FaceBook - Right Name, Right TIme

I know everyone is talking about Facebook, which is why I haven't jumped up and down too much over here. But the things that I'm finding interesting aren't what I see the Web 2.0 experts talking about.

What fascinates me is Susan.

Because, the most real-world-impacting thing about facebook is its faces.

Because Jenna didn't have a cousin named Susan with a smile and a face and a camera phone two days ago, but now she does.

1 day, one face, new family.

Low and behold, I start the Sessum facebook group and we find that Susan's father and George are first cousins, that Jenna and Susan share the same great-grandfather. And now Susan has put up family pictures and George is staring at faces of an Uncle he never knew -- but in his face he knows, you know? -- and looking into smiling eyes and onto etched hands that remember him forward into now.

That could not happen with the velocity with which it IS happening because of Facebook. It could not have happened with such speed and clarity in the vastness of the Internet through search.

It could not happen with blogging because WE -- George and I -- hog the "sessum" search results on google. The Sessums we sift through are ourselves. Are you talking about us and us talking about you. We would never find Susan or Michael or Fred through blogging, and we would never find them BECAUSE of blogging -- because blog results inundate Google search results. And Sessum results are mostly yours truly.

It could not happen with MySpace either, because MySpaces's search capabilities have remained lackluster, despite press releases and claims to the contrary. And because MySpace is more bling and sing than face.

Similarly, with the Dimino group, with 20-some other facebookians -- two of whom are my nephews and one my niece -- we are finding one another: I am not only their aunt anymore - they are not only my brother's kids: we are creatives. From my family group I learned -- through a probable relative's grandmother -- about the long held belief that all Diminos come from the same village of Sicily, this fishing village.

From there, my imagination gives birth to stories. I am transported.

We are the social Web, family.

When we begin to participate on the Internet's intranets -- like FaceBook -- with others who say yes this is who I am and this is my face I'm on this book with you, then we find each other in new ways. And we become new to one another. And the new becomes familiar.

In groups, through play, the way the web has always worked, we meet and move forward and sideways and through together. We expand. We are evolving from hyperlinked-conversation-based relationships.

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Tags: Facebook, Social Media, Web 2.0, Internet, intranet, social networks, myspace, advertising, PR, Marketing, communication, business, everythingisfaces = Powered by Qumana

On the Radio

Oh, I was so surprised and shocked, and I wondered too
if by chance you heard it for yourself
I never told a soul just how I've been feeling about you
but they said it really loud
they said it on the air
on the radio whoa oh oh
on the radio whoa oh oh
on the radio whoa oh oh
on the radio whoa oh oh now, now
--donna summers, on the radio


Tonight I join Social Media Diva Toby Bloomberg on her new BlogTalk Radio Show. Toby, Wayne Hurlburt and I will be talking about social media ethics (yeah, i know!) trying to define what it mens, how and if bloggers differ from journalists in complying to rules/mores/norms, how much any of this matters and to whom, and more. A half hour isn't very long, but let's get the party started. Show notes are here. Wish me luck.

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Pay Per Pownce

Well this is interesting.

Of course the need to belong has always been "monnnneeetizzzable" -- but marry ebay with invites to the latest social network Pownce, and you stand to gain a cool five bucks in cash as long as the market holds--which may be a matter of minutes or days, anyone's guess.

Bloggers tend to get all up in arms and holier than thou when this type of thing happens. They slam the service that has generated the sneaky sub-business. They slam anyone 'stupid enough' to pay the five bucks or a penny (or the current high $2.00 bid) to get in. And they who do so are usually the ones with the a sackful of invites.

Me? I say go for it. You wanna list em for sale? List away. You want to spend a dollar or more to get in, go for it. It's easy to game the system either way. It won't last long. But I love me some market ingenuity wherever it happens to grow, and however short lived.

BTW, first person to comment gets a free Pownce invite.

And for the record, I think it's the most interesting network to pop up since flickr because of the p2p aspect that flickr initially had (before it became a photo sharing site).

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Tags: pownce, web 2.0, tech, social networks, social software, social tools, ebay, markets, invites

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Bad Blogger Pitch Week

As more and more PR firms large and small jump into the space they call social media, which only vaguely resembles the social media space we who participate online play around in, the number of bad PR pitches is escalating. There’s dough to be made. There are plenty of junior people at PR firms with MySpace pages. It’s a match made in billable-hours heaven.

