I’m a pretty heavy Twitter user but I have long argued that we need the equivalent of SMTP/POP for micromessaging as we have for email. I know Twitter is great and has a great ecosystem going, but it can’t last forever. Sure a lot of us have gmail addresses, but we can still send/receive email from people who are on gmail. Right now we don’t have that ability, really, with micromessaging/Twitter. It’s a closed box.

Early on in the whole micromessaging frenzy Status.net out of Montreal developed an open-source server for messaging. Their service is Identi.ca (the server used to be called Laconi.ca, but no longer) where I’ve had a profile for a long while, but haven’t used it in ages. Pretty much because all the conversations were on Twitter and I couldn’t use Twitter clients with Identi.ca as well.

Side note: Bloggers, skipping the really bad picture at the bottom of the post. The DH post is a “teachable moment” about writing good posts. What was the really important part of the post? That Status.net is available for one-click install. Where was it? At the bottom of the post after an eye-searing image that I wish I could burn from my brain. I totally missed it. If you have a point to make. Either make it first or don’t bury it in the post as an afterthought because otherwise people will miss it.

My use of Identi.ca might not change much (I do note that I can connect my Twitter account now for seamless back-and-forth messaging), but I’m going to start toying with the server myself. I’ve wanted to for a long while, but reading the Status.net instructions for DreamHost, well I just don’t have the time right now.

Until now.

I skipped over the tongue-in-cheek post on the DreamHost blog—The Official DreamHost Blog! » Announcing…PetStatus.com!—because it didn’t get to the point quickly enough (and was below a God-awful tattoo as the last image—you’ve been warned) that Status.net is now available as a one-click install now for DH customers. Good thing I subscribe to the email newsletter too or I would have totally missed it.

So later this morning I’m going to set up my own Status.net install and experiment a bit. Oh I know that we can’t have everyone with their own micromessaging server, just like we don’t all need our own email server, but I could have my own email server on DH and be on par with all other servers. My email would come and go just like it does now on Gmail. So what I hope is that, while Twitter might stay the “gmail of micromessaging”, other servers and services will crop up to interact with Twitter. Or better Twitter becomes micromessaging client like Gmail is an email client, and we all start being able to use a more universal and interoperable set of standards.

At least that’s the goal. If it happens will depend on us and hosts supporting a critical mass of additional services/servers.

Here’s to trying.

We had a bit of a tempest in a teacup over here in Vancouver yesterday afternoon-evening over comments on an upcoming Third Tuesday Meetup Event. What I find far more interesting than the discussion, which was certainly interesting, is the whole medium-message question-quandary. Here is a good segment from a post about the events of yesterday:

But it wasn’t to be. Despite Kris Krug’s solo attempt to build a bridge to a positive outcome, things hit a dead end with an organizer’s post:
Tobias: This has become tiresome. If you’d like to continue this discussion, you have a blog. Or you can attend the event. Wait, you likely won’t because you don’t appreciate the direction and don’t approve of the choice of panelists. And you don’t intend to come from Whistler.
Followed by shortly by:
…I myself have enjoyed following this discussion, however there are a lot of people unwittingly subscribed by email to this thread and find this tiresome….
No such comments were posted by the unwitting recipients, so who knows where that insight came from, but it helped make any further discussion unpalatable.
link: Tuesday’s Loss – Corvus Consulting (italics added by author to distinguish quotes from text)

I’ll admit, the continued barrage of message was pretty tiring. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many comments on a Third Tuesday event. Yes, there is a handy, “if you want to stop receiving messages about this event click here…” But I wonder what would have happened if the organizers needed to update something important (like time or venue)? Would I miss out on that message?

So I didn’t click.

So the messages kept coming.

And coming.

And coming.

So, the organizers suggested that the discussion be moved to a blog post. A good idea since people could choose to opt in or out of the discussion and not change or block receiving messages about the event.

I think there is an interesting point here about discussion. I don’t think people were averse to discussing the issue, but I think they were getting tired of discussing it there. There’s a big difference there.

It seems to me that the issue brings up another example of the problem of having lots of places where discussion or commentary can occur but can doesn’t equate should. I think there was an expectation that discussion doesn’t happen there, so having a discussion there was jarring and unwelcome. Again, it’s the there part that’s key.

I can think of lots of other examples of this same thing happening, and often with the same result.

