People Connection Blog

It's Been Fun

Joe Loong — 2007-10-16T16:29:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, Social Media Mess

Hi folks -- just wanted to let you know that this is going to be my last entry in the Social Media Blog, as this is my last day working for AOL.

While I didn't get to a lot of stuff I'd hoped to do, I'm hoping that my successors will pick up the baton and continue to use this blog and other social media and public communication tools as a way to engage with... everybody.

Best wishes to all.

Thanks -- Joe

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Commenting: Managing Feast and Famine

Joe Loong — 2007-10-08T20:30:00 00:00

Filed under: Blogging, AIM Today, AIM Buddy Blog, Social Media Mess

We've been getting a ton of comments on two entries recently, because of two high-traffic links. One is Carol's entry on the upcoming AIM Dashboard page, featured on the top of AIM Today:

The other is Jen's entry on the AIM/Bebo announcement -- it's in a Bebo blog entry featured on the Bebo main page:

Both of these entries are getting lots of comments, and even more comment notifications. (We get e-mail from the tool every time someone posts a comment -- even if the person never verifies it and it doesn't go live. I'm afraid it's going to burn out Jen's poor Blackberry.)

Nothing wrong with comments, right? We love comments. We complain when we don't get enough comments, and we do silly things to try to get more (I still need to do a post-mortem on 10/4 Day, which again went nowhere because I was a big slacker.)

However, here we have a completely different set of problems -- what to do when you get too many comments. Especially off-topic, nasty or spam comments.

Now, the gap between what blog owners hope for (well-reasoned, insightful, comprehensible comments) and what blog commenters actually do is usually pretty wide. Like I say, high-traffic blogs attract TIPS: trolls, idiots, psychos and spammers.

However, in this case, especially since the AIM and Bebo crowds are pretty young, we're getting a lot of "yo, wazzup" comments. Nothing malicious; just not a lot we can reply to. Mostly people who want to say hi and meet other people. (From all over the world: I've seen lots of comments from the UK, Ireland, India, Australia -- as well as many others.)

It's just that the blog comments here is probably not the right place for this kind of socializing. So, unfortunately, I've been kind of a goon, deleting a lot of off-topic comments.

However, it's really, really important to find ways to get people who want to meet other people talking to each other. I think we can do this with AIM Chat (Web chats powered by Userplane) -- it's in testing right now, and it should be a way to get people chatting with each other (where they don't have to worry about a stiff like me deleting their comments).

We'll talk more about AIM Chat soon.

Do you think I'm being a jerk when it comes to deleting comments? Leave me one, tell me what you think.

Thanks -- Joe

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Daisy Chain of DC Links

Joe Loong — 2007-10-03T19:12:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, Blogging, Social Media Mess

OK, I couldn't quite get the links to daisy-chain together. I will try harder next time:

* The US Department of State launched a blog called Dipnote, which is apparently short for "diplomatic note", but has an unfortunate proximity to dip... wad. Dipwad.

In addition to name, folks are also complaining about readability, since they're using not-quite-white (#999999) text on a not-quite-black (#111111) background -- while usability folks say that light text on dark backgrounds is easier to read, this particular combo is not-quite-working. [Link via Wonkette]

* Speaking of Wonkette, they note some personnel changes -- Editor Alex Pareene (he of finger-gun infamy) is pulling up stakes for NYC. [Link via Washington City Paper]

* Washington Post launches its local blogger directory. Maintaining directories of any kind is always a pain in the ass, especially when you have to watch out for spammers and such -- it will be interesting to see how they use it. [Link via DCist]

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On 10/4, Good Buddy, Leave Someone Else a Comment

Joe Loong — 2007-10-03T14:57:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, Blogging, Social Media Mess

Since Wednesday is 10/4, and in CB & radio ten codes, 10-4 means "Message Received," I proposed last year that we make 10/4 "Leave Someone Else a Comment Day."

It failed to set the world on fire. But I'm going to do it again, since October 4th is generally unspoken for, holiday-wise (save for the Feast of St. Francis & World Animal Day -- it's also Simchat Torah this year).

Why a specific day to encourage people to leave comments? Most people read a lot more than they comment, and many people don't comment at all. We know that, because of participation inequality, for every commenter, there are as many as 10 times more readers lurking about. (The rule of thumb is 90-9-1: For every 100 people, 90 are lurkers who never post at all, 9 post occasionally, and 1 person posts a lot.)

