Cate Owen

March 2, 2013March 2, 2013

Best Tweets: February 2013

As we’ve been enjoying this glorious endless summer all February long, our tweets have provided a curious record of what we’ve been up to. Some pretty weird stuff, it turns out.

Please put down your coffee so you don’t spray it out your nose over your keyboard.

Amazing True Stories of Twitter
MsBeeton Googling ‘when blowing nose water bubbles out of eye’. Yeah that happened.
Pilot_Magazine Just casually sitting in a maserati with an ex Russian military intelligence officer on the way to a super yacht. True story.
davidfarrier day off. at the beach. a flower fell on my back and I screamed. look forward to what other terrors await.
CyrisXD Apparently this dude at the mall was just tying his shoe and did NOT want to play leap frog.. my bad dude.. my bad.
THE_VONK 11 is a lot of puppies to squirt out of one dog aye?
ghewgill rmi Do let us know if you start growing tentacles. Somebody from the internet will be by to take pictures.

Keep It Classy, NZ (this is what Twitter is for, amirite?)
BrightBlackNZ Just sassed a 14 y/o girl for making fun of a pregnant lady for being ‘fat.’ I said “I’d be nice if I was you. That’ll be you in a year.”
robertandjono I bet that 19 year old dude with 13 kids has named them all after cars and Eminem songs
Covlin Just walked FULLY into a pole while tweeting. Knocked completely over. Totally pretended like nothing happened. Now my head and penis hurt.
WayneHatesFruit The prostitute outside of Dick Smith’s said “mmm mmm mmm” to me. Oh yeah, I’ve still got it…
emmalouisejohn Thought I had terrible dark circles under my eyes this am. Turns out it was last night’s make up. Mixed emotions.
kirsty_johnston Drying my hair out the window on the motorway enroute to a press conference. All class
NessOldfield Young woman rocking her leopard print onsie. Go Te Atatu Peninsula. #HappyFriday

Crafting Tips to Prevent Embarrassment
natdudley Related: hold onto your ball of yarn when the flight is landing to prevent it rolling all the way down the aisle.

The Pope (if you had your filters on, you missed everything, sadly even people inviting you out for eggs benedict)
farmgeek So the retired Pope will live in the Vatican, neighbour to the new Pope. Best new sitcom premise ever?
@robtreacher “Former Pope” would be pretty cool to have on the old cv.

Valentine’s Day was Just Another Day
pinkdeedle My boyfriend text me. “happy valuations day”. Oh.
DanniiGardiner Some call it valentines day but I call it Thursday
RyanSproull Can’t believe no one’s endorsed me for “Long Walks on the Beach” on LinkedIn yet.

Jokes I Laughed At
NZCoroner #YOLO
guywilliamsguy “Farming confidence down” – Come on farmers you’re doing a great job! Those gumboots look great on you by the way!

And the winner of February’s Tweet of the Month is @CyrisXD for the leapfrog-gone-wrong story! Enjoy your cider, and you can follow them too @OldMoutCider

Thank you Cate for allowing me to be a guest editor – it’s been fun compiling this list. I hope you have all laughed a lot and now have new hilarious people to follow. love, @blendy

February 22, 2013February 22, 2013

In memory of where we’ve been: New Zealand’s #eqnz tweets

I wrote this two years ago, as the Tweets of the Month from the month of That Quake – and as posterous, where it was hosted, is closing down, I thought it should be kept.

February 2011: There’s something wonderful about the Kiwi spirit. We’re opinionated, bulshy, and have awesome senses of humour. And given the terrible events of the last week, that sense of humour has done us proud.

Here’s to you, New Zealand, you funny, amazing people.

nasstkVEVO I’d like to personally thank the U.S for sending 960 Portaloos to Christchurch. When things turn to shit, we know we can count on you
Tarquin_Death The bottle of ‘earthquake vodka’ is getting low. Almost time to open the earthquake rum! Not sure the earthquake is a good influence on me.
securitygalnz No power/water = no bathroom cleaning, washing, ironing, vacuuming, car cleaning or mowing lawns = silver lining to #eqnz
Kiwi05 Only in NZ would the mayor describe the broken sewage system as “seriously munted”
harvestbird The dogs assembled around me and the bush toilet at dawn, as if to say, we knew you’d join us out here one day.
richirvine Everyone, make sure you hug + kiss your partners and kids tonight. Not your flatmates though, that leads to dark places.
brianedwardsmed Just heard – from total stranger on Twitter – that my daughter and family are ok. He went round to her house for me . Kindness in bad times.
JohnJCampbell Dear Christchurch, and all who love that city, what can any of us say, except we’re carrying you in our hearts.
NZTopModelColin As always, be considerate of someone more vulnerable than yourself. Strength is multiplied when the burden is shared.
LitaNZ We are all family, no matter where we come from and our backgrounds. WE WILL get through this. WE WILL stand as a nation again!
nathanknz These shakes just keep coming. Every time I feel one I can’t help but think what it must be like for those amongst the rubble.

