social network sprinkling

Content allocation for the many social networks is a demanding chore. User-generated content means users deciding what content to share or produce, and where to put it.

Most of us hardcore Web Twenty instigators are far flung, like imagination, into the regions of multiple socnet associations. I mean: we belong to more than one social network.

I beta tested over 100 (think of all the profiles of me that are out there now) social network and tool communities. I have time and interest to use only a few on a regular basis, while others are used for various sporadic purposes.

I liken this to "sprinkling". Your content gushing is like a hose. When you just had one blog, for example, you poured all your genius and personality into that one web object. Then, as you learned of and experimented with other online social media and tool communities, you expanded your presencing and productions into other venues.

Instead of a single rushing flood of art and intuitions being directed into a MySpace, Blogger, or WordPress blog, you now find your loyalties divided. You have little pockets of information and art all over the web. Your profiles proliferate. Your conversations are scattered.

You now sprinkle your sayings and doings over a landscape of multiple social networks. Perhaps most of your time and energy has moved off your blog, and moved into Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, or Identi.ca

You now belong to, have accounts at, such sites as Facebook, YouTube, flickr, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Mashable, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Seesmic, Spock, FreeBase, Mahalo, Ning, Instructables, Last.fm, Pandora, Lifehacker, Ustream, Justin.tv, and other online communities or web-based tool sites.

Some socnets are for conversations, others are for creating and displaying things created, or managing information like bookmarks or favorite web pages. You most likely use one channel for everyday communications, one for professional purposes, one for creativity, and yet another for news or technical advice.

When it comes to status update micro-blogging, if you have joined a few communities, it's hard to know how to allocate your content. That's how you must view even your trivial personal asides: as content that is freely, voluntarily contributed to conversations, art collectives, or the information pool.

The more you put into a social media site, the more you enhance it with your personality, expertise, or entertainment. You add value to the online community, if you're sufficiently altruistic and caring. You add value by being yourself, expressing your views, linking to your music or art, being funny, pointing others to cool sites, sharing beta invites, or whatever you do.

How do you do it? How do you spread the wealth of your unique character and insights?

Do you think, "Well, I haven't said much on Pownce lately, I'd better go post a link or a message note today."?

Or do you just play with an application, learn how it works, for potential client use, then abandon it, to concentrate on the ones you like better?

Or do you have an official, thought-out social media strategy, for yourself as an individual? I'm assuming that as a marketing agency, you always plot out a definite series of social media paths for your company and your clients.

What is your personal social media strategy?

What sites have you abandoned? What is your focus (or specialties)? Are you occupying multiple niches? Are you all personal or all professional, exclusively? Do you use different avatars, nicknames, or personas at various socnets?

Have you done a value analysis on them? What social media do you wish existed, but does not?

What deficiencies do you see in social networks and tool communities? How could your favorite social media be improved? What is your biggest complaint about the sites or the members?

Obama internet vs. mainstream media

By not sending his text message Friday night, about his VP pick, Obama built suspense, frenzy, and the public's perception of him being more technologically tuned-in. He got the cable TV news anchors to wave their Blackberries in the air. He got the phrase "text message" to be repeated over and over again.

This rubbed McCain's face in the plate of "I don't know how to use computers".

I think it's smart for the Obama campaign to portray John McCain as a Luddite techno-phobe who lives in 8 fancy caves. If you can't turn on a computer, send an email, comment on a blog, or Google a search term, how can you run a technological nation?

I'm not political.

I don't endorse or support any political candidate, and never will. I have a different orientation to social transformation and problem-solving.

However, Obama's use of technology is of relevance to web usability, social media, and digital communications.

The mainstream media (MSM) has for decades controlled and inordinately influenced most of the news received by public receptacles, i.e., news consumers, people who watch TV, listen to the radio, and read newspapers and magazines.

Now we have alternative message channels: the internet, web, and blogosphere.

Now we have messaging nodes called cell phones that can text news, conversations, and information from one individual to another. As the average person is now empowered to originate, transmit, and re-transmit messages, politicians who tap into this new media of digital communication will gain a certain competitive advantage, which may help them win.

Use of technology, text messaging, blogs, social networks, and mobile computing may not be the leading criteria of a suitable political leader. But it is mandatory as a qualification for leading the USA, inventor of the internet and pioneering king of the web revolution.

Web and digital technology may be one of the few remaining areas in which America can compete, as we see our manufacturing, assembling, testing, and other industries moved offshore to potentially adversarial countries like China. Bloggers must get better at blogging, web designers at web design, IT guys at IT development.

Obama gets it. He deliberately thumbed his nose at the MSM.

