The Two Deadly Sins of Tech

I'm writing this post on a Mac. I have no idea what kind of Mac. It's got a picture of an apple on the front. I think they all do. The reason I'm writing it on a Mac is because my son takes a Saturday art class at CCAD, where I also teach a History of Advertising course one night a week. Since I'm on faculty, I figured out that I can log in on the Macs that the students use in the computer lab right next to where Dan's class is. It's a 2.5 hour class. So rather than drive the half-hour downtown, find something useless to do for 1.5 hours, and then turn around and come back... I can log onto a Mac and find something useless to do online. Like this.

Or... last Saturday I actually did work. I haven't used a Mac for much real work since about 1988. It just worked out that way. Even though I'm in marketing and advertising, my jobs have been predominantly on the client side, where PCs rule the roost. In the early 90's... that was a pain. The Mac kicked serious bahookey over PCs in the realm of creative tools. But over the last 15 years, things have become pretty equal. The main programs my crew of designers at work uses -- Photoshop, Quark, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, etc. -- are just about identical on both platforms. And if you know your way around Firefox, most good Web sites are pretty much agnostic, too. So last week, without having had any training or practice, I sat down at the Mac here in the lab and started up Photoshop CS2 and got about 1.5 hours of serious work-work done. I had to get used to one thing; hitting the Apple key instead of the CTRL key. Whoop dee dooh. Other than that, the experience of Photoshop on the Mac was identical to what I do at work every day on my pretty-much-maxed-out Dell.

I bring all this up because a good friend of mine recently posted and article in an online tech rag about a bad experience he had with a Mac... and guess what? He got horribly, fantastically flamed. Threatening voice-mails, hate email, hundreds of foul, profane comments, dozens of flaming blog responses. All because he basically said, "I really don't like Macs. I had a bad experience with them."

He's got a pretty decent "advanced layman's grasp" of computer gizmos. But they are NOT what he does for a living. He's a marketing dude. He works with computers and software, not on them. Subtle difference. It's the difference between a carpenter (me) and a handyman (my friend). Between a plumber (me) and a guy who has a wrench at home and can fix a leaky pipe (my friend). Between a doctor (me) and somebody who knows CPR (you get the freakin' picture). His description of his experience was a layman's description. It was what you'd tell a doctor if you went to see one with a pain in your chest; "I have a pain right here; above my belly-button. It kind of hurts when I laugh or cough." The MacAttack gang when bananas on him and basically carved him a new one for not being able to adequately identify that he had a ruptured spleen.

I'm not saying I'm a programmer. I ain't. And I'm not saying my buddy is an idiot. He ain't. He's a very "high end regular user." A very, very smart dude. But he is not somebody for whom the operation of the computer and software is integral to the operation of his business. If you said, "We're taking away the computers," or "You don't get to use Photoshop anymore," he could still do his job.

I couldn't. Photoshop is God. Quark and/or (preferrably "and") is required on any resume I look at for an Art Director position. When the computers go down at the office, folks go home and work on their personal boxes (some of which are Macs) and log in remotely.

My Mom uses Word. Everybody uses Word. That's fine. Cool. But for many people, if you said, "You can't have a computer for a few days," they'd probably shrug and go back to work. And to play. And to life. We who live on the damned things and the Web and the blogs and the pods forget that you really don't need this crap for about 90% of the actual "stuff." It's very, very helpful. Don't get me wrong. And my job abso-freakin-lutely depends on it. And 65% of all my hobbies and fun depends on it, too. I'm deep deep deep down this bunny hole.

But... the first and most deadly sin of tech is Pride.

Pride

Life came before tech and computers and the Web. Books and plays and music and dance and paintings and games have been around for a very, very long time. The tech serves the content. I mean that in both ways. Yes, I know that computers run the airplanes and the trucking schedules and UPS and help the drug companies design the anti-acid that I take, etc. etc. They are inextricably tied into our society and commerce and social fabric. I ain't sayin' they ain't. But what I am saying is that you need to remember that they are tools. Not archetypal marks of some kind. Not gods. Not people. Not signs pointing to other things. It's a box full of wires that helps you push ones and zeroes around very efficiently. It's pretty lights. It's noise and data in some combination. I love them, yes. A lot. Pretty, pretty, shiny box. But if you fetishize any object -- car, beer, perfume, gun, sneaker, shampoo, sports team -- to the point where you evaluate its importance more highly than that of a person... bingo! Pride. Because you have just set your value judgement of that technology above the value of another person. It's a complicated hammer, people. And when you put the value of any tool above that of a person, you will begin to...

