If I owned my online identity by being my own identity provider, theoretically I could choose to have a 1-to-1 relationship with brands I trust. I could cut out the middle man or Slash Daddy (as I’ve called Google and Facebook before) and have a real relationship with a companies I believe in. Think of it as “friending” brands. If they abuse my trust, I cut them off my trusted list.

There are a few brands that I’d gladly display on my blog without any compensation because I believe in them so much because they’ve changed my life for the better (Apple, Lululemon, RescueTime, WordPress off the top of my head). I’d like to display the relationships I have with trusted brands using microformats that denote them as personal sponsors (one day) or just be a fan of them.

Thinking further ahead… I could travel the web with my open identity and my trusted contacts follow me. I can already use my open id to log into plugins built with Jetpack. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch for Ad Block Plus to grab my ID and replace the ads it blocks with ones from my trusted list of contacts.

Better yet, get some amazing offers from your trusted companies based on your community influence. Companies that have something real to offer wouldn’t need “spammy” targeted Facebook or Google ads, they could just ask you what you like and deliver on it.

This is all very preliminary, and I’m sure I don’t have enough expertise to be any expert on the topic, but these are some of the things I’ve been kicking around in my brain. I appreciate any insight on the topic.

I sensed my friend’s frustration earlier this week when I asked him questions about company blog he started. I know he’s been working hard on it and it seems to be going really well from what I can see. He’s updating consistently and people are posting comments.

However, when he said “people only comment when we make posts about the product”, I could just feel his disappointment.  I know he puts a lot of effort into blog posts that have broader content than than just product updates.

On the one hand, I was thinking, “Wow! That’s amazing that you can post about your product and people consistently give you feedback. You have an awesome insight into the community.  Your readers actually want to know what they can do with your product!”

But… I could also sense the ego blow he was feeling with his writing on the topics he cares about personally.

We all want to be the next Seth Godin or 37 Signals. (I know I do.)  It’s hard when you pour your blood, sweat and tears into posts and no one seems to care. Sometimes, all the things we want to write about and be respected for are the things our current community doesn’t care about.

Maybe it’s time to start a personal blog and vent to your hearts content and use your company blog as a voice to communicate with the users that love your product. The guys at 37 signals wouldn’t have the audience they do today if they hadn’t first engaged the community about BaseCamp.

Keep your head up my friend, I think you are off to the races!

[For a similar perspective, my friend Ron talks about how he's using his personal blog as an umbrella to the various other community sites he participates in.]

Social networking sites have made it easy for all of us to have an online identity. The big 4 popular networks (Google, Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed) also now use OpenId which lets you take that identity with you around the web. It’s more than just a social network now, they are providing your with your identity.

This kind of convenience is fantastic because it lets you share common profile information between sites and sign up for new services in a flash. However, you should be aware of how the big 4 are vying for the title of your primary identity provider… your Slash Daddy.

We are all becoming a “/”

Find me at

• facebook.com/christendybenko
• twitter.com/x10
• friendfeed.com/x10
• google.com/profiles/cdybenko

Any of these big four would love to be my slash daddy. In their best case scenario, my entire online identity will rest and depend on their namespace (not to mention my contact list and all my photos). To their benefit, they can monitor my preferences and make a lot of money serving up ads to suit my taste. This kind of personal information is gold.

I’m not saying this is entirely a bad thing. I love connecting with my friends in these spaces. But the more I read about the competition to be the next big identity provider, I’m learning even more about how to take that control back. Every time I’m presented with an open ID login, I hover between all my options – which is best?

I’m starting to look for ways to just be my own identity with my website and that’s how I found the DiSo Project.

How to stop outsourcing your identity: Diso Project

It is possible to partake in all the social networking fun, and still be in charge of your own online identity thanks to the DiSo Project (dee soh). DiSo stands for the “decentralized social web”. The open source project is lead by open web visionaries Chris Messina, Stephen Paul Weber, Steve Ivy and Will Norris. Together, they push for open web standards like microformats, activity streams and OpenId all while making it possible for you to own your identity online.

Diso allows you to put open source code on your own blog or domain so it functions as an OpenId provider.

Diso has published a plugin for WordPress which allows you to make any WP installation your OpenId provider. (I’m going to try this week with my blog.) They are also busy working on the same for Moveable Type and Drupal.

While I think, at this time, most people prefer the convenience of having a slash daddy, it’s still pretty cool to have your own domain and your own identity outside of the big 4. I hope to keep learning more about this exciting technology.

Who’s your slash daddy? (Mine is still Google).

Further reading:

• The Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet – and Keep Google Out by Fred Vogelstein of Wired Magazine.
  
• Facebook usernames and the battle over your digital identity by Chris Messina (founder of Diso project)
• Social Network Supermarkets and how to defeat them by Chris Messina (founder of Diso project)

I’ve said before, if you blog, then you should learn to comment on other blogs. Building your whuffie by spreading comment love on other blogs is super important.

For me, I’ve simplified the process by having a category in my feed reader reserved only for  people I have a relationship with.

