Paul Krassner : I Was a Facebook Junkie

Prison break? Paul Krassner's Facebook profile pic.
Cold turkey:
I was a Facebook junkie

By Paul Krassner / The Rag Blog / February 10, 2011

I posted this farewell message on Facebook last night, and then I went cold turkey. Look, Ma, no rehab...

I had no friends in high school and college, and now I have 5,000+ Facebook friends. Maybe 25 of them are actual friends, so I assume that the rest of you liked my work. And the irony is that I’m quitting Facebook because it’s become a distraction from my work -- what Ken Kesey would’ve called my “current obsession” -- writing my first novel, about a contemporary Lenny Bruce-type performer.

I’ve truly appreciated your feedback, wit, imagination, insight, information, argument, and compassion. Incidentally, my decision was made before my Facebook identity was hacked (through my own clueless moment) and you all were spammed as a result. I apologize for that. Although I’m a professional prankster, this wasn’t my prank, or it would’ve had a purpose beyond electronic vandalism.

Recently, when I self-published an expanded edition of my autobiography, which is not available in bookstores, I felt that sharing and spreading an announcement of a link to its existence on my website was simultaneously self-serving and other-serving; ideally, two sides of the same coin. I repeated it at different times of the day for a week because I wanted to reach as many people as possible.

Facebook has enabled communication to span the spectrum from the trivial (what someone vomited for breakfast) to the profound (an organizing tool for the revolution in Egypt), and I have conflicting emotions about leaving. I realize that this isn’t exactly like Dave Chappelle leaving behind his successful Chappelle’s Show and a $50-million development deal, but I do hope that you understand my priorities.

[For years, Paul Krassner edited The Realist, America's premier satirical rag. He was also a founder of the Yippies. Find Paul's autobiography, Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture at paulkrassner.com.]

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Mike Giglio : Egypt's Facebook Rebel

Photo by Peter Macdiarmid / AP.
Egypt's Facebook rebel:
Organizing the historic protests

By Mike Giglio / The Daily Beast / January 31, 2011

In Egypt, a Facebook page administrator known only by the handle El Shaheeed, or Martyr, is one of the driving forces behind the historic protests. Mike Giglio tracks down the mysterious figure, who talks about his crucial role in organizing the demonstrations.

Iran’s Green Revolution had a martyr named Neda, a 26-year-old woman gunned down in the streets of Tehran. Tunisia’s was Mohamed Bouazizi, an unemployed university graduate who set himself ablaze outside a government building. Egypt’s is Khaled Said -- because someone has been agitating under the dead man’s name.

Said, a young businessman from Alexandria, was reportedly beaten to death by local police this summer -- well before rumblings of the country’s current unrest. But a Facebook page that bears his name has been one of the driving forces behind the upheaval that started last week .

The anonymous Facebook page administrator who goes by the handle El Shaheeed, meaning martyr, has played a crucial role in organizing the demonstrations, the largest Egypt has seen since the 1970s, that now threaten the country’s authoritarian regime.

Yet even Egypt’s most active activists have no idea who the anonymous organizer is.

Esraa Abdel Fatah, who earned the nickname “Facebook Girl” when she organized a nationwide strike through her page in 2008, said she and her activist colleagues were in constant communication with El Shaheeed as they worked to coordinate the protest push, but still didn’t know his or her identity. “No one knows” who it is, she said.

“This is very important,” said veteran activist Basem Fathy, of the anonymity. “People find this credible.”

“El Shaheeed is a dead man who everyone is rallying around,” said a U.S.-based activist in close contact with Egypt’s protesters. “But who’s doing this? There is no gender. There is no name. There is no leader. It is purely about the thought.”

In a series of interviews with Newsweek/Daily Beast that spanned from the initial Tuesday protest’s early planning stages to the hours before Cairo’s Internet was blocked in the chaos that ensued, El Shaheeed refused to reveal even the smallest personal detail. But the conversations, which were conducted over Gmail Chat, offered a window on the thoughts and fears of one of the most intriguing actors behind Egypt’s swelling democracy push.

“El Shaheeed is a dead man who everyone is rallying around.”

“I'm taking as much measures as I can to remain anonymous,” said El Shaheeed. “But of course I'm scared.”

At home in Cairo, Wael Khalil, a democracy activist since 2004, saw the post and scoffed. “Come on,” he remembers thinking. “We can’t have a Facebook revolution. Revolution has no time and hour.”

In a conversation days before that first protest, El Shaheeed said T­­unisia had given people a sense of hope -- something the activist wanted to corral, using social-media tools. “A lot of Egyptians lost that hope years ago,” El Shaheeed said. “Now people start to pay more attention to the activists, and there is a hope that we can make it.”

At the time, the page had over 375,000 followers. “The power of Facebook is that our updates reach to everyone's wall,” El Shaheeed said. “Some of the videos we publish get shared on people’s walls more than 30,000 times. That’s how powerful a virus can be... Once it’s out, it goes everywhere. It’s unstoppable.”

However, El Shaheeed also cautioned against investing too much power in social-media tools -- online calls to protests had fallen flat in the past, and, at the end of the day, people would have to leave the screens for the streets.

With that in mind, El Shaheeed stressed interaction with fans of the Facebook page -- constantly polling, corresponding, and asking for advice, and posting downloadable fliers that could be passed out in person. “My role is to motivate people, inform them, encourage them to be part of the event and not just report it,” said El Shaheeed, hoping that if enough people got into the streets, the movement would become unstoppable.

To that end, El Shaheeed also coordinated with activists on the ground, such as Khalil, who quickly signed on. For years, groups like the April 6 Student Movement and its pro-democracy brethren had laid the groundwork -- organizing logistics and having lawyers on hand to track down those arrested, who might otherwise disappear into police custody. Those groups, too, had followings on Facebook and Twitter, and in the days leading up to the protests, managed to get thousands of fliers onto the street.

