My whining is over… on the to world of branding…

Today Jezebel posted this video of a little girl reacting to famous logos.

TL;DR?  Dude, it was two and a half minutes long.  And guess what, Cher, Cliff’s Notes didn’t write sonnets.

Anyway, the little girl has some great (and classic) little kid reactions.  Who didn’t think the McDonalds M was made out of french fries when they were little?  And, she’s clearly a little yuppie in the making – recognizing two coffee brands and getting absolutely excited over the Apple logo.  Yes, little girl, those are the brands that get me excited, too.

No, that's not a backwards G.

Being five, and presumably at that stage when proving that you know all the letters is very important, it’s interesting that the one letter that she’s didn’t pick out is the D for Disney.  She got that it was Disney alright, but not that the logo was a letter.  (A future member of the When I found out the Disney “D” WAS a “D”, it blew my mind Facebook Group.)

Go ahead and test yourself. Which ones do you know?

We did a similar exercise in my Brand Management class the other day, in which the professor flashed logos across the screen and we all had to write down the name of the brand and the first thing it made us think of.  It’s a telling experiment – in some ways it reveals brand equity, but in others it’s just a Rorschach test.  Does the hate you feel when you see the Wal-Mart logo say more about you or Wal-Mart?

Also, here’s a fact of the day for you: did you know that the term brand comes from cattle branding?

Questions of the day: So, how well did you do?  Did you know all the brands?  Also, did you know it was a D is Disney?

Photo credit to Mike Baird.

The other night I was in a race: me vs. my iPad’s battery life.  And I lost.

I’ve recently discovered reading on my iPad. Now that there’s an app that lets you check out library books pretty seamlessly, I’m hooked.  I checked out (is it really checked out when nothing’s physically leaving the library?) a mystery novel on Monday night, and had since spent almost all of my free time reading it.

An iPad only comes with one charger.  And they want about $30 for a second one.  As I am cheap, I only have one – it lives on my desk at work.  So there I am on my couch Thursday night, way after my bedtime but close to the end of a book – clearly it’s a legitimate excuse to stay up late.

Photo credit to RiverRatt3.

And it beeps and tells me that I’ve got 10% battery life remaining, and then only 5.  And snap, the book’s a race.  I can speed read, and with most mysteries I do. (If you don’t spend the time required to write well, I don’t spend the time required to read well – I’m looking at you, James Patterson.)  But this book is different – it is beautiful and wonderfully overwritten, clearly written by an English major.  It has sentence structure that I’ve never seen before and more m dashes than belong in any piece of writing.

Photo credit to theloushe.

It’s a book that deserves the time, but I don’t have it.  (It’s like I’ve just gotten a note: this book will self-destruct in thirty seconds.  So I’m flying through the book, picking out the subject, verb, and object of the sentence and leaving all the other words behind.  But it’s too late – and I run out.  Desperately searching for a charger that I know’s not there, the iPad dies and I’m left without resolution.  Sure they’ve already caught their guy and know who done it, but it’s that final twist, that hallmark of all good mysteries, where the information revealed in the last few pages makes you think about the whole book in a new light.  And I don’t get to read it.  At least not that night.

Books are meant to be immutable.  They’re not meant to self-destruct.  There’s something about reading that’s completely liberating – you enter a new world, and only leave when you choose to.  There’s a conscious act of leaving, that moment when you lift you head, look around, and slowly close the cover.  But suddenly, I was unceremoniously thrown out of the world that I’d been in.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200; the book you’re reading, the world you’re in, no longer exists.

Photo credit to Gael Martin.

I’m learning to love reading on my iPad.  It’s great the gym; it’s great to be able to carry a library in my purse.  And you’d think that 10 hours of battery life would be great to.  But, I can lose myself in a book for much more than ten hours.  I can lose myself in a book for a weekend, or in a series for days on end.  And yes, that lovely and beautifully-written mystery novel that I was reading: it’s the first in a series.  So, here’s to many more battles with my battery life.  Wish me luck.

Questions of the day:  Do you have an eReader?  Have you been thwarted by the battery life?  Do I just need to suck it up and buy a second charger?

