Pink nightmares

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation has been a behemoth in the fight against breast cancer. This week, though, SGK is in the middle of a PR nightmare regarding its decision to discontinue its support to Planned Parenthood. According to the Komen’s founder and CEO, the decision is not politically motivated. It has nothing to do with abortion, but everything to do with a policy changes meant to ensure “you are granting money to the right people.”

In this case, the right people are those organizations who are not under “formal investigation for financial or administrative improprieties by local, state or federal authorities,” reports Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. 

On the surface, this sounds like a reasonable policy. Why would anyone want to fund questionable organizations? However, Goldberg’s probing reveals a political agenda. Indeed, this decision was about severing ties with the most important provider of reproductive health services in the United States. These services, of course, include abortions, and Komen finally decided to veer openly to the right on this controversial issue. Komen applied its new policy to PP, which has been the target of a congressional inquiry since September because, according to Representative Cliff Stearns (R), the organization might be using federal funding to pay for abortions.

However, this entire prologue is not the reason I’m decided to write this piece. What makes the Komen vs PP debacle interesting to me is its social media dimension. It makes me wonder whether or not organizations like Komen take social media seriously, or if they merely think of it as an additional outlet for their press releases. You see, before the controversy exploded, Komen’s Facebook page was a bulletin board. The organization would post news tidbits, like this one

After Komen made its defunding of PP public, though, anger flooded its Facebook page. These comments were added to Nancy Brinker’s birthday thread after the announcement

Komen is the latest public entity to suffer the wrath of social media users. Yes, that wonderful outlet works so well in the PR mix also makes it very easy to express dissent, discontent, and outright fury. More importantly, it increases the speed of protest, as Andrew Rasiej of New York Tech MeetUp pointed out to TheWrap

“There’s a new political and media ecology that social networking provides and it’s not controlled by the mainstream media [...] It’s controlled by citizens who are able to wield power at a speed that has the mainstream media, the politicians and the institutional players in shock.”

Often, media analysts point out that the power of social media lies in its ability to organize dissenters. However, we should also look at social media’s ability to aggregate discontent. Indeed, we can’t think of this backlash as the result of an organized effort. We should look at it as the result of decentralized actions that coalesced because of social media. We use the social web to connect with each other, but connecting isn’t just about sharing pictures of our pets. We share information, we comment on Facebook pages, we use hashtags, and we spread of memes. The savviest organizations and individuals know how to channel these routine activities into movements. Yet what the organizers of virtual protest really do is guide our clicks in the desired direction. That’s very different from asking us to occupy a public park. Clicking, using a hashtag, signing a petition, changing our profile picture, or sharing a picture costs us very little effort, yet the cumulative effects can be very powerful. Planned Parenthood understood this much better than Komen.

I took this screen capture from Planned Parenthood’s album on Facebook. It was shared over 22 thousand times. Furthermore, Planned Parenthood added this picture below to the album, after Komen reversed its funding policy changes and apologized to “the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.”

In comparison, what was Komen doing with their social media? According to Kivi Miller, during the initial stages of the crisis, “The only Komen action on their Facebook page had been to delete anti-Komen comments, so the ratio of negative to positive looks more like 10 – 1 instead of the 80 – 1 (and even higher this morning) on Twitter.” Aside from that, Komen carried on as it would under normal circumstances. For example, as Miller noted, Komen re-tweeted a report from FoxNewsLatino on January 30.

Via @FoxNewsLatino: Researchers discovered a case of prostate #cancer in a 2,200y.o. mummy, the 2nd-oldest known case ow.ly/8LNzM—
Susan G. Komen (@komenforthecure) January 30, 2012

Komen did not address their funding decision on Twitter until February 1, when they released Nancy Brinker’s video statement (posted above). Worst of all, Komen’s Twitter feed today had been dedicated to debunking a supposed partnership with Discount Gun Sales, to market pink handguns for the cure.

