Normal business attire for Sackett. Click to enlarge.

Ever since Laurie Ruettimann suggested a Tim Sackett day, I’ve been stoked.

Not because I think Tim deserves any sort of recognition, especially on any of those influencer or top blogger lists. Because, really? It’s entertaining as hell when he doesn’t get picked.

I played kickball when I was a kid in school and there was this little kid named Ricky who was kind of an annoying little wise ass. And while he was good at kickball, he always got picked for our teams way too late. He’d be picked in the fourth round and he would just be livid about it because, in reality, he was definitely first or second round material.

So one day, the kids who picked teams decided that neither one of them was going to pick him, just to see what would happen. And so his face got more and more red as each successive round passed. He finally got picked: dead last.

Everybody figured he was finally going to lose it. Little Ricky was going to blow a gasket. But instead, he played the most aggressive game of kickball anyone has ever seen. It’s all fun and games until a red playground ball comes flying at your head.

I’m not quite sure why that story is relevant but it made me think of Timmy. I can see him sitting in his office, somewhere between here and the east coast, pounding out a dozen phone calls, making a placement and writing a post that was still better than mine. It only hurts when I think about it for too long.

It is also great talking basketball with him and the other guys in the 8 man rotation. I’m not exactly sure how well Sackett fits in when he goes to the Palace at Auburn Hills but his short whiteness would look good in Portland. Just in case he is thinking about where to retire early.

In all seriousness, Tim is a good guy, getting things done and making things happen. He’s always open with his talents and has been tremendous to the success of TLNT, the place that signs my checks. And when I helped him get his blog up and going, he sent me a Michigan State T-shirt. Then I got to see him jump off a perfectly fine tower in Vegas (and nail the landing).

If you don’t know Tim, you need to check him out at:

• The Tim Sackett Project
• Fistful of Talent
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with him, know him. He’s a smart guy, even if he’ll never ever make a list.

Hope you have a wonderful and safe holiday! Gobble, gobble, gobble!

Lance

“The web is about transparency and you have to be yourself!”

It supposedly makes for more compelling content. Or something. If you’re willing to share a lot of information about yourself, you can be famous. Tentativeness aside, being yourself (or maybe being a glamorized version of yourself) might be the best way to make it big. And if you’re unwilling to do that, there are thousands of other bloggers, social media personalities and bottom feeders ready to take your place, strip off their dignity and show every piece of themselves to the world.

Let them.

Every one of you is a unique snowflake but unless you’re famous, powerful, adventuresome or a moving train wreck, nobody cares much about your transparency.

From 2003-2007, I wrote on an almost daily basis on my personal LiveJournal account. 1,400+ entries and over 12,000 comments received, almost all of which were personal, transparent, raw and real (and none of which is currently available to anyone other than me). In some ways, it is uncomfortable to read about how lonely, moody and insecure you once were. I was there, being transparent and telling my story, and a few people paid attention to me. Good people, mind you, but very few.

I’ve spent about the same amount of time being active in the HR and recruiting space with this blog, Twitter and the other places I’ve ended up over the years. As far as the people I’ve connected with, things I’ve learned and ways I’ve grown, there is no comparison. And yet, my most casual readers probably know a minuscule amount of information about me. Even those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook don’t get anywhere close to the whole story. Selective facts about me that work in concert with my content not withstanding, what you see is a picture of a person that you can believe and trust. I’m not a mindless byline but I’m not your best friend Deb either. Hopefully, I hit something in between those two.

And guess what: it works. And it works much better than opening my heart and soul to the internet ever has ever been. Yes, I can certainly be more successful but it has nothing to do with being more transparent. It is about being a better writer, finding better content, having a stronger voice, meeting more people, reading more, being more bold and tweaking my posts.

Now you don’t have to leave everything personal off the table. If it is something interesting, you should absolutely include it. But let’s not pretend that every instance of TMI leads to great pageviews. And we should also face the fact that in some of the more extreme examples cited, almost none of them are solely related to transparency or being true to themselves.

* * * * *

With that being said, maybe we could stop focusing so much on being “real” online and spend more time focusing on being “real” in real life? Let’s not talk about the same five subjects I could talk to any stranger in an airport about. I want to have real conversations with real people.

For all of the joy and wonder that the internet brings, it can also be fairly dehumanizing. That’s why I don’t talk about religion or politics anymore on it (especially on Twitter). I’ll tell you all about myself but I just don’t want to publish it online. Most of it is boring and irrelevant to why I’m here, anyway.

