Social Snapshots

One of the major social trends worth following in 2012 is...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:41:17 -0500

One of the major social trends worth following in 2012 is “social curation,” a more compelling, interactive stage in the evolution of online content curation. I absolutely love this image and some of the insights I found on Elad’s blog. While I admittedly have not yet played around with Pinterest, I think it’s clear that its popularity is a sign of the Internet entering a new era of social behaviors.

In the past decade, content creation and social platforms alike have gradually moved from high-effort, long-form content, to media and platforms that are increasingly lower-effort. As content curation becomes easier, global time spent on social media activities will continue to grow.

In the not so distant past, Blogging (circa 2004) used to be high-effort. There was a clear line dividing content creators and consumers. Between 2004-2007, Facebook and Twitter transformed social media (and in my opinion, the Internet) by moving from long-form blogging to short, concise updates. This not only made creating social “content” easier, but increased participation.

Now - whether it’s a Tumblr “re-blog” or a Facebook “share” - push button interactions allow users to re-post content with a single click. Content can be curated without any effort or unique thought.

It’s hard to deny the trend: users want to produce and (more importantly) consume content as quickly and effortlessly as possible. Social media has changed the way people find, create and interact with content. Now, “social curation” will continue to shape the way people consume information, interpret it and communicate it with others.

What Brad Marchand Can Teach Athletes About Twitter

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:31:00 -0500

Yesterday, the Bruins online community was aflutter when news surfaced that forward Brad Marchand had finally caved to pressure from teammates and joined Twitter. While professional athletes tweeting isn’t a new phenomenon in itself, the circumstances surrounding Marchand’s arrival to the social networking scene piqued my interest.

Just three days earlier, Marchand wrote in his blog that he ignores the constant banter radiating from Twitter and would never join the site. So what changed?

While Twitter has become an increasingly valuable tool for franchises to communicate with fans, some athletes like Marchand hesitate to join the site because of it’s ability to cripple someone’s reputation with a single, ill-advised tweet.

In other words, by knocking down the wall separating players and their fans, Twitter enables athletes to be candid to a fault.

It’s a tedious, two-way street. Not only does Twitter expose athletes to more frequent, direct criticisms that were once reserved for the playing field, but it also gives them the opportunity to publicly stick their feet in their mouths when responding. The accessible, punctuated nature of Twitter only increases the likelihood that messages will be misinterpreted.

Like any public-facing communication, there are varying degrees of Twitter controversies involving athletes. Whether it’s a player alienating fans by making elitist, contract-related statements or an overblown hullabaloo stemming from a rival poking fun at the size of Marchand’s nose, athletes’ comments are no longer confined to the locker room. Instead, they’re broadcasted to a forum of millions where they become subject to widespread criticism, deserved or not.

While open interaction is the best way for a player to provide value to his fans on Twitter, the added scrutiny from media and front office personnel presents a unique risk for the athletes authoring the accounts. As a result, some athletes choose to steer clear of social media altogether. When asked, Marchand cited this policing of Twitter as the very reason why he wouldn’t ever join the site.

I hear Twitter was filled with comments about me today. For anyone that wants to call me someone who takes cheap shots, they can say what they want…The reason I’m not on there like Tyler is because everyone knows Twitter is being monitored. There’s no point of having Twitter if it’s being monitored and you can’t say what you actually want to say. So it’s pointless to even have it.

Marchand’s on to something here. The feature that makes Twitter most appealing for the general public is the same element that makes it a tricky platform for athletes. Twitter, at its core, turns users into efficient, high-impact content providers. But these messages aren’t pre-approved and presented in a sterilized, branded fashion. On Twitter, athletes are the exact opposite. They’re just themselves, frank, unfiltered and unleashed.

There are far more pros than cons for athletes to tweet, but fans (and team execs, for that matter) can be fickle and self-serving. Given the pressure handed down from fans and front offices alike, I understand why some players are as likely to ignore Twitter as they are to join and feel like it’s another scripted, public-facing chore. At the same time, players are committing a grave disservice to their careers by disregarding these reservations, rather than addressing them.

The social profiles of professional athletes will only become more visible in the future. (Looking at you, Google+.) Teams should actively find ways to create an environment that encourages their players to embrace these channels and engage with their fans. Likewise, leagues should find ways to make players comfortable using these mediums in a genuine manner, whether that be through increased training programs or less stringent guidelines and restrictions.

At the end of the day, athletes can’t ignore the upside of connecting with their fans on Twitter. For every headline-grabbing horror story, there are thousands of meaningful interactions every day.

I hope that one day we’ll see every athlete take the plunge and openly, honestly tweet. Otherwise, we’ll be stuck with accounts like Marchand’s – light on insight, but full of lowbrow self-promotion.

UPDATE: Just 48 hours after Marchand joined Twitter (and plugged his t-shirts) the forward has announced his retirement from the network after a brief, three-tweet career. Hilarious.