MaggieCakes is a blog about social media, marketing, culture, and what’s new on the internet written by me, Maggie O’Toole.  Every day (that’s such a lie, maybe once or twice a week) I comb blogs and news outlets for the news about internet culture and social media to bring them to you (with my commentary, of course) here on MaggieCakes. Find anything interesting in the worlds of tech, culture, or social media that you’d like to see a post on? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail at 2maggieotoole@gmail.com.

Photo credit to stuart63

Or, Futurist Ramblings and a Terrible Novel Idea

I’m still working on those QR codes, so I’m still puzzling about squiggly, little boxes and what they mean for the future.  My puzzling’s been taken even further thanks to Mashable’s contest: What Will the Next 40 Years of Technology Bring?  Mashable’s giving away a shiny new laptop to the person that can come up with the best answer, and as my laptop’s been threatening an unstable hard drive of late, I’d really like to win.  (Also, I just like winning.)

I’m not a futurist, although I’d like to be.  (Best business card title ever.)  So, here’s my answer, where I think we’ll be in 40 years:

Photo credit to fotologic

In 40 years, we’ll have a virtual layer on top of the real world that will be with us wherever we go. QR codes and location-based networks are just the beginning. First we’ll have screens that we can point at codes (although hopefully they’ll be better looking than the current black and white jumbles) and then we’ll have glasses (which we’ll wear all the time) that will allow us to see the virtual layer all around us. After that, we’ll move to contact lenses that are in all the time, so that the virtual layer will always be part of what we see. That lenses will allow us to see cont

ent (largely ad-based) that will be layered on top of everything. It’ll be customized to who we are personally and our preferences and interests. Targeted marketing will no longer be confined to a screen, but will be everywhere and on everything. We’ll see each see our own subjective virtual layer, full of feeds to which we subscribe, and ads which we’ll all (still) be trying our best to avoid.

Maybe I have been thinking about QR codes and real world/digital integration too much, but I really do see a future where we’re all the bionic man.  (Go go gadget lenses!)  I’m expecting a world where the virtual becomes Real (yes, that’s Velveteen Rabbit Real with a capital R), and I really don’t think it’s too out there.

Photo credit to hans s

The part that (maybe) is out there, is that our virtual worlds will be subjective.  But think about.  In the future, everything will be digital.  No one will need to climb up a giant pole to change a billboard; the billboard will change because the computer controlling it tells it to.  (Yes, this is already happening.)  But currently, because the billboard is displaying an image, it’s the same for every person.  (We’re just going to ignore any ideas of subjective reality here.)  But, what if that billboard could be different for everyone who saw it?  What if a family drove by in a car, and everyone saw something different.  Mom saw an ad for a spa, Dad saw one for a golf course, the teenager saw one for a hiking trail, and the younger brother saw one for an arcade – the ad space was all purchased by the same company (say a resort), but everyone saw just what the company wanted them to see.  Because they’re not seeing with their eyes, they’re seeing with the code readers embedded in their lenses.

Photo credit to MelvinSchlubman

As I work on building hundreds of QR codes, I’m realizing that we’re already seeing different phones “read” codes differently.  So, I’ll build a bunch of them and then my colleagues and I each scan them and compare the results.  In this case, the goal is that we find a code that’s readable and shows up the same on iPhone, Droid, and Blackberry.  But, what if the goal was to make a code that showed up differently on each device, or for each person? 

Phtoto credit to rominuspower

Maybe I’m going crazy, or I’ve been spending too much time living inside my head recently, but I’m envisioning a future where the world around us is subjective.  When you and I can stand next to each other and read the same sign and see different things.  When we sit down at a restaurant and open the menus and each see different offerings (or at least offerings presented differently).  Because your profile will know that you’re on a diet, and mine will know that I don’t eat spicy food, and we’ll “see” the parts of the menu that will most appeal to each of us.  I picture standing next to someone on a sidewalk, pointing to an ad for a movie, and saying, “Do you want to go?”  And when we get there, my friend is disappointed, because he had seen an ad for Robot Cars in 3D and thought that’s what I wanted to see, but really he’d just agreed to go to Happily Ever After with Babies, the movie that I’d seen in the ad.

