June 2008
Social Media Beginners: Lesson 2 - Know Your Blogs...
I think Andrew Baron is a smart guy (although I think Rocketboom was better with Amanda Congdon, oh well), and I guess he’s got the right to auction off his Twitter account if he wants to, although what he’s trying to accomplish by that is unclear.
But he left one interesting clue in a comment on my blog, which I am promoting here, as a small insight:
[comment on Can You Sell A...
Share Your Shit : Impressions from Reboot 10,...
guest post by Marjolein Hoekstra
“Share Your Shit” turned out to be the slogan of Reboot 10, the amazingly inspiring conference organized by Thomas Madsen-Mygdal and crew. Over 500 enthusiasts from various countries and backgrounds attended in Copenhagen, Denmark, last week, leaving behind exhilaratingly positive feedback on every social-media platform one can think of. The...
Reboot10 - The Summary of '08
I pulled some comments on my talk, Web Culture: Individuality, Belonging, And Scalar Freedom, from Summize:
[from stowe boyd - Summize]
ecphaff: listening to stowe boyd: difficult to understand, but very intriguing. my second chance to counter cultur.. http://tinyurl.com/59eg2e (expand) 41 minutes ago
pollas: like stowe boyd’s talk about 2 hours ago
ericscherer: reboot10 :stowe boyd...
Easy Blogging Using Email - Posterous
guest post by Erno Honnink
Posterous launched yesterday (see comments on this post). It is a really easy way to blog, maybe the easiest way that I have seen so far.
You can start posting by sending emails. Posting photographs, images, video’s and mp3’s is just as easy. In the subject of your email you type the post title. Then in the body of the mail the post. Don’t forget...
New Guest Contributor: Marjolein Hoekstra
I’m happy to say that Marjolein Hoekstra (of CleverClogs) will be joining the growing cadre of contributors here at /Message. Welcome!
FrontlineSMS
FrontlineSMS: Empowering NGOs and non-profit organizations around the world, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.
I just learned about FrontlineSMS, which appears to be an SMS-based group communication system. Could be useful in a wide range of examples, like emergencies in which the Web might go down but the cell network, especially the data side, is still up.
Social Tools In The Enterprise. Contradiction In...
guest post by David Cushman
I often hear people talk about deploying social tools ‘in the enterprise’. And that’s a good thing. A great first step. But I wonder if the description is a sop to the fears of those-who-would-control? Keeping things closed, internal, secret, locked away; makes the boss feel safe, doesn’t it?
But to get the greatest value from ‘social tools’ you have to see through...
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Web Culture: Individuality, Belonging, And Scalar...
I gave a presentation yesterday at Reboot10 in Copenhagen called “Web Culture: Identity, Belonging, And Scalar Freedom” and I think I scared some people a bit. There is a broad streak of darkness throughout the talk, since I suggest that the future we are moving into — where we are already, actually — is being framed by the crumbling of mass institutions as a result of...
FriendFeed In A Wiki? Whoisi
guest post by Erno Honnink
There is something new at the horizon of personal feed collectors. Whoisi received some attention from Dave Winer on Twitter and his blog. This Tweet really got attention on Friendfeed and received lots of good reactions. Whoisi also got mentioned on Twitter a lot yesterday.
The fun thing is you don’t even have to log in. It works with cookies. What happens if...
Twitpitch: Kindling
Saw an interesting twitpitch this morning:
Kindling (http://kindlingapp.com) is your org’s democratic suggestion box. Ideas Collaboration Voting = Progress! #twitpitch
from “>arc90 about 16 hours ago from web in reply to stoweboyd
I hope it’s not democratic really, but based on bottom-up, reputation-based decision making. We’ll see.
Twitter Isn't About Conversation - It's About...
guest post by David Cushman
Hello, I’m David Cushman and this is my first guest post on /message. My regular blog tells you more than you’re likely to ever want to know about me, so introductions over, I’ll begin.
What’s Twitter for? Most think it’s about conversation. It’s very good at it. It enables conversation - and open, exposed, social conversation at...
David Weinberger on Babbage’s Noise
David Weinberger is one of many folks coming to Reboot10 this week, along with yours truly. He’s let us peek under the kimono a bit on his talk, Babbage’s noise. He says he doesn’t understand what he’s getting at, but I bet we will find out when he presents it.
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Christine Rosen Joins The War On Flow
Christine Rosen, in The New Atlantis, does a masterful job of collating all the arguments against multitasking in her Myth Of Multitasking. I discovered the piece this morning courtesy of the editorial staff of the New York Times, who put it in the Reading File with the uncritical lede, “In The New Atlantis, Christine Rosen explores the dangers of multitasking.”
