Great, Amazon is typecasting me

I think Amazon is trying to tell me something about my writing style:



My PR writing classes are apparently now stalking me through Amazon recommendations. So not fair. You are a cruel mistress.

BTW, this is clearly a lesson in what happens when you fill out a registration form on a site. I bought the 2006 style book in May of that year before departing for my grad program. It still haunts me.

Gather, collect and save information: it may impress a geek. And then he may post about it.

Just leave the AP style book out of it.

The Space Between

The "Look at Me" meme is a universal and annoying facet of society. It exists in pop culture (success of American Idol followed by the success of William Hung, and then all who followed suit in the aftermath). It jumps out at sporting events (say, streakers). Something tells me that it's usually the same jerk who yells "Free Bird" at a concert.

And, obviously, it has its lasting effects on the Internet. Find any YouTube video with "First!" on it and you know what I mean.

This is just a product of being an attention-seeking wingnut in a crowd of many. It sounds pessimistic, but it's really hard to rationalize that everyone is smart and willing to jump right to intelligent back-and-forth. In traditional information flow models, that's fine. The person with a loudspeaker doesn't really have to listen to exist.

I don't know if that's a good thing, but it's a little bit of a buffer.

But, when you get into social media, well, that's when things get interesting:


In the head, there's so much space between, things will be fine. It also means that the volume is really too great to listen. As you get further down the tail to the niche audiences, though, a hierarchy is really hard to establish since lower volume means that more members have an equal share. They are more likely to constructively participate.

But, let's say you run a Techie blog and you point out something new you are following, even in passing. Should we be surprised that within minutes, people are intentionally trying to grab your attention with stupid tricks? (I wish I could link to some of these, but Twitter already fixed the problem and dmfail.com closed up shop).

Here's the danger though: that's incredibly easy to ignore if you're the author/source. It's incredibly close to not listening. The follow-up story didn't involve any of those clammoring for the author's attention. It was that the issue had been resolved.

For those people concerned with audience size over quality audience and fully social participation: I have bad news. You are putting the space between that comes with the establishment of "one-to-many" media. And that means the "Look at Me" tactics are going to get worse.

A hashtag is more important than you think

When the social media folk aren’t in the midst of verbal spars about what defines online authority (and, I’m with Jeff Jarvis: it isn’t mass of followers and audience size), they are spending their time looking for things that relate to their interests.

Obviously, this is the glory of online search. People don’t wade through stacks of information until they find something they need anymore. The act of information seeking brings them directly what they want. Some trust Google. Some trust the online voices they deem credible based on experience, perceived authority (or number of followers, you know, if that’s your thing).

No matter the way, it’s up to the user to discriminate information by whatever parameters they chose. I use a lot of these methods, but I also want to touch on a factor I use to validate information in my searches: intent.

Online authors aren’t known for being cryptic and writing between the lines. A Facebook note isn’t really that much space to build a story of Dickensian complexity. But words, phrases, side references to pop culture happen. For instance, I don't write that much about British Literature. But I'm sure, give it some time, and this page will come up when people search "Dickensian."

Bloggers have a quick, shorthand way to classify the topic they discuss with tags. Tags are separate from the post, but they link that article to other posts of the same topic as the author sees it. Naturally, half of mine are ridiculous and make little sense on their own. That’s not the point. The author meant to categorize them this way. That is.

This all brings me to the hashtag. Twitter users know the # sign as the symbol the user affixes to a word to indicate that the message belongs to a specific conversation or group. Here’s why it’s more important than you think: intending to be included in a group is much more important than coming up in a Twitter search. The #MotrinMoms weren’t looking for each other as part of the conversation. They were showing support, indicating that they were taking a side on the. It was more than being able to find conversations through a search. It was taking a stance on the issue and making a declaration intentionally.

A hashtag yells, “Include me.”

People tweet about the products they use all the time, but a lot of them may only be passing mentions. When it comes to corporations, do you think any good can come out of getting a hashtag affixed to your brand? Better, when that crisis hits, do you want to find through the onlookers or the activists?

