beer goggles for your gmail.

oh yeah, it's just what it looks like. found via techcrunch on behalf of gmail blog, it seems as though the company really wants to ahem--step up to the plate--and give you that friendly, buddy-to-buddy pat on the shoulder we sometimes need.

you know, for when that tiny voice in your head saying "maybe this can wait till morning" or "proofread?! at least proof--" just gets drowned the hell out by overwhelming streams of alcohol-induced emotion.

personally i think this would be better served on Facebook or Myspace. i'm less inclined to be stalking--i mean, checking up on--people in my gmail. what kind of trouble can i really get into there?

anyway. beside the point. kickback it's getting is that most people are saying they can do this sort of math drunk (and that if it's any more complex they couldn't do it sober--here here!)--that it should have other sorts of questions as well. that may be true, but then you get into SAT cultural type issues and no emails ever get sent after 8pm or on weekends. haha.

i think the value in this isn't so much the math question as a--SOBER--voice outside your own head, the calm logic of binary digital happiness, says "hey, uh, maybe you shouldn't be sending that right now?" that's the subliminal message being sent by those math problems, not whether you can count to 11. and that 1 step between you and send--even if it's a step making you run for the calculator--may save lives.

or at least a considerable amount of drama.

[disclosure: i have never sent a drunken text/tweet/mail/etc that i've regretted. partially cos i don't do most anything that i regret. partially cos most anything i'd do drunk i'd do just as easily sober. and also partially because when i'm drunk i'm social and nowhere near any technology that would support mail goggles. haha.]

Facebook facelift reveals a shift

well, it's official. like i said. facebook is no longer about the college age demographic. it shed that skin last night. it's leaving the 13-25 scene to Myspace with a firm kick and something like 'good riddance!'

it seems that by forcing all users to upgrade to the new, streamlined layout, the new projected image is supposed to be more professional, and as a friend pointed out, certainly more viable for marketing opportunities. add to that the new iPhone app and then tell me how many people in the 13-25 age range you know that own an iPhone--and well, you get the idea.

expanding its target to gain traction with a wider age range of users, making it more media viable, and adding support to items like the iPhone, only further go to show that Facebook isn't really interested in helping you connect to your friends any more.

you see, you only have so many friends, really, and they want more users than that. so the tag line on the new, improved home page has moved from the "people around you" controversy to "people in your life"--even that person you WoWed with 3 years ago in South Africa. i guess now it's okay to "make new friends." especially if they're out of school and make/spend money.

UPDATE 10.02 via Darryl Ohrt: now supported by stats from Matt Dickman. seems we were having similar thoughts.

thou shalt give me a panda.

or, an alternate title: Facebook, not nearly enough glitter.

this seems like a Facebook week, clearly, between the threat of impending homogenization of our wall/feeds and the inability to control the fact that they will now be indexed with Google. so, because i'm in such a PEACHY mood*, i will offer up this funny about the social network deity:

The 10 Commandments of Facebook.

it's actually really funny and worth the read. i enjoy:
4. Thou Shalt Not Use A Wall As A Private Messaging Function
6. Thou Shalt Not Use Stupid Apps
[aka, "How do I know which fart app is right for me?"]
7. Thou Shalt Not Give “Gifts”
[aka, "What does all of this crap have in common? I don't want any of it. (Except that Chinese paper lantern. That looks nice.)"]
If you want to give me a “gift” of some kind - like a butterfly, a pink striped thong, or an adorable panda - give it to me in real life.
Yes, you heard me: give me a panda in real life.

as soon as the ad world offers me something more interesting to comment on, i will stop talking about Facebook. promise. want to change it? send me a tip. i'm tired of Facebook, too. but with everyone talking about either Seinfeld/Gates or Sarah Palin... well, i try not eat the low hanging fruit unless i have a gift from the tree of Wisdom.

*[in other news: i'm in a good mood because i passed my road test! don't hate. i never needed a license before, due to NYC public transport, college campus smallness, and generous high school friends. this is a big accomplishment for me, and i'm really happy. one thing to check off my 43 things list. i suppose i can add 'extend list to 43' while i'm at it.]

more facebook suckage. users? what?

