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My New Year's Tech Resolution: Quitting Real-Time

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Jeremy Toeman

Let’s take a long trip back in time.  Let’s remember a world where you were running a little late for a dinner date with friends, and you just showed up a bit late, no texts.  You got to the restaurant and didn’t check-in on Facebook, Yelp, or FourSquare (oh, and you didn’t even use Yelp to find the restaurant, or double-check that it has 4 stars, you just heard about it from a friend).  When the menu arrived, you read it, picked the item(s) that looked good, and placed your order, and if you wanted to know what was the most popular, you asked the waiter.  While waiting for the food, you drank wine and chatted with your friends.  When the meal arrived, you didn’t take a picture of it (or apply a filter) and shared with others.  If the service was lousy, you told the manager, not your Followers or Friends.  When you finished up the meal, you drove home, without using crowd-sourced GPS to get there.  And as a final note, at no point in the meal did you get interrupted by others sharing equally unimportant minutia with you, but if they really *really* needed to track you down, maybe you got a call.

If you are under 25 and reading this, the above probably sounds like a nightmare, but trust me, it wasn’t.

I think it’s time to admit that living in “real-time” is a bit of a disaster, and there’s tons of studies arising that lend evidence to social media (among other things) as problematic to society (here’s a funny take, but full of facts on the topic).  But you really don’t need the studies, just some common sense.  We’ve evolved over millions of years (or, as they teach in several US States – a few thousand plus some fairy dust) and until the last half a decade, the only thing that was really crucial to do in real-time was running from sabre-tooth tigers, which we were actually pretty good at.

Since I started writing this a few minutes ago I’ve received two texts and one IM – every one of which disrupted my writing and thinking.  Thankfully I had already closed my email client (something I plan to do much more frequently), and I have push notifications OFF for Facebook and Email on my phone.  But that’s a core to it: we’ve somehow made ourselves constantly interruptible, and I can’t see how anything good comes of it.  How do you think deeply on anything if your pocket is buzzing, the corner of your screen is flashing, and other little whooshing and tweeting sound effects keep rolling by.

If you are reading this and thinking “that guy’s just an old-fuddy-duddy” (which, to be fair, no young person today would ever actually say), and you are also patting yourself on the back because YOU are a great multitasker, go take a break from this piece, google “multitasking myths” (or just read this) and then come on back.  Bummer, eh?

And it’s not just about getting stuff done, as that too is just massively overrated.  It’s about a lack of peace and calmness. When do we take time anymore just to do nothing.  Even standing in line for a coffee (which is, of course a take out coffee, since there’s no time to just sit in a cafe and enjoy a hot cup of coffee in a real cup) everyone’s on their phones, doing stuff.  The human brain actually needs time, every day, just to do nothing and process all of the events that are transpiring (great article here on “doing nothing”).

So what am I doing?  Focusing on purposeful activity, single-tasking, and shutting down virtually anything that expects me to deal with it imminently, as there are truly very few events which can transpire that I must reply to in real-time.  Somehow I doubt this will negatively impact either my professional or personal life in any way.   This doesn’t mean I won’t use services like Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, IM, and the like – it just means I’m getting a lot more comfortable turning them off for long stretches.

My focus in 2013: Enjoying the moments, and having them for myself – not others.  Enjoying the view, not the retweets of the photos. Enjoying the funny/cute/silly kids, not worrying about grabbing the camera, nor counting the likes or comments.  Enjoying walking into an unknown restaurant, ordering anything I like, getting delighted by it, and telling a friend about it some other time.  Sorry real-time, I’m pushing pause.

