The video is embedded below. Please watch it and comment. I would love to continue the conversation that was started at #140conf.

For a good part of the beginning of the video, the camera guy didn’t realize I was on the panel, and I guess thought I was just the moderator. So he cut me out of the shot. But he figures it out half way through.

Just thought I would share this video with you all. It was put together by a group of people calling themselves THE SOCIETY FOR GEEK ADVANCEMENT

THE SOCIETY FOR GEEK ADVANCEMENT was founded upon the principles that we should all embrace our inner and outer geek and have fun while doing it. As individuals who love learning, innovating and believe in possibility as well as change, the second step of responsibility is to “be the geek that keeps on giving”. As a member of SGA, we work together as a global community to provide the tools and help others realize their true potential too!

“I AM A GEEK!” is a collaborative video project bringing together some of the biggest creators, personalities and web celebs taking on the online world.

“I AM A GEEK”, like all geeky side projects, started out as a tongue and cheek video we spent way too much time on and were going to simply throw out to the wild wild interwebs. But as more people came on board, the question of using “social media for social good” seemed to become more relevant. With Twitter and other social networking sites like Facebook blowing up by the second, it’s not only possible to get noticed and create “social capital”, but to use that for a greater good. Individuals now have the opportunity to be heard and bring awareness and attention to causes like they never had before.

After watching, “I AM A GEEK!”, we hope you are entertained, laugh a little or a lot.

We also encourage everyone to “be the geek that keeps on giving”. We’ve connected with a Room to Read, a great charity started by former Microsoft exec, John Wood, which builds libraries and schools for children in developing countries. You can give in many ways- by RT, blogging and passing on this Geek Advancement message to others, buying an “I AM A GEEK” t-shirt with proceeds going to Room to Read and/or by donating what you can now.

And if you would like to be a part of a user generated edition of this video there are instructions here

This post is directed at YOU my Facebook friends! Twitter is NOT the same as Facebook Status Updates!

Isn’t Twitter just like Facebook updates? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this misconception. I think this issue can be attributed to the Twitter homepage’s question “What are you doing?“ This was always the main purpose of Facebook updates, to let your friends now what you’re doing. While this may be an aspect of how people use twitter, it is a small one. Twitter is used for much more which isn’t exactly explained on the homepage.

Facebook has recently remodeled their homepage, making it very similar to Twitter in that users are encouraged to post links, share content and it asks the question “What’s on your mind?“ While some might say that NOW facebook updates and twitter updates are essentially the same, there are still a few very big differences. (note: I’m not saying one is better than the other, rather that they serve different purposes) Here are 5 of the major differences…

1) Focus

Facebook now offers many of the same functions that twitter does. The difference is that Twitter focuses on these functions while Facebook’s live feed is only one of it’s many functions. While this may make facebook a more “well rounded” service, the great amount of functionality options create a a lot of clutter on the site, taking focus away from the feed. When you’re on twitter, you’re there for one reason.

2) Audience

Perhaps the biggest difference between the two services is who reads your updates. On facebook, the only people reading your updates are the people that you are friends with, meaning you both approved the friendship. When you post a message on twitter you are talking to the world. Unless you keep your tweets private (an uncommon practice on twitter) anyone can search twitter and find your tweets. Additionally, the people who receive your tweets in their homepage feed are anyone who’s interested enough to follow you, whether or not you follow them back. This allows you to connect with anyone, not just who you already know.

3) Conversation

On the facebook feed, the conversation around an update comes in the form of comments that are listed under the update. This greatly limits the amount of conversation you can have because it does not encourage the person who posted the original update to partake in the conversation any further. Also, on twitter, if someone replies to an update, the conversation stays relevant because people continue to read about it. On facebook, once the original update moves down the feed, so does the conversation. Both facebook and twitter provide a private message option; facebook uses a direct messaging system and provides a private chat window while twitter only provides the direct message.

