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.

EDIT:  no longer using Disqus from 2010 onward.

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. Continue reading ‘Building up someone by tearing down another works – not’ »

Sometimes a writer really nails something and nails it down perfectly.

If you’re interested in social media, I suggest that you check out Steven Hodson’s post where he compares social media to the ancient art of maintaining oral history.

It’s one of those points that just seems like it should be obvious, but it sometimes eludes our comprehension.

Well done Steven!

PopeyesChicken @MarkDykeman time to change your chicken! 7 minutes ago from web in reply to MarkDykeman

Tomato Guy is more cheerful, somehow