Experts and Gurus and Evangelists, Oh My!

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sick to death of hearing people refer to themselves as “Social Media Guru” and “Social Media Expert”. Enough already. The fact is, that I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to actually claim those titles and have them be accurate. Our culture, this technology, and the amazing things people all over the world are doing with it – moves too fast.  One cannot be an expert if your field of expertise changes on a minute-by-minute basis. No can do, lovelies.

I really don’t care for the ‘evangelist’ title either, but at least I get that one and I feel it’s more accurate than others, even if it does conjure up images for me of religious fanatics that travel around in circus tents promising to cure people. Wait, maybe that’s exactly the point. Hm. Look at it this way though – if we’re reading and commenting on blogs, updating our status on Facebook, posting photos to Flickr, uploading videos to YouTube, and twittering like our lives depend on it – aren’t we ALL social media evangelists? I think so, even if it’s in a small way. If we’re doing these things, we obviously believe in these things and feel they’re worth our time to do. We may not be preaching the benefits of these things to conference rooms full of people, but we’re walking the walk and that’s the important part.

We’re not ‘experts’ – not any of us. We do the best we can and try to keep up as much as we’re able, but stuff changes fast these days and even if you know pretty much everything there is to know – someone else is doing something new that you’ve never heard about.

Do we call ourselves experts and gurus and evangelists to look cool? To try to stand out among the ever-growing crowd of people using social media? How much do you stand out when everyone and their uncle starts referring to themselves as an expert? Yeah, not much.

Maybe we should focus a little bit more on just doing our best at the things we really love doing. Not because it gets us a crowd of people following us, or worshipping us, but just because it makes *us* happy. Let’s not try to keep up with the Joneses, or the Brogan’s or the Scoble’s – let’s just do our thing and be all about it. It’s not a competition, peeps. Let’s just all do our best at being good people who love what we do.

This post inspired by the quote I’m about to get tattooed on my arm next month -
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” – Rumi

The Popular Crowd

Doesn’t it seem like lately, there’s more and more discussion about twitter followers, being popular, and how to NOT be boring online? Maybe it’s just me, but I swear that every day I think I see more blog posts, tweets and discussions about this and I honestly just don’t get it.

It frustrates me to hear people talk about how many followers they have – there are people out there that seem to obsess over this and make a big deal about people un-following them – why? Why is that a concern for you? I guess I could understand it if you were a company and people were deciding not to listen to you – you might want to think about what your message is or how you might better engage your audience, but if you’re just you? Just a normal person like everyone else.. why does it matter how many twitter followers, or Facebook friends you have? Why is that important to you?

Just a few days ago I saw at least three different comments about how if someone isn’t listening to you, you must be ‘boring’ or not ‘worthy’ of being paid attention to. The other day on twitter I followed someone that I thought I could potentially learn something from and was greeted with an auto-response follow asking me if I’d seen a specific blog post on how to get more followers. It irritated me so much that I immediately unfollowed. It is NOT about the numbers, folks.. it’s about connections, networks, learning, growing, and listening. It’s about having conversations and expanding your perspectives. It’s about collaborating and interacting with each other. This is not junior high school – it’s not about your popularity.

Chris Brogan had a fantastic post today about exactly this sort of thing – perfect timing. Here’s an excerpt:

“I think people get confused by numbers. I am followed by 33,000 folks on Twitter. I had 245,000 unique visitors last month. I’m #6 in Advertising Age’s Power 150, #68 in the Technorati Top 100. Numbers, numbers, numbers. I think that’s part of the problem.

Because, even though I use those numbers as a gauge of what I’m doing here, what I spend my time and attention on is making connections. Many hours out of every day go into making relationships with you. Look at any given page of my twitter traffic. Realize that I’m my own #1 commenter on this blog. I spend hours every day answering email and phone calls from folks who often times want nothing more than to connect.”

Read the entire post here.

When I commented yesterday on twitter about this sort of thing, I received a response from a new follower that basically said “yes, but most people ARE boring!”. I just don’t agree with that. I think every single person on this planet has a unique story and if we had the time to listen to them all, I think we’d be amazed at how fascinating we all are.

So please, can we move past the numbers and popularity game and just try to treat each other with respect and consideration knowing that it’s not about winning – it’s about connecting and learning from each other.

Reunions and Awakenings

It’s been twenty-two years since I graduated high school (holy cow it seems insane to say that!), and this past weekend I spent a few hours with some of my closest high-school girlfriends.  We’ve met a few times in the last several years, usually over a holiday when most of the girls from out-of-town would be around visiting with their families.

The last time we met was four years ago at my house and it was a fantastic evening. Two of us were pregnant at the time and we spent hours and hours catching up, eating great food, and laughing at stories we all had to share. It was really special and made me so glad to reconnect with friends I’d spent so much time with in high school.  I’m sad to say that this time was much different.