Now, one thing that TobiasTodd left out of his post was the offer from the organizers to move the discussion to the Facebook group:

Tobias, I agree that a broader, larger panel would be great. Logistically though, three people is already a busy talk. That said, you raise some good points and I want to hear your questions. Could you please message me with topics you’d like covered? I know our panelists might not be who you wanted, but this is a celebration of social media. And social media is discussion. If I can address an issue for you at the panel, I’ll do my best to voice your thoughts. Same goes for anyone else.
[followed by]
Sorry everyone – one last message. I realize email is not the most social technology, so I created a discussion for this event on the Third Tuesday Vancouver Facebook group. While it’d be great to continue the conversation here, it seems we’re sending out lots of email notifications, so let’s keep things moving without clogging up the inbox. The group page is here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=266947057928&ref=ts Chat soon.

Which if the discussion had moved there, I don’t know I haven’t checked, I think it would have been fine. Better than a blog? Don’t know, but certainly better than what was going on there.

I almost wonder if part of creating tools that allow comments, is creating the rules about how to use the comments.

Update: I incorrectly attributed the post I linked to as being written by Tobias, when it was actually written by Todd Sieling. Apologies to Todd. I’ve edited the post to reflect the correct author.

I’m not a huge fan of working in offices anymore. Not only am I rather out of practice (only one year in the past 10 have I gone into an “office” everyday), but I find them one of the biggest anti-workplaces I know. I enjoy writing and working in a coffee shop more than an office. Why?

People.

In an office there are people (well, duh), but because there are people you have to abide by standard social norms. If someone calls your name, not responding is considered rather rude. Never answering your phone or not showing up to meetings is “not being a team player”. Yeah, great, but what about “getting work done”, when do I get to do that?

This video by 37Signals Jason Fried (which I found thanks to WebWorkerDaily—Why Modern Workplaces Don’t Work – WebWorkerDaily) tells it like it is. The “workplace” is the worst place to get work done.

When I need to write something, concentrate on something, think, read, or code (i.e. work) I need get into that mode and zone. I need some focus and some quiet, and not to be asked random questions or asked to look at something. So on go the noise-isolating earbuds— pretty much these ones in fact-Shure Sound Isolating In-Ear Earphones (SE115) – Red – Future Shop—and away goes the world.

Not quite up there on the “workplace etiquette” scale through.

So, what I suggest is something in between, let’s call it hiding in plain sight. Start with:

• Ignore IMs
• Book blocks of time “busy” on your calendar, which is really code for “I”m working don’t bug me.”
• Let your phone go to voicemail.
• Turn off audio notifications for email, etc.

Essentially turn the tables on your co-workers. Instead of attention, demand inattention. I know, this is extremely anti-social. With open-concept offices, someone is going to wander by (or throw something) or call out your name to get your attention. Here’s the thing, maybe have them watch Jason’s video. Ask your manager to consider having “standing meetings” where you don’t sit, you stand (pretty much guaranteed to make the meeting last about 20 mins max). Try to work on building a culture of working at work and giving people the time and space to work, instead of a culture of interruption.

Or, you can just work from home.

I couldn’t help but to click through to a post with the title of “How Google Failed Its Users and Gave Birth to an Internet Meme“, but reading the post, I have to say that Mike is way off the mark here. His main point is that when users typed “Facebook login” into Google, they shouldn’t have gotten RWW, but Facebook:

While we mock those users, the simple fact is they haven’t necessarily failed, something failed them. With all of our talk about the semantic Web and search engine optimization and tailoring search results to the individual user, there are thousands upon thousands of users performing the same simple search and following the same wrong road. If this were a standard traffic sign misdirecting this many people, it would have been pulled down long ago. There would have been outraged citizens at town meetings and special reports on the five o’ clock news.

I think the real problem is that people are mistaking Google for the addressbar. This isn’t anything new, we’ve all seen it many times. I’m sure that on big sites like CNN, YouTube, etc one of the most common search terms is their domain itself.

The problem isn’t Google but browsers not making this clear…I know this might seem silly, but here’s a screencast showing the difference…

All silliness aside, and please don’t think I’m talking down to anyone, this has been a problem since Google became the default homepage for millions of people. I’ve seen it over and over again, people typing [whatever].com into the Google search field instead of the addressbar.

Where did browsers go wrong that they didn’t make this pretty important part of using a browser more clear? And what can be done now? It’s even more confusing now since if you type a term in the addressbar of Chrome and other browsers it fires off a search…

I guess Google really has taken over.

