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.

A Little Thing Called Thank You

If you’ve been hanging around me the last couple of days (and thanks for the company!), you’ll know that there’s been a little back and forth activity about a blog post regarding 12for12k. The details and response can be found here. An apology has since been issued, so I’m not going to dwell on the subject too long.

Instead, I wanted to share this with everyone who’s been around – you know who you are. You’re the living proof that friendships aren’t restricted to the physical, and for that I thank you sincerely.

Just a quick point – I’m still recovering from wisdom tooth surgery so I’m normally only half as scary-looking. And I don’t make a habit of loud swallowing every few seconds. Honest…

Fear

Fear is just the blanket under which hope sleeps. Hope covers us all – all we need to do is pull back the blanket.

Response to Barbara Talisman?s Misinformed 12for12k Post

This is in response to a blog post over at Barbara Talisman’s blog, where she makes various disparaging remarks (and, at times, low blows) about the 12for12k Challenge. I’m posting here since Barbara has comment moderation switched on at hers.

Hi there Barbara,

I thought I recognized the name and company – you contacted me earlier this year through email (and then phone call) suggesting that donations raised go to your company instead of the charities. You would then use this money to “consult” these charities.

I mentioned at the time that I wanted all funds to go to the charities themselves, and not to a company that may or may not help.

If you think the 12for12k project is merely a “profile raiser” for myself, you discredit the great work of everyone involved, as well as those we’re trying to help. I also take great offense at your claim and can’t help but feel this is sour grapes because I never handed the 12for12k coffers over to you. Except there was nothing to hand over, because all the money goes directly to the charity for that month.

Also, your figures are wrong. WarChild didn’t come to us with a Paypal option until the end of the campaign – the actual total for them is closer to $6,000. Stop the Silence benefited by over $5.5k – the ChipIn widget did not take into account a corporate sponsor donating $1,000.

You’re also missing charities from your information. We helped Yehu.org raise more than $15,000 through a combined effort with Mom It Forward and multiple channels. And this month, Doctors Without Borders has benefited by $5k (so far).

But here’s the thing, Barbara – it’s never been about the money. Our goal is to raise a certain amount, and while we’ve fallen short of that, we’ve still raised almost $50,000.

Our real goal is to raise awareness and long-term change and effect. Donations are great, but it’s the real changes that we can put in place via awareness that will help those that need our help.

Here’s a question – why rant on something that’s meant for good? Why not say what you would have done differently, had I caved in to your badgering on the phone to hand over donations to your company? Criticizing is easy; constructive criticism is better.

Regards,

Danny.

PS – WarChild Canada, our first charity, has a fantastic social media presence, which can be found on their website.

Update September 27 – It looks like Barbara has removed the original post about 12for12k, follow-up and apology from her blog. You can see the original post as a PDF – open or download it here.
Update September 28 – Barbara sent me an email today on top of her apology. I responded, accepting her apology and thanking her for her approach in this way, and that hopefully we can move forward from here.

The Great A-Lister Myth

Maravilla Park / Magnificos Who’s your favourite blogger? Your favourite actor or actress? Your favourite author? Comedian, musician, artist, sports star and any other medium where A-lister seems to be a well-used description?

Now ask yourself – are these people really A-listers?

So a blogger has 20,000 or 50,000 subscribers. Does that make him or her an immediate A-list blogger? Or does it just make them an A-list blogger to those 20,000+ subscribers?

Say that blogger’s content is about marketing. Or PR. Or Internet news. Or some other kind of media-related information.

Is it going to be relevant to someone who wants to read about Murray Mints? Probably not. So, to that reader, the blogger who writes about Murray Mints becomes an A-lister, because the content is meaningful for them.

Take it to other mediums. Let’s look at movies. People like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are hailed as A-listers because their movies are generally accepted to be big at the box office. But does that make them more of an A-lister than someone like Danny Boyle, whose indie movies have generally kicked the blockbuster fare into a cocked hat when it comes to substance?

The point is, A-lists and those on them are relevant to the audience. Your blog can be full of amazing content but if it means squat to me, you’re not an A-lister (at least, not to me). My A-listers are the people I learn from, or who make a difference in my day with their blogs. You can see some of these folks here. But even that’s relevant to me, and may offer little to you.

There’s nothing wrong with tagging folks A-listers. Just don’t hold them up as some sort of Holy Grail when they’re only really A-listers for their audiences.

If you want real, everyday A-listers, take a look in the mirror. You’re an A-lister and you probably don’t even know it. You work to feed your family and keep a roof over your head. You go to movies you have no interest in seeing because your kid wants to. You offer unconditional love and security to your partner when he or she needs it. That’s real A-list work right there.

What defines your A-list?

photo credit: !unite

Making Twitter Sticky

There are a lot of changes happening over at Twitter at the minute. They recently updated their Terms of Service and now they’re working on Project ReTweet, where sharing someone else’s tweet with your connections will be performed differently from the current user-generated method.

As is usual when wide-scale changes happen at a company (or, in this case, on a digital stream), there are both fans and dissenters to the new proposals. That’s normal. But what if Twitter could bypass the need for changes like the retweet one?

Twitter’s reasoning for the change is that it can be a confusing mess for new users, and it’s one of the reasons a lot of new users give up within the first month.

While that’s true, a lot of that comes down to the fact that Twitter itself doesn’t offer a great user guide for newcomers. A really simple FAQ or intro sheet emailed to new users would make all the difference, and then they could advise of user-created options, how they fit in and how best to use them.

This would help settle in new users and create something similar to the WordPress community, where you’d have the official tools as well as the community-created ones that existing users can help with. It’d help people settle in more quickly and get the sticky factor that Twitter needs (if reports that 40% of all new users quit after one month is accurate).

But why stop there? There are other areas that Twitter could help keep new and existing users stay happy.

Kill the Private Spam

This is a major problem for Twitter. We know there’s a chance our public streams will have some spam content. But I don’t recall signing up for private message spam from third-party platforms that I didn’t even register for. Pirate games and mafia clans are just two current examples. How can they get into my private message area when I’m not a user? Not good, Twitter.

Make the Suggested Users List Relevant

When you sign up for a new account, Twitter gives you a list of suggested users. The problem is, this list is usually filled with either celebrities or Twitter “power users”. These accounts can often be amongst the most active and busy as far as content goes – how can that be a good introduction when you’ve just joined? Instead, why not work with something like Twellow, ask a couple of simple questions and use these keywords to offer suggestions that actually make sense? So, people in your locality, industry, interest zones, etc, and ease new users into the system as opposed to scaring them off with hyper feeds to follow.

These are just some options that Twitter could take to make the experience better. They’re nothing major, yet they could possibly make a big difference (at least from a user-friendliness viewpoint).

How about you – how would you make Twitter more sticky?

photo credit: Dustin Diaz