Way back in July 2010 (which is light years in internet time), the “create-your-own-social-network” platform Ning decided to nix its freemium model in favor of a tiered pricing plan. Even though its lowest tier, for groups under 150 members, was only $2.95 a month, many small nonprofits, civil service organizations, and other groups already strapped for cash that were using the Ning platform as their main hub were up a creek with nowhere to go. So I wrote a post about a service I was familiar with called Amazee, and called it “a winning alternative to Ning for cause-based communities.”

It was recently brought to my attention in the comments of that post by one Tobias Eigen of Saidia.org that Amazee will now also be shutting down, as of December 23 of this year. Tobias wrote a post about this story, and drew some lessons from it in particular for civil society organizations looking for “free” places to host their campaigns and other stuff. He feels very strongly that they should be looking to open platforms (preferably run by other civil society organizations), so as to not get shafted again.

Said Tobias,

This trend reminds me just how important it is to have civil society platforms run by civil society organizations. We need to have reliable places we own and can rely on to put our stuff and to run our campaigns to fight for our communities, our environment, the future of our world.

I couldn’t agree more, and encourage you to visit Saidia.org to read further into his points.

As an example of an open platform, Tobias points to Kabissa, a volunteer-run platform which is a “space for change in Africa,” and supported by donations from the community. While I personally love this idea, unfortunately not all nonprofits have the knowledge of how to set something like this up, which as I pointed out, was why the Nings and the Amazees existed in the first place.

An alternative open platform,  WiserEarth.org, was mentioned in the comments, and while it is an open platform, I personally found the usability rather poor and hard to navigate. There’s very little “social” about it, and most of the causes I indicated interest in hadn’t had any activity in months. I see WiserEarth (as a concept) as a step in the right direction, but they really need to work on their UX.

When looking for alternatives a couple months ago I found  Mixx, which since I began researching for this post, has change into a platform called Chime.in, a network based around interests. When researching what happened to Mixx, I found this on the Wikipedia entry:

As of October 4, 2011, the Mixx Classic website has been shut down and now only displays a “we’ll be back soon message” and a e-mail address collection form which subscribes you to a newsletter that will announce the relaunch of Mixx. As of October 8, 2011, this message still exists. All former Mixxers lost all their saved and indexed data despite being promised otherwise by the Mixx staff. All Mixx user profiles have been deleted. The profile pages return errors, do not even 301 redirect to home, and the site lost significant PageRank and potential rankings. Apparently a total fail.

As I write this, obviously the Wikipedia entry hasn’t been updated, but I’m sure it will be soon. (I’m too lazy to do it myself right now.) The concept of Chime.in itself is fine and not too unlike what the original Mixx was, but this serves as yet one more reason you should not be reliant on third-party platforms. They’re always subject to change, and like Amazee, Mixx offered no downloadable CSV or XML file, or any other way for users to preserve/archive their content.

While the majority of the emphasis in this post thus far is on civil society organizations/nonprofits, as I said in the comments of Tobias’ post, it isn’t just  those folks that need to keep this in mind.

No matter if you are nonprofit, for-profit, a public figure, musician, etc. — You need to have your own “home base.” Period.

I’ve personally always advised my clients, regardless of what kind of entity they are, that they needed to “own” their presence on the web and not rely on other platforms such as Facebook, though those are a nice complement to your online presence.

I don’t know how many musicians I’ve worked with who have insisted that they “didn’t need a website because Facebook/Twitter/ReverbNation/whatever was enough.” All I had to do was point to MySpace and the demise of its relevancy on the social web, asking them if they’d REALLY like to keep migrating from platform to platform all the time and not having an online “homebase.” Oh, and grab your digital knapsacks, kids, as of the other day, there’s now Google Music.

I also know there are myriad small businesses who are in this similar mentality that they don’t need a website, their presence on Facebook is “enough.” Guess what? It’s not enough. If you’ve got a presence on Facebook, Twitter, now Google+, etc. … THAT’S GREAT. Good for you for learning how to check off a box, no matter how much you might hate the “hassle” of doing it. BUT, unless you own it, you’re just squatting on free property until “the next big thing” comes along or, in the case of Amazee, that property decides to close down.

“Oh, but where to start?”

I undertand that a lot of the ins and outs of this can seem overwhelming or intimidating to people who are not “digital natives” or otherwise comfortable on the web. But it doesn’t have to be.

