Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Yesterday, I talked about how to crap on mobile browser users by burying your lead. Today, I talk about how it craps on your own promotional vectors — specially Facebook.

When someone shares a link on Facebook, it looks something like this:

Here I’m making folks who follow my Facebook profile aware of my mouthing off. Facebook intelligently grabbed the start of my article, in this case the first 48 words. Now, 48 words isn’t enough to say “hey, here’s what I’m talking about” — after all, there is an art to this whole “introduction” thang. Still, let’s look at some others.

One of Mine That Sucks

This is one of the ones that made me think more about this whole “craft a good intro” thing. Look at that and tell me if it actually conveys anything. Since the original post just has that as the first paragraph before the blockquote hits, that tells me a bit about how Facebook treats such content. Doing that only gave me 26 words. Whee.

Some of the Recent EHP Family Posts

Here are three posts, from Fred Hicks, Rob Donoghue, and Paul Tevis, provided with merely academic comment. I think you can draw your own conclusions. (And seriously, this isn’t easy to always remember. Especially if you don’t use Facebook much or at all.) The images link to the original posts.
(Comment: Notice that it cuts Fred off. That’s normal; it does that when it hits a certain length. I suppose I could spelunk the Facebook API to find out the particulars, but the great thing about this is that I don’t have to. I can be a lazy user.)

(Comment: I find it interesting that Facebook picks up Cam Banks’ comment rather than Rob’s actual post. Goes to show how Facebook’s algorithm & Blogspot’s markup talk…or don’t…with each other.)

(Comment: I like how Paul often starts his posts with a single sentence. In the case of this post, “Everyone’s opposite is different.” Notice that Facebook doesn’t grab that.)

It’s Not Just You

I’d like to say that it’s evident of the links about that it’s not just you that’ll do links to your stuff on Facebook. Your fans & friends will, as well. So even if I was all “fuck Facebook, I hate having vectors of self-marketing that are cheap and easy, and also, hey, mah peeps,” your peeps will use it. So take note.

Here Daniel Perez Liked my post, thanks to the WordPress plug-in Add To Any. So you see what he did, how it looks, and overall the effect is has on the timeline others see. Of course, someone who likes it could click the Share button in Facebook and propagate it, meaning that whatever ends up being in the blurb based on your initial few dozen words will be spread around the Internet.

Back to that D&D Post

Let’s take a look at what that D&D post I talked about yesterday looks like as a Facebook link.

That’s very unfortunate, but not the blogger’s fault. The browser rendering looks nice enough, but Wizard’s markup doesn’t play well with social media. Goes to show you that older faux-blog technology is more of a hindrance than folks realize.

Hopefully this is of use to folks looking to make use of social media like Facebook to, you know, actually rock your social network-fu.

- Ryan

As we move into the future, more and more we’ll see people checking out our blogs with smartphones. Whether it’s because we’re commuting, or because we just woke up and the first thing we grab in our morning ritual is our phone, or whyever, it’s where blog-land’s going.

So, when I see someone entirely hate on mobile readers the way this article from Wizards did, I’m of a mind to speak about it. Let’s start with vector. Follow along with my iPhone screencaps to see where this article goes wrong:

The Vector: How I found out about this article

I follow @DaveTheGame on Twitter, because he’s fucking brilliant. So, when I see him talk about a favorite technique of his, and someone talking about it much better than him, my interest is piqued.

Here’s the thing, though. Part of the reason my interest is piqued? I have absolutely no idea what Dave’s talking about, other than it’s probably smart. A reminder that You Don’t Own Your Message.

Chris Perkins’ name sounds familiar, but there’s no traction in for me. Like I’m sure people will be linked to this and have no traction for Ryan Macklin. That’s important to keep in mind here. Anyway, continuing. I clicked on the link in my phone…

Initial View

Like most blogs, the initial page sucks. But the seasoned smartphone reader only briefly sighs, if at all, and moves on to make the article readable by tilting orientation and pinching to zoom in. (Side note: mobile themes rock. Daniel Perez introduced me to the plugin I’m using for my blog: WPtouch. Go ahead, load this motherfucker in a smartphone.)

Actually Readable

So, now I know the title is I Don’t Know What It Means, But I Like It. Which is funny at the time of this post, because my reaction is “I also don’t know what your title means.” You get the typical-of-certain-sites useless meta-paragraph at the top. Easily enough scrolled past to get to actual content.