I’m getting several of these pitches a day, where I used to only get a couple a week. They are getting stupider, even though the tools that slice and dice bloggers into media outlets should be getting smarter. The problem is that we were never targets; we were never outlets; we never said we were media; we still aren’t. Old PR models still don’t work here.

Word to your Account Exec.

This became oh so apparent yesterday when Toby Bloomberg let some of us in on a pitch she got from a 'teen-and-t'ween PR person who is at least somehow affiliated with Fleishman-Hillard (still pondering if this is an FH site or some off brand) trying to lure Toby into caring about the site with talk of Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore.

Allison of The Next Big Thing sent Toby the pitch that shows she’s never read Toby and doesn’t know what Diva Marketing is about. She doesn’t know the folks Toby cc’s on her reply back either—although she pledges to add us to her “RSS”. I have a Tween and I worked in BigPR long enough to know the extent to which PR cares about tween$ is reflected in that little s at the end.

Now, Toby’s gotten tired of these pitches, but is among the tireless who still take the time to respond to them in an attempt to educate the would-be media relations people or perhaps shut them up until they take the time to READ.

Because most of these pitches are veiled attempts to get you to HIRE THESE PEOPLE as YOUR NEXT "SOCIAL MEDIA PR ONLINE MARKETING WHAT HAVE YOU" CONSULTANT or to USE THEIR SERVICES OR THE SERVICES OF THEIR CLIENTS, not, as they would like you to believe, to add something useful to your day, allow me to provide my tips for choosing a social media consultant in the form of a little quiz you can use in your own business.

Make no mistake: I think that you should work with people who actually participate in social spaces – many of whom started out as bloggers and who are still bloggers – rather than XYZ PRPros or BigPR Central. So lets see how the next people who come looking for your money or attention do on my Social Media Partner Quiz:

• Do you blog? Please provide a link (with a link to your archives).
• What does the word “Blog” stands for?
• Who has been celebrated as the mother of blogging?
• Who is the father of podcasting? Who says they are the father of podcasting? Who's right? (Are you willing to say so at BloggerCon?)
• Which President invented the Internet?
  
• Do you participate in conversations with key influencers in the Technorati Top 500? Name them.
• Have you ever argued online with Robert Scoble?
• Where doesn’t Robert work?
• Is your blog among the Technorati Top 5,000?
• Is an aggregator used 1) to waste time at work, 2) to make your car go, 3) to track blogs you want to read, 4) all of the above.
• How far back do your blog archives go?
• Does a MySpace login use numbers or letters?
• Have you ever twittered before a date? After? During?
• What’s CSS?
• Have you been published on topics germane to this industry in mainstream media?
• Send me links to your blog, podcasts, videos, myspace page, orkut page, youtube page, facebook page, flickr photos and Kaneva page. When I said Kaneva, did you say God bless you?
• Do you spend at least half of your on-the-phone time with other bloggers, Internet lovers, or people in your industry?
• Name some of your best friends online.
• Name some of your best enemies online. (note: immediate disqualification if none listed -- you haven’t been here long enough.)
• Did your read Cluetrain? Was it about 1) freedom 2) the rail and transportation industry or 3) best practices?

For a brief written evaluation of test results and recommendations, paypal $29.95 to ewriter@bellsouth.net.

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the net begins to realize the net is just the net after all

Renee has an interesting post where she chronicles a mini-test, or not so mini really, to see just how many people in her life who are not in her online life are actually online at all. She found not many. She also lists a lot of activities that she will not move from the desktop to the ether -- email being an important one.

Now Renee makes a living, last I knew, working with Internet companies. So I found her post particularly interesting and can relate to feeling in 2007 what I did not feel in 2001, and that is: 1) too old for this medium, 2) too deep for this medium, 3) tired of this medium, 4) uninspired by this medium, albeit I am still somewhat hopeful that art and humor and joy and sorrow can rise above the unbearable noise of of tech-biz-as-usual-white-men-conferring-once-again-and all-is-right-with-the-world-god-bless-America-that-matters-amen.