@openfilehfx They are not our partner, & we have never received any donations from them. Ofcl SGK partners listed here: sgk.mn/wWdUEI—
Susan G. Komen (@komenforthecure) February 04, 2012

Now that Komen has reversed its funding decision, they will have to re-build their brand. The damage is significant, judging from some of the reactions posted to their Facebook page. The damage has nothing to do with breast cancer, or Komen’s mission. It has everything to do about their abandoning their primary focus, breast cancer prevention, awareness, and funding for research.

Before the PP debacle, I counted Komen as one of the savvy organizations. Their pink ribbon campaigns and partnerships were Facebook darlings. In fact, you could say that Komen took Facebook Pages best practices guide to heart. It uses its page to  ”join the conversation, share their stories, and build a meaningful dialogue with their supporters and volunteers.” Unfortunately, Facebook’s handy guide doesn’t address the other side of the meaningful dialogue, the fact that it is public, and that involves people, not sheeple. The lesson here is that one should never assume “Facebook Likes” mean complete agreement with every policy decision.

Filed under: Branding, Technology, facebook, nancy brinker, Planned Parenthood, representative cliff stearns, social media, Susan G. Komen, Twitter

Google +

Getting an invitation to Google +, if you’re interested in social media at all, feels like finding a golden ticket to the Wonka factory. It’s rare, and when you finally get it, you access an exclusive space that probably few among your Facebook friends are privy too. In my case, I have 100+ FB friends, yet only about 7 are on Google+. The reason is pretty simple: Google is throttling access to their social media platform. Yesterday, July 6th, they opened up a brief window of opportunity. Their aim was to double their user base. They must have achieved their goal very quickly, as the window shut down within hours.

I managed to get on the platform. An invite that had been sent to me on July 5th finally made it through, and now I’m part of the beta test group. I was able to send out a couple of invites, but as far as I can tell, only two people were able to join. I also tried a workaround posted on cnet. Still waiting to hear on that one as well, and I have serious doubts that it still works. In the mean time, this is my take on Google +.

Beta testing hype: When restriction translates into interest.

Google beta tests are not always restricted. In fact, anyone can go to Google Labs and test out their prototypes. We hardly ever hear about low profile projects, like Google Transliteration, Follow Finder, or Google Body, and for good reason. Many ideas probably don’t make it past the initial testing phase. In the meantime, though, we are helping Google with our free labor as beta testers. In return, we get to play around with prototypes.

Google’s high profile launches are another matter.  Gmail and Google Wave, for example, were both tested under an invite only model.  Gmail started as a very restricted service. Invitations were hard to come by, as Google only allowed its users to invite two additional people to the test, according to the Boston Globe. For Google Wave,  the company invited 6,000 developers to the beta test, and then rolled out the product to an additional 100,000 users.  I was never able to get an invite for Gmail, but I did manage to finagle one for Google Wave. It just wasn’t what I expected, and I jumped off the wave within a week. I wasn’t the only one, apparently, as Google abandoned Google Wave last year.

Restricting the beta test certainly keeps Google from exceeding its capacity to sustain a social network. Yet it also achieves something else. The restriction just makes Google + more desirable. The early adopters do a great deal of word of mouth marketing for Google. We write about our experience on the site, and we offer our invites to Facebook friends. The truth is that we want them on Google +, because the whole point of a social networking platform is to be social. If none of our friends are on Google+, who are we supposed to interact with?

Right now, we all seem to be hanging out with other geeks, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Everett Rogers, author of Diffusion of Innovations, described the process whereby innovations, new ideas, and new technologies spread. According to Rogers, one can categorize individuals according to their innovativeness, that is, their willingness to try an innovation. The first category, which Rogers calls “innovators” is made up by individuals who are willing and able to take greater risks. What makes them innovators, though, is not merely the fact that they can take risks. It is the fact that they have access to the innovation before anyone else, often because they have social contacts with the creators of the innovation. In this case, we should consider technology bloggers, like Pete Cashmore or Leo Laporte, to fit this category.