Lust

...after it. Oh, lust. To have, as the dictionary says, "A strong or excessive yearning." Whether it be Mac or PC, iPods or new cell phones, digital cameras or HDTV... technolust is clearly here to stay. It's a relatively new variation on planned obsolescence. We want the latest, greatest techno bauble. Why? Because it does... er... new... things. Better. Faster. Bigger. Harder. Plumper. Juicier. Ooh, baby. The problem with lust in the classic, personal (human), sexual sense, is that it a warping of that greatest of God's gifts, love, and actually forbids love. Why? Because Lust stems -- as do all the Seven Deadly Sinse, in classic literature -- from Pride. Lust places the desire of the subject (the luster-er) well above the wishes of the object (the hot potato in the cut off jeans, belly shirt, dangly earrings and little tattoo of a butterfly right above her...). And placing any of our own desires or intentions above those of others is a variety of Pride. With humility and maturity, Lust can become love. In the case of technolust, it is, of course, impossible for Lust to become love, because love requires two. And no matter how hard your try, your iPod will never love you back.

Wrapping it Up

I'm pretty sure I could drag this metaphor out for the other five sins; envy, wrath, glutony, greed and sloth. But the two bigs that came to mind relative to the MacBeating that my buddy took were Pride and Lust. When something is (or seems to be) the most important thing in your life, for both play and work, it becomes a source of unhealthy Pride. "Bad Pride." Not the "I did a good job and should be proud." That's OK. But the kind where your shite gets all out of proportion. Where you make threatening phone calls to someone who never did you any personal harm and whom you've never met and who was only stating an opinion. Even if somebody is a total dip... come on. That's seriously putting your own agend way, way out in front.

And when Pride leads to Lust, we have unrequited Love. Read my lips, people ---

Your
Mac/PC/MP3 Player/Cell Phone/Blackberry
Will
Never,
Ever
Love
You
Back

No matter how much your job depends on your knowledge of Ajax, and how many MP3s you have on your hip, and how many "friends" are on your MySpace page, and how fast you text... I understand that it hurts when someone disrespects your chosen tech. It hurts because she/he cannot defend him/herself. Your Lust and Pride has projected part of your own self-image onto the product. That is a direct result of really, really good marketing and, in some cases, good products and services. And because that Lust can never be turned into healthy love, the reaction will often be that of an unrequited lover; anger, resentment, violence. Because Lust is not healthy, and Pride is all about you.

Technology is things. And things are not deserving of our love. Only people and God deserve to be loved. So before you engage in the other Deadlies, and do harm to a person on behalf of an un-loveable, fetishized artifact... question your motives carefully. Tech is imporant. The Web is way cool. But like the man said, "If I had a hammer... I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters." Not, "I'd hammer out a 2,000 word, massively profane, hateful, flaming rant."

We're all on the same side, my friends. We're all monkeys. Stop throwing poo.

Eleanor "Skywalker" Roosevelt: 1991 - 2006

On the same day that my then fiance Chris and I were packing up my Uncle Doug's truck in Needham, Massachusetts to move to Columbus (by way of Buffalo, NY, where she would prepare for our wedding in about a month), an as-yet unnamed basset hound was born.

August 18, 1991. I had turned 25 about a month before. I had no job waiting for me in Columbus, but did have an apartment set up. On of my best childhood friends, Dave McCann, stopped by out-of-the-blue and helped us load up the truck. I haven't seen Dave since.

Chris and I were married on September 21, 1991. That October, we went to get a dog. We wanted a basset hound because they are long and low and funny and sweet. A girl basset, because they are less troublesome and don't dig through concrete as much. Seriously. We looked around at some various breeders and a couple pet stores, but eventually found a couple who had bred a pair of bassets (Chris can always remember their names; I can't), and for whom this was the second litter. We went and looked at the puppies (one of whom was soooo porky) and picked out the one with the longest ears.

She was white and black, with only a wee bit of liver-brown on the tips of her ears and the bottom of her tail. As she aged, the brown would spread, which is unusual. Tri-colored bassetts often get darker, not lighter, over time.

We named her Eleanor Roosevelt. Entirely out of respect and admiration for our 32nd-and-1/2 president. I should say, Chris named her Eleanor Roosevelt. I named her "Eleanor Skywalker Roosevelt." There has always been some contention about which is the official name... And though we had thought about "Rosie" as her everyday name (Eleanor is a long name even for a long dog), for some reason, she just looked like an "Ellie."

She never really got the hang of howling. Not the long, low, mournful, baying howl that bassets are supposed to do. She barked like mad. Especially in latter years whenever we left her alone. She could bark for six hours straight. But she rarely gave out that great, wooooooooooo! noise you expect from a hound. She did whuff, chuff, chortle, boof, sniff, snuff, ploof, grunt, burp, fart, wheeze, whine, wheedle and click her toenails on any hard surface.

When young, she rolled on dead fish down by the banks of the Mighty Scioto River. She played a game we called "basset ball" where we'd kick a kids' plastic ball against the basement wall in our apartment and she'd leap up to block it with her belly. She initially feared balloons, and would stalk them, finally overcoming her terror enough to leap on them... either bursting them with claw and tooth, or balancing atop them on her belly, rolling on them comically while wondering, we imagined, where they'd gone for the moment.