There are plenty of resources out there to buy domains and host a site. I personally prefer 1and1.com for my domains and host elsewhere (though they host, too), but there’s GoDaddy, BlueHost, Rackspace, and plenty of others out there. If you fear the technical stuff or the design stuff, most of them offer “one-click installs” of various content management systems, including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others. For collaboration purposes, in the place of something like Amazee, MediaWiki is usually one of the one-click installs offered, and it’s pretty popular with the nonprofits and rather straight forward.

If you are still overwhelmed and don’t know where/how to start, there’s also Page.ly, where you can set up a WordPress self-hosted site and host it, and they’ll even give you plenty of templates to get you started with a “look.”

I can’t stress enough how important it is for everyone, no matter if they’re a nonprofit, band, brand, small business, “public figure,” singing midget telegram service, rodeo clown, or WHATEVER that you can’t rely on third party, “free” service for your main online presence. It’s a relatively small investment to purchase a domain (less than $10) and host it (varies).

The best part? It’s YOUR site, that YOU own, and nobody can take it away from you.

Detroit Tigers photo via heidigoseek, rodeo clown via Bill Gracey.

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1. Amazee: A winning alternative to Ning for cause-based communities

Country sensation Miranda Lambert has been taking the world by storm, becoming the first country artist in the 47-year history of the album charts to have her first four albums debut at No. 1. Her first single off her new album, Four the Record, is entitled “Baggage Claim,” which she performed at the 45th Annual Country Music Association Awards recently, just moments prior to taking home “Female Vocalist of the Year” for the second year in a row.

This no-nonsense, “kiss-off song” about a woman liberating herself from the emotional burdens of a no-good, soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, is a light-hearted approach to a situation that is often most vocalized by men:

At the baggage claim
you got a lot of luggage in your name
When you hit the ground check the lost and found
cuz it aint my problem now I can’t carry it all
I got a lot of troubles on my own
Its all over the yard and in the trunk of the car
I’m packing it in, so come and get it

Regardless of our gender, yeah, we’ve all been there once or twice. Just admit it.

While I’m still in preparation to launch That Damn Music Blog,  I thought I’d share this wonderfully amusing and cathartic site I found recently called EmotionalBagCheck.com. (Think of this post as a preview to the kind of content you’ll find at TDMB.)

Emotional Bag Check is a brilliant site powered by the API of Grooveshark (but created independently) that basically allows you to check your emotional baggage online and tell an anonymous collective your problems. When other people read it, they can send you a song that they feel appropriate.  If you’ve got no baggage to share, you can pick someone else’s up and send them a song to (hopefully) make them feel better.

I personally love this concept, so I decided to try it. Hesitant, I decided to pick someone else’s baggage up first, and this is what I got:

Well, OK, so I’m probably not the most original person here but the first song that popped into my head was “Comfortably Numb,” only not the original by Pink Floyd, but by Dar Williams with Ani DiFranco on backing vocals. So that’s what I sent the anonymous, non-feeling person, with a note:

If I could sum up “why I love music” in a nutshell, it would be one word: therapy. Simple as that. In fact, not only is music therapy an established profession these days, but back in the days of Beethoven, doctors used to prescribe music to people to lift their moods. (I read that somewhere the other day and wish I could remember where in order to cite it. I can’t, but if you can find the link for me, let me know in the comments, thanks.) However, you don’t need to be a genius to know that music is medicine for the soul. You just need to be human. Which, if you’re reading this, I’m sure you are.

Anyway, so I decided it was only fair I dump some of my own baggage at EmotionalBagCheck.com after lifting someone else’s. After I “dropped off my baggage” (so to speak), I was greeted with a message that linked me, the user, to appropriate sources if I felt I was in danger or in need of help right away:

(Note that this site is not the product of any kind of corporate funding to do PSAs or whatever, but rather a single person with a conscience. Frankly, it makes me feel good to know there are still a few of us out there.)

I’m not going to get into the details of  the baggage I dropped off, but literally within minutes, before I even finished this blog post, I got a response from someone with some heartfelt advice and a song I had never heard, from a band I normally wouldn’t listen to, let alone would have suspected would write something congruent to my situation. And you know what? It helped.

I’ve come to the conclusion that a service like EmotionalBagCheck.com is way overdue. The closest thing we’ve had until this was radio dedications a lâ Delilah, and while I love Delilah, she’s not quite as instantaneous nor as interactive as the interwebs. I thank Robyn Overstreet for making this giant, anonymous, ethereal support group on the web happen, and I encourage y’all to give it a try, and let me know here in the comments how it works out.