The next category is the early adopter. Like the innovators, they are willing and able to test out the innovations, but unlike the first group, early adopters lack the direct access to the epicenters of innovation. They are just chomping at the bit to get in, however, and when they do, early adopters are key. They do a lot of the leg work that leads to higher adoption rates of the innovation. In the case of Google+, early adopters like myself are not only testing out features on the site. We are also actively trying to get our friends into Google+. Don’t be surprised when some of your FB friends start posting messages on their wall, offering to send invites to whomever wants them. That’s how Google+ will spread for the time being.

One of the interesting things about the launch of Google+ has been the sporadic availability of the invites. Indeed, Google+ opens up the site, enables users to invite friends, and then clamps down again. No one knows when this bursts Google generosity will happen, or how long the portal will remain open. It can be a few hours or barely minutes, which is why the Los Angeles Times suggests that if you want be an early adopter for Google+, your best bet is to check the Google+ site periodically. Perhaps then you’ll get lucky.

Google + features: My favorite things (of the one’s I’ve actually tried)

By now, there are dozens of reviews about Google + features. Circles and hangouts are the most popular. Circles is essentially a different way of organizing the people you follow. By default, Google+ gives you four categories, friends, family, acquaintances, and following. The labels are self explanatory, but in case you miss it, Google+ provides you with a definition of what they mean by these terms. Friends, for example, are “your real friends, the ones you feel comfortable sharing private details with,” whereas Following is people you don’t know at all.

You can argue that Facebook and Twitter also allow you to create different categories and lists of friends, followers, and people you follow. However, I’ve found working with Twitter lists is very awkward. Groups, though arguably better, is not drag and drop, and this is where circles is far easier to use. Circles is drag and drop, and you can create as many circles as you wish.

Sharing is also designed with reminders about privacy in mind. In fact, you can’t post anything to Google+ without specifying how it will be shared. Public makes it available on your public profile, and copies everyone who has added you to their circles. Yet you can also choose to share only with your friends, coworkers, family, bowling team, or whatever combination of groups and people you wish. Again, Facebook has something similar, but it is not built into the sharing mechanics, and you don’t have to specify how your posts will be shared.

Perhaps my favorite feature is the ability to edit my posts after the fact. I can add, delete, and correct anything, no matter how long ago it was posted. There is a glitch, though: the edit function does not work with photo albums. That is something that I hope Google+ will fix.

As for hangouts, I haven’t been able to test them out yet. The people at Mashable describe hangouts as “Google+ killer feature” . Even without testing it out, the ability to video chat with 10 people at one time is much better than what Facebook has to offer.

There was also one thing that puzzled me at first, the incoming feed. I didn’t get the point of having it. Essentially, the incoming feed holds posts that are shared with you by people who are not in your circles. Right now, it is of no use to me, as everyone seems to be sharing within their circles. Eventually, I’m guessing that it will be come the spam feed, and I like the idea of not having to deal with the spammers that plague my Twitter profile.

With the deluge of information about Google+, I think it’s more useful to wrap up this post by sharing some resources about the new social platform. Here they are:

Reviews:

1. Google+ First Impressions (Mashable)
2. 9 Things Google+ Needs for me to ditch Facebook (PC World)
3. Google+: 5 Features and Drawbacks (PC World)
4. First Impressions of Google+ (Hackcollege)
5. Google+ vs Facebook: See how they compare (PC World)

Privacy issues:

1. Google + may carry dangers for photographers (The Washington Post)
2. Gearing up for Google+Privacy Settings (The Wall Street Journal)

How To’s, Tips, Tricks, Add Ons, and Other Goodies

1. Google + Tips and Tricks, a Collaborative Document
2. How to get the most out of Google+ on your Mac and iOS devices (GigaOM)
3. Facebook “Circle Hack” Tool (PC World)
4. The best tips, tricks & add-ons for Google+ (Geek.com)
5. Extended Share for Google + (Chrome add on)
6. How to get your own Google+ Vanity URL
7. Google Plus: 8 Quick Tips and Tricks
8. How to Video Podcast Using Google+ Hangouts (Phandroid)

