I'm a Jerk, No It's My Personality, My Personality is a Jerk?

From the time I first started sharing my reflections here, on the use of emerging technology, I have been aware of my potential in becoming what I despise. As I start recognizing behavior in myself that I have already characterized as "bad," I can either stop that behavior or I can analyze it to the point of justifying it.

I don't want to do either. It's possible for me to treat myself in an experimental way that I can make impartial judgments and observations about how I'm handling it. Morgan Spurlock did it effectively in Supersize Me. A.J. Jacobs has done it several times, most notably in The Year of Living Biblically.

However, watching and reading these works will give you a glimpse into the personal lives of these folks and make you realize that these guys drove their wives crazy. They can't help but drag their friends and family with them into the experiments. They must.
They are incorporating these experiments into their entire life.

So...I think I am starting to frustrate my wife, and I think it's because I am doing a poor job of showing her what's really going on with what has been defined (by this blog) as "experiments and observations." I will try to explain the difference between my personality and what seems like jerky behavior. Maybe we can lure Jennifer out of the lurk to leave a comment. Maybe it will be a comment that doesn't feel like a punch in the throat.

Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting the Social Technographics Ladder. Don't check out because of the name! You can find yourself

This handy reference was put together by the smart people over at Forrester Research. It was heavily referenced in Josh Bernoff's and Charlene Li's Groundswell. I highly recommend reading both the book and the blog if you are excited about this kind of thing.

Take a look at this ladder. This is an interesting analysis of the kinds of people who are online. It seems these classifications are largely tied to how a person's personality and temperament is wired and the resulting behavior that emerges when you put that individual on the interwebs. Perhaps a case can be made for someone moving up the ladder based on their experience with the web, but I believe a person remains stuck on a rung that is informed by who they are in "the real world."

I have realized myself as a Creator. It is largely tied to the kind of behavior I exhibit in offline arenas. My online behavior has been a progress up the ladder. I moved from being and Inactive to being a Spectator and then a Joiner. I have never been an online Collector or Critic and have landed myself squarely as a Creator. You can take this quiz as a help to identify your own spot on the ladder.

I have embraced this label. My personality typically doesn't embrace labels, but my online behavior has born out that I am securely on this rung of ladder.

Move this conversation into the realm of social web and the emerging technology I am experimenting with...
I send a twitter update while I am out with my wife.
A friend chimes in to scold me.
My wife is sly in her agreement with scolding friend.
I feel like I deserve a punch in the throat.

But hold on a second.

Am I rudely texting while while ignoring an active conversation in front of me? No. Jennifer is elbowing me in the ribs for creating and sharing while we were at This American Life.
Am I answering email because I can't stop working? No.
Or am I simply continuing to be a Creator as applied to the social media space?
Am I justifying bad behavior? Or am I embracing who I am in this larger, digital conversation?

If Jennifer remains who she is, she will be a Spectator and not post a comment.
Perhaps will can draw a few Spectators and Joiners out to comment on these thoughts. Perhaps some of them will be thankful to finally identify themselves as something and realize they don't need to feel like they need to be a Critic or a Creator to be an appropriate online participant.

I think this is why so many blogs fail. Too many Critics trying to exhibit Creator behavior?
This is why twitter has exploded. It is an easy tool for Joiners to act like they are Creators.

So who are you on the ladder?
Do you buy into this?
Am I just making excuses for being a jerk?

I created my own TokBox Contest and won!!!

I have known about tokbox for a while now. You really should check them out. My friend, Bob, turned me on to tokbox back in the early days. Back when I had a cell phone, but was refusing to turn it on unless I had an outbound call to make.

Anyway, I lost track of the company and the service until I saw they integrated their service into facebook chat. Very cool. I can set up my account, but the friends I invite into a video chat (through email or facebook) don't need to have their own account in order for us to have a webcam chat. They just click on the url I send them and all of a sudden, Booyah!, they are in the browser based video chat. Just download the plugin and you are set for a one-click invitation to video chat with your facebook friends.

My mom was here for a visit and I was getting her set up with the facebook plugin. I remembered that the tokbox facebook fanpage had a little tutorial on getting the install, so I headed there.

Upon arrival, I noticed that tokbox had 999 fans. Now, I don't typically "do" facebook groups or causes or fanpages. It has to be a very unique set of circumstance that has me actually join any of these facebook distractions. In this case, I thought it would be a funny joke to claim to be the 1000 fan, and write on the wall in celbration of my awesomeness.
So I did...

