Category Archives: Social Media

First, here’s the Brickfish contest link, which I’m involved in through a family member.

Ok, so last week was frenzy week, establishing web presence right and left, Tweeting and Stumbling and LiveJournaling and everything. Take away: there is a LOT going on in the internets! There are many choices to make and intentionalities to establish. I am excited about the nuances and varieties available for every possible message to every single particular distinct audience. Breathtaking!

Secondly, the contest itself has been like an amusement park ride. I’ve learned a lot through it.

It does provide gratification – when you post to another platform and there are votes – it shows on the viral map! But the gratification is delayed, and is not in a 1:1 correspondence with reality – the numbers for each platform are, I think, a proportion – but am not sure. I’m sure they aren’t votes specifically or views specifically either. So there’s response to action, but also a kind of looseness that makes it even more interesting sort of. I’ve learned about various platforms, and also about the Brickfish contest itself.

Sometimes I’ve learned about Brickfish that there is nothing to ‘learn’ – that sufficient information is not available. And that’s fine.. I would just like to know beyond that point sometimes.. For instance, I’m very curious about ‘other,’ which has aggregated a lot of activity. I first thought that was where sites with less activity were accumulated, but Hi5 and Xanga and MySpace showed up with ‘1’ and ‘2’ and so on. Kind of rules that out. So now I’m wondering – is it sites not based in the US? Non-English-language sites? Some whole other categorization completely? Would love to know..

I like the viral map a lot, but since all of us established it on so many platforms, it got really teensy tiny. And it doesn’t genie! Would be cool if it did the Apple-Dock thing, expanding on mouse-over, then contracting again.

You can expand the whole viral map, which makes it not fit in the window, then you can move the map around to see all of it bit by bit. So that works.

Also the Geo view is very interesting. According to it, all the views from Minnesota (where we’re from) total only about 1/4 of the views of this picture. I find that very surprising – I mean I appreciate everyone’s interest, but really? Just surprises me.

Then the whole mechanics as far as how often it was possible to vote, that’s been provocative. At first it was clearly once every 12 hours per browser/os/computer. Then sometimes the waiting period was 10 hours. Then… sometimes only 3 hours! Sometimes the browser would say ‘you can vote again in 7 hours’ for instance, I’d refresh half an hour later and it would say ‘you can vote in 1 hr’. I don’t know what to make of it! That sort of thing can almost become compelling, in and of itself.

Overall, I have to say it’s been a great fit for my own process, since I have this entity (Clarity Solutions) and my site-members and all, and I’ve been wanting to explore platforms and become more proficient with Hootsuite and all. It’s been Completely Perfect for that process of mine. Like when I was learning a new language, and at that point was working in the suburbs and had an hour-long commute, and so could listen to my language CD the whole time. A perfect fit.

I hope I haven’t been too pushy about it! On the other hand, any views/votes always welcome, and any ideas about further promotions (runs till 2/9) are very welcome! But also about staying this side of excessive..

Win/win is always my goal!