FCC socializes it's broadband launch

This week, the Federal Communications Commission decided that social media was a key component to it's submission of a plan for national broadband access. Ever since the United States figured out that it is trailing behind the rest of the civilized world in public broadband, this issue has been hot on the keyboards of programmers and politicians. Given the inherently heated debate that has been stirring, why did the FCC choose to integrate social media into their development stage?

"We want it to be a two-way conversation. The feedback, ideas and discussions generated on thsi blog will be critical in developing the best possible National Broadband Plan," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachoswki. Please note that he took office in June of this year.

I am most looking forward to see which comments and "feedback" are censored. Let the transparency war begin! Here is a quick look at what has been posted since the campaign launch on Tuesday:

Click here to follow the FCC

To be honest, I am more than a little disappointed with their "engaging" tactics. Nearly every post begins with "Broadband Update:" and redundantly links back to it's own general web address. If I wanted to read repeated advertisements to visit their web page, I would add it to my RSS feed.

A quick look at the replies to the FCC account reveals similar feelings among new followers. It seems as though Chairman Genachoswki needs to do a better job executing the "two-way conversation" he has proclaimed.

The "Blogband" blog, however, is performing much better. It only has four posts and is two days old, but has received nearly 100 comments with undoubtedly heavy web traffic. Like most successful blogs, Blogband is collaboratively maintained by the FCC internal team (including posts from the Chairman). It is still too early to tell how much the social media outlets will affect the ultimate decisions of the FCC for initiating national broadband. Despite it being in its early stages, I have great appreciation for the fact that they have created social modes for input from the American public.

The question now becomes whether the FCC will actually begin responding to its feedback publicly. Please comment or send me an email at pauljmatson (at) gmail (dot) com. Cheers!

Twitter is down! Social media Twouble

Microblog service Twitter has officially been down since around 10:00 a.m. today, preventing the tweets of millions of users around the globe. The official Twitter Status blog has published the following update:

Defending against a denial-of-service attack?! Let the battle begin! Time to summon the all-mighty Fail Whale to wage war against the cyber foes. Fortunately, the federal government has the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team to step in if needed.

So what exactly is a denial-of-service (DoS) attack? According to US-CERT:

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In a denial-of-service (DoS) attack, an attacker attempts to prevent legitimate users from accessing information or services. By targeting your computer and its network connection, or the computers and network of the sites you are trying to use, an attacker may be able to prevent you from accessing email, web sites, online accounts (banking, etc.), or other services that rely on the affected computer.

The most common and obvious type of DoS attack occurs when an attacker "floods" a network with information. When you type a URL for a particular web site into your browser, you are sending a request to that site's computer server to view the page. The server can only process a certain number of requests at once, so if an attacker overloads the server with requests, it can't process your request. This is a "denial of service" because you can't access that site.

An attacker can use spam email messages to launch a similar attack on your email account. Whether you have an email account supplied by your employer or one available through a free service such as Yahoo or Hotmail, you are assigned a specific quota, which limits the amount of data you can have in your account at any given time. By sending many, or large, email messages to the account, an attacker can consume your quota, preventing you from receiving legitimate messages.

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If you are already shaking from the inability to access your home page, calm down. Although this is a longer downtime than Twitter has experienced for a year or so, it has happened before. The larger the Twitter network becomes, the more computers get involved, the more likely an attack of this nature becomes. For a more in-depth explanation of this situation and how it is orchestrated by hackers, click here.

The question is this: what do we do when a major social media service breaks down for an extended period of time? What will be an interesting case study is to examine where people are turning in the wake of Twitter failure. Facebook is my first guess. Other ideas welcome!

Designers are not developers

This (somewhat) crass post showed up in my Delicious feed, but think it is worth sharing. There is often a discrepancy over what skills people have in social media vs. digital marketing vs. web design. Naturally, today's PR and ad agencies want to have team members with a diversity of skills and specialty in a few. Few are able to differentiate the actual differences between each skill set.

