Tag: Facebook

  • My Media Heroes

    I’d like to share who some of my heroes and inspirations in the publishing business (bloggers, media moguls, and Internet marketers) have been and are:

    • Nick Denton: President and founder of Gawker Media, an online publishing group which puts out titles such as Gawker, Gizmodo and Lifehacker. Nick has been involved in internet media since 1996, first writing on the subject for the Financial Times of London, and then founding two companies in the late 1990s. First Tuesday, an internet-era events business with branches in 80 cities, was sold in 2000. Moreover Technologies, which is headquartered in London, provides news search technology to Fortune 500 companies and portals such as MSN. After graduating from Oxford University, Nick began his career as a foreign correspondent for the FT during the revolutions in eastern Europe. Later, while investment banking correspondent, he co-authored All That Glitters, the definitive account of the collapse of Barings Bank.
    • J. Michael Arrington: Founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere. Magazines such as Wired and Forbes have named Arrington one of the most powerful people on the Internet. In 2008, he was selected by TIME Magazine as one of the most influential people in the world. Wired magazine also included him in a flowchart of “internet blowhards” citing his obsession with “Web 2.0”.
    • Walt Disney: During a 43-year Hollywood career, which spanned the development of the motion picture medium as a modern American art, Walter Elias Disney, a modern Aesop, established himself and his product as a genuine part of Americana. David Low, the late British political cartoonist, called Disney “the most significant figure in graphic arts since Leonardo DaVinci.” A pioneer and innovator, and the possessor of one of the most fertile imaginations the world has ever known, Walt Disney, along with members of his staff, received more than 950 honors and citations from every nation in the world, including 48 Academy Awards and 7 Emmys in his lifetime. Walt Disney’s personal awards included honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, the University of Southern California and UCLA; the Presidential Medal of Freedom; France’s Legion of Honor and Officer d’Academie decorations; Thailand’s Order of the Crown; Brazil’s Order of the Southern Cross; Mexico’s Order of the Aztec Eagle; and the Showman of the World Award from the National Association of Theatre Owners.
    • Rupert Murdoch: An Australian-born American media magnate and the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of News Corporation, often called News Corp. Beginning with one newspaper in Adelaide, Murdoch acquired and started other publications in his native Australia before expanding News Corp. into the United Kingdom, United States and Asian media markets. Although it was in Australia in the late 1950s that he first dabbled in television, he later sold these assets, and News Corp.’s Australian current media interests (still mainly in print) are restricted by cross-media ownership rules. Murdoch’s first permanent foray into TV was in the UK, where he created Sky Television in 1989. In the 2000s, he became a leading investor in satellite television, the film industry and the Internet.  Murdoch and News Corp now own MySpace, Fox, and the Wall Street Journal.
    • Alan Webber: An award-winning, nationally-recognized editor, author and columnist, he launched Fast Company, the fastest growing, most successful business magazine in history and winner of two national magazine awards, one for excellence and one for design. He was named Adweek’s Editor of the Year in 1999, along with co-founding editor William Taylor. Webber understands the important characteristics of a “fast company”: the ongoing competition for the best people, for great ideas, and for the right way to think about leadership.
    • Biz Stone: Co-founder, Twitter Inc. Stone helped found things besides Twitter: Xanga, Blogger and Odeo. He worked for Google with Blogger. He once won a debate at Oxford Union.
    • Mark Elliot Zuckerberg: An American entrepreneur best-known for co-founding the popular social networking site Facebook with fellow Harvard classmates, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes where Zuckerburg is now CEO. He is currently one of the youngest billionaires in the world with personal wealth of US$4 billion in 2010 due to his 24% share of Facebook.
    • Matt Mullenweg: The founding developer of WordPress, the blogging software that runs much of this site and millions of other sites around the world. He wrote the foreword to WordPress for Dummies and the French WordPress book. Matt worked at CNET Networks, but left in 2005 to found Automattic, which is the company behind WordPress.com, Akismet, Gravatar, bbPress, IntenseDebate, and BuddyPress. Matt is or has been an adviser to Sphere, WeGame, Rescuetime, and Foodzie.
  • Life After HTC’s Hero: A Review

    Going Off the Grid

    Now that I have used my HTC Hero I realize that I am more plugged in than I have ever been. Not only is data being collected on me from phone, email, and Internet use, but I am freely giving up more information on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. But I wasn’t satisfied with the amount of data being collected so started collecting more data using Endomondo and Facebook apps on my GPS-enabled phone, the HTC Hero for Sprint. Every since I got this phone with unlimited Internet access, I have been more plugged in than ever before. The New York Times has a great article on this called The Data-Driven Life. My friends have started to comment on the uptick in wall posts on Facebook and I’ve started to get caught back up on email, but I’ve also increased my risk.

