Hello, I Must be Going: The End of This Blog

Both regular readers of this blog have been pestering me lately about what’s happened, why I haven’t written a new post since before they left for vacation.

It’s because it’s time to fork this blog.

For good.

Last week I started a job with the federal government. I’m now a webbist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, part of a communications team devoted to food safety. I’ll be helping  use the web, social media and digital technologies to do public service. [See site links below.]

Which is to say: 2.Oh. . .Really. As in for real. As in practicing what I’ve preached. In public. Of, by and for the public.

[!]

Which brings us to this blog, the one that so recklessly–indeed without pity, temperance, empathy or foresight!--poked a stick in the eye of those who dared to blunder around with social media technologies to actually accomplish things.

[!]

Oh, it gets worse. The blog topics I’ve hurled tinfoil thunderbolts at create so many potential conflicts of interest the neck snaps:

The future of media, and the persistent misdeeds of legacy news companies? They cover food safety issues all the time. Tzzzztz!

Health 2.0, and the persistent misdeeds of those who seek to use digital technology to do. . .well, all kinds of stuff? Deeply involved with public health, federal agencies, private companies and political interests. Tzzzztz!

Web 2.0 technology generally, and the persistent misdeeds of those who are selling and evangelizing such technologies? My team will be using such technologies. We already are. Tzzzztz!

Government 2.0, and the federal agencies that. . .TZZZZT!

Politics 2.0, and . . . .TZZZZZZZTTTZZZ!!!!!!!!

I think you see what I’m up against. I’d rather stick a fork in this blog rather than a lobotomy needle in its brain. Or, far worse, compromise my ability to do the people’s work without fear or favor. I work for you now. You should demand I be independent and unentangled or tainted by even a perception of conflict of interest.

Oh, sure, I could reinvent myself as a private-citizen blogger.

Hey, maybe I’ll blog a moving personal memoir about a bright-eyed lad from Cleveland who came to Washington many years ago to pursue his destin–ZZZZZZZZZA, A-OOOH-GA! A-OOHH-GA!!!!!@#@#?! DANGER WILL ROBINSON, DANGER!

No. Better to do the thinkable and retire from blogging.

[Brief pause to feign serious reflection.]

Yup, that’s my decision. Retire from blogging. And I’m stickin’ with it.

So: Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for commenting. And Retweeting. And saving to Delicious. Etc.

But mostly, thanks for reading.

I mean that.

Really.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Sites and tools my colleagues and I will have a hand in:

• Food Safety & Inspection Service agency site.
• Multi-agency consumer-oriented food safety site, foodsafety.gov, led by my friends at the Department at Health and Human Services. [Redesign/relaunch due soon.]
• Food Safety Working Group, reflecting the administration’s commitment to transparency and civic engagement in food supply safety.
• Multiple Twitter feeds, widgets, YouTube channels, etc.

My Wrongest Post of 2008: A Transparent Disaster

I take pride in not only admitting mistakes, but making them. In fact, I carry this old [paper!] news clipping in my wallet:

“If you’re not failing enough, you’re not trying hard enough,” said Richard Holden, product manager for Google’s Adwords service. . .”The stigma [for failure] is less [at Google] because we staff projects leanly and encourage them to just move, move, move. If it doesn’t work, move on.”

And so I’m here to call direct attention to my most dead-from-the-neck-up incorrect, thoroughly wrong-headed post of 2008: “Election08: A Transparent Disaster.”

In it I argued that, due to the proliferation of social media tools that allow people to create and publish videos, pictures and brief text reports of goings-on at the polls on election day, the election would collapse under the weight of all that citizen reportage. It would tie up results in some places for weeks, I argued.

I forecast this with the nuanced prose style I have been honing my entire life. Wrote I:

I predict a paralyzing info hell as a rickety, distributed, incoherent, often incompetent, long-invisible voting system is exposed to the harsh light of Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, FaceBook, iReports, youReports, themReports, cell photos, almost-real-time blog postings and whatever self-interested data-motes are broadcast by, um, legit journalists on the national networks on TV and online.