Scroll Down

Alright, still no clue what’s being talked about. Whee for an intro vignette to a freakin’ article. Since I don’t know what’s being talked about, I’m skipping past this context. I can always go back and read it if the subject gives me cause.

Scroll Down II: The Quickening

Oh man, now with “…but not the focus of this particular article” I’m just pissed. Given the additional effort it takes to read this on a smartphone while traveling, being on screen four now, my time feels pretty damned wasted. (Dave’s tweet doesn’t count.) There are a lot of links I can follow on my Twitter feed and RSS reader in my travels. But I was really, really curious as to what Dave was referring.

This is what we call a “bait and switch,” except you actually need to bait beforehand. Still, Dave did the baiting for the author, so I continued on. That said, I went from being an interested reader into an annoyed one. An uncharitable frame of mind. Maybe if I had a vested interest in this author, I would forgive the irritation. But while you’ll have that with your alpha fans, your second-order readers won’t feel that. (They might become alpha fans over time, if you treat them well.)

Scroll Down: Endgame

“And frankly, neither do I. Which brings us to the true subject of this article.” 367 words into the article, this guy finally gets to it. Even on a browser, the point isn’t arrived at until around the end of the first scroll/beginning of the second, depending on your screen size.

After four screens, clicked on the “Tweet” button at the time to go back to my timeline to find something else. No sense in reading something that’s just pissing me off. Not that I have any idea what Dave was talking about in the tweet that linked me here, but whatevs.

Why This Tends To Happen

Bloggers write stream-of-conscious. Sometimes they only copy-edit themselves, sometimes someone else copy-edits. You rarely get deeper editing in what’s typically treated as throw-away or short-benefit work. There will be another blog post tomorrow, or next week, or whenever, and a year from now people will forget a particular blog post exists. Not the same treatment you give books.

On some random fuck’s personal or micro-professional blog, that’s probably okay. Still lame, but not entirely detrimental. Likely a lower percentage of second order readers. (At least, until said blog ends up getting a stupidly large audience.) But for the website of the largest game company around, it looks pretty careless.

An Easy Fix

It wouldn’t take much to fix this article for the mobile reader. Without editing the original content, just add at the top: “Today I’m going to talk about X.”

Is it the best way? Usually not. But it’s not bad, especially if you still aren’t going to get to the meat of the article for four scrolldowns. And you don’t have to give away the farm in this opener — stating the topic is not the same as stating the conclusions you’re going to draw. So have no fear that you’re going to slice the balls from your wit by doing so.

A Side Note On Cutesy Titles

Later, I went back. On the next screen, which I didn’t bother grabbing on my phone, he finally gives you context for his title. That goes to show that this author is writing only for alpha fans, though that’s probably unintentional. A better title and an lead[2] that’s not utterly buried would do better for second order readers, whether on smartphones or not. Which leads me to a choice:

• If you want a cutesy title that requires the article to make sense of the title, present that context in the first 100 words. People are going to refer to your article by title (if even that — Dave didn’t give any specific context), so know that people are going to be entirely clueless when they click on the link.
• Or, you know, don’t use a cutesy title that doesn’t introduce what you’re talking about?

That’s actually a bit flippant. There is a good reason to use cutesy titles: crafting a lasting emotional context for the reader. At the point of discovery of what the title means, that mindstate will be associated with the article, like you’re laughing at a joke you an the author get. (Of course, that assumes one reaches a charitable mindstate at that moment. I think this post illustrates how easy it is to cement a lasting negative context with said technique.) But, like with every technique, what you intend by using it should be something that you as a writer are conscious of.

As Always, It’s All About Intent

Of course, if you actually understand what you’re doing by making a proper topic introduction nearly 400 words in and using a title that has no non-contextual meaning, hey, more power to you. It’s all about intent. But I’d be surprised if that was intentional here.

- Ryan

[1] He said, not having testing this post with graphics on his phone before scheduling it…

[2] Welcome the the post-insular journalism world that is blogosphere. “Lede” is jargon. :)

I certainly have a lot to talk about today! Between reactions to a tweet I did on Monday about hate, to how people are reacting to my Jennisodes comment on mediocrity (reactions from Rob Donoghue, Greg Christopher), to, well, I have a laundry list of topics. I’m going to roll the first two together.