When I tackle my feedreader (feedly) I  start with my “relationship” category and  try to comment on at least one of the blogs there before I continue to surf the information fire hose.

Do you have any other strategies or tips for how to get more involved on other blogs?

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1. I have an amazing sense of direction… we “Seeneys” have named it the “Seeney sense of Direction”. It’s a big embarrassment for me to be driving with my brother and sisters and make a a wrong turn – I feel I’ve tarnished the family name.
2. When I was 12 I could play the entire first level of Super Mario Brothers with my eyes closed.
3. Sometimes Chinese food makes my face swell up but I still eat it occasionally. It kind of adds to the fun.
4. I played the french horn in high school and married a french horn player. (Hot.)
5. Love, love, love todo lists and project planning software. Basecamp, Omniplan, Calendars…. I’m getting misty-eyed just thinking about them.
6. Considering my love of to-do lists, half of them end up not finished and then I beat myself up about it. It’s kind of my thing.
7. I hate digital alarm clocks that have green or blue illuminated numbers. They make me feel bathed in a “Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle” glow and the light gets through my eyelids. Only red digital numbers for this girl.
8. I don’t make a stupid face when I’m reversing in a car. I decided a long time ago when watching my dad’s face as he backed up our car that I wouldn’t.
9. I knew basically nothing about computers until I was 20 and in university. When I saw my first SUM() in MS Excel it sent shivers down my spine. I’ve never looked back.
10. I once I killed a deer in my car. Of the 6 people in my immediate family, there is no one that hasn’t been involved in killing a deer in some way. I have eaten much deer meat.
11. I hate raisins.
12. In grade eight I once recited from memory the entire script of the Lion King movie, just for kicks.
13. When I get nervous and speak in public my voice shakes and it sounds like I’m crying. Not cool… but once it worked in my favour when I narrated a Remembrance Day poem in elementary school.
14. I can’t relax until things are “perfect”… this may or may not have contributed to my Lion King recital and my “eyes closed” Nintendo fixation…
15. I am great at Balderdash. I love spinning deceptive definitions.
16. Once I lip-synced Britney Spears and did a dance in front of my entire high school with Jen Wilms. I block this memory whenever it comes into my head.
17. I want to enjoy reading fiction novels, but I usually don’t. Give me something “real life”, “how to” or a programming language book. (Unless of course it’s Lord of the Rings… that somehow slipped by QA.)
18. I once had my personal MSN conversations with Jesse read by my employer.
19. I hate the photos from my wedding almost 7 years ago. I cheaped out on a photographer and got what I paid for.
20. I still have to make an “L” with my left hand to know which way is right and which is left.
21. I used to have a crush on JTT. (Who didn’t). I saw a “JTT” license plate on a bastardized hyundai excel (80s model) in San Francisco and it made me wonder how JTT is doing these days.
22. I am a night hawk. I work so much better during the night hours.
23. I trained my dog Parker to spoon with me perfectly.
24. Most of these items in the list were told to me by my husband Jesse. I guess he does know me better than I do.
25. As much as everyone else acts like they are only writing this list to appease their friends, that they are too cool for lists like this, or that they are “only doing it because their bored”, I’ve been WAITING to be tagged. Much love to Lindsay Hare on Facebook and Ryan Parman on his blog.

Tagging Muneeb

A lot of Facebook users took their first steps into blogging this past month. The “25 Things survey” was loved and hated alike, but it helped Facebook surpass MySpace in traffic and new profiles.

It also had the bonus effect of getting more people to participating in online conversations by commenting.

If you have a personal relationship with the author (like in Facebook), does it influence the 1% rule?

The one percent rule is the rule is that all of the user-generated content is created by only 1 percent of people who read it or use it.

So I ran a few super-scientific numbers:

# Comments on “25 Things Survey” / Total Facebook Friends = 2.49%

Apparently, the fact you have a personal connection to the author of your Facebook survey does make you more likely to comment, but the numbers are still really low.

Or perhaps a different perspective:

The more friends you have, the more likely you are to have a “content creator” in the bunch.

Either way… if you have 2 comments on that 25 Things survey you slaved over, then you can assume that at least 100 people read your list even if all of them didn’t drop you a line.

A few thoughts for bloggers:

• Think of ways to build relationships with your readers – get to know them by participating on their blog regularly. Reading alone is not active participation.
• Try writing about yourself more often. If not on your professional blog, why not in Facebook notes?
• A comment does not have to always be the most well-thought-out and well written piece to be of value to the author.
• Spread some comment love today
• (You can view my own 25 Things About Me if you want.)

I’m a qualified expert on how to suck on Twitter.  The Twitter Influence Calculator shows my lame-ass score of 4.4/100.  It also gives me some valuable advice on where I’m going wrong and perhaps some on what I’m doing OK.

Here are my twitter influence results on Jan 29, 2009 for the past week of Tweeting:

Click image above to enlarge results.

