Alfred Thompson the Cyberspace People Watcher

Little Ideas May Be Larger Than They Appear

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:06:01 GMT

Alltop, which I have talked about before, has gotten me thinking about how much of the future of web applications may just be small ideas that are unique and well done and attract a lot of repeat visitors. I think people spend too much time linking about big ideas – things that are massive and complex and solve some sort of big problem that people immediately realize they have. And yet small ideas that solve problems that may not even exist in reality but that spark the imagination may prove to be more popular in the long run. And if they are simple and inexpensive to operate the monitizition required to recoup investment may be much less.

So here a look at a couple of “small ideas” in hopes that there are more out there I am missing.

Alltop is a site that aggregated lots and lots of blogs. The blogs are grouped into an increasing number of categories. Once the initial work was done, apparently in fairly short order, the hard part is picking the right blogs to aggregate and putting them in the right categories. Since the popups that give people a preview do not include the whole post people have an incentive to visit the actual blog for more. People save time looking for interesting posts and people who write interesting posts get more traffic. Win win all around.

icantdeci.de – this one is new, its very simple in every way and its a lot more fun than serious. Full disclosure, Aaron White who was my student for a while once upon a time is one of the people behind this one. In this site, subtitled “a techno-crutch for the chronically indecisive”, people can ask short binary questions and after answering a few of them from other people see what others have selected from their options. So you can enter “Chinese food or Thai food” and in a few seconds get a result from some number of random people. Or you can just blow some time by answering a bunch of random questions and seeing what other people are answering. It’s not at all possible to take the results serious (well not for me anyway) but it can be a fun way to procrastinate for a few minutes and be mildly amused.

I think that instant messaging was also a small idea – just send messages to someone you know. Twitter and clones are a small outgrowth of instant messaging. Facebook started out as a fairly small idea and grew into something huge. But really so did search engines. Of course over time building a search engine became a lot more complicated than writing a web crawler (which often gets assigned as a school project in universities) and indexing the results. We keep looking for higher quality search results.

Will some of these other small ideas grow and evolve into big things? It’s too early to tell. But over all I suspect that the next really big thing on the Internet will start off as a small idea by a couple of crazy people. Sane people only come up with boring ideas.

Online Discussion of Public Issues

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:28:02 GMT

In the school district where I live there are a number of blogs and online forums that discuss local politics and related issues. One of the key topics is the schools themselves. Recently the local newspaper brought up the issue of concerns around the schools with a nod to these forums and blogs. (No links though. I wonder why.)

In the article, one member of the Timberlane school board (Stephen Brown from Sandown) charged that the online forums and blogs were not the most appropriate place for this discussion.

There's a time at every meeting for parents and taxpayers to make comments about the district, but that time is rarely used. Brown said it's a much more appropriate forum than posting on blogs.
"We listen, we discuss and reply to those comments," Brown said. "We are constantly striving to make the school district better."

If I didn’t know better I’d think that Mr. Brown was a naive idealist who had little idea of how the school board meetings worked. But of course he’s been around a while and knows exactly how the meetings work. So honestly I am suspicious of his suggestion and of his apparent attempt to move discussion from a wide open and very transparent location to the relative isolation (in time if not access) of a school board meeting. School board meetings are held only a couple of times a month (often less in the summer) and are time limited. Not everyone can make it to a meeting and not everyone can be accommodated on the agenda. Oh and by the way the school board has complete control over who gets on the agenda and how long they can talk.School board meetings are not a good time/place for real conversations with the public. Why? Well first off because time for the public to speak at such meetings is particularly limited. Secondly these meetings are not good for back and forth discussions. Generally boards allow a statement, let the board members ask a couple of questions, and the meeting moves on. There are just too many people involved, too little time, and the chair has much too much authority and responsibility to limit discussion with the public. Thirdly it would defeat the purposes of having a representative elected board. Board meetings should be about getting things down and board members should be doing their homework and talking to the people they represent outside of the meeting time.

It is of course quite appropriate for people to bring issues to school board members outside of meetings. They can do it in person, by phone, by letter and by email (though I have read at least on complaint about a constituent using email to a member of this school board). Why not through other, more public means though? Letters to the editor have long been popular. Today the Internet is a great platform for getting ones thoughts out. It seems to me that online forums may be the single most appropriate venue for discussion of public issues. It is very public. Access is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And everyone can participate.

The school forum for the Timberlane Regional School district that I participate in has had close to 40 topics under discussion in the last month and a half. How many of them do you think the school board would have had time to discuss in open session with active participation from people who are not members of the board in that time? Somehow I think not much.

Lots of public officials are unwilling (some would say unable) to participate in online forums. There are rules around disclosure of some things such as personal and disciplinary matters of course. But rarely are people asking about things that cannot be discussed in a public meeting. I wonder how many people are just afraid of letting their feelings and opinions known. Oh sure meetings are public but not as many people can get to them. Watching on TV takes a lot of time as well and minutes of meetings often leave out quite a bit that may not be directly related to discussion under vote. So posting to online forums makes people, not just officials BTW, somewhat vulnerable to people correctly understanding where they stand on issues. I’d argue that is good for honest, transparent government. But you know lawyers tend to like as much to be secret and “non discoverable” as possible. And elected officials are easily infected with that attitude.

I really hope that political discussions at all levels, but especially at the local levels, continues to move to the Internet. Let’s bring as much of the discussion into the open as we can.

