PR Squared: Once & Future Dips

Upside Marketing maven and common-sense guru Seth Godin has a new book out, called The Dip. You can read its accompanying manifesto here (PDF).

It’s about “when to quit and when to stick” … According to Godin, “What really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to escape dead ends quickly, while staying focused and motivated when it really counts.”

One fun way that Godin is promoting his book is via an interactive poster (pictured) of UPSIDE Magazine’s Year-2000 Bubble Party Players. You get to help identify those former stars, and to suggest how/why their fortunes dipped. Some of these folks are still around, and thriving, today. But plenty more have faded away… into obscurity (many of the featured faces are literally not even identified!), jail, the grave.

It’s an eery look back for folks (like me) who are currently optimistic … yet can’t help but shudder with reflexive dread when they see headlines like, “How This Kid Made $60M in 18 Months” and, “The Kid Who Turned Down $1 Billion.”

One particularly interesting aspect of Godin’s interactive poster is that he is not only autopsying the Bubble but is also asking readers to predict current leaders’ “future” dips. Here was my entry for Google:

One challenge for a company that will index all the world’s content will be a rising need for consumers to exert some minuscule amount of control over search results that impact them personally.

For example, if someone posts a (labeled) picture of you partying half-nekkid on their MySpace profile, and that content is indexed forever via Google, an otherwise promising career trajectory could be unnecessarily derailed.

I foresee a day when users who can validate their identity insist on a system in which they can “challenge” search results that could incriminate them. All it would take is one bone-headed lawsuit in front of a sympathetic jury and the hellhounds would be loosed in the Googleplex.

Multiply that one instance by a couple of billion potential cases, and you can see a Dip. Not insurmountable, but probably inescapable.

What do you think is Google’s Next Big Challenge?

If you were working in and around the Tech Sector in the year 2000, have a look at Godin’s poster.

(And pat yourself on the back for making it through your own post-Bubble Dip.)