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Twitter: a guide for busy paranoids

22 August 2011 in Internet, Marketing, Media, Politics by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

[This is a slightly edited version of the article written for "Stories: from The Local Government Web Network", issue 3, August 2011, which was distributed at the LGWN's conference in Sydney on 18 August. Some material in this article also appears in Tweeting your way out of Paranoia, the closing keynote presentation I delivered.]

If you’re not yet at least experimenting with Twitter, the real-time social messaging service, you should be.

Suppress the corporate paranoia. It’s a lot easier than you might think. And while Twitter does get far more attention than its relatively small size might suggest — truly active Twitter users number perhaps 20 million globally compared with Facebook’s 750 million active users and counting — it punches well above its weight in terms of connecting with influential community members.

Twitter may not ever become the core real-time service used by the masses. Or if it does, it may only be for a few years. You only have to look at the last decade to see the then-leading MySpace surpassed by Facebook in 2008, just four years after Facebook was founded. Google’s launch of Google+ in June this year has generated plenty of speculation that the search and advertising giant’s foray into social networking will in turn wipe Facebook off the planet. Who knows?

There will always be some real-time social messaging service, however. Whether that’s Twitter as a stand-alone service, or whether we all end up using a real-time component of Facebook or Google+ or something that has yet to be deployed — none of that matters. The principles and practices of real-time messaging will doubtless end up being much the same.

Anything you might do with Twitter will be easy to migrate to any other real-time messaging system. The lessons you learn will carry across too.

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Iain Dale on politics, Twitter, radio and authenticity

29 May 2011 in Blogging, Conversations, Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Earlier this evening I recorded this interview with Iain Dale, who’s keynoting the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum in Canberra on 1 June. He’s one of the UK’s leading political bloggers, a former Conservative Party politician, publisher of Total Politics magazine and host of the evening show on London’s LBC Radio — amongst other things.

I’d originally intended to use a slab of this in the Patch Monday podcast I do for ZDNet Australia, but it’s not really about technology. Our conversation did touch upon the way political parties use social media such as blogs and Twitter — or, really, why they don’t. But we also covered the attraction of broadcast radio as medium and why it’ll survive, authenticity and much more. So I decided to post the entire recording here as a podcast.

I began by asking Dale about a piece he wrote for The Guardian earlier this month, Is this really the death of political blogging? It turns out the headline is misleading.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:10 — 29.8MB)

For more on Iain Dale, read his Wikipedia entry or follow him on Twitter.

I’ve been thinking of doing a more podcasts of interviews along the lines of this one — not necessarily about politics or technology but whatever strikes my fancy. Indeed, I created the blog post category Conversations for this purpose, although so far I’ve only used it to post random audio I’ve been involved with. What do you think?

Artemis is gravely ill, generosity astounds

05 January 2011 in Artemis Medical Fund, Human Nature, Personal by Stilgherrian | 13 comments

What a week! If you were following my Twitter stream this evening, you’d already know that one of the cats, Artemis, is gravely ill tonight. She is in hospital. My cashflows are thoroughly depleted. And I am severely stressed. But I am also astounded by people’s generosity of spirit.

In writing all this, I run the risk of alienating those who want to see a supposed-professional’s website full of serious things like my media work and serious commentary, or at least mildly amusing satire, not that supposedly lowest-of-low, “cat blogging”. My good friend Nick Hodge has already written this week about professional versus personal social media projections and the risks of letting them intermingle.

But you know what? Fuck all that!

If I am to be an honest human — and I would like to think I strive to be one — then what I write about should be what is on my mind. And this is what dominates my mind today. If you don’t like it, well, stop reading now and pop back another time. Maybe next week.

And if you think less of me for writing about the personal issues that happen to be dominating my life, well, fuck you too.

So, to Artemis…

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Weekly Wrap 28

19 December 2010 in Internet, Politics, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — which this week wasn’t very much at all because I lost a couple of days returning from San Francisco.

Articles

None this week.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 69, “Service goes social, but how?”. Based on material recorded at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event in San Francisco, this episode includes a chat with Fergus Griffin, vice president of product marketing for Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud product.

Media Appearances

On Wednesday I did another brief spot with Paul Turton on ABC Radio Statewide NSW.