I Tumble, Therefore I Am

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 02:02:26 -0500

In short, my New Year’s Resolution is to quit prodding and start executing. There are two prongs to this: personal and professional.

Personally, this resolution involves ending my in-ring hiatus and climbing back to the top of my competitive boxing game. Professionally (and thus digitally) this resolution, at its simplest, involves blogging more.

In other words: I’m shifting back from being a worker and a fan and a user back to being a results-oriented doer and leader in both hobby and industry.

And no, this isn’t a preemptive humblebrag. Rather, it’s an attempt for me to make sense of just how vital online conversation and content has become, and how to leverage it to achieve my (and your!) goals.

While my professional interest lies in the intersection of social and search (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Google+) my overarching fascination is with the way technology is changing the way we interact with the world around us.

Content creation is at the center of the evolving, hyper-shareable universe we live in. Everyone is an author, a journalist, a voice. And just like our grade school teachers told us, we’re special. We matter and our feelings and opinions matter.

The customer is always right. Everyone should blog and tweet and like and share. You are the alpha and omega of your own social universe. Sharing is as fundamental as eating and sleeping.

Nowhere does this manifest itself more clearly than when our first response to a major event isn’t emotional…it’s social. A great example from Will Leitch:

“While I was in the Twitter offices, Sully Sullenberger landed his plane in the Hudson, and within seconds, a witness named Janis Krums posted this infamous picture to Twitter.

Think about that for a second. In the midst of chaos—a plane just crashed right in front of him!—Krums’s first instinct was to take a picture and load it to the web. There was nothing capitalistic or altruistic about it. Something amazing happened, and without thinking, he sent it out to the world. And let’s say he hadn’t. Let’s say he took this incredible photo—a photo any journalist would send to the Pulitzer board—and decided to sell it, said he was hanging onto it for the highest bidder. He would have been vilified by bloggers and Twitterers alike. His is a culture of sharing information.”

I tweet, therefore I am.

Whether on Twitter, Tumblr or elsewhere, microblogging has unsuspected depth. It’s amazing to see how easily world-changing knowledge can be shared through simple quotes, links and images.

So whether I serve-up content in digestible bites or bloated, meandering prose (like this), I’m operating in a world where even the smallest thoughts, when published, can add up to something truly substantive over time. But before I can reasonably expect to create something great, I have to lay the first stone. And then another. And another. Like building a mountain out of pebbles.

So I hope you stick around and help me build something cool. Where the marketing banter and random thoughts I’ll share here lead, I don’t know. But microblogging is easy and quick and the best medium to communicate your ideas and analysis - even if no one’s listening.

And isn’t that the point?

Social networking adds color to the world. It’s like...

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:43:17 -0400

Social networking adds color to the world. It’s like augmented reality at times.

The answer to life, the universe and everything…can be...

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:50:10 -0400

The answer to life, the universe and everything…can be found in Super Mario Bros.

The original cover was one of the most biased, ill-conceived...

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:20:00 -0400

The original cover was one of the most biased, ill-conceived ideas I’ve ever seen in sports journalism. This updated version looks much better…

I do hate the new Facebook format. For that matter, I’ve...

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:47:57 -0400

I do hate the new Facebook format. For that matter, I’ve hated most changes they’ve made the past 18 months.

But I also hate people who complain about every nit and nuance. Facebook isn’t “too big to fail,” folks. There’s a wonderful little platform called Google+ that I happen to like a whole lot more and wish people would turn their anger into action and actually give it a try.

I guess I'm sorta late to the party...

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:59:56 -0400

I guess I'm sorta late to the party...:

Today, Tumblr surpassed 10 billion total posts - 4.5 billion of which have come in just the past 3 months. That’s an absurd growth rate. Fittingly, I finally joined Tumblr just a few months before this boom.

I’ve always been attracted to Tumblr’s format, largely because my best thoughts come in bursts. And that’s not to say I don’t love writing and can’t spew prose ad infinitum - just look at my old Blogspot blog chronicling my on-again, off-again boxing career. My posts look more like chapters than concepts or updates.

If anything, I write too much. To a fault, actually, since it reaches the point where (counter-intuitively) I want to write so much that I convince myself I don’t have the time, drive or audience to actually make it worth the effort.

Before Tumblr, I’d have a good idea or a post-worthy update, but rarely could write about it immediately. So I’d stash the thought away, nurture it, build it, love it, and let it grow and develop… so that by the time I sat at my laptop I’d have 2000 words in my head, and ultimately decide that there was no benefit to taking a chunk of time to put finger-to-key and expel my thoughts. That, and since I wrote about my amateur boxing career and fandom rather than work-specific (read: cannibalistic) topics like social media and digital marketing, I figured no one outside my “boxing family” would think it was ever worth mentioning. Even now, I have no idea how to best bundle my rabid interests - boxing, baseball and the endless surprises of the Internet.

