Category: Social Media and the Web

Social media, blogging, tweeting, facebooking, web design, and all the stuff that isn’t here yet. Subcategories highlight some areas of particular expertise.

Fear the Culture of Fear (danah boyd SXSW 2012) [en]

[fr] A écouter absolument, cette conférence donnée par danah boyd l'an dernier sur le lien entre la peur, l'économie de l'attention, les réseaux, la surcharge d'information, la transparence, et bien d'autre chose encore. Version écrite.

Danah‘s talk is titled The Power of Fear in Networked Publics. Listen to it as soon as you can. (It’s an hour long, and danah is a wonderful speaker.) Or do what I did, which is drop it into iTunes and have it come up randomly a year later when you’re listening to music.

The amount of content available fuels the attention economy, in which fear is a great tool to get people’s attention. The internet and social media increase the information overload issue (though it is not a new problem, as Anaïs Saint-Jude brilliantly explained at Lift12), thus intensifying the role of fear in our society.

Oh, and sewing machines are evil because women will spend their days rubbing their legs together.

Listen to danah. I’m going to listen again. These are complex issues and danah is absolutely great at laying out that complexity.

 

 

Back to Blogging, et après? [fr]

[en] What happens after "Back to Blogging"?

Jour 10. Ça a passé vite. Dix jours que j’ai lancé le deuxième “Back to Blogging”. On est au bout, bravo à tous les gagnants! (Et c’est chacun de vous qui décide ce qu’il fallait faire pour gagner…)

La machine est lancée, et après, qu’est-ce qu’on fait? Est-ce qu’on continue à bloguer tous les jours? Est-ce qu’on baisse la pression? Si vous avez fait le premier “Back to Blogging”, comment ça s’est passé pour vous? Pour m’a part, ça m’avait bien reboostée, mais ensuite je suis partie offline trop longtemps. Cette fois, c’est un peu différent: je pars quelques jours à la montagne dimanche — et une semaine après mon retour, deux semaines sur l’eau. Mouais, en fait, je vais pas être par là tant que ça. On verra.

Deux réflexions pour vous laisser aujourd’hui:

  • bloguer, c’est aussi simplement savoir écrire; j’oublie à quel point écrire cela ne va pas de soi; argumenter, en particulier
  • vous êtes plusieurs à m’avoir fait remarquer que mes articles de blog partagés dans facebook sont systématiquement illustrés du logo Orange; je vous rassure, je ne suis pas payée pour faire de la pub (il paraît que je pourrais même m’attirer des ennuis si les mauvaises personnes voient ça!) — et dès que j’ai appuyé sur “publier”, je vais aller tenter de remédier à ce sponsoring involontaire (merci Fleur pour le lien)

Je pourrais aussi vous dire que j’adore Prezi et Skitch, que je suis en train de me concocter une bibliothèque d’exemples à utiliser dans mes cours et présentations (il était temps), et que plein de choses bouillonnent dans ma tête côté enseignement, online et off. A suivre!

2ème Back to Blogging Challenge, day 10. Bloguent aussi: Nathalie Hamidi (@nathaliehamidi), Evren Kiefer (@evrenk), Claude Vedovini (@cvedovini), Luca Palli (@lpalli), Fleur Marty (@flaoua), Xavier Borderie (@xibe), Rémy Bigot (@remybigot), Jean-François Genoud (@jfgpro), Sally O’Brien (@swissingaround), Marie-Aude Koiransky (@mezgarne), Anne Pastori Zumbach (@anna_zap), Martin Röll (@martinroell), Gabriela Avram (@gabig58), Manuel Schmalstieg (@16kbit), Jan Van Mol (@janvanmol), Gaëtan Fragnière (@gaetanfragniere), Jean-François Jobin (@gieff), Yann Graf (@yanngraf). Hashtag:#back2blog.

Working With Bloggers: The Tip of the Iceberg [en]

[fr] La gestion de crise, c'est la partie immergée de l'iceberg -- la véritable raison pour laquelle les médias sociaux (et les relations blogueurs en particulier) ont leur place dans les activités de l'entreprise.

Over the last year, amongst the various things I do, blogger relations have represented a significant part of my paid work. Again and again comes the question of justifying what we do: is the effort invested worth the results?

What we see of our results is the tip of the iceberg: the tweets, the facebook updates, the blogposts. The fact that bloggers who have been given a VIP ticket to an event open only to a select few end up having a more positive image of the brand. The fact that we’re communicating on this or that topic.

