According to Symantec, “Porn” is a term most searched on the internet by children less than 7 years old. This means many things, but one thing I’ve been thinking about is that an astoundingly awesome “good-karma” opportunity for Google and Symantec is fading away as we speak.
Symantec collects data on millions’ of users search habits. Their service, OnlineFamily.Norton, is a web monitoring service where parents can create profiles for each child and monitor their online activities. The company has mined data on millions of searches performed by the children who have Norton profiles. Symantec has amassed the data into a report. Symantec doesn’t reveal the number of children who have profiles, but the mere number of searches mined (over 14 million) lends us the information that Symantec must have many thousands of children’s profiles in their system (I trust these data and the sample. As a researcher, I think these data represent the general population fairly accurately).
For kids reported to Symantec as being under 7 years of age, the term “Porn” is #4 most popular on the list. Does this mean that children are hyper-sexualized? No. It means that kids are using the internet to look up definitions of words they hear. They don’t want an example of pornography; they want to know what the word means. They are afraid to ask in fear of “getting in trouble,” so they do what they know how to do: they stick the term into a search bar. Much research shows that although small children can be curious about sex and pornography, healthy young children tend to avoid interacting with adult x-rated media. Wake up and smell the opportunity, Google and Symantec!
These are the results from today’s Google search on the term “porn.”
Notice the lack of plain definitions anywhere. Google, Symantec and perhaps Merriam-Webster are missing a golden opportunity to better the world and to get some great press. They should gather forces to ensure that the top search result for “porn” links to an informative but simple definition of the term. (I’d suggest linking to Wikipedia, but the entry for “Pornography” isn’t appropriate for young children. If Wikipedia could get the image off the entry and lock down any editing, the site may have a fighting chance to get in on this American PR Dream.) If they can throw in a few quotes about kids’ behavior from a psychologist or a prominent internet researcher like danah boyd, I’m sure Main Stream Media would pick up the story. Mothers everywhere would feel all warm and fuzzy inside, Google would boost its reputation as THE 1-stop family shop for searching, and Symantec would sell a bunch more products.
You may counter my idea with Google’s claimed practice of not manipulating search results. This is easy to fix: Google could sell or donate the “sponsored link” at the top of the search results page. Google could commit to selling or donating that particular sponsored link to only educational sites like Merriam-Webster or Carnegie-Mellon University. Merriam-Webster or Carnegie-Mellon could use the space to not only define the term but link to their other educational resources.
Do how about it, guys? When opportunity this great knocks, I’m surprised it’s taking so long to answer the door!
The RSS of alerts on my online content from FairShare usually stays pretty quiet. Even when another site uses my content and a new alert is generated, 99% of the time a link back to my blog accompanies the post. Even then, the post isn’t a full copy but a summary and a link. I have no problem with this, as I license my content under a Creative Commons copyright.
For those of you who aren’t familiar, here’s a 3-step process on how a blogger can protect the words she writes from being plagiarized or stolen.
1st: a blogger visits the Creative Commons website and picks which type of copyright she wants. I’ve chosen the copyright that allows other people to re-post my content, as long as they link back to me or give me credit and they don’t use my work to make money. They can’t sell my work or use it to sell other things, even if they do link back to me.
2nd: the blogger downloads the graphic and puts it on every page of her blog. Mine looks like this:
3rd: the blogger uses various web applications to send alerts via RSS or email whenever her content shows up somewhere on the Internet. I use FairShare to look after all my content and Google alerts to look after various keywords, including my name and blog name. When someone uses my content, those alerts will fire me an RSS update or an email, respectively.
That’s the basic way to keep track of where your work ends up online.
When I get an alert, I immediately investigate. If everything looks OK and within the terms of the Creative Commons copyright, I leave it be. About 99% of the alerts fall within what’s called “Fair Use.” In other words, the other site that borrows my content links back to my blog, giving me credit, and the site isn’t covered in ads or selling any products.
Today I started my RSS reader and found an alert from FairShare that was in that 1%.
