Had a great lunch with two really smart folks – the following was asked, and it rattled a theme around my head.

What if you had to prove (through actions) that you had already provided real value to someone, before you could “friend” them?   What would a social network look like if  every one of your “friends” was guaranteed to have listened to your advice, in a meaningful way, at least once in the past?

Social Networks evolve in a way that demonstrates how people use different tools for interacting:

1. with their closest friends (email/sms/fbmsg for me)
2. with their core audience (RSS/4sq for me)
3. with their broader but still relevant audience (RSS/Twitter/FB for me)
4. with the people they want to denote social relationships with (LinkedIn and Facebook for me).

What tends to happen with successful social networks is that they have a core value to the first user and some incentives to connect with friends (LinkedIn is better than traditional resumes and you look more valuable with better social proof).

But, after reaching a core network size where the product is optimized for relevant information or connections, the incentive continues to push growth; the network starts to signal relationships over information and becomes less relevant.  That’s happened to LinkedIn and to Facebook.

Facebook’s investing in games (and other platform apps), to maintain the users attention and keep them motivated in the quest for ultimate “connection with everything.”  As a result, Facebook’s got a broad ownership of your entire social graph (how you connect broadly to companies, products, people) — it’s probably going to win there.

So, if you want to build a social entity, don’t compete on the broader data play — ask yourself what niche information can you get detail and clarity on that either users or marketers care about?

Back to the original question — I’d find a network that shared the people that are influenced by the people I influence (Think LinkedIn, back when you only had 150 connections).  I could understand whom you actually have a good relationship with, so that I could ask for good quality introductions from you, or discuss relevant people with you.

There are a lot of other niche plays available to us out there. That’s where the hustlers should focus right now.

It’s been a Reasonable Doubt day on my headphones. Say what you want about Jay-Z, but this album has some great lines, some of which are applicable to building your startup.

Some of you don’t believe me, but Jay is an entrepreneur through and through, and, like any good entrepreneur, he shares his hard won lessons with a younger generation of up-and-comers.

To celebrate the end of another great week at Involver, I give you…

Eight startup tips from Hova:

1. “For the dough I raise, gotta get s**t appraised, no disrespect to you, make sure your word is true.” (Politics as Usual)

Ronald Regan said it best: “Trust, but verify.”  Your word should be your bond, but it may not be the other guys, do your due diligence.

2. “If every homie in you clique is rich; yo’ clique is rugged. Nobody will fall, cuz everyone will be each others crutches.” (Feelin’ It)

Surrounding yourself with people who can pick up the slack when you miss is important. You need to surround yourself with the best people and work to make sure they succeed as well.

3. “Even if ain’t sunny, hey, i ain’t complaining, I’m in the rain doing a buck 40 hyrdroplaning.” (Feelin’ It)

Sometimes you gotta play a bad hand, find a way to make the best of the situation. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

4. “Nothing to gain, and a whole lot to loose, you still singing? Fool.” (Feelin’ It)

Know when to walk away, not every game is winnable, or even worth playing.

5. “What, you’re broke, what the f**k you gon tell me? (22 Twos)

Consider the source of advice, choose carefully who you listen too.

6. “We offer our lives, what do you bring to the table?” (Can I Live)

Every entrepreneur should remember this when raising money or working with large partners.  You are making the ultimate commitment, don’t let other stakeholders devalue you’re stake because they have the dollars.

7. “I see his hunger pains, I know his blood boils. He wanna, run wit me, I know this kid’ll be loyal.”  (Coming of Age)

Find hungry proteges and teach them.

8. “The percentage who don’t understand is higher than the percentage who do” (Can I Live 2)

No explanation needed.

This is my 100th post on this blog.  While I’ve written several blogs over the last 5 years, I wasn’t smart enough to migrate posts over when I switch blogging platforms, so… I’m back at lucky number #100!

Humans like to evaluate at round numbers, we find milestones give good reminders to review behavior.  So, why do I blog?