Now if I could only link my real YouTube account to my Google account…

Getting fired for blogging doesn’t get as much attention as it did in 2004-2005. Back then, the media was a buzz about people getting fired because they were blogging, when, in truth, very few people were actually fired for blogging. Oh yes, some people were fired for blogging, that much is true. I’m sure many of the cases had little to do with the blogging parts as it did with something else going on. However the “fired for blogging” thing did do one good thing, it forced companies to realize that people were blogging and set up blogging policies.

I cover blogging policies in Create Your Own Blog, from Sun’s massive one to the “unofficial blogging policy” from Microsoft: don’t be stupid. Blogging is different than almost anything else you do in your spare time because it is public. If you blog about your boss being a doofus, well that blog better either be private or you’re blogging anonymously because there’s a good chance you’ll eventually get turfed for stuff like that. No, calling your boss a doofus isn’t illegal, it’s just not too smart. You don’t think it won’t get back to him or her? Think again. Oh and the anonymous blog thing? Yeah that doesn’t usually last too long. Most anonymous bloggers who gain any kind of following are eventually revealed (or reveal themselves before being outed by others).

Blogging and your job treads into the territory of other social media and employment. Facebook is now the latest target in the “get you fired” or “keep you from being hired” discussion, and honestly the issues haven’t changed. If you publish something online not only is it there forever, there is no guarantee that something to mark or think is private will stay that way. Just as blogging that your boss is a doofus isn’t smart, tweeting or updating your Facebook status that you’re goofing off when you really called in sick isn’t going to do you any favors. It will get around. Trust me. Maybe not that time or the next time, but it will sometime and you’ll be hooped.

This is why I’ve always liked Microsoft’s blogging policy: Don’t be stupid. It’s simple and to the point. Yeah I know it’s subjective, but just consider what you’re doing as if on of your friends told you they were going to it or did it. If you cringe and think “Oooh that was stupid…” Well, then you have your answer.

So, no, neither blogging, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media tool gets you fired, often you do it to yourself by being stupid.

Don’t be stupid.

Yep, I was taken in as well. The night before the iPad launch Jason Calacanis started off a stream of tweets that said that he had been an iPad tester for a while and rattled off a features that sounded logical. Cameras, games, e-reader, solar panels … hold on … I was wondering about that.

I was pretty interested what Jason was saying and since I met him a few times, I figured that there wasn’t a bad chance that Apple had given him an iPad to test. The next morning I was going to be on the radio with Buzz Bishop on his new morning show in Calgary. Darn good thing I got up early to read my feeds before hand so I caught Techcrunch calling BS on the whole thing.

Others weren’t so lucky:

If you’ve wanted proof that we in the professional press are as crazy as a pack of Mac fanboys when it comes to reporting on Apple, here it is. Late Tuesday, the night before Steve Jobs walked on stage to unwrap the iPad, baby-faced entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, who made bank in the 90s as editor of Silicon Alley Reporter and again in the 2000’s with Engadget, began goofily tweeting that he was a beta tester for Apple’s about-to-launch tablet.

[snip]

Valleywag editor Ryan Tate made a “collage of shame” below with screenshots from the sites that should have known better: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, CNN Money, Reuters, Macworld, and Joystiq. Yes, Joystiq!

link: Calacanis’ tablet tweets accidentally hoax mainstream media | VentureBeat

Lesson here?

Yeah, the grain of salt thing is pretty much bang on here. This isn’t a “shame on Jason for fooling us…” post this is a “shame on us for wanting to believe more than double checking facts” post. Yeah I was taken in too. I wondered if they were true. I wondered why Jason would bite the hand of Apple for letting him have early access to the iPad and blabbing about it (we know that never ends well).

My only saving grace was that I didn’t post about it.

Well I guess this is one time when media (mainstream and new) can be equally red-faced over this. Lesson learned. I think terms like “allegedly”, “rumored”, and “possible” are ones we need to make sure we use a lot.

Now back to your regularly scheduled Internet rumor…

Oh Facebook, you just don’t get it do you? I would think that after you’ve been made to sit in the corner by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner once, you would have learned your lesson. Guess not:

The complaint addresses a tool implemented by the social-networking site in mid-December that allegedly makes users’ information more readily available than before. New default settings, which users were asked to review at the time, have actually taken a step backward, the complaint said. “The individual’s complaint mirrors some of the concerns that our office has heard and expressed to Facebook in recent months,” said Elizabeth Denham, the assistant privacy commissioner, in a statement. “Some Facebook users are disappointed by certain changes being made to the site — changes that were supposed to strengthen their privacy and the protection of their personal information.”

link: CBC News – Technology & Science – Privacy commission probing Facebook again

Couple the complaint with Zuckerberg’s stance on personal privacy—Zuckerberg’s Privacy Stance Ignores Being Chastised in Public by Canada — A View from the Isle—jeez you’d think the company was being run by rank amateurs.