FACEBOOK WAKE UP.

you are no longer about the end user.
it's becoming more and more evident as you slight your users.
and your users LOVE you. and your users want to HELP you.
but you are making it increasingly difficult.
yet another reason why: opening the gate to the walled garden.*
*i will address this further a little ways down. feel free to scroll to the star.

since yesterday alone, when the threat appeared, 120,974 more people joined the petition against the new facebook layout. and now there are even more groups. i was going to link to all of them, but there are too many. i'm over 20 groups, with thousands of members apiece, and i'm only at page 5 of the group search. my favourites thus far are "i miss the old me" and "i hate the [...] stalker layout."

you are clearly making it easier for advertisers to utilize facebook in the new layout. i also get that you're trying to "grow with your users" as the college age kids enter the job market--and that's cool, sort of. it's sleek, more organized, and trying to be more relevant. no argument there. the redesign was not a bad idea. i just feel like more PR could have been done surrounding users' concerns other than a blog post or two. users are feeling slighted in favour of The Business.

i already briefly talked about why i'm not keen on the redesign, but the other part is something ReadWriteWeb points out: "as Facebook becomes less of a place for them to hang out and more of a tool for networking in the business sense of the word, the cleaner design and additional controls make sense." Facebook isn't about business. it's about fun. did we lose that somewhere between when it started as a college networking site and now when it's trying to become LinkedIn?

because that's what marketers are interested in.
[and sure, that rocks for 'us' professionals, but if you USE Facebook, this is just lame.]

*and now Google is being allowed to search and index parts of Facebook. namely groups, discussions, wall posts, and events--you know, sites of interaction. i'm sure my alma mater will LOVE knowing when the next big kegger is going down--if they hadn't sorted it out by trolling the book already. not to mention if you ever wanted to NOT be a part of that ridiculous group you joined in high school, TOO BAD. you're internet-linked to it for life. CONGRATS!

WHERE ARE MY NEW PRIVACY FEATURES TO MATCH!?
you seem to be selling me a whole lot more than you're helping me. that's dangerous for you.

[sidenote: i already realize Google owns more of my life than anyone else short of the government; that's my choice using blogger, gmail, etc. i may not have a lot to lose through this index, but i'm betting a lot of the kids who use it will in the future unless everyone above shifts prerogatives about what the internet is and means to incoming generations. on principle i am against it.]

facebook is threatening me

IT WILL SOON BE. THE ONLY. FACEBOOK.
you will submit. you will use The New Layout. you will not Protest. all Complaints will be Futile. Press 3 to Assimilate Now.

facebook, srsly. wtf are you thinking?

never mind that i bloody HATE the new facebook to the assured point that if you make me convert to the new layout, i will use it less, and i'm sure i'm not alone in that. hullo. you don't pay us. we bring value to you by even being there. why alienate? regardless. this is beside the point. it's also simply tactically stupid.

if you want to make the new facebook layout the One True Facebook [cue "there can only be oooooone!"], why did you allow for this random period where users could opt-in and select to use the new Facebook or not? ok, maybe as a beta test it works, but then CALL IT A BETA TEST. not being up front about it not only makes users cranky, but leads us to believe that we do not HAVE to switch.

even when faced with the idea that we would have to surrender Ye Olde Facebooke, users petitioned and created groups to let Facebook know that we are not into the new layout. 691,269 members are actively against the new layout. but not only that, we gave shitloads of feedback about how to improve new Facebook to be equally useful so we wouldn't mind the switch. i haven't seen one thing really change. not one. this makes users who actively participate in creatively critical, useful ways feel inadequate and undervalued.

in this 20 minute extraordinarily long defense, Facebook says they're listening. i'm just not sure i buy it.
so what i mean to say is, the actual way it occurred gives a poor impression.

clearly, Facebook can operate with both layouts at once. why not keep this? if the new Fbook is SO wonderful, then naturally users will gravitate to it. i'm not saying to get RID of the new fbook; some people like it, that's cool. but why force users who aren't so keen? users could keep the layout they prefer. moreover, since the new Fbook resembles other sites (like FriendFeed, for example) than its own unique entity, it may also lead to further creativity--different skins would be fun.

in short, i'm not taking this threat lightly. and that's just what it feels like.
you aren't helping me connect--unless by that you mean, helping me connect forehead to monitor.

first impressions: myspace, facebook newness.