In the meantime, I think I need to make myself more familiar with the catalogue of Linkin Park.

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Seems like the new “ticker” on Facebook is the one new feature everybody loves to hate. Well, most people, anyway. The past couple days, while everybody on Facebook is trying to figure out what shows up in whose ticker, how to stop it, etc. I’m absolutely LOVING it.

Maybe it’s because I’ve got the maturity of a 13 y/o boy, but it seems to me that “show up in my ticker” is the new “poke” — the latest innocent Facebook feature that just sounds, well … dirty. This morning I was having a BLAST with ticker innuendos. So much that I made a status update and invited others to play.

Of course, I brought it over to Twitter, too. Here are some others I’ve come up with:

“I don’t want that to show up in my ticker, I better test it first…”

“Every time I cook that for dinner, it shows up in everyone’s ticker!”

“Lately I’ve noticed a lot of my friends are taking screen grabs and comparing each other’s tickers.”

“Son, I told you if you make that face in your profile picture too much, it’ll show up in everyone’s ticker … FOREVER!”

I recently introduced my friend Jackie, who loves sock monkeys, to The Monkey Shop. She “liked” their page the other day, and this morning, I couldn’t help but notice that all her monkey business kept showing up in my ticker!

So far my favorite from a friend is from my friend Mike:

So we had a few drinks, yadda yadda, long story short, I showed up in her ticker the next morning.

I’ve been having WAY too much fun with this.

Is this immature? ABSOLUTELY.

But you know what? I don’t care (and neither should you). Suddenly, social media is fun again, and I couldn’t be happier.

Now it’s your turn — show me your ticker jokes, and I’ll show you mine!

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Two Things:

The other night I was weeding through my files on my hard drive and found a project I forgot about — it was a little ebook based on this post I wrote way back in 2009, wherein I compare water skiing and social media, and what you can learn about both. It was about 75% finished, so tonight I finished it. It’s short, a very quick read. I know I mentioned I was tired of writing about social media, but this was already written. I just compiled it into an ebook “just because.”  So here, enjoy:

Another blog?

Also, I mentioned a long time ago that I was going to be publishing some of my writing elsewhere on the web, and I’ve been writing a lot and stocking up on stuff to publish, which is sort of one reason why it’s taken so long. (That, and because I’m just a really bad procrastinator when it comes to my own stuff.)

Anyway, I’ve had some crazy stuff happen in my life, and I’ll be publishing stories about many of these things that actually happened over at thisactuallyhappened.posterous.com … so head on over there if you’re so inclined. The first post is up, and it’s about sushi, stripping, and Indian food. All names are changed to protect the guilty parties, and I must warn you that while nothing is (or ever will be) “NSFW,” I don’t recommend your kids read that blog. Any and all feedback is appreciated, and no, that is NOT a “professional” blog by any means (like I had to clear that up). Consider it as me just showing a different side of my writing.

… and yet, another one on the way!

OH by the way — I made a New Year’s resolution to finally get my damn music blog off the ground. Life got in the way, then I reconsidered, then I put it off, and put it off … and I’m sure that by now, many people are doubting that I’d ever actually launch it. Well, guess what? IT WILL BE UP SOON. Like, very soon. For realz. So go on over and bookmark that damn music blog now, and I’ll let you know when it’s up. Got stuff in the hopper, finalizing an editorial calendar, etc… just have a few final things before v1.0 finally lifts off. (It won’t be as pretty as I want it, but I’ve got someone working on that.)

As for this blog, I’ll be writing here from time to time about technology-related things, but my energies are going to spent on those two plus a couple other projects I’ve got going on behind the scenes. But I’m not shutting this blog down, I’m just shifting my attention elsewhere.

OK, so that was more than two things. Ah well.

Anything in particular you’d like to read here (or thither, or yon)? Let me know.

kthxbai

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1. I’ve been cheating on my blog.

As I sit here and type this, I am listening to a live feed of the scanner by the Marion County MECA Fire & Rescue in Indiana. Apparently, the stage collapsed just before the Sugarland concert at the Indiana State Fair.  They had delayed the show, but were hoping to ride it out. Yet strong winds and storm conditions were enough to make the stage collapse, injuring at least a dozen and right now the Indy Star has confirmed 4 dead. For the past hour on the scanner, I’ve been listening to reports that there is a certain 10 year-old girl nowhere to be found, yet a second ago the paramedics just said that they transported a 10-13 y/o “unconscious female, possibly named Maggie” to the local emergency.

