I’ll be honest … At least on the surface, as far as any of you can tell, life is going pretty well for me these days.
I have two new nephews, two weeks ago I got “stuck” and had to spend an extra day in Las Vegas thanks to a snow storm back east, and this past week it happened again, only this time I was in Key Biscayne, Florida.
As I keep telling people: Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
But I have to say, I wish everything was as glamorous and fun as it seems. Continue reading
There’s a pretty good chance that David Hyde Pierce won’t see this.
That’s because when I interviewed him for Continental magazine a few months back and I asked him about whether he uses social media and is on Facebook or Twitter, the erstwhile Niles Crane responded rather quickly and tersely, “I’d rather die.”
Alright, fine. So that subject was a dead end.
But thankfully, there was plenty else for us to discuss, and some of that conversation is now on planes and on the magazine’s website for all to read. Continue reading
It is no lie to say that my photo is included in the latest issue of Fast Company magazine, the one with Lance Armstrong on the cover, on page 138, in a section about Social Media’s New Stars.
(Yes, that’s how it’s referred to on the cover.)
Inside, an article is called “The New Influentials,” and it’s all about the “unexpected players” who “exert outsize impact and power online.” As the magazine asks, “Who is the most influential person online?”
Well, according to Fast Company, I’m one of them.
That much is all true. Continue reading
CNN.com reported Tuesday that 71 percent of all tweets on Twitter are ignored.
I don’t believe that.
Just because only 29 percent of the things posted on the social network get an @ reply or a retweet, that doesn’t mean the others are being ignored. I’m sure people are clicking on the links in those tweets, or reading the tweets and moving on (they’re only 140 characters long, after all).
I’m an active user of Twitter, and even though I don’t reply to a lot of tweets I see, and I don’t retweet everything people post, I’m hardly ignoring everything in my timeline. Continue reading
During a much-buzzed-about press conference yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg announced two significant changes to Facebook: Users will now be able to download all their data to their desktops for safe keeping, and they’ll also be able to more easily segment their friends into groups.
Great.
It’s nice to see the site evolve, and for Zuck to continue introducing forward-thinking innovations that make Facebook an even more important part of our lives.
(And I’m sure he liked taking more attention away from The Social Network too.)
Except it isn’t so nice. Quite frankly, I’m getting really tired of Zuck changing the site on me every few months, or even more frequently than that.
Whatever your feelings regarding Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg before seeing The Social Network, you’re bound to have them intensified.
That’s because the film, which details the early days of the site, portrays the guy as both a nerd superhero and total jerk, and it’s up to the viewer to decide which label sticks.
For me, it’s not an all or nothing answer, and I suspect I won’t be alone when I say I started on one side and moved more to the middle by film’s end, but never crossed all the way over.
Regardless of where you come down on the debate, however, it’s hard to deny that The Social Network makes great entertainment out of one of this generation’s biggest Internet success stories. Continue reading
I became the mayor of another place on Foursquare yesterday, and again, when that crown badge showed up on my iPhone screen, I thought it’d be accompanied by an explosion of confetti, balloons raining down on me, flashing lights, fanfare, a banner unfurling from the ceiling with my name on it, applause from the other customers, and the manager of the store rushing over to congratulate me on the achievement.
Alright, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration (maybe??), but after the smile went away from my face, and I was done mentally patting myself on the back, and I realized there wasn’t any benefit to being the mayor, the same reaction I always have set in: So what? Continue reading
The new film Catfish raises a few questions.
Among them, which will be the bigger PR threat to Facebook, this movie or The Social Network?
And perhaps more importantly, is this film even real?
That second question hangs over this entire film, a “reality thriller” (don’t call it a documentary) about a guy who meets a girl and her family on Facebook and comes to realize they are not exactly as they seem.
I don’t want to spoil too much about Catfish because most of the movie’s appeal comes from watching things develop. But suffice it to say, where you come down on the “is it real?” debate definitely affects how you feel about the movie. Continue reading
I finally finished reading Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires last week.
I say finally because it only took me, oh, about a year to do so. That’s not indicative of how much I enjoyed the book. Rather, it’s just that the book fell victim to my lack of reading time and my laziness about finding time to read.
Actually, this summer, as I got more and more excited about seeing The Social Network, I made the time to read, and I spent a number of Sunday afternoons outside reading the book.
And I’m glad I did. Continue reading
I don’t in any way pretend to be a social media expert.
Sure, I’m an active user of Facebook and Twitter, I have a blog, and now I’ve even started checking in everywhere on Foursquare.
And sure, some people I work with think I’m an expert.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned when it comes to social media, it’s that nobody knows anything (to borrow the phrase from William Goldman), and we’re all making it up as we go along.
So I’ll let other people label themselves as social media gurus, experts, ninjas, or whatever word they’re using these days. Me, an expert? I’m not ready for that kind of label just yet.
Martin's Musings 