I understood really clearly what the rest of the iceberg is thanks to Yan Luong, who was lecturing on Saturday for the SAWI course I co-direct. Amongst many other interesting things, he told us that crisis management was the killer argument to get top management to buy in to social media.

In 2013, a crisis will not just take place offline. People will use social media. You will also have to manage your crisis online. The best way to prepare for this is to be listening, so you can detect signs of an impending crisis online (if that’s where it first manifests), to know your online communities and audience, and have established relationships with key people and ambassadors. The online field will be known to you. It will be easier to navigate. You might even find you already have allies there.

When we work with bloggers and other key online people to establish positive, respectful, and long-lasting relationships, we are in fact doing very proactive crisis management.

That is the immersed part of the iceberg. Of course, people focus on the tip, and say “hey, only 5 bloggers came to your event” or “why are there only 8 blog posts about this?”

But when that crisis ship sails by, you’ll be glad your iceberg also reaches underwater.

2nd Back to Blogging Challenge, day 9. On the team: Nathalie Hamidi (@nathaliehamidi), Evren Kiefer (@evrenk), Claude Vedovini (@cvedovini), Luca Palli (@lpalli), Fleur Marty (@flaoua), Xavier Borderie (@xibe), Rémy Bigot (@remybigot), Jean-François Genoud (@jfgpro), Sally O’Brien (@swissingaround), Marie-Aude Koiransky (@mezgarne), Anne Pastori Zumbach (@anna_zap), Martin Röll (@martinroell), Gabriela Avram (@gabig58), Manuel Schmalstieg (@16kbit), Jan Van Mol (@janvanmol), Gaëtan Fragnière (@gaetanfragniere), Jean-François Jobin (@gieff), Yann Graf (@yanngraf). Hashtag:#back2blog.

Tinkering with Evernote, Tumblr, IFTTT, and Pocket [en]

[fr] Je bidouille avec Pocket, IFTTT, Evernote, et Tumblr.

This is incomplete tinkering. More questions than solutions. Welcome into my ecosystem for dealing with other people’s content.

I’m a fan of the “read later” button, my buckets are overflowing, and I’m fully aware of the aspirational nature of my ever-growing collection of things to read. I do read, though.

When I read things, I publish snippets (my “notes”) to Digital Crumble. I use Evernote to store all kinds of data and content, and am moving towards storing more and more in it. (No I’m not freaked out by the hacking episode, which I think they handled well.)

I used to use Instapaper as my “read later” bucket but have now switched to Pocket, mainly because the latter offers more triggers in IFTTT.

Here’s what I’d like to do:

I love IFTTT, but get frustrated that the triggers and actions associated to the channels I use are sometimes insufficient for my needs. And yes, this is probably often due to limitations placed by the service APIs (I’m still reeling from the loss of Twitter triggers). For example, the ingredients for the Pocket triggers only contain an excerpt of the saved page, and not the full content. Shame!

So, I might go back to just saving my “pages to read later” to Evernote, but it’s not quite as friendly as Pocket for reading and managing them.

2nd Back to Blogging Challenge, day 8. On the team: Nathalie Hamidi (@nathaliehamidi), Evren Kiefer (@evrenk), Claude Vedovini (@cvedovini), Luca Palli (@lpalli), Fleur Marty (@flaoua), Xavier Borderie (@xibe), Rémy Bigot (@remybigot), Jean-François Genoud (@jfgpro), Sally O’Brien (@swissingaround), Marie-Aude Koiransky (@mezgarne), Anne Pastori Zumbach (@anna_zap), Martin Röll (@martinroell), Gabriela Avram (@gabig58), Manuel Schmalstieg (@16kbit), Jan Van Mol (@janvanmol), Gaëtan Fragnière (@gaetanfragniere), Jean-François Jobin (@gieff), Yann Graf (@yanngraf). Hashtag:#back2blog.

Some Thoughts on Blogging: Original Content, Linking, Engaging [en]

[fr] Quelques réflexions sur l'enseignement de l'art du blog.