Online Activities Have Offline Consequences

Wed, 28 May 2008 17:58:20 GMT

Teens and young adults lead compartmentalized lives. They have family, friends from school, friends from the neighborhood, friends from scouts/sports and friends from online. There is almost always some overlap of course but clearly not as much as when I was a kid. I traveled to school from 7th grade through high school so neighborhood friends and school friends were completely different. But there was no online then and friends from my outside activities were a pretty close overlap with my neighborhood. But I didn’t expect (nor really did I want) my school friends and neighborhood friends to know all the same things about me.

Young people expect people to respect their compartmentalization. They expect parents to ignore what they do with their friends or at school. To young people that isn’t family stuff and family stuff is different from peer stuff. They are often surprised when parents even ask about things that they see as separate. No where else is this more true then in online activities. Students often see online as completely divorced from their real lives. Online they pretend to be different people – older, sexier, more outgoing, more wild, and generally just different from who they are in real life. They expect it all to be safe and consequence free.

It seems to me that young people regard the Internet as a sort of “no adults allowed” club house. A place where they can do what ever they want without complications or consequences. It is all virtual. Even when their own feelings are hurt or they feel negatively effected by something that is said or done on the Internet they still expect there to be no consequences for their actions. I think it is a factor of their youth – perhaps the way their minds work.

The title of this post is a statement that Vicki Davis made during an online presentation today about her online student projects. She said that some student, usually very early in the project, does something very inappropriate. She handles this action quickly, decisively and with the full weight of her authority. She uses this teachable moment to make it very clear that online activities have offline consequences that can be quite serious. She makes it clear that adults are watching. This usually takes care of problems for the rest of the project as word gets around quickly.

To me this is great teaching. If we teach students nothing else about their life online we need to teach them that online activities have offline consequences. If they can learn it well in middle school (or before) I think they may make fewer and smaller missteps later on. This is a valuable life skill that students need to have. Sure there is a lot of other value in using Web 2.0 tools and connecting students from around the world as Vicki and her partners do. I am excited for the opportunities her students are getting. But none of it would be possible without hard work, constant vigilance and the willingness to help students learn from their mistakes rather than taking the easy way out and just trying to prevent mistakes.

The Butcher’s Blog

Wed, 28 May 2008 14:50:33 GMT

My wife returned home from one of her favorite butchers with a newsletter called “The Butcher’s Blog.” It was a nice full color, glossy, four page newsletter with some good information. But it was the title that got my attention. There was a web site listed for the company (this is a small chain of quality butchers) so of course I went there to look for the online blog.

Well there wasn’t one. That’s right – they call their hardcopy, print only newsletter “The Butcher’s Blog.” Now since “blog” is short for “web log” and that implies a web page I was surprised. Well not all that surprised. But after years of seeing online content using off line names (newsletters, journals, etc) this was the first case of an offline article borrowing an online sort of name.

I assume they have seen all the attention that blogs are getting in the media and decided that they might as well borrow some of that attention and look hip and with it. The web site is very slick with lots of information. It’s brochureware of course. No interactivity that I could see. I did see a sign up for a newsletter (via email) so I signed up. I haven’t seen what it looks like yet though. I looked for back issues online but could not find them.

I wonder who is advising them on their online presence. Somehow I suspect that the people who create the online presence and the people who suggested the title for the newsletter are different people.

The website is very well done even if the online ordering system is currently closed for maintenance. They are doing a lot of real life community involvement which is great. But they don’t quite seem to be ready for that online community/conversation that would make them a real “Web 2.0” operation. I don’t have a problem with that really. But calling their newsletter “The Butcher’s Blog” just seems a bit wannabe.

Still their meat is very good so we’ll go there. Though between you and I, I’d rather go to the closer, smaller, more comfortable (for me) and every bit as good J & B Butcher Shop. Their web site may not be as fancy but I love the service and the quality of the products. And ultimately, no matter what gets you in the store in the first place, those are the things that determine if you come back.

Who Are The Interesting People Following

Fri, 23 May 2008 18:12:17 GMT

One of the things I have been doing lately is checking out the lists of who the people I follow on Twitter follow. I am starting to see patterns which is of course to be expected.

There seems to be several kinds of people.

Famous People -Those who follow a few and are followed by many.
Followers -Those who follow many and are followed by few.
Regular People - Those who follow and are followed by a similar number of people (ratio of followers to following is usually around 1.2 and 0.8).

Well sure there are outliers like Scoble and Kawasaki who are both followed by and following insane numbers of people but that sort of makes them less interesting in terms of understanding the bigger Twitter picture. (Yeah they are interesting and I follow both of them but I want to look at something different here.)

The people who are followed by many but follow few themselves are “famous” if I can use the term somewhat loosely. By that I mean that they have a reputation in their online community that often far exceeds their local real life community. Their neighbors may not even know they have any fame at all but when they show up at a conference or similar event they attract a crowd. They get quoted as authorities in other blogs and in conversations. Reporters (main stream media ones) talk to them, call them up, and quote them. They tend to follow other famous people more than “regular people” or “followers.” That’s fine as far as it goes but I wonder about echo chamber problems and losing touch with regular people. But clearly these people are hubs of a sort and something that is interesting can quickly spread to many people. That makes them even more valuable which leads to more followers.

Followers are people I don’t quite understand. They follow many people but somehow never generate the interest to attract many followers of their own. So what is the point? Is it all about taking in lots of information? That seems a reasonable goal I guess. It’s just not for everyone though. Anyone have an explanation for that phenomenon?

Regular people do not have time to follow lots and lots of people. They follow their friends, colleagues, peers and yes, fairly often, some famous people. It seems to be partly about following the news (from the famous) but even more largely about sharing with peers. I think all of Twitter is largely about sharing with peers of course. But for the regular people I think there is more use of the reply and direct message to a larger set of people. Famous people reply to their followers but regular people carry on conversations with their friends in a less formal way.