By not announcing his VP pick last night, on a Friday night, he ruined the evenings of many cable TV news anchors, newspaper publishers, and right-wing radio talk show hosts. Substituting speculation and random opinions for news (something they accuse bloggers of doing, btw), the mainstream media scrambled, and fumbled, and looked outmoded, and outdone.

Obama on Ustream
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/
live-campaign-coverage

Obama on Twitter
http://twitter.com/BarackObama



Obama's Twitter message re Biden VP:


Announcing Senator Joe Biden as our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on http://BarackObama.com

about 10 hours ago from web


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managing systems not people on Shear Genius

On a recent episode of Tabatha's Salon Takeovers show on Shear Genius (Bravo channel), "Ten Salon", the proprietor of the salon was obsessively reliant on a cultish hair stylist management training. Kwana, the owner, represses her anxiety by slavish, inhumane adherence to the training philoophy, rules, and forms.

Tabatha takes over the salon and decides to "change everything." She wants the stylists to have "spirit and love, not scripts".

"Ten Salon" episode on Shear Genius, Tabatha's Salon Takeovers

http://video.bravotv.com/
player/?id=268756#videoid=285324

A married couple owned Ten, but Kwana, the female, was a stylist and also acted as CEO, it was her dream. Her shakey voice sounds slightly psychotic, and she is both compulsive and self-defeating, claiming "you can't manage people, you manage systems", as a defense of her robotic and dysfunctional management style.

They were $50,000 behind in their store rent, and had mortgaged their home twice. Beans, rice, and tuna were their dining staples.

How odd the cut shop looked, resembling a botox clinic or sterile industrial lab, with her shy and uncomfortable husband Richard lurking awkwardly like a dad watching his son's soccer game, and being distracted by good looking single moms breezing in and out of of his field of vision.

Kwana's salon management system, which was probably some expensive internet scam job, with cultish operations, is a complete failure, but she resists awareness of this saying illogically, "it's hard to see the system uprooted, since it's worked so well thus far".(!!!!)

She tried to save face, by blaming the employees, rather than the system that substitutes manuals, protocols, and scripts for natural human interactions.

It's the exact opposite of blogs.

Blogs are journals of people expressing themselves spontaneously, freely, humanly, naturally, unexpectedly, transparently, honestly, and humorously. Stiff, scripted, mercenary communications don't go over well in the blogosphere.

Tabatha is a smart manager, inspiring speaker, and professional superstar. She has a masterful sense of business and an intense approach to the art of hair styling. Bloggers, business executives, and artists of all types can learn much from Tabatha.

online music marketing insights to Evolt

Today, I responded to an email message posted to the Evolt! web developers list.

Someone asked who was using social media, and what their opinions were about the value of social media, from a web developer perspective. One of the responders was a woman who happens to be a musician.

She mentioned how she uses YouTube, MySpace Music, and other socnet tool communities.

Here is my reply to her, posted to the Evolt! list members.

@Erika - I'd love to discuss online music marketing via social media, with you, as a fellow musician.

Online socnet marketing insights:

Playlist.com which provides embed players for your own original music (I pasted in my Last.fm mp3 URLs, since my band, Str8 Sounds, was not yet in their system),

MySpaceMusic is the top music site where you interact with your band idols and your avid fans and your fellow struggling musicians,

Last.fm enables me to upload discreet albums w/cover art,

Blogger provides a reliable, fast, effective platform for a band blog, with multi media displays.

YouTube is where you build your music video library/museum.

Snackr provides a ticker crawl across bottom of browser window alerting you to RSS blog post titles.

Twitter is a powerful, SEO juicey channel for link distribution and insight sharing.

Plurk, Jaiku, Pownce, Identi.ca reinforce and expand your Twitter microblogging universe.

Pownce enables a musician to post mp3s to your constructed community...

and socnets provide massive SEO juice!

I am bursting with experiential insights about social media marketing in the new, non-marketing stylistics. LOL

Fun, effective, fulfilling: Web 2.0 Tool Communities.

It's not really "media" to advertise on, it's social networking to be human with!

online creativity and anonymous critique

There's an old saw (maxim, saying, folk proverb, didactic barb, idiom engine) that can fruitfully guide us all, especially Web workers, who tend to fall into the bottomless hole of perpetual computing:

Make it, then dance to it.

(or)

There's a time to make the music, then a time to stop and listen or dance to the music.

Let that statement melt into your mind for a moment or two.

Most bloggers I know are over-achievers, perfectionists, and workaholics. It's hard to get them, or myself, to slow down, relax, and feel the beauty of the created works, whether that productive output is blog posts, music, poetry, comedy, technical expertise, professional recommendations, or web building.