Filed under: Technology, Gmail, Google, Google Wave, Web 2.0

Fan studies: The different and the revisionist

You can’t have PCA without a fan studies panel. Better yet, if you are in anyway interested in fan studies, this is the spot of the week. My first stop was a session titled “Counting and recounting the players in fan culture.”. The three panelists, all from Old Dominion U, discussed fandoms from the perspectives of marketing, transmedia storytelling, and ACA-Fandom.” Of these presentations, I was particularly interested in marketing, and ACA-Fandom.

In terms of marketing, Diane Cooke, from ODU discussed the role of fan communities as marketing tools. This is a fascinating subject for me, as I am most interested in about the intersection between fandoms and corporate cultures. In the textual poachers model, fandom is about establishing a moral economy, which necessarily pits fans and corporate interest. However, I find myself often thinking that it can’t be that simple. Nothing ever is, and this is why I chose to study fans who interact in spaces that are furnished by corporations. Diane Cooke’s presentation addressed a related topic. Based on the work of Peter Morville, she suggested the “Markets are conversations.” Furthermore, the corporate players involved in these conversations are actually tying to be responsive.

Now, that kind of statement would not fly under the transgressive, textual poacher model. “What do you mean corporate players are trying to be responsive? Don’t you realize that whenever they get involved in anything, they wreck it?”

That may be so, but I’m a pragmatist. Fan communities are no longer marginal to the way in which the culture industries operate (BTW… that’s also a Jenkism). Rather, fans are really seen as valuable brand advocates, which is why D. Cooke’s presentation was so engaging for me. Her project was about mapping fan conversations about the release of the Beatles Rock Band game, and it uses a rhizomatic perspective.

Now, if you’re not familiar with rhizomes, or you know them in another context, perhaps, they are a metaphor for complexity. Deleuze and Guattari came up with it, and they used it to explain how we can construct knowledge, and understand complex phenomena. Rhizomes are essentially surface roots, which spread in different directions. The analyst and the critic of culture would be well advised to follow the rhizomes, wherever they may lead. In this sense, rhizomatic theory is different than other philosophical perspectives about knowledge. Rhizomatics is about connections and disruptions, whereas the more traditional way of understanding knowledge is about specialization and deep respect for authority.

What makes rhizomes so well suited for projects that map web-based interaction is precisely this idea of surface, and even unpredictability. In nature, you can’t really predict where a rhizome will go (yes, rhizomes are real. They are actual roots… next time you go to the grocery store and pick up ginger root, you should know that’s a rhizome). In an online environment, you can’t predict what will become a meme, be forgotten, lay dormant and then re-emerge, be taken at face value, or what impact any of it may have. If anything, you can follow a phenomena, and you can map it and describe it, but you can’t expect to fully comprehend it.

“The rhizome is huge, so how can you maintain conversations?” That was one take away from Cooke’s presentation. As she described the process of mapping, you have to be aware of the various stakeholders that are involved in this conversations. You have the official ones, which are essentially the corporations that have incorporated the internet into their marketing efforts (that would be ALL OF THEM), and the consumers, which include fans. Fans will take to the internet, and share information, and official stakeholders are always keeping an eye out.

I don’t mean that in the sense of spying. I mean it in the sense of recognizing the opportunities that fans create for brand extension. In this sense, Cooke described fans in ways reminiscent of Muniz and O’Guinn’s brand communities. They keep up with the developments that pertain the objects of their fandom, and they share information and speculation about these objects.

Cooke’s colleague at Old Dominion University, Danielle Roach, spoke on “Pre-Jenkins ACA-Fandom.” Her work brought in a feminist perspective on ACA-Fandom, by suggesting that feminist scholars who wrote about fandom before Jenkins published textual poachers had been left out of the historiography of fan studies. I wholeheartedly agree with the argument, but I can’t help but wonder if the omission of individuals like Janice Radway is not only due to the declining fortunes of feminism (Roach’s argument), but could also be the result of the ways in which we label and self-identify our work. I mean, did Janice Radway ever say she studied fans?

