If you’re thinking about social media and whether or not you should bother engaging with it either in business, or in ministry, then here’s some more evidence that you should. Especially because anybody born from 1978 onwards is a “millennial” or a digital native, as home in the virtual world as they are in the real world.
Click it for a bigger version.
Via Blogbydc
Also worth checking out the Nielsen Social Media Report (PDF – though you may need to fill out a form)
So. For those of you not following along with the discussion on yesterday’s post about worship… here’s an update.
I wrote that post with a healthy dose of irony. I thought. And I was aiming for humour, rather than offence, when adopting the persona of an “angry young man” essentially writing to a bunch of other “angry young people” and calling them old. I was trying to call out those people who were once advocators of change for being a bit stuck in the rut of that advocacy when things have changed. I also thought it was funny that the issue at hand dealt with music – which I thought was universally understood to be a marker of generational change…
And, in order to be noticed, I adopted hyperbole. I ironically wrote a reactive polemic against reactive polemics, calling for nuance. I thought that would be relatively clear.
But it turns out, once again, that the Internet isn’t very good for that sort of stuff. Even though I think that blogging is a medium different to other mediums (ie content is spur of the moment, geared towards the sensational, provocative, not completely thought out and referenced, opinionated, a contribution to discourse, etc), and think the reader has as much responsibility to consider the genre when responding as the writer does to consider the reader when writing… I think this post failed. People responded to the style, rather than the substance. And so, I edited it. You should read the post and join the discussion.
I am sorry that my post was not clear, and I’m sorry that it was possibly an offensive caricature of particular positions (again, ironically, because I would argue that almost all reactionary/polemic based stuff, especially on the internet, relies on caricatures and straw men).
Also, I am sorry if you’re 35 and I called you old, or if my post offended you in myriad other ways. But I guess my one response is – don’t let the offence get in the way of engaging with the issue, or be an excuse for dismissing the substance of the post or its criticism of your position.
While we’re on the subject…
This is why we Christians need to think about how we use social media for Jesus.
Via Jeff Bullas
Ahh. New Zealand. Home of the long white cloud, Fergburger, and other holiday memories…
Also, home to this ingenious bloke who wrote a letter that humourously told the department of issuing stupid fines that their infringement notice was riddled with factual errors. Letters of note has the exchange.
Firstly, the ‘date of offence’ is listed as the 23rd of June 1974 with the time being at or around half past six in the evening. This is of grave concern to me because I was not issued a drivers license until sometime in 1990 and I have no desire to be charged with driving while not legally licensed. I do not have a clear recollection of very much at all before I was three and a half years old, so I rang Mum to see if she remembered what I was doing that day. She said that – coincidentally – I was born that day!!
He goes on (and you should read the whole thing).
“This is where it starts to get really strange. The car that I must have crawled into had the same license plate number as the one I have now – AEH924 (according to the infringment notice). However, my car is a dark gray Nissan Bluebird SSS, with dual cup holders, 1800cc’s of grunt, air-conditioning and electric windows.
You will notice that a time-travel option is not included on this model, so that rules out any ‘Back to the Future’ issues and the car I was driving back then could not have been the the one I drive today.
This is clarifed by the infringement notice which states that the vehicle was a Honda saloon. How this relates to my Nissan Bluebird, I cannot fathom. I can only hypothesise that, back in 1974, the first range of proto-type Hondas had an automated number plate changing mechanism (like on the A-Team) which were used to avoid parking tickets and facilitate safer getaways from burglaries, armed hold-ups and the like.”
Image Credit: Robbie’s Photo Art, Flickr
One of the big rules of the internet age, especially when emails can be circulated and become viral in, well, seconds, is never put anything in writing that you don’t want going viral.
PR companies should know this. Which is what makes this email from the boss of a PR consulting firm to his staff particularly special.
“So, I am gravely serious when I write this – if I catch someone not replacing the milk, or at least, in the case where the downstairs store has close already, not sending an email to the office so the first person that arrives (usually Christa or me) can pick one up upon arrival – then I am going to fire you. Im not joking. You will be fired for not replacing the milk, and have fun explaining that one to your next employer. This is not a empty threat so PLEASE don’t test me.”
Now he’s saying it’s all a big hyperbolic joke, and there’s been a misunderstanding… but that’s trying to shut the gate after the horse has bolted. Here’s the story on Business Insider.
There’s a shortcut doing the rounds. You have to be a Facebook developer, which is incredibly easy. And only other developers will be able to see your new profile until they’re made public (you can sign up to get one when they’re made public here).
Facebook Timeline looks impressive. Don’t believe me? Let Don Draper convince you… That video is a mashup of a Mad Men pitch for a Kodak product and details about Facebook’s new profile format. It was created by a guy named Eric Leist.