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Posted in General | Tags: calm, checking in, facebook, foursquare, getting things done, peace, productivity, social media, twitter, yelp | 2 Comments |

Why 2nd Screen Superbowl Ad and Social TV Experiences Suffered

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Jeremy Toeman

According to Lost Remote, social media was en fuego during the Super Bowl this year.  Bluefin Labs contributed to these stats, and found over 12 million “social media comments” during the game.  Another element Lost Remote tracked were the plurality of Social TV Second Screen Apps in play:

The best second-screen experience: To start things off, we checked into the game on GetGlue, Miso,IntoNow, Shazam, ConnecTV, Umami, Foursquare and Viggle. Ok, that’s overkill, but we wanted to give them a spin on the biggest social TV event of the year. For starters, GetGlue sailed passed its all-time check-in, counting over 100,000 before halftime and 150,000 total for the game, 3X its all-time record (the company doubled its servers for the Super Bowl.) We’re let you know of other second-screen stats when we get them.

Now that doesn’t include the “official” Super Bowl app, NBC Sports, or a few other options.  But overall, I’m see a glass is half empty scenario myself.

The problem was in the experiences.  I tweeted a couple of times during the game, by using the Twitter app, which was native and easy to do.  The thought of launching another app, just to get something that would enable be to tweet never even crossed my mind.  In reality, most of these apps actually got in the way of the experience.  And yes, while there was tons of tweeting and updates occurring, I’d lay down a strong bet most of this was about people posting, not reading what others were posting.

I also found the Super Bowl ads highlighted two major flaws in the ad experience.  Shazam got a lot of pre-game buzz for all their ad partners.  Sounds cool in theory, but the experience is just plain lousy.  First, the commerical starts airing.  Then, at some point in the middle of the ad a little Shazam logo appears somewhere on the screen (I only noticed it a handful of times personally).  At this moment, the viewer must grab their phone, turn it on, unlock it, switch to the Shazam app, and then – and this is important – get everyone in the room to be quiet for 7-10 seconds.  Great in theory, but this is not a good experience for any user.

The second was a QR code which displayed on screen.  This in my eyes was even worse than Shazam, since QR codes require the user to have a QR app, which is just too obtuse for the average viewer.

worst. crossword. ever.

Compare either the Shazam or QR experience to having a simple URL onscreen.  Is it really easier to go through all the hassle and end up on the Honda website, or just tell the user to go to honda.com?  Plus, by obfuscating the simple methods, advertisers lose brand reinforcement AND are busy handing over the experience to a third party.  Similarly, when it comes to social experiences, is it to a consumers’ advantage to launch an app just to get an update into Twitter or Facebook, or to just use the native ones?

These experiences have come a long way, and are offering exciting potential for the future of TV and second screens.  But so far, we’re clearly at the infancy of what the consumer can use to really “enhance” a TV offering.  I hope some or many of these offerings will improve over the years, and really create a better experience, not one that makes us work harder just to watch TV.

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Posted in Convergence, Mobile Technology | Tags: 2nd screen, ads, apps, bluefin labs, getglue, ipad, iphone, lost remote, miso, NBC, QR code, Second Screen, shazam, social media, social tv, super bowl, superbowl | 7 Comments |

They Pulled Me Back In! I’m Joining Dijit Media as Chief Product Officer

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

A week ago I announced that Jim Schaff would be taking over active duties at Stage Two, and that I’d be focusing on “other stuff.”  Today I’m excited to share the stuff:  I am joining the management team of Dijit Media as Chief Product Officer, where I’m responsible for product and marketing (here’s the official update).  Not only that, my virtually common law married colleague (business partners for much of the past 14 years) and very close friend Adam Burg is the company’s VP of Business Development.

What???

Last Fall, I gave a presentation at the Set-Top Box Conference in San Jose, and the entire drive back I had a feeling of near elation.  Not that I had said anything extremely profound, but it was wrapped up in the feeling of doing something I had a lot of passion for – in this case, discussing the future of television.  Over the next few months, I spent a lot of time doing research in the Smart TV (also called Connected TV or Internet TV) space, and started seeing some trends emerge, and realized there were some very interesting business opportunities on the horizon.