Facebook redesign: shitty. too many tabs. sure, it was a little cluttered before, but i liked it. i went and i got a whole view of a person. i know it's silly, but it is honest to say: i don't have time for your tabs. i'm not going to check your apps, which sucks for those of us sharing Flair or using SocialVibe, to name a few. i also don't understand why the default tab is my conversations while my information is secondary. also, don't need to know about my friends' friends. should we just rename this Stalkers Unite? aka: "i don't care who you are, i just care about what you do." a message that seems to correlate to the advertisers, who think i need to Detox before the end of summer. hello. i don't think you could be talking to a "cleaner" girl. i just hope i can continue using the "old" format. take home message: this redesign verifies this shift.

MySpace openID: hesitant. it's not that i'm opposed to openID, in fact i'm sure it'll make a lot of folks' lives a lot easier. it's that i'm possibly (jury is still out) opposed to what it represents. at first i'm sure it'll be compulsory. after all, not everyone wants an openID. and all the merrier. openID, not openID, whatever. but people will push so that it'll function fully integrated. it will eventually become the only option. moreover, those who don't conform to the openID datamania will suffer from "inauthenticity." in a space where transparency is vital, it will be socially understood that those not authenticated with an openID have "something to hide." problematic for those of us who handle multiple IDs (corporate, personal, etc) unless we are able to use these services via multiple openIDs.

how facebook ads are expanding gender use.

i think i'm actually an advocate of the above ad. minus the "fail" part.

courtesy of failblog.org

my first Facebook breakup. there's a point.

so, being a digital native has certainly made breakups more awkward. i know this has been touched on, especially with regards to the "surprise" breakup, where you log in and suddenly you're not in a relationship. oops!

...that's not what happened to me.
i was one of the original Facebookers. my college was one of the first 50, i think, if not less. this recent relationship was very long. it was the first one to be recorded by Facebook in my life, and now the first to go, it's evident how Facebook is changing relationships.

we actually had to have a Facebook Conversation. we broke up. does that mean we unFacebook each other right away? is it so important that we leave one another's presence and, to properly lifestream, we do it the same day?

...or do we wait a few days? to affect our own nonchalance. or because we don't want to talk about it. or in case we do that strange thing where we break up and get back together. better just not to change it until we're sure, right?

yes, i really did have that conversation.
apparently, Facebook is the measure of just how official my relationship is.
[can i get a "fucked up"?]

we Facebook broke up five days after our actual breakup. it was my decision. i woke up this morning thinking, you know what, it's time to Facebook it. it sucked. moreover, what was even weirder?

it lists my ex as "In a Relationship" as the new status.
apparently when i "Cancal a Relationship" [because it's a transaction, you know: "you never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. if it were not so, how could we take it back without asking?" -- winterson] i only cancel it on my end. i'm single. the ex is "In a Relationship" with no one, but since it's a new listing, it gets broadcast like it's a new relationship.

...really, really awkward.
not to mention if i hadn't Facebook-stalked my ex right away and noticed this error, i likely would have been hella fuckin' pissed when i noticed in three days. and now i have to go text my ex to warn that i did it, so it doesn't look like a jab. or before weird phonecalls start coming about the New Relationship.

but my question: where is the broken heart?

weekend observations: tsc, quiznos, facebook.

things i deduced this weekend:

:. TSC advertisers are morons. or perhaps just truthful.

...is that supposed to be an arrow? because its squished nature is more like a something reminiscent of calculus. sorry, but as an insurance company, do you want to advertise as "TSC less than direct"? the things i ponder on the local train... [hook, line, and sinker, tsc]
:. Quiznos is too poor for another 'm.'

...case in point: Beef Brisket. m m m m m. that's five m's, guys. update the ads or make the voiceover guy say one m less. otherwise, it's just weird. [hook, line, and sinker...]

:. things are funnier through 3rd parties.

...what's funnier than writing "i'll stop by at 2:43 am" on your friend's Facebook wall? finding a bumper sticker that says it for you! there's something about the omnipotent third party that enhances humour. it's funny if you and i think it's funny. it's ridiculously funny if someone we don't know agrees so wholeheartedly as to save us from saying it ourselves.

the socialcash monstrosity. cashify baby.

right on the heels of Facebook's leap forward (previous post, ability to vote up/down on advertisements users see) is this monstrosity called SocialCash.

