Disruptive Conversations

Yesterday I started to see Facebook become more useless. There, right in my NewsFeed, nestled between two updates from friends, was an advertisement for a laundry detergent I could apparently get at my local Target.

This was not an ad on the side of my Facebook display.

This was right IN my NewsFeed.

This is very definitely NOT the kind of ads I want to see - this is junk polluting my NewsFeed. I want updates from friends, family and brands/companies that I care about.

I understand Facebook needs to make money. I understand this may be the only way they have to get an ad in front of mobile viewers. (I saw it on my iPad in the Facebook app that doesn't have ads on the side.)

I understand all that... but that doesn't mean I have to like it! :-)

When I posted about this on Facebook, friends commented that they have been seeing this for some time, and that it has to do with friends liking a Page. By this logic because someone somewhere in all my friends perhaps liked a page about laundry detergent, I am now subject to their spam.

Maybe that's it... or maybe it is just Facebook trying to offer any advertisers a way to reach mobile users.

Either way, with this kind of junk polluting my NewsFeed, Facebook just got a little more useless...

FINALLY! Photo-sharing darling-of-the-media Instagram finally became useful to me with the rollout of web profiles where you (and everyone else) can see your photos. While I've had an Instagram account for some time, I haven't really used it too much because there was no web interface and so you could only manipulate images via the mobile client. That's fine for some usage... but it's hard to go back and find older images... and extremely hard to share with people who did not have Instagram.

Now, web profiles are here and, even better, they are available at very easy URLs. Here's mine:

http://instagram.com/danyork

The resulting page is laid out very nicely, with images changing periodically:

You can keep on scrolling down to see more and more of the images that you have posted. (And yes, it kind of looks like Facebook... which makes sense since they now own Instagram.)

This is a huge benefit to me because often I have found that I've wanted to go back and find an image I took in Instagram to use in a blog post - or just to show someone. Scrolling back in the mobile app is fine for recent images, but I haven't found it fun if the image was some time back. This web profile page lets me easily scan back through all the images I've posted to Instagram.

Even better - and this is that part I find most useful - you can easily go to the individual page for a photo, such as this one:

Now I can see the image and easily share the URL for the image to people. As far as now using the image in a blog post, I didn't yet find any way to embed an image, and I'm guessing that's not there yet. But that's okay, because I can just do a screenshot of my own image and use it in a blog post. The key is easily getting to see the image in a web browser.

Very cool to see... and as a result of this I expect I may indeed start using Instagram more!

How about you? What do you think of these new web profiles? Will you use Instagram more? (or perhaps even start using it?)

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---

Would you like to have more Likes or Comments on items you post on Facebook? Perhaps for your company's (or client's) Facebook Page? It seems one tip is to make sure you include a photo.

It's perhaps a bit of a "DUH!" thing, but a gent named Max Woolf just provided some data to back up that idea. He downloaded all of Robert Scoble's Facebook posts (via Facebook's API) and then analyzed the data. The graph shows the trend quite clearly (click on the image to see the full version):

In every quarter but one, posts with a photo had a higher average number of likes and in most quarters had more comments than posts without a photo.

Now, granted, this is data for a single person's feed, but Robert Scoble creates a large number of posts and has a great number of friends and subscribers. (Max Woolf provides a link to the source data for those who want to play with the numbers.) It also just seems to make sense to me given my own usage of Facebook. My eye is naturally drawn to links or posts that have photos more than necessarily to plain blocks of text.

In the comments to Robert Scoble's sharing of the data, Max Woolf indicated that he performed a similar analysis on the TechCrunch Facebook Page and came up with a similar result.

It will be interesting to see if someone else does a bit more exploration of this topic to see how it goes with a larger sample size, but I'll expect the trend to be similar. Part of the strength of Facebook's new design is its emphasis on visual display... helping highlight the photos and images on your Timeline. There's really no surprise that photos will attract more likes and comments.

But it's always great to see some data... :-)

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---

How many of the issues in this video have you experienced while in a presentation? Either one you have attended or perhaps one you have given yourself?

I learned of this today via a link in Facebook or Twitter (I can't remember which) pointing me to a post from Mitch Joel back in January titled "How To Do Everything Wrong In A Presentation". It is related to the book Habitudes for Communicators by Dr. Tim Elmore. I've not (yet) looked at this book but I'm definitely intrigued. In his post, Mitch also recommends three other books, one that I have (Presentation Zen) and two others that I've heard high praise about. All of these kind of books will only make you a better presenter... and I've added these to my queue of books to read.

Kudos to Dr. Elmore and his team for coming up with a funny and brilliant way to highlight so many of the issues we unfortunately do experience in presentations.

How many of these have you experienced?

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---

Tonight we have a truly remarkable number of options for watching coverage of the results of the U.S. election. GigaOm had a great post up this morning listing a wide range of sites:

http://gigaom.com/video/election-live-stream/

It's fascinating to look down that list. I grew up in the 1970's and 80's when we really only had 3 TV networks in the US on which to watch election results. Now we have a HUGE number of options. Consider that in this list we have:

• Multiple sites doing live streaming over YouTube.
• Multiple sites doing live streaming over Ustream.
• Some sites doing live streaming from their own sites.
• Many sites doing streaming out to their mobile apps for iOS and Android.
• Twitter setting up a micro-site to show election-oriented trends and tweets (and being used by many of the other sites, too, I am sure).

