Maggie's Bread

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Peter Reinhart often talks about the transformational properties of bread.  Bread starts out as wheat, which gives up its life to become flour.  Flour, mixed with yeast and water, is transformed into dough - which has life again.  The dough, when baked gives up its life to become bread - which, some refer to as the "staff of life".  Not meaning to get all preachy here, but, it is a cool perspective on humble flour, water, yeast!

Today, though, I am realizing that bread has one more transformational property.  My daughter Maggie is learning the ancient craft of making artisan bread.  She is studying baking and pastry arts at Johnson and Whales.  Yesterday, much to my delight, Maggie shared with us two images of bread that baked in class.  Simple baguettes and rustic ciabatta.  As you can see from the photos, the bread is gorgeous.  I can't wait until she comes home and bakes some for the family.  I couldn't be more proud of her.

A month ago, I dropped off self-absorbed teenager at college.  Today, I can see that -- through the art and discipline of baking bread, the transformation of my daughter.

Ousted!

Well, it finally happened.  After a two month run, I was ousted as the Mayor of JWU West Hall.  I've never been ousted before.  And when it did happen, I felt stunned. I felt betrayed.  I felt an immediate impulse to check-in and protect my interests (even though JWU West Hall is over 400 miles away from Roxy's Run).  I wanted to know more about this "Amanda M" who seized my position in a stealthy coup.  Was this a premeditated plot?  Did she plan to overthrow me for months?  So, I am planning to make a trip to JWU West Hall to reclaim what is rightfully mine!  As the Mayor of more than 30 places, I do not take this surreptitious behavior lightly.

PeopleBrowsr: Brand Engagement from the Largest Database of Tweets in the World

Brand Managers - is your agency partner using PeopleBrowsr?  


If not, your brand could be missing a great opportunity to leverage the collective consciousness assembled through Twitter, Facebook, and other social channels.   


From CrunchBase:  "PeopleBrowsr can tap into this stream to create a rich metadata cloud built from data extracted from global blogs, websites and other social media platforms, collecting crucial information about a brand or event by providing real-time statistics and human-powered sentiment analysis."


Over the weekend, the folks at PeopleBrowsr invited me to test drive Engagement Center interface. (You can see me taking it for a test drive over at Screenr - btw - another cool tool if you aren't using it already.)


Straightup - good stuff.  I began to think of the whole experience as an "All Access Pass" to the largest cocktail party on the planet.  With this tool, I was able to identify the most influential folks at the party.  Listen to what they are saying about different brands.  Join the conversation.  Influence their opinions.  And motivate them to share more about a brand with all of their other influential friends.


If your agency isn't using PeopleBrowsr on behalf of your brand, then maybe it's time to engage with another partner.

Does Anybody Else Think The iPhone Sucks?

Don't get me wrong.  I love my iPhone for a lot of things (all the apps mostly).  But, let's face it, when it comes to the one thing I need it to do (phone calls), it just plain sucks.  Dropped calls.  Can't connect.  Sloooooooooow connections.  And don't you dare tell me it's my carrier (Verizon).  Believe me, Verizon sucks too (but that's for another blog rant).  But, when I had Verizon service with my Blackberry -- I never had a problem with any calls.  Now, I can't even get reception inside my home.  Thank heavens for the -- yes -- landline (Comcast - they suck too)! Seems Apple got everything right with the iPhone except for one thing - uhh - the phone!

What's the Half-Life of Your Tweet?

What happens to a tweet if it's posted and no one reads it?  Was it really posted?

I often wonder about this, as I launch what I consider to be the most profound tweet in the twitterverse -- only to be rewarded with -- crickets.  No response.  Did it go unnoticed?  Was it not profound enough to catch anyone's interest?  Chances are, it simply got lost in the stream of thousands of tweets that stream by every minute.

There have been various studies suggesting that if someone doesn’t see a tweet or a Facebook post within a few hours, they’ll never see it at all.

Bit.ly has measured what it calls the “half-life” of a socially-shared link. By half-life, it means the point in which a link has received half the clicks it will ever get. From the company’s blog post:

We can evaluate the persistence of the link by calculating what we’re calling the half life: the amount of time at which this link will receive half of the clicks it will ever receive after it’s reached its peak.

In short, after three hours, links shared on the two major social networks — Twitter and Facebook — are headed to obscurity. However, YouTube links last a bit longer. It’s unclear what Bit.ly means here, but I think it’s saying that a YouTube link that’s shared on Twitter or Facebook will attract attention longer than other types of links shared on them. I’m checking on this.

There is a great post on this stuff here.