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All the tools are there for newspapers to save themselves

by Steven Hodson on July 2, 2009 · Comments

rabbit-turtle While Michelle Greer might have being saying it with a little tongue in cheek when she suggested that to save themselves newspapers should hire Robert Scoble the point she was trying to make is pretty spot on. The overall point that I get the impression that she was trying to make is that newspapers have all the best tools in the world at their disposal and they have some great people on their payrolls – so why aren’t they using them?

The most current example to their always seeming to come up short was the recent incident in Iran and how it exploded on Twitter and how bloggers like Scoble and Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins almost immediately started putting some really great stuff – blog posts and podcasts. It took the regular news media the better part of two days to really get up to steam on putting out any news about what was happening.

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Okay Twitter the ball’s in your court

by Steven Hodson on July 2, 2009 · Comments

fitnessalways-cap I don’t follow that many people on Twitter which makes it rather easy to spot out of place tweets as they come through my Twitter client. At first when I started noticing a specific Twitterer showing up in my Friends stream I didn’t really pay attention. However as a part of my Social Media spring cleaning I started paying attention to just who was showing up in the stream.

So when I saw a series of tweets from @fitnessalways I scratched my head and tried to remember when or why I would have added this ‘person’ to my timeline – after all fitness isn’t big on my list of interests. So I did a check on Twitter for this person’s Twitter page and just as I thought – I wasn’t subscribed to them. Yet there she was, showing up in my timeline.

Now I could unsubscribe since I hadn’t even subscribe in the first place so my only other option was to block them, which I did. I figured that would solve the problem after all block is suppose to mean they never show up on your timeline, or at least so I thought.

Apparently though I was wrong because another tweet from @fitnessalways just showed up in my timeline

fitnessalways

This isn’t the first time that I have found people I am not following showing up in my timeline and as far as I know previous blocks have been haphazard as well. So I ask you Twitter – what the hell is going on here?

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ING Canada needs to stop this idea dead in its tracks

by Steven Hodson on July 2, 2009 · Comments

feetweeter I just caught this brain dead idea via Kris Abel’s Tech Life blog and the only thing I can say is that this has to be one of the stupidest ideas for using Twitter yet. Apparently ING Direct Canada wants people to publish their banking fees and charges via Twitter for the whole world to see.

Say what the fuck?

Are you guys insane?

Or just stupid in the marketing head?

As Kris says in his post

There may be no technical link between ING’s application and your bank account, but they are creating a psychological one. With the seal of approval of their brand, they are saying that "some" information from your banking account is "safe" to publish, when the responsible rule is that no information all at is safe for publishing. That’s the kind of social engineering vulnerability that scammers like to exploit.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Stop this idea ING Canada before it comes back to bite you on the ass really hard.

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The Cynical Bastards Podcast – Episode 10

by Steven Hodson on July 2, 2009 · Comments

cbslogo300 Yes folks it’s another week gone by and time for another installment of the CobWEBs podcast from your local Cynical Bastards. This is where myself, Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins and Sean P. Aune take on the interesting topics of the week and have some fun with them.

This week we cover

- the yammering going on over the Real-Time Web (hint: Mark’s all for it but Sean and I aren’t so loving)

- Judge Posner and copyright of links

- saying good by to Joost and some thoughts about video on the web

- the silliness over the online ads for IE8

- plus a bunch more stuff but you’ll have to have a listen to find out as well as discover the winner of this week’s Dickwad Award.

So sit back – click the big green button and enjoy.

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This is why we read blogs, and people like Scoble

by Steven Hodson on July 1, 2009 · Comments

bloggers-on-nimitz Like Alexander van Elsas I tend to call bullshit on much of what amounts to nothing more than hype when it comes to this thing called the real-time web (RTW). Yes it has its place but in level of consumer importance the bullet points that the proponents of RTW hoist upon us really doesn’t count. As much as we might like to think that the next great thing to come is the RTW I see it only as one of many ways we use the Web.

Steve Rubel might be enamored with his new ‘lifestreaming’ project having us believe that this is the next cool thing, but really as much as he might like to suggest that blogging is now old and tired I think he is totally wrong. If anything with the rush of popularity that services like Friendfeed and Twitter are experiencing I think that blogs could end up being even better than before.

