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.

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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.

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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.

TripAdvisor.com and the Wisdom of the Clowns

TripAdvisor.com, the aggregator of travelers’ opinions about hotels, resorts and such, has been posting the following warning on some hotel profiles.

This is an encouraging move.

Most people who have contributed or used web reviews of hotels, restaurants and books can smell a rat–or at least suspect one is usually around.

Wisdom-of-the-crowds opinion aggregators are laughably simple to game. How many e-mails have you received from your favorite restaurants begging for a vote in the annual “Best Of” web poll?

As this issue has circulated through the online travel sphere, things have heated up. In response to a few broader challenges to Trip Advisor’s overall integrity, the company’s chief Twitteur, April Robb, issued the following statement, which appeared on the blog Elliot.org:

We believe our nearly 25 million reviews and opinions are authentic, honest and unbiased, from real travelers, which is why we enjoy tremendous user loyalty. Also, the sheer volume of reviews we have for an individual property allows travelers to base their decisions on the opinions of many.

The integrity of TripAdvisor reviews is protected by three primary methods:

1. Every review is screened prior to posting and a team of quality assurance specialists investigate suspicious reviews

2. Proprietary automated tools help identify attempts to subvert the system

3. Our large and passionate community of more than 25 million monthly visitors help screen our content and report suspicious activity

When a review is suspected to be fraudulent, it is immediately taken down and we have measures to penalize businesses for attempts to game the system. Penalties are handled on a case by case basis.

Well, it’s hard not to smell a rat there too. “Every” review is pre-screened and a team of QA specialists “investigate”s suspicious reviews?

That’s a hell of a workload. Assume it takes 15 seconds to eyeball each of the 25 million reviews Trip Advisor says it has. This means that its screeners have spent. . .let’s see…4,340 around-the-clock days, or about 12 years of constant labor, vetting reviews since the site launched.

And that’s before the QA specialists step in to investigate the suspicious ones!

Even if this work is being done in Sri Lanka, that’s still a pretty high “contractor expense” in the ol’ budget.

You can read an excellent report on the Trip Advisor controversy at Elliot.org, the best-of-breed blog by online travel journalist Chris Elliot.

Also check out the 43 comments on his entry. It’s hard to tell without a dedicated team of QA specialists, but damn, I think I smell a rat there too.

It looks to me like several of the comments defending Trip Advisor’s integrity come from. . .wait for it. . .people with some undisclosed relationship with Trip Advisor.

Health 2.0 Debut: Social Media for IBS

Dr. Douglas Farrago, a family physician in Auburn, Maine, has debuted a new social media tool, one that ingeniously leverages the power of Twitter to serve patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. His introduction is timed to the opening of the Health 2.0 Conference in Boston.

The application allows patients to connect with their physicians and other IBS patients to share real-time information, including messages of support and diagnostic photographs.

If something smells funny, it should be noted that Dr. Farrago is the creator of Placebo Journal, the funniest medical journal you’ll ever read, a sort of Mad Magazine-meets-JAMA. The above image is available for all you Health2.0 geeks and gastroenterologists.

How Do You Get Users to Upload Profile Pictures?

Socialmedian, yet another social content recommendation site, has one of the most brilliant tactics I’ve seen to “encourage” people to upload profile photos: Make the default image one of the scariest faces in the world.

You know, that might just be enough reason to check the site out.

No More Social Networks, Please

Lost track of all the social networks you’ve signed up for? Join the club. [Or better yet, don't. If you've lost track, you're in too many clubs already.]

A handy tool called User Name Check scans over 60 social web platforms for your name and then reports which of them you’ve joined. If you are a social web profligate, this will likely surface some half-forgotten memories. Um, Magnolia? Oh, right. Tumblr? D’oh!.

I think the tool is designed to help you discover whether someone else who goes by your online handle is already signed up for, say, Virb [a Twitter clone, I think. It was down when I checked]. Presumably if the name TweakyCheeky is still available, you can claim your digital grubstake. If someone out there is already using it. . .well, forewarned is forearmed.

But truth told, the real value of User Name Check for me was to illustrate with breathtaking clarity just how many redundant, useless and profoundly inane social platforms have been unloosed in the past year or so.

Oh, I know, I know: The tools of digital collaboration have become so inexpensive and simple that anybody with a two-year-old Dell and a broadband connection can establish a hub where thousands of kindred spirits can be kindred together. The earth is shrinking, cultures are merging and the human fabric is warping and woofing with every new keystroke. All of this is disrupting established institutions and driving a massive social transformation whose outlines we are only beginning to see.

But man, the sh*t-to-shinola ratio of the social web has really spiked while I wasn’t looking.

Could Kwippy make any meaningful improvement to your life?

Could Koornk?

Rejaw?

Go ahead, try User Name Check. Hey, if your name is available on Diigo, sign up. It’s a free. . .global information ecology, or whatever.

But I will save you one bit of trouble. I took a quick look, and I think I can guarantee you’d rather play the “disappearing pencil” game with the Joker than join the social network called iliketotallyloveit.

Once again, a tip o’ the fez to Very Short List, the daily e-mail newsletter which surfaces so much good stuff it’s getting embarrassing for the rest of us.

Exclusive Photo: Sarah Palin as a Goldwater Girl!

Let’s imagine the presumptuous VP nominee Sarah Palin was a teenage Goldwater Girl, an earnest young Republican back in the day when Sen. Barry Goldwater rocked the house at the 1964 RNC.

Here’s what she might have looked like as a candy striper at the 1964 Convention:

This wonderful bit of trickery comes to you thanks to www.yearbookyourself.com. It’s a tweaky tool that lets you upload a photo of yourself, mess around just a bit, and produce an image of what you might have looked like had your yearbook photo been snapped during various years from 1950 through 2000.

But: Here we go again, we eliteliberaleastcoastmediaestablishmentrunningdogs having sport with Palin rather than taking her seriously. Palin, 44, was born in 1964.

So to set the record straight, here is what she may indeed have looked like around the time she really graduated, 1981:

[A tip o' the fez to the always-ahead-of-the-pack Very Short List Web e-mail newsletter for the pointer to yearbookyourself.com.]

p.s. By popular demand, the author at his 1952 graduation.

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