4) Retweets

Twitter makes it much easier for valuable content to go viral than facebook. Someone can always post the link again but this is not as easy, or effective as twitter’s retweet. To add on to the audience issue, when you post a link on facebook, only your friends can find it. On twitter if you post a link, anyone can find it and share it with their followers using retweets.

5) Searchability

You can search the content on twitter. If you’re looking for posted links or any other content, just go to search.twitter.com and search keywords. There is no way to search the facebook feed. You either have to just keep scrolling, or remember who posted the update and check their feed.

So…in conclusion

The facebook feed and twitter may seem very similar in concept, however they are very different in purpose. Still not convinced? Here’s a very general comparison…

Facebook is a great way to see what your friends are doing. Twitter is a great way to see what the world is doing (friends included).

I have decided to start making separate videos for my tumblr account and hopefully foster a community over there that is separate from my random sarah community. Maybe they will both end up being the same…we will see.

I am trying to focus on my different communities across the social web and embrace the fact that they are different. In the spirit of this, I have un-linked my twitter feed from my facebook status updates so that I can try to focus on the facebook community as something that is separate from my twitter community.

You may remember when What’s it all about first premiered. It was back in September during Web 2.0 week in NYC. The first episode we did was explaining twitter, and it got quite a bit of attention. I was surprised at how people responded to a show that I put together in my bedroom with my iMac, but the response was good. At one point the show was featured in iTunes “New and Notable” category.

It was very exciting. However I soon came to realize that I wanted to do more with the show and I did what I never should have done and that’s doubt myself. I realized that I couldn’t put out the kind of quality show all by myself, without funding, from my bedroom. (I probably could have if I really tried, but I doubted myself and I didn’t try) I only made two episodes of the show before I got discouraged with technical difficulties and no one to help me fix them.

So I started to look for a way to make the kind of show I wanted. Ambush TV came to my rescue! My friend Tim Kres-Spatz was starting Ambush TV with his friend Mark and I thought it was the perfect solution.

Ambush.tv creates original video content based on the passions of fresh faces from across the internet. We transform great ideas into high value, high definition productions of broadcast television quality.

Ambush TV has a studio space not to far from where I live, and they had the equipment to help give me great production quality for the show. I still needed some help with the techinical side of things. I wrote the show and hosted the show, but my editing skills were never that great (I was using iMovie) and I had a vision for the website for the show that I could not exicute on my own. So I brought in my friend Rob Blatt. He is an award winning producer and has been a podcast guy for years. Rob is now co-producing the show with me, he edits the show, and he did all the design on the blog. He took what I had in my head and helped make it real and for that I am very thankful!

The show is still in the developement stages but we want to develop it with all of you. We want to hear from you about what you would like us to cover on the show. We want your feedback, and anything you could do to tell people about the show would be greatly appreciated.

The other day I was watching that first episode and I realized that in September when originally launched the show I had less than 300 followers on twitter. (These days it’s close to 1,400) it made me realize how far I have already come and I have this great community to thank.

Well here is the first episode of the show for your viewing pleasure.

Mass media is probably what we all deal with the most. You read it, you watch it, you listen to it.

(via wikipedia)

Mass media is a term used to denote a section of the media specifically envisioned and designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. It was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation newspapers and magazines, although mass media (like books and manuscripts) were present centuries before the term became common. The term public media has a similar meaning: it is the sum of the public mass distributors of news and entertainment across media such as newspapers, television, radio, broadcasting, which may require union membership in some large markets such as Newspaper Guild, AFTRA, & text publishers. The concept of mass media is complicated in some internet media as now individuals have a means of potential exposure on a scale comparable to what was previously restricted to select group of mass media producers. These internet media may include:

• Blogs
• Message boards
• Personal web pages
• Podcasts
• Television
• Video hosting services

The communications audience has been viewed by some commentators as forming a mass society with special characteristics, notably atomization or lack of social connections, which render it especially susceptible to the influence of modern mass-media techniques such as advertising and propaganda. The term “MSM” or “mainstream media” has been widely used in the blogosphere in discussion of the mass media and media bias.