FairShare showed me the site New and Used Books, where my review of NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman was listed under the ad for the book. I was not credited. The full review was posted, not a partial clip. There was no link back to the Amazon site where I had posted my review, there was no link back to my blog. No link at all. And they were using my review (albeit a non-favorable one) to sell the book.
This is when I send a “cease & desist” letter. Basically, a cease & desist is a letter that says, “Please link to me or remove this content immediately. You are violating my copyright.” In other words, somebody owes me money or credit, and if you don’t delete my content from your site, you must pay me.
NewandUsedbooks is still violating my copyright because they are using my words to sell a book, but even that I could let go if they just linked to me or to my Amazon review (which links to my blog).
Here is my email to Newandusedbooks.com. It is a typical cease & desist email that I write:
“You have used my content and are violating copyright. Please either remove my book review or give me the link credit to my blog. You have taken the online reviews from Amazon.com but have not linked to that either. I will be forwarding a copy of this message to Amazon.com.
Here is the link to your page where you violate my copyright:
http://newandusedbooks.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=zmore&manu=Twelve&prodGroup=Book&item_ASIN=0446504122&author=Po%20Bronson&SubscriptionId=0JN0QHH0QAG4YVY4FY02
Here are the first few phrases of my review:
‘Conservative agenda by non-scientists.: (2009-09-20)
New York Magazine journalists Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman team up to add commentary and more information to their articles in this new book published by Twelve, a division of the Hachette Book Group.
The last page of the book has this blurb about Twelve:’
I expect this situation to be resolved by Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009 by 2:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (GMT – 5).
Thank you.
Christine Cavalier
christine@purplecar.net”
Today is Sunday. I didn’t expect a quick response, but a few minutes later I received this email from newandusedbooks.com:
“Dear Ms. Cavalier,
New and Previously Owned Books is an Amazon affiliate. We have not “copied” anything from Amazon rather as an Amazon affiliate and by contract with Amazon, we receive by automatic “download” the books, book covers, reviews, prices, availability, etc. directly from Amazon. We do not select what reviews to post on any given book – they are downloaded from Amazon. We cannot control what Amazon puts on their site and we cannot add to their descriptions and cannot add a link to your blog within their downloaded review.
I hope this explains where the information is coming from and alleviates your concerns.
Vickie Denney
www.ReaderToReader.com”
I wrote back immediately, but have yet to hear a response:
“Dear M. Denney,
Thank you for writing with a prompt reply.
Does your server refresh the pages often? If we remove our content from Amazon, can we conclude that it will then be removed from your site?
-Christine Cavalier
christine@purplecar.net”
Then I went and deleted all 4 of the reviews I posted to Amazon.com, despite the reviews’ good ratings and conversations they generated.
Newandusedbooks.com passed the buck to Amazon, saying that the catalog content they lease from Amazon isn’t controlled by them (or their seemingly parent company readertoreader.com). Does Amazon strip the links before they sell the content? Or does newandusedbooks.com strip the links when they post the Amazon catalog content to their site? The response I received didn’t answer these questions, and I don’t think my follow-up email will get much of a response, either.
I don’t need to pour over Amazon’s Terms of Service. I can already guess that Amazon has standard legalese that states they own the content of all reader reviews on their site. I proceeded to delete all my reviews and decided that the few links back to my profile or blog aren’t worth it. My stats never showed very many links back to my blog from Amazon, and I don’t need to spend time building up a “reputation” on Amazon as a good reviewer.
I know, I know. I’ve been blogging since 2004, I should’ve known better. I was thinking it was an even trade-off for the potential in new blog readership. I didn’t think Amazon would sell my content without at least a link back to the original content on its own site.
This is one of those situations that critics Andrew Keen, @AmandaChapel, et al., cite when they bemoan the current practice of online retailers using free content by amateurs. Readers write free reviews on Amazon and Amazon sells them along with their catalog content to book selling sites. The Publisher’s Weekly reviews are also on Amazon, but Amazon doesn’t lease out that content because Publisher’s Weekly tells Amazon they must pay for that work. The lone avid reader/blogger has no team of lawyers looking after them like that. Amazon and other sites take advantage of readers’ want for connection, or fame, or whatever misguided motivations and sell their very-marketable, worthy content for their own profit.
