K.I.S.S., that was a phrase I heard growing up, keep it simple stupid. Never understood why it had to be stupid, but the purpose of the anagram rang clear. Funny how things that you learn as a child can carry in to adulthood, and this is one of those examples.

If keeping things simple is the best way, why do so many things have to be so difficult when they really do not have to? Being that I work for a Web 2.0 company and spend the lion share of my time on the intarwebs, I have noticed that some sights make it extremely easy for you to accomplish a task, and others make it so difficult, that you sometimes scratch your head and wonder why in the world you are even wasting your time with the site. I mean, after all if you are providing a service to your users, why would you want to make it damn near next to impossible for them to get anything done?

It never made sense to me, especially for sites that require you to sign up in order to take full advantage of what they have to offer that they would guide you through a six step process just to sign up. I mean come on, if you are making it that difficult for me to sign up, I can only imagine what the rest of the experience is going to be like. I came across this post tonight on ReadWriteWeb and it got me thinking about specifically the sign up process and how you can crack the holy grail of sign ups. What I mean is how can you give the user the ability to leverage another account they have already created on some other site for the purposes of signing up for yours. Hello, if you can get the sign up process down to just put in a user name and we will fetch as much info as we can for you so you do not have to fill yet another form out, then I am all in.

Well low and behold, some one out there is doing just that, and it is a company that a friend of mine, Micah, works for. The way they go about doing this is extremely clever, hats off to them for coming up with the idea. It is really quite simple, you provide them with your most common user name that you user on the various sites that you belong to and they go out and fetch all publicly available information they can find. Wow, that is what I call keeping it simple (well at least from a sign up perspective). I think what Lijit has done here is rather clever, and it surprises me that you do not see this happening on other sites as well. As more and more companies are opening up their APIs to allow more an more access by 3rd parties, it seems like a logical next step for more companies to do just what Lijit is doing. What to go guys, now if only everyone else was doing the same .

It is extremely easy to go with the flow, accept what the majority is doing as right, to follow popular opinion.  I say it is easy because most times it requires minimal to no effort, you are surrounded by like minded individuals who will not offer much resistance to your stance (after all, they feel the same way about said issue as you do).  The challenge comes when you go against the grain, that you do not agree with the popular opinion, that is when you are met with potentially a lot of resistance.  So what do you do?

If going against the grain is hard, then why do we do it?  There are times in life where following along with the majority is simply just not the right thing to do.  It takes courage to stand up and challenge the accepted believe, challenge it becuase you think it is wrong and there is a better way.

In business, if you are challenging a decision, you can be seen as a trouble maker, a loon, off your rocker, the list goes on.  But what if you are challenging the decision because you know that the decision is the wrong one, that it does not support the mission of your company, or the long term effects may be negative for the company?  Should you not speak your peace and stay quiet and potentially let the decision have long term negative effects on the company?  Or do you go against popular opinion, knowing that it could jeopardize a future promotion or pay increase because it is what is right for the greater good?

It happens in politics too.  Members of a certain party go against what is popular opinion for their party and “reach across the aisle” to do what is right for the country, not what is right for their party.  It is worth noting that McCain has demonstrated this several times throughout his careers, this reaching across the aisle even when it is against the popular opinion of his party.  Speaking of his party, there have been several members of it lately that have gone against the grain.  But it is not simply reaching across the aisle, they have gone a step further.  Republicans like Colin Powell and Former Senator Larry Pressler are breaking with party ties and are endorsing Obama for president.  They are no longer towing the party line, they recognize that there is something much greater at stake and do not support the candidate for their own party.  In my opinion, this takes tremendous courage, and it is something I am thankful that they have done.

Going against the grain is never easy, if it was, perhaps more would do it.  For those that have, whatever the situation is, I applaud you.