And, (here’s how I know I’m spending too much time in my head) I’m envisioning an adventure story that takes place in this world.  It’s The Giver meets The Matrix with a little Farenheit 451 thrown in.  It’s about people struggling to make their world objective again and the privacy and integrity of individuals in a society overrun by consumerism and technology.  And it will be awful, but I want to write it.  (Who says you should struggle to write the Great American Novel?  Schlocky works of sci-fi are way more fun.)

Here’s my (first draft of a) first paragraph:

Before the codes, things said what they said, or so Jonah had heard.  As impossible as it was to believe, signs, books, letters, they all only said one thing – forever.  They didn’t change depending on the weather, or the time of day, or who looked at them.  Words were like walls, stable, and that seemed awfully inefficient.

It’s gonna be big.  (And by that I mean the ebook will sell for 99 cents on Amazon.)  So, get ready.

Questions of the day: What are your pseudo-futurist ramblings?  Also, subjective reality: am I crazy or is it coming?  Oh, and do you want to read my (possibly terrible) sci-fi book?

MaggieCakes is a blog about social media, marketing, culture, and what’s new on the internet written by me, Maggie O’Toole.  Every day (that’s such a lie, maybe once or twice a week) I comb blogs and news outlets for the news about internet culture and social media to bring them to you (with my commentary, of course) here on MaggieCakes. Find anything interesting in the worlds of tech, culture, or social media that you’d like to see a post on? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail at 2maggieotoole@gmail.com.

As part of launching our new brand at work, we’re getting new business cards.  This announcement is more exciting in Oprah Voice – “You’re all getting new business cards!”  And, the new business cards will have QR codes on them.  (“You’re all getting QR codes!”)  Clearly this announcement should inspire couch jumping.  Actually, it’s inspired me to spend way too many hours staring at squiggly little boxes.

“But Maggie, what’s a QR code?”

“Thank God, I worried that your question was going to be what’s Oprah, and then I was going to worry about you.”

QR Codes, or quick response codes, are the aforementioned squiggly little boxes.  They’re the black and white boxes that you’ve been seeing popping up everywhere, from for sale signs to magazine ads.  (There’s even a company installing them on roofs.)  QR codes are literally codes (as the name implies), but they can’t be read by humans (even Navajos), only computers.

QR codes serve as a link between the real and virtual worlds.  They pull you into the virtual world and direct you to a particular point on the internet.  They can direct you to any web address or send information directly to your phone.  Scanning a QR code turns your phone (or tablet or what have you) into a window to the internet.  They say books take you places, so do QR codes.

So, no, the Borg haven’t taken over, the Cylons haven’t arrived.  The world isn’t turning 8 bit.  It’s just becoming more interactive.

Squiggly little boxes of amazing possibilities

Really there are all kinds of philosophical directions to take a blog post about QR codes, but I’m currently much more interested in the aesthetics.  Maybe it’s because after you look at hundreds of these little boxes, you get a bit crosseyed and you start thinking about why they look the way they do, and what they remind you of.  They’re one of those things that can be both startlingly simple and confoundingly complex at the same time.

We’re covering our world (or more our cities) with symbols that we can’t read.  We’re creating modern hieroglyphics that are a mystery to even their creators.  Each of our phones is our own pocket sized Rosetta Stone, and god help those that don’t have one.  We’ve created a visual language that it takes technology (and money) to learn to read.  It’s a secret code of the haves, the young, and the technologically inclined. 

As I stare at the sea of QR codes covering my desk, my mind wanders and I think about where I want them to take me.  I don’t want a QR code to send me my colleague’s contact information; I want it to start me on a thrilling adventure.  I want it to scan an errant code and uncover a government conspiracy.  I want it to actually open a portal to take me, and not just the screen of my phone, to a new world.  I want them to take me on a journey that’s Dan Brown meets Star Trek, with a little Back to the Future thrown in.  I want to go everywhere that books take Belle:  far off places, daring swordfights, magic spells, a prince in disguise.

Question of the day: Where do you want a QR code to take you?