Last night and tonight, Kid Rock is having sold out shows at Comerica Park and holding a huge block party in downtown Detroit. I almost went to both, but passed.
When I followed a link to this story at MSNBC, it delivered me to my local MSNBC page, where I saw a story headlined, “Kid Rock Show Will Go On, Rain or Shine” … I don’t know if it’s even fair to make a comparison, or draw any parallels here, but one thing rings true, regardless:

It doesn’t matter what the show is, “the show must go on” isn’t always true. Safety comes first. Period.

. . . and just as I typed that, someone on Twitter tweeted at me, “So REO Speedwagon is coming on stage to play youtu.be/DPk4EX2GDc0” … wherein the story behind this song/link is:

In 1991, there was a huge event in Orlando called Festival in the Park. Several big name acts were scheduled to play but a hurricane came through the day before. Most acts canceled & instead of 10s of 1000s of people, only a handful of people turned out. REO probably still would’ve gotten paid if they’d canceled, but they came out anyway & played to us, less than 100 people in the pouring rain, full-throttle for 3+ hours non-stop. they closed the show with this song and it was truly incredible.

While that’s nice, and could seem a gallant effort, the timing of that person’s tweet to me was before he was aware of the confirmed causalities, and I was. Which means at that specific moment in time, I found it very tasteless. He didn’t know at the time, so I can’t blame him for just wanting to be funny, but still …… the point is, people, SAFETY trumps everything else.

Earlier today I was elated to find out that the National Show Ski Championships (Division I) were being streamed online, and watched it fervently as I was cleaning my apartment today. See, show water skiing WAS MY LIFE growing up. My home team, Silver Lake Ski Club, just placed 4th in Division II a week or so ago, and lately I’ve had nothing on my mind but show skiing and “back in the day.”

Then the storms rolled in today. And I was also reminded of some shows where we did some pretty stupid shit in the name of “the show must go on.”

The one incident that stands out the most in my mind was the year we did a show at the Michigan State Show Ski tournament (a.k.a. “states”) with an impending storm very close on the horizon. The judges decided that the weather was OK enough for us to go on with the show, and so we did … but toward the end of the show (you’re allotted exactly one hour) the clouds were so ominous, and it started raining, and we were worried we wouldn’t be able to finish.

Traditionally in show skiing, the pyramid is the last act. And we were lucky enough that the weather had let us make it to the pyramid act. But though we had taken first in states numerous years in a row previous to that year, our competition that year was
TOUGH.

There were about 5 minutes deliberation among our team of whether or not we should go on with the show. I was in the pyramid act, and really, I was very young, and I didn’t have much of a say one way or the other. If I was to climb to the top of the pyramid, honestly, I didn’t have much of a choice. I trusted their judgment.

Let me just tell you one thing: Deciding to do ANY kind of sporting event in an impending thunder/lightning storm is NOT A SMART IDEA. And it’s REALLY not a smart idea if you’re ON THE WATER.

We decided to go with it anyway.

Luckily, we made it off the dock OK, but I was a part of that pyramid act, and let me tell you, when you’re standing on someone’s shoulders on water skis, being pulled by a boat at aroud 25-30 mph, and you see a lightning bolt come down from the sky NOT-TOO-FAR-IN-THE-DISTANCE, even at 13 years old, you start to wonder one simple thing: Is this REALLY worth almost getting killed?!

Obviously, since I’m writing this, we didn’t get killed, and yes, we did walk away with another state trophy that year, but I can’t help but think, “what if we didn’t? what if somebody were seriously hurt?”

Even though we were extremely lucky on all fronts, the fact is, given the weather conditions, we really should not have been on the water at that point. I was 3-tiers high, being pulled by a boat, on a lake, and I saw LIGHTNING, people! 

Which brings me to the Sugarland concert tonight in Indiana.

I’ve been working in and around music for over a dozen years. It’s not nearly as physically dangerous as show skiing (usually), but there’s a lot that can go wrong. Unfortunately, tonight, it was the concert goers vs. G-d, because there’s nothing anybody could have done. I mean, they were waiting it out … the opener had already performed, Sugarland had decided to wait it out, the fans were waiting, enthusiastically, in the rain and the storm … and then Mother Nature decided to take down the stage, and some dozen or more people with her. You can’t blame the roadies for this.

