Apparently there IS no faking it on social media if today’s events surrounding the revelation that senior Telstra employer Leslie Nassar was the person behind the Fake Stephen Conroy account on Twitter.

A few people were beginning to suspect Nassar was the man behind the account and I’m guessing he outed himself before the press did it for him. The tweet in which he made the announcement looks like it has been deleted.

The sequence of events seem to be this: Nassar announced himself as the account creator (he has joked about being other people from time to time), it was reported on a number of blogs and the SMH that he was infact the person behind it, the Conroy Twitter account appeared to be deleted, Telstra announced that they had not asked Nassar to stop tweeting, they then announced they had in fact asked Nassar to do the right thing, Nassar reopened the account and tweeted:

But this is where the story gets interesting. It appears Telstra were in fact the one’s “faking it”. On its “Now We Are Talking blog“  Mike Hickinbotham wrote that he wanted to get the facts straight that:

• Lesile is not going to lose his job as a result of announcing he is the Fake Stephen Conroy
• Telstra did not shut down Leslie’s Twitter account. Fake Stephen Conroy (twitter.com)
• Telstra did not out Leslie as the Fake Stephen Conroy
• Telstra’s policy is that only selected spokepeople deal with the media

He then went on:

Analogies are developed to educate employees that social media ‘is like a conversation within a group of friends on the bus.  The conversation is meant strictly for the group, but it’s not a private conversation’.

The case of Leslie is different, he understands the whimsical nature of social media and in particular Twitter.  This isn’t a case of solving the problem by offering social media training.  Leslie made a conscious decision to engage in social media.

Telstra is learning the best way to engage in social media – notice our response has come in the form of a blog versus a media release.

We believe transparency promotes credibility.  This post is about getting the facts into the open.

I was pretty impressed with what I believed to be an honest response from Telstra and there is no denying social media throws a lot of challenges up for large corporations. I also knew Nassar to have had a few Twitter accounts in the past and I wondered if the fun was taken out for him now that people knew who he was. Had the Telstra blog not been broken, there would be a congratulatory comment from me applauding its openness. In fact, I did congratulate it on Twitter, and I noticed a few others doing the same.

But my alarm bells started ringing though when @M_Hickinbotham started tweeting something that didn’t quite fit with the NWAT post.

Turns out Telstra is not as transparent as it would lead us to believe and had Nassar not had the courage and gumption to speak up and risk losing his job, it would have got away with it. It appears Telstra had in fact asked Nassar to stop tweeting.

If Telstra had any sense they would have seen the opportunity for good publicity that Nassar offered them. The fact that Nassar is a Telstra employee tweeting on an OBVIOUSLY fake account for the Communications Minister only added to the humour.

I can only hope that it exercises “good judgment” here and looks to learn from the situation and redeem itself. I trust they don’t underestimate the backlash against them should Nassar lose his job.

I think it is a very accurate description!

Should your blog be your destination site?

I’m finally putting together some changes I’ll be making to this blog, which is sadly neglected at times – not because I have a lack of things to say, but more because I’m often communicating on other sites these days – mostly Twitter, but also the Norg (of course!), 12 seconds, blip and a number of other social networks.

It’s tempting to pull all those interactions back on to your blog – you see it less now, but there was a time when some bloggers were posting all their day’s tweets on to their blog as posts. You have Twitter badges now, which have replaced that somewhat, but the interaction is still happening on Twitter. Then there’s video that you can produce on sites like 12seconds, Seesmic and Phreadz which can often take forms of video blogging, but this is happening on a site other than your blog and in all together different community than others you may belong to. A lot of those sites have been integrated with Twitter and you can post any updates automatically to your Twitter stream, but that is also not incorporating the interaction and community with which you engaging. And then ofcourse there is Friendfeed, which pulls all these streams together in another community of its own. I guess that sort of leaves one’s blog, out in the cold, so to speak.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a personal blog has its place, but rather than pull all the lifestreams back to it, I think they have just become part of the constant fractured stream/identities that we create. I guess they are no longer our central destination site. Perhaps our need to make it one is born out of a sense to quantify the influence we have – it’s hard to know your reach on Twitter for example – sure, you have X number of followers, but how many read your views at any given time?

