Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Social media experts will tell you, and they’ll make a pretty good case too, that it is the golden key to unlocking meaningful customer relationships and the gateway to surprising and delighting them over time. So how does social media do this? Well all it takes is to listen, be part of the conversation, curate great content, run native advertisements, and oh yeah, be transparent and authentic. Done and done.

Well, wrong and wrong.

Social media isn’t going to save your business nor is it going to make it. This may sound commonsensical, but to succeed in business takes much more than a Facebook or Twitter account. Hostess baked over 400,000 likes on Facebook and yet the iconic American brand is now shut down. Even small businesses are not immune to the real world. According to the SBA, over 50% of small businesses fail in the first five years. Social media isn’t saving those businesses either.

Michael Ames author of Small Business Management, assembled the top 8 reasons that contribute to small business failure and you’ll notice not embracing social media isn’t one of the contributors:

1. Lack of experience
2. Insufficient capital (money)
3. Poor location
4. Poor inventory management
5. Over-investment in fixed assets
6. Poor credit arrangements
7. Personal use of business funds
8. Unexpected growth

From experience, there are two other ingredients that serve as harbingers to the future of any business, under scoping or underestimating sales and marketing and underemphasizing product quality and customer experiences.

In any one of these scenarios, social media is not your saving grace—regardless of business size, number of followers, or however many viral videos you’ve introduced.

Am I saying that social media is useless?

No.

It is after all where connected consumers are spending a significant amount of time these days. Nielsen recently found that Americans spend 121 billion minutes per month in social networks, which is significantly up from 88 billion just one year ago.

I do believe that many experts are however taking their eye off of the ball in the name of social media. But, success takes design, intent, and the relentless pursuit of opportunities even when they are elusive. As a digital analyst and also an entrepreneur and investor, I’ve learned that technology is always going to introduce new channels for engagement. And, that’s a good thing. But they are not in of themselves channels for necromancy. The ability to surprise and delight customers starts with the ability to understand how to exceed expectations. And, even before that, it takes an understanding of what expectations are and where they’re met or missed.

So, here’s where social media can help.

Listening with Intent

Listening is among the most valuable ways to use social media for business relevance and ultimately success. However for it to offer true value begins with the questions you chose to answer. For example, in addition to asking, “what are people saying about me or my competitors,” also ask, “what are people saying or seeking in to improve what they’re doing today?” It’s the difference between information and insight and also listening to and hearing customers in a way that inspires innovation or iteration.

Designing the Experience

To deliver exceptional customer experiences takes experience design. You have to articulate, thoughtfully, what you want people to feel, say, and share. This is more than defining differentiators and value propositions. Businesses must think through how products and services evoke the original inspiration for starting or joining a company and the ongoing aspirations necessary to exceed expectations in the future. Social media then represents a series of open windows to engage customers during each and every moment of truth before, during and after transactions to reinforce experiences and desired sentiment. Think marketing, sales, service, support, and word of mouth.

Paying it Forward

If social media is about conversations you can bet that much of it is based on people asking questions. People are often looking for answers or direction. Rather than “Googling It,” it’s easier to ask those you trust. In this economy where trust is fleeting and transparency is elusive, there’s a tremendous opportunity to become the resource in your community. Don’t sell…instead; sell through the art of reciprocity. Customers feel a sense of appreciation for those who help and provide value.

The Power to Tell

As my good friend Peter Guber says, storytelling or Telling to Win helps people align with your mission through aspirations or solutions. Don’t sell just on price or features. Make your customers the hero by helping them see what they can accomplish simply by aligning with you. If you use social media, don’t just post questions, polls, or random pictures, unleash a gravity that pulls customers to you because they can clearly see that you “get” them and the things they struggle or hope to accomplish with or without you.

These are just a few ways to think about social media. But, there are many many other initiatives that you can consider that deliver value during each moment of truth. You have to consider though, that social media represents a series of new channels that complement other avenues that define your digital and real world opportunities. There is no one way to reach all of your customers and prospects.

Mobile.

Web.

Digital signage.

Geolocation.

Social.

And that’s what makes these times so challenging. You can’t assume however that building a distributed presence is good enough. You don’t have time for that. Growth and success are intentional, which means you can’t afford to stumble your way around them. There are customers to earn now and yes, technology is changing how you’ll reach them over time. See, the people who represent your customers 10 years from now are not the people who you reach today.