Here are the 5 reasons I came up with:

1. Shaping my own thoughts – writing makes you clarify. Someone once said: “If you can’t write something, you don’t understand it.” Spot on.
2. Sharing ideas – I think often about topics outside of my expertise.  I share these thoughts because I probably won’t be able to follow them (focus is about saying no).  Also: you help me evolve the ideas, that which is deprived of sun does not grow.
3. Sharing best practices – I am helping establish the best practices of social marketing. I learn everyday from people who are kind enough to blog about the things they are knowledgeable about, I’d like to share my knowledge, like this and this.
4. Define myself – If you are meeting me, it will be helpful for you to know who I am, how I think, how I talk, what I like.  My twitter, tumblr and this blog give you a good idea.
5. Recognize amazing achievements, important thoughts, or other significant moments – The attention economy works because we like sharing significant ideas or moments with each other. We should all recognize when people make awesome things.

So, what will my 100th post be about?  Mostly #4 above this line, and #5 below this line.

I read “The five things I’d tell my entrepreneurial self” by Jon Bischke today.  Jon gives a 5 pieces of advice that are lessons best learned early, and one of them was so good I wanted to share it here:

Simply put, if you want to succeed, surround yourself with people who (a) are succeeding and (b) expect you to do likewise. That simple piece of advice will do more to put you on the path to success than anything else I can think of. [Read more]

I’ve been thinking more about systems for success recently.

Adopting a framework is generally the best path to success.  In building a successful startup, you can holy-war over what the framework should be (e.g. Viability, Feasibility, or Desirability), but at the end of the day any framework is better than no framework. Building a successful life is no different.

This thought is something I’ve discovered while I’ve been exploring a framework for personal success the past few months (standards project), and I’ve executed some experiments in quantifying my life:

1. In Iceland I tracked a ton of personal stats about our trip, all food/drink we consumed, how many steps we walked, etc.
2. I tried Facet of Life to track data through email.
3. I added health goals to my standards project, to keep track of promised outcomes.
4. I used dailyburn/iPhone to track sleep, caloric consumption, stress, weight, exercise and energy levels on a daily or more frequent basis.

I like these experiments, I also really like tracking things — it appeals to my inner data-geek[1]. I’m competitive, so I feel a need to improve what I measure; I now unconsciously optimize for: Diet, Energy, Sleep, Exercise. Yep, pretty good list.

Experiment #3 above taught me a bit about how to build a framework that utilizes my own nature to increase the likelihood of good outcomes.

• I’m competitive, so I feel a need to improve what I measure.
• I’m also “lazy” — meaning I like to conserve energy.

I realized that my tracking can be difficult when I don’t have control of food preparation. Standardizing my intake around a core group of meals would greatly help me spend less time concentrated on tracking. So I just choose 6 meals and ordered enough food to make them for 2 weeks from safeway.com — this wasn’t a difficult decision, it was an efficient one. It also improved my health. My framework made it easy to make a limiting choice that was positive on my health.

Lesson learned for my standards project: I will focus more on frameworks that utilize a desire to be awesome + a desire to conserve attention to encourage efficient/scalable improvement.

[1] It also offends my sense of uniqueness, none of us like to feel like we’re robots, and I feel a certain elegance to living life unpredictably. But, at least for me, growing up is about accepting that choosing to put yourself in a routine isn’t the same as having a routine thrust upon you.  Embracing chaos means remaining ever-vigilant, that’s hard. Choose routines that conserve energy, and use that energy for chosen moments of chaos embracing.

*Update* video of this talk (10min) is now up at http://www.vimeo.com/9584353

I’m writing this at San Diego State University, where I’m about to give the last talk at the BILPIL conference (an un-conference version of TEDMED, an event that celebrates conversations on innovative health and medicine). I’m officially the least qualified person here — and seemingly the only one not involved with healthcare, but one of the organizers recruited me to speak after reading my post from last month, “A plausible future of health care.”

I readily agreed, because the speakers are unreal talented (Joe Trippi, Aubrey De Grey, Dr. Ben Goertzel, Dr. Philip Steven Low, and Jen McCabe).  The schedule today opened with Dr. David Rosenman from the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation and closed with me.  Yep, that’s how I like to roll.  :)

Lately, when it comes to healthcare, I’ve been thinking a lot about Dr. Jay Parkinson’s focus on creating a market-based solution for better doctor-patient relationships without accepting the handcuffs of working with insurance companies. He seems to have given up on public reform — in face of the immensely bad odds public reform faces, I don’t blame him, but I have arrived to the conclusion that public reform is still necessary.  This presentation is my effort at exploring both of those tracks (private market solutions and public reform) and figure out how they work together.  I’m still learning this stuff, so please give me your feedback!