This goes for blogs, message boards, comments on photos and videos -- any social media or community thing where people can contribute content and comments.

On the blogging side, we know that most bloggers:

* Like getting comments from readers
* Wonder why they don't get more comments from readers
* Are probably guilty themselves of sometimes not leaving comments every time they enjoy an entry on someone else's blog

So, I suggest that, on 10-4, you leave someone else a comment. It can be on a place you just stumbled across (or StumbleUpon-ed) from some social bookmarking site. It could be a blog or Web forum where you've lurked for years (most Web board communities have an Introductions area just for new users to say hi). It could be someone's photo on a photo sharing site you run into. Whatever it is, on 10-4, leave someone else a comment.

After all, the first step in getting more comments on your stuff is to make sure you're leaving comments on other people's stuff.

Keep on truckin', everyone!

Thanks -- Joe

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Liveblogging... Myself? (Jeremiah Owyang Interviews Me at We Media)

Joe Loong — 2007-09-26T21:00:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, Blogging, Social Media Mess

Back in February, I went down to Miami for the We Media 2007 conference on social media, citizen journalism and general blog stuff. (Miami in February. I highly recommend it.)

In addition to the conference events, I was interviewed by Jeremiah Owyang, who was with PodTech at the time.

Now, I have absolutely no memory whatsoever of anything I said. So follow along as I liveblog my own interview:

* It begins. Funky intro music.
* 0:52: I can't talk, and have no idea what I do.
* 1:15: Passersby -- please shut up, I'm trying to talk.
* 1:44: Truism time; how to get more readers for your blog.
* 2:40: I disavow my employer. Smart.
* 2:45: Buzzword bingo: leverage, aggregate, eyeballs, engagement
* 3:11: Gratuitous shot at the blogger A-list. I can live with that.
* 4:00: Convergence. That's an important-sounding word. (Actually, my point about integrating community content into traditionally-programmed editorial pages was borne out by the changes we saw in News, Music, and Sports among others, which shifted to a bloggier format to better incorporate community features. Not that I had any role in that.)
* 5:40: Convergence again. Also community.
* 6:10: That bicyclist went by pretty close, didn't he?
* 6:15: Plug time. People Connection and some of the editorial blogs. At least I got the URL right.
* 7:00: Flailing around a bit. OK, dash to the finish line. It's over.

Well, I got stuck a few times, and I didn't really say... well, anything. And my role here has changed a bit in the intervening months. And the CorpComm folks are probably banging their heads against their desks. And this liveblogging of my own interview was incredibly narcissistic and self-indulgent, wasn't it. But it went better than I expected (though I was expecting a trainwreck).

What do you think -- how'd I do? Should I do more video blog entries, or should I stick to words and still photos?

Thanks -- Joe

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Knives and Penises Don't Mix

Joe Loong — 2007-09-26T15:33:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, Social Media Mess

Here's a somewhat graphic demonstration of why matching algorithms will never fully replace human editors -- Reuters has a story today about an Indonesian man living in Malaysia, whose wife demonstrated her best Lorena Bobbitt impression after he unfavorably compared her sexual prowess with those of his second, younger wife.

(Actually, the article simply says that she was "...enraged by his comparison of her sex skills with those of his younger second wife...", so I am simply assuming she wasn't the big winner.)

Already pretty cringe-inducing, right? (No? How about if you add the phrases "nearly severed" and "11 stitches to reattach"? Thought so.)

Well, on the Yahoo News article page, the article is also accompanied by a Reuters photo, that would be fine in any other context, but definitely doesn't work here. Click past the jump to see the photo, which is work-safe, but not for the squeamish, or those with active imaginations.

Okay, you were warned:

Screenshot of a Reuters article on Yahoo News, featuring an unfortunate confluence of photo and headline.

According to the caption, the thing being sliced into is gammon, which is a type of bacon.

Why this photo with the story? (Which is still live as of this moment.) I'm assuming (nay, praying), that their publishing system just cued on the term "kitchen knife" in the article, and found a Reuters photo tagged with the technically-correct metadata to accompany the story. (I can't imagine that a human photo editor would ever try such a thing. Unless there was a nasty divorce involved or something.)