What do you think of this? Has this happened to you? Do you use copyright protection on your work? Let me know in the comments.
As for me, I say, “Bye-Bye, Amazon.” Now I’m going over to Goodreads.com to see if their revenue model is based on members’ free reviews.
Employers are vetting out applicants online. The new adage is “Google them.” Some employers are stepping over the line of a simple web search to asking for an applicant’s password to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. This may seem like prudent vetting practice, but in fact it’s more troublesome and legally dangerous than it is worth.
After an uproar over privacy laws on the Internet, a Montana city government retracted their policy of asking for applicants’ private passwords for social networking sites. Personally, I think Montana was fortunate it was an uproar on the internet and not an EEOC lawsuit that caused them to rethink their policy. Collecting a mere applicant’s or even an employee’s privacy credentials is not only legally dangerous, but unnecessary.
Let’s think through the logic of this. Say an employer, “BigCompany,” wants to vet potential 17-year-old intern, “Sarah Genius;” they want to ensure she conducts herself in a manner that is becoming to BigCompany. BigCompany’s Human Resources staff, namely low-on-the-totem-pole tech “Pete BadApple,” conducts a simple web search and views what the public can see online about her.
Pete BadApple fancies himself an expert internet searcher. He finds every group Sarah Genius had ever briefly been a member of, every update she posted on MySpace, and every forum she ever lurked on. This is all just public information. Pete BadApple makes a note that Sarah Genius suffers from diabetes and kidney problems (information he assumes based on her group memberships). Pete BadApple uses Sarah’s passwords to log in as Sarah on Facebook. He concludes that Sarah is African-American, based on her family and friend connections. Pete BadApple had met Sarah Genius during the interview process (and found her to be quite cute, actually), and this information is jarring to him.
Still, Pete BadApple continues on, looking through Sarah Genius’s friend lists. Lo and behold, Pete finds that Sarah is a cousin of Huge MovieStar. Huge MovieStar has a private profile and is connected only to friends and family that also have private profiles. They are a tight-knit group and protect Huge MovieStar’s privacy fiercely. Well, Pete BadApple is logged in as Huge MovieStar’s cousin, Sarah Genius, so Pete can thumb through Huge MovieStar’s updates. He finds that Huge MovieStar, who is all over the headlines for being tapped to star as the Next Indiana Spider-Terminator, was newly diagnosed with Leukemia. The headlines have no idea about this, and the movie studio would certainly withdraw the offer if they knew. Pete BadApple is a little short on cash this month, so he calls and sells the story to a tabloid, sending screen shots as proof. Pete BadApple finishes his vetting process of Sarah Genius and emails his report to his boss, and then forwards a copy to his friend, adding pictures of Sarah Genius in a topless bikini, captioning the pictures with “Can you believe this chick is Black? She’s totally hot anyway!”
Lo and behold, somehow Pete BadApple’s report and email wind up in the hands of an EEOC lawyer and the local and federal law authorities that investigate child pornography. BigCompany now has a Big Problem.
Even if Pete BadApple was Pete GoodApple, the mere public web search may have brought up information that although public, should not be part of the vetting process. Pete BadApple should not have included Sarah Genius’s medical-condition support group memberships in his report. This information violates the law. The other concern is that every company has a Pete BadApple. Even Pete GoodApple can “turn bad” when faced with potentially money-making information about an applicant. Why put your employees in that situation and your company at risk?
Nowhere in this process should private interactions come into public view. When you vet a person’s background, you should worry only about what the public can see about that person. Of course, password protection and site security aren’t foolproof and one day private information may become public (although this is a very rare occurrence); we can understand why BigCompany wants to make sure Sarah Genius isn’t a closet freak. But just because the Internet makes it more possible than ever to vet out a person’s background, it doesn’t mean an employer should. Employers got along just fine before Facebook. BigCompany can better predict Sarah’s future performance by looking at her past performance than they can aptly predict her performance based on her private web page. In fact, Sarah’s private web persona is most likely very different than her work or everyday persona. If employers make assumptions based on the content of Facebook Walls, they will be likely passing up qualified candidate after qualified candidate (this is especially true when the hiring manager is a Boomer and the applicant is from Gen X or Y).
