Let’s talk meta. Specifically, Circleme – a new social media site that allows users to connect to themselves.
From their site, “CircleMe is an inspiring social way to collect all your likes and find new ones,” or as most of us read it, “Another one? Really?”
If this fails it won’t be because it’s a terrible idea. Rather it’s too soon, dealing with a problem not enough people have yet – the problem of keeping track of too many sites. CircleMe relies on a group of people asking the question, “How can I possibly keep track of the ten social networks I’m on?” and not immediately answering with, “I could get rid of eight of them.”
Instead they answer with, “I could create another network that keeps track of the ten others. That will surely simplify things.”
What scares me is where this trend is headed. Instead of wiping the slate clean with each new social network, as happened in the past, new ones start cropping on with higher and higher levels of abstraction.
A social network that allows you to compare your connections on 10 platform.
A network that compares the number of networks you have to the number others’ have.
A network of networks networking networks.
That last one didn’t sound real to me.
If CircleMe is a network based on the idea of connecting you to yourself, what’s next? A network connecting you to the networks that connect you to yourself? A way to connect to the networks of others connecting them to themselves? A network dedicated to disconnecting from the ones you actually know?
Anything’s possible, and if we’re going abstract with all of this, let’s go all the way. I want a series of networks that allows me to friend people based on how many social media sites they’re connected to, including the sites in the network itself. It’s the only practical way to objectively like people I never plan to want to know.
Perhaps the world isn’t ready for this yet. It’s too soon. But give it time. I have no doubt we’ll get there.
A big thanks to the 80,000 people who visited my site in the last 2 days.
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I found it odd yesterday when the amount of comments on my youtube channel jumped by close to 600%. That’s right. I got 6 comments.
Looking at the stats, I had a 2,000 person bump in the last two days, 1700 more than I was used to. I assumed someone had embedded the tutorial on their site so was surprised to see the main referrer was listed as jeremyshuback.com.
Heading over to my Google Analytics, I saw 25,000 people had visited here yesterday. On a normal day, I get about 30 hits.
The referring source was Stumble Upon. I headed over there, and saw 79,000 people had Stumbled me and over 5,000 people had pressed Like.
‘What the what?’ I wondered. There weren’t any major influencers. Instead, 5,000 random people and some strange algorithm brought me to their attention.
I did what I could. I saw who was talking about it on twitter and thanked them for linking. I updated my site so it had a slightly better design and added a stumble button to the bottom of it. If I want to sustain traffic like this, I just need more content.
I’d spent the day getting over being sick, mostly watching the fourth season of Parks and Rec, and this was the sort of kick in the pants I needed to get me motivated again. Which is to say, expect more content soon. Some tutorials. Some Photoshop insights. Some art things.
I have almost 80,000 people who visited my site this weekend. Let’s see where this takes me.
Last Sunday I hit a flow state. I hadn’t reached one in a while, and had forgotten just how amazing of a feeling it is. It started when Urgent Genius inspired me to quickly finish an article. They were running a 48 hour contest that I saw 3 hours before the deadline. The contest revolved around newsjacking something popular. To enter you needed a team of 3 to 8 people willing to work the weekend to create something brilliant. In other words, I wasn’t planning to enter the contest, but it felt like a good arbitrary deadline to work towards.
It was due at 6pm, so at 3pm I headed to a coffee shop and spent the next few hours writing an article responding to Stop Stealing Dreams (a book released the week previous). I was hoping to reach a point where it was worth linking to, but wasn’t happy with how it turned out when I pressed submit at 5:57.
It felt more like trolling then a reasoned argument on the subject, so I wrote a far more researched follow up: Learning Math through Programming.
Still not happy, I headed home and ate.
Trying to think up a decent article, I listed out the classes he thought should be taught in schools. I didn’t see how those classes could be taught without losing far too much of our current curriculum. However, writing an article combining the 28 standard high school classes in relation to his classes seemed like a lot of mental juggling. That’s probably why he never did it in the book. I decided I could sort it out with a reasonable infographic. Doing that by computer would mean spending more time staring at a screen, so instead I took out some construction paper, a sharpie, and a poster board and ended up with this:
I got lost in creating the video, and when I put the finishing touches on the third article of the night, Adjusting the High School Curriculum, it was 2:30 and I wasn’t tired. I had energy from creating at a level of output I wasn’t used to. It ended up as 1800 words in 3 articles, a 3 minute video, and a collection of charts to boot.
The irony is I wasn’t a huge fan of the book. It felt like he watched:
which inspired him to read about a dozen books (listed in his bibliography) and then write a series of blog posts strung together in a ‘manifesto.’ Writing three posts on the subject made it seem like I had a disproportionate amount of passion for his book. It’s just that I am a huge geek when it comes to school policy reform, and this gave me an excuse to write about it.
I loved watching one article idea inspire 12 hours of work. It’s nice to hit that flow state from time to time. It reminds me of why I do this.
The last time I went to Richard Simmon’s studio I pulled my shoulder, was rushed to the hospital, and ended up having my arm in a splint for two months. I did get to answer, “This? Richard Simmons workout studio. No – not a video – his class is about a mile from me.” I also got this amazing note to put on my refrigerator.
The whole episode made me realize just how out of shape I was. I took up P90X. I even started a blog on it: Exercise is Hard
The blog only lasted a month, but I managed to finish the program and still do exercises from it to this day.
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Richard told me he’d comp my next visit there, and I should come soon but not too soon. Last night I finally went back and realized why I’d pulled my shoulder. It’s a serious workout heavy on the shoulders. Even after all my working out, I was still worried. When he went around hugging and kissing everyone before the class started, Richard said hi to Meg, wanted to know if I was her fiancé, and was told I was the guy who pulled his arm in his class.
“Just be careful,” he said and then hugged me.
Throughout the class he yelled at everyone to push harder, and then would turn to me and say, “Don’t push harder. Don’t hurt yourself.”
He yelled at everyone, “You’re all amazing. You’re better than roses. Then tierra’s. I love you all.” That’s a misquote, I’m sure. There was a guy from NPR taping the whole thing, and yes I am featured two minutes in to the audio interview.
Link to my interview on KPCC
At one point Richard turned the music down and turned to me in front of the class.
“Why do you keep winking at me?” he asked.
“You’re just so magnetic,” I said, “How can I resist?”
“And how’s the shoulder doing?” he asked.
“It’s good. It was a year ago,” I said.
“Let me tell everyone the story.” He told some variety of it that ended in, “And I told him I’d be happy to visit him in the hospital and whisper sweet nothings in his ear. Right?”
“Something like that,” I said, “But I don’t remember that offer.”
“Have you injured yourself since?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’d know if you had. Either you have or you haven’t.”
“Then let’s go with no – I haven’t.”
We talked for about a minute and a half, and then he picked on a few regulars.
He came about a foot from me at one point and mouthed, ‘I love you,’ because that’s just the sort of guy he is.
Half the moves were a great workout. The other half were just an effort to make us look as ridiculous as possible and forget the fact we were working out.
The freestyle dance period.
The pick a partner and dance with her period.
The switch partners and dance with her as well period.
But I knew what I was getting in to. Any set that starts with playing it’s raining men twice in a row can only go in one direction.
Which is a round about way of saying, of course I’ll be back.