Ten years you say!?

Well, perhaps that’s too far to appreciate. The same is true though for three and four years from now.

Start with getting to know who your customers are and what they need…and how to help them. Then let it inspire you to create meaningful marketing strategies, relevant products and services, and desirable engagement channels in the moments of truth in the medium of preference.

If you don’t continually invest in the awareness of your value or experience you cannot benefit from consideration.

You are now perpetually competing for the future. Social media is one of the channels that now present you with yet another opportunity to truly engage with your customers. In the end, you have to think deeper about this opportunity. Just because you’re in business doesn’t mean you’ll stay in business. If you stop competing for attention and relevance you by default stop competing. This is your time to not just survive but thrive.

What do you think? How else can social media help businesses contribute to business success while helping foster customer and employee relationships and experiences?

Originally appeared in AT&T’s Networking Exchange Blog

Content marketing? That takes a lot of time, doesn’t it?

Are you in a hurry to get somewhere? Yes. Content marketing takes time. And getting it right takes a lot of work, and by work, I mean practice, not research. You can look at demographics all day, but if you really want to get going, you’ve got to start doing, start failing, learning where to avoid the failures if you can, and keep going.

Pick Whatever Platform You Want

Have you seen Vine yet? Twitter just launched it. It lets you record six second videos. Like this:

Sweet yet healthy treat. Micro cooking show. vine.co/v/bJtLu2VYeDa

— Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) January 29, 2013

Can’t see the video? Click Here.

I just started using it. There’s probably a few ways it could be useful. I thought of one right away, and some of my friends are already making their own version. I promoted who was on my radio show like this:

Radio show guests this week on hbway.com/radio vine.co/v/bJMtr7EbqwL

— Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) January 28, 2013

Can’t see the video? Click Here.

So maybe little six second videos aren’t your thing. Maybe you prefer text? Great! Blog. And keep a great newsletter going.

A photo person? Swell! Use Instagram. Or Facebook. Or Flickr. Who cares? Pick whichever platform you want.

But How Do You Find Ideas?

You try things. You see what people are asking about. I dipped into Twitter and saw people asking about details of social media for customer service purposes. Pow. I could write a post about that. I looked on my free health and nutrition group and lots of people are asking for smoothie and juicing recipes. Maybe I’ll make a quick ebook and pop it into the Amazon store. Or I’ll have a live Hangout on Air and share recipes in real time with people from my kitchen.

Ideas are all around you. You need only scratch a tiny bit to find them. But you also have to have your “and this relates to the people I share things with like this” hat on.

Content is a “Pick and Scratch” Process

If you’re looking to build media and get some attention, you need to produce more content than just a little. Where do you find the time? You pick at it. I wrote this while I waited for a YouTube video I was uploading to process. Where did I find time to do the YouTube video? I had a space between two meetings and I knew I needed to shoot this particular video so I got things ready.

It’s the same answers I can give you for living in a little house. You find ways to keep everything functional instead of wasting it. Small houses save space. Content marketers find time. It’s related.

Serve Your Community Passionately

I think about you when I sit down to write. I think about how I can help you. I think about whether I can educate or inspire or instruct. You’re the only person I think about when I create. I don’t wonder what my colleagues are doing. I don’t wonder what’s trending. I work on finding something I can share with you to be helpful. You’re the focus. And that makes it work.

Here’s a formula I love to remember daily: First, earn an audience. Second, nurture a community. Third, empower a network. (feel like tweeting that?) If so, then maybe I’m doing my job well. If not, I’m still on step 2.

You Must Be Responsive and Fast

Gone are the days of “working on a blog post in drafts for the last week.” If the idea’s worth anything, post it. Even unfinished if you have to. You’re not being graded. You’re being consumed, absorbed, and if you’re lucky, passed around. If you don’t have time for the best blog post ever, what are you doing with your time? Reading Mashable? You have work to do.

Utterly stuck? Go for a walk. Ask yourself over and over again what your community wants. Don’t have a community of your own? Write for the community you want to serve! ( tweetable).

This is bigger than “just business.” This isn’t an avocation. This is a path. Are you willing to put in the work to earn what you want?

Earlier this month, Canonical, the co-creators of Ubuntu–a distribution of the open-source Linux operating system–announced that they were getting into the smartphone business. They previewed an Ubuntu-based smartphone OS with an aggressively gestural UI design. The phone doesn’t have a home button, a slider-based lock screen, a “settings” tile, or an app switcher toggle. Instead, a user accesses these functions by swiping various edges of the screen.

