The Great Commenting Experiment

I'm generally a bit of a lurker. I've been a member of online communities for years, spending hours a week on each one reading other people's comments, absorbing their knowledge, and selfishly not commenting. My instinct is that whatever I'll try to add to the conversation has already been covered, one comment is a drop in the bucket, and, really, who has the time to construct intelligent, pertinent comments all the time? There's so much else to do!

All this was fine until I started running a decent content blog (no, I don't mean this one -- I mean the Flippa Blog). Then, comments became part of my tracked metrics, and a boatload of comments overnight could make my day.

Even as social media grows in importance (and yes, I'm still a huge fan of Google Plus for conversations!), commenting is a big part of online community building. That's why I've set myself a new challenge: comment on every article I finish.

That's had three excellent side effects:

  • I'm much more selective about what I read, since I know I'll have to take the time to comment at the end,
  • I read much more closely, since I'll eventually have to find something to comment on,
  • Surprisingly, I'm a little bit more detached from my comments: this is an exercise in "good enough", not in crafting the perfect comment every time.

What's your philosophy when it comes to blog comments? Do you systematically leave them on every post? Do you only leave them when you disagree with the post?

Stay scared.

I loved journalism school, but for someone with anxious tendencies (such as myself), it wasn't the most relaxing of times. We were taught to always second-guess ourselves -- in other words, we were asked to be in a perpetual state of fear. One professor often said that we should be trembling with apprehension as we handed in our articles: you can never check your work quite thoroughly enough. You just do your best by the deadline, and hold your breath until your next assignment.

I now work in a field where fearlessness is prized, perhaps even more than in reporting. Doubt is the enemy. Self-confidence, even self-righteousness, is something to aspire to. I get it: often times all signs point to you being wrong, until suddenly you're right.

This is why the recent articles on failure seem to have resonated so strongly with entrepreneurs and businesspeople of all stripe. If you're always fearless and never second-guess yourself, you'll be wrong at some point. It's comforting to know that happens to others, too.

I still shake a little bit with fear when I hit "publish" on a blog post. I get positively nauseous when sending a newsletter to 103,000 people, if only for a second. That's a good thing.

Today I took a risk on a racy headline. The response has been amazing: Twitter high-fives, private messages on the "gutsy move", and quite a few shares. Nice traffic, too. Getting over the nausea, the knot in my stomach, is paying off.

A Twitter Trainwreck

Gladbrook, Iowa, Green Mountain Train Wreck, Rock Island Railroad

No one can look away from a train wreck, and I certainly couldn't tear myself away from this trainwreck of a Twitter exchange. It ended pretty well, actually, considering. So far, no one has been fired or sued, and I'm sure it's been great for brand awareness... Is any publicity really good publicity?

I work in marketing, but one of my first loves is customer service. No, really. When I was in college, I worked at Montreal's biggest yarn shop. The owners both seemed to have a true dislike for their customers, but I loved talking to people, finding out what they needed, helping them plan their next project, and working through their latest knitting mistake.

When I started with Flippa, one of my tasks was handling Premium Support for our high-end listings, and helping out our support guys when they needed a hand. Though we deal with hundreds of support requests every day, and not everyone was, shall we say, polite to us, I still loved helping out people.

I forget where I read it, but there's a great blog post out there encouraging everyone who runs a business to try and make someone's day, every day. That's still my mission when I respond to people on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and on various forums and blogs. Everyone deserves to have their day made, once in awhile, and it's sometimes as easy as sending a few credits their way, or helping them fix their listing after office hours, or just sending some words of encouragement.

So when I see a brand interacting this way with their customers online, especially on Twitter, I can't help but dread what's coming. This guy was complaining about the company's pricing (which is something we encounter often enough at Flippa), and, in responding, the company completely forgot that this guy was a real person, with friends and family and a budget. Sending two complimentary tickets his way might have bought them a customer for life. Berating him online and standing up for their brand, as Econsultancy put it, might have spread their name across the Internet, but it sure left a bad taste in my mouth -- and I bet I'm not alone.

On meticulousness.

I've spent the afternoon watching the three episodes of Signé Chanel I could easily find online while stitching a few blackwork embroidery squares. Signé Chanel follows Rue Cambon's couturières in the weeks leading to a Chanel fashion show. It's incredible insight into the work that goes into a single item of clothing. 

Three things struck me about the work: 

- the ready shrug and smile with which the seamstresses accept each required new version. Need to make a new train for a dress, after you've spent over 20 hours on the previous version, stitching it by hand? Okay, let's get to work. One hour to un-pick a seam, remove a row of beading, and stitch it back together, again, by hand? Let's do it! Incredible.

- just one woman, a 75 year-old who raises horses on a farm outside of Paris, is responsible for a good part of the hand-woven trim. She's tried to teach a bunch of others, but no one gets it to her level of perfection, and so she's still the only trim-maker for Chanel. 

- Lagerfeld, Chanel's designer, is so inspired by one wedding dress... that he gives the seamstress three more pieces to execute, on top of her regular work, before the show. "The dress was so good," he says, "I can't help wanting more". The reward for good work is more good work ahead. I love this. 

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When I was in journalism school, one of my professors had a habit of flunking the first person to hand in their work. What he was rejecting wasn't speed, he told us, but over-confidence. "I want you to tremble with fear every time you hand in a final draft. Every mistake you make costs me time in correcting it." Harsh. Wise. 

This is probably why I enjoy needlecraft. Each tiny stitch has to be done perfectly, or else you undo it and start over. Online, it's both easy and impossible to delete a mistake: you get an instant do-over, but we all know that nothing is ever truly deleted. Even when you can edit anything with the press of a button, it's worth having a little shudder of fear before pressing "publish". 

December 2 2012

"Last year, I visited Kabul and Herat. I was curious how people in a country with roughly four percent internet penetration and limited mobile data access interacted with Google search and products. Since radio is a popular form of mass communication in Afghanistan, it turns out that people call in to a local radio show called Percipal (Seek and Search) and ask their query to the host. The host, who has internet access, does a Google search and then reads the answer on air. The message I brought back to the US? Constraint breeds creativity."

From The Truth of the Digital Economy, Think Quarterly (The Open Issue) p.18 

Several years ago, Jared and I went to his family's cabin for a fall weekend. This was in around 2008; there was no data reception up at the cabin, and our phones wouldn't have known what to do with one anyhow.

Somewhere around 1am, one of us (I forget which one) started singing Bohemian Rhapsody (there may have been alcohol involved), but couldn't remember the opening lyrics. 

(Quick, without Googling: can you remember them?)

We were going nuts. Our options were to think it over all night, drive back to the nearest computer in Montreal (two hours south), or pick up the phone. 

There was only one person who a) would still be up at 1am, b) would be sober enough at that time to answer the phone, and c) would know the opening lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody. I called my friend Erin, who promptly answered. All was well, and we could finally move on to more important topics. 

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What's my point? The convenience of having a miniature computer in our pockets, always connected to the rest of the world, means we're no longer struggling to remember random information. Memory isn't really a prized skill anymore. It's convenient, but sometimes I miss the effort of trying to remember something. 

Reading...

Too sore to go to the gym tonight, so I'm spending some quality time with 

A&L Daily

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"I humbly hope that our attractiveness performs a subversive function. First of all, because without "us" in balaclavas, jumping all over Red Square with guitars, there is no "us" smiling sweetly in the courtroom. You can't get the latter without the former. Second, because this attractiveness destroys the idiotic stereotype, still extant in Russia, that a feminist is an ugly-ass frustrated harridan."