Mostly though, I worry about being old-fashioned about staying in contact, about getting on the phone, or grabbing a cup of coffee and having a conversation. That I feel disconnected if we haven’t talked for a few months but you might be perfectly content by staying in touch solely online because you share so much more than I do.

In the rush to embrace social media, it feels like we leave a few pieces behind. When someone strives to expose themselves to the voyeuristic instincts of their audience, I don’t feel the need to connect with them as much. The mystery, the interest in getting to know them, slowly vanishes with every revealing stroke until there is no more.

The real you, the one I want to care about, isn’t being broadcasted on Twitter. It’s found in between stories of business deals won and lost, spouses, kids, cats, dogs, sports, tech gadgets, social media and everything else. So while you focus on making yourself accessible, real, and transparent online, don’t leave behind the things that actually matter to people.

If you enter anything on the internet, even in “secret” and you haven’t gone through significant measures to mask your identity, you should assume that the information can be publicly identified and traced back to you. 

Does that sound paranoid? Sure it does. But that doesn’t mean it is incorrect, either.

It is easy to feel secure behind passwords, filters and closed systems. When I used this blog to post without my name, it was still easy to find out who I was. Guess what? I operated as if I was being monitored by everyone who knew me.

When we setup Facebook filters, when we have sensitive e-mail conversations, or when we use a pseudonym in an online forum, that feels like a secure place where we can cut loose. But here’s what else happens: copy and paste, BCC’s, Google cache, screenshots and IP address captures.

Every sensitive conversation I’ve ever held has been in person or over the phone. And sure, phones can be tapped and someone can wear a wire but that has to be premeditated and even I’m not paranoid enough to assume everyone is wired up like a snitch. (Okay, maybe now that I think about it, I should… no, nevermind).

With online communication though, there doesn’t need to be premeditation. In fact, I recently was contacted by an out-of-work recruiter about some recommendations for some jobs in my area. The name sounded familiar and I searched my e-mails and it was a recruiter I talked to in, wait for it, 2005. And, the e-mail record shows that I received a phone interview but wasn’t ever contacted back afterward.

Now, my intention isn’t to be evil, hold a grudge and out this person but I wanted to make a point. We had a conversation that I had passively saved (one of thousands) and now, I could go back and say “Ha! Six years ago, you weren’t so willing to help me out!”

(And yes, I was nice. Could you imagine anything else?)

When the recommendation among people concerned about privacy is changing social networks, messing with privacy settings, changing to more secure passwords and not following unknown links, we’re not actually fixing anything.

Some things do not need to be posted online. Some conversations need to happen some place other than Twitter DM’s, Facebook messages or e-mails. And if the answer to every embarrassing privacy gaffe on social networks is “more security” and not “better venue choice for communicating sensitive issues,” it’s time to wake up. Once that digital record is created, it is very hard to destroy.

True privacy doesn’t exist online. Expecting privacy on any social network is going to burn you at some point. And if you’re that concerned about social network privacy that you can’t even put up basic information and interact in the most vanilla way, well, good luck.

I got into LiveJournal in 2002 via an invite (sound familiar, Google+?). In addition to personal blog posts, I also posted (a lot) about politics. And in doing that, I eventually became the moderator of the largest conservative political community on LiveJournal for a couple years (basically 2004-2005). That’s a bit entertaining for a couple of reasons. For one, while I was definitely heavily conservative leaning back then, I was probably in the bottom 25 percentile in comparison to most of the members. Another point was that I let anyone of any political persuasion post assuming they followed some basic guidelines (including that it was about conservative politics or thought).

This led to some rancorous posts. Hundreds of comments were typical. Name calling, trolling, baiting… it all happened there. And in the context of the relatively new Iraq war and a Bush re-election, it led a lot of people to lose their minds in this public forum. I (mostly) watched detached from the discussions going on and eventually moved on when I found a job and a more productive outlet for my energy (mainly this blog).

I only give you this history because the current debt crisis is the latest political issue to infect my social networks and I’ve generally made a pretty easy to follow rule: if you want to talk politics or religion, I generally won’t do it over the internet (or any written form). Why?

