Tag Archive for 'Social Media'

What Mr. & Mrs. Fitch Do and Do Not Get About Social Media

Published
by
s000z
 on February 22, 2010
. 0 Comments

Mr. & Mrs. Fitch on Twitter

Went to see Mr. & Mrs. Fitch with my friend, J. Hotham the other night. While, it was impossible not to love the tender yet jaded but still lovingly crafted characters, I was constantly distracted by playwright, Douglas Carter Beane’s limited understanding of social media.

From Susannaspeier.com

Its not like everyone has to follow every subtle nuance of the perpetually fluctuating world of social media. Given the fact it was the literal as well as metaphoric world of the play, however, couldn’t Beane have solicited the assistance of a slightly more tech savvy dramaturg? If that wasn’t in the budget, all he’d have needed to do was offer up free lattes and he’d have had a swarm of geeks at his beckon call in no time flat.

Lithgow as Fitch on Twitter

John Lithgow portrayal of Mr. Fitch was sublime. No surprise there. Had the guy been a Brit, he’d have been knighted years ago. But once again, I couldn’t help but be hopelessly distracted by his character’s Twitter dismissives:
I inhaled/
I exhaled/
which do you like more — inhaling or exhaling?
Twitter characterization.

From Susannaspeier.com

How could Lithgow’s character –a journalist whose success had bought him a luxury loft in a great neighborhood–  not have known better.

The First Thing Mr. & Mrs. Fitch Would Have Known About

The epic paradigm shattering, “arrested” Tweet that photojournalism student James Buck sent his followers in April 2009 from the backseat of a police car headed towards the Nile Delta city of Mahalla, Egypt! Not only did this epic tweet succeed in alerting the US State Department –who  arranged diplomatic intervention that would lead to a subsequent tweet of “Free” in less than 24 hours–  it defined the vital role Twitter would play on future hotspot stages.

The Second Thing Mr. & Mrs. Fitch Would Have Known About

The New York Times hosted Social Media Week Crowdsourcing Panel and the upcoming Shorty Awards, (also scheduled to take place in the Times building). If this isn’t proof enough that the new era of journalism is now being championed and embraced by print journalism then Jennifer Preston’s @NYT_JenPreston recent appointment as New York Times Social Media Editor ought to be.

How To Fix All This

Had the playwright asked lead actor, John Lithgow @john_lithgow for a guided tour of the Twittersphere, the story that probes the delicious topic what happens when a credible journalist fabricates would likely have taken too ambiguous a route for its traditional narrative arc to sustain. Mr. & Mrs. Fitch, like the fictitious article the leading characters create are there to entertain, rather than draw their audience into a metaphysical Charlie Kaufmanesque quandary. An up to date depiction of how social media is changing print journalism might have therefore caused the genre’s hard drive to crash. Set the play sometime in late 2007 or even early 2008, however and the portrayal would have been relatively accurate.

Lithgow as Lithgow on Twitter

From Susannaspeier.com
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Social Media 101: when in doubt, Vark

Published
by
s000z
 on October 26, 2009
. 2 Comments
From Blog Archive

It isn’t difficult to ‘get’ social media

That is, it isn’t difficult so long as you avoid empty caloried, time sucking applications involving cupcakes, first person dog profiles and ‘Which 80s sitcom characters are you’ quizzes on Facebook.  Linkedin’s also great.  Be aware, however that, though a great business resource, is more of a supplementary research tool as its unspontaneous and self-sterilizing nature kind of prevents it from being much else.

Twitter is a culture

Of all social media, twitter offers the ultimate flexibility in terms of branding and rapid niche connecting.  Though a ton of stuff is being written about it, IMHO, if you just follow “Trust Agents” author Chris Brogan’s tweets, read his blog posts and check out his streamed webinars, you should be fine.  Chris is like that super nice summer camp councilor all the girls had crushes on because, well, because he was so nice.  Brogan is humanizing, fair, community oriented and seems to perpetually exudes this ability to make more friends in a day than many make in a year.  Given that trust and transparency are his credo, his personality is hard to resist.