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There’s nothing wrong with a little social media spring cleaning

by Steven Hodson on June 30, 2009 · Comments

seth-godin As I have travelled around in the social media world I have always tried to maintain a pretty simple idea when it came to following people on the different services. The numbers of people I followed, or who followed me, were never important. For me it was about finding people who I found interesting and who I might learn new things from. At some point though I fell into the return-follow trap not necessarily for the number counts but because I moved away from that core idea.

In the last few days since taking a holiday from Friendfeed I have begun to wonder about who it is I am following on services like it as well as Facebook or Twitter. Then today I saw a post by Michelle Greer where she was talking about this whole numbers things on social media as well as a video with Seth Godin where he talks briefly about this.

After reading her post and watching Seth’s video I realized that now I had the chance in the lull of my Friendfeed vacation to step back and take a serious look at who I was following and why. For me the take away quote of Seth’s was

“What I really don’t like online is the superficial networking that all the thousands of people who saw friending everybody else … Why … right …. it doesn’t count anything .. it’s just a waste of time

So just as we might rush about friending everyone who friends us or who makes a one-time smart comment maybe there is a time where we should step back and examine those lists. Maybe there are times where we need to get out the broom and dustpan and do some spring cleaning.

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Advertising can work

by Steven Hodson on June 30, 2009 · Comments

new-zealand-air When it comes to advertising on the web we complain bitterly and use any tools we can to make sure that we don’t see them. Whether they be text, image or video we decry the pointlessness of advertising. The thing is when it comes to video ads that can be done right, done so that we might actually click that play button.

Apple is known the world round for its excellent advertising campaigns and Microsoft is generally laughed at regardless of what it tries. Finding that sweet spot with advertisement that will encourage readers to actually pay attention is the holy grail for advertisers. I wrote earlier over at The Inquisitr about some ads being put out by Air New Zealand that I though hit that spot.

They did it with great humor and some well placed camera work that made you actually look to see if what you thought you were seeing was actually true. This ad from Virgin Mobile is another video advertisement that is beautifully done and one you might actually like watching.

Advertising can work but we need to quit being treated as mindless n00bs who are easily swayed by idiotic, insulting and generally stupid types of ads. Tell us a story, make us laugh, let us feel involved.

Is it really that hard to do?

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Is Robert Scoble rediscovering the true value of his roots?

by Steven Hodson on June 30, 2009 · Comments

robertscoble If there is one constant in social media that you can always count on it is that Robert Scoble will always get flack for his breathless promotion of just about every shiny new thing that comes along. Personally I think this kind of reaction, one I’m guilty of as well, is wrong. Robert truly serves an important role out there on the bleeding edge.

It is through him that a great number of people discover new things to experiment with and sometimes started the bigger ball rolling. The problem is that sometime Robert gets so caught up in his learning and sharing that he forgets that not everyone who has followed him through the years is as interested in the shiny new things. This is what has happened in his love affair – or addiction – to Friendfeed, he left his core behind.

From almost the first day I started reading blogs, and then writing them, Robert’s blog has been a staple in my feed reader. There have been time granted where I unsubscribed for various reasons but he always seem to find his way back in there. Unfortunately though the more involved that Robert got with Friendfeed the more it seemed that he had unsubscribed himself from his own blog.

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The crippling effect of having to be everywhere at once

by Steven Hodson on June 29, 2009 · Comments

crutches I just want to make it clear from the start that I have for sometime felt that there is going to be a shake-out in the blogosphere. While I couldn’t really put my finger on the reason I felt that way I knew in my gut that it was coming. The rumblings could be heard in the different corners of places like Friendfeed, Twitter and the blogs. The natives were getting restless and time was becoming a commodity that we just didn’t seem to have enough of anymore.

People who had previously started blogs as a way to express themselves were abandoning them in favor of the simplicity and immediacy of the real-time web. This was the beginning and in a lot of ways I look upon it as a good thing because really when push comes to shove it helped reduce the competition for readers.

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The CobWEBs Podcast – Episode 9

by Steven Hodson on June 29, 2009 · Comments

cbslogo300 One of these days we’ll actually get around to posting the show the evening we do the show. In the meantime just in case you wanted to catch up this last week’s saw our discussion fall across a range of topics that included:

- Chris Anderson and the nonsense around copied sections of Wikipedia entries in his new book

- Of course we had a few words about how Michael Jackson had taken over the InterWebs.

- Panasonic trying blackmail as a new marketing technique with their batteries

- Plus our usual Twitter segment which also included the naming of this week’s winner of the Dickwad of the Week Award.

Enjoy – even if it is a few days late :)

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