An applicant’s privacy is better left intact. If you are an employer, rely on the old-fashioned vetting methods like a credit check and recommendations, and add a regular web search of public pages. Ignore memberships in any public support groups or forums. Keep your company free of legal and civil complications.
What do you think? Have you run into a situation at work where someone’s online privacy was violated? Heard of any lawsuits about this type of thing? Let’s discuss in the comments.
If you haven’t already, make sure to go over to Facebook and make an account. Once you have an account, go to facebook.com/username to pick out a “vanity URL” for your Facebook profile.
A Vanity URL is a website application’s unique web address for your profile. Until now, Facebook’s URLs were a combination of odd symbols, numbers and letters that had nothing to do with your name. Now you can have a URL that is similar to your name or preferred username (if you get there in time OR if you have a very unique name). My vanity Facebook URL is facebook.com/christine.cavalier .
Chris Brogan, a social media guy who is one of the area’s more prominent leaders, didn’t choose the URL facebook.com/chrisbrogan. In fact, he didn’t choose anything for several precious hours after the vanity url registration opened up, in which time someone else snapped up the name. He was at odds with the effects of URLs, naming and applications have on his identity. As he says on his blog:
“It’s never about the sites and services. Never forget that. YOU add value to them, not the other way around. “
This is true, but I tend to think a name is the quickest way to find a person anywhere; Having the vanity URL as your name would be most prudent, especially since Facebook’s search engine is notorious for bringing up all sorts of flotsam when you are looking for friends. I oftentimes type a vanity URL in my browser’s address field, e.g. twitter.com/johnsmith, in the off chance I may just find the John Smith I want on Twitter.com with little effort. I want Facebook to work for me this way, too. I toyed with registering facebook.com/purplecar, but instead stuck with my name. I run the risk of someone else registering that vanity URL, because Facebook allows you only one. This was something I could live with, because eventually I will probably phase out “purplecar” altogether. I own my domain name, so perhaps I’ll move to that URL and make “purplecar” a quaint username I offer in chatrooms.
I digress.
Will life end because Chris Brogan’s vanity URL is facebook.com/dotchrisbrogan? No. Will your life end if you don’t rush over to facebook right now and sign up? No. But you will be online somewhere soon, and you will have to choose your tattoo like the rest of us. What will yours be?
(If you aren’t familiar with Twitter, hop on over to Common Craft and watch this video.)
How to Start Using Twitter.
So you’ve gone over to Twitter.com and signed up. Congratulations, you’re a Tweeter! Now what? What do you use it for? How do you find people to follow? How to get people to follow back?
First things first. You must do the following 3 things when you sign up to Twitter:
1. Upload a picture (any picture will do, but one of your face is best. G-rated helps too).
2. Fill out a bio, including Location.
3. Provide a URL, even if it is your MySpace page.
A picture, a bio, and a URL go a long way in making you appear to be someone who wants to join the community. (I also advise new users to keep away from putting numbers in their username as this tends to look spammy.)
TIP: Don’t be afraid to change your bio sometimes. I personally change my bio every few weeks. It gives my followers some variety and a way to learn a little bit more about me with every tweak. Still, I keep the common elements in the bio field (e.g. “writer” and “techie geek”).
OK, you’re all set up. Now what?
Now you start following people. To follow a person means that you subscribe to their feed; you see everything they tweet out in the public timeline.
Hopefully you know a person or two to follow to get you started. If you don’t know a soul on Twitter, follow me! If that isn’t enough for you (which, I can’t imagine), then start searching for people who share your interests. You can do this in a few ways.
Search locally. An ADOBE AIR application called TwitterLocal will show you tweets from people in whatever area you specify. It doesn’t work that well but it does work enough for you to find some local people.
TIP: After you’ve downloaded the free AIR application, check out Twhirl and Tweetdeck for great Twitter interfaces.
Search Google with the following syntax to find a bunch of people to follow: Term location site:twitter.com (replace “term” with “writer” “doctor” “juggler” or whatever you’re looking for, and put your city in the “location” part. My favorite search is writer philadelphia site:twitter.com).
