The Intersection of Online and Offline

I had always hoped to be in the New York Times, but perhaps under somewhat different circumstances.

I wrote about it last week “I Was Wrong - Sorry Eve,” but the New York Times’ Marci Alboher picked up on the email blogging exchange that Eve Tahmincioglu and I had, which ended up with my feeling like a lunkhead.

Marci wrote a balanced, fair piece:

All this transparency and accountability led to a happy ending. Mr. Story did a follow-up post of his own, calling his original post a “cheap shot” against Eve (as support for this, he admitted that some of his own readers agreed with Eve’s original premise) and apologized to her. Eve included his apology in her follow-up post.

In addition to learning a few lessons about taking ownership for your words online, I also discovered a possible cure for social networking overload in Mr. Story’s original post — social networking aggregators, a new type of site that has sprung up to help people keep up with multiple social networking communities at once. Clearly, I have to get acquainted with these sites.

Thank you, Marci for providing balance and a measured tone — both of which would have served me well a couple of weeks back.

Mark

Forgive me for those of you who are a bit squeamish, but below, I have posted a You Tube video clip from the Maryland-Cal football game last Saturday (which Maryland, my alma mater, won, by the way).

Quick synopsis: Kevin Barnes, a defensive back for Maryland, hit Cal’s Jahvid Best so hard that Best laid on the field and later threw up.  As further proof that social media is weaving its way into our social fabric, one chunk at a a time, this phenomenon made its way onto the front page of the Washington Post sports section.

Here are some fascinating facts:

• Before the game ended, the clip was on You Tube.
• As of yesterday afternoon, six versions of the hit garnered a total of more than 50,000 views, which surpassed the number of spectators (49,527) who watched the play live at Byrd Stadium on Saturday.
• When Barnes visited a local restaurant this weekend, at least 40 customers approached asking him about the hit. Some with iPhones replayed the hit so everyone could watch together.

Sure, some guy hit some other guy who threw up on the field.  But when you consider the speed and reach of people sharing the clip, now THAT is bone-jarring.

Clip is below;  quality is not good (and please do not watch is you do not want to see a football player throw up).

Mark

P.S. - I have gone this whole post without a joke, but I’ll remind you that Maryland’s head football coach’s first name is “Ralph.”

In a moment that was likely based on blogger hubris and too much caffeine, a few weeks ago, I blogged about an MSNBC piece on social media overload and called it “sloppy journalism.”

The point that I was attempting to make in the post is that there are enough tools and aggregators out there to eliminate social media overload.  FriendFeed and other tools can put it all in one place.  Almost as soon as I wrote it, some regular readers chimed in and politely took me to task;  the article was note written for propeller-heads such as myself, but for people for whom social media may indeed create overload.

Among the initial comments were:

• Jonathan Trenn said: You’re an online strategist, a PR pro, a social media practitioner. Being networked on all these sites is in your professional blood. In addition, you likely feel somewhat required to take part in all of these networks because it’s tied into what you do for a living.  She’s likely writing that piece for a lot of the working professionals who are getting all sorts of information on this network, on that service, etc.
• Jenn Zingsheim said: I agree that this seems to be sensationalist journalism, but Jonathan has a really great point. I find that when I’m talking about what I do to friends & family, they get quickly lost when I’m describing all the different networks. They like to package things neatly into boxes (”…ok, so Flickr does photos, LinkedIn is professional, Facebook is college…what? It’s not just college? and you have professional connections there too?…I thought that’s what LinkedIn was for…” etc.)

And then, yesterday, the author of the original article, Eve Tahmincioglu wrote a polite and measured response to my posting which was critical of her piece (which I am listing in its entirety):

• Hey Mark,

  I don’t enjoy being called sloppy but I’m open to any criticism if I can learn from it and get better at what I do. I’m not sure your criticism here really helped me out but I’d be interested in hearing more.

  It’s great to hear you’re able to keep up with so many social networking sites, but alas, not everyone can, aggregators or not.

  I have gotten tons of emails from people who believe they need to have hundreds of friends on every site out there and the thought of it is driving them crazy. The bottom line is they don’t.

  Because of what we do we have to luxury to play around with all these new great sites, but there are many professionals out there scrambling to keep their jobs or find new ones that don’t.

  If I had time, I would definitely attend the Blog Expo, being I’m a blogger myself. I would have stopped by to say hello.

  And by the way, my name is pronounced, tach-min-gio-lou.

  Best,
  Eve

Just like the old saying goes, if one man calls you a jackass, pay no attention.  If three people call you a jackass, buy a saddle.  So I am going saddle shopping later today.

I’ll say publicly what I posted in the comment thread and what I emailed:  my post was a cheap shot and Eve responded politely and without rancor.  And the fact is that Eve, Jonathan and Jenn were right:  it’s easy for me to dismiss social media overload because I live in a different world.  Given time to think about it, my response is akin to my accountant saying to me, “There’s no such thing as difficulties in doing your taxes because Microsoft Excel is so easy to use.”

I was wrong, period, and am eating a big crow sandwich.  After I researched Eve a little, I discovered that she has her own blog, has published a book, and is well-thought of enough to have column on MSNBC and is clearly somewhat of an expert in the career field.

And to top it all off, when subject of a pithy post, Eve is unfailingly polite.

So where I come from, when you’re wrong, you apologize. Sorry, Eve.

