That's Buster, Josh's dad's dog. He is almost as awesome as Josh is.

But that's beside the point. When I was revamping my site over last weekend, I was having some issues with the SquareSpace UI (user interface). This was, I admit, mostly my fault, because I, the user, wasn't interfacing with the site properly. That's my fault. It's always hard to learn a new system, and I know just enough HTML to have posed a danger to myself. So what did I do when I encountered difficulties? I bitched about it on Twitter. And within three minutes of my spastic, self-serving complaint, I had a response from @acasalena, the founder and lead programmer behind SquareSpace. He was just chilling out on a Sunday night, and asked me if he could do anything to help with my issue. Turns out, he could, and he helped me fix what I was having problems with. Turned out to be my own stupidity I was struggling with.

The fact of the matter is, though, that Anthony Casalena didn't have to answer my Tweet. He (or maybe his rep, I don't know...I still chose to give him credit because he seems like a cool guy) didn't have to spend his time searching to see if he could help someone out. But now, because of that one action, I'm hoping to get my dad, my roommate, and my potential webcomic and/or craft store up on SS. Because if tech support is half as good as Casalena is, it's four times better than any other site I've encountered, including...*gasp* .Mac, now MobileMe. I know, I know...a self-professed Mac cult member saying that.

That's not all though, kids. A few weeks ago, standing waiting for the L to come and take me home after a long day at work, I found a small button waiting for me on the phone booth next to my right hand. It was just a picture of a blue sky with a few fluffy clouds, and on the back was a website and email address, asking you to contact the creator with where you found the button. Now, me being me, and easily distracted, I forgot about it until I found it in my bag today at work. And it got me thinking: is that what we're doing with social media? Reach out to strangers, leave little links and pictures and tidbits around for them to find and follow back to us at the source. We just don't always get to do it in such a beautiful and simple way. If you're curious, the site on the back of the pin is deepblueskies.com.

But wait, there's even more! The last post I put up here, the one about Decibelle and the poetry reading, got some attention. Last Friday, I got an email from T. Khyentse James Executive Director, telling me that she'd stumbled across my post. My immediate reaction was, of course, AH DON'T LOOK AT ME I'M SORRY. But then I realized that, if I spent a little time and effort on it, I could do some great work for them. And maybe it's the repressed angry feminist, maybe the repressed rocker chick, maybe it's the repressed Girl Scout...but I really want to. So I've begun doodling on napkins again, trying to figure out how to do more for non-profits in particular. Beyond what I mentioned in my last post about Facebook and teaming up with other non-profits, what resources are there?

And so I went poking around. I found Change.org (doesn't fit the needs of all non-profits, but it's a good place to start). Skimming through Decibelle's (really awesome) site, I looked at all the traditional media attention they've gotten in the past few years. It's great that they can get the articles written when they have events, but usually it's published after events have already happened, a sum-up of what went on and who was there. They even have some great, big to medium sponsors. They're definitely better off than most non-profits I've seen or worked with. Then it hit me. One of the places that they don't seem to be taking advantage of their diverse and wondrous talents is with small, local, regular events. At least, not in Chicago.

Here is where I think social media can really shine. I can get them in contact with weekly or monthly open mics that can not only funnel new listeners to them by announcing their events live or online, but also help them find new talent, new venues, new donors, and maybe even get some cash and support for themselves.

Here's my question for all of you, my loyal readers (for all that I may force most of you to read or run the risk of losing my friendship): what else can I do for Decibelle that will help them out? How can I get people to respond to them with the same excitement and conviction that I did to SquareSpace and my nifty Blue Skies Button?

Comments are ready and waiting people...let's help out a great cause.]]>Everything I need to know about social media I learned from lesbians.http://www.youruinedmychildhood.com/blog/2008/9/29/everything-i-need-to-know-about-social-media-i-learned-from.htmlCRosberg2008-09-29T02:05:00Zmarketing lesbians social media writingNo, really. I went out this Friday night with my beloved friend and sister-in-arms Megan, and I discovered, yet again, that there opportunities for learning about this stuff in unexpected places. We went to Women and Children First up in Andersonville (Chicago) for a book reading of a writer I’d never heard of before. But I trust Megan’s taste, and all she told me was that Michelle Tea was a lesbian, former sex worker, and talented. So I assumed angry lesbian poetry.

A) I was wrong. And B) there was a cool display of social media that took me by surprise. First of all, both of the writers who read that night were talented, gregarious women with a very loyal following, not only in Chicago. The second writer, Christy C. Road, was also immensely funny and talented.  But again, I had heard of neither of them, despite being fully invested in the indy writing scene, particularly where it overlaps the GLBTQ community (excluding the jerks I met in Sautgatuck, Michigan last weekend on the boat with my cousin, her fiance, and the boyfriend of awesomeness) but I didn't even know that the event was happening.  So, without Megan, I would not have known about it at all.

So, briefly, this is how I feel about things: Palin is scarier than McCain, who is scarier than Bush (who knew that was possible?).

