from Annie Hall:
Annie as they are driving through Beverly Hills:
God, it’s so clean out here…
Alvi:
It’s because they don’t throw away their trash. They recycle it into television shows.
Television garbage
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click the infographics to discover my Storify release of the definition of PR.
Enjoy.
Antoine Didienne.
How to blog for beginners: 1. Before you start blogging.
So, you want to open a blog and you don’t know where to start. WordPress is the ONLY blogging platform you should be looking at. Who else offers you the possibility to go off on your own once you have outgrown the WordPress.COM platform? WordPress.ORG, that’s who? And yes, you can transfer all of your blog and a few clicks and the transition is seamless..
Right, so you’ve wisely chosen to go with the .COM format for now. Now, What?
I am not here to give you tutorials on how to use WordPress. I wish, but I am not that good at it. BUT, I certainly can give you some advice on tools you can use to make for yourself a very presentable blog.
BEFORE you start blogging away you need to figure out a couple of things:
- What’s your blog about?
- How will it be different form others?
- Who do you want to reach?
- What do you want to achieve with it?
Here are a few more questions you need to ask yourself. Those following questions will come up eventually but I don’t think you need to worry about it just now if it’s a personal blog. If your objective it going pro right away, well then yeah. In the mean time, maaaah.
- Who’s your competition?
- Who do you want to emulate?
- Are you going to “invest” in metrics?
Does it feel a bit daunting? Anxiety attack just yet? To me, it felt like What a claustrophobe would experience if he she had to walk through a tunnel.
Yes, just like that one. Nice tunnel isn’t it?
Go write all the answers to the questions above down on a sheet of paper and then check for the second installment: The Blog Post.
Antoine Didienne.
can touch this. u just can’t own it.
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I heard this wonderful quote from a social media expert that made me think a lot. I have rarely heard truer words. Here they are:
You can’t own social but you can lead social. If you own, you restrict.
She continues on to say:
Statistically, social is led by any of these three departments (in chronological order): Marketing, Public Relations, and Human Resources.
What do you think?
Antoine Didienne.
P.S.: Here is what I thought on the subject in a previous post.
Storify it
I wish I could tell you that I came up with this clever pun but Storify is the culprit. It’s a news curating, “make your own newspaper” tool. You can tell your own story, bringing in sources from around the web, thus making your story more compelling. You are the reporter, editor and publisher of your own story.
It’s awesome and incredibly powerful. It’s a shame I don’t use it more often.
Check out this story I have published as an example: Hacktivism
Antoine Didienne.
Hacktivism III
In the past, Anonymous has taken actions against the establishment, government corruption, corporate cowardice when under pressure from the American government and outspoken racist radio talk shows using massive attacks on the targets servers. In my opinion, these actions were commendable but they lacked depth.
Now, these hacktivists have taken a more committed approach to their actions. Anonymous hacked into the servers of the law firm handling the case of Sgt. Wuterich and in a WikiLeaks fashion released 3GB of emails to the public in the intent to expose the injustice (and moral corruption) of the American court system. Sgt. Wuterich will receive no jail time, but only a slight slap on the back of the hand, while Army soldier Bradley Manning (who has not killed 24 innocent men) is still imprisoned -most likely for a very long time- because they want to make an example out of him.
Although this post is way more politically engaged than I am used to, I have to say that maybe Anonymous is an answer to something I long to see from the media as the watchdog of the government, the fourth branch of power after the executive, the legislative and the judicial. The media hardly do what it is supposed to do: investigate the government’s actions, whether it is to praise or point a finger at because they are private entities way more interested in profits than in informing.
I don’t think it is much of a coincidence if the Occupy Wall Street movement wants similar things than Anonymous. Both bodies are a way for the people to take their country back from greed and power. Anonymous and Occupy just might be our Luke and Leia Skywalker. It will be interesting to see what comes next and how Anonymous’ actions escalate and what results it brings forth.May the force be with them.
I don’t think it is much of a coincidence if the Occupy Wall Street movement wants similar things than Anonymous. Both bodies are a way for the people to take their country back from greed and power. Anonymous and Occupy just might be our Luke and Leia Skywalker. It will be interesting to see what comes next and how Anonymous’ actions escalate and what results it brings forth.May the force be with them.
Antoine Didienne.
The smoking network
My Facebook Op-Ed
You smoke? naaaah, me neither. You have a Facebook account? yup, me too.
What’s the connection?
Socializing.
People used to smoke to socialize. Most people have started up smoking to fit in with a group, whether you wanted to be rebellious or just because it was what people did around you. Actually, those two reasons are intrinsically connected on many levels, but this is only part of my point. Smoking was an excuse to bond with others. It was cool, everybody was doing it and even though it was bad for you, nobody cared. Big Tobacco was not yet seen as it is today. It ha(s)d enormous power and looked unstoppable. And holy kittens, it is addictive so that you keep on smoking. Another thing of importance with Big Tobacco was that they did not care in the least about their customers. They did care, but only that about that would bring them profit, nothing else.
Facebook is basically the same thing as smoking. it is used to socialize, although there never was a rebellious act in joining Facebook, the blue and white platform is a pretty cool way to communicate and socialize with others. I use Facebook to make sure that I bond with my friends and family. And to tell the truth I think it is somewhat efficient, especially when they live very far away like it is in my case. I say somewhat because we all know that Facebook will never replace face-to-face physical interaction even though they are trying very hard to be a hub of every tool we use on the internet (email, social, audio and video conference, and photos) so that you stay longer on the site.
Facebook is also similar to Big Tobacco due to the fact that they don’t give a kitten’s butt about you; or me for that matter. They care about us having a satisfying experience when we use Mark’s product, but basically nothing else. I am ok with that fact because of the nature of the beast: it’s a company, not a non-profit organization. BUT, the difference is that it “feels” that Facebook thinks of the user much like the machines think of humans in The Matrix (you still haven’t seen this movie? you serious?).
Every time Facebook rolls out an update on its platform, hundreds of articles concerned about people’s privacy pop out. And every time, I am appalled by the fact that Facebook makes changes in MY profile’s settings without telling me. Thank goodness I read articles and I “think” I know what to do to keep things away from Facebook’s prying eyes, but I think I am part of a minority of “informed” people (pedantic enough for you?). We probably don’t know everything that Facebook is collecting about us. To paraphrase Mashable’s article, there are at least 7 things you don’t know about Facebook’s new timeline and the implicit privacy changes that it will entail. Are you ready for it?
You know what’s bothering me? Right now, no one else comes close to replace Facebook’s interactivity, amount of users, etc. It’s the network my friends and family members are on. That bothers me greatly because the incentive to leave Facebook is still too little for me. I don’t think I am fully aware of how much Facebook is spying on my use of the network. I don’t even know how many companies I have “allowed” to access my profile.
Overall, It bothers me because I am addicted to it on some level. We all are. I know it’s bad for me but I don’t feel like quitting yet. I can kick the habit anytime I want. It’s just a couple of times a day after all. I am a social Facebook user.
… right?
Antoine Didienne
