Tag Archives: social media

Making the Internet Fun Again

I’ve been self­ish about how I share things online. When I was writ­ing reg­u­lar­ly as a crit­ic, wield­ing my blog like a bull­horn for what­ev­er I desired, I shared with near wreck­less aban­don on vir­tu­al­ly every plat­form at my dis­pos­al. Lately, I’ve turned inward, keep­ing cool arti­cles and ideas nes­tled snug­ly in Instapa­per, or worse, my head, like they’re some pre­cious bauble to hold close. Well, that’s going to change. I’m vow­ing to share more in 2012.

Some­thing I’ve come to love about the most excel­lent writ­ers (call them “cura­tors” if you must) is how they edi­to­ri­al­ize links. I think I’ve been slow to accept this because with music writ­ing, it could be mon­e­tized in clear ways by pub­lish­ing through a third par­ty. When you read great stuff at blogs like dar­ing fire­ball, you mar­vel at how far a link and an ounce of edi­to­r­i­al can take you. Same is true for Twit­ter fol­lows like David Carr, who just re-shared his insight­ful inter­view with Ter­ry Gross on Fresh Air specif­i­cal­ly about this top­ic. Serendip­i­ty! It’s what makes the Inter­net fun and I think that I for­got that some­where along the way while hoard­ing links and arti­cles and ideas in Google Read­er and Reed­er and Twit­ter and Tum­blr and Instapa­per and all the oth­er ways we use the web today.

So 2012 at Ram­say­ings will be about shar­ing those insights. Brace yourself.

I’ve Rejoined Tumblr

You can fol­low Ram­say­ings: The Tum­blr by your pre­ferred method. Since I fol­low a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of music crit­ics there, it may be where I enter con­ver­sa­tions about stuff like that? Or pos­si­bly techi­er things? Or social media things? It’s a gar­den that’s grow­ing very quick­ly and I’m scram­bling to keep up.

And, yes, I think I’ve decid­ed to main­tain both Word­Press and Tum­blr plat­forms in some way or oth­er indef­i­nite­ly. Social media is a cru­el mis­tress. I guess it would be cru­el­er if I were also vlog­ging or something.

Calling All Word Nerds

Yes­ter­day I start­ed my new job as Com­cast’s chief blog­ger. Now I’ve had some fun with social media so far in my career and have had a real­ly great time get­ting peo­ple excit­ed about bring­ing the A’s back to Philadel­phia, but I have very lit­tle in the way of what you may call deep back­ground on social media practices.

My take: I feel like I have the trick­i­est part–writing–down cold. I have a sol­id under­stand­ing of what sto­ries are best told through text and which are bet­ter explained by video, thanks to my tenure at comcast.net. I know that peo­ple want reg­u­lar con­tent and they have expec­ta­tions around how it’s deliv­ered. That’s understood.

What I have ques­tions about are best prac­tices in the social web. If you can rec­om­mend read­ing either on- or offline, I’d appre­ci­ate it. Leave a note in the com­ments or @ me on Twit­ter. If you have favorite blogs that deal specif­i­cal­ly in this, feel free to share those as well. My Google read­er feels a lit­tle emp­ty after I 86’d oh so many music blogs.

Don’t think I’m not doing some heavy lift­ing myself. I’m find­ing Kristi­na Halvor­son­’s work and the Brain Traf­fic blog a very use­ful font of info and links. I’ve also sub­scribed to sev­er­al rec­om­mend­ed com­pa­ny blogs, rang­ing from South­west Air­lines to Google’s Offi­cial blog. Love how they read!

How to Improve Netflix

Yes­ter­day I down­grad­ed our Net­flix account from three DVDs at a time to two. Have I got­ten so much as an email ask­ing me why? Nope! Net­flix may be the most suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny I use that does­n’t seem to care about cater­ing to their sub­scriber base. What makes me say that? Since I signed up, I can’t think of a sin­gle fea­ture they’ve man­aged to improve. You might say, “But they rolled out stream­ing for your pre­cious Xbox,” but even that came with its own set of prob­lems. Net­flix is absolute­ly nowhere when it comes to solv­ing the issues that would make their ser­vice bet­ter with­out the cost­ly expense of new content.

Here’s what I’d like them to fix:

  • Shared queues. This is a great fea­ture that was spared the chop­ping block in the past year. It’s the thing that ensures that Helen and I share our account and that every­one gets their picks. His­tor­i­cal­ly, Helen’s got­ten two discs and I got one; she’d burn through sea­sons of TV while I slogged through art house flicks. It’s pret­ty great, right? It’d be even bet­ter if Net­flix could tell us which titles were on stream­ing for both queues, instead of just select­ing my queue and leav­ing it at that.
  • New releas­es. I get it. This is an embar­rass­ment that Net­flix wants you to for­get by bring­ing you more stream­ing con­tent. I’m not con­vinced. Even if we can’t have new releas­es for 28 days plus how­ev­er long it takes to get them to us, could we at least see what new stuff is out there, even if it’s just to point­less­ly update our queue. Is that so much to ask?
  • Social fea­tures. These were hor­ri­ble when they had them, but they might’ve improved them rather than wip­ing them out out­right. I know social fea­tures aren’t easy to do. It’s hard to know what peo­ple want. But I can’t think of any oth­er online movie ser­vice that peo­ple love more than Net­flix. I’m guess­ing the com­mu­ni­ty could’ve made help­ful sug­ges­tions. It would­n’t have had to involve much work prob­a­bly. At this point they could prob­a­bly get away with some degree of Face­book inte­gra­tion and let that plat­form do the heavy lifting.

Now, I’m thrilled that they’re lever­ag­ing their stream­ing con­tent to the max. Putting that stuff on any screen is great. I’ve heard plen­ty of peo­ple say there’s noth­ing good in the stream­ing library, but that’s just because they’re not real­ly into the art house con­tent. I love it! I can’t wait until I can watch an episode of 30 Rock on my iPhone as I ride the train. I just think that these tweaks will go a long way to improv­ing the ser­vice for the long haul.

So, go ahead and sur­prise me, Netflix!