Generations & Internets: Collapsing Standards or Just Change?

When I was growing up on usenets and dial-in BBS's, yes there was the birth of the troll, but there was a higher standard of communication. You treated your messages as you might treat a written letter. Now? Not so much. I'm barely into my 30's and I'm feeling what every person before me has felt: the degradation of communication, the irascibility of the younger generation.

For example, take the now-high-ended ideal that someone might spell words correctly in a proper email. Then degrade it with txt-msg'ng language, reduce it to a Facebook pseudo-meme liek [sic] "On 11:11:11 on 11/11/11 I'm going to make the most monumental wish evar" as one of the 500 trite pseudo-groups you now "like" and post the following jpeg I found in my daughter's feed:



Teaching children to use Photoshop without teaching them art is like teaching someone to fire a rifle without referencing the basics of morality.

You can quote me on that.

(For reference, many "art" classes in schools are now completely computer-based and grammar is not a great focus.)


So how does this saga end? Do we hope that high school and college education (along with our involvement) can properly educate our children - despite social norms - and teach them to maintain standards of communication? Or are we doomed to the fate of Idiocracy?

ikr

Any thoughts/feedback would be appreciated.

Unfortunate Facebook

Juxtaposition can sometimes have unfortunate consequences. This appeared as a Facebook update in my feed. Blurring to protect the innocent.

Wednesday Twitter Headlines: Security, XLIV, Space, Teens

No! No celebrity news this week! Not one blip about Fall Out Boy or Lady Gaga. Not one!

Unsecured Twitter?

But this week Twitter did say: "I's been haxed!

"A red flag was first raised on Twitter's end when it noticed an abnormally high number of followers for certain accounts. This prompted the company to investigate and eventually reset the passwords for anyone following those suspicious accounts. Twitter noted that although torrent sites have been around a while, this is the first time it's seen an attack using this angle."

It was a custom-built, torrent site back door, password reset phishing scam. W00t! As always, Twitter kinda has it under control.


Beer! I Mean Super Bowl XLIV

And if you've been waiting with baited breath to see what's going on with tweeting and Super Bowl XLIV, your wait is over: Super Bowl XLIV Earns an Official Twitter Hashtag: #SB44. I'd give you a blockquote on this one but that's the whole story. Not that this is actually news. I went to a conference this past December where a half dozen of us tweeted the event. We had a hashtag too.

Note to media: A hashtag is not earned. You don't have to file with the IRS or anything. You just make it up, let people know, and start using it.


Um, Teens and, um, Twitter

And I also noticed an abnormally large number of stories covering the fact that teens still aren't showing Twitter the love that they show Facebook. Also, this is not news, just like it wasn't news last August when I talked about it.

Maybe I need to start a blog on Twitter headlines that aren't news.


Not Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

And this one's a little older than a week, but: Tweets From Spaaaaaaace!

NASA has set up an impressive wireless connection that provides astronauts on International Space Station with Internet access so they can surf the Web, e-mail their friends and family back home, and even send Twitter messages.

Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer started using the connection this morning by sending the first tweet originating from the space station.

Sweet. Question: Is a tweet that you're going to the bathroom more interesting if you're going in a suction-powered space toilet on the ISS?

Answer: Yeah!


So what did you learn from Twitter this week? I'm always happy to read your feeback!

A Sidenote: Facebook Rant

I like you Facebook. I really do. And I like you, people I friend; otherwise I wouldn't friend you. But as I douse all the pending requests today with Ignore juice, I feel a need to rant:

I don't want to be a farmer. Otherwise I'd move 10 miles east and buy a couple acres and some overalls and a straw hat and a combine. I do not need a cow or a pig or a banana tree (banana tree?). I certainly don't have time to pretend to be a farmer. Please stop the Farmville requests. It's bad enough I have to see your farm snapshots in my feed.

The Godfather trilogy and Goodfellas was good enough for me. Even if I had a time machine to go back in time to when the mafia was a hard core, in-control group of legend, depending on the exact date, I'd end up at Woodstock or a Bauhaus concert. I don't want to be a gangster. Or a gangsta. And I don't want to pretend that part of my lot on this Earth entails fighting mob bosses and offing the competition - or asking my friends to help me complete said tasks. Please stop with the Mafia Wars requests.