She once chased her tail around 17 times.

"Basset" comes from the French. "Bas" meaning "low." Basset can literally be interpreted as "rather low." Ellie was, indeed, a long, low dog. We joked that she wanted to be a greyhound when she was a puppy... but she was brought up short.

She was as gentle a dog as ever there was. You could take food out of her mouth if need be. She loved kids, and tried very hard to knock them down so that they would be at her level and, thus, more lickable. She loved to give wet, stinky kisses. She got the chance (twice) to eat whipped cream out of the mouth of a prominent lawyer (you know who you are). On her birthdays -- 15 of them! -- she preferred ice-cream sandwiches to cake.

We once, many years ago, re-wrote the lyrics to the song "Superfreak" for her:

She's a very sleepy hound.
The kind you don't wake up for breakfast.
She will always put her jowls down
Directly on your feet (yeah)
She likes to eat from your hand
Doritos are her all time favorite
When she makes a move for the couch it is nap-time
It's such a sleepy scene

And such. Also, since she liked to walk around in circles and hop... and skip... and jump around in her blankets in preparation for bed, we liked to sing:

Do a little dance
Make a little nest
Lay down tonite.
Lay down tonite.

There was also a picture, Photoshopped, from very early on in her career, and using one of the very first digitial cameras ever available, of "Stealth Bassets Over Baghdad." What really won the first war, you know...

Ellie took part in the Michigan Bassett Waddle, back in... oh, it must have been 1995 or so. Nothing like 300+ bassetts in a parade.

Her favorite toy was... well... chicken. Or tuna. Kind of a tie, I guess. When she was younger, we tried giving her those disgusting, dried piggie ears. She would take them to a corner of the apartment, or the back of a closet, and then attempt to burry them. Which is hard, when there's nothing there but carpet. She'd drop the ear, push it into the back corner with her nose, and then rub invisible dirt all over it with her snout. Again and again. To the point where she'd rub her nose almost bloody. Very, very odd. Those pig ears were either so foul or so wonderful that they had to be hidden from sight or preserved for posterity. We never figured it out.

Once or twice (or more, maybe) she would find for us a creature outside and bring it in, dead or mostly dead, for us to enjoy. This is what bassets have been genetically engineered to do. And so we did not blame her. Their long ears are designed for picking up underground vibrations. Their noses for burrowing and sniffing out critters. And their short, very powerful legs for digging various fauna from their underground lairs. You can't fight several thousand generations of bassett inbreeding. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, bassets gotta barf up semi-digested bunnies in the middle of a fancy dinner party. C'est la vie.

You may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but Ellie learned them on her own. In her twighlight years -- bassets normally only live to be 10 or so -- she began to be, well... unreliable as a free-roaming bassett. We had installed a dog-door, and for many years she used it fine when we were out and at work all day. Not so these last few years. She'd go outside and bark like mad, full tilt, all day, until we came home. So we had to keep her inside. An cordoned off unto a particular zone of the house. Or so we tried. This dog could get out of almost any human-made zone of control. She'd chew her way through dog fences. Shimmy under or around blockades. Climb over furniture we left in her way. Much of this behavior after the age of 14, which is, for a basset, pretty much like 110 years old for a person.

The first day we brought her home, she tried to get a tennis ball that was about the size of her head into her mouth. She did it. Hysterical. Just yesterday, the day before she died, I fed her a handful of cut-up hot dogs and one got stuck underneath her and she couldn't quite figure out where it was. When she finally got it, she shot me this look that so clearly said, "You put that there on purpose, you goober." Hysterical.

She had the most beautiful ears of any basset. Ever.

Virtual Alternate Reality Game (VARG): A Proposal

Three things that are in my head...

...and what happend when they smashed together.

One. I'm currently reading "The Night Watch," by Sergei Lukyanenko. It's a neat fantasy book about vampires and witches and sorcerors in modern day Moscow. Originally written in Russian, now in English. Fun stuff. It supposes a system by which all folks with supernatural powers of any kind, called "Others," are bound by a treaty so that there won't be a huge war that wipes out most of mandkind and earth and them and various bad things like that. So that's in my head; a world with another level of secret "stuff" going on. A battle in another magical dimension that takes place all around us.