#Exactly

Google Thinks I'm Bill Murray

Steve Rubel noted yesterday afternoon that Google was now including thumbnails in search results for bloggers on WordPress. It looks like it is grabbing those bloggers (like yours truly) who are on Blogger engines.

Only problem, Google thinks I'm Bill Murray:


Why couldn't it grab the threat advisory - so much funnier if that was my thumb. Methinks it's time to potentially upload an actual photo.

What I Want from Social Media in 2009

I'm not asking for much. This I promise.

I just want to be able to take more control of my digital identity - and get more information from it than ever before. That's not a lot. I don't need new social networks. I just want to use the ones I'm in better.

Three things I'd like to see in social media to leverage my connections, relationships, friendships and more:

1) Stop turning LinkedIn into Facebook for Grown-ups. ReadWriteWeb nailed this last week, but I just wanted to add something else to the idea. I only want LinkedIn to keep my contacts in one place, and reconnect with people who I want to keep away from my social profiles on Facebook (even though I know that anything online is my profile - you can't hide, lesson number one. Luckily, I have a high shame threshold). Keep LinkedIn simple and it will continue its value.

2) Some help from Twitter to intelligently expand conversation networks. It'd be nice to start with an acknowledgment from Twitter about its best tools and then building them directly into the interface. Acquiring Summize was great because it was a step of incorporating the tools that people created for Twitter. But given how search is the driving force of well, EVERYTHING, why isn't it on the main page? Better yet, what else can we pull from the best tools? As new ones get created, what will they be and how can Twitter pull them into the interface? For example, I'd love to see a "Mutual Followers" similar to "Mutual Friends."

3) Facebook Insights for everyone. (This is about as geeky as I get). Businesses get it with their information. Why can't we all have the tools to look at our friends? Let's say I end up on a field trip to somewhere exotic for work or for a wedding. Who am I not thinking about who may have moved there? I want to be able to quickly build a list of friends in a certain region - why is it such a pain in the ass? Give me the demographics of my friends. Tell me who I have the most in common with so I know to invite folks to events and not leave people out. Which of my friends are on blackberries, iPhones, so I can reach them on the fly? I know that not everyone in the world cares as much about these things, but if the information is there (and we know it is), make it available.

So, there we go. It's going to be a geeky year. I feel it.

Your Christmas Playlist

If you've followed me on Twitter in the month of December, you would have noticed that early every morning, I've been sharing a Christmas SOTD. Here now, for your full enjoyment, is a list of all of those tunes (including what the songs will be on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day).

Some are a little obscure, so the YouTube pulls are completely random sometimes and occasionally a different version. I wanted the best quality of the song where available so that it would flow nicely in the YouTube playlist.

1. Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas by The Eels
2. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays by N'Sync
3. Last Christmas as performed by Dexter Freebish
4. Holly Jolly Christmas as performed by The Format
5. Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time by Paul McCartney
6. Happy XMas (War Is Over) by John Lennon
7. Footprints by Barenaked Ladies:



8. I Believe in Father Christmas by Emerson, Lake and Palmer
9. The Christmas Song by Dave Matthews (performed by Dave and Tim Reynolds)
10. Linus and Lucy by Vince Guaraldi Trio (pretty sweet Acoustic guitar version here)
11. Frosty the Snowman as performed by Burl Ives
12. Silver Bells as performed by Perry Como
13. O Holy Night by the Tipatina Foundation [From Studio 60]
14. Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight) as performed by Left Front Tire
15. I'll Be Home for Christmas by Dean Martin
16. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas as performed by James Taylor
17. Christmas Eve Sarajevo by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra:



18. White Christmas as performed by Johnny Cash (calling an audible on the original and including the version by the Drifters)
19. Christmastime is Here as performed live by Stone Temple Pilots (here's the version from Charlie Brown Christmas)
20. We Wish You A Merry Christmas as performed by John Denver and the Muppets
21. Joy to the World as performed by the Butties (Very cool version that gives homage to The Beatles)
22. It Never Snows at Christmas by Five Way Friday
23. Let it Snow! Let it Snow! as performed by Frank Sinatra
24. Merry Christmas Eve by Better than Ezra
25. All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey

YouTube, Music and Christmas

Music rights have been in the news a few times this week; a few stories about YouTube and the future of MP3 piracy policy. I'm pretty interested how these two things may hurt small, unsigned artists.