See above paragraph as to why I am not interested in being a Gangster Battle participant, which is apparently the redheaded step-cousin of Mafia Wars.

I don't want to fling food, I don't have time to find out what Disney Princess I am, and What Greek God I am equated with due to a fluff quiz put together to sell ad space is of NO interest to me.

I have no L'il Green Patch. No Flair.

Facebook is good and kind and I love it as both a way to keep in touch with others as well as keeping people - those who choose to be a fan - up to date with my business. And maybe it's my lack of free time that turns me against these Facebook flourishes, but the amount of time people spend on these diversions truly boggles my mind.

Get out! Use social media to socially network! Meet up with others, share experiences, network, or just hang out. Do it in person!

I know I'll continue to get them, and really I won't mind hitting that Ignore button once or twice a week. But dang. It would be nice to get a week or two off.

Wednesday Twitter Headlines: Golden Ratio?, Ted Kennedy, No Teen Twitter for Privacy?

Twitter's Golden Ratio

The Washington Post has an article called Twitter's Golden Ratio in which they begin:

If you're new to Twitter, life is easy. A notification comes in that someone is following you, and you probably follow them back. After all, you're going to want some tweets in your stream. After a couple dozen of those, you may start using more discretion, looking over the person's profile and their most recent tweets. But that gets old quickly as well, and inevitably you turn to using the secret ratio that nearly everyone knows (whether they realize it or not) to determine who is worth following back: "Followers" versus "following".

It's cute and endearing from the point of someone who actually manages their follower list. They may have nailed one item or two, but if you've read my post on 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You Back on Twitter, it's a moot point.

There are at least 10 (and probably 20-30) reasons why any one person will not follow another on Twitter if they are deliberately trying to increase the value of what they see daily on their stream. And a golden ratio is not a be-all, end-all of any sort.

It is nice to see the mainstream media taking notice - and a shot at understanding - for those of us in it every day.


Ted Kennedy

Whatever your politics, we lost an amazing statesman early this morning. Check out this article to see some of the comments.

Sorry, but they're also novices and apparently no one thought to use a hashtag.

R.I.P. Ted Kennedy. You will be missed.


Teens Shunning Twitter

This article from PC World talks about how teens would rather text than tweet. That can make sense. Until you see this bit:

So why aren’t the kids down with Twitter? Perhaps because they don’t want the authority figures in their lives — parents, teachers, and other downers — knowing what they’re up to. Texting, by comparison, is an inherently private conversation between friends. It’s the wireless equivalent of passing notes.

First problem: no one's been "down" with much since '03.

Second problem: Accepting the "they don't want authority figures in their lives" argument completely side-steps any of these so-called "private" teens' complete embracing of Facebook.

Facebook updates and comments are an enormous, thorough view of what those teens are doing. No Twitter? So? They're pushing more of their lives via updates and comments and photos and tagging photos via Facebook with less effort and software or interfaces than they'd be able to with Twitter.

To say they're eschewing Twitter because they're into privacy is a fanciful, ignorant romp into social media. NYT may not know better, but I'd expect PC World to have a better finger on the pulse of what the hell's going on in social media.


You turn! What do you think about these stories? Does the Washington Post have a finger on the pulse of Twitter behavior? Is Tweeting TK's death okay? Does the NYT or PC World have any idea about what's going on in social media?

As always, comments appreciated.

It's Twitter! Somebody Call 9-1-1!

Twitter is apparently back online after a Denial of Service attack earlier today disappeared it from the internets. However, on the best of days Twitter can have a tough time keeping up with traffic. With one hand fighting the continuing attack and the other trying to keep it online and millions of people more insistent than ever to get on and update and thousands who never would hearing about the DoS attack and pinging the address and a handful of malicious fools sitting all morning hitting F5 because they have some misplaced aggression targeted directly at Twitter users, I'm guessing it's going to be a while.

(Why Twitter? Is the Iranian government posturing for the aftermath of Ahmadinejad's swearing in?)

The interesting thing is how one link in the social media chain breaks and everything else falters a bit. Twitter is down so when I post this, I won't be able to tweet about it for a while and that reduces potential clients getting to my website. So I'll settle for posting it on my facebook account and EJM Designs Limited fanpage for now and might even resort to friendfeed, which I just posted on my friendfeed is "like reading when the electricity goes out."

