Do you use the @mentions feature in your status updates? If you type @ and immediately start typing a name, Facebook will suggest friends. Click on one and the name is inserted as a link. The friend will be notified and more likely to notice. Until now, this only worked in your own status updates. It now works in comments on anything posted to a news stream.
Unfortunately, the @mentions feature does not work when updating status via the Graph API. Apparently it did at first, but app makers immediately used it to spam everyone with notices. Facebook yanked it. I would have preferred that they limited notifications similarly to how they limit how many news stream updates can go out in a certain time period.
In addition to mentioning people, you can also mention pages and apps. Many of the things you “like” in your profile have underlying pages. If you’re mentioning a band or a movie you enjoy, try using the @mentions feature to make it easy for readers to find out more.
As Josh rattled off several business-as-war metaphors, I thought of the work of Lloyd deMause at The Institute for Psychohistory. In particular, I reflected on the powerful metaphor of the Killer Woman who appears in popular culture prior to cultures launching into war. These metaphors are gels filtering the light of truth. You may be aware that something’s not quite right, but the mood is certainly colored.
In business, it feels natural to slip into aggressive language towards our competitors and our clients. Some of us slip easily into the role of crusader, sacking the infidels at all costs. If we’re lucky, someone hasn’t paid attention from the beginning. They stumble into the bad movie unfolding and ask everyone, “why are you watching this terrible shit?”
I recall a year where the company I worked for was on a wonderful run for a client flush with cash. We were expanding into new departments and ready to please. Christmas approached and managers were eager to dispose of budgets. A request came to build something like a hit piece on the client’s competitor. The idea rolled along for a while. Usually, the engineering team was the last to hear of projects, sometimes not until creative was finished. My team was were the latecomers wandering into a bad movie. To the credit of the entire team, we regretfully refused to sacrifice our integrity.
Josh says our habit of discussing business as war obscures the truth, makes us complete the mission without regard for the greater value. The new social metaphor aligns with human needs. People need relationships. They need to cooperate. We need to trust each other. We need to know our authentic selves. Without an aggressive metaphor to get in the way, we gravitate towards this type of interaction.
"Making the world more open and connected"
I heard Mark Zuckerberg say the purpose of Facebook is to encourage greater connectedness and openness between everyone. This isn’t a strategy for ending war metaphors. It’s a strategy for ending war. I heard Stefan Molyneux say that the way we end violence is through multi-generational improvement of parenting. This is the corollary to deMause’s theory that war is a symptom of child abuse.
I knew I had to write this piece when an unsolicited ad for Guy Kawasaki‘s new book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, dropped into my inbox. He says his book “explains how to create delightful, voluntary, and mutually-beneficial relationships with people.” Ten years ago, Guy released a book called Rules For Revolutionaries.
Metaphors matter. The leading edge of our culture is using more life-affirming metaphors. I won’t ask you to execute the old metaphors. Release them. Free them to help us in other ways. Embrace the new metaphors. This is how we change the world.
Back in September of last year, I decided I was spending entirely too much time doing things I wasn’t enjoying — commuting for an hour to Berkeley via BART to spend equal parts of my time
doing project management on tragically underfunded projects,
participating in marathon executive meetings, and
digging around a decade-old PHP/Oracle/ActionScript/Perl codebase that preferred to speak XML/XSLT to itself.
What was I doing? What should I be doing? How could I do it?
The following questions nagged at me. What was I doing? What should I be doing? And most importantly, how could I do it?
I also asked several of my close friends if they had work for me. Actually, I put it this way: find me a couple of months of work and I’ll quit my job. Two of the responded simultaneously; I suddenly had two full time gigs starting immediately. Oh boy, was I busy in Q4 2010. And one of those gigs kept going for the first two months of this year. It’s been thrilling.
Meanwhile, I took the advice of another friend to form a corporation (18INT) and build a real business. Why not? I’ve been doing the Internet consulting thing since 1997. Five years ago, I’d made it my aim to understand the operational part of the business. Having earned something like an MBA of hard knocks, I was ready to start something new.
The past five months have been relatively easy if I don’t think too hard about the intense weeks in November when I was working 10 hour days seven days a week. Now that the Facebook game I’ve been helping with is close to launch, I face perhaps my greatest challenge: signing the next big project.
This is a big challenge in a personal sense only. I’ve worked with plenty of people with a talent for selling. My personal style was to overachieve relentlessly and wait for people to ask me to work on something. I’ve learned that proactively asking how I can help works well, too. I just need to find the right part of me that delivers this request in a genuine and non-self-conscious way.
With less work in March than I prefer, I’m poised to ramp up my new business development skills. I hung out at GDC for half a day last week. I’ll be at Web 2.0 in a few weeks and at ad:tech after that. And I’ll continue to reconnect with my favorite colleagues of the past. Lastly, I hope to find the time to be more diligent in talking about what’s going on with me.
My goal is to sign enough work in 2011 that I must hire one or two full time employees. I know there’s more than enough work out there. So, how can I help you?
The main premise of this book is that in North America, we and our kids are suffering from a lack of attachment between each other. We push our kids away from us to attach with their peers. Unfortunately, other kids are not healthy resources for kids to reach maturity. The authors compare parent attachment to peer attachment. They show how when kids attach to each other, they are in a constant state of insecurity which makes it hard for them to learn and grow.
The book spends a great deal of time up front in making the case for attachment. It demonstrates how lack of attachment leads to problems for parents and children we seem to be hearing more about. Many of the ideas in this book jive with what I’ve learned over the years about psychology, so it read as a bit too verbose to me. For anyone new to these ideas, the book probably covers the ground well.
The techniques offered to foster attachment with your kids are general and seem fairly simple. I appreciated how the authors stated clearly that you should never rely on a book, even this one, as a cookbook. They offer principles and leave it to the parent to apply the principles appropriately.
Generally, the advice of the book is for parents to “collect” their children after any absence, including being at school or even being asleep. They suggest four steps. First, get into the child’s space. That just mean being physically close, although I can hardly resist wrapping my arms around my kids if I sit next to them. Second, offer something for the child to hold on to.This can be something such as a kind observation. Demonstrate your awareness of the child and he can hold onto that knowledge. Third, invite dependence. Said another way, this means offering help. Fourth, act as a compass point. That is, be an anchor your child can use to understand where they are and where they should be.
For example, suppose your child is camped out on the couch, hypnotized by the TV. You may sit down next to him and put your arm around him. You then say something like, “you’re really into this show about Egypt. Perhaps we can visit the ancient history museum this weekend. Anyway, mom said dinner would be ready soon. We’ll have to turn off the TV.” Compare this to yelling from the kitchen the moment dinner is on the table.
I have been trying to keep the ideas of the book in mind as I interact with my sons the past two weeks. It’s been easier during this time without work as a distraction. I am always striving to be a better father, so I hope to keep up the momentum. I recommend this book to any parent, even if you feel your relationship with your child is perfect. The principles in this book apply to anyone who cares for children, such as teachers. The path to a more peaceful world requires more kindness and understanding of children. This book helps point the way to a better world.
Handwritten cards? So last century. Photo cards ordered and sent from Shutterfly? So last decade. E-cards? Not good enough. This year I decided to create a big project for myself and it turned out pretty weird. Good and weird and funny (I hope).
, dropped into my inbox. He says his book “explains how to create delightful, voluntary, and mutually-beneficial relationships with people.” Ten years ago, Guy released a book called 
