Conner's Blog

In the last month or so I’ve been asked on several occasions what my Twitter name means. So I thought I would take the time to share this incredible story with my readers.

Ok, I’m lying it’s not interesting or incredible but since people want to know I’m going to tell them. Sloped came from a blog that I started in college and killed almost immediatly called slopedsideways. I came up with the name because I realized fairly early on in my life that my brain doesn’t work like the rest of the world’s. Not that this makes me unique, but at the time I thought it did.

So in an attempt to describe this phenomenon I settled on the phrase slopedsideways, basically this meant that my thought processes don’t go in a straight line but instead slant a touch to the right or left depending on the time of day.

When I joined Twitter I was looking for a short yet unique name for myself. I had recently been thinking about the blogs I had started throughout the years. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to resurrect the name and it’s unique enough that I generally can use it anywhere I go.

So that’s the story behind the name, and this is also the perfect opportunity for me to announce one of my new projects. I’m starting another blog at http://sloped.me. It’s going to be a place for me to get on my soap box about social media, workplace technology, and other things that don’t really fit with that I’m doing here. So take a look, subscribe if you want, and let me know what you think.

Ok, so I don’t think I deserve to win the 2009 PowerPoint Karoake challenge, but it would be pretty cool to place.  So I’m looking for help.  Go here http://powerpointkaraoke2009.com/bracket and vote for me.  If you want to see what you are voting for, and laugh with me, go here http://powerpointkaraoke2009.com/profile/sloped.

Thanks, and have a great afternoon.

It is no secret that I love social media and the Internet.  Twitter and this blog are my playgrounds, with a few dashes to Facebook added for seasoning.  One thing that amazes me is the fact that people still think social media is going to ruin interpersonal communication in the real world.  This makes me cringe every time because the exact opposite has happened to me.

My love of social media really began during the political conventions leading up to the November 4, 2008 elections.  I didn’t have any friends at the time that would watch the speeches with me, so I logged onto Twitter and was suddenly bombarded by hundreds of people talking about what was happening.  The best part was that not only was I interacting with others watching from afar, but also getting first hand accounts from convention goers.  At the time, I had no idea how much of an impact Twitter would have on me, I just was having fun bashing politicians and discussing the issues with real people scattered all over the globe.

I believe it was sometime in January or February when Art and I had a conversation on Twitter and made a decision to meet at the Herkimer for happy hour.  Art was the first person I met who I had known exclusively through Twitter before meeting in real life.  Though he was not the first person I had met through the Internet, (I had joined a few meetup.com groups previously) he was the first person I met through an online social network.  Since then we have remained good friends.

Of course Art was just the beginning, in the last year or so, I’ve met a lot of people because of Twitter.  Some I met because they knew someone I met on Twitter, others I met only because they were on Twitter.  In fact, at last count, my In Real Life list has 89 members.  Some of these have only been meetings in passing, but many of them have involved fun times, great conversations, and a few have become close friends. Add at least a dozen people I’ve met who aren’t actually on Twitter and my social circle has been expanded by over 100 people just because of a little box saying “What are you doing?”

What I’m trying to say is, if anyone says our Internet connected networks are going to ruin our personal lives, destroy our ability to communicate, or stop us from meeting new people, well, they are crazy. Unless you are already an introvert and do not enjoy meeting new people, interacting online is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social media.

Is it really October?  I’ve reviewed all the calendars I can find and they all state that September was 30 days long.  I’m pretty sure they made a mistake and it was only 15 days.  It’s the only explanation for how fast that month went by.

I’m leaving town tomorrow morning and heading up north to a friend’s cabin.  It’s an annual gathering of my college friends and it’s always a blast.  Cards, games, drinking, bad jokes, fires, and walks in the woods will all be taking place.  I will barely be recovered on Sunday when Art, Andrew, Gabe, and I head to the Bulldog Uptown to start the first leg of our Twin Cities Reuben Tour.

