Disruptive Conversations

TONIGHT - Live Webcast of "WordPress Security: Fact & Fiction"

2013-06-18T17:04:52-04:00

Interested in WordPress security and making your site as secure as possible? Tonight, June 18, 2013, at 7:00pm US Eastern time (about 2 hours from now), I just learned that tonight's WordPress NYC meetup will be livestreamed. The description sounds great:

D.K. Smith will present a comprehensive range of WordPress security best practices, including: Methods for repairing a hacked site; “Multiple Layers of Security” techniques that keep your site secure. There will also be a preliminary presentation by Austin Gunter on the distinctions between managed, shared and dedicated hosting.

Unfortunately I won't be able to attend live, but I will look to watch the archive of the event.

If any of you are able to watch this live, it will stream out of:

http://www.livestream.com/internetsocietychapters

Looking forward to listening to it...

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Boom! Apple Disrupts Media Coverage of WWDC 2013 By Streaming The Keynote Live

2013-06-10T11:10:01-04:00

This morning I imagine there must have been a round of collective shock going through the tech media community as word spread that... GASP! ... Apple is going to stream the WWDC Keynote today at 10am US Pacific LIVE on the Internet?

Apple?

Streaming a WWDC keynote... LIVE???

HUH?

Given Apple's intense focus on secrecy, and the fact that the WWDC keynotes have NOT been streamed live in the past, an entire mini-industry has grown up around supplying "live" feeds out of the WWDC keynote. Sites like Engadget, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac, MacWorld and a zillion others have maintained "live blogs" posting the latest updates out of WWDC. These sites have been populated by reporters actually in the WWDC room using smartphones, laptops or whatever other tools they can. Photos were posted from phone cameras. Updates went out to social media.

In fact, past WWDC keynotes have been proving grounds for various forms of "live blogging" software and platforms - as many have collapsed under the crushing load of massive numbers of viewers wanting the latest news out of Apple. It's also been interesting in the past to watch the different outlets and their strategies... having one person typing updates while another posts photos, for instance, while yet another is tweeting or updating other social media channels.

The scarcity of information led to truly creating a "spectacle", as Apple is so good at doing. You had to visit these sites and watch the social media streams if you wanted to know in the moment what Apple was announcing.

It's the way we've become used to monitoring WWDC keynotes within the tech community. We expected today's speech to be more of the same. Each tech news site has been focused on providing the best and most comprehensive coverage of WWDC, knowing that doing so would garner them a large number of new visitors and potential subscribers. They were all gearing up for covering today's event.

And then this morning... BOOM! ... Apple just deflated and disrupted an entire way of covering the event.

First word started circulating that Apple had rolled out an "Apple Events" icon on Apple TV allowing Apple TV owners to watch the stream live. Then a link appeared on Apple's website where you can watch the WWDC lifestream. And then Apple actually issued a press release stating that they would be live streaming the event.

With one action, Apple just removed the primary need for all of those live blogs by all the major tech sites, as well as the need to follow streams on Twitter and other social networks. Sure, you can still follow them to get analysis or snarky commentary but there is no longer the need to follow them.

One site, 9to5Mac, has already stated they will be adjusting their coverage:

Update: Since Apple will be live streaming the event on the Web, iOS and AppleTV, we will be doing real-time updates only on our Twitter account and posting stories as they become available.

I expect some of the others will do so as well.

Now... will this actually lead to better coverage of the event for us as readers? In the past, these tech media sites have been competing with each other to churn out the live updates as fast as possible. But with the live stream available directly from Apple, will these news sites instead be able to focus on assembling articles about the announcements? (And will there then be even more articles churned out by the sites?)

It will be interesting to see... we'll find out in about two hours... :-)

P.S. This morning I published an audio commentary on this topic at:

I'll note that at the time I recorded this podcast it was not yet known that Apple would be streaming the keynote live on their website.

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SoundCloud Rolls Out Auto-Sharing To Google+

2013-05-14T05:19:32-04:00

Yesterday SoundCloud released a new version 2.6 of their iOS app that for the first time allows sharing to Google+. This is rather intriguing because right now very few applications are able to share directly into Google+. Google has very tightly controlled access to their Google+ APIs to the dismay of many of us who want to more easily share the content we create into our Google+ accounts.

The new SoundCloud app for iOS provides the following new features related to Google+:

The ability to login to SoundCloud with your Google+ credentials. This is only really useful to people who are new to SoundCloud as it simplifies the account creation process by letting you login with your Google+ ID.
The ability to share sounds out to Google+ from within the iOS app.
Automatic sharing of new sounds you create to your Google+ account.

The last one is the most interesting to me and the focus of what I'll write about here. I'll note, too, that according to multiple reports, including an article in TheNextWeb, the ability to login to SoundCloud via Google+ is also available in the Android SoundCloud app, although apparently the sharing is not there. The automatic sharing is centrally configured in SoundCloud's web interface and so may not have a dependence on the mobile app.

Automatic Sharing From SoundCloud To Google+

This is again the most important feature of the update to me. SoundCloud has for quite some time had the ability to automatically share any new sound you upload out to Twitter, Facebook (including Facebook Pages) and Tumblr. This new release adds Google+ to the mix.

You need to login to your SoundCloud account and go to Settings -> Connections. Once there you will see a new Google+ button:

Selecting the button allows you to go through the standard Google+ process to authorize this application to connect to your Google+ account. Once you do that, you will see a new connection at the bottom of your list of connections:

Somewhat bizarrely it doesn't use a Google+ icon but rather something that reminds me more of MySpace.

Similarly, over in the iOS app, after you save a recording and are getting ready to post the sound to SoundCloud, the "Sharing Options" now have a Google+ option at the top - but without any icon: In theory, this should all allow the auto-publishing of links to new sounds out to your Google+.