While I had noticed the photo and story on Yahoo News' popular stories page this morning, I didn't really think to blog it until my cow-orker Ira (see some of his pictures here) IMed me with "wanna see a great example of why you shouldn't let algorithms replace editors?" So blame him.

Thanks -- Joe

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Recent Links From the DC Slushpile

Joe Loong — 2007-09-25T20:21:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, Social Media Mess

Here are a few DC-related blog items, rapidly aging out of my blog topic slushpile (remember, if you haven't seen it, it's new to you). We'll go in order of freshness:

* Greta Van Susteren Does Her Own Blog, Darnit! [via DCRTV]: From her GretaWire blog, in her own words:

"You will love this....someone forwarded me an article or blog (I can't tell from the email which it is) suggesting that I don't write my own blog.....go figure!

I regret to inform all the doubters that all the spelling errors, grammatical errors, incomplete sentences, poorly edited videos, poorly spaced pictures, etc. are my own....."

Let's give it a stream of consciousness look: it's a Wordpress blog, about 2 months old, lots of entries, most pretty short but that's okay, her blogroll is a bit sparse but ooh, look -- she's got TMZ in there.

Looks like she's using her categories like tags, which is going to make the category listing pretty unwieldy after a while. For example, both "Chris Farley Impersonator" and "Hot Legal Cases" show up as categories. It's a case for keeping separate tags and categories, even if your categories act as tags (for purposes of marking your content for blog search).

Anyway, good on her for blogging.

[Continue on, there's plenty more!]

* DC Blogs Jumps Into the Group Blogging Game: Pat announces that the DC Blogs crew will be adding guest editors, so they'll be doing original topics, in addition to highlighting items from the live feed.

It's an interesting change to the DC local blogging mix, especially since the other primary players in the local DC blogging scene already draw pretty heavily from the live feed as a way of seeing what's going on.

* The Jamie Mo-Train Is Leaving the Station: AOL cow-orker and Sports Blogger (Live!) Jamie Mottram shook the sports blogging world over the weekend with the announcement that he's leaving for Yahoo. Best of luck to Jamie.

I don't know if I'll be going to the 2008 International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, but I will suggest to the pointy-heads that someone take a look and do an analysis of the sports blogosphere. I have no idea what the hypothesis would be, but I think it would be interesting. I'd do it myself, though it's been established that statistics frighten and confuse me. (All those Σs. Shudder.)

* Bypassing the Mainstream Media: Earlier this month, the Washington Post had an item about how the Bush administration is reaching out directly to military and politics bloggers to get its message out on Iraq. (I recognized some of the bloggers from the milblogging conference earlier this year.) And while they might not agree with every administration move, I think it's safe to call them a sympathetic crowd.

Do you think this administration (or any future one) will be as free with access to bloggers who aren't as friendly?

* The Elite DC Blogging Scene: Lastly, a fortnight ago, the Wall Street Journal had a profile on Sommer Mathis, DCist's first fulltime, paid editor-in-chief. She's another example of how some people are blogging for a living -- though with the exception of the occasional blogger-entrepreneur, they ain't getting rich (present company included).

Thanks -- Joe

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AOL: Possibly, Maybe Not Doomed

Joe Loong — 2007-09-24T19:48:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, AOL Mothership, Social Media Mess

Saw this item via Mediabistro today -- it's an AdvertisingAge blog piece by Simon Dumenco, lauding some of the recent developments in the AOL business strategy: Friends, New Yorkers, Lend Me Your Ears: I Come to Praise AOL!

Since it's coming from AdAge, it's not surprising that they like the ad moves the company is making, like the literal moving of HQ up to NYC to be closer to the ad biz, and generally eschewing some of the excesses of the late '90s-'00s dotcom bubble, like pressure closes, non-standard ad sizes, general arrogance, and biz dev guys pulling knives on clients and doing lines off the hoods of cars while stuck in traffic. (Those last bits were particularly lurid anecdotes from either the Swisher or Klein books. I may be misremembering.)

The article also mentions TMZ as an example of a programming success.

Notably absent is any talk of AOL products, which I guess is understandable, since it's an advertising industry blog. It's also convenient, as it might darken an otherwise upbeat portrait. While there have been flashes of inspiration and innovation, we've got a lot of work to do -- a lot of blocking and tackling -- when it comes to our products.

