Latest posts from Danny Brown

Enjoy the latest posts from Danny Brown, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments after the post.

Stepping Outside Social Media and All That Jazz

So this post has absolutely nothing to do with marketing. Nothing to do with social media. Nothing to do with PR, or communications, business or blogging tips (unless you count the stats about spam emails when you click the “More” tab on the side navigation menu).

But that doesn’t matter. Sometimes you need to step away from all of that stuff and take a look at the world around us. Learn about the people, facts and figures that make up this planet.

Which is exactly what this World Clock from Poodwaddle does.

With real-time statistics (based on projections) on the state of the world today (collated from various world organizations), it’s a very cool visual representation on the make-up of our home.

Enjoy.

For more cool applications, check out the Poodwaddle website.

Could This Be Your Child?

First off, I make no apology for the image used for this post. It’s taken from the website Child Sex Tourism, which aims to combat the child sex slave trade and, while this post is slightly different in approach, I think it reflects the importance of it well.

My friend Doug Haslam wrote a great post the other day on what it means to be a dad in the social media space. Doug’s a communications guy at Voce Communications, so knows the ins-and-outs of how social media and social networking work as well as the next guy.

In his post, Doug tells of his son turning thirteen, and why Doug and his wife won’t let him have a Facebook account any time soon, even though (legally) Doug’s son is now old enough to do so.

The post and subsequent comments are excellent, and open up a very important topic – what privacy do you give your kids, and what do you make open to the public gaze?

It’s a topic that DJ Waldow covered recently as well, when he blogged about his decision to make his baby’s social media accounts and blog private. Since DJ’s daughter’s birth, both he and his wife have been using social tools to share updates and growth spurts about DJ’s daughter. No more.

And it’s something we all need to take time out and think about if we’re parents.

Who Are Your Friends?

The beauty of social media and social networking is that it’s allowed us to connect with people we would never have known about otherwise. These online relationships can then turn to business colleagues, clients, blog readers or, best of all, friends.

It doesn’t matter about location – a single tweet or Facebook status update can cover thousands of miles in an instant. Because of this, conversations are easy and friendships and connectivity can become as easy as simply putting your fingers to a keyboard.

And there’s the problem.

Because we strike up friendships, we often don’t take enough time to really think about the person behind the persona. We take them at face and tweet value, and only worry about them breaking that connection through a poor choice of words or actions.

We don’t think what they could really be like. And we could be opening up our children to anyone if we share them too easily with our online friends. According to stats from parental control company Sentry PC:

One in five U.S. teenagers who regularly log on to the web have received unwanted sexual advances.
75% of children are willing to share private information about themselves in exchange for goods or services.
25% of children have been exposed to unwanted pornographic material online.

There are more stats like that for other countries, but it gives you an idea of how children are vulnerable online. But that’s for kids that are online. Let’s take that part away just for a moment, and think about the reason this post is being written.

Friends or Fiends?

Let’s say you share a picture of your newborn on Facebook. It’s a common theme and one that a lot of proud parents do. Or you upload a Twitpic, or set up a Flickr group to share your child’s growth from baby to child to teenager and beyond.

Seems harmless, and it’s a great way to share a visual history with friends and family, right? Now think about this.

That same, harmless photograph you uploaded is downloaded by one of your online friends, who’s also a pedophile or child sex predator. He or she (women are just as guilty of child sex offences as men are) download that picture to their hard drive. Then they turn to photoshop.

That innocent picture of your baby is now a not-so-innocent picture of your baby dressed in sexual attire, and that online friend of yours is using it for their own pleasure, as well as passing it onto their little circle of perverts.

You don’t know about it (obviously) and yet you continue to happily share pictures with that friend, because they’re so nice and genuine. Scary, huh? And you can bet it’s happening somewhere even as I’m typing this.

So what can you do?

Take Control of Your Friends

There are a few options available for you. Some might be right for you, some may not – the important thing is that you are aware of the choices and the potential consequences for non-action.

Follow DJ Waldow and Doug Haslam’s example and either make it completely private or no profile/account at all.
Restrict the share and visibility to close family only – no friends.
If you do need to share a picture, try and have your child covered or sandwiched between parents to lessen photo manipulation.
Research, research, research. Google for advice and parental tips on protecting your kids from sexual predators.

