For the DC Metro and Social Media: the Solution is Stairs

I'm a WMATA rider. Nearly every morning for the past 20 months, it's been my way of getting across the river from Arlington to the Edelman DC office right on the K Street Corridor. For all of its convenience, the Metro has created a certain type of regular commuter.

Every escalator in the Metro system is wide enough for two people to be on each step at a time, and cardinal rule number one of Metro riding is that if you choose to stand, stay to the right so people can walk by on the left. This is also the source of many a judgmental stare from common commuters who get frustrated by those who don't abide by the "Walk left, stand right" rule.


I had an epiphany this morning upon leaving the Farragut West station. You see, there was a little bottleneck on the escalator because the middle of three escalators (which changes direction dependent on the flow) was out of order.

Now, my first thought was an old Mitch Hedberg bit on such a situation:

"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You would never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience."

Well, Mr. Hedberg, may you rest in peace, this morning, you are unfortunately wrong. Because that middle escalator was blocked off.

Then it hit me: that's the problem with the Metro stations around the network. The vast majority of stations - especially inside the District where people tend to be in more of a rush - do not have stairs getting out of the station. Metro commuters are *forced* into taking an escalator, even if they want to walk it, they then join into people who do want to not walk up the escalators and, voila, frustrated riders and disruption.

What would stairs do? They would give metro riders the option on how they want to leave the station. It gives them as many different ways as possible to get to where they are going.

This brings me to my stretching-a-metaphor moment: when you are trying to reach an audience or a conversation through social media, are you making it easy for people to come to you? Are you giving them stairs?

Why this matters: the more ways an audience has to get to where you want them to go, whether it is outside the metro station or to your key message, the more likely they are to easily get to that point. You remembered to build a widget, implement a twitter stream, hack an RSS feed to share stuff on Facebook - but did you remember a basic contact form on the home page?

When building anything for conversation, all the fancy tricks and high-tech widgets (or escalators) are great - just don't forget the simple things.

Only 75 million used to be journalists, though

Oh, Doonesbury, you're so clever and witty for making fun of newspapers *and* buyouts.



(H/T Fishbowl DC)

The Gmail Power-User Paradox

Yesterday was fun for everyone when it came to Gmail, no? Between a two-hour downtime of the site in the morning, and then a simple phishing scheme that was surprisingly effective, Gmail didn't exactly have the best day from a usability standpoint.

Now, of course, losing your e-mail is never the most productive way to get through life. If there was an anti-Lifehacker, I'm pretty sure post number one would be "disconnect your point of daily contact." But, I'd argue that the downtime yesterday was significant because of how Gmail has evolved into a portal that is at the hub of the wheel for not just the Digital Squad, but also the average user.

Think of this way: Google has gone out of its way to build a tool that is easy to customize and make more efficient for the Internet Explorer crowd, not just the Greasemonkey-Maniacs and Chromers. It's painfully simple to take with you anywhere because of automatic setups on iPhones, Windows Mobile, or Blackberry downloads.

It seems that new lab features are showing up all the time. They aren't just developed by the technosquad and used by them, but powerful, time saving tools that are being deployed by everyone. I turn many off and on all the time, but, as of this morning, here's a quick list of the Gmail Labs I currently have enabled:

-Offline
-Multiple Inboxes (which, I geekily love)
-Tasks
-Superstars (ya, so, what of it?! - it's the difference between "Pay this Bill" and "Don't forget your flight reservation for your sister's wedding in May." If priority is an issue, it rocks)
-Default "Reply to All" (Gmail is a social tool, after all...)
-Custom label colors
-Mark as Read
-Title Tweaks (today's new feature)

This is such a small sample of all the options that I currently have active. There are a lot of quick things to play with Gmail to make it easy, efficient, fun, or even perfect for personal damage control.

I'm getting sidetracked from my point (although, please let me know what features you are using in the comments below). The point is that usage of these is common - and above all, Gmail is giving people who may not be prone to "Power Using" online applications the ability to easily do it. That's the paradox, as I jokingly refer to it, the distance between the average user and the self-proclaimed power user is getting negligible.

