Posts with tag "conversation"

Experimenting with embedded Waves in posts

Category: Technology
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Posted 1117 days ago

While Google Buzz is getting much of the press when it comes to Google’s attempts at crafting a viable social media platform people seem to have forgotten about Wave. It’s understandable because, really, what is Wave all about anyway?

To be honest I’m not sure if that is a question that anyone, other than the Wave team, can really answer but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of people experimenting with it. Chris Brogan is the one person that I know of that has been experimenting the most with it and strongly recommends it for task management and collaboration.

I know I wrote a post about the idea of using it as a replacement for Facebook but the only problem is that … well … no-one is using Wave. Even though it is obvious that it would take a hellva uptake of Wave in order to even come close to approaching Facebook that doesn’t mean that there still aren’t other uses for it.

The Kevin Smith Saga – Sometimes there are no winners

Category: Uncategorized
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2 comments
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Posted 1220 days ago

Kevin_Smith I am sure most of you have heard of the dust-up between film director Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines over the weekend. For those of you who don’t my good friend Sean P. Aune covers it pretty well over on his blog but suffice it to say the whole thing fizzled out on Sunday evening.

And when I say fizzled out I mean just that. There were no resolutions. No-one left the party a happy camper. Southwest still still looks like a jerk-off company and Smith ends up irritating a bunch of people with his excessive use of the F-Bomb.

Mack Collier has a post that does a great job of dissecting the aftermath of the dustup which for the most part I find myself agreeing with.

In the end, I think both Southwest and Smith handled this poorly. Southwest clearly didn’t handle Smith’s situation very well at all, and probably never should have let him on the plane, and then weren’t completely honest about why he had to leave the plane. At least that’s what it seems like to me. Then their apologies didn’t seem completely sincere, and Smith went from being justifiably outraged to all but whining on Twitter. And constant f-bombs did nothing to help his cause.

Look I’m not adverse; as many people already will know, of using the word fuck when either I get to riled up or I feel it is useful to stress a point. However it is a word that really needs to be used judiciously, not as every second word in a sentence.

I’m not suggesting either that Kevin Smith didn’t have a valid point to raise – he did. Southwest pulled a freaking stupid move that they then compounded with a blog post that only exasperated the whole situation. Kevin’s reaction though did nothing but show him to be a mealy-mouth pissed off person more intent on raising shit than trying to reach a solution.

In the end though the real loser in a sense if Social Media itself. The incident shows that companies still don’t get the two way street methodology of the conversation regardless of how many people they have on Twitter or who write blog posts.

It doesn’t help it either when reactions like Kevin’s; although very justified, cast Social Media as the venue of angry young men who can’t form a coherent sentence without swearing.

As amusing as the whole thing was to watch the fact is the whole thing ended up being another pointless shouting match that could probably end up in a movie.

It didn’t have to be that way and that is the sad part.

Condensing social media down to two simple things

Category: Uncategorized
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3 comments
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Posted 1334 days ago

magic-formula Social Media – the new battleground of inane buzzwords and incessant hyping of how important it is for businesses to hop on the bandwagon … usually with a couple of high paid consultants hired to whisper sweet nothings in the ear of some CEO.

It is all about ROI of conversation based on consumer involvement as well as creating some kind of brand buzz. It’s all about getting your face out there on Twitter and Facebook so that you can be a part of some conversation around your products or services. It’s all about trying to find that magical formula that will help you increase your sales by making your business seem to be more human.

Is it really though?

Linking and the creating of a community

Category: Uncategorized
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3 comments
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Posted 1379 days ago

links_pic

Darren Rowse has an excellent post today at ProBlogger where he talks about linking. It was a post that was prompted by the replies to a comment that he had made on Twitter:

“A change I’ve noticed from the ‘old days’ of blogging – people don’t link when they quote you as much as they used to.”

He then went on to list some of the reasons he was given as to why links were becoming less used. Here they are in point form so I suggest reading the original post for further explanation behind the reasons which are:

Competition
PageRank Sculpting
Laziness and/or Forgetfulness
Ignorance
Or have things just changed.

Darren follows that up with the reasons why he still links out

Etiquette/Manners/Courtesy
Usefulness
It makes the web better
The Power of Links to Build Relationships
Outbound links and SEO

The post is well worth reading because I tend to agree with Darren that indeed there seems to be a lot less linking going on and this isn’t a good thing to have happen. Sure we can get all introspective as to the reasons why just as we can espouse all the reasons why we should; however linking all boils down to a couple of things.

I don’t care about the SEO crap and yes things like etiquette are important but when it comes right down to it linking out does one of the most important things we can do as human beings.