Now, when it comes to all this ad, business and product stuff, I'm just a semi-informed layman, since I just push words around. But I wouldn't be here unless I thought we could still do some good, and I hope to be blogging more about some of those good things soon. So it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Thanks -- Joe

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Customer Service, Theme Parks and Not Hating Your Customers

Joe Loong — 2007-09-24T18:43:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, Blogging, Social Media Mess

At the risk of treading on Cory Doctorow BoingBoing territory, here's an AP story from last week about customer service training that the Disney Institute offers to other organizations .

A lot of what they advocate is simply paying attention to what people do. (This is very often different from what they say -- I'll talk more about observation later, from another presentation I attended last week).

I particularly liked how they approach something Disney employees (sorry, "cast members") get asked all the time, which, on the face of it, is simply a stupid question: "What time is the 3 o'clock parade?"

Here's their suggested answer:

"The parade will start on time at 3 p.m. in Frontierland, but it will be at Main Street U.S.A. at about 3:20. You can line up right here under the shade if you want to. Thanks."

Not only are you answering the literal question without making the person feel stupid, but you're also providing useful information which answers the underlying question that the person should have asked. Very smart.

A few years back, then-AOL-chief Bob Pittman also used some theme park customer service lessons, stemming from his days heading up Six Flags. He would tell a story about his first days as CEO of the company, when he asked for the worst job in the place, and they sent him picking up trash around the amusement park.

He said the other trash collectors hated the customers, since they saw their job as keeping the park clean, and customers (being customers) kept messing the place up.

However, the way Pittman looked at it, their job was actually to provide an enjoyable experience for the customer, and part of that experience was to give them a clean park.

It's a subtle but important distinction (not hating your customers is a good thing), and it's more than just rah-rah motivational-speaker stuff. (Even if it's not a true story -- I have no idea if it is.)

Not to murder a metaphor, but the same thing goes for corporate blogging, which is basically customer service. -- at least the way I look at it. Yes, you do run into stupid questions, but if you resist the temptation to throw it back into people's faces, you can find what they really need help with, and then find ways to help other people who have the same problem.

That's customer service.

Thanks -- Joe

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A Roundup of Some of Today's DCish Items

Joe Loong — 2007-09-21T00:31:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, Blogging, Social Media Mess

Sad to say, this is not a pre-scheduled entry -- I'm pretty far behind in my to-do list today:

* WTOP Joins the Blogosphere: WTOP News Radio (your station for DC "traffic and weather on the eights") launched a gaggle of blogs on a variety of subjects, including traffic, gossip & sports. Is this merely a token hop on the blog bandwagon or will there be real value added to listeners? I have no idea -- we'll have to see. [via DCRTV.com]

* DCist Changes Comments Policy: Hyperlocal blog DCist (part of the Gothamist blog network) updated their comment policy. Previously, anonymous comments were allowed, but those comments were displayed in light-gray type on a white background, so you had to work a little harder to read them. (Registered commenters' comments showed normally.)

Now, their "guest" comments are hidden by default, and the DCist folks say they'll probably eliminate anonymous comments entirely at some point. Why? The cloak of anonymity seems to encourage people to be really obnoxious (say hi to the usual suspects: Trolls, Idiots, Psychos and Spammers.)

Since comment registration just requires a valid e-mail address (similar to ours and lots of other blogging platforms), it's not a tremendous barrier to entry -- people can always just create a new account. Trying to deter determined troublemakers while not making things too cumbersome for legit users is always a delicate balance.

* Yet Another Local Blog Roundup: I just noticed it today -- the local DC alterna-weekly DC City Paper started a Summary Lovin' feature, which highlights items of local interest by bloggers and news sites. This joins similar features like Wonkette's Metro Section, the Washington Post Express's main page BlogLog and others.

At least in DC, a lot of these roundups are powered in no small degree by the DC Blogs live feed, which is an opt-in aggregated feed of recent entries by local bloggers. It's a very useful service (in fact, for a while, Wonkette was basically hoovering their featured picks for their Metro Section).

* A Neat Little Finger-Gun to Tie Everything Together: Lastly, while I'm not usually one to laugh at the misfortunes of others -- especially the victims of crime -- I'll have to make an exception here. The City Paper reports that editor of Wonkette (the aforementioned potty-mouthed and uber-snarky political gossip blog ), Alex Pareene, returning with his girlfriend to her DC house early Sunday morning, encountered a burglar, who told them he had a gun.