Sounds Great... But Didn't Work :-(

So, after configuring all of this, I recorded a new episode 5 of my The Dan York Report on this topic... and it did NOT auto-post to Google+. When I was in Google+ there was a yellow message that appeared several times at the top of my screen that said something like:

"Oops... there was a problem posting "TYDR #005 ..." Retrying.

Unfortunately it appeared and disappeared too quickly to get a screenshot.

Manually Sharing From SoundCloud Web or iOS App

The good news is that the SoundCloud web also provides a mechanism to manually share a sound out to Google+. If you click on the Share icon on the page for a sound, you can select the Google+ tab: and then write a message about the sound and choose who to share it with:

Similarly, you can now do this sharing from within the iOS app itself:

I'm showing these windows for sharing the sound I created, but this could be for ANY sound that you listen to within the SoundCloud app or web interface.

So What About That Auto-Sharing?

Why didn't my first episode after configuring Google+ integration auto-publish out to Google+? I don't know. I'm going to assume this was perhaps a "teething pain" as the folks at SoundCloud get this integration working.

Regardless, it's good to see this integration with Google+ happening (assuming it starts working) and more apps being able to connect into Google+.

An audio commentary about part of this announcement can be found at:

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FIR Podcast Hits Episode #700 - Publishes Special Interview With Shel and Neville

2013-04-30T15:53:53-04:00

As most readers probably know by now, I'm been a weekly contributor to the "For Immediate Release (FIR)" podcast since back in 2005, and all those years later I continue to find the FIR episodes extremely useful ways to stay up on what is going on with social media, marketing, PR, podcasting and the intersection of all of those topics along with technology and business.

Last week Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, the FIR co-hosts, passed the tremendous milestone of FIR episode #700. It's a pretty remarkable achievement to publish 700 instances of anything... but of a 60-90 minute podcast, week after week after week, is pretty amazing.

Shel and Neville tried to keep the actual FIR episode #700 to be fairly "regular" in terms of content, but at a suggestion from the FIR Google+ Community, they did allow themselves to be interviewed by Donna Papacosta about the show. Both the show and the interview are well worth listening to, in my opinion.

Congratulations, Shel and Neville, on publishing 700 episodes of FIR! Now I'm looking forward to the next 700 episodes...

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Every Minute You Spend Consuming Content Is A Minute You Are Not Creating Content

2013-03-06T09:55:12-05:00

Think about it... right now, while you are reading this, you could be writing an article for your blog or website. You could be recording a video for YouTube or an audio segment for SoundCloud. You could be working on a new application if you are a developer. You could be writing a guest blog post to appear on some site somewhere. You could be writing up future posts so that they will appear at some later date and keep new content appearing on your site.

Or you could be reading this article... or liking posts on Facebook... or interacting with people on Twitter or Google+... or watching the latest video on YouTube that-you-absolutely-MUST-see-because-it's-so-amazing... or watching that series everyone is talking about on Netflix or commercial TV...

In every moment, you have a choice:

Every minute you spend consuming content is a minute you are not creating content.

Do you read this article? Or do you create a new article that feeds your sites and social networks?

Do you spend time interacting with content other people create on social networks? Or do you create new content that you share out onto social networks?

Obviously, the key is... balance.

We all like - and need - to consume content. We learn by reading, hearing and viewing the articles, podcasts and videos that are out there. We are inspired and amused and delighted and saddened and angered... and every other emotion. We deepen our friendships (and meet new people) by interacting with content created by others.

In fact, sometimes we may need to consume content, in order to create new content of our own. We may need to read articles to research a topic we want to write about - or we may want to read other points of view to bring depth to our own article. Or our own new content may be a "curation" of other content with perhaps added commentary for context - and so we need to be a consumer of content in order to create the new content.

Consuming content may in fact be an important part of the creative process.

BUT... if consuming is all we do... then we are not adding to our own online presence. We are not building our own online reputation through the material we create. We are not providing our own content that others can share. We are not out there telling our own stories and sharing our own information. We are not helping people learn and grow from our experience and knowledge.

Are you just a consumer? Or are you a creator?

Consume? Create?

In every moment, you have a choice... choose wisely.

P.S. A month or so ago, I recorded an audio commentary on a similar topic that you may also enjoy:

UPDATE: After a comment by Alan Percy on Facebook related to this post, I added the paragraph "In fact, sometimes..." and the following one-line paragraph to clarify that consumption may very well be part of the creative process... but again, it is finding the balance.

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Internet Society Hiring Marketing Communication Manager - Apply Now!

2013-02-25T13:01:19-05:00

Do you want to ensure that the Internet remains "open" for everyone? Would you like to work for a global nonprofit organization focused on promoting "the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world"? Would you like to work with me[1] and the other great people we have on our staff?

If you have a marketing / communications background, the Internet Society is looking for a "Marketing Communications Manager" based in our Reston, Virginia, USA, office. Full details and information about how to apply can be found here:

http://www.internetsociety.org/jobs/marketing-communications-manager

The Internet Society (also known as "ISOC") is an excellent organization[2] working on a wide range of activities related to the development of Internet access, public policy around Internet governance and open standards and the key technologies underlying the Internet. We have a simple vision that "The Internet is for everyone" and that underpins everything we do. Our latest business plan lays out our priorities for the next few years and if you take a look you'll see we're active all around the world.

A key element of all that work is to increase the capacity of our Communications team - and this new role is a key element of that.

I hope that some of you reading this will take a look and strongly consider applying!

There are a great many battles out there for the future of the Internet... and we need people who can help us get our messages out!

[1] To be clear on how I fit in here, I should note that while I am involved with external communications for the Internet Society, it is through the Deploy360 Programme, one of the programs of an internal team known as the "Deployment & Operationalization (DO) Team". You can read more about why I joined ISOC and what I am doing there. I work with people on the Communications team and so you would be one of the people with whom I would potentially work - but there are also 70+ other employees scattered around the world.