MaggieCakes is a blog about social media, marketing, culture, and what’s new on the internet written by me, Maggie O’Toole.  Every day (that’s such a lie, maybe once or twice a week) I comb blogs and news outlets for the news about internet culture and social media to bring them to you (with my commentary, of course) here on MaggieCakes. Find anything interesting in the worlds of tech, culture, or social media that you’d like to see a post on? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail at 2maggieotoole@gmail.com.

Photo credit to romana klee

I’ve had a hard time getting excited about things recently, but was lucky enough to stumble across Findings and its gotten my head buzzing.

The newest advancement in digital, literary culture, Findings is a website/app/digital service/what have you that allows you to share your margin notes with others across the community of readers, opening up the potential for reading to be a more dynamic and engaging experience that ever before.

Even since reading Good Omens, I’ve been interested in the possibility of interactive marginalia.  In the story, a family passes a book down through the generations, each scribbling his own notes in the margins, often having contentious discussion of particular passages that last for generations.  (Yes, I recognize that that’s a very selective telling of Good Omens, but I thought it’d take too long to explain angels, demons, and the new four horsemen of the apocalypse.)

Although it’s always seemed like marginalia was a conversation, it never truly was, it was always uni-directional.  The first person that reads a book writes something and the next is left to either ignore the comment or reply to it.  (I guess the first person could then read it again and they could go back and forth ad nauseum, but books that are worth that level of attention are rare, indeed.)  So, with marginalia, as it currently stands, there’s no true back and forth; there’s acting and reacting.  But, Findings allows us to all have our own clean draft to respond to, and then the ability to selectively turn on (and off) others’ comments.

As a society, we talk about where were you at certain moments, at those historical moments that so define our collective psyche (9/11, the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin Wall), that the divide our lives into before and afters.  But, I’d argue that there are moments in books that can be those defining moments in our lives, too.  Especially those pivotal moments in the the bildugnsromans that we read as teenagers.  The stories of growing up that are part of every high school English curriculum.  How did you feel when they murdered Piggy?  Or when George killed Lenny?  When you first read The Lottery and realized what exactly the “prize” was?   Or when Boo saved Scout?  (Personally, I was really confused on that one and had to read it over a few times before I could get passed my initial reaction: Why is she dressed as meat?)  For readers, those are defining moments, but we analyze them after the fact, in a generalized way.  Respond to the events of Chapter 5.  What was the central theme of the novel?  Was this novel romantic, realistic, or naturalistic?  Discuss.

Photo credit to serikotik1970

I want to have conversations with people’s real honest reactions, not those that they prepare for a teacher after the fact.  I want to get to know my friends (and thoughtful strangers) through their books and through their notes.  I want to read their scribbling in the digital margins.  I’ve written that I worry that the move from paper to digital paper will fundamentally change the way that we read, that sometime tactile and beautiful will be lost.  I still fear for the loss or musty paper and old fashioned type faces, for judging a book by its weight as well as its cover, but maybe well gain something wonderful in the move to ebooks, too.  Maybe books will become vehicles for true multi-directional communication.  Just think of the possibilities for choose your own adventure books…

Questions of the day: What book moments stand out in your life?  Do you write in your books?  And why is Scout dressed as meat?

MaggieCakes is a blog about social media, marketing, culture, and what’s new on the internet written by me, Maggie O’Toole.  Every day (okay, I try for every day) I comb blogs and news outlets for the news about internet culture and social media to bring them to you (with my commentary, of course) here on MaggieCakes. Find anything interesting in the worlds of culture or social media that you’d like to see a post on? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail at 2maggieotoole@gmail.com.

Since this post is just about my life in Dover, I've decide to illustrate it with pictures I've taken on my wanderings around town. So, I guess they're all credit to me.

Oh, my blog, I’ve been neglecting you.  I have lots of excuses as to why, but basically it comes to this: it’s hard to write about things that inspire you when you’re not feeling very inspired.  It’s hard to write about things that make you think when you haven’t really been thinking.

Recently, I’ve been deeply involved in a big project at work.  And it’s sucked all of my time.. and most of my brain power.  And at the end of the day, I’m left pretty drained.  I just want to sleep, and maybe eat something terrible for me (chocolate covered raisins have become my friend).

