Social Media

I feel like I’ve blogged way too much about Facebook as of late, but there always seems to be a new angle to explore. I’ve complained before about Facebook suggesting you friend people…sometimes the annoyance of friend suggestions are as simple as being suggested to friend someone who was mean to you in high school. But sometimes facebook asks you to friend people who have abused you in some way. It makes using facebook a little less desirable because friendship suggestions are based on mutual friendships–not on interests or something else that would be way more helpful in my opinion.

Recently, a woman wrote in the NY Times that facebook had suggested she friend a guy that raped her as a pre-teen.

Thirty-eight years later, I browsed through the Facebook friends of the boy who was the first to rape me, noticing names I remembered from high school. In his recent photos were snapshots of a boy with his nose and a pretty teenage girl with long silky hair parted in the middle. He gripped a beer while his belly drooped over his jeans. I found some older photos of his wedding, him with a pretty young bride.

So I went back to his profile page and typed a private message: “I hope that night has haunted you. I was naïve and a virgin. I see you have a teenage daughter now. Better keep her safe from guys like you.”

I wanted to hate him and hurt him but realized that the only way to be free was to let it all go. When I defriended him I felt strong. The past was the past, and my mouth wasn’t covered anymore.

It’s a pretty powerful story, I’d suggest everyone read the whole thing.

When social media first took off, all folks talked about is how disconnected we were becoming. And the end result seems to be the opposite–we can’t leave things and people behind anymore no matter how hard we try!! Unless, of course, we choose not to participate in a part of society that may happen online but has very real life incentives in addition to the consequences.

Sidebar: Some of the commenters blamed the writer for not telling the man’s wife he was a rapist. I’m not so sure about that…mainly because I believe that women who are involved with those kinds of men often are already aware, assuming he hasn’t changed in all those years. I’m not sure. It was on my mind, though.

One thing I’ve noticed about folks on facebook is that many seem to understand the dangers of having certain information searchable for employers. And, for the most part it seems, people with white collar jobs where that sort of thing tends to matter more are a little less public with sharing things that might get them fired. Although, it must be stated, that most people still aren’t making full use of their privacy settings.

But the other side to facebook “danger” is the use of information: traced clicks, having your information sold, or, my personal favorite, facebook smacking one of your profile pics beside some ad for a company that you know nothing about. Those are the things that only savvy heavy internet users tend to pay attention to and care about. The proof of that is in the fact that no matter how much tech and personal privacy sites put out about facebook-or how much advocacy groups sue the site–people are still using it and sites are still asking you to use facebook to connect. Not too long ago, facebook was tracking users’ activity AFTER they’d logged off. That story barely was a blip on the radar.

For a long time I refused to ever connect facebook to anything. It was the principle of the thing. But now I’ve succumbed. Why? cause it’s soooo much easier than plugging in a user names and password. And for someone who has a blog where they need to comment on other sites more often, facebook makes the whole thing easier. I’ve actually decided that when my sports blog is redesigned, I’m going to move all comments on the facebook page a la Grantland.

A few readers have already complained about this. My response: I’m sorry..perhaps you should get a dummy account.

I know they think I’m being a little arrogant suggesting that they create a faux facebook account just to comment on my blog, but my advice is really less about my blog and more about using the internet to your advantage. Something I think we all should be looking to do.

Facebook is largely in control and now the only thing we can do in rebellion is to get more out of the site than it gets out of us. There’s no rule saying you can’t have a facebook page with a dumb photo, a fake location, and no status updates. Hell, a lot of people do that for their regular accounts. A dummy account is a convenient way to leverage the partnership that facebook has with some of your favorite sites while still retaining control over the information you post–or in this case the information you don’t.

For many folks facebook is a way to connect with former classmates and colleagues and others that you are interested in enough to know what’s going on in their lives but not entertained by enough to follow on twitter–assuming they even tweet. Secondarily, facebook is a photo storage and sharing site. And it’s really hard to beat. But I see facebook’s primary role being altered to a middle man between you and the rest of the web. And opening your private data to a middle man rarely works out well, ask anyone who’s been taken down in a ponzi scheme.

I’m happy with my decision to use a facebook dummy account. And honestly it’s not all that dummy—my real location and alma mater is on there. I also have ONE profile photo. If anyone tags me in a photo, I disconnect the tag. I’m not opposed to unfriending the person either. I don’t have a “regular” account because facebook just isn’t “for me” anymore. I’m connected in so many other ways.