[2] I was a member of the Internet Society long before I became a staff person in September 2011.

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One Image To Show The Incredible Importance Of Sharing Web Pages Versus PDFs

2013-01-24T16:23:57-05:00

So you have that report, infographic or other document as a PDF, right? And now you want to get that massively shared out in social media, right? So that everyone can see your document and learn from it?

Do you...

Start distributing the link to the PDF and ask people to share it?
Wrap the PDF in a basic web page, share THAT link and ask people to share it?

If you answered #1, read on for why you should think of #2.

This morning the World Economic Forum (happening this week in Davos, Switzerland) published an excellent infographic about the Internet as "The Innovation Engine" outlining a series of recommendations for leaders with regard to key Internet issues.

The only problem was that they only published the document as a PDF file on their site. The link that was being sent around was just for the PDF.

Links to PDF files do not "share" very well in social media!

Thankfully, someone on our (Internet Society, my employer) Communications team was able to put up a simple web page that provided a nicer link for sharing.

Notice the difference in the image of my Facebook NewsFeed this morning:

The first link, from LACNIC, was for the PDF-only link. It has a URL you can't understand and just the domain name listed. No preview image. No title. No text. Sure, I can know from the status update text what the link is about... but the "link preview" doesn't grab me in and make me want to click it.

The second link, from the Internet Society Comms Team, is to the web page wrapping the PDF. Note here it has a preview image. It has a title. It has some descriptive text. This "link preview" provides enough information that I may want to click on it right away without even reading the Facebook status update.

Ultimately, both links bring you to the same PDF file. The difference is that the second link is to a web page that provides enough "meta" information that the social network can use that information to build a "link preview". While my example here shows Facebook, it works similarly on Google+ and probably works the same way on other social networks.

Note, too, that the web page wrapping the PDF is nothing special. It's a very basic page with a preview image of the PDF, a couple paragraphs of text, a title and the link to the PDF.

That's it.

But that's all that's needed to provide a much better sharing experience when that link is passed around in social networks.

Something to think about the next time you are looking to share out a PDF of a image, infographic, report or other document. Wrap it in a simple web page and your sharing will be much more effective!

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WAIT! Don't Delete Your Instagram Account Just Yet...

2012-12-18T14:09:10-05:00

WAIT! Don't just delete your Instagram account!

Across a wide range of social networks today, I'm seeing people deleting their Instagram accounts after Facebook changed the Instagram terms of service in a way which allows Facebook/Instagram to potentially use your photos in advertising. At issue in particular are two clauses under "Rights" in the new terms of service (my emphasis added):

2. Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you. If you are under the age of eighteen (18), or under any other applicable age of majority, you represent that at least one of your parents or legal guardians has also agreed to this provision (and the use of your name, likeness, username, and/or photos (along with any associated metadata)) on your behalf.
3. You acknowledge that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such.

The first of which is the serious issue, while the second is more just annoying.

UPDATE 19 Dec 2012 - Instagram has responded with a post about the new terms of service. I think it's an open question whether that will help or whether people will continue to take a wait-and-see approach as Neville Hobson is doing (as am I).

I completely understand why people are deleting their Instagram accounts, particularly when directions about how to leave Instagram are published on Wired and being widely circulated - and also when other services like Flickr roll out new mobile apps that rock!

But think about what you are losing:

ALL THE LINKS WILL STOP WORKING that are to your Instagram photos. All those links floating around out there in Twitter, Facebook and other sites will no longer work. Presumably they'll all now be 404s.
YOU WILL LOSE YOUR ACCOUNT NAME - and someone else may be able to get that name. Maybe your name is unique enough that someone else won't come along and want your account name... but I know mine is NOT unique, and so if I were to give it up, some other Dan York could come along and take it.
INSTAGRAM MAY CHANGE ITS TERMS as it deals with all the backlash. You may find yourself wanting to get back in... and someone else may have claimed your username.
INSTAGRAM IS PART OF FACEBOOK... and love it or hate it, Facebook is a big player in this space. We don't know how they will (or will not) evolve Instagram. It may be worthwhile to have an account there at some later time.

Now it may be that there is a very simple way to keep your Instagram account yet not fall under the new Terms of Service:

Do not USE Instagram starting on January 16th!

I am NOT a lawyer, but I've seen multiple notes that this Terms of Service only applies to photos you post as of January 16, 2013. I don't know if that is true... but if it is, this may be a simple way to keep your account and links intact. Keep the account, but just stop using it and switch to some other service instead.

Of course, if it is NOT true, then I might be joining you all in deleting accounts... ;-)

Seriously, though, please think carefully about whether or not you want to lose all those links and your account at Instagram before you just go and delete the account.

Links are how the web is constructed... and by deleting your account you'll be tearing a hole in your own personal web of content!

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What Happens When All Communication From A Country Is Disrupted?

2012-11-30T22:13:10-05:00

What happens when all communications into and out of a country is completely disrupted? We're seeing that right now with Syria. As I wrote on CircleID yesterday, all Internet access is down... and reports say that all communication via cell phones and landlines has also been terminated.

What happens when a country just completely... drops... off...

It's scary, really, to think about. And we're seeing it play out right now. The links are still all down.

My thoughts are definitely with the people there in the country. I hope things are okay... and that the connections get restored soon.

Crazy times...

Finding My "Barriers To Blogging" Apply To Audio Podcasting As Well

2012-11-29T22:51:35-05:00

In thinking about how I might do more audio podcasting, I found myself hitting many of the same barriers I wrote about with regard to blogging... so I made this recording:

Can A Blog Post Be A "Work In Progress"?

2012-11-28T20:56:20-05:00

Are we stuck with the mental model of blog posts as pieces of content that are just published and then not touched again?

Or can we treat a blog post as a "work in progress" that will continue to evolve and expand over time?