So, Facebook, here’s the deal. People like to maintain some degree of privacy. Yes, I know lots of users in their teens and 20s don’t seem to mind their Facebook info and pics leaking out to the Internet, but they will. Like when they are trying to get a job and they learn that they didn’t get it because of their “Keg stand gallery” or “Spring Break 2010-Week of Debauchery” pictures. Then cold, hard reality is going to smack them in the face and they are going to want to make those things gone. Sorry, too late.

Facebook’s privacy stance has to have a reality check and a good helping of common sense. Even before Facebook, we did stupid things in college. I’m know there are lots of us who are really, really happy that our past antics aren’t available online. Back then, if Facebook had existed, I probably would have put up stuff that I’d now regret. That, folks, is the nature of youth.

I’m not saying Facebook needs to act in loco parentis for users, but jeez don’t put the gasoline, matches and firecrackers all together with a neat bow around them!

Let’s be pragmatic. Let’s go back to…everything is private until I say it’s public. Let’s put just a wee, tiny buffer between users and their own stupidity. Like the “are you really sure you want to delete this system file…” warnings we see.

Look Facebook, it’s either that or you’re going to be going to the principal’s office (i.e. the Canadian Privacy Commission office in Ottawa) every couple months. And really, do you want to be that kid in school?

Yeah, I’ll admit it. I’m pschyed about the iPad. No, it isn’t perfect. Yep there are some obvious flaws (lack of USB port or SD card reader are big ones for me), but I’m excited about how this will change how we use computers. I remember I wasn’t too keen on the iPhone at first, but I knew from the moment I saw it that it changed how we would use and interact with smart phones from then on. Same with the iPad (I agree, the name is terrible, just awful). Maybe the iPad isn’t what everyone will be carrying, fine, but I think Apple’s endorsement of the form factor and technology will boost all tablet makers. Sony and Amazon, well they have some catching up to do. Nothing that a color screen won’t fix though.

What I’m most interested in seeing with the iPad is how ebooks can combine multimedia within a book. Even live websites. Right now I’m writing Using WordPress, which is a beginner-focused WordPress book. In each chapter there will be screencasts and audio segments. Being able to pull those up in line with the text they refer to? Holy smokes that would be awesome. How about a special “section” at the end with updates and changes pulled live from the Internet?

Think about paying less for academic textbooks. Think about textbooks that can self-update over the Internet.

Sure these aren’t nearly as interesting a a game or drawing program. But I certainly can imagine using an iPad to review changes to chapters, jot notes, read books …

Now I just need to imagine the money I need to buy one.

I’m going to tell you something that us “experts” don’t want you to know. Ready?

Blogging is dead.

Wha? Blogging is dead? Didn’t you just write a book on creating your own blog? Yeah I did, but let’s get this straight—blogging is writing and a blog is just a website that makes it really easy to do that. When I took on writing the book that would become Create Your Own Blog, I have to admit I was a little reluctant at first. Not because I didn’t think I could do it (I wasn’t smart enough to be worried about that), but because I think getting stuck on the idea of blogs and blogging as what changed things in the last five years sells us all short.

Here’s what made blogs great:

• We wrote like we meant it
• We linked to lots of other people and sources
• We commented
• We read what each other wrote
• We used tools (aka blog engines) that made all of this easily.

And none of that has changed since then. I think we’ve only gotten better at it, in fact. The fact of the matter is that little of what we’ve been doing needs to be tied to a word.

Humans like to define things. People wanted to find a ways to differentiate what became to be called “blogging” from the myriad (plethora?) of websites that cropped up like mushrooms between 1995 and the early 2000s. That was fine. Then when “blogging” took off, a blog took on some kind of mystical quality that if you had one all your marketing problems would be over. With a blog, anything was possible. Yeah well like a young lady I know once said:

“Come on, don’t you know a blog is just a website…”

And that is 100% true. What people forget is that when more and more people started to use blogging tools something more interesting was happening. Suddenly writing something and putting it onto a website didn’t require much more than knowing how to use HotMail. Suddenly you could write as much as you wanted, post, and then people freakin read the stuff. Yeah we read a lot of stuff back then. RSS readers were essential to the digerati, so we read a lot.

Then we left comments.

Then we wrote our own posts and linked to other posts.

