November 2009
Why Facebook Email is a Facebook E-Fail
I was having lunch with Adriel Hampton today (who many of you know as the first person to declare candidacy for Congress via Twitter), and the subject turned to Facebook. We’re both overwhelmed by Facebook’s popularity, and subsequent deluge of data. Everyone’s seemingly got a friend they recommend you add, a group they recommend you join, and an event they recommend you attend. ...
An Investigation: Who Has the Best and Worst...
For a whle now, NationalJounal.com has been writing som great stuff on at you might call “investigative Government 2.0” stories - digging a little deeper, making charts and graphs, and tryng to quantify to some degree what’s happening. Their latest is no different. In an article titled Congress’ Best (And Worst) Committee Websites, reporter David Hebert got three people...
Kevin Rose Fantasizes About the Most Powerful...
The November 30 issue of Forbes is themed with profiling The World’s Most Powerful People. Very important stuff. Henry Kissinger contributed a list on the most powerful people in history, Karl Rove made a list of the most powerful people in Washington, Dr. Elias Zerhouni wrote his list of the most powerful people in medicine. Lots of good material here. Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg.com,...
You Worry About Powerful Registered Lobbyists;...
Today the Washington Post ran a story about how the Obama administration will bar registered lobbyists from sitting on the nearly 1,000 advisory panels to the Federal government. These are panels of subject matter experts with named like the Defense Science Board who conduct studies that the government doesn’t have time to perform, and provide subject-matter expertise the government...
When Did Government Become a Business?
When did government become a business? I keep hearing government called a business, and business terms like “efficiency” creeps into the lexicon here among progressive Washington folk. Sorry, government is not a business any more than the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, or a public high school. Yes, they have some things in common, but so what? Governments do not even meet the most basic...
What You Should Read About Monetizing Your...
There’s been a lot of discussion about the authority of Twitter users, and how users with many followers, or authority, or subject-matter expertise, might monetize their tweetstream via inserting paid advertisements. Here are the most important articles I’ve seen about this debate. I recommend reading them in the order below. The New York Times has a piece that makes it sound cool and...
IBM Knows How To Monetize Your Friends
IBM researcher Ching Yun Lin gave an interesting talk about the monetary value of having friends today at Web 2.0 Expo in New York. IBM is a gigantic company with thousands of people, mobile, global, and moving around. How do you find the right person to answer a unique question or problem? How does one unlock the power of existing social networks? Where within networks does knowledge actually...
White House Deputy CTO Beth Noveck Wants MORE...
New York, NY - Far from reducing the power of lobbyists in Washington, DC, it seems that one of the goals of Government 2.0 is to create more lobbyists. Millions of them, in fact. “We want to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to advise government,” Deputy Federal CTO Beth Noveck remarked while being interviewed this morning by tech publisher Tim O’Reilly at the...
Anil Dash creates Expert Labs to connect...
New York, NY - Earlier this afternoon at the Web 2.0 Expo, techie Anil Dash announced the creation of Expert Labs, which will work to connect government policymakers with science and technology experts from the public. Working under the assumption that the government doesn’t have all the knowledge it needs from its internal experts nor from a handful of industry leaders, Expert Labs will...
Why Weird Al Is the Best Video Blogger Ever (And...
The term “blogging” has become nearly meaningless because blogs have gotten so simple and so complex they can look like nearly anything these days. Is Twitter a blog? Yes. Is MarkDrapeau.com a blog? Yup. Is Mashable a blog? That too. So is Gawker. So is WashingtonLife.com, which is technically a magazine hosted on WordPress. Looks kind of like MarkDrapeau.com. So I argue that anything...
Gov 2.0 Event - "Open Government: Pages From the...
Today I’m attending a Government 2.0 unconference called Open Government: Pages From the Playbook (http://3.ly/31a) at the MLK library in DC. If you’re not here, you’re missing out. Attendees are hearing from govies and contractors about how they are adopting the Administration’s directive on open government. I hear and read a lot in this area, and I’ve definitely...
What Does Innovative Social Engagement Look Like?
As many of you know, I’ve been thinking about the topic of Government 2.0 a lot lately. Part of this topic deals with the multi-directional engagement between government and citizens. This is what the White House and others have termed a more transparent, collaborative, and participatory government. Unfortunately, the engagement for the most part is not very authentic nor meaningful....
Do you think Andrew Ross Sorkin worries about his...
I just finished reading a great New York magazine article about New York Times writer and now book author Andrew Ross Sorkin. There’s a lot of interesting information in the article about Wall Street’s evolution during the past year, the tensions between Sorkin and other financial reporters (even at his own paper), and questions about where you draw the line of being too close to your...
Tweetup: The Term Is Played Out
Do you know what a “tweetup” is? If you don’t, trust me, that’s okay. Don’t bother learning it. The term is already played out. A tweetup is a meet up that is planned on Twitter, or at least it’s supposed to be. At first it was a cool, insider thing. Now it’s an uncool, wannabe thing. In 2009, I was invited to “tweetups” in person, on...
My Philosophical Review of the Audience Conference
Loren Feldman. 1938 Media. Audience Conference. That’s about as much of a summary as you’ll find about the Audience Conference held in New York last Friday. That’s because there were no open laptops allowed during the performances. There was also no Wi-Fi, no video streaming, no tweeting, and no blogging. Something akin to omertà joined the members of the Audience Conference together. This bond...
