What if They Crowdfunded a War and Nobody Gave?

Way back when I was a child, there was a popular poster that said, "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." (Posters were a crude pre-Facebook era meme communications device.)

Well, it seems that the great day is finally here!

Well, at least, if you live in Ukraine. And if you update "bake sale" to "crowdfunding campaign." (And ignore that bit about funding schools.)

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has turned to social media and crowdfunding to get their troops combat ready. Ukrainian activists claim the campaign has raised nearly $2 million so far. (Right now, only 6,000 Ukrainian troops are considered combat ready, according to the BBC.)

And would it be a crowdfunding campaign without a video up on YouTube? That would be a big, "Nyet!" And here it is:



By the way, did you take a close look at the thumbnail icon before you played that video? Just in case you missed it, here's it is again:

Yeah, that's right. In Ukraine, people still use Blackberries.

So Long, It's Been Good to Know Ya'

As I write this posting, I have 324 friends on Facebook. But, considering it's an election year, and I tend to be quite open with my strong opinions on things political, the folks over at the Pew Internet Project would like to warn me that I can expect to have only 262 Facebook friends by November 7.

That's because 9% of users of social networking sites "have blocked, unfriended or hidden someone because they posted something about politics or issues that the user disagreed with or found offensive," and another 10% of those on Twitter and Facebook, "have blocked, unfriended or hidden someone because they post too frequently on politics."

I don't believe I would ever fall into the second group; de-friending just because the person likes to talk about politics. I would also never de-friend simply because I disagree with the person's politics. If that were true, I'd have long ago dumped several of my Facebook circle who post daily reminders of why they're voting for Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul. (Thankfully, I don't have any Rick Santorum voters in my circles. Or, maybe I did, but they already dumped my liberal ass? More likely, they're just too embarrassed to admit who they're voting for in public.)

Actually, I quite like seeing posts on my newsfeed from all over the political spectrum. I enjoy reading things from different points of view, even when I find them dangerously stupid. Of course, I try to be polite in my commenting, and not just come right out and tell them they're being stupid. And I'm usually successful at that.

And then there have been times when I'm afraid I've gone too far in my commenting, and been surprised when the person was still on my friends list the next morning. I'd like to take this moment here to thank them for that (you know who you are).

But the "found offensive" thing... I'd like to say that I'm not easily offended, and that I have a high tolerance for questionable humor. But there are some areas where I have to draw the line.

If I find your ideas politically offensive (see example)  I will argue with you, but I will not be the one to click the "unfriend" button. I will also remain your friend, no matter how pious, self-righteous, and pig-headed you are in declaring your beliefs to be morally, ethically, or intellectually superior to mine (I've done a bit of grandstanding myself, this post included).

But, if you resort to overt racism or sexism or other hate speech to try and make your point, where you have no legitimate point to begin with, I will remove you from my view. That's it. You've been warned.

Now, the Pew study has a bright side too. Although I may lose up to 19% of my friends for either being too political (10%), or just not the right type of political (9%), they also point out that 16% of users have "followed or friended someone because that person shared the user’s political views."

So, my net loss may only be 3%, dropping me from 324 to 314. But it will be a much more civilized and intelligent 314. I'm looking forward to that.

In Memory of Jim Harris

Jim Harris was a computer consultant, a software developer & programmer, a teacher, a union organizer, president of a trade school, a gifted musician, and a social activist. It is in that last role that I became aware of Jim, soon after he and Pat Murphy co-founded Progressive Secretary in 1997.

Progressive Secretary was not the first organization to see the potential for using email and the net and what we now call "social media" to encourage activism, and bring people together for progressive causes (MoveOn.org had them beat by at least a year), but they were certainly early in the line.

And, for all the changes and advances in technology in the last fourteen years, Progressive Secretary has remained true to their original, simple concept:

Progressive Secretary sends out progressive email letters to Congress, the President, and other officials on peace, the environment, civil rights and other issues.

The letters are suggested by participants in the cooperative and are sent to you as a proposal. If you tell us to "send", then the letters are sent ... over your signature and return address.

Whether or not you consider yourself a "progressive" or not, and whether or not you agree with Jim's politics is not my point here today. It's the simple elegance of the concept of using email to organize cooperative grassroots campaigns. So obvious today; not so much in 1997.

Today, the flip side is that such efforts have become so commonplace that they are derided as "slacktivism" - faux activism designed to appeal to the lazy. But Jim Harris was no slacktivist. He worked for social justice all his life, was part of the Civil Rights movement, going to Mississippi with SNCC, and later working with Cesar Chavez and the UFW. When he co-founded Progressive Secretary in 1997, he was recovering from leukemia, and considered it part of his healing.

