Videoblogging & Vanity
My friend Matt asked me a question the other day, regarding videoblogging and vanity. [Click Here to read the Google+ conversation.]
His question reminded me of the line you have to walk.. assuming that you want to be involved in social media at all.. between being too souped up over yourself and not souped up enough… “Souped Up” being a slang term for thinking that you’re a great person.
Basically, the question comes down to “Who cares what *YOU* have to say? o_O”, which is followed by who cares who cares what I have to say, which leads you down the spiral of vanity. Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Subscribers, Commenters, Lurkers & Passers-By
I had a conversation a few days ago with a friend who asked me what I thought about blogging / podcasting / creating video content, specifically as it pertains to viewership and even more specifically as it pertains to NUMBERS of viewers for content we post to the internet. Read the rest of this entry »
Haiti Earthquake + Social Media = HaitiXchange.com
Yesterday, there was an horrible earthquake in Haiti that measured 7.0 on the Richter scale. We won’t know until the sun comes up how horrible it was, because electricity AND telephone service was knocked out.
My long time friend and college homeboy, Pascal Antoine is Haitian. He founded and has been maintaining a website called HaitiXchange.com for a lot of years now.
I normally don’t watch the news at all, but I’ve been fascinated by the recent trend of channels showing 3% news and 97% punditry (people giving their OPINIONS about what the news means instead of showing us a bunch more news stories). So I turn on the television around 8pm and flip to CNN, where the slot says “Campbell Brown”, so I’m like “*yawn* Here we go!”, and she has a different look on her face and the marquis below her reads something like “Hospital Collapses In Haiti”. Read the rest of this entry »
Hire an Executive Producer (EP)
If you’re going to make television shows, or at this point, shows for the web… SOMEBODY on your team needs to KNOW. HOW. TO. MAKE. TELEVISION. SHOWS!!! :/
If you cut this corner, your productions will look like trash, and deservedly so. Now you can’t say no one ever told you.
I was minding my business one day and got a call from some so-called television production company to come in and interview with them to create a pilot for this show they were trying to sell. They had received my name from someone I had worked with before, so I decided (against my better judgement, haha) to go see what they wanted.
This was back in the day, so I show up to this so-called television production company with tapes. Beta tapes & 3/4″, just in case they were so primitive as to still be using 3/4″. Of course, it turns out that they had NEITHER. No Beta Decks in-house and No 3/4″ decks. So, that was that for my demo materials. Of course, at this point in time, my demo reel is right here on my site ===> (see sidebar), and companies are encouraged to check it out before wasting my time. Read the rest of this entry »
Twitter Evolution (Here Come The Civilians)
I joined Twitter a little over two years ago, around the time of SXSW 2007. I was already about a year behind its launch. I wrote Twitter Has “Ruined†My Life in June 2007. This picture is on that post, and includes Mike, Justin, Anil, Kenyatta, Debbie, Grace, Eric & myself and was taken by Jared. I fully expect to see 5 if not 6 of these same people later today at an IRL get-together.. two years later:

Photo Credit: Jared Klett
The reason I joined Twitter is the same reason I joined any Social Media site. There were people that I ALREADY KNEW that started using a new site, app or tool and I wanted to be involved in this new (and hopefully BETTER and INNOVATIVE) way to contact them or keep up with what they’re doing. What that did was give Twitter a particular flavor for me. It was the place where I went to receive up-to-the-minute information about people that I was keeping in contact with anyway via newsgroups or forums or email or their blogs or whatever. Read the rest of this entry »
At Least ACT Like You Give A Damn
Sean Bohan‘s article, “The 50/50 Rule, Link Love & Reciprocity” starts out like this:
Sean: “The 50/50 Rule is something I started sharing with clients a while back. It’s nothing new or earth-shattering and TONS of individuals and companies are doing it EVERY SINGLE DAY. The idea is simple – to connect in the Social spaces where the users live, you need to spend half as much of your time talking about the users as you do about your brand/product/service/website/effort/whatever.”
This is an intelligent idea. At least ACT like you give a damn. People aren’t being taught this. All they’re being told is that there are new and wonderful technologies available on the internet that they can utilize to make money, and here they come, a-runnin’. I currently have 1,567 followers on Twitter. I’d say I get five (5) new followers every single day. Somebody told these people to put auto-responders on their Twitter accounts. Read the rest of this entry »




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