So…I’m wondering, am I the only one thinking dummy accounts should rise in popularity?

Ain’t no way in hell Hermain Cain should be running the country. That being said, I finally got a chance to check out his new campaign video. After almost a week of reading tweets about whether or not the video was “real,” I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. But I have to say, as weird as it is, there’s some genius there.

Using an old Hollywood western style, the video successfully conveys Cain’s primary message which is “Hey! I’m just as white as you are, thank you very much!”

The video starts with his Chief of staff Mark Block, an older white male, saying what an honor it’s been to work for Cain. You get the feeling that there is a good chance that this man may have shot the Sheriff AND the Deputy. After giving his spiel about whatever it is that America needs that we really don’t, he ends his statement by taking a puff of a cigarette and blowing the smoke right in the viewer’s face.

How’s that for thumbing the nose at everything that America’s wimpy side stands for?   What may look like some silly hypermasculine puff of smoke to you was really a coded action. With that puff, Block just told all of you that Cain isn’t some soft, new-age, PETA-supporting, we-are-the-world, race-speechifying Obama supporter. This is a guy who doesn’t mind if you smoke, eat copious amounts of red meat, or carry a gun onto school property.

When times are hard, nostalgia reigns supreme and Cain’s ad provides a healthy dose of it. The narrative that America has gotten too “soft” is a popular one in red states. Lots of Americans long for a time before there were regulations that protected us from companies, strangers, and ourselves. When you could smoke a cigarette without everyone looking at you like some sort of pariah. There is a direct correlation, in some Americans’ minds, between America’s one-time strength and the popular norms and values of that time.

Of course those would be the norms and values they like to remember like smoking in public places, not the ones they conveniently forget like openly accepted racism and sexism (though I gather they don’t think that was all that bad). Cain’s supporters want America to be free again whether that means exercising some prejudice or simply smoking while having a drink at the bar.

The song you hear in the background “I Am America” is a perfect complement to the video and so is Block’s immediately preceding line about taking the country back. Cain’s face shows up right as the lyrics begin to play and there’s a subtle message that again, as dark as Cain may be, he’s just as whitebread as you and the rest of your family. With this video and subsequent sustained messaging, Cain may effectively detach “taking the country back” from racially coded language and reduce it to merely politically-coded. Can you take the country back from blacks if a black man is leading the charge? Literally, yes. Figuratively, no.

On a whole, this video spits in the face of almost everything I learned studying elections and media. Of course, my original study took place long before you tube and the advent of online viral campaigns.  But it gets one thing right for sure–it portrays the candidate in a way that will appeal to his audience. And due to the fact that many folks in red states have shown a distaste for negative ad campaigns when polled, Cain was wise to avoid yet another formulaic 30 second take-down of an opponent.

First of all, is anyone still using Google Plus? I can honestly say that I was NOT at all looking forward to maintaining another social network. I joined Google Plus because I heard that when it comes to sharing it really beats twitter. Or, at least it was the first couple weeks it was out. I do notice that people are RTing blog and news posts a lot less these days and I think that a lot of it has to do with long term use of twitter changing the landscape of how people feel about those they follow and the content they post. I have some other theories too…

But we’re not here for that right now!

I did join google plus, I started adding people to circles.  My main purpose for google plus was to enhance football conversations as a complement to my football blog. I tweeted to my twitter followers that if they want to be in my football circle to add me. So…people start adding me. I quickly note that some of the people adding me do not like football. I know this for a fact!

So…why were adding me?

Obviously, the answer to this is because they want to keep up with my non-football updates. But how would I know that? See, when someone follows you on twitter it’s easy for them to follow and unfollow if you’re content isn’t what they’re looking for. When someone adds you on facebook, they’re getting whatever you post to your timeline that is accessible to them. They know that they won’t like everything you post, and they’re not looking to do so.

But on Google Plus, you have NO CLUE why people are adding you. And it makes it a much harder social network to manage, especially if your plan is to be a one-trick pony.

The way I’ve tried to solve this problem is by creating a temporary circle I called “why did you add me?” I posted an update to ONLY that circle that said tell me which circle you’d like to be added to: football, social media, or general updates. This is a fine strategy except that most of the people in that temporary circle will never see the post. Should I repost? I don’t know.

