Talia, She Wrote

Hey all -

So I am in the depths of hell that is the research proposal for my Master's Capstone (kinda like a thesis).

My topic revolves around social media measurement. Currently, I am working on the proposal but once I get into the actual paper, I am hoping to reach into my digital network and get advice or opinions from you all.

Some of my twitter followers have expressed and interest in the process and so I will be blogging about it here. If you are interested in following my process, I will be tagging these posts with the tag - Capstone.

If you are not interested... well... sorry. ;) I promise to keep up my odd and varied posting.

What a horrible human being.

I use Facebook daily. In fact, I am on Facebook pretty much all day. That is my job. I post to Facebook for Patheos and I keep my eye out for best practices and new ideas.

The results are in!

I made it to the semi-finals of the Mad Men photo competition!! I am so excited, if for no other reason than there were over 4,500 entries and I am in the top 10 women! Thanks to everyone who voted for me, tweeted it, Facebooked it, and generally made me viral. :)

Here's a link to the semi-finalists - http://bit.ly/MMSemiFinalist

Stay tuned. I don't know when we find out who wins but I will let you know when I know!

-t

Okay, so I don't want to cast aspersions on this process but...

The voting has been crazy. Doing my super-PR girl thing, I got the word out there about me. There have been over 500 clicks on my link - bit.ly/adgal (which is why I use bit.ly, they let you track clicks) but I am landing on the 8 or 9 page! EVERYONE in the contest has only 2 stars with the exception of one girl. She has three stars and has been sitting pretty as #1 in the contest for over a week. That is pretty strange considering that no one has stayed that steady in this game. Her shot is alright but I doubt she has more friends voting than all the rest of us who have been blogging, Facebooking and Tweeting about it. I am pretty positive that the only people who have been voting are friends of contestants and Maddicts. It is clear that everyone is going around ranking themselves a 5 and everyone else a 1. This, though logical, seems silly and unfair. There are pictures that do not capture the essence of this competition ranking in the top 20, and that is silly!

It's turned into one big f-you fest and I don't like that. It's who's friend network is bigger and who can find auto-voting software to outsmart AMC. :( Very disappointing.

I hope the powers that be take a good look at the votes before picking the winners.

All that being said, I am not a sore loser. I had fun doing this and would do it again and I do, desperately want to play in the costume room for the show sometime (okay, maybe the props too).

So please, vote for me. We have until Monday. Again, my link is bit.ly/adgal

I have... I have a passion for the advertising of the 1950's & 60's. Well, needless to say, my favorite television show is Mad Men.

So when I heard that Banana Republic (one of my favorite stores) and Mad Men were hosting a contest, I knew I had to enter! The prize? Priceless! A chance for a walk on role on Mad Men but the Banana $1000 gift card doesn't hurt! So I got a good friend of mine who is an incredible photographer to take some great pics of me wearing my favorite 50's style (Banana Republic) dress all around Denver! They came out amazingly!

So how does this work? Well, I need all of you to go to this website (AdGirl Talia) and vote for me (you don't have to register). Everyday! :) Please give me 5 stars. The competition is interesting, I would say most of it is headshots and wedding pics, a lot of snaps taken on a night out but there are some die hard Mad Men fans (we call ourselves Maddicts) that have done a good job. The public vote gets you through the first round. Top 10 women and top 10 men. Then the creator of Mad Men makes his choice - 60% on Mad Men style and 40% on creativity. Well, I really hope to win so I need your help! Please vote often and high! :0)

Thanks!!! Oh and here is the link to the other pics from the photo shoot - Photo Shoot (pics by Ben Barefoot)

And here are some pics from the new season (you just try to tell me that I don't look like I fit right in! :)) - Mad Men Season Three

So today has officially been declared Jackass Day.

Bad drivers, bad boys, bad social networking sites... just all around annoying. But the best part is nearly everyone in the office is on the same page. So we are trying to trend #JackassDay on Twitter now. And having a great time...

Hilarious... so enjoy Jackass Day and if you want to be cool, help us trend #JackassDay by Tweeting about Jackass Day with the hashtag - #JackassDay

:)

This is the best video! Very awesome.

The irony/poignancy is very cool. Notice the signs on the top left of the screen... and Jacob looking like a homeless person...

The end though... classic... and totally not planned!

Watch it here-


And share it with your friends, email out one of these links (or tweet it or facebook it)! - http://taliashewrote.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-crazy-bastard-video.html or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEIqwNgzHFE

And be sure to check out www.patheos.com for cool discussions and very interesting articles. (And seriously, Jews, got on those discussion boards. The Evangelicals are kicking our butts!) :o)

I love this program.

This is a snapshot of my most used words in my blog.
www.wordle.net

SO, in my last blog (almost a month ago... yeah, sorry about that) I spoke briefly about my new job at Patheos.