In the end, I guess the rapid adoption (or should I say “acceptance?”) of microblogging finally convinced me to quick caring what people thought of my medium and hop on-board. Sure, publishing on my own terms would’ve done wonders for my personal brand and let me capture so many more, priceless thought-nuggets that were squandered due to my fear of content creation in smaller, digestible spurts. But you live and you learn, and to this moment I’m still figuring out how to best collect my sweeping thoughts and interests without turning this into a digital scrapbook.

And it’s good to see so many others doing the same.

Everyone seemed to have a story to tell after this week’s...

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 11:00:00 -0400

Everyone seemed to have a story to tell after this week’s hurricane moved up the East Coast.

My personal favorite involved this traditional news spot. A TV reporter for the Washington, D.C. Fox affiliate did a live shot Saturday and was covered in a thick, mysterious foam that was being blown onto shore by Hurricane Irene’s wind gusts.

The reporter couldn’t identify the foam, and described in great detail what it felt and even tasted like.

The foam was later identified….as raw sewage.

Gotta love Mother Nature’s sense of humor.

A flow chart you can actually use

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 10:08:56 -0400

A flow chart you can actually use

You can’t plan viral.

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:02:14 -0400

You can’t plan viral.

If you don't support this movement, you're no friend of mine

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:23:41 -0400

If you don't support this movement, you're no friend of mine:

“It usually begins the same way, with one or two fans who stand up and holler at everyone around them. They want to start the wave.”

…and me sitting there, arms folded, hollering “Watch the game!” every time it passes by.

Stop the wave!

The happiest place on Earth, with the Mexicutioner taking the...

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:15:00 -0400

The happiest place on Earth, with the Mexicutioner taking the mound to boot.

One of my all-time favorite pics. The man on the left is Charles...

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 23:13:00 -0400

One of my all-time favorite pics. The man on the left is Charles Raymond Jerome, my great, great grandfather. His picture was taken in 1910 and mine in 2010. Until I saw this, I didn’t know he existed, let alone that he was a prize fighter too.

My Mema says not only was he a fighter like me, but “liked his beer too.” Oh, family.

Your dugout will never be as metal as the Royals'

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:15:00 -0400

Air-fives for all.

Seth Godin: If you're going to work...

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:53:00 -0400

“…work hard.

That way, you’ll have something to show for it.

The biggest waste is to do that thing you call work, but to interrupt it, compromise it, cheat it and still call it work.

In the same amount of time you can expend twice the effort and get far more in exchange.”

- Seth Godin. Smart dude.

I feel like this mindset is often lost in the extremes of people solving problems by either over-planning every step to a fault, or tackling challenges by working themselves to death.

Quit cutting corners or half-assing simple projects. Stop multi-tasking your to-do list into limbo. You’ll be amazed what happens when you block out the noise and work.

Social Media Shaping the Middle East

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:21:08 -0400

A college acquaintance works for the Washington Post and linked to a recent article with this Facebook update:

Policies of social networking sites when it comes to Middle East protests appear to be as follows. Google: Do no evil. Twitter: Support the revolution! YouTube: Free speech for all. Facebook: Aren’t I already doing enough?

The social media nerd in me found this to be quite profound.

2011 MLB Predictions

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:23:00 -0400

I have been meaning to create a Tumblr for a long time, because I feel like it fits my broad and oftentimes spasmodic writing style and interests. Fittingly, I turned my idea into action for no other reason than to be sure I had my 2011 MLB predictions in stone by Opening Day.

So without further ado, I predict that the 2011 baseball season will go a little something like this:

East: Red Sox, Tampa (WC), Yankees, Toronto, Baltimore

Central: White Sox, Minnesota, Detroit, KC, Cleveland

West: Texas, Oakland, LAA, Seattle

East: Atlanta, Philly (WC), Florida, Mets, Washington

Central: Milwaukee, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Houston

West: Colorado, LAD, San Francsico, San Diego, Arizona

Playoffs

ALDS: Boston over Chicago, Texas over Tampa

ALCS: Boston over Texas

NLDS: Atlanta over Colorado, Philly over Milwaukee

NLCS: Atlanta over Philly

World Series: Boston over Atlanta in 5 games

Awards

AL MVP: Adrian Gonzalez (with the assist going to 3rd-place MVP, Carl Crawford)

NL MVP: Prince Fielder

AL Cy Young: Jon Lester

NL Cy Young: Roy Halladay (would have been Greinke before his rib injury)

AL ROY: Tsuyoshi Nishioka

NL ROY: Freddie Freeman

Needless to say, I expect a wholly entertaining and crazy season, but with the Red Sox pretty much dominating from start to finish. (No homer - they’re just that loaded.) What are your thoughts?

Happy Opening Day everyone!