But we'll carry on. We'll bring out the candles and cards and Trouble with its pop-o-matic bubble. And we'll wait and hope and flinch every time a car goes by because maybe, just maybe, the power is back.

Episode V: Facebook Strikes Back or "Yes, I'm Human"

It was a long day. I was clearing the plate before the sun went down and suddenly realized that I'd promised to set up a Facebook group for an organization of which I am a member. Not so difficult. But I'd done the basic account setup for clients so often, I guess I went into autopilot. And I opened a new account instead of starting a group. And after I set it up I changed the contact email to my main email - which happens to be the same email as my Facebook account. There is no check or verification for that circumstance.

I quickly realized what I did and - just as quickly - saw that my account, vanity URL and all, were gone. Disappeared.

I've been contacting Facebook help for 2 weeks now by various means. To no avail.

For a while I had hope: eric.marschall vanity URL is not available and the old EJM Designs Limited business page was still there. But it's been too long.

Oddly (or not so oddly because of the time I spend on the internet), I actually uncovered an older Facebook account that I'd opened a couple years ago and have fully converted it to my needs in the anticipation that Facebook will fail on this one, at least in time (which is now).

So you can find and connect to my new facebook page at www.facebook.com/eric.j.marschall. The new EJM Designs Limited Facebook page can be found at this place. Become a fan!

I'm posting all this information because I'm good at what I do, but I'm also human. I can goof. And I don't have other-worldly powers to fix those goofs. But I do admit it and I do fix them and I get the job done. It may take me a couple of days to get my profile up to par, but my dedication will get it done in just a couple days.

As always, I'd love comments, but especially on this post: join me on Facebook and become a fan of the EJM Designs Limited site. Have a great day!

Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook.

When social media becomes popular enough that it begins to span generational gaps, discomfort and hilarity spreads. Then it spawns meta-sites like Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook. Here Facebook users - almost exclusively the son or daughter - can submit screenshots of the questionable tresspasses. It's no ICanHasCheezburger or FailBlog, but it's worth a few of your precious time-wasting minutes.

The mix of social media and familial relationships is very interesting, but not without real-world correlations like your parents walking in on a party and trying to be cool, not only embarrassing you but changing the dynamic of your own behavior, as though a sanctuary had been violated.

I'm looking forward to that level of awkwardness coming soon from both ends: I've probably less than a year before my parents get interested enough to join and I get liberal enough to let my daughter open an account. Then it's weird all over.

Incidentally, I'm currently dealing with my own Facebook snafu: my account has recently been deleted. Entering my own vanity URL results in an Account not found and my login no longer works. I think I've traced the source of the problem, but am awaiting response from the Facebook Support team. I gain only slight encouragement from positive comments about the help folks I've come across. Wish me luck.

And let me know: do you have or know of cross-generational accounts on Facebook? How's that working? No big deal or out of control?

I Bet You Think This Song is About You...

As many of you already know, facebook finally went with vanity URLs. That means that as opposed to linking with and attempting to remember http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1234567890, you can now do something simple. For example, my new URL is http://www.facebook.com/eric.marschall.

First, if you haven't done this yet, it's quite easy to do. When you log in to facebook for the first time, there is a gray box at the top that prompts you to claim your URL. Click the link. It gives you some suggestions and the "more" option that opens a text field so you can choose your own.

They will warn you, but allow me to as well: Once you do this, once you claim your URL, that URL will be forever tied to that account. You cannot change it. So please, choose wisely. I'm sure Facebook is already dealing with thousands of emails with text to the effect of: "I meant to put HuttFace as a Star Wars fan, but...." Choose carefully. Take your time.

Second, if you haven't done this yet - Do it now!

It's not every day a land grab comes up like this. This is Branding 101 for your name and your business. This is search engine results oriented. Reports were that 500,000 names were snagged in the first 30 minutes. Go get yours now.

And after you do, check out this Wired post about some of those that must have proud mothers. Although it looks like facebook nixed www.facebook.com/haywood.jablome, and it doesn't include one I spotted and found rather clever: www.facebook.com/default.aspx

For those of you wondering about your facebook Pages (extension or promotional pages, as I have for EJM Designs Limited), if you have under 1000 fans, vanity URLs will be available for those pages in 2 weeks.