I have been asking myself this question in relation to my quest to tear down some of my own barriers to doing more blogging. The model that we have had since the early days of blogging has been one more similar to traditional news media - you write an article, you publish it, you move on to your next article.

You "fire and forget."

Sure, you might go back and update the article if something was wrong or if later information changed the story a bit, but even in the latter case it is often more common to write a new story with the updated facts and then link to the new story from the old one.

But what if we just posted a blog post as a first draft knowing that it would change and evolve over time?

Almost something more like a wiki. ... perhaps a "blicki" :-)

Where you post knowing full well that you will be editing... and then you do so.

Interestingly, I have been seeing news sites doing this. In the rush to be the first one out with a story to get the tweets and retweets and links, they will publish a stub story with "more details to come" - and then they will in those details in the subsequent minutes and hours.

Can we do that as individual writers though? Can we give ourselves permission to post a partially done piece? And can we have the discipline to go back and update it?

An Implied Contract?

To expand on this a bit (and practice this kind of editing myself), I wonder:

Do we have an implied "contract" with our readers?

Do they expect that the content will not change from when they first read it? Or at least not change dramatically?

Many of us, myself included, seem to feel there is this implied contract and so when we do go back and update a post, we'll often put those updates at the top or bottom of the article with some kind of marker like "UPDATE:" to clearly show what was been updated. Or we will use ~~strikethrough~~ to indicate that text is removed.

But what if we just wove all the updates in together to make a cohesive article?

Would readers find that troublesome?

What if the initial content is only a few paragraphs... and then over time it evolves into a lengthy document going on for several pages?

What about the "integrity" of a piece? If someone else quotes an article or references an article as containing a specific quote or bit of information... but then the article gets modified so that that quote or content is no longer there... what does that mean for the original reference?

For these reasons we tend to think of writing that gets posted online as "fixed"... but what if we move away from that and let posts evolve over time?

What About The Aggregators?

In the comments to this post, Michael Richardson asks "what will my aggregator think?" And indeed that is a good question. Many people read blog posts in aggregators / news readers / other clients that often pull copies of the articles down onto the local system for the user to read. However, once the article is retrieved, the aggregator may or may not go back and retrieve the article again. And so the user may be sitting there reading an article that is now outdated.

Even with my own aggregation site, danyork.me, where I aggregate pointers to all of my writing, I have it set to pull in the RSS feeds from all my sites and store the contents in that WordPress site. (The site is not indexed by search engines to avoid "duplicate content" issues.) Now, in the particular syndication plugin I use, I have set it to merge in and overwrite any changes that come in from the RSS feeds. So as I update this post, the changes should be reflected over on that site. But I don't believe that was the default setting. I think the default was to ignore any changes in the RSS feeds... so the aggregation site would be out-of-sync with the real content.

For all these reasons, it's not clear to me that we should move away from the way we work today. But could we?

I don't know... it's a shift in thinking.

What do you think?

P.S. You may also be interested in reading "Subcompact Publishing" by Craig Mod. It's a long piece that is exploring a different question, that of our mental model of a "magazine" online, but a similar kind of thought experiment...

Fashion Designer Chris Benz, Copyright, Photography - And Watching The Social Web React

2012-11-27T17:18:05-05:00

Right now a part of the social web is in full reaction mode to what they see as a strong injustice... and we can watch it unfold right now in Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more.

Photographer Jessica Nichols has laid out her case in a lengthy post that begins:

I have been fighting an infringement of my work since July and it is time to share my story. Fashion designer Chris Benz used my Loads of Ranunculus photograph without my permission and without compensation on his Spring 2012 line.

She goes on to show photographs, including one where a reader matched her photograph pretty much identically to one of Chris Benz's purses.

Having received no response from Chris Benz or his sponsors, she has put out a call to action for people to let Benz and his corporate sponsors know what they think through their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. That post was echoed by others and spread into social networks. I saw one such post of support on Google+ where it was spreading virally through friends of mine.

And it's happening... I can see the comments on Chris Benz's Facebook page filling up... and the "Posts by Others" on the Saks and Lancôme pages seem to have posts there.

As a (casual) photographer myself, I certainly understand why Jessica Nichols is upset - and I do hope some resolution can be found sometime soon.

In the meantime, the social web is responding... and unless there is a response from Chris Benz and his sponsors sometime soon, I don't expect it to go terribly well for them...

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WordPress 3.5 Nears Completion - First Release Candidate Now Available

2012-11-26T08:50:54-05:00

Last week Andrew Nacin of the WordPress core team published an update titled "The short road To 3.5" that outlined exactly how close the team is to having a final release. The next day, in fact, the first "release candidate" of WordPress 3.5 was made available for download.

As noted in both posts, as well as the WordPress 3.5 schedule, the goal is to go through a couple more release candidates and then have the final release on December 5, 2012 - only 9 days away!

Whether or not the core team hits that goal will really depend upon how much testing they get (and they are looking for more people to test WP 3.5!) and what the status of the major issues are as the date draws closer.

For communicators/marketers, WordPress 3.5 continues the ongoing series of improvements to the WordPress "user experience" to make it even simpler and easier to use. I don't know that anything in 3.5 necessarily rises to the "MUST HAVE IT NOW!" category, but certainly the improvements look good. I am particularly interested in the rewritten media subsystem that will apparently allow for much simpler insertion and handling of images. One thing that has always bothered me about WordPress' media handling was the dialog boxes around setting a "Featured Image". From the tickets, this seems to be one of many improvements.

New WordPress Multisite Goodness

Another feature I'm looking forward to for new installations is the ability to set up WordPress Multisite in "subdirectory" mode versus "subdomain" mode. To date, Multisite has only worked when you used a subdomain as the base for all blogs. For instance, you might base the blog at:

blogs.example.com

and then your individual blogs would be:

blogs.example.com/blog1 blogs.example.com/blog2 blogs.example.com/blog3 ...

