3 Easy Steps to Import Your Facebook Friends to Twitter

There seem to be a lot of folks who haven't been able to bring their Facebook friends into Twitter so that they can follow all their friends. If you don't have a friend's email address and don't feel like going through all of your friends on FB and doing this individually, here is the simple, simple, simple solution:

1. Go to your Yahoo email address. If you don't have one, just create one, this will still be quicker than any other solution
2. Yahoo has a new import Facebook friends feature. So, do it. Import all your FB friends into your Yahoo mail account
3. Go to Twitter, click 'find people' and then import your Yahoo contacts. 

Easy as that, now you can check to see how many of your Facebook friends are on Twitter and follow them!

Let me know if this works/doesn't work for you and don't forget to follow me on Twitter! @alextorpey

Intro to Online Microtargeting

As more organizations, businesses and campaigns look to the internet for there advertising needs, I thought it would be helpful to give a really brief intro to this field and offer some interesting resources as well.

First, in any online advertising campaign, you need to determine whether you want people to click on your ads (conversion) or whether you just want them to see your ad (persuasion). Most advertising networks, including Facebook and Google offer you both options, and you should choose whichever option you are not trying to do. If you expect a high click-through rate it would best to purchase pay-per-impression ads. However, if you don't expect many people to click on your ad then it would be best to purchase pay-per-click programs.

Next, there are many different networks that you can advertise in. For example, Facebook is a great way to reach college students whereas Google has better geographic pinpointing. These are the biggest two, but more should be considered based on who exactly you are trying to reach. Google let's you define keywords that you can be relevant to and Facebook lets you select profile information of the people you'd like to advertise to.

Ensuring that you have something unique to show or give people can't be overlooked of course. If you are running a political campaign, you can even do some negative campaigning on websites where people are likely to be an opponent or undecided because you are not required to publish a 'paid-for' disclaimer in small text ads. Additionally, people often have 'source amnesia,' where they forget where they originally heard something. Although people may say they don't like negative ads, they often use the talking points learned there months later without remembering where they heard it from. If there are issues you need to clear the air with but are worried they might be perceived as negative, use contextual online ads. If people are clicking-through to your site make sure that one click is the last stop. If you're looking for donations, have the landing page be the only page someone needs to visit to complete the transaction. Every additional click people have to make will discourage many from continuing.

Check out the Personal Democracy Forum's website for a plethora of resources, like archived podcasts on exactly this issue.

Also:

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/23902.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtargeting

Healthcare Reform - Defining Socialism, Communist and Fascism

In light of the furious debate around healthcare reform, and some people advocating the definition of healthcare reform (that sets a minimum standard for government regulation to spur competition in private markets to improve access to a private service) as either socialist, communist or fascist is misleading at best. I would like to provide some context to what these terms actually mean. Granted, these are not perfect definitions, as each term has libraries of literature written about them and I am not nearly educated enough on history to provide that deep of an analysis. However, I hope these will suffice as at least a very basic understanding and context for what each of these terms means.

Socialism - An economic theory or system where wage labor and private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods/services are replaced by total public ownership and operation. In a socialist economic system, the means of production and the forces both driving production of goods and providing of services is entirely owned publicly, for example through direct government control and ownership. This is different than government regulation, which seeks to provide standards in private markets operated and controlled by privately owned entities. Some (Karl Marx for example) define this at least partly as a system which advocates the maximization of use-value as opposed to exchange-value. Some also believe socialism is a transitional phase onward to communism. In application, socialist nations tend not be able to harness the rapidly innovative forces that exist in the free market. | See: Venezuela, Bolivia, China.

Communism - Theoretically, communism is a classless, stateless way for a society to be organized free of oppression and private markets, commodities or property ownership. In practice, communist principals have been attempted to be implemented by authoritarian states like the Soviet Union and China. Some theorists believe that communism is the final stage of societal evolution, however, in practice, the application of this theory has lead to massive corruption, oppression and a stronger institution of class structure and hindering the advancement of free market structures in producing innovative goods/services. | See: China, Cuba, North Korea.

Fascism - An authoritarian state that promulgates the advancement of a singular collective nation-identity, often based on either economic status or race, above all else. A centralized state structure that absolutely oppresses dissent, (often violently) democratic civic involvement and seeks to control information and economic and political activities with violent force and propaganda. | See: Nazi Germany, Iron Guard (Romania).

Healthcare reform falls in none of those categories. To debate this issue and ensure that we are implementing the most effective public policy is a necessary piece to the workings of our democracy. However, using terms like the above to try and re-classify something to make it sound like something it is not for political gains is an embarrassment to the democratic process of our free market of ideas.

Instead of battling over political ideology, and using any means necessary to preserve or advance one ideology over another by creating what might be repeated best in a soundbite, we must engage in a truly open, free, educated and rigorous debate on the issues that face our society. Only then we will be able to truly work towards solutions that, rather than benefit a political ideology or platform, will be for the benefit of each and every citizen within our democracy.

(1) Newman, Michael. (2005) Socialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-280431-6

(2) Oxford English Dictionary

(3) Merriam-Webster Dictionary

(4) "Communism". Columbia Encyclopedia. 2008.

(5) Lyons, Matthew N.. "What is Fascism? Some General Ideological Features". PublicEye.org. Political Research Associates. http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/whatfasc.html.

