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My girls are both big fans of iCarly, and honestly it is a very watchable show. I don’t mind when it’s on. Tonight was the iMeet the First Lady” episode with Michelle Obama-and it was pretty funny.
Then came the moment I shuddered. The big announcement from Fred. Fred the Show was about to premiere.
For those un-initiated to the world of Fred, it started out as a screaming kid doing web videos which became viral in the tween and pre-tween set. Here’s a sample:
Now the good news for this debut-it was mercifully short. Fred thinks the music teacher in his school is missing and he goes on an all out search for her. See which other Nick stars you can spot helping Fred out:
Fortunately, it’s all a big misunderstanding and only 15 minutes long. What will be very scary as a parent though is the Saturday morning when Sponge Bob is mixed in with Fred the Show. That will be a long morning for sure.
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As we move through life we all gather experiences that help us from who we are, and in many cases can give us a level of expertise in diverse areas. While we may not be recognized world leaders in a subject, when you get into your social circles, if you think about it some, no doubt you will have an expert on cooking, an expert on baking, an expert on banking and very likely an expert on cancer.
I admit, expert may be a little strong-perhaps its expertise (at least experience).
But what is not over-stated is when you need help, advice or insight into something you will reach into your social fabric and find the person whose opinion you respect and who you think will give you guidance to get you through an event, point in life or a moment in time.
While I like to talk about technology, social media and mobile; the area of expertise I am more often asked about is being there to support a partner with cancer and how to pick up the pieces when cancer strikes.
In fact, if it were not for the last two items on my list above you would not be reading this blog. Still, it’s not quite expertise I feel blessed to have. I do feel blessed in some way to be able to positively share my experiences and who knows perhaps even help someone who is facing the decisions I was forced to face.
The reality though is that every situation is just slightly different. And every situation has different factors that weigh against it-making even real-time experience in my mind somewhat suspect. Still, I know it has a calming effect to know someone has walked the walk ahead of you.
Over the last month or so, I’ve offered some thoughts and insights to four different people who are setting out on the post cancer diagnosis path. One is a single woman, two are young families and one is a single guy. Half of the people are friends of friends the others are friends of mine. It does not make the advice any different, it perhaps changes slightly the way it’s delivered though.
But I still have this nagging feeling that maybe I should not be in that business because the factors are different, and there is no doubt the outcomes will be different in some way, shape or form. Still there are the contestants: the treatment’s effects on patient and supporters; a feeling of helplessness when you ask a doctor what you think is a black and white question and get shades of gray as an answer; the stark reality that no matter what the outcome is things will be changed.
While I’d love to be known as an expert in the areas I have a passion, perhaps my calling is to be the reluctant expert in living day-to-day and just making today better than yesterday-because tomorrow is too far away to worry about.
As 9.0 said this morning-my girls are getting a little spoiled this year at Hanukkah. And given all that has gone on-I think it’s OK. Or at least it’s not the worst thing that can happen.
By the way that declaration came after the first night-because they got their big present, the cell phone.
Neither of my kids had any idea a cell phone was coming their way this year. In fact, I had told them talk to me when you are 13, but a variety of things have gone on over the last few months that made me re-think my position.
But that’s not to say it did not come with strings. You see before being allowed to explore the features and functions of their Droid X (pictured) phones they had to sign a contract of responsibility. Yeah, I”m like that.
Basically the contract points out what I am committed to paying for and clearly states overages are out of their money. It also puts the onus of maintaining the device on them as well as using it responsibly.
They both have experience with losing iPod’s and DS’s devices for significant chunks of time for not following the rules and not being responsible-so they know there are consequences. The contract though is a first.
Here’s a look at the contract:
Contract of Cell Phone Ownership and Responsibility
As part of my ongoing policy with them of teaching them social responsibility in the connected world I thought in this case it was important for them to know the rules, know what they were getting and put consequences in writing for them.
We’ll see in six months if this works-but at least they know for now what the ground rules are and they know that if there is a problem, the phone is a privileged that can be rescinded at any time and not a right of passage.
In the immediate future-look out for a text from one of both of my kids-they are slowly working their way through every mobile number they can find.
So admittedly, I am somewhat shameless in my self promotion and I am good with that. Very early on in my career I learned the value of self promotion from former NYS Assemblyman Sam Colman. Mr. Colman’s office would put out press releases nearly every day-and almost any subject. The why when I asked Mr. Colman one day, “If I’m not out promoting myself, no one is.”
As I think it’s the case with most bloggers, I get a couple of email contacts per week from people looking for promotion-the ask is for me to do a product review. Usually it’s a mobile app or website, sometimes it’s a physical product and randomly (based on time, level of effort and personal interest) I will agree.
Lately though, I’ve been asked to do reviews for a couple of dating/hook up type websites. I have some history working with dating sites (I consulted for one when I left CBS last year) but that’s not very well-known.
Generally, this blog gets good traffic and is well targeted so it is appealing for certain brands.
