JoelFoner.com

“I don’t want to hear about your stupid breakfast!” is loudly proclaimed as a-priori proof that status updates, using Twitter, and in some cases blogging in general are a waste of time. Could it be that this apparent nonsense, including Tweets that explain why you woke up late, status updates that shout that a movie is stupid, and comments that some person is a dork, are actually a sign of something good?

Much of the content on the web is far from trivial. It is published in blog, status update and long form, and continues to grow in depth and breadth. I believe these apparently trivial and self-focused uses of social media are side effect of the fast and constant influx of new users of these technologies, and not a sign of a problem of any sort. Large numbers of new people continue to start along a developmental path that leads from triviality to personal learning, synthesis, creativity and personal development.

Lots of people publish status updates and blog posts to share personal “what’s happening to me this minute” thoughts. Over time, people start publishing different kinds of material, and end up in a very different place than the one in which they started.

Based on study of the public output of others, many discussions and personal experience, I believe that there are consistent phases of personal development that mark growth through levels of personal publishing facility, capability and goals. It would be interesting to see statistically significant study results in this area – but lacking that, here’s my shot in the dark. What do you think? Does this match your experience? Does it match what you see in the experience of other people?

The 7 Developmental Phases Of Personal Publishing (continued below the fold…) Read more…

Tonight I glanced at my Twitter feed and saw a comment about TweetChat, talking about its virtues in hashtagged discussions. In the stream was a pointer to a lively discussion underway, and thought “Why not? Let’s see what this toy does.” Before I say anything else I should add that I have no financial or business relationship with the TweetChat developers, and in fact had no idea it existed before tonight.

TweetChat aims to make participation in topical hashtagged discussions on Twitter easier. It has a straightforward, single pane web interface with a clean, simple design. After a first long session with a large group, I’d say it accomplishes this goal well.

You can set refreshes to be as fast as every 5 seconds or as slow as 60 seconds, and if the conversation is going much too quickly, there is even a pause. For many uses, the default of 10 seconds would be fine. You can set the font size to larger or smaller to your taste. It automatically adds the main discussion hashtag to any updates you post, and has single click funtions for reply, retweet, user feature/block and favorite.

Everything lives on one page, so you can participate, read the discussion stream and adjust things without jumping away from the discussion. The refresh is fast enough so that even in a busy discussion there is little waiting time, enabling a smooth discussion flow.

Nicely done. I think I’ll be using TweetChat again. My only nagging concern is that participating in these higher volume chat-styled conversations on Twitter may annoy regular followers, who did not necessarily opt in for a high volume of updates. Do you think that Tweets have a short enough lifespan that people won’t notice an occasional stream of discussion?

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released a PDF document “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” that describes changes to the rules of disclosure for advertising endorsements and testimonials. These guides update existing rules regarding advertising disclosure to incorporate social media and go into effect tomorrow, Dec 1, 2009. I hope that a brief overview of the Guides will be a useful reference.

Disclosures

I do not work for the Federal Trade Commission, have no connection to the organization to disclose, and since this article is not an endorsement in the first place, I guess I didn’t even need to say that, but… given the topic I figured it couldn’t hurt!

Actually, my important disclaimer is I wrote this post with my understanding of the rules, from reading source documents and walking through the “Guides” PDF document linked above. I am not a lawyer. Nothing I say here should be construed as legal advice. Nothing. At all. In the least. Did I remember to mention that I am not a lawyer?

I am hoping that an overview of the new disclosure rules will be helpful. Please feel free to comment on anything I’ve gotten wrong, right or anything else important that got missed!

Is Every Product or Service Description an Endorsement?

All descriptions of products and consumer experiences in “consumer-generated media” are not considered to be endorsements by the Commission. The Guides state that the rules apply to situations where, “viewed objectively, the relationship between the advertiser and the speaker is such that the speaker’s statement can be considered “sponsored” by the advertiser and thus an “advertising message.”

Why Self-Regulation Did Not Win

Some commenters suggested that the industry should be allowed to self-regulate. The Commission clearly disagreed with this position, stating Read more…

“Social Engineering Goes Massively Multiplayer – Are You The Next Target?”

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Dec 1st, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

Social Engineering Goes Massively Multiplayer – Are You The Next Target?

The explosion of social networks has enabled a new level of study in human behavior. Never before have large social networks been readily available easily for interactive engagement. Social media “gurus” proclaim that they know how to generate results with social networks, yet we are really at the beginning of understanding both how networked societies work and how to harness them (or change them) to achieve results.

A week or so ago I noticed this post Social Wargaming – Triangles 2.0, announcing the start of a social network enabled serious game to determine whether “quantitative methods and social network analysis allow us to consciously and precisely craft the shape of social systems online?”

The advent of quantitative research applied to the development and manipulation of social media and social networks may be the start of a new generation of ability for marketers to reach audiences, and a potential dark side, or statistically driven, highly effective social manipulation on a large scale. Public references to various academic work in process in this arena suggest Read more…

We Are The Network: “Excuse me, but did you really say that?!”

