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And You Shall Know Us by Our Tweets
Identity Forming Behavior, Data Creation and Social Media
By Rachel Linthwaite
The world of social media is something of a hot topic these days - regardless of your age, profession or quite frankly, tech savviness, its becoming all but unavoidable. But what really is it that has caused such a stir - what is it about social media that is so new and exciting? The answer, I think, lies in this question: what are we really doing when we engage in social media?
Facebook and Twitter have been around for a while now, but these days Foursquare is gaining traction in the social media world. For those who don't know, Foursquare is an application that allows users to "check-in" to wherever they happen to be, in the hopes of connecting with others around them, learning helpful "tips" concerning their current location and earning "badges" that carry with them both bragging rights and sometimes actual deals courtesy of the establishment. At the most basic level, checking in to a restaurant, shop, bar or the like is a very simple act. It doesn't require much thought to push a button but there's a lot more going on here than the simple act implies. At the very least, you're alerting the rest of the foursquare public to your likes - just check-in to Starbucks? You're probably a coffee drinker. Consistently shopping at Whole Foods? You're likely someone who cares about the quality of your food and, furthermore are willing to pay a premium to indulge that particular idiosyncrasy.
On another level, when and where a person chooses to check-in is a proactive choice that carries with it a certain identity building function. You're unlikely to check-in somewhere you don't want your friends to know you frequent. If you have a reputation amongst your personal circle as a fashion plate of sorts, you're unlikely to check-in to Supercuts. Cultivating a reputation as a gourmand? Then you're not checking in to McDonalds. When we check-in, we're creating a persona - crafting a particular identity that we are comfortable with, that we'd want others to know us by. The same principle holds true for other social networking sites. Messages posted to twitter are essentially 140 character advertisements about who we are - whether we're actually conscious of it or not.
It's a reasonable concept, really, to view our social networking footprint as a means of personal creation. The social media giants (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) themselves have recognized it (or perhaps knew it all along) and are beginning to implement new ways in which to utilize and harness this wealth of valuable information. Everyone, for instance, is probably familiar at this point with Facebook's open graph platform (the universal 'like' button launched in late April of 2010 which allows users to register that which they 'like' from anywhere on the internet and in turn, allows Facebook to collect and ultimately share a plethora of newly minted data). And Twitter, for its part, has recently encouraged users to add a location to their tweets, thereby allowing twitter to keep an ongoing log of all the places you've been and all the places you've deemed tweet-worthy. Facebook has jumped on the location based bandwagon as well, following the Foursquare model of check-ins.
The growing popularity of social media (Facebook currently has approximately 500 million users, Twitter over 175 million and Foursquare over 6 million users - a number which has more than doubled since last spring) is a testament to the fact that people are becoming more comfortable with this push of information. Enough privacy issues have come to light to make social media users aware of the fact that they are giving the world a free pass to look at their most personal thoughts, likes and dislikes, even location. This is not to say that it's a good or bad thing - there will surely be consequences of both ilk - but it is the beginning of something. We've created our own little social networking world complete with languages, regulations and even celebrities. Its only now, however that the full weight of what we have created and nurtured is hitting. It may just be 140 characters; it may just be a check-in to your local coffee shop, but its more than that - it's you, or at least the version of yourself which you let the world see.
Rachel, in addition to working as Research Associate at CSA, overseas the social media presence of sister company BostonChefs.com which includes three Twitter accounts and two Facebook fan pages.
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My Trek Through India
By Erich Wiernasz
In March 2010, I had the incredible (and harrowing) experience of traveling in India for three weeks. I traveled her enormous and varied geography by rowboat, by train, by SUV, by auto rickshaw, by camel, by bicycle, and mostly by foot. The many modes of transport brought me from Delhi, to Agra (home to the Taj Mahal), to Varanasi, and finally up the foothills of the Himalayas to an old British outpost named Darjeeling. It was a Dickensian journey, not in the strictest of definitions, but in that it was, "the best of times and the worst of times." India is the extremes- a manic lover we go back to, yet we ask ourselves, "why?"