We need to stop, sometimes, and soak it all in. Keep your critical microscopes handy, but try to enjoy what you've done. Look at it. Listen to it. Laugh at it. Read it. Question it. But mainly: appreciate that you had the time, talent, and strength to do it.

While you Twitter, fellow humans just like you are stepping over land mines, being shot at, kidnapped, molested, damaged, and forced by abuse to being forever insane and humanly broken.

How to step back, calm down, and open your perception to your own work?

By abandoning self. Become someone else for a while. Put your self into the shoes, as they say, of a fan, a friend, or a random other. Go beyond ego, which is just a constructed figment of your body's imagination, and see through unconditioned eyes, hear through unregimented ears.

Listen anonymously, as no one and everyone and someone else.

Look underivatively, as the ghost of the shadow of what used to be you.

Be objective in analysis, but also be new to what you experience.

If you find it difficult to make believe you're not you, then try this: pretend your work was created by not you, but someone else.

Try to imagine (that's the power) that you've never seen or read or heard it before. Psyche yourself up to pretend you're not the person who made it. Evaluate, and enjoy, it as though it were the product of some other person, not you.

I call this technique Anonymous Critique.

It's valid methodology, because most of the visitors to your blog and websites are anonymous strangers, random web surfers, new prospects, future customers, and yet-to-be fans (or foes).

See it, hear it, read it through them.

Read a large quantity of comments people have posted to your blog, or emails you've received regarding your work, and you'll begin to savor the flavor of external perce\ptions.

Anonymous Critique will greatly boost your understanding of the online creativity you struggle so hard to perfect.


NOTE: I'm not referring to "anonymous comments" which are illegitimate, have no place on the web, and tend to be trolls. We see many webless cowards on sites like TechCrunch, who post attacks and resistance, without using a real name or a link to their blog or website. Such anonymous remarks are of absolutely no value, for they are unaccountable "drive-by" smears and idiocy.

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portable jukebox #1

Here's a way to create and share your music playlists with others: Playlist.com

This website has the best usability of almost any I've ever encountered. It's extremely easy to sign up, create an account, start a playlist, search for available mp3s (by artist, song title, or keywords), edit your playlist, and get the embed code to put it on your blog.

You can even change the order of songs, add or delete songs, and the changes take effect quickly. The user interface is simple, bold, and clear. Big buttons, logical progressions, smart design -- this Playlist.com website has it all.

I hurriedly assembled some songs I like, put them in a playlist player, and here it is.

Imagine what a record label might do with this promotional entertainment tool. You can make your own jukebox or radio program or collection of your own music, and transport it to your various blogs and websites.

If you're a musician on MySpace Music, you can add a Playlist player in your Band Details section, by pasting in the player embed code. Now you can let fans of your music hear the songs that inspired you, right on your own MySpace Music profile.

Project Playlist is opening a new world of music sharing. Bands can use it to create portable virtual jukeboxes for fans to spread virally.

Thorstein Veblen and advertising

Again we dip into 1904 for an early industrial age explanation of advertising. According to Thorstein Veblin, the "monopoly of good will" is a way to dominate the minds of customers, to increase your market share.

Not by improving the raw materials, or the manufacturing process, or the product performance, but by outsmarting competitors with clever slogans. A better, but more difficult approach, is to improve the product, then say something creative and smart about how the customer's problem is now solved more efficiently or completely.

Instead, they ignore actual users, and dream up new ways to sell a product they really only know this about: "we need to sell more of it."

"We want you to think of our product in this manner. Why? Because we say so, that's why" is the underlying basis of fabricated hype.

Shape the customer's imagination, redirect the desire, and conquer by psychology!

First in mind. Positioning. Top of mind choice. Automatic purchase reflexology.

Our new marketing is Not Marketing. We reject the emotional trigger theory and seek to return to the Advertising As Information concept.

We the People are influencing each other. We use peer to peer recommendation systems of internet channels like Twitter, blogs, MySpace, and other social networks. Personal credibility, i.e., online reputation, is the value by which the others judge your user or beta tester report.

CEO blogs, and forays into Twitter and other online message sharing communities, are an effective path for letting customers, recruits, and colleagues know more about the essence of your company and its expertise in solving their problems.

True marketing, good advertising, guaranteed viral buzz rests upon the sure foundation of altruism. If you really understand the problem, and genuinely care about those who have the problem, and honestly provide a reasonably priced solution, get your message out there.

Now, an ancient but still valid observation from over a century ago.

The end sought by the systematic advertising of the larger business concerns is such a monopoly of custom and prestige.

This form of monopoly is sometimes of great value, and is frequently sold under the name of good-will, trademarks, brands, etc. Instances are known where such monopolies of custom, prestige, prejudice, have been sold at prices running up into the millions.

