Everybody knows Lambert will win this season’s Idol but there may be some surprises in store none the less.

Mashable has a great story today from Adam Ostrow about ways to have a peek into the future of pop culture:

According to The New York Post “a glitch in the Apple software allowed fans a glimpse at which contestants are selling the most “Idol” download.” And, in what will come as a surprise to many Idol fans, Gokey was not the first or second most popular artist.

While Lambert, as expected, is the most downloaded artist so far with 6 of the top 10 top tracks, Kris Allen actually occupies 3 of the slots, while Gokey has just 1 song on the list. Of course, American Idol fans don’t vote on singing skills alone, and Gokey, as you might know, has a compelling backstory, which could make all of this irrelevant.

If you enjoyed the video earlier about marketing in an economic downturn here’s some more data to support John Quelch’s thesis that we need to segment by attitude rather than demography

Effects of the Recession

Other consumers that are living more cautiously are joining the “life on hold” tribe. These people are staying in more and cutting out big-ticket purchases such as cars.

This group are generally in the 35 to 54 age bracket. Vauxhall’s “You pay we pay” redundancy marketing campaign is an example of a company responding to the fears of this group.

There is another group who are slightly less pessimistic frame of mind. The groups have been divided into those who are trading off, those who are trading down and those who have the occasional treats.

More here

‘Easy’ is the key to disruptive innovation.

John Quelch says demographic segmentation is dead–emotional/behavioral segmentation is emergent.

Four new consumer segments– Age and Income not really drivers.

1.) “Slam on the Breaks”

2.) “Pained but Patient”

3.) “Live For Today”

4.) “Comfortably Well”

“Pained but Patient” consumers are the ones driving the change in your business and the ones who need your attention.  Gaining marketshare is less expensive today than it was during good times.  New habits are being internalized and consumers may not revert to their old behaviors.  Consumer appetite for new products that demonstrate value effectively doesn’t wane during a downturn

Who do you target?

How Google might fail– A compelling, if not paranoid, look at the threats that Google faces as the web grows. Via Slideshare

Very funny satire

Roughly 40 people you should be following–and why being followed isn’t quite as important as your ego may suggest. (Thanks to @PRsarahevans for the title)

It’s follow friday on twitter.  If you are new to twitter this is an important day because it is one of the best times to add people to your follow list without getting chumped into following a bunch of MLM gurus.

This follow friday I intend to unfollow as well.  This is always risky. I watched one of my favorite twitter iconoclasts, @sdreinhart1975 clean house.  I was impressed  The truth is I won’t unfollow many people but I need a smaller fire hose to drink from and honestly some people are just not delivering value.  Twitter is an excellent tool for people reporting on the minutia of their lives and many are interested.  I need to learn stuff so –as popular as she is– I’m cropping iJustine.  Sorry, nothing personal, You’re very attractive, (I love your picture), but I need to move on.  It’s not you– It’s me.  I know you won’t miss me– your are loved by thousands (probably more).

I am not loved by thousands.  Nor will I ever be.  I’m ok with that.  Twitter is a smart RSS reader that can be made smarter and I intend to get smarter from it.  If you want to validate yourself through twitter, save your self a bunch of time:
(1) just follow a bunch of people.  Screw follow friday –follow everyone– more than 90% will follow you back because its the right thing to do.

(2) If you want lots of followers focus on those with fewer than 3000 followers and who follow more people than they are followed by, your chances of them following you are even greater.

You should have no problem amassing tens of thousands of followers following those two simple rules.  Best of luck–you’ll be burned out in no time.

I’ll follow you back too –unless your time line is filled with pitches for MLM, too many self-congratulations, unsolicited offers to grow my follower count, or offer me a free Mac Air.  The only other reason I won’t follow you is because you are an ideologue.  I’m easily bored by dogma both on the left and on the right.

