Home - Stay N Alive

My Old Partner, Phil Burns’ Daughter has Leukemia

Posted on May 25, 2008 by jessestay

For those unaware, my old partner and good friend, Phil Burns (aka @phil801 on Twitter) just found out today that his daughter, Serenity, has Leukemia. She has been pricked, prodded, and the stories Phil and Adria tell are heart-breaking! Phil says (much of what I have learned has been through Twitter) that Serenity just got a transfusion and is feeling relatively better, if there is such a thing. She will start chemo in the next day or two. I’m still trying to get things organized – we’re working on a website to show support for her and raise money for the family, and I’ve had numerous Web 2.0-related organizations offer to dedicate funds in their name. The support and interest in helping has been amazing so far. For now my suggestion would be to contact Phil directly to donate money in the more immediate term – I will try to set up a fund as soon as we’re able to. There are many expenses that they are unable to avoid now and I’m sure they can use all the help they can get (they are checked into the hospital now, so I’m sure things like just paying for food at the hospital restaurants is much appreciated).

In the meantime, I’ve set up a FriendFeed Room here that even if you’re not on FriendFeed, you should be able to subscribe to via rss and get updates on the situation. I’m trying to share everything I see from Phil there, including his Twitter posts, blog posts, Adria (his wife)’s blog posts, and his Flickr photo uploads. If you are a member of FriendFeed feel free to leave your comments there or on his or his wife’s blogs, where they seem to be documenting the process.

For those unaware, my Grandmother died from Cancer, my Aunt is fighting it, and seems to be surviving it, and my Uncle died from Cancer. My Grandfather is a Cancer survivor. Things like this hit home for me. Phil says Serenity has the type of Leukemia that has an 80% survival rate (the “good” kind, as he puts it) – however we need to make it easy for them to focus on her and give her 100% of that 80% to survive! Please stay tuned and I’ll post more here as we get organized. If you’d like to help out in any way please let me know and we’ll find a way to put you to good use.

In the meantime, please blog, retweet, or share with all you can to send support and encouragement their way!

Kirk Yuhnke, Reporter for Fox News 13 Joins the Conversation – My Tips for Him as a Reporter

Posted on May 19, 2008 by jessestay

I was made aware via Twitter of all places today that Kirk Yuhnke, a reporter for Utah’s Fox 13 News morning show, has joined Twitter. They did a feature about Twitter, demoing it for Dan and Kerri (couldn’t find a link to the Morning Show on MyFoxUtah!) and showing live on the air how it works. You can see the post he made on the air here.

Looking at his Tweets, it looks as though Kirk has been using Twitter for at least a few days – I am curious what introduced him to Twitter. Anyway, it’s very refreshing to see more Old Media reporters and news people embracing Twitter as a tool to both receive and report the news. I think Kirk will realize very fast that Twitter’s more than just an addicting little thing to report statuses on – Twitter’s “the world’s largest conversation” (I tweeted that – wish Twitter archived Tweets for longer), and because of that, you’re able to get into everyone’s lives, receive news as it happens, and report it as it happens.

Kirk, in case you happen to read, here are some tips I’d love to give you as a reporter that I think you’ll really enjoy:

Follow @newmediajim. Jim Long, a camera man for NBC News’s Presidential detail is one of the early users of Twitter. He has reported while on trips to Iraq, world summits, and basically anywhere the President goes. You get the news, as it happens – he’s the essence of one reason Twitter is so popular.

Today, type “track san diego explosion” into Twitter. Soon, if you have notifications turned on in your Twitter settings, you’ll be receiving new notifications either via your cell phone or IM (depending on your user preferences) on everyone living in San Diego talking about the explosion at the downtown Hilton in San Diego.

Use Tweetscan. Go to http://tweetscan.com and search for recent news you are tracking – do a search for “wii fit” and find a record of everyone trying out the Wii Fit. Do a search for “KirkYuhnke” and find out about all the people like me that are talking about you. As a reporter, this will be invaluable to use!

