John Lacey » Social Media

History: 140 Characters At A Time

John Lacey — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:13:17 +0000

Twitter and the Library of Congress announced Wednesday that every public tweet posted since Twitter started in 2006 will be archived digitally by the federal library.

The purpose, according to a blog post by Library of Congress communications director Matt Raymond, is to document “important tweets” as well as gather information about the way we live through the sheer masses of tweets on the site.

Nothing has made me quite as self-conscious about tweeting as the knowledge that those tweets will be recorded for all of time within the Library of Congress. But I do actually believe in the logic behind the decision. I truly believe that all that collective information tells us a lot about ourselves and each other and deserves to be recorded and studied. There is a part of me that can already imagine the historians and archaeologists of the future doing technological ‘digs’ in the way such professionals have excavated information about the past from artefacts exhumed from the ground.

My concern is that this information may be taken out of the context it was produced within – with it’s particular sense of time and space and audience – and be misconstrued in a way that is currently confined to readings of religious texts. Will some flippant tongue-in-cheek remark made on a sunny Sunday afternoon be used to explain a particular political persuasion? Will some injoke with a close friend be ‘reimagined’ as a grandiose conspiracy theory?

Social networking technologies are an important part of my life, but this blog is primarily concerned with creativity and art and I think there might be a creative lesson in this as well. If you are too preoccupied with what others will think of you, your efforts and your expressions, you’ll never get anything done. (It be might be worthwhile to revisit Nina Simone’s thoughts on this matter.)

And if you’d prefer not to enter the records of the Library of Congress at this time or in this fashion, you’ll have to make your Twitter stream private.

Hide Annoying Facebook Applications In Your News Feed

John Lacey — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:46:19 +0000

I’ve often griped about Facebook. But the truth is once you deny access to 90% of the Facebook applications and hide anything ending with ‘Ville’ from your news feed, it gets back to being friends sharing thoughts and images with each other. And that is something I can appreciate.

Hide Annoying Facebook Applications In Your News Feed
You can’t control which applications your friends are using. But that doesn’t mean you should be notified every time they find a sad virtual animal walking across their virtual farm…

Simply move over the offending item in your news feed. You will see in the top right hand corner the word “Hide” will appear. Click on “Hide”. You will then be given the opportunity to either hide items from a particular person or those that relate to a particular application. Simply do this for each application you wish to remove from your news feed.

Check Your Application Settings
With a new year upon us it is worthwhile doing a quick spring clean of the Facebook applications that have access to your account.

Go to the “Settings” menu at the top of the screen and click on “Application Settings.” From here you are given the ability to sort the applications in different ways.

If there are any applications that you tried out for 30 seconds before deciding they weren’t for you, simply hit the little ‘x’ beside the application name. You will be prompted to confirm this action or cancel. (You are also given an opportunity to give the application a rating out of five stars to let other people know what you thought of it. This is optional.)

Are Online Friends “Real Friends”?

John Lacey — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:49:41 +0000

Are online friends “real friends”?

I was a little amused that Plaxo (an online calendar/address book/organiser service) sent me an email to let me know that somebody I knew had joined their service. I clicked on the link and was presented with the following options.

You can choose between Business Network, Family or Friend. Though the suggested text beside ‘Friend’ is more than a tad condescending, especially for what is essentially a service for connecting and sharing information online.

Your real life friends. (Not your “social networking friends”)

But wait, there’s still more…!

Further down on the same screen:

Pulse is for real relationships. Please do not spam people you don’t know with unwelcome connection requests.

How do you know if a request is ‘unwelcome’ before you send it? Isn’t that the point of the exercise, to give the other person the opportunity to accept or deny the request at their discretion?

I hear the expression ‘IRL friends’ all the time. I understand the desire to differentiate between those relationships in daily life and those that exist online. I understand that there are different dimensions and dynamics to both. What I struggle with though is the implication that friendships formed online are in some way inferior, trivial or ‘unreal.’ If anything, I tend to think these relationships can be much more meaningful to the extent that they’re based on shared passions, interests and beliefs, rather than just the stuff of circumstance – a shared city, workplace, demographic.

Psychology aside, I do worry about the longevity of a web based service that would begrudge such relationships. As it is my friend, the new user of that service, didn’t fit neatly into any of the categories provided and I sort of gave up and closed the window. I don’t really use Plaxo anyway…

The Shitty First Draft and Social Media

John Lacey — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:29:21 +0000

I was surprised recently to visit the section of my local library about writing and writers to discover a book I had never seen there before. To make matters even more exciting it was an author I had heard Merlin Mann refer to in a speech he gave with John Gruber. So for the last week or so I’ve been eagerly reading Anne Lamont’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. What a beautiful book this is! I was impressed by the rich sense of humour Anne imbues into everything – even her deeply held religious beliefs. I was impressed by how much practical instruction she offered on the subject of writing. What really surprised me though was how thoroughly the book lives up to its title; I’m learning at least as much about life as I am learning about writing, perhaps more.

