I’m Too Exhausted to Post, So Go Check Out the Comments

My teammate and I gave a presentation to a bunch of the higher ups in Product Development today and I’m totally bushed — or rather, my brain is.

Rather than expending a lot of mental energy on writing what will probably not be a very good blog post, I’m going to refer you to the comments section of this blog, where some very interesting conversations are taking place:

• Readers Daniel K and Ike are having a great conversation about the role of peer pressure in this election.
• Meanwhile, a great conversation continues to churn around Obama’s merits or lack thereof. The most recent installment features first-time commenter Diane making her feelings about Barack Obama known.

The wonderful thing about being a blogger is reading the comments. My ideas are not half so interesting as yours are. Please jump in.

MTV Street Team ‘08 Does a Piece on TeresaCentric!

Many thanks to Washington State Street Team reporter Cory Midgarten for covering TeresaCentric.

Some Neat TeresaCentric Stats

This caught my attention in my WordPress dashboard just now.

Way cool!

Don’t Worry, the Superheroes are Coming Back!

I’ve received a number of e-mails (and Facebook pings, and direct Tweets) from concerned readers who want to know why Andy and I chose to get rid of the superheroes that used to grace this site.

Well, as you guys have probably gathered by now, Andy and I broke off our engagement a few months ago. It was obviously a very amicable — even amiable — parting. But somehow, the old banner no longer fit.

Thankfully, the woman who drew the first banner is my womb to tomb girlfriend Dylan Meconis. She is in the process of drawing us a couple of brand new superheroes. I won’t reveal exactly what our two cartoonish caped crusaders will be up to, I want you guys to be surprised.

But trust me, the superheroes are coming. I only pray they’ll be in time to rescue us all.

Gizmodo Grasps at Ideological Straws and Digs Bloggers in Even Deeper

At the risk of being much too echo-chambery, I’m going to address the Great Gizmodo/CES Controversy. Why? Because I call bullshit.

Pranks are awesome. My friends and I definitely pulled a few dozen of them in college. Some of them were inconvenient to many people — especially freshmen and authority figures. Still, they were hilarious at the time. They’re even more hilarious when rehashed at every possible opportunity.

The thing about pranks is that they’re best kept out of the professional space. Sure, it might be funny to unload a box of frogs in your boss’ office right before he gets back from vacation. But it’s not the best idea when it comes to your career. What’s more, workplace pranks wreak havoc on those around you. Everyone suffers the wrath of a boss beset by unwanted frogs.

Gizmodo’s behavior at CES is no different. The credibility of all bloggers is now being scrutinized by the CEA because of one guy’s immature, unprofessional stunt. Gizmodo’s claim that the prank was a statement of ideological purity and editorial independence is utter bunk. They’re grasping at straws to excuse the stupid behavior of a writer who — were they a MSM publication — would have likely been fired well before now for unprofessional conduct. In the process, they’re hurting the reputation of their cohort.

Pranks are usually pulled by the disempowered against the powerful. When we pranked the dean, it was because we were just a bunch of sophomores and the dean was — well — the dean. It seems to me that the Gizmodo prank reveals some serious feelings of disempowerment on their part. Perhaps the industry has been a little too slow to take bloggers seriously for their taste. I can’t imagine why. We had industry people clambering over one another to get involved with our blogger party this year.

Whatever the motivation, it’s hardly unfair of the blogosphere at large to come down on Gizmodo. Yes, we behave respectfully where respect is due. But please don’t confuse maturity and professionalism with dependence on any industry. Bloggers are still our own people. We’re just growing up.

Big Changes at TeresaCentric

If you’ve clicked through to the blog recently, you’ll notice that we’ve made some big changes around here. I’ve been wanting to turn this blog into a bit more of a content hub for some time now. You’ll find featured music, videos, stuff from my Twitter feed and Flickr feed.

Andy and I will still be posting about politics, religion and all the other inflammatory topics that interest us. So stay tuned!

Robert Scoble Takes a Well-Deserved Blog Break

I’ve been beating myself up lately for not doing enough to change the world. But it looks like I’m in good company.

The bottom line is that if the Scobleizer wants a blog break, he should take one. But he needs to know that he adds value every single day because he asks intelligent questions, drives traffic to people saying interesting things and raises our awareness of the possibilities for the world we live in.