There's a curious linguistic paradox where the most important words in a culture's lexicon are those that have multiple variations, while the most important concepts have absolutely no utterance. I think this applies down to a personal level, where the most transcendent and pleasurable experiences, are often ineffable. The unfortunate truth is that the easiest experiences to explain are the low points, those having to do with universal, existential experiences like digestion (or rather indigestion), late trains, scammers, and the occasional monkey thief (maybe not so universal). And yes, the food is consistently good but always potentially dangerous. I'll spare you from the scatological...
Varanasi, aka Benares, aka Kashi "City of Lights" is one of the oldest living cities in the world and one of the holiest places for Hindus and Buddhists alike. It is here that a Hindu soul can transcend Dharma and break free from the endless cycle of reincarnation, a process called Moksha, which means "release." It is also here where Siddhartha Gautama gave his first sermon on the basic principles of Buddhism and thus Varanasi is one of four Buddhist pilgrimage sites.
The holy Ganges, "Ganga", runs along the outskirts of the city separating Varanasi's eastern shores from Ramnager's western. The river shrinks and expands annually with its depths dependent on the aggressive rainfall of the tropical monsoon season lasting June to September. Flanking the river in various parts are its Ghats. The Ghats are where Varanasi's people bathe, drink from, wash clothes, and cremate the remains of loved ones. At virtually any time of day, you can see all of these activities, but like the people of Varanasi, the river comes alive at sunrise.
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Rowing Down "The River Ganga" at Sunrise
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We woke at dawn and walked to the river, where we met a kind man in a weathered blue rowboat who agreed to row us for a very small fee. The boat was clearly this man's livelihood and evidence of this was displayed throughout the vessel. He had a collection of small sardine like fish that he caught, smelling at his feet, and he casually told us that he had spent the night in the rowboat as he wiped sleep from his eyes.
There was a fleet of other colorful and well-worn wooden rowboats, most filled with Westerners, fewer filled with locals, selling cheap tourist goods and postcards. Throngs of men dipped in the water, half-clothed washing their hair, brushing their teeth, all part of the morning routine. Others were doing laundry- repeatedly soaking, scrubbing, and beating linens on rocks, comparable to the "spin cycle" on our Western washing machines. The air was already intensely hot, but still preheating to its recommended level of 108 degrees Fahrenheit, where you begin to understand what it feels like to bake.
Scattered between bathers, worshippers, and travelers, were burning pyres fueled by sandalwood hauled from many miles away, transpiring souls from physical bodies, lending the air a faint, but distinct smell. We came to a point farther downriver where a Yoga teacher perched atop a higher vantage calmly instructed through a loudspeaker a group of young boys, all about the age of 10, through morning Yoga practice. The man rowing our boat stopped and we idly took in the sight of the children enacting their series of ancient moves. At the end of the class, during the "cool down," the sound of a young boy soprano sang out over a simple, repetitive, hypnotic drumbeat. The music was thick and loud. Combined with the heat, orange light of sunrise, and the powerful smells of an Indian morning, the affect was aural alchemy.
Sitting there, floating, experiencing, this pleasant assault of the senses, the lightness of my being, I came to understand why it is here, in Varanasi people come for liberation, final release, moksha.