To put a bow on this, here's an interesting case: last fall, Gmail went down and, if you were looking for answers, you went to Twitter. Yesterday, sure, there was plenty of talk among the Twitterati about it. With all this recent talk that Twitter is breaking through the tipping point, though, the new user isn't thinking about how Twitter can be used to find out about a Gmail outage.

I should have been less surprised, but I started seeing Gmail frustrations yesterday morning in Facebook statuses. I know it sounds Ivory Tower-esque, but the fact that the impact is being felt on the mainstream channel is more significant than the Twitter folk who are always plugged in to this stuff.

As many know, Gmail turns five in about a month. Like it's similarly-aged brethren at Facebook, we have trusted it with a lot of information, much of it significantly more private than the social network. A Gmail outage, though, is cross-channel, affecting so much because we have used these tools as our portable workstation.

I think I really need to get around to reading What Would Google Do. Basically to answer this question: When everyone is a power user, is anyone? Or are we all just Generation Google?

The Big Couch

Andrew Wilson has been making a pretty decent impact on Twitter in only his first few weeks. Sure, he is mainly on there in a role benefiting his work at HHS as one of the members of its social media team.

The reason why he has gained such great traction though is because (a) he's personal and (b) he's not all business. He's genuine and participating in the conversation as it happens - not trying to latch on to one's that are mildly related.

Professionally, I do my best to track and keep up on health news for my clients. That's one of the reasons I've started following Wilson. The thing is, I have a very low tolerance for people who talk a lot on Twitter with no rhyme or reason. Andrew may tweet frequently, but it is still tolerable because of how he uses it.

Wilson treats it not only as a professional tool, but on a genuine level of being involved. He does not require a Scoble-level cost to follow. Perfect example? This tweet from last night that had nothing to do with Peanut Butter, the FDA or HHS:


With that really excessive overture about one guy who uses Twitter, we finally arrive at my thesis of the day. Several times in the past year, I wondered aloud that, in order for Twitter to not be a geek/flack/wonk back channel, we needed to talk about normal, social things like sports, TV and music. Last night, during the Academy Awards, we saw our first true glimpse of it.

I tend to be wordy - it's a curse. Luckily, I follow Andrew on Twitter, and if I didn't, I would have missed this short and sweet retweet in the storm of conversations almost entirely about the Oscars. It was fascinating to watch because, even if folks are claiming that the recent mainstreaming is causing Twitter to Jump the Shark, it isn't a bad thing for the service to be normalized. I'm just happy we're talking more about what's going on than necessarily about the technology itself.

Some of my favorite reactions last night that worked because all of us were plugged-in, around the country? The instant reaction to Jackman's fantastic opening, the gut check on Whoppi's choice of clothing, and the triumph of Sean Penn and Slumdog Millionaire. There was a really interesting shift in the social tone of this year's Oscars. All of us, together, continuing that conversation made it even better.

I like the image of a bigger couch, because the reaction is immediate and personal. The most familiar saying that I know, (I'm paraphrasing here, and I wish I could cite this off my head) is that the Internet doesn't change the way we talk, it just makes the barroom bigger. That can be a good thing, like we saw last night. It can be a dangerous thing (ever seen something escalate quickly at a bar?).

Definitely food for thought that I will revisit later. For now, let's revel in what was a really entertaining Oscar show - efficient, interesting, not over-the-top, and personal.

Hmm - how perfect, it's kind of like Twitter at it's best.

The Future of Conan O'Brien's Timeshifted Audience

As some people know (or at least those obsessed with ridiculous television know), Conan O'Brien hung up his cleats last night as the host of NBC's Late Night to take a few months off before inheriting the Carson throne from Leno at the Tonight Show.

An interesting idea is being discussed (both online and offline) as to whether or not Conan will be able to get away with some of his - um, 'sophomoric' - repertoire.

It's really interesting to think about the size and difference in an audience that is willing to stay up to 12:30 as opposed to only 11:30. I think it's right, too, Conan will have to change his game. Luckily, he's bringing E-Street drummer Max Weinberg to help fill in the void, but there will be a big lift.

I'll reserve judgment on the new Tonight Show until we actually see what Conan as on June 1st. The focus of this post is something completely different.

