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Category Archives: layoff

Feb 08 0 comments

Participation, data mine, layoff, sad, web 2.0

The Private and the Public Profile

: Image via CrunchBase

Facebook, FriendFeed, Linkedin are great ways of getting to know people. The problem comes in when people start doing odd things or sending odd notes to your mailbox or DM on these systems. There has been a rash of people deleting accounts lately on Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed lately either through the distraction that these systems have, or being terminally offended by something that someone posted. The naked pictures of kittens playing with nipple rings aside, the time of the public and private profile has arrived and this mostly has to do with self-protection and a sense of being more intimate with a smaller number of users who really do matter to you.

The telling point in any story is what triggers the event that causes someone to modify his or her behavior. The key trigger for me was a supervisor walking into the office waving their iPod and asking what was going on with my Facebook account, why were there so many postings. The issue at heart was that I was mucking about with a program – and literally had everything from FriendFeed going into Facebook. This caused a problem because it looked like I spent all day social networking and not doing much of anything else. This was a programmatic issue; I was mucking about in code with a program, and was literally dumping everything from all the people (over 500) on FriendFeed. This was beyond that supervisors belief system because they honestly thought that there had to be a direct action to get anything into Facebook.

I have also been seeing a sharp increase in just simple weirdness coming in from other sites, and people with demands, things they want now when I do not even know them. Which is disturbing to say the least, my time is in short supply at times, and having people demand anything from me becomes problematic very quickly.

Hence the private profile, I can program to my heart’s content without upsetting anyone along the way, and keeping a supervisor out of my office waving their iPod at me as if I was doing something offensive. Moreover, this might be the one thing that people need to do to adopt some form of privacy on social networking sites. One profile for everyone and their brother, and one profile that is more intimate to be used amongst a smaller circle of friends.

The immediate benefits are if you boss, HR, or employment group wants to have access to your Facebook account you can give them the public profile. The one with all the ordinary people or one that is rarely updated as your base, the face you show to the world. Ensure that your public profile puts your best foot forward and is professional, enjoyable, and reflects well upon you. Your private profile, the one with your smaller circle of friends can be just that, more private and satisfies your needs for conversation where no one will mind what you are up to online.

Delete Your Account helps you delete accounts from online services (downloadsquad.com)
Users Log Out of Social Networking for Good (time.com)
Social Media and Young Adults report shows teen blogging on the decline (downloadsquad.com)

Nov 04 1 comments

Politics, layoff, sad

Another Face of Microsoft Leaves this time via a Firing

: Image via CrunchBase

I am a diehard Microsoft Fan boy – even though I own an Apple and Linux boxes and use AWS for most of my infrastructure needs at work and at play, Microsoft still is an important part of my normal work day. But with the release of Don Dodge (who I have met at a couple of conferences, and listened to him speak) was the face of the current Microsoft. Much like Robert Scoble was the face of Microsoft while he was there, Don was more low key, more easy going, and less likely to rock the boat than Robert could be. Microsoft probably let the wrong person go, but then in many ways Microsoft remains a mystery to many outsiders.

I am sorry to see Don go, mostly because he was an excellent evangelist for Microsoft, which they need. No doubt that someone else will step into the shoes, but replacing Robert and replacing Don is not going to be an easy thing, and there will always be that nagging hammer over the head of the replacement, what happens next.

Sorry to see him go, but wishing all the best wishes in the world. You can read more at Don’s blog, and this is a loss for Microsoft, they need all the good evangelists they can get.

If you have never heard Don speak – here is a YouTube video of him at one of the conferences.

Microsoft ambivalence (mondaynote.com)
The Macalope Weekly: Everyone’s got an opinion (macworld.com)
What Makes Boston’s Start-Up Scene Special? (bostonvcblog.typepad.com)

Oct 21 2 comments

Participation, Politics, layoff, sad, web 2.0

Why you need a public and a private profile in Social Networking

: Image via CrunchBase

Social networking when taken from the viewpoint of connecting people works; it is a brilliant way of getting people together across various age and demographic groups. The side effect of all this is that as we become more highly connected to each other we do tend to end up living in a fish bowl, everyone knows what we publicly post all the time. This has lead to people getting in trouble.

According to Mashable 8% of companies that were surveyed and are tracking and using social networking have sacked employees who have violated company rules because of their activities with social networking. For some companies the use of social networking can be generally annoying leading to employees being blocked from using social networking at work. Or dangerous to the company because the employee violated some rule that needs to be obeyed or legal requirement for publicly held companies. It is very easy to be fired for social networking. The idea of a public and private profile though is nothing new, but it is time for a wider adoption of the concept in our always-on always-connected Web 2.0 life.