This isn’t even a question of whether or not that was “fair,” because those arguments are futile. This is more or less a reexamination of our common sense here, people.

Obviously, by my example above, I’ve done some really stupid shit in the name of glory.

And obviously, by my twitter friend’s example above with the REO Speedwagon story, people will do some similarly stupid shit in the name of glory/music/whatever. I could add plenty more of my own examples to that, but I won’t.

The fact is, however — it doesn’t matter how “die-hard” you are in your passion, whether it’s music, or sports, or whatever … if your safety is in danger, your dedication is trivial.

(Note that I am NOT talking about those brave men and women who put it all on the line every day for our country … that’s a totally different story. NOTHING they do for our freedom is trivial, and EVERYTHING they do is appreciated.)

But the things we civilians take pride in — whether it’s a water ski state championship, or saying “I saw Suglarland in the pouring rain” … is, indeed, trivial compared to the big picture here, and we need to just use some common sense. I know that once those folks were there in the crowd, they couldn’t quite easily say “never mind, I’m going home.” But still, I chose not to go see Kid Rock tonight for a reason. I had plenty of opportunities. The degree of which you’re a fan doesn’t matter. The fact is, there will always be another concert, there will always be another tournament, and there will always be another chance to do or see something cool. But there will never be another YOU.

So please, be careful out there.

Photo 1 via IndyStar, photo 2 via the Silver Lake Ski Club. 

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I really thought I was done writing about “social media.” I’ve been bored with it for a long time, over saturated, jaded, stick-a-fork-in-me done. Yet recently I had a conversation with a new online friend of mine that reminded me of one big reason why.  (And in my usual ironic fashion, I thought I’d write about why I’m done with writing about it. However, consider this the last post before a big shift.)

Anyway, back to my friend. Like the friends I’ve been making online since the days of IRC, she and I bonded over our mutual love of music. Only we met via Twitter, not IRC or a BBS. She’s not one of of the myriad marketing/PR/”social media” people on Twitter, nor does she have any more than 200 followers, and you know what? That’s OK. Neither the tool, nor the perceived online “klout” matters as much as what was the glue that brought us together, which was music.

I really enjoyed conversing with her for a few weeks, so I invited her to befriend me on Facebook. Her reply (strung together from a couple DMs) went something like this:

Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind if I decide to add more pals to my Facebook acct. Right now I only follow my kids. I’ve ranted against Facebook for a long time. Now that I’m on it, I’m afraid if I befriend one person over another, someone will get pissed.

I told her not to worry about what the social media pundits/gurus/ninjas/unicorn jockeys say, and to just use social media however it works best for her. She said to me, “Oh, it’s not just them, it’s how I’ve seen the people around me use Facebook. I have no desire to be bombarded by baby pictures!”

We all have our different policies on whom we befriend on the world’s largest social network and why (or why not), but I thought I’d reach out, because, well … I dig her. She did accept my friend request, which I appreciated, but would totally understand had she decided not to.

Though this particular situation is about personal use of Facebook, the implications of her comments are much farther-reaching and apply just as well to the business aspect. . . both of which drive me batshit crazy.

Echo chamber or baloney machine?

This is wrong on so many levels.

Every day, the social media pundits in the blogosphere churn out an immeasurable barrage of “best practices” posts, and at any given time, there is a conference, seminar, webinar, or tweetup going on all about the “right way” to do things on the social web vs. the “wrong way,” yada yada yada.

Scroll through your RSS reader or click any random link in Twitter and chances are you’ll see headlines like “10 Social Media Best Practices for ___” and “5 Reasons Not To Do ___ on [insert social tool du jour here].”  Not only does it get tiring to hear after a while, once you’ve worked with enough companies and individual clients on your own, your bullshit  baloney meter gets as finely-tuned as your patience for hearing it grows thin.

The average person on the web and the average client, whether they’re a small business, a big corporation, or just the lady down the street who enjoys tweeting during NBC’s The Voice  is so bombarded with all these messages, it’s no wonder that they feel pressure to do things the way it’s allegedly “supposed to be” done.

I’ve encountered people who were very frustrated and distraught because they’ve spent money on conferences, webinars, and books all about how they can make social media work for their business, yet they’re not seeing any significant difference in revenue. They’ve followed all the “steps” and did everything all the usual case studies did, but they’re throwing in the towel and saying it’s a waste of time and money.