Twitter Grader allows you to put in your city and see the top Tweeters (I’m usually around #12 for Philly). Follow a few that sound interesting. Tweet them (type @ then their username, no spaces. Type your message, then hit send). Start conversations. Most people usually follow back.
Twellow is a service that helps people find niches on Twitter. There are so many of these types of sites popping up everyday. Just look for them.
TIP: Under the Notices tab in your Twitter Settings is the word “@Replies” next to a little pulldown menu. [See picture]. Until you are very familiar with Twitter, I suggest that you set it to “Show me all @replies.” This helps you find new people to follow. If someone sends an @reply to someone else that seems interesting, check out the person they are @replying to. Do this by clicking on the username or typing http://twitter.com/username in your browser’s URL (replace “username” with whatever came after the @ in the person’s tweet). You may find that the person on the other side of the conversation may be just the kind of person you’re looking for. Once you are comfortable with Twitter and have found enough interesting people to follow, then you can change this setting to “Show me @replies to people I’m following.” Doing so will keep the noise in your stream to a minimum.
How to get people to follow back?
Usually people will follow back once you follow them. If they don’t, don’t worry about it. There’s way too much emphasis in the social media world about number of followers. Follower numbers are not trustworthy; as cool as Twitter is, spammers abound, which send follower rates through the roof but make those rates totally bogus. Don’t waste your 140 characters per tweet on desperate pleas for followers either. Just Tweet out things that interest you: links, quotes, musings, etc.
TIP: Under settings at the very bottom of the page is a checkbox next to Protect My Updates. Don’t check this box. If you protect your updates right away, you won’t get any followers and it will be nearly impossible for people to have conversations with you. Private tweeting is more of an advanced Twitter function and requires a little learning curve.
Don’t follow thousands of people. To start out, try about 20 people on for size. See how the timeline suits you. See if people are following back. One of the biggest mistakes that I see constantly is the Major Follow Move. Newbies start on Twitter then click follow buttons all up and down the timeline like a squirrel hoarding nuts in November. DO NOT DO THIS. That’s a dead give-away for “spammer.” In fact, the spammer Major Follow Move had gotten to be such a problem that the Twitter.com staff have now put a 2,000 person cap on new follows. You can’t follow more than 2000 people if your follower::followee ratio is too out of whack.
So, as people follow you back, follow more people. Grow your network slowly. You can always watch the humongous public timeline if you’re bored (Japanese kids are writing novels on Twitter, so be forewarned if you want to absorb the world’s public tweets).
Last but not least, the big question: What the heck do I use this for?
Great question. Once you are familiar with tweeting, you’ll have learned that the simple answers to “What are you doing?” don’t really elicit intellectually stimulating conversations. I don’t use that prompt much anymore myself. Telling my followers “I’m getting my roots done” doesn’t really keep my anyone interested. As a freelancer and stay-at-home mom, I use Twitter as my water-cooler, my board room, my lunch table, and my happy hour. I send out questions to the group that sometime roll into heated debates among many users. Sometimes I retweet a funny link someone else sent me. Just wing it for now. You’ll get into the swing of things.
TIP: Search the internet for 3rd party tools that work with Twitter (it’s ok to give your password to the apps, just make sure your Twitter password isn’t the same as your banking or email or any other password). The Twitter search functions may help you figure out what you want to do with your account and who you may want to follow. Check out this wiki to get started.
Twitter is one of those litmus tests in life: what you put into it will be what you get out of it. Find your people. Start connecting.
And try your hardest to avoid addiction.
Here’s the Better Philly video segment. It’s definitely a very cursory introduction and it is geared toward stay-at-home moms:
Second video, learn about Joey Fortman’s bubble tweet:
Skeletons in my closet: To Friend or Not to Friend the Ex.
The other shoe dropped for me last week.
One shoe: The internet.
Other shoe: The past.
Don’t be smug. You think you’re ungoogleable? You think it won’t happen to you? It will. Skeletons have broadband access in your closet. Prepare yourselves.