Gestural interfaces–which eschew visual “chrome”-like buttons and tiles in favor of swiping, pressing, or tapping directly on content areas–are just starting to go mainstream. But the Ubuntu phone is going all-in on these new interactions. They’re as baked-in to Ubuntu’s mobile design language as skeuomorphism is to iOS’s. I got in touch with Canonical’s head of design, Ivo Weevers, and Lead Phone UX Designer Mika Meskanen to ask them about jumping into the deep end of gestural interface design. (They responded jointly via email.)

Co.Design: Why did you choose this approach? Was it simply to distinguish from iOS and Android? Or is an “all-gestural” phone OS the future of phones in general?

Canonical: Traditional Japanese architecture teaches us some important design principles about the balance between space and objects. Things that are not needed are not in the way, to allow complete immersion into an activity. Objects are placed around the periphery of the room and so are easily accessible when needed. By studying design cultures like this and how people use their phones, we could design an experience that takes a leap from where mobile user interfaces were until today.

These principles can be seen in Ubuntu’s gesture-based interface, which gives the content or task at hand undivided attention on the screen. Everything else is peripheral, but is easily evoked from the screen’s edges. It means that it’s really easy to switch between favourite and previous applications, and access controls, notifications and settings without ever interrupting the natural flow of activity. Gestures are also very intuitive and give a natural feeling to engaging with your personal content and applications.

Typical phones insist on navigation via hard or soft buttons to go back to a home screen, and eventually to the desired destination. The edges of the screen give immediate access to the features that a user needs the most frequently on a phone.

Co.Design: Exactly what functions can be invoked by swiping from each screen edge, and why?

Canonical: During research, we found that most people use up to ten apps most frequently, so in Ubuntu a left edge swipe quickly reveals a list of these most used apps without ever leaving the current, open app. Swiping right flips between currently open apps. Most of the time, people want to use two or three apps only, and this swipe makes that very easy.

The top edge gives the user access to peripheral but key system tasks, such as accessing and responding to messages, as well as settings such as connecting to wifi, adjusting screen brightness, time, date, and battery life. For these settings, often users just want to take a quick peek or make a swift alteration without having to leave their application, going to a home screen and scrolling through settings, and therefore losing the ‘flow’ of the activity in hand.

The bottom edge of the Ubuntu screen reveals controls for that app only when they are needed, so users are immersed much more into the things that matter more of the time. Most of the time people want to simply engage with content. For example, it is the photos that matter when looking at photos in a hardbound album, not the scissors and tape used to stick them there. Intrusive control buttons or controls constantly available in the interface take away precious real estate, even though they are used only in a minority of situations.

Co.Design: Gestural interfaces have their advantages, but they’re very new and unfamiliar to most people. How do you make these features intuitive and discoverable to new users, when there’s no obvious visual cues or skeuomorphic affordances?

Canonical: Touch interfaces have had the tendency to become very explicit. By consistently using edges instead of physical or software buttons that people have to poke at or aim for, we can leverage a range of human motor skills previously untapped–like muscle memory and finger dexterity.

User research found that gestural interfaces require a short learning curve. However, once learned they are very easy and become natural interactions quickly. There are already clear examples in existing products how the user can be informed effectively about the interactions, and by doing that the user gets access to a whole new world of interactions.

Co.Design: Aren’t design and open-source fundamentally at odds? How can Ubuntu’s design team ensure the best possible user experience when they can’t control what users will do with the software–including modifying, hacking, and forking it?

Canonical: Ubuntu design is led from our exceptional design team based in London, but also through engagement and collaboration at the right levels with other designers and community contributors around the world. There are great examples of co-creation projects that resulted in great products. For example, we have developed our own distinctive Ubuntu font,
which is a great example of a major new design led by our team and developed with the community across the world.

Developers have already shown that the open-source approach can result in great code, so we don’t see why designers can’t achieve the same.

Food for thought: If you gave a million monkeys a million typewriters and a bunch of cigarettes and coffee, or however that thing goes, they’d not only produce the works of Shakespeare but all sorts of bizarro versions of Shakespeare’s plays, too. Eventually, they’d come up with what Shakespeare’s plays would have been like if Shakespeare had, in fact, been Sir Francis Bacon, and they’d come up with a wacky take on Hamlet in which the hero’s father came back not as a ghost but a vampire. At some point along the way, they’d write a set of Star Wars prequels that weren’t so awful.

