Broadcasting Brain

Does something’s value really increase because of a recommendation from a trusted source or association with someone else or with some organization?

I’ve been thinking about the idea of how someone’s recommendation, sponsorship, or support can make you seem better than you might actually be. Conversely, name recognition is a form of social proof. I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s Small Is The New Big which includes one of his blog posts, Placebo Affect, The. The post contains the following phrases which triggered some more thinking:

“Why do some ideas have more currency than others? Because we believe they should.”

We’re going to talk about the power of context, reputation, and sponsorship in this blog post because if you don’t believe that they have a meaningful effect on bolstering your social media profile, or your profile in any field of interest, you need to think again.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you're new here, welcome! Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed to stay up to date with my latest posts and articles. Thanks for visiting!

Is it at all possible that all of these social media/Web 2.0 toys that some of us love to talk about and use may herald something bigger to come? Could a science fiction novel from 1989 be painting a picture of things that really could come?

Rex Hammock, who someone on Twitter once compared to the Web’s version of Walter Cronkite (which I would consider to be high praise), made the following quick comment on Twitter on June 28:

“FriendFeed, Twitter, Seesmic et al, are pointing in the direction of something. They aren’t the destination.”

This lead to an interesting discussion on FriendFeed about just what that something is. A number of people speculated on the future in terms of the current toolsets that we have.

Let me take a drink of the magic KoolAid and speculate a bit further, as inspired by one of my favorite science fiction novels, Hyperion. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve created an account on Swurl to see what it’s all about.

I apologize in advance, this isn’t one of those organized and professional reviews, it’s a collection of thoughts.

Things I like: Read the rest of this entry »

DON’T PANIC!

As we continue to wonder about the best uses of social media and such, it’s interesting to check out what author Douglas Adams, the author of the stupendously successful Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy phenomenon, had to say about the Internet back in 1999:

Here’s an excerpt:

I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Someone linked to this on either FriendFeed or Twitter a few days ago - I forget who exactly. At any rate, it’s good enough to share. Plus, I hadn’t realized that Douglas Adams had this website, which is cool.

The full text of Adams’s Internet article is here.

Share and enjoy.

I’m going to stick my nose into the Feldman/Israel situation. Sort of. Actually, I’m going to suggest a better use of everyone’s time. It would be for a charitable cause and it would promote social media to boot. Everyone wins.

If anyone is wondering who Loren Feldman or Shel Israel are and what the big deal is about them, Mathew Ingram has written a good summary of their situation. Suffice it to say that the two have exchanged words in public forums and both claims that the other has done hurtful things that have caused different kinds of harm. And puppets were involved. Read the rest of this entry »

Blogging is a way to promote yourself and your ideas. By regularly publishing creative output, you put yourself out for ongoing scrutiny. But what if you aren’t the type of person who likes to do that? Is there an inherent contradiction between the practice of blogging, and social media in general, and introversion? Does it make sense to put yourself into the public eye? What’s the benefit? Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter’s reliability continues to be spotty. How long are we going to wait for them to sort things out? Or at least publish a plan of attack?

This is getting way past ridiculous. Sometimes it seems like the damned whale will fall out of the sky if you breathe too hard on your screen or click on your mouse too fast.

While announcing two new directors/advisors (including Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com), the Twitterers That Be included the following paragraph in their June 24 post on the Twitter blog:

Project: Runway

Twitter will become a sustainable business supported by a revenue model. However, our biggest opportunities will be worth pursuing only when we achieve our vision of Twitter as a global communication utility. To reach our goal, Twitter must be reliable and robust. Private funding gives us the runway we need to stay focused on the infrastructure that will help our business take flight. We will continue hiring systems engineers, operators, and architects, as well as consultants, scientists, and other professionals to help us realize our vision.

You said it, guys. Twitter must be reliable and robust.

Which it still isn’t. Not yet.

I’m getting just a bit tired of waiting. How about you?

In today’s post I’m going to play out a situation that happened almost 20 years ago and I’d like you to tell me if you think it was an early example of social media.

In 1988 and 1989, DC Comics (the publisher of popular comic books about Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, the Teen Titans, Green Lantern, and many other characters) ran a multi-part story in their Batman comic book called A Death In The Family. This story occurred several years after the original Robin, Dick Grayson, had adopted a new superhero identity while a boy named Jason Todd took over the Robin identity. This story, a mystery in which Jason attempted to find his birth mother, featured a number of classic Batman characters, including his nemesis the Joker.

DC Comics did something quite extraordinary for the times with this story. DC Comics editorial was aware that a number of comic book readers did not like the Jason Todd character, so they decided to put some decision making power in the hands of the readers. The penultimate chapter of the story was left as a cliffhanger, where Jason was placed in a situation where he could die. DC then set up two phone numbers that fans could call: one to spare Jason’s life, a second to lead to the character’s death.

As the story goes, after the votes were tallied, a slim majority of callers voted to kill off Jason Todd.

Jason Todd was killed in the final issue of the Batman story.

This was a clear example of getting reader input and reacting to it. The technology wasn’t Web enabled or housed on the Internet, but it had some similar characteristics.

My question to you: was the use of these phone numbers to kill off a character an example of social media in action? I’d really like to know what YOU think, including your arguments FOR or AGAINST the idea.

After a lot of thought and consideration, I switched Broadcasting Brain over to the Disqus blog commenting system.  You’ll notice the new look and feel in the comments section.

Disqus is a commenting system that allows you to maintain your blog comments on your website while also sharing them via a central repository.   It helps expose the comments and the blog entries themselves to a larger group of people, as well as giving me new ways to track comments.  A number of my fellow FriendFeed users have had many good things to say about Disqus and finally decided to take the plunge.  The installation was slick and easy.

All comments that were here prior to Disqus will remain as they are.  All new posts will use Disqus’s commenting functions.

Please note:  you don’t need to be a Disqus user or member to leave comments here now! You just have to type in the same kind of identifying information that you did previously.

Having said all that, there are three things that could be affected by implementing Disqus:

1.  CommentLuv Wordpress plugin - I don’t think this will work anymore.

2.  Top Commentators Widget - again, this probably won’t work either.  I will definitely maintain the existing status until the end of June, though.  Going to see if Disqus has any similar functionality.

3.  Subscriptions to blog comments - I’m not sure how this will work yet.

I will sort these three things out during the next day or so.

I hope that this change hasn’t caused any problems for anyone.  Just trying to improve the blog a bit.

Sometimes we take all of this social media, Internet marketing, and self-promotion stuff too seriously. Many of us look for role models to help shape what we do and how we do it. There are times when we take it too far and slip into adoration and idol worship. Read the rest of this entry »