Broadcasting Brain

If you’re in a Christian part of the world or if you’re a believer anywhere in the world, today is the start of a three day cycle celebrating death and rebirth (or ascension, maybe that is a better word). Many people treat this as a time of reflection and celebration.

Why not try something a little bit different this year?

Don’t focus completely on the literal, or the myth, around this time of year.

Try looking at this example, the death and rebirth of Jesus, as a way to ascend or to improve. Maybe you feel like you are at a plateau and, in your own way, you are suffering there. Maybe you have critics that are dragging you down. Maybe you are your own worst critic.

Try to figure out a way to rise above the critics, stay true to yourself, and inspire others to make a positive contribution to the world.

Maybe that’s a hidden lesson of the Easter story.

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Amy Gahran, who I’ve been following on Twitter, writes an interesting post about her experiences using Twitter vs. her standard blogs.  Quoting from her post:

…I remember that blogs have always been an awkward tool to satisfy my deepest desires for conversational media. Yeah, I love to write — but I tend to find quality conversation far more rewarding and satisfying than merely writing. Despite all Twitter’s limitations and weaknesses (which are many) I find it to be a superior conversational media tool. In many ways.

She also seems to say that her Twitter activity is increasing while her personal blogging is decreasing, especially since Twitter “feels” like a better platform for conversations.

I have made over 1400 Twitter posts, compared to probably half of that number for my blogs.  However, I’ve certainly written much, much more in total word count in the blogs than in Twitter posts.

If anything, my output is probably larger due to using Twitter.  However, I do have a distinction of subject matter in these two platforms:

I may write about Twitter here at Broadcasting Brain (among other things), but I try to limit the subject material to communications (broadly defined) and social media.

With Twitter… it feels more like a brain dump.  Generally speaking I don’t restrict myself to any particular subject matter in Twitter.  In fact, I let a lot of my geek and fannish roots hang out in Twitter and I’ll leave the occasional real-life status update there as well.

I’m not doing as much blogging as Amy G., so I probably don’t have the same time restrictions as she does.

I definitely think that Twitter has some advantages as a conversation platform, although as I’ve said earlier this week, I don’t think Twitter is a good platform to hold a debate.

Thought provoking post, Amy!

For those of you who blog and Twitter, do you think either platform is suffering because of the other?

Tell us what you think, please! 

This isn’t a political blog, but I thought I’d comment on Barack Obama’s March 18 press conference concerning comments made by his church pastor and his relationship with the pastor because it has a couple of interesting points about communication in the mass media.

Note: I have not actually seen the press conference video, nor have I read the transcript of his speech, so I am basing this post on press coverage that I’ve heard.

Two particular points of interest:

1. Obama apparently disagreed with his pastor’s views on race in America (I believe the pastor has made numerous statements which seem to accuse white people of doing wrongs against black people in America, but I’ve never read any of it), while at the same time continuing to embrace the pastor as an individual. He also referenced his (white) grandmother’s attitudes and behavior, which could be considered racist at times, while simultaneously maintaining a loving relationship with her grandson.

Obama clearly seemed to be trying to embrace multiple constituencies during a difficult campaign incident - do you he succeeded?

2. The news commentators mentioned that the podium set up (including multiple US flags) and the location (across from Independence Hall in Philadelphia?) seemed to be set up in such a way to make it look like Obama was giving a presidential address, or at least a reasonable simulation of one.

Did he look presidential to you?

Again, two questions related to mass media communication. I’d love to know what you thought about this, regardless of your ethnicity, political affiliation, or nationality, for that matter.

Even though social media is growing in prominence, traditional mass media still seems to rule in government and politics.

    Yeah, I buried it.

I buried a Digg submission from one of my social media contacts, a person who’s generally been pretty decent to me.

Why on earth would I do that?

I did it because I felt the subject matter of the submission was offensive.

I have mixed feelings about having buried the story, but I believed that the story within the submission was a horrible deed that didn’t need to be spread across the Web.

It was a gut reaction and, while I’m not sorry that I buried the story on its own lack of merits, I’m still a bit troubled.

You see, I didn’t even read the story. I took one look at the headline and made a snap judgement. Just like many of us do when we see news headlines or post titles in our feed readers. This may have been a worthwhile story that the world should have seen, but my “blink” (as in Blink by Malcolm Gladwell) reaction was to remove the story because it was offensive to me.

I’m not naming the Digg user, nor the story in question, because this blog post may well create assumptions or hard feelings that might not be warranted. This person does a tremendous amount of work in social media and is highly regarded. I’m just questioning the judgment that went into one submission.

At the same time, it makes me look at the various submissions that I’ve made within social media, or supported through a vote of support. How much of that work really makes the world a better place? Are we really doing the world a service when we write an enticing headline, description, or review that doesn’t accurately reflect the material in question? Does the desire to build credibility and authority outweigh all other guidelines and principles? I’m no better than most at this kind of behavior.

I always hated it when comic books featured a scene on their covers that never, ever appeared in the stories within.

It still happens quite often today.

I don’t think this one incident is worth getting upset about, but it’s certainly put me in a reflective mood.

Anonymous Social Media User, no offense was intended: I made a judgment call on your submission and acted according to that. I just think that some stories might not be worth broadcasting to the world.

Maybe I need to take more care in what I submit, too.

While using Twitter this weekend I witnessed a couple of debates between various Twitter users that I follow.  Leaving people and personalities aside, I don’t think that Twitter is a very good platform for debates.