The great end of consistent advertising is to establish such differential monopolies resting on popular conviction. And the advertiser is successful in this endeavor to establish a profitable popular conviction, somewhat in proportion as he correctly apprehends the manner in which a popular conviction on any given topic is built up.

The cost, as well as the pecuniary value and the magnitude, of this organized fabrication of popular convictions is indicated by such statements as that the proprietors of a certain well-known household remedy, reputed among medical authorities to be of entirely dubious value, have for a series of years found their profits in spending several million dollars annually in advertisements.

This case is by no means unique.

It has been said, no doubt in good faith and certainly with some reason, that advertising as currently carried on gives the body of consumers valuable information and guidance as to the ways and means whereby their wants can be satisfied and their purchasing power can be best utilized.

To the extent to which this holds true, advertising is a service to the community. But there is a large reservation to be made on this head.

Advertising is competitive; the greater part of it aims to divert purchases, etc., from one channel to another channel of the same general class. And to the extent to which the efforts of advertising in all its branches are spent on this competitive disturbance of trade, they are, on the whole, of slight if any immediate service to the community.

Such advertising, however, is indispensable to most branches of modern industry; but the necessity of most of the advertising is not due to its serving the needs of the community nor to any aggregate advantage accruing to the concerts which advertise, but to the fact that a business concern which falls short in advertising fails to get its share of trade.

Each [business] concern must advertise, chiefly because the others do.


-- Thorstein Veblen
The Theory of Business Enterprise (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904, chapter III)

Thorstein Veblen and blog values

Thorstein Veblen is easily seen to be the source of much of the thinking of Tom Peters, Peter Drucker, and W. Edwards Deming. Veblen was a handsome ladies man, so they say, as well as a radical feminist and politician-hater who refused to vote.

From his thought we see a stronghold of user-centric ideology, a bedrock that all web usability analysis and customer acquisition, loyalty, and word of mouth buzz.

Consider how, compared to the modern business owner, the guild craftsmen of centuries past were more "bloggy", i.e., closer to customers, actively conversing with them, and dependent upon perfection of satisfying user needs.

I could see the neighborhood cobbler as having hundreds of stories to tell his friends and customers. Tales that end up with his hand-made shoes being involved in a positive way, that's what he'd put into his blog. Close communications with friends, colleagues, peers is what social media is all about.

In the older days, when handicraft was the rule

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(52) of the industrial system, the personal contact between the producer and his customer was somewhat close and lasting.

Under these circumstances the factor of personal esteem and disesteem had a considerable play in controlling the purveyors of goods and services. This factor of personal contact counted in two divergent ways:

(1) producers were careful of their reputation for workmanship, even apart from the gains which such a reputation might bring; and

(2) a degree of irritation and ill-will would arise in many cases, leading to petty trade quarrels and discriminations on other grounds than the gains to be got, at the same time that the detail character of dealings between producer and consumer admitted a degree of petty knavery and huckstering that is no longer practicable in the current large-scale business dealings.

Of these two divergent effects resulting from close personal relations between producer and consumer; the former seems on the whole to have been of preponderant consequence.

Under the system of handicraft and neighborhood industry, the adage that "Honesty is the best policy" seems on the whole to have been accepted and to have been true. This adage has come down from the days before the machine's regime and before modern business enterprise.

Under modern circumstances, where industry is carried on on a large scale, the discretionary head of an industrial enterprise is commonly removed

---

(53) from all personal contact with the body of customers for whom the industrial process under his control purveys goods or services. The mitigating effect which personal contact may have in dealings between man and man is therefore in great measure eliminated.

The whole takes on something of an impersonal character. One can with an easier conscience and with less of a sense of meanness take advantage of the necessities of people whom one knows of only as an indiscriminate aggregate of consumers.

Particularly is this true when, as frequently happens in the modern situation, this body of consumers belongs in the main to another, inferior class, so that personal contact and cognizance of them is not only not contemplated, but is in a sense impossible.

Equity, in excess of the formal modicum specified by law, does not so readily assert its claims where the relations between the parties are remote and impersonal as where one is dealing with one's necessitous neighbors who live on the same social plane.

Under these circumstances the adage cited above loses much of its axiomatic force. Business management has a chance to proceed on a temperate and sagacious calculation of profit and loss, untroubled by sentimental considerations of human kindness or irritation or of honesty.

-- Thorstein Veblen

The Theory of Business Enterprise (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904, chapter III)

Deming and business blogophobia

Why would a business that's dictatorial, controlling, and arrogant want a blog?

Business blogs are effective, but not as common as some would for some reason hope. The reason for businesses being sluggish and half-hearted about blogging is clear. It's not the fault of the blog. It's the attitude underlying blogging that some businesses are incompatible with, and cannot conform to, as it is intrinsically alien.