I’ve got to say – I like these changes and this new design more than I’ve liked anything Facebook has done before, change wise. I’m not one of those people who complains about redesigns. I mean. Look what Facebook looked like when it launched. Navigation is intuitive – and it’s fun looking back through my own story, I’m looking forward to browsing through other peoples’ histories too. That’s what Facebook is for. Right?
Anyway, here are some shots from my sneak peak.
This is a “summary” of photos I was tagged in in September.
And places I visited.
Pretty nifty.
A significant time…
This could be game changing for businesses and churches in terms of creating content with some legacy value, there’s something nice about having an entity’s history there to play around with.
Delicious. And perfect for your next meaty missive.
Love it, designed by Henry Hargreaves, via Dripbook
I like this marketing campaign. It’s Japanese. It’s for Star Wars, for a new boxed set. What a clever use of everyday items…
Some details here.
This transcript of a radio piece provides a nice little snapshot of the inner workings of a graphic designer’s mind, when it comes to how they think about their own profession.
Some quotes.
“Graphic design has been likened to a wine glass. When we drink wine we barely notice the glass it’s served in. It wouldn’t be true to say that we don’t care what glass we drink out of — we wouldn’t choose to drink a rare vintage out of a Tupperware mug, for example — but it’s the wine that matters, not the vessel it comes in.”
“For many observers and commentators, graphic design’s embeddedness in commercial culture makes it into one of the specious modern black arts, like spin, hype and branding. And it’s undoubtedly true that most graphic design is about selling things in a consumer society.”
“Most recognise the fundamental difference between artists and designers: artists create work that comes from an inner impulse. Or to put it another way, they write their own briefs. Graphic designers, on the other hand, respond to briefs supplied by others — they are reactive. To go back to our glass of wine — artists supply the wine, graphic designers supply the glass.”
I, for one, appreciate the work of graphic designers. They make it possible to judge an object by its appearance because their work ties an object to a particular culture. And I like that.
I’m an Apple fanboy. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. I like iThings. But I’m a little underwhelmed about the new iPhone. Both Robyn and I are off contract, and lugging around a semi-bricked iPhone 3G, and a semi-bricked iPhone 3GS. We’ve been holding off on upgrading to the iPhone 4 believing the hype about an iPhone 5. But where is it?
So now the question – given that our phones barely receive or make calls anymore, and given that we actually do need phones (we don’t have a landline, and the phone provides internet when we’re on the road) – should we stump up the extra for a 4GS? And what provider should we use – we’ve been with Vodathree for ages, and while their customer service is adequate their network is not very good…
I’m not going to go to android – so shut your yaps you insidious open source google nerds… I like iTunes. I like my phone, iPad, and MacBook being essentially tied to the same mothership. But a flashy camera and a slightly faster processor? Seriously Apple. No wonder your share price dipped this morning… What do you reckon?
Jason Kottke runs one of the finest examples of the curated link blog out there. He manages to find and post some of the most interesting stuff online before just about any body else. Now, somebody built a robot version of Kottke… it’s an interesting experiment.
I don’t think of St. Eutychus as a link blog. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s a content blog. Sometimes it’s a soapbox. But my inclination towards link blogging waxes and wanes. It’s a great way to keep content flowing without investing significant time into posting, but you also get to a point where your curatorial or editorial senses are dulled. There are things on the Internet that don’t excite me as much as they used to. Everybody’s sharing stuff. Some people are sharing everything (I’m looking at you 22 Words)… Kottke describes this malaise beautifully in a piece about the robot version of himself…
“Some days, you just don’t want to do it,” Kottke says. “You look at so much stuff everyday and it all becomes kind of the same—all equally interesting or uninteresting. It’s hard to maintain that sense of discovery, that little hit that you get when you find something that you haven’t seen before. I’ve posted 15,000, maybe 20,000 links since I started. I’ve been whittling down the discovery space of things that are going to be new and interesting.”
Here’s Robottke – the machine version of the link blogger…
This is a pretty candid interview with Rob Janoff, the guy who designed the Apple logo, where he debunks a bunch of rumours – like any connection with the garden of Eden.
“Well, I’m probably the least religious person, so Adam and Eve didn’t have anything to do with it… I designed it with a bite for scale, so people get that it was an apple not a cherry. Also it was kind of iconic about taking a bite out of an apple. Something that everyone can experience. It goes across cultures. If anybody ever had an apple he probably bitten into it and that’s what you get. It was after I designed it, that my creative director told me: “Well you know, there is a computer term called byte”. And I was like: “You’re kidding!” So, it was like perfect, but it was coincidental that it was also a computer term. At the time I had to be told everything about basic computer terms.”