This time much of the talk was technology-related and I guess that’s to be expected when you look at how much has changed in our culture in the last several years, but what surprised me is that I was surrounded by a group of people that were so negative about technology and how it’s being used today.  Some of the comments made were about Facebook with one friend asking, “Is it like email?” and “Is it like chatting?”.  Other friends complained about cell phones and how they hated feeling like people could call them all the time. Another friend went so far as to say that soon children would be born with only thumbs because all kids do these days is text.  Also heard that evening, “Aren’t you glad we didn’t have cell phones and camera phones when we were younger? I’d have HATED for all we did to be captured!”.

I tried to explain Web 2.0 and what it’s all about and how important it is, and why they should care, but I’m fairly sure no one heard me. I tried to explain Facebook and why they might want to be there and connect with others, but I don’t think they ‘got it’. I tried to tell them that younger kids today prefer texting to emailing and chatting because it’s mobile and they can stay connected wherever they are, but I don’t think they cared.  It honestly made me frustrated, confused, and sad. I left the party wondering when my friends changed and why they no longer seemed to care about how the world was changing around them.

I think that we forget that not everyone knows about how things are changing. Not everyone has a Facebook profile, or a text messaging plan. Not everyone knows what a blog is, or RSS. I didn’t even mention twitter because I was afraid their heads might explode or they’d come after me with fire and pitchforks.

When you’re as immersed in the culture as much as we are, it’s so easy to forget how far others are outside of this circle.  When you read books like The Rise of the Creative Class, it saddens me to feel as though I’m leaving my friends behind.

My friends are intelligent people. They have full-time jobs, they work with teenagers, they have children, they’ve graduated from prestigious schools and work for wonderful companies.. and they don’t get it.  If *they* don’t get it.. how many others don’t get it either.  How can we help them to understand and see the benefits if they’re so far behind that they don’t know the difference between email and IM?

We’ve talked previously about ‘invitations’ and how important it is for us to invite people to participate in our online communities, but more and more I’m thinking we need to dig a little deeper than that. I think we need some serious hand-holding, demonstrating, and mentoring to bring people into this conversation.  We owe it to them to not let them fall behind.

Big Day for Virtual Worlds

Today was a big day for virtual worlds.

* IBM and Second Life have managed to figure out how to have an avatar move from Second Life to Open Sim.

* Vivaty announces public beta with Facebook and AIM

* Google announces their own virtual world, Lively.

These are all pretty big things.  Interoperability is something that’s been discussed for a while now and the idea of allowing avatars to move freely from one virtual world to another is a pretty sweet thing.  With as scattered as I feel in the social media realm these days, the ability to have just one avatar, one identity, that’s able to move around .. makes me happy.

Vivaty and Lively are virtual worlds that are web-based and they both allow you to create your own ’scenes’ and interact with others. There’s a lot of customization in both – you can change how your room looks, move furniture around, pick new clothes/hair for your avatar.  Vivaty works with Facebook and AIM and Lively is its own thing that you can embed in your own website.  Both very cool, both with a lot of potential.

I don’t see myself using either Vivaty or Lively much right now for a few reasons. The main reason is that both are PC-only at this point and I spend most of my ‘free time’ on my Mac. I’m sure it’s being worked on and I sure hope so.  The PC only stuff makes me cranky.  If we can get people to move from one virtual world to another, surely we can get these things to work on a Mac.

Vivaty, AIM, and a public beta

I got an email yesterday from Vivaty letting me in on the news that they’ll be moving to public beta and that Vivaty will now also with with AIM.

I posted previously about Vivaty and the potential I think it has. It’s a cool little virtual scene environment that’s all web-based and for that alone, I think it’s a good thing. TechCrunch has a great post about Vivaty and this news so you can pop over there and read the whole thing.

One thing that I’ve been thinking about, however, is how useful this might be in AIM.  I use AIM a lot for work and to connect quickly with co-workers and friends. It’s a small little program that provides a fast, easy way to get answers.  Now, if Vivaty works with AIM is that something that would make AIM better for me? Personally, I doubt it.  I’m using AIM *because* it’s fast, easy and gets me what I need.  Vivaty is great, truly.. and I think it’s a good tool, but for me.. Vivaty and AIM are not a good match.

I’m also not one of those Facebook “chat” people. Facebook is fantastic and I certainly do have a Facebook profile, but for me.. that’s all Facebook is. I’m not using Facebook to chat, or play games, or interact with the community in general. I know a boatload of people *are* using Facebook for those things and I think that’s great. Do your thing.. I’m just not.

So, that being said.. I think it’s neat that Vivaty is in public beta and people can now add it to their Facebook and AIM and make your own scene and connect there. Good on ya, Vivaty.

How “Friendly” are You?

We’ve had some discussion recently among the local twitter community here at Penn State about how many people we all follow on twitter.. and why.  The consensus was that most of us try to follow no more than 100 people and all for the same basic reason… it’s not beneficial. At more than 100 people, conversations begin to become fragmented and you can’t really feel connected to more than that many people.  While this may not be the case for everyone, the majority of the people I’ve spoken with at Penn State feel this way.