Blogophobic businesses dread contact with the public. They can't deal with sharing the conversation, instead of dominating it. Interaction with real customers is delegated to focus groups and usability persona workshops. Money is their aim, not customer empathy. Selling product is more important than understanding, and solving, customer problems.

Mary Walton's book on W. Edwards Deming, The Deming Management Method, discusses how American business managers rule by fear, which makes even their own subordinates refuse to communicate good ideas to them.

So how could we expect such organizations, who are deaf to their own employees, to get excited about setting up a blog to start conversations with customers?

People are afraid to point out problems for fear they will start an argument, or worse be blamed for the problem.

Moreover, so seldom is anything done to control problems, there is no incentive to expose them. And more often than not, there is no mechanism for problem-solving.

Suggesting new ideas is too risky. People are afraid of losing their raises or promotions, or worse, their jobs. They fear punitive assignments or other forms of discrimination and harassment. They are afraid that superiors will feel threatened and retaliate in some fashion.

In the perception of most employees, preserving the status quo is the only safe course.


-- Mary Walton
The Deming Management Method
(Perigee Books, Putnam Publishing, 1986, p. 72)

Deming taught the ideology of Continuous Improvement. Top management approves and implements change, so that's where the responsibility lies.

Without constant product evolution, based on user-testing and market research, organizations miss lucrative opportunities because they're averse to talking with end users of their products.

No conversation is deemed necessary, for all the outfit wants to say is "Buy my product" and all it wants to hear is "Love your product" as customers rush to buy some more.

Web 2.0 Participatory Social Art

Certainly we are flocking to online communications via blogs, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, del.icio.us, flickr, and the other social networks, which ad agencies like to call "social media".

If we assent to call it "media", meaning a means to transmit, display, explain, broadcast, communicate, share, promote, and collaborate, then what are we putting into it? Just gossip, opinion, debate, flirtation, business, humor, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs?

Web 2.0, meaning websites that you and others can actually do something with, rather than simply stare at and buy things from, enables more than simply talking. We can also make things together. Then try to sell or share them.

Post Secret proved that user generated content is valid, interesting, and financially lucrative. The "unauthor" of the "non-book" of post card art and text just set up a blog (using Blogger like I do), and invited people to contribute content to it. He then selected the best, and published a book of it.

He got rich quickly by doing almost nothing.

Web 2.0 Participatory Social Art can be accomplished by all, but those who pioneer the concept's applications will be well poised to succeed in larger terms than the common crowd of late adaptors.

One way to realize this is to consider the net artists, who used computers and networks to dis-communicate, to compose art in itself, without the cumbersome need for goals, effects, or meaning.

Wikipedia: "net art".

AdaWeb http://adaweb.com/home.shtml

Whitney Portal to Net Art http://artport.whitney.org/

Rhizome at the New Museum http://www.rhizome.org/

A surrealist Dada perspective can serve us well.

One person contributes a random sentence. The next person adds to it, in whatever manner deemed necessary or funny. Someone steps up to the plate and knocks a homerun with a clever new paragraph, ending with an exclamation point! And on and on it goes to the completely unpredictable and abrupt conclusionary statement that ends the "novel" (in the sense of "new", not necessarily "lengthy".).

Starting with an absurd, unexpected, and bizarre opening is a good way to get the fiction ball rolling.

"I thought my love life was over when they amputated my head. How wrong I was, I was soon to discover."

"It finally dawned on me: air is unnecessary."

"Her turpitude was unwhelming me to the point of abstract lethargy, as I slipped into a dizzy pool of relaxation imagery."

"No, you cannot serve the turducken in that vulgar and unseemly manner, I insisted as I reduced my invisibility to a factor of 5."

"Billy was sad to see the little purple pony in the sandbox again. It loved to eat slips of paper with people's names on them, and then they died."


See? It would be abysmally easy to continue such fiction beginnings at those. And, without fanfare or solemn ceremony, Web 2.0 Participatory Social Art has now begun. Again.

Let the analysts of culture argue about boundaries, definitions, and rules. We just merrily make new art with new media and new tools, and care little about the aesthetic theory.

We can also create, with our webcams, 15 second films, then send them to me, and I'll patch them together with a desktop movie editor, and we'll have a viral video to get rich and dreamy on.




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Twitter User Generated Novel

I've been discussing, on this blog and on Twitter, the idea of using Twitter to compose works of literary art. Today Yesterday I started a conversation on how we could create a multi-author novel, how to get it going, how to edit it, how to deal with trolls, and other aspects of collaborative fiction composition.