I mentioned my thought on hate, which in its compressed, unnuanced made-for-Twitter form, was:

I will now propose the Macklin definition of hate: Giving airtime or effort to things you don’t like.

It’s incomplete, but one of the questions I was asked, by Monica Valentinelli, was if there was room for critique in that. I’ll get back to that in a moment.

When I was given five minutes to talk about whatever on my recent Jennisodes interview, I chose to voice my disappointment at mediocrity. And while I tried to make it clear, I didn’t both because it’s the Internet[1] and because I wasn’t working from an outline. This is something that’s bothered me for a very long time now[2], and I decided to give voice to it.

Here’s where those two things converge:

Critique cannot exist healthily on the Internet. So we cannot constructively point out the mediocre elements in games made popular. This inability to do so leads to a downward spiral of mediocrity.

I’m going to name a name, here, because everyone “in the know” either already knows or suspects it’s what I’m talking about: I think everything unrelated to game design on Apocalypse World is phoned in. Text design. Layout. Even fulfillment. And that’s okay for Vincent to do, because no one wants to slag him for any of it on ther Internet.

Why? The fans. His friends, who are going to have an emotional reaction to this. I’ll honestly bet Vincent himself doesn’t really care, but man, the people that look up to him will. Fans are the reason we can’t have critique publicly, because any attempt an book analysis will be drowned in a flamewar.

I want to make clear: I’ve read Apocalypse World a bunch of times. I’ve played it a bunch, run it a bunch, and as a game once I can get past elements, read forum posts to better understand it, talk with people who have more experience, man the game fucking rocks. The design is phenomenal. It’s everything else that’s problematic and, dare I say: lazy and/or rushed.

I want to make doubly-clear: I’m finally giving you an example because I have tried to find a way to talk about this without pointing to something, and I haven’t found a way that works. So, fuck it, I’ll roll the dice and deal with the flames if need be.

Honestly, I don’t care about helping Vincent. Apocalypse World’s been published. It’s done. Vincent’s a big boy, he’s done this enough to know what corners are being intentionally cut. I don’t see any accidents in his decisions with his products. He’s pretty fucking knowledgable and doesn’t need me telling him what’s up.

But my heart feels for the person who honestly wants to try, but is scared, confused, lacking knowledge, and again scared of this new endeavor. He or she sees the wild success of something unedited, poorly laid-out and otherwise looks like little effort went past rules design, and that gives him or her the permission to let fears rule the day and not try any of those things as well. The rushed or lazy products of popular geniuses allows talented neophytes an excuse to also not try.

For that reason, I want to pick books apart. I want to point out flaws so that we can talk about why they don’t work, when they would work, how to do better. I want to arm people trying this for the first time with information. I want explore these things we all love. And right now, I do privately, in IM and Skype conversations and drinks at the bar.

Always to people I know. Usually to the choir. And I’m honestly tired of that bullshit, because it feels so unfair to everyone who genuinely wants to engage this craft with the fullness of their heart and soul. Like, you know, me a few years ago when I said to Luke Crane that I thought not calling out products and talking around them on the Internet was “ivory tower bullshit.”

I’m going to reword the above: I so, so desperately want a world where we can critique in public. But we can’t, because of the fucking Internet. The agendas of everyone viewing are not universal. You don’t know if the poster:

• Actually likes the thing they’re talking about and wishes it was better (a.k.a. reading charitably)
• Has an ax to grind against the publisher/designer/whatever (a.k.a. reading uncharitably)

And readers have their own varied agendas:

• To comment and actually engage in learning & teaching
• To pepper their mind with thoughts for the future, but otherwise passively read
• To win points on the Internet by “defending” their favorite designer
• To respond emotionally about something their friend is involved with — both with the target of my critique *grr Ryan is Wrong!”) and with me for posting it (“grr Ryan is Right!”)
• To engage in the brain chemical reward cycle that happens with you tell someone they’re wrong on the Internet
• To win points on the Internet be “defending” the original post from those in point three above.
• To stir shit up, engaging in a different chemical reward cycle

Critique can be non-toxic if only the first two types are allowed to speak. But it’s the Internet. We may deserve better than this, but this is the world we have. We have no one skilled at moderation to direct the flow of attention in a critique. We just have asynchronous, fire-and-forget technology, the ability to execute a chemical reward cycle and walk away.