Mark

It was bound to happen.   I said something nice about Comcast last week (their customer service person being on Twitter), and they go an do something evil, reminiscent of the reasons that drove me to Fios and DirecTV.

On the surface, it’s a move that will impact few users.  According to SlashDot:

“Comcast has confirmed that all residential customers will be subject to a 250 gigabyte per month data limit starting October 1. ‘This is the same system we have in place today,’ Comcast wrote in an amendment to its acceptable use policy. ‘The only difference is that we will now provide a limit by which a customer may be contacted.’ The cable provider insisted that 250 GB is “an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. … As part of our pre-existing policy, we will continue to contact the top users of our high-speed Internet service and ask them to curb their usage,’ Comcast said Thursday. ‘If a customer uses more than 250 GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use,’ according to the AUP.”

This is, even with a fairly sizable limit on bandwidth, a sample of a bait and switch.  Comcast advertises “blazing download speeds” left and right to try to lure customers from other providers and enter into one of those iron-clad and idiotic “bundling” agreements (”INTERNET!! CABLE!! TELEPHONE!!!), whose rates creep up after the initial period — and have you every tried “unbundling?”  It’s a pain in the arse.

Comcast simultaneously advertises Internet download speeds while putting up bandwidth limits.  This might just be an isolated incident or simple stupidity, but to me, it’s a really slippery slope for any ISP to do this.  You advertise “blazing” downloads, so let me get my music, movies, run my business, whatever - and get the hell out of my way.

To do otherwise is either disingenuous or just plain stupid.

Mark

Wrote an article for my pals at Media Bullseye today, questioning if the political conventions are any indications if social media will be game changing or just red meat for the right and the left.

And yes, I know I am going to get hate mail on this calling me either a right-wing fascist or a lefty commie pinko.  But here’s the article:

#RNC08 #DNC08 - Does it Really Matter?

This is the year. Everything changes. The Internet will make a difference in political races. I have blogged in the past that I do, indeed, think that the Internet will finally have the long-predicted impact on the presidential race this year, getting people to cross over from the online to the offline world and get off their duffs and meet up in the “first life.” Maybe.

I still need to be convinced, however, that the plethora of social media tools surrounding this year’s political conventions do anything except provide red meat for the people who really care anyway.

Text messaging

I am not on Obama’s text message list. I am not on anyone’s text message list, hopefully because it costs me ten cents every time someone sends me one (and thanks to my friends texting me from bars at all hours of the night). But to “walk the walk,” Obama announced some time ago that he was going to announce his choice for running mate FIRST via text message. This is a cool concept. It bet it got a lot of people signed up for Obama’s text list.

But, like other predictions that “the Internet is going to change everything!” The story broke before that Obama had chosen Joe Biden before he could send out his text message. Was this a real victory in convincing a whole heck of a lot of people to sign up for Obama’s text, to feel “in the loop?” Sure. Was it a great tactic to connect with younger voters (who have not shown up for the Dems in numbers that they would like in the last few elections) in a way that suits them? You bet your bippy (there goes that archaic comment from my last article again).

But was this “game changing?” No way. I live and work in Washington and have for more than 20 years and this place leaks like a sieve. If Obama thought that he would keep the secret before his announcement, he was naïve. If he and his advisers saw it as an opportunity to connect with potential voters is what will be a tight race, he was dead on.

Twitter

This has been the Twitter Week From Hell for me. I am fortunate enough to have friends on both sides of the political aisle (including far left and far right) and have seen WAY too many breathless posts directed to #dnc08 (for the Democratic convention and Obama supporters), #rnc08 (for the Republican convention and McCain supporters). Reading some of the Tweets, you would think that there were two different Obama acceptance speeches that took place on Thursday night. Here are a few of my favorite tweets (leaving them anonymous):

• “Just filed my last #dnc08 dispatch via Blackberry en route to the airport. What a night! I was lucky to be at Invesco.”
• “This is why McCain wanted to wait. Less than 12 hours after Obama’s speech, the cable networks are focused on the veepstakes. #rnc08″
• “Eight is enough! . #dnc08″
• “C-SPAN caller says Obama is a socialist. Says he didn’t spend his life fighting communism to watch America go down this path. #dnc08″
• “Drudge now showing picture of McCain and Lieberman. That would be cruel. #rnc08″

Let’s think about Twitter and the conventions right now. Most of the tweets for the Dems were coming from folks on the ground in Denver and were being read by people who are interested in the knowing what’s going on on the ground in Denver. Good for them.

Most of the #rn08 tweets were either slamming Obama’s speech or talking up McCain’s “Veepstakes.” Good for them too. (Ed. note: This article was written prior to McCain’s announcement of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate.)

My main point is for this to be the year in which the Internet does actually have an impact on the elections, it needs to be more than feeding red meat to your supporters. It’s great to have a bunch of echo chambers for each party as well as extra vehicles to rally supporters and increase voter turnout, but my political instincts tell me that what really matters is the middle - the people who have yet to decide in the states that are toss-ups. According to Real Clear Politics’ delegate count, there are 125 electoral votes up for grabs.

Are those people tweeting? Are those people texting? Maybe. But traditionally, most voters make up their minds in the last few weeks of the elections largely through a barrage of earned and paid media as well as presidential debates.

This year may be different, but I can’t wait to get my Twitter back and return to the serious business of who went out where last night and who forgot to feed their cat.

Mark

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