More than that, look at the different sources of these live streams:

• "Traditional" TV networks such as CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS (with six live streams!), and Fox
• Newer TV media like C-SPAN, Univision, MSN News, Al Jazeera and the Comedy Channel
• "Newspapers" streaming video such as the Wall St. Journal, New York Times and Washington Post
• Newer websites such as Politico and the Huffington Post
• An independent group watching voting problems

This list, too, is just the sites that GigaOm found and felt should be included. There are probably a hundred other lists floating around on other sites that include other livestreams not mentioned here. Plus the many sites that will be doing "liveblogging"... plus the sites livestreaming audio-only... plus the many mobile apps that people are using on their smartphones... plus the zillion other social networks. Mobile-photo-darling Instagram even got in the game by partnering with NBC to produce: http://electiongrams.com/

And all of these are (generally) available to people all across the world, not just in the US. There is no limit according to geography.

It's an amazing testament to the power of the Internet to disrupt traditional media and to encourage innovation ... and to potentially democratize the creation of content by allowing anyone to get in the business of streaming media.

Wherever you are tonight... as long as you can get Internet connectivity, you will have the ability to watch the US election returns!

I'm looking forward to tonight... and will probably be watching several of these streams as we look forward to learning who wins the election not only for President but also for the Congressional and local races as well.

Enjoy the evening!

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---

This morning a conservative friend posted to Facebook a link about how Mitt Romney had a very positive message and was a decent person, in contrast to President Obama who was extremely negative, full of lies and was treating half the country with contempt.

This post was followed soon thereafter in my NewsFeed by a link posted by a liberal friend about how President Obama had a very positive message and was a decent person, in contrast to Mitt Romney who was extremely negative, full of lies, and was treating half the country (or at least 47%) with contempt.

Tonight I see posts from my conservative friends with links about how Mitt Romney will be victorious tomorrow despite all the polls showing the opposite because Romney has seen internal polls - and saying how the liberals are all delusional after being fed propaganda polls by the mainstream media.

Those are intermixed with posts from my liberal friends with links about how Barack Obama will definitely be victorious tomorrow despite all the polls showing it to be quite equal - and saying how the conservatives are all delusional because they are cherry-picking only the polls they want to see.

Who is correct? And who is delusional?

The Internet has brought about a glorious revolution in online publishing - easily allowing anyone to post anything they want and have it read by tens or hundreds or millions. We talk within the communications profession about how today, in 2012, "every company is a media company". In presentations I have given on social media topics I have often accented this point:

There has never been a better time to tell your own story in your own words without the interpretation of media or anyone else. Your words - raw and unfiltered.

What we are seeing in this election, though, is the corollary to that statement:

There has never been a better time to hear your own views echoed back to you without the interpretation of media or anyone else. Your views - raw and unfiltered.

Because it is so easy for anyone to publish information - and because there is so much of it out there - we naturally filter the information sources to find the ones that we think are the "best."

In this book, The Information Diet, Clay Johnson writes of how we seek information online in our "desire to be affirmed" and that "affirmation" is the goal.

We want to be correct.

And there are any number of people and sites willing to tell us how correct we are.

Liberals read the Huffington Post while conservatives read the National Review. Conservatives watch Fox News while liberals watch MSNBC. Liberals take faith in Nate Silver's polls while conservatives believe Gallup's polls are the answer. And a thousand other websites, podcasts and video sites join in the fray.

The end result is that we wind up in a self-fulfilling echo chamber that reinforces and reaffirms the rightness of our views and how wrong the other parties are.

And so my conservative friends could make their strong statements because they are wholly and entirely convinced that they are absolutely 100% correct. And my liberal friends are equally convinced that they are absolutely 100% correct.

Where does it end?

Tomorrow we hold an election. One candidate will win while the other will lose.

The ads, the postings and the articles will fade in their intensity...

... but the echo chambers will remain.

How, then, do we bridge the divide?

As C.C. Chapman wrote in his excellent piece this morning, "Wednesday Morning In America," the hard work starts Wednesday. Despite all the venom and vitriol... despite all the negativity and harsh words... despite all the divisions... we must as a nation work together to move the USA forward.

How do we break out of our individual echo chambers? How do we suppress that desire for affirmation enough that we stretch our minds and listen to other points of view? How do we move beyond our self-reflected delusions?

I don't know that anyone has all the answers... but we must together work toward that goal. Somehow.

If you are a US citizen casting a vote tomorrow (and I do hope you will vote (or have already voted)), we need to think of what happens next...

... and how we start listening to each other's points of view - even if they are adamantly opposed to our own - and finding somewhere in there the common humanity that can allow us to work together... as insanely hard as that may be to do.

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---

Want to stay up on what is happening with the underlying infrastructure of the Internet? Or perhaps more interested in what is happening with domain names or the new "generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs)"? Curious about Internet governance issues? policy issues?

