Houston. As Dickie told me "Everything we did was designed to get people talking about KILT. Our goal was to be the talk of the town."

"Content isn't king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you'd choose your friends -- if you chose the movies, we'd call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about." Cory Doctorow

The italics above are mine. Cory's observation is spot on. Getting into (and staying a credible part of) the conversation is the ball game. This is what McLendon and his managers had down cold.

Today we have the advantages of the web to help us spread the news, get the word out. As Hugh MacLeod writes...

..."Great Content" is only half the story. The other half is just as important, though a little more subtle. And what is that?

Short Answer: "Sociality".

It's not just that Boing Boing's content is fun to READ. It is. It's also that Boing Boing's content is fun to SHARE...Boing Boing has a lot of "Sociality" baked-in, i.e. its content makes for great "Social Objects" i.e. their blog posts are great "Sharing Devices". We are primates. We are social creatures. We like to socialize. And we socialize around objects. Boing Boing cranks out "social objects" by the ton, that we can effortlessly pass along to our friends.

Read Hugh's entire post, Boing Boing and baked-in sociality etc, here. Bravos to Hugh. He well makes this very important point.

Get into the conversation, ensure that your content is ready (and easy) to share. Think export.

Bonus: The (Not So) Final Word by Doug Zanger. Doug offers his take on the state of broadcast radio and the creative business, here. The Advertising Life podcast hosted by Doug Zanger...he invited me to guest on Episode 5, the audio is here. My thanks to Doug. It was fun getting to play on his stage.

A DJ speaks out: Guest Commentary: An Open Letter to Radio Programmers By Tara Dublin via Oregon Media Central, here

Today's big buzz is Facebook buying FriendFeed. More by Jason Kincaid via TechCrunch, here. I <3 FriendFeed.