I like the reality check of this post, because Renee rubs elbows with a lot of influencers who could use a dose of WTF, which she gives:

Last year, I went to a flickr party and was the oldest person in the room. I attended the event with a 27 year old girlfriend who is a lawyer in the Valley. She dragged along three lawyer friends from LA, all roughly her age and none of them had even heard of flickr.

"Everyone is using Twitter," I'm told. I don't get it and won't. It's not that I'm not open to trying something new - it doesn't solve a problem for me that is need of fixing, nor does it improve my life. Nor do I even think its cool. As for useful? Perhaps at a three or four day conference in a foreign city for all of those three or four days.

It took my immediate family six years to find my blog. And I'm not exactly low profile. So I can completely relate to Renee's take on who is NOT online the way we are online. And she mentions the specific fetish of all things web in the Valley. Ah yes, the Valley--who's writing the book on the Cult of the Valley and the Religion of Social Media? I want to help. Or at least pre-order it.

In that the reality of many, not to mention the economy of many, can be shaped by the hyperbole of a few, the Valley is a shining example of how New Religion works. It is an example of how powerful cult mind control can be. Extending its tentacles across the global Internet -- with quite literally around-the-planet reach--it's a whole new ball of wax, one the leading cult debunkers have yet to touch from what I can tell. The Valley's webcult has the potential to be a global Waco in the making. It's just waiting for its Koresh. Or maybe he's distributed this time around.

Or maybe I'm getting all worked up over nothing. Leave off the Silicon Valley element if you wish (though I don't think you should), and read Renee's take from a strictly business perspective to get a glimpse of where the rest of the world is in adopting This New Social World Order, and Renee's warning that not everybody knows what you know.

The marketer in me sees opportunity. The parent in me sees trepidation. The artist in me sees an aardvark on a cell phone. Whatever that means.

Keep in mind, Renee is also at OnHollywood, while I am only OnTheCouch, so that could account for her deep dive on the topic and my sort of abstract take.

...

Back to My Roots

I have been thinking a lot about the women of BlogHer the last couple of weeks, especially since the business name was unfairly thrown into the mix of the recent melee that tied me to accusations of now-well-publicized posts and unrelated death threats, a big-fat none of which I wrote/made/insinuated, as if that needs saying again, but there it is.

Since everything apparently happens for a reason, I’ve taken this mess as a reason to start thinking about my own group blogging affiliations, my level of involvement and attention-paying, who I know and don’t know in the groups I belong to, what any of this means for those group blogs I own and run, whether or not there’s still a synergy for me in these groups, what I’m getting out of – and giving to – those groups, and how much any of this matters in my life. I have arrived at no particular answers. But the thinking has kept me busy.

Combine these questions with the well-publicized push toward “seals of approval” and “codes of conduct” for blogs, covered in the NYT and elsewhere, and I find myself at a crossroads on how I view blogging—both group blogs and my individual blog.

While codes of conduct have their place on targeted team and business blogs, neither “seals of approval” nor self-important, semantic legislation of adult behavior sit well with me. None of this "cyberbullying" sentiment (save it for the children who need it, please), these "codes of conduct", or "blog seals of approval" ring true as ways to serve readers, writers, or conversation in its entirety, especially in the forms currently being discussed. These means of constraint are American-Fear-Inspired, insulting, reductionist nonsense designed to quiet dissent, no matter how many euphemisms – like ‘civility’ -- the civilized West tries to color them with.

What works to keep blog writers, and their commenting readers, in line with the context of the blog? The blog writers and their commenting readers!

The bottom line is this: I don’t want the push toward mandated civility extended toward me, either by implication or by association.

Neither do I want the pieces of me that are less civilized and less acceptable – YAY PIECES! – to reflect badly on the group blogs where I participate. This is especially true for a business blog like BlogHer—especially when I’m participating not for money, not for ad revenue, not as part of my business, but for fun.

All of this discourse over behavior—it’s stupid. I’ve known how to navigate the Internet since I built my first website in 1996 and started the first women’s team blog on Blogger in 2001. Today’s A-listers need to stop talking about how to talk with their readers and how to ignore occasional trolls, and just fucking DO it.

Anyway, I have digressed to the point where I am losing my manners. That was not my intention. But it was fun.

