I’d invite you to join me on my new site if you haven’t already.

So why the change? Social media got boring.

The Evolution of a Social Media Professional

2007: Holy crap, this is so cool.
2008: This is really cool. You should check it out.
2009: Why won’t anyone listen to me. This is going to change everything.
2010: Yes! It’s working. I was right.
2011: See how well this works. I told you so.
2012: Oh whatever, I said all this stuff 5 years ago.

I love change. I love studying human behavior. I love solving puzzles. To me, all the big social media puzzles have been solved. There’s nothing new anymore, it’s all just variations of the same thing and from here on out it’s pretty obvious how things will play out, it’s just a matter of time. And I hate waiting. I feel like Sherlock Holmes when he’s bored waiting between cases (don’t worry, I haven’t resorted to shooting up cocaine like he did).

I don’t mean to sound condescending or arrogant, it’s just that social media has entered a phase where people like me, who fly at 30,000 feet, don’t add as much value as we used to. It’s now time for people who are better at scale and optimization to take over. Those of us that are better at the messy creation part (and find details boring) need to start thinking about what’s next for us.

Just to be clear, I still very much believe in social media. Social is now part of everything we do. But I believe we’re now entering the Post Social Age where we need to start building on top of the social world.

So where is Tac these days?

Tac.is is kind of my catch all blog. You;ll still see some social media stuff, some business stuff, some personal stuff and some random stuff. It’s where I’m most active and it’s probably where I’m going to move most of the more personal posts I want to keep.

Postsocial.us is the blog where I post things beyond social media. Things like cyborgs, psychology, the future, sensors, facial recognition technology, and in general things I find more interesting than social media. This is the blog I’ll move most of my predictions and other non social media stuff to.

Blog Posts From The Future is where I’m stretching my brain. I don’t have the attention span or the time right now to write a novel, so I’ve started to write fiction blog posts. It’s a lot of fun but posts here are far less frequent. My first post was on the Klout Phone and my latest one was on the Cyborg Olympics.

What If I Don’t Want To Follow 3 Blogs?

Of course if you follow me on Twitter, I’ll post links to all my various blogs but you’ll still likely miss stuff so that’s why I started a newsletter. I’ll be sending out ‘fortnightly’ updates where I’ll share a few thoughts and link to a few of my favorite posts. You can sign up here if you’re interested.

I’m not going to say that this is my last post here but they will probably be few and far between.

Cheers.

In a world where money and power are the de facto standard, egoic actions take precedence over almost all else, particularly in the business world.

This is another reason that the community-building aspect of online (and offline) communications continues to baffle many organizations.  It’s so completely counterintuitive to the ego, which wants to shore up control wherever possible, and create a very narrow definition of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

A great example I came across recently is that of ATM fees. What other kind of mindset would develop a system by which a potential customer is punished for using a service?   If I’m a Chase customer, and I go into a TD bank to get money, I am charged extra.

If you take a moment and consider this, even from the most basic business level, it seems ludicrous.

TD (in this example) has the opportunity to build a relationship with a potential customer, to connect in a way that maybe their current provider does not, to create a lasting impression.

Instead, the experience feels more like a punishment for using the other guy. It is a “the other guy is evil, and screw you for using them” moment.

You have people at a point of influence.  Their attention is focused on the experience. Why not use that time for something positive? Why not leave them with a great, memorable experience? Why not be human?

Why use it for ‘other-ing’ the people who come in?

Competition need not be about defeating the other guy, it can be about building a community regardless of what else is out there. That comes from a place of humanity.

A real place.

Just over two years ago I wrote a post called, The Cloud Opened Up and Rained Marketing Data. 

I put on my futurist hat and I wondered, “What is the worst thing that could happen with social media?” This is the blog post I don’t want to write in 10 years. I don’t really think this will happen but I think it’s important to remember that it is possible. 

It was a bit of fiction, written from the future. Something I enjoyed doing and plan to do more of. The basic question is what happens to marketing when we can track you just as well offline as we can online? Here’s the relevant excerpts:

Not only could we target you with ads exactly when you wanted, we could target ads exactly when you were algorithmically most susceptible.