• I observed people with unlimited character lengths not be able to fully explain the nuance of their political position. Twitter is the equivalent of pulling bumper stickers out of a drawer to have a political debate. It may be clever or make you laugh but the depth there is zilch.
• People lose track of the fact that you’re a real person on the internet. When we’re in person, we often assume the best of people but looking at the black and white of text on a computer illicits the opposite effect. The internet robs us of some of that humanity and compassion.
• There are no winners and losers in internet debates. Everyone usually loses because they spent time and emotional energy on something that could have been better used elsewhere. Nobody changes their mind on a major issue due to an internet debate. It takes time and humility to accept you may be wrong about an important issue. Notice neither one of those is someone typing in all caps in response to a posting they made.
• Social media has become the e-mail forwards of yesterday. The amount of incomplete, out of context or simply untrue statements circulating is simply astounding. “I saw something on Facebook that said…” is the new “I got a forward from my crazy uncle that said…”

The fact is, writing about politics in a compelling, smart way takes a lot of practice just like anything else. So when I see the amateur stuff I see from social media acquaintances, I cringe a bit. And you can bet that a bunch of other people feel the same way too. It isn’t like this is new either. It has been going on since the dial-in BBS days too and certainly in all of my experience as being on the front lines of this phenomenon. The conversations haven’t improved or changed.

While I do think HR people should be more politically involved, it doesn’t mean you have to do it like an amateur on the internet. Here are three better ways to be involved:

1. Be educated. Take in information from different sources and consider alternatives.
2. Have discussions in person with people you know. Be patient and empathetic.
3. Have a relationship with your political representatives. Give them feedback and get to know their aides.

I can tell you almost universally that arguing on the internet is a big fat waste of time. And when you add in the character restrictions of Twitter and Facebook, you just add fuel to the fire.

About a year ago, I met a guy at a pub for lunch to talk about recruiting, human resources, social media and Portland beers. The guy was really intelligent, funny and knew his stuff about the world I live in. At the end of the conversation, he handed me a business card and also told me the address of his blog. I wrote it down and put it in my pocket.

A couple of days later, I found the card while cleaning out my shirts in preparation for laundry. I grabbed it and headed over to my computer to take a look at his blog. My eyes slowly glazed over as I read post after post of… well, stuff that would even put me to sleep. It was stiff as a six inch thick board. At first, I had hoped that it was just a post or two but pages into it, I realized it was this way all the way through.

When I called him about an unrelated matter, I also briefly talked to him about his blog:

“So I read your blog…”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think it captures you well at all. I would’ve never guessed this is the person I was talking to the other day if you hadn’t handed me this card.”

“I know…”

His marketing team said he should blog. The reason: we have to blog. The other reason: other people are blogging. And so they threw him out there with a WordPress blog, no instruction and a vague directive. With so little guidance, it is amazing he made it that far. He said nobody reads it he probably would stop if his marketing people would allow him to do so.

You might think this post is about getting my new friend educated on how to reach an audience, how to add personality or how to really get the best from it. It’s not. I told him he should do all he can to abandon it. And I told him I would have been more reluctant to meet with him if I had read his blog first. Again, he’s a smart guy and his blog reflected poorly on him (I thought, and he at least agreed with me a bit). He had no desire to work on it, it was a distraction from other business and he could have used that energy elsewhere.

My advice wasn’t taken right away but I noticed they had another writer the last time I checked. I don’t know if the blog is much better but at least his time isn’t being spent on it anymore.

The point being is that you don’t have to blog, especially if your talents are elsewhere. Would Jerry Seinfeld be a great blogger? If his book is any indication, probably not. That doesn’t take away from his brilliant performances though. And if someone has talent in other areas that is better utilized for the company, why try to force the round peg through a square hole?

When someone comes up to me and says “I don’t like blogging or even writing so why should I blog?” I say, “Don’t do it.” It’s pretty simple. Just because someone at a conference says you should blog doesn’t make it right for you. If you don’t like writing but still want to get involved in social media, there are plenty of ways to do it now. No matter what anyone tells you, you don’t have to blog. Period. Full stop.

P.S. Unless that person is your boss of course. You still may be able to reason with them though.

Wrong.

But there was good news: Twitter has great search capabilities. How great? It can search the text of the URL for keywords (kudos to colleague Amybeth Hale for pointing this out to me). So for example, searching for “rehaul.com” would find you all mentions of this website on Twitter. Pretty great, right?

So what I did was create a Twitter search that not only included mentions but also included links back to our website. The search I use is:

@ERE_net OR “ere.net”

That captures all of the mentions of both our Twitter account and anybody who links to our content. And the stream is full of references to our website that don’t even mention our Twitter handle. In fact, most mentions of our website don’t reference our Twitter handle at all.

