Category: Uncategorized

Obsidian Wings: Andy Olmsted

I had put a draft blog note to link to this amazing community indicator – a post created “in case I died” and posted by a friend on the blog of an US soldier in Iraq. There is much more to the story – the fact that Andy Olmstead has been blogging from Iraq, for a newspaper. But the humanity of the final post, the act of community in posting and responding to that post by friends and strangers, is what really took me. Take a peek. Obsidian Wings: Andy Olmsted by hilzoy (Andy’s friend who posted the final post.)

Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G’Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to publish in the event of his death; the last revisions to it were made in July.

Spock Deletes Me (finally)

Back in December I wrote about my recent experiences with Spock. Full Circle Associates » Dislikeing Spock Even More (Oh jeeze, I love that I made a type on the title. I’ll have to go back and fix that.

I have not gone back to see what people wrote about me. I asked to be unsubscribed from their emails. And look what I get. Oi vey! Here is the email from Spock telling me I have been deleted. But look at the REASON! I am a VIOLATOR of their guidelines (but no specificity of what exactly)!! This is interesting because I’ve done nothing on the site. And I wonder who the “Spock users” are who “flagged” me. Sigh. This is a complicated world and we try and do interesting things (including Spock) and look what it gets us.

From: Spock Team
To: nancyw@fullcirc.com
Subject: Your user account has been removed

Hi Nancy,

Spock users have flagged and deleted your account. This could occur for a number of reasons including:

  • Impersonating another person
  • Using a fake name or identity
  • Inappropriate behavior
  • Presenting private information

For more information please visit our community guidelines.

If you believe that an error has occurred please contact us at info@corp.spock.com.

–

Unsubscribe: (link deleted)

Hm, considering I asked them in December to delete my account, I find this strange. Here is the email I sent them December 17th:

1. Please do not send me any more requests from “trusted contacts wanting to invite me to spock.” As it turns out, many of them did not understand your invite process and were embarrassed that mail was sent on their behalf. Your invite process leads a person to believe that if they found a friend in search, that meant they were members. In fact it only means you have indexed them.

2. Please delete my account – you seemed to have created one and sent me a password despite the fact that I did not request one. I do not want an account. I do not want to appear as if I am a member.

3. No, I do not want to log in to change my email settings because I do not want an account. Please, allow me to opt out without having to join your service.

Thank you

Uh, I continued to get requests from “trusted associates. I never heard from Spock. Here is my latest response to them:
To: info@corp.spock.com
Subject: Fwd: Your user account has been removed

Dear Spockites

1. I asked for my account to be removed in an email to you on Dec 17th, 2007. Happy to forward it to you if you lost your copy.
2. I have not been on the site since then, so whomever is violating your community guidelines, it is not me. I’d appreciate it if you would look into your system that sends emails to people who don’t use your system accusing them of misusing your system. I know you are working out the bugs.

Good luck

Nancy

Will that be the end of it? I hope so.

Jon Lebkowsky on Friends and Tipping Points

Jon Lebkowsky wrote this quite a while ago on WorldChanging. I had started a draft post and never got back to it. While doing a little blog-keeping today, I found it again and it is worth blogging. (Just a warning… there may be a little flood of blog posts to “catch up.”)

Jon thinks about what we mean by “friends” online. The Value of Connections

I have a lot of connections on Facebook – 415, to be exact. When I go there, I see quite a few friends doing interesting things, and I always have invitations to connect, join groups, join causes, etc. Facebook is a very effective social network platform, perhaps because people like me like the idea of having a place where we can connect with people we know. But the more people we connect with, the more demands there are on our limited attention, and the less truly engaged we can be with anyone.

On the other hand, the more people I connect to on Facebook, the more who will see my stuff. So if I ever do have a cause I want supported, or a message I want to circulate, having a large network would be helpful. The downside is that it feels less social and more like the broadcast model of publishing: one to many.

I do want more Facebook friends, but there are some significant issues to think about if I want to use the network effectively and avoid wasting my — and everyone’s — time. And there’s a distinction to be made between “social” and “mass.” As you get more and more connections you have more social overhead; as you scale up you run into an inherent limit on social media’s ability to remain social. If I value a broad attention base or large audience over effective manageable relationships, I should work from a different set of assumptions.

I still don’t have neat boxes for these thoughts and concepts; I have more that I’ll get into within the next few weeks. Meanwhile I’d like to hear your thoughts…

As I’ve written before, I hit some sort of volume wall the middle of last year. I’ve written about how I am now more selective on adding friends to follow on Twitter. I mostly ignore Facebook friend requests. I totally ignore Plaxo requests. Just the management of the requests has gone over the top, and I can handle a lot. The people I work with in NPOs and NGOs most likely would never even consider the work it requires to maintain a presence on one of the social networks.

But the friends, the contacts, the network is so powerful. Where is the balancing point for any one of us?

Oh as a little side note – an interesting self test on your online identity! I wonder what the relationship is between being “digitally distinct” and overwhelmed by maintaining that status. Oi!

“Your online identity score is 9 out of a possible score of 10. Congratulations. You are digitally distinct. This is the nirvana of online identity. Keep up the good work, and remember that your Google results can change as fast as the weather in New England. So, regularly monitor your online identity.

Tony Tags me on 2007 Traffic Stats

Tony Karrer tagged me with his new 2007 Blog Traffic Stats – Hopefully a Meme (hopes its a meme!). OK, I’ll bite, particularly since I rarely look at my stats, but I was curious last week about how my reduced blogging impacted readership on the site. Otherwise I’m a bit oblivious to stats. I do like to see in my Bloglines readers how many subscribers I have. And I know I lost a lot of people when I moved from Blogger to my new WordPress powered site. But that’s cool.

Of course, this tells us nothing about folks who read this blog via their blog readers. Are you one of them? I’d love to know. I’m always curious about people who read this blog but rarely, if ever, actually visit.

Here are my Google Analytics screen captures. After them you will find an interesting disclosure!

Blogstats1
blog stats 2

There is one page on my website that has nothing to do with my blog but which gets a ton of traffic. It has been on my site since 1997. It is my son’s story about my grandmother’s ravioli recipe! 10% of all pageviews last year!

So, I’m not sure I’ll tag anyone. I have a slight discomfort that it may be implied that there is some sort of competition here. If you feel like doing it on your own, circle back and leave a link and any reflections on what you learned looking at your blog stats.