I like teaching people about blogging. Right now I have nearly 100 students who are learning to blog, with varying enthusiasm and success. Teaching blogging makes me realize that this mode of expression which comes naturally to me is not that easy to master. Here are a couple of the main hurdles I’ve noticed for the student-blogger:

  • Original content. It seems obvious that a blog will contain original content, but in the age of Tumblr (I love Tumblr) and Facebook (I love Facebook) and Twitter (I love Twitter) it seems there is a bias towards republishing rather than creating. One of the things that make a blog a blog is the fact that the blogger has taken the trouble to think and try and communicate ideas or experiences or emotions to their reader, in the written form. Some early attempts at blogging resemble Facebook walls.
  • Links. Writing in hypertext is not easy. A blog is not an island. A blog is connected to many other pages on the web, be they blog articles or not. It’s caught in the web. It’s part of the web. A blog which never links elsewhere? Might be a journal or a memoir, but it’s missing out on something. What do I link to? When? Which words do I place my links on? The art of linking is full of subtleties.
  • Engaging. Blogging is about writing, but also about reading and responding. Links ensure that a blog doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The parallel human activity is responding to comments, reading other bloggers, linking to them socially, and actually engaging with content found elsewhere. Some will say “comment on other people’s articles”, but that is not the whole story. Leaving a superficial comment is not it. Trying to understand the other, daring to challenge and disagree (respectfully), push thoughts further and drag others out of their comfort zone: there is something philosophical about the practice of blogging.

Some things are relatively easily taught: how to hit publish; how to write in an informal voice; how to dare being subjective. But how do you teach engagement? How do you teach debate? I know the Anglo-Saxon (at least American) school curriculum includes debating. Switzerland, sadly, doesn’t — and we tend to shy away from it, or end up in “dialogues de sourds” with two polarised camps each trying to convert the other.

2nd Back to Blogging Challenge, day 7. On the team: Nathalie Hamidi(@nathaliehamidi), Evren Kiefer (@evrenk), Claude Vedovini (@cvedovini), Luca Palli (@lpalli), Fleur Marty (@flaoua), Xavier Borderie (@xibe), Rémy Bigot (@remybigot),Jean-François Genoud (@jfgpro), Sally O’Brien (@swissingaround), Marie-Aude Koiransky (@mezgarne), Anne Pastori Zumbach (@anna_zap), Martin Röll (@martinroell), Gabriela Avram (@gabig58), Manuel Schmalstieg (@16kbit), Jan Van Mol (@janvanmol), Gaëtan Fragnière (@gaetanfragniere), Jean-François Jobin (@gieff). Hashtag:#back2blog.

Gmail Storage Space Problem: Account Blocked, Wrong Numbers [en]

[fr] Problème de quota Gmail.

I’ve been sitting here for an hour with Elisabeth trying to figure out what the deal is with her Gmail storage. Here’s the story:

  • 10 days or so ago, Gmail tells her she’s used up 101% of her storage quota, blocks outgoing e-mail
  • she goes back and deletes lots of old e-mails, attachments and all (years of e-mail) but the quote indicator and message inviting her to get more storage doesn’t change
  • she empties the trash and waits 24 hours or so; still nothing; however, when she follows the link to buy more storage, the storage indicator there tells her she is now using 30% or so of her quota
  • in desperation, she buys the 25Gb Google Drive storage plan
  • 24 hours later, she notices that the block on outgoing e-mail is lifted and that her storage quote now says 90Gb — but that she is using 13.7Gb of those 90Gb.

I have poked around everywhere I could. She has almost nothing in Google Docs or Google Plus. The trash is indeed empty. The mails are indeed deleted. When we viewed her subscription plan, it indicated she was using 0.01% of her quota — obviously different numbers here.

What on earth is going on? How do we get Gmail to see how much storage she is really using? Any ideas welcome.

2nd Back to Blogging Challenge, day 2. Others: Nathalie Hamidi(@nathaliehamidi), Evren Kiefer (@evrenk), Claude Vedovini (@cvedovini), Luca Palli (@lpalli), Fleur Marty (@flaoua), Xavier Borderie (@xibe), Rémy Bigot (@remybigot),Jean-François Genoud (@jfgpro), Sally O’Brien (@swissingaround), Marie-Aude Koiransky (@mezgarne), Anne Pastori Zumbach (@anna_zap), Martin Röll (@martinroell), Gabriela Avram (@gabig58), Manuel Schmalstieg (@16kbit). Hashtag:#back2blog.

Second "Back to Blogging" Challenge [en]

[fr] Un court article par jour pendant 10 jours, histoire de reprendre le rythme et de se souvenir qu'écrire un article sur un blog, ça peut être vite fait.

Do you have a blog?

Have you been really bad about blogging of late, like me?

I bring to you, for the second time, a 10-day “Back to Blogging” challenge.

Starting tomorrow (Monday), I will write a short blog post each day. Quick and dirty. Get something out the door. I expect to spend maximum 30 minutes on it.

Feel inspired to join in? Hashtag: #back2blog.