Yes I know that famous people hold conversations with their friends, who are usually other famous people. These conversations are often part of the reason people follow them but conversations between regular people seem to be more personal.

I have been looking at a bunch of people lately and wondering who among the people they follow I should also follow. If a lot of the really interesting people are following someone should I also follow them? Or should I keep my traffic down and assume that somehow the interesting thing from those people will show up in the people I already follow? So far I am adding people very slowly. I’m sure I am missing a lot of interesting people but there is only so much time in the day. And I’m reading too many blogs so until I cut back there I don’t have a lot of time to follow many more on Twitter.

Why do we put up with online advertisements?

Fri, 23 May 2008 03:21:45 GMT

The other day my wife and I were watching a TV show that was recorder on our DVR. As you might expect we would fast forward through the commercials. My wife pointed out that we gained about 15 minutes per hour that way. She suggested we think about not watching TV “live” at all. There was a time when there were a lot fewer commercials (and fewer channels) but we didn’t pay anything for the shows we watched. Today we do pay for cable access. Where we live that is about the only way we could get quality of viewing or quantity of shows. You’d think though that the money we pay would be enough but apparently it is not. We put up with the advertising because we have little choice. Of course the DVR is starting to give us choice and we are starting to exercise it.

But what of the Internet? When I first started using the Internet (back in the early/mid 80s) advertising on the Internet was almost a capital offense (as defined as something that could cause you to lose access the the Internet). It was more or less acceptable to use a form of word of mouth in that one could talk about products where they were reinvent to the discussion. But pure advertising? That was a no no.

Just like the era of free (but advertising supported) broadcast only TV the early Internet was a little light on content compared to today. More and more Internet features from web based email, to search, to media of all sorts is paid for by advertising. I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of the efficacy of online advertising (see this article I wrote in 1996 before Google and a lot of other things) but companies are spending lots of money on it. People keep saying online advertising is money well spent but I sure wonder about it. It seems like a lot of magic hand waving goes on about the numbers.

Of course people like things to be free and we as a society have gotten used to advertising paying for all sorts of things. When was the last time you were in a school gymnasium and saw a scoreboard that wasn’t paid for with advertising? It goes back a long way so we should not be surprised that it goes on via the Internet. In the early days of the Internet boom lots of companies tried to charge people for services but people were not buying. Well most people were not. I paid for a couple of early paid services. I even paid for Slate when there was a fee for the good stuff. It was worth it to me but apparently too many people want advertisers to pay for their news.

I also pay for a premium account with Hotmail/Windows Live services. That is why there are no advertisements on this blog BTW. I’m paying for your access. (You’re welcome :-)) Though in a sense one could say this blog is an advertisement for Alfred Thompson. And word of mouth for things (like the books on the book list) that I like. But again I think I am in a pretty small minority.

While I am pretty good at ignoring most online advertising including the occasionally pop up or pop under when I do notice it I find it annoying. It also reduces the space for content that I really want and the ability to make web sites more pleasant reading. I also feel like it takes away some of my control over the suppler of the content or service. It is not like I can say “hey I’m paying for this service so fix x, y and z.” I can say I will leave the service or use it less but that somehow doesn’t feel like as powerful a statement. I can’t say “add a feature and I’ll pay more” either. The control is much more in the hands of the advertisers. Oh sure the visitor numbers are important but aren’t companies likely to assume (usually correctly) that people who complain are not likely to click on their advertisements and add to their revenue stream anyway?

I’m fighting city hall as the saying goes on this I know. But given a choice I think I would prefer small reasonable fees for more of the Internet than more and more intrusive advertising. I wonder if I am part of a large enough demographic to pay for anything of value though. What do you think?

Gen Y and the Future of the Internet

Fri, 16 May 2008 22:43:00 GMT

My manager forwarded a link to an article called “Why Gen Y is going to change the web” today that makes very interesting reading. I think there is a lot of good insights and information in it. But – hey you knew there was a but coming – I think some things are over stated. And other things need not be as scary as they may appear.

First the overstated. Gen Y is not quite as fast to grab on to things as we often think they are. I talk to groups of high school students (and college students) regularly. Few of them seem to know about Twitter let alone use it. They know about blogs but they don’t seem to be writing them as often as many think. They are on Facebook and My Space though. Very short updates seem to be the common thing there. Think Twitter but not in Twitter. It all comes back to that short attention span that is not overstated in the article. Maybe they will blog as they get older. It could happen I guess. I actually hope it does.

The blog post says that “They're also wary of old folks, like their boss, trying to "friend" them in their social space, especially if they're tragically un-hip wannabes.” I think this is true however – as a change from saying but – they do welcome “old folks” who have earned their respect and who treat them right. “Old folk” like me do best when we wait for the Gen Yers to reach out to them. Most of my 182 (!!) Friends on Facebook are in Gen Y. Some of them I poked but all of them issued the friend invite. I may do a poke if I think it will be received as a simple “hi I’m on Facebook” and not as something pushy. Friend invitations from old people to young people or from manager to subordinate (unless there is a clear out of work friendship) are just too likely to appear pushy to me. But the key take away is that you have to earn some credibility. Blog, Twitter, learn to txt message, and make your own identity in the online world before you try to jump into the Gen Y world.

But generally I think that post was spot on. Work is going to change to meet the way Gen Y lives. Managers are going to have to change their ideas of control, of motivation (money is not everything for Gen Y), and of communication. Advertising has got to change as well. How well will Internet advertisements work for a generation that has already learned to ignore them? Video is going to be more important. Word of mouth will work faster and with more impact. TV ads are going to be cool or be gone. If you can fast forward through an advertisement as you can with a DVR or online video who will watch boring? And are Gen Yers really going to click on black & white text advertisements on web pages? Really?

