Popularity on the Internet: E-mail this post!
The Onion, the satirical news outlet, launched its newspaper here in Washington, DC today. Finally, the nation’s capital has journalistic integrity!
When I received a copy last evening (today’s news yesterday – I love it!) a front page headline caught my attention. It is:”‘Most E-Mailed’ List Tearing New York Times‘ Newsroom Apart,” which of this posting I could not find on the parody site.
The gist of this silly missive is that Times staffers vie for a spot on their site’s most e-mailed list since it connotes popularity of their work if people invite others to read their articles. In the farce story, columnist Maureen Dowd allegedly makes up “cutesy names” for government officials all day and nearly two dozen staffers — including John Burns, a Pulitzer Prize winning Baghdad correspondent — want to work at the Home & Garden and Travel desks since such topics are inherently full of “click and send” qualities.
This funny piece provides interesting commentary applicable for blogging whether it is for personal, political, journalistic, or business purposes. Web surfers tend to peruse quickly and skim most of the content they come across, and that requires anyone writing content to creatively attract and keep their attention.
Thus, on-line content that attracts people’s attention must serve a purpose and somehow apply to a site’s audience. When appropriate wittiness and humor are useful, but commitment to accuracy should never wane. Even if all Ms. Dowd did throughout her work day was sitting around nicknaming politicos, she still must adhere to standards. Anyone or organization that blogs must also follow standards, or their credibility is at peril. Yes, I know that this sounds elementary, but these facts are important.
If bloggers decide to attract readers through creative and amusing writing, success typically requires commitment to this tone. I don’t know about you, but that’s tough. However, flippantly covering serious topics like DC politics successfully is possible — just look at Wonkette. Wallstrip is an excellent example of a blog that injects pop culture into typically staid business news. What are other blogs like these do you read?
Facebook: Where everyone can have a cause
Social networks on the Internet like Facebook serve more than just as places where people can connect with friends (new and old), share gossip, and post pictures of them making a fool of themselves at a kegger last night or from their spring break trip on the beach. People can also use them to start or bolster a real world cause.
While people show their early support for 2008 presidential candidates in groups like "One Million Strong for Barack" and "ABH: Anyone But Hillary," there are more focused niche groups where organizers rally support and organize specific real world action.
For instance, Vice President Dick Cheney is speaking at Brigham Young University's commencement ceremonies later this month, but not everyone is happy with this speaker choice despite the conservative leanings of the school's community. Besides voicing opposition in the student newspaper, a group on Facebook was created to serve as an organization point. The social network provides a venue where people who share similar feelings can vent and plan, but the university has no control and likely no jurisdiction over it. Group leaders have kept members informed on their progress on obtaining permission from the university to protest Mr. Cheney, and after approval was granted the group was used as a bulletin board for organizing the event. Further, links to news coverage of the greater opposition and debate through comments are available there.
It'll be interesting to see if people use the groups for politicians as places to spur real world action and host vibrant forums for debates and information gathering and sharing like the anti-Cheney at BYU group since these groups provide a way for politicians to tap into a significant chunk of the overall passive young voter demographic. The fact that many young people who are otherwise not active are joining politically focused groups since they see that their friends join is a potential harbinger of social networks' future influence in drumming up support from the young. In a sense when people see a group on their friend's profile, their friend is endorsing the group's mission — like electing a certain politician.
On a related note, alumni of math, science, and technology focused high school program in the Houston area created a group to show their support for a popular teacher who was applying for the headmaster position over the program. In fact, many of the group members graduated high school more than five years ago. Although the headmaster applicant has a Facebook profile (and is a member of this group), it is likely that the school district administration is oblivious to the group and won't allow it to sway its decision in either way, but politicos and organizations in many cases cannot ignore such groups since people use them to spur real world action.
When it comes to social network groups, it is very important to note that in this realm an individual, group, or organization has little or no control over them unless they create them. Even if an individual or organization launches a group, their control is constrained to whatever the network allows. Thus, those who want to venture into social network groups should remember what Todd wrote concerning the recent spamming on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign site. He said, "If campaigns are going to play in these social communities they need to understand the rules and respect the culture."
Link Roundup 4/3/2007
(1) Drinks with Dell
Jeff Jarvis, who has a bit of a history with Dell, went and had drinks with the Dell team in Austin. In this great post, he recaps the steps Dell has taken to rebuild itself after the Jarvis-lead Dell Hell mess two years back.
(2) MySpace Will Hold Presidential Primary
TechCrunch has the scoop on the MySpace Presidential primary that will be held in January of 2008. I’ve signed up for like 5 accounts over the years for various projects so I assume I get to vote 5 times. Awesome. I predict a victory by Ron Paul.
(3) Site Review: Tommy2008 And Thoughts To Guide Your Online Campaign
Mike Turk takes the scapel to another Republican Presidential campaign website. Turk deserves credit for coming up with creative ways of saying “this website is kind of horrible” over and over again. Sample quote: “If Rudy’s site, and Tancredo’s site spent a wild drunk night together, Tommy’s page would be the illegitimate offspring.”
(4) 10 Things You Can Do with Mixed Media RSS
Cool post by Marshall Kirkpatrick of Splashcast, which is at the top of my list of cool web aps I haven’t had time to play with yet. Here’s the elevator sentence on Splashcast: “Today, we’re the only company that provides a way for you publish a channel of mixed media content (video, photos, audio and more) that’s subscribable by RSS and can be displayed in an embeddable player.”
(5) Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to be convinced about marketing on Second Life
HP executive Eric Kintz provides a nice breakdown of some of the flaws with Second Life as a marketing platform.
4 Sites that Need a Makeover…Now!
We've all seen them: websites that are part of our daily web-surfing routines that have less-than-stellar layouts, designs, or functionality. Sites like this really get on my nerves, as they often have key information that I can't find elsewhere, so I am forced to look at them on a regular basis. Here's a list of some of my least favorite major sites on the web and things they can do to instantly improve user experiences.
Web 3.0?
Don't ask me what exactly web 3.0 is, but Jason Vallery has a good summary of the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media meeting held last week in Boulder, CO, where web 3.0 was discussed. His summary:
"While the future is far from certain, one thing is for sure. The future of social media and “web 3.0″will be focused around two key areas. Mobility and search. Developers needs to come up with better ways to get at the information you need and make it simple to do from mobile devices. While some predict the death of sites like Twitter , I think they are ground-breakers in their field. When blogging can become a commodity that is approachable to anyone, and all of that data is well organized and searchable, that is when we can say that web 3.0 has arrived."
And if I had one thing to add: that the data/information sets from a search are all the more mash-able, i.e., in standard formats that enable users to easily mix and combine the data into new information structures and applications. Think Google Maps in 5 years.