Except for college students and insomniacs, few people hang up to 12:30 to keep up on Conan's antics. Never fear! Not only does Conan get a huge lift from NBC's deal with Hulu (he's also getting real estate on the home page during this last week), but I'd love to see the affect of timeshifting and DVR. Like the Daily Show and Colbert, Conan has probably gotten an overall boost from the "next morning" viewer.

But, with the relationships to Viacom or NBC, there has been some challenges about using YouTube to spread interest in this cast of motley fools. I took a lap this morning on YouTube...and many of the clips from Conan's show have disappeared. There used to be an unbelievable amount of his stuff online. NBC and YouTube got into their mess a few years ago, and nearly every program and every clip they could get their hands on was removed. For some reason, many Conan clips missed the axe, including a library of one of my favorite gimmicks (the Walker Texas Ranger Lever).

I checked this morning again, writing this post, and it's been reduced to one legitimate clip (and actually not even really a direct NBC clip):



At 11:30, Conan is definitely going to have a bigger TV audience. NBC certainly won't give him the same creative leash - mainly because of how the audience will adapt. And it looks like he won't have the same leniency on YouTube, either.

How will people discover the past joy that is Conan's self-deprecating, almost self-scathing humor? Leno and Letterman moved to their posts after years in different positions, but the late night landscape was very different in 1993. Conan was a rookie, though, when he took on Late Night, as he so eloquently reminded everyone in his sign-off of the last show. Conan had to build a base, and as he became popular in the last five years, I'm sure that the timeshifted and YouTube audience is what made him the easy choice to follow in Leno's shoes.

Who knows what the status of contracts, and Hulu, and Boxee, and YouTube, will be come June. Conan's move will likely benefit from all three audiences: those who will come with him, the new demographic willing to stay up to 11:30, and those who still watch even if it is the next day. But how else will it grow?

As much as I care about the media impact of Conan's move from an online media perspective, I also genuinely am interested in the waves he's going to make in late night television history. I'm going to come with him, that's for sure. I've became a fan of Conan growing up on the Simpsons reruns that I realized he was responsible for. He was really a writer during the best seasons and episodes of the show (say, the Monorail episode).

If not for anything, it's because of his originality - and the fact that he's proud of it. That's something I can absolutely get behind.

"We're going on to this next gig, and sometimes I read that 'Conan needs to grow up because he's moving to 11:30,' and I assure you that that's not going to happen. This is who I am, for better or worse. I don't know how."

Blaming Social Media for Not Letting Go Of College

While I'm in no ways fully a grown-up (never will be), I actually have been out of college for several years. Someday soon, I'll have been out of college longer than I was in Chestnut Hill, Mass.

But, if you have ever seen my Twitter stream in the heart of the fall...

...actually, for that matter, even in terms of other social media attempts...

...maybe you've seen an out-of-place article here or there on this blog about something crazy I did while a student...

...or caught my Facebook page, which broadcasts my love of my Alma Mater. Not only through the networks that I list (and, of course, how I first got into Facebook), but also through photos and applications...


...or even saw that I still get the Heights every Monday and Tuesday in my e-mail...

...you would probably assume I have issues letting go.

I do, but that's not the point.

Many of my every-day-social-networks are things that I really came into using while a student, and I was at the inception of some of those networks. Now, college students actually are adding their university network to established groups once they finish high school. Joining in new networks is not change, but our old networks are digitalized, so there is no reason for them to disappear through the distance like they used to.

Clay Shirky made a great point about college students and social networks in Here Comes Everybody, but I want to add something in. Shirky looked at the ability of these pre-existing networks to continue on to organize around an issue. Of course, being able to keep like-minded individuals connected is huge for creating a crowd. But I think there's a preservation element, as well, regardless of an issue to rally around.

Interesting to think about how many more people I've kept in touch with through knowing they've been out and about at an event because of Facebook news feed. Even still, thinking about common friends I knew in passing at school, but have joined in conversations with because of Twitter. In fact, I reconnected with a few folks through these lines of communication that I otherwise never would have had if I graduated even two year earlier.