It’s going to be a whole new world.

Just Google Me

Sat, 10 May 2008 17:42:24 GMT

Actually I don’t mean use Google. I use “google” in the generic “look something up on a search engine” way that I think most people really mean it. Personally I use Live Search as my default search engine.

Anyway, this morning I was looking at a slide deck by Ted Demopoulos from his talk on how to sell blogging to a CEO and noticed his last/contact slide. Ted included his email and his web site, as you’d expect, and then added “or just Google me.” This got me thinking. Well thinking more, because lately a lot of my referral logs show people doing searches for my name. They are using Live Search, Yahoo Search, AOL Search and yes, for the most part, Google search. But regardless of which engine they are using they are finding me or more specifically my blogs. This wasn’t always the case. Blogging changed that and really raised my Internet visibility. If one can remember my name they can find me. That is helpful for me in my line of work!

The same is true for Ted BTW. Although I have to look up his last name before I can spell it correctly. I keep meaning to ask him if he has bought domains with close but wrong spellings of his last name. :-)

But what about other people? I have links to most of the people in my group at work and I see searches for their names finding my blogs. I assume that a lot of searchers also go directly to their blogs of course. And I suspect that some of the visits I get that come from their blogs are from people looking for me who found their blogs and links to me first. That’s how the web is supposed to work after all.

But where do searches for people who don’t have their own blog or personal web page go? I search for people all the time and many of them are not in any sort of control of their web presence. I look for teachers pretty often and as a general rule I only find them on their school web pages. Many times not even there. A couple of times the only reference I have found is in a copy of the school board minutes from when they were appointed to their job. You would be amazed at how hard it is to find teachers in many schools. That this is the case for computer technology or computer science teachers is even more surprising. Though in all fairness a lot of teachers don’t have a lot of time to create their own web presence.

Not being able to find business people is even more common and yet, in some ways, even more surprising. After all business people depend so much on a reputation and on people being able to find out about them. A search engine search is now becoming common practice for most people looking to hire or otherwise do business with people. People want to know that someone is an expert and these days people look to the Internet for that sort of information. Why don’t more people take charge of their Internet presence? Time? Knowledge? I guess it is all still new to most people.

I think of one’s Internet presence as a sort of enhanced online resume. The Internet is where people look to find out who you are, what you are and have been doing, and to get a look into what others think about you. If people can’t find online references to what they see on your resume what does that mean? Perhaps nothing but it is something I would expect to be asked about on an interview. The world is changing.

One last piece of advice, if you are searching for people (or anything really) use multiple search engines. This week my other blog was the number one hit for “Zune games beta” on Google which is crazy given that I’m just linking to other places related to that. Live Search had more useful links in my opinion. And compare searches on Live and Google for “Ted Demopoulos” sometime. Both useful but both a little different. One keys in more on his books (good books too) and the other on his web sites. BTW I recommend Ted if you are looking for a consultant on blogging for business – especially if you are looking for someone to talk TO people rather than AT them if you know what I mean.

How To Get Links To Your Blog

Tue, 06 May 2008 08:25:45 GMT

It is said that links are the currency of the Internet. Certainly they are important for bloggers. Links mean traffic – readers – discussion – credibility – and a feeling that one matters. Well to some degree or an other I guess. What a lot of people don’t realize is that the initial traffic from a link is only part of the story. Lots of blog traffic comes from search engines. Links are what make a web page or blog post show up highly in search results. So the more links a blog has the more likely it is to be found by people searching for something. The long term benefits of a link may be greater than the short term.

So how does one get links to their blog? The best way is to write brilliant, insightful commentary or wonderfully useful information. In other words great original content. People will read it and want to share it with their readers. This is not as easy as it seems though. Well not for me anyway.

You can also embed great pictures or videos – cute, funny, smart, educational – there are lots of options. People like pictures – its part of what makes http://icanhascheezburger.com the number 8 blog on Technorati’s Top 100 list. Embedding the images/video is best because that way people link to your post and not to the site of the original image (if it exists elsewhere).

Linking to other good content sometimes works. If your link is directly to an image or some file that is not a web page that’s best. If your link is to another web page people often just link to that page. Sometimes they link back to you as how they found out about it but not always. As a matter of being nice it is always good to link to the place one found out about good content as well as to the content itself. I try to do that though if it is one of those things that I see several places I might not. Anyway if you can link to a really useful resource (especially a free one) people will often link to your post.

Speaking of linking. Trackbacks and comments generally do not give one links that “count” for search engines or incoming links. Too many spam trackbacks means that many systems use the nofollow tag for those things. They do however let people know about you and you may get more traffic from them and that may lead to direct links. I am amazed at how many readers I get from people following back from a comment or a trackback. So don’t discount them completely.

Participate in interesting memes. My recent “book meme” post has resulted in three different people linking back to this blog. This one is tricky though. It requires an audience that is interested in the meme. I have a literate and fun loving audience here. They seem to like books and they are willing to participate in this meme. The audience for some blogs would see many memes as off topic, distracting and not useful. And if people do not want to participate there will not be any links. In fact in some blogs this may cost one regular readers. As with anything in writing knowing ones audience is important.

