Choose where to live by asking locals about their neighborhood. Listen in on their conversations or jump in and ask their advice – from wherever you are.  That’s what Eric Wu promises renters with his online site that combines the online sharing and conversational powers of a wiki and Twitter. RentWiki. Get a feel of the neighborhood beyond what you see driving by.  How family-friendly is it, for example, if you have kids? Who else is moving in?  Why? What’s there to do nearby? Asking people who already live there enables you to get a better feel of the area. 

That is, if current residents feel motivated to spend time sharing their views and recommendations.  That’s the part of Wu’s business I don’t understand. Yet the site is user-friendly – and more power to him for being the first to try. Perhaps tie-ins with Yelp, outside.in and other local-based sites and services would draw more people who aren’t looking for a place to rent.

Clearly, such Twitter verticals are growing wildly popular. Why not start one to boost sales in a low-cost way? Or, more daringly, start a Twitter-based business? Here’s more stories to whet your appetite for the idea:

• WallHogs uses it to attract customers and turn their uploaded images

 into prints - over-sized vinyl wall hangings actually. Dell uses Twitter as a fast and low-cost way to sell discounted products. (Could you as well?)

• You could use it to create an instant, real-time straw poll or to research stocks at Stocktwits which “aggregates tweets from a group of Twitter users who are involved in trading and investment topics.” 

• Even golf club owners are haltingly tip toeing into social media by Twittering the media with press releases. (How did owners manage to abbreviate their releases to 140 characters?) Remarkably, Scott Beale used Twitter and other social media tools to fund his start-up.

• British baker Poke is tweeting customers to alert them when a fresh batch is out of the oven.

• Chris Savage trolls on Twitter to find people who need his private video sharing software.

As with all Wisdom of the Crowd-based ventures the value and profits you generate are dependent on the smarts and diversity of the participants.   Twitterers who figure out how to reward people for smart, active participation in their Twitter-based service represent the cream that will rise to the top of our attention.  Posterous has similar possibilities as a tool for entrepreneurs and for existing businesses and groups.  Watch it grow over the next six months.

Other than your best talent your most vital trait is the capacity to collaborate – especially with people extremely unlike you. That’s the great leverager of value. Many people – even some social media advocates  - still hew to the Leaders/Followers model for work and social life.

Yet those most likely to succeed and savor their lives in this flattening world are those who can recruit people extremely unlike them to join in accomplishing “first-evers.” They will be sought- after Collaborators. 

That’s what made the most difference (other than the candidate himself) on the Obama campaign staff, as I experienced it. 

It seems to me that we need to learn from those who are agile Opportunity-Makers – with and for others.   You can recognize them because they usually ….

1. Search for and speak to the sweet spot of mutual benefit, rather than talking about themselves.

2. Articulate that mutual benefit to the possible team members in a way that naturally recruits them to join in capturing the opportunity.

3. Are open to facilitating the team’s success  - or asking the team to consider who is best suited to do so.

4. Get the team to agree on a top goal, rules of engagement, tasks with lead persons for each and a related timetable.

 With that approach we are more likely to:

•  Optimize our opportunities in work and in life. 

•  Become happier and higher-performing - with others. 

Ultimately we’ll enjoy accomplishing greater things together than we could on our own.  In brief, that’s the Moving From Me to We mindset. I elaborate in this interview with International Association of MBAs president Lisa Cummings.

Ben Casnocha

1. Mentoring in the Most Powerful Way

In today’s interview you’ll hear about the far-reaching benefits of deep, two-way guidance. Some effects ripple out beyond the original mutual mentors as this story demonstrates. My favorite line in this story is about the golden rule of mentoring: “It is wise to help set the course. But the navigator has to find his own way.”

Yeh’s life is saturated with flourishing relationships. An avid family man, friend, high-tech entrepreneur and advisor (Symphoniq, AthenaWork, mail.com, Umaveda, Ustream.TV, etc.) and a writer, he‘s actively involved with former classmates at Stanford and Harvard Business School.

2. Making Collaboration Easy and Fun Online

In this interview, Chris also describes a second Me2We approach, the power of free or low-cost, user-friendly wikis to collaboratively collect and share information. At PBwiki (hosting over 400,000 business and educational wikis), Chris, Kristine and the rest of the team serves even the non-geek market of people like me and perhaps you.

(Kevin Holland goes further, saying don’t even call them wikis or you’ll scare some people away.) In past posts, we’ve mentioned other Me2We ways to wiki.

If you’re now hungry for more Yeh ideas on connecting well with others, check out Ustream. Use it to broadcast your live video experiences, including athletic event, school play, wedding, talk show … and political convention.

Better still, it led Jane Pollak to her dream job.

Jane provides what’s probably the single most successful Me2We tool you’ll ever find. The mastermind group. She’s belonged to one for 16 years. Now, she organizes and leads them – and you can too. With more people working on their own, the desire for this kind of structured mutual support and camaraderie is growing fast.