Note: the title does...
Typepad And Feedburner Woes Lead To Author...
Let me apologize for any confusion about recent posts, and let me also clarify things.
This blog, /Message, has been a solo act since its inception. However, I am now involved in turning it into a micro business, and as part of that, I am bringing on some other contributors.
I would like to note that various stats on /Message have been growing in the past year. For example, consider this...
Nick Carr and Scott Karp: Is The Web Making Us...
Nick Carr suggests in his recent Atlantic Monthly article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, that the way we use the Web is changing the way we operate, which he is mistakenly characterizing as becoming stupid:
I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the...
Why Aren't You Talking To Me?
guest post by Matt Balara
This afternoon my best friend Steffen called me. The first thing I said was, “Hey! What have you been up to the past couple of weeks?” As be began to tell me, it surprised me how strange it felt having to ask him that question.
If the laws of chance should flip on their heads, and I would bump into Jeffrey Zeldman on the street tomorrow, I’d ask...
PingMe: A Task Reminder Service
Passing by on the Deck ad network this morning (at Andy Baio’s blog) I saw a new service called Tempo, which is a time tracking tool… but this is not a post about that product, but another from the same folks at Zetetic, called PingMe. I will take a look at Tempo at some other date.
PingMe is a task reminder tool that allows users to create, share, and get alerted about things. The...
Poll: How Many Of My Twitterstream (and /Message...
How many of my Twitterstream are planning to go to Reboot10?Yes No Maybe View Results Create A Poll
Another Reason To Distrust The Powers That Be
Michael Arrington cast a bright light on abuse of power by the domain registration companies as a whole, and Networld Solutions specifically. Network Solutions has just turned a 180º on domain hijacking, calling for an end to the practice that they themselves embraced earlier this year:
[from Network Solutions Suddenly Opposed To Domain Hijacking]
Here’s how the scam works: You go to...
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Instant Messaging Decreases Interruptions
Those that have followed my work will know that I don’t buy the microeconomic reasoning that requests for assistance should be minimized because they lead to a decrease in personal productivity. On the contrary, I have been arguing that the willingness to trade personal productivity for connectedness is a hallmark of web culture, and that drive for connectedness trump any personal...
AVIN: An ISBN for Wines
Adegga, the social wine site, is doing a lot of cool stuff. But perhaps the greatest contribution that the smart folks at Adegga have made to the world of winedom is the creation of the AVIN: a universal code for wines, like the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for books.
[from AVIN - An ISBN for Wines]
What is the AVIN?
The AVIN is a unique code for wine. Think of it as an ISBN...
The Twitter Hall of Shame: 50 Tweets That Will...
InsideCRM has posted The Twitter Hall Of Shame, 50 tweets that ‘will echo in history’, and the first on the list is a post I wrote here at /Message about John Edwards abandonment of his ‘followers’ on Twitter without even a ‘so long and fare well.”
[from The Twitter Hall of Shame: 50 Tweets That Will Echo in History - Inside CRM]
Political
The 2008 U.S....
Tom Raftery on Xing
Whoops. Xing (formerly OpenBC), a leading European business networking service, has managed to piss off Tom Rafferty, and probably many other Irish users:
[from Twitter / Tom Raftery.
Xing email: “Invite your friends in the UK and get free months!” Premium membership if you invite British friends. V. [very] insulting to the Irish
The implication being either a/ UK citizens ...
Feedly: Turning Google Reader Into A Social Flow
I have been heads down for the past few days — no, I am not a full-time blogger — and somehow only was twigged to Feedly, the new Firefox plugin that revitalizes Google Reader. Basically, Feedly uses the information about RSS feeds and your various contacts in Google Reader, but presents it in a number of significantly more interesting and useful ways.
Here is the What’s New...
Comment by gregory on Web Culture And The New...
[from comments to Web Culture And The New Ethos Of Work]
all this stuff is just consciousness in action, pretty easy to figure out, get coders for the bolts, yogis for the direction, it all should be ok
Twitpitch: Chictopia
Via Twitpitch:
chictopia @stoweboyd[Chictopia hits 2 million page view run rate 8 weeks of public launch. Lands first advertising deal American Apparel.]#twitpitch
chictopia @stoweboyd[feedback? http://www.chictopia.com/deals/hot_deals]#twitpitch
stoweboyd @chictopia Its a legit #twitpitch, but I don’t know how interesting to my readers. I like the Polyvore tools, though.
stoweboyd ...