For all of those topics, and many more, a site I've come to rely on is CircleID.com.

It is a "news" site, but one that is very focused on what is happening in the underlying infrastructure that powers the Internet - and from both a technical and business/marketing point-of-view. There are technical articles and blog posts focused on topics such as IPv6, DNS security, cybersecurity, cloud computing, etc. - and there are more business-focused articles and blog posts talking about the business behind domain names or the new generic TLDs.

For marketers and communications professionals these latter topics are quite important - there is much going on right now in that space that will define what the future of domain names will look like.

I should note that Circle ID is a community-driven site and anyone can register and sign up to contribute. If you want to publish articles in this space - or have a client for whom this would be a logical audience to write - the folks behind CircleID are always open to new contributors.

To that end, I should note that I do write at CircleID from time to time and have republished some of my Disruptive Telephony posts there in the past.

It's a great resource, and one that many of you may find useful to track what is happening behind the curtains of the Internet.

P.S. Naturally CircleID is also on Twitter and Facebook, too, and has a host of RSS feeds.

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---

In this week's For Immediate Release episode #675 on Monday, October 29, 2012, my report covered:

• Hurricane Sandy and the impact we were already seeing on Monday morning. I pointed in particular to Google's excellent crisis map.

• I spoke a bit about my recent trip to Moscow and referenced a post I wrote: Walking In Red Square: Reflections of a Child of the 1970s

• Finally I spoke about a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that could ultimately get into your rights around "owning" something that you purchased abroad. More info in these articles:
  • http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/a-supreme-court-clash-could-change-what-ownership-means/
  • https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/your-right-own-under-threat
  • http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnvillasenor/2012/10/28/are-we-all-copyright-infringers/

If you are a FIR subscriber, you should have the show now in iTunes or whatever you use to get the feed. If you aren't a subscriber, you can simply listen to the episode online now.

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---

The team at Evernote is making a big push right now to let users know about the upcoming new Evernote 5 for Mac. They have even released a beta version for users to try.

I won't be trying it. I'll wait for others to take the chance.

Why not?

Primarily because...

Evernote completely burned me with their "upgrade" of Skitch!

This "redesigned" Skitch took away pretty much everything that I loved about the application. Now I realize that the Skitch development team is different from the developers behind the main Evernote app, but still...

they have lost my trust.

Further, I have been so burned in the past by other software companies that whenever I hear (as I do in the Evernote 5 video) the words "we've completely redesigned the application", I immediately think:

NOOOOOO!!!! THEY ARE GOING TO TAKE AWAY ALL THE POWERFUL FEATURES I LIKE!

Evernote did it with Skitch. Skype did it with their Skype 5 for the Mac that left behind so much of the Skype 2.8 that we all loved. Apple's done it too many different applications to count (ex. iMovie, Final Cut).

So I cringe whenever I hear the words "completely redesigned"!

Now, granted, I do appreciate it when companies take in user feedback and make new versions of their applications. I love it when companies are responsive and make applications better. I just don't like it when they remove powerful functionality (even as I do understand that sometimes they need to do this to re-do the application).

For me, Evernote is a critical part of my daily workflow. I am a paying Evernote customer and use it across my multiple systems and mobile devices.

I don't want that workflow screwed up!

So I will wait for a bit and see what others who are more daring than I say about the new version. I am pleased to see that the initial comments to the beta release post seem to be positive. I'll continue to monitor the flow of comments for a while before I even think about upgrading.

What about you? Are you going to take the plunge?

FYI, here's their video about Evernote 5:

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---

In the continuing saga of Evernote's destruction of Skitch, a.k.a. how-to-really-badly-screw-up-a-product-loved-by-its-users, I grabbed a screenshot in the old Skitch 1.x (a.k.a. the version that works) and hit the "Share" button. I hoped to get back a skitch.com URL that I could then simply pop into Twitter to reply to someone.

Instead I got this:

"Skitch.com sharing has moved to Evernote."

Now, in fairness, they have been mentioning that this transition was going to occur for the past bit. So it's not a tremendous surprise.

But here's the FAIL - the "Click here" link takes you to a page on the "Skitch.com Transition to Evernote". But this page simply tells you how to transition your old Skitch.com images to Evernote.

It tells me nothing about how to actually now share an image.

Zip. Na da.

I am left with the mockery of the first sentence: "Skitch is getting even better."

I am guessing that Skitch 1.x users who refuse to upgrade to Skitch 2.0 because it is an incredible downgrade in functionality are probably now just simply... screwed.

I am guessing the easy "Share" function that I use on pretty much a daily basis will now no longer work with Skitch 1.x.

I am guessing that I need to find a new screen capture program that does what I need.

(And yes, I've tried the new Skitch 2.0.1 but it still continues to add many more steps to the easy way Skitch 1.x worked and it still doesn't do all that Skitch 1.x did.)

I am guessing all this because the link that Evernote/Skitch takes me to tells me nothing about how to actually share an image.

Further, I went to look in the Evernote forums to see what users might be saying there and... the site is down for me.

:-(

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---