Two. I'm almost always thinking, at some level or another, about Second Life. Although I don't play it much anymore, it still fascinates me. That plus the fact that anytime anyone with an actual company starts an account, the press release gets picked up in the media. But one of the reasons I stopped playing was that it had become, for me, a glorified, very pretty, chat room. And I've got plenty of people to chat with IRL, at work, at home, in IM, on email and on the blogs I frequent. Bumping into random people, faeries, furries, Goreans and mechs is fun... but I really have/had other stuff I should be working on. If there had only been a real "purpose" or more of a "game" to SL, I might have stayed on longer and done more. I hear that frequently from other folks, too. I tried becoming more of a builder at one point, to see if that would do the trick. But the 3D system in-game, while amazing for being free and letting you build your own content for a VW... well, it's still tricky and often cludgey. And you basically have to own land to really get the most out of it. And you then need to go use Photoshop to make textures. Which is a bit of a busman's holiday for me. And then you need to do scripting/programming for your stuff. And then I'm tired. So I just sit around at the bottom of an ocean and chat with people who look like large cats. What to do in Second Life?

Three: One of the blogs I keep an eye on, and have marked over there -- >, is InfoCult. Bryan talks about lots of neat stuff, but one of his frequent topics is Alternate Reality Games, or ARGs. From the Wikipedia definition:

An alternate reality game (ARG) is a type of game that overlaps the game world with reality, by utilizing real world media, in order to deliver an interactive narrative experience to the players -- a kind of surrealism. ARGs are typified by involving the players with the story and its characters, by encouraging them to explore the story, solve plot based challenges, and interact with game characters. ARGs can be delivered via websites, email, telephones, or any other means of communication which is readily available to the players.

There have been a number of famous ARGs in recent years. See the Wikipedia link above if you're interested or the ARGN Network, and bookmark Bryan's blog for ongoing coverage. It's fascinating stuff. But the basic idea of a game that goes on using real world media and events, intertwined with the same tools we use for work and other play... that's been in my head, too. So...

The Virtual Alternate Reality Game (VARG)

So... What if a group of people were to take the ARG motif to Second Life? I mean, lots of groups have all kinds of explicit alternate realities going on inside SL; they do Star Wars builds, they have islands that look like Hawaii, they have various S&M roleplay sits, etc. etc. But all of these suppose an understanding by all and every player that, yes, our little corner of the virtual world is different; incoherence. My reasons for being a furry do not overlap your reasons for being a Jedi do not overlap her reasons for being a dominatrix.

A good ARG, however, is built around coherence -- the idea that the real world is indistinguishable from the created situations of the ARG world. Its differences are implicit, and only then when you know it's a game.

So... how could you build a VARG on top of Second Life? A game inside the non-game? Several ideas have come into mine wee haid.

• An economy based VARG. Each player joins by putting up a certain amount of $LD (Second Life currency) into a general pot. Some portion is held for a final prize. The same amount is used by each player to start an SL business, and at the end of the game period, the player with the biggest bank account wins. The game could either specify a certain type of business, be a free-for-all, exclude certain types, etc. All transactions would need to be recorded and public or some such nonsense.
  
  


• Social VARG. How many friends can you make in a week? How much can you boost your ratings? Offer prizes.
  


• The alien digital critters VARG. Pretend to be aliens from another dimension who have been either doomed or ejected or sentenced or something to a digital world -- Second Life. Totally roleplay the crap out of it. Maybe have several factions. Kinda like "Highlander" for SL.
  


• The Knights Templar VARG. Start a whole secret society whose purpose is to do... something bold and moral. Stop having in-game sex? Start having more sex? Better sex? Wipe out in-game gambling? No bling? Pick an ethical (or aesthetic?) gambit and have at it. Either something that really tickles your fancy or something that would just be fun to implement from a, "Wow. That's changed the world," standpoint.
  


• The Dojo / Guild VARG. Start a teaching society whose goal is to make folks into better scripters, builders, texturers, animators, etc. Preach the gospel of "DIY" on the grid. Have levels in several professions. Grant journeyman and master's status. Rate players and shops. Become the AAA of the multiverse.

Come to think of it, putting the last two of those together (or the last three?) would be interesting. The point is to figure out some overwhelming reason to be doing something with an overwhelming reason, and then stick to it in the game world.

This would be lots easier in SL than in the real world. Why? Because SL is built to be built on. You'd also have an easier time converting characters than you would people in a real life ARG (did I just type that?).

The last thing that occurred to me was that you could probably make some actual scratch doing this, as there is a real economy inside SL. If your VARG created objects that could be sold, a la the Dojo VARG... it's a game with a product. If it was a service VARG... same dealio. Here's a scene that popped into my head to leave you with...

Jayorg Maybank looked up at the half-finished temple wall he was helping to build along with four other apprentices. When they were done, the detail work would be exquisite, having taken the five of them nearly six hours each. But it would be worth it, as it was the project that would finally earn them their Journeyman Builder Badge. After which they would be allowed among the pleasures available on Cyan Island, rather than just skulking around the sandboxes and lame discos of the Apprentice Zones.