This post is actually meant to thank the women of BlogHer, especially leaders Lisa, Jory, and Elisa, and say that I have enjoyed working with and writing along side of you since this baby got birthed. But it’s time for me to go back to my roots, to go pay attention to the group blogs that are home to me, maybe make new ones, to tend to Blog Sisters and my own blog. That's what I've been gravitating toward the last couple of months. It's time to make it official, for what it's worth.

Lisa and I have talked and she has graciously accepted my request for freedom. The decision is mine and mine alone, and I think it’s the right one.

Here’s to what’s next. I wish the BlogHers well in growing up and evolving their business, brand, and blog. Ladies, continue to name names and push the limits. Don’t settle. Look BOTH ways before you cross the hyperlink. And be well.

-jeneane

...

no lists, just action - speaker diversity and the top-dog bypass

Chris Pirillo wonders why Gnomedex didn't make Kottke's list of conferences examined for their percentages of male vs female speakers.

I'd say it's a good thing Gnomedex didn't make the list, because, although it's an interesting idea to compare today's hot Internet conferences based on these percentages, it's sort of like addressing a zero balance in your bank account by changing the numbers in your checkbook register.

It doesn't really address the lllaaarrgggerrr ppprrrooobbllem.

I wish more tech conferences were like gnomedex, and that more of today's web-tech conference organizers were like chris and ponzi. Gnomedex was fostering discussion on the tech landscape LONG before today's webby conferences (and conference organizers), many of whom are doing what they do to capitalize on web 2.0 money, the Internet economy, and the social media 'who's who' scene.

THOSE are the conferences I inherently distrust and see as suspect, and they nearly always give me reason to distrust, because they almost always take the speaker bypass of looking at the technorati top 100 or Top Dogs or Founding FATHERS of blogging, and approach them for speaking slots. These individuals are STILL the easiest to come across when you skim the web looking for voices-as-commodity. They are also pretty good themselves at going after gigs. Easy, visible targets beget easy quick conferences beget money in pockets beget notoriety for speakers and conferences, which beget more speaking gigs and conferences.

Chris and Ponzi don't skim the web. They live here with us. They participate--participated before it was trendy and highly lucrative. That is why I trust them to put together a good, representative conference, and to listen to ideas for speakers and topics if people think they should do it differently.

Back to the Kottke list: There is no universal diversity percentage that makes things okay.

Wouldn't that be simple? It would allow for more bypasses, faster conference planning, and more predictable tracks. It would allow everything to be fair and just, and would mean that no one would have to think about their own beliefs and motives. Just fill in the 38% diversity quotient at work, and then you don't have to wonder if it's okay that you wish your new neighbors weren't black.

The "right" number of women speakers for a deeply-tech tech conference might differ from the "right" number for a social marketing conference. Because there is no right number.

Except for NOT ZERO.

AND PROBABLY. NOT ONE EITHER.

Use your fucking heads.

How to find good speakers? Ask the people you know who are in the populations you think are sparse or missing. Better yet, START READING PEOPLE who don't look like everyone else in your aggregator or blogroll. Then read who they read.

And if you really don't know any women or people of color, expand your world a little bit. Get off your computer, get out of your fucking house, city, state, and/or cultural comfort zone to-day.

THEN plan a conference.

whatisthis radio silence

i am not sure why i have felt uninspired to blog.

you see, i read thru bloglines and every one in my aggregator is coming up short, posting about the same shit over and over. sorry if that pisses off the duly aggregated. i don't care where you're flying next. thank god for my blogroll. the news vs the new.

news is more and more the same -- web 2.0 dance, political and cultural zerohood.
new is art loss death scream -- joy floats.

i'm no fan of march. march is not my month. st patrick is a motherfucker, took my daddy and my grandma, patron saint of fuck off. march 17 disappeared me.

maybe that's it. maybe that's what has left me too empty to blog, too ordinary to care, too pragmatic to explode, to hurt to bandage.

holding down the fort.

like always.

need to soar to sing again need to slice and peel again, to feel again

but it's too big too real.

stop taking me down, march.

stepping out...

In case anyone's playing the 'where's jeneane?' homegame (which means you should probably play the lotto instead so you can win cash to take a trip somewhere interesting), I wanted to update you: I decided to leave the Media 2.0 Workgroup because I think stepping away from it is the right thing for me to do. I wish my fellow mediaites well, and will be following along as a reader.

back to our regular programming.