This works fine (and is still in 3.5), but if you want to integrate your blogs into an existing web site, you weren't able to easily use Multisite. Now, with 3.5, you will be able to install WordPress Multisite into a subdomain, so that your base can be:

www.example.com/blogs/

and then your individual blogs can be:

www.example.com/blogs/blog1 www.example.com/blogs/blog2 www.example.com/blogs/blog3 ...

This then allows you to continue using your main domain for SEO or branding purposes, but still have all the power of WordPress Multisite with regard to letting different groups have their own blogs with separate users, access control, etc. ... and all the other goodness you get from Multisite.

Now, this option can only be chosen when installing WordPress Multisite, so it doesn't help existing installations... but any new servers can be spun up in this mode if that works better.

The Normal Caveats Apply...

If you want to know more of the details of what will be in WordPress 3.5, the Beta 1 announcement had all sorts of good info. There's also a ticket with a rough list of changes in 3.5. All of that info should eventually make its way to the Codex page on WordPress 3.5 as the release date nears. There are some really good changes for developers that ought to improve WordPress performance and help in so many other ways.

You should, of course, not just drop WordPress 3.5 onto your production site, even after it has been fully released. There are changes to the underlying systems and so you should really test it with your theme(s) and plugins to make sure that they all work before you make it live. You also of course want to backup your system and make sure that you have the ability to restore if you need to do so.

WordPress also has a "WordPress Beta Tester" plugin for the more adventurous who want to run a site testing out the newest releases. Again, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this for production servers given that things will break during the normal course of development. Rather than use that plugin you can also just download the 3.5 release candidate and try it out.

I'm looking forward to seeing what this new release brings and to trying it out on my own systems. Kudos to the development team for their hard work and aggressive schedules!

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The Challenging Intersection Of Facebook And Religion - And The Blurring of Public and Private Lives

2012-11-25T21:33:18-05:00

Facebook creates a challenge when it comes to religion (and politics) for many of us who also use Facebook in a professional / work environment. I fervently believe that a person's religious views are their own private matter. Each of us should have the right, in my opinion, to hold whatever beliefs we want and to practice (or not) our religious views in whatever manner we wish.

For us to work together in a business setting, our religious views shouldn't come into play. In an ideal world, your choice of religion (including "none") shouldn't bother me - and mine shouldn't bother you. In the real world, of course, where we are imperfect humans, these choices, when known, do very often have impacts.

The reality is that there isn't really any reason for us to know the religious views of the other people around us in a professional setting.

Of the hundreds of people I've worked with in the corporate world over the past 20 years, before the world of social media I probably knew the religious views of only a very few. Usually it only maybe came up in a side conversation - or it was someone who was very open, or who was very involved in church fundraisers, mission work or other public activities. In a few cases I have worked with people who were also ministers and were public about that.

But for probably 99% of the people, I have had no idea - and that's perfectly fine.

Facebook, though, makes this complicated.

The Twin Taboos

Way back in 2007, I wrote about how the twin taboos of politics and religion were entering the workplace because of the many people who were then signing up on Facebook and "friending" other people at work... and filling out the various form fields on their Facebook profile with their politicial and religious views. I wrote in part:

A strong "born again" Christian may see that the problems of the world are because people have not accepted Jesus Christ as their lord and savior and need to do so. A strong atheist may see that the problems of the world are because of the very existence of religion and that it is the root of all evil. These are deeply-ingrained views:
Politics and religion are part of our core identity that helps form who we define ourselves to be.

When that part of our identity is confronted by a polar opposite, we naturally react. Conservative Christians will have second thoughts about atheists, and atheists will have second thoughts about conservative Christians.

Five years later I still see that article as on target. You can substitute, of course, any religious affiliations in that part I quoted. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists... pick your religion. Even within a "religion", different sects may have widely divergent viewpoints and deep emotional attachments. (Ex. Protestants/Catholics in Northern Ireland or Sunnis/Shiites in the Middle East)

With the emergence of the TimeLine replacing the "Wall", Facebook moved those religion/politics fields a bit. You have to click an extra link to actually find them, so their prominence is much less... but the TimeLine also created new challenges I'll mention below.

The Blurring Of Our Lives

The underlying issue is that we are engaged in a grand experiment of blurring all the various facets of our lives together, something I wrote about in 2009, asking whether this improved co-worker connections or just felt creepy. We all have many different contexts in which we interact with people. We maintain various different personas for each of those contexts. How we interact with our co-workers in the office may be very different from how we interact with our friends at a local bar which may yet again be very different from how we interact with people at a church or in a community group. As I said then:

This is particularly true with the divide between our "work" and "personal" lives. Sure, we've always shared some parts of our personal life inside the walls of our "work" environment. We've talked to our co-workers... gathered at water coolers or in break rooms or cafeterias. Some people have shared very openly about what they are doing and we've learned much about their overall personality. Others have remained very private and shared virtually nothing. To some degree, we all have a facade that we construct that is how we appear to our co-workers.

Yet the fundamental problem is this:

We have ONE Facebook profile.

All of those different people see one common Facebook profile. (Similarly they see one common Twitter stream.) And so when we write about religious issues or our religious views, or when we "share" images or content from our church into our NewsFeed, all our "friends" see the info.

There are more subtle, ways, too. When a friend posts a set of photos from a recent church service, I now learn of his affiliation. Or when another friend "checks in" at their church, I learn of her religious views.

Interestingly, the Google+ social network tries to solve this by letting you set up many different "circles" and then sharing information only out with certain circles. While a great idea in theory, choosing the circles with which you wants to share info adds time to a posting that most people don't seem to have... pretty much everything I see posted to Google+ seems to go to all of someone's circles and often even is posted as "Public" for all to see.