The best way to achieve this goal is to tag the folks in an update so that they get a notification about it. That’d be fine if I didn’t have 106 requests.

What google doesn’t seem to understand, generally speaking, is that people want to be able to choose how they use a social network. This is the same problem that surfaced with google suspending accounts that don’t use real names. Why would I use my real name when everyone on the web knows me by “J Danielle?” For a supposedly groundbreaking social media site, there’s absolutely no respect or attention to the personalities that exist online.

Getting back to choosing how you use a site, there’s no fool proof or easy way to separate people in a way that lets “influencers” reach the right audience and also helps “audiences” get tailored content.

I have other issues with google plus as well, such as the SPAM. I mean who wants email notification that a spammer added you to a circle?

I’d be interested to see how others are using google plus? Is there a way to separate people appropriately that I haven’t found yet? if you can totally debunk my argument by showing me how to achieve my goal, that would be absolutely great.

Let’s just jump into this. If you tweet me using any service like twitlonger that allows you to use more than 140 characters, I will not read it.  I will not click. I will not clack. I will not skim, scan or glance at it.

Got it?

Twitter allows us to do two things: 1. Engage in complete conversations using its API and 2. Share links to informative content. When you use character extension services, you are violating number 1 and impeding my ability to determine whether or not your tweet belongs under number 2.

Plus it just looks stupid. Ever seen someone try to curse someone out using twitlonger? It goes like this:

First of all, I don’t know who the HELL HE THINKS HE IS. He thinks he’s slick!! WHEN I SEE HIM I’M GONNA http://tmi.me/abcde.

No.

Further, these services make tweeters lazy. The point is to be creative and concise not just with your own tweets but when you modify the tweets of others to add your comment.

Tweet counts matter less, but I once saw someone talking about people who have too many tweets, and when I clicked on their page it was full of twit longer links. Their tweet count probably should have been much higher than it was. Their tweet count was also lowered by the fact that no one was responding to them due to their being almost no content available on their timeline that didn’t require clicking on the outside link.

The worst of the worst? Twitlonger links inside of twitlonger links. I once got curious about a tweet that seemed juicy and clicked on the twitlonger link only to find YET ANOTHER TWITLONGER LINK.

I don’t like disappointment. It was that day I vowed that no matter how juicy a tweet may seem, if it’s preceded by a link to more tweet text I’m not falling for the okie doke.

Scary thought–what if EVERYONE started using extension services? Before tweetdeck released its latest update, there was no way to turn off their silly ass deckly service. Most people I follow do not approve of these services but suddenly my timeline was full of them because people kept forgetting that deckly was on. Imagine an entire timeline full of half-expressed thoughts that may or may not be complete when you click off of the site. How dreadful.

I’m of the mindset that if something would be detrimental for all to use, then probably no one should use it.

Of course the choice to twitlonger is yours, just know that I and many others will not readlonger. Deal?

It’s really easy to look at this clip from Today’s Show in 1994 and snicker a little bit. If you’re around my age (28) you’ve grown up with the internet for most of your life, if not all of it. And many of us who read blogs, tweet, facebook etc consider ourselves to be pretty internet savvy. But, on a whole, are we really net savvy as a society?

I would say…not really. In fact, according to the NY Times a full 28% of Americans don’t use the internet at all. I grew up in a rural area and didn’t get access to internet consistently until 2000, the year I went to college. I still remember very well life without the internet–and honestly, it wasn’t all that bad.

But moving on to those who do use the internet, there’s lots of signs that “use” doesn’t equal “knowledge.” There’s still a frightening number of facebook users who have no grasp of the need to adjust their privacy settings. Even more aren’t aware that privacy is even an issue as they allow more and more applications to access their information. Last week my facebook stream (which I rarely ever bother to read) was full of people panicking about their phone numbers and the numbers of their phone contacts being openly visible on facebook.

Since these privacy issues began, rather than learning every little detail, I’ve chosen to take the safe route and scrape facebook of everything except my name and profile picture. That doesn’t make me savvy, just cautious.