On the Facebook page, El Shaheeed took pains to avoid political and religious language in the posts, wanting to bring together groups that had otherwise often competed. Stripped of ideological overtones, the page became a draw for longtime activists as well as regular people. The language was emotional but conversational and filled with slang. “It’s not someone talking to the people,” said Khalil. “It’s someone talking with the people.”

“On Tuesday, I saw you who love Egypt -- conscientious, respectful, educated youth,” said a message on the Facebook page, after the first mass protests Tuesday. “You who walked and moved to clean up streets -- because these are the streets of Egypt. Not a single act of sexual harassment. Not a single fight. Youth are dreaming, and they want the chance. And we will have our dream. I swear to God it’s very close. If only we would unite.”

Protesters hadn’t brought political banners to the demonstrations but instead carried the Egyptian flag; men and women, rich and poor, Christians and Muslims, were suddenly marching together. “I can’t believe it,” El Shaheeed said in a message a day after the protests. “No one can think what will happen next -- including Mubarak.”

With the next protest scheduled for that Friday, activists including El Shaheeed were busy coordinating their response to what they believed would be a brutal government crackdown. A Google document with a list of demands as well as instructions for the demonstrations was, at one point, viewed at the same time by more than 200 people, altered in real-time by dozens of editors.

In a harried conversation on the eve of Friday’s protests, El Shaheeed vowed to stay anonymous even if the revolution succeeded. “This is not about me,” El Shaheeed said. “This is about the people of Egypt. I want to go back to my real life. I don’t want any glory. I wasn’t seeking it to start with.”

Shortly afterward, the Egyptian government cut Internet access.

Two days later, Wael Khalil stood among thousands of other people in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the demonstrations. The protests called for Friday had continued into the next evening, seemingly tipping the balance of power.

Police stations across the country had been overrun; the National Party Headquarters had been burned to the ground; faced with tens of thousands of demonstrators, police had disappeared. On the tanks that had taken their place, protesters scribbled pro-democracy slogans without interference from the soldiers.

In a telephone call, Khalil said that he hadn’t heard from El Shaheeed since Thursday night; with the Internet still down, the Facebook page had been inactive ever since. But perhaps there was no more use for it -- it had played its role.

Fires still burned on the streets of the capital; in their flickering light, people huddled together to talk openly about revolution for the first time in many years.

Perhaps somewhere in the crowds was El Shaheeed.

[Mike Giglio is a reporter at Newsweek. This article was posted at The Daily Beast.]

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Backlash : Whole Foods Rep Takes Serious Dip

Whole Foods Buzz

As the Whole Foods Boycott grows on Facebook, brand perception is dropping

By Jennifer Van Grove / August 25, 2009

As the Whole Foods Boycott on Facebook continues to swell -- the group now has over 27,000 members -- we’re finding out that CEO John Mackey’s statements in The Wall Street Journal are affecting more than just angry Facebookers, but consumers in general.

According to YouGov’s BrandIndex, which tracks the daily consumer perception of brands, consumer opinion towards Whole Foods has been falling fast on the Web since the editorial appeared.

YouGov scores brands from 100 to -100, with zero being neutral, based on daily interviews from respondents, and they track the change in the score to show a rise or decline in overall brand perception.

Their buzz chart is a reflection of how buzz perception changes over time. They ask consumers, “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, was it positive or negative?” Their results indicate that Whole Foods had a buzz score of 22.8 on August 12th, and that score fell to 13.6 by August 20th. That’s almost a 10 point drop in just over a week.

Whole Foods Rep

The reputation chart is scored in the same manner, but asks respondents, “Would you be proud or embarrassed to work for this brand?” According to their research, the reputation score is suffering even more. On August 12th Whole Foods had a 33.3 score, but by the 20th they were down to 20.3.

Can the results be trusted? Well, according to the firm, “YouGov’s BrandIndex interviews 5,000 people each weekday from a representative US population sample, more than 1.2 million interviews per year. Respondents are drawn from an online panel of more than 1MM individuals. Margin of error is a very accurate +/- 2%.”

While we take no sides on the issue, it’s hard not to attribute at least some of the drop in consumer perception to the vocal Facebook group that has emerged in the aftermath of the CEO’s Wall Street Journal op-ed. Should YouGov’s research be as accurate as it claims to be, then Whole Foods definitely needs to be concerned about this social media backlash that’s negatively impacting consumer opinion.

Source / Mashable

For previous Rag Blog articles on Whole Foods and founder John Mackey, go here.

Thanks to David P. Hamilton / The Rag Blog

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Iran : How I Helped Tweet the Revolution from San Francisco

Students turn to Twitter. This photo from June 15, 2009 shows a picture of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, left bottom, next to a broken computer monitor in a room in a Tehran University dormitory after it was attacked by militia forces during riots in Tehran, Iran, in the early hours Monday. Photo from AP.

The State Department asked social-networking site Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance earlier this week to avoid disrupting communications among tech-savvy Iranian citizens as they took to the streets to protest Friday's reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The move illustrates the growing influence of online social-networking services as a communications media. Foreign news coverage of the unfolding drama, meanwhile, was limited by Iranian government restrictions barring journalists from "unauthorized" demonstrations. -- Washington Post

The Revolution will be Tweeted

Twitter hashtags created an instantaneous collectivity that could never be created by mainstream media.

By Austin Heap / June 16, 2009

Also see 'Cyberwar guide for Iran,' by Cory Doctorow, Below.

SAN FRANCISCO -- It all started at 10:40 p.m. on an otherwise quiet Sunday night. After talking about the Iranian election on and off for several hours, I saw a tweet (a message on Twitter) that pointed out CNN’s failure to cover the story. As an obviously rigged election in one of the world’s most important countries was being perpetrated, America’s oldest 24-hour news network was reporting primarily about how confusing the new fangled digital TVs were.