We began to build algorithms that tracked what you were searching for. How many times did you have to perform that search? How quickly were you searching, clicking?

What locations were you visiting? What locations had you visited? Were you traveling alone or with a friend or family member?

What was the tone of your status updates that day? Were you in a good mood or a bad mood?

Which of your friends did you call, email or message?

Which of your friends are influencers to you about which category of products? What have your friends purchased lately?

How quickly were you traveling through the store? Were you in a hurry or taking your time? Were you in a good mood susceptible to messages of reward or in a bad mood susceptible to messages of comfort?

Have you been sticking to your diet lately?

Did you just break up with your girlfriend/boyfriend?

The list goes on. The list fills data centers. And those data centers process that information in real-time as you move through the Webbed World. It recalculates your personal algorithm with every click and new event, with each bit of new information you shared on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, your blog, your online and publicly available offline behavior.

Why do I bring this up again? Because of this nifty little patent filed by Microsoft:

A newly surfaced Microsoft patent application describes a “user-following engine” that would analyze a user’s posts on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to deduce mood, interests, and possibly even the person’s education  level and comprehension of specific topics.

Then the system would automatically adjust the search experience and results to better match those characteristics.

In the case of the person’s mood, for example, the background of the search interface could be changed to a different color. Or if the person has been posting to Facebook about an upcoming trip, the search engine can use that to make the search engine.

They’ve already updated the patent.

Now the company is taking things a step further, adding ads and the Kinect sensor to the mix.

A different Microsoft patent application, made public this week, proposes targeting ads to users based on their emotional state at any given point.

Do you seem happy? You’ll see ads for vacation packages and consumer electronics, but not weight-loss programs or self-help products. Do you appear sad? You won’t see that over-the-top animated ad for children’s birthday parties at the local bowling alley. Feeling frustrated? It’s PC support ads for you.

Those are actual examples from the patent application, which incorporates some of the same ideas as the earlier filing for deducing the user’s mood — including scanning messages and social media postings. Also included this time are audio and video capture devices (to detect facial expressions and tone of voice) in addition to the company’s Kinect sensor, which would be used to analyze body movements as another input for the emotion-detecting algorithm.

As shown below in a diagram from the patent filing, advertisers would be able to tag their campaigns to target users in specific emotional states and avoid others.

This is a whole new level for multi-channel marketing.

I wrote the post in a very dystopian mind-set but I don’t view this kind of technology as being good or evil. This could be very convenient and appreciated. It could also be used to exploit people who are feeling a little emotionally vulnerable. So this isn’t a warning about the technology but a warning to the Marketeers who would use it.

Most enterprise companies have an intranet, and most of them suck? Why do they suck? They’re treated like an afterthought, receive very little budgets (comparatively) and have almost zero interactivity.

While intranets aren’t going away, IT departments are having to quickly scramble to keep their employees from using external tools which lack the security and control company information needs.

Back in the end of 2009, one of my Top 5 Predictions For The Next 5 Years was that intranets would begin integrating with social media. We’ve seen this with both additional social functionality from established players like Microsoft SharePoint (a client) and new players like Jive, Socialcast and others. But we’ve also started to see direct integration of external social networks into internal products like Outlook and SharePoint (and I’m sure the new players do this as well).

The reason I this is important is because as businesses push towards becoming “Social Businesses” most of that movement is just talk and hype. Companies are willing to be social in their marketing and external marketing, but they’re reluctant to spend the time, resources and money on internal social opportunities. Which I think for many companies will prove to be more valuable than their external efforts.

Culturematic is an interesting and fun book. It was a refreshing break from the normal social media and business books I’ve been reading and it’s not the kind of book you’d expect to read from someone with a PhD in Anthropology (but if you’re familiar with Grant then it shouldn’t come as a surprise). Culturematic is full of examples ranging from TV hits to Fantasy Football to the business world. If nothing else, I have to thank Grant for not using the same old tired examples all business books seem to be using right now.