And what about spyware and phishing sites? People still struggle telling legitimate sites from fake sites, and and surf the web with outdated virus software. I think on some level Microsoft relies on this ignorance because it’s one of the biggest reasons people buy new PCs. When my PC died, I avoided responsibility by buying a Mac. I’d never return to PC.

But those are just individual decisions, what about the media and government’s understanding of the internet, and more specifically, social networks?

I’m working on a post about the media’s over and mis-emphasis on social networking’s role in the uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa. It’d be silly to imply that social media didn’t play a significant role. Facebook and twitter have been used for everything from informing protesters of places and times to meet to helping reporters find witnesses for stories or travel across borders.

But in many ways, the media is talking about social media in a way that gives it more credit than it deserves. After all, there are people behind these computers and simply using social media doesn’t make one effective at it. Further, the emphasis on digital revolutions is tone deaf given the lives lost or altered forever in these uprisings. Like so many things social network-related, I find myself asking “what about the human element?”

Finally, this year the government will have to make some big decisions on net neutrality. As companies like Comcast and Verizon spar about various services and territory, all the average consumer can do is sit back and hope internet service gets better and cheaper. We’re largely at the whim of corporations whether we’re informed or not.

Lately, the Obama administration has had to defend its position on net neutrality. This, a full 2 years into the President’s term. The internet and how we use it and how its provided to us is one of the most pressing matters of this generation. But I can’t help but wonder if the people who will make the biggest decisions about it–from Congress to the President–are about as knowledgeable as The Today show hosts were in 1994.

Today twitter suspended both ubertwitter and twydroid today for “policy violations,” but didn’t say why. Well, I got my little brown hands on the letter twitter sent them when the sh** hit the fan.

February 18, 2011

To whom it may concern,

We are sorry to inform you that we have made the very difficult decision to suspend the use of your application by twitter users. As you know, we’ve had a long and successful relationship with you and we’re very sad to see it come to an end. Unfortunately, twitter has strict standards and expectations when it comes to the use of our site and a quick review of your clients’ activity shows a deficiency in meeting them.

Months ago we sent you a warning letter about the amount of time your twitter client spends fully operational. We found that your 99.9% success rate violates our policy of only working half the time. We also found that users of your application were pleased with the aesthetic, were able to block millions of bots and report them to spam without any trouble, and had access to the old, preferred way of retweeting.

While we understand why you’d make such a high quality product available for free to users, we simply cannot tolerate its inconsistency with our way of doing business.

For that reason, use of your application has been suspended indefinitely. We promise not to make the reasons for the suspension public if you don’t.

Thank you for your outstanding commitment to users of twitter, and we hope to work with you again in the future when your standards are low enough not to compete with our officially produced applications.

Warm regards,

Twitter

**This letter is not real. Okay?

Tech Crunch has the real scoop…Twitter says Ubermedia was violating privacy with DMs longer than 140 characters and changing the content of users’ tweets among other sort serious charges. They said the problems have been ongoing since April of 2010. I definitely don’t want Twitter to be like Facebook and say privacy and rules be damned, but I haven’t found a better twitter client for blackberry than uber twitter.

Tweetdeck is my favorite desktop client but not yet available for blackberry. Social Scope is pretty popular and users seem satisfied but it’s private invitation only. I guess the hope is that us ubertwitter folks and twydroid people will whine for a week and then use one of the applications twitter created itself. I’ve used twitter for blackberry and was not impressed.

I haven’t done a quick Friday thoughts post in a while so here goes it.

65 Million Reasons to Pay Attention to the Kardashians

The Kardashians made 65 million dollars last year to which everyone responds “DOING WHAT?”

I think the Hollywood Reporter’s article on the Kardashian clan answers that question well.  The Kardashian talent–mainly a talent of their mom Kris–is branding, marketing, and choosing opportunities wisely.

These days, the Kardashians are ubiquitous. Their book, Kardashian Konfidential, has been on the New York Times best-seller list since December (275,000 copies have shipped). Kim’s eponymous fragrance was Sephora’s top seller last year, and a new fragrance, Unbreakable by Khloe and Lamar, launched Feb. 12. In the summer, the sisters will unveil a new lifestyle collection with in-store shops at Sears. (The Sears deal is one of their most lucrative projects to date, along with QuickTrim diet supplements and Kim’s eponymous fragrance.)

