Old SMartens.eu design

I had spent quite some time creating it from scratch a couple of years ago, so it was kind of hard to just let it go.
Coming to think of it though, I’ve realized that I don’t need any nifty design to attract readers.
I’m not a designer, well not an approved writer either, but content being king, I decided to grab the design I’ve been using for komischer-typ.de since 2009. It’s very basic so the actual content has the reader’s attention.

Speaking of readers, there’s that flag in the upper right corner. Clicking it will direct you to the German Language Version of this Blog.
Topics will remain the same, roughly speaking Social Media within and outside the Enterprise (2.0).

Cheers – and happy International Women’s Day ;-)

In my humble opinion, Lee Bryant encapsulates the most important things you have to know today, to grasp the incredibly interesting and vast topic Social Media. By chance, I also know that “to encapsulate” seems to be one of Lee’s favourite words. That’s probably due to his gift of being able to break down even the most complicated stuff into its most essential parts.

Here’s the video I’m talking about:

Lee encapsulated what the video is about as follows:

The focus of my talk was the idea that hanging shiny social media baubles on the cold, hard external walls of a corporate organisation runs the risk of creating a false brand promise unless this work has strong internal underpinnings in the form of social business structures that can do something about the noise, insights and feedback that outbound communications generate.

Key to achieving this is building bridges between the inside and outside worlds, and recognising that we are all (corporate, as well as human beings) products of our networks, ecosystems and connections. I touched on Christakis’ work on contagion and the influence of social networks and emphasised what an opportunity this embodies for brands with a strong value proposition, such as the poster child of modern customer service Zappos, and how this also creates a building-block, API-style opportunity for others to build on your products or services to create even more value.

If you don’t have 20 minutes to spare, I’d recommend Lee talking about knowledge management (2.0):

This one’s part of a movie called “Us Now”. You can watch “Us Now” at http://watch.usnowfilm.com/.

It’s a great piece of information as well. I actually showed the latter to several people that didn’t have any idea of the topic of enterprise 2.0.

The fact that Twitter introduced lists is great. But wouldn’t it be even better if you could choose which lists should read the tweet you’re sending out?

A couple of scenarios:

• I created a list of German speaking Twitterers writing about social media. If I now stumbled across an interesting social media related German link and would like to share it with my followers, it unfortunately doesn’t make much sense to non-German speakers. So I’d like to have the opportunity to share it with this specific German list of my followers.
• You’ve created a list of real friends, close ones, not the ones from Myspace, and don’t want to share some kind of personal stuff with your whole timeline but just with the folks on your close friends list.

If Twitter had only taken a quick glance at a the privacy options Facebook rolled out roughly half a year ago, the above-named issues would have been solved right away. 

Marshall Kitpatrik from ReadWriteWeb nailed it:

The new Facebook publishing feature lets users share things with just a particular list of their friends. (Or with the public at large if they so choose.) The contexts are un-collapsed. Communication is human again. That’s a very big deal and is the kind of change that could make far more people comfortable sharing far more information about their lives on Facebook. It’s also a feature that no major competitor (namely Twitter) offers.

Facebook may be solving one of the biggest problems in social networking – the unnaturally uncontrollable nature of communication.

As a matter of fact, somebody unfollowed me on Twitter yesterday, telling me that too many of my tweets seemed too extraneous to appear in his timeline, therefore putting me on a list.

So basically, Twitter would just have to copy Facebook’s feature to reduce the noise in our timelines & make communication on Twitter more sophisticated in general. Just by enabling users to choose which lists should see their tweet. I’m not a very skilled coder, but this shouldn’t be rocket-science.

To conclude, I’ve put together a how-to-video of the above-mentioned Facebook feature for those of you who haven’t heard of it yet :

As I’m primarily using it as a source of information, as well as a platform to spread some (hopefully) valuable information, I’d really like to see some Twitter features that actually reduce the noise that is out there. If I’m looking for information, I select Twitterers because of the subjects they’re writing about / interested in. Thus, I don’t really want to know that a guy who tweets about enterprise 2.0 has just caught a bus in time. And I guess some of my followers don’t want to read some of my tweets as well because they just don’t have any value for them. There are two kinds of information I’m referring to in particular:

Tweets in a language my followers don’t understand

They might be helpful for my fellow Krauts, but don’t make any sense to followers who don’t speak any German. So instead of forcing them to learn this incredibly complicated language, I’ve had the idea that it’d be great if Twitter introduced language hashtags as a feature. And I guess it’s not just for German, but for a lot of people that don’t want to nag their mostly English speaking followers with Polish, Turkish or Spanish tweets, just to name a few.