benkepes Hope. Pure and simple

This person (a complete stranger to me) responded to a tweet of mine. I was trying to locate the mother of a friend in the UK. She actually went round to his mum’s house and then tweeted me that she was fine. You can imagine the relief of her son after waiting over 24 hours and hearing nothing. Just awesome. – Marg

February 13, 2013February 13, 2013

Is bigger better when it comes to Facebook pages?

Are you a social media/community manager who struggles to determine what a “good” Facebook page metric is?

It seems that the only number people are really looking at is “likes” – as if that means something really important in this day and age of Facebook algorithms, reach and “people talking about this”. It’s essentially like looking at Twitter follower numbers, but not how many replies or RTs an account gets… And we all know likes can be bought.

I’d noticed a trend for a while – that despite Facebook page growing like numbers, the “talking about this” number didn’t really climb, and the percentage of fans talking about the brand dropped!

So I decided to investigate. Here’s my very unscientific method:

I picked a range of pages, mostly from NZ and Australia and a few from the US that:

had between 1,000 and 500,000 fans
had posted in the last week
were ‘official’ pages, not fan pages

and I cross-examined ‘likes’ with ‘people talking about this’. Here’s what I found:

Even as the number of fans grew, it was rare to see the “talking about this” figure go over 15,000. Here’s what the same data looks like when you change the scale:

It’s not that you’d expect a page of 500,000 fans to have 500,000 people talking about them – but why is it so low? Maybe if I had a bigger sample of pages sized 300-500k, I would have had more outliers.

Lets look at ‘talking about this’ as a percentage of fan numbers. I’d expect this to stay reasonably constant, but…

I know it’s difficult to infer from a small sample size, but maybe this is a trend – that when a page gets bigger than about 140,000 fans, engagement slips below 10%. I thought it might have something to do with people not wanting to have their say when a certain number of others are – the old “what’s the point of me saying something when 1,000 other people are”.

Is there are critical mass for Facebook conversations?

Some caveats:

n=200
Pages may have been running promotions and ad campaigns which skew the data
Also note, I looked at many more pages that had <200,000 fans – simply because there is more of them.
I am not a statistician and have not run any of this via a researcher. That doesn’t mean my data is bad: Just that I’m putting this out there as a thought starter.

</braindump>

February 11, 2013February 13, 2013

What is the Harlem Shake?

The Harlem Shake can’t be explained. It has to be seen, and hopefully, experienced.

Check out my picks for the best Harlem Shake videos below, and add yours to the comments!

The army edition

The office edition

The Portland edition

The UGA Swim and Dive team edition

The KSLA News edition

February 3, 2013February 8, 2013

Best Tweets: January 2013

Compiled by Vicky Rawhiti-Forbes

As it should be during summer holidays, we spent a great deal of the past month drinking. Then we went back to work and watched cat videos. One generous tweep shared extracts from her teenage diary, and we may never look at Oprah the same way again. Here are January’s tweets of the month.

Bottoms up
@BenQuigan I’m too drunk, too many waiheke
@nikkitheknitter I’m at the stage where it feels appropriate to finish other’s abandoned glasses of wine at the table. #weddingettiquite #quitedrunk
@AshleyCnz Shingle Peak says its new 500ml bottle is “perfect for two”. I think it’s misspelled one
@DanniiGardiner So I just woke up handcuffed to myself. What happened last night #hensnight
@annemjw Signs the person you are hanging with may have had A Night? Powerade-blue tongue.
@Robbo_Junior I’m having fruit salad for lunch. It’s mostly grapes. All grapes actually. Fermented grapes. Ok, I’m having wine for lunch.

Face, meet palm
@beanbiz Read the ‘rinse just before use’ label on the blueberries. After demolishing them all. Do I drink a glass of water to now to clean them?
@TroyRF Mum: “How do we cremate a frog?” Brother: “Do we put it on a toothpick?” Decision: Burial. #FrogRF
@RachelRayner Watching cat videos. Ad: Are you single? Meet men near you! Shut up, YouTube, stop judging my choices.
@TophHooperton Something huge with a lot of legs crawled across my bed and then Kaiser Soze disappeared before I could fight it. #hyperventilating
@pinkdeedle I just dried myself with a tea towel after a shower. Must do washing.
@CyrisXD Person is typing…Person is typing…Person is typing…Person is typing…Person is typing…Person: Hi.