Feels like the Internet is why we cannot have nice things, which I think we say too often without feeling like we can act on it. (Yes, this is an emotional statement, since the Internet is pretty fucking cool in many other ways.)

To address one thing that Greg Christopher said:

Freedom is messy. And tearing down production barriers does result in a lot of crap.

Freedom is messy, and totally awesome. But the production barriers being broken down aren’t why we have a lot of crap. We’ve had a lot of crap since well before we were born[3]. The problem is the lack of freely available knowledge. The barriers are social, not technological.

So, fuck it. I’m going to stop being a part of the problem by saying nothing. My intent for next week is to write about how neophytes can overcome some basic issues, without having the advantage of, as Rob Donoghue put it, being Ryan Macklin. And, damn it, I’m going to use examples. I’m going to break that rule. I will need some time over the weekend to collect those thoughts.

- Ryan

[1] Which I try to not let be an excuse. It’s just a fact of life I have to contend with.

[2] Folks from Story Games in 2008 may remember some bullshit called “The New New Honesty” — a term I hated, but was one of the core cheerleaders for. Which lead to be realization about how forums worked, causing me to start my now-abandoned forum Cultures of Play, which tought me really, really keenly how forums work.

[3] Why do people have blinders about the past that makes the present always seem more filled with crap? Seems to come up often in conversation lately.

Say you’re going to post something up on the internet — a tweet or FaceBook status, a video, a blog post, whatever. Here’s something key to keep in mind when dealing with people checking that out: you don’t actually own your message.

Simple statement, complex idea. To break it down some, hopefully, we’re dealing in an age of rampant asynchronous communication and content-on-demand. (To be fair, synchronous communication over long distances is by and large a relatively new concept to humankind, and we’re still struggling with institutions that have business models set up around content-on-scheduled-broadcast. So, these are partly societal growing pains. At least, I utterly hope it’s just that.)

Parenthetical disgression aside, the point is that because we’re talking about content that is consumed at the viewer’s choosing and lacking an immediate feedback cycle, we’re actually kinda fucked as content creators. Here’s why: we have no idea what mental state our reader/viewer/listener is in.

One, we have no control over the immediate past. Living in a constant fire hose of subscription-centric information, with Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, all that, whoever reads what you’ve written will do so with the last thing their read still imprinted on their mind. Here’s an example:

• Jeff is reading this very blog post on his iPad’s RSS reader while waiting for food delivery. He’s a bit grouchy from being hungry. Right before that, he got an email from his boss who is pissed off because their client is pissed off and it’s trickling down to Jeff. So, Jeff’s in a crap mood and that’s coloring how he’s reading this post.
• Will is reading this in the morning, after waking up all natural-like on his day off. He’s got his iPad RSS reader and reading in the bathroom, right after checking his email. He got a sweet love-letter from his girlfriend that he read a few minutes prior, so he’s going into everything super-charitibly.

Those are extreme examples, but even positive or negative tweets you read prior to a new, unrelated one will color your read of that tweet.

Two, we have no reasonable expectations for when our readers will end up reading this. This gets into talks about circadian rhythm and all that jazz, but the time of day we read something does have a great impact on how we read things. (That said, this feels like utter common sense that someone’s done an actual study on. So if anyone knows of one, please comment with a link? Thanks!)

Three, in an age of retweets and likes and other social media propogators, you may well be impacted by someone’s commentary before reading what they’re talking about, thus coloring any follower’s perception of that blog. Now, people will still form their own opinions, but coloring is pretty influencial.

• Jeff sees a tweet to this post with the hashtag #smartpeopletalking, and clicks on the link. His viewing is likely now colored with a sense that he’ll get something out of it. Maybe I’ll fulfill that expectation, maybe disappoint, but regardless that’s what he’s coming in with.
• Will sees a tweet to this post with the comment “Macklin’s got it wrong again, that fuck.” He’s probably viewing this now with hostility or at least negative interest. So, hey, I have a reader that has a very differently-colored agenda with my post.