Add 40404 to your Cell Phone. Be sure to add 40404 and set the name to “Twitter” on your cell phone. Then send a message to that address book entry. Now, imagine you’re the reporter on the scene at midnight at a local explosion and Fox 13 News has decided to go off the air and report it in the morning (true story!). You can live-report the event, all via Twitter, and those viewers all yelling at their screen asking what the explosion was can get up-to-the-minute updates on the Explosion happening. Not just that, but those outside of Utah following you can find out what’s happening! (I had about 5 people from outside of Utah trying to come to me after the south provo plant explosion a few months ago wanting the latest news about it, and I had nothing to give them!)

Check out Twhirl. As a big news reporter, everyone will want to follow you on Twitter, and you’ll be quite a popular guy, both in and out of Utah! Here’s what I do: I follow everyone that follows me (unless they are outright spammers) – this allows them to direct message me if they need to (Twitter only allows those you are following to DM you), and shows that I have an interest in them as well. It’s courtesy, in my opinion. Now, install Twhirl on your computer, and use that to skim through the messages of all those you follow – you don’t have to read every single one, but at least you’ll have a good overview of what’s happening in the world.
Now, for those nearest and dearest to you that you want to follow and pay attention to, turn on notifications for those people. Leave notifications for all the others off. Now, all those that you want to pay attention to will go to either your cell phone or IM client (depending on your Twitter preferences), and you won’t miss any of the important stuff. I should also mention that with notifications turned on, both @replies and direct messages will go to either your cell phone or IM client as well. This ensures you get all the important stuff.

Use SocialToo.com. Okay, this is a little shameless plug on my part, but it’s one of the only services of its kind out there. When you sign up at http://socialtoo.com/registration and provide your Twitter credentials, it will automatically start following those people that follow you, for you. Not just that, but you can blacklist users you don’t want it to follow, and even leave a message for new followers (that features actually slightly broken right now, but you get the point). This will allow you to use the technique I mention above.

Check out my post on ways to change the world using Twitter. I track the term “earthquake” as one of the terms I track, and recently there was a 4.0+ earthquake in London. I started receiving an influx of Twitters from people experiencing that Earthquake before it was even reported on USGS! Robert Scoble also does this, and recently he reported about learning of the recent China Earthquake before even USGS reported. Twitter has power in this way.

So Kirk, I think I speak for all of Twitter when I say, “welcome to the conversation!” Keep talking – we’d love to see what we can do to help you out. Hey, maybe we’ll even invite you to a “Tweetup” some time.

For those that would like to follow Kirk, he goes by @kirkyuhnke on Twitter.

The Mormon Church/Wikileaks Fiasco (or not-so-fiasco), A Mormon’s Perspective

Posted on May 14, 2008 by jessestay

Note that I’m not going to provide any links to the mentioned content here – you can go research yourself. Unlike Wikileaks, I respect others’ copyright.

One thing you may notice on this blog is that while I rarely pipe in with religious thoughts and my own personal religious beliefs (although I used to quite often), I will not hesitate to step in when a Social Media-related religious event occurs. An interesting Groundswell is happening today between the Headquarters of my Faith, and the controversial anonymous sharing site, Wikileaks. However, I don’t think it’s occurring in the way people think it is.

This morning on Slashdot you may have seen an article about the Mormon Church (or “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints“, which is the Official name of the Church) sending a Cease and Desist to Wikileaks for posting links to a Copyrighted, yet old version (1999) of the Church’s “General Handbook of Instructions” for others to freely download.

I don’t understand why this is news. Having been in LDS Bishoprics before as a Clerk and Executive Secretary, I am very familiar with this manual. It is simply a guide for leaders of the Church to know how to council and guide members of the Church, and according to my understanding, NOT (fully) DOCTRINE. It is simply a Policy manual, and while Bishops and other Leaders of the church may follow its council, in the end they are left up to their own judgement (encouraged by the Church “to follow the promptings of the Spirit”) to decide how to handle matters in the Church. The Church considers the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Perl of Great Price to be the Official Doctrine of the Church.

