You may recall my rant about character blogs done poorly. If you don’t the quick recap is that it’s hard to have an effective “character blog” (a blog created around a fictional character) when the blog has constant reminders that this character is completely fictional. TV show characters live in a world that’s not hosted on CBS.com, for instance.
Since that post I’ve been on the lookout for a great character blog and Web sites that I could share as an example of how to do it right. I found two great support efforts for this season’s hit show “Heroes”, and both focus on lesser discussed aspects of show.
Of the two, my significant favorite is the VotePetrelli.com site. This site literally could have been created for any candidate running for office this year. (Which is a sad reflection on Web sites for political candidates, but I digress)
Let’s see how this site stacks up against my Rules for Character Blogs & Sites:
The second site focuses on the fictional Yamagato Fellowship but isn’t as tight. Sadly there’s far too many “coming soon” references in the content for this to be considered great, but it’s certainly a solid effort.
Great work, NBC!
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Continuing our May theme of Transparency, Clue Unit episode 14 has been released!
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Episode 14, about 30 minutes.
Today’s Topic: Non-traditional Discussion of Transparency
With Jake McKee, Lee LeFever and Christopher Carfi. As always full show notes are available at www.clueunit.com.
We’ve also created a Twitter account to make it easier to keep up with the podcast. Check us out at: twitter.com/clueunit
(Originally posted on the Big in Japan blog)
For a while, I’ve struggled to find an explanation for the reason I was using Twitter, even in the very minor way I was. It seems like everyone that I talked to about it said: "I don’t know what the point is", yet they were using it somewhat regularly.
I never got excited about the "what are you doing right now" model of posting (or reading for that matter). I don’t care where people are eating breakfast or what they’re having. But I do care about what they’re thinking right now. Or perhaps more specifically, I care what people I know are thinking right now. Some random guy from India? Unknown girl from Buffalo? No context, no interest.
But in the last couple of weeks, my wife and a group of our friends all signed up at once. Nearly overnight there was a group of people who I was very interested in having tell me what’s going on in their lives and what they think about it. I’m now following Twitter daily, if not hourly.
It’s more and more clear to me that social projects tend to fall into two areas:
This may seem a bit obvious or simplistic, but imagine how much better most social tools would be if they chose between these two to begin with. Too many tools try to serve both purposes as a first priority and simply get confusing.
(In related discussion, check out Jeremiah Owyang’s Jennifer Jones’ interview with the Twitter CEO)
Jake McKee is the Chief Strategy Officer and Ant Wrangler at Ant's Eye View, a customer experience strategy practice focused on helping clients escalate their customer experience. With a rich background in customer collaboration, online communities, and fan groups, and Web development, community management, and product development, Jake helps organizations understand how to act like groups of people, rather than soulless money making machines.
