thejakers

I know I shouldn’t be promoting tools that help you block out (annoying) web advertising so you can have a much more enjoyable web reading experience, but I can’t help myself. It seems like many news websites and blogs try to stuff as many annoying and badly crafted web banner ads into their article pages as possible. I don’t blame them. They need to make a buck. But I don’t want to deal with it.

And now I don’t have to. Thanks to Readability, an easy to install bookmark for Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, we can now read to our hearts content—without feeling like our brains have been blown out by advertising scatter shot. While it’s true Safari 5 has incorporated this type of technology into their browser, not everyone wants to use Safari (including me). This is a great solution.

Here’s a quick little promo video by the developers:

There’s been a lot of buzz about how social media has overtaken porn use as the primary Internet activity…of course, there’s a lot of porn going on in social media as well, so it might not be as clean of a break as you think.

Regardless of whether porn is the #1 or #2 activity, the reality is that it’s a huge industry—and thus a huge problem.

There’s also been huge coverage about Steve Jobs clamping down of porn with the iPad, but the reality is that anyone with an iPad can access porn through the Safari browser. And the lack of accountability software will only make porn that much more accessible. I wrote about that here, Why the iPad will be a smashing success…porn.

Below is the latest statistics on porn use. The numbers are staggering.

I’m curious as to how church leaders are addressing the porn issue. Can you share with me how your church is being proactive (or reactive) in regards to this issue?

Via: Online MBA

This is a great video on the latest numbers behind Social Media. If you’re in any kind of communications or marketing position, the information here is not only valuable but will also change the way you do your job in next five years. The biggest change I see coming: More subversive campaigns that infiltrate your daily online interactions in subtle and subconscious ways. Check it out:

Your thoughts?

Thanks to TechCrunch I’m now armed with the knowledge that you can make your own Google search stories. I was going to make my own for this post, but really nothing is better than the one the article writer made: Nevernudes.

Twitter is free, right? Not exactly. As we all know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

When I logged into Twitter this morning, I saw that I’d posted an astounding 5,061 Tweets. That’s a lot of little posts. And I wondered, how much did that cost me in time…and money.

Let’s assume that each Tweet represents a minute of time on average. That’s 5,061 minutes of my life in the last year or so spent on Twitter in one form or another.

That breaks down to 84.25 hours…3.51 days!

That means I’ve spent a little under 1% of the year on Twitter. And given my hourly consulting rate, my time value is around $100 per hour.

In essence Twitter has cost me $8,425.

Or has it?

Here’s where the exercise gets a little fuzzy. I’ve definitely received business both directly and indirectly from Twitter. There are many intangibles that social media affords that are hard to measure. In fact, I can think of one particular contract that came indirectly from my Twitter use that nearly doubles the amount it cost me in time value.

So, besides the immeasurable value of relationships I’ve developed on Twitter, the actual time and “money” spent, has been more than worth it.

Thanks Twitter!

How about you? What’s your Twitter cost? Have you ever thought of it in such a way?

[Photo by Shovelling Son]

Stumbled across an interesting article by Umair Haque over at the Harvard Business Review, “The Social Media Bubble”. Haque wonders if the rise of social media isn’t unlike any other cultural or economic bubble that creates inflation and then rapid deflation. In this case, the social media bubble creates relationship inflation:

Call it relationship inflation. Nominally, you have a lot more relationships — but in reality, few, if any, are actually valuable. Just as currency inflation debases money, so social inflation debases relationships. The very word “relationship” is being cheapened. It used to mean someone you could count on. Today, it means someone you can swap bits with.

Thin relationships are the illusion of real relationships. Real relationships are patterns of mutual investment. I invest in you, you invest in me. Parents, kids, spouses — all are multiple digit investments, of time, money, knowledge, and attention. The “relationships” at the heart of the social bubble aren’t real because they’re not marked by mutual investment . At most, they’re marked by a tiny chunk of information or attention here or there.

He then goes on to list 5 factors that he belives lends credibility to his hypothesis.