So what’s this book about? Why did Grant write this book? I think the best answer to that comes in these two wonderful paragraphs in the introduction (emphasis is mine):

As an anthropologist who studies American culture and business, I recognize some of what I hear out there. I have an idea of what marketers are doing, how capital markets work, the theater of politics, the logic of fashion, the economics of television. I get most of these. And, of course, I like having my preconceptions confirmed. But it’s the things I don’t understand that are useful. These send a message. These say, “Your models are broken.”

In fact, the world is busting through my anthropological models as if they were made of balsa wood and tissue paper. The problem, of course, is change, the sheer propulsive force of change. What once took a century now takes a decade. What once took a decade can now happen in a year. The world sprints into the future. Models waddle. Always too little. Always too late.

I love that.

In this book Grant takes all of these anomalies he’s seeing in the World and tries to make sense of them. He presents a new model he calls the Culturematic, which evangelizes the use of “labs” with a heavy bent towards failure.

In the end Grant doesn’t give you all the answers. I don’t think the answers exist and I think that’s his point. If you’re waiting for someone to tell you what the next big thing is, then you’re probably too late to the game.

But what I think is more important, and why I think you should read this book, is the approach Grant took to making sense of what he was seeing. If you read this book look at how he identifies the key trends and how he then makes sense of them. If you can start thinking like this then you’re way ahead of the competition.

There are a few factors here. One is what Clay Shirky talks about in his book Cognitive Surplus. People have more time on their hands and they want to do something fulfilling with that time.

I first noticed the trend in 2008 when a lot of individual developers started latching onto the myriad of available API’s and build quick little mashups and apps. Most of these failed or went by the wayside, but some became real businesses.

I noted the trend again in 2009 as individual developers were able to build quick and easy iPhone games while still keeping their day job. I believe the downturn in the economy actually accelerated this trend.

Then near the end of 2010 I began noticing that there was a whole new class of micropreneur that didn’t need the same level of technical skills. They just needed some free time and the willingness to take advantage of new opportunities. I wrote about this in my 2011 version of the Top 5 Predictions for the Next 5 Years and called it making a living from the crowd.

And today I came across an article on the FastCompany CoExist site which summed up some of the factors around this trend quite well.

What defines this new economy is that it’s built on the empowerment of individuals and the technology that enables this. It’s allowing individuals to create their own jobs. It’s a celebration of life and time, and a shift in perspective of money. Technology now provides an opportunity for people anywhere in the world to monetize their passions. And it’s not just the artists and under-employed flocking to these platforms, but professionals who seek a higher quality of life, greater flexibility, and more time with their families.

There are five main reasons that I think make micro-entrepeneurship so appealing:

1. Flexibility: The ability to focus on what’s important (family, health, self-care) is not only about have having more time, but also about having more flexibility in your schedule.
2. Following your heart: The opportunity to spend more time doing what you love.
3. Making money: Being able to cash in on the goods, knowledge, places, skills and passions that people already have.
4. Enrichment: Many people, especially those who have been in the workforce for a long time, are looking for new, sustainable ways to enrich their knowledge, skills and experience in life. Those who are retired or unable to work full-time love an alternative way to stay active.
5. Creativity: Being your own boss means being the visionary behind your own business, rather than merely following marching orders.

The value proposition of self-employment is so compelling that it’s precisely what drove the corporates-gone-creatives entrepreneurs behind the aforementioned companies to empower others to strike out on their own, while providing a business structure, resources, and guidance through the platforms that are otherwise unavailable to the self-employed trying to do it solo.

So with that out of the way I’d like to share some context, that as an outsider, I find interesting about Nick, about the “place” from which this book was written and finally a little bit about the book itself. In full disclosure I should say that I’m not an unbiased reviewer. I like Nick. Nick invited my wife and me to the Angelmaker launch party and he has given me advance copies of both Angelmaker and The Blind Giant.

Regardless of my personal affinity towards Nick, The Blind Giant is interesting for me on many levels.

I found it especially interesting reading this book because it came right on the heels of Nick’s second novel, Angelmaker. Nick is an amazing writer. He has a way of using words and building sentences that will leave you re-reading sentences not for clarity but just for the sheer enjoyment of reading a well-written sentence. It’s obvious that Nick loves to write, and that comes through in his writing.