An idea to solve this problem could look as follows:

#de Moin, dieser Tweet ist deutschsprachig und wieso sollten Leute ihn lesen, wenn sie kein Deutsch können?!

In this case, the #de-hashtag would indicate a German tweet. If Twitter now allowed its users to select the languages they actually understand, their timelines could be purged from “foreign” tweets that don’t make any sense to them, indicated by the specific hashtag. This would reduce the noise for Twitterers who don’t understand the language of multilingual users they follow. Other than that, it could also make a 2nd Twitter account superfluous.

Nicole Simon for example, a renowned German Social Media lady uses an English (main) account and a 2nd one for her German tweets. I also gave this solution a try by creating a German account apart from my main Twitter account SMartens83, but it really got tedious. I consequently started tweeting in English and German on my main account again, which does create noise for many of my non-German followers, but is much handier for me at the end of the day, I’m afraid.

Tweeting to specific lists

The fact that Twitter introduced lists is great. But wouldn’t it be even better if you could choose which lists should read the tweet you’re sending out?

A couple of scenarios:

• I created a list of German speaking Twitterers writing about social media. If I now stumbled across an interesting social media related German link and would like to share it with my followers, it unfortunately doesn’t make much sense to non-German speakers. So I’d like to have the opportunity to share it with this specific German list of my followers.

• You’ve created a list of real friends, close ones, not the ones from Myspace, and don’t want to share some kind of personal stuff with your whole timeline but just with the folks on your close friends list

These are the features that come to my mind when it comes to reducing the noise I create for my followers. If you have any other ideas or any workarounds to make these ideas a reality without a new Twitter feature, feel free to leave a comment or get in touch on Twitter. But please don’t DM me in Swahili ;-)

Anyway, I’m trying to change this next year (wow, that’s tomorrow, right?!) apart from some other New Years Resolutions.
I know, it’s kind of lame to exploit New Years Eve to make radical changes in one’s life – in most cases we could actually do this everyday.

Rabbi Hillel makes a good point here in saying the following (thx Rabege):

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?

Nice quote – but hard to take it to heart in each and every moment (as with most quotes out there), especially if you can think of thousand of moments were you didn’t act like this at all. But I guess it’s time to forget these moments – living in the past, wondering why this and that happened, just makes things worse. So does torturing oneself for not living up to one’s own expectations and ideals.

Well, this weird private post will be followed by the usual Social Media stuff next year to be sure. Maybe some posts will even be worth reading.

Cheers and Happy New Years!

A couple of other interesting links on the Iranian election and the impact of (Social) Media:

• Are the three most active Twitter users in the Iranian election debate nothing but an Israeli conspiracy?
• The probably most striking  collection of pictures from Iran’s Disputed Election

Watch out, this review definitely contains spoilers, so watch the movie ;-)

V for Vendetta – Reviewing and Analyzing its Terrorist Aspects

The movie “V for Vendetta”, released in 2005, is based on a comic book series of the same name, written by Alan Moore. ¹
The plot of the movie, which is categorized as action, science fiction and thriller², will be summarized, analysed and interpreted in the following.

V for Vendetta starts looking back at the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, where a conspiracy of Roman Catholics failed to blow up the Houses of Parliament when their religion was severely oppressed.³
However, the movie’s fictional government does not only oppress Roman Catholics but the whole English population.
With surveillance cameras everywhere the socio-political circumstances pretty much resemble Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth from Orwell’s novel 19844, but are also similar to “La Grande Terreur” during the French Revolution, which historians think of as “state-organized or state-backed visitation of violence on [...] dissident citizenry”.⁵

Citizens are not allowed to leave their homes at “post-curfew” time, which is when the female protagonist Evey goes out and is stopped by patrolling police forces, so called “finger men”.

When they try to rape her, the male protagonist V rescues her and takes her on top of a roof opposite of the Old Bailey.
Here, V has the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky played, blowing up the Old Bailey along the way.