Don't Understand New Media? Maybe You're Not...
Yesterday I wrote a post contrasting Twitter with the ancient honeybee “waggle dance” that is used by a single forager bee to signal where food resources are located to the hive. It was my little metaphor to explain the larger point that the instinct to tell a group of people that a cafe you got to first doesn’t have wi-fi, or that the line at the nightclub is too long so we...
Don't Thank Your Famous Fans
Frequently, when I start following a new blog or Twitter account, I get a note that says something like, “Thanks so much for following me! I’ve read your stuff for a while and I love it - look forward to chatting!!” That’s flattering, but truly unnecessary. The fact is, I (and I suspect that this is true among many others) don’t follow you because we want to chat, or...
The Latest Twitter Chairty-For-Followers Scam
Ben Parr, a co-editor of Mashable, tonight became the latest in a series of indistinguished charity-for-followers scam artists on Twitter. Here’s a recent tweet of his: “I’ve decided that I’m going to donate 10,000 pennies ($100) to charity, one chosen by whoever is my 10,000th follower.” This charity scam is disingenuous for three reasons. First, why develop a...
Animal Behavior: How Microsharing is Like the...
Some of my readers may know that my background is in scientific research, and more specifically on the neurogenetics of animal behavior. One of the projects I was fortunate to be involved with was the International Honeybee Genome Project, within which I analyzed a family of proteins that likely underlies some of the social instincts that species exhibits. One behavior that honeybees perform is...
My Quick Take on the Twitter-LinkedIn Deal
Anyone who talks to me a lot about Twitter knows that I often mention LinkedIn during those conversations. Why? It’s a storehouse of Rolodex information from high-income, business-oriented Internet users who know enough to be there but often have some trepidation about “social media” at the bleeding edge like Twitter and Facebook. And those are precisely the kind of users that...
The Fuller Fellowship: Advancing Conservation...
WWF-US is pleased to announce the availability of Kathryn Fuller Fellowships for 2010. For nearly 50 years WWF has committed to delivering science-based conservation results while incorporating the latest research and innovations into our work. As part of its commitment to advancing conservation through science, WWF established Kathryn Fuller Fellowships to support PhD students and postdoctoral...
Microsoft Public Sector: The Bright Side of...
My colleague Steve Lunceford from Deloitte called my attention to a new Facebook Fan Page that Microsoft Public Sector (government group) started, called “The Bright Side of Government.” From an initial glance, it looks pretty cool. First, there are a lot of nice features, including YouTube videos from Microsoft principals, and links to local and state governments using emerging...
Social Networking: the Two Dirtiest Words in...
Next week I’ll be speaking at a Sweets and Treats event called Social Networking: The Two Dirtiest Words in Government 2.0, which has been organized by Debbie Weil and is sponsored by Neighborhood America. Sweets and Tweets features leading voices from DC’s diverse technology community talking about the use of social media by the public and private sector, from the White House and...
Untitled
I would love to tell you about what I learned of human engagement, engaging storytelling, stages and audience – but I won’t. I won’t tell you about Dan Farber’s realistic view of the current state of the journalism industry Posted via web from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »
Washington DC's Most Creative New Media People...
I’m pleased to say that I made Washington Life’s “Creative List” of people working with new media (http://www.washingtonlife.com/2009/11/08/the-creative-list-new-media/) this month. There are some other great people on the list, including Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs, Teresa Carlson of Microsoft, Alec Ross of the State Department, Shana Glickfield of NextGenWeb.org, and...
Does Government Create Incredible Experiences Or...
This morning, marketing blogger Seth Godin asked the question, “How much of time, staffing and money does your organization spend on creating incredible experiences (vs. avoiding bad outcomes)?” This really hit home to me as someone who spends time thinking about how marketing broadly defined fits into government missions. Under the framework of what we call Government 2.0, I’ve...
Hollywood Flash Mob Does the Hammer Dance
I love this video of a “flash mob” hitting a Sunset Blvd store in Hollywood and doing the MC Hammer “Can’t Touch This” dance. One of my favorites. Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »
How To: Open a bottle of wine with your shoe
Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »
Seed-Funded Psychometric Web Identity Startup...
So my buddy Tim Koelkebeck of Apps for Democracy fame has a new startup called MyType that’s looking for a chief scientist. And the company sounds like they might be on to something important (I have a Ph.D. in animal behavior, so I know this stuff, okay?? :) How can I deny Tim access to my social network of govies, techies, and influencers? Hope that some of you or your colleagues find...
Why Don't Social Media Companies Have Good Blogs?
For all the talk of how every person is a brand that needs a blog, how marketers need to be part of the conversation, and how even the White House needs to be more authentic and transparent and participatory, it strikes me that one major group of organizations is not really like that at all - the social media companies. Why aren’t companies like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, StumbleUpon,...
How To Win Dates and Influence Girlfriends
In 1936, Dale Carnegie wrote a book called How To Win Friends and Influence People. I have serious doubts about whether this is the best way to go about trying to be an influential person, but I have to admit that this is the best dating guide for men I’ve ever seen. Below follows the summary, which can be found here (http://3.ly/OhF). Men, imagine while you read this that you are on a...
