Who You Calling A Nobody?

Today was my daughter's 13th birthday so I let her skip school and took her to the mall. While I was stranded in the hell that is Hollister/Abercrombie/Pac Sun/Aeropostale (e.g. loud music and lots of perfume in the air) I was thankfully able to entertain myself with my iPhone. And, naturally, Twitter. The Washington Post tweeted a link to a story in today's paper about--what else--Twitter, and I admit my nerd sensibilities were completely offended when I got to this part:

"Here's something odd:

There are some non-celebrities who amass giant followings. Thousands of strangers tune in for regular updates of these nobodies' lives."

Nobodies? Wow. I could almost feel the gut punch the collective Twitter elite no doubt felt when they read that.

What I don't understand is this: how can someone find it curious that "non-celebrities" could be as interesting as, or--dare I say it?--more interesting than celebrities on Twitter? Um, Washington Post reporter lady--have you read Britney Spears' tweets? Kim Kardashian's? I personally will stick with the 154 nobodies I'm following, thanks.

Live Tweeting Lawmakers?

On the heels of ASAE's Great Ideas conference and the twitter about live tweeting during sessions, there's an article in today's Washington Post addressing the same thing: A Tale of 140 Characters, Plus the Ones in Congress--excellent headline, btw.

The article talks about lawmakers tweeting through Obama's speech to the joint session of congress. Tweets like "I did big wooohoo for Justice Ginsberg" and "Capt Sully is here -- awesome!" The author, Dana Milbank, likens the tweeting lawmakers to high school kids sending text messages from math class. He poses the question

"Should these guys maybe spend time fixing the country and leave the Twittering to somebody else?"

Are you kidding me? The article lists the number of followers for each of the three lawmakers featured as of the date of publication (today). As of the time I'm writing this post (7:30 pm), each of them have gained hundreds of new followers just since this morning. Look at Claire McCaskill; she has over 10,000 followers. You think she's going to walk away from that attention anytime soon? Hell, I feel like a rock star having 220 followers; I can't imagine what it would be like to have 10,000.

Twitter has made it so anyone can bask in a spotlight that would otherwise be unavailable. Pre-Twitter, it would never have occurred to anyone to ask "what are you doing?" on an ongoing 24/7 basis--nobody would have cared. Now anyone at all can have his or her own personal ticker tape, to which their fans--I mean followers--are riveted.

There's no doubt about it: Twitter is inherently narcissistic. Why would you bother sharing what you're doing with the world if you didn't think your every move was fascinating? If you're a private person or don't think what you do would be of interest to anyone, chances are you're not on Twitter. Or if you are, you're merely a lurker using it as a convenient RSS feed.

So who can blame these politicos for wanting to stand out from the crowd and be seen as more than serious guys/gals soberly flanking the President? What is politics other than one big popularity contest? And who are the popular kids? The witty ones, the smart ones, the glamorous ones...the ones who can spin any given moment's happenings into a 140-character piece of prose, for instance.

So back to the question about when these people are going to hand over the mike and get back to work: I say the answer is no time soon. It would be like asking a stand-up comedian fill a room then walk off the stage.

Changing of the Media Guards

A few months ago I posed the question "Will citizen journalism replace traditional journalism?"

I recently came across an article that gives a great example of why the answer is "yes." Roland Legrand, a multimedia newsroom manager for Belgian publisher Mediafin, wrote a great piece for PBS.org's Mediashift, detailing a newspaper's role in bringing a community together. He pretty much sums up the reason why user-generated media is destined to replace traditional media:

"The people formerly known as the readers have now become readers/writers. In the 'good old days' of the print newspaper, we only got a few letters each day. Today, we get hundreds and sometimes thousands of comments on our news articles each day. With the click of a button, readers can easily and instantly post reactions to articles. Furthermore, the readers don't only react to our articles -- they react far more often to each others' comments. The article may start a discussion, but it does not necessarily remain the center of attention."

He likens his paper's new live blog application a soccer game: "One can watch it at home, alone, or experience the magic of being all together with fellow fans in the stadium." He maintains that readers don't want to just read news; they want to discuss it.

I thought about his article when I read my Sunday Washington Post the other day. Front page, above the fold was a story about DC's charter schools. A prominent call-out box to the right of the story pointed out additional features to the story on washingtonpost.com:

• "Interactive Charter Schools Map: Find out how each school measures up on test scores and other data.


• Multimedia: Narrated photo galleries of principals, faculty and students.


• Live Online: Reporters...host a discussion at noon tomorrow."

The thing is this: with newspapers folding like houses of cards lately due to plumeting sales and ad revenue, how long are they going to be able to pay people to generate the same content that's available online in spades online for free? Take this charter school article, for instance; The Post had to pay not only the two authors of the article, but the person/people who created the interactive map and narrated photo gallery--as well as an additional reporter for the live online chat. Not to mention the production and printing costs.

If you search "DC charter schools" on Google blogsearch, you get over 30,000 results--take your pick. Prefer multimedia? Right now, YouTube has almost 50 videos about DC charter schools. Online interaction? Try the DC Charter School Reform group on Yahoo or the "I Love my DC Charter School" group on Facebook.

All I know is this: if traditional media does fall, there's plenty of user-generated content poised and ready to take its place.

See What I Mean?

Did you read my post from a few days ago about the incessant blogging about Twitter?

Here's yet another example of what I was talking about.

How long until Twitter stops being the topic of every blog and newspaper article? Like I said in my post the other day: WE GET IT ALREADY! Everyone's using Twitter. Can we please move on to other topics?

On the other hand, maybe I can just turn this blog into a compilation of other people's commentary about Twitter.

New Direction

I'm often been told by friends and co-workers that I can find anything. It started when I was a kid and could find anything as in literally find things--e.g. misplaced objects. There have only been a handful of times in my entire life when I've not been able to find something I or someone else has misplaced, and it kills me when it happens.

Since the advent of the internet--or my use of it--I have parlayed my instincts for finding things into the ability to research a myriad of topics and come up with information that others apparently don't know how to--or don't want to take the time to--find. I hardly think of it as a unique talent--anyone can presumably Google just as well as I can--but for whatever reason when I research things I am often met with "you should write a book" or at least "you should have a website." I have to say that my head is a repository of such a vast amount of random knowledge that it's sort of a shame to have it go, for the most part, unused.

At any rate, this new blog is my attempt to see if I can turn that random jumble of knowledge into some freelance commercial writing opportunities. Commercial writing, by the way, as defined by Peter Bowman, author of "The Well-Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency as a Freelance Writer in Six Months or Less," is writing for corporations or other business entities, as opposed to writing for magazines or other publications.

On Motherwhatnowredux, my personal blog, I frequently write about my belief that it's to become rich and successful as a writer through as little effort as possible. Miss Information is my first step towards making it happen. It occurred to me that if I'm going to spend a decent amount of time writing on almost a daily basis, whether it be on Motherwhatnowredux or guest blogs for OnBalance--both purely for pleasure rather than profit--I may as well try to put all the random information in my head to some use.

I anticipate writing about a variety of topics, both business and personal. One subject I do a significant amount of research on is web development, marketing and usability, so I figure I'll be writing about that a fair amount. I haven't thought much beyond that at this point so I guess I'll be starting with that. Topics I plan to cover, given that I already have the information readily available, include nonprofit-related web issues such as online fundraising, search engine optimization (SEO), social media trends, and many other topics I explore for my real job as web communications coordinator for a non-profit.

So stay tuned--or don't. I'm sure if and when any actual business opportunities arise as a result of stuff I write here I'll be writing about it on Motherwhatnowredux.