This is how blogging seemed to have superpowers. This is how a single post could start a tempest in a tea cup or bring down a presidential candidate. We could write and distribute information as fast as we could type (and some of us type really freakin’ fast).

Today smart companies use blog engines to power their “regular” websites because they figured out that a WordPress-powered website was easier to update and maintain than one made up of lots of individual pages. Is that a blog or just smart publishing?

Don’t worry if people and pundits tell you that blogging is dead.

Don’t worry if people think you’re yesterday’s news launching your new WordPress blog/site.

Don’t worry because the word “blogging” might have lost its allure, because “writing and sharing good stuff” never does.

Just start.

Just write.

Just create “an interactive, dynamic, database-drive website where publishing is really easy.”

Yeah, just blog.

When you’re looking for new content, good content, or just plain old information, where do you go? Technorati used to be the place, but that era has, sadly, passed. I often hit Google Blog Search, which can give me some okay results, but no measure of how good the blog is compared to other blogs in that niche. Really the solution is right at hand, it’s PostRank which has been helping me sift through content to get the wheat from the chaff for years.

Today Melanie announced PostRank’s Top Blogs of 2009 and before your think it’s a popularity contest based solely on links and traffic, you’re wrong. Really, really wrong. What PostRank does is measure how engaged your readers are with your content. Your content compared to you. So you can have a smallish readership, and still rank very high on their scale if your readers leave lots of comments and share your links a lot. Here are the criteria that PostRank used:

Each topic contains a ranked list of blogs, along with each blog’s engagement profile and top posts for all of 2009. However, we didn’t feel that handing out just one award per topic (Most Engagement) told the whole story, so we are highlighting three notable achievements per topic:

• Most Engagement
• Most Influential
• Biggest Movers & Shakers

link: Announcing the PostRank Top Blogs of 2009! | PostRank Blog

And as you can gather from the title, I did make the list in a few categories. I only made the list because you like the stuff I write. Sure, I have to write it, but if I write crap, doesn’t matter how much traffic I have, it’s still crap.

So thank you for helping me make the list!

If you’d like to start with PostRank, the best thing to do is check out their filtered RSS feeds on the topics you’re interested int. You’ll be amazed at the stuff you’ll get. Of course if you’re using WordPress you really should have the PostRank plugin installed to help you see what your readers like. Knowing what people like can help you with content decisions, and you can learn from popular posts what resonates on particular topics.

Give it a shot and you might be on the list for 2010.

Last night I had the rare pleasure of getting to hear Gillian Shaw speak to the Vancouver branch of the Canadian Authors Association. Gillian’s topic was, as you’d expect, social media and she did a fantastic job explaining it. Gillian delved into blogging (a wee bit) and (mostly) Twitter to a pretty diverse crowd of writers, and what surprised me most wasn’t what people didn’t know about social media, but what they did know about social media—but were wrong.

For example, a good part of the audience were aware of Twitter, but they thought that if you were on Twitter you needed to share everything about yourself. One member of the audience had a terrible run-in with Internet trolls, and another a victim of identity theft, so it’s understandable (and a good word of caution) that they had excellent points and questions about social media. However, it seemed to me that what was most interesting was that people’s perceptions of social media didn’t match many of the things that many of us find most useful.

Continuing with Twitter as an example, like Peter Wilson and Gillian, a lot of what I use Twitter for is information. With a whole column dedicated to information sources that I consider “news”, tweets when people have new posts, and other items that filter in, Twitter is my primary source for breaking news. Sure I still use RSS (thank God Gillian didn’t get into RSS, I think heads would have exploded), but Twitter is rapid and constant.

Then we run into the whole problem of “explaining” Twitter. Gillian, Peter, and I agreed that without seeing Twitter, it just doesn’t make sense. Twitter isn’t a hard concept; it’s not like multi-dimentional, multi-variate stats or anything, but I think we all (myself included) suck at explaining it without a computer in front of us. We live it, use it, crave it, maybe even are addicted to it, but we can’t seem to explain it. Why is that? Is it because we’re too close to it to see the greater whole? Is it that we try to encompass all of Twitter in a couple short sentences? What ever it is, we pretty much suck at it.

As I’m reflecting on this, I’m also looking forward to the first (re-)organizational meeting of Social Media Club, Vancouver, where I think one of the most important things we can do as a group to just help other people get it.

Explain why Twitter has changed how we all consume news and information. Explain why writers have both a lot to fear and a lot to gain from social media. If we think social media is great, we need to find better ways at showing the benefits of social media in terms that people get.