Trust

Even though the rate of relationships has grown exponentially, the level of trust, Haque argues, hasn’t. How many of your social media friends would you trust to watch your children?

Disempowerment

Far from empowering people, Haque argues, the Internet is becoming a tool for the old gatekeepers to manipulate in a fresh new way. We aren’t free of PR tyranny, we’re seeing thousands of new PR opportunities coming our way. Governments aren’t being undermined by social media, they’re using it to suppress people.

Hate

I’ll just go ahead and quote Haque here: “Far from fueling meaningful conversation, today’s ’social’ web is a world full of the linguistic equivalent of drive-by shootings.” Might be the truest thing he wrote.

Exclusion

People aren’t actually forming new relationships with people of varying backgrounds, but rather experiencing the ultimate realization of the old adage “Birds of a feather flock together”. Haque writes, “But rarely are the gaps between differences bridged. Yet, that’s where the most valuable relationships begin.” Not sure I believe that the most valuable relationships begin at bridging gaps of difference…but then again, maybe my viewpoint will make Haque and I great friends.

Value

Finally, Haque postulates that if our online relationships were really that meaninful to us, we’d be willing to pay for the services that provide them. Instead, the social media entrepreneurs are forced to find intrusive and often unwanted ways to “monetize” their services apart from charging the end-user.

Interesting points, but not sure how I feel about them.

How about you? What value do you place on your online relationships? Where do you agree with Haque? Where do you disagree?

You can read the rest of the article here.

[Photo by aeioux]

This great video from Fast Company gives voice to the reasons why I’ve altered my use of Twitter and Facebook (and blogging) over the last couple months. Take the time to watch this (block it out if you will). It’s worth it.

If you’ve ever complained about blogs and bloggers, lamenting the seeming degeneration of quality communication in the modern internet-driven world, then you have to read the New York Review of Books article on pre-modern forms of communication that serve as precursors to blogging. Here’s a snippet:

Blogging brings out the hit-and-run element in communication. Bloggers tend to be punchy. They often hit below the belt; and when they land a blow, they dash off to another target. Pow! The idea is to provoke, to score points, to vent opinions, and frequently to gossip.

The most gossipy blogs take aim at public figures, combining two basic ingredients, scurrility and celebrity, and they deal in short jabs, usually nothing longer than a paragraph. They often appeal to particular constituencies such as Hollywood buffs (Perez Hilton), political junkies (Wonkette), college kids (Ivy Gate), and lawyers (Underneath Their Robes). Politically they may lean to the right (Michelle Malkin) or to the left (Daily Kos). But all of them conform to a formula derived from old-fashioned tabloid journalism: names make news.

How new, then, is bloggery? Should we think of it as a by-product of the modern means of communication and a sign of a time when newspapers seem doomed to obsolescence? It makes the most of technical innovations—the possibility of constant contact with virtual communities by means of web sites and the premium placed on brevity by platforms such as Twitter with its limit of 140 characters per message. Yet blog-like messaging can be found in many times and places long before the Internet.

You can read the rest of the article here.

This is a great reminder that human nature is always the same—no matter the calendar year or cultural epoch. We shouldn’t be surprised that blogging often slides into libels and half-truths about celebrities—including high-profile Christian leaders. It’s not that blogging is an example of cultural degeneration as much as it’s proof of a degenerate human condition as old as the hills.

Blogging (and the Internet) just makes it easier for us to expose our true nature by democratizing the process. In the times past, only a select few had the “privilege” of trashing people in a public forum. Now we all can.

Instead of greedily devouring the gossip and slander propagated by these select few, we can now participate…and that’s much more fun—and satisfying.

The only thing that should surprise us is that we didn’t think of it sooner.

[Photo by pshab]

Social media can take over your life if you’re not careful. Personally, I fight a constant battle to keep my social media activities in check and a healthy, balanced part of my life rather than a monster that consumes my free time, energy, and steals from my family.

I found this great little video over at Fast Company on how to master your social media monster:

These are great suggestions, no? I’m curious as to how you’re coping with the barrage. What are some tactics you employ to tame the social media beast?