• The 140 character limit really causes problems.  You’ve either got to make your point in 26 words or less or else continue a conversation over multiple Tweets which tend to get lost if you have a number of people in your timeline.
• In some cases, I believe that people’s responses were compressed to making a “sound bite” that would fit into the 140 chr. limit.
• The ability to adequately explain a point of view was just not there, particular if anyone watching the debate didn’t understand or appreciate the full context of the conversation.
• Regardless of intent, a number of comments were perceived to be ad hominem arguments, at least in part due to brevity (again, my opinion) and word choice

The thing is, Twitter provides a forum that a lot of people can participate in and thus, if nothing else, it has a share of attention that could be used to have debates of this type.

Maybe it would be worth creating a Twitter debate guidelines document of some kind.

Does one already exist?  I’m going to check this out.

What would you like to see here at Broadcasting Brain?

What topics aren’t being covered that you think should be covered?

Edit:  are you getting enough nifty blog ideas here?

P.S. Thanks to robojiannis for featuring the Broadcasting Brain avatar!

I’m quite curious about this.  I have a theory that E-Mail usage is declining as other methods become cheaper and easier to use.

How do you keep in contact with your social media contacts?

-  Face-to-face

- Telephone/Skype

- IM

- E-Mail

- Twitter/Pownce/Jaiku

- Blogs and blog comments

- Message boards/Ning groups

- Other?

Please leave a comment - I’m curious to know how YOU keep in touch?

Here’s your chance to tell the world about something you love within the realm of social media.  It can be:

• Social news (Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Shoutwire, Sphinn, etc.)
• Photo/audio/video sharing
• A Ning community or message board
• Microblogging like Twitter or Pownce
• Lifestreaming like FriendFeed
• Social networking ala Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace
• Any other relevant site or service that you use regularly

 Are you passionate about a social media site?  Do you know something that the rest of the world needs to know about?

Tell the world in the Comments section - we’re waiting to hear from you!

Sometimes we communicate to the world by virtue of the groups that we join.

Membership often implies that you subscribe to the beliefs and values of the groups that accept you as a member.  Is that really true?

Do you ever feel like you are a member of many groups but that you don’t belong to any of them?

What do you think?

In this series of articles, I’ve been comparing blogs to islands. After introducing the concept in the first article, I described some of the possible pitfalls in having a blog that’s like a remote island that no one knows about, no one can find, or that they might not like to visit.

Today I’d like to look at this model from a slightly different perspective. How do you get in contact with a blog (or, more accurately, the blogger or editor who publishes the blog)? Maybe you want to comment on a blog post – that’s easy enough. But what about asking a blogger for:

• Their opinion
• A link back to your site
• A guest posting opportunity
• Help in a business venture

Please note that this article is intended for you to make benign, mutually beneficial contact with other bloggers. In no way, shape, or form do I condone anything that even remotely resembles stalking or harassment. People have a right to privacy, including the right to be left alone if they wish.

Although the Web is capable of linking any website to virtually any other site, communicating with people is not the same thing.

Dunbar’s number (normally represented as 150) is often cited as limit to the number of relationships that any one person can have (although this article does make an interesting analysis of this topic.) Whether or not this value is correct or not, it does make sense that there are limits to the number of meaningful relationships that one can have or acquaintances one can develop, if only because we all have limited time to socialize.

In the Bridges game, I noted that any one island can only directly connect to up to four other islands. This isn’t realistic either: most of us will develop relationships of some type with dozens if not hundreds of other people. Some of the relationships will be deeper and more meaningful than others. It might seem to be impossible to get in touch with an A list blogger (those mighty souls with enormous subscriber counts that get talked about and linked to by a lot of other people) who is, at the end of the day, human like the rest of us.

If we limit our thinking to the Bridges game model, we might despair because the limitations on personal contact are so striking in this model.

However, here’s three possible ways to work past this potential limitation.

1. Go direct

Fortunately, most bloggers include contact information where you can somehow get a message to them by E-Mail. If you’re really lucky, they may publish their Instant Messaging account ID or a telephone number.

You could also comment on their blog. Unless they are so completely swamped in their work and personal lives, the vast majority of bloggers read comments (I know I do!)

You could also link to their blog, which they can normally detect through their blogging software. You can use trackback functionality to turn a link from your blog post into an entry in the comment section of their blog entry.

If you do want to contact a blogger directly to get their assistance, I recommend that you read Darren Rowse’s post on how to pitch to a blogger.

2. Go through an intermediary

The silver lining in the Bridges model cloud is the knowledge that every island ultimately links into an unbroken chain. As the famous experiment once showed, on average there are no more than six degrees of separation between any two people because of the way our networks of relationships develop. Ultimately we are all connected.

The answer here, then, is to examine your own network of relationships to see how close you can get to the blogger than you want. Maybe one of your friends is a friend of the blogger in question, or a friend of a friend. If you look long and hard enough, you should be able to find a connection

3. Join the same groups and use the same media

If you do some of the same activities, join up with the same networks, or otherwise “shadow” the other blogger’s activity, you may be able to create a situation where you can get in contact with the blogger in question. I’m finding that Twitter is turning about to be a great way to do this. I’m actually being followed by a couple of A List bloggers through Twitter, mainly because they like the ability of Twitter to facilitate quick and easy communication with many other bloggers.

Message boards, Ning groups, and other social news/social media sites are providing other great ways to make these contacts. It’s especially useful if these groups are ways to share and promote common interests. Just make sure that you understand the rules of conduct for each site that you sign up for!

So there you have it. Bridges is a concept to help illustrate the opportunities and challenges inherent in getting in contact with other people. Although direct communication is sometimes challenging, remember that we are all connected in some fashion. Use this concept to stimulate your thinking and come up with practical and creative ways to reach out to other people.

I hope you’ve found this short series of articles to be entertaining and useful.

Please let us all know what you think about these ideas - leave a comment!

EDIT:  Sept. 4/08 - you might also find the discussion about hyperconnectivity and six degrees of separation to be helpful.