Of course, not being disconnected has it's downside. I was proud to be one of the first student government campaigns to create a Facebook group back when I ran one four years ago. Well, it's election time on BC's campus right now. And, four years later, not only are these types of ticket-based support groups constantly being created, college students are still asking me for my support. The main reason? Because I'm still a part of the social network and I can affect other BC students news feeds.

Will I ever get away? Who knows. I guess I never can as long as I stay a part of this network of people.

One point to understand: I'm totally ok with that.

Lessons from the Facebook ToS issue

In the last 36 hours, there has been a significant amount of hubbub about a few minor changes to the Facebook Terms of Service. There is a really solid breakdown from a communications lawyer at WebTechLaw who evaluates a few notable points, but a lot of what he discusses is the way the Terms of Service fully work.

First and foremost, the fundamental change in the ToS is not the rights that you provide Facebook when you upload any type of content. The vast majority of the language in question existed in the previous ToS, specifically as it related to Facebook's ability to access/distribute/license for marketing anything you have uploaded. The difference now is that, when you deactivate your account, Facebook still retains those rights of your "content." Part of that is because it will still exist on other profiles/pages or, more importantly, through Facebook Connect, on outside blogs and Web sites.

The reason so many people freaked out about this (the best example is the post on Consumerist from late Sunday) is a lack of awareness about what a user agrees to in the Facebook ToS. In case you are wondering, as the terms say, by using Facebook, you are technically agreeing.

This change to the terms is not drastic – the reason why Facebook is getting crushed on this is the same roadblock it has run into on any of its major changes in the last five years: lack of communication. By my account, there have been five significant overhauls about which the Facebook population didn’t feel properly informed: News Feed, opening the networks beyond colleges, Beacon, the large scale redesign from last summer, and now the new Terms. Had Facebook clearly communicated this change, instead of backtracking (like Zuckerberg was forced to yesterday), it would be in a much better position.

Ultimately, Facebook lost the nomenclature war, here. By not starting the conversation, dissenters got the idea of “Facebook owns your content,” and even in the most level-headed post I’ve seen from Valerie Maltoni, you see that term front and center. Even in a note to the Industry Standard, Facebook had to fall back and defend the idea of ownership.

Before every thing goes out the window, think about this: What would Facebook actually do with your content? Believe it or not, not that much. More than anything, they want to data mine it to find out the most popular types of information being passed. It is not like you are automatically tagging the Facebook team in your "25 Things About Me" note or on those pictures of you from last weekend.

The Facebook ToS is written broadly because there is a lot of unexpected sharing/passing of information through the network by its members or by the organization. In terms of the advertising/marketing side, let’s say Facebook is being paid to give a keynote at SXSW in Austin in a few weeks. Without these broad terms, they would have to be very careful about the personal content or corporate pages that they show for demonstration.

Here’s another example: let's hypothetically say that recently, someone recorded a video of you doing something crazy (say, a car-ride sing-a-long) and posted it to your Facebook profile. Let’s say that I come along, as a connection from college and someone who isn't friends with the original creator, and I wanted to leave a comment about your song selection or falsetto. If the terms were more narrow, I may not be able to do that. The broad ToS is required because it has to be applicable to all or applicable to none.

So, here's the two lessons that I take out of this; one is a personal lesson and one a communication/PR lesson:

1. Never assume anything is private when you post it to Facebook. EVER.
   
2. Talk with your audience, all 175 million of them. Once you alienate your audience, you are at their mercy.

Final point, and this was voiced by one of the many smart people I work around every day: the privacy/trust issues that a user has with Facebook are obliterated throughout all of this. When your network is built on personal information that trust is even more important. This all goes back to lesson number 2. Alienating your audience is a destruction of trust. Very few groups have 175 million they can call direct constituents; if your audience is smaller, and you violate trust, you are going to be in a much worse position.

Crowdsourcing Approval [Original Music Included!]

Shortly after learning to play guitar, I started messing around and writing my own music. Don't play it too often, but, given the upcoming [shameless self-promotion] Battle of the Bands Finals at Four Courts, I really wanted to put a new one together.

The one thing that's changed the most since I started writing music in high school is now I have a lot more ways to bounce new originals off of people. I have this site, I have Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. So, I'm going to see if I can get all of those things to work together and see what people think.