I’m going to tell you the story knowing full well that the person I mention, my ex-boyfriend, will probably be reading this. Normally, I am quite polite. I’d steer quite clear of this breach of privacy, but the situation is more and more common and we could all use some help. We need to sit down and talk about this.
So, in the interest of science and all life digital, I will tell you the story.
My ex-boyfriend found me online.
We’re not talking the ex from gradeschool, the cute one with the first kiss behind the willow tree on the playground, in the breezy shade from the summer sun. (That ex friended me too, and that’s cool).
No. We’re talking the person that I thought I was going to marry. A college love. Serious. Meaningful. Heartbreaking. The mess you never ever want to see your children go through. The Break-Up of the Century. That was over 15 years ago. This Ex and I didn’t end well. There was no contact and no closure. I was OK with this.
The term “crowdsourcing“ is widening in definition. It used to mean sending one particular problem out to the universe. The amorphous crowd, that undefinable pack of listeners floating around in space, would come up with a solution, either individually or working together and send it in.
Find your crowd.
Small businesses aren’t going to be hiring big corporate crowdsourcing services like Innocentive, but they can use Web 2.0 technologies to gather data and have conversations with their customers or potential customer base. Gathering data and ideas is now considered to be under the umbrella term “crowdsourcing.” Here are 5 FREE ways you can crowdsource for your small business.
1. Start with your immediate, real life crowd. This means ask your own employees, friends or contacts, maybe even your child’s kindergarten class to help you come up with a solution or new ideas.
A particular anecdotal example of this type of private crowdsourcing came from NASA (it was told to me at my former employer, Mars, Inc. when I was a server administrator):
The space shuttle Atlantis was 600 pounds too heavy. In space flights, even the slightest pounds make a difference. The NASA engineers had to get rid of exactly 600 pounds or the mission would fail. The engineers could not figure out where to trim this weight. They had planned every last detail down to its maximum efficiency. These highly trained, world-class engineers mulled over the problem for weeks. Finally someone suggested that they get every single NASA employee in one room and present the problem. Every employee from the night janitors to the mechanics to the secretaries to the astronauts were called into one big assembly with the engineers in the front on stage. They explained the problem. The crowd sat, thinking.
Recently, Twitter user @soluzioni asked me the following question:
“Hi Christine! Since u seem to use Twitter lots, what are ur insights on the in-effectiveness of visualising threaded discussions? ..-)”
Although I love a good academic chat about Twitter, I didn’t understand this question at all. @soluzioni isn’t a native English speaker, and at times foreign users adopt too many buzzwords or odd habits. My first impression was, “What is ineffective about thinking of improving how we look at threading?” My second thought was, “Either threads are there or they aren’t.”
I ran this question and @soluzioni’s next one (“‘Nothing too clever’: a couple of connections / pivot points to who+what to facilitate context.” [-I think he's trying to dumb it down for me]) past my rhetoric-busting husband. He suggested that perhaps @soluzioni, whose bio has references to mind mapping, was trying to create a way to represent visually the links between posts in a threaded discussion.
I can understand that. The “ineffective” part threw me off. Anyway, I’m going to work with the premise that @soluzioni is unhappy with the status quo of conversation mapping on the web.
Basically, a forum thread looks like this:
Main question
—>reply
—>reply
—->reply to a reply
—>reply
—->reply to a reply
—–>reply to the reply to a reply.
The first “main question” post is either at the top or the bottom of the page. Then replies are off-set under the main post. Replies to replies are offset even more. Many times, a user will click the “reply” button under the main question but continue on with a point brought up in one of the already existing replies. This means that if you want to follow the discussion, you have to spend the time viewing every single reply entry embedded under the “main question,” no matter what level of offset they are.
This type of chronological map is the simplest way to “follow” a conversation on-line. Unfortunately, the 140 character limit of Twitter makes it impossible to classify your conversation over multiple users and instances. At times people use hashtags (a # symbol followed by a term that reflects the conversation, e.g., #eaglesfootball) but hashtags still take up space and may not reflect all of the relevant topics in a conversation.