“Dear CNN: please report about Iran, not Twitter. #cnnfail #iranelection,” a user by the name of nympholepsy wrote. The dual hashtags (the pound symbol before a subject, which allows users to search for all tweets on the topic) opened the door for me, a 25-year old who had never even traveled to the Middle East, to become an activist in Iran.

It was probably the tag #cnnfail that appealed to me at first. In 2000, the first presidential election for which I was truly cognizant, I watched as legitimate claims of voter suppression in my native state of Ohio and across the country were ignored by the mainstream media as conspiracy theories.

If the media failed, the populace was complicit. There were no protests that rocked the stability of our government, no mass movements against the subversion of our democracy.

But the other tag, #iranelection, did not have the luxury of our delusion. Even before the ridiculously lopsided results were released, opposition headquarters were sacked, dissidents arrested. The government of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to minimize the threat of any opposition leaders organizing a revolution against it. Unfortunately for them, this revolution did not need figureheads to lead it. The Ayatollah had not read the lessons of Moldova, where protestors used sites like Twitter to organize mass protests in April against the Communist government.

Through the power of social networking, individual Iranians were also able to mobilize each other. Twitter hashtags created an instantaneous collectivity that could never be created by mainstream media. When the government realized what was happening, they tried to shut it down. Members of the tech community across the globe did what they could to support it. We started posting functioning relays (or proxies) through which Iranians could subvert government firewalls.

The spontaneity of the tech movement was also one of its weaknesses. With so many updates at #iranelection, it became hard to tell which relays were working and which were not. I started monitoring all of the proxies and created a webpage that listed which proxies were functioning. I asked people I had never met to send messages to me on Twitter to let me know the status of each proxy. And they did.

But that information was public. Anyone on Twitter could find it. Anyone could access the page I had created. When Iran’s Guardian Council began monitoring tweets, other members of the community reported it to me. We had to adapt instantly in order to maintain the ability of the Iranian opposition to mobilize. I quickly set up a secure page. Instead of asking people to send me relays publicly, I now asked for them to be sent via Direct Message or e-mail. They came in a flood.

My website has been attacked by Iran. My servers are melting. But individuals in the opposition are still able to use technology to mobilize each other. And the tech community around the world is still able to support them.

Now, less than 24 hours later, I am receiving more than 2,000 simultaneous connections per second from Iran. When I wake up, I will have received more than 300 e-mails from volunteers trying to contribute and lighting the path forward for a movement that is both new and old.

Americans ignored the subversion of their democracy. When a people better than us stood up to secure theirs, I could not let them down. The revolution may not be televised, but it will be tweeted.

Source / New American Media

Cyberwar guide for Iran

By Cory Doctorow / June 16, 2009

Yishay sez, "The road to hell is paved with the best intentions (including mine). Learn how to actually help the protesters and not the gov't in Iran."

The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through Twitter.

1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP's over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distribute them discretely to bloggers in Iran.

2. Hashtags -- the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88. Other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.

3. Keep your bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don't retweet impetuously, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.

4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become "Iranians" it becomes much harder to find us.

5. Don't blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don't publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don't signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind...

Source / boingboing

Thanks to Roger Baker and Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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I Only Read the First 140 Characters. I’m Posting This on My Facebook Wall. Snob.

Nit-twits!! If You Twitter, You May Be a Twit
By Dorian Snow / April 1, 2009

I have an aversion to blogging about my personal life on public websites. I just don’t think I’m that interesting. And it gives me the willies to think someone I don’t like, or wouldn’t like, can spy on me. It also makes me shudder to think I may type something I’ll regret, and I won’t be able to delete it. I prefer to blog anonymously. I don’t need credit for my posts. If I were an entertainer, a performer, a celebrity, a politician, or a creator of absolutely anything that should be in the public forum, I could see the interest in having a MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter account. However, as best as I can tell, there are more “regular” people with these free blog pages than public figures, and it amazes me how many of these people appear unaware of the fact that the entire world can watch them in this fishbowl technology. I had to wonder: How many people who post using their real names wonder if anyone is spying on them? Do they wonder if they may be sounding unprofessional? Do they wonder if judgments are forming about them—and I don’t mean the good ones?

So as not to be judgmental, I researched the pros and cons of these sites. There are advantages and disadvantages, and if you have a fan club (even if it consists of a nephew and a niece, or one friend) Facebook and MySpace are a convenient and free way to keep them up-to-date on your thoughts and whereabouts. But be mindful: e-mail is much more private. On Facebook, you can allow or block readers. But on Twitter, the whole world can “follow” you. If you are a voyeur, that is the best feature of Twitter. (More on that later.)

I had never had an interest in posting to any of these public sites. This past October, I was invited to join Facebook. It was against my sensibilities, but in order to see photos from a thirtieth high school reunion I had attended, I had to open a Facebook account. It took thirty seconds to do. This was the forum used by the former classmates so they could stay in touch with each other. Facebook has a tool to create alumni groups, social groups and activist groups. It’s wonderful for networking. But mostly, it’s used by friends and families to post in-the-moment thoughts and photos. Facebook also encourages its users to play gimmicky social games that are, for me, sophomoric.

When I joined, I had no idea how popular this site was. I had heard about FB for the first time a couple of years ago. A high-school student mentioned it to me as a way she was staying in contact with her friends and acquaintances. It seemed like a fun thing for kids, and she seemed to think that high school and college kids were using it as an alternative to MySpace. Now, a couple of years later, it seems people of every age group are using it.

Within a day of joining, people from recessive corners of my life began to find me, inviting me to be their FB “friends.” Oh no! I wondered, do I have time for this? When you have a FB, MySpace, or Twitter account, if anyone googles you, they will find you quickly. If people were looking for a way to contact you, consider yourself found. Since you have to apply by using an e-mail account, all your email contacts who are also using these other blog platforms will quickly find out you too are using the same platforms. And voila—if you are popular, or if former friends had been looking for you, your e-mail inbox will be filled to the gills with messages from people from your past. If you are looking to expand your social or professional network, this can we a wonderful tool.