The fact is, you can follow all the advice from all those sources as much as you want, but if you forget who you are and what your needs are, it’s probably not going to work out for you. Nothing is cookie-cutter, social media doesn’t come in a box, and if you try to follow instructions like that, you’re only going to end up half-baked.  (Pun unintended.)

But… what about the case studies?

Case studies are great, and it’s important to discuss what’s working and what’s not. It’s great to see examples of how companies used certain tools to work to their advantage. But only Zappos is Zappos, only Comcast is Comcast, and only Company X is Company X. You can learn from their trials and tribulations, you can employ their tactics, but what it all comes down to is what works best for you. Everything is subjective. 

Case studies stand out because the company in the study was willing to experiment. The companies (and people) were willing to stick their neck out and try stuff. But for every “best practice” being preached on and about the social web, there is someone doing the exact opposite and it’s working out just fine. (If not a case study such as, “How Company Y Did It Wrong and Got It All Right.”)

Social media is a bunch of tools.

Uh... huh... huh ... she said "tools."

Let’s ignore the double-entendre there for a second and admit that tools are things that exist in order to carry out a particular function.

The other day I saw a tweet that said something like, “I should be able to tell what you do from briefly looking at your twitter profile.” I don’t remember the particular tool who said it (see what I did there?), but to them I say:

Says who?

Who is anybody to say how anybody else should use a tool? My goals for using a certain tool are different from others’ goals. Pardon me for putting my own goals in front of someone else’s expectations of how I “should” act on the social web. Frankly, I don’t care about advertising on Twitter what I “do,” I just want to have fun. So what’s with the self-righteousness?

If you know the history, it was by its users’ ingenuity and NOT using Twitter how it was originally intended that made it grow to what it is today.  Same goes for duct tape. When was the last time you used duct tape on a heat duct? There’s more than one way to use a certain tool, and hell, there’s more than one way to eat a Reese’s.  The examples are infinite.

It’s no secret that I am one of the many people on Twitter who HATE automatic direct messages (“auto dms”). In fact, I despise them so much that I put right on my background “I auto-unfollow all auto-dms.” I think they’re extremely annoying. But a lot of people and companies still auto-dm, and it appears that they’re doing just fine on Twitter. So if it works for them, who am I to tell them not to do it?

I just know that personally, it annoys the crap out of me, so I choose not to follow people who do that. It’s my choice. It doesn’t matter how allegedly “wrong” or “right” something may be, if it works for you, that’s what matters, right?

This may be oversimplifying, if not downright insulting to the social media strategist/consultant/guru/ninja/unicorn jockey who pours all their sweat and elbow grease into blogging and advising people on what to do or what not to do, but if you run all of that echo-chamber “advice” through a metaphorical colander, it all boils down to a very common cliché:

Different strokes for different folks.

Yup, I went there.

So people, please — stop wasting your time and breath on how you think things should be done, or worrying about what other people did, and start concentrating on what works best for you. It’s great to know what worked best for others, and yes, sometimes you’ll get some great ideas, but “doin’ it wrong” for one is oftentimes “doin’ it right” for another.

Note that I’m not saying people who have NO frickin’ clue  shouldn’t seek guidance — there are plenty of seasoned professionals in the field of communications who are well-versed in navigating the digital waters and can help out those who aren’t as comfortable. People who already have experience in trying different things, are familiar with the ever-changing landscape of tools, and may be able to shed some light on possibilities and help shape a strategy.

But figure out what’s best for you. You as a person, you as a business, whatever. Stick your neck out. Experiment. Know who you are, what your goals are, what’s important to you, and especially what’s not important to you. Once you figure that out, you’ll be a lot further along than most. The internet is just an extension of life — everything is trial and error.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go out and buy some duct tape, some Reese’s peanut butter cups, and somehow get that disturbing smiling bologna image out of my mind.

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Last week I found myself in a very engaging discussion over at Shonali Burke’s blog on the challenges of authenticity on the social web. The post was a guest post by Erica Holt, who posed the question of whether it’s possible to truly be yourself online.

The discussion in the comments got into dissecting what exactly it means to be “authentic” or “transparent” on the web, and why some people find it much easier to be their true selves online than others. (If you’d like to chime in, I highly recommend going over to Shonali’s and reading both Erica’s post and our discussion in the comments.)