We all consume media in different ways. You may DVR a bunch of shows for the week and sit down for a nice long Sunday afternoon watching them all. You might constantly hit refresh on your favorite blog while sitting at a desk at your boring job.

We all have different media habits, but the ways in which we consume and even create different types of media make us all unique. A little more than a year ago if you asked me what was the first thing I did when I got online in the morning I wouldn’t have said, checked my email, I would have told you that I read my feed reader which, at the time, was full of only apple rumor sites. That was the most important type of media to me.

Many people think that consuming large amounts of media is a waist of time. I have heard many people say that throwing away their TV added hours of productivity to their day. But what do you do when it becomes part of your job to keep up with all this media? How do you keep up with it all?

Many of my close friends find it fascinating that I can go on and on about popular culture at it’s connections to mass media at the time. They wonder how I keep all this information in my head. Well that is easy:

#1 I am a Media Studies major, so while everyone else is taking chemistry, my professor’s would reference last weeks episode of the L word so it would benefit my grade to know what was going on.

#2 I make it my job to read tons of  technology, pop culture, and social media blogs every day. Why do I do this? Because that knowledge becomes valuable when I can make connections to why some things work and others failed. For the same reason that we study history (so that it won’t repeat itself) we all should keep a closer eye on the patterns in Media.

I decided to take a look at the tools I use to keep up with all the media that we all see every day. Inspired by a post by Chris Brogan who was inspired by John Jantsch I decided to write out my “social media system” Mine is a little more inclusive however to describe how I keep up with other forms of media as well.

The Workflow:

• Constantly – monitor twitter: I use tweetdeck when at home and Twittelator Pro on my iPhone. I also have certain people’s tweets as well as DM’s pushed straight to SMS. This helps me not to miss anything important. I use twitter favorites a lot to help me remember tweets that had links I wanted to check later or tweets I wanted to follow up on.
• Constantly – check email and respond: I’m one of those people who can’t leave unread message notifications bothering me on my phone. I need to check to see what it is.
• Constantly – monitor Tumblr (if I’m home): Tumblr is another thing that keeps me in the loop. A lot of the time I will see something on tumblr first. I’m a very visual person so I am much more likely to remember something if I see it in my tumblr dashboard than I am to click through a link on twitter.
• Twice daily – Go through Google reader: I try to skim in the morning while sharing and staring items that I want to read later on. In the afternoon or evening I will read it all in depth.
• Daily – Watch new podcasts: I subscribe to over 20 different podcasts, most of them aren’t daily but there are always new unwatched ones I need to catch up on.
• Daily – Write blog posts: While I may not post something new every day I am always working on something. Evernote helps me a lot with this. I can keep writing and bring in photos and different reference links.
• Less daily – Swing by Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn and check for new content and respond to messages.
• Less daily – watch new TV content
• Weekly – Read the Sunday Times Magazine, and the week in review.

In the background:

In order to watch as much video media as I do there are some very important tools I use. iTunes is how I manage all my podcast subscriptions. This way I can always catch up when I am away from my computer on my iPhone.

While I do have a DVR, sometimes it just isn’t enough. It can only record on two channels at once and on Monday nights that just doesn’t cut it. I use a great program for OS X called TVShows. TVShows is an application that automatically downloads torrent files for your favorite shows. Manage your subscriptions and preferences from within the TVShows application, and TVShows takes care of the rest: a background process is automatically launched at a regular interval to check for new episodes. This allows me to keep up with shows I watch regularly and watch them on my computer via Boxee anytime I want.

So that is how I keep up with all the media that I consume. What is your media flow? Write a post on your blog and post a link!

I wrote down in my book that I felt the same way about the social media world I had stepped into. I know that things I do today as part of my normal everyday life, will completely change the face of media forever. It is hard to see what affects this will have, but I know that it has an affect.

Today there was a story that College age kids make up less than 25% of Facebook. Last year 42% of facebook users were 18-24. It just goes to show that social media is always changing and the game will never stay the same. This made me realize that now more than ever, everything I do has the power to really change the future of media.