Millar's Law, Brand Strategy, And Fish.

A week or so ago I took a quick shot at explaining what online marketers are doing wrong in trying to cut through the noise in the crowded Internet space: They're making more noise. What they should be doing instead is shutting up and helping people do what it is they want to do.

This post over at Brand Tactitians does a wwwwaaahhyy better job at illustrating what web companies should be doing for the people they like to call users. Because most companies treat people like users; their aim is to sell them us drugs, new drugs, better drugs. We're not users. We're doers. Help us do stuff, okay?

Anyway, I digress. A story about fish awaits you. It is Millar's Law. It is important. Go Read It.

giving it a go, diversity, the red button, and anil.

So many women over so many years around these so many parts have endeavored so often and so passionately to describe the problem with diverse voices being excluded from tech events, tech conferences, and the tech economy--heck some would wish we'd shut up altogether--that there is hardly anything left unsaid.

And yet, the same types of people keep spewing the same types of stupid arguments the same way about the same topic (linking to the same one anothers in doing so) to try and shift the blame anywhere other than their own two shoulders -- it makes me want to push the red button on this whole damn social experiment. As if i had a button.

It's crazy making. it really is.

Today the men are talking about it again, and I am pointing it out so that others can go there and talk about it with Anil, whose post is right on in explaining why monoculture is not only NOT a good thing, but why diversity is a business must that will pay off. (In other words, hurry, there's money involved.)

I haven't always agreed with Anil. In fact he's pissed me off several times over these many years. He's also very smart. This is a good post and a good discussion. Thank you Anil for having it.

community guy on community stuff

community guy's got a ton of info on:

Safer User Generated Content Campaigns

If you are of the safe-sex school, that means you should comdomize yourself before writing a politician.

badumpbump, crash!

Okay, even if i don't like the UGC lingo, the tips in the post are worth a read for those establishing or running moderated communities--or any kind for that matter. Jake points to a whitepaper that goes into detail: Six Techniques for Safer User Generated Content (UGC) Campaigns, focusing on six key, and often under appreciated techniques. I like the tip to enlist users of a community in moderating it.

4. Enlist your users – most site users want a positive experience. Given the opportunity, many of them will help to protect the safety and quality of a project. Enlisting users can not only help moderators, but can engage users in the site itself. Make sure to develop tools and processes that make it easy and rewarding for "good" behaviors to help protect against the "bad" behaviors.

As the community lives a hopefully long and healthy life, the natural evolution is for the participants to define levels of moderation, and to ignore or oust the assholes, to create and enforce what's acceptable and what gets you shot behind the barn.

(if only!) ;-)

feeling all information superhighwayish

I've been perseverating about Stowe's traffic and flow post for a couple of days. Not every waking moment. But pretty persistently.

I'm in a frame of mind where I'm taking a look at how 'social' all of this new social technology really is, especially as technology seems to be backfiring all over me this week:

1.) what with my wireless router working well for everything but wireless all of a sudden, and

2.) what with this annoying feed-reading dyslexia I've developed where I keep thinking I'm reading SOMEONE except that halfway through I start getting that weird "doc's excited about new underwear?" or "j. brotherlove went to the circus?" feeling only to figure out I've once again clicked on a different name in bloglines than I thought, jolting me out of my happy reading experience with someone I thought I knew. It's like going home to the wrong house, or walking in on your parents having sex. I'm just saying.

So Stowe's report of Emily Chang's new data stream left me feeling jittery. I don't want to feel jittery about a data stream. But no matter how much I admire these ideas and their generators, and no matter how much I admire the professional stamina and gitundoulous amounts of information and knowledge these folks juggle, the focus on data and streams and all of the recent nattering around "how DO we keep up?" leaves me feeling a little jittery and a little pissy.

Part pissy, part jittery.

Maybe the jittery part is about me not being able to explain why I'm so pissy about it.

Certainly Emily's goal and journey in figuring out how to keep up with her online social activity is an important personal activity. People who live inside of this stuff and make a living there really ARE drowning in data and dying for information (oh wait! that was 1996 and data warehousing...). Drowning in websites and dying for gigs (no wait, that was 2002). Drowning in feeds and dying for .....what?

What?

What exactly is it that's being died for?