However, if you are trying to hide from the world, do not open a Facebook account!

There are many uses for these sites. But be forewarned: Many of the people with Twitter and Facebook accounts think that the minutia of their lives is interesting. They are basically tone-deaf to their own vapidity.

With Facebook, www.facebook.com, you have to be invited to be a “friend” in order to enter someone’s blog page and read all the posts on their page. I have accepted the invitations of everyone who has asked me to link to them, and so far, only people I know have requested this. Suddenly, with access to their homepages, I was now peering into their cyber worlds, reading their posts, and viewing their photos. I thought this could be a lot of fun. Dorian the Spy.

So I began to read posts. What surprised me the most was that for the most part, their personal comments painted a picture of rather mundane worlds, although I doubt these individuals think of their lives as mundane. I also don’t think that in reality, their lives are as mundane as they sound. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be making them public…one would think. What I learned is that when given a public forum, most people aren’t very creative. What caused me to form this opinion was that I observed that those who religiously post on Facebook answer truthfully the ever-present Facebook question: What are you doing right now?

The answer to that question is what is known as your “status” update. As an example, I noticed that my acquaintance “friends” were regularly answering that question with brutally truthful answers that seemed to me so dull, perhaps only one or two people on the planet might care, and that’s being generous:

“Dreading having to go food-shopping in the freezing cold.”
“Sitting on the sofa with my feet up, watching TV, but nothing good is on.”
“Bored silly on a Saturday night.”

Coming up with an answer more scintillating than that probably requires more thought than most people are willing to entertain.

The schticks and gimmicks attached to FB are endless: delivering cyber glasses of wine to your online “friends,” throwing “snowballs,” and “poking” them. Please don’t ask me to explain this. It’s not worth your time. But the one gimmick that gave me pause was the request to post “25 Random Thoughts About Myself.” A “friend” invited me to participate. It’s a way for them to get to know you better. I declined. I can’t even think of one person who would be interested in reading 25 thoughts about myself, or 25 people who would want to read even one random thought about myself! I decided I could not bear to inflict my personal and random thoughts on cyberspace.

To be clear, I think these sites are great. Merging freedom of speech with interesting communication technology gives everyone an interesting product. However, by posting the question “What are you doing now?” these popular sites are enticing people to write the first thing that comes to mind. And from what I can tell, these knee-jerk, thoughtless comments are creating an inordinate amount of mindless cyber-clutter.

This led me to my next observation: If you are trying to impress someone—for instance, if you are looking for love, or looking for a job—if the most interesting answers to the question “what are you doing right now” are more often than not in the realm of the tedious, work-a-day drivel that clutters your mind—and you are at the same time hoping to convince someone out there in the real world that you are the best thing since sliced bread—you might want to put a bit more thought into your posts.

Additionally, it is wise to keep in mind that all of your “friends” and fans can post to your page. And if they are FB or Twitter addicts, they may post some inane things from time to time. If they sound like ninnies, don’t blame the rest of the world if they judge you by the cyber-company you keep. Trust me: There are people out there who are not willing to ignore the portrait your blog pages are painting you to be.

If I were looking for love, you can be sure I’d refrain from telling the truth about my boring Saturday night. Your other bored friends might enjoy your misery-loves-company attitude. But remember that the world is watching you in that cyber fishbowl. My status update would surely be something much more enticing to the reader I was hoping to attract: “Cooking yummy gourmet meal. Listening to Beethoven’s Waldstein. Taking dog for walk on beach. Wish I had special guy 2 share it with.”

That post was 131 characters long. Why mention it? This is important to know if you want to use Twitter. www.twitter.com. Each post on Twitter has to be no more than 140 characters in length. Can you sound interesting in fewer than 140 characters? From my observations, most people can’t. But the point of Twitter is not to sound fascinating. The point is to communicate is short sentences.

I recently read that six million people are using Twitter, which grew by 900 percent last year. The average age of a Twitterer is 31. A few news anchors I watch have been mentioning their Twitter blogs, such as Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper. I’ve chosen to ignore that until now. Most of the time, a TV anchor might ask the viewer to “go on Twitter and tell us what you think.” By the sound of it, it seemed to be something I needed to “ignore.” There is way too much stuff I don’t have time to read which I wish I did have time to read, and I decided I definitely do not have enough time to wade through Twitter babble.

However, after my recent foray into Facebook, and my refusal to participate with others very often, I decided I should take a look at Twitter to see what all the hoopla is about. As I mentioned, if you are a voyeur, it can provide hours and hours of fun. While you can find links to topics of interest, and short, personal updates written by people you may find interesting, it is also a site where you may find you are spending hours and hours poring through mini-thoughts—most of which are no more interesting than an observation of the weather at the corner of Sixth and Nowhere. For many, it is a useful tool. I certainly do not begrudge anyone a useful tool. However, one needs to be aware that if you are reading someone’s Twitter page, you might wonder why a public figure might have just posted they are stuck in rush-hour traffic. My first reaction to this was: BORING!! WHO CARES!!! Turns out, because Twitter links to Blackberry and I-Phone applications, it keeps friends, family, and colleagues up-to-date on your whereabouts. Famous people and others with important, relevant issues to discuss use their Twitter blogs for advertising, PR, sales, and comments. Yet, periodically, they post they are just getting on the red-eye, or they are stuck in traffic. Someone out there actually cares. I’m guessing the significant other cares…the rest of us are just innocent bystanders, or witless voyeurs into their fishbowl.

twitter1.jpgSome people report that Twitter is faster than email and doesn’t require an Internet connection. Therefore, millions are using it so their inner circle and network are updated when necessary. From what I can ascertain, the most beneficial use of “tweeting” is to communicate short ideas, directions, or bulletins to inform your circle what you are doing in that moment, what information they need to know, or where they need to be. Many Twitterers post a link to an article, a website, or a video that they think the reader will find interesting. A Twitter page is a running log of comments, and tweets are often non-linear conversations. Posts intended for fans or colleagues are interspersed with posts responding to specific people’s comments to you, or personal updates to family members and friends. If you are reading their page, you’ll find you may want to “ignore” a lot of it. Expect that you’ll have to wade through a lot of posts that sound so meaningless and banal, you might wonder why the Twitterer took the time to type them. If this gets too tedious, you may find you don’t enjoy Twitter. If you don’t, you are not alone. Many people hate it.

