Broadcasting Brain

Sometimes everyone wants a piece of the social media champ.

That piece may be bragging rights or it may be a share of the spotlight.

How about learning from the pro? Or acknowledgment as a form of social proof?

Is this a bad thing?

One of the greatest opportunities of social media is to interact with people both similar and different than ourselves who we might never otherwise meet. Technology becomes a common glue and a blank slate where we can interact with virtually anyone, whether they are:

• junior to ourselves (but not inferior!)
• equivalent in skill and knowledge
• the type of expert or role model that we’d look up to.

This flattened playing field and the multiple access paths to attention share is an innovation that we sometimes don’t appreciate for what it is: the ability to punch above our weight. Read the rest of this entry »

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This week I’ve been trying to do something different here at Broadcasting Brain – I’ve been focusing more on creating original content vs. joining the echo chamber. Or, to put it another way, I’ve been trying to create conversations instead of following them. It’s been interesting to compare the two weeks.

Last week was a lot of fun because I was feeding off some other conversations from guys like Alexander van Elsas and Colin Walker, among others.

This week, I’ve been trying to go my own way. Trying to start my own conversation threads. Trying to move away from the ongoing conversations and talk about what other people aren’t talking about. I think there’s been some good conversations here this week.

Which is better? I really don’t know. Some would say that it’s always better to blaze trails down different paths. However, I think I’ve really come to appreciate the value of echoing.

Echoing makes you feel less alone and more like you belong to something bigger. It makes you feel like you are a part of a larger conversation. It allows you to take a concept and make it more interesting. That’s one of the great things that’s been happening on FriendFeed – new and better conversations. Sharing. A sense of community, even.

If you’re lucky, you can start new conversations when you strike out on your own. Sometimes you won’t. It’s a lot like planting seeds. Some will grow, some won’t. Some will be dwarfs, some will become giants. You don’t always know.

I think you need to try both: to join in conversations and to start your own. Sometimes it’s hard to strike out in a different direction, but many people value new thoughts and new ideas.

It’s easy to echo other people or to climb on to the latest conversation train in social media. Some people think it’s the wrong thing to do. However, if you can add your own good ideas and make an honest attempt to analyze part of the conversation, then there’s nothing at all wrong with doing that.

We have to make our own choices about the conversations that we’ll start or join. However, either alternative is perfectly acceptable if your intent is good and if your contribution is thoughtful and heartfelt.

There is no right choice; any discussion choice can be the right one at any given time. Make the choice, commit to it, and make the best of it.

Nothing fancy here, just a simple list:

Andy Partridge (musician of the band XTC)

John Cusack (the brilliant cool actor guy)

Seth Godin (I’d pick his brain)

Al Gore (ditto)

David Suzuki (same)

Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, Grant Morrison (comic book writers, all)

George R. R. Martin (novelist - author of A Song of Ice and Fire series, among others)

Stephen King (novelist)

How about you?

EDIT:  May 30/08 - of course, it would be pretty cool to meet them in person, too!

I believe in the potential of the little guy and that can easily justify the need for social media.

I believe that big is getting to be far too big.

I believe in influencers AND having the right environment to make an idea spread.

I believe that being famous is like wearing a target 24/7/365.

I believe that name recognition is a conversion factor.

I believe that the vast majority of large publicly traded companies will never get social media because they shy away from risk and must quantify ROI.

I believe that social media will look very different in two years.

I believe that a lot of what Seth Godin writes makes sense, but lumbering giants don’t die easily.

I believe that social media is a pyramid scheme (of sorts) AND that it can be a rising tide that lifts all boats.

I believe that technology is just a set of tools.

I believe that a lot of people want fame or recognition, but they don’t know why, nor do they have a plan to use it when they get it.

I believe that social media works best with a healthy dose of cynicism and practicality

I believe that social media has to move beyond selling things and focus more on sharing things (the original intent).

I believe that social media is changing the world, a tiny bit each day.

Warning: this is going to be a very long post, a response to two great posts about the future of social media and the social web from Alexander van Elsas and Colin Walker from the week of May 19, 2008. I’m placing the More tag here because, frankly, it’s going to be a lot to wade through and I don’t want to force people to read through it. I hope Alexander and Colin do, however. And, for that matter, I hope you do as well!

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past few days I’ve been tracking some conversations about the potential shift in blogging which has led some people to coin the phrase Blogging 2.0.

Steven Hodson of Winextra links to a number of these conversations at his blog.  Without going into too many details, a number of bloggers think that blogging is starting to undergo a fundamental shift whereby more and more things are pulling people away from blogs towards other sites which carry the conversations about the blogs .  This activity could pose a big problem for probloggers who are dependent upon site visits and ad-clicks for revenue.

Steven also posted a great rant post which pointed out that there are much bigger problems in the world than trying to track what people are saying about you or keeping up with every hip conversation.

“Blogging 2.0″ Misses The Point has a great point that shouldn’t be lost in all of this chatter, however and it’s a point that I believe in.  Put simply, blogging, like other social media, has the potential to be a great equalizer and advocate of democracy.

Social media gives anyone a relatively cheap and powerful means to communicate to the entire world, as long as they have access to the Web.

Per the post:

What makes blogging and podcasting interesting is that you can do it. You can make the “long tail” longer.  And when you make the long tail longer, that means there’s more tail for everybody. (Or something like that!)

Definitely.

That’s where the real value is, in letting more people broadcast to the world and get feedback, because you never know where the next good idea will come from.

