heyNathan

Community: From Little Things, Big Things Grow

Thu, 15 May 2008 15:33:00 -0400

Community: From Little Things, Big Things Grow: Very smart and insightful article by George Oates of Flickr for A List Apart. Want to build a platform for ideas and shared experiences? You can start here. Flickr still rocks.

Earth2100

Wed, 14 May 2008 17:09:00 -0400

Earth2100: ABC is backing a very compelling project - leveraging online video submissions to create new discourse on climate change, population growth and resource depletion.

AT&T to boost 3G speeds more than fivefold by 2009

Wed, 14 May 2008 17:05:52 -0400

AT&T to boost 3G speeds more than fivefold by 2009: Going mobile, anyone?

Photo

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:07:00 -0400

"And that is what’s great about the internet: it allows pompous blow-hards to connect with..."

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:54:44 -0400

“And that is what’s great about the internet: it allows pompous blow-hards to connect with other pompous blow-hards in a vast circle of pomposity.”

- Bill Maher

NYT: Death by Blogging

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:37:16 -0400

NYT: Death by Blogging

"Standing ovations, the word genius, and the word friend are overused."

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:19:13 -0400

“Standing ovations, the word genius, and the word friend are overused.”

- Jeffrey Tambor (via marco)

Twit-lebrities?

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:04:00 -0400

I just overheard Jason Calacanis suggest (via his UStream.tv channel) that celebrities Paris Hilton and Kobe Bryant will soon be Twittering.

I have one friendly question for you Jason. Are you insane?

I’m willing to admit I might be wrong about this, because who am I to try to understand what’s going on in the brilliant minds of Paris, Britney and the like. But it seems to me that a service like Twitter would have little value for top-tier celebrities. Understand that one of the largest challenges these people face is over-scrutiny of their private lives. We don’t see many celebrities rushing to blog or participate in social networks, outside of faux-celebrity or promotional profiles maintained by interns at their respective agencies. While I once enjoyed the fact that Heather Graham was my friend on MySpace, I never really believed she was behind the curtain. And while I’ve never asked a celebrity myself, I imagine most of them value privacy above almost everthing else.

Furthermore, services like Twitter are popular in part because they enhance users’ social lives to varying degrees. At best, they provide a more efficient means of creating, sharing, managing and filtering real-world connections. At their worst, they provide a way for otherwise lazy or socially-inept people to feel some sense of community without getting off their ass. Do celebrities really need any of this? Do they have a shortage of social options? If Scarlett Johannson or Conan O’Brien decide they need more friends, is it really a problem for them to expand the posse? It may be hard for them to develop natural relationships with people who can look past the bling, but Twitter won’t help in that department. As for self-promotion (the other big reason people use Twitter), that’s not really a good match either.

Most importantly, despite my taking the time to write this post, I don’t really care if Paris Hilton twitters and neither should you. My biggest beef with Twitter and many other social apps is that they are so damn focused on ego - case in point, Twitterholic.com. Is this the nerd equivalent of People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people issue?

People are self-obsessed, plain and simple. So when you create a platform based primarily on connecting people, you get a lot of self-important garbage. This may prove to be the fatal flaw of social media, unless…

Developers and content creators - please learn to focus on connecting ideas and content, not people! The sites and applications that have figured this out (and there are quite a few already) should be around for years to come.

"Intimacy, deep friendships, and love can be scary, clicking your mouse is not."

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:06:36 -0400

“Intimacy, deep friendships, and love can be scary, clicking your mouse is not.”

- Jason Calacanis

"The value of a social network is defined not only by who’s on it, but by who’s..."

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:56:39 -0400

“The value of a social network is defined not only by who’s on it, but by who’s excluded.”

- Paul Saffo, quoted in The Economist - Social Graph-iti

The New Look of Working

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:26:51 -0400

cubicle17:

I’ve heard some ridiculous chatter around the office recently about how some people “obviously aren’t working because they don’t spend enough time at their desks”. While it may have been true in the past that employees were working only when they were sitting in their desks with their heads down for 8 hours a day, that simply isn’t true anymore. These days working looks markedly different…

These days working looks like staying at home so you can get more done with less distraction. It looks like walking around the office so you can talk to your colleagues face-to-face instead of through e-mail. Working looks like taking a break every hour so you can remain focused over an entire day. Working looks like a day without meetings, and looks like eating lunch somewhere other than your desk. It looks like leaving two hours early because you’re ahead of schedule. Working even looks like spending the weekend doing what you want to do, not spending it in the office.

One thing that working does not necessarily look like, however, is busy. After all, the only real way to tell if someone is working is by their results, and that’s how it should have been all along.