Getting onto Twitter takes a few seconds. I had no goals. I quickly set up an account and started looking around. The setup lets you know which of your e-mail contacts have Twitter accounts. These are people you can instantly put in your Twitter network, if you choose. You can also delete their names in an instant. Anyone you find on Twitter is someone you can “follow.” You don’t need permission from them. Through my small instant network of friends who were immediately linked through my e-mail contacts, I clicked on one of their names, and looked at the people they were following on Twitter. You can literally follow thousands, if not millions, of people on Twitter. Within a minute, I was reading David Gregory’s, Rachel Maddow’s, and Chris Hayes’s Twitter pages. A blog entry is called a “tweet.” (That term is a bit saccharine for my taste, but it follows the birdbrain, micro-attention-span format of the site.) Chris Hayes writes for “The Nation.” He appears on MSNBC frequently as an astute political commentator. And yet, Chris’ tweets can be rather banal blurbs about D.C. rush hour traffic on a Friday afternoon. When he’s not following the ins and outs of the political scene, he’s blogging about stuff that definitely needs to be ignored. I learned quickly that Chris must have people who care about his traffic woes. I was disappointed. Chris’ Twitter page wasn’t giving me anything worth reading. David Gregory was posting the names of upcoming guests on “Meet the Press,” using his page as an advertising vehicle. Rachel Maddow was posting the names of her upcoming guests that evening, listing stories she was working on, and making some snarky comments, too.

tweeter4bird.jpgNot surprising, for many people, these sites are a place for the egocentric who wish they were famous. Some people have in fact successfully become “famous for being famous” by using these sites. All of these sites are getting more and more popular. But they have one thing in common: they allow everyone in their network to know how interesting, or ordinary, their life is.

Supporters say, “Just ignore the things you aren’t interested in.” However, you can’t know you want to ignore something until you have read it for content. In the search for interesting posts, ignoring can be very time-consuming. There is a lot of drivel out there. On Twitter, you might find yourself wading through an endless list of 140-character posts of nonsense.

On Day One of my entrée onto the Twitter site, I got a cute little pop-up message with a picture of their cute bird icon: The message read: “Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.”

Their site went down. Too popular. And clearly their servers are beyond capacity.

The following was a comment on a blog responding to an article about Twittering. This supporter of Twitter wrote this:

“Sure, there are people whose ego overrides their good sense…Like any tool, Twitter has good uses, and LOTS of worthless ones. I follow about a hundred accounts…most of them automated news feeds. Much quicker to read through a few pages of headlines and links than to scan a hundred or so RSS feeds or hit a hundred bookmarks. I do fieldwork with a group of colleagues, and we’re all set to phone-follow each other. One twitter can broadcast a quick update to several people at once, and it’s much easier than conference calls or mass emails…and can be done from places where we don’t have any Net connection. ‘15 mins - NW corner Smith & Jones’ and we all know where and when to join up…And then there was this recent weather emergency when phone lines (and cell freqs) were overloaded…one quick tweet every hour or so, taking almost negligible bandwidth, could let a couple of dozen friends, family, and editors know that I wasn’t dead. Oddly enough, they seemed to care about that. Twitter’s just another way to keep in touch.”

Another downside to all of these sites is that like Instant Messaging, both Facebook and Twitter can be addictive, if you are prone to that. For some people, they can be so consuming, their relationships and jobs can suffer.

On the same blog on Alternet was this comment, which summed up my concerns perfectly:

twitter3.jpg“Does anybody enjoy being alone in their own space anymore? Seriously: a quiet walk in the park, a quiet book with some soft music, a dinner made for a loved one, a morning doing art, canoeing or gardening…anything that doesn’t have a constant e-portage of the minutia of other people’s moment-to-moment commentaries?

“…When is the last time people just spent time alone and enjoyed it? If you’re not enjoying being alone in your headspace for any significant period of time…are you ever doing your own thinking & personal development? Are you ever in the moment?

“Who are you if you can’t spend any time without a constant chatter from talk radio?…tv?…Twitter?…Facebook?…TXTMSG? Hell, some people can’t even walk down a hallway without jabbering on a cell phone…don’t even get me started about ‘quality time’ with a BlackBerry or iPhone junkie…

“Is our technology stealing our opportunities for experiencing the goal of Zen practitioners: being in the moments of our existence?”

Very good questions, if you ask me.

Not only is there a social issue, but there is a safety issue. Did you hear that New York City may make it illegal to type text messages and cross a street at the same time? At least one casualty per day shows up in the emergency room because someone fell off a curb or hit a lamp post while using their Blackberry because they were not watching where they were walking.

Would you read a magazine while walking through a crowded city street?

Would you read a magazine in front of your companions at a fancy dinner party?

Would you read a magazine while driving a car?

These are all activities where texting simultaneously is not obviously rude, or worse, dangerous, to a lot of folks.

Jerry Seinfeld recently did a bit on Blackberries. He won’t use one. He rightly observed that people have become exceptionally rude while using them during social gatherings. He explained that there were perhaps more interesting buttons on the Blackberry than there were on the face of the person sitting next to them. From my own experience, I have noticed some of my in-laws playing video games on their iPhones during dinner parties. How has this become socially acceptable?