Adam and I spent months developing a prototype concept of the vision we had, and went to meet with some of the brightest folks we know in the convergence field.  One such bright folk was well-known VC Stewart Alsop, who I’ve known since the late 1990s, who introduced us to Maksim Ioffe, CEO of Dijit.  In our very first meeting with Maksim it was clear he shared much of the same industry and product vision and philosophy with Adam and me. I’ll keep this part of the story short, as we’ve all seen this movie before – we ended up agreeing to join the company. And there was much rejoicing (yay).

Why Dijit?

The grand vision of Dijit is to create the ultimate “four screen” (phone, tablet, computer, TV) social entertainment experience, one which seamlessly merges disparate products and platforms and content into one single, easy to use, consumer offering.  The company is well on its way, and its first product is an iPhone app that enables a really sophisticated, yet elegantly simple control experience for home media centers.   As Maksim put it, “Consumers have 21st-century home entertainment experiences but are stuck with remote controls that haven’t been updated since the 1980s.”  The company partnered with Griffin to produce the Beacon, a clever take on the “IR blaster” product, and one that’s already receiving solid reviews (and I haven’t even done anything yet!).  This is going to be a very exciting company to be a part of, and I’m thrilled to have such an opportunity.

Reminiscing.

I still recall the early days at Mediabolic, where we enabled networked home entertainment solutions that interfaced with legacy, analog consumer electronics devices (yes, we were networking the living room in an era where there were virtually no HDTVs, no YouTube, no Pandora, and no… iPod!).  At Mediabolic I learned what it takes to design and build embedded entertainment devices, to work with consumer electronics manufacturers, and the deep set of challenges surrounding the connected home industry (fun trivia: I heard the phrase “this is THE year of the digital home” every single year starting in 2001 – possibly earlier).  It was a great experience, and key people from that team now work at amazing companies like Netflix, Rovi Corp (Rovi acquired Mediabolic in 2007), etc.

At Sling Media I had the unique opportunity to work for and with some outstanding individuals, not to mention the position of being tasked with figuring out how to deliver the perfect “living room experience” – only over the Internet.  The company’s CEO, Blake Krikorian, taught me the meaning of focusing on every detail and nuance, remaining truly innovative, and keeping the consumer’s wants and needs in the forefront of every product decision.  I also had to learn the ins and outs of social media, back in the era before it was called “social media,” where “the bloggers” were a special, hard to understand subset of humanity (or, as I rapidly learned, just cool people).  We accomplished a great success building the Slingbox, and I’m proud of the product, the team, and the experience.

Over the past four years at Stage Two, I’ve had tremendous exposure to startups, big companies, CEOs, visionaries, the media, and managing a great team.  We literally put companies like Boxee, Bug Labs, and Pogoplug on the map, and have also had the chance to work for well-established firms like Electronic Arts, Best Buy, and VUDU (now Wal-Mart).  I’ve learned from entrepreneurs like Jim Lanzone (now president of CBS Interactive), Peter Semmelhack (Bug Labs), David McIntosh (Redux), Rahim Fazal (Involver) and so many others (I’ll write another post in the next little while chock full of shout-outs).  I’ve redesigned product experiences for dozens of products, and created marketing/PR/social media campaigns for dozens more, and had the pleasure to work with great teams along the way.

The Future.

And now I’m taking all of the above, and putting it to work at one place.  Welcome to Dijit.

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Posted in Convergence, Gadgets, General, Video/Music/Media | Tags: adam burg, best buy, blake krikorian, boxee, bug labs, Connected TV, Convergence, dijit, dijit media, electronic arts, four screen, internet tv, Jeremy Toeman, jim lanzone, macrovision, maksim ioffe, mediabolic, Netflix, OTT, over the top, pogoplug, remote control, rovi, set top box, sling media, slingbox, smart tv, social media, Stage Two, stewart alsop, vudu | 5 Comments |

11 Things You Should Never Do Online

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Jeremy Toeman

Did you know you could lose insurance benefits from putting photos online?  Or that a Tweet can put you in jail?  Or that the FBI might be friending you on Facebook?  Or that even brand-new service Chatroulette isn’t truly anonymous? I’ve blogged recently on my concerns about privacy trends, and it’s quite the hotly debated topic these days.