Some 3rd party Twitter API apps have attempted to thread Twitter conversations, and they do a decent job of capturing and offsetting immediate replies. But the more people you “have in your room” the more fragments will occur. Without hashtags (which people forget to add anyway), it’s impossible to capture all of the ideas that swarm during a Twitter conversation.
For businesses or people trying to gather ideas via social-media crowd sourcing, this is devastating. Even 1,000 Google alerts honed in on Twitter won’t bring you the little gem of an idea offered by a small-crowd Twitter user. I propose a different method.
I’d like to see a 3rd party app that can build keyword clouds from Twitter entries. I’d like this app to be highly customizable. I want to be able to mark the first “main topic” Twitter entry (a.k.a. “tweet”), then I’d like to modify the user span from which the app will draw keywords, then I’d like to put a time limit on it.
Here’s an example of using this fantasy application:
I put this entry into Twitter:
“Your company wants to start using Twitter as a business tool. How do you advise the use of social media to them?”
I then fire up my fantasy app. I link to my original entry.
I click the option of “all conversation” (as opposed to “only @replies”).
I put a time limit on it by clicking “in the next hour.”
The app first uses a Twitter search to see replies to me (@PurpleCar).
But, and this is where it gets innovative, the app also takes a catalog of all my followers and all THEIR followers, and makes a keyword cloud out of EVERYTHING they ALL tweet in the next hour. If one of your follower’s followers (3 tiers away from you) has more followers than say, 95% of all Twitter users, then that user’s tweets can be pulled into the keyword cloud (this would address “reach” — like a 6 degrees of separation concept — how far do your ideas reach around the Twitter community). The app, after an hour, would give you a reach score and a keyword cloud based on your choices. If your main topic’s keywords show growth (easier if they are very unique words), you can assume that you’ve started a conversation.
This keyword cloud along with some well planned Google blog search and keyword search over the next few days could lend a pretty reliable picture of what people in your community are talking about.
We are a LONG way away from this fantasy app. For the app to be effective, it would have to automatically abbreviate your words (e.g. “business” to “biz” or “bus”), have serious drive abilities (I have over 2,000 people in my room, most of whom are online when I am, and a lot of my followers have more than a few hundred followers themselves), and have total access to the Twitter API. None of those things is possible right now. It’s almost on the verge of artificial intelligence AND NASA-fast CPU’s AND server health and security at Twitter (the last of which is the most impossible option of all).
But, keyword clouds, twitter search and Google alerts exist, so with a bit of work you can fashion your own keyword cloud for a certain group of users over a certain amount of time. You’d have to work on a very small scale, but sometimes big ideas come from just one small voice. You just need to find a way to hear that tiny peep in the darkness.
I hope @soluzioni wasn’t too insulted, and I hope this answers his question about my insights into the threaded (or lack of threaded) conversations on Twitter.
UPDATE: 19 January 2009:
Erich from the comments reminded me via Twitter of tweetstats.com and wordle.net. I made a nice “wordle” of my Tweets – it’s a keyword cloud of the most used terms by me. You can see it here. It is for ALL of my Tweets since I started with the app in 2007.
The main problem with university social media branding strategy is this: There is no strategy.
Universities have not caught up yet. They are unaware of the benefits that a university-wide, coherent social media strategy can bring. A latin phrase, some colored logos, and Newsweek rankings seem to be the extent of the .edu’s marketing and community plan.
Here’s the current situation: Each department finds their own time, staff and money to design online social networking platforms their current students and alumni are requesting. If they don’t construct something (however haphazardly), students take it upon themselves to construct a Facebook group or a Ning for the department. No thought is applied to coherent design interdepartmentally or globally. Nothing is monitored, yet the university’s name is being employed and associated with these rogue websites (this makes lawyers quite nervous).
At barcampphilly this fall I sat in on a talk given by Geoff DiMasi of P’unk Avenue. Geoff mentioned that the major roadblock to progress at any .edu is trying to unite its three factions: Administration, Faculty and Students. Trying to get these three factions to agree on anything let along a coherent strategy even within an individual academic department is an incredible challenge at best. Jen Yuan, an IT Communications Analyst at the University of Pennsylvania added that there was an unofficial but heavily recognized fourth faction, Reputation. The Ivy League schools especially, Jen noted, weigh every move with the university’s reputation and perceived ranking (a.k.a. “brand”) in mind. I’ve been employed by the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania, and my husband is currently an assistant dean there. We both can attest to the truth in Jen’s statement.