Robert, you’re one of the good guys and you’ve made my world a better place.

I Love My Commenters!

I just wanted to send a quick message of love to everyone who has left a comment on this blog since I started it four years (!) ago. Sometimes I feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day to respond to every wonderful thing you guys say, but I’m resolved to do better in the future after my marvelous conversation with the wonderful Liz Strauss yesterday.

So how are you all? Please leave me updates about what you’re doing this summer? Listen to any good music? Read any good books lately?

*mwah* to all of you!

The Queen, the Demolition of the Barrier Between Public and Private, and The New Web

Andy and I watched Helen Mirren’s impeccable performance in The Queen (iTunes) this evening. He wasn’t as enthusiastic to see the film as I was, but we both wound up enjoying it.

The film got me thinking about issues of transparency and how far our culture has moved from Her Majesty’s heyday. Technology — first the television, now the “personal” Web — has brought human flaws and struggles to the forefront and pushed institutions into the background. Corporations whose goal was once to preserve brands now use new media to humanize themselves. The same must be true of the monarchy if it is to survive in Britain.

Never was this gap in the generational understanding of the public/private divide made more clear than in the days after Princess Diana’s death. As the movie illustrates, Her Majesty was never brought up to wear her heart on her sleeve. “Duty first, self second,” she states primly to Prime Minister Tony Blair as the film nears its end.

What she didn’t understand was that her duty changed as technology changed her people. Diana was so beloved in England because she put a human face on an institution that has sought to submerge humanity beneath layers of protocol since its inception. Her great physical beauty and poise, and her compassion for ordinary people only made her foibles more endearing. She was photographed — quite literally — to death. The exposure of her every move cemented her role as “the people’s princess.”

The newest phenomenon of people using the Web — it has been variously styled as “Web 2.0,” “emerging media,” “new media,” and “consumer generated content” — to tell their personal stories is a natural extension of the global culture that lauded Princess Diana and decried the Queen for her lack of public empathy with the people. Companies, and corporate communicators in particular need to understand that.

I’m in Business Week!!!

I never stop getting a kick out of being considered an expert on this business blogging stuff.

I love my job.

Virginia Tech Students Use Facebook to Organize Vigils, Mainstream Media Falls Behind

The Planet Blacksburg blog has a post up about how students are using Facebook to organize vigils for their slain friends.

Meanwhile Virginia Tech student and blogger Andrew Mager has a post up about the evolving Wikipedia article on killer Cho Seung-hui.

It’s very interesting to watch the Web play such a crucial role in the information sharing during this crisis. On 9/11/01, I remember getting most of my information from the mainstream media. The blogging culture was in its infancy, but still some bloggers were sharing their experiences and making their very real grief felt.

Now, six years later, the blogosphere, social networking sites wikis and other avenues of online communication are providing more up to date information than the mainstream media.

More importantly, the information coming from social media is more poignant and real to me than anything I’ve seen on CNN.com. I’ve seen some of the pictures of the slain students on Facebook and it makes the whole thing so much more real than if they were featured in a newspaper or on television.

Part of watching disasters like this from a “safe distance” is that you can’t imagine them happening to you. But when you’re looking at a picture of a slain student on Facebook, just like you would look at a picture of yourself or your friends, you start to realize that this could have been anyone. It could have happened anywhere. It makes things very, very real.

I have some more thoughts on this posted at Blog Business Summit.

The Virginia Tech Shootings: News and Outreach Come From Blogs and Facebook

Obviously, there’s very little that can be said about the tragedy at Virginia Tech that has not yet been said. It’s horrifying, disturbing. My prayers are with those who are suffering.

One thing that I find interesting about this whole situation is where I’m getting my news. Everything on CNN is just pure repetition. Meanwhile, the most informative news is coming from the students themselves on Facebook. The group I’m OK at VT enables students to share that they are alright with their friends. The conversation here and at the VT community board paints the most compelling, non-sanitized picture of what has occurred. It reminds us that underneath all the monetized media sensationalism, there are people who are really hurting.