I can’t settle into a book.  I can’t focus.  Hell, I can barely even follow a comment thread.  And I can’t seem to get myself out of this funk.

Looks like a Mario level, doesn't it?

Before, when I was feeling like this.  I’d call a friend or bounce ideas off my family.  I’d go to a coffee shop, or out to dinner.  But I just moved.  To Dover, Ohio.  It’s kind of a cultural black hole.  Coffee shops close at 7:00; and they carry the Tuscarawas County Bargain Hunter, not the New York Times.  I’m lacking a place to go to have inspirational and challenging conversations, and the people to have them with.

Wouldn't this sign make you afraid to go to the dentist?

But, it’s not that everyone isn’t nice.  They’re so nice.  Like, nice to a fault. Maybe if I could get over my cynicism and senses of irony and superiority, I could make it work.  (But, unfortunately, those are far too engrained my card-carrying yuppie self.)  Maybe I could open up and meet some amazing people.  Maybe there really is some good stuff in the Tuscarawas County Bargain Hunter.

But there’s just a huge cultural disconnect.  I’m trying to live a digital life in a (pre) analog world.  True story:

My little Amish soul mate

A few weekends ago, I went to an Amish auction.  (Really, the title of this whole chapter of my life should be Maggie Meets the Amish.)  I bought a new TV table (the first “real” – read: no particle board of veneers – piece of furniture that I’ve ever owned).  So there I am standing in line with all the other people, most of them Amish, who also bought items at the auction, waiting to pick up my table.  Let’s just say it’s very clear that I don’t fit in.  I’m wearing shorts and a t-shirt (hello, Indian Summer), not a homemade long dress; also: no bonnet.  The woman beside me is an Amish woman in her 70s who’s basically like, “So, you’re not from around here.”  And I tell, no, I’m not.  And she asks what’s brought me to the area (a new job) and what I do.  And I explain that I work in marketing and she asks what specifically do I do, so, totally not thinking “You’re talking to a 70 year old Amish woman, adapt your story,” I say, “oh, I do social media marketing – I spent a lot of time on Facebook – and I design Excel spread sheets.”  I might as well have just made something up.  She probably thought that I was speaking jibberish.  But, she smiled and nodded and asked how I liked it and what I had bought at the auction.  We talked about the beautiful end table she bought and how it was going to fit in her living room so nicely.  And it really was a lovely conversation.  And she was a lovely woman.

The Boo Radley House. Actually, my neighbors do not find this weird. I find it terrifying.

But I feel like those are all my conversations now.  They’re lovely, but shallow, and completely disconnected from who I really am and what I really care about.  I spend my time walking around town and taking pictures of the ridiculous things that I see, some beautiful, some sad.  Currently, I’m not engaged in a world of deeper conversations.  I live alone.  I work largely alone, holed up in my office, headphones on.

But, I am trying, to make myself go places, to make myself do things, to make myself meet people.  I’m also trying, and completely failing, to put away my cynicism, irony, and superiority.  But sometimes I see things that just reinforce all the crazy things that I’ve been thinking about this area.

So, why does this keep me from blogging?  Because I’m feeling disconnected and antsy… and not at all a part of the larger conversation about digital culture.  It’s hard to feel like you have something to say about future tech when you regularly have conversations that go “yes, my phone has a camera in it”.

Questions of the day: What do you do to keep yourself inspired and connected?  Do you think I’ll actually be able to get over my irony, superiority, and cynicism?  Maybe just one of them?

MaggieCakes is a blog about social media, marketing, culture, and what’s new on the internet written by me, Maggie O’Toole.  Every day (okay, I try for every day) I comb blogs and news outlets for the news about internet culture and social media to bring them to you (with my commentary, of course) here on MaggieCakes. Find anything interesting in the worlds of culture or social media that you’d like to see a post on? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail at 2maggieotoole@gmail.com.