For years, I have suggested that adolescent addictions to instant-messaging and texting has turned young people into people with fewer interpersonal skills. And yet supporters of these technologies insist these technologies will never replace the need for face-to-face communication. That may be true, but I have my doubts. I have observed that social groups, while face-to-face with friends and family, find whatever is happening on their Blackberries and I-Phones exceedingly more interesting than what is being said by the person in the chair next to them. How many of us have been out to dinner with someone who has constantly answered their cell phone and has spent more time on the phone than in conversation with us? Have you been with people whose gaze is constantly drifting down to their idle cell phone to see who may have sent them a text or e-mail? I surmise they fear that they are missing out on something if they aren’t checking their cell phones constantly.

With the increase in cyber networks and platforms, the number of digital communications has become so tremendous that it can be a full-time job reading them, let alone responding to them. It has become very easy to tune out from real life in favor of tuning into the world of digital communication.

If they are not waiting for an emergency call, should we not inform our friends that this behavior is rude? Or should we just “ignore” them and move on? If a dinner companion who is jilted in favor of their friend’s tweet and texts on a cell phone doesn’t find this insulting, they should. It worries me that so many are turning into Pavlov’s dogs, jumping at every ringtone, every vibrating alert, every text message.

On The Daily Show, Feb. 26, Brian Williams responded to Jon Stewart’s question on this topic. Jon asked Brian what he thought of Twitter, observing that many correspondents now use it.

Jon: “Have the news organizations now become so enamored of the technology that they really are not using it for its proper things? Congressmen are Twittering. Newscasters are Twittering. Is this a distraction? Is it worthwhile? What’s your opinion?”

Brian: “You know what? I don’t Twitter. When you Twitter, the subject line is automatically, “”What are you doing right now?”" And the answer I have to that question at any moment of the day isn’t interesting enough. It’s not interesting enough to my family and friends…my dog doesn’t wake up when I come home. So until I can answer that with a more compelling thing…it just isn’t my game.”

Jon expressed consternation that members of Congress were Twittering during Obama’s address to Congress on the evening of February 24. Brian replied, “A 200-pound chimp in an inappropriate relationship has caused them to jump on monkey legislation, and you’re expressing surprise??”


And so, if you Twitter, you may be a twit. Not necessarily…but you get my drift.

As my parents used to say, “There is a time and a place for everything.” Unfortunately, I believe our society may have lost its sights on the appropriate time and place for respectful behavior.

When I have more time to waste, or an addiction to take up, I will surf through Twitter to look for the hidden gems…the blogs of artists, musicians, scientists, writers, thinkers…the people who are compelled to share more interesting thoughts than wishing they didn’t have to go out in the cold for a quart of milk, or wishing they could find something good to watch on TV.

In case you are interested in organizing your cyber platforms, there is software that allows your various blogs to link to each other, so one status update will update all the other platforms. It’s an organization tool that can be a valuable time-saver. A friend linked me to this page, in case you need to link your blogs. mashable.com/2007/07/17/social-network-aggregators/

Source / CommonSense2

The Rag Blog

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Obama and a Brave New World : Governing a Netroots Nation

Obama addresses journalism convention in July, 2008. Photo by Jennifer Dronkers / Unity News.
'Obama isn't just trying to make government more transparent by posting online videos of himself or his transition team's doings. He is attempting to organize his campaign supporters into a political force that he can tap in tough times.'
Joe Garofoli / November 24, 2008

During the campaign, the Obama team showed how new media tools can be used to win the White House. Now, the president-elect's advisers and allies are previewing how they intend to use the power of online organizing to govern.

The effort gained national visibility when President-elect Barack Obama started posting YouTube videos of his weekly national address, and it accelerated as the transition team and others solicited supporters' ideas on what to do next with their "movement."

Analysts say Obama isn't just trying to make government more transparent by posting online videos of himself or his transition team's doings. He is attempting to organize his campaign supporters into a political force that he can tap in tough times - like when he needs to go around Congress and the mainstream media for direct citizen support.

"Just like people hadn't used the Internet in campaigning to this extent before, they haven't really used it to govern before," said Peter Daou, Internet strategist for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. "The challenge here is trying to figure out how to use something that was used mostly for campaign advocacy - and use it in a way to advance policy."

That's tricky. A campaign runs on an adrenaline rush fueled by a deadline (election day), a person to rally against and the rush of daily polls. Shepherding policy through Washington is not as sexy, and now the candidate is president of all Americans - not just his supporters.

So on the grassroots level, the legions of Obama supporters who self-organized on social networking sites are reconvening to figure out what to do. Meanwhile, the incoming administration is trying to figure out how to engage its supporters and solicit their ideas - and continued support.

"Where they meet in the middle somewhere is where the energy will come from," Daou said.

Those efforts intensified last week when Obama campaign manager David Plouffe asked the estimated 11 million members of Obama's e-mail list what new ideas they had for the administration. Before asking supporters to complete a brief survey, Plouffe wrote, "Your hard work built this movement. Now it's up to you to decide how we move forward."

The survey asked supporters "how they would like to be engaged" and to rank the importance of "goals for this movement" such as "Helping Barack's administration pass legislation through grassroots efforts" and "training volunteers in the organizing techniques we used to elect Barack."

MoveOn's efforts

The efforts extend beyond the official Obama organization.

On Thursday night, MoveOn.org - whose members supported Obama - held more than 1,200 offline "Fired Up and Ready to Go" parties. The point of the gatherings, according to an invitation from MoveOn: "We'll launch a new campaign to help Barack win big changes - like health care and clean energy." The group will follow Thursday's meetings with a day of personal lobbying on Capitol Hill and in congressional district offices Jan. 21, the day after Obama is sworn in.

The 5 million-member liberal online hub has seen its membership transformed this year. MoveOn gained 2 million new members in the past six months - 55 percent of them are not white. (Membership was 85 percent white before.) At least half of the newcomers are under 35, said executive director Eli Pariser.

Unlike past political campaigns, where voters returned home after casting their ballots and waited for politicians to deliver results, many Obama supporters are looking for ways to continue to provide their input and offer help.

"It's clear to MoveOn members that they want to continue to focus on a few core issues," Pariser said.