One of his compatriots was complaining about the work on in open chat, but Jayorg hushed him. "Shut up, Tael," he IMd. "You never know when the Master may pop in." Tael did shut up, and Jayorg could almost imagine that his avie was surly as he continud to apply textures and create new 3D shapes for the wall.

Once Journeymen, Jayorg knew, they'd be allowed to work on teams with animators and scripters, and that's when the real money could come in. So far only one of his pieces -- a rather nice pair of shoes, if he did say so himself -- had been accepted into the Guild Store. Of course his Master, as his sponsor, received 25% of all commissions and the Guild got another 25%. But he'd already made 2,400 LD in one week. The Guild Mall had incredibly strict taste and requirements, and it didn't hurt that there were always live fashion Artistas from the Social Hall on hand, 24/7, to help guide any shoppers.

He'd heard that when the Guild reached 500 members, and the Guild Chest had at least LD 1 million, that they would begin work on Magenta Island, which would be both a home for the Masters, and a place of rare services for invited high-rollers. Rumor was that the Journeymen were already working on a class of animated objects that required over a thousand hours of scripting each. Of course those were just rumors... If a Journeyman ever actually spoke to an Apprentice of his/her tasks and was found out...

Jayorg finished the final touches on the scrollwork of the wall lintel and placed it just-so. He paused to look around at the temple garden and was truly amazed and still a bit taken aback that he'd been accepted into The Guild. Nowhere else on Second Life could you find original work of this quality, because nowhere else were 300+ citizens working together, learning together, all under one plan. And the Guild's plan? The Commandment of Moral Beauty:

Our Second Lives are gifts. Gifts of time to communicate, connect and create. We will not waste these lives in idle chatter, nor in lewd acts, nor in gambling, nor solely in the contemplation of others' work. We will strive at all times to make this Other World a better place. More beautiful, educational,  civil, intelligent, interesting, pleasant, moral and profitable.

Six months and hundreds of hours of modeling and texture work... But Jayorg was *this close* to becoming a Journeyman. And even if would take him another six months... he believed in Moral Beauty in Second Life. When he went elsewhere on the grid and saw all those avies whose houses were cookie-cutters of each other... saw the chair campers... saw the chatters. They were having fun, sure. And that was fine... But he was... accomplishing something.

The temple garden stretched away into the distance in all directions; east and west, and up into the air, and down into the ground. Beautiful and original and designed by architects and planners, the Guildfounders and Masters and Journeymen. Somday he would call them "peers." He would walk with them and plan the new islands and towers and games.

But for today... there was another arch to build. And a temple to complete.

Just one idea... A real set of goals inside a virtual world. I don't have time to build it, but I'd sure like to visit...

New word alert: Emotainment

Doctor, doctor... it hurts when I do this...

I hate making up new words. And yet I keep doing it. Why? Because I love making up new words. Love and hate are not so far apart. We learned this from Mr. Spock on Star Trek. The opposite of love is not hate... the opposite of love is Andy Dick. Anyway...

If we use "edutainment" to mean content that is both educational and entertaining, and "infotainment" to mean those things that are entertaining and informational, well... we have a new form of entertainment online that revolves around all the new social thingies that we've got going on. Do any of these sound like things you're doing these days?

• Heavy commenting on blogs -- not just leaving one comment, but engaging in comment strings, learning who the regulars are, developing a personality on the blog for yourself


• IMing with a cadre of friends whom you only know online (another word of mine, "eLationships" applies here)


• Creating avatars and personnae in virtual communities in order to vent various feelings and thoughts you wouldn't under normal circumstances


• Engaging in online gameplay not because of the game, but because of the relationship potentials


• Posting and replying on bulletin boards until all hours of the night because of the back-and-forth with various members


• Chatting in chat rooms, being clever, being sweet, being sympathetic, zinging each other, being flirty, being outright sexy

Well, if the appeal of any of those activities stems largely from the interpersonal drama, the friendships, the wit, the arguments, the zingers -- all the communications that aren't specifically related to the material itself, but to the feelings of the participants, you're involved in what I'm now calling emotainment.
Isn't emotion entertaining? I don't think we've thought of it that way before, but I believe it now is. In the same way that we didn't use to think of education or information as ever being entertaining... but now we do; hence edutainment and infotainment.

When we engage in social interactions on the Web, we are doing so in a medium that we observe even as we interact with it. We are the audience of our own performance. And so,

• As I type in my own zinger on Digg and dugg somebody, I get to mutter to myself, "Nice one, Andy!" I have been emotained.
  


• A group of friends gathers in IM or a chat room and one gets out of hand, bringing a bit too much drama, another soothes the gang, chilling everyone down... impressing the bunch with her words of wisdom. Emotaining them all.
  


• A guild leader in World of Warcraft dresses down one of his minions in front of a crowd of guild members after a series of infarctions. The offender leaves in a huff, but all the others agree, "That droog had it coming, and totally had to go." A nice bit of emotainment.
  