Did I mention my October is crazy.  Next weekend we have the Zombie Pub Crawl, something that I meant to attend last year but managed to miss.  I have been invited to two birthday parties, one of which is a two part caper.  We kick of a new season of the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra next Sunday in Stillwater.  Halloween is sure to include some sort of revelry, and I still need to go apple picking, make some pumpkin pie, take fall photos, bike, eat more squash, learn how to make new soups, and cross a few more items off my Minnesota Todo list. Did I mention there are at least a few shows I want to go see as well?  Yep, this is going to be fun.

It’s funny, last year at this time I would be looking around for things to do, failing, and then sitting at home wondering how you find things to do in this city.  It was ten months ago that I really started using Twitter and it has has a dramatic impact on me.  It brought me back into the Internet community and helped get my blog rolling along.  Most importantly, I’ve met a lot of great new people in the real world as well.  I’m never looking for things to do, instead I’m usually trying to decide what I’m going to have to miss.

…

Sorry for the completely disjointed and random post.  I’m in a really weird mood today for some reason and my thought processes are completely out of whack.  If I wasn’t at work I think I’d be sitting at a bar with my laptop, writing and striking up conversations with anyone who was foolish enough to sit next to me.

Dear Star Tribune,

Welcome to Twitter, it has been fun having you in our playground.  It is great having people with connections giving us some insight and some breaking news once in a while.  In fact I’ve really enjoyed following the Favre, Rubio, and the Twin’s collapse sagas over the last few weeks.

But here is the thing, you’re doing it wrong.  It’s great that you are with us, but, with the way you are currently doing things it’s not going to work.  Here are a few of the reasons.

• The number one reason you’re doomed to fail is your avatars.  You’re a media company and as much as I know you hate to think it, to succeed you need people to want to listen to your people.  No one really trusts the Star Tribune, yeah you have some cred, but most people are likely to take the word of Lavelle E. Neal, Judd Zulgad, or Sid Hartman over the faceless paper.  So having them tweeting is great, and yeah I can look at their names and know whom I’m reading.  However, I don’t use Twitter like that, and I bet 90% of those who follow you don’t either.  We look at the avatars to see who is tweeting, currently all I see is Star Tribune, and this just doesn’t excite me.  Let me know who is tweeting without wasting my time by making me read the name.  Let your writers put their face up.  You could even use a Star Tribune badge in the corner of their photo so your branding is still there.  I guarantee we would all appreciate it.
• Second, your use of hash tags is a problem.  Hash tags are great; they give context to tweets and make searching quite a bit easier.  But your insistence of putting “strib” in front of whatever your tweeting about is accomplishing nothing.  When your readers tweet about the Twins we hashtag it #twins, you have your writers hash tag it #stribtwins.  Now what happens if I search for the #twins, well your writer’s tweets don’t show up, and if I search for #stribtwins other tweets don’t show up.  Kind of a pointless endeavor, you would be better off avoiding hash tags all together.
• You should also try and have your writers interact with the public a bit more. A quick review of four of your writer’s last page of tweets showed only seven tweets with @ mentions.  Most of those go back to their fellow writers.  Most readers understand writers aren’t going to be able to interact with all followers, but giving it a try will help develop a relationship that you can capitalize on later.
• Finally, you should make it easier for readers to find your writes twitter feeds.  I spent a few minutes looking for this information on your site and it wasn’t easy to find.  If nothing else, a link to their Twitter page should be included on their profile page right next to their email address.

I hope that you take a few of these ideas and try to improve your use of Twitter.  I’ll be the first one to say Twitter isn’t going to solve all your problems and you also can use it how you want But, if you are going to use a tool, at least use it well.

P.S.  I have noticed you are using hashtags without the strib added to them.  Keep that up; we appreciate it.

Until recently, I had been struggling with Facebook.  I hardly ever logged on and when I did I never really felt like I learned anything useful.  I even toyed with the idea of deleted the entire account.