"What that means, is that users are given the option to earn stuff in return for completing offers -- like applying for credit cards, getting information about vacation rentals, receiving free trials of magazines, or finding out their credit score. The offers subsidize the reward (like, say, an iPod Touch or an XBox 360) and the developer gets a cut."

so wait, wait--let me get this right.
i click stupid advertisements, fill them out and pretend to like them, and instead of paying me, you give me branded products. yeah, cos that sounds revolutionary. or like a banner ad in and of itself: "click me and a win a free ipod!" yeah thanx no.

i don't want to sign up for credit cards, give out information to third parties via banner ads, or learn more about vacation rentals i won't use, just so i can have a chance at an ipod. no value there. this won't work.

when i said users should be involved with their advertisements, i said in the ads selection. "paying me off" taking time to do shit i don't want to do for stuff i don't want when i could be playing with facebook apps (talking beneath me, here, but you get the idea) is not my idea of a good time.

the only reason socialvibe works with perks is because a) i don't have to DO anything -- the badge stays on my page. b) the information i share is with socialvibe only, or may be shared with my sponsor/charity of choice. c) i go into it knowing that i'm not doing it for the perks, i'm doing it for charity, so if i don't get a $20 gift certificate, i'm not going to be cranky.

but if i fill out hundreds of stupid banner ads or pop up offers or what have you and don't see anything for it--except for lots of credit card bills well then i'm still going to have to go with a HELL NO. this is not RELEVANT. REMEMBER to be relevant when dealing with a teen market! you are not important to them unless you're doing something they already want to do. newsflash: they don't already want to fill out for vacation rental deals. they're sixteen.

"The Gratis concept works for two reasons: 1. people love free stuff, and 2. in order to get the stuff, users must invite a certain number of users who also complete the program (the number varies based on the value of the reward). So the customer pool grows virally and exponentially."

...stop calling it viral. it makes you look bad. < /peeve >

"Clearly, the viral spread didn't work"--anyone else find that sentence funny twofold?

a triumph: advertising and facebook

check this out, courtesy of readwriteweb. seems facebook has quietly enabled users to vote up or down on advertisements they see, according to relevancy, redundancy, and felicity.

sure, it's not quite what i'd like to see, but it's a helluvalot better than nothing at all. kudos, and thank you, facebook.

revisiting facebook, jobs, millenials

in light of this post, i'm revisiting this post.

i wonder if this is going to change.

me, i am a brand. i embrace my inner brand and utilize it. i am the CEO of the brand of the girl Riot™. however, even CEOs get to go home. no one is Cheerios, or BMW, or Adidas all day long. even Adi, Adidas' founder, shares the responsibility with other well-titled folks. at one point, you go home. you sleep. you see friends. you connect with other people. you know... a la the point of social media: being social. and after hours, i'm sure they don't all sleep in Armani and talk jargon in their theta-state.

what gives you the right to inspect a person's private life for their job?

isn't that what applying is about? references, presentations, self-craft. now we're pushing away from that, toward transparency. "twit-pitch me. tell me what you're after and how you can help me--i'll do the background check. nevermind that you can't control what pictures other folks put up of you. nevermind that you can no longer access accounts to things you created, age 14. nevermind what exploration you did in your youth years that made you a good creative--i don't want to see it."

then how transparent are you, really? you want the real person--but only after they've covered their tracks? deleted their pics during those college years everyone had but everyone is supposed to deny? it's a shame facebook wasn't around when you Xers and Boomers were younger. are we handling this like 50s prudes asked to sit in on a sex addicts' meeting in a church basement? if you don't want the "full story" then why are you looking? keep it to the "legit" side of things. we craft those.

sure, check out their blog, their website, their portfolio, newspapers who reference them, other blogs who link to them. i'm not saying don't Google search. i'm saying to assess your digital detective choices--chances are you won't find that information solely on their facebook accounts. to me, that level of invasion borders on pervy. all 100+ pics of me on facebook? i haven't uploaded one. not one. i don't care if it's "personal and public"--it's discerned as a private space for friends (unlike, say, Twitter, which is searchable, Google tracked, and anyone can follow). just like your brand is not my friend, my employer is not my friend unless i invite you in. those spaces are not about you. they're about me.

and i'll be damned if you want me to censor my life to fit your desk job. you wanted a forward-thinking creative, you wanted experience and intellect--this shaped me. this is who i am. and yes, my stuff is on private. but then you're going to want to know why it's on private, aren't you? i'm supposed to connect with friends but not with employers. can i have a "only folks born 1986 or later can access this profile" option? why do i have to keep my personal life private if the whole reason of having the profile is to share?

moreover--will this disdain for (supposed) transparency change as more millenials enter the work space?

and if you think just cos i can do a keg-stand that i'm going to do one with your client, then i'm really concerned. my maturity isn't directly related to my flip cup abilities (which, mind you, are stellar). don't ask for transparency (look at personal sites) if you don't want it. my brand is excellently crafted. my personal life isn't. and if you can tell me how to control all aspects of your personal life, that's really a blog post worth writing.

so i return the question to you all:
how well do you expect someone to cover their tracks? what are you really looking to get out of trawling potential employees' facebooks and myspaces as opposed to their blogs, LinkedIns, websites? ...what are you really expecting? --and will those expectations change?