Some days I think I must be crazy to keep up with so many different social networks, and different blogging platforms. But at the end of the day, every single one of those communities is teaching me something. There are people with valuable knowledge everywhere and I always want to learn more. If a day goes by that I do not learn something new, that is a waste.

So here we are again — playing Nostradamus in media, technology, and pop culture — with 36 predictions for 2009:

1. Hatahs: 4chan digitally antagonizes an entire race of people into self-inflicted genocide.

2. Facebook: By the middle of summer, you realize that you’re logging into most websites via Facebook Connect. You get a creepy feeling in your gut about this, but it’s so damn convenient.

3. Politics: After a freak caribou attack injures Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Sarah Palin joins The View.

4. Newspapers: At least three major daily newspapers cease to exist. The most likely members of the carnage: the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

5. Yahoo: Fuck it, Lycos buys it.

6. Twitter I: Facebook finally buys Twitter, but only after a price war with Google ramps it up to a ridiculous nine-figure valuation. Unsurprisingly, this is Twitter’s big plan “to make money.”

7. Twitter II: But seriously, just like those stories in 2001 about people who [shock!] make a living off of blogs, the “Twitter professional” will somehow become a reality.

8. Twitter III: A major news event happens that no one live twitters. NYT writes three stories (Styles, Tech, and Media) about this phenomena, quickly dubbed “Twitter Shock.”

9. Starbucks: After trying everything else imaginable, they introduce a new “buffet” option, which is a surprise hit.

10. Daughter Moguls: In the most convoluted assassination plot ever devised, Christie Hefner, Shari Redstone, and Elisabeth Murdoch join forces to commit triple patricide. Vanity Fair dedicates three eInk covers to the incident, with heads that morph from father to daughter.

11. Magazines I: Some rich kid on the west coast launches a magazine called Charticles, which consists only of… yeah. Choire Sicha commits suicide in his St. Mark’s apartment by paper cutting himself to death with the debut issue.

12. Magazines II: Monocle raises its newsstand price to $1295.00.

13. Magazines III: Doy, of course Portfolio goes under. The final cover story is mysteriously about cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney.

14. Gossip Girl: In the Christmas ’09 episode, Chuck and Blair finally fuck again. The recession ends.

15. Subscriptions: Against all seeming rationality, several new online subscription publications show up on the scene.

16. Where The Wild Things Are: You know what? The movie actually does suck. Gen X icons Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers are pilloried by a millennials who claim old people just don’t get it. They’re kinda right.

17. New York Times: After Brian Stelter notices that David Carr has refriended Jayson Blair on Facebook, the New York Times asks Carr to take a drug test. Upon failing, he returns to Minneapolis to run City Pages, which ends up being the last remaining alt-weekly at Village Voice Media.

18. Online Video: Something’s gotta give. Two of the “big” three — Revision3, ON Networks, Next New Networks — cease to exist by the end of the year. And when 23/6 and Funny Or Die expire on the same day, Alley Insider’s headline is “Funny Or Dead In 24/7.” Normal people have no idea what any of these things are.

19. Terrestrial Video: Something’s gotta give. One of the “big” five is morphed into a cable outlet.

20. Daily Beast: Tina Brown uses her consulting role at HBO to pitch a reality series about her own website. No one thinks it will go into development, but then Aaron Sorkin and Mark Burnett sign on. Julia Allison and Arianna Huffington are super pissed.

21. Tina Fey: First woman knighted. Now Oprah’s pissed too.

22. Google: They do a lot of stuff that no one expects, but the surprise application of the year is some sort of mashup between three core Google products: Reader, Chrome, and Docs. Oh, and maybe Android, just to make this pshit sci-fi.

23. FriendFeed: Not only does your mom still has no fucking idea what it is, but your friends don’t either.

24. Publishing: 49 books are published that chronicle the end of publishing.

25. Music: Proving that fake stuff always wins, Lonely Island’s album debuts platinum — the only album to do so this year.