We don’t have to explain email anymore.

We don’t have to explain using the Internet anymore.

Now we need to explain how we’re building stronger friendships and connections with social media. We need to explain how social media can quickly galvanize people to a cause. Right now there are more tweets about helping the people of Hati than any other single topic. Of course you’d expect this, but the call to raise money started moments after the quake. Faster than the TV reported it.

I think only when we can clearly articulate social media to people who have basic concepts of the Internet, will social media be accepted by the mainstream and then become something more interesting than it is even now.

I was watching, and this is rare for me, Net@nite and Leo was telling Amber how Sony offered him $2000 to send out one tweet (one!) on a certain date. Leo didn’t see the email in time, so he didn’t send it. I gather the offer came from Ad.ly where Leo said he signed up for an account and set his cost per tweet very high, just so he could check out the service.

This got me thinking so I queried my Twitter followers:

Would you send out a single tweet for $2000? Clearly marked as an ad, for a company? Discussion @ambermac & @leolaporte @twitlive
and
Extension to this. If I sent out one paid tweet a day, would you unfollow me?
about 5 hours ago from TweetDeck

What I got back was very interesting…(reverse order, of course):

OnlineStrategy: Earlier today @trishussey initiated a good dialogue about Twitter ads. Here’s my take: http://ow.ly/VToz
jonjennings: @trishussey Wait, if you’re sending me $2K tweets then I want something in it for me. Fund a party + we’re OK. @hummingbird604 @johnbiehler
Miristee: @trishussey Yes I would unfollow.
shanegibson: @trishussey I think if their product and values are in line with you then it’s okay.
bbluesman: @trishussey yeah too bad we all ahve that 3 meal a day habit huh?
DebNg: @trishussey I wouldn’t unfollow you for one sponsored tweet. If all your tweets were spammy and paid links,I’d probably do so.
tamar: @trishussey i don’t think paid tweets are bad if you’re tweeting about something 1. interesting to you AND 2. interesting to your followers
DixonTam: .@trishussey One paid tweet a day is unintrusive. More than that, I would consider unfollowing. Tweet should clearly indicate it’s sponsored
shaicoggins: @trishussey Hey, Tris. How’re you? Congrats on the book. & on the Q: Depends on what I’m Tweeting. If I’m cool w/the msg, then *maybe*.
digitalkvan: @trishussey I have done paid tweets and have not had any “drama” from them including unfollows
KaerusGrp: @trishussey @ambermac @leolaporte @twitlive I believe I probably might as long as your doing it with full disclosure….tough call.
yurechko: @trishussey for $2k, I’d do it. For $200 I’d probably do it
digitalkvan: @trishussey Have you read this? http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/10/20/how-to-make-15000-00-in-1-month-just-by-tweeting/
wildsheepchaser: @trishussey “The trouble with drawing lines in the sand, is that they are so easily erased.”
gmarkham: @trishussey Paid tweets/sponsored/ads don’t bother me as long as overall value of the stream remains high.
ianiv: @trishussey Plus I already enter contests via tweets which are like ads and those don’t even guarantee I get anything back
duzins: @trishussey no, but anyone else, yeah…
ianiv: @trishussey I’d feel dirty, but for $2k I might do it. potentially loose some followers in exchange of mrtg payment?
bbluesman: @trishussey If we asked you for money one tweet a day would you unfollow us?
wildsheepchaser: @trishussey hell yes, but nobody is looking to me as authoritative voice on anything either, and I think that matters.
digitalkvan: @trishussey yes I would and have! I have also used these companies to run campaigns with great success
shanegibson: @trishussey depends what company.
duzins: @trishussey depends on the company and the ad copy…

What this tells me is that Twitter is reaching maturity and acceptance as something that takes time and adds value to people’s lives. The same thing happened with blogging not so long ago, and with pretty much the same sentiment. Ads are okay as long as it’s not over the top, reputable, and doesn’t interfere with the content.

There will always be people on Twitter, just like there are blogs, who’s sole purpose in life is to generate ad revenue. There are other folks, like me, who work hard, try to enrich the larger pool of knowledge, but also like to eat and have a home. I’m not at a point where I feel I have to stop using Twitter because I need to earn money. Twitter is an integral part of me earning money. It’s one of the key ways I use to promote myself, my books, my classes, and my work.

It’s tough to say what my number is. I did, out of pure curiosity, sign up with Ad.ly and set my price pretty high (much higher than their “recommended” amount). Regardless of whether or not I do take an advertiser up on their offer, I am very curious to see if I’m offered anything at all.