Also, facts have emerged on blogs that are not yet a part of the mainstream media. Michelle Malkin posted a deeply disturbing e-mail from a student who was in Norris hall at the time of the shootings. Apparently, the gunman chained the doors. Brutally Honest has the transcript of an instant message with a student that indicates the mainstream media had even less of the real story than we originally thought.

Previously, this kind of word of mouth and the attendant community support would have been limited to the campus. But as we get a real window into the world of the shootings, we become a real part of the affected community. I hope that we can use that extension of community to reach out and help more than we use it for voyeurism.

Did Blogging Moot the “Difference Between Lightening and the Lightening Bug?”

I used to spend more time revising my writing. My dad often said that, “writing is re-writing.” This held true for me throughout most of my student life. The first drafts of my school papers often contained unfinished ideas. When I re-read them, I immediately saw that more needed to be said. So I unpacked and reorganized them thoroughly before handing in the assignment.

Now, I must admit that I didn’t give every school paper equal attention. Some topics were just plain boring to write about. But writing assignments on subjects that captured my imagination received the benefit of many red pen strokes before the professor got a crack at them.

All of this changed after college. Mark Twain famously wrote that “the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug.” But what happens to that noble idea when the fast-paced world of Internet media urges you to settle for the almost right word because you don’t have five minutes to mull the difference between “ineffable” and “inarticulable?”

Blogging - especially blogging for business as I do, is a get-in, get-out, get-on with it art. It revolves around brevity: both in the time spent writing and in the prose itself. It allows for, and even embraces the publication of unfinished thoughts. The revision process happens in the comments and in later blog posts on the same topic.

But what does this say about the quality of our writing? Is being a good writer relative to the medium in which you publish your work, or will the advent of easy personal publishing platforms make good writing less relevant? John Milton might not have been a very good blogger. But could Robert Scoble give us Paradise Lost?

Like my father before me, I write for a living. But unlike him, I spend next to no time revising my verbal concoctions. In that sense, blogging has taken something away from me and I plan to get back. From now on, I will take the time to revise my work before I send it out into the ether. Starting now.

PS: I know that the use of “moot” as a verb is considered an “uneducated” usage, but language is fluid and I like the way it works. If anyone else knows of a better word for, “to make irrelevant,” I’d love to hear it.

Why MeanKids.org Failed

Some very cruel things were said in the blogosphere this week about a friend of mine. When I read them in Google’s cache of the now defunct Meankids.org site, I nearly lost it. I can only imagine how she, her husband, and her family felt.

When faced with genuine human goodness, some people can’t handle it. They attack and belittle it because they simply can’t understand it. They try to sully it and tear it down to their level. And they fail every time.

The people behind those very cruel posts on Meankids.org and its offshoots can’t handle Maryam Scoble, Kathy Sierra, or any of the other people they targeted. Their only hope in the face of brilliance, decency and honesty is to tear down and belittle. They are no better than sixth grade bullies. Their jealousy and bitterness erupted sideways and exposed them for the pathetic cowards they truly are.

Some say that Meankids.org casts shame on the entire blogosphere, but I don’t believe we should give them that much power. They’re simply not worth it. They failed because they can never permanently tarnish the people they set out to attack. They can hurt, and they can instill fear. But hurt and fear can last only so long before righteous anger and growing strength take their place.

Robert Scoble wrote that we should spend the next week talking about how to fix the culture of misogyny and cruelty in the blogosphere. The solution is in our ability to stand up for one another and call the perpetrators of death threats, hate speech and viciousness on their disgusting pettiness. It’s in making genuine human connections paramount.

The rest is just details.

Twitter Isn’t Going to Replace Blogs

According to Steve Rubel, blogger Nick Wilson has unsubscribed from more than 100 blogs and replaced them with Twitter.

I find this relatively gimmicky. As much as I love Twitter, I don’t see it as a replacement for my blog. For one thing, my Twitter page doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to Twitter. It’s the same exact reason why I stopped hosting my content at TypePad. Also, Twitter doesn’t provide by-date archiving, categories, or any of the many other things that I have come to expect from a blog.

Twitter is more like leaving an away message on an instant messaging program than it is like a blogging platform. It’s powerful in its own way, but I can’t see it replacing blogs or blogging.

