Created By: MBA Online

Yes, it really has been that long.

January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs had 3 big pieces of news. The first was nice. The third was decent. The second changed the world forever.

Skip to the 1:45 mark in the video below to see the world getting rocked.

For most people and most pictures, sharing it on Facebook or Twitter is enough. It may be a quick snapshot of you and your friends out on the town or a cool sunset from a mountaintop and sharing it with our friends and family is enough. Other times, we’re able to capture something amazing, stunning, hilarious, or otherwise important enough to want to expose it to the rest of the world.

With those, we want to go viral. Here’s a (relatively) quick way to maximize the exposure of your perfectly-timed, once-in-a-lifetime shot.

To do this, you’ll need to be on several different social networks. It may seem like a large list but once you’re signed up the actual posting of this and future pics is a breeze.

You’ll need accounts here:

• Chime
• Pinterest
• Tumblr
• Buzzfeed
• Digg
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• Facebook
• Twitter

Wow! That’s a lot, right? Not really. If you’re into social media at all these are all sites that you should be frequenting monthly, weekly, or even daily. They’re the only social sites you’ll need if you’re into photography, laughs, tech, offbeat, or just about anything else.

There are some notable exclusions, here, for those who have been in social photo sharing for a while. Flickr comes to mind as the first place that many people think of when wanting to share images, but there are challenges. First, it breaks frames, an announcing on sites like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon where sharing is often done from with a toolbar. The results for those who click on a Flickr link is that it will not display the image but rather an obnoxious message telling you they don’t support frames.

Okay, once you have your accounts created, it’s time to start exposing it to the world.

My Unfortunate Choice of Pictures

As fate would have it, I’m not in a position to go take an amazing picture (it’s 2am right now) and this is the only thing on my camera with even a remote chance of going viral. It’s a picture I took while at the mall with my family and the sign struck me as being funny because of the wording of the message. In retrospect, it wasn’t that funny, but it’s the best I’ve got right now.

No matter – I love a challenge. If I can make this particular image go viral, your masterful piece of photography should be able to use the same techniques to spread around the world.

Once you have it on your computer, it’s time to get to work…

Chime It

Our first destination is Chime.in. The social network that was formerly Mixx before being grabbed up (and dramatically improved) by Uber Media hit the scene last year and is making a big splash. It’s the place we start for several reasons:

• It resizes large pictures for you automatically. in the world of sharing pics, it’s great to have a 10mb 2500px-wide image from your iPhone, but it’s hard to share. Uploading to Chime reduces the size to make it manageable and sharable.
• You can easily upload multiple images into a single gallery. Be sure that the primary image you want visible is the one that is uploaded last.
• The domain does well on the social sharing sites (discussed below).
• Unlike many of the photo sites, it allows you to write long descriptions with line breaks and links.

Again, I’m working with a challenging image to make viral, so I chose a headline that I thought would draw attention. It’s borderline offensive (the concept of eating kids is, well, sick and takes a depraved mind to think of it) but hopefully won’t be so bad that people won’t get the joke.

Be sure to use descriptive tags; you can post up to 7.

Pin It

Once you have it on Chime, use your “Pin It” bookmarklet to pin the image to a Pinterest board.

Don’t upload the original image. Using the bookmarklet will allow you to grab the image directly from your Chime. This links it back to the original Chime while making a separate instance of the image available on Pinterest.

The site is growing just like Chime and is getting plenty of positive press, so getting started early on these two sites will give you geek cred – like a hipster, you were on Chime and Pinterest before they went mainstream.

Pinterest does not allow you to title images per se, but you’ll be able to put in a short description. Unlike Chime, Pinterest does not do long descriptions very well and does not allow line breaks or links, so you’ll want to keep it short.

Tumbl It

Tumblr is a hybrid of many social functions. It’s decent for blogging, good for microblogging, and great for sharing image and videos.