I predict legal intervention, litigation and a long postponement of official results.

As anyone who has not been sequestered in a warehouse full of Minnesota ballots for the past two months knows, none of the above came to pass. Not even close.

The two biggest efforts, in fact, suggest that the proliferation of those tools made the election more efficient, not less.

Problems were captured and reported on by CNN. But in many cases it appears the problems were reported in local election officials who actually may have responded to correct, control or at least explain the problems.

Ditto a big effort called Twitter Vote Report, an initiative sponsored by a bunch of large (though mostly progressive) organizations.

In no case could I find an example of the reports being used to dispute  results. I remain surprised. After so many reports of voter intimidation and official incompetence in 2000 in Florida, I couldn’t imagine how those alleged events would not have been captured in real time and the data used to litigate close elections.

Even the recount of the extremely close Senate election between comedians Norm Coleman and Al Franken has been handled with such admirable transparency that no question of election day mischief has come into play.

So: Mea culpa. Mea freakin’ culpa. I was wrong.

I would vouch that I’ll be careful not to repeat that kind of transparent blogging disaster in 2009. But that itself would be another blatant mistake.

After all, if I don’t fail enough, that would mean I’m not trying hard enough.

Dr. Laundry’s Blog: A Stain on Corporate Social Media

I love it when big, rich, sophisticated companies stumble like blindfolded spendthrift drunks into the world of social media.

I refer to Clorox’s Dr. Laundry. The good doctor provides an object lesson of how to misuse social media.

It’s a blog designed to serve people who battle laundry problems. The good doctor, a 30-year veteran of laundry product development, answers questions.

How does Dr. Laundry’s blog fail the competent-use-of-social-media test?

1. Nearly every entry promotes one or more Clorox products. Violation: People don’t trust self-interested advice–they want information that will help them, regardless of which products are involved. They reject overt sales pitches on the web.

2. The questions appear to be made up. They are not signed by real people, yet they are labeled “Your Questions.” Violation: Lack of transparency; trying to create the impression of interaction where there is none.

3. It makes no attempt to solicit, or respond to, other ideas from people. It has attracted very few comments–nine comments between July 31 and September 4. The Doc does not appear to have responded to any of them. Violations: Muzzling the “wisdom of the crowds.” Failure to engage the audience you’re trying to attract; failure to leverage user input.

4. It pre-moderates comments. If you use a dirty-word and robot-spam filter, why keep comments off the blog? Add the names of competitors to the filter, if you’re feeling prudish. But pre-moderation depresses user interaction. I left a comment at 7 a.m. on Dec. 2. We’ll see when it’s posted–and if it’s responded to. Violations: Depresses user participation due to fear; ignores it due to indolence.

5. It does not link to outside content. Ah, the “walled garden” approach, which most others abandoned in 2003! A blog’s value is enhanced by links to outside content. Fear of “sending customers away” is how a retailer thinks, not a contemporary communicator who understands web user behavior and values. Violation: Sacrificing user value to shallow self-interest.

I’m sure there are ways to argue Dr. Laundry has been a success for Clorox. But the metrics don’t look good to me.

Its Technorati authority is 30, its ranking 209,329. Nearly all 50 of its inlinks are from blogs that are about corporate social media [many of them complimentary. Go figure].

Quarkbase suggests each user views 1.2 pages [page view count is not available].

The blog ranks 1,874,459 on Alexa, with its rank trending downward.

Eight items have been bookmarked on del.icio.us.

It has 27 coding errors that fall short of W3C standards.

I can’t tell which fancy social media consultant delivered this campaign for Clorox, but there is a “multimedia release” for which Ketchum PR is responsible, and the domain is registered to Ketchum. But it’s not clear whether that firm is responsible for creation of the site and its strategy.

I don’t care what Clorox does with its marketing budget. But for those of us who are self-interested consultants/providers/analysts in the social media space, badly done stuff like Dr. Laundry is harmful. Dr. Laundry becomes a lesson, to Clorox and its competitors, that “social media doesn’t work.”