One way that seems to work wonders but that I don’t recommend is to really annoy an A-list blogger. This isn’t as easy to do as you might expect because they people have developed really thick skins so easily shrug off and ignore most insults. However if you do succeed in getting them annoyed to link to you and point out what an idiot you are you may get a lot of links. First off their fans will link to you so they can call you names, demand that you be fired and otherwise be very mean to you. That makes this strategy not for the faint of heart. Yes, the A-lister’s detractors may link to you as well and even say nice things. But honestly they probably think you are just pointing out the obvious and may not find that link worthy.

Now someone is going to say “how about positive links from A-list bloggers?” Sure that is always a good thing. But honestly that’s all about writing great content and I covered that already. Besides I am not convinced that a link from an A-list blogger carries much more weight in search engines than any other link. It may get you more initial attention and it may occasionally result in some of their readers also linking to you. But as a strategy “I’m going to get a lot of links by getting some A-list blogger to link to me” I think it is something of a lottery. Better to write for your core audience and just be happy if one of the links you pick up is from an A-lister. The big benefit from an A-list link is a few extra people dropping by with the chance that a subset of them will become regulars. The conversion factor from another more closely related blog that is not an A-list blog will often be a lot higher.

I was going to not say “link to other people as much as possible” because I thought that is sort of obvious. But maybe its not. Link to the sort of content that you appreciate. It helps out and encourages the people who create it. Plus it lets them know about you and maybe they will see content of yours that they will want to link to. Besides it is always right to treat others the way you would want to be treated.

What did I leave out? Any other recommendations for getting links?

Twitter: Follower to Following Ratio

Mon, 05 May 2008 01:11:40 GMT

I read in a blog recently about a technique for deciding to follow or not follow someone who follows one on Twitter and other sites. The short version is that if the person has more followers (or close to a 1 to 1 ratio) that they will be followed. I sort of use that myself. Though not quite. I will follow people I actually know even if the ratio is way off. As a general rule I don’t follow complete strangers unless I have a reason to believe they will actually write things I am interested in. When in doubt I use the follow to followers ratio as a guide.

Robert Scoble says that people define themselves by who they follow. I am sure he is right to some extent. One of the things about me is that I don’t have as much time as it would take to follow thousands of people. Nor do I think I could get real value from a Twitter feed that traveled to fast for me to keep up with. I’m limited in time and energy so I have to set some guidelines for myself.

Most of the people I follow are followed by more people then they themselves follow. What does that mean? Well I like to think that it means they are interesting and create original content. Usually when I decide to follow someone I also look at who they follow. It is nice to see that they follow some people I follow but it is probably more useful that they follow very different people. That helps to minimize “echo chamber” effects and means that people can be connectors.

A lot of the people I follow also follow a number of people who I follow. I think that is because there is a community of educators and people interested in education which is a good thing. There is also a tech circle in my follow/followers list. I think that being a member of several circles is a good thing. I don’t think that one has to follow everyone in the circle though. The really important and cool stuff will make the rounds. Being a part of several circles means that information can flow between circles. Again the good stuff will make the rounds. That’s my theory so far anyway.

Many of the people who follow lots of people are followed by relatively few people themselves. I don’t think that following lots of people automatically makes one an interesting person. It may make one more informed but I have found that does not always translate to interesting.

A number of famous people or important people (using various means of defining important) have a lot more followers than they follow themselves. usually that is not so surprising. Someone who is a CEO of a company generally doesn’t have time to follow a lot of people. They do often have interesting things to say though. Robert Scoble used to automatically follow anyone who followed him but recently stopped doing that. At over 22,000 people to follow I suspect he is already getting more Twits than he can follow.

Guy Kawasaki follows more people than follow him. That really surprised me. The man is famous and is a very interesting Twitter person. I do wonder how he keeps up with the traffic of following over 10,000 people though. He’s replied to Twits I have made to him so he obviously pays some attention to replies.

Anyway I think that most people have to make some sort of decision about who to follow based on their tolerance for traffic. The follow to follower ratio seems like it might be helpful for many of them. What do you think?

Book Meme

Sun, 04 May 2008 04:27:46 GMT

Thanks to Michele and Leigh Ann I found this list and had to fill it out. Honestly some of the books I was required to read I wouldn’t wish on people I didn’t even like. How “Catcher in the Rye” is regarded as more than trash is beyond me. Not so much because of the language as much as how depressing it is. I’ve long wondered how many students read that book and decide to kill themselves. (Yes I am serious.)

According to a LibraryThing survey, these 106 works are the ones most often marked as “unread”, That is, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.
Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones read solely as a curriculum requirement, italicize the ones you started, but didn’t finish.
Final touch: denote (*) the ones you liked, and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you did read them for school in the first place.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
*Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
*The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
*Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
*Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
*The Three Musketeers (I’ll read anything by Dumas)

Out Of Office Messages

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:25:08 GMT

Out of office (or in Microsoft speak OOF – for Out Of Facility) messages for email are the new answering machine messages. But different people use them differently. For example, I sent out an email to four co-workers today. Three of those accounts replied with an OOF message. The interesting thing is that all four people are at the same off-site event with the same access to email. And yet one person didn’t set up an OOF message. It’s not because he doesn’t do so – he does – but (I think) that he has a different view of what being away means.

That’s pretty common. I have received messages from people who are in their office and working on the computer but have decided to focus hard on a specific task and ignore email for the day. And yet I know other people who always ignore email except for one specific period of the day without feeling the need to set up an automatic message. Some people will set up a message if they will be off email for a single day. Others will not unless they will be away for several days or longer. I’ve had messages from people who typically take days or weeks to reply to most email that say that “today they are not in the Internet” as if somehow it will make a real difference.

I have heard of people who set up an OOF message during lunch breaks. What? No really. Once I set up an OOF message saying that I was taking the weekend off and that I would reply to email on Monday. Several people found that amusing. Others expressed concern about people who bring work into the weekend. Ironic as they had seen the message because they sent me work related email on the weekend.