Relative authority

• NON EXISTENT
• I have tweeted nothing valuable this week that someone would want to re-tweet into their own stream for their followers.
• based on 0 retweets of @x10’s updates by others

Relative visibility

• SLOWLY EMERGING
• A few people reply to me. Not bad, but it shows that I need to engage others more in conversation.
• based on 9 references to @x10

Relative generosity

• SLOWLY EMERGING
• I don’t take the time to retweet other people’s content. Sheesh, how can I expect to be re-tweeted if I don’t do it myself.
• based on @x10 retweeting 1 times on behalf of others

Relative reach

• DEVELOPING
• My reach has been growing steadily since Guy Kawasaki convinced me to follow all my followers on Twitter.  This has been helpful in adding 8 to 10 new followers a day.
• based on @x10’s 417 followers:

Relative velocity

• SLOWLY EMERGING
• I think 14 updates in 7 days kinda sucks personally, that works out to only two posts a day. I update Facebook more than that.
• based on 14 updates from @x10

Relative clout

• NON EXISTENT
• None of the Top 100 Influential Tweeters tweet to me.  Makes sense.
• based on 0 influential Twitter users referencing @x10

Relative value of contribution

• DEVELOPING
• This score is basically how much needless crap I post, divided by the amount of useful information I post (references, links, hashtags, retweets).  Definitely can improve here.
• based on a signal to noise ratio of 35.7%:

How not to suck.

• Have some real conversations and try to move into the 4th or 5th stage of Twitter Acceptance. (See graphic below)
• Retweet great content when you see it.
• Tweet valuable material.
• Make friends with Twitter royalty? :)

Want to help me stop sucking? Feel free to tweet me by copying this into your twitter client:

RT @x10: How to suck on Twitter. http://bit.ly/J9qM

Since my last SEO post entitled Easy SEO tips and tricks for bloggers from Stephan Spencer at WordCamp 2008, my Google PageRank has increased from a 0 to a 4. In that time, my overall traffic has increased by 300% and my organic search engine traffic increased by 500%.

Organic Traffic: Web traffic which comes from unpaid listing at search engines or directories is commonly known as “organic” traffic.

When I started, only 4% of my web traffic was organic and now it’s up to 45%.  People are actually finding my content in searches. Yay!

Considering how little work I’ve actually done to see these initial results, it’s pretty exciting.

I’d like to share the 4 WordPress plugins that I rely on to make this possible.

1. SEO Title Tag *UPDATE: Not compatible with WP 2.7*

Use the SEO Title Tag plugin to hand craft titles for blog posts that appear in the <title> of your page.  If you read the post Easy SEO ips and tricks for blogger from Stephan Spencer at WordCamp 2008 it explains how absolutely invaluable this is.

2. All in One SEO Pack

I use the All-in-One SEO Pack to make sure my category, tag and author pages have great SEO titles and meta data.  Changing WP themes can change the way your titles are shown in the code, so using this plugin is a great way  to keep titles consistent regardless of themes.  Use it to add unique meta data (keywords, description) to EACH blog post. This also makes your search listings come up with a great recap underneath them.

** Note: I don’t use this plugin to format my title tags because I like to handcraft each post’s title using the SEO Title tag plugin above, but this is not yet compatible with WP 2.7 so this is a great alternative!

3. Google Analyticator

Google Analyticator makes it insanely easy to add your Analytics tracking code and not have to worry about hand coding it into whichever WP theme you are currently using.

4. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress

Google Sitemaps Generator creates XML sitemaps from your site structure. You can customize how the priority of pages occur (for example, give higher priority to the most commented posts).  I just used this with its default settings right out of the box.  Make sure to evaluate your sitemaps at Google Webmaster Tools.  It also submits your changes to yahoo, msn and ask.com.

This week, Guy Kawasaki told me (and everyone else reading his blog) why I should follow everyone who follows me on Twitter:

The reason you want more followers is the law of big numbers: the more followers, the more people talking about what you do, the more you can reach the tipping point. If you think you “know” exactly who can and will help you, you are deluding yourself. [Read his post How to use Twitter]

I don’t have a large following on my feed, maybe one or two new followers every two days or so, but I definitely haven’t been in the habit of following back.

When I think about it in this way, I am missing out on conversation. All of those people who subscribe to my twitter feed can’t get back to me.  (Direct messages and @replies don’t show up in your feed when you aren’t following).  I’ve been treating Twitter more like my Facebook friending or LinkedIn professional connections, focusing on quality of relationship rather than a conduit for discussion.

Soooo… i’ve taken Kawasaki’s advice on following everyone. I signed up for socialtoo.com which is a service that will send a thank you message to anyone who follows me and lets me automatically follow those who follow me. Hopefully Tweetdeck whill help me sift through relevant tweets.

If you follow me on Twitter prepare to get followed!

Motrin seems to have really missed the mark with this commercial. It was designed to innocently poke fun at the aches and pains that mothers experience. Instead, it’s instigated a fury of angry conversation between disgusted moms.

Before the “age of social media” this commercial would have been just as offensive, but now mothers have a united voice online. Women allover have bonded together and expressed their disgust with this ad.

See twitter responses here:

See the original commercial here:

How do you think Motrin should respond to this conversation? Do you think their message (taken from motrin.com) is sufficient?