Photo credit to vagawi

Recently, I read a post called “Is it time for an anonymity movement to challenge Facebook?”  Although the (very great) points of the post ranged far and wide, the part that stuck with me was this section about Facebook and conformity:

But having the ambition to display the whole life of their users is just insane.  Take Spotify, for example!  Sharing the music you’re listening to seems great, right?  Just put yourself in the shoes of a shy 16-year-old guy; what is he going to do to impress others and fit in?   He’s going to listen to the same music that everyone else is listening to, so as not to seem “weird” at all via his very public Facebook profile.

Imagine that he may stop listening to what he really likes because he will be ashamed to share his real taste in music, unless he is one of the rare users that figures out how to stop the feed from Spotify to Facebook.

Now take this concept and duplicate it for tastes in TV, movies, places to eat … maybe with just about everything.

…

Facebook is on track to homogenize society, which conversely, and ironically, may “weaken” the database that Facebook is building and the advertising targeting that they are offering!

Photo credit to chotda

Recently, I posted about how Open Graph means the end of social media curation.  But, if we can’t (directly) curate our social media profiles anymore, are we going to start curating our lives as a means of curating our profiles?  If we can’t (or don’t know how to – please ask if you have questions!) curate our streams, will we curate the actions that feed into them?  I worry about the loss of the private sphere and what it means to be (socially) off the grid.  I’m preemptively mourning the end of reading, viewing, and listening without social consequences.

I worry that having to content with the direct feed through the open stream means that we’ll, even if only momentarially, pause before hitting play on the song that just popped into our heads, or that we’ll have that split second of doubt before changing the channel to the show that we’ve been waiting for all week.

Photo credit to Kam

I guess what I’m really wondering is does the end of social media curation mean the end of guilty pleasures?  Will I stop watching Toddlers and Tiaras or reading Flowers in the Attics (yes, I’ve done both) if everyone else will be notified of it the minute that I do it?  Will I stop dancing around to the Spice Girls if my friends (and co-workers, relatives, etc.) are all informed that that’s how I’m spending my Friday night?

We call these pleasures guilty, like they’re something to be embarrassed about, like there’s something wrong with them.  But middle and low-brow entertainment are ubiquitous.  They’re the things that unite us as a culture, that we’re all talking about.  Right or wrong, we don’t have a national conversation about BBC docudramas – over coffee, we discuss the Jersey Shore; over dinner, we talk about John and Kate (and their infamous eight).

Boy Watching TV

I really hope that Open Graph doesn’t change our tastes (viva trashy TV!), but I do worry that it will.  Not so much for someone like me who’s fully embarrassed her bad taste.  (So far in this post I’ve admitted to Toddlers and Tiaras, Flowers in the Attics, and Spice Girls.)  But, I worry for me at 13.  Who watched Dawson’s Creek just to know what kids were talking about in study hall.  Who tried desperately to hide the fact that she had no idea what music the other kids were listening to.  I worry that, if I had come of age in the time of Open Graph, I would have had the opportunity to develop my (admittedly terrible) personal taste.  That I would have spent high school listening to Dave Matthews, because everyone else was and it was “alternative” enough to have the suburban kid version of street cred.  That I would have read the 1997 equivalent of Twilight (any suggestions as to what book should claim that dubious title?) at the expense of everything else.

What might I have missed?  If I knew that everyone could see (and judge) my reading list, would I have picked up Harry Potter at age fifteen?  Would I have watched all of Firefly in one weekend if I knew that every episode would leave a mark on my timeline?

Questions of the day: If you knew that everything that you read, watched, and listened to would appear on your Facebook timeline, would it make you think twice before reading/watching/listening?  Or do you wear your dorkyness on your sleeve?  How about when you were a teenager? 

MaggieCakes is a blog about social media, marketing, culture, and what’s new on the internet written by me, Maggie O’Toole.  Every day (okay, I try for every day) I comb blogs and news outlets for the news about internet culture and social media to bring them to you (with my commentary, of course) here on MaggieCakes. Find anything interesting in the worlds of culture or social media that you’d like to see a post on? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail at 2maggieotoole@gmail.com.

Recently, a new social network launched.  SocialSamba gives you a social media space to interact with your favorite characters.  (Social media, characters, fanfic overtones … obviously I am way excited about this.)