So how'd you fair? Did you get your URL? Are you waiting? Has someone squatted on it? Do you really just not care all that much? Comments want to hear from you.

World's Largest Snowball Fight: Epic Fail

As the Sioux City Journal (?) reported, organizer Mike Basak of the University of Wisconsin-Madison tried to trump Michigan Technological University's 2006 record snowball fight involving 3,600 attendees.

Hey, more than 4,000 people joined the Facebook group! Only it was just a couple hundred that showed up. Reasons given were that it was too cold or there was a basketball.

Of course Mike, a freshman, should've been tipped off by his senior year Facebook group experience where 15 people joined "Hey Totally TP Michelle Oplatki's House Cause She Broke Up With Me" but he was the only one to show up to her house. That's if you don't count Michelle's dad, already on the porch with a shotgun.

The real life lesson here, while not uplifting, is that much of the world is well aware that some people already flaunt verbal commitment. Online gives them even more distance as in "I didn't even say anything, just clicked something on a whim."

Which returns me, yet again, to a theme that is apparently going to - rightfully - run through this blog. Technology is good for us. Web sites and search engine optimization and usability and social networks just...work for us. But it's not just a game. It's not just numbers and avatars and network connections. Every link is a person. And if we don't get off our asses and use this technology as a tool to connect in the real world, we will inevitably fall into a recursive pattern of leaning back, clicking, and occasionally smiling. But only occasionally.

Because quoting "Why's the carpet all wet Todd?" "I don't know Margo!" is just not that great unless you get that immediate recognition and - hopefully - chuckle.

I'm going to have to start a movie blog.

Snooping Bosses and Social Networks

Since I recently gave a talk about social networks and "What your boss already knows about you," it was interesting to see yet another article on the topic today, this one on MSNBC entitled One in five bosses screens applicants' Web lives.

Unfortunately, MSNBC does not appear to have their house in order:



What the article was probably about, if you are unable to glean from the title, is that more an more employers are researching their employees, easily finding them through MySpace or Facebook or LinkedIn, and sometimes taking them to task over what they find. NY Times wrote about the trend a little over a year ago, but the behavior has been around as long as social networks have been in existence. People are simply starting to notice.

Teachers, Managers, and police officers are getting canned by putting something online, attached to their profile, that someone does not like. And it's not just current employees. Employers are screening prospective employees as well, running ego searches to see what they can find out there about the people they might hire. Colleges are in on the game too, keeping an eye on the MySpace and Facebook and Twitter and YouTube social worlds of high school kids to make sure they are actually the right material. High school teachers are monitoring their students, parents their kids.

What are they looking for? What would they be looking for? Activities from underage drinking to drug use or foolish drunken photos or inappropriate pictures containing sex or nudity or "Hey that's me stealing that street sign! LOL!!1"

It shouldn't come as a surprise, nor should there be any outrage about it. If you put something on the internet where anyone can see it, then why get upset when the "wrong" person looks at it?

Unfortunately, when we're discussing employers who do not have to give an official excuse to an applicant, the line of fairness can be crossed. Imagine the following scenario: The HR Director of a large IT company, a staunch liberal with little patience for anything that is not, comes across the blog of his most qualified candidate. And that candidate spent July through November blogging about how the Democrats were going to ruin America. Even though company policy is to keep politics out of the office, the HR Director throws the resume in the trash.

Is that fair? No. But I'm certain it happens on a regular basis.

The crux of this whole discussion is that if you are out there, if you are trying to get a job or hold on to a job or get into college and are under or potentially under any sort of scrutiny, there are a couple things you should do. Right now.

• Do an ego search, entering your name into a couple different search engines. With and without quotes. Include nicknames, switch it up with a middle initial. This is what the prospective employer or school will be doing.
• If you find anything out there that you are not comfortable with everyone seeing, you should probably try to get rid of it.
• You know if you have a MySpace or Facebook. Get in there and clean up your space like you're having company over. Once it's seen, it can't be unseen.
• If you have a blog that could be found offensive by language or images or subject or politics, strip your name or identifiers from it. Use a pseudonym.

Is it fair that you may have to distance yourself from what you consider yourself, that you may have to hide your beliefs behind a pen name? No. But life's not fair. You have two choices here: get accepted, get hired, keep your job, or risk not.

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Getting this journey off to the right start.



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