26. Lara Logan: Dueling February covers of Parenting and Playboy.

27. Gawker Media: Nick Denton predicts armageddon, using copious Excel graphs to elucidate his point.

28. Mad Men: After negotiations break down with AMC, a rumor floats that a movie is in the works. It is eventually released in 2012 on the same day as the Arrested Development movie.

29. Diablo Cody: Released in September, Jennifer’s Body becomes the first young adult movie since Heathers and Clueless that resonates with grown-ups. While you try very hard to think of a new reason to hate her, Diablo casts Sasha Grey in her next film. Backlash-to-the-backlash-to-the-backlash-to-the-backlash ensues.

30. Words: Webster’s Dictionary names undershare word of the year.

31. Online Media: Trying to take advantage of cheap labor, hundreds of “me too” small startup publications launch. They will call themselves “online magazines,” but they will be blogs.

32. Microsoft: They! Will! Suprise! You! (Actually, no they won’t. You hear this every year. Their online version of Office will be begrudgingly cool, but it will have one severe flaw that renders it unusable.)

33. Apple: After Biz Week’s “Is The Innovation Over?” story appears, Steve Jobs retires at the end of the year, surprisingly citing health reasons.

34. Education: 37 percent of the people you know go back to grad school.

35. Digg: It does not get bought and Kevin Rose does not go on a date with Jennifer Aniston. Every boy in the Valley weeps at a shared realization: their sense of worth is over-valued.

36. Rupert Murdoch: He dies in a freak yacht accident. Sumner Redstone, Padma Lakshmi, Barry Diller, David Geffen, Rachel Sklar, Hoobastank, and Shaquille O’Neill are also on board, but all survive. Foul play is suspected, and an investigation reminiscent of the board game Clue ensues. A rumor spreads that Murdoch’s cryogenically frozen brain is in an Anaheim basement next to Walt Disney’s frontal lobe and the Arc of the Covenant. Michael Wolff sells his next book, The Brain Eaters, for $10 million. 17 people buy it; 4 read it.

One of the plugins that I discovered is wp-greet box. It’s a great plugin for blogs that get a lot of random search or referrer traffic. The plugin will load a small message at the top of a post if someone has arrived on that post as the result of a link. But the plugin goes beyond that. It recognises where the traffic came from (google, stumbleupon, facebook, twitter, etc) and give the visitor a customized message based on that.

If the visitor is on your site because of a random google search (I get traffic like this a lot) It will let the visitor know that they can subscribe to your rss feed if they like what they see. But it also has the ability to display what they were searching for on google and show other posts on the site that they may be interested in.

I have my twitter updates feed into my facebook status. Because of this I get a lot of blog traffic from facebook when I tweet a link. This plugin will give your facebook friends the option to share the post they are viewing on facebook.

As many of my readers know, I love twitter! So you can imagine that I was happy when I saw that this plugin had twitter support. The message will let readers tweet a link to the post using TwiThis. The plugin also puts a link to follow me on twitter if perhaps you found the link through a re-tweet and you weren’t following me already.

Currently the following referrers are installed by default, but you can easily create your own if your favorite referrer is not on the list!

1. blinklist.com
2. blogmarks.com
3. del.icio.us
4. delicious.com
5. digg.com
6. diigo.com
7. facebook.com
8. flickr.com
9. furl.com
10. google.com
11. ma.gnolia.com
12. mister-wong.com
13. myspace.com
14. netvibes.com
15. newsvine.com
16. reddit.com
17. search.live.com
18. search.msn.com
19. search.yahoo.com
20. simpy.com
21. stumbleupon.com
22. technorati.com
23. twitter.com
24. youtube.com

One of my favorites is the new news feed. It allows you to see how many comments any certain post has, and let you add one right from the news feed. Another great feature in the news feed is the bar on the top. You slide your finger horizontally across the bar to switch the news feed you are viewing. It implements friend groups so you can only look at the news feed of people you want to see. It also lets you look at the news feed for certain facebook apps. The inbox has been updated, showing a much easier to read conversation. And as always there is facebook chat.