A day or so later I receive a message in my inbox from Damon Billian. Check this out...


I created my own fake contest inside the facebook fanpage, and tokbox honored my stupidity! When it comes to making loyal fans, this little process has worked on me. I have been at dozens of conferences, behind a vendor table, giving away all kinds of things in drawings. I have even won a few contests like that too. However, I am much more of an energized fan when a company reaches out to me, as an individual, like this, than if I had entered and won some drawing they hosted. This is bomb diggity.

I really liked the service, but now I like the company.
I like Damon.
I like Micky O'Brien and Ron Hose.
I like that I can reach out to them instantly.

I started chatting this experience up in and around the office. Then Lance says to me, "Did you get that message from Damon?"

"You know Damon?"

"Yeah" says Lance. "Frazier and I were on a video chat that we made public the other day. Damon popped in to say hi and see what we were chatting about."

"You know MY Damon!?"

Anyway, so many lessons for social media marketing. So many things that make this aspect of technology very redeemable. I will probably not IM chat with a facebook friend except on very rare occasions, but I am in for a surprise video chat with you anytime.

Thanks Damon. Thanks tokbox. 1000th fan! Woohoo!!

Social Media Schematic or How I Use Ping.fm

When I first jumped into the exploration of ping.fm I thought that it had one application for me. I had just figured out how to use twitter as a hub, and now ping was trying to throw off my groove. I quickly concluded in a previous review, that the only reason I might use ping is if I wanted to get a quick webcam video out to my networks. Seesmic works with ping in that way in a very easy flow.

Then I added the synergy of twitter feed and my opinion has drastically changed. With these two tools working together, Ping works as a hub that I don't have to visit. It works as a background resyndicator of my content. Here's how I use the tools to sync together...
If you are going to try this out, and you don't already have profiles on some of these services, I would recommend starting with getting yourself an openID. An openID will be something that twitterfeed asks and directs you to early on in the sign up process. So, while you are at twitterfeed, you will choose to pull/push your twitter and your blog feeds. The rest of your profiles will be tied in when you open up your ping.fm account.

If you are just going to simply test this work flow, and you don't have any existing accounts, start by opening a quick email account with gmail. Don't use your productivity email account to simply test these services out. You don't want to accidentally take a potentially usable user name off the table just because you are playing around with the technology.

ALSO - THIS IS NOT A STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATION!
There can be all kinds of reasons not to follow this schematic. Most of those reasons have to do with a series of strategic questions you should ask yourself about why you are participating in these spaces to begin with. Your strategy should inform your schematic.

And, by the way, feel free to use the image however you want. I haven't dug deep into Beth Kanter's advice about the Creative Commons License yet, so the image isn't labeled properly, but feel free to take and use. I hope you can show me your own schematic work flow.

Ping.fm review revision - Got a pencil?

I think I need to draw a diagram for myself, but I think I found a way to use Ping.fm for more than just seesmic.com.

The schematic includes twitterfeed pushing my blogger posts to both twitter and to ping. In turn, facebook brings it in from twitter with the status update and a link. The feed to ping pushes it out to all my other spots, and you never have to use ping except for the setup.

I need to draw a diagram.

Corporate Twitter Cage Match: DishNetwork v Direct TV

My last little experiment put Lowes head to head with HomeDeopt. You can read that here.

So I wanted to expand the research information and put Dish Network and DirectTV head to head in their twitter response time. I sent out this tweet.




You can see I stepped up the challenge by not putting the @ symbol in front of the name. They would have to monitor and respond to their search feeds to even know I asked them a question.

30 hours later, no response.
I followed up with this tweet...



Now my question will be more obvious and easier to be on their radar.

40 minutes later DirecTV hits me back with this little number.



DishNetwork has yet to respond. I'm sure I am lost to them in the twitter toilet, even though I'm just a few scrolls down the page if they were to search their own profile. At some point, I am going to need to be an angry consumer and put somebody through the ringer in order for this to be a serious rating system.

Dish, unfortunately, seems to be using this primarily as a way to get press releases and announcements out. They do seem to be engaging with the little twits, but not very often. Directv has far fewer broadcast announcements, and it shows that their approach to this is for listening and responding instead of broadcasting.

Unscientifically, I have engaged with 4 corporate entities.
100% have twitter profiles.
50% interacted with me on a direct question.
0% punched me in the throat
results have a +/-margin of 50%