Thankfully, no one was hurt, in large measure because the burglar was actually only armed with a finger-gun stuck in his pocket (which is to say, not armed at all). Upon discovering this crucial fact, instead of calling the cops and telling the intruder to get the hell out, the couple merely negotiated the robber down to 80 bucks (saving a digital camera and cellphone) and sent him on his way with "Good luck" (presumably in his next robbery).

That's some good work, Lou.

At the very least, I was expecting a strongly-worded blog entry that I'm sure would have devastated the burglar emotionally, but Wonkette has been uncharacteristically silent on the matter. Hey, tell us your side of the story, and no one gets hurt:

If you have any thoughts on anonymous comments, finger-gun robberies or anything else, feel free to leave a comment below. Thanks -- Joe

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Arrrr! Heave to and Prepare to Be Blogged!

Joe Loong — 2007-09-19T18:26:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, AOL Mothership, Social Media Mess

Ahoy, in case you've been trapped below decks, it bein' September 19th, today is Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrrrr:

Apparently, my pirate face has lost a lot since last year. (Thanks to Jason for taking the photo.)

Now, of course, modern piracy doesn't seem particularly fun. It covers everything from Caribbean drug smugglers commandeering pleasure boats (and giving the unfortunate owners the old heave-to), to raiding cargo ships in the Malacca Strait, to firing RPGs at cruise ships off the coast of Somalia (which, I dunno, seems like cheating to me).

See the International Maritime Bureau for updates on real-life piracy.

* Other nautical terms in the news: Netscape.com launched its new-old look today (returning to a more traditional portal style), while the social news aspects have split off to a separate site, Propeller.com (also live now today).

In addition, AOL España went live today. I will refrain from any Spanish doubloon references. Oh, wait, I won't.

* DC-area bloggers, don't forget: Tonight is the monthly meeting of the Washington Blogger Meetup Group. (Which means I've got to hustle if I'm going to make it out there -- it's kind of a schlep from here.)

Thanks -- Joe (Arrrr)

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Look on My Slushpile, Ye Mighty, and Despair! :-)

Joe Loong — 2007-09-18T16:07:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, Social Media Mess

Here's a core dump of recent links from my slushpile of bloggy stuff:

* 25 Years of Sideways Hatefulness: This, and only this, is the reason I used a smiley in the headline -- Emoticons were invented 25 years ago tomorrow.

Personally, I use emoticons only slightly more often than I quote Shelley (which is never -- I don't even know the gal), since I think it's a sign of writer laziness. Kind of like a laugh track ("LOOK, I'M JOKING. LOLZ").

Granted, there are a few instances where it may be useful (particularly in IM), but I'm willing to take the hit.

What I do find interesting, though, are some of the differences in emoticon systems. Generally, they're read left-to-right (that is, the eyes come first), but I know people who insist on using backwards smileys: (-:

Also, Asian smileys are typically vertical -- you don't have to tilt your head: <(^_^)>

Check the Wikipedia entry on smileys for more examples, and see the AIM Smiley Dictionary for uses of graphic smileys in AIM.

* NYT, Tear Down This Free/Pay Wall! As covered by practically everyone, the New York Times is discontinuing its paid-subscription TimesSelect service, opening it and a large chunk of its archives (including all stuff from the past 20 years and articles from 1851-1922) to everyone for free.

As the article states, the only reason why they would discontinue a service that pulled in $10 million a year in subscription revenue is that they figured they can get more from advertising. They'll presumably still require a free registration to view, but there's always the permalink URLs they supply (the better for bloggers to link to them with), as well as bugmenot.com.

* BlueString Rolls Out: News.com has a first-look review of BlueString, which is AOL's new online media (pictures, movies and music) storage and sharing service.

I'm just starting to play with it myself, so right now I'll just parrot the bullet points -- powered by Xdrive; 5 gigabytes of storage space for free; requires Flash 9.0; use your screen name or register your e-mail address; drag-and-drop stuff around, mash up your files and publish and share "shows."

Like I said, I'll have to play with before I can talk about it more.

(I also have to play with the Winamp 5.5 Beta. Read more about that in this Wired Listening Post entry.)