Like a boss
@MeghanMutrie Slow clap to Oprah’s team for figuring out how to get men to openly watch Oprah.
@CateOwen Bought a bunch of those naff stick figure car decals and have been slowly adding to the neighbour’s collections. Only God can judge me.
@hamish_keith Someone knocked on the door and asked what did I think the “personal name of Gd was?” I suggested Fred and they went off in a huff
@EstherStephens_ Dear neighbours. If your shit music is loud enough for me to shazam and establish what bullshit you are listening to, IT’S TOO DAMN LOUD.
@kittenypentland Tomorrow I am going to go up to a bald man and ask him if his carpet matches his drapes. I suggest you do the same.

Kiwi as
@cathmarygeorge Sat next to some Americans at lunch who were quite disappointed that the kiwi burger at McDs here didn’t have actual kiwi in it
@JennySuo My mother on the NZ Police force: “They don’t even get to use guns! They run around with those tweezers instead!”
@kirsty_johnston You know, when the early settlers nicknamed Russell “the hell-hole of the Pacific” they’d obviously never envisaged Waitakere District Court

The diary of a teenaged tweep
@BoganetteNZ happened upon a diary from her teen years. We spent the evening glued to Twitter while she quoted gems from her journal and added comments from her older, wiser self.

“Mum told me to fuck off 2day. She is such a fucked whore of satan slut bitch cunt. I’m going to kill her, steal her pills and sell them”
Oh Jesus. “MY FUNERAL: play Dolphins Cry, bury me with my Marlborough lights, party at K Bar afterwards, red coffin please” LIVE? LIVE?
“I love Jax so much I can’t even breathe my lungs are made of water. Fuck my mum is a whore. I hope she dies.” Who the fuck is Jax?
“I am actually having the best week. Other than my mum being a fucking whore. I want to stab her every day”
“We are going to the beach today!! I got a new bikini I look ok. Better than that fucking whore Gemma. Also I got a kitten! So cute”
“I am so in love with David” Let me guess…David gets a hand job? I’m like Oprah. You get a handjob! And you get a handjob!

This month’s winner of some delicious cider is @BenQuigan. Thanks, Old Mout! Make sure to follow them: @OldMoutCider.

And thanks to Cate for putting her baby in my care this month. What a fun way to start the year!

Cate’s note: I hope you’ve all enjoyed Vicky’s sweet tweet choices, and thanks again for all your nominations – I couldn’t do this without all of you! I have enough guest editors to see us through to August, so I’ll put another call out in the middle of the year. If you’d like to be a guest ed, keep your eyes peeled for that.

January 26, 2013January 26, 2013

Sexism and [Social] Media

Why are so many women practitioners of social media in New Zealand, but so few willing to be the face of it at events and in the media?

Let me start by telling you a story about one of the last social media events I went to. It was a night where two men and a woman were sharing their thoughts on social media in New Zealand. It was the usual setup, with the audience encouraged to tweet their thoughts to the big screen via a hashtag.

The first speaker was nondescript – I don’t remember anything about his talk. The second was a fairly unusual looking guy, but all the feedback for him was around the points he was making. The third was a high-profile woman who was making many excellent points and offered the most insight of the three.

But the comments on the big screen were about her legs, and her knee-high boots – and they were coming from high-profile male social media personalities. In fact, one gentleman went so far as to comment about her good looks during question time, which the female speaker awkwardly laughed off.

Women aren’t featuring at New Zealand social media conferences

I looked at several large social media-themed conferences in New Zealand. 84% of all speakers and 90% of key note speakers were men. Women made up just 14% of “quickfire” sessions, and only 25% of panels.

Why?

Who knows! But there are a few of things at play: Are women being asked to participate? If they are, is the Imposter Syndrome, which is supposedly more likely to affect successful women, causing them to decline? Is the additional abuse women get when they represent the voice of authority stopping them from repeat performances?

Wait – what was that third one?

Are women more likely to be called names for putting themselves in the public space?

Claire Robinson is a professor of Communication Design and a political comms and marketing commentator in Wellington. She wrote an excellent post about sexism in media, and related her own story of being called names after appearing on TV, whereas the gentleman who appeared alongside her received very little vitriol.

“In the previous three elections I never received one piece of criticism. That changed in 2011, with the social media revolution,” she wrote. “During the election campaign I received and read what I considered unpleasant personal criticism in the social media.”