Most of the time I keep my OOF messages short and serious. And I tend not to use them unless I am on vacation or really not going to be able to keep up with email. Being on a cruise ship for example. I have a vacation coming up – we’re going to Disney World. I am tempted to have a message that says something like “leave me alone unless you have something more fun than Disney World in mind.” That should keep most follow ups away. But of course I will not do that. I’ll have the usual “out of the office and away from email” with a connection to my manager in case of an emergency.

But you know the sad thing? I’ll probably be reading much of my email while I am away. Just not as often.

People You May Know

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:33:30 GMT

The friend of my friend is my friend, the enemy of my enemy is my enemy? Well one might think so. But in actual fact, at least in most of the western world, we pick our friends and foes largely independently. If a friend recommends someone they know we give that a lot of weight of course. And we tend to take our friend's side against strangers as well. But we don't assume that friendship is automatically transferable.

What brought this on? Well Facebook has a new feature called "People You May Know" that lists people in Facebook who are friends (at least in the Facebook sense) with two or more of your Facebook friends. LinkedIn, the older more professional networking site, has a similar feature. There I think the connections can be even more tenuous though.

I love looking through these lists. Often I do find people I know and think of as friends and these sites allow me to easily establish a connection in their network. I have re-connected with a number of "long lost friends" that way. More often though I ether don't know the person at all or I know who they are but don't really know them. On Facebook the other large category is former students. I know them and I feel friendly toward them but as a matter of personal policy I don't bug them with friend invitations. I do accept them happily if they extend the invitation my way.

Often I am very impressed with the people my friends know. Honestly sometimes I'm impressed with the people I know and who have accepted or even extended friend invitations to me. But some of the people my friends know are the sort of people I'd be too shy about approaching in most situations. I'm clearly not ready to send them friend invitations. That is just not how I see those sorts of networking sites. Though I know others see them differently. Even I get lots of invitations from people I know nothing about. I feel awkward turning them down but I'd feel more awkward accepting them. But that may just be me.

Coming back to the people I know, at least by reputation, but who do not know me - I can imagine cases where I might ask a friend for an introduction. or if I were to meet them in real life I might drop the friend's name to help establish a connection. But I'm not going to just send them something like "I know Joe and Joe knows you so will you be my friend" out of the blue and with no good reason. I am not into collecting pseudo friends for the sake of a large list.

I will admit though that looking at lists of people my friends know is interesting. Maybe I'm nosey or maybe I just like seeing connections. In ether case these applications make these networking sites more interesting and useful for me.

Figuring Out This Twitter Thing

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:14:27 GMT

I think Twitter is starting to make sense to me. It's fun and interesting but for me I don't think it will take the place of blogging anytime soon. Though honestly I don't think that is the case for everyone.

I see some benefits to following a lot of people and some benefits to having a lot of people follow you. The benefit of following a lot of people is that you can pick up a lot of interesting news and information. You can also be a part of some interesting conversations among diverse groups of people. It can however be quite a time sink. How people who follow thousands of people (and there are a good number of them) can keep up and separate the heat from the light I do not understand. I'm following about 75 people right now. Some of them hardly update at all. Some of them (Guy Kawasaki and Robert Scoble to name two) can post quite a bit; often in a short time.

The people I follow who post often post a lot of interesting things. I have looked at some people who post a lot but whose posts I find less interesting. I have chosen to follow people who are interesting to me either because of my relationship to them or because they post things of interest to me. Not everyone is that picky and I can only assume they are getting different things of value to them. Am I missing some things by limiting myself? Probably but at the same time I don't have enough time to use all the data I get as is is.

The value from having followers comes in several forms. The most obvious and shallow shallow is ego gratification. With about 80 followers Twitter is not going to be a huge boost to my ego. Not when there are people with thousands and tens of thousands of followers out there. Its not a goal for me either. I am pleased that friends of mine are following me. I am intrigued, amused and a mite bewildered that people I know nothing about and who probably know nothing about me are following me. Some of them are following thousands of people so I guess they are the type who are good at separating the heat from light. More power to them and I hope the get some value from my Tweets.

The more serious value from having followers is the serendipitous conversations and interactions that can take place. For example last week I wrote an update that I was heading to a gathering. One of the people who follows me (and whom I follow) sent me a reply asking if he could join me. As a result we have a pleasant evening that we might not otherwise have had. And then there is the possibilities of people answering questions. People one knows or people one doesn't know. One can toss a question out and get answers from unexpected places/people. I hear lots of stories of impromptu real life meetings as well and blog ideas, business ideas and who knows what else.

For example, Guy Kawasaki seems to be building Alltop.com largely from Twitter conversations. This seems to be from both following and being followed. The fact that he is so open to conversation on Twitter is no doubt earning him more fans all the time as well. In any case I believe it is making that site a lot better and more useful in a shorter period of time then it might otherwise become. BTW Scoble is also sending a lot of replies to the people he follows. I have no doubt that it is leading to good things for him as well. He has a business that requires lots of contacts and word of mouth. Twitter is nothing if not contacts and word of mouth.

In fact the way to get the most out of Twitter is not just, as Scoble says, to follow a lot of people but to converse with a lot of people. Since Twitter lets one reply specifically to individuals but have the message go out to all followers it is obvious who is listening seriously enough to learn and converse (one can't reply without first listening). Sending a reply broadens the conversation, connects more people to each other and is really a sort of "force multiplier" of Twitter value. Following a lot of people is good but having a lot of conversations is great.

