Category Archives: Social Media

Accelerating Art

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I'm not a music afficianado by any stretch of the imagination, so it wouldn't surprise anyone that Yo-Yo Ma is probably the only classical musician that I can name.  I don't know what the experts think of Ma but I think he does an admirable job of promoting the arts, and I love that he's so open to doing things outside of traditional venues for cellists.  The video below (found on BookofJoe) is a perfect example:

The video was accompanied by this quote from Spike Jonze:

"The other day, I was lucky enough to be at an event to bring the arts back into schools and got to see an amazing collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and a young dancer in LA, Lil Buck. Someone who knows Yo-Yo Ma had seen Lil Buck on YouTube and put them together. The dancing is Lil Buck’s own creation and unlike anything I've seen."

That quote reminded me of an article I read a while back in Wired about the impact that Youtube and other video sharing sites on the rate of innovation:

"A series of challenge videos by rival groups of street dancers had created an upward spiral of invention as they strove to outdo one another. The best videos were attracting tens of thousands of views. Much more than pride was at stake. Chu knew something weird was happening when he saw a YouTube video of Anjelo Baligad, a 6-year-old boy from Hawaii who had all of the moves of a professional.

In fact, he wasn’t as good as a professional—he was better. This tyke, known as Lil Demon, was demonstrating tricks few adult dancers could pull off. If 6-year-olds could do this now, Chu imagined, what was dance going to look like in 10 years? As he remarked at last February’s TED conference, where the LXD gave a breathtaking performance: “Dancers have created a whole global laboratory for dance. Kids in Japan are taking moves from a YouTube video created in Detroit, building on it within days and releasing a new video, while teenagers in California are taking the Japanese video and remixing it to create a whole new dance style in itself. This is happening every day. And from these bedrooms and living rooms and garages with cheap webcams come the world’s great dancers of tomorrow.”

Breaking News via Facebook

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There's a bit of a political kerfluffle brewing right now in Greensboro over a recent redistricting vote by the City Council.  It's been a hot topic at Ed Cone's blog, which everyone in Greensboro knows is where you go to be seen, er heard, er read when you want to vent your spleen about the goings on in what is likely North Carolina's whiniest city. What's interesting to me is that Ed just broke the news that one of the City Council members announced that she's going to ask that the vote be reconsidered, and she made the announcement via her Facebook status.  

It would be easy to just say that this is a sign of the times, and it is, but upon further examination I think there are some fairly interesting ramifications in this simple act. Here are some that have come to mind:

  • Any reporter "friended" by a public figure who uses Facebook as a primary communication vehicle will have a competitive advantage over a reporter who isn't. Public figures have always had preferred members of media and I suspect they've always cherry-picked who they leak news to, but this is a very public way to play favorites with members of the media. 
  • Of course the public figure can also completely "disintermediate" the media by friending everyone but the media, thereby communicating directly with their audience and excluding the media.
  • Whether or not a member of the media is included or excluded, the news will be old to a healthy chunk of the audience by the time the 5 o'clock news airs or tomorrow's paper is printed.
  • This development has only reinforced my conviction that "news" operations need to move away from the shallow "breaking stories" MO and move quickly towards deep and analytical stories that provide context and avoid titillation and tattling.  In other words most of us now know what happened with the Greensboro redistricting, but few of us really know why.  Giving us the "why" is where the professional media can make hay.
  • In another interesting twist I've found that most of the really good comments on Ed's blog are posted by the professional journalists (I'm thinking of Joe Killian here) who often provide context and expert understanding of the issues in response to other commenters on Ed's posts.

Teen Steganography

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I found this short article in Wired to be fascinating:

In 440 BC, the Greek historian Herodotus first described a trick that spies used to send hidden messages. They’d write something on the wooden back of a wax tablet, then cover the message with wax bearing its own message. If enemies intercepted the tablet, they wouldn’t suspect it contained anything strange. It’s called steganography: hiding one message inside another.

Two thousand years later, teenagers are doing something similar to communicate with one another—on Facebook…

The solution is what researcher Danah Boyd has dubbed social steganography. Teenagers now post status updates that have two layers: A bland surface meaning intended for parents, and a deeper, richer significance that can be decoded only by close friends.