* Newsflash: Nude Celebrity Photos = Increased Site Traffic: It's a truism for Web promo writers: Chicks get clicks. A corollary is: Nude celeb chick pics get even more clicks. Click for the article and partially-obscured celebrity nudity.

* USA Today Founder Al Neuharth on Blogs: [via Mediabistro] In addition to reading USA Today, NYT, WSJ, WaPo, and either a NYC or FL paper, he reads a lot of blogs. And he says:

"Most of them, when I read them, I say, 'This is a lot of interesting bullshit,'" he says.

You can be honest, Al -- most of them ain't that interesting. (I'm a blogger, I can say that.)

Thanks -- Joe

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AOL News Minute: Who's Moving?

Joe Loong — 2007-09-17T13:00:00 00:00

Filed under: AOL Mothership, Social Media Mess

Got e-mail this morning from AOL Chairman and CEO Randy Falco (we're like this -- the mail was personally addressed to, um, everybody) that says one thing I've been expecting for a while, and one thing I hadn't really thought about much (but isn't really surprising):

1. The company is consolidating all its advertising businesses under a new ad organization, "Platform A."

Like I've said before, I don't really have a head for the business stuff, but even I could see that AOL has been acquiring ad companies like they were Chiclets, so focusing an organization around it seemed like an obvious play (even for a dummy like me).

2. AOL Corporate HQ is moving up to NYC; specifically, to 770 Broadway [Google Maps link -- yeah, I should use MapQuest, but they don't have a Street View equivalent yet].

AOL already has a couple of offices in New York -- groups up there include some editorial and ad folks -- so they'll presumably putting all the NYC folks together. And the only people moving from Dulles will be the senior execs -- the suits -- so there will still be a few thousand folks here in Northern Virginia.

You can see more in some of the trade coverage, including: paidContent.org, Washington Post (who probably got the Falco e-mail, like, 5 seconds after it was sent -- oh, wait, Valleywag printed the whole thing), and News.com.

Now, the new HQ will be at Broadway and East 9th St. in Manhattan, and I know that stretch of Broadway pretty well. (At least, I used to.) It's near NYU. More importantly, it's just down the street from Forbidden Planet NYC and The Strand.

I haven't been up to NYC in a while, so I guess this announcement is another reason to visit. (Like anyone needs another reason to visit NYC.)

Thanks -- Joe

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AOL News Minuto: Ciao, Italia!

Joe Loong — 2007-09-13T12:46:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, AOL Mothership, Social Media Mess

AOL Italia Launches: Just saw a press release announcing the launch of AOL's new Italian portal, www.aol.it:

I don't normally talk about press-release-y stuff, but I wanted to make a joke about the AOL Italia Web portal being optimized for ~~wild~~ expansive hand gestures.

Fortunately, I didn't. (Oh, no: He dinn't.)

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Pew's Views of Online Social News

Joe Loong — 2007-09-13T02:01:00 00:00

Filed under: Social Media, Social Media Mess

I've had social news on the mind this week, especially with the announcement that the social news aspects of Netscape.com will move over to a new site.

It's either synchronicity or serendipity that the Project for Excellence in Journalism (part of the Pew Research Center) has a new study out -- The Latest News Headlines -- Your Vote Counts -- that compares the featured stories on mainstream media sites, with those on social news sites Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us (as well as Yahoo News) [link via BBC News]

[Actually, looking at their list of sites, I would split a hair and say they looked at social linksharing sites (where users submit, vote and comment on links), which is a broader category that includes social news sites, which are explicitly news-focused: Newsvine, NowPublic, etc.]

During a one-week period this June, they analyzed the featured stories, and came up with some general observations:

* Disparity: There wasn't a lot of commonality between mainstream and social news sites; MSM sites tended to be more internationally-focused, to stick with big stories and come back to them again and again. On the other hand, the social news was more "twitchy" -- rapid cycling, with stories passing quickly out of view with little followup.

* Diversity: Social news sites were also a lot more likely to draw from non-news sites like blogs. In fact, "Digg users dug blogs more than any other source," which was slightly surprising to me, since so many Digg users reflexively profess to hate blogs (especially "blog spam," which is what they tend to call any intermediary link, even if it adds value and isn't simply an unneeded middleman).

* Differences: Additionally, they noted differences between the social news sites: Digg was more tech & science focused (shocker -- not uncharacteristic, even if it was iPhone launch week, too), as well as the most US-centric; Reddit was the lowest-traffic and most political; and Del.icio.us was the most eclectic.