These are just some ideas and, to be fair, come from someone who’s not specifically experienced in this space when it comes to predators and protection. I’m also aware that a lot of child abuse comes from within the family, sadly, and we all need to be vigilant for this.

Online, however, it’s harder to gauge so, as a parent, I know what I would share – which is nothing to very little. Sometimes your personal life is just that, or at least some parts of it are. Yet I also know other parents are keen to take a ton of pictures of their children and want to share.

Again, nothing wrong with that. Just ask yourself who you’re really sharing with, especially when child pornography and sexual images are key factors in the step up to sex trafficking and child prostitution.

It’s the least you can do for your kids, no?

Why You Won’t Like This Blog

I had a few emails (and 14 unsubscriptions) after this blog post I wrote yesterday. The emails I received expressed the sender’s dislike of the post, saying that if I didn’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all. I’m guessing the unsubscribes shared that view.

That’s fair enough. Opinion pieces often do that – some will agree, some will disagree, and some won’t care either way. And that’s all good, and how it should be – it’d be a pretty boring world if we all agreed on the same topics.

Whether the post was enough to make folks unsubscribe because of it, I don’t know. Personally, I think I’ve written far “worse” and much more opinionated posts here, but that’s by the by. Like I say, the choice is yours – I’m not forcing you to do anything, nor would I want to.

But it led me to thinking what this blog is about, and what type of readers it has. And that in turn led me to thinking of reasons why you wouldn’t like this blog, if you were a new visitor today.

So here’s the quick 15-second elevator pitch on why you won’t like this blog.

It’s often blunt and, while respecting reputations, isn’t afraid to challenge people and practices.
It’s not just about social media, but how that fits into the bigger picture.
There are sometimes cuss words.
It won’t tell you how to raise whatever influence score system you’d like to game.

I’m sure there are many more reasons not to like this blog (and feel free to drop them into the comments!), but these are the ones that I’ve had most feedback on over time.

If any of these aren’t your cup of tea, I fully understand you not visiting again – there are plenty of blogs out there that will meet your needs on any or all of the above.

If, however, you like honesty and an open approach to everything – where your voice is just as key as mine – then thanks for continuing to be here, and let’s keep challenging the way we think.

Cheers!

image: waferbaby

Why We Can’t Give Up

Sometimes you want to just throw in the towel and give up.

Sometimes you look around and see nothing but smoke and mirrors and a bunch of crap that you know to be nothing but faux genuineness and bullshit.

In short, you question why you’re still doing what you do when the charlatans have hypnotized the audience and the click of the fingers to open their eyes again never comes.

You wonder if you should just call it a day, surrender to the fact that the cheerleaders and the jocks have won and the clever kids never made it out of the library.

(For the record, being Scottish we never had cheerleaders and jocks at our schools so I’m basing my thought here on John Hughes movies).

You wonder if you should step away and say you gave it your best shot, but your best shot will never be enough because the shepherds have long since branded their sheep and formed the herd mentality that silences your valid disagreements.

Sound familiar? Join the club.

For the last few months, I’ve watched as the same old soundbites get trundled out and been called new thinking. I’ve watched as brilliant voices ask brilliant questions and get ostracized because they dare challenge the In Crowd. I’ve watched a medium I love and advise on become the equivalent of a clown parade when the circus comes to town.

And I’ve watched this all and become disheartened – often – at how gullible we allow ourselves to be and accept this crap.

But it’s for all that and more that we can’t give up.

Because if we give up, the shitdiots win. If we give up, the lies and the falseness and the business-breaking advice wins. If we give up, then repetition wins and originality and creativity loses.

We have a responsibility to make sure the bullcrap artists don’t win. We complain about mediocrity and yet we support it every day by continuing to support the feckless and insincere.

No more.

Draw the line. Build the fort. Amass your cohorts. Look at the crap and cast it aside. Look at the lies and combat with truth. Look at poor business practices and advice and destroy its inadequacies with facts and actions.

We’re at a crossroads. The decision you make will either see you give up and let the same crud take the money and run, or it will see real become the norm.

The choice is yours. Make it the right one.

image: anyjazz65