Why? Because infinity begets inevitability, or so the reasoning behind the theorem goes. The monkeys aren’t working toward Othello; they just happen upon it at some point during their eternal, unyielding keyboard-bashing. And in much the same way, though in a slightly more orderly fashion, a recent project by the Nebraska-based artist Jeff Thompson will eventually live up to its name and produce Every Possible Photograph. Not just every photograph ever taken, mind you, but every photograph conceivable (including many you’d never think to conceive in the first place).

Thompson arrived at the idea after spending some time thinking about the slippery, subjective matter of what makes for “good” art and how he might remove himself from the process of creating it. Essentially, he says, he wanted to cede control of “the decisions that we think of traditionally as the provence of the artist,” considerations like color, composition, and form. Short a monkey, he wrote some code to take the reins.

Thompson’s program spits out between 200 and 300 new images every second, each a slight, pixel-level permutation of the last. The output may not look like much–above, it’s visualized as a wall-size projection of tiny, flickering thumbnails–but eventually it will produce every photographic masterpiece ever captured.

Well, not exactly. In deference to some vanishingly small semblance of practicality, Thompson limited his endeavor to a grayscale palette on a 15-by-10 pixel canvas. “Even this version will take approximately 46,138,562,195, 008,110,600,774,753,760, 087,749,172,181,189,607,929, 628,058,548,517, 099,604,563,033,706,075 years to complete,” he explains. “By way of comparison, the universe is 13,770,000,000 years old.” So by the time the thing gets around to making tiny, pixelated sunsets, our own life-giving fireball will have exploded and incinerated our whole solar system along with it.

Still, for whatever its deficiencies as a useful image-making machine, the program is remarkably efficient at generating thought-provoking questions about the nature of art and imagery. For Thompson, who teaches courses on digital art at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the project shines light on all sorts of thorny issues.

“It’s a time machine!” he says of his creation. “It shows things that happened, things that will, things that will not, and every possible permutation and variation. What’s most interesting to me is what does this mean ontologically? If the camera didn’t ‘see’ those events, are they real? They look like real people, but aren’t. What about images created this way that are illegal (child pornography, for example). They are not ‘real’ but depict something very real.”

Granted, he’s not likely to stumble upon anything illegal–or anything brilliant–at any point during our lifetimes. “Those kind of images will exist within such a vast ocean of noise that they are tiny statistical blips,” he says. But you never know. Load this thing onto a supercomputer and maybe we can at least get a decent snapshot of someone’s lunch.

Facebook hit a billion users! Twitter is the new digital water cooler! Youtube is the future of TV! Ok, you get it right? Social media is transformative. So what? Every business that thinks about customer engagement through a technological lens will miss the very thing that will keep them in business for the long-term—the impact of technology on society and behavior and how it opens up new touch points and changes expectations as a result.

Depending on your business, you may or may not already have someone dedicated to your social media strategy. Whether it is aligning with your current business objectives and priorities is a different article. The focus for our time together right now is on how you will compete for the future of attention, wherever attention is focused. All signs at the moment point to mobile as the future of engagement and commerce as smartphones and tablets become the lens for how consumers see the digital and virtual worlds.

At the end of 2011, the U.S. alone was home to more than 100 million smart phone users. By 2014, 90 million people will use tablets in the U.S., which will represent 36% of the overall Internet population. Why is this important to your business? Regardless of size, the state of mobile now insists that you think through a dedicated experience for customer engagement and commerce alike.

For years, web designers would not only develop sites, but also test their aesthetics and functionality in multiple browsers using the most common operating systems. Additionally, user testing ensured that the desired click paths and outcomes were optimized. No site can truly launch until it performs as designed for the masses. As any designer will tell you, if the click path breaks down or introduces friction, visitor frustration and abandonment isn’t far behind.

Similar to the Web, mobile is now a dedicated channel that represents a means to an end. Or said another way, mobile has become an exclusive experience rather than a bridge between people and information on the traditional or desktop web. It is still largely assumed that people on mobile devices represent the minority of web users and thus require less focus and resources than those who use desktop or laptop PCs. But with the proliferation of smart phones and tablets, the balance is shifting. The question is; have you revisited your web and mobile strategies to meet the needs and expectations of your connected customers?