A New Virb, A New Hope

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:02:00 -0400

A New Virb, A New Hope: A new hope indeed. If anyone can inspire a positive evolution of social platforms, I’d bet a pretty penny on these guys. Ladies and gentlemen, the private beta for Virb 2.0 has begun.

Sign Up Forms Must Die

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:05:00 -0400

Social Media Addiction Rap - ‘nuff said.

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:38:48 -0400

Social Media Addiction Rap - ‘nuff said.

Seth Godin on the Forces of Mediocrity

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:22:21 -0400

claudia:

bauldoff:

“Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths… whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it’s over.

If it were any other way, it would be easy. And if it were any other way, everyone would do it and your work would ultimately be devalued. The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it’s unlikely it would be worth the journey. Persist.” (via his blog)

Caveat: I’m not a hater. I think I qualify as one of these...

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:34:00 -0400

Caveat: I’m not a hater. I think I qualify as one of these myself. Self-deprecation is fun sometimes.

On FriendFeed

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:29:00 -0400

heather-rivers:

Seriously? How many ways can we invent to monitor each others’ lives before monitoring is all anyone does? Lately the interweb feels like a large, tightly packed crowd of people, motionless, all feverishly glancing around, waiting for someone to blink. Then when someone does, the twelve people near enough to see it start shouting “WE GOT A BLINKER! RIGHT HERE, BLINKED! SAW IT MYSELF! SOMEBODY TIMESTAMP THIS BITCH!” “Did you see that guy who just saw that one girl blink?” “Yeah, that made me laugh. I posted it on Facebook and it showed up on my FriendFeed, and then the girl saw it and totally Twittered ‘LOL that was me’.”

Kudos to those of you with lots of original content. That’s why I follow you.

(Filed under “great meta ironic reblog potential”)

Amen.

"Patience – this whole social media app phenomenon is only 9 months old."

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:40:09 -0400

“Patience – this whole social media app phenomenon is only 9 months old.”

- Jeremy Liew, General Partner, Lightspeed Ventures at today’s SNAP Summit in San Francisco (via rajivdoshi)

89% of your customers don't blog.

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:07:24 -0400

89% of your customers don't blog.

Social media advertising, done right.

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:23:00 -0400

Let’s consider it a good thing that brands and organizations are so interested in utilizing social platforms on the web. Even the big agencies are starting to realize they need to get beyond the Flash-tastic/experiential/brochure-ware sites that have become so prevalent in advertising. Making a commitment to promoting your brand through social media may sound simple enough, but doing it right requires that designers, developers and their clients truly understand what works and what doesn’t.

Social advertising done right:

Create meaningful offline experiences for your audience, THEN build online destinations that enhance and reflect those real-world experiences.
Add value to existing social platforms - create content, applications and social tie-ins that reflect your brand while providing value to the online community.
Choose platforms that accurately represent your audience and message. Virb may be an awesome site, but how many teenagers in Quebec are using it? Does video serve as the primary creative in your campaign? Dedicating your resources to YouTube and Vimeo may be a better bet than a Facebook app.
Branch out. People use more than one site - your brand should do the same. Tie your campaign into multiple platforms and connect them all as much as possible.
Don’t forget, people still like to touch things! Print collateral, merch, giveaways, etc.. Use real stuff as the hook to drive people to your online initiatives.
Take chances creatively. A significant challenge to swimming in the social media pool is that the inherent lack of filters means you’ll be competing to stand out. Drop some compelling content. Make a big splash. Get noticed.
Clearly define the goals of your online campaign. How are you monitoring its effectiveness - number of ‘friends’, comments, a specific call to action, quantity or quality of impressions? Best to ask these questions early and often.
Have a plan for sustaining and supporting your social presence. Creating a profile on Facebook, MySpace or Virb may get the ball rolling, but how will you continue to build your visibility over time?

Social advertising gone wrong:

“The tv spots air tomorrow! Does anyone know how to skin a MySpace page?!!”
Your budget should be aligned with the social strategy. Sinking all your dollars into a traditional media buy can be a big mistake. Invest in quality content. Let the audience do the rest.
Blind ‘friending’ can be worthwhile, but don’t expect it to move mountains of people to your brand.
Don’t depend on luck. There are plenty of great vids on YouTube that never get seen. Push your content in every way conceivable. Take part in the community. Create more opportunities for people to find you.
Assuming your content is cooler than cool? Too stubborn to make a creative shift? The masses are fickle and you better be flexible. Expect the unexpected and respond.
No matter how cool your website is, it is not the destination! Don’t expect people to come to you. Go to the users and give them a reason to interact with your brand.

My final piece of advice - don’t read this article more than a year from now. Social platforms are evolving so fast that the game will probably change completely. For more detailed recommendations and case studies, here’s a good starting place - a well-informed article by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li from the Sloan Review.