I could not do this though, because my family and most of my close friends use Facebook as their exclusive social platform.  This means that if I want to find out what my brother is up to or find out where everyone is going for Christmas I have to be on Facebook.  Of course, that information was there, but it was hard to wring out of the myriad of old friends and acquaintances I’ve gathered since joining.

Recently though I discovered the solution and I’m going to share it with you.  It’s simple and effective, but it does take a bit of time to set up.  The first step is getting your friends into groups.  This may sound daunting, but it’s worth it.  I was lucky to have done this a while ago so I just had to go through and refine a bit.  Personally, I would recommend dividing people up by, friends, family, co-workers, and then others.  I then created a group called PIWTKA (People I want to know about) and put everyone who I wanted to follow closely into this group.

Like I said, this takes some time but it’s worth it.  Now after you’ve done this if you look at the left hand sidebar you will see the groups listed, when you click on the group, only the news feeds from those people in that group show up.  This is a useful tool in itself, but I discovered a way to make it even better.

First you have to click the more button below your friend’s lists.  Then you simply click and drag the PIWTKA group to the top of the sidebar, drop and abracadabra, every time you log into Facebook, you automatically only see those people you really want to know about.
Hopefully, this makes your Facebook use more enjoyable, I know it’s done it for me.  Oh and while you’re at it, why don’t you add me as a friend, I may even stick you in my PIWTKA group.

A few weeks ago, Kate Brodock and I got into a discussion regarding the definition of Twitter.  It started as a back and forth on Twitter, and I put up a post and then she followed up with a post.  This is my response to her post.  The main argument I had put out is that defining Twitter is not only impossible it is also a bad idea.  Though Kate seems to agree with me, she makes the point that in a business environment you sometimes are forced into defining sites.  I have to concede this point to her, but I’m giving it one caveat.  I don’t think you should categorize websites anymore.  It’s not good business.  Putting Twitter in the same category as Facebook or Blogging doesn’t work because it shares some of the same qualities as each site.

My idea would be to come up with a set of scales to put sites on.  These scales should define things that are important to your business.  Here are a few I thought of.

Trust – Can people trust what they get from the source?  Facebook is great for this; you have to validate yourself before you create a page.  Sending an email from your own domain is safe.  Twitter is a little sketchy here, and I think we’ll see this change in the near future as Twitter starts to monetize it’s platform.  IM is also a little sketchy, it’s hard to validate you are who you say you are.

Timeliness – How quickly do people read your updates once posted?  For Twitter, most users, if they respond or take action, will do so immediately.  Email is usually a little slower, but for most users they probably read your message within the hour.  This is tough to state unfortunately because everyone uses sites differently.

Message Lifetime – How long does a message exist? This isn’t how long it actually stays around but how long from first sending the message can you expect people to still be viewing it.  E-mail is indefinite as once it arrives in someone’s inbox they can take weeks to read it but it doesn’t go away until they take an action on it.  Twitter’s messages can roll through the system and miss many eyes if they aren’t watching their feed.

Openness – Are your updates limited to just those that opt-in.  Email updates only go to those who ask for them (or they should), IM is the same; Twitter on the other hand goes to those who want them but are public and can be seen by anyone.  All three systems allow users to pass the messages to unsubscribed users, but Twitter allows anyone to find your updates at any time.

As I had written before I think we need to shy away from defining sites as social media, social networking, or blogging sites, because everything on the web is turning into a social network.  If you don’t believe me check out the Google Wave announcement from Google.  Look at how it merges a myriad of sites/services and adds a social element to them.  This is just one example, but as the web evolves having a strict system of categorization forces you to keep reviewing things every time the web evolves and either re-categorizing, redefining the categories, or creating new categories.  Putting services on a sliding scale keeps you from redefining categories and allows you to just move the service up or down if the service changes.

