What are your guilty pleasures, and when was the last time you indulged in one? I indulged in one of my guilty pleasures the other night and it was great experience.
Here are the details:
Backstory
I am admittingly late to the blogging game, as I only started blogging on LouisvillePM in July of 2008 and here in 2009. When I returned from living overseas in 2001, the social internets of my world were made up of a couple message boards. One for the car I drove, one for the NBA team I loved, and one for the local underground dance music scene I was into… Things were somewhat anonymous back then, and what I really enjoyed about those experiences were the arguments.
The sarcasm and oneupsmanship displayed on message boards is hands down, second to none.
Where I grew up, having a quick wit was a necessity that I learned to enjoy. Therefore, the fact that people I didn’t know were attempting to be smarter, funnier, or more sarcastic than me on the boards turned into hours researching topics, establishing positions, and making snarky counter arguments on points that, in retrospect, didn’t really matter. However, they did make for a thriving community.
This obsession morphed into a guilty pleasure that I had to stow away because it was taking up too much of my time. Time that I could waste here instead, right? What I had forgotten about, over the past few years, is the skill that getting into online arguments bestowed on me. The ability to rapidly pick a side and defend it with logic and proof is transferable into the real world. Even if it was developed in an unorthodox and potentially lame way…
Two things I learned during my time on the message boards were to not make things personal and to not take things personal. I can disagree with your ideas from here to last Wednesday, but I can’t call YOU names. If you insult ME, I will not get mad because after all… we are arguing on the internet which is something that people shouldn’t be allowed to get mad about.
Guilty Pleasures and Growth
Justin Kownacki has been on a totally entertaining tirade lately about being a better audience. About pushing each other. About making the social web better. I’ve appreciated his edge since I discovered his blog, but after reading these posts his words hit me. Being cool to one another in the blogosphere is expected. Coming on to somebody’s personal blog and disagreeing with them is almost unheard of these days… it could even get you labeled as a troll. (Which would be a fate worse than death for some.)
However, that is what Justin is asking us to do, because disagreement leads to both individual and group growth. I then realized this meant that I had to engage in a disagreement with him. Not in some kind of macho, there can be only one type of way. And not just for the sake of disagreement, either. I had to disagree because I had a disagreement, and because I owe it to him to push him in hopes that he would push me in return, and on… until some kind of conclusion.
The fun part is that I’ve spent the last few months reading through his responses to people who disagree with him on his blog. That led me to believe that I would be accosted with sarcasm upon any disagreement I displayed. The thought of this excited me, however, because it meant that I would be able to jump back into an intellectually sarcastic mosh pit of growth with somebody who’s opinion and style I respect.
I wasn’t disappointed. And what I learned about Justin through our exchange is that he seems to subscribe to the same two principles I learned on internet message boards: don’t make it personal and don’t take it personal.
After experiencing this with Justin, I agree that the social internet will only be able to grow and thrive is if WE are able to actually disagree with one another, on each other’s blogs or anywhere else, without getting our feelings hurt… These thoughts, however, will need to be explored in other posts.
Right now, I’m still giddy about the “fight” I was just in with Justin. And hope that we can continue to verbally joust with one another as the opportunities present themselves. We’ll both be better for it.
I’ve had a resurging interest in promoting @mathiask’s inaugural, I am Choking iPhone app this weekend. For whatever reason, I believe in it and want to see it become some sort of meme if possible.
Yes, I am aware that I need help.
So in my haste to get it in front of iPhone bloggers this evening, I cruised over to AllTop, scanned for blogs that looked like they knew how to party with their iPhones and reached out to four of the 50 or so blogs on the list that seemed to cater to apps of this nature. I didn’t write long winded messages about how I’ve loved their stuff forever, I simply wrote:
A friend of mine, @mathiask, created the I am Choking iPhone App that I have reviewed here on my personal blog. If it’s worthy of a mention on/from [BLOG X], that would be awesome. If nothing else though, I thought you may get a kick out of it. :)
Jerk Alert
What I didn’t do, before I rushed in to blogger outreach mode… was a quick Google Search on “I am Choking App.” Had I done that, I would have saved myself the embarrassment of askinig KRAPPS to take a look at an iPhone app that they had already showcased brilliantly right after the Super Bowl.