Butterfield and Fake To Leave Yahoo
Yahoo’s best and brightest continue to leave in droves, and the newest — and brightest — stars are Catarina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, the founders of Flickr. This has been reported by Techcrunch and a gazillion other tech bloggers.
This is on the heels of Jeremy Zawodny’s announcement, and the recent flare-up about Jerry Yang’s uncertain future as captain of...
Tweetburner Stats
I signed up for Tweetburner, and I have been using it for creating short URLs via Twitter, but I don’t think I ever logged back in to see the results. I had to reinstall ‘Twurl This’ today on my new Friefox 3 toolbar, so I caught this:
I am amazed that so 113 Twurls have been “alltogether” [sic] clicked for 6277 times! Wow.
I may start using these Twurls for...
Twitter + Webinar = Twebinar
guest post by Erno Honnink
Chris Brogan comes up with some great ideas. See for example his articles 100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media or Starting a Social Media Strategy. Probably his best idea lately is to setup a Twebinar.
A twebinar is a webinar and Twitter mash-up where conversations take place in real-time before, during and after the webinar, on Twitter.
To enter the...
Movino: S60 Nokia Phones Can Be Used As WebCam On...
I was hoping that I could find a way to use my new n82 as a webcam. Specifically, I wanted a way to webcam the screen of my Mac, which can’t be done with the built-in iSight. I came across this post — iSight replaced by Nokia N95: Movino — that led me to Movino’s solution.
I installed some software on my Mac and some on my n82, and easily was able to use the n82 as a...
Beauty Disclaimers: Plazes
I wonder if all tool makers should be as candidly disarming as the Plazes folks:
[from Inbox - Plazes - Right Plaze, Right People, Right Time]
Let’s face it, your Plazes inbox hasn’t exactly been a beautiful site. We’ve cleaned it up for you so that you’ll be able to easily scan through and react on the different types of incoming notifications and messages in the...
Web Culture And The New Ethos Of Work [From...
I gave a presentation at the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, entitled Web Culture And The New Ethos Of Work. The text below are the slide notes I developed prior to the presentation, but I don’t promise that they are truly what I actually said.
[It is starting to feel like I am working on a book. Anyone want to publish it? “Web Culture and The Post-Everything...
I, Too, Am a Twit at e-Literate
Link: I, Too, Am a Twit at e-Literate.
First of all, most of the people that I work with and socialize with most often aren’t on Twitter at all or aren’t utilizing it heavily. So part of it is probably just a human network thing. Second, I tend to throw myself into my current work very intensely and stay focused on it for long periods of time. This hasn’t always been true and won’t always...
The 'No Women Speakers' Meme Is Awake Again
[from Twitter.com/maryhodder]
retweet of @anon: The no-women-at-conferences sausage fest is become a trope! Agree!
@jerrymichalski prob is, most men ask 4 conf participants this way, & get, you guessed it, men only. u won’t get women if u do it this way
maryhodder about 1 hour ago from twhirl in reply to jerrymichalski
@MaryHodder please explain why I won’t get women to...
This Ought To Be Fun: Inside Knowledge Profiling...
Jenny Ambrozek is doing a complex piece on me at Inside Knowledge magazine. One cool idea we are trying is to crowdsource the profile.
[from 21st Century Organization: Stowe Boyd Stories For His Inside Knowledge Magazine Profile.
[…]
As Stowe has promoted awareness and adoption of “social tools” since introducing the term in his last 1999 newsletter, it seemed ...
Information Overload Research Group news wrapup
The newest attack on connectedness and whole brain attention is here, spouting conventional wisdom as gospel:
[from Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast by Matt Richtel]
The onslaught of cellphone calls and e-mail and instant messages is fracturing attention spans and hurting productivity. It is a common complaint. But now the very companies that helped create the flood are ...
Web Culture: Individuality, Belonging, and Scalar...
I have posted my proposed talk for Reboot10, which is two weeks away in Copenhagen:
[from reboot10 - Web Culture: Individuality, Belonging, and Scalar Freedom
Free…. Are we? Free to do what, exactly?
I am interested in exploring the conflict between web culture’s tribal aspects — exclusion of the ‘others’, the power laws, the mob mentality of fads, herd...
Quote of the Day: Let Marc Benioff RunYahoo
Joe Nocera is a wise man, based on the William James notion that you judge someone’s intelligence by how well he agrees with you. It is time for Jerry Yang to leave Yahoo: either as part of a deal with Microsoft, or ousted by torch-bearing shareholders.