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, November 3rd, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™
Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

Have you been here?  You write an email or IM, send it out thinking that it was clear and neutral.  You move on to something else.  Then all of a sudden you get a stormy response from someone who saw something very different in the words you crafted than what you meant.  We all know that it is pretty easy for this to happen in all sorts of discussions, and more so in text conversations than some others.

This week we’ll revisit a spin of an old game… the telephone game… updated as a micro-game for modern times.

“Excuse me, but did you really say that?” is a way for us to explore in role play style various ways that written and spoken communications can be interpreted and misinterpreted, while hopefully having some fun and learning some useful techniques.

Each participant will either chat in text or say in voice one sentence. We’ll all create as many possible realistic interpretations as we can create.  Then we’ll figure out how the original might have been handled differently to increase clarity and reduce the chances of misinterpretation.

Feel free to bring in real examples or make up samples.  Either way I suspect we’ll turn over some interesting things in the process.

See you on Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”.

Best regards,

Joel

How Can I Get Event Announcements (choose one or more)?

Read more…

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, October 13, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™
Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

Organizational culture has become a “big thing” in the last few years. It is sometimes a primary enticement to attract employees, and a catch phrase by which companies create a public image to reinforce marketing strategies.  Although the term may seem self-evident, it’s surprising how many different ways people think about organizational culture, and how many different things are meant when someone says “our culture”.

At this weeks session we will discuss the nature of organizational culture: What is it, how is it formed, how does the internal reality relate to the stated culture, how does telecommuting and remote work culture relate to “main office” culture, what is its value, and what is the impact of stated and unstated organizational culture on the work experience itself and organizational results?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

Read more…

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday,  Sept 29, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™
Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

How do we understand the personality and background of people through online communication?  This question appeared at the end of last week’s session.  Sometimes people wonder “Do you know the real me?” from online communication.  Sometimes we hope that others see only a projection of a person we hope they will see.  How do we build a picture of a person from online communication, whether through purely written forms or virtual worlds?  Are there stages of development in communication that are recognizable and consistent?  As we spend more time online, does our ability to project ourselves change and develop in sophistication, in ways that may parallel communication development in children, and does our ability to interpret the cues of online communication develop over time?  What are the typical developmental patterns, if they are common?

After a while trying to find really relevant reading links, I was surprised to come up pretty much empty handed on these topics, but that is intriguing in that maybe we can break some new ground.  I wonder if the concept area is too new for research to have been done, perhaps there is limited commonality, or perhaps it’s a topic that is considered taboo by commenters.  Casual conversation online and in virtual worlds suggest that people do recognize these patterns, and have mental models of how they work.  Can we capture some of them in a way that provides a useful picture for enhancing online communication?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL, and thanks for being part of “We Are The Network”!

Best regards,

Joel

How Can I Get Event Announcements (choose one or more)?

* Watch this page or grab an RSS feed from http://joelfoner.com/

* Follow @JoelFoner on Twitter

* Join the We Are The Network group in Second Life™

* Join the We Are The Network hippoGroup ( this does not take up a group slot – tap the “We Are The Network” sign at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™)

* Join the We Are The Network Facebook Group (get Facebook newsfeed, message and email alerts, if you have enabled them)

* Join the We Are The Network Fan Page (get Facebook newsfeed notifications only)

Please Note – Mixed Text and Voice Session:

We Are The Network is an open, mixed voice / text discussion session. Please feel free to participate in voice or in text, to your preference. The facilitator and some participants will be using voice, so you may wish to enable voice in your viewer so that you can hear the voice portions of the session.

To enable voice, choose Preferences from the Edit menu, click the “Voice Chat” tab along the left of the form, and then make sure that “Enable voice chat” is checked. Again, speaking is not required for this session, however if you do not enable voice, and use speakers or headphones, you will not be able to hear part of the discussion.

Thanks for attending!

Joel Foner (SL: Joel Savard)

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday,  Sept 22, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™
Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

This week, as a result of several public incidents, the press seems to have discovered the meme collectively that we are losing our way in public discourse, and that the core issue is people not being civil to each other.

Is people not caring to be civil the core of this issue, or is rooted elsewhere, in the parenting style changes of the last decade or two, impact of large scale media behaviors, the political realities of today’s global interconnected culture, the recent financial problems, family structure changes, or some other cause?  Is this a new and growing phenomenon, or is the global net of communications exposing us to this issue in ways that we were not aware of previously?   If we trace the path back, what are the causes and drivers of these shifts? Read more…

Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)

This Tuesday, Sept 1, 2009, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

Click here to teleport to the Epoch Institute in Second Life™

This Week’s Topic

Society is undergoing large-scale transformations, changes that we probably only partly understand at this early stage. Our “totally connected” world is starting to demand new skills. What are the key skills needed to thrive in the 21st century, and how will we learn them?

The rate of change and volume of information available, fueled by access to global realtime information and the evolution of social networks, have created a torrent of distractions along with new possibilities. How will we decide “how much is enough?”, “what should I learn now?” and “what will learning, school and work look like in five, ten or twenty years?”.  How will changes to the nature of work and society alter our careers and thus priorities for learning and skills?

Join us Tuesday at 12PM noon SL for a great discussion!

Best regards,

Joel

Reading links below – have fun and see you soon!

Read more…