Now I use HootSuite to track mentions and manage multiple Twitter accounts but this trick works for any Twitter client with search capabilities or on the Twitter search site itself.

Not a fan of tweeting?

No problem, you can create an RSS feed to use in your RSS reader.

Do a search on search.twitter.com and on the right hand side, you’ll see the RSS feed for the search. So my URL search gave me this RSS feed:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%22ere.net%22

Not a fan of either Twitter or RSS feeds? Use Feed My Inbox to get a report on how your website or blog is being mentioned on Twitter using the RSS feed you created.

There’s no punchline there either. I don’t think you write as long as I do without a healthy dose of ego. It’s not something to be proud of, just reality. Something has to fuel you through commentless posts and bad ideas. You have to be good or delusional (or both in my case, depending on the day).

So when I read a quote by Laurie Ruettimann in a post about Twitter, it resonated with the little part of me who writes:

I’m only on Twitter as an extension of my narcissist self… and I’m nearly bored with it, which is saying a lot.

And then I think about the reaction one friend gave me when she found my Twitter account: “Why do you have 3000 followers on Twitter? I read some of your tweets. I don’t get it.” She was serious too. And right.

I later read a post by Chris Ferdinandi about how he thinks Twitter sucks now. He wrote:

Two years ago, it was really easy to find meaningful conversations on Twitter. Lots of signal. Little noise. Sometime over the last couple of years, though, things changed.

Now there’s lots of noise. Mindless retweeting. Daily quotes. Follow Friday has devolved into a laundry list of everyone you follow.

It’s really easy to become cynical about social media. You see the way people automate, degenerate and exploit a system that was really built to democratize content distribution and it is easy enough to say forget it.  Unlike Chris though, I don’t think this is a recent change. Blogrolls, lists, SEO blackhat and spam to even common social tricks like trolling and sock-puppetry have all been a part of the explosion of social media.

If you’re a decent person, you’ll probably tire of it. And there are a couple different options.

1. Flip the switch off. You’re done and you get more vitamin D.
2. Be annoyed and cynical all of the time. You’ll participate but not enjoy it.
3. Power through with positivity. See how that goes for you!
4. Turn to the dark side. Embrace the bullshit and become what is wrong with the internet.
5. Make social media a utility. You use it for its purpose but it isn’t the end all be all.

And in case it isn’t completely obvious, I choose number five. I use social media like I use the telephone or e-mail. Sure, there are people who still abuse the telephone and e-mail. Most e-mail messages are still spam after all but it doesn’t make it any less useful for me.

This isn’t some sort of battle of principle either. How you decide to use social media doesn’t have a major impact my usage. I use it to connect with the people I want to connect to in the way we both decide to connect with one another. How you choose to use it only impacts whether I choose to connect with you or not.

And if you’re being a jackass or even just really annoying on social media, that doesn’t make blogging or Facebook or Twitter suck. It makes you suck. And if you’re a decent person who just wants to connect with great people, cull your friends list or blogging buddies list down as low as you need to go and use it that way. I met a lot of great people when I only had a few people reading this blog and I meet many people everyday using social media as my utility.

I guarantee you, the narcissism will find whatever new piece of social technology that comes out next. Finding the next Twitter or Facebook is only a temporary refuge. Create your own sane space on the playground and live in it.

Does anybody remember their first e-mail address? I do. It was lhaun@pacifier.com. The same company that hosted my favorite dial-in BBS also became my first e-mail provider. And it was great except I only knew three other people who used e-mail (and they lived only a couple of blocks away from me).

So I would check my e-mail address for weeks and not receive anything. What did I do to remedy this? Well, I signed up for some newsletters (about cars because I was still a teenager) and I started conversations online about politics, sports or Ham radio that would spill over into massive reply all e-mail fests.

Which was great, at least for awhile. Then more widespread adoption of e-mail took place and in between newsletters and virtual conversations came e-mails that I needed to read from family and friends. And then later, e-mails from fellow students and co-workers. In between all of those were e-mail forwards from people I did want to hear from but just not on those subjects.

What eventually happened was the initial use transformed into something different as time went on. Now I am rarely involved in an e-mail chain that lasts more than three or four e-mails because then we need to discuss it in real time. Now I rarely receive e-mail newsletters for anything but the most pertinent industry news. Now I rarely have discussions with strangers via e-mail that goes beyond either a “not interested” note or a “let’s discuss this on the phone” note.