One of the central concepts to Anne’s teachings on writing is something she calls the ‘Shitty First Draft.’ She explains:

For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page.

Infact the concept is not that far removed from the Morning Pages described in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. The idea is to suspend your judgment and just get something – anything – down on the page. You can edit something later, you can’t edit nothing. This is a discipline I am still working on developing. For the most part the things I’ve written have been short stories, articles and blog posts and traditionally I would edit while I write. Attempting much larger projects has seemed extraordinarily daunting to me. Last November I attempted NaNoWriMo (The National Novel Writing Month) and after writing two completely unrelated thousand word pieces I was ready to assume the fetal position on the floor. I quickly abandoned NaNoWriMo.

I’m hoping that with my current project I’ll be able to chunk the work into pieces and focus on smaller parts without becoming overwhelmed by the scale of the whole. It’s just a mind trick, but somehow working on 1000-2000 words per day seems more acheviable to me than 50,000 in a month. I’m going to suspend my disbelief and just write. I will figure out how they all fit together later. That is what editing is for.

The other tenet of both the Shitty First Draft and the Morning Pages is that the work is not seen by anybody but the author.

I have been a great champion of social media – Twitter, especially – so it surprises me a little to admit that I am now walking away from it. For me the temptation to share ideas with the masses via social media (before they are fully formed) is too great. I am working to create a little sanctuary where I can explore any creative whim I possess without opening myself up to a lot of criticism. Also on a more personal note I have come to realise the part Twitter plays in my procrastination. I spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself on Twitter and soliciting sympathy from others. So for the time being I am taking a break from it.

Here’s to many, many Shitty First Drafts!

Facebook Statuses At A Glance

John Lacey — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:29:31 +0000

What follows is primarily for the benefit of Cynthia.

After you log into Facebook by default you will see the ‘News Feed.’ This is just an aggregated overview of recent items about your Facebook friends. This is just an overview and the results are somewhat arbirtrary.

In the top left hand corner of the screen you will see a number of options that let you filter the information in other ways. You can sort by the networks you’re a part of (in this instance, Australia because I am Australian), by recent photographs, links and status updates.

To see recent status updates, simply click on that option. You’ll be presented with recent updates from your friends, starting with the most recent ones.

If you get to the bottom of the page and want to see even older updates, simply click on ‘Older Posts.’

If one of your friends posts so prolifically that they’re pushing other people’s updates out of view, you can hover the mouse over the corner of their update and select the ‘hide’ option.

If you decide you’d like to show their updates in your feeds again, simply click ‘Edit Options’ [in the same bar that 'Older Posts' appears (see above)] and select the users you’d like to include.

I hope this helps. If you have any more questions please let me know!

Fight Club: Social Versus Traditional Media

John Lacey — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:07:11 +0000

Why can’t we all just get along?

I recently wondered if early social media adopters were antisocial, though perhaps users have reason to be suspicious of traditional media ‘spin’ when it comes to their beloved social media services.

This weekend the fascination Australian traditional media outlets have with Twitter reached saturation levels. The refrain? It went something like this:

Twitter only has six million users.
It’s no Facebook.

Nobody is sure how it is making money.
It’s somewhat reminiscient of the ‘dot com’ boom/crash.

Why would anybody use such a service?
You’re boring. Nobody cares.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Richard Glover must be the service’s greatest critic (in journalistic circles, at least). He suggests that Twitter is a fad. He assures us that nobody had heard of it yesterday, and that ‘Tomorrow Twitter will be dead.’ He even goes as far as to suggest that:

We used to have a name for what is called “Twittering.” It was called “narcissitic personality disorder.”

Er… a bit like having your own vanity opinion column in a Newspaper, Mr. Glover?

Where does all this traditional media hostility originate from? Rather curiously it seems that answers can be found elsewhere in the very same publication.

In the Good Weekend magazine, which accompanies The Sydney Morning Herald, Will Leitch relays his experiences talking to Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams in their San Francisco office. In this article Leitch makes an astonishing admission. He writes:

You can forgive journalists their Twitter obsession. If you haven’t noticed, we’re in an economic clusterphooey of historic proportions, and many analysts are blaming the media’s failure, in particular, to create info-sharing services like Twitter.

This seems to be an opinion shared by one of Twitter’s most followed and celebrated users, Stephen Fry. In an interview with BBC Radio he said:

If people want to announce their new this or their new that, they’re going “I’m not going to do an interview, I’m not going to sit in the Dorchester for seven days having one interviewer after another come to me, I’m just going to Tweet it, and point them to my website and forget the press”.