Politics and How We Define Ourselves

I came across the incredible infographic the other day that draws a contrast between people who are generally liberal and conservative, and the differing values that are important to each group, for example liberals as 'champions of downtrodden' and conservatives as 'champions of opportunity.' Although the graphic, which is of course not 100% accurate, as it is generalizing and categorizing people into two differing groups, does provide some interesting insight into the values that liberal versus conservative people and families tend to hold true, and does so in a way that seems very rational and non-biased.

One of the more interesting pieces to it, which is backed up with substantial sociological research, (for example Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff) is the differing family structures in liberal versus conservative households. More liberal families, which tend to be less religious are more democratic in their decision making - allowing children to play roles in decision-making on important household issues. Conservative families, which tend to be more religious, more often make decisions in a patriarchal fashion, where the father-figure is the ultimate authority and decision-making is not really open to discussion or dissent. That research provides enormous insight into how decisions are made by various political officials at even the highest levels of government.

All this to say that is important to understand those that you may disagree with. By understanding where people are coming from who you disagree with, you can make a much more profound effort at understanding and empathizing with peoples' ideas. By understanding eachother more, we can help frame discussions, especially in a public policy sphere for example, and act rather than in an obstructionist way out of ignorance or fear in such a way that encourages people to work together through understanding.

For the full-size version: http://infobeautiful.s3.amazonaws.com/leftright_US_1416.gif

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Thinking, Thinking and more Thinking

I was given the opportunity to speak to two political science classes at Seton Hall today about politics and technology. Aside from having a great time (hopefully some students came away with a new interest of exploring the implications of new technologies) it really reminded me how important it is to really engage with the different technologies that we use everyday. Before long, new technologies that at first seemed strange, encroaching on our privacy or otherwise inconvenient seem to more-so define our daily lives.

The Facebook Newsfeed is a great example. When it came out, a large percentage of Facebook users got fairly upset how their lives were being displayed publicly for anyone to see. Now, imagine if Facebook took away the News Feed and the alerts about what our friends are doing? It hardly would even seem like an interesting or useful service to use. Yet, that is exactly what the service was for the first couple years of its deployment.

All of this not to say that these technologies, or more specifically, platforms, are necessarily, or inherently, bad, but rather that we really should make sure we all fully understand the long-term implications of the technologies that we more and more use everyday

Objectivity, News and Healthcare

After the healthcare summit last week, these were the leading headlines on the three major news websites:

FOX: GOP comes out swinging.
CNN: Spirited but civil debate at healthcare summit.
MSNBC: Tempers flair at Obama's healthcare summit.

Each of those titles is really very different. It isn't even that one is 'liberal' and one 'conservative' necessarily or that two are stark opposites of each other. Each network just reached an entirely different conclusion as to how to summarize the summit in a one line title.

In a way, this isn't all bad, as for all news to report the same thing seriously risks discourse and debate being lost in our culture. Having a culture with a singularity around any field of knowledge is a serious impediment to progress and democracy. However, many people do watch one of those networks (or any news source, for that matter) as objective fact. But asking networks to be 100% objective is probably an impossible task as even TV anchors unconsciously give subtle clues to their own personal feelings in their posture, tone of voice and hand gestures. So the problem is not really the lack of subjectivity, but rather that these networks and news services claim to be objective (Fair & Balanced, anyone?) and therefore many people watch them expecting an objective analysis and don't place what they hear in a larger context.

There is nothing wrong with getting news from any of these sources. However, everything must be placed within the proper context of who is doing the reporting. This is another way that context is incredibly important in our society in terms of understanding information that it is presented with. To hear a soundbite and know whether it came from MSNBC or Fox News helps people understand better what they are hearing.

I can only keep my fingers crossed that one day Fox's 'Fair & Balanced' would change to 'Leading Conservative Provider of News.' Does anyone really believe after looking into the issue that Fox is fair and balanced? I hope not. And admitting a political inclination is not a bad thing at all. It's honest. Internet news sources seem to get quickly pinned as liberal or conservative and thus readers can try to place what they read in the proper political and cultural context, and we need to encourage networks to be honest and help people place what is reported on in a better frame of mind.

Context out of Context

The idea of context is an interesting one, and a topic I've briefly covered in some past posts and columns, but I am beginning to realize that the idea of context is much more fundamental and important that it is gnerally given credit for. 

In Jaron Lanier's book You are not a Gadget, he argues that my generation (Generation Y or the Millennials) and the younger generations are loosing context as part of our experience with culture and media. No longer must you read the entire length of a work to understand it, you can just head over to Wikipedia and look at bits and pieces gathered from various sources (sometimes up to 300-400 or more footnotes on a single Wikipedia page) and loose much of the context and importance that was meant to be conveyed in the original work. Academic works are amalgamated into mediums like Wikipedia, and art, music and video are mashed up into remixed YouTube videos, again with the original context of the work being totally lost when it is viewed in such a tertiary form. In fact, in many cases it's quite possible that tertiary viewer doesn't even know anything about the original creation, or that there really was even an original creation that allowed for the viewing of this work.

I wish I had more of a conclusion to draw, or even more of a direction in which to ask questions, but alas the best I can do right now is bring this issue and promise to revisit the idea of context and what it means that I believe younger generations are beginning, in all aspects of living, to lose context.