Destroying the featured statue of justice, V demonstrates his disagreement with the government’s understanding of justice.
The graphic novel is more straightforward here because there V literally “professes his love for her, but accuses her of being a whore for the fascist government”.⁶

V’s main adversary High Chancellor Adam Sutler declares that V has to be found, making him understand what terror really means, implying that he’s willing to use the same means as V.
As the government is passing legislations as it pleases, it has more than “a fair bit of freedom in deciding whether to adopt an essentially legal approach or to step outside the law”⁷ to fight V’s terror.

Sutler’s approach is rather similar to Israel’s “policy of assassinating those it holds to be terrorist”⁸.
In his next coup, V walks into the headquarters of BTN TV where he threatens to blow up the building if they won’t let him speak in front of their cameras. He succeeds, telling people to remember 5 November again and denounces the government.
Even though he’s able to escape with the help of Evey, the media reports that the police have killed him in a heroic act, therefore deliberately deceiving people.
V takes Evey back to his place, the “Shadow Gallery”.
Admitting that she hasn’t eaten ordinary eggs and butter since she was a little girl, the government’s totalitarian rule is unveiled once more.

Convinced that violence can be used for good, V kills Lewis Prothero, an influential TV moderator, whom he calls “Commander” as he had been responsible for various cruelties in a detention camp before his TV career.
Needless to say that the media conceals the murder and pretends he passed away peacefully.

In addition to the “Commander”, V plans to kill a bishop who used to work in the camp, too.
Evey serves as a bait here because his holiness has an indulgence for young girls, but she changes her mind and decides to flee from V.
She finds ayslum at Gordon, a well-mannered TV moderator.
It turns out that he’s also secretly opposing the government, showing Evey all his forbidden belongings such as a copy of the Koran.

Meanwhile the police have found out that V has killed all the people who were in charge at the Larkhill detention camp except for one female doctor that he finally liquidates as well.
V’s killing spree is obviously a revenge as the government had developed a biological weapon in form of a virus in the camp, V being the only surviving test subject.
The government had deliberately used the virus against its own population and made it look like a religiously motivated terrorist attack by terrorists.
This way of deceiving the public to exploit the effects for one’s own ends resembles the “Lavon affair” from 1954, when Israeli agents intended to blow up US and British targets in Egypt with the purpose of “alienating the US and Britain from Egypt and Nasser”.⁹

There’s a turning point in the story now as people publicly start to protest against the government,  spraying ‘V’ graffiti all over the government’s propaganda posters.
Furthermore, Gordon exposes the former untouchable High Chancellor to ridicule on TV, which leads to Gordon’s arrest and execution.
As Evey was hiding at Gordon’s flat, she also gets caught and is brought to a camp, where she gets tortured.
However, it turns out that V was setting everything up to test how far she would go to support him.
Condemning what V has done to her, Evey has a nervous breakdown, realizing the government’s responsibility for the deaths of her family.
Thus,  she ultimately agrees that V’s actions were indeed justified.

To prevent people from revolting even more the Chancellor starts spreading false news about pandemonium all over the world to spur fear within the population, a beloved tool of politicians from the “terrorism industry” that “systematically exaggerate dangers” to “profit from their fearmongering and alarmism”.¹⁰
His actions do not prevent V from killing the head of the government’s Secret Service Mr. Creedy as well as the High Chancellor himself.

Being severely injured, V is still able to accomplish his final goal with Evey’s help, who uses a tube train to send his body together with explosives towards the Houses of Parliament.
The exploding edifice is watched by thousands of V’s supporters on their way to the seat of government.

One might wonder whether V is, in fact, a terrorist or a freedom fighter.
Drawing upon Valls (2000) who states that “violence committed by non-state actors against persons or property for political purposes” is terrorism, one can conclude that V indeed uses terrorist means.¹¹

Internet users don’t seem to share this scientific view though:

References

1 cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta
2 cf. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434409/
3 cf. http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/g08.pdf, p.2
4 cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Story
5 cf. Tilly 2004: 9
6 cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Bailey#In_popular_culture
7 cf. Townshed 2002: 125
8 cf. Townshed 2002: 125
9 cf. http://www.mideastweb.org/lavon.htm
10 cf. Mueller 2007: 4
11 cf. Valls 2000: 68