In addition to posting the president-elect's weekly addresses on YouTube, the Obama transition team is posting snippets that describe the activities of some of its transition groups. A three-minute video titled "Inside the Transition: Energy and Environment Policy Team" that recently appeared may not sound like scintillating viewing, but it does give viewers a peek into the mind-set of the incoming government.

"He doesn't have to wait for CBS to use four seconds of one of his speeches as a sound bite in a story. He can send his full comments directly to his supporters - and everyone else," Pariser said.

But Obama's early efforts on YouTube have not been in the two-way spirit of new media communication - comments are not accepted, although people can repost the videos or embed them elsewhere and start their own conversation threads.

"I'm not sure of the strategy behind that," said Steve Grove, YouTube's head of news and politics. "They're probably trying to feel out how it will work."

If the Obama administration is anything like the Obama campaign, Grove predicts it will produce a prolific amount of video. He wouldn't be surprised if Cabinet officials and other top administration leaders began posting videos, too. And, even though "day-in-the-life" videos may be hackneyed, Grove said there would be an audience for such a behind-the-scenes peek at the White House.

Obama's YouTube channel had more than 1,800 videos during the campaign, and they were viewed 110 million times. Many posted after September were seen upward of 50,000 times each and more than a dozen were seen at least 1 million times.

"Their user base has come to expect a certain level of accessibility," Grove said. "But the challenge will be to find that sweet spot now that they're governing. There has to be a certain imprimatur and gravitas when the president of the United States is involved."

'Craigslist for service'

There's no shortage of other ideas on how to engage people online. During the campaign, Obama officials talked about ways to create a "Craigslist for service" - where people interested in doing some sort of public service or volunteering could be connected with a need in their community. Others have spoken about video streaming all open government meetings. Daou said to expect a lot of "trial and error over the next few months as the White House sees what works."

"What's most important is that he makes government more transparent," said Raven Brooks, executive director of Netroots Nation, the annual conference of bloggers and online activists that grew out of the popular DailyKos political blog.

Brooks' idea: He would love to see Obama - or more likely an aide - use the social networking tool Twitter to update citizens on what he is up to throughout the day. "He wouldn't have to be giving away state secrets or anything, but maybe something like, 'I just met with Paul Volcker and we talked about monetary policy.'

"Now, the average voter is not a political junkie, and may not be interested in that level of minutiae, but I think a lot of people would appreciate the effort to communicate," Brooks said.

A spokesman for the Obama transition team said of its new media strategy, "Unfortunately, we're not ready to discuss further details at this time."

Perhaps the details will be posted first on YouTube.

Source / SF Gate

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Riding the New Media : How Obama Really Did It

Cake and eat it too. From a party organized through Obama social-networking site. Photo by Porter Gifford / Technology Review.
The social-networking strategy that took an obscure senator to the doors of the White House.
By David Talbot

This article appears in full in the September/October 2008 issue of Technology Review.

Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign manager and Internet impresario, describes Super Tuesday II--the March 4 primaries in Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island--as the moment Barack Obama used social tech­nology to decisive effect. The day's largest hoard of dele­gates would be contested in Texas, where a strong showing would require exceptional discipline and voter-education efforts. In Texas, Democrats vote first at the polls and then, if they choose, again at caucuses after the polls close. The caucuses award one-third of the Democratic delegates.

Hillary Clinton's camp had about 20,000 volunteers at work in Texas. But in an e-mail, Trippi learned that 104,000 Texans had joined Obama's social-­networking site, www.my.barackobama.com, known as MyBO. MyBO and the main Obama site had already logged their share of achievements, particularly in helping rake in cash. The month before, the freshman senator from Illinois had set a record in American politics by garnering $55 million in donations in a single month. In Texas, MyBO also gave the Obama team the instant capacity to wage fully networked campaign warfare. After seeing the volunteer numbers, Trippi says, "I remember saying, 'Game, match--it's over.'"

The Obama campaign could get marching orders to the Texans registered with MyBO with minimal effort. The MyBO databases could slice and dice lists of volunteers by geographic micro­region and pair people with appropriate tasks, including prepping nearby voters on caucus procedure. "You could go online and download the names, addresses, and phone numbers of 100 people in your neighborhood to get out and vote--or the 40 people on your block who were undecided," Trippi says. "'Here is the leaflet: print it out and get it to them.' It was you, at your computer, in your house, printing and downloading. They did it all very well." Clinton won the Texas primary vote 51 to 47 percent. But Obama's ­people, following their MyBO playbook, so overwhelmed the chaotic, crowded caucuses that he scored an overall victory in the Texas delegate count, 99 to 94. His showing nearly canceled out ­Clinton's win that day in Ohio. Clinton lost her last major opportunity to stop the Obama juggernaut. "In 1992, Carville said, 'It's the economy, stupid,'" Trippi says, recalling the exhortation of Bill Clinton's campaign manager, James Carville. "This year, it was the network, stupid!"

Throughout the political season, the Obama campaign has domi­nated new media, capitalizing on a confluence of trends. Americans are more able to access media-rich content online; 55 percent have broadband Internet connections at home, double the figure for spring 2004. Social-networking technologies have matured, and more Americans are comfortable with them. Although the 2004 Dean campaign broke ground with its online meeting technologies and blogging, "people didn't quite have the facility," says ­Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor who has given the Obama campaign Internet policy advice (Lessig wrote The People Own Ideas! in our May/June 2005 issue). "The world has now caught up with the technology." The Obama campaign, he adds, recognized this early: "The key networking advance in the Obama field operation was really deploying community­-building tools in a smart way from the very beginning."

Of course, many of the 2008 candidates had websites, click-to-donate tools, and social-networking features--even John McCain, who does not personally use e-mail. But the Obama team put such technologies at the center of its campaign--among other things, recruiting 24-year-old Chris Hughes, cofounder of Facebook, to help develop them. And it managed those tools well. Supporters had considerable discretion to use MyBO to organize on their own; the campaign did not micromanage but struck a balance between top-down control and anarchy. In short, Obama, the former Chicago community organizer, created the ultimate online political machine.