Someone at PR Newswire Thinks I’m Full of Myself

I suppose that’s a valid statement. This blog wouldn’t be called “TeresaCentric” if I weren’t fully prepared to poke fun at my own narcissism. What’s more, I’m asking for it. I’m out here in the blogosphere spouting my opinion, which is the equivalent of painting a big red target on my ass. But all that aside, when someone comes in out of nowhere and calls me on my arrogance completely unprovoked and out of context, it can seem a little…well…rude.

But rudeness isn’t the reason I’m writing this blog post. I’m writing it because of where the comment came from. According to Wordpress, this particular comment came from IP address 199.230.26.52, which is associated with PR Newswire’s New Jersey Offices.

I would think that this would be an issue of special concern to the folks over at PR Newsire, given that their work takes place at the intersection of public relations and emerging technologies/online cultures. You would think that they’d given their employees a lecture or two about using company time/resources to post rude comments on other people’s blogs. It’s not so much an issue of wasting time at work as it is about misrepresenting your company.

I don’t believe for a second that this rude commenter meant to represent his company. He was probably just having a crappy day at work and decided to take his frustrations on an opinionated woman 3,000 miles away. But what he and his employers need to understand is that every time someone comments on a blog using a company computer, that comment can easily be traced back to the company. Therefore, any time you leave a comment on a blog from a company computer, you are representing your company.

These exact same kinds of mistakes have plagued other companies in the blogosphere in the past. Employers need to take the time to talk to their employees about why behaving unprofessionally from company computers could come back to bite them in the ass.

I’m not going to make any assumptions about this being somehow PR Newswire’s fault. It’s entirely possible that the management team has already discussed this issue with their employees. This particular joker may be demonstrating flagrant disregard for both social norms and company policy. It’s also possible that the joker in question isn’t even a PR Newswire employee. They could be a hacker who cleverly accessed PR Newswire’s WiFi network from his apartment next door. It could be some hapless employee’s kid who has been dragged to work with his dad. It could be the work of an intern on his coffee break. But whatever the case, let this stand as a cautionary tale to businesses everywhere.

Things I Don’t Like About Hillary Clinton’s Campaign

I’ve been doing enough bitching and moaning about how Hillary Clinton’s campaign hasn’t been doing enough to court social media. So I thought I’d just come out and make a list of all the things she needs to do to improve her campaign online.

1. Make all Hillcasts embeddable. — Making them downloadable as high-res Quicktime files was a good first step, but given your propensity for retaining control of the conversation, I would think that you’d want to centralize access to the files. If you’re worried about bandwidth, invest in bigger servers. You’re going to need them anyway.
2. Enable trackbacks on your blog. — Sure, I’ll leave a comment from time to time, but often what I was originally going to say to respond to your post turns into a blog post of my own. Make it easy for me to post on my blog, link in, and let you know that I’ve said something about you. If you rolled your own platform — and it looks like you did — consider switching to Wordpress, or if you’re looking for something more enterprise-oriented, Blogtronix or Expression Engine. All three platforms accept trackbacks and kick some serious ass in general.
3. Don’t require me to be a member of “Team Hillary” to post a comment. — I’m not sure I support you yet. So far, I like what you have to say, but I’m still on the fence, mostly because I’m not sure I trust you. You’re only going to get hardcore supporters to read and comment on your blog if you automatically sign them up for your campaign/fundraising team when they really just want to leave a comment. If you care about the conversation as much as you say you do, you should open the doors wider and allow people to leave comments without setting up an account. You can still retain complete control over spam (Akismet) and moderate all comments before they appear.
4. Start leaving video comments on other people’s blogs. — I haven’t heard of a single person who has actually heard from you or any of your campaign staff reaching out to engage with other people on other websites. You should start posting some video responses on YouTube. That will really get the conversation going.
5. Don’t be so scripted on camera. — All of your Hillcasts are done with professional makeup, lighting and sets. Get out from behind that stylized desk and take us for a walk around your campaign headquarters. Walk down the street with a camera guy and ask regular Americans what they care about. Answer their questions off the cuff and on the spot. You can always edit later if you’re afraid that your remarks will be taken out of context.

I’m sure there are a bunch more opinions, and I’ll offer them up in due time. But these are just a few of the ideas I have. I think I’ll probably cross-post this or some version of it to my work blog — where I talk about these things all the time — in the morning.

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