She lists the names she was called. It’s not pleasant. People attacked her personally, her job, even her children. A parody account was started on Twitter.

She goes on to write that, “I searched the internet at the time to see if fellow political scientist Jon Johannson was receiving similar personal attacks. Aside from the odd accusation of him being a lefty, there were none.”

I had my own experience of this. About a year ago, after appearing on the news to comment about social media and the election, I was called ugly, fat, a “self-proclaimed guru”, and someone tweeted something along the lines of “what would she know”. You learn pretty quickly to never search your own name on Twitter.

Once I sourced another social media person to speak on camera about a technology issue; A women who had recently moved to the country but who had a distinguished career overseas in the online space. The outrage poured on her by the Twitter community was astonishing. How dare this unknown women comment on NZ technology! Who did she think she was?!

And yet unknown men sometimes feature, and no one comments. Men appear in print, radio or TV, whose backgrounds in the social space are, in my opinion, chequered or unproven, and people don’t seem to question them, and certainly never comment on their looks.

When I mentioned I was writing this, Jacky Braid kindly pointed me to this article about Cambridge professor Mary Beard, which is worth a read.

So in a nutshell, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that women putting themselves in the public eye are more likely to get abused – is there any research?

The research is bleak.

There’s plenty of international studies out there, I don’t need to regurgitate them here.

In her post, Ms Robinson noted that Corin Higgs completed local research that found that on blogs, social media and other outlets, criticism of female pundits tended to be more personalised than criticism of male pundits.

I’ll end up quoting her entire article soon if I’m not careful. Please go and read it.

I am all for getting the best person, regardless of gender, into the media and at conferences to talk about social media, or any other area. But I do think there are issues around getting women connected to the conference creators and media producers, around dispelling myths about women’s opinions not being as valid as men’s, and dealing with all the nasty crap on social media that happens afterwards.

So leave me a comment, share your thoughts… Just don’t write this off because I’m a woman.

January 23, 2013January 23, 2013

Facebook’s Open Graph Search: A user’s first time

Today I got my Facebook account upgraded to include the new Open Graph Search – a function that allows you to use information which you and your friends have uploaded to Facebook, as well as info supplied by Bing, to find what you’re looking for.

This is what the start screen looks like:

The search starts refining as soon as you start typing.

And when you’re already on a page, it defaults to this view, basically allowing you to search the page, and dig a little deeper.

You can also put qualifiers directly into search – I asked Facebook to tell me TV shows my friends like, and this is the results display.

Clicking on that “other TV shows” link starts you down the rabbit warren.

Open Graph Search also groups activities such as location checkins, as demonstrated below.

This shows me where my friend Jesse has been lately. I can filter it down from here.

You can search groups of friends, too. Below is an example Facebook provided during its guided tour – here are some of my friends who went to the same university as me. I can then drill these down with filters.

Another nice function is the display of photos you’ve liked. Previously these would disappear into the ether, but Facebook now displays them for you. Not sure why I liked that Justin Timberlake photo. Don’t judge me.

Much ado has been made of the potential dating aspect to the new search. I started by looking for single friends of friends. Here are the options Facebook gave me:

And those can be drilled down to:

So if you wanted to see friends of friends, who worked where you do, in the same city, and single… you can.

In a nutshell, if you want to keep using search in the simple way you always have, you can. And if you want to get into some serious stalking, you can. I don’t doubt it’ll be confusing for some people, and we’re yet to work out any of the algorithm (How much do likes, or does Bing come into it, I wonder), but I think this could be very, very interesting.

It’s easy to use, and fast, too. I did notice, however, that a few pages that previously appeared first for me were appearing last, or not at all.

I think a lot of people will be shocked by the sheer volume of information Facebook has on it – but remember, it’s all stuff you’ve given it. I’m yet to work out whether Facebook uses implicit data to draw conclusions about things like hometown and marital status, but either way… Where to adjust your privacy settings.

January 10, 2013January 10, 2013

Celebrities read mean tweets about themselves

Twitter: Giving people a licence to be rude to strangers since 2006.

People often say “you shouldn’t be in the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat”, but hearing celebs read out the insults they get tweeted in the below videos highlight just how mental people can be.

And also how the celebrities are actually just human beings, with feelings and senses of humour. Mostly.

December 30, 2012

NZ in 2012: As told via Twitter

2012. It was a strange year. A year we, as a nation, ran out of Marmite. A year we watched people in lycra chuck stuff and run fast for shiny necklaces. A year where ANZ finally put the NBNZ horse to sleep. A year we rocked the classiness harder than ever before.