[post script & further transparency--i had a really engaging conversation with Jason Falls about his post; this is not an affront on his views: i actually highly value and understand them, and respect him, which is why i engaged in the conversation to begin with. after all, my facebook is on private. i'm just arguing that it shouldn't have to be.]

zappos rocks. facebook scares kittens.

i can't say it better than Marshall Kirkpatrick, who reports on Facebook's message censorship. good comments going on there, too. censorship makes Riots very, very cranky. you don't want a cranky Riot, let alone multiple cranky Riots. you really don't need to know me in my plural state. anyway. i only recently started getting heavy into Facebook again after a year or two of App Intimidation, but the Flair app has assuaged me. this might send me running yet again.

in other news, Zappos is still bloody brilliant and is paying their employees $1000 to quit after one week. you're jealous you didn't think of it first. it's okay: you can still do it. something about imitation and flattery, right? i'm still trying to figure out why, if i'm so in love with how zappos runs things, i've still not been able to find a pair of shoes on that site worthy of ordering... i do want to support. i'm trying?

and lastly, it seems i've also become a connoisseur of the lolcat, and so, compliments of @ckieff, i give you Cats For Obama dot com.

i have advertising thoughts.

so, after having the luck to engage in an interesting conversation with Ian Schafer, a very smart man, yesterday via Twitter, i decided to delve deeper into the advertising thoughts i initially considered in "huge tracks of land."

i asked what he thought of socialvibe and its implications, after reading something written in Adweek (wish i knew what it was, the link is gone now). he felt skeptical because it gives incentives for a given behavior, but felt that the fact socialvibe benefited charities may even it out. i replied that i liked it because it enabled users to choose what their profiles support, giving street cred to the ads.

he argued this would be problematic if all users were allowed to select their own advertising, because some advertisers wouldn't be selected, and users would inevitably support 'prom king' brands. which, naturally, has a lot of merit. because it's true.

but, nevertheless, the concept i'm talking about would only apply to a user's specific profile--not the apps page, or the main page, or 'common areas' owned by more than one person (ie, events or groups). in that way, less popular folks could still get the word out on the same platform, while making advertising more relevant on personal spaces. agreeing in theory, examples he offered were like nascar or skate decks.

i then asked him if he thought incentive was a bad thing to offer users, since it is the users who bring value (data) to the networks. after all, if the users weren't valuable, advertisers wouldn't be up in arms trying to sort out how to reach them effectively, and there wouldn't be such a bid on Facebook's ownership. and guess what? kids are starting to realize this. i wish i had the Facebook link, but kids were responding saying they wanted money for their data being used. i was floored.

in comparison to giving up cash flow, what's wrong with perk compensation for choice advertisements? ian replied saying that, "playing devil's advocate, isn't using a service for free compensation enough for seeing ads?" initially, i say, yes, by far it's compensation enough, even on a place like Twitter, where i'm not giving out a lot of data value. but on Facebook or Myspace? it seems the perfect way to solve the ad-relevance problem.

+ let users choose the ads their profile page sponsors.
[on social media sites in which the users offer up a lot of personal information, like Facebook and Myspace]
- give them the option of using socialvibe in its place.
[so that if they should want, they can donate to charity through their ads. not all users will opt for this, though, since i doubt socialvibe could host the multitude of sponsors kids will want, and i doubt those multitude of sponsors all want to donate to charity.]
+ use the socialvibe method for incentives
[each day the ad is up, you get 1 Entry. on a given day, there are drawings for incentives that support the user's chosen sponsor. IE, a $20 gift certificate to PacSun for those whose ads are for PacSun. this promotes brand value at the same time as not too much monetary loss. this also fosters elitism and competition, which also adds brand value.]
+ in this way, social space advertising becomes relevant
[if the ad reflects my friend's interests, i'm going to be equally as interested in his or her brand choices as their music choices. we show our sponsors on our tee shirts, from brands to clothing companies to coca cola; showing our preferences on our profiles will only add to this level of sharing. in fact, limiting the amount of sponsors a profile can have will become necessary, likely only 1-3. this increases response rate to advertisements. it also makes users feel like a worthwhile part of the cycle, rather than having ads be something purely ignored.]