For example, Boyd interviewed one girl who was going through a breakup while on a class trip and wanted her friends to know but not her mother (who’d “have a heart attack”). So the teenager posted the chorus of a black-humor Monty Python song sung by a group of men who’ve been crucified. (“Always look on the bright side of life / Always look on the bright side of life!”) Her close friends, being fans of the movie, understood the reference and immediately messaged her to offer support. But her mother didn’t know the film, so she thought the lyrics were genuinely cheery and posted a response saying she was glad her daughter was happy.

And all this time I thought my teens just suffered from a severe lack of originality.

How To Facebook Video by Local Food Blogger

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You may not know it, but Winston-Salem is home to a food star.  Rebecca Subbiah is a Brit living in our fair town and she has a great food blog called Chow and Chatter.  She's also a wiz at Twitter and Facebook and she's been generous enough to share her Facebook wisdom by making a how-to video.  I think her target audience is other foodies, but her advice pertains really to anyone trying to use Facebook for their business. Oh, and she's my new hero for using her Twitter feed to share a link to this story about beer being good for heart health.  Gotta love when a vice is magically transformed into a virtue.

A Note of Advice to My Friends in the Newspaper Biz: Listen to Anne

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About 10 years ago I had the privilege of working with Anne Holland as she was starting up MarketingSherpa.com.  I don't exactly remember how I met Anne, but it had to be through some activity in the premium newsletter business since that's the industry we both worked in during the 90s.  She's one of the smartest people I've ever worked with and so I can recommend without hesitation, and without reviewing it myself, this free training video for newspaper execs.  Anne has started a new site, Subscription Site Insider, that I'm fairly sure will become a "must-use" site for anyone in the paid content space, if it isn't already.  From the page about the video:

During our research for the presentation we could not find one single example of a good newspaper paywall. Not one! Newspaper paywalls are — frankly — scary bad. They just ignore all best practices.

Why is that? My theory is that newspaper site design is really difficult – it’s a science in itself. You’re dealing with heavy text, complex navigation, and hundreds of thousands of pages… Plus, on top of making this dense content easily navigatible, you also have to deal with the demands of advertisers — get them enough clicks to keep paying while not sacrificing all your screen space.

Paywall design requires a completely different skill set. The goal is paid conversion, not free navigation. The content is focused, not comprehensive. Psychologically, the audience isn’t looking at the page because they want to be there, but because they’re forced to be there.

Other niches in the subscription site industry have been testing, researching and refining their paywalls for close to 15 years now. Audience development executives and web designers for newspapers can learn a lot from them. 

If your business depends on getting people to pay for access to your "stuff" then you really should check out Anne's place. You wont' regret it.

 

Proofiness: Why I Love Reading a Variety of Stuff Online

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I love reading stuff from a wide variety of sources online because, if nothing else, it often makes me laugh.  Today's example from a conservative blog:

We maintain that Global Warming is the greatest hoax ever played other than the hoax of Obama’s constitutional eligibility to be president of the United States.

Hey, everyone's entitled to their opinions, even if they fly in the face of the preponderance of evidence. Seth Godin calls it "proofiness" and I think I'm going to be using that term a lot to describe some of the stuff I come across in my online travels.

Everyone Should Have a Printing Press

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I just read an interesting interview with Evan Williams, founder of Twitter (and Blogger) that had a great quote:

In response to a question from the audience about Twitter empowering people to publish and act as journalists, Williams — who founded Blogger and later sold it to Google — said that “lowering the barrier to publishing” has been something he has spent most of his career on, and this is because he believes that “the open exchange of information has a positive effect on the world — it’s not all positive, but net-net it is positive.” With Twitter, he said, “we’ve lowered the barriers to publishing almost as far as they can go,” and that is good because if there are “more voices and more ways to find the truth, then the truth will be available to more people — I think this is what the Internet empowers [but] society has not fully realized what this means.”

