social media

Posts Tagged ‘social media’

The silent unfriend

Monday, May 10th, 2010

This post is REALLY long. I’ve included headings that might help you navigate the boring bits, but skip to the bottom because it has the best parts.

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I have a lot of Facebook friends. As of May 2010, I am clocking in somewhere near 1000 connections, though I’m sure that kind of number is far from unheard of on the Interwebs. Still, I’d say it’s significant. I believe I saw a statistic somewhere that mentioned that the average Facebook user has upwards of 400 Facebook friends, although some sociologists get all whiney about the Dunbar number and say you can only ever really have 150 stable social connections and yadda yadda yadda. Listen, we all know there is a big difference between an on-line friend and a IRL friend, though often a personal connection can represent both. In other words, I think the sociologists should find other silly facts to get all uppity about and let us have our social networking fun.

Being a man who works in social media, I find it important to have many Facebook friends for several reasons. For starters, it expands my potential reach and overall presence on the Web (or, if you’re in marketing, it’s the more eyeballs the better). When I produce a new video, write a new blog entry, find something remarkable in connection to a professional venture, or otherwise publish worthwhile personal- or business-related material, my 1000 connections get to see that. And because I’m such an egotist, 1000 just isn’t enough – I ‘Add as a Friend’ just about anyone that I meet (this also helps me remember who they are as well as get to know a little bit about them based on their ‘Info’).

It’s all about reach…

Now, before you accuse me of thinking that my friends are just numbers to me, let me illustrate what I’m really talking about here in terms of online reach: a couple of months ago I had the privilege of producing a video of an awareness event for the Greater Northwest Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Volunteering in this capacity, I found out through the Chapter that the video was to air as part of a special program regarding MS on a local university’s TV channel. Through my on-line social connections I was able to inform a social networking specialist at the local NBC TV affiliate, who in turn relayed word about the event to their thousands of Twitter followers, so those followers in turn could be aware and come out for the event that day. None of this would have been possible if it wasn’t for my drive to ‘Add’ everyone I meet, including this TV station’s social media person. Although the our social network indicates we’re Friends, in reality we hardly know one another. But, by knowing her something great happened; it’s got nothing to do with merely numbers – every number is a real person, and good things happen when you’re dealing with real people!

…which brings me to my topic – the silent unfriend, or rather, the sad fact that the silent unfriend even happens.

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Tags: digital friendship, facebook, like, silent unfriend, social media, unfriend, unlike
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Resetting social connections

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

The following is… well, it’s something… written specifically for ex-girlfriends and former women I’ve dated, some of which specifically want nothing to do with me any more… however, I think this also applies to any kind of dropped connection, too:

You don’t need to have anything to do with me, I understand that. You don’t even need to be my friend, I also understand that. I screwed up and handled the break-up and/or how I treated you when we dated incredibly poorly, I definitely understand that. I am really crazy, like probably chemically crazy, we can probably both agree on that, too. And, of course, people often just don’t want to associate with exes (or crazy people), I understand and respect that clearly as well.

Nevertheless, I happen to still think you’re pretty cool, so…

What I also understand is that there is often an unhealthy, if minor and mildly annoying, tension – an almost NEED that we artificially create in our minds to protect ourselves – a subconscious (or very concious) game of thinking about how to avoid a person that we previously had some kind of fallout with whenever they happen upon us. At least, that’s what happens on my end. Of course, I know I am not the most popular guy in the world, so your side and your thoughts when seeing me in a room could be quite different, but generally, I think that’s what happens. Negative energy ensues.

But, I also think we all have kind of a common bond, and that’s our mutual associations, friends, and, potentially, future social exchanges of some kind, all of which remains worthwhile. As for the latter, I’m talking “exchanges” of information, business, or maybe even service, in the least. I think we just can’t close the “mutually beneficial” doors that life may present to us from time to time. I know that in my chosen industry, a networker’s paradise, we pretty much never ignore a soul because someday we might be working for them, and vice versa. Even if not financially. You might show up for that community volunteer gig and find out the guy you loath is the one with the clipboard! (more…)

Tags: friends, social media
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How I Internet

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

I am a prolific social media user. As a man who engages in the space for business and for pleasure, I thought I might share how I do my internetting, aka, how I propagate and build my personal brand across multiple platforms.

Now, as some of you, especially ping.fm users, are reading this, you might ask yourselves, “why doesn’t he just use one service to populate everything?” Well, the answer is simple: each service has different needs. They all have different audiences, and they (typically) each separately require unique approaches and handling.

Those few personal brands who work in the social space who have large, entrenched followings can afford to “broadcast” to otherwise “narrowcast”outlets (by that I mean they can send one identical content item/link/status to many different services, allowing their following to engage with what’s shared in the space of their choosing). But I think this is a less effective approach, and can be overly redundant. On the other hand, it does reach users in their preferred realm(s).