Let’s take Facebook as an example. The company faces a serious dilemma as its mobile site m.facebook.com, and its dedicated app for iOS, Android, Microsoft, and Blackberry, rival its classic website Facebook.com. In May 2012, comScore reported that for the first time, mobile users in the U.S. spent more time in Facebook than those using desktops and laptops, 441 minutes vs. 391 per month. While the company has designed successful mobile products to deliver optimized, on-the-go experiences for the small screens, it has not found a viable business model to monetize this profound shift. Facebook makes the lion share of its billion-dollar revenue by serving four to seven ads at a time on the desktop. On the mobile, it only presents a few per day in its micro news feed. If a tech-savvy company such as Facebook faces this quandary, chances are, you will as well.

In a mobile economy, apps become the currency of a new information exchange. One of the most fascinating and least understood aspects of apps is that they create a contained experience that essentially is its own Internet. Everything your customer needs or could possibly need should be included in the app. And those mobile browsers that need to hit the traditional web, visitors will expect to see a page optimized for the smaller screen. Think about it for a moment. How many times have you tried to hit a site from your phone or tablet only to quit in frustration when the site would not load correctly on your screen? You may or may not choose or remember to visit that site later and that’s just one example of how designing for experiences is as much a part of form and function as it is about platform-centricity.

That ‘s the point. Customer behavior is evolving. Technology is evolving. Is your digital strategy evolving? Is it considering shifts in attention, activity, and expectations and designing new experiences to react and lead accordingly?

The time is now to answer these questions and more…

Who on your team is thinking about designing mobile experiences? How is mobile tied to the overall digital strategy? How is social and mobile complementing your web strategy? More importantly, how are people connecting or attempting to connect with you and how would they define the experience?

Answering these questions will help you design for tomorrow’s digital strategy right now. The future of online experiences is distributed, but it is also integrated in its ability to tell your story while delivering exceptional experiences optimized for each channel. Like the classic web and social media, mobile is just one of the many channels that requires a dedicated approach. And, as we’re learning, mobile will become one of the most if not the most important channel for customer engagement.

Hooray! I get to post a completely pro-Google infographic! If you don’t know, I love Google and hate Apple, mainly because of Apple’s uncanny ability to milk every last penny out of their customer base. Google, once again, has produced one of the greatest mobile apps, for completely free.

Google Music is a free music cloud storage and streaming solution. When I first heard of Google Music, I could not believe it. Free streaming of my entire 15,000+ song library? I’m there. Not only that, Google Music’s app works 99% of the time, even with slow internet.

Now I’m not going to say that my Google Music app will be obsolete soon, but it will. I’m sure I’ll be making the switch to Spotify Mobile shortly. Not because I don’t like my Google, but when entertaining as many new musical artists as I do, all the downloading and record storing takes up too much time. I’m getting older now and I don’t have time to hipster out on obscure music blogs all day. I need a service that can do some of the work for me with similar artist functions and app capabilities. I’m sorry to all you online music stores, instant music streaming is the only option for the future. Now I just can’t wait until Google comes out with a free version of Spotify Mobile.

Though it took hundreds of thousands of years for fossil fuels to form naturally, chemical engineers at the University of Michigan did it in a minute.

By “pressure cooking” green microalgae in 1,100-degree-Fahrenheit sand for around 60 seconds, the researchers converted more than half of the slimy algae into biocrude oil, which can be further refined into various forms of biofuel.

It’s an exponential improvement over Mother Nature, and a breakthrough for the lab. Two years ago, the team sped the process up to under a half hour, converting around 50 percent of the microalgae into biocrude.

“We’re trying to mimic the process in nature that forms crude oil with marine organisms,” said Phil Savage, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan who conducted the study along with doctoral student Julia Faeth.

Instead of waiting for dead organisms to decompose under layers of sediment over the course of millions of years, Savage and Faeth filled a steel pipe with wet, green microalgae of the genus Nannochloropsis, and pushed it into the hot sand. A minute’s exposure heated the algae to 550 degrees all the way through, and 65 percent of it became biocrude.

In addition to the time savings, Savage is trying to streamline the process of creating algal biofuel by starting with wet algae. Traditionally, algal biofuel producers dry algae before extracting biocrude. That takes time and costs quite a bit of money – which explains why algal biofuels cost around $20 per gallon. Savage and Faeth said that they can’t yet estimate any cost savings for their method, but any simplification of the process could potentially bring prices down.

