If you tweet for work, who owns your Twitter profile

You’ve invested much of the last two years building up your profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon et al to the point where you’re a power user on several of the sites. You’ve got thousands of followers on Twitter and hundreds of friends and subscribers on Digg and StumbleUpon.

You didn’t feel guilty building these networks during your work hours because you used them to market your employer as much as you used them to build relationships. Your organization has certainly benefited from your reach across several social media platforms.

You’ve benefited personally, as well. Your stature as a social media elite has helped land you a new gig at a respected PR agency. So, my question is, does your old employer have a legal claim to your Twitter and Digg profiles?

Read more at 800 Pound Guerilla

Republican wake up call? Hit the snooze button

The Republicans are coming. The Republicans are coming. Just in case you were wondering what was causing that clickety clacking noise, it’s the rumblings and keystrokes of a conservative revolution (a true oxymoron if ever there was one) on the Web.

After getting their asses handed to them on Nov. 4, the Republicans have done a little soul-searching and they’ve realized that if they ever want to win a national election again, they’re going to have to figure out this thing we call the Internets.

Read more at Another Dead Canary

WordPressDirect: No fuss blogging or spammer’s delight?

Michael Kinsley’s recent piece in Time online asked the question: “How many blogs does the world need?” Kinsley was wondering if, at this point in the history of the Internet, there was anyone out there without a blog?

The opportunity for us all to express an opinion is wonderful. Having to read all those opinions isn’t. In 2004 there were probably still more people reading blogs than writing them. Not so now, or so it seems.

I came across Kinsley’s piece after seeing a mention on Mashable about a new service for the would-be blogger who wants a blog but doesn’t actually want to, you know, do any writing.

Meet WordPressDirect, a blog-in-a-can service that will have your blog up and running in no time and all you have to do is enter some key words to describe what you’d like your blog to be about. WordPressDirect then scrapes different user-generated content sites, such as YouTube and Yahoo Answers, looking for content that matches your key words.

Read more at 800 Pound Guerilla

Suicide on Justin.tv sharpens focus on social media

He’s not the first person to commit suicide in front of a live audience and, sadly, 19-year-old Abraham K. Biggs of Pembroke Pines, Fla. probably won’t be the last. According to reports popping up on the Web, Biggs took some pills Wednesday night and then laid down on his bed while users on Justin.tv watched. Mark “Rizzin” Hopkins at Mashable gives a detailed account:

After an unspecified amount of time, one forum member in particular from India became concerned by Biggs’ lack of movement and hunted down the actual name and location. He then pleaded with the forum to call the Miami-Dade police department, but was met with cynical replies declining to intervene on account of his “troll status.”

After several unsuccessful emails by the forum member to Miami-Dade police, he borrowed his father’s mobile and spoke to a number of policemen who didn’t take the call seriously, but directed him to the Broward County Sheriff’s Department.

Approximately an hour later, Biggs’ door was busted down and BSO and paramedics arrived on the scene. After quickly confirming his status, covered the camera.

I wonder how long it will take for someone to blame Biggs’ death on his use of social media, in this case the BodyBuilding.com forum where he interacted with other members and Justin.tv, which allows users to stream live video, share videos and chat. Honestly, I’d never heard of Justin.tv before tonight. By this time tomorrow, I’m guessing a lot more people will know about it.

Read more on 800 Pound Guerilla

For the faint of heart, Digg is still a wild, untamed territory

I think of Digg as the wild, wild west of the social networking world. You post comments and links there at your own risk. The mob’s reaction to spammers and those who break etiquette or post something unpopular is not for the timid. Frontier justice is swift and often merciless.

That’s not all bad; the system, despite its flaws, usually succeeds in propping up interesting stories and burying those that are not.

So, I wasn’t surprised to read about the sexist reaction on Digg to a Fast Company story about the most influential women in Web 2.0. The anonymity of the Web emboldens a lot of jerks out there. I found the article interesting and worth a read, even if lists like that are often thinly-veiled attempts at getting linked to by the people you’re flattering.

Read more at 800 Pound Guerilla

D.C. voting rights rally

I’ve been shooting a lot of protests lately. This picture is from the Veterans Day rally in support of giving D.C. representation in Congress. In D.C. we pay taxes but don’t get to elect anyone to Congress. I think they call that taxation without representation.

Posted at Cosmic Smudge

Viva La Revolución

If you believe a recent Wired article, I’m starting this blog a few years too late. Blogs are done. Finished. Kaput. They’ve been tossed into the media dustbin, right on top of newspapers and television news.

In his article, Paul Boutin argues that social media, such as Facebook, Flickr and Twitter, have made blogs obsolete. Who has the time to craft well-written blog posts when you can get instant, 140-word gratification on Twitter?

If I totally agreed with Boutin, I suppose I wouldn’t have started this blog. In fact, I started this blog specifically because of social media.

Read more at 800 Pound Guerilla

Our moment is now

I spent the week before the election volunteering for the Obama campaign in the Roanoke, Va. area. This was taken in the Obama campaign HQ in downtown Salem.This card was handed to voters standing in line. On the back is a message from Obama urging people to stay in line and vote.

Posted at Cosmic Smudge

Politico’s whack job on Palin

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m completely in the tank for Obama. I’ve phone banked for him and I’m heading to Roanoke later this week to work as a volunteer to get the vote out. If you’ve read any of the other entries on this blog, you know that I’m a flaming liberal.

I don’t support John McCain for many reasons, chief among them his decision to add the incredibly unqualified Sarah Palin to the ticket. Well, the truth is I wouldn’t have supported McCain no matter who he named as a running mate, but his decision to tap Palin made me feel a lot better about it.

It’s late and I don’t have the energy to go off on Sarah’s shortcomings — her fake reformer credentials, her questionable ethics, her lack of intellectual curiosity, her inability to form complete sentences, her eagerness to incite the fear, hate and insecurities of the mob. Shit, there’s really not anything I like about her.

Which is why what I’m about to write feels sort of weird: I’m bothered by this whole “whack job” blowup.

Read more at Another Dead Canary

Why McCain will have to wear Ashley Todd’s scarlett letter

Here’s the question of the day: How did the entire blogosphere and twitterverse know intuitively that Ashley Todd was some imbalanced attention-seeker almost immediately after the story broke but John McCain, Sarah Palin and their top staff did not?

Predictably, the liberal bloggers and tweeters were calling bullshit as soon as they heard Todd’s tale of getting mugged and having a backwards “B” carved scratched into her cheek while she was somewhere on the “wrong side” of Pittsburgh. The B, presumably, was for “Barack.” The mugger, a tallish, thinnish black man (apparently dyslexic) became enraged after he noticed that Todd, a McCain campaign worker, had a McCain bumper sticker on her car.

Of course, everyone knew it was a lie just by looking at the picture of her “disfigured” face posted at Smoking Gun. Why would the mugger carve a backwards B? And why did he take extra care not to break her skin with his knife after violently punching, kicking and throwing her to the ground?

Read more at Another Dead Canary

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