Well, I’m no Pirillo or Scoble as yet… but, as I said, while I’m trying to present a uniform message, or personal brand, I realize that each venue, each niche, needs to be handled in its own unique way – personalizing the personal brand, if you will. A web juggernaut like Pirillo might not need to do that, but as I am building my brand (something I can do for any brand, hint hint), I know I need that more niche-tailored approach.

So, here’s how it goes for me..

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Tags: Digg, facebook, fark, flickr, Foursquare, Internet, LinkedIn, myspace, social media, social networks, social sharing, social Web, twitter, Wordpress, youtube
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The two kinds of Web video

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

I believe that there are two kinds of Web videos – those that exist as self-contained narratives, and those that serve a functional external purpose.

Self-contained narratives are iterations of a larger type, what we have classically referred to as “movies” or “films”. Movies can be anything from that 15 second clip of a dog on a skateboard to a two-hour long Netflix stream of Spider-Man 3. To a degree such videos can serve a functional external purpose – for example, the skateboard video could be co-opted by a skateboarding website to help generate pageviews, and we certainly understand a large Hollywood movie like Spider-Man 3 is going to have all kinds of licensed merchandise tie-ins – but invariably, “movies” are, in the old media sense, individual SKUs meant to be consumed on a per-performance basis. By individual SKU, I mean that we think of these movies as products, something we would have traditionally exhibited on the aforementioned per-performance basis; we’d sell tickets or rent the DVD or otherwise distribute, or commoditize, these self-contained narratives for no other reason than to create a viewing experience, or an individual performance of a narrative which, hopefully, would be paid for individually. Moreover, the experience can end when the curtains close and the lights come up.

Now, the fortunate thing about the Web is that anyone, anywhere, even collaboratively over great distances, can produce movies, the 15-second or 2-hour variety, completely unrestricted, and post them almost anywhere on-line. From there, movies can take on new life in the social media space, too, in that they can spread an idea, help build a filmmaker’s portfolio and reputation, foster a meme, and perhaps lead to further work for the filmmakers. Also, movies can become an active part of participatory culture.

The unfortunate thing is that, as digital commodities with a reproduction price of zero, movies on-line are painfully difficult to sell as self-contained narratives. Almost all must (or inevitably will via infringement) be shared for free.

Which brings me to our second variety of Web video, material that serves a functional external purpose… (more…)

Tags: film, social media, social media video, video, web video
Posted in advertising, communication, convergence, digital media, entertainment, film, monetization, net economics, new media, old media, storytelling, web video | View Comments

The Wealth in Networks

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Yochai Benkler’s”The Wealth of Networks” is the Old Testament of social media. It’s long, a bit dry, and nobody ever gets through it – despite the fact we all talk about how important it is anyways. It’s not nearly as exciting as some newer books, those metaphorical New Testaments of social media – books that preach pleasant gospels of untold riches to be had by those businesses who get involved in the groundswells of crowd wisdom, where everything will someday be free. Nevertheless, the Genesis (pun intended) of just such newer gospels is to be found in Benkler’s seminal 2006 achievement.

Moreover, a closer examination will reveal that The Wealth of Networks has a vengeful deity, too, one akin to the god found in the first thousand-odd pages of that most famous of Books. Benkler’s jealous Being is seen in the fundamental message of, at least as I read it, Benkler’s text – that the social production of an information commons and the existence of an alternative to the industrial models of the twentieth century, a networked information economy, does not always have to be about the bottom line. That, it would appear, is a scary message for some, indeed. But for those small few of us who have joined with the covenant people and followed Benkler as our Moses in to the World Wide Wilderness of Sinai, there’s a message of freedom and a better world to be had in networks, the kind of wealth in networks that I feel inspires the greatest economic motivation: sharing knowledge, and lifting others thereby. (more…)

Tags: book reviews, democratic web, Internet, mass media, social media, social production, Yochai Benkler
Posted in book reviews, mass media, net economics, new media, social production | View Comments

Should we monitor blogs and social media for death threats?

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

In the wake of last night’s fatal shooting at an LA Fitness outside of Pittsburgh, PA, a thought occurred to me that I felt I’d write a quick entry about, perhaps to generate some discussion particularly with my UW MCDM counterparts. Within 24 hours we get news that the alleged shooter, George Sodini, blogged for months and months about his “exit plan”, or his plan to end his life and take as many people at the gym he worked-out at with him. His shooting rampage plans were right there on the web for all of the world to see, but it seems no one took notice, either because no one saw the blog or cared to read the thing, or because Sodini himself did little to promote his writings anyway. However, this isn’t the first time that plans for such rampages have surfaced on-line before the events took place – it’s just that usually the posts are discovered by people after the fact. In light of this and other examples of different killers’ obvious pre-meditations posted on-line in advance of the deadly events they carry out, the general question I pose is thus:

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Tags: death threats, metrics, monitoring, monitoring the web, shooting rampages, social media, social media tools, Sodini, tools, tracking
Posted in blogs, communication, social media | View Comments