Second Thoughts

The Secondbrain contest ended a couple of weeks ago and already announced the winners on the contest page. We think it’s time you know them better, to learn their success stories and to show you that they are real people, with real lives, hobbies and dedicated friends.

Dedicated friends? Well… yes! We must acknowledge those friends who made it possible for The Dude Dean to become the Secondbrain Macbook Air contest winner. Without his armies of followers, the Dude Dean would probably be less successful. Of course, Secondbrain is more than a social network, but the power of the community is what makes us more influential, and Dude Dean proved this all the way.

Since he joined Dean has been actively involved in the Secondbrain community, he created interesting collections and he contributed to the growth of the Secondbrain family. Obviously, we are not the only ones who think he deserved his prize – after all it’s the Secondbrain users who voted in his favor. But what is really interesting is to learn how Dean managed to gain so much popularity.

Dean doesn’t keep his strategy a secret:

My 474 friends on Myspace, my 320 friends on Multiply, my 309 followers on Twitter, my 146 Followers Plurk, my 538 friends Iconbuffet and my 234 friends Facebook.

Obviously Dean is an active social media user, a believer and a “guru” – although the term is somehow biased. There are lessons to be learned from a fellow like Dean, and if you are looking for advice on social media marketing, he’s your man - he is an SEO/UX consultant and an SEM. Somehow this may have given him an unfair advantage over other contestants, but let’s not forget that Secondbrain is a social media service, and it is only natural for the best communicators to be at the top and to become “top Secondbrainiacs.” StumbleUpon, digg, Propeller and others function based on the same principle: the most active users, with the greatest number of followers, have the best “user karma” – a fair reward for being so active in these communities and actually helping these sites grow.

It’s not easy to become a top user in any social network. The “unfair” advantage costs a lot of time if you think about it. One may even wonder just how much time is needed for anyone to become at least popular. Ask Dean… or better yet see what he already revealed on his blog:

The real cost was social momentum: one year on Iconbuffet, four years on Myspace, four years on Multiply, one year on Twitter, one month on Plurk and two years on Facebook. All that time spent on these social networks was what won me the contest. I just had more social capital than anyone else in the running. Who knew having a giant SEO Social Media network could pay off so well?

Time and dedication made Dean a Secondbrain winner, but we think he won more than just a Macbook Air. He won friends and he won a position among our top users. With him… we won as well: more members in the community and valuable content in the Secondbrain web library.