In the midst of this debate, I composed a short comical novel with another Twitter user, Barry Carlyon, thus providing proof of concept.

To avoid confusion, I've separated that little Twitter collab novel and included it at the end of this post, in red type.

Here are the Twitter think tank replies to my provocations, in forward chronological order. Notice how the very act of discussing this idea on Twitter is a collaborative treatment of how such a collaborative process could occur.




Twitter User-Generated Novel
discussion on Twitter



(Me): If someone makes a Twitter account for a user-generated novel based on random input from other Twitters @ ing it, I'll collaborate on it.


vanhoosear: I'm seriously interested in the Dada Twitter novel. I think it's a GREAT idea!


(Me): Until now, I've focused on composing Twitter poems of several message units, and Twitter novels that were just one Twitter message unit.


David_N_Wilson @vaspersthegrate: The problem is, I think, that someone must edit. Updates protected, I guess...and the novel itself collected in a blog?


(Me): @David_N_Wilson - Edit the user-gen Twitter collab novel? Via one or by all (voting)? An aggregator assembles the novel, but others can also.


barrycarlyon @vaspersthegrate: Agreed, give me a shout if it happens I'll play :-)


@barrycarlyon - Thanks for agreeing to participate in the Twitter user-gen novel. We may fail a few times, but we'll get it right eventually.


(Me): A Twitter user-generated novel would be like a wiki. No single author, by invite only? Could it be sequential with no editing? Depends.


(Me): Would a Twitter novel have to be written in reverse chron? Backwards? So that when you print out the profile page, you get it in order?


Ike Pigott ikepigott @vaspersthegrate - A Twitter novel would have to be reverse chron - and would involve people using hashtags for auto-collation.


Todd Van Hoosear vanhoosear @vaspersthegrate: That would be a fun way to do it, yes!


Barry Carlyon barrycarlyon @vaspersthegrate: If there was a website for it then it would reverse it for you.....but this way means followers read it in order......


Ike Pigott ikepigott @vaspersthegrate - Twitter Novel would be a fictional story taking place in a real-time timeline, from as many perspectives as contributors about.


David_N_Wilson David_N_Wilson @vaspersthegrate: I can tell you from collaborative experiments of the past - if you just leave it open, someone will purposely ruin it.


(Me): @David_N_Wilson - Then the avant garde way to deal with ruination is to include it as footnotes to the main story. LOL


David_N_Wilson David_N_Wilson @vaspersthegrate: That might well be. The problem is, if you don't control the input, you can end up well down the road from the "glitch".


(Me): We could experiment as @barrycarlyon and I just did, created a (so far) 2 Twitter message unit novel.


(Me): Or simultaneous Twitter novels morphing adaptively amongst inner circle participants. Trolls are simply ignored. Assembled off Twitter.


Michael Wiik mwiik @vaspersthegrate: Why not write the novel in TinyPaste, then assemble with twitter?


(Me): Who will step up to the plate, and is so bored this actually makes sense, to solve the Twitter user-gen novel methodology? Get rich fast!


(Me): I will assemble into a Pluperfecter blog post my remarks and your @ replies on this subject of the Twitter user-generated novel soon. Reply.


Michael Wiik mwiik @vaspersthegrate: Recalling the Bynars from ST:TNG and how they would buffer conversation: http://tinyurl.com/6c8wue


Michael Wiik mwiik @vaspersthegrate: Host a party, capture guests' conversation via something like Jott -> Twitter, insert into novel





Twitter User-Generated Novel
proof of concept




Barry Carlyon barrycarlyon @vaspersthegrate The man said 'There will be a novel and it will be grand". He then sat down and turned to the right.


(Me): @barrycarlyon - As he moved, his elbow tipped over a Hungarian china cup of Folgers coffee, spilling it into his Hewlett-Packard keyboard.


Barry Carlyon barrycarlyon @vaspersthegrate: The HP laptop began to whirl loudly as it absorbed the coffee, the screen became brighter and then


(Me): @barrycarlyon - [That previous tweet to you was written in the product placement prose style of William Gibson. Which I abhor. LOL]


Barry Carlyon barrycarlyon @vaspersthegrate Smooth :-) I will have to get myself sponsored too!

Barry Carlyon barrycarlyon @vaspersthegrate the man was distraught at the loss of his HP machine, so purchased Mac Book Air from Mr Jobs himself.

Technorati blog claim

This post is devoted to completing my Pluperfecter blog claim at Technorati. I have chosen the post claim method, which means I must put code into a post (see below) and publish it, to start Technorati analytics.

Every blog should enter the Technorati tracking system, for it is the premiere service. You will gain access to tag clouds (display your post tags and weights them by frequency: the more a tag is used, the larger it appears in the tag cloud), other blogs linking to you (in blogrolls and post citations), and other stats.