Most meet in person, some online or via phone. (My group does all three.)

Does a mix of writing, coaching and/or speaking – and leading mastermind groups appeal to you? Want to learn exactly how to start a profitable mastermind coaching business – serving the niche profession or industry you know best and enjoy most? Dreaming of a lifestyle change? Seeking more independence?

How about a chance to mentor those in your kind of work and facilitate their mutual support so they can grow successful faster and have a balanced life– and enjoy the ride with them? Many people are now leading mastermind groups. Plus the market for them is growing. And, for starters, as Vocation Vacations and others have demonstrated, there’s a huge market of boomers who’re exploring new ways to work, play and live – with others – and want help finding their way.

Hear how in this interview.

Every few days you’ll find fresh examples here, taken from one of the blogs on Links, our blog roll. Here’s your first one:Create Community with Maps Mashups and WidgetsOverlay your information on a google map so people you seek to serve can click on geographical places to learn more. Your information-on-a-map creation is a one kind of mashup. Here’s how to make one.Jump on this wildly popular and versatile find-it tool. For inspiration, see 100 interesting things via google maps mashups. Find, for example, locations for extreme sports, breweries or public toilets (a connection?).

And talk about  timely! At Mike Pegg’s blog find the cheapest gas.What kind of maps mashups could you create that would motivate others to add their geo-based information, generating ever more value as they do so?

For example, Paul places real estate listings from craigslist on a Google Maps API. He has many cities up already. Now re-locating home buyers and renters can click on his map to look at their options for a new home. They can explore by price range or geographical area. (Conversely, see 25 Unsafest US Cities.)

Paul paid nothing for the information he used. He’s “just” spent his own sweat equity in creating this service.Then it’s onto Mapplets, 3D and google Earth. Take heart. Creating and using widgets and mash-ups is relatively easy. If, like me, you need someone by your side to learn, then it will be easy to find adept help via your designer or trouble shooter for your blog or web site.

Get free help here, here or here or get pro help.

In their book, Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams dub these mashups “platforms for participation.”

Learn more ways to start a business or enable your town to flourish in Dave Atkins’ guest blog post at All About Cities.

Get inspired by others’ creative uses of Google Maps at Google Maps Mania. See, for example, at Milbazaar, “the life journeys of Barack Obama and John McCain from birth to … well probably the White House for one of them.”

Via a mashup you can submit your own punchline for the famous Dilbert comic strip. Causes and companies can use the same model to invite people to craft a slogan or motto.

Some mashup creators invite others to add and/or rate content to their map, making it more valuable for everyone. See, for example one serving another fervent niche, “1001 Secret Fishing Holes.”

Another kind of mashup you can use to attract others to your cause, hobby or business is a widget. That’s a chunk of web code that can be embedded in your blog or web site.

For example, use the widget called ChipIn, “to create a widget stating what you’re collecting for, how much you want to raise, an end-date and how you’d like to receive your funds (credit card or Paypal) … track your progress on your blog or website and invite others to contribute to your cause” suggests Rebecca Leaman at Wild Apricot.

Then use ChipIn’s popular SproutBuilder to create a custom widget to share your “content” on others’ blogs and sites.Then, to build involvement and discover more about those you are attracting to your blog or site – just ask.

Using PollDaddy.com, post a poll that gives instant polling results as AIMS is doing. With this easy, no-cost approach your participants also discover more about each other. That may deepen their involvement at your blog or site, inspiring them to linger longer, contribute, tell others and return.

• the top-of-heads photo on Clay Shirky’s insightful book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

• the 60-foot high faces of Chicagoans that appear on the Crown Foundation. See startled passersby watch the lips purse on each face, then spurt water like a modern-day gargoyle. Steven van Yoder would probably approve of Godin’s offer to make some members of the Godin tribe, “slightly famous.” Here’s some of my favorite quotes, by the way, from Shirky’s thought-provoking book:

• “We are living in the middle of the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race. More people can communicate more things to more people than has ever been possible in the past, and the size and speed of this increase, from under one million participants to over one billion in a generation, makes the change unprecedented….”

• “What we are dealing with now is filter failure.”

• “Group action gives human society it particular character, and anything that changes the way groups get thing done will affect society as a whole.”• The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming “gather, then share” into “share, then gather.”

• Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.”Shirky is walking his talk. During an interview on the Colbert Report, Colbert suggested printing “Colbert” stickers to put on Doritos bags in their nearby grocery stores.

Shirky, evoking the theme of his book, invited audience members to create their own stickers.

Thanks Steve Johnson.Shirky recommended Jeff Howe’s forthcoming book, Crowdsourcing.

So wrote Alfred P. Sloan. This management guru recognized both the danger of “groupthink” and the need for creative disagreement are vital for any committee or project team to succeed. Sloan was the transformative president of General Motors, philanthropist and more. Thanks, Mardy Grothe. Groupthink can be an innovation killer. To paraphrase Marshall Goldsmith, what got us here won’t get us there.