Listen to the linguists

As cerebral as Chris Brogan is warm, fuzzy, entertaining and anecdotal, when it comes to Web content, linguist Ginny Redish is clear, focused and streamline.  Her definitive book on the topic, “Letting Go of the Words” is mercifully readable and thankfully user oriented.  Be prepared to apply design principles to your words and expect to emerge with an updated arsenal of margin notes, color coding, Sans Serif, chunking and  contextual clarity.  Redish’s book so thorough that it is really the only actual investment you’ll need to make to learn about writing for the web.

Arianna Huffington is blogging, okay?

Though social media stars are generally famous for something achieved outside of their viral social media realm, with bloggers that is not necessarily the case.  Think of Perez Hilton.  Arianna Huffington is the living embodiment of the new media blogging superstar and her status is will deserved.  The Huffington Post provides everything from Pelosi to Politiku (the latter of the two, being a passion project of yours truly:-)  “The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging” is about as comprehensive as it gets.  As with, “Letting Go of the Words” once you’ve got it, you can go ahead and return your big yellow For Dummies volumes to the bookshelf…right back where you found them.

Knowing how to ask

Whether it’s where to go to learn more about SEO optimization, or how to treat a cat’s eye infection, be keyword sensitive, bearing in mind that a computer is categorizing your question. Aardvark.com (with a url that uses the shortened, Vark.com) will try and match the question to someone who can answer. Set up an account and it hooks you in through your Facebook network. Vark is undoubtedly one of social media’s best kept secrets. Not only is it a great when all else fails option. It’s also actually a good place to start your research.

When in doubt, Vark

As with Social Media, blogging has no epicenter.  Also, like the others it offers multiple entry points with multiple hubs around which multiple identities can cluster and congregate. What is different with Aardvark is that it is information, as opposed to personality, driven.  Questions are matched with compatible information providers who, like everyone registered on Aardvark, is encouraged to both ask as well as respond to questions.  If the answers the current online members aren’t doing it for you, you have simply to resubmit and Aardvark will send on to the next round.  Still not working, then resubmit.  Still not?  Then use Vark to ask someone on Vark to help you understand what’s going on.

If you’re into this kinda stuff, you should also be sure to check out the post about how Daylight Saving Time and how Google trends can lead you grammatically astray.

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Daylight Savings 2009 makes me miss my atomic clock

Published
by
s000z
 on March 8, 2009
. 9 Comments

A Brief History of Daylight Saving Time -  Not a history geek?  No worries.  You can read my computer geek Daylight Saving Time post, instead.

Daylight Saving Time -or-  Macro vs. Micro:

It’s weird what a big deal I’m making over daylight saving this time round by putting a time twist on the macro perspective is not by choice so much as it is due to the fact that it’s impossible not to obsess over the history which is very much the story of individuals struggling to bring a micro concept to the macro arena where it belongs.

140px-Franklin-Benjamin-LOC

According to the Franklin Institute:

Benjamin Franklin was the inventor of Daylight Savings Time.  No one had conceptualized the idea prior to Franklin’s 1784 satirical essay on the topic.  It wasn’t until 1907, however that the English builder, William Willett propsed a Daylight Savings Time bill. Neither Franklin’s satirical nor Willett’s sincere efforts to brings this idea came to fruition came about during their lifetimes.

Contentious DST Component Established & Nixed

Daylight Saving Time was established as law in the U.S. by the Act of March 19, 1918 (sometimes called the Standard Time Act).  The primary purpose of the law was to officiate the time zones that the railroads had unofficially been using since 1883.  Although the contentious DST component of that bill was appealed in 1919, the standard time zones remained.

DST Finally Re-established

During World War I, Germany nationally established a DST and other European countries soon followed, including England –where Willet’s idea had been previously ridiculed.  Early into World War II, DST was finally nationally re-established in the United States.

