Bill Cammack

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 »

Being connected with people on social networks like Facebook, Twitter & Foursquare has taken on a new importance in people’s lives in 2010 AD.

It used to be a frivolous decision whether to add someone as a “friend” or not. It used to be similarly unimportant whether you deleted someone after becoming friends with them. Those days are over. :) Friending and unfriending people is serious business now, as people’s IRL lives spill over into their online presence and “art” begins to imitate life… Read the rest of this entry »

FIRST-EVER VIMEO® FESTIVAL & AWARDS CELEBRATES CREATIVE ONLINE VIDEO AND OPENS FOR AWARDS SUBMISSIONS

Leading Industry Luminaries and Award-Winning Creators to Judge Submissions;
Winner of ‘Best Online Video’ Award to Receive $25,000 Grant to Produce New Work

NEW YORK, June 3, 2010 – Vimeo®, an operating business of IAC [NASDAQ: IACI], opened the submissions window today for the Vimeo Awards, which honors creative and original online videos and the people that create them. Read the rest of this entry »

I dropped my e-Stalking series in 2008.

At the time, I was talking about asynchronously getting to know someone by reading their blog posts, listening to their podcasts, watching their videos & live streams and coming to your own conclusion about who they are, what they’re like and what they like to do without them ever knowing that you exist.

e-Stalking makes perfect sense because people tend to share what they care about online to the degree that they’re willing to be judged by what they wrote. Trust Me.. You can learn way more about someone in 20 minutes of consuming their media than you can during 20 minutes of banter with them and three other people standing around at an IRL social function. Read the rest of this entry »

Let me tell you how Social Media works…

There are two layers. There’s the online layer and then the offline layer.

The online layer is where we all say whatever we want about ourselves and expect people to take our word for it. The offline layer is where you have to PUT UP OR SHUT UP. You’re either the same person IRL (In Real Life) that you claim to be online or you’re not. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things I find laughable about Social Media is that it’s sold to people that don’t know anything about Social Media.

This makes it possible for people who are ABSOLUTE GARBAGE at creating and maintaining their own online presence to make money telling other people how THEY should represent themselves or their companies online.

I’m not the type of person to knock the next man’s hustle, but that’s exactly what it is.. A HUSTLE. Smoke & Mirrors.

There are LOTS of people who are legitimate and present great solutions to their clients, but some people are just embarrassingly horrible at Social Media and still they’re heralded as gurus amongst their fans. Read the rest of this entry »

Ladies… If you really want to learn about your man’s personality, hang around him when he’s playing video games.

All of y’all that are dating gamers know I’m telling the truth.

The way he plays his games is the exact same way he’s going to interact with YOU….. um… assuming that he cares as much about YOU as he does his VIDEO GAMES….. which isn’t likely. Read the rest of this entry »

“Content is King” is a lie that’s been perpetuated in web video circles for a few years now. “Eye Candy” has always been.. Queen.. but I’ve recently noticed that the tables have turned and Content actually *has* overtaken EC..

I wrote about EC in March 2008 and mentioned “the formula”, which was that whatever actual content you had, the way to get views for your show was to have an attractive female as the ‘front’ or the ‘face’ of the show. She didn’t have to know or understand JACK about JACK so long as she could look good and read her lines. I probably noticed this formula in 2007, since I got started in online video in 2006.

Regardless of the content, the most popular shows were headlined by a female that was nice to look at. Period. (with the one obvious exception being Ze Frank’s “The Show”)

It was even worse on YouTube, because everybody knew that YT took the picture that represented your video from exactly 50% into your episode. If your video was 6 minutes long, the still YT would take was @ 3 minutes. So.. Regardless of what the actual content was, people would figure out the final length of their show and insert a few frames of a chick in a bikini exactly in the middle. They’d upload their show, YouTube would pull the image of the bikini chick, all the boys would click on it expecting to see some ass, the video would get popular and then eventually ‘featured’, where it could really take off and get more views. Read the rest of this entry »

So I had mentioned to a friend of mine a few months back that I was going to start doing Reputation Management / Online Presence Management for people other than myself. I’ve pretty much peaked, heading through year #2 of being a top-10 Google result for “Bill” as well as a top-10 Google result for “Cammack”. There’s nowhere else to go. I’m bored. *yawn*

Bill & Debbie

So yesterday, I’m chatting with this same friend, who’s starting a new business soon. He wants to be involved with Social Media, except he sees how much time, energy and research I put into it and he’d rather spend his time making money than doing research he’s not going to get paid for and that I already did.

As we’re chatting, I can tell that he doesn’t really “get it”, and eventually, he directly says something to the effect of “I can’t see what my benefit is in getting involved in these sites and this social stuff”. This makes sense to me, because unless you’re LIVING Social Media, you’re not going to be privy to the effects… You’ll only be able to see the “cause”…. Read the rest of this entry »

This is not a continuation of “Online Dating Tactics”. This is a response to a BlogHer post by Zandria M, entitled “Dating: ‘Tis the Season”.

Zandria: I’ve heard that more breakups occur during the holiday season than any other time of year. [...snip...] The thing is, though, I haven’t seen a drop in the amount of people looking for dates online. In fact, I’m receiving more expressions of interest than I did when I first signed up over the summer.

hehehe Excellent read, Zandria. :) Let me tell you what’s going on.

