I’ll talk a little about Twitter, since that’s the newest big social kid on the block. Millions of people are on Twitter, tweeting to their heart’s content, and millions of people that don’t tweet wonder what all the fuss is about. If you recall, the same sort of thing happened with Facebook and MySpace before Twitter. And again with Blogging before that. And with email lists, IRC, and web forums before that. All the way back to primitive peoples sharing stories around a crackling fire, there have been those who ask, “What’s the big deal with fire anyway?”

All the way back to primitive peoples sharing stories around a crackling fire, there have been those who ask, “What’s the big deal with fire anyway?”

I’ll tell you what the deal is.

It’s not the technology, it’s us.

All through history, people have had this need to connect, to create community, to share their ideas, thoughts, fears, and hopes with others. We want – we need – those connections, just like we need food and water, and even air to breathe. People are nothing if not social animals, and if you’re surprised that now, in the early 21st century people have discovered new and empowering forms of social media, then you just haven’t been paying attention. We have always found new forms of social media, ever since the dawn or symbolic thought and our ability to share stories and ideas through language. I also suspect that we will always create new ways to do so.

And there will always be those who wonder what all the fuss is about.

So, I believe that social media is much like any other form of community – and you tend to get out of it what you put in. Maybe that’s the only rule, and that’s why people talk about twitter and Facebook karma. If you’re a prick to your neighbors, do they invite you to their big 4th of July cookout? If you play nice in your virtual communities, then maybe you get nice back.

In any event, you have to join in to participate – and that’s just the beginning of the fun.

In order to continue offering the best in equipment and network practices, we constantly conduct data center audits to keep you, our valued customer, on top of the latest innovation the market can provide.

In keeping with this practice, we have determined the server your VPS is hosted on requires an immediate upgrade to avoid service interruption due to potential hardware failure.

To avoid any potential service degradation and to simply provide you with the fastest solution, we had to schedule an immediate migration to a new server that already meets those performance requirements as previously mentioned to keep you in best practices.

This affects your VPS and this is what you need to be aware of:

- This means that the IP Addresses you were using have been changed.

Your NEW IPs for the VPS are as follows:

And the email continued, listing my new IP address and other pertinent account information. After a four long days, I was finally able to get back into my account, and everything seemed fine. That is, until I saw that another customer posted an email they received on a web hosting forum. Lo and behold, they too required an immediate upgrade. On further digging, it appeared that our hosting provider was sold to another company – and my user account with it.

Normally, that wouldn’t bother me too much, but this whole thing looked like a scam. Why not simply tell your customers what’s going on instead of making up some cock and bull story about “offering the best in equipment and network practices”? Seriously – it would have been ok if they hadn’t lied to me.

So we’re moving over to a new server and hosting provider, and thing are looking better. Let me know if you see any problems with the site.

Obviously YouTube views aren’t really votes, and it’s not really clear how, or even if, they’ll somehow translate into votes. Obama’s success on YouTube does, however, illustrate the fact that Obama, much more than McCain, has an effective strategy to leverage social media sites like YouTube and Facebook to get his message out, and that very well could translate into more votes come election day.

Take, for example, Brian Stelter’s interesting article in the New York Times yesterday about the new media strategy of the Obama campaign:

The campaign’s new-media strategy, inspired by popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook, has revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool, helping the candidate raise more than two million donations of less than $200 each and swiftly mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters before various primaries.

The centerpiece of it all is My.BarackObama.com, where supporters can join local groups, create events, sign up for updates and set up personal fund-raising pages. “If we did not have online organizing tools, it would be much harder to be where we are now,” Mr. Hughes said.

What we see here is that the Obama campaign is doing more than just taking the internet seriously. They’re making it an integral part of their media apparatus. They’re staffing their web team with savvy professionals, and funding it as if victory depended on it. If this trend continues, and if the Obama campaign can somehow translate all the social media juice into tangible action in the voting booth, you can expect every future campaign to learn the lesson: Rather than simply a tool for poking your friends or for niche marketing, social media outlets can play a key role in selecting the President of the United States of America. And to me, that prospect is simply amazing.

The Collective Thoughts blog is about Social Media. Social Media to me is about using interactive elements of a website to get your proposed message across. What better way of getting into someones head then to let them see a little bit into your own mind. It is all about how you build your rapport.

Mark then goes on to request readers to imagine their own favorite flower, to reconnect with why it’s their favorite, and to then write a review of his post on stumbleupon. Yeah, I did all that, but what would motivate me to actually take time out of my increasingly busy life to review this guy’s post?

The answer is quite simple – he didn’t just ask for a link. Instead – he gave me something of value first. It might be that his simple effort to actively connect with his readers made me stop and think for a moment: What was my favorite flower?

And there it was – all internet marketing copywriting wisdom rolled up into one simple concept: write something sincere for your readers, and they might do something for you. He wasn’t asking me to buy anything, just imagine my favorite flower – and that’s all it takes to plant the seed in someone’s mind.

BTW, I really like sweet olive blossoms – they’re so tiny but smell amazing.

8,789 words

BAM – top that luhoo-zuhers.

No wait, that’s my XBOX gamer score. Shit, at least I can edit html to make it look as if I broke the mythical 35 wpm barrier.

Many people like to think that humanity is rightfully master of the universe because only our species can perform complex symbolic reasoning and do cool things with our opposable thumbs. We enjoy our spot at the apex of the food chain, at the very pinnacle of evolution, even though we defined the rules by which our preeminence can be the only rational conclusion.

Given that I often feel awash in the abundance of such conceit, I sometimes find it comforting when I am reminded of our true place in the natural pecking order. One such reminder is provided by the Nikkon Corporation, with their Universcale application. This has been around for almost a year, but it’s so well done, and such a clear demonstration that we’re not king of every hill, that it’s worth exploring.

Yes, indeed – size does matter.

Edit: Updated the link for this since it recently changed

As a scientist my life evolution works like this:
1st step- save the culture I live in
2nd step- observe all of the possibilities
3rd step- plan out the most effective re-arrival
4th step- lead one of the 5 super-civilizations
5th step- attempt to destroy the entire universe

You need to understand the universe was BUILT BY ME so that YOU ALL WOULD SEE HOW RETARDED YOU WERE IN TRYING TO PROCLAIM YOU’D FIGURED IT ALL OUT AS A BUNCH OF LITTLE RETARD HUMANS!

Michael then goes on to explain why animals and bacteria are “WAY more intelligent than people.”

In reading his claims, I am reminded of the word-salad that accompanies some types of schizophrenia.

Will Michael build universes and walk away with the Million dollars, or will Michael walk away with a decent prescription? What is your tingling Spidy Sense telling you?

Good demo of the Color Range selector tool, and no juice boxes were harmed in the filming of this episode.

“A few weeks ago the White House announced plans to sell $20 billion in weapons to the Saudi royal family. Boom! Balance of power restored. Trust me, you don’t have to worry about billions of dollars in weapons being sent to a country like that — may I remind you, a full 20% of the 9/11 hijackers were not from there…”