The Social Times article that introduced me to SocialSamba started off with:

“Have you ever wished that you could be friends with the characters from your favorite movies and TV shows in real life?  Until recently this was impossible—after all, these characters don’t actually exist outside of the TV shows and movies you love.”

Wait what?  You’re saying that they’re not real?!  Must I introduce you to Six Characters in Search of an Author?

Of course, SocialSamba has to make money somehow, and it’s working with TV shows and movies to bring their universes to (digital) life.  So, the only characters that you’ll get to connect with on SocialSamba are branded characters.  The ones under copyright and with active (read: money making) brands.  (No, you can’t be Juliet’s sassy gay friend and tell her that he’s totally not worth it.)

Here’s what SocialSamba’s co-founder, Andy Williams has to say about it:

“SocialSamba’s technology revolutionizes social media marketing.  We give fans a deep and personalized connection to the characters and stories they love, and open proven social revenue streams to those brands.  The tremendous interest we have received, even before officially launching, affirms our belief that our technology establishes an entirely new industry standard for how consumers engage with characters and brands, and with social networking itself.”

Although SocialSamba’s still working itself out (currently there are only three stories involved), it seems that each of the character interaction universes will be completely separate and that SocialSamba will remain a unique set, separate from mainstream social media outlets.  SocialSamba is a place of scripted social interactions; it’s a very limited choose your own adventure – in which we’re all Mary Sues.

SocialSamba’s a really a great idea, but there’s no way that it can live up to what I want.

Because I want all my characters to be my friends of Facebook and my followers on Twitter.  I want Hermione to congratulate me when I post that I got 100% on my exam.  I want Willow to retweet my uberdorky internet culture links.  I want to be able to congratulate Kara and Lee when they post to say that they shot down six cylons today.  I want to join Scout’s “Free Tom Robinson” Facebook group.  I want to compulsively stalk Daenerys’s profile pictures (come on – you know they’d be ridiculous).

Questions of the day: Who are your favorite characters?  Who would you follow and Facebook stalk?  And who would be your top friends?

MaggieCakes is a blog about social media, marketing, culture, and what’s new on the internet written by me, Maggie O’Toole.  Every day (okay, I try for every day) I comb blogs and news outlets for the news about internet culture and social media to bring them to you (with my commentary, of course) here on MaggieCakes. Find anything interesting in the worlds of culture or social media that you’d like to see a post on? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail at 2maggieotoole@gmail.com.

Photo credit to talkingplant

In my last post, I discussed how frictionless sharing without context was meaningless.  How an app posting that “Maggie read this” really only meant “Someone on Maggie’s computer clicked on this”.

But frictionless sharing means a lot more than meaningless oversharing, it’s also the end of social media curation.

Since the rise of social media, we’ve all become curators – we’ve become the scrapbookers and librarians of our own lives, learning to research, present, and display material in a meaningful and engaging way. 

Remember 5^th grade history books that organized US history into themes? (They had names like “The Road to Liberty” and “America Looks West.”)  Well, in writing and sharing our own autobiographies through social networking sites, we’ve learned to create those themes.  And are themes aren’t usually structured around things like “Maggie is lonely”, but around things like “Maggie had an awesome vacation”.  They’re all happy, positive themes – much like the 5^th grade history book themes.

Our social media profiles aren’t an accurate picture of who we are.  On Facebook, we’re all shiny, happy people.  We post about the cool places we go and the parties that we go to, we don’t post that we’re sitting at home alone wishing we had something better to do.  (On Facebook, like in Lake Wobegon, all children are above average.)

Lots has been written (by me and many others more qualified) about the problems that this super curated view of the world can cause.  How no one can keep up with the Joneses when they only know about the best and brightest aspect of the Joneses’ lives.  How seeing only the happy parts of our friends’ lives can make us feel even more upset about our own.  The grass is always greener, especially when you only see pictures of the greenest pieces of the grass.

Photot credit to lars hammar

I’m of two minds on the end of curation.  #1) I spent hours artfully curating my social media presences.  I enjoy it and I enjoy building a scrapbook of how I want the world to see me – it helps me figure out how I want to see myself and the person that I want to be.  On a personal level, my curation is good for me.