Still, why aren’t we including much earlier work on fandom as part of the historiography of the discipline? Perhaps is because starting points, or foundational stories if you want, are often arbitrary. However, the ways in which power structures play out and influence academic disciplines should be taken into account. I found that to be Roach’s most valuable contribution, and that was my main take away from her discussion of the historiography of fandom.

Filed under: ACA Fans, Fandom, Technology, ACA-fans, advertising, Deleuze and Guattari, fandom, fans, Henry Jenkins, marketing, rhizomes, technology

Tech reviews: A few of my favorite things

Oprah has her favorite things, but if you want to be nit picky about it, this post is not intended to emulate her. I was actually thinking of Maria von Trapp, or rather, of Julie Andrews’ singing about a few of Maria’s favorite things. She liked kittens. I, on the other hand, like kittens on YouTube. I think of myself as a tech savvy individual. I own a MacBook, I can program a DVR, and I have several twitter accounts, which I manage somewhat efficiently using a twitter client. However, ever since I came to Trinity University, I’ve come to realize that I had overestimated my savvy. Sure, I could insert video into a PowerPoint slide, and I also had my own blog, but that was the extent of my use of technologies in the classroom, and I was fine with that.

Until I came to Trinity, that is. And it is not just because now I can afford a Blackberry with the data plan (as opposed to salivating every time I saw one of my friends updating Facebook from their Blackberry). The timing was just right, as I arrived as Trinity was transitioning to the cloud. Yup, we are one of the schools who are using Google apps.

Tmail, Trinity’s version of gmail, is probably the one app we are all using on campus. It’s just like Gmail, and very soon we’ll be able to switch between Gmail and Tmail without having to log off and on. GoogleDocs is also part of the suite available at Trinity. I have discussed some aspects of GoogleDocs  in a previous post, and I will be writing some more on the challenges I’ve encountered using it in a future entry. This time I just want to discuss my other favorite Web 2.0 technologies, and how I’m using them.

Prezi: presentations beyond powerpoint.

Prezi is definitely at the top of my list. Prezi is a presentation tool, and it is far more versatile than Power Point. Indeed, powerpoint limits you to slides, whereas Prezi gives you an entire canvas to fill up with your ideas, and you can organize your thoughts as you would do if you were creating a mind map. In terms of design, Prezi includes 10 different templates, and you can also create your own style sheet. Finally, Prezis are very dynamic, since you can add video, and create basic animations. For example, this is a Prezi that I created to discuss the future of newspapers with my intro to mass media students.

As much as I like this tool, Prezis have limitations. The main one is that you can only embed video from YouTube. Furthermore, if you want to embed audio, you have to convert your file to FLV or SWF format. Also, wordpress does not embed Prezis, unless you use the gigya shortcode. That can be really frustrating, especially if you are not familiar with coding. However, the beauty of the web is that, if you keep at it, you can always find someone who figured out the solution to your computing problem. I guess this is why one of my colleagues, Aaron Delwiche, says that we can all be programmers now.

Dropbox: File storage on the cloud

I’ve had my MacBook for a couple of years. I wrote my dissertation on it, and I use it more than any other technology that I own. Last spring, I started getting a little concerned about the age of my computer. I’ve heard the horror stories before, about people losing all their files to a hard crash of their hard drive, or God forbid, the death of their mother board. At that point, I had almost completed my dissertation, and even though I had several copies scattered around in flash drives and emails, I felt it was time to back up everything. I did what most people would do. I bought an external hard drive, formatted it for the Mac, and dragged and dropped everything to it. I’m glad I did. As it turned out, my hard drive did die. However, I have never been able to use my external hard drive on a PC. Since that is what I have at the office, that’s actually an issue.