I asked in that 2009 post these questions:

What if the person sharing the "revealing" information is a co-worker? Do we understand yet how (or if) this changes our relationships? Do I gain more respect learning of a serious childhood illness now overcome? Do I lose respect for that co-worker when I learn of the drunken binges they go on each month? What if I don't like their politics or religion? Does any of this change the way I interact with the person? On one level, how can it not change my views of that person? - but can I/we move beyond that?

Have our "culture" and "conventions" caught up with the degree of information our tools now let us share?

Where is the line between information we share with co-workers and our "personal" lives? Is there even a line? Or is the very concept of such a line just a quaint anachronism of another era?

Three years later I'm not sure we're any farther along in answering those questions. Perhaps we will not be for many years to come.

"Frictionless Sharing"

In fact, in the last couple of years Facebook has made this even more complicated by removing the "friction" from sharing information... in other words, they have started sharing information about you without you being involved.

The classic case of this is sharing when you "Like" a page. Click the "Like" button on a page, such as that of your church, and... ta da... that will show up in the NewsFeed of many of your friends - or the "Ticker" running in the upper right corner of their Facebook window in a regular web browser.

Similarly, if you "Like" or comment on an item on your church's web page, that action, too, goes out into your newsfeed.

And if you've linked any location-based applications into Facebook, like FourSquare, that activity goes out into your NewsFeed:

The end result is that from all sorts of angles you wind up passing information about your religious views and activities out into your Facebook friends - sometimes consciously through postings, check-ins, etc.; and sometimes more inadvertently "leaking" through likes, comments, etc.

The Professional Challenge

The challenge, as noted earlier, is that if you use Facebook and connect with people from your work, sharing your religious (or political) views can potentially impact those relationships. We certainly saw this in the most recent U.S. election, where many people posted (or shared info/images) very passionately related to either the Obama or Romney campaigns. Those posts, at least the more venomous of them, may have caused some people to block others... or to unfriend them... or to simply lose some degree of respect for others.

This is particularly a challenge, too, if you are a "public" face of a company or organization. Whether you are an executive, a spokesperson or even just someone writing online for a company or organization, you become connected to that entity. Now if you are also sharing your religious views in ways that are easy to find, it could become problematic - do you wish to potentially alienate some % of your potential customers?

Moving it to a global scale, there are many parts of the world where religion plays a much larger role than others. Given the current conflict in Gaza, how well will parties from the other religion be received? If you interact with people on a global scale, you may need to have an even more heightened awareness of cultural sensitivities around religion.

Now let's be honest, though, and note that MANY (most?) work connections on Facebook may not even notice or remotely care about your religious views. "Meh, whatever..." is a commmon enough view. Particularly here in North America or in western Europe where the strength of religious concerns in society is nowhere near what it once was.

But what if someone who does care about your religious viewpoint happens to be your company's largest customer? Or your manager? Or your employee? Or CEO? Are you willing to take that risk?

Splitting Your Personality

In reaction to all of this, some people use multiple Facebook accounts. I have friends who have one Facebook account that they use for all their professional/work "friends" - and a completely separate Facebook account that they use for their close friends and perhaps family. One Facebook account is their "work persona" while the other is their more open and candid persona.

While this works, it does require a rigorous degree of discipline. You have to make sure you are in the right account before posting. On a mobile device, where I'm often posting to Facebook, this may require using separate apps for each account. For instance, one friend uses the Facebook app on an iPhone for his "work" account and the Hootsuite app for his "personal" account.

It can be done... but my worry, and the reason I don't do it myself (yet, anyway), is that it seems FAR too easy to mess up. Forget which window or app you are in and... BOOM... that more private post gets seen by all your work colleagues.

Oops.

The Counterpoint

The counter-argument to what I made above is that by being open and talking about your religious views (or at least not suppressing them) is that you may find new opportunities and connections. Rather than finding a percentage of people alienated by your views (or perhaps in addition to that %) you may find a % of people who actually embrace your religious views. Work connections may come forward with the information that they, too, share your views. Or they may be curious and want to know more. A learning experience may emerge that may lead to greater understanding.

Others with whom I've had discussions along these lines in the past have pointed out that by sharing, even if only through Likes or comments (i.e. nothing direct like posts), you are allowing yourself to be "whole" and true - that you are thereby giving yourself the permission to be who you really are both online and offline. Others have argued that if someone is not willing to work with you due to your religion, do you really want to be working with them?

Another group contends that the "Millenials" and others entering the work force today just expect that sharing of this kind of information will occur... and they are just going ahead and sharing it all, while we of the older crowd are writing over-analyzing articles like this one.

All good points, certainly, although I would note that in work contexts we don't often get the luxury to choose who we will work with as customers, co-workers, partners or vendors. Sometimes we do - often we don't.

What To Do?

I don't know.

I struggle with this myself. I've been online for over 25 years, since the mid-1980's, and have been writing prolifically since around 2000. Yet in all those many years of writing, tweeting, podcasting, etc., I don't know that you could find many, if any, references to my religious views in any of my writing. Ditto with political views, although I will admit to being a bit more forthcoming on that front in this past election within the walls of Facebook.

I don't believe either of those viewpoints should have any role in my current professional and work personas.

Yet I'm a pretty hardcore political news junkie (living in New Hampshire it is hard NOT to be!) and have had a lifelong passionate interest in religion and spirituality. Offline, I'm active in my local church, yet I don't bring any of that activity online - and I do struggle with that. On a simple level, I would like to "Like" my church's Facebook page... but in doing so I start crossing that divide and blurring my own lines.

I have had any number of colleagues who are very open about what they believe and what their religious views are. I've had many, many more who have kept that information to themselves.

As we continue this experiment in merging our lives together, this kind of information sharing will become increasingly unavoidable. Unless, of course, you choose simply to not participate, but even that will become harder as more of more of our communication moves online and into "the cloud."

There is certainly the potential that this increased sharing can lead to more connectedness between people and better communication and understanding... yet the potential is also there for increased division and fragmentation.

In the words of Facebook, "It's Complicated."