The Blind Giant doesn’t contain nearly the level of word play that Nick’s novels do but I can honestly say that it was refreshing to read a non-fiction book written by a novelist, not a business blogger turning out a book. This is not a knock against my business-blogger-turned-author friends, because many of them have written excellent books (something I haven’t done), but not many of us can command the English language the way Nick does.

Most interesting to me though, is that this is a book about the disruption of technology, by a writer who is the child of writers (Nick’s father is John le Carré). Nick has grown up in one of the industries most disrupted by technology, and being a member of Generation X, Nick grew up during the time that technology itself has grown up.

Nick is prolific in his use of social media and, that’s how I came to know Nick. Several years ago I stumbled across his book, The Gone-Away World, and quickly discovered that Nick has a blog and is active on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Not only does he have and use these accounts but he genuinely engages with his followers; which was not at all what I expected. My experience is that most authors only really talk with other authors unless they have a book to promote, then they’re suddenly very engaging.

But while Nick may be an early adopter and a power user of social media he also made a name for himself here in the UK as an outspoken critic of the heavy-handed approach tech companies take with their users. He has been most vocal on the Google Book Settlement. Nick took issue not with the existence of the project, but with the way in which Google went about it. It’s this outspokenness about tech that led Nick to write The Blind Giant.

What becomes apparent about Nick – and is evident in The Blind Giant - is that he is passionate about the potential of technology, and understands that it can be used for “good” just as well as “evil”. Because of his background and his current situation Nick sits balanced between the ongoing debates surrounding technology, intellectual property, publishing and privacy (I should also mention his wife is a human rights lawyer).

Nick starts the book by doing an admirable job of covering the huge topic of modern technology, specifically computing and the Internet, taking us from the early days (aka the 80s) through to modern times. For those of us that lived during this time it’s a nice bit of nostalgia. For those who weren’t paying attention and wondered where all of this tech stuff suddenly came from, it’s a good crash-course. It’s also a useful piece of history for the younger Generation Y readers who don’t know what Netscape was (seriously, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t know what Netscape was and had to ask Facebook board member and Netscape co-founder, Marc Andreessen).

Nick then tackles, head on, many of today’s hotly debated topics. I was delighted that he took to task several of the complaints Nicholas Carr raised in his book The Shallows (aka “Google is making us Stupid”). And he discusses the debate on publishing and intellectual property and how many forces are putting it at odds with personal privacy – you shouldn’t have to give up one for the other.

The book is not long (especially compared to Nick’s novels) and at just over 250 pages Nick doesn’t have a lot of time to go deep on each topic. But what he does well is frame each topic with enough context and examples and then breaks the subject open enough for the reader to continue the debate intelligently. In fact, there is an accompanying website at www.blindgiant.co.uk where readers are encouraged to continue the debate in a forum or in posts about each chapter.

There are very few definitive conclusions made in the book and I believe this is because Nick wants to the reader to come to their own conclusions. Nick’s main point is that we created technology and (in my words, not his) that it is in fact a natural extension of our own evolutionary progress. We created technology to solve some of our more pressing problems (and to have some fun). We created technology to allow us to be more human, not less. But it won’t just sit there and regulate itself (or us) and manage how we use it. If we don’t manage ourselves and technology then at best it becomes yet another distraction, a point of stress in our lives. At worst, larger forces, like governments and corporations will turn technology into a tool to manipulate us.

Ultimately Nick argues that we need to develop our critical analysis skills. He even offers up a few tips and tools to help us along. To survive and thrive in the digital age we need to ask ourselves and each other hard questions, we need to engage in debates. We can’t sit by with optimistic expectations of the inevitable arrival of a technology utopia or with fatalistic expectations that an apocalyptic technology dystopia is inevitable.

To borrow a line from The Blind Giant:

The hard truth is: get involved, or get sidelined. The future is not set. It’s being made right now.