The Mormon Church is simply requesting Wikileaks remove the content because it is their own IP, not Wikileaks, and they are removing it as they would any other Church-owned and copyrighted document. Wikileaks and other sites are also portraying the contents of the manual as though it is doctrine for the general membership of the Mormon church, when in reality it was only intended as a guide for Leaders in the first place. The Mormon church has to protect the dissemination of false information as well.

In Charlene Li’s and Josh Bernoff’s book, Groundswell, she starts out with an example that happened last year on Digg.com where a user shared a blog post about how the HD-DVD Encryption standard had been broken. AACS LA quickly sent a cease and desist to Digg.com and the Digg.com founders promptly removed the link. Before Digg knew it, their own users began to backlash against them, occupying the entire front page of Digg with copies of the HD DVD encryption algorithm. Digg had a Groundswell of its own between its own users and it knew it had to do something. What did they do? They listened to their users and put the link back up, stating they would go down fighting rather than ignore their users.

I think with the post on SlashDot this morning some people may be thinking (and some hoping) a similar Groundswell is going to occur with the Mormon Church. Those that think so will be pleasantly surprised – there’s a difference between a Groundswell of your own members and those outside of your membership talking about you. How do you handle a Groundswell of people outside of your customer-base/user-base/member-base? You get in the conversation!

I want to share with you a video from Elder Russell M. Ballard, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Quorum of 12 Apostles – religious or not, I’d like to encourage you to read this not just from a religious perspective, but also a business perspective and how you can disseminate correct information about your business:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEsjYm6Av4w&hl=en]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is getting in the Groundswell through its own members. They encourage their members to blog, Twitter, get on Facebook, and clarify misconceptions. The Mormon Church will overcome this Groundswell (if you can even call it one) via its own membership, correcting misinformation Socially rather than through news releases and other means and letting the general media and blogosphere say what it believes. They have a Youtube channel here. They are on Twitter. They have a Facebook Page.

I encourage other churches and even businesses to take this response – there is a lot that can be applied from a religious, or even non-religious perspective from this. When you get your own followers of any business, brand, or religion to spread correct information about your brand it can overcome any misinformation spread about it.

Wikileaks is wrong in this case – they are sharing copyrighted information, not owned by themselves, and without the permission of the owner. The LDS Church isn’t going after them because the shared links are “secret”, but rather it is copyrighted material, and Wikileaks does not have permission to share it! As a book author and software developer I don’t want people using my content without my permission (which I’m generally pretty relaxed on in my personally owned content). Why would I want Wikileaks sharing the content I personally own on their site let alone others?

Toronto Star and the Power of Community

Posted on April 19, 2008 by jessestay

I’ve written before on the power of community and how Social Networks are bringing back the days of the small community within a large world. That’s why I was happy to hear in a recent interview I had with Erin MacLeod of the Toronto Star that BJ Fogg, Professor at Stanford, and teacher of the “Psychology of Facebook” class seemed to be on the same track (Fogg is also author of an excellent book on technology and marketing called “Persuasive Technology“). From the Toronto Star article,

“If you look at the history of civilization, you’re part of a community and as you grow up you stay connected with a community and those past lives and past friends,” Fogg says. “So maybe in some ways Facebook is bringing back what humans have lived with for thousands of years, a persistence of identity and relationships for decades.”

I agree wholeheartedly with Fogg. In the article I mention that it goes even further beyond that though. Technology always adds another layer to something that previously existed in a lesser form. With Social Networks, technology is simply bringing together a massive world of people into a small community-type atmosphere, but at the same time allowing a layer of privacy, giving users control over what that small community sees, and does not see.

