I’m involved in social media for one reason. I want to help clients get into the global conversation to engage transparently with influencers. And for the money. And the girls. And because sometimes I get to do things I would never otherwise have been asked to do, like promo the latest episode on Buffy Between the Lines, one of the web’s top Buffy the Vampire fan sites.

Tags: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy Between the Lines

My June column on Talent Zoo, on the topic of mommy bloggers, is out a couple of days early. I call it failed, not because I think it is uninteresting (I hope it is interesting) but because I failed to fully support my initial hypothesis that the art and craft of blogging has outgrown the term “mommy blogger.”

I dislike the term. This is not the same as disliking mommy bloggers. Please read on. I feel the term has the potential to demean women. I find attaching the qualifier “mommy” or “mom” to any profession or pursuit can be inadvertently apologetic, as if to say, “I’m a mom, and I write a blog, and that’s an accomplishment.” You could take this one step further, and add, “and doing both at once requires some sacrifices in both.”

I also think there are so many outstanding writers, journalists, commentators, poets, authors, etc. out there that should be identified by their areas of expertise, not their gender and parental status. I read a lot of blogs, including some so-called mommy blogs, and there is much fine writing, analysis and commentary that stands on its own without the need for clever labels. Yes, being a mommy is one of the hardest things in the world, but so is being a daddy, a brother, a sister… I’m just not sure it’s an enduring strategy for online writing.

One example. I read Louise Brown’s marvelous Busy and Lively blog. She is a wonderful writer, and everyone, including yours truly, can learn from her smooth style and literary grace. And I hope Louise doesn’t take this the wrong way, but she writes about both the profound and the profoundly trivial, like this post on “8 things you might now know about me.” But all of it is engaging. Louise does not “identify” herself as any particular kind of blogger, or for that matter, as a social media expert, SEO guru or managing director of an Uplands grist mill. She lets her writing speak for itself.

I did a number of interviews for the mommy blogger piece via Twitter and e-mail. “Live” comments on Twitter, among my approximately 900-person sample, indicate a clear dichotomy on the topic, with, at one end of the spectrum, those who feel that the mommy blogger movement is still thriving, growing, relevant and important, and those at the other end, who openly mock and detest the idea of mommy bloggers.

I “heart” mommy bloggers and I hate mommy bloggers bumper stickers should be selling in equal amounts based on the informal survey. This is where my hypothesis fell apart. What I found as I researched the subject is that the field is indeed large, highly varied in its attitudes and its ideas of what it means to be a mommy blogger, and divided as to the larger importance of the movement and whether it will endure. From a strictly statistical standpoint, mommy blogging should grow as a trend. More women are coming online, and more are blogging. There are of course longtime mommy blogger stars, and new celebrities could come up through the ranks. (If, that is, coming up through the ranks is what they wish to do. Many are simply writing because they enjoy it, and because they enjoy connecting and sharing their experience with others.)

What do you think? Are you a mommy blogger and proud of it? Is it a noble movement, or a potentially demeaning gender classification that we have now outgrown? Please read the article, comment here, or otherwise let me know how you feel.

Many thanks to Kimber Schmahl, Mae Mason, Kristen Munson and Zoe Siskos, for their contributions to the article, and thanks to everyone else for all of the great responses to my questions.

Note: None of the mommy blogger detractors I contacted chose to be interviewed for attribution for the article. Take what you will from that.

* Al, don’t go all semantical on me. You can be an MS Word user, without being defined as an MS Word user, just as you can take your car to the car wash, without principally thinking of yourself as a car wash customer.

Tags: Kimberly Schmahl, Kristen Munson, Mae Mason, mommy blogging,, mommy bloggers, Zoe Siskos

A pinhole camera, also known as a camera obscura, has many uses. It may be used to indirectly view the sun to avoid harming the naked eye, or to help bring a distant object into focus. It is also an apt metaphor for the view we have through social media, not only of the world at large, but of the world of social media itself. By gazing through a pinhole of our own design, we look only at the output of a certain group of trusted friends, at a certain list of preferred blogs, at a certain set of daily news feeds. It is a narrow world of comfort, predictability and familiarity.

Both our self-constrained eyes and the pinhole camera limit our panorama. As Dirk J. Van Den Berg wrote in the online journal Image [&] Narrative,

“This involves the construction of imaginary fixations whose distorting effects are due to their cancer-like growth in the image domain and their relentless dissemination in visual culture. Such ideological fixations are typically images of ‘what goes without saying’ (Ri coeur 1986, cf Van den Berg 1993) — images that empower and disempower, images that conceal and reveal, images that identify and stereotype, images that blind people and that make people see, images that console and images that damn.”

As we peer through the tiny pinhole formed by our perceptions, our limitations, and our notions of “what goes without saying,” how much of the world’s potential to inform and amuse are we overlooking? Does the very nature of social media, its structure, its reliance on friends, and links and connections, doom us forever to see only a 65-degree view of the world?

Amidst the raging debate about curbside baggage checks, airline fees and restrictions against tipping sky caps, I jokingly asked Southwest Airlines on Twitter whether I would now have to pay the airline for the bags under my eyes. Here is their response:

This is exceptional, because it means that Southwest is actually staffing their Twitter account with live people, and they have the freedom to have a little fun. Go ahead and leave a comment about how awful airlines are at customer service, but since when have you been able not only to “talk” to an airline, but actually reach a real person with a sense of humor?

Tags: Southwest Airlines, Twitter, baggage

With apologies to Edward Tufte I offer two graphics that clearly illustrate what’s wrong with the PR industry, the first illustrating a May 10 post on the Newsvetter blog titled It’s Spring: Time for another round of PR ass kicking.

The post is on the dismal trend of self-important bloggers who “out” PR people for poorly crafted/targeted pitches. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and (like so many people) I have written about it often.

I am also fond of old style patent drawings for illustrating modern concepts, and created this graphic for a post I did a while ago titled Pimp slapping clueless PR folk.

My parents were so bothered by the phrase “pimp-slapping,” they asked me to publish a new post quickly to push the offending post down the page.