[from Talking Business - Oh Jerry, It’s No Longer Your Baby - NYTimes.com by Joe Nocera]
[…]
Jerry, you’re a billionaire...
Om Malik on Social Networks And Scale
Om seems to be a luddite at the top of his social network sanity check piece, but he quickly gets down to what he advocates, after reviewing and analyzing comscore numbers about the supersized networks like Facebook and MySpace:
[from Social Networking Gets a Sanity Check - GigaOM]
[…] the market has shifted its focus onto niche social networks, such as those dedicated to sports,...
Guest Blogger: Erno Hannink
As part of my growth plans for /Message, I will be bringing on new bloggers. Erno Hannink is the first guest blogger here, as he has already posted his first contribution, Twittict: When Twitter Lets You Down (I was using Twittict at the Enterprise 2.0 conference last week!).
Please join me in welcoming him, and the others that will be scribbling here in upcoming weeks or months.
My hope is...
Twiddict: When Twitter Lets You Down
guest post by Erno Honnink
Are you a Twitter addict and fan? Not ready to jump on the next micro blogging service, despite all the downtime on Twitter. So, what do you do when you want to tweet your messages even when Twitter is down?
You post your messages on http://twiddict.com
A service built and maintained by a couple of guys from Belgium; Tom Klaasen, Koen Van der Auwera, Robin...
Ode To The Death Of Mr Paperclip
I love Lynda Rathbone’s connection between Microsoft’s killing off Mr Paperclip — perhaps the most hated avatar of all time — and the emergence of the post-document future:
[from Opinion: Ode to the death of Word’s paperclip - Inside Knowledge By Lynda Rathbone]
Suddenly the creation of a formal document and the posting of that document online as web content is...
Stephanie Booth Rediscovers Social Media Basics
Stephanie Booth is the force behind the recent Going Solo conference (where I was a speaker; I also serve as an advisor to her company, Going Far). In the run up to the event, Stephanie ran through the entire social media promotion handbook, and rediscovered the bedrock rules that drive it. A great read for anyone attempting to harness social media:
[some snippets from 5 Lessons in Promoting...
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Overload, Shmoverload: The Myth Of Personal...
The newest attack on connectedness and whole brain attention is here, spouting conventional wisdom as gospel:
[from Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast by Matt Richtel]
The onslaught of cellphone calls and e-mail and instant messages is fracturing attention spans and hurting productivity. It is a common complaint. But now the very companies that helped create the flood are trying...
Movino: Use Your S60 Nokia Phone As A Mac OS X...
Link: Nokia N95 blog - iSight replaced by Nokia N95 Movino.
Movino does a super job streaming video from my N95 to my Powerbook… and even let Skype use it as a webcam!
A Few Links To Web Culture Talk
Discovering some lnks to people who saw my Web Culture presentation at Enterprise 2.0:
Column 2 : Enterprise 2.0: Stowe Boyd on Web Culture
Day 3, concluded
I had a few folks mention that it was perhaps the most thought provoking talk, which makes me happy.
Ideas For Enterprise 2.0 Next Year
Based on (in part) the closing Town Hall.
[from Twitter] Ideas for Enterprise 2.0 next year (based in part on the town hall):
1. Drop ‘tracks’ based on segmentation, and use tags to characterize presentations
2. Let’s crowdsource (at least in part) topics, speakers, case studies, etc., and get the community involved months in advance
3. More case studies
4. More...
Small Business Ecommerce Link Digest - June 13....
Jennifer Palmer offers up some insights into how Twitter helps us coalesce into on-the-fly ‘groupings’ as I call them:
Reality Sandwich | Radical Interdependence and Online Telepathy: How Twitter Helps Us Find One Another.
Twitter is a great tool for DIY, self-organizing “un-groups” such as the stranded airline passengers mentioned above. As the name would imply, an un-group...
Jeremy Zawodny Is Leaving Yahoo
[from Leaving Yahoo! (by Jeremy Zawodny)]
It seems that word has started to leak out, so I might as well remove any speculation or ambiguity. In the next few weeks, I’ll walk the halls at Yahoo! as an employee one last time and turn in my purple badge.
[…]
I won’t at all be surprised if some people think this is related to Microsoft or Carl Icahn and the uncertainty...
When Micro-blogging Grows Up - O'Reilly Radar
Link: When Micro-blogging Grows Up - O’Reilly Radar.
Three categories (technology, tech/personal, personal) accounted for 56% of the total “subscriptions” to the top 100 Twitter users. Compared to the blogosphere, politics is less represented in the Twitterholic Top 100. The top Democratic presidential candidates were it as far as politics. In contrast, more than ten...