Social Blend co-host Bdog2g2 in his own words

Catch the Brainwaves is our ongoing series of interviews with a variety of folks participating in blogging and social media. I ask them ten questions and they respond with their brilliant answers and insights! Today is the second of our four part series of Q&A sessions with the co-hosts of the rockin’ podcast Social Blend, featuring Bdog2g2 (aka Brian Hill)

Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin!

1. Can you tell us the origin of your username (Bdog2g2)?

Nothing really spectacular. While in High-School, most people never remembered my name, so they usually called me ‘B’. That evolved into B-Dog, then for some reason around 2000 I started using the handle Bdog2k for (B-Dog 2000) for gaming and in the year 2002 I changed it to (Bdog2g2 - B Dog 2 Grand 2). By 2003 my fingers were so well trained in typing Bdog2g2 that it became my “Online Identity”. Plus being lazy I didn’t want to have to change it every year.

2. How did you discover Mixx?

I believe it was through an Techcrunch article I found on digg. I signed up for the beta and played with it for about 5 minutes and actually hated it. After gettting a response from Mixx to some of my criticisms I figured “These guys actually gave a shit about what I thought?”

3. What’s the story behind the creation of MixxingBowl (the unofficial blog by Mixxers, for Mixxers)?

Well during the beta and very shortly after (2days) of Mixx going public, many of the members would use comments across submissions to suggest features, bring up issues, and overall have off-topic conversations. One person suggested a forum and I figured, hey hosting’s cheap and forums are a “One-Click install” so I’ll go for it. I was honestly expecting a C&D within hours of the Mixx crew finding out, but they were surprising cool with it.

As for the name, well it seemed appropriated but being an obsessive domain name coiner, I had plenty of backups.

As for Friday Fest. That’s Greg’s fault all the way, but I can tell you it is a HILARIOUS way to kill some time. Get there early though, once MarkCarras arrives its dead.

4. What are your thoughts on StumbleUpon? Is it a good way to drive traffic to a website? Do you think that Mixx and StumbleUpon could be used together for effective marketing?

I can honestly say that I do not use StumbleUpon. I’m really not that big into Social Media as the concept is manifested right now. I got really engaged into Mixx not because it was a “Social Media” site, but because I actually found interesting stuff and some really interesting people.

5. If someone disses you in a Mixx comment, what’s the best way to handle that?

Well if they’re rude and abusive, report it and let Mixx pick up the pieces. If they troll, again, report it. Other than that, I don’t feed the trolls. There are some people who are itching for attention and like to act like little babies on Social sites. It’s not my fault that daddy didn’t love them enough.

6. Do you have any other social media or blogging projects in the works?

I have a few things in the works. Currently I have a site called taglovers.com. It’s not a social site right now, though it could easily be. It’s a service to help people to quickly grab tags for articles and then they get an easy copy-n-paste list to add to their social media submission. Right now it only grabs single words and looks at the number of occurrences, but I’ve always found that simple is better. I’ve tried some NLP solutions. They give me two good tags and about 40 crappy ones.

I’m also working on another project that’s near completion. The best explanation I can give is that it’s a 6-word Twitter.

7. How challenging is it to work on a podcast when none of you are in the same location?

It’s not too bad. Unfortunately I’m the only one in the cast who’s on the East Coast and sometimes the other guys forget that so their 11pm is my 12am. An hour does make a difference.

8. Could Kevin Rose have created Mixx and made it what it is today?

Sure! If he got his head out of his *** and told Jay to take a hike. Kevin did something great, no doubt, but success was his own enemy. Like many people who succeed they think they can turn crap into gold at will.

9. Pretend that the Internet is destroyed overnight. What do you do the next morning?

Go to the beach and drink.

10. Any final thoughts for our readers?

Be excellent to each other. And. Party on dudes/dudettes!!!! (had to adjust it to make it PC).

Thanks to Bdog2g2 for sharing his brainwaves!