So, here's the video (with lovely interior shots of my room. Unrelated plug - check out my colleague's blog on interior decorating. Jenn's a great writer and has lots of solid ideas).



Do me a favor, leave comments here or head over to the YouTube page and do it there. Let me know what you think, if you have a better name than "Watchman," or, well, anything at all.

The 100th Post Spectacular

Over the last few months, I've finally gotten a shape down to this blog. I am massively interested (and professionally) invested in figuring out the *social* aspect of social media, not the technology itself. Technology will come and go, but what we talk about - music, personal relationships - will not. 

It's not what the tools are. It's how you use them.

Before getting back to the task at hand - after all, this is the 100th post - let's take a stroll down memory lane. The inspiration from this comes directly from my love of classic TV, which always seems to manifest itself in weird ways. Let this be yet another example. I actually am always massively entertained by attempts of shows to promote their 100th episode, and keep joking to myself that I want to start some sort of serial content and then celebrate a mediocre milestone at, like, the seventh edition with a "Best of".

Aside: This latter idea was executed in beautiful tongue-in-cheek style by Matt Groening during the Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular. Because I'm not that unoriginal (close, though), I'll just stick to legitimate milestones (as opposed to, say something pedestrian like 30,000 miles).

First:
This blog was named by my co-worker during an especially ridiculous lunch last year. Embracing the title and all the subsequent gimmicks are of my own doing.

Biggest traffic drive to this site:Links from Twitter; however, some people do end up finding my blog useful for other things. Here are the most common (depressing reality) search terms:

The most popular posts from the first 99:
-The trick to riding the Metro: Judge
-Seinfeld on the Silver Medal
-What I Want from Social Media in 2009

I have unnecessarily done a lot:
I actually have a tag called "refusals to make a Bob Saget reference." Plus, I have tagged four seperate posts (this will be five) with "believe it or not, I'm walking on air." In only one of those posts have I actually embedded the theme to the Greatest American Hero. These are small snippets of the supefluous nature of much of what I do.

The most shamefully self-promoting posts from the first 99:
-Google Thinks I'm Bill Murray
-Arlington, Google Street View and a geek moment

The quote that got me into the DC Express:
"I thought your 15 minutes of fame was up with Bobby's World. How wrong I was. There's a reason the Howie Mandel show lasted one season: you aren't funny."

The fact that this anniversary is occurring on Valentine's Day really couldn't be more perfect. To remind you of my thoughts, please see last year's comments.

Many hundreds more posts to go, hang on for the ride.

My new favorite term: Oyayubizoku

Oyayubizoku (Japanese) - Literally, "Tribe of the Thumb."

This term was mentioned in Tomi Ahonen's most recent (fantastic) thought piece on the patterns of the 4-billion strong army of mobile phone users around the world.

I thought this was too great not to share:

We are also seeing the sillyness then around it. The dangers of SMS text messaging with driving for example. Its not a unique new discovery in America. The UK Transport Reserach Laboratory studied the effects of driving while texting, and found in 2008 that it is more dangerous than driving while drunk or driving while stoned. As to walking while typing? This results in so many accidents among pedestrians that London has introduced soft padding to traffic signs on sidewalks to prevent accidents when pedestrians bump into the signs when typing and walking. The Japanese have a term for the this "thumb tribe" or Oyay-ubizoku.

Give the whole piece a read over at Tomi's blog, there's a reason it was the post of the week in the Carnival of the Mobilists.

Arlington, Google Street View and a geek moment

That whole music thing is going well, and want to take some blog space to thank everyone who came and supported my bid in a local pub's Battle of the Bands. I'll be back up on stage to play in the finals on March 8th, time TBD, once again at Ireland's Four Courts in Arlington.

I had a blast, and there are some great photos and videos thanks to Tom Bridge from last night's set.

Well, I've already got the wheels slowly moving on the machine for the final round (crowd support does matter, after all). While looking up the address for Four Courts to make sure it was right on the Facebook event, I got distracted and started playing with Street View of the Courthouse area. I then decided that giving people an address isn't fun. So, I did the logical geeky thing:


Caption contest? It's tagged on Facebook with "The arrow points to where the magic happens." Willing to take on better ideas.