To know me? To see me? To read me? To understand me? To get me? To get as many mes as you can?

Or to FOLLOW. To follow the traffic, the noise, the action?

The collision of RSSing and aggregating and twittering--it's people following. It's people following information. Not following not you or I, but following themselves.

Emily writes:

Recently had to revisit the plan to aggregate all my activity into one data stream. As the calendar rolled to 2007, I kept wishing I could look at all my social activity from 2006 in context: time, date, type of activity, location, memory, information interest, and so on. What was I bookmarking, blogging about, listening to, going to, and thinking about? I still had the urge to have an information and online activity mash-up that would allow me to discover my own patterns and to share my activity across the web in one chronological stream of data (to start with anyway).

On the 'cool solution!" front I'm all, 'how cool is that?' On the 'what does this mean to the web?' front, I'm all about being creeped out.

What I'm trying to say -- I think, at least, as I limp along -- is that I don't get how we're trending toward social here. What I see is more and more niche experts going more and more micro, inner and inner and inner, and calling it social.

How does this help us act as intermediaries for new voices? How does any of this help connect the man or woman who isn't "followable" in terms of scale with readers and friends who don't know they exist?

At our SoCon session last week, I made a call to bring back the blogroll. Because in all of the devices that have come along since the day when we only had blogrolls to show who we were reading -- RSS and aggregators and technorati and conference agendas and on and on -- nothing has done THAT job effectively.

There is no tool to raise us up. Only to follow those who have been raised.

And I think THAT job -- the job of connecting and circulating voices, especially new ones -- is the most important part of what we're doing here. Reading and writing one another whole.

I'm not here to FOLLOW you. I'm here to meet you. To like you, to love you, to read you, to hear you, to know you, to call you family or kick you in the ass and tell you to get lost.

Stowe is one of the smartest guys I know in this space. I'm sure that when he says there are tools in the works to make meaning out of things like traffic and flow, he's telling us straight. But I'm not getting how this technology is -- at its core -- social-making:

A pal of yours is having a party? He will create the event using some social application site, and the event will be cast into his traffic. Your flow-aware calendar app might snag the event from the traffic, and ask you if you'd like to confirm. You agree, and the agreement is thrown into your traffic, for your buddy and others to make sense of, downstream.

This world of traffic will change things like blogging: instead of commenting at someone's post -- a static, page-centric system -- I might simply create a commentary with a link to the original (which I may have discovered in my inbound traffic, not necessarily by browsing his/her blog), and I drop a comment into my traffic, where it flows out to all those who want to see my natterings. Yes, sure, I might archive that comment (as well as the inbound post), or maybe push the comment into a conventional blog post: but the basic perception of what is going on shifts away from pages and static URLs toward flow and the elements that make up my traffic.

While I got the initial buzz off twitter -- the unending chatter of followees about this dinner and that, about this meeting and that, about this profound thought and that -- twitter's after taste is what was so important to me. Twitter made me realize how unworthy we are as human beings of being followed.

Period.

We are not, each and every one of us, a walking techmeme or fashionmeme or dinnermeme or godmeme, streaming continuous brainfood for the masses. Thank you Jesus.

Those who could change you in some fundamental way if you followed them -- you won't see them sticking a stream out of their butt and asking you to jump on.

I don't know. Am I making sense?

I was feeling pretty alone thinking through all of the the last couple of days when I happened on Doc's post, We Are All Authors of Each Other.

And Doc brought me home.

Let Doc bring you home too:

I don't think of my what I do here as production of "information" that others "consume". Nor do I think of it as "one-to-many" or "many-to-many". I think of it as writing that will hopefully inform readers.

Informing is not the same as delivering information. Inform is derived from the verb to form. When you inform me, you form me. You enlarge that which makes me most human: what I know. I am, to some degree, authored by you.

What we call "authority" is the right we give others to author us, to enlarge us.

The human need to increase what we know, and to help each other do the same, is what the Net at its best is all about. Yeah, it's about other things. But it needs to be respected as an accessory to our humanity. And terms like "social media", forgive me, don't do that. (At least not for me.)

What he said.

Media 2.0 - Video Blow OR GooTrain

Cutting Through the Noise -- You Don't Do It By Making More Noise.

