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Social Media – The new ‘Internet’, hello 1998

Anyhoo. history aside, I was struck the other day at a MHSMC meeting that social media is the new ‘internet’. Mainly this relates to my love of all things Cluetrain Manifesto. One of the of the primary things I took away from Cluetrain in my first reading as a lowly Software developer at a mortgage company where marketing outnumbered IT (as well as my many subsequent readings), was that it’s important, and beneficial for enterprises to let their people be people. Lower the walls, don’t raise them. I thought we were making progress here.

It seems that social media is moving away from that if MHSMC is any indicator. The presentation this month was on Corporate use of Social Media.

twitter lists and why I’m not playing

The nonconformist in me hates lists for the simple reason that everyone else is ga ga over them. ditto for google wave.

But for lists there’s a bigger reason, and Chris Brogan hits the nail on the head, They’re exclusionary. They’re the new “hottest kid in school” list posted in the locker bay. Those on it feel more self important, and those not on it, feel like less than people, and in the end, they’re completely meaningless and 100% arbitrary.

There’s few things I hate more than internet popularity contests.

National Comic Sans day October 1

So we have CSS Naked day (apr 9), and talk like a pirate day (Sept 19) and even Zombie Crawl day (Props to Danny!) and just to show that we need to not take ourselves so seriously all the time, I’m starting national Comic Sans day.

Yup, damn straight, National. Comic. Sans. Day.

I thought I’d hate Four Square

What really keeps me interested in Four Square, and even brightkite is the awesome outside the phone potential. I want my starbucks to give the mayor a free coffee (Frapaccino please). I want my neighborhood bar (where Dave and I are in a cold war for mayorship) half off drinks, or a free drink, something.In the brighkite world, I want to check in and see that where I am is running a Brightkite special, or maybe not where I am, but the place next door.

Where FS excels is that it identifies the losers (cough) people who frequent a place. Rewards them for doing so with points and meaningless badges, that can’t even be printed out! What if they got a burger instead!

Ford is down with social media sorta

I had heard of the Fiesta movement (which to me sounds like a bowel movement after Mexican food, but whatever) from Jeremy. While I’m not a fan of Ford vehicles in the slightest I applauded their efforts to do more than just throw TV commercials at us. I think a ‘Mustang Movement’ woulda been cooler. [...]

Defrag Conference ’08 day one thoughts.

I wrote this after lunch on Monday. Another freakishly awesome day in Denver! I’m sitting in the main hang out area (long foyer along the two break out rooms) with the sun beating on my back, reflecting on my MB Air’s glossy screen right into my face. It’s like those metal tanning things from the [...]