I see two primary reasons why you shouldn’t do something online:

  • Personal Harm/Loss
  • Future Regret

So without further adieu, here’s 11 Things You Should Never Do Online!

  1. Show your goods. One would think this would be obvious. One would imagine that an individual would not normally choose to show their private parts to the entire world, presuming they are not in the adult entertainment industry. It took me less than a minute on Chatroulettemap to find a picture of a naked guy, and his hometown (pictured here, safely edited by me). Here are some NSFW pictures found on Facebook. Why shouldn’t you do this? How about “decency” or “self-respect”? I wouldn’t even call it prudish to say there is a reason for the phrase “private parts” and some things are simply best left out of the public eye. Leave it to the pro’s, people.  Nobody’s going to be walking around when they are 80 years old saying to themselves “I sure regret not showing my penis to the entire world.”  Unless they have some kind of exceptional penis, that is.
  2. Meet a random stranger in a non-public location. As a child I was taught not to get into cars with strangers.  Of course I was also using public transportation as of age 8, but I don’t think that’s too contradictory.  We’ve heard numerous stories of people meeting strangers via sites like Craigslist, then bad things happen.  I have no problem with online dating services, but use some common sense people.  How about having 2-3 dates in public before you decide to even reveal your home address (assuming you haven’t done so already online – see more below)?  Why shouldn’t you do this? Pretty much goes without saying – and while there will always be creeps and they will always find methods of doing terrible things, but how about not enabling them to occur so easily?
  3. Publicize travel plans. Be it foursquare, brightkite, gowalla, plancast, tripit, dopplr or anything else, the concept that an individual would specifically tell anybody in public that they aren’t at home is something I personally find mind-boggling.  Whether it’s a simple burglary (or much much worse), there’s no greater bait I can think of for a wrong-doer. And to think that all criminals are simply too stupid to figure this out is somewhere between ignorant and elitist. Heck, teenagers in the UK find empty swimming pools with Google Earth, and thieves last year used it to find and steal koi fish from backyards.  Why shouldn’t you do this? It doesn’t take extreme paranoia or a DVD collection of Law and Order to come to the simple conclusion that these activities are asking for trouble.  Combine public records with services like plancast and twitter, and you have the equivalent of a “how-to rob me” service that you are proactively choosing to use – it’s gonna happen.
  4. Share identity-revealing data. Over 9 million Americans have identity theft issues every year. Why on Earth would you make it easier for them?  Further, one of the easiest methods of gaining access to an identity is through simple human error and naivete.  If you put personal information, like say your credit card activities, proactively into the public eye, you are asking for problems.  And unlike physical thieves (per the above point), phishers currently use technology to steal information.  You want to put your phone number in public? Fine! Get a Google Voice account, set up a redirect, and use that.  But don’t put the same number you have to authenticate important personal records! Why shouldn’t you do this? Actually this should be the opposite question – why oh why would you put private data out in public? If I can’t get you to stop buffoonery, fine, but at least be on the watch for things that can impact your finances and credit score!
  5. Ignore privacy requests/needs of others. It’s perfectly legal to take pictures of people in public. It’s also perfectly legal to put those pictures in the public spectrum (so long as you aren’t profiteering from their likeness).  But that doesn’t mean you have to.  Some people prefer to keep their lives completely out of the public eye, and they have the right to do so (despite what many social media bloggers would like to say).  Just because you choose to publicize your life doesn’t mean everyone else has to as well.  Furthermore, and more specifically, parents should rethink what pictures they put online in public or semi-public locations.  Maybe your kids won’t want those pictures to be accessible one day when they are older – and I can guarantee they’ll have a tough time taking them down.  The oh-so-cute moments in the bath might be funny to reveal at a wedding or bar mitzvah (both private events, mind you), but how about during their sophomore year in high school, to the whole class? Not so much. Why shouldn’t you do this? It’s inconsiderate – and that’s enough of a reason.