(That said, the latter can also work to your advantage. If you hear that someone that routinely hates things you like rants against something, you’ll probably go in with a more open mind thanks to the magic of association. Couple years back, used to be that RPG Pundit fulfilled this role for fans of indie games, which is why people sent him review copies. Negative reviews sell games.[1])

Four, people have long-term baggage and innocuous elements of a post will set people off in random directions, positive and negative. For instance, when I see someone add a smilie to charged language, like:

You’re wrong :)

…I get extra-pissed off at the passive-aggressiveness of it. Now, person might be trying to inject levity, but man instead I have years of interactions where that’s been used in order to get away with being a cockbite. So, I can’t read that uncharged. Similarly, I had a friend recently tell me about how he sees the footnotes[2] that Paul Tevis, Rob Donoghue and I do as being “cliquish.” I wanted to say, rather dismissively, “eh, that’s just your baggage,” but then I realized he had a point — and one of the reasons I’m making this post. I don’t control his reaction to using footnotes, or anyone else’s. And I have to remember that.

Granted, that doesn’t mean I’m going to sterilize my blog. If I did, I wouldn’t have a giant cockbite in my tag cloud. But I have to understand the cost of using these techniques of information presentation, if I’m going to be effective.

Now, not all of these problems are new (nor is this list exhaustive), but the ways in which we consume media today worsen their effects. And they ways in which we can be very publicly reactionary[3], which then further worsens it. While I like to add “and here’s stuff to do” to these sorts of ideas, I don’t have one right now. “Be mindful” is crap advice, but it’s all I have at the moment. Be mindful as a content creator and as a content consumer.

Because, again, you don’t own the moment your post will be read. You don’t own the headspace of your reader. And as much as you wish you did, you don’t own your message…because you don’t have control over the messenger: the Internet.

- Ryan

[1] And since negative reviews sell games, I never negatively review. If I hate something that much, the worst thing I can do for it is to give it no traffic.

[2] Hi!

[3] Which, for personal reasons, has been a touch harder for me to put a lid on lately.

I’ve mentioned before that I think more podcasters take the idea of “seasons” as a silly, “let’s pretend we’re real media” way. Like, “ohh, look at us, we’re season 2! Aren’t we keen!”

Not that I mind people having fun, playing around at something, whatever, but I feel like if that’s what someone thinks of as a season, they’re missing the point. And it’s a point I’ve been talking about here and there for the last year or so. That seasons can be a good idea, if you understand them.

These days, I don’t enter into new projects without some plan of an exit strategy. Things that sounds like they’ll go over forever tend to end at a point of low energy, which is a violation of one of my podcast rules: “Leave people wanting more, not having wanted less.” Which means that with anything on-going (including this blog), I break my time spend doing that into seasons, and choose whether to renew that project after each season.

I’ve been talking with a friend about starting a new show, something we’re both interested in talking about but want to make separate from our current shows. He was worried about adding another ongoing commitment to his life, and I agreed.

“That’s why podcasts aren’t ongoing commitments to me anymore. I think in seasons. Tell you what, let’s try five-episode seasons. If we like our first season, we’ll renew.”

As I described my thought and the advice I’ve given over the years, he came at me with a new thing I hadn’t considered before. “No. I don’t want to do something episode-based. That doesn’t feel like it has a hard stop.”

This blew me away, because I hadn’t considered something based on time-elapsed before. Or, rather, I had and discarded it. “Yeah, but if we say ‘Let’s try this for two months’ and we only do an episode…I dunno.”

We compromised. Five episodes in fourteen weeks. That’s one episode every two weeks, with an extra four weeks to cover life happening. Not that we’ve started that yet, but then GenCon recovery really only started with me last week, and I have a backlog of life. We should be recording our pilot in September.

Another podcast I might be a part of (holy crap, it’s almost like I’m a media producer again) is taking a similar approach, and it’s smart[1].  Small, agile seasons. It gives us a target to shoot for that’s reachable in the short term, a period when we not only can but must seriously evaluate what’s happened, a time where we can plan to take a break rather than it just happening…and lasting several months. Most importantly, it gives us permission to walk away.

Permission to walk away while you’re at a high point is important to being successful at anything. You’ll be remembered for your last acts on something. If you ride something all the way down to it crashing, that’s what people will remember. People give me shit still for Master Plan podfading rather than properly ending (though I am, slowly, getting back on that horse because I feel like I should finish it right, even if that violates my rule above). And that’s the point of seasons — to give yourself permission to quit something while it’s still good when you think you don’t have another full season in you.

Also, funding. But that’s another topic for another time.

- Ryan

(Not sure if I’m going to stick to “Media Monday” as a blog topic, but I’m playing with the idea. We’ll see if it survives a season!)

[1] Yes, I just said my own idea is smart. I’m a humble guy.