The image above, which looks like a broken Death Star, is actually a visual representation of my Social Graph (at least on Facebook).
Rather than explain what a Social Graph is, I’ll just tell you this. First, there’s a new kind of geek in the world now. I’ll call them the Social Geeks™. These are the people who are dubbed “social media gurus“. Second, the Social Geeks® have come up with a fancy sounding term (so they/we can charge more per hour) called a “Social Graph”. You know it as your “friends”.
Now, if I can stop using quotations for a minute, the real point of the Social Graph isn’t for the generic person who uses the internet. It’s an analytical tool so that those Social Geeks∞ can sell their souls to the devil (a.k.a. marketing departments), telling them how to get in touch with your friends so that you can be sold that 4th burrito you really shouldn’t have eaten at lunch (and then the 24 hour fitness membership you’ll use for 2 weeks).
Ok, it’s not all bad. Plenty of academics use Social Graphs to determine behavior, affinity, and other academic stuff. And, as we all know, 99% of what academics study don’t cross over into the business world where it becomes applicable to the generic public.
All that to say….
Pretty cool picture huh?
I’ve admitted I’m an affiliate marketer in the past, and other than the money this fact doesn’t give me warm fuzzies because of a few unscrupulous folks who give it a bad name. But, every now and then I run across a decent soul who I thank for inspiration. Jonathan Volk is [...]
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The image to the left was created using Google Maps on Sunday, May 4th 2008. Although this map is static, it’s a replica of the map shown on the right sidebar of our Traveling Europe blog. This post will explain how I use my iPhone, a new service called BrightKite, and a [...]
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May
01
Posted by nate within General
That’s right, BarCamp San Diego 3. Unfortunately, I can’t make it this time, but if you’re around, you should definitely hit that puppy up.
Free beer. Need I say more?
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One of my favorite authors, Seth Godin, recently touched upon the subject of signal to noise in social media and the web in general. It’s interesting to me that his perspective comes at such a fortuitous time as this. Literally, the day a few of us will be getting together to discuss the [...]
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Apr
19
Posted by nate within General
I’ve recently been awarded the prestigious Subversive Blogger Award, and I’m thrilled. I’d say I’m speachless, but I’m not. I’m a blogger. How could I be speachless?
These days, when I’m not winning awards or being interviewed for books (insert feign popularity flip of the hair here), I’ve been working diligently. Thankfully, [...]
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As some of you know (if you follow me on Twitter) my wife and I have been on vacation for the past week. “Vacation” is a somewhat deprecated term these days because who, really, goes on vacation? Do you really not check your business email? I check mine daily, even while I’m [...]
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Feb
29
Posted by nate within General
Sometime on February 26th, I noticed my ISP, Road Runner (Time Warner cable) started hijacking or intercepting bad DNS requests. In non-geek speak, it means when I typed in some web address that wasn’t registered, instead of seeing my browser’s default 404 page I saw this:
I’ve said in the past, when Kevin Ham did [...]
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