Although it’s interesting to observe how the wheels of stardom turn, those three things are important to everyone in every stage of their career. And as the job market becomes even stiffer, the books, seminars, blog posts and the like that address personal brands and selling yourself to employers have multiplied exponentially.

Even on a smaller scale there’s always debate about whether the right person has achieved success. “Right” meaning the person with the most talent. I’m sure you can look around your work place and see a variety of people who have succeeded despite a serious dearth of talent. What the Kardashian clan has done is nothing new; however, the tools are evolving and I find it pretty fascinating.

Is There Something to All the “Iyanla Vanzant is Crazy” Talk? I Mean Besides Her Saying It Herself

There was a key moment in the first part of the conversation between Oprah and Iyanla Vanzant where Oprah asked Vanzant why she approached their business meeting 11 years ago the way she did. Vanzant’s response “There’s some crazy a pill can’t fix.”

Apparently, that comment and Vanzant’s perceived erratic behavior on the show has led people to really run away with this crazy label.

I don’t like it.

I mentioned in my post yesterday that I have taught Crucial Conversations for quite a few years. And even when not teaching, working in politics and government, I’ve observed a great many tense confrontations. I didn’t find Vanzant’s interaction with Oprah to be strange in the least especially given the size of Oprah’s audience, the time gap between their last conversation and this one, and the internal conflict Vanzant must have had in terms of deciding how to “handle” Oprah on live television on her own turf.

If you’ve never seen YOURSELF in the midst of a tense interaction with another person–especially in a business setting, I would tread lightly on using the word “crazy” to describe Vanzant’s behavior. Just something to think about.

For the record, I took Vanzant’s comment about being too crazy to be fixed by a pill to mean that some of her issues were deeper than even she could understand or address at the time.

Monique is Still Very Very Very Loud and Unnatural

One of the things that really annoys me about people who are famous for one thing is that it makes it so much easier for them to get to do the next thing. And even if they’re not good at the next thing, they still get to do it because, you know, well, they’re famous.

Monique is about as bad a show host as it gets. And it bothers me that she’s the only black late night talk show host and in order to see some of our favorite stars that aren’t covered in the mainstream, we have to endure her over serious, supremely emphasized speech patterns and screaming.

Was that a rant? Cause I don’t rant. But since it kind of seems like a rant, I’m going to stop there.

Lil Kim Needs To Fire Everyone Around Her and Educate Herself on Modern Technology

This week everyone’s favorite Mattel knockoff released a diss (I can’t believe I’m 28 and I just wrote the word DISS) mixtape  charging $10 for downloads. The cover art was some sort of anime crap that depicted the aftermath of her murdering up and coming rapper Nicki Minaj. For those of you who pay no attention to such things, Lil Kim is angry at Nicki Minaj because she believes Nicki has stolen her image and hasn’t credited her appropriately.

Unfortunately, Lil Kim is a terrible rapper when she has to write herself. While I was over on Dlisted getting my monthly dose of extreme fuckery, I listened to one of Lil Kim’s songs and not only were the lyrics terrible but she’s now rapping in her natural high pitched voice which sounds very unpleasant. But this is a media blog and that’s besides the point.

The real issue here is that newer (younger) artists like Nicki Minaj have leveraged social media and modern techniques to get their careers started right. Lil Kim is making a bevy of mistakes:

1. No one charges for mixtapes (especially ones that aren’t even mixed!) Mixtapes are a way for artists to get creative and use beats they’d normally have to pay for the license to use. It’s a way for them to promote their music. If you want to charge $10 for something you put the work in to create a complete album and sell it on itunes. NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE should be ignorant of these facts.

2. You can’t just make shit up anymore. Lil Kim stated that she sold 113K copies of her mixtape in 28 hours. We live in the world where quality artists don’t even sell that much. And blogger @robo3k confirmed with Paypal that there is a $3000 limit to how much money you can receive on paypal in day. Other bloggers revealed that Kim’s mixtape site had only gotten 23K clicks (not downloads). For those of you who have blogs or other new media goals, it’s really important that you learn at least the basics of analytics.

The saddest mistake:

3. One of the worst things Kim ever did is not educate herself on business matters. Before going to prison a few years ago, Kim was not aware of her financial expenditures and it’s probably a safe guess that while the Notorious B.I.G. was alive she probably didn’t pay much attention to the contracts she signed.