According to a new study by Proofpoint, an Internet security firm, of companies with 1,000 or more employees, 17 percent report having issues with employee’s use of social media. And, 8 percent of those companies report having actually dismissed someone for their behavior on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. That is double from last year, where just 4 percent reported having to fire someone over social media misuse. Source: Mashable

As employers and companies increasingly search the “real time web” looking for customers who are angry about something, or happy about something, the odds are highly likely that they will also find employees talking about things that will generally tick off the company and lead to someone being shown the door. This is a huge drawback to working, because on the internet everything is cached, everything is remembered; including everything you ever posted online. This is why the public, private profiles are becoming so important.

We all make mistakes, like when I posted looking for a social media position and started getting phone calls from people who were wondering if they could have my job. I was annoyed with the reaction, and I was even more annoyed for that one moment of stupidity along the way. It was a mistake, didn’t really want to leave and don’t want to leave my job it is still fun and I still work with some very cool people. Like all jobs, it has its ups and downs, but that is ok, people expect that. It is in those unguarded moments though that we make our most horrific mistakes that lead to being fired. This is why if you want to talk about things online you need to have a private profile, something that people who you truly know and trust are privy to, and not your boss, not your high school chums, and not anyone you do not know personally.

The private profile gives you the opportunity to rant, much as you would on those long Sunday phone calls to your friends, or those nice meetings you have with your friends on Saturday night in a grotto bar somewhere in town. People generally do not monitor or even know that you and five of your friends went to a bar on Saturday night to talk about life, liberty and anything else. The difference is that everyone who is your Facebook friend (say some 500 of them) all knows that you hate your job if you post on your public profile, in a carefully controlled private profile, only a very small number of private people know that you hate your job. The message is contained to people you personally know and trust; it is also easier to find out who said what if your boss talks to you about your Facebook postings.

Something to consider, and if you have to rant in public you need to have a private profile that few if any know about, this is just safe social networking.

To friend, or not to friend: That is the workplace question (seattlepi.com)
College Republicans Terminate Online Social Network “As Scheduled … (jonggunlee.tistory.com)

Sep 21 2 comments

Politics, funding, layoff, news, sad

Newspapers do not need a tax bail out

: Image via Wikipedia

Over on “the hill” a blog news site comes news that there is a newspaper tax bailout bill being seriously proposed in Washington. Newspapers do not need a bailout bill; they need to restructure to meet the needs of the new way of doing things.

Much like buggy whips, assembly before the assembly line, the introduction of the steel belted radial tire, we have allowed companies to fail. This sudden and disturbing interest in bailing out companies so that they can continue on with their old business models that do not fit where technology and society is going is going to fry innovation in its tracks. Sorry, while I like the New York Times and the Seattle Times, it was not a big loss to me to lose the Seattle PI, the Rocky Mountain News or other newspapers that have shutdown or gone out of business.

This is not an assault on Journalists, this is not an assault on the free press, we need a reasoned non yellow journalism (AKA Fox News) way of getting the news. What is happening is that we are getting the news from people we trust, not necessarily the NY Times. We are following what our friends follow, we are reading blogs, we are reading the BBC, and we are reading a whole host of online content. While the ads on the internet and on those content sites might not be generating mega bucks in profits, they are reporting the news. If anything shows that the current way news is developed, promulgated, and shared is broken, look at what happened during the Green Revolution in Iran. Most people got their news from Twitter. If you want breaking news you will go to twitter, not to CNN and not to Fox, ABC, CBS, or NBC.

If you want to find news information you will go right to AP (even if you disagree with their policies) because the AP has a web site. Or you will go to Yahoo news, Google News, or MSNBC. People go to the middle man, not necessarily to the core web sites that create that content. Bloggers have had to deal with this for years; it is time for newspapers to learn the same.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin’s Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D). White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had played down the possibility of government assistance for news organizations, which have been hit by an economic downturn and dwindling ad revenue. Source: The Hill

While later on in the article they do talk about the core ideas behind why this needs to happen. One of those ideas is that blogs are unreliable. When people are reading blogs like 538, or other authoritative blogs then the argument does not hold true. Blogs are not the boogey man to scare small children with, there are blogs that go back and fact check everything like Ars Techica. We do have blogs that spin the news to suit them, but this is no different than what we see in media today, information as entertainment is nothing new. The problem is that with all the choices we have to divert our attention, newspapers are but a small section of where we will spend our money on entertainment.