It has been remarked on often before that we engage in higher levels of emotional outburst on the Web, in IM and in email than we do in real life. We don't self censor, it is said, because we don't have the social cues of real life. And we don't have the other person in front of us. I also think we tend to jump on the drama llama online because, well... it's fun. It's emotaining. It's fun to get a little frisson of excitement from being a bit more brusque, risque, flirty, sweet or angry than we do in real life.

And since the consequences aren't (usually) so severe, we go ahead and push the envelope. Which is what entertainment is about. It's just, in these cases, rather than the moments being crafted by a screenwriter or author, we make them ourselves with our own emotions.

Emotainment. Now playing at an adrenal gland near (er... "in") you.

Social features vs. social functions

The social story thusfar...

This is the third in a series of posts about social networking/software, intended to put the current... er... enthusiasm... about making everything "social" into some kind of perspective, and to begin to assign some kinds of business and/or marketing terms and thoughts to the various processes and parts of social platforms.

The first two posts dealt with how we might measure the relative social value of various systems. It took me two posts to do it, since I use this space to think out loud, but with your kind patience, I came up with the following definitions:

Share of Participation: the relative value of participation in a particular type or brand of social activity by an individual or a group as measured by resource or influence

Social Share: how much of the total participation in social activities of a desired audience is aggregated to a particular brand or segment.

So "Share of Participation" might be seen as the social equivalent of "Share of Wallet," but measured in time, number of "units" of participation (entries, comments, etc.). And "Social Share" might then be an equivalent of "Mind Share" or "Market Share." The first measures how much of an individual or group's "social capital" is spent on a particular social network. The second measures how much of an entire, desired audience that network has captured. These are two very different measurements, their differences are incredibly important, and we'll get to that later in this post.

How & what vs. why

People get strategy and tactics mixed up all the time. They also get vision and mission mixed up. I've heard the two terms used interchangeably. I've always thought that "vision" makes sense as the "higher" of the two, as what you see or are looking to achieve -- your vision -- doesn't change based on what you do, but your mission(s) -- what you do -- can change over time. Missions change more often than visions, so they should be lower on the totem pole of organizational chatter. But as long as you know what you mean... fine. That's what I'm talking about. Higher vs. lower.

The "higher level" stuff is almost always concerned with strategy, and strategy is almost always concerned with "why" you are doing what you're doing as opposed to "what and how" things get done. That's because until you know the reason(s) why you (or your boss or your board or your customers) want to do something, it is almost always harder to formulate a decent plan for doing what and how. Why is that? Because there can be many, many different reasons for doing the same thing.

Witness lipstick. It's the "what" answer to a "how" question: "How do we make somebody's lips very, very red artificially?" With lipstick. Bingo. Quesion answered. Super. So... what are you going on about there, Mr. H?

Well, what I'm going on about is the difference between a feature and a function. Lipstick does, in fact, make lips very red. But if you are a woman looking to buy lipstick to make your lips red to look all sexified for your date... that's a much different function for red lips than that of a circus clown. Same feature, different function. One can argue that clowns probably use some other kind of make-up entirely; not lipstick at all. At which point I say again, "Bingo." You've now narrowed your "feature" even further. It's not just about red lips anymore, is it? It's probably about the adhesive properties of the unguents involved or something. What do I know from lipstick? But my point is, for the one feature description, "Make lips red," there are several higher level functions that are radically different.

It gets much more complex when features and functions overlap. And when they aren't well understood. And don't have a history. When media are new and everybody is jumping all overthemselves to get in on a game that seems very exciting because all those crazy kids are setting up MySpace pages and downloading YouTube videos and using the Wikipedia to research their homework because it's all so dang social... well, you need to stop and understand whether the social aspects of what they are doing are features or functions of those networks.

To put it another way: is any particular platform social in nature, or does it simply utilize social abilities to perform tasks? Or both? And, if it is social in nature... is it uniquely social? Is it creating specific social content, or easily replicable interaction? And, at this point, we're back to ways in which we might utilize measurements like share of participation and social share.

Social features: Wikipedia rules

If you don't know what Wikipedia is, and somehow you've found my little blog... that's just sad. That's like some weird kinda reverse Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing. But, be that as it may, Wikipedia is one of the best examples of a software platform that utilizes social aspects of computing almost completely as features... but is almost entirely devoid of a social function, except as an implicit byproduct for some of its authors/editors.

Most people who use Wikipedia come in contact with it as users; searchers for information. When you do that, you have no social interaction with article authors whatsoever. You are consuming information. Period. End of story, no social nuttin'. The whole Wikipedia might have been, as far as you know or care, written by one really smart dude, a computer, or a giant robot squid from the future. The social tools put into place -- the social features of a wiki -- are used in order to enable the writing and editing of articles on the site. The function of Wikipedia is to provide those articles to its readers.