Here is the Technorati post claim activation for this blog:

Technorati Profile

Paul McCarthy Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement

Chrissie Iles, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, discusses Paul McCarthy: Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement.

Paul McCarthy "Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement"





Artcyclopedia links to Paul McCarthy online.

We Make Money Not Art: Paul McCarthy at the SMAK

Paul McCarthy interview on Ralph Mag.

Paul McCarthy on Wikipedia.

More Paul McCarthy video on UbuWeb.

More art videos on Art Forum.

Twitter novels

I have composed many art objects and conducted many ethnomethodological experiments on Twitter. I've made endless Twitter link loops. "Bird Mind" is a recent Twittered poem, comprised of several message units.

Extremely Short Prose Units are micro content of literary intent. Within ESPU are found novels of ultra brevity.

Here are a handful of Twitter novels I've written, each being in the single message unit limit of 140 characters.


[Titles are supplied for convenience, but were not in the original transmissions.]



(1) The Andromedans

"Humans love war. Do not land on planet Earth. They just fight all the time. Their art sucks. Back to Andromeda!" the Andromedans said.



(2) Stagnant Adventures of Sheila, Part 1

Sheila's life outstretched before her now. Its lethargy seemed to fall like a huge shadow over the porch swing. Her tea had evaporated.



(3) Stagnant Adventures of Sheila, Part 2

As the insect flew closer, Sheila could see Sam's face seeping through the sofa. Soapy dishwater overflowed the sink as she glared at it.



(4) Stagnant Adventures of Sheila, Part 3

The creaking door meant he was back. A walking stick laughed as she crammed more fig stuffing into the turducken which was dinner for them.



(5) Misty Seesaws

Misty seesaws swayed indelicately in the autumn breeze. A butterfly fluttered hastily beside it, as the children moved on to other play.

The Kick Me's album strategy on MySpaceMusic

Probably, in the midst of online music marketing for some clients, one of my greatest discoveries has been The Kick Me's aka Magical Forest. The Kick Me's is Dave Zwick of "real band" Farcial Hoodwink and Magical Forest includes his friend Russell.

I sent You Need Records a check for $10 (made out to Dave Zwick), and received the Magical Forest "The Ghost of Onyx Blackman" and "Comings and Goings" CDs, plus The Kick Me's "The More Durable Spires" CD.

Later, I mail ordered The Kick Me's "Wrist for the Weary", "Survey Says", "How Little Things Are Made", and "I Can't Believe It's Not Bitter" CDs.

Wonderful quirky dreamy works of DIY art.

The Kick Me's "The Restless Surge of the Liquid State" (2010) and "Spirits" (2010) CDs -- FREE mp3s on SoundCloud:

https://soundcloud.com/the-kick-mes-spirtis



The Kick Me's
http://www.myspace.com/
thekickmes

Magical Forest
http://www.myspace.com/
forestmagical


Explanation of their sound with words? Music concrete mixed with noise electronics and rock guitars jangling up around by the outclouds.

Similar artists: Sonic Youth, Halo Benders, Syd Barrett, Jad Fair, Silver Jews, Animal Collective, The Residents, Olivia Tremor Control, The Apples in Stereo, Guided By Voices, Caroliner Rainbow, Mouldy Peaches, The Swirlies, Robert Fripp, Gong, Felt, Wild Man Fischer, The Fugs, MEV, Alvin Curran, Merzbow.



They created a separate MySpaceMusic page for each album:

[UPDATE: Some links are no longer working.]

"The More Durable Spires"
http://www.myspace.com/
themoredurablespires


"Hey, This is the Day!"
http://www.myspace.com/
heythisistheday


"I Can't Believe It's Not Bitter"
http://www.myspace.com/
icantbelieveitsnotbitter


"Survey Says..."
http://www.myspace.com/
surveysays26


"Wrist for the Weary"
http://www.myspace.com/
wristfortheweary


"How Little Things are Made"
http://www.myspace.com/
howlittle28


"Still Thinking"
http://www.myspace.com/
stillthinking25




The Kick Me's friends and offshoots include:


The Low Budgets

Naughty Naughty Nurses

Daughters of the New Summer Morning

Farcial Hoodwink

Sailboat!

Sailboat "Sharks & Monsters" LP

http://sailboat.bandcamp.com/

CEO blog as wound

Your blog is a wound, a self-inflicted peeling away of layers, to reveal your inner thoughts, your best thinking in an area of expertise.

You'll ruin all your corporate communications if your blog fails. When a business blog goes over like a lead balloon, the negative buzz and ill will can be overwhelming. A poorly planned and executed blog is a huge, publicly visible, black eye. Personal credibility and business professionalism are severely damaged when a blog goes wrong.

