Oatmeal Stout – Justin Thorp’s blog

A co-worker just sent this to me and it almost made me shoot espresso out my nose.  It’s that funny.  Thought I’d share it with all of you.  Happy Friday!

(Via Cheezhead)

Congrats to Geoff Livingston and everyone at Livingston Communications about being acquired.

Some of you may have seen the news today. I’ve sold Livingston Communications to the Toronto region’s Social Media Group (SMG). Maggie Fox, CEO of SMG will be my new boss, and I will serve the organization as Executive Vice President, Americas (Image: Maggie and I at Ford Headquarters last week).

Basically, I will serve major accounts as a lead strategist, head the DC office, market the company and continue blogging at the Buzz Bin (which will get a resulting content upgrade).

I’m really tired of hearing folks from companies tell me “I wanna engage in social media.”  It’s such the wrong way of looking at EVERYTHING.

Social media is not an ends.  Being in business isn’t all about using social media.

If you’re in business, it’s because you have someone to serve.  There are users who value what you do and you like serving and meetings their needs.

Don’t just engage in social media because it’s the cool thing to do.  Don’t just start a blog or put up a Facebook Page because you read about it in the New York Times.

Engage your users using social media.  Social media allows you to meet your users face to face.  It gives you the opportunity to build this community and these relationships.

If when you start thinking about social media you can’t answer “why?” then you probably shouldn’t start because you’re not going to do that well.

Sorry for the rant.

Here in the DC area, we have a really sweet upcoming opportunity.  The O’Reilly Graphing Social Patterns Conference will be in Washington DC from June 9-11th.

It’s organized by the Web 2.0 guru Dave McClure.  There will be social networking luminaries there such as Facebook’s Dave Morin,  Citizen Agency’s Chris Messina, Forrester Research’s Jeremiah Owyang, my friend and Social Times founder Nick O’Neill,  Clearspring’s very own CEO Hooman Radfar, and many more.

I’ll be there and you should be too.

If you’re coming (especially if from out of town) and wanna meetup, drop me a line.  Would love to hang and grab drinks with folks.  E-mail me – justin@clearspring.com

So instead of just making sure you have your company’s domain name, you need to start thinking about whether you have your company’s username on major social networks.

Geico is learning a hard lesson.  A user on Twitter is holding their name for money.

Interested in purchasing this twitter? Contact me at jondoeb83@yahoo_.com without the underscore!

If Geico ever wanted to use a Twitter account to give company updates, they’d have to use a different name or buy it off the guy.

(Thanks Peter for the tip. )

Every once and a while you’ll notice that i’ve gone a day or two without blogging.  This doesn’t mean that i’ve gone completely off the grid.  It just means that I’ve probably gotten really busy between my work and after work lifes.

Chances are that during a lull you can probably find some type of my activity on a number of different Web 2.0 applications…

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Del.icio.us
• Flickr
• LinkedIn
• Cork’d
• Pownce
• Digg

If you wanna keep up on my various comings and goings when I’m not blogging, by all means please add me as a contact or friend on one of these services.

If it’s possible to put in a message with your “friend request”, just say that you read my blog.

I remember when I got into the World Wide Web for the first time.  I was just a boy in mid-Michigan sitting in front of a computer with my dad.  The world seemed very large and incredibly inaccessible.  That was all about to change.

With the Web, information and people become infinitely more accessible. You get to meet people on the other side of the state, the other side of the country, or even the other side of the world who have common interests to you.    Before my friends would have been restricted by who I lived geographically near.  With the Web, this all changed very dramatically.

A few years ago, Shel Israel to me was just a guy who I admired, co-authored a book about blogging, and lived on the other side of the country. Because of the Web and specifically our blogs, we were able to connect and I now consider Shel to be an old friend.  He’s become what he likes to call part of my “global neighborhood.”

I could have never imagined that I would have had the opportunity to get to know and become friends with Shel but that’s the power of the Web.  It has the ability to allow to people from different backgrounds, ages, and parts of the world who have a similar interests or passion to get to know one another, form a conversation, and start a friendship. It’s sooo cool.

Today, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Shel in person at the Social Media in Government conference that was being held in Washington DC.   It was a blast.  If Shel didn’t have a plane to catch, i’m confident the conversation could have gone on for most of the day.

At the conference, I also had the pleasure today of meeting Kyle Hansen.  He wrote a blog post a while back which made a lot of people’s attention, including Shel’s.  He said “to my future boss: please let me blog.“  Kyle is an outstanding example of the revolution that is taking place with how people communicate.  He’s also very bright.

Someone in Washington DC, please hire Kyle.  We want him on this coast (he goes to school in Calif but is at an internship in DC).

I’m proud to say that Kyle is now a part of my global neighborhood.

The Web is and will change your life.  It will give you the opportunity to connect and meet truly amazing people.

Who have you met or been able to connect with via the Web?

I read a lot stuff on the Web. A lot of what i read is just people rehashing other people’s ideas and calling it there own. But… every once and a while, you come across something and you’re like DANG that’s brilliant.

I’ve been really enjoying Jyri Engeström‘s stuff on object-centered sociality and social objects. Go read, watch, and inhale this stuff right now…

• zengestrom.com: Why some social network services work and others don’t Or: the case for object-centered sociality
• zengestrom.com: What makes a good social object
• Jyri Engeström @ Geek Dinner London

This is what others have had to say about Jyri’s ideas…

• The Social Graph and Objects of Sociality – Bokardo
  
• RussellBeattie.com – The Object-Centered Sociality
• hugh macleod – more thoughts on social objects

I wanna add my 2 cents in about this stuff but i’d be curious to hear everyone else’s thoughts.  Does this stuff make sense to anyone else???

I continue to be amazed by how the DC tech community is really starting to take off.  The latest twist is that there’s going to be a Facebook Developer Garage in Washington DC.  It’s on Wednesday, October 10th at 6pm at Edelman.

As you all know, I’m continually fascinated by Facebook.  I know this is going to be a great opportunity to get some of my questions answered.  It will be a great opportunity to dive deeper into the Facebook platform.

Hopefully see all of you there.

There is an interesting thread in the blogosphere about how Facebook might just be a gigantic way to be unproductive.  Web standards luminary  Jeffrey Zeldman and even Facebook app consultant/self-proclaimed Facebook addict Nick O’Neill have  admitted to its unproductive qualities.

The question I ask is… if the best thing Facebook has going for it is its ability to help you waste time really well, can’t it be easily replaced or won’t it slowly die out?  How can this be a long term viable platform?

Some other Web application or social network is going to help you waste time in an even more fun way and people will flood to that, in the same way that people are moving away from MySpace to Facebook.

At TechCrunch40, everyone got super excited when Mark Zuckerberg announced the new venture fund they’d be starting to spur on the growth of Facebook applications.   They have apparently set away $10 million for this.  I guess this means I can apply to get $25k to build the next generation in Zombie biting Facebook applications.

Please, someone build me a Facebook applications that blows my mind.  Build me an application that really takes advantage of the social graph in an meaningful way.   Show me how you use it in a way that is beneficial to your day to day.

I like Facebook Events but I’d rather use Upcoming or Evite because its not as restrictive.   I like Facebook Photos but I like Flickr better because everyone can see it.  Facebook Video is great but I don’t use it that much.

I need more.