  6. Reveal vices. My healthcare company is raising our rates 35% this year – despite no claims or major changes of status.  Their business, in a nutshell, is to profit as greatly as possible, which they accomplish by (1) raising rates, and (2) giving out minimal claims/benefits.  I will say the following unbiased and bluntly: it is in their interest to find evidence of you smoking, drinking, and otherwise acting recklessly because it lets them profit more. If I were you, I’d make sure there were no tweets, status updates, or anything else containing “So drunk I almost fell down the stairs” or “Onto my 2nd pack today. Boy these Marlboros are smooth” etc.  Why shouldn’t you do this? If you don’t think insurance companies, healthcare providers, or other “big brother-like” organizations will use social technologies to raise rates or otherwise increase profits, you are just fooling yourself.  Drink, smoke, be merry – and just enjoy it with the people you are actually spending the time with (they’ll probably appreciate it too).
  7. Mock those you may do business with. A famous PR exec once tweeted disparagingly about a magazine his firm had to pitch.  The editor in chief saw the tweet.  An ad agency salesman on his way to pitch a client openly mocked the city in which that client lived. The client saw the tweet.   Disparaging a potential (or existing) client is generally speaking, not the way one gets more business from said client.  The whole concept of doing things in public means anyone might just see them – including the people you are trying to get to spend money on you. Why shouldn’t you do this? How about… “livelihood”?
  8. Sound like a schmuck. Per the above point, you never know who is going to see the words you write. Your “witty banter” with an old high school friend on Facebook might not sound so clever to a potential employer.  I’ll be the first to admit that I am a cynic and an outspoken one, and I am certain this colors peoples’ opinions of me. But I also do my best to sound objective and educated about whatever topics I’m talking about.  While I’m sure I’ve tweeted things I shouldn’t have, or left comments on blogs that could be misconstrued, I generally make a concerted effort to consider my commentary and how it would be interpreted by a complete stranger (though I could still use improvement myself).Why shouldn’t you do this? Your words will come back to haunt you – how about just not saying them in the first place?
  9. Publicize your partying or let your friends put up embarrassing photos/videos of you. The most famous example I’ve found so far involves a swimmer and an arbitrarily-banned substance. Whoever took that picture is, in a word, a jerk. Not as big of a jerk as whomever made this happen, but a pretty big jerk nonetheless. But when you compare it to the amazing amount of inappropriate stuff you can easily find with simple Google searches, you really start to wonder if the entire concept of self-respect has gone out the window.Why shouldn’t you do this? A future employer? A future spouse? Your kids one day? Your grandkids? How about anyone you want to not massively unimpress one day.
  10. Be inconsistent with your real life claims. If you call in sick, stay offline! Let’s face it, lying consistently can be challenging – it’s something you really have to work hard at. So if you are going to call in sick, you probably shouldn’t update your Facebook status or tweet or do anything else that conflicts with your claim. I recall the classic “which tire?” tale from university lore, only dramatically more impactful with public timelines and social presences.  You should also know that when you take pictures and upload them to sites like Picasa or Flickr, the actual day/time is logged in that photo somewhere as well. Why shouldn’t you do this? Hopefully you don’t need me to tell you not to lie or otherwise make false claims in the office space or personal life.  But if you are going to, try to tow the line with your online presence as well.
  11. Assume you are not being recorded. We decided at the office to try playing Chatroulette last month. Every time we used it, we recorded our session (using freely available screen capture tools), just in case something funny/outrageous happened (and it did, and no, I won’t be sharing with the group).  Your web history is recorded by Google (if you are logged in).  Facebook knows everything you’ve done.  Most Web sites store your IP address along with the comment you leave.  The Internet Archive stores copies of just about everything. Your cookies have privacy flaws. When you do something on the Internet, it is there to stay. Don’t forget it!