How can an advertiser evaluate any individual Twitter user? I’m not a celebrity, so there isn’t that kind of draw. I occasionally am caught saying something smart or witty (I said occasionally) and I have a fair number of followers with good engagement. I think I’d be a good bet for some tech product or service. I’ll just have to wait and see if any advertiser thinks I’m worth it. Which, ironically, is actually putting a price on you my readers and followers. They aren’t paying money for me, they are paying for your attention.

As I said, this is a good discussion to have. We need to just hash these things out. It’s new territory and like ads on blogs before, people are going to make mistakes, but that’s okay. It shouldn’t cost us. Much.

(Apologies to Dire Straights)

I try, as much as I logically and realistically can, keep Facebook at arm’s length from my world. I realistically can’t delete my Facebook account nor can I just eschew using Facebook as a powerful promotional tool within social media. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Recently I commented on the nature of public and private and before that how employers perceive potential and current employees through their Facebook (and other social media) profiles, both posts raised some hard and difficult questions. Things that we haven’t really had to deal with before. Marshall Kirkpatrick commented last night (and I’m glad he retweeted it this morning) on Mark Zuckerberg’s comments on Facebook privacy from the Crunchies. Here is a particularly powerful part:

That’s Not a Believable Explanation
This is a radical change from the way that Zuckerberg pounded on the importance of user privacy for years. That your information would only be visible to the people you accept as friends was fundamental to the DNA of the social network that hundreds of millions of people have joined over these past few years. Privacy control, he told me less than 2 years ago, is “the vector around which Facebook operates.”
I don’t buy Zuckerberg’s argument that Facebook is now only reflecting the changes that society is undergoing. I think Facebook itself is a major agent of social change and by acting otherwise Zuckerberg is being arrogant and condescending.
Perhaps the new privacy controls will prove sufficient. Perhaps Facebook’s pushing our culture away from privacy will end up being a good thing. The way the company is going about it makes me very uncomfortable, though, and some of the changes are clearly bad. It is clearly bad to no longer allow people to keep the pages they subscribe to private on Facebook.
This major reversal, backed-up by superficial explanations, makes me wonder if Facebook’s changing philosophies about privacy are just convenient stories to tell while the company shifts its strategy to exert control over the future of the web.

link: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over

Beyond Zuckerberg’s youthful arrogance, he fails to acknowledge that many of the privacy changes he talks about weren’t driven by “changes in societal norms”, rather Facebook getting called to the carpet by the Canadian privacy commissioner and having to mend their ways, and fast.

I agree that a lot of what was once “private” is now public. In some ways this is good, in other ways I think it is hurting us all. Facebook is an agent of social change not just something carried in the tide of it. Many people have just gotten used to everything they do suddenly thrown into the public sphere. Personally, I still, haven’t completely gotten used to or am 100% comfortable with it (yes, this is hugely ironic, I know). I agree with Marshall that Zuckerberg’s stance is arrogant and dangerous, I prefer to keep Facebook locked down as much as I can. Eventually I’d like to create a nice, limited profile and (no offense) put most of my Facebook friends into that pool rather than how it is now.

If there was ever a time to seriously consider privacy it’s now. This isn’t even a conspiracy theory laden argument, it’s a simple fact that once something becomes public online, it’s there forever. You can’t get it back. You can’t, easily, become a private person after being public. The genie doesn’t go back into the bottle. Facebook sees dollar signs. Facebook knows, as we all do, that our information is a goldmine to advertisers. Facebook would like to have access to as much of our information as possible so it can be offered for sale. Yes, this is part of the deal when we sign up for the service. I get that, but to claim that society is changing is a logical fallacy.

I think that people haven’t changed as much as have become resigned to the fact that they have no control over their information. That isn’t change, that’s akin to being bullied. It’s akin to being told that for our own safety we have to give up a basic freedom like expression or assembly.

I know Facebook is a juggernaut. I know that for me to stand screaming into the wind calling for mass boycotts of Facebook is ludicrous and pointless, but what is neither ludicrous nor pointless is to encourage people to check their Facebook privacy settings and really think about what they are sharing with the world. Consider not what you’re sharing with friends, but your definition of “friend” of Facebook is.

That would be societal change.