News is hardly news anymore, and buggy whips are a dying business. We didn’t prop up the buggy whip industry, and news is all over the internet. Some of the sponsored big box news is absolute tripe, with a large amount of demagoguery on both sides of the political fence. No one complains when average people get sucked into something that is not fact checked when it comes from big box news. The same holds true for blogs and other social media, if you look at what makes it to the top of social media and blogs; it is all from great sources with trustworthy people, at least as trustworthy as anyone else who purports to be a reporter. Newspapers do not need a tax bail out; they need to learn to work in the new environment.

Old Media Blues (meganmcardle.theatlantic.com)
Vibe Magazine Closing: Another Victim of the Internet Crisis (mashable.com)
-Newspaper Bailouts: a Threat to Freedom of the Press? (answersforthefaith.com)
Get Out Your Checkbooks – You Will Be Paying For News (lockergnome.com)
The Future of Newspapers–Posner (becker-posner-blog.com)
Newspaper Editors Want Clear Credit When Bloggers Link to Them (pbs.org)

Jun 30 0 comments

layoff, news, sad, web 2.0

Yahoo 360 shutting its doors

: Image via CrunchBase

Yahoo 360, one of the odder attempts at social networking is closing its doors on the 13 July 2009. In an email message to people who use the service they state:

Dear Yahoo! 360° customer,

On July 13, 2009, Yahoo! 360° will be closing and your new profile on Yahoo! will become the place where you connect with the people who matter to you most. With only fourteen days remaining, it’s important for you to save any information you’d like to keep, and begin transferring your blog to your new profile. Anything not saved from your Yahoo! 360° account before July 13, 2009, will no longer be accessible. Here are some details to guide you through the transition.

What you need to move to your new profile

Your 360° information will not be automatically transferred to your new profile on Yahoo!. To move your profile photo, nickname, and any personal status messages, you’ll need to first save or download them before July 13, 2009. Once you’ve saved this information, you can later upload it to your new profile. Be sure to head over to your new profile soon so you can make it look just the way you want.

What to do with your blog

Be sure to take your blog with you as part of this transition process. To help, we’ve built a blogging tool for you in your new profile on Yahoo!. We’ve made the move easy; it takes just one click to take your posts with you. If you’d prefer to take your blog to a different website instead, you can download an archive of your posts and transfer them to your new blog space. Click here to read more about your blogging options.

Some content will not be supported in your new profile

Please note that your new profile will not allow mature content. Also, you will not be able to take the following with you to your new profile: your 360° inbox, testimonials, friend categories, local reviews, RSS feeds, tags, or custom theme. If you want to retain any of this material, we strongly recommend that you return to your pages and download it before July 13, 2009.

Your privacy settings are retained

Your privacy is important to us. Both your new profile and your blog contents will be set to “private”. This means unless you change the setting, you will be the only one able to see your profile.

To help you through this transition, we’ve compiled a list of the most frequently asked questions and resources here.

Their support site right here can help you manage the transition over to the new system, the interesting part is that they are going to have you move all your components over like your blog or risk losing them when they shut down the service. With all the consolidation of services across the majors, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google, it is interesting to see how the closures are going to influence the material that we make. This is just one more reason why it is probably a good idea to have your own destiny in your hands, own your own domain, own your own systems (well at least as much as you can) and keep your sites maintained on your own. The closure of Yahoo 360 is going to be interesting, and there will probably be outages and issues the closer folks get to the 13th of July 2009.

The Walking Dead: Yahoo 360 Officially Closes, Again (techcrunch.com)
Yahoo 360 to close on July 13 (news.cnet.com)

Dan Morrill’s personal views on Technology, Education, Web 2.0, bringing people together

Category Archives: layoff

Another Face of Microsoft Leaves this time via a Firing

Newspapers do not need a tax bail out

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Dan Morrill’s personal views on Technology, Education, Web 2.0, bringing people together

Category Archives: layoff

The Private and the Public Profile

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Another Face of Microsoft Leaves this time via a Firing

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Why you need a public and a private profile in Social Networking

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Newspapers do not need a tax bail out

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Yahoo 360 shutting its doors

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main control center:

Let me introduce myself

Oddly Not Normal

Subscribe to the Blog here

Blogroll

RSS Feeds

Meta