You explained why you’re getting more expressions of interest now than you did over the summer. Guys are dumping their girls for the holiday season OR they’ve already DECIDED that they’re dumping their girls, so they’re trolling for more women ahead of time. It’s like being a freelancer in a work situation. As a video editor, I get MORE work when people get fired or companies downsize. You’re experiencing the same thing with online dating. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a response to Chrissie Brodigan‘s post, “Don’t Feed the Trolls: Dealing With Social Media Sins”.

Not that I give a damn about disclosure, but I’ll mention that Chrissie is a friend of mine (as is probably everyone else she’s talking about in her post):

Interesting.

I posted about this back in June: [http://billcammack.com/2008/07/12/freedom-of-consequences/].

Basically, in order to “live online” as we do, one needs to remain mindful of the lowest common denominator. Whatever you’re “saying”, make sure that if your employer or your grandmother or your “significant other” or you CHILDREN see it, that it’s an accurate representation of yourself that you’re willing to OWN… because odds are that eventually you WILL have to own it, and probably in a fashion that you didn’t consider at the time.

Even “That was then and this is now” is only a partial defense. Look at the Presidential campaign that just went on. John McCain acted like A JERK for the whole time, and then when it was all over and he lost, he gave, IMO, a heartfelt, genuine, really respectable and admirable speech. Things like that can alter people’s perception about a person, but the facts and memories remain about their prior behavior, even if the ‘pain’ of them is muted by the person’s present actions.

So, ultimately, the WIN is Prevention and not Cure. Does that call for sacrifice of some (or many) things one would want to do or say? Yes. The question, however, is what do you really want in the end? Do you want to have social media friends, who don’t know everything you think and feel?… or would you rather be known for what you think and feel and let the chips fall?…..

Social Media is characterized by asynchronous relationships… basically, stalking, in a one-way fashion or a mutual fashion. I might get two comments on a post I make, and then everyone I run into IRL is like “I read your post, blah blah blah”. You can’t suspect that the people you hear from are the ONLY ONES that dislike what happened. Those are merely the ones who are willing to risk THEIR OWN social media reputations by wearing THEIR hearts on Twitter in the same way you constantly wear yours. It basically branches out and people take sides behind the scenes, which is what causes “floods”, because a lot of people get fed up at the same time… a lot of people that the person in question probably wasn’t even AWARE that they knew of or had any opinions at all about the situation, which they thought, for some odd reason, was contained to a small group.

On top of that, our NYC set is different from other groups, because we’re in so much physical, IRL contact with each other. I’m very used to going to parties where I know 60 people on the Facebook “definite” list. I have over 200 mutual friends with several people on Facebook, and a lot of those people live here in NY or NJ. Obviously, all of these people are not going to get along with each other. The only way to navigate this group is to remain neutral. I can care or not care about the situation, empathize or not, but ultimately, it’s none of my business, and I’m not going to tell or suggest to people what they should do, and I’m not going to choose one side over the other, between people that have historically been decent towards me and have developed some sort of beef between each other.

So, to apply my own theory… When I go to that party that at least 60 people that I know are going to show up to, I have to be mentally prepared to OWN anything I’ve said about them since the last time I saw them. I also have to OWN the videos I make and the blog posts I make and the currently 710 pictures of myself on Facebook, where I can’t turn around and say “no… I don’t know that person” or “no… I wasn’t at that party”. I have to own what I say and do AT the party. I have to own the media I output about that party and the cycle continues. So, basically, every stitch of media that you output, you need to check yourself on whether you’re willing to own it, ad infinitum.

As this pertains to your suggested rules for offenders:

You always “Acknowledge Action”, because it’s in “Black & White”, and YOU put it there yourself. It’s not like paparazzi ran up and quoted you and put it in the tabloids. If you post from a position of ownership, acknowledgement is obvious.

You can’t “Become a Victim”, because you’ve already owned the media. You already know WHY you said what you said or did what you did and you already thought about how you would defend it before you pressed “send”. “Defense” is merely informing people about what you were thinking when you posted it. The only real question is whether you unintentionally slighted someone in a way you didn’t anticipate when you posted, in which case, if you feel like apologizing for it, that’s completely appropriate. If they take offense at something you fully MEANT to say and currently stand behind at the point of the ensuing conversation, the issue becomes whether or not you were out of bounds with what you said and whether “the shoe fits” as far as what you said about them, which THEY would need to recognize, and get out of your face.

The Final Frontier is blocking people. That doesn’t keep them from finding out about YOU, but it keeps YOU from hearing what THEY have to say about you. If people aren’t going to be rational and have intelligent discussions with you (assuming YOU’RE acting rationally, to begin with), then the solution is to agree to disagree and hope to avoid those people as much as possible.

So, Yes… It’s EXTREMELY COMPLICATED to live in public, even the limited “public” of our echo chamber, but that’s exactly what it is… an Echo Chamber, which means that everything you say and everything everyone else says is going to keep coming back to you. Your best bet, as I’ve outlined, is OWNERSHIP from the giddyap, so you’re fully prepared to deal with the ricochets.

~Bill