Comment!

One advantage of posting to the internet is the huge audience. Somebody seems to find value in most anything.

What you post is how you are experienced, your electronic personality.

A second advantage is the ability to comment, to add to the discussion. Commenting is a developed skill, a habit. You get better the more you try.

Comments add different points to the original idea, and often reinforce the author’s idea.

Comments take can take the initial post in a whole new direction. When Jack Gates posted The New Normal, we were working to define a radically changed economy and how to use it.

Jack was picked up by over a dozen outlets and received almost a hundred comments. One group got quite active debating the meaning of the word “normal.” I suspect the later commenters weren’t even reading Jack’s post. They were developing a strong riff from the comments.

Not all the comments I get make sense to me, but often spark further comments and passionate debate. Once you let an idea go into the world, you can’t control how it develops. You can experience power beyond your own work.

David Sloan Wilson, the evolutionist, has done some studies that show that the perception of beauty and social rank are based on behavior that moves the species forward, not necessarily specific individuals.

The first thesis of The Cluetrain Manifesto, the book that started social media, is “All markets are conversations,” meaning more than one way. Television was the one way medium.

Develop your thinking in the big arena. Comment early and often.