When was the last time you sat down and picked about the details of a problem to solve it? How often do we get caught at “30,000 foot level” when trying to grasp something or read the patterns of news or sentiment? I’d say often. When I was a kid I was often accused by teachers that I “missed the forest for the trees”, which was and is still true. However consider this, if you don’t look at the trees that make up a forest, and look at them closely, you might miss the one that is carrying a pathogen that could wipe out the whole forest.

This exchange between Chris Brogan and Doriano Carta (and the rest of the post), gives context and words to the idea of going from a wide angle look at a problem to a macro look:

“@chrisbrogan I noticed the Hemmingway effect spreading amongst bloggers. Less is more is the credo for the new Macro-blogging age.” I followed up with this tweet which Chris retweeted: “By Macro-blogging, I mean zooming in on particular details as in photos instead of using the usual wide angle lens trying to cover too much” Someone said they didn’t understand what I meant, saying Macro means bigger. My response was this: ”Large in the sense of zooming in closer, not larger as in volume or quantity. More Focus, less words”

link: Doriano Carta » Blog Archive » Macro-Blogging in a Microwave Society

Paisano continues…

The good news is that we have the freedom to choose the tools and approach we want to use. It’s up to each one of us to choose the right lens (pen) for the job at hand. Would the subject be better served with the wide lens, the macro lens or something in between? The ultimate goal should be to capture its essence and truth as clearly and as effectively as possible.

When I start my day I have email, Twitter, Fever and now LazyFeed open to scan what has come in overnight. At this point I’m zoomed out. I’m trying to catch the big topics (Fever can do this for me with one click):

I can see what’s going on, what’s trending, what to watch for. Then I zoom in. Some idea, trend, or technology catches my eye (or mind, as I’m reading Blink now I’m trying to be more aware of what draws me first) and I dive for it. We all do that. Some are better than others, and those “others” are the ones who often come up with the brilliant ideas that stun us all.

I think while RSS helped us gather the big picture, it’s Twitter (ironically micro-blogging) that has helped us catch more details. When I read feeds or scan my LazyFeed page…

it’s the big picture. Sure I see details there, but I sometimes don’t act on them until I see more information on Twitter or a post rises to the top to fill in the details that I’m looking for. Something that will provide context.

Macro-blogging is the perfect compliment to our infocentric world. We have tons of info spinning around us, but we take a moment to obsess (in a positive way) over a detail.

At least that’s the theory.

But as I dissect it further…

Do we really need to get people in a room to talk about social media? Seriously, won’t SMC Vancouver just become some kind of self-referential echo chamber where everyone is an “social media expert” or consultant or “social media marketer”? Come on who needs to talk about social media, haven’t we got it all figured out by now? Does anyone really need our advice on how to navigate the morass of social media that we currently live in?

In answer to all those questions—yeah we do.

Oh sure, there is a great risk with any professional organization that it just becomes an insular bubble. Doesn’t matter if the group is for bloggers or plumbers or accountants, sometimes the only other people who want to talk about the details of what we do are other people who do it too.

Social Media Club, started by my friend Chris Heuer and something I was involved with early on, is built on the mission of education and outreach. Social Media Club Vancouver has had an on-again-off-again history. Part of the problem with a lot of social media people, we get tremendously busy in the blink of an eye. Social Media Club Victoria has some great folks behind it (they could be happy that I didn’t try to get SMC Victoria going, ugh that would have been disastrous).

I think it’s easy to dismiss social media as “easy” and “common sense” when you’re in the midst of it all. Come on, what’s so hard about talking to people? Isn’t working with social media just another core competency that people just have now?

Not so much. As much as I think that everyone marketing themselves as a social media consultant isn’t a great idea, I do think helping people learn the ropes, especially for their businesses, is an important thing to do. It’s hard not to be accused of hyperbole when I say that social media has changed everything that we do now, but it has. Newspapers, shopping, learning, reading, computing, even dating has been influenced and changed by social media. Ten years ago if a company screwed a customer, you were extremely lucky to get local news coverage. Today any company can have its image tarnished in a few hours or days.

I don’t read newspapers often, but I write for one.

When I’m looking for something from a new game to something as mundane as groceries I turn to social media—and I get the answers!

What I hope Social Media Club Vancouver becomes is a true educational group. We need to have both higher level discussions about where the whole industry/medium is going as well as help people learn how to use the plethora of tools available to them. We don’t need another group for parties and tweetups. We need a group to hold hands-on workshops and media days. We need to connect investment money and the startups who need it. We need to help foster careers that people can make an actual living doing, not something that people love to do but can live doing.

I think the time is right and we certainly have the talent in Vancouver to do it.

So who needs a social media club anyway?

We do.