Seems to me Robert is asking as much a marketing and PR question (how can companies cut through the roar of noise on the net) as he is a personal time management question. Surprisingly (heh), I have an answer:

Engage a Marketing/PR person who lives, breathes, and sleeps online like you do. BUT: Make sure they're actually smart, not just off their Ritalin.

The right person will watch for opportunities -- much the same way you read feeds, but with different glasses on -- to enable people who are gathered around a common interest or passion, one your company's product/service addresses. This person understands that an opportunity isn't a chance to spam influencers. It's a chance to help people accomplish something they can't accomplish at that moment. It's two, two, two mints in one: engage and enable.

It's helping the market help itself.

Using your company's passion and people, you help real people (in old-school language, your user base; in new-school language, communities) solve a challenge--not necessarily a challenge that has anything to do with your product or service.

A snapshot that Robert was involved in-- CES 2005. There was a room shortage--no one could find rooms anywhere near CES in Vegas because of a collision of shows and events. Bloggers started saying, Oh crap, I can't find a room at CES. WTF? Big names and not-so-big names were told there was no room at the inn. Technorati ranking didn't matter to the reservations people.

At that time, I was working with BubbleShare, who was also going to CES without dollars to spend but with the hope of connecting with bloggers and others. What did we do? We saw this context-based need and realized an opportunity to help solve a problem. We didn't pull some obvious, goofy PR stunt: Hey, let's take photos of people out on the street and have a contest! We engaged people and helped solve a problem.

In one night (we started around 11 p.m. I think), we built, populated and got the word out about the CES Wiki, which was designed to connect folks who were looking for roommates, places to stay, rides, etc., at CES. By the next morning, everyone was talking about it.

We followed the conversation like bloodhounds trying to help people hook up, matching needs with solutions. Calling hotels and getting information on who had rooms and who didn't. And once everyone was situated, we used the wiki to update that same community during the show. Charlene Li told people where they could rent bikes to get around. Doc debated a star-watching excursion. And we held an "Unconference/Unshow" during the show to connect bloggers and companies realtime.

Yes, we encouraged photo sharing on the wiki, but the POINT of the wiki was that we were providing a way for the people to accomplish something. And we were doing so without spending money on hot air balloons or limos.

Now if we had had money..... well, never mind. The cost was virtually nothing. The reputation gain was huge. If I had my way, that wiki would still be up and active, and would have morphed into something larger in its own right, continuing and facilitating relevant conversations and connections around events.

So, yes, while tools and processes can help Robert and the rest of us cut through the noise, smart people who understand the net are what help companies cut through the noise.

Okay, Ritalin helps too.

(I'm KIDDING!)

Angry Jonas Shot

IMG_4299.JPG
Originally uploaded by jon gos.

easy, jonas. eaaaasssy.

And right back at you! Imagine my surprise to find you speaking in the ATL--well, almost in the ATL. One of my early day who's-that-masked-man heroes.

George says, come back soon--we will try to get left coast too.

Writing the Personal, Writing Personally, And Who Are You Online?

Toby's got a cool discussion going on about the ins and outs of sharing the personal on a professionally-geared blog, and vice versa. We're continuing it tomorrow at SoCon.

Questions -- Can you write 'personally' without sharing details from your personal life? Can a professional blog be personal and professional too and still be 'weighty' enough to matter?

What are the risks of integraing or separating your "selve(s)" online. And what about other social spaces--profiles on myspace, orkut, friendster, facebook; professional connections on linkedin, 'personalities' on second life; photos on flickr; videos, podcasts and everything else Media 2.0? Are we becoming more dissociated or more integrated?

How much of you are you willing to share, how personal are you willing to get, and at what cost?

And what about gender -- are women willing to go where guys fear to tread in the personal department? Is it true that male bloggers tend to separate their professional writing from their more personal posts (men who come to mind: mike arrington's "techcrunch" vs "crunchnotes"; stowe boyd's /message vs ambivalence; and scoble's -- oh wait, I guess scoble blogs like a girl).

:-0

eh? eh?

Kat Herding Media goes social!

My atlanta blog cohort -- my blogdivamia -- Toby Bloomberg and I will be leading an uncon discussion on Women and Social Media: Finding Your Niche at SoCon this Saturday. Last minute addition to the schedule, we said okay, and we'll do our best to evoke some interesting conversation--bring your wildest questions, sometime in the afternoon, to Kennesaw State. I'll be coming from Jenna's last basketball game, so let's be thankful they don't do overtime in the Upwards league. ;-)

see you there.