But on the other hand, my curation isn’t good for my friends, and their curation isn’t good for me.  There’s a bit of The Tragedy of the Commons to it.  (Basically, just because something is good for each person as an individual doesn’t mean that it can’t have disastrous consequences for society as a whole.)  It would be good for me to see that a lot of them spent last night at home alone, too.  And it would probably be good for some of them to know that that’s how I spent my evening.

(Also, on a side note, but really enjoy non sequential lists, like 1, B, Also, IV, and Finally.)

Photo credit to lago A.R.

On a personal level, I’m not looking forward to the end of social media curation.  (After all, without it, how can I convince people that I’m cooler than I actually am?)  But I see that, in a broader way, some good might come out of it.  After all, it’s a lot easier to keep up with the Joneses when you see that their kids cry and that their roof leaks, and that their grass has some brown spots on it, too.

So, Facebook, bring on the brown spots.  Let everyone know that my grass isn’t all that green.  And let me see that theirs isn’t, either.

Questions of the day:  Scale of 1 to 10, how accurate is your profile?  (Or, inversely, how good of a curator are you?)  Do you look forward to the end or curation or wish to hold on to that power a little longer?

MaggieCakes is a blog about social media, marketing, culture, and what’s new on the internet written by me, Maggie O’Toole.  Every day (okay, I try for every day) I comb blogs and news outlets for the news about internet culture and social media to bring them to you (with my commentary, of course) here on MaggieCakes. Find anything interesting in the worlds of culture or social media that you’d like to see a post on? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail at 2maggieotoole@gmail.com.

Phtoto credit to bengrey

Or, Open Graph is sharing without the caring

In Mark Zuckerberg’s world, everything is a social experience.  Listening to a song?  Would it be better if a friend was listening to it, too?  Reading an article?  Would it be great if your friends could read the same one?  (Also, wouldn’t it be great is Mark could make some money on that happening?)

Well, Mark’s world is quickly becoming out world.  And in Mark’s world, the default is social.  (Do you ever feel bad for his college roommate?  Did he announce things like “Mark is cutting his toenails,” or “Mark is eating pizza”?)

Like Do Not Enter for the 21^st Century

Phtot credit to Stuart Herbert

We’re going in a direction in which everything is social unless we specifically prevent it from becoming so.  Instead of clicking the share button, we’re going to have to click the do not share button.  (And the do no share button is coming – Spotify has recently announced the addition of “private listening mode”.)

Through the new open graph apps, our roamings across the web leaving social footprints that are posted to our Facebook profiles.  And, I don’t know about you, but I roam weird places.  Sometimes I lose myself down rabbit holes for hours, browsing strange topics, happily clicking away.  (Usually Sociological Images is responsible for these sojourns.)  And, if my digital footprints from those adventures appeared on my Facebook, people might start to think that I had issues.  (Sociological Images once sent me on a week-long bender about people with body dysmorphia.)

Photo credit to Toban Black

The problem with a social default is that there’s no context.  Things appear on your timeline as “Maggie listed to this,” or “Maggie read this,” not as “Maggie read this and thoroughly disagreed with it, closing it in disgust after the end of the second paragraph,” or “Maggie read this, shorten the link on bit.ly, tweeted it, and then saved it in her favorites.”  Without context, saying that I read something is fairly meaningless.

I’m a voracious reader.  I read everything.  My reading something isn’t an endorsement of it.  Actually, in my world, it means more when I choose not to read something than when I choose to read it.  So even though I’m Little Miss Social Media, I’m saying no to the open graph apps, at least for now.  (Because really, even HuffPo has open graph interaction, and how can I be held responsible for reading crazy things on there?)

Questions of the day: Do you read things that would make you appear crazy when taken out of context?  Will you take advantage of private listening (and the sure to be announced private reading) mode?

MaggieCakes is a blog about social media, marketing, culture, and what’s new on the internet written by me, Maggie O’Toole.  Every day (okay, I try for every day) I comb blogs and news outlets for the news about internet culture and social media to bring them to you (with my commentary, of course) here on MaggieCakes. Find anything interesting in the worlds of culture or social media that you’d like to see a post on? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail at 2maggieotoole@gmail.com.