It shows respect.

By linking either as an inline accent to your train of thought or as the prelim to a quote that link to the original source of either the quote or someone’s idea that helped you clarify your own thoughts you are showing respect for their work or thoughts. Just as you would hope that your ideas and conversations are respected for where they take other people so do those that you link to.

As well links are the neural connections of all the conversations that happen on the web. By denying that neural pathway you are in effect diminishing the value of the conversation and the people involved in it. There is an old saying that blood is thicker than water and considering the fact that links are the life blood of the conversation by not creating those links we end up diluting the conversation.

Respect, folks – you expect it so do the right thing and show your respect back and help the life blood of the web to keep flowing.

It’s always been the conversation about the content – not the content alone

Category: Technology
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Posted 1477 days ago

Community_Conversations2 (1) To echo the headline of a post written by Mack Collier today:

The idea that ‘content is king’ in blogging is total bullshit.

Thank you Mack for aptly sizing up the the over hyped nonsense that all it takes to become a popular blogger is a lot of really good in-depth quality posts. In most cases, when you look at those blogs that are ranked as being the most popular, the majority of them are lucky if the vast quantity of their posts exceed a couple hundred words. At best they are a paragraph, or two, and a nice oversized graphic.

Blogs like TechCrunch, Engadget, Valleywag, and any number of other big name sites while they do have longer insightful posts generally are pump and dump posts. So how is it that they are so successful and keep pulling people back day after day?

Don’t You Dare Touch My Comments

Category: Technology
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5 comments
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Posted 1771 days ago

From the beginning FriendFeed has always been billed as being an equal playing field for everyone involved. Something thought that Cyndy Aleo-Carreira posted today over on Louis Gray’s blog has me wondering just how level that ground might actually be. While Cyndy notes that users on FriendFeed have been able to moderate comments on their own item’s comment threads since almost the beginning of the service she wonders if that moderation is being used by some to control the conversation.

I am sure that the majority of users; and the FriendFeed team themselves, would cringe at the very mention of censorship but the question remains – is this happening and to what degree?

Sure for most people the moderation of comments could be considered to be fairly benign and used to keep spam and trolls from ruining the conversation; but the idea that people could use the feature to delete comments that are contrary to their points of view is bothersome. What is the point of participating in something like FriendFeed if you are going to censor what someone says just because you don’t like what they might have said. Additionally what is the point of participating if you have to wonder if something you might have said is going to disappear on someone else’s whim.

I don’t imagine that this is something that happens on any large scale but I am sure that some people that I know on FriendFeed wouldn’t hesitate to make comments that they don’t like disappear. As Cyndy said in her post

The FriendFeed fans have always maintained that FriendFeed is an equalizer, giving everyone from A-listers to the most unknown tech afficianado a level playing field for conversation. The reality, however, may not be so egalitarian. I can’t count the number of times in the past week I’ve seen comments that I read suddenly vanish, or viewed comments on a thread that don’t seem to reply to anything.

Like Cyndy I have never seen the sense in this kind of moderation of comments because good or bad by denying that they have been made detracts from the value of the conversation and makes it strictly one sided and no-one learns anything when that happens.

From the Pipeline – 5.29.08

Category: Odds & Ends
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Posted 1847 days ago

Today has been a really good day. I have been having an excellent discussion over my post earlier about comments. That is the great thing about blogging for me – I get to meet intelligent people who take the time to engage and make me possibly re-evaluate my position on stuff. This great because I am learning something new and nothing beats learning new things. For now though here’s a few things that I found of interest in today’s FriendFeed pipeline.

FriendFeed ‘Likes’ Compatibility Index :: I’m not actually a geek – Hutch takes a look at the “Like” feature on FriendFeed and why that is good way to find other folks you might like to follow.

The Death of Common Sense :: Michael Koby – just a plain old fun post to read. Thanks for the chuckle (even if it does ring pretty close to the truth)

Social Media Explained in Four Minutes. Or Less :: Converge – if you are still trying to figure out the reasoning behind social media take a moment to watch this excellent video. Me – I’m going to go make some ice cream.

How do bloggers hold onto the value they’ve created? :: Online Media Cultist – Eric has an excellent post that points out distributed conversations can work for the blog author. A good read.

7 People Fired For Blogging :: mental floss – the sad part of this is the proportion of women who are on the list. Man .. that sucks.

Semantic Search: The Myth and Reality :: ReadWriteWeb – Alex Iskold has a really good post on why the semantic search isn’t working for us and how we need to change our approach to using this type of search.

It’s a Conversation :: philcrissman.com – it only matters if the conversation that is going on is interesting to you in order to make a social media service exciting.