Jim finally passed last Friday, June 3, of glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. There will be a Quaker memorial service today at the Sacramento Friends Meeting House. He was seventy-years old. Progressive Secretary lives on.

Calling "BS" on Twitter Study

I'm seeing many people tweeting and trembling over yesterday's Mashable headline story, "Most Tweets Produce Zero Replies or Retweets." Many are reading this as "Tweets Are Ineffective Means of Communication" (one exception: Tom Guarriello). Okay, first the data, then why I am seeing the silver lining.

• 71% of all tweets produce no reaction "in the form of replies or retweets"
• 23% of all tweets solicit replies
• only 6% of all tweets produce a retweet
• 96.9% of replies and 92.4% of retweets happen within the first-hour

The first dangerous assumption here is that 100% of tweets were intended to inspire a reply or retweet. Many (maybe the majority) of my tweets are intended to inspire a click through to a link (such as, perhaps, the one you followed to this blog post). This study did not include click-throughs, lumping them in as "no reaction."

The study also looked at "All Tweets." While this sounds like a fair basis to pin their analysis on, we are all aware of certain companies and marketers who don't quite "get" twitter, and whose twitter stream is nothing but "Buy our Products" repeated every hour. These thousands (millions?) of tweets are included in the study sample. Is anybody other than the hucksters surprised that these tweets get no retweets or replies?

While it may not have been quite so democratic an approach, I would really expect that if the study were of "top tweeters" the number of replies and retweets would be far higher. The inclusion of twitter spam in the study skewed the data set to produce these results: Garbage in, garbage out.

The creators of the study, Sysomos, a "maker of social media analysis tools," seem distressed that retweets are so low (6%). Frankly, while it's really nice to when somebody is inspired to retweet something I've posted, I'm thrilled that 94% of what I see in the stream of tweets from my friends is original content. If somebody I follow does nothing but repost other people's content, why would I follow them?

Of course, Sysomos has a different point-of-view. They're selling their services: to "Identify and engage with key influencers to build relationships and buzz." In other words, they sell their clients retweets. My point-of-view is different: I'm only a lowly user of twitter.

And then there's the "shocking" news that most activity on a tweet happens within the first hour. Of course it does! Did anybody really think that a tweet had a shelf-life any longer than that? It's a conversation, and it's constantly moving on. Jump in when you can, and don't worry about catching up on what happened yesterday.

That Sysomos and others who think of twitter as nothing but an advertising tool are dismayed by the results of the survey does not surprise me. But Mashable should know better. They begin the article on the survey by saying, "[It] suggests that an overwhelming majority of our tweets fall on deaf ears," and concludes with, "Perhaps our tweets really are just pointless babble  after all."

Think about all the chit-chat and small-talk you put up with during an average day. Pleasantries exchanged with co-workers, neighbors, the clerk at the grocery store, etc.. If 29% of that led to a measurable reaction (your being quoted, or a getting a memorable reply), you've had quite a productive day. Perhaps Mashable is just pointless babble?

Social Media Training for Voters

Here's an interesting item (well, to those of us obsessed with social media). On the Jerry Brown for CA Governor YouTube channel, along with posting various interviews, campaign ads, biographical bits, and so on, the campaign has now posted a "Social Media Webisode" -- a short training video on how Jerry's supporters can help get the word out. The first webisode is on promoting the Brown campaign via Facebook:



Now, whether or not you're a Jerry Brown fan (I am) or support his campaign for Governor of California this year (I do), you have to admit that this is a brilliant strategy. Faced with a challenger who has so far spent over $119 million of her personal fortune, making hers the most expensive campaign for statewide office ever anywhere, Brown has not only made good use of social media to get his message out, he is harnessing the full power of social media by turning supporters into advocates.

Too many of the social media campaigns that I see, whether political or for products or whatever, treat facebook, twitter, etc., as one-way broadcast mediums. They neither engage the audience in dialogue nor tap into the extended networks of each of their followers. Brown 2010 has now done both.

Blogging is Dead! Long Live the Blog!

Pretty much since blogger.com launched eleven years ago, giving the average non-total-geek access to the tools to create frequently updated, timely, personal websites, the mainstream press has been declaring the death of blogging. First off, they said, what we were creating now were not truly "weblogs" as the pioneers had created, they were more along the lines of diaries or journals, or even worse, according to the professional pundits, amateur punditry. And so they looked to any signs to show that it was all just a passing fad and fancy.

Newsweek (remember them? they used to publish a magazine?) is the latest to pound these well-worn drums in an online article titled "Take This Blog and Shove It!" with the clever sub-title of "When utopian ideals crash into human nature—sloth triumphs."