On top of all that, they also looked at Yahoo News' user-influenced categories (Most E-Mailed, Most Viewed, Most Recommended), and also saw that the user picks didn't jibe with editors' picks, with some differentiation between categories --most viewed was most sensational (crime and celeb gossip).

(I would just like to add a personal observation -- for the photo sections, I would also note a healthy and consistent selection of cheesecake in the most popular photos for any given time -- swimsuits, celebrity skin and lingerie fashion shows.)

Anyway, their conclusions are a little soft (we need to keep an eye on these differences), but it's an interesting study.

I'm a little tired, so I may have mischaracterized the results. If I missed something, or if you have your own observations, please leave a comment.

Thanks -- Joe

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How Do You Know That It's Been Too Long Since Your Last Blog Entry?

Joe Loong — 2007-09-12T17:34:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, AOL Mothership, Blogging, Social Media Mess

Found this taped to my monitor this morning:

"How do you know it's been too long since your last blog entry?"

Is my boss getting on me for not blogging enough? Is this a potential submission to Passive Aggressive Notes?

[Click the Read More link to see the exciting finale.]

When I lifted the flap, what first appeared to be a veiled threat was actually a password request:

"When you can't remember your SN or PW ...help :-( !!"

It was even in greeting card format.

I'm not going to reveal which of the Social Media Blog bloggers left me the note (I was kind of wondering for a while, myself, as it was unsigned. Which pretty much defeats the purpose of the note.), though you can guess if you like.

Thanks -- Joe

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A TV Squad Blog Memorial for Adam Finley

Joe Loong — 2007-09-10T13:29:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, Blogging, Social Media Mess

I got this via internal e-mail today (it was also in Obscurestore) -- Adam Finley, a Minneapolis-based blogger for TV Squad, died last Thursday after being struck by a bus while riding his bicycle. Here is TV Squad's entry about it:

"We usually don't get into anything that serious or deep here at TV Squad, but something has happened and we thought we should share it with you.

Our friend and colleague Adam Finley died last Thursday morning in Minneapolis. He was hit by a bus while riding his bike. He was just 30 years old.

[...]

Instead of the usual TV news and reviews today, we're going to pay tribute to Adam all day, running our favorite posts of his that he has done over the past couple of years."

I think the staff highlighting their favorite selections is a nice and fitting blogger tribute.

I didn't know Adam, but our deepest condolences go out to his family and all those who knew him.

For the requisite blogging twist, the TV Squadders mention that, while he passed away on Sept. 6, his last entry was posted Sept. 8. (The news article mentions that he hadn't been carrying any ID when the accident happened, and he was identified two days later by the serial number on his iPod.) They explain that their publishing system (Blogsmith, which is what we use here, too), allows you to pre-schedule entries for later publishing, which accounts for the posthumous posts.

If your blog publishing platform supports scheduled publishing, I guess you can author a long-trigger blog entry, too -- the blog version of letters to the future ("If you're reading this entry...").

Again, condolences to Adam's friends and family.

Thanks -- Joe

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I, an AOL Internal, Hate the AOL Client Software

Joe Loong — 2007-09-06T21:02:00 00:00

Filed under: AOL Mothership, Social Media Mess

OK, the headline is pretty much an outright lie, used solely to attract attention.

I don't hate the AOL client software. (Well, not more than anyone else.) I still use it pretty much every day, and have done so, starting with 2.5 and going all the way to 9.0 Security Edition SE now. (I do admit I'm not so good with the betas -- I like using what people use now, instead of what they will be using soon.)

However, I don't know if it counts as a dirty little secret or not, but a lot of AOL internals aren't particularly fond of the classic AOL client. In fact, a lot of them simply started using AIM for IM and Outlook or other mail clients to access their AOL mail at first chance. (I know. I took a very scientific poll.)

And this summer, when the corporate e-mail system switched over to Microsoft Exchange, a whole bunch of other folks took the opportunity to ditch the AOL client and never look back.

Personally, I think that's a mistake. As long as we continue to support the AOL client, and we've got millions of people using it, I think we should keep using it (especially those folks who don't need to use the client simply because their job requires it).

Does that mean I look down on AOL internals who've abandoned the client? Of course n... actually, yeah, I guess I do. A little bit.