But Kim is not in her 20s anymore. As a 35 year old woman, it’s time for her to take a step back and educate herself on the decisions that she makes. There’s a lesson in this for us all. Ever feel like you go through life making decisions on auto pilot? Think about it.

Instead of writing diss tracks, Kim should have been using her free time pursuing ways of understanding this new-fangled thing we refer to as the internet, and seeking out advice from her celebrity friends who have been in the business a long time on how the business has evolved.

But the biggest thing she needs to do is figure out what to do besides rap. Not a lot of space in entertainment for a  35 year old who only REALLY had one huge album and has since destroyed her best asset–her looks. Kim needs a 2nd act. And that act probably needs to include student loans.

Since I had a little time I decided to post about some things that bother me but are too petty enough to be the only post I put up in a day. ha!

First of all, Tyrese Gibson has the worst twitter timeline of any celebrity I’ve seen–in particular one who purports to have a book coming out. Tyrese is trying to capitalize on the black male advice genre of books–a genre I’d hoped would go out of style before it ever got up and running.

The problem with Tyrese is not just that he’s full of self-important and often senseless advice (according to him, if you’re not moving you’re lying flat), his advice is also questionable. On January 10th he told his followers that if you believe in God you can live outside of your means and know that he will provide. If that’s the kind of advice that will be in his book………

To add insult to wounds Tyrese already inflicts with his tattered logic, he doesn’t ever ever ever bother to spell check before hitting that precious “send” button. In Tyrese’s world, titties are tithes, years are hours, and there’s no difference between “your” and “you’re.” I’ve said before that grammatical errors and typos don’t really get to me, but when there are a string of them in every tweet that defy a reader’s efforts to make sense of what’s being said, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

Tyrese may be the first person to ruin his own book launch by misusing social media.

Jennifer Hudson…glad she’s lost weight…glad she’s happy. My only question is if there’s so much less of her why am I seeing so much more of her? Her Weight Watchers commercials are loud, the lyrics to the song are Tyrese-twitter-timeline-like “sun in the sky, I know how I feel…” Im sure it’s supposed to be motivating, and perhaps there are additional lyrics not in the commercial, but mostly the song feels…wrong.

I typically limit myself to watching TV once a week and then when football is on. Seeing Hudson’s commercial so many times has reminded me that I’ve gone over my TV limit the past two weeks. So perhaps the fact that the commercials offend my ears is a good thing. I will definitely be scaling back to my normal schedule.

Overall, WWs is running too many commercials for my tastes. It feels like Hudson is screaming at me about “feeling good” every 10 seconds. After a while, I start to wonder if WW is the only company that can afford to advertise on TV during this recession.

I can’t wait until WW releases subscriber/customer information after this campaign. I want to know if this strategy of saturating television with 1 or 2 of the same commercials is effective. The commercials are certainly memorable.

**Update @Rhythmkeene on twitter noted that the song is “Feelin’ Good” by Nina Simone. I’ve heard this song before and didn’t recognize it. Of course, I haven’t heard it since I was kid. At any rate, perhaps they should have used the original. Or, at least, lowered Jennifer’s key. But I suppose they didn’t do that because they wanted the tone to be different.

When I first heard that Alicia Keys and a bunch of other celebrities were giving up social media until they raise 1 million dollars for HIV/AIDS awareness, I thought it was a joke. The reality is no one of age gives a damn if celebrities tweet, facebook, you tube or whatever else they might be doing online. To decide to engage in a “digital death” that can only be revived if people donate money is silly on its face.

In order to inspire people to donate in this manner, they’d have to be “punished” by the “death.” But the reality is celebs leaving social media hurts no one but them. Kim Kardashian, who is also participating in the death, gets paid upwards of $10,000 to tweet about products. Her tweets (and I’m a fan btw) are either product placements or tweets to her sisters and her celebrity friends.

Lady GaGa, who I’m also a fan of, rarely ever tweets and when she does she’s either thanking her fans or promoting some charity or another.

On the bright side, at least I knew GaGa and Kim had twitter pages. These other people? I had no idea.

When it comes to PR campaigns, one of the first things you have to think of is the value of your product. In this case, Alicia Keys’ tweets aren’t providing enough value to her audience that they would clamour to spend money (IN A RECESSION) to get them back.

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