Blogs still have an important role, but I think they are just now part of the fragmented identities that so many of us have across a number of networks. I don’t think that’s a bad thing and just like “control media” needs to learn how to let go, in some sense we have to as well. I think we gather different audiences across different sites and that diversification can actually add to our online profile instead of detract from it. Just because I care what you say on Twitter might not mean I read your blog, but that’s one avenue you have my attention on, that you may otherwise not. Those of you interested in my blog may not care whether I’ve wasted an hour one morning looking for white socks.

I guess wanting to hold on to our online identities in one place is an old-way of looking at things. Growing your profile in future might mean more fragmentation, but that’s something we’ve been telling larger monolithic corporations like news sites to get their heads around for years. Time to taste our own medicine perhaps?

Photo: Venetian Glimpse by BombDog

I spoke on a panel yesterday at the MEAA’s Future of Journalism summit in Brisbane on, “Tools or toys: techniques and technology for the digital age.” Margaret Simons opened the conference with some very straight-shooting talk on where she saw the industry heading and it looked vastly like unexplored territory. What makes her points so interesting is that she is one of the few journalists I know who is trying to forge a living from journalism outside of established media companies and she is very frank in saying that she is still trying to find out how to do that exactly. As Cameron Reilly pointed out the economics of media have shifted fundamentally and its time we looked for new models, but we are not going to find them by relying on the old way of doing things. Margaret said she believes the most exciting journalism in the future will not be happening in traditional media – something I agree with wholeheartedly. It’s not happening often yet, but it is starting to happen and there will come a time when traditional media is not the place where the most interesting stories are happening or even where most news is made.

The other point then is how do we find these stories? I like Jay Rosen’s video on “How to Digest News“, which goes some way in explaining why crowd-powered aggregation sites are so important. You can’t assume that on your own you can find the best news out there – finding a trusted site that filters news for you makes more sense.

My own advice for journalists on how to prepare for the future is to start investing in themselves and to experiment in online participation. Going from writing news in a straight non-personal style to writing online is quite confronting – I remember it took me some time to find my voice and gain some confidence in writing from a personal perspective. The best place to start to learn the nuances of online communication, in my opinion, is Twitter – and the key is not then to just create content, but to participate as well – a point Jean Burgess from QUT made during the day. It’s those who start taking the risks now that will be better off in the future. I know it’s a confronting situation, but it’s time to face reality – things are not going back to what they were.

UPDATE: You can find more coverage on the seminar on Lavartus Prodeo,  and Wooly Days.

Last Friday I was invited to take part in a “creative salon” for the Perth International Arts Festival staff and I was so inspired that I thought the idea was worth spreading.

The idea behind it is very simple – get a few people who are innovators in their field and bring them together in an informal setting to share their passions and stories with a group. For the inaugral event I was invited with two other guests – Caroline Wood from Amnesty International and Ian Weir (Gordon Innocent) artist/architect and photographer to come and talk to Festival staff. Rania Ghandour, who is the media relations manager at the Festival and a person of inspiration herself, put the salon together so we could all stop and think about our passions/what drives us and the contributions we make to our area of interest. It was a fantastic experience and Ian and I have already asked Rania that she invite us to the next one

I learnt a lot as well – both Caroline and Ian are amazing people with the most wonderful stories. I love the way that Ian has this bullish passion for his art and just lives and breathes his ideas. He has an exhibition coming up in Artrage soon and I hope to catch up with him then and do some stories on his projects for the Norg. Caroline has this amazing magnetism and presence and this extraordinary calm and focus that for me is always a sign of a great learnt wisdom. She holds a full time job and is also the head of Amnesty International WA and must come across the worst of our humanity everyday, but she remains hopeful and, better still, is doing her part in making a difference. But the learning didn’t stop there, because the audience was as much a part of the salon as we were. So thanks to all the staff for taking time out of your day to come and share your experiences too.