Erica brings up many points in her post, but there was one line in particular that resonated with me:

“. . . when miscommunication occurs, this can be dangerous.”

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot in the past year or so.

Again and again, we celebrate all the good that comes out of this new media we call “social” — the connections we’ve made, the business we’ve acquired, the friendships we would have otherwise not found, or the friendships we’ve rekindled. We have frequent “tweetups,” applaud one another for the accomplishments and connections we’ve made, and even hold myriad conferences in the name of these tools and technologies that we hold so dear to our hearts. Our love for our real-time communication and rapidly-advancing technology is evident in everything we do, but seldom do we talk about how dangerous our dependency can be.

Social media can indeed create many ties that bind; but how often do we talk about how our dependency can break those ties, and sometimes open up old wounds?

I think it happens a lot more than we’d like to admit.

Miscommunication has always happened by relying on medium. We’ve all heard stories of the letter that got lost in the mail from a woman’s fallen soldier husband, only to be finally delivered decades later, tying up loose ends. If only she’d have gotten that letter sooner, when it was supposed to be delivered …

Of course, you know where I’m going with this. Many of us have had instances of misunderstanding because of an important email accidentally getting caught by the spam filter, or worse yet, never being delivered. Or perhaps being delivered way too late. (I recently received an email dated 2005 regarding my student loan consolidation!)

But it goes a step further, and this is what confuddles me: WHY do we not openly talk about those times when beloved tech fails us? Those times when text messages or emails get lost in space, which sometimes cause arguments, or at the very least, confusion? Are we so forgiving of Facebook always having glitches, that the fight that breaks out because of messages not received or returned is somehow just magically OK? Are we so forgiving of Twitter that DMs containing important information that are never received are somehow to be instantly dismissed?

Not long ago, I spent almost a week wondering why one of my best friends blocked me from seeing everything on her Facebook account. I couldn’t see her wall, her pictures, nothing. I was worried she was mad at me about something, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I did wrong, other than forget I was signed onto Facebook chat and didn’t respond to her quick “Hi, how are you?” IM that morning. I thought that was hardly a reason to be so mad at me that she’d block me. I wrote her a note on Facebook and didn’t hear back from her. She didn’t reply to my text messages, either. Finally I asked her husband what was up with her, and asked if I did anything wrong. Turns out, it wasn’t me at all — her account got hacked and she was having issues with her phone. All that worrying for nothing!

That’s a pretty mild incident, but the potential for much more severe instances is prominent. Our addiction to our technology can unite us, but our dependence can (and sometimes does) severely divide. What price do we put on that?

Is our dependence on our tech a prescription for inevitable social disaster?

In the fine print on most prescriptions, it says something like “Your doctor has prescribed this because s/he believes that the benefits far outweigh the risk of side effects.” At what point do realize that the benefits of our tech DON’T outweigh the risk of the cost? Then what?

Back before the internet (for those of us who can remember) it was usually pretty easy to tell when someone gives us the “cold shoulder.” Unfortunately, the “cold, new media shoulder” is often misinterpreted.

Do we assume that someone with whom we THOUGHT we were very good friends never wants to speak to us for some reason, or do we ask them for an explanation? And how?

Every semester, at the beginning of every communications course he taught, one of my favorite professors in undergrad always started out by stating,

“Even by not communicating, you’re communicating.”

… and that’s the cold hard truth.

Communication, in its simplest definition, is the delivery of ideas and/or messages. Think of the speculation that abounds in courtrooms (real or movies) when someone is declared guilty of murder and their reaction is stoicism. (“They have no remorse! They have no soul! Monster!” when in reality, said person could simply be in shock.)

What messages are you sending to people by not saying anything at all? Or, worse yet — what are you saying (or not saying) to people by depending on the medium (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) over face time?

I ask a lot of questions in this post and don’t really have any answers. But these are things I’ve been thinking about a lot, and I’d love to hear your take.

Photo 1 by Search Engine People Blog, photo 2 by Thirteen of Clubs.

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One of the joys many people, including myself, find with Twitter is the beauty of the tweeted “overheard” statement, which is some odd statement that is, well, overheard, that you just feel compelled to share with the rest of the world. (Because of character constraints, “OH:” is usually used before the statement instead of “Overheard” though I confess when I first saw people using this I wondered what Ohio had to do with anything.)