The fact is, social media “works”–sometimes. It depends on what it’s intended to accomplish and whether it’s done creatively and intelligently. But it’s an immature form of communication, and even the best practitioners are learning as they go.

But social media has to be given a fair shot. Which requires following at least some basic best practices. And avoiding unsightly stains on the medium.

Thanksgiving for Losers: LiveBlogging the Holiday

My friend Ed sends along this link to The New York Times’ Thanksgiving liveblog.

Writes Ed: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should…..”

Well said, Ed. He could be offering a solemn prayer on behalf of all of those who have been battling this pernicious social media virus all year.

For the rest of us, let us be thankful for time with loved ones, far away from the keyboard and the perils of self-absorption.

Oh, wait. It’s 4:30 on Wednesday and I’m posting on my blog. Yikes. Gotta run.

Where’d that family go again?

Andrew Sullivan on Blogging: Unreadable Online

I periodically make a Print ‘n’ Read recommendation–a piece of writing about the social web that’s so compelling it’s actually worth firing up the ol’ HP Inkjet and printing out to read later.

In this case it’s Andrew Sullivan’s Why I Blog.

It is, of course, utterly unreadable on the web. At 5,200 words, on the website of the Atlantic it requires clicking through four “pages,” each of which is five screens deep. Even if you have an Aeron chair with lumbar support you’re courting orthopedic danger attempting to read this thing online.

But [or I should say, therefore] it’s one of the most thinking, engaging and true pieces of writing about blogging I’ve come across.

Giving himself the opportunity to reflect and dig–which, Sullivan points out, blogging does not–in this long-form article he surfaces many insights that will resonate with anyone who has spent much time typing into a blog’s vacant white box.

For instance:

It was obvious from the start that it was revolutionary. Every writer since the printing press has longed for a means to publish himself and reach—instantly—any reader on Earth. Every professional writer has paid some dues waiting for an editor’s nod, or enduring a publisher’s incompetence, or being ground to literary dust by a legion of fact-checkers and copy editors. If you added up the time a writer once had to spend finding an outlet, impressing editors, sucking up to proprietors, and proofreading edits, you’d find another lifetime buried in the interstices. But with one click of the Publish Now button, all these troubles evaporated.

Alas, as I soon discovered, this sudden freedom from above was immediately replaced by insurrection from below. Within minutes of my posting something, even in the earliest days, readers responded. E-mail seemed to unleash their inner beast. They were more brutal than any editor, more persnickety than any copy editor, and more emotionally unstable than any colleague.

But, alas, Sullivan & Co. push their luck. The printed magazine promises “More Online”–a video in which Sullivan and fellow Atlantic blogger Marc Ambinder discuss the blogging life. Sounded like a bad idea to me–a video of two guys talking about blogging. Ack.

But, as a dutiful student of digital media, I went looking. I couldn’t find it anywhere online. Huh. So I typed in the url the magazine published in ink on its paper pages. I hit “enter.”

Here’s what I saw.

Obama and McCain’s Blogs, Writ Large

A while ago I wrote about a very cool tool called Wordle. You stick a URL or feed into the tool and it produces a visualization–a word cloud–that demonstrates how often words are used in a particular document or blog feed.

Just for sport, I compared results from an official Obama blog and an official McCain blog.

Obama’s blog:

And here’s McCain’s:

Fun stuff: The candidates talk a lot about themselves. Obama’s focused on Ohio, McCain on Missouri. Obama’s often used words: “get” and “can.” McCain’s: “reform” and “America.” Both write more about Gustav than each other.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. The Obama blog I’ve Wordled is the campaign’s main one. McCain’s main blog doesn’t have a single RSS feed [the feeds are parsed by issue]. So I had to cut and paste text from a bunch of recent entries from McCain’s blog and let Wordle have at it.

As for McCain blogs that do have a single RSS feed, let’s look at what they’re talking about in the “McCain Report” blog, written by the trench-warfare-mustard-gas-tosser Michael Goldfarb.

That blog talks about Obama a lot.

Alas, no apples-to-apples there, either. Obama’s site doesn’t have a negative campaign blog.

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