It's obviously no secret how much I love YouTube. More than anything, I think it's a great place for unheard of musicians. For bigger musicians, it can be an annoyance, and it's also apparent that the royalty system Google has to compensate artists is difficult to track and costing them plenty of money.

I have ranted in the past about my belief that Napster made Web 2.0 a reality because it brought something that the average person wants to share (Music) to the forefront. It was easier to learn from there than by way of things like mIRC, a geek backchannel. I miss ICQ. I digress.

I believe strongly that musicians should have embraced MP3 as a way to gain new fans. Some did. They let people tape their shows and pass them around. Then people come to the shows, become more invested "in-on-the-secret" fans and spread the word around further. You know, an involved fan base isn't bad.

For the main label acts and Top 40 folks who can gain 100 million views on YouTube for a crappy pop song that's a rip off of "Hey Mickey," there's money to be made. And they don't need an involved fan base. When it's not about the music anymore, the Web user will get hurt.

I just hope that YouTube doesn't scare away unsigned acts with a lack of investment in features. They'll go right back to MySpace. Which means I can't embed the tunes as easily, build a playlist or try to convince people that I'm not sending them a Rick Astley video.

One reason this is coming up is that I've spent a good chunk of my Sunday building a playlist out of the 25 Days of Christmas Songs of the Day. I've been sharing some tunes over on Twitter all month. I will have the entire list ready to go on Tuesday, and naturally, it will be tweeted.

As a tease, here are some clever parodies thank to Neil Patrick Harris and How I Met Your Mother.



"You're like Weird Al Yankovic if he only wrote Christmas Songs about banging my sister." Such a great show.

Dr. Smallscreen

or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Find the Delete Button if I Can't Read it On My Phone.

Yeah, it's been awhile since I posted, apologies. The lesson I have, for today, comes out of two things. Partly of things I've been thinking about since attending Mobile Monday DC earlier this week, partly from an old article in Newsweek concerning the Power-Insider Inside-the-Beltway Update Playbook.

Here's the Cliff Notes of the Cliff Notes:

Mobile communication relies on utility (do I need this now?), ability to leverage unique things of the phone (concise messaging; direct action; anytime, anywhere communication) and value to the user (otherwise, you're invading the user's personal space, they'll delete it and never read it again).

Mike Allen of Playbook nails all three, as this quote from the Newsweek article demonstrates:

Each Playbook usually arrives in inboxes no later than 8:30 a.m., and it's built for speed, so there are rules. At the top of the list, he says: no paragraph may be "longer than the average BlackBerry screen."

The utility is that it is an unbelievably useful way to power through all the morning news on the Metro into the city. Allen also plays to the user, he takes into account what they need to get it.

He realizes that he's writing for his audience, not his own positioning. So easy to forget sometimes.

I don't read half of the campaign e-mails I've signed up for because I probably read 80 percent of e-mails (unless I need to respond) on my phone. I know that the campaigns I belong to - everything from politics to alumni associations to marketing e-mails from stores I've purchased stuff - may not include my demographic in their target. But the mobile e-mail faction is growing - fast. Adapt.

In this city, more than any other, I'd say, mobile e-mail is a way of life. How does that apply to to conversation from Mobile Monday on Electioneering?

In 2010, the innovation of using mobile for campaigns won't have the impact of Obama's. Yes, it was pointed out that Obama gained many subscribers from on-location sign-ups. The feet on the ground helped, and as his mobile team admitted, the one regret was not starting earlier in the primary season to build that grassroots base. There was a bump, though, from media coverage of the novelty.

That's gone in 2010. Utility of the programs will be the way they spread. That means the program better useful to them. No spam, no fancy messages. Just useful information as it's needed. It doesn't have to be a long morning wrap-up, but the lesson and best practice is there.

It'll be about taking a page right out of the Playbook.