The Uncanny Evolving Social Media Blog List has been newly updated with almost 100 additional blogs.

It’s now up to 225!  Check it out!

Later this week you should see the Alltop badge in my sidebar. Broadcasting Brain is listed in Alltop Social Media.

Whether or not you think Alltop is a good thing, there’s really no downside for me, and most bloggers like me, to being included in Alltop’s Social Media page. If anything, I benefit from it more than Alltop does. I’m listed alongside a lot of bloggers that I read and admire. Alltop’s already thrown me a little bit of traffic.

It’s all good.

I’m of the same mind as Chris Brogan about Alltop. If Alltop opens up the blogosphere to people who don’t use RSS, other blog directories, or the like, then I think we all benefit. Let’s face it, there are far more people who don’t dabble in social media than do. Every bit of exposure helps. It’s a good way to help people find your blog.

Some people think Alltop has been overpromoted or that it’s riding on Guy Kawasaki’s reputation. I really can’t judge the former; time will tell us whether or not the latter is true.

Alltop’s method of displaying RSS feeds may be basic functionality that an idiot could use (or make), perhaps even redundant, but it sure doesn’t hurt anyone. Plus, it’s aimed square at the heart of that HUGE TAIL (not just a long tail) of potential readers.

Thanks to Alltop. I hope we all benefit! [and here's a post with some ideas on how you can use Alltop to your best advantage.]

Once again, ReadWriteWeb provides a few new nuggets of insight for social media practitioners. Marshall Kirkpatrick provides information about the best and worst times to submit news stories or blog posts to social news and social bookmarking sites.  Read his article to get a better understanding of Jake Luciani’s study (or, for that matter, read Jake’s own post about the study.)

In short:

• Thursdays are the best days, Tuesdays aren’t far off (in my opinion)
• Saturday, Sunday, Monday are the worst days
• Wednesday and Friday are somewhere in the middle

In terms of time of day (all times in GMT):

• Midnight to 2 AM and 4 PM to 10 PM are the best times to submit to social media
• Between 10 PM and midnight is the worst time slot for submitting to social media; 8 AM to 2 PM look fairly weak as well
• Every other time is average

This information might be useful to anyone who wants to become a Top Digger (I’m still at 711 in the top 1000 list) or other social media maven - every little bit helps.  However, as with any of these studies, the information should be used as just another piece of data in your social media strategy and you shouldn’t rely too heavily on timing.

I know that in my own experience, I used to submit Digg stories early in the morning (my time) and I seemed to have better success when I submitted stories at different times of day.

Marshall’s article also made me wonder about the timing of blog posting. Are some days better than others?  Are some times better than other times?  In the RSS world it shouldn’t really make any difference because the posts are always there in your reader, waiting for you, right?  Or does timing matter?  I tend to check more than once per day, although I reserve noon hour my time to review a certain collection of social media blogs.

And so, on this Monday, the beginning of my week (possibly yours as well), I’d like to hear what you think.  Do you read blogs on some days or than others?  Certain times of day more than others?

Looks like he’s stumbling over something…

First of all, I love StumbleUpon. I think it’s an awesome website and tool. It’s a wonderful way to get people to visit your blog. I get a lot of traffic through SU and I’ve come into contact with some pretty cool people there. Overall, it’s a good way to share info about websites and it’s more fun than your standard social bookmarking function.

However… there are some things that I’ve found over time which I don’t like or which have caused me some problems. Many of these issues have been covered elsewhere, so they may not be new to most of you. Nonetheless, these are the things that have “tripped me up” a bit, so to speak.

1. Keep your post slugs simple - no special characters. StumbleUpon especially hates commas; it makes them very hard to submit your posts to StumbleUpon without doing some trickery. Wordpress in particular tries to take your post title and use it as your post slug, which becomes part of the URL for your post. If you insist on using these additional characters, take care to type in a post slug using just numbers and letters separated by hyphens.
2. Use the correct URL. Some sites, like the Triond family of websites, will run articles over multiple webpages. It would make sense to Stumble the very first page. Otherwise, you may accidentally submit multiple pages, which could dilute the value of your Stumble.
3. Tags can be overwritten. If you are the kind of blogger who is very particular about how you want your submission tagged, it’s possible that a subsequent Stumbler may change them. Keep your eye on this.
4. Tags can also be incorrectly chosen by the submitter. I’ve seen some weird choices, including adult-oriented tags, where they probably weren’t intended to be used. It could be the result of using a plug-in to automate the submission process. Similar to problem 3.
5. Remember to “thumb up” the post before clicking on the Comment button. Otherwise, the post might not be correctly registered as a “thumbs up”.
6. Unfortunately, people will occasionally downvote your submissions. Resist the temptation to reciprocate unless the downvoter is being abusive. Even then, use caution
7. The 200 mutual friend limit. After awhile you just can’t add any more friends, which sucks.
8. The Send To function is very annoying, especially if you have more than 35 mutual friends, because you have to scroll for several seconds until you find the friend you are looking for. Yes, you can argue that the Send To function can be abused by spammers. However, if I want to send a link to someone whose user ID begins with the letter Z, then I have to scroll all the way to the bottom. It gets really, really tedious with 200 mutual friends. Maybe there’s an add-on or other application out there that circumvents this problem?

None of these problems seriously damage StumbleUpon, they are merely annoyances. However, they do represent some ways that the service could be improved. Are you reading, StumbleUpon?