My Challenge to the Social Media Experts

No, I'm not an expert myself and never claimed to be an expert :)

This idea came to my mind when my friend Anna told me about NaNoWriMo, how she did it 5 times, and how efficient it is.

So I thought to myself: how about asking people like Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, and other people to take a challenge where they'll create a new personnality known by its nickname and nothing else. And starting to promote it, making that new entity evolve and gain audience and sympathy.

WHY?

That would be a very intersting experiment in both marketing and socialmedia. The challenge if you (yes, you're invited too) take it, is to demonstrate how a "normal" person can draw interest, success and sympathy. In other words, prove that it's really doable for and by everyone if they apply some of the ideas you're using/preaching.

The Rules:

1. Choose a nickname and use it.
2. Forget everything about your past, friends, connections, content. Everything!
3. Start from nothing and build something worth attention and sympathy.
4. Do NOT invest gazillions of dollars in ads. I fact, do not pay for ads.
5. Do not use your current network to promote. Create new twitter, friendfeed, digg (whatever) accounts.
6. Don't give hints (any hint) on who you really are.
7. You can tell your readers about this challenge, but give no hint about who you will be.
8. (If you want) and If you choose to prove efficiency by generating money. Think about helping a charity :)
9. You have two (02) weeks to do this.

I'd really like to see many people taking this challenge, and I think that it will be a very entertaining and educating experience. So? Ready? :)

Why I don't believe in the "OpenMicroblogging Standard": My answer to Jesse Stay

People who know me, know that I'm almost against everything. I am very, very sceptical :)

But I always try hard to explain my views. So, in this post I'll try to explain my view about the so-called OpenMicroblogging Standard, and why I believe that it's "vain". This will be somehow a detailed response to what Jesse Stay wrote on Louis Gray's blog.

Let's define things first:

Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually 140 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web. (From Wikipedia)

So just to be sure, microblogging is actually blogging in a smaller format. In other words: sharing small content.

The question now: is there any concept that we used to use for blogging and that can't be used for microblogging? Do we really need a Yet Another Standard? I'm asking this while thinking about the very nice article by Tim Bray: "Don’t Invent XML Languages". Because it's really easy to define a new XML dialect everytime we feel the need, but is the need that real —always?

The blogging era brought some really interesting concepts. We do have OPML for reading lists. RSS/ATOM for content aggregation and reading and Trackbacks (which some people think are dead) for replies.

Can't we just use these three ideas for microblogging? What makes microblogging so special that these concepts won't work or won't be enough? This is my question, and the day someone answers it and gives real and logic arguments, I'll stand corrected and be convinced about the necessity of another standard.