It’s true that you will need to be more careful in the future with what you reveal on Social Networks, but the power of these Social Networks is that there are controls in place already to prevent information from getting out. Facebook has friends lists, privacy features, and flags you can enable and disable to control what elements are revealed to what people. You’ll find similar elements in other networks. I imagine even in Twitter (which I argue isn’t necessarily a “Social Network”, but rather a communications platform for Social Networks of people) will develop methods to segregate your friends and communicate only to whom you want.

At the same time, I feel we are becoming more forgiving of one another. We recognize through these mediums that we are all human, with flaws and imperfections, and that’s okay. Social Networks have power to make the world a better place.

Check out Fogg’s Psychology of Facebook class on Facebook here – he Ustreams it live every week!

Wanna win a copy of the book?

Posted on April 12, 2008 by jessestay

Beth Kanter and I met over at Graphing Social Patterns this year. I was running late to the lunch and happened to sit down at a table I saw Rodney Rumford at. I introduced myself and Beth happened to be at the table. She asked if she could give a book away on her blog, and interviewed me briefly. She posted a great review of the book today (yes, that’s my big head in the close-up!), and announced the free giveaway of “I’m On Facebook–Now What???”.

Learn more about Beth and ways to “Change the World” using Facebook on FacebookAdvice.com…

5 Inspiring Uses for Twitter That Changed the World

Posted on April 5, 2008 by jessestay

I figured after yesterday’s post on Guy Kawasaki’s blog, I’d continue the trend, but this time into Twitter territory. Except this time I’d like to try to truly inspire you.

For those unaware with what Twitter is, in a sentence it is a mass communications tool which lets you post the status of what you’re doing, see what others, on a global scale are doing, and track certain terms within those global statuses. All of Twitter works either from the web at Twitter.com, from a desktop (similar to IM chat) client like Twhirl, or even from your cell phone. Not a user of Twitter and want to follow what I’m doing and discussing throughout the day simply via your cell phone? Text “follow JesseStay” to 40404 on your cell phone and you’ll see what I mean. (to turn them off just send “off JesseStay” to 40404)

Here are 5 inspiring uses for Twitter I have seen that in my opinion have in various ways, truly changed the world:

Track Earthquakes — send “track earthquake” to 40404 on your cell phone, or via Twitter if you have an account, and every time anyone mentions an earthquake, you’ll get updates sent right to your cell phone or IM client with what people are experiencing at the time.
This may not seem like much, but a month or so ago, I received an update for this tracked item from a user saying something to the effect of “woah – was that an earthquake?”. Suddenly I was receiving update after update on my cell phone, almost crashing my cell phone quickly showing there was a very noticeable earthquake somewhere in the world. Doing some research on each of the usernames, I quickly found out that there was an earthquake in the U.K. and I was getting updates from every single person in the United Kingdom that was experiencing the earthquake, at the time it happened. A search on USGS did not even show anything when I found out from Twitter. Twitter told me the news first.

Help out in an emergency — I recently just started tracking the term, “911” on Twitter. I get a lot of updates from people talking about the date/event of 9/11, but what if someone was truly in an emergency asking for Twitter followers to dial 911? I could quickly be one of the first “Twitter emergency responders” on the scene to help out. 911 is a fairly common term, but what if collectively we all came up with a “Twitter Emergency Number”? We could use something that is not going to be used elsewhere, like the letter combination, “xzq”, and those following would be able to help out in an emergency. Join the Twitter rescue squad and “track 911”!

Fight Forest Fires — @Rumford (Rodney Rumford, my good buddy from FaceReviews.com) reminded me the other day about the use of Twitter back in the Fires in the L.A./San Diego area. Twitter was used to point out the status of the fires, locate where they were, and collaborate amongst those affected or threatened by the fires. A strong threat to peoples homes and lives quickly became a very personal event to the entire world using Twitter.