If you've read this far, what do you do?

Do you keep your religious and/or political views offline and/or private? Or do you not worry about any of it and just let all of that information hang out there? Will this kind of sharing become more expected and "normal"? How will it change how we interact with each other? Or will it not? How will our cultural norms evolve?

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The Problem Of Trying Blogging From An iPad Using TypePad

2012-11-24T22:52:31-05:00

Yesterday's blog post epitomizes one of the problems I have with creating blog posts on a tablet that work with TypePad, the service with which I started hosting this site way back in 2005.

All I wanted to do is have an image that was right-justified with the text wrapping around it. Instead I got this:

(Which has now been changed to be correctly right-justified, but through the regular desktop web interface, not to the mobile interface.)

In order to write more regularly, I've been trying out using the iPad as a writing platform. It's been working well for sites hosted on WordPress, but not so well for TypePad.

Because the TypePad app is fairly useless on the iPad, I wrote the post using Blogsy, a fairly interesting and useful blogging app for the iPad. However, try as I might, I could not get Blogsy to right-justify and wrap the image. The issue seems to be that Blogsy would only send to TypePad the <img> tag with this attribute:

class="alignright"

Now this might be fine if the CSS for my theme on TypePad defined a class like that, but it doesn't. I tried multiple times to edit the raw HTML in Blogsy to add the simple inline CSS to the IMG tag of:

style="float:right;"

However, Blogsy kept removing that style attribute when sending it to TypePad. Now, maybe there is some setting in Blogsy that I couldn't find that would pass along CSS attributes... but if so, I have no idea what it is.

Trying other apps to correct the problem... as I mentioned, the TypePad app is fairly useless on the iPad. It is only an iPhone application and so while you can blow it up to take over the whole iPad screen, it is still an iPhone app and doesn't make use of the iPad's screen nor of its improved keyboard. More importantly, it only lets you create new posts - there is no way to edit or modify existing posts... so there was no way to get in and modify the post to add this style attribute to the image.

Next, I tried the "mobile" website for TypePad, but it doesn't seem to work so well on the iPad. I tried to get in and modify the post above and wasn't able to easily do so.

Finally I tried logging directly into the "regular" TypePad website on the iPad. It looked like it might work as I could get into the HTML view (which was the only view, actually) and add the style attribute. But when I went to try to publish the updated post, the Publish button didn't work.

In the end, I had to go to my desktop system and login to the regular TypePad web interface to make this change.

This is a perfect example of what I referred to in my "Barriers to Blogging" series as "Getting The Tools Out Of The Way". A whole chunk time spent... simply to get an image to be right-justified. :-(

Now to get the tools out of the way in this case, I may again search for a better blog post editor on the iPad. Another option, of course, would be to move this blog off of TypePad and over to one of my WordPress servers (where the tools work better)... but that's a much longer process. Still, it is another answer.

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Now Amazon Rolls Out Pages And Posts, Too?

2012-11-23T22:33:01-05:00

As if companies and brands don't already have enough places to establish their presence online, now comes word that Amazon.com will let you create a URL with your brand name where you can promote your products and other information. You also will be able to create "posts" for your page similar to a Facebook Page.

Amazon spells out more details in the FAQ for "Amazon Marketing Services", including the fact that these pages are free to create and that there is a verification process for brands. It notes that in building your Amazon Page you have a choice of three templates - and that Posts can also be cross-posted over to Facebook after you link your Amazon Page to a Facebook account. It also notes that there is "Amazon Analytics" to show you the interaction with your page.

I have not yet explored setting up a Page myself, but I can certainly see the value for any company selling merchandise through Amazon. I expect we will see a rush for brands wanting to own their own brand name at amazon.com. For marketers this becomes, though, yet one more place to potentially establish a presence.

What do you think of this move? Will you establish your own Amazon Page?

Thank You

2012-11-22T08:08:00-05:00

Today, for most of the seven billion people in the world, it is just yet another ordinary day. Nothing special... just another day.

But for those of us living in the USA it is our "Thanksgiving". It is a public holiday that most people get off. And it is for me the holiday that in so many ways I enjoy the most.

Why?

Simple ... because it has not yet become over-commercialized. Tomorrow, of course, is an epic nightmare of consumerism and crass commercialism (and the participation in which I avoid as much as possible).

But today, for the most part, is a collective... pause.

Throughout our nation (and around the world for those living abroad) people gather with friends, family, loved ones. Most businesses are closed (except for many restaurants, convenience stores and some gas stations). People eat (often large quantities), play, relax and enjoy each other's company.

It is a moment to revel in that gathering... to reflect on how we are thankful for what we have... to help out those who need help... to pause in a sacred moment and give thanks.

And so I take this moment... here... on this site... to thank all of YOU out there. All of you who continue to read my articles... to listen to my podcasts... to read my books... to watch my videos... to hear me in presentations... to read my newsletter... to engage with me on social media... thank you!

Thank you also for challenging me... for asking me tough questions... for giving me feedback... for doing all those things that help me to grow and learn and become even better in what I do and help me learn how to be of better service to you all.

Thank you.

For the 6.7+ billion of you for whom today is a perfectly normal day, I hope you have an excellent day. For those of you celebrating US Thanksgiving, I hope that you all are able to gather with those you love - and that you are able somewhere in the madness to pause for even just a moment and reflect on all that you have to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. It's not all rosy, of course. Many people cannot be with their family and friends. Many people do not have food, homes, or the money or means to travel to visit people. Even "normal" family gatherings can be filled with tension, drama and crisis. It can be a quite bleak and depressing time for many. For those of us who are able to celebrate, the question becomes, too... what can we do to help others? How can we translate our thankfulness into action to help those who are struggling? Can we dedicate part of our lives to helping other people have something more to be thankful for?