The Obama campaign did not provide access or interviews for this story; it only confirmed some details of our reporting and offered written comments. This story is based on interviews with third parties involved in developing Obama's social-networking strategy or who were familiar with it, and on public records.

An Online Nervous System

A row of elegant, renovated 19th-century industrial buildings lines Boston's Congress Street east of Fort Point Channel. On any given day, behind a plain wooden door on the third floor of 374 Congress, 15 to 20 casually clad programmers tap away at computers. On the day I visited, the strains of Creedence Clearwater Revival filled the room; a Ping-Pong table dominated the small kitchen. This is the technology center for Blue State Digital, which means that it is also the nervous system for its two largest clients, the Barack Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Founded by alumni of the Dean campaign, Blue State Digital added interactive elements to Obama's website--including MyBO--and now tends to its daily care and feeding. The site's servers hum away in a Boston suburb and are backed up in the Chicago area.

Jascha Franklin-Hodge, 29, greeted me with a friendly handshake and a gap-toothed grin. He has a deep voice and a hearty laugh; his face is ringed by a narrow beard. Franklin-Hodge dropped out of MIT after his freshman year and spent a few years in online music startups before running the Internet infrastructure for the Dean campaign, which received a then-­unprecedented $27 million in online donations. "When the campaign ended, we thought, 'Howard Dean was not destined to be president, but what we are doing online--this is too big to let go away,'" he says. He and three others cofounded Blue State Digital, where he is chief technology officer. (Another cofounder, Joe Rospars, is now on leave with the Obama campaign as its new-media director.)

The MyBO tools are, in essence, rebuilt and consolidated versions of those created for the Dean campaign. Dean's website allowed supporters to donate money, organize meetings, and distribute media, says Zephyr Teachout, who was Dean's Internet director and is now a visiting law professor at Duke University. "We developed all the tools the Obama campaign is using: SMS [text messaging], phone tools, Web capacity," Teachout recalls. "They [Blue State Digital] did a lot of nice work in taking this crude set of unrelated applications and making a complete suite."

Blue State Digital had nine days to add its tools to Obama's site before the senator announced his candidacy on February 10, 2007, in Springfield, IL. Among other preparations, the team braced for heavy traffic. "We made some projections of traffic levels, contribution amounts, and e-mail levels based on estimates from folks who worked with [John] Kerry and Dean in 2004," recalls Franklin­-Hodge. As Obama's Springfield speech progressed, "we were watching the traffic go up and up, surpassing all our previous records." (He would not provide specific numbers.) It was clear that early assumptions were low. "We blew through all of those [estimates] in February," he says. "So we had to do a lot of work to make sure we kept up with the demand his online success had placed on the system." By July 2008, the campaign had raised more than $200 million from more than a million online donors (Obama had raised $340 million from all sources by the end of June), and MyBO had logged more than a million user accounts and facilitated 75,000 local events, according to Blue State Digital.

MyBO and the main campaign site made it easy to give money--the fuel for any campaign, because it pays for advertising and staff. Visitors could use credit cards to make one-time donations or to sign up for recurring monthly contributions. MyBO also made giving money a social event: supporters could set personal targets, run their own fund-raising efforts, and watch personal fund-­raising thermometers rise. To bring people to the site in the first place, the campaign sought to make Obama a ubiquitous presence on as many new-media platforms as possible.

The viral Internet offered myriad ways to propagate unfiltered Obama messages. The campaign posted the candidate's speeches and linked to multimedia material generated by supporters. A music video set to an Obama speech--"Yes We Can," by the hip-hop artist Will.i.am--has been posted repeatedly on YouTube, but the top two postings alone have been viewed 10 million times. A single YouTube posting of Obama's March 18 speech on race has been viewed more than four million times. Similarly, the campaign regularly sent out text messages (at Obama rallies, speakers frequently asked attendees to text their contact information to his campaign) and made sure that Obama was prominent on other social-networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace (see "New-Media King" chart above). The campaign even used the micro­blogging service Twitter, garnering about 50,000 Obama "followers" who track his short posts. "The campaign, consciously or unconsciously, became much more of a media operation than simply a presidential campaign, because they recognized that by putting their message out onto these various platforms, their supporters would spread it for them," says Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, a website covering the intersection of politics and technology (and another Dean alumnus). "We are going from the era of the sound bite to the sound blast."

Money flowed in, augmenting the haul from big-ticket fund-raisers. By the time of the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008, the Obama campaign had more than $35 million on hand and was able to use MyBO to organize and instruct caucus-goers. "They have done a great job in being precise in the use of the tools," Teachout says. "In Iowa it was house parties, looking for a highly committed local network. In South Carolina, it was a massive get-out-the-vote effort." MyBO was critical both in the early caucus states, where campaign staff was in place, and in later-­voting states like Texas, Colorado, and Wisconsin, where "we provided the tools, remote training, and opportunity for supporters to build the campaign on their own," the Obama campaign told Technology Review in a written statement. "When the campaign eventually did deploy staff to these states, they supplemented an already-built infrastructure and volunteer network."

Using the Web, the Obama camp turbocharged age-old campaign tools. Take phone banks: through MyBO, the campaign chopped up the task of making calls into thousands of chunks small enough for a supporter to handle in an hour or two. "Millions of phone calls were made to early primary states by people who used the website to reach out and connect with them," Franklin-Hodge says. "On every metric, this campaign has operated on a scale that has exceeded what has been done before. We facilitate actions of every sort: sending e-mails out to millions and millions of people, organizing tens of thousands of events." The key, he says, is tightly integrating online activity with tasks people can perform in the real world. "Yes, there are blogs and Listservs," Franklin-Hodge says. "But the point of the campaign is to get someone to donate money, make calls, write letters, organize a house party. The core of the software is having those links to taking action--to doing something."

Read all of this article here / Technology Review

Thanks to Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog

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