Corporate Largesse

On Friday I had lunch aboard the South Steyne at Darling Harbour, courtesy of Watterson Marketing Communication.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Since I didn't take any photographs this week, here's one of the rather serious seagulls they have in San Francisco.]

Talking war reporting, in Newcastle this Saturday

29 September 2010 in Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

I’m making an unexpected trip to Newcastle this Saturday for the National Young Writers Festival, where I’m part of a free panel called No Man’s Land discussing war reportage.

War correspondence is undertaken by all parties involved in conflict. The NGO’s [sic], the military groups, and hopefully the civilians via a free press. This panel is an introduction to how these stories find their way to us.

The other panellists include people with some first-hand experience. Freelance photojournalist Ed Giles, who’s worked across the Middle East and Asia since 2006. Sierra Leonian journalist Olivia Boateng, who fled with her children. One child killed, and her family scattered, Olivia spent 5 years in a refugee camp before being granted refugee status. And there’s author and academic Debra Adelaide, who currently teaches the Creative Writing program at UTS.

I’m replacing Patrick Gray, producer of the Risky Business podcast on information security. Supposedly I’ll be talking about how all this changes in this new high-bandwidth networked age. Or how it doesn’t change.

No Man’s Land is this Saturday 2 October 2010 at the Elderly Citizens Centre [shoosh!], Laing Street, Newcastle, from 2.30pm to 4pm. It’s free, and you don’t have to register. Just rock up. And you can buy me a drink afterwards.

The National Young Writers Festival is all part of the grand This Is Not Art festival. It’s a great time to visit Newcastle. I went last year and wrote this Letter from Newcastle.

Jetstar, Powderfinger to exploit fan’s enthusiasm

14 August 2010 in Internet, Marketing, Music by Stilgherrian | 11 comments

Australian airline Jetstar and the managers of rock band Powderfinger seem to think that waving the magic word “social media” means free labour. Exploitative cunts.

As mUmBRELLA reported:

Jetstar is continuing its drive into social media, funding an official blogger on Powderfinger’s farewell tour which is sponsored by the budget airline.

According to Jetstar: “Over 50 days, Jetstar’s official tour blogger will ‘Follow the Finger’ and produce daily blogs, video diaries, fan photos and Twitter updates. They will interview the band and support acts, interact with fans and locals and become a member of the tour support team.”

As well as covering travel and accommodation, the blogger will receive an allowance of $100 a day.

Right.

So in other words, for more than a month and a half, the “winner” of the “competition” will work as a writer covering the tour — call it journalism or blogging or whatever you like, it’s all the same thing. They’ll work as a producer, curating fan photos. They work as a PR assistant and “interact with fans and locals and become a member of the tour support team”. That’s a whole bunch of different media skills, a pretty special person indeed.

In return they get paid less than the legislated minimum wage.

The federal minimum wage is currently $15.00 per hour or $569.90 per 38 hour week (before tax).

Casual employees covered by the national minimum wage also get at least a 21 per cent casual loading.

I reckon “become a member of the tour support team” sounds like an offer of employment, yeah?

“Jetstar has been making a growing investment in social media,” says mUmBRELLA, but clearly not enough to pay a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.

Maybe Jetstar should try telling the roadies they’ll also get $100 a day “allowance” in return for the privilege of seeing all 34 concerts. To their faces. And I’ll sit back and watch…

Please insert a final angry sentence that includes the words “exploitation”, “unethical” and “pond slime”. And on Monday I’ll be phoning Fair Work Australia for an opinion.

Rock on.

Unless, of course, Jetstar get in touch before then to tell me they’ve decided to pay the winner the proper MEAA rate for freelance writers [PDF].

Oi, The Online Circle! Don’t spam! Don’t lie!

07 June 2010 in Internet, Marketing by Stilgherrian | 6 comments

[Update 8 June 2010: The Online Circle's CEO Jeff Richardson emailed an apology and explanation today. I think it's a superb response, dignified yet accepting the very harsh criticism I served out. I'm impressed. And of course I accept the apology. So do bear that in mind as you read this rant. — Stilgherrian]

Speaking personally, I wouldn’t trust a “full-service interactive agency” that can’t even get the basics of the Spam Act 2003 right. So here’s my Big Fat Monday Night Hello to The Online Circle, the arsehats who just spammed me.