While Malcolm Gladwell made the “tipping point” a part of our shared lexicon over a decade ago, the desire to put a finer point on why one thing succeeds (and others fail) has been in our genes from the beginning. It’s only natural to want to pick apart the success of others with the hope of learning something that will help you with whatever it is you’re doing or want to be doing. Just as chimpanzees learn the fine art of ant fishing from one another, humans turn to their fellow man to learn what’s worked and what hasn’t.

In the business world, more often than not, this desire to learn from success takes the form of stilted case studies. Sometimes it takes the form of an informative conversation. I hope this post more closely resembles that second option.

Following that line of thinking, I decided to interview someone who has seen a huge amount of success in the highly competitive field of Web-based entertainment to hear some tips on DIY marketing, creating quality content and the importance of an integrated communications approach first-hand.

Rob Michael Hugel is Brooklyn-based actor, writer, director (and longtime friend) who’s seen a great deal of attention for his hilarious web series, I Hate Being Single. I was lucky enough to catch up with Rob in advance of the web series finale, which airs tonight at a public finale screening party at indieScreen in Williamsburg and goes live tomorrow on the web at ihatebeingsingleseries.com. You can catch episodes 1-5 on the series’ YouTube channel in the meantime.

Before we get into your take on marketing and promoting the series, how would you describe the premise of the I Hate Being Single for an audience who is used to elevator pitches and discussions of ROI?

The premise I would describe is probably that it’s a sitcom web series. Picture a Curb Your Enthusiasm for the Portlandia generation but in bite-sized 5 minute episodes. It’s a little bit Wes Anderson, a little bit Cosby Show. Each episode is a standalone story so you don’t necessarily need to know the backstory to get it. The tone of the show is dry like the British Office or Larry Sanders Show, with observations of Brooklyn and the “indie” lifestyle from the perspective of a lonely outsider. Anything can happen to him in the show but the eventual outcome is true to the phrase “I Hate Being Single.”

What’s been your overall strategy when it comes to promotion?

My strategy with promotion (and production) has been to do as much as I can without money. I made the series with the help of favors and eventually a Kickstarter. I work freelance and sacrificed a lot of the paid work time to do the show, so it’s a complete DIY strategy.

The promotion has been entirely online with the exception of a couple hundred flyers for the release day. Social media is the first and daily, and press outreach is done strategically to what the episode is about. I had a release schedule of about 14 weeks with a new episode each week so that was important to use as tool to keep people coming back each week knowing there would be a new episode.

As a rule, I try to make everything dealing with the show look true to the series style as far as graphic design, posters, flyers, images. I basically operate like a one man TV studio in the same way they have a graphics department making trailers, promos, magazine ads; I’m doing the same thing on a small scale. I watch HBO, FX and IFC and think about how they promote their shows. I’ll follow that guide. Anything to make the audience believe that the show is legit, substantial, and worth looking at. Consistency is very important.

Did you have a particular audience in mind when you made the series?

I wouldn’t say I had an audience in mind as a goal, but I thought there would be a good possibility that people like me would like it. Independent spirits, artists, musicians, comedians, actors, fans of indie films, fans of independent comedy, and Williamsburg itself. There’s been a lot of film or TV that parodies and satires the world of hipsterdom that is about us but not necessarily for us. So this was my attempt to recreate that world but in a more earnest and genuine way than it’s been seen.

It wasn’t untill the series premiered at the New York Television Festival that I got the response from people of all backgrounds who connected with the story. It was a great realization. (Image note: That’s Rob accepting the Bing Audience Award at the NYTVF in the thumbnail above.)

You ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the upcoming finale. What did you learn from that experience?

The Kickstarter was a great relief. I really just had a lot of reservations about whether or not we’d meet the goal ($5,000) and I was nervous about asking for money, and would people judge me, and stuff like that. It’s a strange situation to create a show that has the potential for a whole TV series, but be the ONLY individual representing. No co-creator, no co-writer, so it was all on me to pitch the Kickstarter and represent the show, and not sound too desperate, cocky, entitled, amateur, and any other criticism.

