I guess you could say we’re ‘In’famous…
This past week I woke up one morning and went through the usual routine… wake up.. workout.. check facebook. Like clockwork every day. On Thursday morning, however, things were a bit different. A random guy added me on facebook which is nothing too out of the ordinary, but I checked out his profile and noticed a link to his blog.. so I dug deeper into my facebooking stalkerness routine. To my surprise he had written an awesome blogpost about Ryan and I’s blog.. and how he had been randomly added as a friend by Ryan and stumbled upon our blog, only to end up wasting an hour (a good hour I might add) reading our posting and watching our videos.
This wasn’t just any blog review,however. This guy so kindly recognized myself as being quite a “hottie”. Haha. To quote the infamous words of Kevin, “I would want to douse Steph in Grey Poupon and whisper dirty things in her ear in German while doing things that we read in Cosmo.” Honestly, how can you read that and not die laughing or pee your pants.. I personally peed my pants.
This little posting got quite the response from readers, and suddenly turned into 200+ diggs on www.digg.com , which is pretty cool, right?!?! There’s just nothing like having somebody that you’ve never met before write up something about you. It’s so cool, and it’s awesome to see how others react to your blog when they find out about it randomly as well.
I’ve noticed that since living in Palo Alto I’ve really started to take on somewhat of a geek persona. I’m catching myself thinking about the internet more intuitively than I had before in the past, and even enjoying the spontaneous blog world from a different perspective. I’m amazed how things happen so suddenly on the internet, and how one day, we can just be two people who like to blog and the next day almost be on the front page of digg, it’s just crazy, and awesome. So, here’s to you Kevin, for making my day… 
They say imitation is the best form of flattery…
The couple to the left… is my father and step-mom. What’s special about them?? A lot actually, but what is most impressive recently about their relationship is the fact that they were inspired by our blog! That’s right, just recently we stumbled upon bartandshan.blogspot.com
Since they are such jokesters they also decided to make their website painfully similar to ours. In fact, the very first post is almost word for word exactly like ours, with a few adjustments just to spice things up a bit. I warned them that once you get a blog togther that means things are serious Their tag line reads… “Telling our story ( hmm sound familiar?) but we don’t think anyone is listening” Bart and Shannon, we are now listening… write on!!!
Feeling great besides a butt that’s asleep
Before I headed to work out I wanted to let everyone know that I am feeling great today, that I am getting a little hungry and that my butt is asleep due to these damn wooden Starbucks chairs. I guess that it’s also kinda my fault since I’ve been sitting here for about 3 hours. Time to go get swoll - more soon.
p.s. I found Marc Andreesen’s blog(founder or Netscape, Ning.com and others) today and I have already read some amazing stuff that he’s written. The guy really knows what he’s talking about and he seems really, really down to Earth. I’ll meet him one day.
Teaching a (wo)man to (blog)fish
If you all weren’t aware, I’m a computer nerd and web geek and whatever else you’d like to throw out there that has to do with technology, batteries, screens, computers, things that light up, etc. I have worked in the tech field in some capacity the past 8 years or so dating back to my college years(wow, that was 9 years ago???), I’ve spoke to many groups about online social networks and have even written a book for Dummies on the subject - so I’m definitely no newbie when it comes to this stuff.
But, although this isn’t my first rodeo, the same can’t be said about Stephanie. She has never kept up a blog, much less ever created one and I’m sure that it’s not because she thought it was dumb or pointless - she simply has never had someone like me show her where to begin. It’s hard to know what you’re missing when you’ve never even known why you’d like it in the first place, right? So what does she think now that she’s up and running with the assistance of yours truly? She LOVES it and has already gotten some great feedback from a few of her friends and family about her first couple of posts.
So why did I even bring this up today? Well, after playing around with our Twitter account yesterday I started to realize something - most of the people who use these types of new web technologies, or those who ‘get it’, mainly use these web technologies to talk to others who ‘get it’ as well. Oh and what do they mainly talk about? They talk about new web technologies, of course! I thought that this was really, really funny for some reason and when I read Intellagirl’s UberNoggin blog today it was right on the money and it inspired me to state this example of extending the social media conversation beyond those who are already converted - like Stephanie. I believe that it’s all about taking the time to connect a technology with something that the non-converted view as valuable or simply cool and it’s the exact same thing when talking to a business, only it will be tied to something that they view as valuable in their world(sales leads, ticket saes, etc.).
It’s true - I have begun to teach Stephanie to fish and before you know it she’ll be pulling ‘em in all by herself. Have you taught someone to fish lately? If we don’t, who will?