Click here for photos from the trip
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3 large eggs, room
temperature, separated
3/4 cup of granulated sugar
3/4 cup of Dutch process cocoa (Hershey's cocoa is fine)
1 1/2 stick (6 ounces) of
unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon of dark rum
(Myers or similar)
3/4 cup of flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
confectioners sugar(for dusting)
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Chocolate Madeleines By Chris Schiavone Although Madeleines, those delicious little shell-shaped cakes, have become a staple at Starbucks everywhere, back in the fifties, they were virtually unknown in America. That was until Chuck Williams (of Williams-Sonoma fame) brought them to the states from France. My dad was a certifiable trend-watcher and early adopter, and was ordering from the Williams-Sonoma catalogue long before their stores started popping up in US malls. My mom recently gave me the first pair of Madeleine pans my dad bought her, together with a hand-written recipe for the chocolate version of the tasty treat. Dark Jamaican rum is what makes these a little bit different. It's an easy and reliable recipe. Best to use a stand mixer, though a hand mixer will do if you don't mind a little extra work. - Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees
- Generously butter a pair of Madeleine tins.
- Beat egg whites at high speed until stiff peaks form; set aside.
- Sift together sugar and cocoa.
- Beat egg yolks at medium speed, and slowly add sugar-cocoa mix until it has the consistency of a thick frosting.
- Add softened butter and rum, until thoroughly mixed in.
- Slowly add the flour, baking powder, and salt until all the dry ingredients have been absorbed.
- By hand, fold in the egg whites, and keep folding until whites are evenly distributed. (The batter will be quite stiff, so this will be a good workout!)
- Spoon the batter into the tins, about 2/3 filled (the madeleines will rise). Bake for 10-12 minutes. Turn out onto baking racks.
- When room temperature, sprinkle lightly with confectioners sugar.
Yield: 2 dozen cookies |
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Characters Unite
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"Adrian Monk" Played by Tony Shaloub in Psych
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Bringing Artists and Activists Together
By Chris Schiavone
Some of the most successful shows on ad-supported cable can be found on USA, most of them constructed around interesting or outsize characters like the eccentric detective Adrian Monk (played by Tony Shaloub) or the sexy con man Neal Caffrey (in White Collar). These characters are the pretext not only for the the network's tagline ("Characters Welcome") but also for the network's pro-social campaign: Characters Unite! The goal of the campaign is to use the power of media to celebrate diversity of all kinds, to move beyond mere tolerance of difference (racial, ethnic, sexual, political) to authentic acceptance and appreciation.
The cynical view on such campaigns is that they are transparent marketing gimmicks, but the business ethicist in me is reminded that "doing well" and "doing good" aren't mutually exclusive. In the case of Characters Unite, I was psyched (or is that Psyched?) last spring to have an opportunity to facilitate a day-long gathering of senior writers and program executives from USA's signature series, together with 25 representatives of 16 different advocacy organizations based in Washington DC. It was a veritable alphabet soup, with everyone from NAACP, HRC, and NEA to ADL, CDF, and NCLR represented around the table. The objective of the conversation was to inspire and inform the creative development of USA's fictional stories and characters with the real-life experiences of people representing the full range of the American family. The exchange of ideas and opinions was lively--even a little testy at times. Representatives of the organizations pleaded with the writers and producers to offer a more authentic, textured, layered depiction of the various groups they represent: black, Native American, Asian, Muslim, Jewish, gay, female, Latino, and so on. Members of the creative teams spoke with passion about the importance of maintaining creative freedom and warned against sanitizing characters or stories for political correctness. There were no grand solutions, or resolutions, but the exchange itself seemed a model of the kind of dialogue that could or should be going on across the media--not just among folks working in the entertainment genres, but also among those working in news and sports as well. As philosophers from Plato to Oprah have demonstrated, "the truth" doesn't exist "out there" to be grasped by any one of us and then imposed on everyone else. Rather, the truth emerges organically from free and fearless conversations between people who are willing to respect each other. Thanks to our friends at USA for doing their part to make that happen. |
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How We Know
We're flooded in a sea of information. The choice is ours: either create islands of meaning or get lost amid "leagues of cacophony and incoherence."
The Day The Movies Died
The death of Hollywood stems from one source, the Summer Blockbuster, projecting rails of celluloid cocaine with a single goal: the transient heightening of sensation.
Who are the pushers of the product? Marketers...
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