these are my current advertising thoughts with regards to social media networks.
i'm already a walking advertisement. i'm supporting my socialvibe charity as i type this in my TWLOHA shirt while wearing matching MAC eyemakeup. why not capitalize on these tendencies and harness them to make advertising more useful without being more intrusive?

huge... tracks of land. yeah.

can i get another "duh" and "i was right" in this corner? kthanx.

adrants picked up a piece on SocialVibe which--guess what? makes social networking ads more relevant by appealing to peoples' ACTUAL interests.

effin' novel, i tell you. bloody hell. finally. "huge tracks of land" aside, awesome way to advertise, and even better that it's linked to charities. that gets a huge KUDOS from Riot. in fact, i'm going to go implement it. so there.

next step? have user-chosen ads REPLACE non-chosen ad placement on user-interfaced social media sites like Facebook, Myspace.

lines of intrigue. things to think about.

1] Facebook helps raise a revolt, inadvertently of course. "Egyptians are using the online social networking tool Facebook to defy the government's attempt to muzzle the media and hush recent incidents of police brutality during a strike by workers in a town in the Nile Delta." rock on. one more positive aspect, right up there with the kid who used Twitter to get out of a foreign jail by tweeting "arrested"--and, more personally, when a kid went missing at my alma mater last weekend and the cops wouldn't do anything about it for 72 hours, the kids organized search parties and raised awareness via Facebook.

2] in other news, New York doesn't need any more bloody taxes, give me a break. i hope the bill goes down in flames.

3] also, i can't decide, at all. what book would you save? if you could reinvent the canon, decide that for the future THESE were the books that would matter, what would your canon look like?

some of my choices:
- to kill a mockingbird
- fight club
- house of leaves
- written on the body
- the great gatsby
- lord of the flies
- brave new world
- alice's adventures in wonderland

will revisit this when i get home and look at my bookshelf. i am not including works of poetry, plays, or anthologies. because then it would be even longer, as i love poetry and drama. like copenhagen and arcadia.

4] i love this. i love it i love it i love it. i love it so much that i can't even readily articulate why exactly i love it so much. i'm sure i will analyze and get back to you. must sit and ponder and draw connections and relate and commiserate. yes.

digital natives and the elevator twitpitch

i read this plea to ban employers trawling Facebook some time ago via a link through danah's blog, and while yes, i agreed to an extent, i didn't really think long and hard about it until elevator (twit)pitches arose.

now, i do think twitpitches can be useful. i like the simplicity, the conciseness, the mandate for effectiveness and efficiency. it does not allow for fluff but instead lets the work (ie, a link) do the talking. this is, on the whole, a brilliant idea--especially when aimed toward those who know well enough to craft themselves online; those who know and expect their online 'persona' to affect their working world.

but what about the up-and-coming folks, the "digital natives" as the phrase goes? they were not considering the twitpitch (and all that follows) when they were journaling online at age 13, sneaking into frats at 16, or generally doing "self-exploration" that they may not later wish to admit to (especially when some sites, like Facebook, make it so hard to delete the tracks later on).

as the article i first link to states,
“A world where even a 14-year-old has to think twice before posting an adolescent poem suddenly looks very unappealing and increases the pressure on children and young people to conform to a set of tightly focused adult norms.” (excerpt)

i recently asked my twitter followers this question;
@luckthelady was nice enough to respond, saying that:
To a degree, certainly. I definitely wouldn't hold it against a girl if she got drunk at a frat party, but...
If she's considered to be dishonest, a repeated flake or someone with a bad reputation, it would definitely affect the offer.

do you agree? disagree?
what do you take into account in your employment decision when "e-searching" someone? how well do you expect them to "cover their tracks" (or do you expect at all)? do you think this is unfair to begin with and puts digital natives on an uneven playing field with their more-crafted, older brethren?

and, my question also: how do you determine if someone is a "repeated flake" (for example) online? ie, what if they simply don't check Facebook in particular a lot? or how to measure this over the span of 4 years on Facebook? at what point is social media, aimed at friends, no longer about personal facts but professional representation?

