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Archive | February, 2010

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This is one of my many Ignite Raleigh slides. Be prepared so…

This is one of my many Ignite Raleigh slides. Be prepared so see something cool when I post the entire presentation next week.

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Tufts Now Accepts YouTube Videos as Part of College Application

Tufts Now Accepts YouTube Videos as Part of College Application:

If I had to submit a Youtube video with my college application, I would have been horrified.

There’s just so many ways that watching a video, especially one posted on Youtube, can hinder the application process.  Does the admission officer rate the video on artistic merit, or that it’s been rated five stars?  Do they bias against the look and/or the race of the person in the video, even if the applicant isn’t directly in the video and just wrote and directed it?  How do we know the applicant isn’t attaching his/her name to something s/he didn’t make?  Do all the dumb comments count against you, or do the comments just add to your score?

I’m glad I got out of high school before people could make fun of the crappy video I shot to get into college, and I’m also glad that it won’t stay on the internet for everyone to see for the rest of my life.  High Schoolers are awkward enough, can’t we help them a little bit and keep them from ruining their personal brand and online reputation early?  Let’s keep their college applications private, and save Youtube for their awkward vlogs.

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The Social Media Uniform

Today’s guest post comes from Allison Najman (@mbagrrl)  You can visit her site to stalk her learn more about her. When she’s not being snarky for this blog, Allison is defying online marketer and social media guru stereotypes.

What Not to Wear

Every girl’s nightmare is showing up to the ball in the exact same dress as someone else, and even worse if their frenemy looks better in it. Guys don’t seem to have this fear as exampled by the typical social media uniform I see at every Tweetup, Camp or general social media gathering I attend. This uniform transforms creative, interesting people into lemmings.

Stylish Glasses

Plastic rimmed glasses. Anyone that stares at a computer for 8+ hours a day probably wears glasses; so this population is especially prone for needing vision correction. Plastic rimmed glasses are the correction tool of choice. They are very versatile and come in a variety of shapes that almost anyone can pull them off ranging from Henry Rollins, Elvis Costello, Rivers Como and David Cross.

Blue Button Down Shirt

Blue button down shirt. There is some variation that it can be solid, striped or plaid, but blue is the color of choice. Blue is supposed to be soothing, but all this blue puts me to sleep.

“Formal” jeans with black shoes. Dark washed expensive boot-cut jeans are the new khakis. With the trend of upscale denim, came the New World Order that it’s socially acceptable to wear jeans to any occasion as long as they were more than $75. To dress up jeans, they are paired with black leather shoes.

Laptop Bag

Slung over laptop bag (with MacBook inside). No social media power user worth their salt would be seen without their laptop. Despite being armed with an iPhone, you never know when a social media emergency will come up that requires flash.

iPhone

iPhone. The ultimate social media accessory. Too bad it’s accessorized with AT&T.

Individually none of these choices are bad, but put together they make social media men look like an army of one. Express yourself a little less via Twitter and a little more through your clothes.

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Farmville wins the “Social Networking Game of the Year…

Farmville wins the “Social Networking Game of the Year Award,” the worst named award it could possibly win.  Can we all agree that Farmville is a game that hijacks a social network, not facilitates networking?  The one time anything like networking happened with Farmville to me was when I tweeted I was becoming obsessed with it, and a bunch of crazies followed me and friend requested me just to play Farmville with me.  I would never trust anyone who used Farmville to network.  NEVER.

I will commend Zynga once again for slowly taking over the world though and being rewarded for it.

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You Can Sort Through the Social Media Content Flood.

Part of being an Anti-Social Media Expert is reading a lot of blog posts, tweets, feeds.  It’s a never ending stream of media, and as I get more minions followers, it gets worse.  So, how do I handle it?

I don’t read a lot.

I don’t have the brainpower or the energy to read everything.  I prefer to write rather than read, and I prefer to try to live my life away from the computer.  90% of my tweets/writing/content come from my iPhone, while I’m doing something other than focusing on social media.

I plow through a lot of blog feeds on Google Reader.  I’m becoming less and less of a fan of Google, aka Big Brother, but Reader is a perfect product because I can see all my feeds quickly, skip the less interesting ones, and save all the interesting ones for later.  And when you write a social media blog, and have a life off of the internet (WHO KNEW?!), this creates a whole flood of interesting and relevant posts you can write about later.

The next thing I do is I pick my sites and stick with them.  I’m big on Twitter, Facebook, and TriOut.  I also exist on LinkedIn, Tumblr, Foursquare, and a bunch of other places, but I don’t try as hard on them because I don’t understand them, don’t use them the way they are intended, or I just don’t care for them.  I can’t be everywhere physically, and I can’t be everywhere on the internet.  I pick my battles on what works best for me, and try to do the best I can there.

For everything that I don’t have time to read right now that isn’t on Google Reader, I use Instapaper.  This is mostly articles I come across on Twitter when I use my iPhone, so it’s not much, but I can read it quickly on my phone or when I get on my computer.

When all else fails, I unfollow.  If the lack of information is truly apparently, I can always come crawling back and refollow.  It’s not pretty to come back to a source after dropping it, but my humility allows me to recognize where I get content, versus all the crap that wastes my time.

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Housekeeping: February 2010

Faithful readers and followers of the Anti-Social Media revolution:

Think of this post as a general catch-all of everything that’s going on in the world of The Anti-Social Media.  Things are getting busy here, and there’s a lot of exciting news and happenings that I need to fill you all in on.  I suspect as the revolution grows, these posts will happen more frequently.

The Anti-Social Media will be presenting at Ignite Raleigh on March 3rd.  Thank you to everyone who put up with us while the voting was taking place.  I promise I will make your votes worth it.

I can’t say exactly what the presentation will encompass, but I can promise you it will be informative and hilarious.  I may also sneak in a few sneak previews of some of my slides or slide ideas.  I’m drawing each one of the slides by hand, so I will include any crazy mistakes or ideas that don’t make it.  This is going to take a bit of time away from this site though, so please be patient while I finish up this project.

Also, be on the lookout for a guest post next week.  If you didn’t know, blogging is hard.  You have to do it damn well, nearly every day, for a long time to build an audience and capture the hearts and minds of the people of the internet.  And most of us who blog have real jobs, families, and friends that need our attention.  That’s no excuse, it’s just a reminder there’s a world off the internet I’m a part of.  Thankfully, I have friends, enemies, and frenemies who like to help me out.

Keep in mind if you want to see your social media questions featured, ask away here.  We’re on Twitter, and you can email me at TheAntiSocialMedia @ Gmail.

Finally, Google Buzz still sucks.

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You Deserve a Social Media Break.

It’s not easy to keep up with the tweets, wrote blog posts, and respond to comments all the time.  The best of us are only human at heart, and taking those moments to rest between content publishing make all the difference between genius and insanity.

Take the hour, the day, the week, or whatever it is you need to recover.  The internet will still be here, and your brain will thank you.

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This is not social media news, Mashable. Honestly, is this even…

This is not social media news, Mashable.

Honestly, is this even technology news?