I’m genuinely trying to add value to your time on Twitter.  I am guilty of over retweeting because I like to follow people who are smarter than me and share with people who may have broader interests than me.  I think I’m a good mediator/filter  I like sifting through and finding the good stuff.  That said, anyone can follow the people I name below and skip me all together.

There are people who are better at twitter than I am.  They are bigshots–the A-listers:
@Scobleizer More followers than L. Ron Hubbard.  How he monitors all this stuff is truly amazing.  He really finds great stuff, despite the enormous flow of information he is managing
@jowyang Analyst for Forrester, he’s the master of social media in general.  I follow for stats because he is so generous with them.
@SteffanAntonas Where does he find this stuff?  maybe the best link-finder on twitter.  Never disappoints
@palafo Hard-core journalist.  Gives you hope for the future of journalism in general.
@avinashkaushik Bleeding edge technologist
@mike_elgan Tech journalist with a remarkable sense of the future
@Armano One of the shining lights of PR on social media.  Has real results to show for his efforts
@Kitson Smart, funny and aware–particuarly of issues regarding CRM and technology.  Awesome links
@danzarrella Social media Scientist (I love that–and he really is).  He is living in the future for real.
@zaibatsu Friend to the world.  Tons of followers–everyone loves him. Hardest working twitterer in twitterdom
@stejules good links.  I personally like the way stejules experiments with twitter as a ad channel.  Wonder if he’s making any dough.
@rww Read Write Web is without question one of the most impotant blogs on the web.  They make themselves more approachable with Twitter.
@timoreilly Wanna learn how the web will change society? follow Tim.
@mashable Much like @rww @mashable makes the mashable brand more approachable. It also keeps me more aware of new content on a terrific blog

Honestly, if you just want to watch, follow those 15 tweeps and you will get 85% of all that is cool in social media.  From there, follow people who are into what you are into, and you’re good to go.  For example, I follow @webby2001, mramsey1, MarkEdwards and @martindave because we’re into the same stuff (legacy media and how it adapts to new technology) and they are really good social netizens. They are as important to me as anyone on the aforementioned a list.  I follow artists and celebs I admire like Tony Hawk, Penn Jillette and Beck too,  but honestly I’ve been mostly disappointed.  P.Diddy (@iamdiddy) needs some serious social network coaching (Bitchassness? Let’s go!!!!!!) Bottom line: Don’t worry about who is following you.  That’s not where the value is. You are not your followers– you are who you are following.

I often think of retweeting as voting.  I know I could do that in digg or delicious but I like to weight my vote with something rational. Plus the social bookmarking services are kinda rigged.  Twitter isn’t rigged yet (as far as i know anyway).

I follow Ars Technica Michael Arrington (@TechCrunch) and ReadWriteWeb (@RWW) because they are three of the best blogs on the web.

You will have others– hopefully you will share them. Sometimes it’s awful hard to understand why twitter is so compelling, but a big part of it is collecting ideas from some of the brightest minds alive.  follow me if you’d like yours filtered a bit–but if you prefer it straight–  drop me and pick a top 20.

If I’ve quit you and you aren’t a zealot, a troll, a barnacle, or an MLM– just @me and I’ll follow again.

Others you will get a great deal of value from include:
@tommytrc
@sbeckham
@AndreaMeyer
@LtGenPanda
@frostfire
@marketingwizdom
@Hamlet
@DragonI
@kasthomas
@styletime
@littlebrownpen
@AdInfinitum
@RickM
@adamostrow
@gleonhard
@lisahickey
@stef
@Dana_Willhoit
@techpr
@sarahintampa
@lisamurphyTO
@BradMays
@mparent77772

Of course endorsing all these people may make you wonder: what about Guy Kawasaki, Dave Winer and the other A-listers?  Well, I figure you know about them. That isn’t what follow friday is for. They don’t need my endorsement–and everyone retweets them anyway.

Who do you follow?

A classic.  Worth reviewing.  Presentations need a new apporach.  This slideshow explains why.  It also shows how to do better decks–if you must.