Yesterday, Facebook was at it again. Talking about privacy settings.

There was a lot of buzz and I wanted to catch some of it promote Hailey Hacks Privacy Settings. I wanted to find a way to use the buzz to drive some more hits to the video.

My majorest stumbling block was that I am here in Niagara-on-the-Lake helping to run a crossplatform training lab. We were just hitting the most intense part of the program as the Facebook privacy news hit so it was hard to find time to work the social media.

I came up with an alternate plan: email my community and ask them to help by using status updates, tweets and comments to the Facebook blog video which was in the newsfeed to draw people’s attention to the video.

I sent out an email asking people to come up with funny status updates etc that said why they were sticking with Hailey’s suggested privacy settings instead of following the ones that Facebook is now suggesting.

I have many good and supportive friends. Here are some of the resulting tweets and updates.

I love that my community came through for me, but when I looked at the initiative I’d started, I realized it felt way too much like advertising.

Meanwhile, Illia responded to my call for support by sending me a bunch of images of funny and embarrassing things people have said on Facebook. If you set up your account the way Facebook is now suggesting all these kinds of gaffs won’t be visible just within Facebook’s walled community (where at least they disappear fairly quickly off the front page) but will be findable through Google. Not that’s entertainment!

So I quickly (well not so quickly, it took me till about midnight last night to do it), I crafted a blog post that included those images. It ended with

Do yourself a favour, keep your life off Google. Set your privacy settings the way Hailey suggests in the video below and when the transition tool comes out? Stick to your old settings!

Followed by an embed of Hailey Hacks Facebook Settings:

The results? A spike in views. But not thousands of people by any means and complete failure to achieve viral.

Conclusion: more work -- a lot more work -- is required to get the view count up. It’s important from here on in to get the word out beyond my own community. I need advocates with big communities of their own, communities who include parents of tweens and people who teach them.

I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Tweet #treat.

Tweet #trick.

...wait and then more zombies populate your home page.

Today's Google logo:

Click on it:

Click again:

And again:

One more time:

Judy Shapiro has a brilliant article on monetizing the web on Ad Age Digital.

She starts by talking about some the problems with the ad-supported model that many of us hope will work as well with digital as it has with television. Shapiro points out that the digital space is unlike any other media channel:

[The internet] disrupted the basic laws of supply and demand. Before the web, content was a tightly controlled and distributed commodity -- a limited amount of content was distributed through highly controlled and limited channels. This was the ultimate "push" model.

The internet was the game changer because it is one big "pull" engine -- users pulling what they wanted, when they wanted it: services, connectivity and, yes, content. The tight control the media industry had on content was gone forever. Users could access content from a wider variety of sources and anyone could create content and distribute it at will.

This massive change has hit a lot of industries hard, particularly music and print. Now it's catching up with the film and tv industry. To survive we're going to have to figure out how to monetize and that, according to Shapiro requires a shift in thinking. Push is over, pull is the new black.

She believes that content creates community and community is what you can monetize.

This is the magic moment when content can begin to drive revenue because once you have the audience -- thanks to your content -- you have the mechanism to create compelling community experiences. The benefit of a community is that this shifts users' loyalty from just your content, available in lots of online places, to your site because of the community. The revenue possibilities expand as your community creates the all-important "sticky" user experience.

Successful communities utilize all the new social-networking tools and technology to create vibrant user interactions. They introduce technology that lets members engage in real time with each other, they permit many forms of self-broadcasting and publishing, and they provide a platform for members to connect around a shared passion or issue.

Ignite passion in your community and the content monetization engine begins to stir.

Once you have a community, you can offer services and products and maybe see some increased ad revenues. Sounds a little like kids tv, doesn't it? Essentially you give away the series in order to sell the toys and lunch boxes. Shapiro's examples are TechCrunch, Huffington Post and Mashable.

Great piece. Worth the read.

Taking a look at the You Tube videos devoted to Rosh Hashana gives you a great example of how communities use the social media. These videos get passed around a tremendous amount. You'll see many of them in the Facebook newsfeed today and probably on Twitter as well. These are just a few of the many many videos being passed around this weekend.

The power went out for a sizeable chunk of downtown Toronto around ten pm last night. Eighteen hours later it still isn't back on and Twitter has been all a-Twitter about the event. Everyone's tweeting and retweeting the latest hyper local news about which block is still dark, who's offering a place to warm up and free wifi and which bus routes are slowest. All the conventional news gathering organizations have turned up to monitor the conversation.

I think the steady stream of tweets are in part due to the poetry of the hashtag that @ryankuder coined last night: #darkto. It's succinct and easy to type, even if your fingers are numb. It's got its comedy "K" to lighten the mood and the abbreviated "to" that makes it familiar and inside. But best of all is the choice of "dark" -- not "blackout" or "cold". It comes at the event from an oblique angle. You had to be there to get what it means.

@ryankuder joked in his twitter feed that he was opening a microblog tagging consultancy. In all seriousness, I think the perfection of #darkto is part of its success. It is so poetic that Twitters couldn't wait jump in and use it. Once the tag brought everyone's stream together the discussion became a torrent of tweets that has lasted many hours with no sign of tailing off yet.

This is the best of Twitter. Drawing us together to share a common event. A chance for strangers to exchange thoughts and information. Spreading rapidly and creating that new kind of community that makes us love the web so much.

Cold as Toronto may have been in the last few hours, its new personality shone through. The new wired Toronto has a strong community spirit speaking eloquently when many voices come together through the power of a single hash.