Listen to people, ask questions of people, answer questions others ask - in short - participate in conversation. Lots of followers or few; following many or following few; I'm not sure it matters as much as conversing with the people in the circle. One may get into more conversations if the circle is larger and if one really wants to get the most value possible then following more people will do that. If nothing else it will lead to getting more followers and creating more opportunities for more conversations.

The reason Twitter will not replace blogging for me is because I am too long winded. I like to express myself at length and 140 characters doesn't do it for me. If I were the sort whose posts were just links or pointers or short snippets it might be enough. But that is not me. So for me Twitter is something else. Something interesting, sometimes useful, often fun but still something else.

Technorati Tags: twitter,scoble,kawasaki

Where Are The Kids on Twitter?

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:00:05 GMT

I haven't seen many kids on Twitter. I've brought up Twitter several times before groups of high school and middle school students and for the most part they have never heard of it. I'd sort of thought that since Twitter was so much like IM that students would be all over it. But it appears not. This seems strange to me.

I have seen really only a couple of cases of teachers using Twitter in their classes. (Most recently here) It appears that teachers are introducing it as something new to their students. Most teachers are learning most things about Web 2.0 from their students. But Twitter is working the other way around.

Anyone have any insights into this? Am I just talking to the wrong students?

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - 7 Blogging Statistics Rules - There is Life After Page Views

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:49:48 GMT

Scott's post on blogging statistics and what they mean is one of the best I've seen in quite a while. I like the two questions he posits. In some cases I do care who reads my blog. In the case of changing based on what statistics tell me about who is reading my blog it depends. I will change if statistics tell me that the people I really want to read my blog will find it more useful if I change things. But that impacts almost entirely my work related blog (the one I do for high school computer science teachers - gotta link when I get an excuse :-) )

This blog I don't really care too much who reads. Well I do hope that some read it and that they get something from what they read. But I'm not out to impress anyone in particular and I am not out to get huge numbers of readers. I have another blog that appears to be read by no more than a handful of people. Perhaps fewer than five. But that is ok as it serves as a place for me to write and get some ideas "on paper." One of the people who reads writes a comment on most of my posts and so I feel I am at least having a conversation. And that is more than enough to make me happy. Having people talk back is the greatest measure of success for me.

So I think a lot depends on why you blog. I've been looking at a lot of statistics lately and for the most part they don't change what I write or how I write. So they are getting boring.

One key factor that stats tell me, and Scott talks about this as well, is that all audiences on the Internet are global. Realizing that has changed a couple of things. I generally try to use metric and English system measurements since I don't want readers to have to "translate." And I am more careful about idiom.

Does your audience change how you write?

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - 7 Blogging Statistics Rules - There is Life After Page Views

Do you care who reads your blog?

and if so

Will you change your behavior given statistics on who reads you blog?

Of Memes, Chain Letters, and the Internet

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:04:00 GMT

I ran across yet another "5 things" meme yesterday. This one is on comfort foods. And it got me thinking. (BTW I'm going to list mine at the end so you can skip them if bored and I can still participate.)

There have been chain letters flying around the Internet with this sort of thing for decades. Usually they are around the idea of getting to know people better. Each message has a list of questions with the sender's answers. Each person is supposed to replace those answers with their answers and send it back to the sender and on to some number of other people. Often one is supposed to do a reply all so that the list of people on the chain gets huge and everyone learns something about a lot of other people. As chain letters go this type is pretty harmless - as long as there are not threats of bad luck to people who let the chain drop. I really hate that sort of "incentive."

The "five things" mime in blogs adds a new wrinkle - links. Links are the currency of the Internet in general and especially for blogs. So the incentive here is that the people you "tag" (link to so that they will build on the chain - or is this really a pyramid scheme?) will participate and link back to you. The people you tag get links, you get links, the person who tags you get links. Your readers learn more about you the blogger and learn about other bloggers them may want to read. Yea! Everyone wins.

Well there is one problem. Maybe two. The first is that answering the meme question is off topic. That may annoy some readers. It may be seen as wasting their time. The other problem, in two parts, is that some people who are tagged may feel an unwanted obligation and some people who are not tagged may feel left out.

I go back and forth on this issue. Some of the meme's seem fun and I want to reply but I worry about things being too far off topic. And yet really how much does it take to just ignore the occasional off topic post? And I find that I do enjoy reading the answers of bloggers I follow. It does help me feel more like I know them and that I have a connection to them. So often I do participate - though not always. The tagging others is more stressful for me.

I worry (I'm really good at worrying by the way) that the ones I tag may be annoyed and the ones I don't tag will be left out. And what about all those people without blogs? Does anyone think about them? OK if they don't have a blog they probably don't want to answer the questions anyway but ... I guess they could leave a list in the comments. That would work for me.

Well when push comes to shove this is my blog and I can do what I want. So I'll participate in the memes that intrigue me and not in the ones that don't. Hopefully people will not take offence at me for either participating or not and realize that it is nothing personal either way.

My top 5 Comfort Foods because I know some of you really want to know:

Country Fried Steak with white gravy
Chili
Big hamburgers with onions, bacon, cheese and catchup
Mashed potatoes with lots of gravy
Bacon, egg and cheese on a croissant

I'm not tagging anyone because a) I don't want to pressure anyone and b) I don't want to leave anyone out but if you want to participate use the Technorati tag: comfortfoods And feel free to blame me with or without a link. :-) If you do respond I know I will enjoy reading your response even if it is off topic. :-)

Let Me Make Up My Own Mind

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:32:16 GMT

I have long been dissatisfied with reading/hearing second hand or third hand reports of events. Reading a book review or a movie review is not the same as seeing the movie or reading the book. The same is true of newsworthy events. One of the great wonders and joys of the Internet is the ability to get to the source itself. Of sure not everything but at least a lot of things.