I like Fred Wilson's take on this too:

When I started blogging back in 2003, I would tell everyone how awesome it was. A common refrain back then was "not everyone should have a printing press." I didn't agree then and I don't agree now. Everyone should have a printing press and should use it as often as they see fit. Through things like RSS and Twitter's follow model, we can subscribe to the voices we want to hear regularly. And through things like reblog and retweet, the voices we don't subscribe to can get into our readers, dashboards, and timelines.

If I look back at my core investment thesis over the past five years, it is this single idea, that everyone has a voice on the Internet, that is central to it. And as Ev said, society has not fully realized what this means. But it's getting there, quickly.


Case Study on Good Corporate Twitter-care

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Last week the organization I work for (Triad Apartment Association) hosted its regular monthly dinner meeting and it was one of the most successful meetings we've had in a long time.  The topic was social media and it featured a presentation on the "Top 10 Things You Need to Know About Social Media" and was followed by a Q&A session with some social media experts from the apartment industry. One recurring theme that evolved from the presentation and the Q&A was the importance of being active in the social media sphere, and being prepared to engage with customers and prospects via Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I thought of that today when I observed the interaction between one of my coworkers, Rachel, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car.  Enterprise told Rachel that they'd be at our office to pick her up at 2 p.m.  At 2:15 she called them to see where they were and they indicated that the driver had left on time and knew where he was going so he should be here any time.  Rachel waited a few more minutes and then wrote this on Twitter at 2:21:

Hey Enterprise, remember when you said "We'll pick you up at 2!" That was awesome. Except. You didn't. #tickfreakingtock

Obviously she was being funny, but it's also obvious she's getting a little annoyed. Well, someone at Enterprise is on the ball because within 20 minutes @enterprisecares Tweeted the this:

Have you called re: the delay? If you need anything else follow us & I'll DM my contact info to get details (Elizabeth)

Needless to say Rachel was impressed and is currently a very happy Enterprise customer.  BTW, the driver showed up just a couple of minutes later; he'd gone to the wrong address which is not uncommon for people coming to our office since it's a kind of weird location. 

Here's a screen shot of my Tweetdeck showing the interaction. Very well done Enterprise:

TwitterCustomerCare
 

Want to Force Me and Kenny Beck to Shave Our Heads?

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Anyone who's been watching WXII this week knows that they're making a serious push to raise food for Second Harvest so that kids won't go hungry this summer.  One of their morning show members, Kenny Beck, has been doing goofy stuff like the chicken dance in exchange for financial donations.  I asked him via Twitter what it would take to get him to shave his head and he said $1,000. When I indicated I might be serious he said he was too, and we agreed to a low setting on the clippers (not bald, but pretty short).

This dovetails nicely with the food drive that my office is doing for Second Harvest and I thought that if Mr. Beck has the guts to do it, then so should I. So here's the deal:

  • If you want to donate to Second Harvest please contact me via email at jon.lowder AT gmail.com and coordinate the donation with me.  Once we amass $1,000 I'll arrange to get it to Kenny and we'll get his head shaved.
  • Once we pass the $1,000 mark for donations I'll start adding to the tally for TAA's food drive.  If you tell me you're donating in hopes of getting me to shave my head then once we reach another $1,000 I'll get my head shaved too (most likely a high and tight like the Marines). I'll post pictures on this blog, my Facebook profile, Twitter, and anywhere else. It won't be pretty, but it's for a good cause. BONUS FEATURE: The largest single donor actually gets to do the hair cutting on me (can't offer that up for Kenny).

So that's it.  If you want to see Kenny Beck and me get our heads shaved then email me at jon.lowder AT gmail.com, or call me at (336) 899-0238 to arrange donations. You can also simply mail a check made out to Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina and write "Make Kenny and Jon Shave Their Heads" in the memo field and mail it to me at:

Triad Apartment Association/Attn. Jon Lowder
3407 West Wendover Ave., Suite E
Greensboro, NC 27407

Of course you can mail it directly to the Food Bank, but if you want it to be counted towards our impending baldness you need to send it to me so I can keep track of our progress.

Also, I've also set up my very first Facebook group for the cause. If you visit it you can see one of the worst pictures ever taken of me Photoshop'd to show me bald.  Like I said, it's gonna be ugly.