While I am not sure I want to spend a lot of time reviewing dating websites (a subject for, I another blog post) I guarantee I am not spending money to review your site or your product. The inner journalist in me will not accept money for writing a review. But the pragmatist in me will not expend money (and time) to review your product either.
And this is the shameless behavior.
I ask people to download my book-but I don’t offer a coupon. I ask my friends (people I know directly) to write me up a review as well. I hope everyone writes a review for my book.
But I’ve never even considered sending out blind emails to a blog owner and giving them a link to my book, asking them for money and then saying please give me a nice review. That’s can’t be the business model for some of these sites, can it? It certainly does not seem sustainable and seems like it would be a waste of human bandwidth to send out those emails.
So many who know me for a while know I have kept for several years a social media blog. It was here I was able to share thoughts and commentary on what it was like to integrate social media and social media practice into traditional media.
As life changes and things change, I found I was doing a lot more social media commenting and product reviews on this blog-since my perspective has changed from media insider to a dad trying to navigate social media.
So, as of today, all of that social media content is now on this blog in the “Social Media Stuff” section. While I still work in the media-my focus has changed and the voice for my other blog is no longer as relevant. What is relevant though is that I have two pre-teens who leverage social media on a daily basis.
I am constantly reviewing products and sharing thoughts with other parents, so I think this is a pretty natural progression. I hope you all think so too….
One of the ways I hope to keep myself on the professional cutting edge is to offer a fresh perspective on the way content is consumed. One of the best ways I know to gather this information is to watch my kids (11. 0 and 8.5) and their friends as they gather around an iPod or computer.
Today though, I had the chance to go into 8.5′s third grade class and talk her peers. While under the guise of talking to them about journalism and news (which we did a little), I used it as an opportunity to find out how my daughter and her generation seek out and share information.
While it’s not a huge surprise (at least I hope its not), TV, radio, newspapers were not even in the discussion. I was a little surprised-Facebook and Twitter was not either. There are a lot of reasons for the latter-responsible parents is my hope, but the reality is 8-10 is well under the age requirements for those sights.
However, based on the discussion-text, text chat, video chat and especially search are far more important anyway.
On the discovery side-when I asked a class of 20 or so third graders how they find things out-and things I defined as news, information, websites, songs, videos, movies and entertainment-search was the number one way to find things. And when I pressed the kids, they didn’t care what the search engine was (Google was as good as Yahoo was as good as iTunes search). All they need is a search box and an execution point.
The quick take away on this is to over tag if necessary, but make sure tags capture all the keys to the content and all the imaginable entry points. While I am among the people who believe SEO, as we know it today is a dying art, the reality is SEO will continue to be a discoverability driver in some form. (An interesting note, one of the kids wanted to know about a way to search content shared via text chat, hmmmm).
On the consumption side, once again search was a huge driver to finding content. One of the girls in the class even talked about setting up an RSS homepage-similar to Pageflakes or MyGoogle to capture key elements. But a huge consumption driver for text and video is images. It’s a concept I am late to embrace but important. In the digital clutter, you still need to capture eyeballs. See any of the e-book stores (Amazon, B&N, iBooks). Which books are you likely to purchase if you are just scanning a topic? Eye-catching cover art is the driver.
Finally, when it comes to sharing information text, text chat chat (including video chat) was the focus. One boy in the class said (and his classmates agreed), “I can send an email, but no one reads email,” from the mouths of 8+s comes great truth. Email has been a dying medium for more than five years now.
The take away here is to make sure your packaging includes interoperability to share via text-because that is a key driver to reach the generation that is not tethered by Blackberry Enterprise Server, Outlook Exchange or Gmail on the go.
As the parent of one tween (10.5 who will be 11 in two months) and an 8.5 who wants to do what her big sister does-social networks like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube etc are sources of big concern for me-and I know a lot about them. Which seems to put me well ahead of my peers who are parents confronting these issues.
To fully understand the issue I (and other parents of tweens today) face-you need to understand the landscape. Chances are if you are reading this blog, you do-but for the sake of clarity:
At school, softball, camp-pretty much any place more than three kids gather, eventually the conversation turns to Facebook, texting, You Tube and any one of a myriad of social games. Now, like many parents I am guilty of enabling this conversation by outfitting my kids with the iPod Touch-which opens up the magic of the app store to them. I am aware of at least three apps that my girls and their friends use regularly that are not compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). And these are the ones I worry most about.
Through the age of 13 (which is why its the magic number for Facebook, You Tube, Twitter etc) COPA provides some rigorous rules about how kids under 13 are treated on websites. Speaking as someone who has had to consider COPPA compliance-it’s not treated lightly in large companies. I can see in some start-up environments though there being more of a “let’s wait to see if someone complains” attitude.
Basically, COPPA provides strong content guidelines and enforcement as well as protections against the collection of PID (personal identification). Enforcement of COPPA falls on the Federal Trade Commission.