There was Valentines Day
ErinNoName I was just given a bottle of codeine and a box of tramadol. That’s a valentines day gift, right?

A road rule changed
robtreacher Starting Sunday, Kiwi motorists will be giving the finger to other turning traffic with the left hand and not the right.

Kim Dotcom happened
KimDotcom You heard of this guy who was nailed to a cross, came back from the dead & launched a cool movement? Mega is kinda like that 😉

We watched the Olympics together
rhysiedarby BBC commentary: “The NZ rowers are a little rough around the edges.” – yeah that’s how we like it. We’ll wait for you at the finish bro.
katie_skatie Oh, & Olympics Gods… thanks for making weightlifting terminology so fun. “In her snatch” is the best! Followed closely by the clean jerk!
TophHooperton THROW THE BALLS YOU BEAUTIFUL MASSIVE LADIES
snappy_nz New Zealand now top the medals per exploding barbecues at fan bases table.

#marmageddon hit!
evilkud As long as Hamilton exists their will never really be a lack of yeasty spreads in NZ

There was another Batman movie
Nightwyrm It’s okay that I’m not wearing pants while repeatedly watching the new Dark Knight Rise trailer, right? No-one on this train seems to mind.

Aaaand there was a Hobbit movie
kebabette The only way I could be more bored by The Hobbit is if it starred Kim Dotcom, Dan Carter, and a big jar of marmite.

The Shopping Channel launched
damianchristie The shopping channel reminds me of a game where you give someone a bunch of P then get them to talk about some crap they found in a drawer.

The Target guy fapped
VinLew Clean a stain, make a stain, clean a stain, make a stain
_victoriajayne_ Is he watching videos of girls staining carpets?
hello_im_megan After all is said and done, I was impressed by a man multi-tasking

We said goodbye to The National Bank
cjlambert quick other banks! *cue rolling thunder switch campaigns #blackhorsedown

Movember!
TwitOnTourNZ Planning My Movember Gala outfit… Question, How long does it take to grow eyebrows back?

Christmas happened, again.
And I did a whole post about it.

Bonus: The best of Stay Classy tweets
lmfbs Is a DIY brazilian a terrible idea, or simply a bad idea?
jessepeach Taught my parents to use Skype tonight. Then my dad tried to squeeze a pimple on my mother’s face. I really don’t think they get it.
pinkdeedle Accidentally pashed a dog. Long story. Bull mastiff.
JaneYee Superman may be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I can catch baby vomit with my bare hands.
JaredNeilsen Glade has ruined walking in parks! The smell of fresh cut flowers now reminds me of restrooms
mikokiko Hey snobby lady. Ohakune called. They want their carrot back.

Thanks for another year of awesome, Kiwis of Twitter.

Read more:

December 29, 2012December 29, 2012

FAQs about Tweets of the Month

Here are answers to some of the frequently asked questions I get about Tweets of the Month.

How do you pick who appears in TOTM?
Thoughout the month, I keep an eye out for tweets that are either really funny, or really poignant. People also nominate tweets they enjoy. I make sure they meet the criteria, cull it for size, and then publish. Sometimes I’ll ask guest editors to do it on my behalf.

What is the criteria for TOTM?
You need to be in NZ, or be a Kiwi abroad. Sometimes I’ll include infamous tweets about New Zealand. The other important note is that the tweet has to make sense outside of context – i.e. it doesn’t work to read an in-joke out of context a few weeks later.

The tweet also has to be ‘alive’ at the time of publish – if the author deletes the tweet, I won’t publish it.

How can I nominate someone?
The best way is to tweet me a link to the tweet you want to nominate. I prefer to not have the nominee cced in just in case the tweet doesn’t meet the criteria or make the cut. Failing that, you can send me the tweet. Thank you all so much for your nominations – even if I don’t use them all, I appreciate them all.

Can someone with a private account be nominated?
Yes. I’ll ask their permission before I publish the tweet.

Can I get a tweet removed from the list?
Yes. Just send me a message.

Do you only pick your friends?
People nominated include a mix of people I know, and people I don’t. I don’t care if I know the person or not, I don’t care if they’ve been in every single TOTM before. In a nutshell, if the tweet makes me laugh or think, and it meets the other criteria, it’ll probably be in there. I’ve followed some amazing new people thanks to other people’s nominations.

How long have you been doing this for?
Since 2009. You can read my first TOTM on the blog it started on.

How do you get the prizes?
Companies sometimes approach me, asking to partner on TOTM. I figured it would be nice to give a treat to someone, so that’s why y’all get some goodies. They have no say on the editorial content of TOTM.

Any more qs just hit me up in the comments.