Spore looks like a crapton of fun, but I will not know for a while, because despite the "this is a game for the people" sell, it won't run on most non-gaming machines, and barely any laptops without a several hundred dollar update to the videocard. Which is lame. On top of all of the delays, and the not really making the game they said they were making (even if it is still a cool game) it doesn't even play on most machines...and they haven't released it for anything except PCs and portable gaming. Does that make any sense at all? What's even more frustrating is that most of the reviews that I've read or seen/heard in podcasts don't even mention this fact. I understand that a lot of gamers have gaming PCs, and that they are some of the people that were waiting for this for the longest time, but seriously...this is not a better, more fun version of the Sims...this is not an expanded, awesome version of four different game types that simple enough and user-friendly enough for everyone to play. That blows. Big hairy chunks.

I am astounded by all that the government is doing right now. I know just enough about it to be dangerous (thank you over-education) and it really does just scare the crap out of me in some serious ways. There's parts of it that make me want to plug my fingers in my ears and go running "lalalalalalaIcan'thearyou" into the night. It makes me regret knowing anything about economics, and regret not being a teacher anymore. I can tell there is going to be a generation of kids growing up right now that don't know what the hell "normal" is (I'm still not positive myself, but I have a better idea than they do). It reminds me of a radio broadcast I heard, probably on NPR, talking about how people that were born between around 1960 had no idea that famous people, especially politicians, could die of natural causes. It was far more common to hear about assassinations than someone dying of old age or disease...and I get the feeling that this is a new generation of kids that won't know what it's like to have the rest of the world at least respect us, if not look to us for leadership. To have the economy be stable and their wellbeing, in terms of health and education, still matter to the various and sundry governments that hold sway over their lives.

Also, I am both proud and a little sad with all of the stuff that's going on in the world of GLBTQ at the moment. More celebrities coming out of the closet than ever before, the number of gay men, lesbians, and bisexual characters in both scripted and reality TV have continued to rise, we now have transgender and transsexual people on TV for pretty much the first time...ever. That's great. But why are we so obsessed with it? It should be pretty standard by now. I know that it isn't, and I know the reasons that it isn't, but it strikes me as the same thing of Race (yes, with a capital R) in the presidential race. It's the sort of issue that, if I ruled the world (as I totally should be doing), would be a non-issue, for the sheer fact that it shouldn't be one. Anyone who is in our population should be reflected as such in our public life.
That's my major rant for the day. I'm sorry that it took so long for me get down, but I didn't really have it sorted out in my head until fairly recently. As a result, I might add, of two days off nursing a fever. More soon, and I really mean it this time.

What this means: posts will be sporadic at best for the next week, week and a half. Email will be pretty nil. Also, I will lose touch with EVERYTHING. Except when I'm at work. And I can't work on my MA paper, which isn't the end of the world, but it certainly is annoying.

This weekend in Minnesota was wonderful, and it got me thinking, as I poked around on ShareThis.com, FeedBurner, and Google Analytics, only the first of which was working to my satisfaction when interacting with Blogger. And here's the question:
How do you hold a company that provides you with a free service accountable for the quality of that service?

Something to consider: when a roommate, significant other, friend, family member, or other person that one may feel relatively close to treats you in a manner you don't appreciate, does something to hurt your feelings, continually "forgets" or skips out on seeing you, doesn't pay you back, etc, etc, what do you do? Well, if you're not passive aggressive, aggressive, or otherwise inclined, the first time (maybe the first two or three times), you may ignore it, justify it, or otherwise sweep it under the rug of your relationship. The next few times may lead to confrontation of some kind, either calm or not, but most people will make their feelings on the situation known. In the imaginary world of everything going right, the situation is resolve quickly, if it comes up at all. In reality, you lose friends, break up with significant others, avoid family members and move away from roommates.

But what happens when a company that provides a free service patronizes you, marginalizes you, craps out on you, and takes away services without warning? What recourse do consumers of free products and services have? Mostly, at least since Google has begun to take over the world, they can go to a message board and complain. That rarely gets the attention of a help desk or company employee, let alone gets the problem solved. And while I love seeing the Twitter Fail Whale and going to check that handy Twitter blog to see what's up, being told that the service is down and "it's being worked on" does little for my frustration.

The case of Google is even more interesting. Despite service outages, randomly malfunctioning services, and a rather lackluster performance on less central offerings like FeedBurner, Analytics, and in particular AdSense, Google is still dominating in customer service surveys. How does that happen? Well, it's easy to say that most of the time, Google's service is pretty good (and it is) BUT, that's only true for the more central services like G-mail and Google Documents. How well do we really think the Android is going to do, if Google doesn't throw all of its support and celebrity behind it? And, despite the problems that Apple has had recently, with their stock prices, Jobs illness, iPhone/MobileMe debacle, and the Nano announcement, does Google have the following that Apple and Crackberry have? I don't think so.

But back to the original point. How do you get a free service to respect you and continue to give you the service that you so richly deserve desire? Working for a company that has something similar to many other offerings, I know that the point of providing the service (even for free, despite Twitter) is to make money. And if you don't give people the services they want, they will take their business, and the advertisers, elsewhere (More on this later, when I have more time). There's too much competition out there, even for services as awesome and overall good as GMail, FaceBook, and Blogger. Look at the exodus from MySpace...(But ignore this.) So besides flaming companies, besides trying to get prominent bloggers to bash them so they'll shape up, besides trusting them to do the right thing, and besides switching services...are there any other options? A Consumerist.com for free stuff?

There's always the option of turning of the computer. (Ha.)