And the press are already struggling enough – God knows they’ve already lost their grip on news to some extent. If they lose their grip on comment and gossip and being a free PR machine as well, they’re really in trouble.

So naturally they’re simultaneously obsessed because they use it (as it fills up their column inches) but they’re also very against it.

So you’ll get an increasing number of commentators going “Aren’t you just fed up with Twitter? Oh, if Stephen Fry tells me what he’s having for breakfast one more time, I think I’ll vomit.”

They really will have a big go at it because it attacks them, it cuts them out.

Clearly Twitter isn’t a fad. It is a completely new way of distributing information. Previously traditional media had the monopoly on broadcasting information to a significant number of people.

Twitter is increasingly becoming the shortest route between people and what they desire to know. The responses are coming from people users already trust – indeed people users have actively selected to interact with – and from people who know them. This distinction is important. You could argue that my friend on Twitter might not be as qualified to review a movie as a professional movie reviewer, however my friend on Twitter already knows a lot about me and my movie preferences. Similarly I know a lot about this friend, I am already aware of their movie preferences and what biases might be present in the information they provide me with.

But even more than this, I will likely receive many responses from many friends about a single query. This helps me contextualise the information I receive further. This is a far cry from traditional media where the dominant opinion is often the only opinion.

Perhaps this is really is a question of survival of the fittest.

Are Early Adopters Antisocial?

John Lacey — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 05:38:43 +0000

Tee Morris, co-author of Podcasting For Dummies and author of the forthcoming All A Twitter, has started releasing a collection of talks he has given about businesses failing to be authentic when it comes to using so-called ‘social media’ services.

In his five part video podcast series of talks titled Anti-Social Media, he cites many examples of businesses who do not understand the ‘social’ aspect of ‘social media.’ From automated Direct Messages on Twitter to misleading blogs as advertising vechicles, this is a veritable ‘what not to do’ guide for businesses finding their feet online.

One of the most interesting observations he makes in the first installment of Anti-Social Media is about the very people who currently consume blogs, podcasts and social media services. Tee explains:

With success, the people who have been there since the beginning are worried about social media going ‘mainstream.’ They’re terrified of social media going ‘mainstream.’ The problem is that’s what we want. We want social media to go mainstream.

You always know when a social media service you use has appeared in mainstream media because people are talking about it. Both on the service itself and in other places too. There seems to be a mixture of giddy anticipation and trepidation among hardcore users when the likes of Jay Leno, Whoopi Goldberg and Ellen DeGeneres start making mention of Twitter.

The initial thought, “Finally people get it,” might be replaced by another, “Do they get it? Are they just jumping on the latest bandwagon?” I mean Barrack Obama was a prolific tweeter… up until he got elected. For all their mentions it seems unlikely that Jay, Whoopi and Ellen are devoting much time to the practice.

Even a close personal friend of mine who is largely bewildered as to why she is on Twitter feels a great compulsion to be on Twitter after a publication she regularly reads wrote about the service.

Though even this is largely inconsequential since Twitter – like all social media services – operates on an opt-in basis. Lots of people were using the service in the kinds of antisocial inauthentic ways Tee describes long before the extra media attention. You were under no obligation to ‘follow’ them then and you certainly aren’t required to follow them now. Indeed you have the luxury of a ‘block’ button should you think it necessary.

The flip side of this phenomena is that more new people might mean more interesting people too. Sure they might fumble their way through at first, but they’ll learn by doing. We have to remember we were all beginners at one point. (I find the notion of the n00b to be really disingenuous). Our social media experiences will be enriched by a greater diversity of people within our various social networks.

Anti-Social Media is available from Tee Morris’ website or as part of the Image That! Studios Podcast on iTunes.

The Syntax Of Twitter

John Lacey — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:13:41 +0000

John is as John does. Or something.

I’ll never forget the words of my year ten English teacher Ms. Beddoe. She wrote:

John is a fluent, careful writer.

This actually puzzled me more than anything that had appeared on a school report before. Fluent seemed like a wonderful compliment though I wasn’t sure if ‘careful’ was a good thing or not. Was I unable to take literary risks? Was I too bound to convention?

Perhaps I was. To think it only took me eleven years – and a humble status update service called Twitter – to reach this conclusion. Twitter is one of those inexplicable things in life that seems utterly pointless to the uninitiated. Yet to the true believers (myself included) its value seems so obvious. It poses one simple question: What are you doing? You respond in 140 characters. Of course in any given moment the question could just as easily be:

What are you thinking?
What are you wearing?
What excites you?
What frustrates you?
What inspires you?
Who do you love?
What is trying your patience?