The support from the Kickstarter was amazing. People donated who I never could’ve expected, and it was truly a huge sign of support from the “community.” A lot of the money was from people I know through doing comedy in NYC over the years, and friends from throughout my life. The largest donation from one person was $500 and the rest were a collection of $10, $25, $50, $150, and $300 donations. I think people assume there’s always a big backer (family member, or wealthy stranger) that takes care of a large chunk and the campaign is almost a front for that. I am very proud to say that was not my experience at all. All the donations add up and make a huge difference. We met our goal the day before production, so I was promoting hard for the entire process, and very, very nervous about if we’d make it.

You’ve been promoting the series through social media quite a bit. What does your presence look like online and have you found any one platform or tactic to stand out in particular?

I’ve been using Facebook (personal and fan page), Twitter, Tumblr, Buzzfeed, YouTube, and Blip.  I wish I could say there was one successful platform alone. It hasn’t been my experience.

I really love Tumblr as a tool for this show. Our official website is a Tumblr and I’ve been using a personal blog for a while. Over the past year I think there’s been a great boom of Tumblr users. It’s the best place for people to spread work and not feel like its “clogging a feed” or something like that. It’s my goal to keep working on getting tumbld and find more followers that way. I search tags of things that I like or I’m influenced by and find thousands of people who like the same thing and want to share it. It gives me confidence that we’ll reach the right people eventually if we keep working at this.

As for Facebook it’s been really great for gaining a grassroots following. I have a great network of friends in NYC and across the country who, when they repost from Facebook tend to get a positive response, which leads to a new follower on the fan page, or YouTube. It’s very typical that I’ll post something on Facebook, a friend reposts it, and a minute later my I Hate Being Single page has a new follower that I don’t know who is connected to the friend that reposted. It really is social networking!

There’s a small number of international fans on Facebook. I have no idea how they found us originally, but there’s some random people from South America, Europe, Africa, and Australia. Even though it’s small number of people, it’s one of the coolest things I can think of; thanks to social media I know they’re out there at least, and can communicate with them easily.

That being said, I wish it was easier to get Facebook fans. I Hate Being Single has 550 fans and I have over 1,000 friends on my personal account. About a quarter of my Facebook friends have “liked” the fan page. It’d be nice to get that higher, but it’s out of my control aside from a friendly reminder once in a long while.

What just wasn’t worth the effort?
I can’t really tell what wasn’t worth the effort at this point. I’m still feeling like everything has paid off in one way or another, and since we aren’t yet done releasing the season, I think there’s a lot of promotion on the horizon. I know the finale episodes will exceed people’s expectations for a comedy web series. I’m getting ready to work on that promotion as soon as it’s up.

I think we all have found our friends can get quite tired of promotions, whether its related to fundraising for an upcoming charity race, getting people to check out your new blog or anything else that doesn’t directly involve them. I’ve found this is especially true on Facebook. People want to see pictures of you and significant others, read funny life experiences, but beyond that, you’re often pushing your luck. Did you run into any of this in your personal promotions?

I haven’t had much backlash from personal promotions. I think different Facebook users have different experiences depending on who they’re friends with. I live in NY with a very bustling and almost overwhelmingly energetic community of comedians, improvisors, and actors. So, in my daily feed there is almost constant promotions of live shows, web series, films, articles about people’s projects or jokes. So, I don’t really think a lot about the people that aren’t in that circle because it’s what I see the most.

I do get a lot of good support from other friends or family from the past who live in other places. They’re always encouraging from afar and keeping tabs on what’s going on. I do think once in a while that people could be judging me for posting too many mentions of something, but I don’t hear from them and they can take me off their feed if it’s too much trouble.

What words of advice for those looking to find an audience for their creative work?

My advice to creative people looking for an audience is to first concentrate on the product and make it as good as you believe you can. Imagine yourself in a public place with like-minded people, like a concert or art gallery, find them online and get the work in front them. I always think about who my inspirations are, and find people who have that same inspiration. They’re more likely to associate with what I do. Get specific.

You’ve gotten quite a bit of great press on the series. How did those pieces come about?