You can wade through my long, long, last and very earnest post about community on the web or watch this video from Jonathan Mann of Rock Cookie Bottom, which is far more entertaining, funny and melodic.

Thanks for the link, Rob.

I’ve been grappling of late with the concept of online community. It seems on the surface like it should be a good thing. I love the internet and community is a fine concept. Put them together and it should be excellent. Yes? No?

I can tell you some horror stories. Like what happened to Kathy Sierra author of the blog Creating Passionate Users. Here are some of her own words about what happened:

For the last four weeks, I've been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that's not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs... blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers.

An online community of bloggers attacked her. Sierra, who’s blog was positive and beautiful, stopped blogging. I’m sure the impact on her non-virtual life has been enormous and long lasting.

Less dramatic, but similar in many ways is the recent Twittack on CBC producer Ira Basen. Basan was actually virtually slagged by some Twitterers while he was onstage giving a speech. An online community – of which he wasn’t a part – ganged up on him. There was a meanness to the attack. Maybe they didn’t like his ideas, but the words don’t feel like an intellectual challenge. They seem hostile.

Online communities can get vicious. And when two communities get mad at the same time, there can be a blog battle, like the one that took place after I presented Story2.OH at Case Camp last year, with the Jets/PR-types on one side and the artist/screenwriting Sharks on the other. To appreciate the scope of the virtual war, you have to scroll down on both links are read the comments, along with those below my original post on getting deleted by Facebook. It was the virtual version of a territorial war – no knives, but some colourful use of language. It certainly left lasting scars.

Speaking of wars, remember Color Wars, ze frank’s inventive collection of online community games for the Twitter community? Twitter bingo, online Rock, Paper, Scissors, Rap Battle Remix. I don’t think anyone argued with the judges or stamped their foot about losing. That was big time virtual fun. And what a great sense of community it developed. There wasn’t any bitterness between say Team Puce and the Off White Team. Color War built a sense of camaraderie.

The web has certainly created a sense of community for Canadian screenwriters. We began gathering virtually around Dead Things on Sticks, Ink Canada and Facebook, then expanded to add more blogs and Twitter to our realm as well as our non-virtual events. In my experience this is a warm, supportive, friendly, funny community that knows how to hoist a pint. This is an example of online community excellence.

But check out what smart Ivor Tossol has to say about Facebook. He says we’re all fakety-fake-fake when we’re online and there’s no room for depression in a status update.

Every status update, every comment, every little fart of consciousness that gets posted to that site sounds more or less like every other one: an attempt to look smart, sound detached, act aloof, as if life really were an endless series of caustic remarks and mild annoyances.

It's like being trapped in a nightmarish Oscar Wilde theme park, where everything is surface and snark and everybody has an animatronic smile fixed on their face. It's not what's said on Facebook that amazes me. It's what's left unsaid: Nobody is vulnerable or depressed. Nobody is on anti-depressants.

There’s extreme truth in what he’s saying.

When I interviewed Damian Kindler, creator of Sanctuary, which started out online and then became a tv series, he had plenty to say about community. A strong community had formed around Sanctuary when it launched on the web. And Damian came to hate them. He had hoped to harness their enthusiasm and turn them into ambassadors for the series. Instead they succumbed to petty in fighting and were a massive drain on his time and energy to the point that he had to close down most of his own online presence to get his life back. Online communities can be a pain in the fucking ass.

Yesterday on Twitter were all the people who noticed and tweeted #peace. We didn’t make a difference, didn’t bring any wars to an end or save lives and we probably didn’t even draw the attention of any politicians. But collectively, we called for peace. Can thinking about it, hoping for it, voicing our desire for it be wrong? Of course not. Online community can have a collective conscience; we can dream together.

Online communities take many forms, kind of like offline communities. We humans are a varied and interesting bunch. We never cease to amaze me. Individuals want different things from the web and use it differently. Sometimes we hook up with a bunch of like-minded types and our grouping takes on a personality of its own.

In some ways, being on the web is like being back in high school. There are the emo kids and the goths, jocks and preppies, the hipsters and the nerds and many many more. There are definitely some mean kids out there. Beware of them. Despite the fact that their sticks and stones are only words, they can definitely hurt you.

But there are lots of other kids in the playground. Smart ones, fun ones, the ones who know all the best toys.

Recently I had a Twitter exchange with Karen Walton that turned into a blog post about what Twitter can do for writers. I had been floundering around in the dark trying to make sense of my obsession and Karen’s thoughts on the subject had been sort of an epiphany for me. But when I blogged about it, the comment gave me even great insight.

One of the comments I loved most was from MJ Reid, a member of my virtual posse – we met on Facebook and are Twee-pals as well, but have yet to meet in person:

Members of primate groups (bands? communities?) make efforts to connect with the other members of their groups, even just with a touch or a couple of seconds of togetherness in a task. This (apparently) fosters common purpose and belonging. The same happens with human groups, and always has. Getting together at meal-time; religious and / or social events; marriages, births, funerals; sport and games; art and music - all examples of social community building.

The big difference with Twitter and the like is it allows community building to be intentional and non-local. You’re not constrained by physical proximity. You can add and remove members of your intentional community at will. You can connect faster, wider, and more powerfully than ever before. Heady stuff.

That’s one of the things I love most about my online communities, how they’ll apply their minds to the problems that challenge me. Collectively, I have confidence we’ll figure it all out.