Waste-of-Daylight-19-cover

Love and Loss

My beloved analog atomic clock will take a few days to catch up.  In the meantime, I will feel that significance of time passing and continue to organize and structure my precious writing hours as its large, clunky hands catches up with the change.  The fact that time gets lost during this atomic hickup –which, btw, has something to do with the dialogue it has with its NIST sponsored mothership, causing a few days of confused uncertainty before it sets itself straight, again— appeals to me.

Maximization through ubiquity

I admire the passion and dedication Franklin and Willett had for honoring and maximizing the precious hours of the day at a time when no one took their ideas seriously.  Then the concept, like my atomic clock, finally connected to the mothership and became the new, ubiquitously acknowledged measuring standard.

Blogs, websites, social media and Daylight Saving Time

Blogs, websites and social media, like Daylight Saving Time, maximize your potential.  The creation of content with sticking power and resonance, however, requires good writing.  If you need help developing quality online content to promote your business, email a website link and a tweet-length description of your business goals to: 

susanna (at) susannaspeier (dot) com

and I will provide a free assessment of your business’ online communication voice along suggestions for ways in which we could work together.


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Quakey

Published
by
s000z
 on July 30, 2008
. 1 Comment

So this was bound to happen at some point or another. My first real Cali Earthquake. Ground was shaking. Not tilting or slanting or rippling or buckling or any other the other bizarre scenarios I’d heard or seen or read about. It sounded like a large truck or freight train passing uncomfortably close. So I leap across the room, sequester myself in the doorway for all of, oh, twenty seconds and then it’s all gone. And I stay in the doorway for about another minute or so, wondering what, if any, aftershocks might ensue, then get up and return to my script. About five minutes pass and I realize my heart is still on fight/flight forward. I check the radio.  Schubert playing.   ‘Was it really a big deal,’ I’m wondering, ‘or am I making a big deal of it?’ Maybe it wasn’t a quake at all—just a plate tremour, like they always get, only I noticed something this time.  Seemed like more than that.  I did, afterall, leap into a doorway.  But maybe not.  My generally quiet downstairs neighbors are now arguing with the other neighbors but I can’t understand what they’re arguing about because it’s in Arabic.  Both families recently immigrated from Syria.  Could that be connected with what just happened?  Are there Earthquakes in Syria?  Phones are ringing, now.  It’s like all the apartments, all around the courtyard have phones going off  simultaneously.  I hear a siren; then another one.  Okay, okay, emergency vehicles are involved.  This was def a legit experience.  Okay, so I turn on the radio, again. Playing…Schubert?  I think it’s Schubert, anyway.  Not 100% sure. Google search.  No, not Schubert seaching, earthquake searching.  Only earthquakes mentioned in Burbank were in, like 2005.  So, I go back to writing my script when Sam’s IM pops up on my Gmail ichat. “You alright.” OMG—this was a legit experience, I guess. “Yeah, fine. How’d you know?” I’m asking. “The Tube” he tells me. And so we’re discussing all the various applications of the word “Tube” via g-chat (via fiberoptic ‘tube’) when I get another call and then another. Dad wanted to be sure I was okay.  He tells me about the quake he experienced in Japan.  Why haven’t I ever travelled to Japan?  I wanna go to Japan one day!  Dad has to get back to work, ends the call.  Cousins Josh and Sally in Calabasas each send emails tell me they’re okay.  And then Edward calls.  Edward, my fellow east-coast transplant who just two weeks ago returned Boston and was all bummed that he never got to experience an earthquake.  He assures me that this earthquake was legit. Yes, a real earthquake. 5.5.  I check in w/ the cardio-vascular unit and yes, indeed, my heart is still prepping to enter mach five past light speed. Okay. So it really really was legit. Quick. Relatively innocuous. But still, legit.  And after trolling the LA Times website for some photo or snap of some sort that might have managed to successfully captured the jolt, I’d done near given up when, low and behold, “Earthquake Damage” popped up on my friend, Michelle Hanson’s facebook profile.  And there it was.  Michelle had succeeded where the LA Times’ pulitzer winning staff had failed.  Jpeg version of photo, kindly provided by the artist and posted with her permission.  That is, so long as she gets 5% of the gross, if it sells…

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