Guys, here’s how your email starts:

Hi Stilgherrian,

Firstly, thank you very much for your effort and involvement in our [redacted] campaign (We hope you enjoyed the chocolate). We saw some great blog articles and Twitter updates written that have really helped people understand more about [redacted] and why we all should get involved.

Erm, I wasn’t involved in this campaign, with or without any effort. So there’s arsehattery #1. And I never got any chocolate. There’s arsehattery #2.

Oh, and that sentence in parentheses? The full stop should be inside the closing parenthesis. That’s #3.

I’ll skip over the plug for your “we’re excited to announce” thing because — and OMFG how original is this? — you’re inviting people to upload videos to promote your client’s product! A video competition! How unique is that?

“Not at all,” is my answer there. Video competitions have to be the most overworked cliché in social media marketing.

But here are the bits which really shit me.

You are receiving this email because The Online Circle has found you to be an online influencer in Australia. This is our first contact with you and we promise not to share your name or any details with anyone.

An “online influencer”, eh? So it’s not that I’m an “interesting writer” or “respected commentator” or “glutton for chocolate” or even just “nice guy” or perhaps even “dangerous psychotic” — but an “online influencer”. Great. I fit some smegging buzzword du jour category for your marketing effort. T’riffic. How depersonalising.

“This is our first contact with you,” you say?

Bullshit.

You previously emailed me on 24 February, subject line “Social Media Influencer — How about free samples?”, to say that you “understand generating content for your blogs and social media channels can sometimes be challenging”. No, I don’t “generate content”. I write. I take photos sometimes.

And you emailed me again on 1 March, subject line “We are ready to send you some free chocolate”, with the same content.

All three emails claim “This is our first contact with you”. Liars.

And if you’d bothered to even look at my website…

… as opposed to, I presume, just finding me on some list of Australian bloggers somewhere, you might even have discovered that I don’t fill my website with random plugs for multinational corporations. Especially corporations that pull more than USD 7 billion a year in revenue but still want the punters to do their creative work for them in exchange for a few chocolates.

Arsehats. Exploitative spammy bloody arsehats.

Notes on Obama’s election campaign

18 February 2010 in Internet, Media, Politics by Stilgherrian | 11 comments

[Last week, Australia's Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner wrote about Government 2.0 in The government wants to blog. Later today ABC Radio wants me to talk about how Barack Obama's presidential election campaign used social media and social networking, so I've been reviewing my liveblog of the presentations made by Ben Self at Media 09 and Joe Trippi at the Microsoft Politics and Technology Forum. Trippi has worked on various Democrat campaigns including as campaign manager for Howard Dean's 2004 unsuccessful presidential nomination campaign. Self's company Blue State Digital managed Obama's online fundraising, constituency-building, issue advocacy, and peer-to-peer online networking during the primaries. I figured I might as well share my notes. Enjoy.]

More than two years since Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign, the numbers are still staggering. $770 million was raised, roughly 65% of that online. There were 3.2 million individual donors, with the average donation under $100.

This is completely different from traditional political fundraising, which revolved about dinners and other events costing $2300 a ticket — the maximum ~~unreportable donation~~ donation allowable from a couple at that time under US electoral laws. Obama’s campaign really did reach out and mobilise millions of ordinary Americans.

Yes, millions. The progressive Democratic Party network is now 15 million people online.

Online social networking tools made all this possible, sure, but the success came through the clever application of those tools. The key word here is “personal”.

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Yes, I wrote about iPad, but not here

01 February 2010 in Blogging, Internet, Personal by Stilgherrian | 7 comments

Not posting here for a week makes it look like I’ve vanished. But increasingly, more of my work is elsewhere. Like my Crikey piece It’s called iPad, and the Kindle is rooted. Like the 2000-word feature I’m slaving to finish today for ZDNet.com.au. Look in the sidebar under “More Stilgherrian”. My online presence is now scattered amongst so many streams of data!

There’s an essay here about the meaning of all this fragmentation. But if I write that essay, I’ll end up having to admit this is precisely why Facebook has been so successful. So much of your life can happen through Facebook and its myriad third-party data-sucking privacy-perverting applications, from organising a BBQ to marketing a business.

The ease with which Facebook can become your all-encompassing social portal means Facebook will win.

That means I’ll probably never write that essay. I don’t want to admit Facebook will win. Because it’s ugly. And because they’re cunts.

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