It’s a bit more complicated than Chime or Pinterest, but it’s much bigger as well and gives you a nice venue for more than just pictures if you choose to use it or such things.

If you aren’t already on Tumblr, you can skip this step if you don’t want to invest the time into personalizing your blog with a theme, URL, etc.

As with Chime, tags are extremely important on Tumblr. Without them or a lot of followers, you won’t get natural views of your image. Don’t forget to set your click-thru link to either your Pin or your Chime.

Buzz It

Buzzfeed is one of the best-operated social networks out there right now from a sheer business perspective. They are aggressive and have a very clear understanding of how to drive traffic to their own site, reward their users, and get advertising dollars in ways that Twitter and others have failed at thus far. If they were as large as Facebook, they’d be making as much money as Google.

Unfortunately for you, it can be challenging to get to the front page. If you aren’t on the front page, you’re not going to get views from Buzzfeed itself which is why quality of content and promotion of your image is extremely important.

The good news is that Buzzfeed does very well on the social sharing sites, so even if you don’t make the front page of Buzzfeed initially, you’ll still be able to get visitors to it through the other networks, particularly StumbleUpon.

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Something blew my mind last night. I was discussing a product launch strategy with a friend at a local Starbucks when I said, “Sometimes, you just have to go Leeroy Jenkins-style and charge into the room.”

He was bewildered. Despite the crowded coffee shop, I let out a hearty, “You know, Leeeeeroooooooooooooooooooooooy Jenkins!”

He averted his eyes and pretended like I hadn’t just drawn the attention of the entire crowded room onto our table. Thankfully, a 20something barista saved me by replying, “At least I have chicken!”

As I scanned the room, I realized something. Most had no idea what the barista and I were quoting. I turned my friend’s computer around on the table and quickly called up the video below. A couple of people came over to hear and see the explanatory video. At the 1:28 mark, the 4 or 5 of us watching erupted in laughter, drawing more people to the table. We replayed the video with the same results, only amplified.

It earned me a free refill of my 5-shot espresso over ice.

For those who have never experienced the combination of “World of Warcraft is serious business” and the Leroy Jenkins technique, here’s the video that has over 30 million views when all of the variations are combined. If you have seen it, consider this a time to reminisce.

Now that you’ve seen it, what can we learn from it? Two things pop out as important. First, there’s always a risk with jumping in head first and not knowing what’s on the other side. Planning can go a long way but there are wildcard factors that can arise. Don’t let them sink your plan.

Second, there are times when you just have to be aggressive and apply the Leeroy Jenkins technique. Fear can lead to inaction and missed opportunities. Just because you may have been burned in the past trying an aggressive technique doesn’t mean that you should let it go altogether.

This video was staged. I’m sorry to burst any bubbles, but that doesn’t change the hilarity of it nor the underlying messages.

What would it take for you to be a Leeroy Jenkins?

The Internet is the greatest collection of knowledge in human history, but if an alien were to download it he’d think we were still experimenting with how to breed. And getting it fantastically wrong a lot of the time. The Library of Alexandria was not stuffed with naked bodies in improbable combinations, but it also wasn’t open to everyone.

You had to be well enough off to have time to read instead of earning food. For the first time in history we can now educate while earning a living, and online associate degrees are a huge step in that.

Imagine logging on to education instead of funny pictures of cats. Or even better, logging on to classes AND videos of cuddly Maru. (Look him up if you don’t know him. You’ll thank us. Claim it’s a study break.) But instead of improving themselves, millions of people waste billions of man-hours on endlessly clicking ‘refresh’ on the same few sites. So we got to thinking: what if those sites offered online associate degrees?

Facebook

An online associates degree in Facebook would be closest to a real-world MBA: a relentless obsession with networking which approaches new contacts more like a hungry shark than a friendly person. The Facebook graduate doesn’t need to be doing something, but desperately needs to be seen doing things which leads to feverish activity.

Unfortunately at least three-quarters of every effort is wasted on making sure that the task is documented, tagged, commented, liked, and submitted to every group and network in existence.

