Facebook and Twitter have done it again. One more time, we’ve seen these tools used to cause real social change.

This week brought us a controversy about the pulling of financial support for Planned Parenthood by the Susan B. Komen for the Cure Foundation.  On Jan. 31, the fight was on when Planned Parenthood used Twitter to announce that they felt they had been wronged. Three days later, news sources reported that Facebook was recording 20 negative posts per minute about the Komen controversy. The next day, on Feb. 3, the Komen Foundation reversed its decision and reinstated their funding for Planned Parenthood.

Similar results occurred last month with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) controversy. On January 18^th, thousands of web sites went dark in what was reported to be the largest online protest in history. Two days later, on January 20^th, Congress shelved the proposed acts.

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Along with millions of other people in this world, I am an avid Facebook user.  I enjoy posting, sharing, commenting, and even the occasional Facebook stalk, just as much as the next person.  However, as an educated and employed adult, parent, and friend (to over 464 people, apparently!), there are some rules that guide me as I use Facebook.

It seems to me that my guidelines are mostly common sense.  But judging by more than a handful of my “friends,” and many “friends of friends,” these guidelines are NOT common sense, and need to be spelled out.  So here goes:

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At the height of “the bubble,” a decade defined by a burning hot economy and the founding of many Internet companies, lots of firms were losing their top performers to dot.com upstarts.  Almost overnight, they found themselves scrambling to find ways to retain their people.  Start-ups were offering large signing bonuses to lure people away from big companies who, in turn, found themselves with hundreds of vacancies and an unemployment rate at the lowest level in over 30 years.  For a short time, retention bonuses were all the rage, but it was quickly clear that using money to retain people created many more problems than it solved.

As companies turned to retention surveys and benchmarking for insights, they revealed that money was not the deciding factor in why most top performers stayed.  People stayed because they felt they worked at a “great place.”  So what were the best companies doing to create workplaces that people consider ”great”?

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When a company is struggling because their software products get stuck in testing and redesign, and are slow to shoot out the end of the development cycle, the problem is most likely poor requirements. Getting product requirements right early in the development process is critical to creating software products efficiently.

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So what’s in your plans for 2012?

Is this the year that you write the next Great American novel? Will you be knocking on DefinedLogic’s door for help developing the next great web application or mobile app? Or is it the usual “lose 10 pounds?”

We’re eager to learn what’s in your plans for 2012!

Happy New Year from DefinedLogic!

Did you see our company featured on the front page of the TriCityNews?

We were recently visited by a reporter from this local newspaper. He spent time speaking with one of our founders, Alex Shanley, and also with Alison Kimszal, one of our Business Analysts. We were pleased to be featured as part of the tech scene in Red Bank and the surrounding area. Here’s a link to the article:

Red Bank Tech – DefinedLogic Demonstrates What Can Be Built Here

Thanks to Dan Jacobson of the TriCityNews for his visit to DefinedLogic! Learn more about them at http://trinews.com

Its here! Last week Timeline was released  in New Zealand, but today December 15th  it is now live across the world.

Timeline is a new enhanced profile that displays an overview of all your activities on Facebook, think of it as an online scrapbook of your life.  Once you upgrade to Timeline, you’ll have 7 days to preview your timeline before other people can see it, this will give you

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Has it really been 10 years already??

As we approach the 10-Year Anniversary for DefinedLogic (in January), I’ve been thinking a lot about how far we’ve come…  I have been lucky this far in my career to have worked at some pretty great companies, but none compare to DefinedLogic.  For me it started with an article in the newspaper, which led me out of NYC to a local internet startup, where I met many of the incredibly talented people that I work with today.  I often wonder where I would be if I had not seen that article and applied for a job there.  Then came DefinedLogic – we started as three people, working out of the home of one of the founders.  Slowly we grew, adding some amazingly smart people that we had worked with in the past. Today five offices later (and back in Red Bank), we find our staff almost 20 times bigger. 

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How many times have your heard a business owner say “the hardest part in growing sales is to get customers to understand what we do?”  Companies are eager to jump into social media marketing to resolve this problem, but social media does not eliminate the need to address marketing basics first.

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One of the most popular business catchphrases of the last decade has been “We have a terrific culture, you would fit in well.” Many people use this when describing the culture or work structure at their company. But sometimes it’s not as much the culture as the people who make it work and the managers and supervisors that support it. People shape the culture, the culture does not shape the people.

If you look at some of the most famous work cultures (IBM, Apple, Jet Blue, Disney, and RockStar games all come to mind), all of them have something that makes them special. Whether it is dress code, work atmosphere, people, training, leadership, or maybe just genuine coolness, every culture provides something that makes it different. Is dressing in a white shirt and tie better than wearing shorts and sandals to work? People will argue both points. Culture is basically the best fit to ensure that people are comfortable, and hopefully it will make a difference in retaining or adding talent. Culture does not take the place of salary or bonuses, but it is a deal maker when the monetary enticements are close.

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