If there are any social functions of the Wikipedia, they are, essentially, serendipitous; accident. You and I might "meet" while editing the same article, discover each other's email address, correspond (probably not entirely on Wikipedia, but that could happen...), fall in love, etc. etc. I'm sure that a few deep, meaningful relationships have, indeed, formed across the pages and links of Wikipedia.

Then again, I'm sure that deep, meaningful relationships have formed between mail carriers and folks on their routes. But the social aspects of mail delivery were not, and will not ever be part of the raison d'etre of the US Postal Service, FedEx or UPS. It happens. But it's not part of the "vision."

Social function: eHarmony connects

Meeting, dating and marriage are about as social as you can get. The relationship site eHarmony.com is all about matching folks up with that "perfect someone." I have no idea if it's any good. They have good ads. But I've spent some time goofing around on their site looking at their system, and I can tell you one thing -- their Web site and tools are not social, although their service and reason for being is entirely so. Many of the individual tools/features we associate with socialness and Web 2.0 -- wiki-like functionality, tagging, user-creativity tools, individual home pages, Java/AJAX-enabled aps -- are entirely absent from eHarmony's site. Its feature-set doesn't include many social tools. But its function is 100% social -- to establish a social relationship between its users where one did not exist before they joined and used the service.

Social this vs. that? Why should we care?

About half the companies with any kind of serious truck on the Web are monkeying about with social-this and social-that. Yahoo! may pay $1 billion for Facebook. Google just paid $900 million to be the search pal at MySpace. Lots of companies are adding tagging and user profile features to sites. Hundreds of sites today offer either a few social features, or are overwhelmingly social in function, or have utilized social features to the point where they would not function without them (Wikipedia).

This is all part of the Web 2.0 phenom. User created content. Groups of folks connecting with like minds. Virtual worlds and MMOs. All of which is grand. But from a business and marketing perspective, you gots to know what you're looking to accomplish (goals), what you're willing to do to get there (resources), and how exactly you're going to make the trip (tools at your disposal). Being confused about any of these things will put you in a world of loss.

For example... if you think that adding some social features to your company's Web site will create community and make your customers into a big tribe of hand-holding advocates for your products and services... well... probably not. At this point, tagging, user pages, etc. are becoming de riggeur. Within a few years, not having those features on your site will be like not having a search box. In this case, playing into the "social game" may be a good idea, but don't get your expectations up to high. You're adding features to your pre-existing products/services. You're not enabling folks to find their dream spouses.

On the flip side... if you have a service that is truly social in function, like eHarmony.com, be very, very careful about tacking on social features. Why? Because you may be enabling people to cut out the middle-man: you. What happens, for example, to the match-maker when the users become the match-makers? Well... er... Right. That's what happens. Bye-bye. It doesn't strike me as dumb in any way that eHarmony's site isn't very social. They're selling social. Giving it away in the site features wouldn't be very smrt.

I'm not saying there ain't good ways to combine the two; I'm just saying that you need to understand the difference. Know what you're selling vs. what is the value-add and what is the loss-leader. Know how social features might truly benefit your customers vs. just being a distraction. Keep an eye on when the socialness of your site may be allowing for interactions that are truly helpful -- uncovering new cross-selling ops, for example -- vs. when you may be enabling competitors to set up shop in your own backyard.

Social networking is good. Yes. I think so. But it is also very powerful. And that means it can bite the hands that feed it if not implemented carefully.

enough 2.0

Being in marketing, I consume about 32,009% of the USRDA of buzz and hype. It's part of the gig, and I accept the health affects. The headaches, the nausea, the decreaed intelligence and strange looks that children give me.

What you reg'lar folk (who only consume marketing and advertising during your day) may feel after, say, a few hours of watching TV without the aid of TiVo to assit in powering through the ads... that slightly tarnished, funky feeling of having had a strange man put his hand on your thigh and try to guide you into a new Avalon or Body By Jake... well, we who dwell in the Land of Spin, we live with this 8-12 hours a day. And we don't put blinders on -- we pay for electron microscopes and consultants and subscriptions to magazines and reports and blogs that give us MORE. On purpose. We watch ads and read books about direct marketing and go to seminars about branding and all kinds of jazz like that. Why? Because we make this stuff up. You eat it. We plant it, grow it, harvest it, grind it, mix it, bake it and deliver it to your door.

I say this as a preamble. I say it to let you know that it takes a lot, a whole lot... a really, really big friggin' lot to make me tired of a catch-phrase. Normally, most marketers think of them as pets. As cute little buggers that the populace at large has adopted for awhile, and will eventually let die once they grow too old to cuddle and start to smell funky. Sometimes a catch phrase will linger on in comedy bits as something that folks in-the-know understand isn't cool, but that geeks think is still "hip." And we in marketing can certainly exploit that tension. Fine, fine, fine. But I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about a catch-phrase that is actually lingering in the by-god mediasphere. Something that people who should know better keep using. And when it gets to the point where I can't go a week without reading some new "Two-Dot-Oh" crappy story... well, I've gotta just ask people to cut it out.