Internet Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Bailey#In_popular_culture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434409/

http://www.mideastweb.org/lavon.htm

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/g08.pdf, p.2

http://www.smartens.eu/blog/2009/03/30/v-from-v-for-vendetta-terrorist-or-freedom-fighter/

Literature

Mueller, John (2007): Reacting to terrorism – probabilities, consequences & the persistence of fear
Tilly, Charles (2004): Terror, terrorism, terrorists
Townshend, Charles (2002): Terrorism – a very short introduction
Valls, Andrew (2000): Can terrorism be justified’ in Andrew Valls (ed.) (2000) Ethics in
International Affairs, pp. 65-79

“Due to its design, I’m not even quite sure whether they want it to go mainstream as it rather looks funny than business like.
I reckon mobile phones with an RFID chip will do the job in the future, but I’m not a technical person, so I actually don’t have a clue ;-)”

What I had missed when I visited the Next Conference in Hamburg was the startup competition, which was won by My name is E. Just check the first 10 minutes of the footage to see their slick presentation:

As you can tell from the video, they’re basically offering the same service as Poken does, but literally more seriously, which is to say more business like.
You can exchange data via any mobile phone with an internet connection or use their so called “Connectors”.

I’ve just created my public virtual business card there:

Making it public is optional, but I’d highly recommended it, also because the links to your profiles are indexed by search engines, as they’re not (yet) “nofollow”.

Looking forward to asking random people at upcoming events if their Name is E as well :-)

People meet at an event and exchange business cards.
Sometimes these people might actually have something in common, consider each other interesting or even likeable, but in most cases exchanging business cards is not about actual people, but, as the name suggests, about potential business.

Most people add the newly acquired contact in online communities such as Xing or LinkedIN and throw the cards away.
If the potential business partner is not on Xing or LinkedIN, the contact details are saved somewhere else and we secretly tag the person as web 1.0.

In the end, the tiny little cards are either thrown away or put somewhere to collect some dust.

Looking at this awkward process and its accompanying waste of paper, the obvious solution is a way of exchanging business data in a different kind of way.

This is where Poken comes into play:

These cartoon-like little fellows use an RFID chip to exchange data from common social networking sites such as Facebook as well as the above mentioned business sites Xing and LinkedIN.

All you have to do is a “High 4″, i.e. clap the Pokens’ hands as they only got 4 fingers, just like your favourite TV familiy The Simpsons.

Once you’re home all you have to do is upload your new contacts from the device to your computer and the Poken page gives you access to their social media profiles.

I guess it will still take a while until Poken goes mainstream as mostly geeks on barcamps and relevant conferences seem to have one at the moment.
Due to its design, I’m not even quite sure whether they want it to go mainstream as it rather looks funny than business like.
I reckon mobile phones with an RFID chip will do the job in the future, but I’m not a technical person, so I actually don’t have a clue ;-)

The adoption stlye seems similar to Twitter to me:

If everybody had an account / a device, life would be so much easier, but it takes a while to convince people of the added value microblogging / digital business cards provide.

While Twitter is (still) for free, Pokens cost something like 15 EUR, which is a quite reasonable price.

As I don’t have one yet, I’m hereby taking part in a lottery at gadgetgettinc.com to get one for free ;-)

I’d love to win the Elvis poken, basically for two reasons:

1. Save some trees instead of using business cards.
2. To use the power of resurrected Elvis to convince friends of mine to do the same (see 1.).

All a blogger has to do is linking to their homepage.

The campaign will end at the end of May or after 3.653 incoming links.

It’s apparently time to forget about SEO guidelines saying that linkbuilding should be done at a slow pace to avoid penalties by Google and other major search engines. I guess they know what they’re doing.

Interesting to see that Malte Landwehr wrote the seoFactory blogpost about the tourist-online campaign.
That might explain why that SEO jack of all trades hasn’t blogged at his Online Reputation Management blog since January 2009.

If that really works out it might be fun to spend a week or two with fellow bloggers that also took part in the campaign ;)

Update:

They just emailed me the voucher in .pdf format. Now I just gotta find some cheap flights…and finish my Master’s thesis in time ;)

Big thanks to tourist-online.de – will post a review of my stay, will probably be some time in July!