Or it was, until I heard about Dropbox.^[1]

With Dropbox, you can synch any number of computers and/or mobile devices to your dropbox, and any files you save, change, and/or delete from your dropbox folder will update automatically across devices and platforms. Dropbox offers 2GB of free cloud storage, and you can get an additional 250 MB of space by referring your friends. Moreover, if you register a .edu account, Dropbox will give you 500 MB per referral. You can invite your friends directly, or you can share your referral link with anyone. Here is mine. Feel free to use, or not.

This is my dropbox, or rather, how my dropbox looks like online. However, it is not how I use it the most. I’ve downloaded and installed the dropbox desktop client on my home and office computers. This creates a folder on my hard drive, and it automatically updates and synchs everything to the most recent version. As long as I remember to close the files, they will synch.

If 2GB is too little for your needs, take a look at SugarSynch. It is basically the same service, but with 5GB of space for free. I’ve installed it, but haven’t really used it yet. However, here is a review of SugarSynch, by Shep McAllister for HackCollege. He actually has used it uses it. I merely have it on my laptop, but have yet to do anything with it.

Evernote: “Have you noticed me taking pictures of the your handouts?”

When it comes to technology, I’d take cues from Shep any day. Shep writes for  HackCollege, which is a version of Lifehacker for the college crowd. Shep was a student of mine at Trinity.  Last fall, he asked me if I had noticed him taking pictures of the my handouts.

I had not noticed, and I even felt a little inept. Shouldn’t I be able to see such things going on in my classroom? I supposed that if I had a strict no-technology rule, I probably would have. It also would have helped to have X-ray vision, since I teach in an amphitheater-style lecture hall. While it isn’t ungodly large, you would have to constantly walk up and down the room if you want to keep track of what everyone is doing. I hardly ever do.

In any case, Shep was actually digitizing his notes. He’d take a quick picture of a handout, and upload it to Evernote.

Evernote is note-taking 2.0. You can type, scan, or record notes directly to your favorite device. I have since tried it on my blackberry (a little cumbersome, since I’m still getting used to the virtual keyboard on the torch, which I insist on using just because I have it), the iPad, and my laptop..

Now, I know that I could share files, if I wanted to, directly from Dropbox. However, with Evernote I can compile different materials into a single note, and then organize the notes into shared notebooks. So far, I’ve created two of these. I use them upload recordings from lectures, annotated PDFs that I use for my own class prep^[2], assorted videos, and links to prezis. I think of it as my very own academic smorgasbord. This is what one of my Evernote shared notebooks looks like.

So far, the only drawback I’ve had using Evernote is that I can’t record a full lecture directly to an audio note. I tried it once, and could only capture about 10 minutes of semi-coherent rambling ^[3] before I exceeded the space limit for the Blackberry app. I don’t have this issue if I simply use Blackberry’s own voice notes recorder. I can tape the whole thing, and then upload to Evernote. Once up there, I can access the content from any computer, share it, and if I’m feeling especially ambitious, I can convert the audio files to MP3s, clean them up on garage band or audacity, and voila! I have a podcast.^[4]

These are tools that I use daily, but they are not the only technologies that are available for instructional use. If you know of any cool tools, please let me know.

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Notes

^[1]I actually learned about Dropbox from Aaron Delwiche.
^[2]Preview (for the Mac) now allows you to annotate PDFs. NitroPDF, on the other hand, is a good solution for the PC, as it can upload directly to Evernote. There is no NitroPDF version for the Mac.
^[3] Sometimes I honestly wonder what the students think of the rambling. This was especially true when I decided to discuss encoding/decoding.
^[4]This is the first semester that I’ve made recordings, with permission from the students. I decided to do it because for the first time I have several students who are entitled to special accommodations. This is one way in which I can provide that.

Filed under: Pedagogy, Technology, Classroom Technologies, Dropbox, Evernote, GoogleApps, HackCollege, pedagogy