It was interesting then, to read this post from ReadWriteWeb today discussing this very thing. An excerpt from the post here:

“Research by Robin Dunbar indicates that 100 to 150 is the approximate natural group size in which everyone can really know everyone else. “Human beings ought to live in groups of around 150 people, judging from the logarithm of our brain size; and sure enough, studies of hunter-gatherer groups, military units, and city dwellers’ address books suggest that 100 to 150 is the natural group size within which people can know just about everyone directly,” writes Jonathan Haidt in the book “The Happiness Hypothesis,” drawing on research by Dunbar.”

The post also discusses the difference between the amount of friends a person might have on Facebook as opposed to twitter and for me there’s a difference.  I feel as though I could have a million ‘friends’ on Facebook and be fine with that because it’s not conversational in the way twitter is.  It’s like the difference between a dinner party and attending a Penn State football game. I’m ok hanging around with thousands of people as long as I don’t really want to get to know all of them. If I want to spend quality time with them.. then I’d prefer the dinner party.

Vivaty and Possibilities

A few weeks ago I received an email asking me if I would be interested in trying out a new tool/technology called Vivaty.  I did a quick twitter poll asking if anyone knew anything about Vivaty to which NO ONE responded (Seriously people.. what the heck). So that told me that either no one knew anything about Vivaty, or no one felt like telling me about it so I figured I was on my own and I’d give it a whirl just to see what it was about.

This past week I was able to take part in a conference call and demonstration with Keith McCurdy, the President and CEO of Vivaty, and I gotta say.. I think this has potential. Keith introduced himself by saying that he worked previously for Electronic Arts and had developed Vivaty as a platform and wanted to get my impressions.  We used WebEx so Keith was able to walk me through some “scenes” and show me what you’re able to do while we discussed it.

In a nutshell, from my point of view, Vivaty allows you to log into a ’scene’ which is your own personal virtual environment. You have an avatar that you create with very simple choices.. not great amounts of avatar customization right up front but in my opinion.. that’s a good thing. Sometimes that stuff can be a little (a lot?) overwhelming at first. So anyway.. you log into your ’scene’ and you’re able to invite others to come join you. The scene that Keith showed me was sort of a patio area with a pool and some outdoor furniture but apparently there are/will be many others to choose from as well.  As we were hanging out at Keith’s pool he showed me how users can move objects/furniture around to customize their area and make it more unique.  It felt to me very much like a Second Life environment, but with one difference.. it’s web-based. No intensive graphic requirements, no huge processor, no leaving people out because they don’t have a powerful graphics card capable of running it.. very nice.

Another fantastic thing Vivaty can do is take YouTube URLs and allow them to be embedded in the scene and viewed by anyone that’s present in that area. There were also photos on the wall that were brought in from a Flickr RSS feed.  Vivaty is almost like a big mash-up of web content in a fantastically neat virtual package.

Vivaty is currently in beta and being used in Facebook. I’ve been invited and if any of my readers are interested, I do have some other beta invites that I can toss your way and get you included.. PC only at this point, it seems. I was a little disappointed with that because I do prefer my mac, but it’s not a deal-breaker.

Vivaty Pros:
Web-based
Immersive
Customizable
Can pull web-content from other sites into environment (YouTube, Flickr, etc)
No risk of ugly, inappropriate ’scenes’ to interfere with your space
Seems to be very user-friendly and easy to understand/navigate
More control over your environment/space

Vivaty Cons:
Still in beta
Other than the discussion with me, there was no real consideration about educational uses, but in all fairness, they did say that these were things they hadn’t thought about, but would now consider.

From my perspective, Vivaty has a lot going for it. If you can restrict your logins to a specific group (or class) you can easily have a defined, secure, virtual environment that’s community-based where groups of people can meet, discuss and view web-content together. If we were able to use a tool like this within ANGEL, for instance, allowing each online class to have their own virtual room where the entire class could meet I can see a lot of potential there for some really wonderful interactions.

I’m pleased to have been asked to provide some input and check things out and I’m looking forward to playing around with Vivaty.  I’m hopeful that they’ll keep educational institutions in mind as they progress forward and I can’t wait to see what opportunities this will present.  A big thank you to Raksha, Keith and Heidi.

Social Media Better Than Traditional Media?

Just came across this post on ReadWriteWeb that references a study that will appear in New Scientist Magazine that has found that things like blogs, instant messaging and social media sites are better than traditional media in times of emergency because they connect people and provide warnings in real-time.

It’s a really great post and definitely worth reading. I love that they’ve used real examples of how all of these sites and tools have really been useful recently. They’ve also shown the real value of using these things in emergency situations.

I wonder.. with the proliferation of blogs, twitterers and people using these tools, if at some point “traditional” media will disappear. It seems, at least for myself, that more and more I’m tired of the ‘drama’ that old-school media brings to the table and I just want to get the quick, honest assessment from a ‘real’ person on the front lines.