Chick-Fil-A and the Straw-Coke Thing

It’s not all that deep, nor is it terribly interesting, yet it’s important enough that I’m taking ten minutes to write about it, this straw-Coke thing.

In the South, we USians are fortunate to have a fast-ish food joint called Chick-Fil-A. My understanding is that it’s run by a conservative evangelical type, but I don’t know enough about the company to say if that’s true, and it’s not the point of the straw-Coke thing.

Well maybe it is, but I’m claiming it’s not.

I don’t go to Chick-Fil-A often, but as quick food goes, their chicken breast sandwiches are not all that unhealthy, plus they taste good.

What little tendency I have toward ADD seems to love the Chick-Fil-A brand. It took more than a year after first arriving in Atlanta for someone to stop and inquire, “What are you saying?” when I asked if they wanted me to bring them anything back from the drive through.

“Chick-A-Fil,” I announced. “I’m going to grab a sandwich.”

“You’re kidding, right? ‘Chick-A-Fil’?”

The entire front desk staff doubled over when it became clear that I indeed thought the name was Chick-A-Fil – as in ‘fill you up with chicken.’

Old Habits Are Hard to Break

Even after I learned the real name, it was hard to break the old habit. It became an office joke—I’d write post-it-notes saying, “at chickafill, be rt bk!” and stick them on my monitor. Countless lunch discussions focused around which brand would really be better for the company: A-Fil or Fil-A. You could call it a meme. Or not.

But this isn’t even about that.

It’s about this week and the straw-Coke thing.

There has been, no secret if you read here or there, a ruckus going on at Tara’s blog, which emerged from what some -- present company included -- saw as her dogmatic, even careless, approach to discussing a loaded topic with her commentors, an approach I happen to think she takes too often, nice though she may be.

I have been knocking the whole thing around in my head for a day or more, trying to figure out what part of the interaction was bugging me the most.

As it happened, clarity was waiting at the Chick-Fil-A drive-through window.

It Really Is That Simple

As I was paying for my chicken breakfast bagel this morning, the cashier handed me my drink with my change. As usual, I sat staring at my drink wishing she’d given me the straw that goes with it.

But they never do.

At Chick-Fil-A, they always give you the drink, and you have to fish your straw out of the bag later, once you start driving.

I was thirsty, so I asked for my straw.

She went and got one with a smile. And I decided to ask:

“Why do you guys always wait to hand out the straw? It's pretty stupid. I mean, why not hand it over with the drink? Drink-Straw, Straw-Drink.”

She explained to me that usually they try to “expedite” orders so that there is just a little time between the drink and the bag of food with the straw in it. But usually that doesn’t work. Especially at breakfast.

So I said, “You don’t even have the straws nearby do you?” She shook her head, “They’re with the assembler—he puts them in the bag after he wraps the food.”

I decided to talk to her a little more. “But I’m thirsty when I get my drink. Doesn’t it make sense to have a straw with the soda?” She shook her head yes. “You wouldn’t believe how many people ask me for the straw after I hand them the drink.”

I told her maybe I would let Chick-Fil-A know that the straw-in-the-bag thing isn’t working.

She smiled and said she’d like that because she spends a lot of time getting straws.

The Generosity of Saying, "That's Stupid."

Beyond remembering that flawed processes tend to get passed along in franchise businesses – and downstream to the customer in all businesses – the interaction at the drive through window brought me some clarity on what’s been bugging me the last couple of days.

There is a generosity in telling someone they’re wrong, and there is generosity in hearing it.

When you take the time to explore with me where I’m off track—that’s an act of generosity from you, no matter how much I think I’m right.

“Enlightened” is not shutting you down for telling me what I don’t know, and making sure everything resolves to the easy key-of-C “My Truth and Your Truth.”

Enlightened is owning up, is learning and reapproaching, is stepping down into the muck, not stepping away from common filth onto the pedestal. Enlightened is willing, is stupid and messy, but is so much more beautiful than pretty.

It’s saying, “The fucking straw does belong with the Coke. How’d I miss that all this time?”

And maybe even saying, "Thanks."