Lastly, I should mention Festival Artistic Director Shelagh Magadza, whom I could spend hours talking to. I think I may have piqued her interest in Twitter – which somemone pointed out was like an everyday Creative Salon – and I hope that she joins. She has so much to share and is definitely someone to watch and be inspired by. Our Festival is is awesome hands and I suspect it will get better every year under her.

Enough lovey dovey from me – I must resume my battle position in the media war, but really it was a great event that helped me recharge my batteries and remember why I created the Norg in the first place. Now to take aim and fire
We can’t all have TED, so can I suggest a “Creative Salon” INS-TED.

What my speech bubble sez.

I’ve mentioned before that I’d like to start doing a bit of videocasting, but at the moment time is my limitation. That was until I was invited to be a “pre-alpha” tester for Seesmic, serial entrepreneur and man with the sexy accent Loic Le Meur’s latest start-up.

The Pulver TV show where I was interviewed by Chris Brogan also featured Loic so it was fitting that it was Chris gave me an invite to Seesmic and also a testament to the shrinking world we live in. Either that or we are all trapped in the same bubble

So what is Seesmic? I’ve heard it described as “video Twitter” and from what I’ve seen that sums up the basics pretty well and there are a lot of people using it as a video lifestream. I like that idea and it seems the users on there are really getting into it. A lot of the video conversations – you can reply to other videos – revolve round Seesmic itself. It will be interesting to see how this evolves, as more users join the community and think about creative uses for the service. I’ve said before that for me a community has really evolved when it finds new uses for services beyond the original intentions. Twitter is an example of this, it’s gone beyond just about “what people are doing”.

For me Seesmic is an easy informal way to video blog, and I intend to use it that way and try and try and show the world some of the great innovation that is going on in Perth and Australia. I’m going to make it my mission to interview as many people as possible and develop my Seesmic stream into a voice for the Australian start-up community. Yes, I could do it on YouTube, but Seesmic has the added bonus of sending it out to the social communities I’m involved in – it can post the video to YouTube, send it to Twitter and hopefully soon be able to send them to this blog.

My other motive for getting involved is I’m really interested in investigating Seesmic’s potential as a Cit J reporting tool, where Cit Js can upload video from Seesmic to norgs. Better still when they can do that directly from their mobile phones. I love this space and Seesmic really excites me.

Grum pointed this out on Twitter.

So do Twitterers all not value our privacy or do we value our openness?

Whatever!

It shouldn’t suck when things you love go mainstream, but it does!

Oh ye and kiraEDGE has a twitter feed – but it appears its just quick thinking a fan. Would have added a whole new dimension if they had created twitter feeds for those tangled in the virtual triangle.

Well, I don’t know what I’ve done, but Twitter appears to have eaten all my followers, just when I thought that Everybody Loves Me.

I’ve gone from 473 followers to 146, back to 220 and now I’m on 207. It seems that my profile was set to private – I have no idea how, but I have now changed it back to public and have still lost over half my followers.

I’ve logged a bug with Twitter and hope they’ll get on to it. In the meantime I feel so unloved

I gave a talk the other day on building online communities, in which I mentioned that gaming elements can be an important part in getting people to take part in a social network. Give most people a bit of a challenge and they rise to it.

Twitter’s newest Twitter poster is a great example of that It’s supposed to provide a visual representation of people’s degree of influence on Twitter. An hey, everyone wants to be a *little* influential.

Except of course if you have a private Twitter profile. Then you just want to be private!

Already I’ve seen a few tweets popping up about how to get on the Twitter poster. How many followers you have seems to be a consideration, but I think there is a bit more to it. Some people with 0 followers appear on the Australian page, so it could just be a pretty picture… Anyone else have theories?

Oh, and you can follow me here BTW.

Game on