Usually neither attribution nor context is given, which makes them that much funnier. In fact, in my office, it’s become somewhat of a competition between coworkers to see who makes my “overheard” tweets. I work with a very creative, linguistic bunch and there’s never a dull moment in our conversations. My overheard tweets aren’t always coworkers, mind you, oftentimes they’re friends outside the office, like at gigs or something.

Anyway, the other day I decided to see which gems I had tweeted “OH:” recently, so  I went to my profile and searched “OH:” in my tweets only. Twitter only archives the past few days now, which I just learned, but the tweets in my past few days’ archives were not only hilarious, but kind of sounded like a funny story if you read them in chronological order.

Keep in mind that NONE of these tweets are related in any way, shape or form, and most had completely different contexts:

To “get it,” you have to read from the bottom up, but to make it easier, here they are in succession:

“That’s like, WAAAAAY down the road. Like Friday.”

“Haven’t you seen Subway commercials? Don’t you know the right way to say it?”

“I wore so much black I out-blacked myself. Black is the new black!”

“You are the reason that dress was invented.”

“Woo! It’s nice and bright in here! It makes me wanna take this dress off!” #unrelatedtothelasttweet

“We’re going to drool all over her like a pork chop.”

“… and it doesn’t give you the risk of having quintuplets!”

“You just want me for my numbers.”

“You gotta perpetuate the SEO-ness of your lineage.”

“Who the hell are you and why are you soliciting me?!”

OK, maybe it’s only funny to me, but I’m curious to see if anybody else’s completely unrelated overheard tweets also look like they kinda tell a story. It’s an interesting and fun exercise.

Here’s what you do:

1. Just view your own profile on Twitter.
2. Plug “OH:” (or “overheard,” whichever you use) into the search box and make sure that the box is checked to read only your own tweets.
3. Read from the bottom up.
4. Do they kinda tell a story?
5. If so, take a screen shot & share.

Come on, you know you want to. It’s fun!

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In April 2010, custom social network service Ning decided that they were going to start charging and do away with their free service. Beginning August 20, Ning will charge the following for usage of their custom social network platform:

(Features included in each plan are not shown because of space.)

As you can imagine, this decision by Ning caused (and is still causing) quite a stir among users and administrators of such networks.  Even if it’s only $2.95, many administrators of smaller groups are unwilling to pay for it, and many are struggling to find effective Ning alternatives, especially nonprofits and “cause” networks. There’s even a Facebook group dedicated to prevent Ning from doing so.

Well, have no fear, activists — Switzerland-based Amazee is stepping up the plate and offering FREE Ning migration service to their platform.

What is Amazee, you ask?

Though it hasn’t caught on in the United States (yet), it’s a popular custom platform for projects and reaching goals, whether it’s fundraising or non-monetary aspirations. It’s very popular in Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere in the world.

Here’s a quick video Amazee made explaining the benefits of migrating to their platform:

Welcome, Ning refugees! from Amazee on Vimeo.

From Amazee’s blog:

First of all you’ll get a lot of the features on Amazee which you’ve been accustomed to on Ning*: You’ll be able to post blog entries, upload pictures and embed videos, you’ll have your own forums for discussion, and have a good overview over who’s doing what in your group and on the platform.

Next to that we are taking your Ning experience to the max: There is no limit to the number of members a group can have (Ning only allows for 150), there are no limits on storage and bandwidth (Ning only allows you for 1GB and 10 GB respectively), you’ll be able to set up events and have people rsvp directly in your group (this is not possible at all at Ning) and you can add an unlimited number of RSS feeds and content boxes to your group (Ning has 1 and 3 respectively).

Furthermore we allow for maximum online collaboration and promotion by supporting a solid Facebook integration: You can easily recommend your group on Facebook, if you like you can even sign in to Amazee with your Facebook account. And the icing on the cake: You’ll get a reliable and competent community management on top of all that. For free, of course.

I’ve had an account at Amazee for over a year and have been (minimally) involved on this platform with a few projects in South Africa, and absolutely love the functionality of it. There are other Ning alternatives, like GroupSite and Mixxt, but personally, I don’t find the others very conducive to the needs of collaborative activism.  Amazee, on the other hand, was designed for that very purpose.

So if you’ve got a cause-based community on Ning, don’t fret – head on over to Amazee and they’ll make migration easy, painless, and free.

Have you found any other good Ning alternatives? Please share in the comments below if so. Thanks!

Note: I got no form of compensation for writing this post.

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