Background - Patheos is a comparative religion website with a fantastic interface. It is a fabulous resource for anyone who is studying religion, wanting to know more about their own traditions, or has questions that have plagued them for years. The site launched on May 5 and it has been SO exciting! We have had some great coverage on the launch. See our Time.com article here. Leo and Cathie (the founders) are really passionate about the site and incredibly articulate about it!

Okay, so my role - I am the Community Manager for the site. You can really break the site into a few sections. There are the Gateways and library where the worlds traditions are cataloged and serve as a great resource. The Public Square is a place where the leaders of the faiths who are chronicled as Gateways can weigh in on some of the hottest, most controversial and thought provoking topics in our world today. And then there is the community section. That is where I come in. In the community, we have groups, blogs, and discussion forums. I have been hard at work creating the governance documents for this community. Leo and Cathie, in fact, everyone at Patheos is really committed to making this a safe place to express beliefs and learn about others. It has been a really cool and interesting and hard process for me but I have created some documents that I am really proud of and I think serve this community really well.

In addition to that, I have been learning about the back-end management and how to use the software that we are utilizing for this website. It is Pluck software and it is just so versatile and awesome. I have to say, I was partial geek before but now I am going into full geek mode! It's a lot of fun. Not only do I do the governance but I have also been charged with the social media aspect. Twitter and Facebook and all that jazz. My specialty! I have been learning so many new techniques and measurement ideas.

So that's the new gig. Really enjoying the co-workers, bosses, and the work. I am very happy I made this decision. On to Chapter Five in The Life of Talia. :)

I started a new job today at www.patheos.com. It is a comparative religion website with a social interaction aspect.

I highly recommend checking this site out. It hasn't fully launched yet (look for the main launch on May 5th) but it is super cool. The Judaism gateway needs some work so go to the contact us button if you are interested in being a contributor.

I don't have too much to say about it yet but I will keep you updated. (Come on, today is only my first day!)

Well, it has officially happened. Twitter has taken over the world.

In the past week, I have had 10 friends join twitter who were anti-tweet before. Why the change? Why now?

The Denver Post ran an article in the Sunday A&E section about Twitter - http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_11899588
And on March 3rd they ran this Twitter article - http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_11826126
Two articles about Twitter in less than two weeks!!!!

Clearly, the press is jumping all over twitter and as it comes out that John Mayer is tweeting nasty about Jennifer Aniston during a concert or Shaq clearly doesn't know how to spell because his tweets are illegible, Twitter has become fodder for the mainstream. AND it is becoming a news source. People in the plane that crashed into the Hudson were tweeting live from the sinking plane and on the ferries. CNN's news isn't breaking anymore because I read it from the people who are experiencing it on Twitter.

Twitter caught my attention in the middle of 2007. At this point I can't remember who urged me to sign up but I had an account and then I read a story about an American kid in Egypt who got thrown in jail. He tweeted, "Arrested" and kept the world updated with his short tweets. The country was mobilized on his behalf in just a few hours and he was released. All because someone, his Tweeps, found out that he was in jail. I wonder how Twitter will figure into court cases and missing persons searches... "Well, Captain, she tweeted that she was meeting a guy out on cty rd 4 at 11:37pm and hasn't been heard from since." That plus GPS in cell phones should help locate missing tweeters.

But back to why the surge in members. I blame Facebook. So we all know by now that Facebook changed their interface and there are articles all over the web about how much it sucks and what people like or don't like (and then there are the people who don't really understand the Web 2.0/3.0 revolution and make up for it by calling those of us who do understand front end and back end systems and all that idiots and dorks and time wasters... I bet you in a month or two they will be calling us to help them get set up on Twitter or Facebook). I'm not here to discuss the pros and cons of it (because frankly, I don't have the time to and it was done really well here - http://www.alternet.org/story/131866) but I think that the new "Twitter-like" Facebook interface helped make Twitter go mainstream but pissed off the Facebookers.

Here's the logic -
Facebook users who are Twitter users saw the similarities immediately. SO we all started Status Updating that and talking about how much we disliked it. That plus the abundance of media coverage about Twitter pushed these people over the edge and they signed up.

Now, I will say that of these people who just registered, many have only tweeted once and the tweet read something like, "Trying this Twitter thing out" or "Signing up for Twitter!" But that's okay guys, just hang in there. I think it was a full year after signing up that I got Twitter-active (now I have 600 some followers and well over 2,000 tweets, I average 16 tweets a day). It took going to the NPAC arts conference in Denver last year to really get me going. I realized I could tweet the wisdom I was getting and share it will my tweeps. It was great!

Anyway, here is another really great blog post on the evangelising of the anti-tweeters - http://www.sarahlacy.com/sarahlacy/2009/03/guest-post-a-facebook-addict-gets-twitter-religion.html

So, needless to say (I think), Twitter is becoming main stream and the early adopters (I like to think of myself as one) will be moving on to the next best thing. And Facebook, you are not it. I'm kinda happy with the change in Facebook... now my addiction is disappearing. Instead of checking it every half hour or so, I maybe check it once or twice a day! Whoo hoo!! I guess I don't need that 12 step for FB after all...