My Report Into FIR #678 - Facebook Mobile Sharing, Barriers To Blogging, and Social Media with Israel/Hamas

2012-11-21T07:24:00-05:00

In this week's For Immediate Release episode #678 on Monday, November 19, 2012, my report covered:

Facebook finally lets you "share" content in mobile apps and the mobile website:
- Facebook FINALLY Adds Sharing To iOS/Android Apps And Mobile Web
I spoke about continuing my "Barriers to Blogging" series:
I then concluded on the somber note of the escalating conflict in Israel and the Gaza Strip as the Israeli Defense Force and Hamas engage not only militarily but also via social media:
- When armies become media: Israel live-blogs and tweets an attack on Hamas
- Israel and Twitter: Where does free speech end and violence begin?
As part of that, I also spoke of the dark side of all the social media usage... as well as the escalating conflict about the potential shutting off of Internet access into the Gaza Strip:
- Israeli Military To Citizens: Don't Facebook, Tweet, Instagram Rocket-Hit Locations
- Anonymous attacks over 650 Israeli sites, wipes databases, leaks email addresses and passwords (updated)

If you are a FIR subscriber, you should have the show now in iTunes or whatever you use to get the feed. If you aren't a subscriber, you can simply listen to the episode online now. There is a TON of other great information in the weekly episode relevant to those involved with PR, marketing and other forms of communication, so I'd encourage you to give it a listen.

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PSY, MC Hammer, the American Music Awards - and The Amazing Power Of The Internet

2012-11-20T08:36:20-05:00

Seriously? The American Music Awards closing out the evening with a song sung almost entirely in Korean?

Wow.

Let's just reflect up on that for a moment. The American Music Awards... ending with a song sung...

... in Korean!

A song where the only words that the vast majority of the audience actually understood were "Heyyyyyy, sexy lady!" and "Gangnam Style". (Well, and the overlay of MC Hammer's "Too Legit To Quit" song last night.)

But the rest of the song was entirely in Korean.

How cool is that?

Forget for a moment what you may think about the actual "Gangnam Style" song from PSY and whether you love or absolutely hate the "horse dance" thing he does. Forget about whether you think the whole meme is overdone with everyone and their brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents and babies (and animals) doing remakes and paradoies of the song. Forget about whether you are so sick of it and hope you never hear about it again.

Forget about all of that.

Think of the moment. Think of the fact that a 40-year-old awards show... again, the American Music Awards... closed its event with a song by a Korean performer sung almost entirely in Korean.

Amazing.

And we see here again the amazing and awesome power of the Internet and how it has fundamentally changed the ways in which we communicate.

Without the Internet, PSY might have been extremely popular within Korea... but probably would have remained almost unknown outside the country.

Instead, because of the Internet his music has been seen and heard 100s of millions of times in basically every part of the world. And here he is is... on stage with MC Hammer closing out this award show.

I love it! Even as I am not personally a particular fan of the song (nor did I watch the awards show)... I delight in the fact that here in the US we celebrated that song.

Score another one for the power of the Internet to unite us all and enable us to experience the creativity that is in all countries and among all people... and in all languages.

Very cool to see!

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What Is The Future Of The Levelator? (The Podcaster's Ultimate Quick-Fix Audio Tool)

2012-11-19T09:18:45-05:00

What does the future hold for the awesome "Levelator®" tool, now that The Conversations Network is shutting down all of its websites at the end of 2012?

That's certainly the first thing that popped into my mind when I heard the word that Doug Kaye was declaring "Mission Accomplished" and shutting down the TCN websites and moving their content to other locations.

The "Levelator," in case you aren't aware, is a truly awesome piece of software for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux that can take an interview recorded with varying audio levels and turn it into something great for listening. As the bottom of the Levelator page says:

Do you believe in magic? You will after using The Levelator® to enhance your podcast. And you'll be amazed that it's free, now even for commercial use.
So what is The Levelator®? It's software that runs on Windows, OS X (universal binary), or Linux (Ubuntu) that adjusts the audio levels within your podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next, for example. It's not a compressor, normalizer or limiter although it contains all three. It's much more than those tools, and it's much simpler to use. The UI is dirt-simple: Drag-and-drop any WAV or AIFF file onto The Leveler's application window, and a few moments later you'll find a new version which just sounds better.

For those wanting the gory details, the site contains a detailed description of the "Levelator Loudness Algorithms" that explains how it does its magic. The FAQ, also, includes some helpful information.

Normally, when I'm recording podcasts in my home office with my podcasting rig, I'm able to control all the audio levels, even if I'm interviewing someone over Skype. So in those cases I don't need the power of the Levelator.

But... if I'm recording an interview with multiple people over Skype, I only have one feed for Skype into my mixer and so I can't control the varying audio levels for the different speakers.

Similarly, if I am recording a panel session typically speakers are sitting at different distances from their microphones and they naturally have different levels of their voices.

In either of those cases, the Levelator has been a HUGE help in making my recordings sound that much better.

It's also insanely easy to use - just drag a file onto the interface and drop it. That's it.

Now it's now always on target. A time or two I've actually liked the original better, but that's often because I've got noisy backgrounds or other issues. But probably 95% of the time it does a truly wonderful job making the audio sound better.

So what is its future?

I don't know.

Doug Kaye's post about the future of TCN says only that they intend to continue to make the existing content available. It's not clear from reading that what will happen to the Levelator. Will it be updated? Will someone continue to maintain the software? Will it be open-sourced so that the community could maintain it? Or will it just fade away?

The @levelator Twitter account did provide some hope in an October 3 tweet saying plans are still being discussed:

I do hope Doug and his team are able to find a way to keep the Levelator around. It truly is an awesome tool and it is and was a tremendously generous gift to the Internet community to make it available for free.

I look forward to learning its future... and meanwhile, I've made sure I've downloaded the most recent version so that I'll have my own copy around for a while.

Have you used the Levelator before? Has it helped you? What would you like to see the TCN team do with the Levelator?

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