The press has been awesome. It’s a mix of things. Some people contacted me out of the blue from seeing posts on Facebook through friends, a few were through friends of friends who were recommended to check it out. I sent out press releases on the morning of most of the full-length episodes, which came out biweekly. I sent about 200 emails each day with a press release about the series, and that particular episode. I targeted NYC blogs that would cover it for the topical NYC stuff and other sites that I saw had coverage of indie film, web series, comedy, TV, and fashion. I feel like the show has a flavor, and if there’s any outlet that has a similar flavor, then I’d contact them. Some of the press didn’t get back to me until the 3rd or 4th episode/email, which is worth mentioning because I’m the kind of person that feels slightly uncomfortable emailing someone repeatedly with no response. I learned that the persistence is important and not be discouraged to get no response, for it may come a while down the road and be totally positive.

One of the things that quite a few of the  blog posts and reviews mention is the high production quality, which is definitely not standard when it comes to the web. What was your thinking there?

The quality was a very conscious choice. I’ve been doing TV production and making videos (in one form or another) since I was in middle school. I really wanted to make something for the internet that looked better than what the internet expects. The center of that issue is money, of course. I didn’t have money to shoot episodes 1-12 (everything except the finale) so I was working with friends who donated their help to shoot and be the crew. The DP for those episodes was Giga Shane, who is a videographer and experienced with documentary shooting. He can make things look great with just his eye, lens choice, and a light. Even if it was paid for it’d be looking amazing for very little money compared to a professional shoot.

The sound was done by Matt Cook, a close friend and collaborator (Nights In Ultraviolet, CafeBloodbath). He knows how to record good sound and that’s something a lot of people get wrong on small budget productions.

Aside from the shooting quality I really wanted to make the show specific and detailed throughout. The music was original by a friend Jake Zavracky (Zavracky.bandcamp.com). I’d email him ideas for the tone and he’d write a song send it back and forth a couple times. Then I’d recut the song to fit the episode exactly.

The opening title logo was created by my good friend Mike (theblackaxe.com) and animated by Giga, the DP.

Basically everything in the show was done specifically so people watching could get into the story and not be constantly reminded that what they’re watching is a) on the internet, b) not famous and c) not funded.

The finale episode is that same idea, but using the budget we raised to pay a director, DP, steadicam operator, sound mixer/engineer, locations, lighting gear, and more pro camera. It looks like it cost $100k and it only cost $6k. Again, that’s only because so many people are willing to sacrifice getting paid a lot for the project itself. It’s not a model I plan to continue and if I won the lottery today, I’d be giving them a chunk because it means everything to the project and to me.

What’s next for the series?

I’m hoping to continue the series in the best way possible. I’ve been hoarding ideas for a while and will be ready to write it while we spend some time promoting season 1. I’ll be looking for a home for the show somewhere we can be funded for the season, should we find the right fit and of course. I wouldn’t rule out pitching to TV as well. I’ll be in LA in June to start this process.

What’s next for you acting-, writing- and directing-wise?

What’s next for me will be hopefully somewhat determined by the show. My girlfriend and I co-host a stand up show every month at The Gutter, I’m performing at UCB NY with the house team “Onassis,” and I’m acting in an independent pilot at the end of the month. Continuing pursuit of commercial and legit acting work in NY and LA and working on a new live show.

The notice (below) implies that Patrick’s account should not have been activated to begin with. It’s all very legal sounding (a.k.a. doesn’t really say anything) but having looked at both Path’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, I can find no reason why Path did this.

Patrick used his real name and real information. He’s well older than 13. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Facebook and Google are notorious for deleting accounts first and then only responding reluctantly later. I’m sad to see Path take this approach. I wish social networks would take the small steps to notify users first and give them a chance to respond in some way before their accounts are deleted.

You’d think with all the negative response Path already received around collecting user information that they’d proceed with caution around this stuff but maybe that’s too much to expect from people who came from Facebook.

Patrick’s reached out to Path, I hope they respond quickly.

UPDATE: Patrick is back on Path now and it seems the problem occurred because when Path first let users signup they didn’t force users to fill in their birth date. Users who slipped through this gap are apparently being deactivated instead of just being prompted to input this data. I still don’t know why social networks take this heavy handed approach when it seems like a little communication will go a long way.