What’s Happening With Twitter

When Frank Roche posted about his 10,000th tweet, I was first a little surprised that he beat me to 10,000 (by about 1,200 tweets too!) even though he was on the service only a few weeks before me. But then, I was interested to hear that he thought the best years were behind Twitter.

I’ve told my friend Chris Ferdinandi multiple times that Twitter was easier to manage four years ago. There were maybe a few dozen then maybe a couple hundred people that were on in our niche and almost all of them were worth following. Early adopters of a service usually have similar goals, norms are established and the network is smaller so it is easier to influence (and be influenced).

Now? You can’t watch ESPN without hearing Twitter mentioned. Not a conference goes by where I don’t end up talking about Twitter at some point. It’s a different world out there. You can’t just follow back everyone like the “good old days.” The network feels less tight, less special, and less useful. So does that mean its heyday is behind it?

Twitter is Changing (And We Shouldn’t Be Surprised)

The way we use Twitter is changing. For me, it has become a utility like e-mail or my RSS reader. The people I follow are more than likely people I know or have met at least virtually. Some people I have met I don’t follow because they tweet too much. Some companies I do like I don’t follow because their updates aren’t interesting. Some people I haven’t met but are producers (writers mainly).

It’s not about being cool or being part of a clique anymore. After all, anyone can send me an @ message. And for those longer messages, my e-mail is widely available. There isn’t a special crew of people who knows a special e-mail address. It all comes into the same box

It is about getting the maximum usefulness out of the service in as little time as possible. It’s the same way we manage e-mail, calendars, or reading schedules. That may seem cold but it also makes Twitter something that I view like e-mail: indispensable, constantly available (though not constantly monitored) and available to anyone who wants a quick reply to or from me.

As I had done so often before, I uploaded it, it showed me who was already on and I clicked that I wanted to connect with those who were already using the platform. I thought that was it. A few people would connect to me and I’d be able to see how the activity stream looked and what features looked like with some people.

About five minutes later, my wife asks me, “What is Viadeo?” I wondered if she has been snooping on my screen. I tell her it is sort of like LinkedIn. Then she asks me if she should accept my invite and open an account.

I looked in my inbox and I had invited myself to the service. Then I watched as dozens of e-mails came in from my unintentional invitees. And then questions from confused family members and friends (certainly not people I would choose to invite to a business networking platform). The next morning, I sent a message out to Twitter apologizing for spamming people with the invites. The few replies I got back were from people who were jokingly offended that they weren’t on the contact list that got spammed. After all, they weren’t chopped liver!

Problem Solved?

Two days later, I received a reply from Viadeo telling me they were sorry about the mixup and pointing me to a blog post that explained they were taking steps to resolve the issues I had when signing up.

I was contemplating deleting my account before but I figured their response was good enough for me to give them a chance. They were put on notice, they responded and they said it was fixed. I still wanted to check out the features and give it a go. Plus, I had added 50 connections (almost entirely by my invitation). I figured I should stick around if only on their behalf.

What’s that old saying? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me? Yep.

Last Friday, they sent a follow up invitation to my entire address book. So I pulled the cord on my account, hoping that it would stop the issues and invitations. One uninitiated invitation on my behalf is bad enough. Sending two is something out of character for me. Not only that, none of the invitations were personalized (another thing I do if there is ever the option).

As a note, the tweet is the only way Viadeo has reached out to me so far. If they do respond privately, I will update this post accordingly. They are also free to comment as well.

My Bad. Really.

This is the time where I’d normally take a company to task for doing some pretty ridiculous things. And that’s not to minimize or discount what Viadeo did.

In this instance, part of my anger should be reflected back on myself. As I mentioned at the beginning, I do this typically with any new service just to see who is on. So I put in hundreds of contacts to see the dozen or two that might be using the particular service. And what happens with the rest of those contacts? They are typically stored on a database in a far off locale just sitting idle. They sit out of my control after I upload them though and that’s a problem.

Sure, most services don’t do what Viadeo did but why shouldn’t I assume the worst case scenario? Especially when I am unfamiliar with the reputation of the service. Especially when people have entrusted me with their personal information. My carelessness with my contacts was a major factor in this even if it wasn’t the cause.

Lesson Learned

If you were one of the people I uploaded to the service, I’m sorry I was careless with your contact info. I’ll figure out a different, less obnoxious and more private way of figuring out who is on new and emerging services.

And hopefully the lesson I can share with you is a good one too. How you use social services and the privacy that goes along with them is ultimately in your court.