Oh, and please, come join the rock show on March 8th.

Why Google Latitude Isn't the Killer App

There was a point last week when I wanted to squelch any mention of Google Latitude that made its way into my Feed Reader. Here's the thing: when you follow a lot of 2.0 and Mobile blogs, any collision between the two leads to a lot of noise.

So, when Google announced the new location-based stalking tool, I saw more coverage of it than I really needed. In fact, I've seen so much that I forget where in that haystack this needle of important information was:

Knowing where your friends are *isn't* that important from a social networking/messaging standpoint.

Here's where I think the hole in this application is:

Google requires you to approve contacts, or at least e-mail them regularly before adding them to your list. When you tap into your contacts on Google to ask them to join you on Latitude, you're just talking to people with whom you already have connected.

The people you are giving access to your location are people with whom you already talk.

That's not location-based social networking. It's just opening a new channel of ways to flag your pre-existing relationships. If I want you to know where I am, I'll just text you and see if you're nearby. So much easier and accomplishes the exact same thing as Latitude.

Although, it did lead to this really funny post from Mobile Industry Review. So I can't hate it *that* much.

Copyright and Fair Use

Now, I'm proud of this post because not only are my friends the kind who would name this blog, they also are the ones who told me [paraphrased], "If you ever went to jail, it'd probably be for a weak crime like copyright infringement."

Let's fire up that Comm Law class real quick and remember the following:

To claim copyright, you must have printed material. So, a photo of Barack Obama taken by one of your staff's photographers is certainly considered your property.

And what can you do with that?

1) Distribute;
2) Prepare any derived works;
3) Reproduce; or
4) Publically (a) perform or (b) display.

Also, you can sell the rights to do so.

Of course, if you can prove that an individual saw the work, then used it without permission and benefited financially, you can recover and get an injunction in place. That's the course of action for correcting an infringement.

Some things fall outside of infringement, though. For example. the idea of Fair Use. You know, the one that kind of allows generations of American artists the freedom to take something and artistically reinterpret it. It's covered by this statement in US Copyright Law [emphasis added by me in this case]:

The fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

This comes up because the AP is actually trying to take it to Shepard Fairey over that whole poster that includes a similar pose of the original photo:


You want to talk about Social Media? Has there been anything more social in terms of political comment than this image over the last six months (that didn't include Alaska, Russia or Tina Fey)? So, don't go changing your Obamaicon yet. I'm looking forward to AP getting raked over the coals on this. (It's already started at TechCrunch and FamousDC).

Occam's Razor of Music: Archive.org

All this talk about music in the last few weeks has led me to some ridiculous things. I was thinking about tackle my challenges of social media and music and was stuck in the weeds of looking for the next big thing.

Problem with that is that, while thinking about where to find new music, I completely forgot about one of the greatest sites of all time. Archive.org. The site is simple, it looks like it hasn't changed since 1995 (actually, it really hasn't changed much since 2001). But here's what you have at your fingertips:

Libraries upon libraries of free, live and studio music from artists who allow their shows to be taped (which is a fantastic and large number). In fact, you can usually find this information on nearly any artist's site before going to a concert. For someone who loves live music like me, you can basically get the experience and feel through this collaborative library of music.

The type of artists who allow taping are usually the up and coming, as well. So, when a friend last night suggested I join him for a Griffin House concert, I took a quick search on archive.org on a whim, and what did I find? A live show at which he joins another artist for an incredible rendition of U2's Running to Stand Still.

Archive.org is actually home of even more cool tools (including the Wayback Machine, which saves old versions of Web sites from years ago. Great stuff), but the music is why I keep going back. Tens of thousands of live shows. And free. And shareable, crowdsourced ways to share music rock.

Remember Occam's Razor: sometimes the most obvious answer is the right one.

One other question of last week involved promoting my own music. To keep the creative wheels going, I tried to tackle it by creating a Fan page on Facebook (with the help of great local photographer and friend, Tristan Roy). I mean, how cool is this photo? If you have time, would love your support in that growing community.