    Physical Risk

    Now, more than ever I use my phone while driving. If texting makes you 8 times more likely to get on an accident, what is the odds for someone filming and posting videos to YouTube from the road? There is also the minor strain on the wrists from using the mobile device more and in more situations.

    Financial Risk

    Because my phone has always-on Internet access and unlimited text messaging there is nothing to stop me from using the phone at work. Checking Facebook is an issue that I have found that I have and texting with my wife can happen a lot depending on what she is doing that day. The bible says to be a slave to your master; serve your employer well while you are at your job. Being a good steward of your time is part of that.

    Conclusion

    So now that I’m in, am I wishing I was out? I do like the new features of the phone like weather information, Facebook access, and the qwerty touchscreen, but its just another thing in my life I have to maintain and manage. Like this site, I need to learn to better manage my actions while driving and while at work so I don’t get forced off the grid.

  • Strawberry Cake Pie and the Facebook Coefficient

    Strawberry-cake-pieLast night I had a dream that I went to a restaurant with a couple of friends and we all ordered a strawberry cake pie.  It was served in a “taco salad”-like pan with a friendship bread, cake-like base.  The topping was similar to a strawberry pie, but the kind with strawberry glaze mixed in.  That was our meal.

    In the morning I called my friend on the way to work and he thought the idea was fantastic, but then he took it to the next level.  He said, “Why not take strawberry cake mix, churn cold butter into it, and make that the crust instead.” BRILLIANT and DELICIOUS-sounding.  I’ve got another friend who makes exceptional deserts (such as the 7-layer bar) who is going to do the testing.

    Analyzing Facebook

    During our conversation I had mentioned that I was so excited about the strawberry cake pie that I had posted it to Facebook first thing in the morning.  This led to a discussion about a recent Facebook “analysis” I had done on this friend’s Facebook profile.  I had noticed that his wall posts were down compared to a month ago so I mentioned that his Facebook wall posts were down 83% compared to last month.  I hadn’t really done the analysis, but he thought I had, which made me think that Facebook is ripe for analysis.

    A while back a different friend of mine did a quick study to find out how many wall posts one of his friends made before and after a point in time. He was able to go back through all of his wall posts to discover that, even though they had been Facebook friends, before the event there were no wall posts, but after the event, the wall posts were near-spam levels.  The metric in that analysis was wall posts, which inspired me to use the same metric for what I call the Facebook Coefficient.

    facebook-coefficientThe Facebook Coefficient

    The Facebook Coefficient is the number of wall posts you make compared to the number of wall posts received.  This is a measure of your popularity on Facebook  (or how big of a jerk you are, which a friend of mine pointed out).  The coefficient takes into account the last time the user logged in, not counting incoming wall posts until after the user logs back in.

    The coefficient can be computed manually, but would best be done by a Facebook App.  I am a member of the Facebook Developers community, but I have yet to produce a Facebook app.  This is in part because I never had a need to or an idea of what Facebook app to write.  If you are a developer, feel free to use or adapt this idea.  I would be interested in using it.  For more ideas, check out this blog post about wanting Facebook Statistics.

    What Facebook apps would you like to see? On May 19th, 2009 I posted about using Twitter as a business research tool. If you are a Facebook developer I would consider doing something similar.  Here’s why: the following two wishes have been granted.

    WISH there was a way to permanently hide any news feed info relating to those “What kind of blah blah are you” quizzes on facebook.

    wish there was a way to opt out of getting messages from some people in facebook. Seems like whey need a spam filter.

    But this one still has not:

    wish there was a way to post PDFs in #Facebook messages…

    So if you are a developer who wishes to develop a popularity app like The Facebook Coefficient, then you may have already developed Popularity.  Popularity is a, “fun and rewarding ranking game that calculates how interactive people are with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr,” but when you try to use it on Facebook it errors out and says

    There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of Popularity are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged – if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!

    You may have heard the expression, “There is no such thing as competition.”  No matter how good of an idea you have, if you can’t execute it, then it is not worth much.  Execution is really the name of the game and whether you are baking a strawberry cake pie or a Facebook app, you must deliver the goods – otherwise, it’s just a half-baked idea.