The funny thing (if there is one) on the above list is if you were to ask your grandparents if you should do any of those things, they’d give you one of those “what’s wrong with you boy?” looks.  But instead here you are reading my blog because it’s actually a topic.  Them kids today…

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Posted in Guides, Web/Internet | Tags: anonymous, archive, burglary, chatroulette, cookies, craigslist, crime, facebook, foursquare, google, google earth, gowalla, plancast, privacy, social media, social networks, tripit, tweet, twitter, web sites | 13 Comments |

Social Media meets Consumer Electronics at CES2009

Posted on December 9, 2008 by Jeremy Toeman

I try to keep the “plug Jeremy” posts to a minimum, but it’s my blog, and I can do what I want, right?

I’ve been invited to participate in Jeff Pulver’s exciting new event at CES 2009, called “Social Media Jungle.”  During the daylong session, a variety of very accomplished speakers will present on a variety of topics pertaining to social media and trends for 2009. In my case I’ll try to “bridge the gap” to address the CE industry.

Jeff’s description of the event:

“The Social Media Jungle at the 2009 International CES brings to light how the advent of social media is changing the way we work and live. Sessions include state-of-the-industry updates and a candid look at how social media disrupts the workplace by empowering companies to lower burn rates. Plus, learn how companies can motivate consumers through social media to drive product sales without increasing costs.”

Here’s the agenda:

8:30 – 9:00: Real-Time Social Networking
9:00 – 9:20: Welcome to the Jungle, Jeff Pulver
9:20 – 9:40: Navigating the Social Media Seas, Chris Brogan
9:40 – 10:00 – Industry Perspective & Update
10:00 – 10:20 – Industry Perspective & Update
10:20 – 10:40 – What to Look for in Social Media Platforms in 2009, Robert Scoble
10:40 – 11:00 – Return on Social Media Investment, Ben Grossman
11:00 – 11:20 – [ break ]
11:20 – 11:40 – Learn, Baby, Learn: Turn Your Social Media Addiction Into An Asset!, Jeffrey Sass
11:40 – 12:00 – Social Media Principles, Chris Heuer
12:00 – 12:20 – Naked PR: What Marketers Need to Know in the Age of Social Media, Susan Etlinger
12:30 – 2:00 [Lunch Break]
2:00 – 2:30 – How Reporters Have to Think of Themselves as an Entrepreneur and a Publisher Using their Company as a Platform, Daniel Honigman
2:30 – 2:50 – New Media Strategy in Challenging Times: Conquering the 3 Screen World: Dean Landsman and Howard Greenstein
2:50 – 3:10 – How Small Business can use Inbound Marketing/Social Media to Help Increase Their Business, Justin Levy
3:10 – 3:30 – The Convergence of CE and Social Media, Jeremy Toeman
3:30 – 3:50 – Managing Your Reputation While Being Genuine and Authentic Online, Dave Taylor
3:50 – 4:10 – How to Botch an Agency Briefing (No Matter How Cool You Think Your Product Is), David Berkowitz
4:10 – 4:20 [break]
4:20 – 4:40 – How Trust Drives Transactions During a Down Economy, Eric Weaver
4:40 – 5:00 – Leveraging Social Media for the Social Good, Rebecca Bollwitt
5:00 – 5:20 – How New Media is Changing the World, Brian Reich
5:20 – 5:40 – Transforming Unemployed BabyBoomers via Social Media, Carlos Hernandez
5:40 – 5:45 – Wrap up

I’ll be talking about how “social media” is infiltrating consumer electronics devices.  There are already a handful of products on the market or coming to the market with built-in social services.  The future of devices is clearly all around connectivity, and the interesting phase will be understanding how we get from today (mostly disconnected islands of functionality) to tomorrow (intelligent data sharing between devices and Internet services).

Registration costs: US$ 295 / 395 (Social Media Jungle page on the CES website and Facebook page).

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Posted in Convergence, Gadgets, Web/Internet | Tags: ces, ces2009, social media | Leave a comment |

How to Use Social Media to Get Hired

Posted on November 23, 2008 by Jeremy Toeman

I hate the term “social media”, but I didn’t really want to write a post entitled “How to Use Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, social networking, Google Search, Craigslist, and other Web sites to Get Hired.”  It just didn’t have a good ring to it.