Totally my bad.
The Upside
What’s really cool about this story though, is how KRAPPS handled my obvious faux pas. I wasn’t scolded or made to feel stupid. KRAPPS sent me the link to their post about Peyton Manning using the I am Choking iPhone app after he threw that interception…
Phenomenal.
So I’m writing this post as a tribute to krapps.com, the place for out of the ordinary iPhone apps. I am now a blog subscriber, a Twitter follower, and promoter of what they’ve got going on over there. If you have a sense of humor, you should be too.
[Disclaimer up Front / Gratuitous Plug in the Rear ~ I work for Humana, the company that built the creation of the awesomeness you are about to behold. Today, I personally found a use that could give people who want to meet other people an edge. The thoughts below are my own, have not been vetted through any Humana approval process, and do not represent anything Humana would ever think about saying...]
Have you ever wanted to stalk an online influencer’s conversations before reaching out to them, but just didn’t know how because it’s way too hard? What if there was a tool that made stalking internet influencer conversations, and the people they’re having them with, a whole lot easier?
I co-created myTPSreport.com with @mathiask to track keywords, but have found that it can also work for conversation stalking if that’s your bag. Conversation stalking is like eavesdropping into the personal public conversations a given online influencer is having with their, what we can perceive to be, close connections.
@JasonFalls Case Study
Let’s say you just heard about Jason Falls because you read CNN or Mashable. You determine that he must be some sort of influencer to get quoted by those two prestigious institutions and want to stalk him a little bit before reaching out to him…
You want to stalk him primarily because you want to increase the likelihood that he will respond to you. Knowing who’s talking to him and what they’re talking about gives you insight that keeps you from coming off as irrelevant.
But you also want to stalk him because you’re kind of a creepy person who I’m definitely not judging right now.
Traditionally you can meet almost anybody online by commenting on their blogs, following/tweeting them, etc. But let’s say you want an edge over everyone else who does that stuff to strangers. You want to get acquainted with the people Jason’s talking to as well as Jason. Total CIA, Donnie Brasco undercover work to put your best foot forward during a first impression.
How would you do that?
You could use Mailana to visualize Jason’s relationships. (I’ve spoken with Pete Warden and he’s a super cool guy)
You could try to triangulate who Falls follows along with two other influencers (Like Marshall Kirkpatrick talked about here).
Or you can use myTPSreport.com. (A free Twitter Conversation Analytics Engine allowing you to find the who, what, when and where around any Twitter Search.)
who If you want to know who is talking to Jason the most over a certain period of time, then look at the top tweeters graph and you can find out in descending order. Extra Bonus if you already know anybody on the list. Click on a name and all of the tweets from that person containing @jasonfalls in them will appear in the tweet stream on the right hand side. Stalkertastic, right?
what Check out the trending topics around what people are saying when they talk about @jasonfalls. Click on a topic and peep all the tweets that have that word in them in the tweet stream on the right hand side.
when The analyze over time graph shows you spikes in the conversation around @jasonfalls. This information could be helpful to know, to attempt to optimize when you send him a message. The fewer mentions he’s looking at, the higher the chances he may reply to a random stranger’s your tweet.
where Look on the map in the main viewer to get an idea of the places where Jason is getting tweeted from. Clicking on a red bubble will populate the tweet stream with tweets from that location. Or you can do the same from the Tweetingest Places graph.
Use myTPSreport
One cool thing that I didn’t mention is that you are allowed to save searches for easy access when you come back. This means that there are a lot of other applications for myTPSreport.com outside of stalking internet influencers. Please let me know how you’re using it in the comments below.
There are many Chris Hall's in this world. This one blogs and tweets under the code name: hallicious.