This system has it’s flaws of course, it’s more complicated than dropping sites into categories.  Putting sites on the scales is subject to opinion but at least you can look at a site in an instant and see where it falls for a specific task.

A few weeks ago Disqus announced a new feature in their commenting system. Namely, it gave comment authors the ability to send a notice to Twitter about their comment.  I really like this idea and since reading about it, I had been considering installing Disqus as the commenting system on this site.

Today I saw an update from Doni stating that she was going to implement another external commenting system, IntenseDebate.  After looking at IntenseDebate I liked what I saw and decided to install the plug-in. 

First, I want to congratulate the creators of IntenseDebate, you have an awesome Wordpress plug-in, it was easy to install, your admin interface meshes really well, and the plug-in didn’t mess with my theme at all.  I will admit part of the reason I wasn’t thrilled with Disqus was the admin interface.  Intensedebate on the other hand barely makes itself know.  Anyone who has used the Wordpress admin interface would have no problems dealing with comments on a system run by IntenseDebate.
Unfortunately, after looking through it for a few hours I decided it just wasn’t for me.  First, if you were a registered user of IntenseDebate, when you posted a comment the link that is shown for your name links back to your IntenseDebate profile.  I understand the reasons for this, but I wanted the option to use my website address instead.   This isn’t a problem when commenting on this site, but if I comment on other sites I want them coming here, not going to IntenseDebate and then having to click through to my site.  I also like to send my readers to my commenter’s websites if they choose to post their website.  Not having this option was the first knock against the plug-in.  Second, the comment system displays Gravatars and gives the administrator no way to not display them.  Now many people like Gravatars and Avatars, and I think they have their place.  Personally, though for a low traffic site like mine I don’t like them.  Additionally it relegates the readers that don’t have Gravatars into second class citizens by giving them a generic icon.

After a few hours of trying out IntenseDebate I decided to give Disqus a quick try.  Here is where I made a decision.  External comment systems seem great but they have a failing.  If your site is up but the external system is down, your site is going to run slow and it’s possible users won’t be able to comment.  I came to this decision because the moment I decided to try out Disqus, I could not access the site.

External comment systems are beneficial.  They allow users to maintain a history of their comments across multiple sites.  It also gives you way to backup all the comments you have made across the web without worrying about them disappearing when someone decided to nuke their blog or a commercial site folds.  Other users can follow your comments even if they don’t visit the same sites as you.

However, even with all of these benefits I think the negatives outweigh them.  First, you’re relying on an external site for your comment system.  If that site goes down, has a network hiccup, or isn’t accessible for another reason, your readers won’t be able to comment.  Second, a commenter who isn’t a member of which ever system you are using, either has to register to claim their comments and has to trust that the 3rd party that they are submitting their comments to is trustworthy.

The alternative should be allowing users to post comments in whatever system they wish to, whether Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Digg or your site, and be able to pull these comments into your site.  Disqus and IntenseDebate offer some of these options, but for me the negatives outweigh the positives.

In place of Disqus or IntenseDebate I setup a system to pull comments about my posts from Twitter into this site.  This works well because even if Twitter goes down, if my site is up then the comment is available.  I’m going to start searching for ways to pull in comments from Facebook and elsewhere.  I hope to share these at some point.  For now, if you don’t want to comment here, go ahead and post a link to my post on Twitter, my site will find it and put it here allowing other readers to view what you said.

(Image courtesy of Flickr user massdistraction)

Yesterday, I saw this tweet from @just_kate.  “Question for everyone: Twitter – Social Network? Still just microblogging? Somewhere in between?”  If you read my blog, you know that I do not think Twitter has rules or really allows for a definition and so I sent back the following.  “It’s whatever you make it, it’s both for me.”

This is 100% true, one moment I may be talking (blogging) about my latest cooking adventure, only to end up in a conversation about what makes the best Guacamole.  @just_kate responded “interesting! What about social networking vs social network? Blog/Twitter a social network or (micro)blogging platform??”