I’ve worked within the academic computing environment, I’ve been a social media consultant for some local university departments, and I’m currently a Community Manager and webmaster for a public school parent/teacher organization. Based on my experience, I’ve constructed the ten steps below to help your academy start controlling and utilizing a coherent brand strategy in order to grow your community and strengthen your reputation.
Ten Social Media Brand Strategies for The Ivory Tower
1. Design a strategy ASAP. Realize that all online presence says something about your school. Just as you label architecturally diverse or similar buildings with the same colors, same fonts, etc., you must think about a consistent design for each department’s social networking site. It should be based on your overall look of your current websites. Having consistently designed sites directly influences your school’s reputation worldwide. Consider hiring a social media consultant.
2. Offer server space, template designs, and support to departments. Don’t leave the departments out in the cold. Their students are demanding social spaces online. Give them easy website and forum templates to choose from and set up the site for easy end-user administration. You can charge their budgets with a discounted price so they avoid outside solutions.
3. Find quick alternatives. If disk or support is too expensive, utilize Ning. Offer to set up a similarly branded Ning for each department at the University. The department can pay the tiny fee to keep the Ning ads off the site.
4. Communicate the strategy. Have training sessions for all of the departments’ computing gurus or social website administrators. Get the them connected online as a group. Set it up so they are constantly working and communicating with each other across departments.
5. Work from the top down. University administration at the highest levels need to be educated on this ‘splintered brand’ dilemma. They need to be on-board right away. Bottom-up grass roots initiatives are sprouting up outside of the administration’s control; this opens up the university to potential lawsuits with third-party solution houses and also risks the reputation of the faculty and students.
6. Get student and faculty input. Academia is founded on the concept of collaboration. Make sure the website and forum templates make sense to your audience, or you’ll have a disk full of abandoned sites. Rogue sites will start popping up again. You don’t want your students making a Facebook group for the department. Keep them happy, keep them home.
7. Don’t rule with an iron fist. There will be some varied needs from different departments. As long as the basic branding is present, the templates can change pretty drastically and still fit within the school’s strategy.
8. Link similar departments together. Provide communication opportunities between all website participants. Start with departments that have a lot of student cross-over. For example, Chemistry and Biology. You may even decide to make a combined space for the pre-med students who spend most of their time taking both classes in both the chemistry and biology departments.
9. Provide private areas. Students, alumni, and faculty need their own areas on their respective departments’ online space. Password level access is expected by most users now; it’s not offensive or against the social media tenet of “transparency”. A group thrives when its members know they have a designated space to communicate without public scrutiny.
10. Create an overall Community Manager (CM) position. This person would:
*Be a liaison between computing and the departments;
*Set up training of faculty, students and staff on the use of the sites;
*Protect and gently enforce the university’s web strategy and rules;
*Report to the higher offices that deal with public relations and/or computing;
*Help create a community of other CM’s in other universities;
*Be on-call for any problems that may influence the community or the university’s brand negatively.
*Ferret out rogue sites and influence the users to come back into the university’s plan.
*Perform any other duties as needed to improve and protect and foster your academy’s online community.
These ten steps should get universities, colleges and schools thinking in the right direction. The unique environment of academia is based on collaboration, research, and careful thought. Keeping true to those principles will lead you to coherent and effective online community that will enhance the world’s experience with your school.
Please add, subtract, collaborate on this list with your comments.
Lots of people are ‘mommy bloggers’ (I’m not one of them). There are dozens of sites that rank mommy blogs. There are entire conferences, marketing plans and outreach initiatives all centered around the phenomenon. But that’s not in ‘reality,’ exactly. That’s in a place we social media folk like to call the bubble.
Tags: blog, boys, children, children using the internet, girls, kids search for porn, kids using the internet, little kids, little kids look for porn, Media, porn, pornography, report, sex, story, top 10, top ten 
The other shoe dropped for me last week.
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