To fall flat on your face in a blog is very likely, and there's no way out of it. You must fully comprehend and comply with social media netiquette, expectations, and protocols. Profit-hungry product hype invasions and targeted ecommerce exploits are quickly detected and despised.

The blogosphere is not the United States, Western culture, or capitalism. It's not Business As Usual (which leads to Business As Over). Blogs are a rapidly expanding and evolving species of web presencing that obeys new rules of behavior.

Let's carve a metaphysical wound into the blog itself and see what appears inside:

diversity

individuality

authenticity

transparency

advocacy

reciprocity

sensitivity

community

collaboration

communication

creativity

... are the primary drivers here.


Are you and your company really ready to move powerfully and honestly with these engines of the share economy underlying your commerce?

You must gain expertise in navigating the globalism manifested in social media, blogs, and business networks. Sexism, mammonism, patriarchy, hierarchy, con artistry, sales commands, product hype, traffic-generation tricks, and penalizable SEO gimmicks are just a few of the taboo practices, forbidden in the blogospheric realms.

CEO bloggers are the most bold of bloggers, displaying their personality and their organization to the world, authentically, passionately, unflinchingly.

Customers don't want ads or brochures.

They want conversations, explanations, admissions, interactions, cooperations, and solutions. Your business blog must be seen not as an extra appendage flapping in the shifting breezes of the internet, but a serious wound that displays the core of your expertise and value system.

Google Analytics top content report 8-06-08

My traffic report on blog content items from June 6 to August 6, 2008.



Most Popular Posts
per Google Analytics:



(1) amanda chapel anti-blogosphere team troll

(2) creative Twitter bios part 3

(3) how to calculate your Twitter Meta Index

(4) creative Twitter bios part 2

(5) self promotions vs other relations

(6) social media marketing best practices

(7) 6 signs of a deceptive marketing expert

(8) how to improve a CEO blog

(9) A List not dead but expanding interactively

(10) creative Twitter bios part 1

(11) blog title search SEO study

(12) credibility is king, not content

(13) participating in social media

(14) link recommendations July 2008

(15) obama and NASCAR

(16) social media marketing ideology

(17) what is brand

(18) defeating an abusive boss

(19) information flow manifesto

(20) Web 2.0 vs China

brands in social media

Brands in social media? Some reports are gloomy: not much success. It must be crushing emotionally for a brand to be ignored, shunned, even despised, in the hip new arena of social networks.

Ad agencies want to think of social networks as media. If something is media, then they think people will tolerate slapping ads and sales commands all over it.

They see online community members sharing and displaying content: text, photo, video, audio, digital art, live streaming video, videoconferencing. Ad executives consider: "If it contains all these forms of content, it must be media. We also have content: advertising messages, PR announcements, and sales pitches."

So, the word "network", that sloppy human connectivity, is replaced by the more convenient, manageable term "media".

Social media.

Now that the marketing and management people are perceiving social networks as a special new "media", social media, it's ripe for invasion. They have great exploits to conduct, terrific feats of commerce to perform.

To their minds, the social network members are sitting ducks, easy marks, happy people chatting away, when they could be shopping. These social network members are talking and sharing, why can't we interrupt their conversations, change the subject, and start talking about some products?

In defense of the chilly reception online community members give to "brands", self-promotions, and ads:

How would you like it if a salesman walked up to your intimate backyard BBQ and tried to sell products to your guests?


But.

If that salesman saw a group or individual need, and the salesman had the expertise or product that could fulfill that need, and the salesman was calm, friendly, and not pushy or cheesey...perhaps he could find an audience for his message, which at least has some relevance now.

Twitter Poem 1 "Bird Mind"

I composed and published the following poem live on Twitter today as an experiment in spontaneous poetry transmission via social media networking.

"Bird Mind" was transmitted compu-telepathically in a total of 5 tweets (Twitter messages). Each message length being 140 characters maximum. Four lines could fit in each individual message.

Bird Mind

"I have no wings, I cannot fly"
I said to the bird up in the sky.

"Fly with Mind" the bird then said.
At that moment, all fear went dead.



"I have no hands, I cannot write",
the bird told me late one night.

"Write with Mind", I told that bird.
He writes mentally word by word.



"I have no movement, cannot walk",
said the statue in the chalk.

"With your image you still talk"
I replied without a balk.




"I have no teeth, I cannot eat"
said the book that was complete.

"Consuming time is no small feat,"
I replied in the desert heat.




"I have no face, I can't be seen",
said the song from in between.

"Look at how you make me gleam",
said I as I became the dream.

~