The question could be anything, really, and your only constraint is the number of characters with which to respond. In my English classes I was taught that constraints were actually helpful, that form allowed you to concentrate on content. We analysed the poems of Robert Frost and Robert Gray. I laboured over a one stanza sonnet for hours and somehow by the end of that process it made it feel even more satisfying. Certainly this 140 character constraint was an invitation to be more concise. In a world where people are always complaining they don’t enough time this chunk of information is still easily digestible.

Yet the true power of Twitter is even more subtle. You are not merely your job title. Or your martial status. Our identities are a culmination of a lot of intricate factors – interests, beliefs, desires, values, subject matters – and Twitter allows us to disseminate all kinds of information, from the trivial to the profound. Every piece of information I have about you helps my understanding of you. If I know you in a professional capacity, I will know what you do. If you sell life insurance I will know that. However I might not know that you are a Michael Jackson fan. Indeed there may never be an appropriate context for you to make mention of it. Lots of people will tell you that there are things you should or shouldn’t do on Twitter. However I maintain the value of the stream of information is that it is presented ‘as is’ without judgment or prejudice. The responsibility is on the follower to opt-in and opt-out as they see fit, the only obligation the Twitterer has (in my opinion) is to be authentic. Social media is an invitation to be yourself.

The biggest stumbling block I feel I had with Twitter was my desire to impose a syntax and structure on the tweets I made. At the time I would see my tweets started with @johnlacey in my feed. The end result of this observation was basically that I took to talking about myself in the third person.

@johnlacey is going to bed.
@johnlacey is listening to Dinah Washington.
@johnlacey is as @johnlacey does. Or something.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Though what I found was that people would respond to the same observation (that I was listening to Dinah Washington for example) in different ways depending on how I presented that information. If I said I was listening to Dinah Washington all it really signified was my ears’ proximity to a recording of that particular artist. Other people might reply with, “Oh, I was listening to her earlier” (if they replied at all). As an observation it was too matter-of-fact. It said nothing about my relationship to the music (whether I liked it or not), it didn’t speak of my motivations for listening to it. There was no colour, just a chronology of events. It is the difference between an Encyclopedia presenting the ‘facts of the matter’ and a memoir of someone who was caught up in the situation itself. What was missing was personality. As much as your interests and beliefs and hopes and dreams, language – the very words you use – help construct a picture of who you are.

If you have a penchant for sarcasm and flippancy (and I know I do!), I want to know about it. If you’re caring and earnest I want to know that too. Certain forms of communication lend themselves better to these understanding than others. Remember you are not bot. (At least I hope you’re not. Perhaps you’re a search engine spider. In which case I meant no offense, please carry on indexing this site as you see fit.) Be yourself, express yourself. Happy tweeting!

Should My Business Get Involved With Twitter?

John Lacey — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:44:51 +0000

Whether businesses jump on the social media bandwagon or not won’t affect other people’s ability to talk about that company online.

Infact I was listening to a podcast on BlogTalkRadio featuring Susan Powter and she just slammed a very expensive hotel that she referenced by name for kicking her out for using lavendar oil room in her room. (I’ve never heard anything quite like it. Well I’ve heard angry people before, but not in a podcast.)

So the question is really do you want to have the opportunity to take part in that communication process (and potentially, hopefully, difuse frustrations with your customer base and avoid further bad publicity) or do you want to go down the old path of “Your call is important to us (okay, not really) please hold for another 3-6 hours.”

I guess I would hope with the speed of technological innovation people would have a better understanding that new technologies are constantly being developed and are worthy of consideration on an individual basis.

If I was an employer, I guess my primary concerns would be the investment of time social media requires and just establishing some guidelines about how to use it (when/how to communicate with disgruntled customers, what you can and cannot comment on).

On Twitter, especially, there is a great understanding that it is peer-to-peer communication and that businesses in and of themselves can’t “talk” by themselves. Often a corporate twitter account will be used just to launch official business announcements, or a specific ‘tweet’ might include the name of the person responding (@BigPondTeam – an Australian ISP company – use this approach). Alternatively many people use their own personal account and interact on that level. If you discuss the 12seconds.tv video status update service for example you’ll get a quick response from their CEO Sol Lipman.

So while I can appreciate that there is a learning curve involved and that (certainly in larger companies) protocols need to be put in place, I really think if businesses are scared of talking to their customers they probably won’t last very long anyway.

There are benefits for early adoption too. Take Stephen Fry for example. Certainly he already had a profile and was beloved, but his involvement on twitter has taken him to a new level of cult status. (He even sells Twitter themed tshirts from his website.) Twitter lovers appreciate when someone in their world embraces the technology in the way they have. Politicians earn renewed respect when they use these same technologies in an authentic way. I constantly see people quite excited that somebody else in their lives actually “gets it.”

John Lacey » Social Media

History: 140 Characters At A Time

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