Ashton: just smart enough to know he’s not smart enough?

Backstory: Ashton Kutcher bumbles into a PR disaster via ill-informed tweet & subsequent perceived overreaction (said something dumb, decided to kinda quit social media for a bit til he recovers).

Why did Ashton temporarily drop out? 3 reasons why a very famous social tech investor would decide to stop expressing himself himself on Twitter:

1. Earnest Ashton feels the weight of his 8.3 million reach on Twitter & sincerely doesn’t want to spread misinformation.

2. Petulant Ashton has had enough self-inflicted humility and wants to stop getting yelled at by people less good looking and rich than he is.

3. Businessman Ashton recognizes that he’s damaging his brand when this kind of thing happens, and doesn’t want to risk getting fired from tv.

Turns out social media is hard. Opportunities to get eaten by crocodiles abound.

I'm just trying to be a good person.

November 10, 2011 9:35 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@aplusk

ashton kutcher

What’s the male/female ratio on Google+ these days?

Amber Mac asked recently if anyone has recent stats on the maleness to femaleness ratio on G+. I’m doing some livechat action with the Winnipeg Free Press (with GigaOm’s Matthew Ingram, Modern Earth‘s supercute Ian Rountree & the Freep’s social media reporter Lindsey Wiebe) about Google+ on Tuesday, so I need to know this kinda stuff.

SocialStatistics—crawling 45k+ G+ profiles—says about 12.5% of the landscape wears lipstick and uncomfortable shoes. If you know anything about surveys, you know a sample size of 45k is oodles more than statistically accurate.

This isn’t the only gender ratio guesstimate available, however: Find People on G+ speculates chicks are more in the 30% range.

Personally I’m surprised at the Google+ insistence on identifying gender (and therefore not surprised that ‘other’ comprises almost 85k people) in light of the “It Gets Better” campaign. Drop-down-menuing gender seems a little off brand.

Note to chicks: take advantage of this early girly disparity to make the most of your personal, chickified brand. You’re currently rare.

#FF: The cutest boys on Twitter

You should follow these boys based on their decorative function in your Twitter stream.

Obviously, the cutEST boy on Twitter is my husband, @KevinGlasier

Betoqued French Canadian graphic designer @andrelavergne

Stylish Minneapolitan developer—hey, he looks just like the last guy!—@andylemay

British with cartoon indie hair: @willfrancis

Strategic stripey Googler @malbonnington

Italian-sounding Edelmen Digital kind of guy, @armano

Mobile UX designin' nice guy @fiftyforty

Norwegian, sitting on blonde bent plywood furniture: @arnteriksen

Canadian AND an illustrator. @ben_weeks

Googly guy avec personal flair. @chrismessina

A man who really cares about pencils: @forcedefrappe

My mental picture of Leonard Cohen @HipGnosis23

Just cute, kwim? @ChrisSaad

Smart & stylish Peg City developer @envex

Digging 30-something foreheads! @ev

Serious cowlick Jim Carrey thing @jack

Real or art gallery? @JeromeJenner

Art, culture, hoody @ryanwmurray

GSPish Montreal designer @jmbrais

Confrontationally cute @kareemy

Symmetry & suiting @mashable

Creative! Tidy! @MassimoFarina

Indy Pegger @mikedeurksen

It's nice to wear a tie. @ninjarunner

Blow it out @shauncy

Harvard. Glasses. London. @umairh

Creative BBHer @zachianblank

Why Jesse Eisenberg is cuter than Mark Zuckerberg

Columbia Pictures will be releasing The Social Network, a flick about the rise of everything-changing Facebook, this October. The movie poster is now out, and Jesse “Michael Cera with more testosterone” Eisenberg will be playing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The likeness is pretty good, with the usual Hollywood cutening-up of the IRL protagonist.

Why is Jesse a great choice for the Zuck character?