LinkedIn

This is the MBA Facebook from above, so adding an online associate degree would be a dangerous mix of incredibly business-based dedication and social networking. Entering “LinkedIn” in LinkedIn’s own education history risks creating a recursive feedback loop of being far too online, and could end up creating the Matrix.

Twitter

If Facebook is the MBA, Twitter is the Social Media Networking Guru. Except the first thing they’ll teach you in any good online associates degree is not to call yourself a guru. They can teach that with a baseball bat if they want because it’s very important.

The combination of ultrafast super-short sentences with an entire degree program might sound challenging, but that’s what an online associate degree is all about: getting good at something you can then do whenever you want. This should be a job, and that’s a good thing.

MySpace

An online associate degree in MySpace would translate to some real world liberal arts, like the feminist reinterpretation of medieval pottery.

Technically you can claim it’s a real field and it is possible to spend lots of time on it, but you’re really just avoiding work and then – when you try to get a job – you’ll find your ill-chosen degree is far too good at helping you avoid any kind of employment. But such mistakes aren’t terminal. You can always get an online associates degree to upgrade your skill set with something more relevant.

Google Reader

Not everyone uses Google Reader, but for those that do it’s less a website than a lodestone. The place you start, and return to in order to recharge yourself with all the wisdom of the Earth. Collecting all your regularly used sites in one Reader saves an enormous amount of time, because you no longer have to check if they’ve updated.

They’re on a computer, it should do the extra work to tell you, and that’s exactly what Reader is for. And picking and choosing exactly what you want to learn and doing so as quickly as possible is exactly what you should be doing with your life. Learning never has to end, and with modern technology it’s easier than ever to add to your skills – even at home, or on the bus, or in any office you might be working in if other staff aren’t so attentive or you can angle your monitor away from them. Unfortunately, Google Reader is being phased out.

Censorship.

It has been a dirty word in American society since the birth of the country. Every few decades it pops up again as a politician here or corporate entity there tries to fight the various freedoms upon which the country was built.

Today, old targets of censorship are relatively safe. Books, television, newspaper, radio, and other forms of traditional media have been able to survive different variations of censorship. The internet, however, is being threatened in a major way by the Stop Online Piracy Act.

First, here’s a great video from last month that illustrates what the act represents to Americans and the world:

The online efforts against the act have been strong. Everyone from 4chan to Tumblr, from Facebook to Google have demonstrated strong opposition to SOPA, but the pressure cannot end there. There is a ton of money in the form of campaign contributions being used to sway votes. Washington must be made completely and utterly aware of the opposition of the people.

This post will be a “living” post. We will monitor social signals for completions to the sentence, “We Must #StopSOPA Because ____________.” We will post the results here and blast the results to congress in ways that will compel them to read what the people really think about SOPA.

Comment. Tweet. Share. Washington must be told.

Reactions from the Web

• How SOPA would affect you
• Cautious Optimism Follows SOPA Hearings: Don’t Get Cocky
• SOPA Act harms Internet freedoms
• SOPA’s ugly message to the world about America and internet Innovation
• Congress, SOPA, and special interests: following the money trail
• OpenDNS: SOPA will be ‘extremely disruptive’ to the Internet

Video Reactions

Infographic

Some of us need Wuphf. With so many ways through which to communicate, it can be challenging to get the right message to the right person without having to go through several different methods. It was part of a joke on an episode of The Office last year, but there’s real merit in the concept.

In essence, sending a “Wuphf” will contact people in every venue they use. One wuphf would call them, send them a fax, hit them on Facebook message, Tweet at them, and any of a dozen other methods of communication all at once. Here’s the “pitch”:

There are plenty of posting services out there, but there are reasons that Wuphf could actually be useful:

• Busy people who must be contacted through many different methods could benefit from a consolidated messaging system.
• Bored people could annoy the heck out of their friends (or enemies).
• Those who are forever alone could feel important  based upon a single communication.
• It’s The Office. It has to work.