So back to my parenting conundrum. Both of my kids (more so 10.5) have friends who are on Facebook, regularly post videos to You Tube and are on social gaming sites like Second Life etc. My kids, not so much. They have email, I let them on Opionaided (it is COPPA compliant) and they can play social games targeted at tweens that are COPPA compliant.
But the battle continues. Then comes the part that confuses me, although I know it should not. Since becoming a single parent, I am more apt (perhaps more open) to talking with other parents at school events, temple, parties etc-and they seem unaware of the kind of information their children are sharing on social networks.
They are shocked at what I know about their kids and their family trips-just through a casual glance at Facebook.
Now this is a lesson I am trying to teach my kids as well-as I will not count on the FTC or COPPA compliance to keep my kids net safe. That said, its not easy to say, “no” to the relentless stream of asks to join Facebook, You Tube and other sites.
When the girls want to try a new site out, I tell them I have to look at it first–and the first thing I look for is COPPA compliance-sites that are COPPA compliant brag about it, so its not hard to find.
The other items I look for:
Even without a full picture, the information NGMoco released about We Rule on the game’s one year anniversary in the app store reveals a lot about social gaming and engagement via some very powerful mobile platforms.
NGMoco’s We Rule has more than 13 million downloads in a year-a number anyone in the app space would covet. But the more impressive (to me and hopefully you) number is the 3 billion minutes players have spent on We Rule in a year. The 15 million mojo’s transacted each day is impressive too-although what is not clear how many of those are hard-dollar purchases versus free acquisition via the game.
What is clear though is that the hybrid “freemium” model NGMoco introduced is a viable business model, with significant hooks into many digital facets to bear close study no matter what your core business is.
For the uninitiated, We Rule is a free game to download for iOS devices. The game is mostly simple, through touch and swipe gamers are able to grow and expand their kingdom from a single plot of farmland growing corn to multiple (now up to eight) realms with purchases of businesses and amenities to create an empire.
My We Rule has a dark realm where I keep dragons and land scarring structures; a water front with a ship yard, fish monger, naval ship. (this is also where I keep the three little pigs and a butcher shop). I have an opulent castle (recently upgraded) and I am eyeing one of the four new realms that opened with the last download of the game.
Some of the unique qualities of the game though-the ones to seriously look at and contemplate for products are:
While the game is fairly engaging and easy to play and understand, there are some components that can be improved-and I would think knowing the way NGMoco has rolled out other games (I also play Adventure Bay and Castle Craft (esd714 is my gamer name in all three games) there is a constant review.
Have to make sure I am there next year, I actually miss being there
Anyone who knows me, knows I am very much not a fan of conferences. It’s just not my thing. However, South By Southwest (SXSW) is a different kind of event, and every year (like this one) that I don’t go, I regret it.
For background only, I am someone who attended SXSW more than 20 years ago when it was a college music show in Austin-this is before the tech crowd kind of took it over and in the vernacular of my industry made it about convergence. I can remember struggling to find money to go in college (the college radio station paid a couple of hundred dollars). When I worked in TV in Dallas it was great to be assigned to the show. It was so out of the mainstream, it was an easy assignment to snag.
Now, it’s a tough ticket. One friend was actively looking for hotel reservations that were about to be canceled–knowing the roots of SXSW, that’s kind of crazy.
Over the years of evolution SXSW has become a place for tech on the periphery of the music and film industry to make announcements-this for the most part means apps (especially mobile) and new ways to layer social into existing products. The list this year has been impressive:
And those are just five off the top of my head…
Then there was the one that didn’t happen:
The rumor over the weekend was Google would introduce us to its next social attempt, Google Circles. Following that over the weekend (while not in Austin) was a bit dizzying–but it looks like that won’t happen, for now at least.
The upshot though is a place where new bands and indie producers gathered to be found has been found…
It’s no wonder the person who best lives convergence has been such a hit
So, hopefully next year this update is from Austin, and I won’t spend three days saying, “Man I should be at SXSW.” Either way, it should be a lot of fun (as it always is).
For the last few days, I have been messing around with Greplin, self-billed as the search bar for your life. And so far, while not quite the utility I was hoping it would be (although I am not sure I can quantify that statement), it has been effective and useful.
Admittedly, because sometimes life gets in the way, I am trying to catch up on some emerging products and companies that have cool tools-and Greplin is one of them. I heard about them earlier this month when Sequoia stepped in with Series A funding.
The way Greplin works, after you register for it (I have invites for anyone that needs, although I don’t think you need them any longer) you register your social networks, email accounts (looks like gmail only right now). One nice thing is they include LinkedIn with Twitter and Facebook. One of my personal complaints is that I really do try to keep my LI professional based only and there are few bridges between my Facebook and LinkedIn. My Twitter is one of the bridges but not very effective.
Once set up and permission are granted, Greplin then acts as a search engine and crawls your networks and creates an index.
A couple of early adopter issues:
All in all, for an early product its useful. I think once I can figure out what I am expecting-and watch how Greplin goes through its next few drops–I think it will become a great utility.
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