Since I still have the AOL client running, here's what part of my taskbar looks like:

Screenshot of my PC taskbar.

I use AOL 9.0SE for keywords, chat and instant messaging on my primary business screen name; Microsoft Outlook for scheduling; Mozilla Thunderbird for my primary corporate e-mail; AOL Mail on the Web in Firefox for my JournalsEditor mail (as well as with lots of other stuff); AIM for IMing under other screen names; and IE for publishing, accessing enterprise software and other accounts, etc.

This is in addition to any other browser windows, plus Photoshop, Homesite and the like. Which explains why my laptop can frequently be heard screaming in agony.

Additionally, over on my Mac desktop, I typically also run:

My Mac desktop switcher bar.

...another instance of Firefox (with several windows and a whole buttload of tabs), NetNewswire Lite (for feeds), Terminal (I kick the old-school command line for a few things), Adium (for more IMs) -- and of course, iTunes and Last.fm. (Among others, like AOL for Mac, as needed.)

The point of all that is not merely to show off, but to show that, just because you know what's going on with your own stuff (the always-attractive image of "eating your own dog food"), doesn't mean you can't still be aware of what's going on in the rest of the world.

Thanks -- Joe

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Cow-Orker Crazy Carol Makes BoingBoing (Again)

Joe Loong — 2007-09-04T00:45:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, AOL Mothership, Social Media Mess

Right now, I'm catching up on my e-mail, feeds and sites (and I'll be blogging some more substantive stuff later today, honest), and when I got to BoingBoing (currently #2 on the Technorati Top 100 blogs) -- well, if I'd been drinking my coffee, it would have sprayed all over the keyboard:

Screenshot of BoingBoing article featuring Carol Orsini

That's cow-orker and closet gamer (NOT) Carol Orsini, who leads a blog entry about geeky wedding cakes.

I IMed her immediately. You know the football dictum (variously attributed to Paterno, Holz, Brown, Landry, and others) that goes, "When you get into the end zone, act like you've been there before"? It was kind of like that, and in Carol's case, it's easy because it's true:

Me: oh god
Me: did you know that you're on boingboing?
Carol: yeah i did
Carol: again;-)
Carol: I was on there a couple of months ago as well.
Me: for what
Carol: same thing
Me: they took out your red eye
Carol: aw.
Carol: isn't that nice.
Me: though I note it's not a creative commons licensed photo
Me: can I use it for social media blog? or I might just screenshot BB
Carol: sure.
Carol: use it up

Actually, tracing the provenance of the photo, it looks like Carol had blogged the red-eye removed photo in the Game Daily blog (which looks no longer to be -- check Joystiq for all your game blogging needs), wherein it began its long journey through the bit-o-sphere (I thought I was being clever, coming up with "bit-o-sphere", but looks like one blogger beat me to it by about, oh, 6 years.)

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A Redesign Trifecta: AOL Video Uploads, BoingBoing and Digg

Joe Loong — 2007-08-28T16:44:00 00:00

Filed under: General Mess, Blogging, Social Media Mess

Hi folks -- got a couple (actually a trio) of site redesigns/rebrandings that I wanted to touch on:

* I apologize in advance: This one happened about last week or so -- with the relaunch of AOL Video and the makeover of Truveo as a video search hub, the video folks also decided to rename AOL Uncut Video.

The new name is AOL Uncircumcised Video.

[I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I had to. I've been sitting on that joke for a year and a half. Bad blogger! Bad!]

The user-created video uploading stuff is being integrated into the main AOL Video site, so it's pretty much AOL Video uploads -- you can read more about it at the Video uploads blog.

* So that's why they didn't post this morning: BoingBoing, currently the #2 blog (according to the Technorati Top 100) refreshed its look and launched a new gadget blog. They also turned comments back on -- they're being managed/moderated by Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Light. See Boingboing's announcement entry.

[Link via Metafilter -- the item and discussion demonstrates some of the inevitable backlash (i.e., hatin') on one of the top blog dogs (even if I do happen to think that a lot of it's deserved), but while it may be annyoing, it can't be ignored.]

* Digg on Digg: Lastly for now, here's the Digg item about the Digg design tweak: It's nothing too earth-shattering -- some cleanup of functionality and design. Here's more in the Digg blog.

Thanks -- Joe

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