First of all, if you don't know what "Web 2.0" actually is, don't use the term. It doesn't mean a Web site that you designed in the last year or so. It doesn't mean an interactive site. We've had those for years. It doesn't mean a site that looks clean and cool. It doesn't mean a site that uses Flash or AJAX or Ruby-on-Friggin-Rails. If you don't know what it means, look it up. I'm not even going to give you a link. HINT: If the article doesn't mention Tim O'Reilly, it's a crock.

But even if the hype around Web 2.0 was inflated and had overstated its welcome... and even if folks had just stuck to using the term inappropriately... well, I'd have shut up and put Web 2.0 in the land of cute, too-cooked catch-phrases that us marketing wallahs learn to live with as the enter and exit our various visual fields.

Now, though? Now everything has to be friggin' 2.0, dunn' it? We've got Enterprise 2.0 and Banking 2.0. There's Education 2.0 and Cinema 2.0 and Religion 2.0 and Career 2.0 and Design 2.0 and...

Here's a Clue 2.0... put just about any business phrase or idea into Google... add 2.0... and do a quick search. Great yazzin' zotz.

Two-Dot-Oh is a great way of saying... you don't really know what the hell Web 2.0 is. There is quite a lot of controversy in the Web world as to what Web 2.0 actually means. And even if you believe in what Tim says it means, if what that is, is what it should mean. Because Web 1.0 was supposed to mean that in the first place to many people. Get it? It's not like saying something is "salt free." Saying your idea is "2.0" doesn't make it anything.

Except Annoying 2.0 to me.

Update 10/29/06: In case you didn't click on the logo above, you should know that it was created using Alex P's "Web2.0 Logo Creator."

TaleWeaver, Second Edition

Well, I finally got around to it -- the Second Edition of TaleWeaver. The First Edition has been available on Amazon.com  for awhile, which seems like a big deal, but ain't. If you care, here's the story behind the story about the story of making up stories.

Back in 1999, I originally wrote the 100 story/game/poem cards that form the basis of the project as a stand-alone deal-i-o for my wife and future (at the time) son. Had no intention of doing more with it, really, than playing it at home with them and some friends and family. But I was told (by her and others) to "Get with the program" and write down the rules. So I did, and formatted it in a friendly way for the nice gnomes at Kinko's to print out, along with the cards.

I made up about 12 copies In that format --  which I guess was "TaleWeaver beta." Hah hah hah... does this make the current version "TaleWeaver 2.0?" NO IT DOES NOT! I will rant on the whole "2.0" thing if you give me even half an excuse. So don't get me started... anyway...

So I had the "beta" done and hanging out, and my friend Jeff called me up and we were talking. And he, it turns out, had started one of the first online self-publishing companies, "Great Unpublished." And since they were new, they needed whatever projects they could get "on the shelves" when they went live. He asked me if I had any "book length manuscripts" or such that could fetch some attention. The only thing I could think of, other than ganging together every scrap of poetry I'd ever written, was TaleWeaver.

So I gave it unto him, and he published it for free. At the time, GU was charging like $150 or sumfin as the set-up fee. No big whoop. The he and his partners sold GU to a company called BookSurge. Which then got sold to Amazon. So now my wee book, through no work and with no effort and no payments on my part was on Amazon. Cool. Ish. Because the cover was really crappy, as the initial GU covers were all very basic. And the cards were included as pages inside a paperback book. Yeesh. And I had no control over the typography. All of which, as a design-wank, made me nuts. But not enough to cause me to do anything about it, as I hadn't done anything about it to get the thing published in the first place.

But then, if you'll check down there... a couple posts down... no, not the one about shaving your nuts... you've scrolled too far... a couple higher... yeah... that one... you'll see that I got a nice email from a guy who used TaleWeaver as a lightweight RPG. "What a neat idea," I thought. "If ever I update TW, I should include that."

Well it bugged me. A good idea like that all, well... Unincorporated. That and the crappy cover, and the cards in the book, etc. So I've been working on the 2nd edition for the last month.

And now it's done and you can get it at Lulu. I'm pleased with how it's turned out, especially the RPG system. I resisted the urge to get overly complex. There's just one mechanic in the whole dang game. Hah! Take that, Steve Jackson! And you can buy the cards separately now, as a downloadable PDF, and print 'em on your own card-stock. Which, since I can't find a way to do custom cards over the Internet (yet), is the best I can do. I may offer a deluxe gift pack or something in my Etsy store where I'll put the book, a printed deck of cards and a couple dice together in a nice box along with an autographed picture of anyone other than me.

Enjoy.