A "concerned web developer" decided to publish this note contribute his insight (there is a lack of grammatical accuracy, but hits several important nails on the head):

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Dear Poster of Job Ads,
For the record, nobody knows PHP, .NET, MYSQL, HTML, FLASH, CSS, JAVASCRIPT, ILLUSTRATOR, and PHOTOSHOP. If a potential emplotee says they do, they know a little of each and are of no real value. If they do indeed appear to be an expert with all of these, then they have no life. If you want someone of real skill -- you need to break down your job ads like so:

[PHP goes with MYSQL]
[.NET goes with SQL]
[HTML goes with CSS and maybe JavaScript]
[ILLUSTRATOR goes with PHOTOSHOP and FLASH]

...futhermore, there are two major spheres here that often get blurred into one..

web DESIGNER and web DEVELOPER.

A designer can also be a GRAPHIC designer -- these people are artists and can use Illustrator, Flash, and Photoshop.

A web developer knows how to code, web developers are NOT artists! -- If your potential employee claims to be a senior web developer and also a graphic designer, they are LYING.

A concerned...
web DEVELOPER

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You can find the original post here.

Self evaluation: blog traffic transparency

Since the inception of this blog nearly two years ago, it has undergone three major aesthetic overhauls and countless changes to it's content focus. There have been few alterations since the Summer of 2008, which prompted me to compare the actual traffic performance of today to my initial goals.

With majority thanks to Google Analytics and the input from insightful subscribers, I was able to uncover some interesting facts about what people find most interesting, the relevancy of my content, and how traffic is directed here. In honesty, my first post was for a college class, discussing the possibility of Facebook releasing an IPO. Today, with the title "The Social Media Institute," my blog has evolved into a home for my thoughts on optimizing the opportunities inherent in engaging the world through digital mediums.

In short, how to use the Internet to reach people.

For transparency's sake, I have published an 11 month web traffic report for your viewing/downloading pleasure. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have, and welcome thoughtful feedback. Leaving a comment, @ reply/DM me on Twitter, or send me an e-mail at pauljmatson (at) gmail (dot) com.

Google search results:
About 52% of my overall traffic comes from organic search results on Google, Yahoo and other search engines. I currently hold the top five listings for the following entries (test them yourself!):

1. abercrombie and fitch media (ranked #1) ... I'm still a little shocked at this one.
2. how to keep people interested (ranked #1)
3. a dying father (ranked #1)
   
4. best twitter application (ranked #2)
5. GPA vs experience (ranked #1)
6. strategically obnoxious (ranked #1)
   
7. no such thing as an expert (ranked #2)
   
8. social media institute (ranked #3)
9. how to pitch using social media (ranked #4)
   
10. paul matson (ranked #1) ... I hold the top 3-4 spots on a given day.

Top referring sites:
After publishing a new post, I typically post it to Twitter, PROpenMic.org, my Delicious page, Instant Messenger away message, Facebook, and LinkedIn. E-mail subscriptions included, of course. These are the top site ten web site referrals that are not from search engine traffic.

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. Blogger
4. PROpenMic
5. ohiouprssa.org
6. iphone.facebook.com
7. beingcheryl.com
   
8. LinkedIn
9. researchgoddess.wordpress.com
10. tonysylvester.blogspot.com

Global visitors (89 counties):

1. United States (4,300 visits)
   
2. United Kingdom (227 visits)
   
3. Canada (149 visits)
   
4. Austrailia (63 visits)
   
5. India (51 visits)
   
6. Germany (38 visits)
   
7. Phillipines (31 visits)
   
8. Netherlands (30 visits)
   
9. Colombia (22 visits)
   
10. France (21 visits)
    

Most popular posts:

1. The best Twitter applications
2. What and When to Tweet
3. Welcome to the Abercrombie & Fitch Emergency Department and Trauma Center
4. Who will hire me? GPA vs. Experience
5. Five ways to keep up with social media
6. 7 ways to keep people interested
7. How to pitch using social media
8. Twittiquette
9. Get noticed through Facebook
   

The full report:
Traffic report