i have questions. i'd be interested in any answers.

anorexia and how it changes blogging.

curiouser and curiouser: the french.

according to new laws proposed, the french are going to jail and fine 45,000 euros bloggers (among others) who encourage anorexia. free speech what?

not that i'm "pro-ana" (the term they use) by any means... but i'm not going to tell you that you can't blog about your anorexia, or post your... "thinspiration" pictures. for once, i give kudos to Facebook and Myspace for resisting the request to remove such "pro-ana" statements/photographs.

with the state trying to legislate beauty aesthetics and media guidelines, many media kids are up in arms, from the fashion world out. there will be trials held to determine if your site is "pro-ana" and, if so, how detrimental it is.

The new offence is defined as "provoking a person to seek excessive thinness by encouraging prolonged restriction of nourishment" to the point of risking of death or damage to health. The maximum penalties are applied if the person dies. (Bremner)

some of this is excusable and even understandable, considering events like the "Miss Bimbo" website, which encouraged children as young as 9 to embrace plastic surgery and extreme dieting in the search for the perfect figure. The Miss Bimbo site invites users to create a virtual doll, keep it “waif thin” with diet pills and buy it breast implants and facelifts. The website attracted 1.2 million players in France.

now, i went to the Miss Bimbo site after reading this. it does seem rather odd, but so are a lot of humour sites. not that i'm outright defending it, but i'm not prosecuting it either. after all, it is named MISS BIMBO. how serious can it be? yes, it points out a poor represenation of women... i would think enough to point out that it's what you shouldn't be.

i am sad and somewhat anxious if 9 year olds are taking this site seriously. i don't think the site should not exist, but perhaps it should revisit its age limitations to an audience that can think critically. i know 13 is probably too generous, but other mainstream social media sites pick up there.

how young do you think is too young for exposure to that?
should states regulate this kind of thing in order to combat behavioral diseases?
do you think bloggers and other websites should be penalized for it?

hey facebook: speaking of "liars."

so, the kids that recently got pwned by AdRants got me thinking. i started reading their community blog, Our American Shelf Life, which is basically blog posts updating their personal use and thoughts surrounding social media (facebook, twitter, even 'old school' stuff like aim and msn. icq anyone? oh no.)

anyway, this post got me thinking. i don't perceive there being a huge age gap between myself and those bloggers; i think i am older than some, and younger than at least one. point being? is it a year-gap thing... or were my friends just jaded from the get-go?

let me back up.

it's established, both in academia and in digital sense, that we choose to craft ourselves online. sometimes to reflect ourselves 'more accurately' than in the day-to-day, and sometimes to recreate according to what we'd like to be. (more, if you didn't already agree? danah boyd)

what makes you think Facebook is not an extension of that?

i allow that due to popularity, friends might keep other friends 'in check' if one profile is too inauthentic, too 'crafted'--too fake or untrue to the person. yet that only applies if the friends themselves aren't in on it, or don't also find it amusing. (communication and procrastination, the lofty goals of social networks.)

case in point, Facebook dating, as described in the ASL post.

except, my school was one of the first 50, if not fewer, to be added to Facebook. i'd wager 20, but my memory isn't that good. when we got to put up that much revealing information, we were all a bit taken aback. skeptically, we asked ourselves why we would want to declare whomever as our significant other. ...didn't we--and our friends--already know that?

this gave rise to many hilarious antics. fake profiles, real profiles with fake dates... people were 'married' left and right--and not even to people they were truly dating! often, to people it would have been 'funny' to date. my best friend (hetero, in a relationship at the time, actress) was Facebook wives with our stage manager friend (who is a lesbian) because it had been a theater joke.

Facebook marriage, and, consequently, Facebook dating status, became a farce in many of our minds. i don't know exactly when this changed, but i can speculate:

i think it had to do with the live feeds.

before, only people who visited your profile actively knew who you were dating. with live broadcast, things became more serious. people you barely knew who followed your updates could start asking why you and X broke up, or how mean you were for doing it, or how sad they were--when you weren't even truly dating X. the awkwardness abounded. it forced into truth so at least you had answers when stalkers came knocking--or you took your marital status down altogether.

so to the kids who take it seriously and wind up finding out their relationship has been "cancelled" before their partner informs them face-to-face: ...man, i'm sorry. lighten up, go 'marry' your hs gym teacher's daughter.