(Last time around I published links to all the posts of the day at the bottom of each article. It took way more time than the actual blogging! If anybody has ideas about how to automate this, I’m all ears.)

The winning team!

Gmail: essentiel d'activer la double identification (avec téléphone) [fr]

[en] Haven't turned on Google two-factor authorization? Do it now, or you risk being the next Mat Honan.

Pour mes lecteurs plus francophones, dans la série “sécurité internet de base”, il est essentiel d’avoir pour votre e-mail non seulement un bon mot de passe, unique, et que vous ne partagez pas, mais également d’activer l’authentification en deux étapes.

C’est le genre de système qu’utilise votre e-banking depuis des lustres: pour vous connecter, vous devez donner votre mot de passe (=quelque chose que vous savez) et prouver via un code reçu par SMS que vous êtes en possession de votre téléphone mobile (=quelque chose que vous avez). Ainsi, le simple crack de votre mot de passe ne suffit plus à rentrer dans votre boîte e-mail.

Une fois activée la double authentification, Google va générer à votre demande des mots de passe à usage unique pour les services et applications que vous avez besoin de connecter à votre compte Gmail. Par exemple, votre logiciel de chat pour Google Talk, votre client e-mail sur votre ordinateur si vous en utilisez un, ou un réseau social qui voudrait accéder à vos contacts pour vous aider à démarrer.

Pas convaincu encore? Lisez Matt Cutts, patron de l’anti-webspam chez Google, qui vaporise un certain nombre de mythes (oui, si vous perdez votre téléphone, il y a quand même moyen pour vous d’accéder à votre e-mail!). Il a écrit cet article suite au hacking assez dramatique dont a été victime Mat Honan (en gros, perdu toutes ses données dans l’histoire, y compris toutes les photos de la première année de vie de sa fille). Si cette triste histoire ne vous motive pas à prendre un tout petit peu sérieusement la sécurité de votre identité en ligne… je ne peux rien faire pour vous!

CatBlock Fills Your Internets With Cats [en]

[fr] CatBlock vous montre qu'internet est fait de chats. Miaou!

The other day, Anna told me I should blog about CatBlock for Chrome. Here we go.

You knew the internet was made of cats, right? Well, instead of simply hiding ads like AdBlock, CatBlock reveals all the hidden cats inside them.

Since I’ve been using it, it has greatly helped me get my daily cat fix. Yes, with CatBlock, my work is no longer interrupted by a sudden urge to run off and look at cat pictures on Tumblr or I Can Has Cheezburger. (Or wherever the cute cats are hiding nowadays.)

See it in action:

Blog with CatBlock

Blog with Cat (CatBlock

Une Nuit au Sahara -- catblock

catblock -- rencontre sérieuse

You can even send in photos of your own cats if you like. Did you spot Safran?

And if you’re not that into cats, you can tell CatBlock to display pretty much anything: unicorns, dogs, or even motorbikes.

Go download AdBlock/CatBlock, which started off as an April Fools’ joke. You’ll have to pay a small monthly fee but it’s a great way to support the developer of AdBlock.

Meow!

Anil Dash Writes About The Web We Lost [en]

[fr] Le web qu'on a perdu. Nostalgie.

Yes, there are people who have been blogging for longer than me. Quite a few of them, actually. Anil Dash is one. You should read him.

His most recent article (found thanks to danah, who has also been blogging for longer than me, and whom you should also read) is titled The Web We Lost. It hits right on the nostalgia that has been creeping up on me these last years, expressed for example in A Story About Tags, and Technorati, and Tags or Ye Olde-School Blogs Are Still Around.

Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr and Pinterest are all great, but they tend to suck us in, and I feel we are all collectively high on real-time content and interaction. I miss the slower days. I miss the sense of “community” I felt with other bloggers in the old days, as I mention in the wrap-up post to my “Back to Blogging” challenge. I feel that on Twitter and Facebook community has been replaced with network. Networking is great. I love spending time with my network. But it’s not the same thing.

Most of all, the timeline we now live in is made up of transient content. It’s there and gone. It’s the world of orality, of the spoken word which evaporates once pronounced, even though we are typing. We are going back to an oral tradition. Blogs and wikis, however, are still part of the written tradition. We are losing searchability. We are also using content portability due to the lack of RSS feeds on certain platforms, and increasingly restrictive API access. APIs seem to be the promise for more holes in our buckets, but they seem more and more to be a way to control tightly what happens to the content locked in a given platform.

That’s sad. That’s not the way I hoped things would go.

There is more. Go and read Anil’s piece. And leave a comment there through Facebook.