Investors, if you’re interested, The Office still has the page up. Sign up now and make billions by February:

It’s a feeble argument, I know, but whenever there’s an opportunity to invoke a reference from The Office, it’s go-time.

In the past, emergency outages at Reddit have been caused by an overload of comments. When astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson hit Reddit yesterday with “I am Neil deGrasse Tyson — AMA“, the community responded. During the subsequent slow period on Reddit early this morning, the site went into emergency maintenance mode for over an hour. Coincidence?

On Reddit, the r/IAmA subreddit is designed for people to say who they are or what they do followed by the acronym AMA (ask me anything). It draws a wide range of people from movie stars (Zach Braff, Bruce Campbell) to Jeopardy! champions (Ken Jennings) and often makes for the most informative and engaging comment threads on the website.

When Tyson hit the subreddit and announced it with a Tweet, the flood of questions and answers began.

It is rare to see any Reddit, even an IAmA, get over 10,000 comments. If it was the reason behind the outage, Reddit had better get ready – Tyson recommended that he should do a monthly AMA. If they aren’t ready, we may get to see a monthly screen like this:

Here’s the top question and answer:

No matter what social media platform you use, there is one mistake you can make that will make you disappear fast than you can click your mouse, and chances are you are making it.  In a word, that mistake is self-indulgence.

Most users of any social media platform are kind of like content factories, just churning out posts, tweets, pictures, videos, links, and updates and shipping them out to everyone on their friend and follower lists.  Whether Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, or any other platform, these users will be disconnected from the network and will never be truly integrated into it until they learn a fundamental truth about social media: it’s about being social.

While this might sound like a glib insight masquerading as a profound one, many users don’t think about the implications of the phrase “social network” and are disappointed when their content is ignored.

Social networks operate on the same principle that live networks do: interactivity.  If you have a friend in real life who does nothing but ramble on about his or her accomplishments, problems, or anything else without letting you have a word, you probably will avoid that person when you can.  The same is true online.  Just because your communication online seems one-way doesn’t mean that it is.

It takes work to approximate the immediate interactivity of face-to-face exchange, but it is possible—and not only possible, it is necessary.  The idea is simple: if you want people to pay attention to you, you have to pay attention to them.  Constantly unloading content at an audience alienates them and cheapens the interaction.  You might as well be talking to a wall.

People won’t care about you and your original content unless they feel like you care about them and theirs.  This is a fact.  (Unless your target audience is bots; in which case, do whatever you want.)  The question, then, is how to go about interacting.

The answer is simple enough: Pay attention to your network the way you would want them to pay attention to yours.  If you aren’t getting enough views or comments on your page, blog, site, or enough followers of your Twitter account, it’s probably because you aren’t viewing and commenting on other people’s pages, aren’t following other tweeters, and generally aren’t keeping up your end of the deal.

It doesn’t take much to be seen as a presence online—making a few specific comments in many cases is enough.  But if you don’t make at least some effort, you’ll watch as your popularity shrinks.  It’s all about the Golden Rule: do unto others … well, you know the rest.

It will be interesting to watch how the world reacts to the killing of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. We’ll be compiling the updates and posting them shortly. Here’s the news reported from several sources:

According to Mail & Guardian, he was captured at dawn Thursday while fleeing in a convoy which Nato warplanes attacked. A Libyan government fighter told Reuters that Gaddafi was found fleeing from where he was “hiding in a hole” in Sirte, shouting “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.”

He was initially wounded and captured and later died of those wounds, according to Reuters.

“Provisional government officials in Libya say former leader Moammar Gadhafi has died after being wounded as he tried to flee from the town of Sirte,” said Voice of America. “The reports have not been independently confirmed.”

National Transitional Council is firm on their assertion that he has died.

“He was also hit in his head,” said National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid Mlegta. “There was a lot of firing against his group and he died.”

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