• Pasty nerd skin
• Unruly hair
• Gentle, geeky demeanour

But Zuckerbergian though Jesse may be, his cuteness exceeds that of the CEO in the following ways:

• More animated, punkier hair
• A steelier gaze, complimented by chiseled cheekbones and a square, manly jaw
• A broader, flatter nose—a nose with just a little more presence, you know?—and a more angular, more defiant chin

I will grant there are a few factors that might make Mark Zuckerberg a better boyfriend:

• Untold billions
• World-changing mastermind abilities

But unfortunately:

• “Mark Zuckerberg girlfriend” is a top search on Google, so the competition will be fierce
• Potential evil genius

Anyways, I’m highly anticipating this film, but wonder if my fondness for Mr. Eisenberg is going to colour my feelings towards Zuck, which are ambivalent at best. This may have been strategic on Columbia’s part.

I’ve seen Mark Zuckerberg speak in person, and he’s disarmingly nice for someone that basically rules the world. We’ll see if the film paints a multidimensional picture, and if MZ comes out a sympathetic character. If we can get past the cuteness.

Social Butterflies: Sacha Chua on women in social media

Last in a series of interviews with female Canadian social media stars! The premise, which you can read about here, investigates how women act towards each other in the quest to be head social butterfly.

Sacha Chua is a Torontonian technology-loving girl geek, by which I mean she’s an application developer at IBM, for Pete’s sake. She’s also an Enterprise 2.0 consultant, helping people understand and use online collaboration tools.

I tend to not think about gender much.

I almost reflexively check the gender balance at conferences (still pretty bad, but better than it was before, although there’s still a lack of women speakers), but I don’t consider gender when I’m helping people or linking to them, and I’ve never intentionally “held people down”.

No point in making things an ego contest. Life is more fun when you share!

Engage unboxing

If you’re not familiar with the unboxing phenomenon, you’re going to think I’m mental, but basically when geeks order something super cool from the internet, they get so stoked to open it that they document taking it out of the box.

My copy of Brian Solis‘s Engage finally arrived, so here’s the reveal. I let my baby do the unboxing, because she really, really likes cardboard.

This book is “the complete guide for brands and businesses to build, cultivate, and measure success in the new web”. I’ll let you know what I learn, how I’m applying it, and what my ROI on the $25 is

“#Curate” is an obnoxious word for filtering

Mike Rhode's SXSW sketchnotes

I’m so into the evolution of language. Ask anybody. I stop hyphenating “email” in like 1977.

As a lover of language, I have a keen appreciation for the nuance and tone of vocabulary. Fluidity of meaning is super, but it has to be totally right.

The word that’s wrinkling my fur is “curate“. You know, that thing you get a Masters in Byzantine art history to do.

“Curate” as a verb for posting links for your buddies has been floating around for a bit. SXSW seems to have really flagellated that horse past all repair, though. See Mike Rhode’s sketchnotes bearing the imperative “Become a curator“.

Scoble started this, and I thank him for bringing the issue to a head. Better we make a decision now than let this linguistic boil fester any longer.

Scoble wants better aggregating tools for when he’s filtering. I’m all for that. I’m sick of taking screenshots of tweets too. But I unhumbly suggest most of what we’re gathering is more “filtered” than “curated”.

Have you read Cult of the Amateur? (God, I need an Amazon affiliate account). It’s about UGC (user-gen content) being the death of expert authority, and all that. I’m not totally down with this book, but the elevation of common man to Curator puts me in mind of this ominous thesis.

Curating is something done by experts. And Scoble, good sir, you may indeed claim that title.

But homo commonis is just a dude with a bunch of interesting (to him) $h1t that he’s gathering up in one place bascially so he can find the links to it later. If he makes industrious use of that $h1tpile by sending it to his tweeps, or his tweeps to it, then we can generously call it “filtering”.

Let’s not drag down the actual profession of curating by overstating link hoarding. It’s pretentious to ascribe more significance to our activities than they warrant with high-falutin’ words.