It seems like everyone is talking about Barak Obama's speech on race in America. Most of the reviews I came across where by fawning fans of the man so it was hard to take them too seriously. But this is the Internet age and so I was easily able to find and watch the speech for myself. And a wonderful speech it was. It almost makes me want to vote for the man.

And then there is reporting on other issues. The one review of yesterday's testimony on the Washington DC handgun ban I was able to find was by someone who is clearly biased in favor of the ban. It was pretty disrespectful of almost all involved. Fortunately the transcript is available and I was able to spend some time reading it. I learned a good deal in that reading. And frankly the transcript reads a lot more reasonably than the review I read would have suggested. If one needed a reason to distrust the main stream media that would do it.

There is this theory that the Internet will result in a more informed populous. That people will be able to seek out and learn from unbiased reporting or at least be able to get unfiltered reading from both (or more than two) sides of the issues. Or maybe they will go to the source and avoid filters completely. It's a wonderful theory and I believe it is possible. But I wonder if most people just look to the same old biased sources and get their information pre-digested and pre-filtered. It takes some work to find the sources. It takes a lot more time to read 80-100 pages of testimony than to read a one page summary. People have to really care to put in the time. Just because they can doesn't mean people will.

We run our world (I'm thinking especially of voting) as though we have an informed population. But do we really? I wonder.

The Secret To Twitter

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 03:06:25 GMT

I've been thinking a bit about Twitter lately. I'm seeing some value in following a number of people. I've picked up some interesting and useful information from these Twitter messages. But I've been wondering if I was adding value to the people who follow me. I'm not really sure what value people get from following me. So I find that I am putting out fewer updates and thinking more about what I do message. I'm vain enough to think that having people follow me is pretty cool. But having people follow as an ego boost seems potentially disruptive for ones psyche.

Tonight I saw this message from Robert Scoble.

Scobleizer @mkrigsman it is human to compete over stupid things. The real secret to Twitter is in following people, not in being followed. about 1 hour ago from web

It's a great point. Of course the value of following someone depends on them having interesting or useful things to say. So not everyone can be just a follower. Some people have to be of the type people want to follow. There has to be a balance.

I'm currently following about 60 people. About 50 people are following me. (Find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/alfredtwo though you're probably not going to see a lot of updates from me.) I'm having a little trouble keeping up with it though. Guy Kawasaki is following over 6,000 people. Robert Scoble is following over 13,000 people. I have no idea how they do it. I don't doubt that they are getting value from it. I see both of them replying directly to a lot of people so clearly there is conversation going on. But boy that sure is a lot of Twitter messages (twits?) to follow.

Those guys have careers that are built around Internet activities though. I can't justify the kind of time they must spend reading blogs, following Twitter and who knows what else. Following them (Guy and Robert) probably means that I get a look at a lot of the best stuff they find though. I'm finding that I miss a lot of the twitter traffic that comes though the feeds I follow. But honestly a lot of the traffic is not all that interesting. The problem is that some of the interesting traffic comes from some of the same people who send some of the uninteresting traffic. I wish I had an easy way to score feeds over time so that I could determine which feeds have the highest useful/interesting to noise traffic. I already feel like I follow too many people. Picking the right people to follow is going to become a skill I think.

Everyone is going to have to find the balance of people, volume of traffic, etc that they can deal with on Twitter. As for me, I'm not ready to drop anyone but I'm going to be careful who I add going forward.

Not Away Icons

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:51:22 GMT

Most instant message utilities have various status icons and messages that can be displayed. Things like "in a meeting" or "do not disturb" or just "away." I have decided that there need some more. Not to say that you are away but that you are there but perhaps people need a warning or maybe an invitation before they IM you.

Warning messages would be things like "working while sick" or "here but I don't want to be" or perhaps "I'm really grumpy right now you may want to think twice." If you were a person's boss you might very well feel like ignoring that last one. And the second one may be a message you would prefer your boss not see but still it could be useful if you want to send a message. wink wink

Invitation messages would be like "cheer me up" or "I'm lonely" or "looking for an excuse not to work" Or perhaps "ask me about my special news" or perhaps "bored out of my mind." Things that one looking at their list might see and think "you know it has been too long since I chatted with that person" and start a conversation.

Why shouldn't the conversation start before the chatting begins? And why should people wonder about the reception their IM will bring. I wonder if I can get the MSN Messenger team to adopt some of these. What do you think?

OH and they all need icons too. I wish I were creative and artistic enough to come up with those.

Photo Album: My Back Yard

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 03:31:36 GMT

My Back Yard

meditation

Morning01

DeepSnow

SnowGate

In Flight

In Garden

Photo Album: Water Falls - Norway

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:13:36 GMT

Water Falls - Norway

IMG_0590

IMG_0591

IMG_0642

IMG_0643

IMG_0646

IMG_0647

IMG_0658

IMG_0670

IMG_0735

Photo Album: Iceland 2007

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 23:03:49 GMT

Iceland 2007

Cowboys

Harbor Statue

Landscape

volcano

waterfalls

Photo Album: Signs

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:41:03 GMT

Signs

No Parking

robot crossing

Photo Album: Edwards Town Meeting

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 05:13:38 GMT

Edwards Town Meeting

Don Dodge & Robert Scoble

John Edwards

Satelite trucks for the MSM

Robert Scoble Returning from getting some video outside

Robert Scoble & Alfred Thompson

Scoble and his camera working