This got me thinking, and I sent a few quick responses using the 140-character platform.  The main point that I came to is that people are constantly attempting to put Twitter on a pedestal and say it is special.  The thing is, Twitter really is not that special, it’s just a new way to share what we’ve been sharing since we learned to speak.  It’s a free eco-system that allows you to talk about what you want, but by limiting you to 140 characters it keeps conversations clean and neat.  E-mail, instant message, and social networks will all be around for a long time, but you get messages that take minutes to read where Twitter’s messages take seconds.  This enforced brevity let’s you interact with a lot more people on a daily basis.  Twitter just takes online communication and adds what events like Ignite add to presentations.

The second problem is our constant attempt to define web sites as “social networks” and acting like social networks are new.  They aren’t new, it’s as old as spoken word.  I argue they have been online since the Internet first launched.  Usenet, forums, and chat rooms were the precursors, and even without a comment system, a blog is a form of social networking.  You’re publishing for a reason and usually its so people can get to know you.  Whether talking about car repair or your kids soccer game  you’re building people’s image of you.  You do the same thing at work when your co-workers come over and ask for advice, or you talk about last night Twins game.  You develop new connections whenever you go to a party and meet your friend’s friend or meet with a new client.  Social networking is just building and maintaining your social network.  We can try and make online networking special but it’s not, it’s just easier because computers handle the physical pieces of our connections for us.  We just have to worry about the conversation.  Like I said yesterday, “[p]eople want to put Twitter on a pedestal, it’s no different than the water cooler or networking at a conference.  It’s just online”.

The truth is the web has always been one giant social network.  It may not have been interconnected using terminology like friends/followers; instead, it’s built on social connections called links.  If you consider the web a university, you could consider individual sites to be clubs or fraternities/sororities. They are just networks inside of a larger network.

I say we stop trying to define these sites and start finding new ways to use them.  The truth is, if you are publishing online you are networking, people are getting to know you and your viewpoints.  We have always had the ability to create vast “social networks”; it’s just easier to maintain them with the tools technology has provided.

If you wish to read the full conversation between me and @just_kate, go here.

Photo via eye2eye on Flickr.

Since I’ve moved my reading list over to a page I decided I should start posting occasional updates in post format when I’ve added a few new blogs.  I’m going to try and update when I have ten or so additions.  So here is the first update, we’ll see what happens.

First I have a few food and beverage related blogs that need to be shared

• Happy Food – A blog about food, if nothing else this recipe for Vegan peanut butter cups should pique your interest.
• Simple, Good, and Tasty - Focusing on local food news, I haven’t been reading very long, but so far I like what I see.
• You Are Where You Eat – Dropping local wisdom about healthy and sustainable eating.  Lots of links, this guide to the local food system was interesting to me.
• The Captains Chair - A blog about beer, and not your uncle’s watered down American lager.  (I apologize if you uncle drinks real beer)
• Stirrings from the Empty Nest – Bob Collin’s personal blog.  I found this via his News Cut blog and haven’t dug in yet.

I have to say, the more I dig into the Twin Cities food blogging scene, the more impressed I get.  It kind of makes my attempt look sad.

Finally a few more multi-purpose sites.

• Mullet Like Me – A normal guy grows a mullet and decides to write about it.  If your wondering…yes it’s humerous.
• Zipbag of Bones – I followed her on Twitter for a long time before I found her blog, she’s just as clever in more than 140 characters.
• synapsecollapse – A smattering of fun content from around the web.  Also someone I’ve followed for quite a while.
• Powderhorn365 – A project documenting the history of the Powderhorn Neighborhood through photos.
• Streets for People – A site promoting the use of streets for humans and not dead steel.
• 50000000 Sparber Fans Can’t Be Wrong – Max Sparber’s personal blog

So there you have it, do you like this format, let me know here and as always, if you want your blog included in my list, leave a comment on the list and I’ll see what I can do.