While the results are certainly promising, don’t expect to fill up with algal biofuel anytime soon. The Michigan team conducted their tests with just 1.5 milliliters of microalgae, and still don’t know why they hit a sweet spot at the minute mark. Savage and Faeth suppose that researchers previously overestimated how long it took to create biocrude, and that affected the yield of prior experiments.

“My guess is that the reactions that produce biocrude are actually must faster than previously thought,” Savage said.

Though nature took a while to create fuel, more time spent in a pressure cooker could actually be deleterious to the algae. ”For example, the biocrude might decompose into substances that dissolve in water, and the fast heating rates might discourage that reaction,” Faeth said.

Even if further research shows that it’s completely feasible to create large volumes of crude from algae in short periods of time, biofuel producers still have to generate enough heat to get large amounts of algae up to 1,100 degrees. That’s going to require a great deal of energy, not to mention algae. While algae doesn’t displace farmland the same way ethanol and other crops grown for fuel do, the US would still need enough algae to cover the state of New Mexico to meet its energy demands with biofuel.

Flying has always been one of my favorite ways to travel. As a child I would use American almost every flight for their frequent flyer program. Now as a pay-my-way adult I use exclusively Southwest and JetBlue. I do noticed that the employees of Southwest and Jetblue actually seem happier. A happy flight attendant makes me enjoy myself better.

At South by Southwest a couple of years ago, there was a panel on company culture and keeping employee moral up. One of the sitting experts was from Southwest Airlines. Did you know Southwest has over 20 employees who’s only job is to find ways for all of the other Southwest employees enjoy their time at work? Not only that, but there is a social network online exclusively for southwest employees to interact with each other and react to company press releases and major decisions.

Besides workplace transparency, Southwest is a company actively trying to make flying fun. I know you’ve seen the rapping flight attendent, but I’ve been on multiple Southwest flights where crying babies are sung lullabies or some other great tunes.

I hope more airlines start including a fun atmosphere, but I respect travelers who want to be left alone.

Via DailyInfographic: http://dailyinfographic.com/

Do you feel as if there aren’t enough hours in the day? Maybe you’re not utilizing them correctly. As today’s infographic suggests, a simple twenty minute nap can have your mind and body running at optimal performance.

When I was a young boy, my mother was the queen of naps. Me and my sister always knew not to bother her for anything during this time, because she was generally a happier camper when she arose from her slumber. I’ve never been much of a napper myself, just because that big burning ball in the sky says it’s time to rise and grind. But whenever I do nap, the feeling I get afterward is quite nice.

Some of the greatest historical figures, ranging from Einstein to Da Vinci have been documented nappers. Whether you’re nodding off for five minutes or an hour, a brief venture to the dreamworld can increase your level of alertness, increase your mood, stamina, and even have long term health effects. Finish the week off strong with a nap a day. And remember, I’m not liable for any damages caused by excessive napping.

I basically never use Siri. Half the time she has no idea what I’m asking her for, which is only funny when you’re not in a hurry. The times she’d be most useful to me, I’m usually out on the streets of New York City, and the background noise seems to confuse her, which leads to me yelling the same phrase at my phone over and over while worried New Yorkers hurry past me, shielding their children.I can’t remember the last time I used Siri on purpose, but I must accidentally launch her at least once a day. For some reason, it always happens when I’m on the subway: “Siri not available. Connect to the Internet,” she tells me in her humorless bot voice. Usually, the other people in my car pretend not to notice, tho earlier this week another passenger helpfully shook my arm with both his hands and told me, “Siri doesn’t work when you’re underground!” I thanked him and moved to a different seat. I should probably just turn Siri off, but I keep thinking I might suddenly think of a great reason to use her.

A quick Twitter search proves I’m not the only one who has a rocky relationship with Apple’s faceless lady:

I think Siri is a great idea and has lots of potential, but so far she hasn’t lived up to it. Maybe that will change with the iPhone 5 (or 6). As Ilya Gelfenbeyn, CEO of Speaktoit (Siri’s Android cousin), told Fast Company recently“The field is still in a really early phase of development. It’s something like the search engines in the beginning of the ’90s.”

Do you find Siri useful, or annoying? Share your best–and worst, and funniest–Siri stories below, along with any tips you might have for the unconvinced (me).

Image: Flickr user Scott Moore