Conner's Blog

After a brief hiatus due to me being extremely lazy after getting the School Night Badge on Foursquare, Friday Five is back. This week contains a bit of humor, some music, one excellent writeup about social media “experts” and a comic about arguing. Enjoy

• Have you seen Dessa’s new video? If you haven’t you should check it out, immediately.
• Minus Manhattan catches a glimpse a bundled up teddy bear. Proof that even stuffed animals aren’t made to live in this crazy weather.
• MN Headhunter calls out the many social media experts. He has ruined my dream of putting “social media expert” in my twitter bio and making six figures.
• Rachel is losing control of her pillow.
• Instructions on how to make your point in an argument.

Finally, I’m posting this even though it’s heartbreaking, but read about Monkey, and then go hug your pet.

Have a fantastic weekend everyone, stay warm and enjoy the end of the first month of 2010.

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.

I’m starting to understand why those who don’t get social media don’t get social media.  Just check out all these reasons to avoid it.

• Why would you want to connect with a ton of people from all over the country and world?
• Why would you want to engage with people in your industry who might one day be a connection to a job or a potential positive addition to your company?
• It’s an awful thing to walk into a restaurant alone at lunch time and find out that someone you’ve been talking to for weeks about politics, sports, your interests, or current events is sitting in the corner table without a lunch partner.
• That first real life meetings is always awkward, sometimes these people are actually just as smart/funny/interesting in real life as they are online.
• Getting tickets to a show through a new friend who happens to know you love the band because you won’t shut up about it the weeks leading up to the sold out show feels almost like cheating.
• Getting a chance to meet an old media rock star who happens to also be a new media rock star in person and then have that person get the bar to sing you happy birthday because the mayor of Minneapolis declared your birthday the rock star’s day, well that’s embarrassing. (but really freaking cool)
• It’s always better to watch sports without forty other fans to provide commentary, the television announcers are always more intelligent.
• Raising money for charities was so much easier when you only had to cold call or knock on doors.
• Restaurant critics who work for a paper always know what they are talking about, a hundred people just like you providing instant feedback is completely unnecessary.
• Without social media you can still go see the new comedy that came out on Thursday on Saturday without knowing it is in fact, awful.
• Journalists are the best fact checkers, and having numerous trustworthy sources to tell you someone is full of crap is unnecessary.
• I’m too busy watching reality television to talk to real people online.
• Email isn’t social, it’s communication, and totally different.
• Social media is clogging the tubes and I won’t be able to watch my funny cat videos on Youtube.
• It’s easy to find the best restaurants in new cities, why ask your friends?
• This Internet thing is a fad and once it goes away you’ll lose all those friends anyway.

See there are countless reasons to stay away from social media, stop trying to convince everyone it’s cool.

As most of you probably knew, yesterday was Jason DeRusha Day.  Some of you may have also known it was my birthday.  I had not planned on really celebrating yesterday, as I had went out on Saturday but yesterday turned into one of my best birthdays.

• I got chocolate chip cookies at work
• One of the customers I met with is a board member of Two Rivers Choral and I had a chance to talk to her about running a music organization that does not charge admission.  She said that one of the members had used the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra as an example of a group that does this right.  If you didn’t know, I’m a board member of the orchestra so it was great to hear this.
• My mom and dad both called me since my dad is currently out of town for work.  Usually I just get one call from them.
• I got to visit OM, a new Indian restaurant in town and enjoyed it.
• I met a ton of Twitter users who I have followed for quite a while.
• I not only got to meet Jason DeRusha, but he also had the crowd sing me Happy Birthday.
• Had great conversations with Doniree, Aaron Landry, Jason DeRusha, and others about social media and how it’s changing the way we interact with everyone, from newscasters to our elected representatives.

Overall a rock solid day, birthday or not.

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.

Dear Facebook,  your suggest a friend feature is the most worthless thing ever.

Here is the deal, when I first joined Facebook, which was quite a while ago, I was friended by some random girl in Memphis.  At the time I wasn’t picky about who I accepted friend requests from, so I accepted her request and we have been friends ever sense.  Occasionally I consider removing her as a friend, but really I see no reason to. She doesn’t interact with me, and doesn’t post annoying things so I just let it be.

Recently though, being friends with her has given me some insight.  Basically it is that Facebook’s suggest a friend feature is worthless.  For some reason Facebook insists on showing me people that she is friends with.  This makes no sense.  For one thing, I have no mutual friends with her.  Wouldn’t that put her pretty low on the list of people whose friends I know.  Additionally, she isn’t geographically close to me, we’ve never interacted, never lived within 100 miles of each other, and never attended the same schools. If you were going to choose someone on my friend list to use for that feature, she would be the last one on the list.

So Facebook, here is my challenge to you, write a decent algorithm that keeps stupidity like this from happening.  You try hard to sell yourself as a valuable platform, but nonsense like this doesn’t help your sales pitch.

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.

I have a good list today, I’ve been focusing on starring and bookmarking interesting stuff so I don’t have to throw together this list from my history.

• Tim Brunelle shares a great story that puts social media in perspective.  It’s here to stay, and is not only great for finding interesting information, but also for real life networking.
• Apparently sarcasm has benefits beyond confusing those that don’t know me well.
• Stock up on acorn futures, apparently there is a shortage, wonder if the explosion of bird squirrel feeders has any part in this.
• This is a great site, @mosqueda is a great person to follow on Twitter.
• A simple but poignant reminder that we aren’t doing that poorly.
• An amazing visualization of our national budget.  Via Newcut
• Drew is moving to Minnesota, he needs some tips on how to survive our arctic chill.
• Here is a tasty looking Mexican dish.
• A list of authentic Minnesota Food.  Via The Deets

Finally an actual thought for Thoughts and Links.  I’m not a fan of the auto bailout, but I think we need it or this recession is going to go on for an extra year or two.  It’s ridiculous that banks who don’t actually create anything tangible get $700 billion, yet an auto industry that creates actual products can’t get a nickle.  (Admittedly the auto industry is not run correctly, but neither were the banks)