Alert others and coordinate during child abductions — recently a young child was abducted and brutally murdered here in Salt Lake City. During the time of the child’s disappearance, I began thinking of suggesting Twitter as a tool to coordinate during the abduction. The abduction could be broadcast worldwide to alert the world in the event the child ventured any further than the home of the child, and at the same time volunteers could easily coordinate via cell phone and computer to track and update what areas had been searched, possible sightings, and more. I can only imagine what it would have been like if Twitter were around during the Elizabeth Smart abduction! One way of helping out in such efforts is to “track amber alert”.

Raise awareness for Breast Cancer — one of the most inspiring uses for Twitter I have seen thus far has been during the diagnosis and experiences of Twitter user, @susanreynolds, who was diagnosed with Breast Cancer and Twittered it live to her Twitter follows. She shared her experience, and the pains she went through as they poked, prodded, and even performed surgery on the cancerous areas of her body. She used a bag of Peas to ease the pain, and as a sort of comic relief (and sign of her strong character), posted a picture of herself and the bag of peas.
Quickly a movement of “Peas” spread through Twitter. Everyone began posting peas in their profile pictures in support of her fight with Breast Cancer. A fund was set up in her name, and Twitter users everywhere donated to the fund to raise money for Breast Cancer. Susan Reynolds inspired us all, through just 140 characters or less.

I have quite a few more of these examples I’ll post in a follow-up post, including a great mention by @DrBaher about the Twitter account, @makechange. Are there any inspiring examples you have seen through the use of Twitter?

SocialOptimize Announces the "We’re Protestant" Facebook App

Posted on April 3, 2008 by jessestay

Yesterday’s announcement of the Catholic vs. Protestant App on Facebook, if you didn’t try to install it, was intended to be just an April Fools joke. I’m proud to announce a new App however which isn’t a joke. I’d like to announce that we’re now launching a new compliment to SocialOptimize‘s “Holy Rolls” line of religious community applications. I’m titling the app, “We’re Protestant“, in harmony with the current Apps, “We’re Baptist“, and “We’re Catholic“. “We’re Catholic” is currently the largest group of organized Catholics on Facebook at near 45,000 users. It is my hope that “We’re Protestant” will even further exceed that with a much larger American following.

Are you Protestant? This App is intended to be your App, and should entitle you to identify yourself as a Protestant to all your friends on Facebook. We’ll continue to work to give you more ways to live your religion on Facebook and other social networks and share that with your friends. Currently, you can pick your favorite verses from the King James version of the bible, display those verses randomly on your profile, as well as list other friends who have added the application and are Protestant. Some future considerations will allow you to track churches you’ve attended and friends from those churches, as well as sending Prayers to others.

We will also be working on some complimentary applications that fit well with almost anyone who is religious. While the “Catholic vs. Protestant” App was intended to just be an April Fools joke, I think there is strong potential to enable peaceful discussion between religions, and on the other hand, allow you to test your knowledge within your own religion and compare it with others in yours and other religions to see which religions know most about their own faith. You should see that, and a few other similar apps in coming months.

The greatest feature of this launch is what we did behind the scenes. Now, the Holy Rolls suite of community applications on Facebook and other social networks is a complete, consolidated, code base. With just a simple change to the database we can now quickly, and easily launch more community apps. Expect to see We’re Jewish, We’re Islam, and maybe even We’re FSM (Flying Spaghetti Monster) soon. Even bigger news is that we can now expand this to more than just religion – imagine a “We’re Snowboarders” app, a “We’re Quilters” app, and others. If you currently run a website outside Facebook and would like to bring your community inside of Facebook, or have an existing Facebook App you’d like to integrate into our platform please talk to me. We are truly at the cusp of a huge group of niche communities we can bring together and include common functionality – contact me if you’d like to join or compliment what we’re doing!

Are you Protestant? Add “We’re Protestant!” here:

http://apps.facebook.com/wereprotestant/