The last time my consulting firm put out a job opening (on Craigslist and LinkedIn) we received a few hundred emailed resumes.  We phone-screened about 25 of these resumes (and I left some advice for the other 375), met 8 people in person, and hired none of them.

As the firm is hiring again (haven’t listed it yet, but similar to this description), I thought I’d give some tips to anyone out there in need of a job. First, pay more attention to the Jobwire from RWW and WebWare “spreadsheet of sunshine” (as opposed to the doom-and-gloom purveyors, who aren’t really helping anybody with their efforts).  Second, look for jobs on craigslist and LinkedIn, they are excellent resources.

Braindead Easy Stuff
These are the things you’re supposed to be doing.  In other words, if you come in my office and haven’t done all of this, you will not get hired.

  • Read the last 2-5 entries of the company blog and/or press releases.
  • Do a Google Search, Google News Search, and Google Blog Search for the company.
  • If the company makes a product, read reviews of that product, and be familiar with its current prices, offerings, etc.  If the company makes many products, be generally familiar with them.  Use Amazon to see user ratings of product(s).
  • Check to see if the company uses any social networking services (e.g. MySpace or Facebook Fan page), communities, twitters, etc.  If so, read through some recent content.
  • If the company has a page that profiles employees, read about them.  Ditto for a “clients” page.
  • Be very ready to talk about what the company specifically does as a business!  One of my first questions tends to be “so what do you think we do here?”, and while I don’t expect anyone to say it as well as I would, I expect them to roughly get it.
  • Make sure all your “social profiles” are job-ready.  Get the photos of you throwing up at the frat party off your MySpace page, and make sure your last few blog posts, twitters, and status updates aren’t embarassing.  While you should always “be yourself”, you don’t necessarily need to be all of yourself all the time (hint: it’s like dating – I didn’t tell my wife-to-be that I waited in line for 7 hours to see LOTR the first midnight showing on our first date).

Smart Moves
Here are some simple things you can do that will probably help your chances with any interviewer.  None are mandatory, but help a good candidate stand out from the dreck.

  • Comment (thoughtfully – don’t just suck up) on a recent blog post.  No need to leave a comment on all the blog posts, but one or two is a good move.
  • Try to get a list of who you might be meeting with before you come in.  Read their Facebook and LinkedIn pages before the interview.  Caution: don’t be stalkery, and if you don’t know the difference, you probably should skip this one.
  • Figure out if any of the people you are interviewing with blog, and if so, read it too!
  • If the company has a Web service, use it before you come in (that one’s probably a given).  Have some feedback to share (and it doesn’t have to be all rosy and good either).

Double Ninja Maneuvers
These are the things that I think can make a difference, but must be handled differently for every situation.

  • Send a Tweet to the company’s twitter account (or individual’s) before/after your interview.  There’s no “rule” to the content, but a cleverly handled message can be impactful.
  • Thank everyone you met by email.  You could send written cards too, depending on the length of interviews (I wouldn’t do it for someone you only spent 10-15 minutes with).  If you go down this path, your window of opportunity is 1 day, anything later is a big procrastiFAILnation.
  • Write a blog post about the interview.  Again, proceed with major caution, as any misstep here can cost you an opportunity.  That said, if you handle it right, it could also bring you the attention you want to show why you deserve the job.
  • “Follow” someone on any business or pseudo-business social sites.  Good ones: Twitter (and other microblogging sites, even though nobody else actually uses them), FriendFeed, Digg, Upcoming, Google Reader.  Bad ones (more explanation below): Facebook, Last.FM (unless, of course, you are interviewing at a music-oriented startup), Flickr (ditto), etc.

Oh No You Didn’t!
Here are a couple of things you really shouldn’t do, either due to inappropriateness or other potential backlash.