Among the horrifying (yawn) statistics uncovered:

"Amateur blogs, the original embodiment of Web democracy, are showing signs of decline. While professional bloggers are "a rising class," according to Technorati, hobbyists are in retreat, and about 95 percent of blogs are launched and quickly abandoned...

"[W]hile Twitter carries more than 50 million tweets per day, its army of keystrokers may not be as large as it seems. As many as 90 percent of tweets come from 10 percent of users...

"Citizen journalism also has stabilized. Fewer than one in 10 Web users say they have created their own original news or opinion piece..."

First off, I love the quotes around "rising class" when referring to professional bloggers. If ever a typed quotation mark had to be read as air quotes, this was it. Leaving that bit of editorializing through punctuation aside, let's look at the 95% abandonment rate and why I think that's just fine.

Starting a blog is the modern version of starting a novel or screenplay. In any office in any city anywhere in the world, you'll find accountants, clerks, middle-managers, and other assorted board pencil-pushers who all have the seeds of their dream project tucked into the back of a drawer. Nobody has ever put a number on their abandonment rate, but I'm willing to guess it's somewhat over 95%.

If 5% of first novels started this year were actually completed and published, we'd be seeing more new authors than at any time previously. 95% of blogs are abandoned? Fine. Does that take into account blogs that were started for a particular limited time purpose, like promoting a (now past) event? I doubt it. Some blogs have a final post for a reason, but still remain live for archive purposes.

The only difference between blogs started and abandoned and writing the first few pages of the Great American Novel is that one is a far more public declaration of the would-be writer's creative ambition. Writing is tough work, whatever the medium. Not every idea pans out the way we hoped it would, and not everybody with a creative idea has the stamina and drive and determination to see it through.

I've certainly abandoned my share of blogs. This particular blog (9-1/2 years and over 1,100 posts) is still going strong, as is my Nonprofit Consultant Blog (nearly 5 years and over 200 posts). But my attempts to do a food blog or a guitar blog have not fared as well. Big deal. Next point.

So, 10% of tweeters account for 90% of tweets? Again, not surprising, or any different than we'd expect in any type of communications medium, including face-to-face meetings. Does your workplace have staff meetings? Keep track of who does the most talking. This is just human nature. Some people have the common sense to keep their mouths shut once in a while.

To me, what I see in that sentence is "50 million tweets per day." That's a big number, representing an awful lot of written text, even at 140 characters per tweet. And that's from only 10% of people with Twitter accounts? I don't see failure; I see an awful lot of written communication and I'm still impressed.

Next point... the "stabilization" of citizen journalism. Again, "only" one in ten web users has created a news or opinion piece. I wish somebody had ever thought to keep track of how many newspaper readers had ever even written a letter to the editor, let alone had one published in the paper.

When in the history of the planet, has 10% of the population been able to share their ideas, opinions, and creativity with mass audiences beyond their immediate family and a few associates without editors, censors, and expensive hurdles to cross?

And this amazing amount of participation, writing, and reading, is what Newsweek terms "sloth"?

For the social media revolution to succeed at changing our society it does not need the majority of citizens to be constantly publishing their every thought. All it requires is that a greater percentage of people participate than have ever had the opportunity to participate previously. That has happened.

So the participation figures have leveled off a bit. Great. They've not declined. A leveling-off should be expected after the initial bursts of growth. There will be more growth, but at a slower and more sustainable rate, in the years to come.

The tools are out there, and getting better every day. The cat is out of the bag. There's no turning back. Sorry, Newsweek, but your days of being relevant are what is losing steam.

Social Media Meet-Up in Santa Cruz, CA, September 18, 2010

Along with my friend Curt (known as OhCurt on YouTube and elsewhere online), I'm organizing a Social Media Meet-Up (or SMMU) on the Santa Cruz Pier for September 18, 2010, 10 AM to 3 PM.

In the past I've been to several YouTube gatherings, but the social media landscape is much broader than that now. I've been here, on blogger, for nearly a decade, YouTube for about four years, twitter and facebook since they each launched, and the community is very fluid, with people migrating from on platform to another as their interests and needs shift.

One day video bloggers may be posting vlogs on YouTube, but the next on Vloggerheads or Vimeo, or micro-vlogs on 12seconds. Bloggers now tweet, and status updates from twitter now automatically post to facebook or buzz. It's a fascinating time, and there are lots of great people involved, and the SMMU is an attempt to get them all together for a great time and learn about how we're all using social media in an informal and fun setting.

For all the details on the SMMU (location, time, etc.), please see the SMMU blog at sc-smmu.blogspot.com, or the join our facebook group. Meanwhile, here's a little announcement video about the event: