Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 17, 2009 in
Tech 
On November 22, 1963 along with President Kennedy newspapers received their first fatal wound and they’ve been slowly fading ever since. Most people learned of the assassination of JFK via their TV set or radio — and ever since then newspapers have broken less-and-less news each year. Smugly watching this death march has been broadcast and later cable television news. At a certain point the money, power and glamour shifted from print to the small screen and along with that came a certain sense of hubris that we see today. Read more…
Tags: Social Media, Twitter
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 4, 2009 in
Tech 
Disclaimer: Reverse engineering the mechanisms of Digg is always a guessing game — and a hard one because Digg is always changing the rules of that game to stay one step ahead of spammers. So everything in this article is just my speculation — it’s not a “how-to get to the front page” methodology.
Not too long ago (around February) Digg cracked down on power users by limiting the number of diggs in a 24 hour period. Now this isn’t a science but after 150 or so diggs a user would be greeted by the warning “Whoa there cowboy! Itchy trigger finger? Digging fast is so lame. How about reading some stories instead?” Now notice that last line about “reading some stories instead” — it’s always been my theory that while Digg never prints a rulebook that they always give your humorous hints as to how to succeed on Digg in their interface design. Read more…
Tags: Digg, Social Media
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 24, 2009 in
Tech 
Being on Twitter every day I’m always reminded of the web 2.0 mantra that software should always be in beta — so being creative I started to wonder “why not take this to the next level and turn a bug into a feature?” Having some game design experience I know that having fun negative payoff can be much more entertaining than actually winning a game sometimes. So I applied this logic to the now familiar “Something is Technically Wrong” illustration and have come up with a series of customized versions which I propose that Twitter adapt right away. Sadly knowing that Twitter is now mainstream I’ve designed these screens to appeal to original core audience of geeks who may feel abandoned as every brain dead TV presenter boasts of their account on the air:
Read more…
Tags: Memes, Social Media, Twitter
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 29, 2009 in
Tech 
If you’re a geek and you’re reading this, to you social media is old news — which is why it’s now mainstream (and about to get worse). But first a history lesson: The real story behind the sucess of MySpace and Facebook is that they were sites NOT aimed at geeks — unlike so many Web 1.0 hubs the real appeal of this first generation of these Web 2.0 sites is that they allowed a younger demographic to organize their real world activities. As an example MySpace empowered Gen Y to see their favorite band or to meet their classmates before moving into the form on Facebook. Yet there was still a generational barrier in place that has only slowly been crumbling lead by elder techies and creatives. Read more…
Tags: Social Media
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 20, 2009 in
Tech 
Nearly a day goes by on Twitter without yet another social media “expert” choosing to stalk me. At first it started innocently — back in the day (about a year ago) various techie friends started to declare themselves social media gurus because they decided to hang out on Twitter and Facebook all day. And now an army of their offspring monitor Summize in search of human flesh. Read more…
Tags: Social Media, Twitter