  • Don’t “friend” someone.  It’s perfectly fine to add anyone you meet as a LinkedIn contact, but unless you know, for sure, that someone treats Facebook “friends” as a list of anyone/everyone they’ve ever encountered, don’t cross this potentially bad line.  By the way, sending a message via Facebook isn’t a bad thing – but then again, you do have their email address…
  • Make any negative remarks about the company/employees, in any digital environment, anywhere (and yeah, that includes email and IM).  If you felt the guy/gal you interviewed with was “a total tool”, that’s just fine, and you can tell your buddies in person and out loud, as opposed to in writing.  You’d be amazed how easily an email can get forwarded.  By the way, I’d also advise against ranting in public, this town of technology companies is really, really small, and you never know who you’re sharing a bus ride with.

I hope this is helpful.  For those who didn’t pick up on the recurring theme, it goes something like this: use the Internet to thoroughly research companies and individuals you are going to interview with, and mildly engage with them before and after the interview.  Then again, if that wasn’t obvious by now, you probably don’t want to interview with me.

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Posted in Web/Internet | Tags: advice, hiring, interviewing, Jobs, social media, tips | 10 Comments |

The 20 Commandments of Social Media

Posted on September 9, 2008 by Jeremy Toeman
  1. Thou Shalt Avoidest Using the Term Social Media, Except When Specifically Discussing Social Media
  2. Thou Shalt Not Use Thine Blog or Twitter Purely to Show Off About all the Cool People Thou Know, nor the Secrets Thou Art Entrusted With
  3. Thou Shalt Not Use Twitter in Conjunction With a Service Which Updates Itself Automatically and Frequently
  4. Thou Shalt Not Complain When Thine Family Professes Ignorance of the Contents of Thine Blog
  5. Thou Shalt Not Put Embarrassing Photos of Thine Self on Thine Facebook Page, for They Shalt Be Easily Found in the Future
  6. Thou Shalt Not Be a Bad Commentor, Nor Shalt Thou Be a Sycophantic Fool
  7. Thou Shalt Not Exclaim With False Surprise at Quantity of Thine Followers
  8. Thou Shalt Not Assume That all Humans use FriendFeed
  9. Thou Shalt Not Poke, Bite, Nor Throweth Sheep, Yet Thou Mayest Be a Pirate
  10. Thou Shalt Not Forward Urban Myths. Ever
  11. Thou Shalt Not Create Video Podcasts of Thineself With a Duration Countable in Minutes
  12. Thou Shalt Not Befriend all People Thou Hast Ever Encountered, No Matter How Briefly
  13. Thou Shalt Not Describe New Startups as the Blank of Blank, Nor the Killer of Blank, Nor the Social Blank, nor the Blank 2.0
  14. Thou Shalt Not Spend Thine Day Reading Blogs, Leaving Comments, Writing Tweets, Updating Facebook Statuses, and then Complain About Thine Busy Schedule
  15. Thou Shalt Not Assume That All Content Received in Email or Read on Web Pages is Factually Accurate
  16. Thou Shalt Not Asketh a Question on Twitter When a Simple Google Search Wouldst Suffice
  17. Thou Shalt Not Confuse Transparency With Invasion of Privacy
  18. Thou Shalt Not Transform Bloggers’ Names Into Verbs, Such as Scoble-ized or Louis Gray-ed
  19. Thou Shalt Enjoy Thine Internet Fame (if Bestowed), for it is Surely Fleeting
  20. Thou Must Never, Ever, Whine About the Sacred TechMeme. It is All-Seeing and All-Powerful and Must Not Be Questioned

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Posted in No/Low-tech, Web/Internet | Tags: humor, social media | 13 Comments |

About

Jeremy Toeman is a seasoned Product leader with over 20 years experience in the convergence of digital media, mobile entertainment, social entertainment, smart TV and consumer technology. Prior ventures and projects include CNET, Viggle/Dijit/Nextguide, Sling Media, VUDU, Clicker, DivX, Rovi, Mediabolic, Boxee, and many other consumer technology companies. This blog represents his personal opinion and outlook on things.

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