When I was in college, a friend of mine gave me a fiction book, one of only a few that I had received as a gift since my childhood: J.D. Salinger’s Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters. In the several years since, I’ve picked up the occasional nonfiction book but I don’t recall reading a fiction book cover-to-cover like I did with that one. I do enough reading during the day as part of running BeerPulse that reading even more on top of that just isn’t appealing to me.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the purpose of a publisher in a niche community like craft beer, something that I made quite clear in an interview I did with Aleheads yesterday. Breweries now have their own communities to which they can disseminate news thanks to blogs, newsletters, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Google+. All the social media sites have mechanisms for curating content from various breweries, too. So where do publishers in these niche communities fit in nowadays?
In dog racing, there is this little thing called the “rabbit.” Dogs race around a track chasing this contraption that may or may not look like an actual rabbit.
The rabbit is nothing more than a motivational device.
Its only purpose in life is to motivate the dog to run harder. Run faster.
Without the dog, there is no rabbit. It serves no purpose to the rest of mankind.
Twitter will turn 6…SIX!…on March 21st. That’s right. Before long, the service will be picking up a Trapper Keeper and starting the first grade. As of this posting, Twitter users have sent over 158 quadrillion tweets.
Twitter’s origins lie in a “daylong brainstorming session” held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group.[11] The original project code name for the service was twttr, an idea that Williams later ascribed toNoah Glass,[12] inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes. The developers initially considered “10958″ as a short code, but later changed it to “40404″ for “ease of use and memorability.”[13] – Wikipedia.
Twitter users sent less than 100 tweets on Day 1. Here is a look at all of them.
I don’t tell anybody where I am going. I just go. Just me, a rental car and a gym bag full of clothes. And snacks.
Man. Seems like it was just yesterday.
November, 2008.
I am 24 years old.
I am working on a three-week job in Tucson, Arizona, when the three-day holiday weekend comes. Everyone gets to go home and go see their loved ones, etc. I’m single so I have no one to go home to…I decide to stay put in Tucson and enjoy the nice weather.
You’re looking at a search stream that I subscribe to that allows me to track and engage in conversations that relate to my work.
I see people on Twitter who have sent over 30,000 tweets and I’m not sure how they do it while still being able to do whatever else they need to do during the day. I’ve sent about 7,500 at this point. Not to mention, Twitter is only half the battle for those who use Facebook frequently. And then there is Google Plus…wow.
I, like many, have a love/hate relationship with Klout. It is an awesome idea and I agree with those that say companies want/need to identify social media influencers. The problem that Klout has is identifying actions in the virtual world that can drive value to a client company’s bottom line “in real life.” At least, the tech talking heads think this is the problem that Klout needs to solve to make money.
The algorithm that is supposed to solve this problem has a long way to go, at least when it comes to Twitter, and as has been documented time and time again, it can be gamed quite easily for those willing to put in the time and effort.
So, I met this hip, young lady the other night. Super cute and wicked accomplished. Intimidated the crap out of me. Could barely look her in the eyes to be honest.
Normally, I’m fairly confident about meeting new people. When I tell someone that I run a beer website for a living, they usually get a kick out of it and say something like, “That’s awesome, man!” I’ll ask them what they do and they say that they are getting a grad degree or working a desk job somewhere. I’m rarely assured by people that they are truly happy with what they are doing. In some twisted way, I think I come away more confident about the career path I’ve taken after these encounters.
This night was a complete reversal though. It was really humbling to meet someone that actually made me question how happy I was with the path I’ve chosen. While I’m proud of what I’ve done so far with Beernews.org and all that, I’m not yet where I want to be with it. It has been a ton of work over the past few years and a ton of time behind a computer screen. Still doing everything myself. And very little travelling and meeting people face-to-face.
It was quite a day for Warren Buffett and the New York Times.
(Big thanks to apfriedman for making this here photo available via Creative Commons)
Buckle your seat belts for lots of stats geekery. Even the honey badger makes an appearance in this one…
UPPPPDATE: We are now at 900k+ likes/shares/comments and tweets on the New York Times link. That doesn’t even take into account all the other media coverage. Just one link!
